Hypnagogia, the transitional state between sleep and wakefulness, often involves experiencing hallucinations such as visual, auditory, and sensory perceptions. Approximately 70% of the population experiences hypnagogic hallucinations, with visual hallucinations being the most common. Hypnagogia is distinct from dreaming, parasomnia, or sleep paralysis and is considered a normal form of hallucination. Certain individuals, particularly those with poor sleep quality or mood/anxiety disorders, are more prone to hypnagogia. However, hypnagogia also offers a unique opportunity for enhanced creativity and problem-solving. It can be intentionally induced through techniques like hypnosis, providing a controlled way to explore the mind's uncharted realms.
Research explains the neuroscience behind the experience of feeling the presence of another when alone in an empty room. The Society for Psychical Research conducted one of the largest studies on the topic in 1894, concluding that such experiences happened too often to be down to chance. Presences have a particularly strong link with sleep paralysis, experienced by around 7% of adults at least once in their life. Studies have suggested more than 50% of people with sleep paralysis report encountering a presence. The experience of feeling a presence can be unnerving, but scientific research may give us an explanation for this phenomenon.
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.
