'Dreaming with your eyes open'
Sleep paralysis happens when the brain messes up the process of falling asleep or waking. Usually, you only start dreaming after you're fully asleep. And you stop dreaming before you waken.
Sleep paralysis "is like dreaming with your eyes open," explains Baland Jalal. A neuroscientist, he studies sleep paralysis at the University of Cambridge in England. He says this is why it happens: Our most vivid, lifelike dreams happen during a certain stage of sleep. It's called rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep. In this stage, your eyes dart around under their closed lids. Though your eyes move, the rest of your body can't. It's paralyzed. Most likely, that's to prevent people from acting out their dreams. (That could get dangerous! Imagine flailing your arms and legs as you play dream basketball, only to whack your knuckles on the wall and tumble to the floor.)
Your brain usually turns this paralysis off before you wake up. But in sleep paralysis, you wake up while it's still happening.
Faces in the clouds
You don't have to experience sleep paralysis to sense things that aren't there. Have you ever felt your phone buzz, then checked to find there was no message? Have you heard someone calling your name when no one was there? Have you ever seen a face or figure in a dark shadow?
These misperceptions also count as hallucinations, says David Smailes. He's a psychologist in England at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He thinks that just about everyone has such experiences. Most of us just ignore them. But some may turn to ghosts as the explanation.
The brain has a tough job. Information from the world bombards you as a mixed-up jumble of signals. The eyes take in color. The ears take in sounds. The skin senses pressure. The brain works to make sense of this mess. This is called bottom-up processing. And the brain is very good at it. It's so good that it sometimes finds meaning in meaningless things. This is known as pareidolia (Pear-eye-DOH-lee-ah). You experience it whenever you stare at clouds and see rabbits, ships or faces. Or gaze at the moon and see a face.
According to us, it is normal and is caused due to heavy work given to the brain. It can be avoided by proper sleep and rest.
Selective Attention Test -
The brain's picture of reality sometimes includes things that aren't there. But it can also completely miss things that are there. This is called inattentional blindness. Want to know how it works? Watch the video before you keep reading.
The video shows people in white and black shirts passing a basketball. Count how many times the people in white shirts pass the ball. How many did you see?
This video was part of a famous 1999 study into inattentional blindness. While you watch it, count the number of times people in white shirts pass a basketball.
Partway through the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks through the players. Did you see it? About half of all viewers who count passes while watching
If you too missed the gorilla, you experienced inattentional blindness. You were likely in a state called absorption. That's when you are so focused on a task that you tune out everything else.
"Memory does not work like a video camera," says Christopher French. He is a psychologist in England at Goldsmiths University of London. You only remember things you're paying attention to. Some people are more likely to become absorbed than others. And these people also report higher levels of paranormal beliefs, he says, including beliefs in ghosts.
How could these things be related? Some strange experiences that people blame on ghosts involve unexplained sounds or movements. A window may seem to open all by itself. But what if someone opened it and you just didn't notice because you were so absorbed in something else? That's a lot more likely than a ghost, French says.
In one 2014 study, French and his colleagues found that people with higher levels of paranormal beliefs and higher tendencies to get absorbed are also more likely to experience inattentional blindness. They also tend to have a more limited working memory. That's how much information you can hold in your memory at once.
If you have trouble keeping lots of information in your memory or paying attention to more than one thing at once, then you risk missing sensory cues from the environment around you. And you might blame any misperceptions that result on a ghost.
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