Thread: The Ganzfeld effect: Quick, safe, homemade hallucinations

Originally Posted by Snowy Egypt

Again, maybe for you. I don't need scientific evidence to tell me if this will or won't work. And apparently CeDaR didn't either since it seemed to work for him. You should at least try for yourself before making such a strong statement as "if science doesn't back it up, it doesn't work".

From what I have learned throughout my life, red light will not and does not cause hallucinations. I have spent time in quiet photography dark rooms for extended periods of time...and have never hallucinated.

All I see this as is a person reaching the beginning stages of sleep.

it could take ten-forty-five minutes.

Laying down in a dark, quiet room for that long will cause most people to begin to drift off.

Even if it is just early HH, so what? Hypnogogic hallucinations are still hallucinations, and if this method can help induce them then I don't see what the problem is.

Well yeah, the red light is optional. (Most people probably don't have it anyways. XD And I don't really see why it's needed.) I still don't see how it would work in a dark room (for the reasons you stated), even though, from what I understand, CeDaR managed to pull it off. If that was the case, you wouldn't even need the ping pong halves. Personally I just think we all just don't have enough time to go get some friggin ping pong balls to properly do this with.

From what I have learned throughout my life, red light will not and does not cause hallucinations. I have spent time in quiet photography dark rooms for extended periods of time...and have never hallucinated.

All I see this as is a person reaching the beginning stages of sleep.
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Well, no. Red light will not cause HI, unless it is the ONLY light that your brain is receiving. Simply put, if you have any sort of structured sound/imagery/feeling in your head, it will be next to impossible to hallucinate.

And, while there may not be any kind of strict evidence, many experiments have been done with the ganzfeld effect. As you can see on this very thread, it has worked for many.

I've had a lot of experience with the Ganzfeld effect. The color of the field of vision is not as important as the field being uniform and featureless. To learn more about the effect, check out MindwavesGoggles.com

this is nice

I tried this the other night but didn't get very good results-my vision seemed to extend far out and I got cold on the two times I tried it (I hadn't previously been cold in the room although it might've been because I wasn't moving) and that put me off. I only tried for about 15 mins. I didn't have the static either so I will definitely try again.

There's a youtube vid flashing a red light that I use for this-if anyone wants the link for it let me know. Next time I'll use the red light with the ping pong balls and static. A lot of people seem to get creepy visions from this-I don't usually have nightmares or worry about scary stuff but people saying they've seen scary faces makes me not be able to stop thinking about it when I do this experiment!

I've been meaning to experiment with this and last night I started. I'm using orange ping-pong balls and listening to "pink noise" which has a slightly different composition than white noise and is less jarring. I'm listening to it through headphones. The boyfriend interrupted my session last night but I'll be at it again 2 days from now. Are you supposed to keep your eyes open? If so, when you blink there will be a change in the sensory stimulus.

I've also spent considerable time in darkrooms, and I've often experienced this effect, at least in a mild HI-like form, in dark rooms(no red light). Eventually blotches of color appear in my field of vision and don't go away when I blink, then eventually bright sparkles of light and intricate patterns start to form, similar to pressure phosphemes. I never saw any more organized, dream-like imagery, but I have gotten some of that after HI and this phenomena seems to be related(maybe even the same process), so it seems to me that it should be possible to go into a dream from this state.

decided to give it a show - made myself one of these



attempt number 1 (failed)
eyes were mostly open, room was dark, I was sitting in my armchair listening to static on my headphones (not to soft and not too loud) - total time : about 30mins.
began to feel sleepy and had no way of keeping track of time so aborted.

any advice/suggestions on how to make it work will be appreciated

Originally Posted by yuriythebest

room was dark

Well there's your problem... The way I understand it, and the only way it makes sense to me, is that the golf balls diffuse light creating visual sensory depravation. The white noise creates auditory sensory depravation. Technically, I don't see the diference between closing eyes in the dark - creating a void of darkness, and the golf balls in the light - creating a void of whiteness. Just that my knee-jerk reaction to a person in a dark room + relaxation = HI. If you browse through wikipedia regarding Ganzfield hallucinations you'll find various other articles like "prisoners cinema" and reports of hallucinations when people deal with featureless landscapes etc. Although based on my own personal experience, regarding hypnagogic and hypnagogic like waking hallucinations, the white background creates a better contrast for my hallucinations. Perhaps there is some deeper neurophisiological difference, but it all seems connected on some level.

Two friends and tried this twice each for 30 minutes after finding out about it a year or so ago
We first used generic ping-pong balls and one of us did white light, then us other two did red light. 30 minutes, none of us got anything.

Thinking it might be the small amount of text, we tried again, and also sealed off all gaps with white paper and used completely blank ping pong balls
Listening to radio static while under a red light, again, none of us got anything :/

My ping pong b alls are yellow is this okay?

not sure if this is related, but recently when ive been having trouble sleeping, just laying in darkness in my bed, ive imagined the narrative of a dream just without actually being asleep, like a really vivid day dream. this sort of thing could lead to sensory-deprivation initiated dreams

So if you do this while already tripping, will in increase hallucinations? Sorry, have to ask.

Is there an alternative to the ping pong balls? Could I just use paper?

you said use a red light? do you think using a black light word enhance this experience?

The OP hasn't bee active in some time.

The thread should answer your questions.

**Thread closed**