Anyone else see moving dots?

[Kieran]

My younger brother had some sort of degenerative eye condition when he was a kid. He used to point at "dots" and ask what they were. He seemed stumped when other people couldn't see them. He's had a few surgeries and I think he sees better than me now.
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I think skunkape is right in some cases, but not everybody has a problem with there eyes.I had them tested only recently, there fine, but i can doubt something like floaters could be the cause for me. It seems reasonable the explanation given by the medical profession 'to why' this happens to people.

 

[tyder001]

When I was a child I would see little gold balls at night when I would close my eyes. These would morph into patterns and at times rolling patterns. Anyway, I'm not sure how to describe it but the title of this thread had a "intense?" Well that's the wrong word but an affect non the less. 8)

 

[Kieran]

Yes, it strange, but is seems alot of people have it, and the medical profession explains some of it, but floaters doesnt explain everything for me, but there also probably, is another medical expantation for what we are seeing?

 

[atomic_annie]

Yes, it strange, but is seems alot of people have it, and the medical profession explains some of it, but floaters doesnt explain everything for me, but there also probably, is another medical expantation for what we are seeing?

Oh, I don't think so Irishseekers!
I'm pretty sure those floater things are aliens from other planets.

 

[NTS]

I've been told the little black 'floaters' are blood cells that have leaked from the vessels in your retinas. Most people have them and it's usually not a problem, but if it suddenly gets more noticable see your doctor. That happened to my wife and she had to have laser surgery because one of her retinas was becoming detached.

I can see odd shifting patterns if I close my eyes (it was fun when I was a kid). Sometimes they're afterimages of something really bright and I think some of it is our retinas doing random things when they don't have anything else to do.

 

[KEROUAC]

So am I right in saying no one else apart from maybe Irishseekers and me are seeing this grainy effect? It's not floaters as they are individual spots right? There are millions of these things. It's funny but since I began this thread I have become even more consciously aware of it. A bit like the way we're not aware of the dots that make up a picture on our TV screens until we take a closer look. As I say I'm wondering if more people can see this are but are subconsiously blocking it out. I realise this discussion sounds a bit crazy.

 

[Kieran]

Oh, I don't think so Irishseekers!
I'm pretty sure those floater things are aliens from other planets.

I doubt it Annie, well i hope not Any other suggestions other than Aliens.Any doctors on the forums

 

[Kieran]

So am I right in saying no one else apart from maybe Irishseekers and me are seeing this grainy effect? It's not floaters as they are individual spots right? There are millions of these things. It's funny but since I began this thread I have become even more consciously aware of it. A bit like the way we're not aware of the dots that make up a picture on our TV screens until we take a closer look. As I say I'm wondering if more people can see this are but are subconsiously blocking it out. I realise this discussion sounds a bit crazy.

To be honest, it seems other people have the problem and it seems it is a problem with the eyes.
I had mine tested and there fine. A specialist in the eye area, maybe is what is required.
For people, who dont have it it would seem a little crazy to them, however it seems now, other people have it in some form or another, so it makes it a little more sane to talk about.

 

[The Hawk]

I can see small line like particles moving (always moving) along elliptical paths. I see them when I want to and if I try hard enough I see them where I want to but the path will always slowly move up or down. I've been able to do this since as long as I can remember, it's not too terribly interesting, but it's something to do if I can't sleep and I'm laying in bed.

Other than this I have encountered absolutely no other optical oddities ever.

 

[Brian Now]

I can see small line like particles moving (always moving) along elliptical paths. I see them when I want to and if I try hard enough I see them where I want to but the path will always slowly move up or down. I've been able to do this since as long as I can remember, it's not too terribly interesting, but it's something to do if I can't sleep and I'm laying in bed.

Your eyes can be perfectly fine and still see floaters/flashes. And they can appear as small orbs (I thought I was actually seeing ATOMS when I was a little kid! Ha!) or as squiggly strands or other shapes. They can appear dark or bright white depending on complicated retinal stuff I don't understand.

As for the graininess, there's a term for it that I don't remember. Is it like you're seeing TV snow or static in the background of everything, especially in the dark? I have that, and I asked my optometrist about it. I think it was something to do with rods and cones or the optic nerve having a background buzz I was sensitive to. Nothing paranormal though.

Anyway, many harmless things can happen with vision, and there are going to be many variations on the above conditions and others.

Say, have y'all ever heard of this thing called Google? It's a real humdinger.

 

[jimaparks]

First time poster here. I thought this subject looked interesting. I see floaters, especially a weird snakey thing that people have told me is the back of your retinal nerve in you eyeball. You can never quite focus on it -- it moves just out of the center of your vision.

When I was a around 11, I used to lay my face on my hands with slight pressure on my eyes and after a few minutes all kind of weird multi-colored shapes would appear. Almost like fractal images, the way they would morph, remembering back -- though this was before fractal studies.

I have found that if I look into a daylight sky, pure and unclouded, I can see all kinds of floaters and dots and lights and such. I think it has something to do with how the eye has nothing to focus on.

All these experiences I have found pretty cool and not frightening (except at first the snakey optic nerve thing, at least till I knew what it was -- I thought I had maybe burned a hole into my eye from staring at the sun too long). One thing I will say -- at least about myself, and if it applies to you or not, that's good too -- is that I was lazy and bored a lot as a kid and did a lot of this sort of thing just to amuse myself, I guess. I also used to make myself faint, which was pretty cool and kind of hallucinatory.

I read about people with macular degeneration, where their scope of vision recedes till it is just a small vignetted circle, and finally nothing. Apparently people with the advanced stages of this disease have all kinds of wild hallucinations -- and some of them turn out to be common amongst each other. They report seeing lines of people trooping by them, very clearly, some of these imaginary people waving at them. This actually reminds me of Fairy Troops, which are described by Jerome Clark in his *Unexplained* book.

I think that when humans are deprived of sensory input, they will fill in the gaps with random stuff from their memories and imaginations. People experience weird stuff in sensory deprivation tanks. Alternatively, perhaps sensory deprivation gives non-ordinary reality a portal into our experience. Either way, I find stuff like this to be fascinating.

I am new to the Paracast and have been listening to the recent shows and devouring the archives. I found out about the Paracast on Above Top Secret, where I go from time to time to see what sort of nonsense people are talking about now. At least it was worth the steer over here. Great show.

 

[KEROUAC]

When I was a around 11, I used to lay my face on my hands with slight pressure on my eyes and after a few minutes all kind of weird multi-colored shapes would appear. Almost like fractal images, the way they would morph, remembering back -- though this was before fractal studies.

Welcome Jimaparks. I have had this too. I can still get this effect from rubbing my eyelids sometimes. I suppose the original point of my post was that we are told we only see a small fraction of the overall spectrum of light which many other creatures can see. I was wondering if it is possible sometimes to see beyond what would be the normal boundaries. I suppose these minute moving particles could be something to do with that. My son mentioned again this week that he could see many multicoloured moving dots. I really think we lose the ability to see this sort of thing as we get older and perhaps conditioned to block it out.

 

[dreampsi]

I have some "floaters" but aside from those, I also see the "dots". There are different kinds. One is colored balls that are very small I'll see dart across the room and fade as they do. These are usually purple, gold or blue. I always wondered why there were not other colors. I only saw a red one once and it was in the hospital ICU where my uncle was dying. In the waiting room a red one ran the full length of the ICU room and into the wall. I can only assume red has something to do with death, sick, trauma, etc. as that is the type of situation I was in and only time I saw it.

Now the other type I see look like you are looking into a microscope and watching particles bounce off each other very rapidly. I usually see them as gold in color. I was riding in a car with a friend one day and while sitting in line chatting at the bank drive-thru she said "Oh, there are my gold gnats." I asked what she meant and she said, you wouldn't believe me but I see these little gold balls bouncing off each other and I call them "electric gnats" but I knew she was seeing what I saw as I was seeing them that day, too.

These "gnats" I have to figure are either 1) some type of cellular thing going on in my eye I can focus on
2)seeing some sort of spiritual energy which could be the energy of souls moving about in the astral...who knows?
3)seeing some type of atomic particle either in the air or inside my eye which is why it looks like particles bouncing off each other like looking at cells or particles under a microscope.

I, too, can focus on them like anything else and watch them since they are there all the time. I just don't do that. When tired, meditating, etc. like others here, they are more in my vision or I notice them more.

 

[Poi]

I've seen the gnats darting all over too. When I close my eyes, I still see them, but they're red then. Like Jim, I always thought my eyes were trying to paint something interesting for my brain, or vice versa, my brain entertaining my perception.

I know from my doctor that most floaters are the result of tiny tears in the retina one gets just from exertion sometimes. If one has poor connective tissue, the tears happen more frequently and some people are warned off heavy lifting to keep from tearing the retina beyond repair. If anyone begins to see a "shade" coming down in one eye, that's the time to get to a doctor quick.

Later in life, the gel like substance in the eyeball hardens a little and pulls away from the retina. The floaters are worse then and people often see lightning flashes in the dark. I have a few cloudy floaters from that and lots of lightning strikes in the dark.

But the crazy dots are something very different. It's really interesting that kids see them in different colors though. I don't remember seeing them as a kid.

 

[kcfraser]

I believe those are cells sloughing off the inside of the eye and refracting light. Some people have them so badly that it require laser surgery to lessen them, although I think the tendency is genetic and they are likely to come back again.

If we're talking about the same thing, I beleive Steve is correct. It's just dead cells floating around inside the eye ball.

Keith (There are no bad ideas in brainstorming. Only stupid people who say stupid things, possibly while shouting.)

 

[Shea]

I don't know much of the technical jargon associated with how these "dots" and whatnot are visible, or at least seemingly visible, but just from my general background with how vision works and my own experience with these grainy particle looking things and dots have led me to the assumption that it's simply due to the high density of cells and nerves of the eyes and nerve impulses. Just background static. The graininess, being observed more in low light conditions is probably attributed to the regeneration of rhodopsin in the eyes. Rhodopsin is the pigment which lets us see in low light conditions and it bleaches out when in bright conditions. Therefore when you enter a dark room the rhodopsin has to regenerate and this accompanied by the activity of rods (low light/black and white) and cones (color/brighter light) is probably a major aspect to the grainy effect.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

When I was a around 11, I used to lay my face on my hands with slight pressure on my eyes and after a few minutes all kind of weird multi-colored shapes would appear. Almost like fractal images, the way they would morph, remembering back -- though this was before fractal studies.

Yes! Me too. For me they are kind of greenish colors. I used to do this all the time. In fact I sometimes still do. You can actually start to see stuff this way.

Now I find I can do something similar without pressing on my eyes. I often do this at night while laying in bad on my side. I can apply slight pressure with my eye lids. Now the interesting part is after the seemingly random morphing shapes, which I can never really describe, I get a small diamond shaped white light in the center of my field of vision (if you can call it vision with your eyes closed) and the sense that light is shining on my eyelids, and then a black "hole" opens up and I can see through my eye lids and often see things in that space. The last time was an old wooden chair with a round seat and bent wood back and legs. That seemed really random. I keep looking for a similar chair when I go places. Interestingly my wife and I took the kids to Holsten’s Confectionery last week, which is the restaurant where the last episode of the Sopranos was filmed, and in the front window.. was that chair. Nothing else, just the chair. What does that mean? I have no idea.

But I have been using this technique lately to see lots of weird stuff akin to remote viewing, besides the chair. I don't understand most of what I see.

Also the moving dots thing... I see that static looking background all the time, especially in the dark. My earliest paranormal experience memory was involving these dots. I've told this here before, but what happened was I was about 3 or 4 years old and my mother wanted me to take a nap. I wasn't tired, but laid in my bed staring at the ceiling. The room had one window with a room darkening shade, so it was fairly dark for the middle of the after noon. I was watching the dots swirl around and form random shapes. Then they starting coming together to form a large shape which turned into what I called a "skeleton head", as I didn't know the word "skull". It was large with two big dark eye sockets, and looked down at me for a moment, and then came down towards my face real fast!

I jumped out of bed screaming for my mom, who was in the next room. I told her what happened and of course she said I was dreaming, and didn't believe me that I was awake. It wasn't until fairly recently that I realized I was never comfortable taking naps in the daytime since that day. I think I was in my 20's before I could sleep without it being totally dark. I also wonder what I saw that day. I thought it was a skull, but thinking about it now all I'm sure about was a large whitish face with large black eyes. This was in 1961 so it was before any images of "grays" where in popular culture.

Ironically I haven't been here in a while.. I'm self employed which means I work all the time, and this place can be very time consuming! But I got an email from the forum saying it missed me and here I am... and into a thread which I have direct experience with (cue spooky music).

I'm about to post something even weirder that happened a few months ago complete with a drawing.

 

[Shea]

This kind of talk is getting a little out there for me. The neural receptors in the eye have a direct link to the brain and they can send signals to the brain without the presence of light. Pushing on one's eyes just results in semi-random nerve impulses. I say semi-random because the accompanying visions do seem as though they are oriented with the pressure. Now black holes and visions of actual objects, I'm gonna have to ho with imagination or even dreams. When I was young I would lay my head on my pillow and I was able to hear my heartbeat possibly in the form of blood being pushed through some blood vessel. It sounded like people marching in unison to me.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

This kind of talk is getting a little out there for me. The neural receptors in the eye have a direct link to the brain and they can send signals to the brain without the presence of light. Pushing on one's eyes just results in semi-random nerve impulses. I say semi-random because the accompanying visions do seem as though they are oriented with the pressure. Now black holes and visions of actual objects, I'm gonna have to ho with imagination or even dreams. When I was young I would lay my head on my pillow and I was able to hear my heartbeat possibly in the form of blood being pushed through some blood vessel. It sounded like people marching in unison to me.

This stuff IS out there. People don't imagine things they can't understand.. you always go with things you already know. Also everyone knows when they are dreaming, and you have to be asleep for that!

You have to accept that people experience odd things all the time. These things are not hallucinations or imagination. Did you ever meet anyone that hallucinated anything, ever? I never did. But I do know a women that once saw a large nose on her wall that talked to her when she was a kid. She doesn't think that's a normal thing, but she saw it. I know another woman that was chased by a bunch of sticks that were standing up and running when she was a kid. She said no one believed her, but she knows it happened. That's pretty out there too, and I believe both of these people because I have known them for a long time.

Read my other thread I just posted. A friend saw what he described as a troll/elf/leprechaun, complete with long beard when he was a kid, and then many years later his young nephew describes seeing the very same thing in their house! Two people don't imagine something 20 years apart.

The world is a strange place.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Regarding floaters. They are deposits or condensation in the vitreous jelly of the eye often caused by red blood cells as a result of hemorrhage and white blood cells as a result of inflammation. There are other causes as well.

I developed floaters a few years ago following an infection. My wife got them the same time when the infection became uveitis which lead to some serious eye problems for her. We don't know why we both got this at the same time, but the doctors think it was viral.

You can't mistake floaters for anything else because you don't see them in both eyes at the same time, and mostly see what looks like a thread going past your field of vision when you move you eyes. You certainly don't think they are a real object.

The static stuff you see in the dark is just way the brain/eyes work. You can also see it in the light, if you stare at a white wall.