EVP during lucidity, or something, I'm scared as hell...

[brett]

Hello, This is my first post on what seems like a wonderful forum, so hi Just to give you a bit of background on where I'm coming from, I wouldn't consider myself an amateur at lucid dreaming, or a person who 'doesn't really know what they're doing'. I haven't attempted to have a lucid dream in quite some time, as since I've started work, I'm usually asleep before my head hits the pillow. I haven't lost interest, maybe a little motivation and strength are lacking at the moment though. This morning I was woken up by my mother getting ready for work at around 6:30am (by that time I would have been asleep for maybe 6 hours), I glanced at the clock, had a small think about the dream I was having, then fell back to sleep nearly instantly. This is just about the only way I have lucid dreams without putting effort in; by being awoken after a decent amount of unbroken sleep, and going back to sleep again shortly after. I awoke around 20 minutes later, and let out a horrified/scared gasp or moan of some kind, something that you'd probably see in a serious horror movie, something that would make you chuckle if performed by a bad actor. Now I'm not one that's known for waking up with a jolt, or expressing anything vocally within, or coming out of sleep. I'm not a 'jumpy' person either, it usually takes a lot to unnerve me. After letting out the disturbing sound that I didn't even know I was capable of producing, I instantly thought that my mother may have heard me...and I wondered how I was going to explain what just happened to her..a bad dream? Luckily she didn't hear me, as far as I know, I laid awake in my bed getting constant chills/cold flushes in fear of what had just happened. I laid there for another five minutes absolutely petrified, my mind jumping to crazy conclusions, while I listened to my mum driving off to work. I got up, went to the toilet and let my dog in (for support? :/), hopped back into bed and tried to rest but not fall asleep again in fear of what may come. I got up a few minutes later and went to work, and as the day progressed I thought about my experience off and on, not really worrying about it, until now. I suppose I should outline what happened, and how I imagine something along the lines of EVP to be involved. The dream I recalled while waking at 6:30am before the lucid dream was nothing out of the ordinary, I didn't really pay much attention to it when I was awoken, I just dismissed it as uninteresting, but nice. The lucid part: a friend of mine has been getting more and more into mainstream drugs of late, ecstasy, mushrooms etc. The dream was mainly of him telling me of a drug experience that rivalled all his others, except the catch was that during the experience, you would have a very unpleasant experience to justify/compare how good it was, or maybe to 'pay' someone or something back for the experience. A few seconds later, I started experiencing the effects of the drug, without seeing it or taking it, and I remember saying something to him like 'hah, I can get to this state without even taking the drug'. I am not a drug user, and have never touched drugs...I rarely even think about them. After saying that to him, the more lucid part of my dream began. I could see a girl with strangely beautiful red hair (not natural red). Being the over emotional kind of person I am, I instantly fell for her, and told her I loved her, with knowledge of doing so (that's as lucid as it gets, sorry). Then all hell broke loose. Everything went black, I felt an overwhelming feeling of oppression against me, while completely awake in sleep paralysis, I tried to shake my body around to wake myself up, yet I had absolutely no control, unlike other times I have had sleep paralysis in the past (I'm not narcoleptic, and rarely have much of a struggle when I am paralysed to wake my body up). So here I was in some kind of limbo, having no control over my body, petrified by the strange feeling of oppression, then came the worst part. I heard a voice (maybe more than one) toward me, saying crude, humiliating things, in an indescribable voice/tone. Things that I wouldn't have been thinking of in the deepest recess of my mind. I then awoke making the horrified moan sound mentioned above, leaning forward my bed. For someone to say those things to me, I can't really explain how it feels, yet it felt as though they had been watching me, watching the dream I was having, or something to that effect. It probably doesn't sound like much, but just imagine a feeling of being watched for your whole life in a place you thought was completely private, your dreams. And then to have such juvenile comments thrown my way, it was like being held down and raped of all I had that was sacred. I won't go into detail of exactly what was said to me, yet I shall mention that the voice(s) I heard were clear as day, and until this day I can not recall a moment of experiencing talk towards me in a dream. This felt outside the dream. My first conclusion I jumped to was some kind of spirit/ghost intervention. And then I recalled some scenes from that EVP movie 'White Noise'. Now please don't think I watched the movie last night and had a plain old nightmare after it, I saw that movie a few months ago, and didn't think much of it at all until this morning. I remember scenes of a girl not wanting to go to sleep for fear of something that sounds very close to what I experienced, in particular the rude/vile messages which are often associated with EVP. I had nothing electrical on in my room except for my alarm clock, but I remember when waking up I was looking directly at my TV's screen, and everything else that I've been able to paste together has strangely fitted in with my thoughts of this being somehow related to EVP. The voice(s) I heard did not seem to come from any particular direction either, if I had to estimate, I would say it came from about a meter above my head, and slightly from in front. I'm a huge skeptic I might add, I'm always looking for scientific explanations behind phenomena, so I'm not really 'jumping' to conclusions when I mention EVP, it's really the only thing I can think of that resembles the experience I had. I haven't read up much on EVP, I remember reading an article on skepdic.com a while ago about it, but didn't think much more of it. Whatever it was, I know it was something or someone else, and not just my imagination. It's currently 1:33am, and I'm too scared to go to bed, even though my endurance is getting the better of me Thanks for opinions/help... Brett. By the way, I’ve just started reading up on EVP again and found the article on skepdic I mentioned before - http://skepdic.com/evp.html I apologise to all the people that had no idea what I was talking about throughout this post when I mentioned EVP…

[kimpossible]

Hi, Brett! Welcome! Sometimes the dream world can seem pretty frightening at its edges, I agree! So where's the E in the EVP here? I didn't visit your link (or see the movie), but to my knowledge, EVP is ELECTRONIC Voice Projection. "Spirits" talking via the 'jacking of electronic devices. In order to do that, so the claim goes, the spirit effectively modulates noise coming from the electronic device. They have no projection and/or amplification on their own, so it would be at the volume of the device in question. Miniscule for a digital clock (like 3dB maybe) that isn't alarming, and 0dB for a TV that is turned off. So applying Occam's Razor here: do we need EVP to explain this? Doesn't seem like it. What's the simplest explanation? Hallucination and/or audible projection at edge-of-sleep. So - what's wrong with that explanation explaining it? It certainly easier and more scientifically sound, right?

[brett]

Hey, By no means does it have to be EVP, that was just the only thing I could think of that resembled what happened. And I know this may sound a bit off-putting, with electronic being the operative word, yet in the movie, there was quite clear mention of a girl being 'sought after' by evil spirits within her sleep, as she pleaded with the star of the film to stay with her and keep watch...or something like that. It also might be worth mentioning that my brain works on thousands of electronic pulses a second (well that's what I've been told..). But yeah, keep the alternative explanations rolling, as I'm still sitting at my computer, dreading the thought of what may happen again when I fall asleep!

[Sifr]

Hey, welcome to the forum First things first, how about we make this Ethereal Voice Phenomenon instead to fit with dreaming? lol The recesses of the mind are a very strange thing, to hear negative thoughts you wouldn't have are very strange, I wonder what these ethereal voices sounded like? Can you elaborate on that? Lol perhaps on a Freudian note you might have just walked into your id and superego having a little bout of fisticuffs in your unconscious mind?! Its a very strange experience, has anyone else had this before?

[dream-scape]

Hello brett, Welcome! This sounds like sleep paralysis to me. Sometimes when you wake up paralyzed it is accompanied by feelings of incredible fear, feelings of a sinister presence, feelings of suffocation, and supernatural sounds, smells, and/or visions often more sinister than you thought you could imagine. When the paralysis is accompanied by these it's commonly called "old hag syndrome" from folklore. I've had this happen about 3 or 4 times now, and yes i can be both quite frightening and traumatizing. I haven't had alot of experience with it but I've found that closing your eyes, repeatedly telling yourself it isn't real, and trying to calm down to be an effective way to either "shake it off" or fall back into a normal dream. As for the cause, the paralysis is caused by the brain for some reason not completely shutting off the paralysis it puts your body in during REM. The haunting experience though, I am not sure. It might just be pure hallucinations brought on by the immense fear of finding oneself paralyzed, but it might also be that the brain also does not completely shut off the dream, which then takes a new form as a ghastly haunting. I think most people who experience it though share very similar experiences, so I think it is an area that would do well with more research.

[brett]

Thanks Sifr, dream-scape, The 'ethereal' voice(s), are...very hard to describe unfortunately. It was a deepish voice, mayble slightly layered with a similar voice. As in, two or more people saying the same thing at the same time, although one sounded more prominent than the other. That's if there was more than one voice, I can't be certain, but I'm fairly sure there were (around 75% sure). As for the sleep paralysis side of things, I am quite used to experiencing paralysis on waking, the first few times it worried me a little, and then I became used to it and managed to find better ways of getting out of it as time progressed. It has never been something I've been so scared about that it has caused me to wake up with a horrified/scared gasp. It might be worth mention that I've 'played around' in sleep paralysis before, exploring what was happening when it didn't scare me anymore. I've probably laid in sleep paralysis for 10 or more minutes before, trying to put my brain back to sleep, or finding out which movements/thoughts are the best for waking myself up...so yeah, it isn't something I'm afraid of. Although it did scare me yesterday when I couldn't do anything about it while hearing the voices, yet the whole unpleasant experience only lasted for maybe 5 seconds (including the paralysis and 'ethereal' voice). I went to bed at around 3:30am this morning, still in fear of falling asleep and experiencing the same thing again (which I presumed was going to happen if I was truly being haunted ). After about half an hour of listening to music while using the light of my mp3 player to make sure no monsters were in the room with me, I managed to get to sleep. Not before getting in and out of bed a number of times to get a drink or to turn on the light to scare the shadows away though, I felt like a 5 year old who had just watched the scariest move they had ever seen. Anyway, I woke up for after around 3 hours sleep, and didn't experience or recall anything disturbing, no sleep paralysis, just a huge desire to go back to sleep which is pretty normal for me. Yet if I were able to go back to sleep after waking up, maybe I may have had a similar experience due to the higher possibility of becoming lucid...I'm kind of happy that I didn't have the chance to find out.

[dream-scape]

brett you should consider yourself quite lucky. I don't experience SP as often as some people do, but I've never had the pleasure of having it happen without the sinister premonitions, feelings, and visions. I think it could potentially be a positive experience without these. [but since the negative part is all I get, it's not really something I actively wish for ] Be well!