I may catch some flack... but, I think a dead guy visited me.

[TalkingMeatSuit]

So there I was, sitting on the couch, completely zoned out after a poopy day. I get down at times, burnt out, tired, etc. It was just one of those days.

All of a sudden it feels like someone turned the electricity in the center of my chest up by a thousand volts and an overwhelming, near uncontrollable wave of emotion hits me out of nowhere.

I look at the end of the couch, and what I see in my mind's eye doesn't match what I physically see. There's a guy sitting there that I knew briefly 5-6 years ago. I didn't particularly care for the guy - it's not like we were friends. He had a painful life and was a drug-user that committed suicide not long after I met him. I hadn't given the guy a moment's thought in years.

He says "You don't have to wind up like me. Hang on, don't give up", then he's gone and the sensations of the odd state fade.

Some random stranger's words on an internet forum don't mean much, but it felt quite real to me. I wasn't drinking or on anything. Other than being a bit tired and bummed I wasn't having any strong feelings or emotions over anything whatsoever at the time. I can't explain the intensity of the wave of foreign emotion that hit me, or the sense of energy in the center of my chest, or the abnormal high vividness of what I was seeing and hearing inside, along with the way the TV screen of my mind wasn't seeing what I expected it to see.

I thought maybe I was just imagining the entire thing, doubted it, doubted myself, etc. Two days later I get a message on FB from a mutual acquaintance that I similarly hadn't spoken to or seen in years. She finds me, reaches out, and tells me during the usual long-time no-see banter "I was helping some customers at work a few nights ago and I could have swore I saw [dead guy's name] and my heart just about dropped out of my chest".

Random imagination w/ a coincidental mutual contact? Semi-precognitive daydream? A dead guy's persistent consciousness was able to connect to me while I was zoned out?

A few years ago I would scoff at something like this. This happened a couple months ago, and I've been hesitant to talk to anyone about it because of how it sounds. I've had more weird stuff happen to me over the last few years of experimentation and searching... maybe I'm just losing it though.

 

[Wade]

When you say experimentation is that via hallucinogens and/or meditation ?

The interesting thing here is by searching it's standard to suggest that the have opened yourself up and been more receptive but I have to wonder if you wouldn't have had this experienced even if you weren't doing anything to encourage it. I would have mentioned perhaps by searching you could theoretically talk yourself into having an event but what with the encounter with your other friends saying she experienced something similar I'd say that was definitely not the situation.

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

When you say experimentation is that via hallucinogens and/or meditation ?

It started after I heard an old Paracast episode with Gary Shwartz talking about double and triple blind testing some alleged "psychics". Until then, I was only into UFO type stuff. I couldn't believe it, so I did some research, read reviews and went out and tried some of them. Over the last few years I've tried a number of them. Many are crap despite the good reviews IMHO, but some were able to say and do things that made me scratch my head. This lead me to consider other fringe topics and experiment a bit with them.

I've also practiced meditation (at times for an hour a day every day), spent a few days with a shaman who guided me through things like shamanic journeying (my job of 13 years involves lots of visualizing, so stuff like this isn't too hard of stretch), Ayahuasca (didn't go as planned), various forms of hypnosis (past life regression was interesting), a handful of other experiences (none as emotionally overwhelming though) similar to the one I just posted about, an experience that I don't know whether it was OBE or vivid lucid dream (have no experience with either before or since), and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things. Have had sleep paralysis episodes as far back as I can remember. I zone out pretty easy - I'm one of those people that drives somewhere, space out, and then all of a sudden realize that I'm at my destination.

A LOT of this stuff has made me uncomfortable and feel real silly. Viva las Internet. When I go to try something though I just suspend disbelief for the moment and go with the flow - there's plenty of time to analyse afterwards. It doesn't always pan out, but sometimes it's interesting.