Happy Atheist Forum

I am beginning to wish I would have written this down right after it occurred when it was more fresh in my memory. I've just been trying to soak in what has happened. Last week I took a look outside my window and there were two kids playing outside. One pulling the other in a little wagon. They didn't look familiar - I've never seen them in my neighborhood before. They ran behind a tree and appeared to have vanished! Soon after I thought of it I couldn't recall seeing them cast any shadows, such as the enormous one cast by the tree. Was I hallucinating or what? Is it common for hallucinated figures to not have shadows?

Maybe hallucination, maybe dream. I'm not sure there's anything common about hallucinations, though. They seem pretty random (though the hallucinations I've had were of a decidedly different sort   ).

Maybe you just weren't paying close attention to what you were seeing ... and now you think you saw (or didn't see) something that you really didn't see.  :blink:

Were you up for a considerable length of time? Or haven't been able to sleep well lately? Sleep deprivation can cause extremely vivid hallucinations. I once stayed up for a week in the early nineties on a coke fueled bender, and by the end of it I was hallucinating terribly.

It started with hallucinating that I was smoking, and then I would all of a sudden not have a cigarette, so would start frantically looking for it, thinking I had dropped it. Also seeing things in the corner of my eye, but on the last day I was having full on hallucinations, including having full fledged conversations with people that weren't there. Though I can't recall if they cast a shadow or not.

Hi Sophus.

This reminds me of a story my father once told me. When my dad was about 15 years old, in China, he and his best friend were hanging out at some local park. They were playing catch with a ball and my dad threw it to my friend. As he ran back to try and catch it, he ran into a tree and according to my dad, he just disappeared. My dad looked all over the park but couldn't find him anywhere. He went to his friends house right after and his mom opened the door. My dad asked her is her son there, and she replied that he has been sleeping for the past few days because he is very sick. My dad  responded by saying that that's not possible because he was just at the park with him. But the mom insisted that he was in bed all day. Till this day, my dad still doesn't know what actually happened or what he thought he saw. Creepy story though. It give me the chills writing it just now...

Were they messing with you? That sounds like something I would have done as a child.

Thanks for the responses guys.

Quote from: "Hitsumei"Sleep deprivation can cause extremely vivid hallucinations. I once stayed up for a week in the early nineties on a coke fueled bender, and by the end of it I was hallucinating terribly.

Jesus Christ, maybe that's it. It's been months since I've had a night that got in more than just three or four hours of sleep. That doesn't sound as severe as your staying up forr an entire week straight though.

QuoteCreepy story though. It give me the chills writing it just now...

That's nuts. Hope I don't go that crazy.  

QuoteWere they messing with you? That sounds like something I would have done as a child.

Yeah you know them kids. They'll hide their shadows just to screw with you. lol.

Small children, much like electrons, are known for quantum impermanence and non-linear existence.  You can never know exactly where they are without affecting their position and they most likely are where you least expect them to be.  Additionally, the presence of small children is well known in upper level Physics circles to cause increased entropy.  This is why they are often seen with messy hair, chocolate stains and untied shoes nanoseconds after being washed, dried and put into clean clothing.  Multiversal experts have mapped the branching existence and paths of small children throughout the various dimensions and have discovered they are the main cause of most of the missing matter in the universe, a phenomenon known as dark matter, which is largely made up of the vegetables from small children's dinner, pocket lint, pillbugs and other such contents from the pockets of small children.  Often the phenomenon of small children can be observed photically yet have no real presence in your quantumn time line due to the excessive speed at which small children travel after the consumption of large quantities of sucrose laden consumables or when evading the temporally challenged adults who are responsible for their care.

Quote from: "Sophus"I am beginning to wish I would have written this down right after it occurred when it was more fresh in my memory. I've just been trying to soak in what has happened. Last week I took a look outside my window and there were two kids playing outside. One pulling the other in a little wagon. They didn't look familiar - I've never seen them in my neighborhood before. They ran behind a tree and appeared to have vanished! Soon after I thought of it I couldn't recall seeing them cast any shadows, such as the enormous one cast by the tree. Was I hallucinating or what? Is it common for hallucinated figures to not have shadows?

 :crazy: have a look at the following link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... enses.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1134415/Ghostly-faces-visions-little-people-The-eye-disorder-leaves-thousands-Britons-fearing-theyve-lost-senses.html)

Hmmm.  The eyesight thing sounds bad.  I hope that's not it.  Seriously now on the shadows.  You remember the whole moon landing hoax conspiracy theory thing?

One of the reasons conspiracy theorists believe the thing was a hoax is because of the angle of the shadows.  But after watching a nice T.V. show debunking this with a scale model it was proposed the topography of the ground affected the way the shadows were cast.  They were at totally different angles because the moon's surface is not perfectly smooth.

Kids are pretty small compared to trees and maybe the ground they were on was graded slightly so their shadows could have been cast at different angles to the tree and less noticeable.  The shadow lengths could have been a lot different, too.  And when the kids went behind the tree they might have stayed out of your vision long enough for you to get distracted and not notice how they got out of your vision.

Plus if you were tired or under stress this could have easily been the case.

The thing to do would be to build a scale model of the tree, children and the topography of the ground and photograph the steps and angles of said models over and over until....wait, now that would be madness!

Quote from: "Sophus"They ran behind a tree and appeared to have vanished! Soon after I thought of it I couldn't recall seeing them cast any shadows, such as the enormous one cast by the tree. Was I hallucinating or what? Is it common for hallucinated figures to not have shadows?

Maybe they ran so fast behind the tree that they outran their shadows just like Little Stuart (http://www.stuartstories.com/stories/boyandshadow.html)

Quote from: "LARA"Hmmm.  The eyesight thing sounds bad.  I hope that's not it.  Seriously now on the shadows.  You remember the whole moon landing hoax conspiracy theory thing?

One of the reasons conspiracy theorists believe the thing was a hoax is because of the angle of the shadows.  But after watching a nice T.V. show debunking this with a scale model it was proposed the topography of the ground affected the way the shadows were cast.  They were at totally different angles because the moon's surface is not perfectly smooth.

Kids are pretty small compared to trees and maybe the ground they were on was graded slightly so their shadows could have been cast at different angles to the tree and less noticeable.  The shadow lengths could have been a lot different, too.  And when the kids went behind the tree they might have stayed out of your vision long enough for you to get distracted and not notice how they got out of your vision.

Plus if you were tired or under stress this could have easily been the case.

The thing to do would be to build a scale model of the tree, children and the topography of the ground and photograph the steps and angles of said models over and over until....wait, now that would be madness!

Obviously the shadows would have been smaller than the trees but it still would have been fairly large at this particular time of day. Another thing I didn't mention is my dog, who was looking out the window, normally barks when anyone approaches the house. He didn't that time.

I'm fairly certain now it's because I haven't been getting enough sleep. Thanks everyone!