Learjet said:

I'm curious of how other people see these images, rather than the actual content also. Do they have natural colour or is it richer/bland? Does room light affect them? Anything else of note that you can think of that make them different to "normal" vision?

Sorry for all the questions. I'm just trying to understand better.

Yes, these things are familiar. When I was younger I would see the grid above the tile floors, and it looked like a very sharp afterglow of the grout, only thinner and sharper, and more exact. It would shimmer and blink. I would also see that seemingly random dot pattern on your page in the carpet if I was looking carefully for santa's elves. :)  The dots, which were also bright white, tiny, exact and not as random as it would seem, were a way for my brain to check many places as once (that is certainly what I remember thinking). Oh, and the tile grid thing was a way for my brain to organize somehow. I knew when these things were happening that they were brain functions rather than extrenal things, but they were most definately seen with my eyes as if they were there, and yet I knew they were not there, but were a function of my eyes. I have seen a choppy ocean view turn into many connected triangles, again my brain or eyes organizing the ocean. The spinning coin I would see looked very very similar to one of the images on your page, the one that looks kinda like a kidney bean, but i would see it standing vertical, and the spinning of it would definately make it look at times like it was bent, as in the illustration. It also had the striations on the side as in the drawing.

Now the visions I would see were not the same then, and not now either. I must add in this complicated mis that I also see sound, not all the time, but when I allow it. I think that part has to do with some kind of emotional sensitivity? But then I am not an emotional person, at least outwardly. But again to the visions — many of these visions of people, spirits, projected images or whatever they are happen while I am perfectly awake. One in particular that was striking to me was the image of a man in white robes standing before me as I tied my shoe to go play tag football with my friends. That was in the haunted house #1 that I haven't written about yet.

Oh, here is something that might interest you — my sisters and I all saw glowing multi-colored tadpole-like things flying around our ceilings when we were young (all in that "haunted house" now that I think about it). These visions stopped by about age 6 or 7, but we all saw them, and our descriptions match exactly. Many flying around at once. I think we probably all saw them when in bed, and probably at dusk and dawn. They were similar to the grid, only brightly colored and not organized at all, but more organic and animal like. I never really thought about what they were as I did with the grid things, and I always assumed they were external from me, but I am unsure about that. I remember thinking these were either neutral in "personality" /personality free or friendly. I beleive my sisters were afraid of them, and I may have been too at first, but it lasted many more years for me and I probably got used to it. I did not see this shape on your page, and I am really not sure what to make of it. Have you heard of this?

Ok, rereading some of your questions I think maybe I didn't answer them all. That is partly because I am not sure how to use this interface, so I have copied them onto my clipboard and will try again.

You said, "These entoptic images are a primitive form of HH. Apparently they date back many thousands of years, perhaps even further, and can even be traced to early cave art. They appear to feature in the early human brain, for what purpose I can't even guess."

I can see how they may have been useful to people. The scenes where I saw these entopic images are bruned into my brain in a way that makes them unforgetable. I am sure there is some link between these images and my very very vivid memory. 

By the way, where did you find out about these explanations for the images?

You said, "Grids, patterns and the like are a common feature and this fascinates me. Why the dickens would we see grids? What are we, some kind of machines and this is some sort of calibration array? Lol…"

I actually worked very closely with an optical physicist (Maurice Jarzembski), and I think maybe our eyes are little machines and the idea that these images are a calabration array sounds very plausable to me. Maurice was very interested in the eyes and vision, and decided that if he threw away his glasses (he was quite nearsighted), and if he looked at the sun at sunset every day, his eyes would fix themselves. Now I dont understand his research, but from what I gathered, he thought that the reason his eyes were bad is because he didn't let them "calibrate" with the sun's light. After a year he told me his vision was not better, but that it might be improving — and its been 4 years now. He just sent me a photo last week, still no glasses, so maybe it worked. Or maybe  he is blind. I will ask.

You said, "My early HI was of many such things. Grids, lines, polygons, all semi-static, mostly in monochrome green and rotating with a pulsating nature of a few Hertz. I'm curious if the pulsating is a sub-harmonic of a corresponding brain wave pattern. I'm trying to figure if I can build an EEG to test my theory. I'm curious about the science of these things."

The grids and dots and spinning coins I would see were usually glowing white (the coins sometimes yellow), not pulsating but blinking in relation to the movement of my eyes, and I could turn it off at will, but not change it (I did try). Sometimes the grid would blink in one direction (horizontal lines brighter and moving) and sometimes in the other direction (vertical lines brighter and moving), and this would change almost at will, but not quite. I don't think I ever saw them pulsating with any regularity. The spinning coin was very much like a spinning bowl I saw my cousin playing with years later. I wondered at that time if maybe he was spinning bowls (at age 1) for the same reason I had seen the spinning coin — some kind of developmental thing for the brain. Incidentally, when my son was 1, I gave him bowls to spin, but he was not interested the way my cousin had been.

You said, "My HI evolved from the early types into more complex and lifelike scenes. Most of them still have production artifacts like speckle, pulsing and what seems like image burn after images, like the effect of looking into the Sun, looking away yet the image remains. "

Here is where our experiences become different. Well maybe. As I began to taper off on the grid, I did start to see sound. I am not sure if I saw it before that. Chances are, before that age (about 7), I hadn't really heard any classical music of any noteworthiness, and those are the sounds I see best. At the same time these things were happening, I was also seeing full blown visions, and was very frightened by it. They did not have any visual relation to the HI that I can think of. No sparkles, no bright white outlines, no spinning, no afterburn. At that time the visions I was seeing didn't make much sense to me but scared me to death. I was certain I was being watched, and was terrified of one room in the house. I had nightmares akin to twilight zone episodes. Much later, in my 20s, I had decided that these "pesterings" by "spirits" were just me bumping in to "astral garbage", and that for some reason I was just more sensitive to it. That is still the best explanation I have for it. Except for the day that a chair caught fire in the center of the kitchen. That was weird, but a story for another day.

You said, "I'm curious of how other people see these images, rather than the actual content also. Do they have natural colour or is it richer/bland? Does room light affect them? Anything else of note that you can think of that make them different to "normal" vision?"

My visions look normal. The SOUNDS I see are vivid colors and patterns. I have drawn these patterns, and they look very much like Escher patterns, but within living colorful organic shapes. But these are not the same as the visions (and the voice to be honest). My visions look just like what you would see every normal waking day. Some happen in sleep, in the few minutes before I wake, and some in the daytime when i am busy doing things.

Room light does effect what I see, although the light goes through the "people" or whatever they are. I can see that they are not solid, but still the light on them will be in the same direction as the light in the room. This isn't always the case, but is the case in most instances that I can wrap my mind around. Sometimes these spirits are solid like normal people (well almost solid), and sometimes they are see-through, and sometimes they are almost invisible. I have noticed that if I become afraid of the vision, the vision will become more frightening looking, and if I calm myself the vision itself returns to a normal looking scene. being calm is absolutely essential for any meaningful type of comminication, but can be hard to achieve because in all honesty its always a bit frightening to be confronted with this stuff.

Many times the visions involve corners of the room I am in, or extremely loud sounds (like a foghorn or thunder) during part of the vision. I would not say that these meetings take more than 5 minutes at any one time although they may seem longer. Surely 5 minutes is the uppermost limit of time a spirit will be seen,  except in the case of the ghost tree I described earlier. By the way, I contacted my cousin about it for confirmation, and he says he no longer remembers that trip to New Mexico at all. So now its all just me, and the ghost tree can't be confirmed.

Here's another cog for the wheel. Some of these visions contained what I call "teachers" who tried to teach me different lessons about the "spirit world" by various methods. If I failed the lesson, they would be back the next day or night with a new, revised version of the same lesson until I could get through it.  Now here's the kicker (for me at least). I always thought that guy– what was his name — Edwards, the "psychic" that had a tv show where before and audience he would basically (it seemed to me) guess at names, dates, situations of deceased loved ones of the participants in the audience. I could hardly watch this ridiculous display from what I considered to be a snake oil salesman. Then, just last month, I picked up a book on tape from the same guy. On the cover he said he would desctibe the "spirit world" in the book. So I decided to listen so I could laugh at his silly ideas. Well, nearly everything  he talked about I have experienced, and even things that I have never told anyone he described. Weird things, like visiting an exact double of this world thats under water. I listened to nearly all the book, and then I think maybe I just didn't want to hear the rest, and sent if back to the library. So now I am unsure of this guy. Either he isn't joking about his "abilities", or he read some things I was pretty sure were experiences unique to just me in some book somewhere. Still not sure what to think of it.  And I still don't want to hear the rest of that book.

captainsteve said:

Now that you have me flashing back to my previous life…we would say (in a calm, quiet voice) "I believe you… now just get in the car and I will take you to a place to talk to a nice person".

Since this is a site for skeptics some choices are; Betty Ford Clinic, church, exercise, no sugar/coffee, counciling, an aluminum hat. Take your pick and get help.

Not really helpful or constructive in any way.

I definately remember being paralyzed with fear, laying in bed, unwilling to move or cry out  because of the things I saw.  It happened all the time. I wonder if all children do this? I assume most children don't like sleeping alone in a darkened room, but have never actually looked at any studies about it. I remember a cousin telling me that he slept with his covers pulled tightly over his head, with only a hole for breathing  — and yet he has never told me that he saw anything out of the ordinary. But then, I have never asked.