The Science Behind Feeling Alone in a Crowded Room

Research is showing that the eerie sensation of a presence in the room when you are alone is something we can understand using scientific models of the mind, the body, and the relationship between the two. Many of the accounts collected sound like hypnagogia: hallucinatory experiences that happen on the boundaries of sleep. Presences have a particularly strong link with sleep paralysis, experienced by around 7 percent of adults at least once in their life. Studies have suggested more than 50 percent of people with sleep paralysis report encountering a presence.