Paranormal Psychology
03.09.04

Another "what if?"

What if we treated people who claimed to see the things that go bump in the night, who claimed to hear the voices of the creatures of the night, that felt the fingers of the dead on their bodies ... what if we treated them with the assumption that what they're seeing or hearing or feeling was absolutely real?

When people show up in an emergecy room or shrink's office claiming to have head voices, they're treated as wingnuts. Maybe there's a checmical imbalance. Maybe there's a malfunctioning bundle of nerves in their brain. Maybe ... as un-PC as this is ... they're just plain nuts.

Well try this one out. Maybe that chemical imbalance has opened up their "third eye" and they're seeing outside this realm. Maybe they're seeing the same dimension psychics see into, but they're just finding the assholes of the universe. Maybe they're seeing a completely different dimension where they're ALL assholes. Maybe the visual hallucination isn't being created inside their head, maybe it's really out there, but we can't see it.

Maybe that brain trauma that cause that malfunctioning nerve bundle is opening up their auditory processors to hearing the things we just can't. Maybe there's more to sound than just the vibrations that can be picked up by an eardrum. Maybe the auditory hallucination isn't just in their head, we just can't hear it.

Maybe, just maybe, those paranoid schizophranics with hallucinations, just AREN'T imagining these things. Maybe it's our adult, closed off, unbelieving brains that are keeping us from experiencing what they're experiencing.

So here's the thought. How about treating these people under the assumption that what they're exeriencing IS real. We come up with new coping mechanisms, new rationales. Figure out ways to get the old guy to actually leave. We wouldn't tell someone to just ignore the "real" person who just shows up in the middle of thenight to hang out in your room. Instead of "let's drug the crap out of this guy so he stops seeing the old man in the corner who's staring at him" we try something like "let's figure out how this guy can deal with the old guy in the corner who's staring at him."

I've seen the old guy. And he's not going away because someone else says he's not there. As a 22-year-old, I saw a shadow. The blackest black a thing can be, absorbing light, staring down at me over my bed. And I turned into a child immediately, curling up in a ball, pulling the covers over my head, like it would protect me. There is no fear like that fear we felt as kids when those things came for us. We grow up and try to rationalize it away. And for the most part it works.

So what if we get away from telling the adults, "it's just not real, accept it and move on. Or take these drugs." Go back to treating them like the children whose belief they have rediscovered. We wouldn't tell a kid to get over it as he's sitting in a puddle of piss. Because the kid BELIEVES it's real. The adults don't. And while we can't prove that those things are real, we can start treating people as if they were real. And maybe we'll be much better off. Maybe they will be too.