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Childhood Hallucination

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ProphetofOccam

ProphetofOccam

Paranormal Adept
When I was four or five years old, I lived with my family in my great grandmother's house in an urban residential area in Cleveland, Ohio. On occasion, I would spend the weekend sleeping over a friend's house across the street. Their family was a little rougher-around-edges than your typical family, but he was the only kid my age on the block, so i tended to spend a lot of time over there.

I don't really remember why, but at some point in the later evening hours, about 10 or 11pm, I had decided that i didn't want to spend the night over my friend's house that weekend and promptly left his house and began making my way across the street. This was very shortly followed by one of the most panicked, terrifying moments of my 33 years.

To preface, at 4 years old, I had exposure to UFO and ET materials, primarily via television specials. It was the mid 80's, and the paranormal was experiencing a pretty big surge in popularity at that time. Specials about Greys, and news reports of Russian UFO's were plentiful and common. For reasons I still don't really understand, aside form some innate fear our brains experience from the features of the creatures, I had, and to some extent still have, a deep rooted phobia of "grey" aliens. I believe this had a lot to do with my hallucination.

As I timidly made my way across the street -- it being very dark and very late for my four or five year old psyche -- I heard a noise behind me, sending me into an irrational panic. I bolted for my grandma's front door as if my life depended on it. Running as fast as my little legs could carry me, I decided, against my better judgement, to turn my head to see what was clearly after me.

In front of a panel van, awkwardly moving towards me, was a figure that I first mistook for a ghost. It's entire being was bright, pale white. A hazy green glow emanated from every inch of its body. Aesthetically, it looked very much like a glow-in-the-dark action-figure.

After a second or so, I realized that the figure seemed to be wearing some kind of suit. I guess it was my young mind's approximation of a space suit, though looking back on the image in my mind, it more strongly resembled an old-timey diving suit without the helmet. Its limbs formed slow moving wave patterns as it "ran" towards me in slow motion -- think of the flailing, wavy arms of an old-timey Mickey Mouse cartoon, but that moves about slowly like the astronauts in footage from the first lunar landing. If it was a ghost that my mind had produced, it certainly wasn't human.

Panic conquered ever synapse in my skull and shot through my heart, and then my stomach like a bolt of lightening. I started crying uncontrollably, and it felt like my grandmother's front door was hundreds of yards away.

My eyes were blurry with tears, and I continued to glance back over my shoulder to keep track of the figure's advancement. Each time I looked back, the figure had advanced another two feet, even though the speed of its movement didn't reflect that possibility. It dawned on me that I hadn't yet looked at the creature's face, mostly out of the paralyzing fear of what it might look like. Panicked, and partially blinded by tears, I could make out what appeared to be a pear-shaped head on top of which sat two slug-like antenna, which also moved slowly, in much the same way they do on an actual slug. I don't remember any eyes, which I've always thought was strange given my grey phobia.

Before I realized what happened, I ran, full sprint, into my grandma's front door. I then began to beat and kick on the door, screaming for help, with everything that I had. My mom answered the door, and I just about ripped the screen door off the hinges, pulling it out of her hand to get into the house (it was common in that neighborhood to answer your door, and then put some distance between you an the unexpected visitor with the storm door). According to my mom, I was basically unintelligible with hysteria, but was convinced that something was going to get me. When I looked back a final time, now within the safety of the house, the figure was gone. My mom, not living inside my brain, didn't see anything.

For several years following that experience, I was pretty sure that I had seen a real, live alien creature. It wasn't until I was in my late pre-teen years that I realized, given the ridiculous appearance of the creature, that I suffered a hysteria driven, full-on hallucination comprised of an amalgam of all the things that creeped me out, or otherwise disturbed me on some level, as a kid.

My mom says that, on an entirely separate occasion, though she can't remember if it was before or after the hallucination, I came running into the house one afternoon full of excitement, claiming to have found a "baby alien" behind the garage, and I needed her to help me find something to put it in so that it wouldn't die. When we got outside, I apparently couldn't find it again, and, according to her, became extremely distraught. In retrospect, given my exposure to images of greys and the like, I had stumbled upon the ever so common sight of a fallen, featherless baby sparrow or starling for the first time, and mistook the otherwise unrecognizable bird as an infant, big eyed alien. Likely a cat or some other animal got to the bird between the time I found it and the time I went into the house to get my mom.

I have no history of mental illness, nor have I ever had any similar experiences or hallucinations following that one. I don't know if my friend and I got into some pills or "candy" of his parents' that we shouldn't have eaten, or if the fear I had of the late-night, darkened neighborhood was enough to send my brain into a hallucinatory tailspin. Whatever the cause of the hallucination, it remains one of the most interesting experiences of my life, and I'll never forget it as long as I live.

George
 
You're not alone. Many children have strange experiences, including yours truly. I haven't tried to rationalized mine one way or another to fit any particular belief. I simply accept that to me the experiences were real, and that there is more to them than I have any certain explanation for. I suggest that yours may be the same, and that instead of trying to jam it into some psychological framework, just try to accept it on its own terms. If you like stories of strange experiences by children ( with a hint of alien ), I suggest that you read Whitley Streiber's Secret School. It took me back in mind to that place when I was small and allowed me to review my experiences from a new perspective ... and by that I don't mean that the book made me believe anything in particular, but let's just say, if you had never had any strange experiences, you wouldn't get the same effect from it.
 
I decided it was a hallucination at a very early age based on a number of factors. The main one being its absurdity. I'll do a rendering of what I saw, which was literally the amalgam I described (30's Mickey mouse cartoons, aliens, ghosts, a certain glow-in-the-dark figurine, old dive suits that were popular in fish tanks as figurines, snails, and human space travel were all things that disturbed or creeped me out as a kid). The thing ran slowly because I thought that's what you did if you were in/from space. Too much was, frankly, stupid about the entire event that it really just makes more sense as a product of my imagination.

The baby bird thing just makes sense as a baby bird thing.

My phobia of "greys" was extreme. I had a slightly less intense phobia of ghosts. I would pray to my baby sitters velvet Jesus just to ask him/it never to appear to me in any form. I think those intense emotions are what fueled my eventual interest in the paranormal as a type of study.

When I said no history of mental disorders, I meant psychotic disorders. I was tested for ADHD in the 3rd grade, and they thought I might actually have post traumatic related syndromes (which would could have been prenatal in origin -- my mom was physically abused by my dad when she was pregant, up until they were divorced when i was three). Later, in my mid teens, I awakened a panic attack type deal after a bad drug experience -- nothing hallucinogenic in nature. This led to about five or six months of agoraphobia, which I worked on and it went away. I don't really consider that type of thing a "psychological disorder" so much as a temporary psychological inconvenience, and drug and trauma related in nature -- nothing genetic.

At the time of the hallucination and baby alien thing, I'd had no history of anything.
 
I guess I should note that I still experience panic attacks. The way that works is not that you are driven into states of panic based on trauma or experience, as many people seem to understand it, but that your nervous system goes into fight or flight mode at random, without provocation. Instances are extremely few and far between, and I generally try to ignore it until it passes. I experience these attacks maye one or twice every three or so years.
 
ProphetofOccam said:
I decided it was a hallucination at a very early age based on a number of factors. The main one being its absurdity ...
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I think that it's fair to believe that what you saw wasn't actually the way you perceived it. Children do have vivid imaginations, and hallucinations can result from anxiety attacks. However healthy people rarely have hallucinations unless they are induced. So I think it's likely that there was also some real visual stimulus that was beyond your immediate comprehension that caused your mind to fill in the blanks. For example, maybe there was an image on the side of the panel that was sort of similar to what you saw ( the Michelin Tire man comes to mind ), and the play of shadow and light in the street gave a brief illusion of movement that your already heightened fear and imagination amplified. It's also not inconceivable that there may have been something there, but what exactly who or what it was you didn't have the composure to investigate further. All perfectly understandable.
 
It very well could have been something on the panel van, though it was a personal vehicle. Back in those days, though, people painted crazy stuff on those things. It's quite possible. Plus, I don't remember what made me change my mind so abruptly about sleeping over the friend's house. I may have already been crying, which would have distorted my vision and then my imagination took over. I have also considered that it may have been a teen or group of teens in a mask, just goofing around at night, and, again, my imagination filled in the rest. Again, I'll put together a rendering, if I have time, and you'll get why I think it's a hallucination or something of that nature.

Oh, and I've read bits and pieces of Whitley Streiber's stuff, and I've read a lot of the stuff he puts on the internet. I've always meant to read his first two "alien" books, but never got around to it. I always thought the original stance he expressed on the situation was interesting -- now, it seems everyone wants to take the psycho-dimentional beings angle. It's much more fun than the concept of extraterrestrials.
 
ProphetofOccam said:
It very well could have been something on the panel van ... Oh, and I've read bits and pieces of Whitley Streiber's stuff ... but never got around to it ...
Click to expand...

Here's a plumbing contractor van in Calgary that almost fits the bill !​
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6449535265_69dfbd9bfe.jpg
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I was the same way with Streiber's books until Secret School.​
It was the first one I read all the way through​
The first time I tried.​
 
Here's a quick & dirty rendering. I can't remember exactly what the legs were like, and I don't want to start embellishing. This is as accurately as I can remember it. The legs MAY have been similar to the arms.alien001.jpg
 
While I do freelance motion graphics, digital media and design, my day job is the awful experience that is welding. My apologies to any other welders in the forums ho happen to enjoy their jobs. I'm trying to transition fully into design, but freelancers don't have a lot of stuff to choose from in Cleveland. It's there, but not as much as New York or Chicago.
 
My little ones have had similar incidents of visitors to them and don't ridicule. Even a local Primary school teacher found it more common tat certain age with these incidents of visitors and advised us to ask question which did not lead but first ask what had happened. Second what shape or colour. Is it the brain changing growing pains or outside interference?
 
Nice, a fellow Clevelander. I had a similar experience, though it was in my house, not outside when I was around 9 years old. When I was a kid I was convinced that I had some sort of alien contact and I've also had the Gray phobia thing, I'll never forget the pure, unadulterated terror I experienced when I saw the cover of Communion. I ended up reading the book anyway a couple years after the experience, which probably contributed to my thinking I had contact and/or was abducted. I wrote it up in the personal experiences forum when I first joined the site.

Over the years of getting deeper and deeper into the subject of UFO's and abductions, I realized that my situation was probably the result of sleep paralysis mixed with hypnogogic hallucinations. I've only ever had 1 or 2 strange sleep type experiences since then and it's never been quite the same, usually I'll realize that I'm suffering from sleep paralysis and simply sit back and wait for it to wear off. Still, one does wonder at times. I'll never forget that initial terror and I'll also never stop wondering why in the hell I reacted the way I did to it, unlike yourself I don't remember any prior exposure to images of Grays or the like but it's possible I just don't remember. Thanks for taking the time to write that up, it was interesting.
 
Very interesting experience ProphetofOccam, when I saw the head of your hallucination (?) It reminded me of an occasion where I along with a friend witnessed a smiling cartoon caterpillar. just google mr. do-bee (from romper room) to get an idea what I "co-hallucinated"
 
Spooky, I know of Romper Room and Mr. Do Bee. That's actually pretty interesting. I believe the snail aspect of what I saw was inspired by this guy: Silas the Snail. He's a character from the Nickelodeon show Pinwheel. I was, for whatever reason, somewhat terrified of the thing -- his clowny, smiley face just completely freaked me out. I'd have to change the channel when his segments were going on.

Muadib, I too was afraid to look at the cover of communion. It still creeps me out. Though, as I get older, my phobia of the grey characters has grown into an appreciation for the simplicity and cleanness of their design. Some renderings are creepier than others, but as a conceptualization, they're aesthetically effective.

A friend of mine, who I used to date, experiences night terrors. It's very easy to see how some of these conditions could make people believe they are experiencing abductions and encounters. It's also extremely creepy to experience as an observer for the first time.
 
I went through a good decade of night terrrors plus a previous childhood decade of intense nightmares, wakingmares and the occasional fever/dream fear induced hallucination. The most intense hallucinations were just so incredibly real and dramatically uncanny that I can completely understand how people with night terrors feel that they are subjects of alien abductions.

I was once in ths cavern, basement bar I worked in and was the only human resent. I was surrounded by rodents, squirrels, raccoons etc. that were all human size and wearing human clothes. I was the only or working the bar in this insane Germanic fairyae Coe to life.

Suddenly an all female militia burst into the bar and abducted me at gun point. I was told I was going to be killed. Pallid with fear I was allowed to have a smoke. Then I was no longer tied up in their van. I was in my bed, my arm outstretched hanging over the bed, with a lit cigarette in my hand. Somehow I had managed to pull a smoking object out of my dream and into reality. My wee brain could not hande the terror of reality breaking this way.

And then I was shuttling down the hallway outside my door, flying through space at an ever increasing speed, threatening to always be on the verge of crashing into my parents' bedroom door, like a point on a curve racing towards its inevitable asymptote. I was screaming ferociously through all of this, and could eventually hear my body moaning. I struggled to wake, but i could not regain control of my body. The images fom this experience are all still vivid 22 years later.

I think your description of the flailing illuminated figure is another example of how our brains work hard to construct reality for us when we perceive parts of it to be broken. The reality constructed, just like dream logic, sees the brain searching through the filing cabinets of memory to produce only a disjointed interpretation of what it thinks we need to see.
 
Thanks for sharing. Those childhood experiences can seem very real. The part about the van gives me the creeps because there are the kinds of people out there who put kids in vans. Maybe something gave you the vison to alert you to get the you know what out of there. I'm glad you made it out ok.

Probably one of the most real things that wasn't real happened to me in my childhood at about 4yrs old involving a dream in which I was covered by bugs that were slowly eating me. I could literally feel and see these bugs crawling all over my body. They were getting into my nose,eyes and mouth.There were so many of them you couldn't see my skin. It took a long time for my parents to wake me up. The strange thing is, I could see my dad trying to wake me up and STILL feel and see the bugs.
 
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