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cold.” Says Bell, “Thankfully, these distressing experiences tend to
be rare, and most people who experience hallucinations during be-
reavement find them comforting, as if they were re-connecting with
something of the positive from the person’s life.”
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Sleep Paralysis
Another ailment that leads to hallucinations is sleep paralysis—a
very common yet unexplainable condition that affects as many
as 40 percent of people at some point in their lives. A victim of
sleep paralysis will wake up and find he or she is unable to move.
The patient is temporarily paralyzed. It can be a frightening ex-
perience. Moreover, a symptom of sleep paralysis can be hal-
lucinations. Salma, a twenty-year-old student at The American
University in Cairo, Egypt, told physicians that she awoke one
morning, found herself paralyzed, and suddenly saw the image
of an intruder in her bedroom—a fanged and bloody creature. “[It
was] something out of a horror movie,”
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she said.
Baland Jalal, a neuroscientist at the University of California
at San Diego, suggests hallucinations caused by sleep paralysis
may be a result of a person experiencing a heavily confused pe-
riod at the moment he or she wakes up. Perhaps, he suggests,
a nightmare involving a ghost startles the person out of his or her
sleep. He says, “If you have fear, the activation in fear centers in
the brain might mean more likelihood of fully awaking during sleep
paralysis, and experiencing the whole thing.”
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Many People Still Believe
Scientists argue that there are many reasons people may believe
they see ghosts. They may suffer from mental disorders or see
spirits while under the influence of drugs. Or they may be duped
into believing in the paranormal by the perpetrators of hoaxes.
Still, as the public opinion polls reflect, perhaps tens of millions of
people believe in the existence of the spirit world. Clearly, Houdini
was unable to convince a lot people that communication with
ghosts is not possible. In the decades since the magician’s death,
many skeptics and scientists have tried to cast doubt on the exis-
tence of the spirit world—evidently with little success.
