Are these paranormal experiences or hallucinations?

Question

1. When I was in high school, and right after my grandmother passed, I arrived home one day after school. Went downstairs put a load of clothes in. Heard a woman say my name and I thought it was my mom so I yelled upstairs that I was in the basement. This happened twice again as she called my two more times. When I went upstairs I said aloud "Didn't you hear me. I said I was downstairs." No one was there.

2. One night after putting my little brother to sleep, I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I remember being unable to move and a light sort of like moonlight on water was on my closet door and I heard what I thought was my grandmother call my name. It lasted for a few seconds. Then the light disappeared.

3. I used to stay with my mother and her fiance in his house after I came back from college. I was sleeping in the basement and I heard a sniffing around my face and I felt the sensation of something sniffing me. I couldn't move and didn't see anything.

Answer 1

Are they paranormal or hallucination? You can't absolutely rule out either possibility. But you can consider the probabilities and see what's the most likely explanation.

When I read the title of your question, I had a hunch you'd be talking about experiences where you were sleeping. Sure enough, 2 out of the 3 experiences were associated with sleeping. Most paranormal events reported seem to happen as one is falling asleep, during sleep, or when waking up. It's during these times that the conscious mind can be confused between what is real and what is happening in the subconscious (dreams, in other words).

Regarding your 1st experience, such auditory hallucinations are common. My wife has come downstairs at least once and said "Yeah, what did you want?" I never called her, but she thought she heard me call her name.

Since both the semi-dream state of waking and auditory hallucinations are well known and common, while ghosts/spirits have never been shown to exist, my bet would be the former.

Answer 2

I would suggest starting by examining your question. The question assumes an either or basis they are hallucinations or they are paranormal.
However, perhaps you should consider a and also approach.
Many highly successful ESP experiments have been conducted while a person is asleep (link below) as well as the Ganzfeld experiments (link below) which limit input from the the physical senses (just as sleep and hypnosis would do).
These were personal experiences that were not experienced under controlled conditions so they provide no evidence for anything paranormal OR hallucinations OR any other normal explanations. Thus, you are free to choose the meaning of your experiences and believe any cause you wish. I suggest choosing the meaning that you are most comfortable with and makes your life better.
Only you (not believers, not debunkers, no one else) can answer this question in any meaningful way.

Answer 3

If they are not hallucinations, what can they be. As far as I know there are no spirits. It will be your mind that will be playing the tricks. If such things do happen why do they not occur to two persons simultaneously. Say have you ever experienced such things when you are with another person, say your friend, a sister or a brother. I am sure you haven't. Has your little brother heard anyhing or saw something when you saw the light or heard your grand mother. I do not know how old is your little brother ofcourse. Try and find some reasonable explanations for the sensations you are having

Answer 4

Hallucination can very well happen, the brain is able to muster the right chemicals to make this happen. However, I think these happenings are genuine. The moment my mother died, she appeared to a friend who was sleeping, and she called 5 minutes later. Also, I started seeing a dark ghost figure walking around my house for 2 weeks.. Oh man, I had to really battle my rational mind about that for a while, it was so creepy.. Even though it's long gone and I barely remember what it looked like, I made sure to write down that I saw it many times for reassurance later.. Ghosts are very real, science just hasn't found a way to determine how they exist.. Trust your experiences, they are Your evidence. But do look into rational explanations as well, a hallucination is always a possibility. Cheers!

Answer 5

There are stories of the sort. Typically, these images or sounds are external signs of things that happened in you at the subconscious level. Since you couldn't notice them your body tells you through images and sounds. I believe its a natural thing not to worry about nor to get tangled into, just like any other sensory perception.

What your image tells me is that you loved her deeply and that is the greatest treasure ever.

The important thing to look for is whether or not you felt at peace after the event. Mind what those images tell you about yourself, but treat them with the same skepticism than you would a complete stranger and don't hang on to them as if they were some treasure.

Best wishes

Answer 6

I would say that two out of three were visitations, the third could have been an animal spirit or sleep paralysis. I have had recently deceased relatives, and some that I have never known do things that you described in one and two, I have also known people who don't believe in ghosts to call me in the middle of the night or day in a panic, because something just wasn't right!
As for number 3, had it happened more than once? Did your Mom's fiance have a recent pet die or something. Even pets that have died will continue checking out the new intruders after they die sometimes. If it was a one time deal I would say sleep paralysis.
We all have abilities to see and hear, some are just more intuned than others. Three occurances of normal life experinces is no reason to think you are crazy though.

Answer 7

I've had a lot of the same things happen to me in my life. You are not crazy or hallucinating. Your just a person who can contact the other side, the paranormal. Spirits know this and will try to make contact with you all of your life. I call it being a ghost magnet. For some reason people like us just draw spirits to us. You should try to find a psychic group in your area and explore your talents. No matter what other people say there is more out there then we can rationalize with science and religion, life goes on after death, in some cases they come back to contact us.

Answer 8

There are people here who are real believers.Pretty much every out of place sound is a spirit.There are also some honest paranormal investigators.I think they'd say the same thing as me.Numbers 2 and 3 were almost certainly dreams.Number 1,who knows,but that type of thing happens to everybody.

Answer 9

If they are not hallucinations, spirits are trying to communicate with you.

Spirits are otherwise known as satan's little helpers. Angels cast from heaven when they were defeated and thrown out. Spirits are not the other dimentional form of your deseased loved ones, however they love to impersonate people , animals, or whatever in order to gain influence over you so that you might make the same bad choices they did in order to be vanquished from heaven.

When people die they do not know anything or do anything. They aren't floating around, they aren't sitting on a cloud. The 'spirits' of dead people are waiting in stasis, not thinking or doing...until the day that every living being that is or ever was is raised to life and answers for the decisions they made in life.

You don't need to see a psycic, they are second hand impostors. If you want to understand this world and the next and the others...read the Bible.

Answer 10

Could very likely be hallucinations. A friend of mine who is a psychologist, told me that both visual and auditory hallucinations are quite common, and happen to people all of the time. Also, dreams, media etc. serve to build memories of things that never really occurred.

Many of these people mistake these occurrences, false memories, etc, to be paranormal phenomena, when they most often have a psychological basis.

Based upon what you described, I really saw no evidence of anything paranormal.