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Witnessing Forteana While Wearing Glasses / Eyeglasses

GNC

King-Sized Canary
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Aug 25, 2001
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No, not drinking glasses. This will be difficult to test, but if you're a spectacles wearer and you see a ghost, would that ghost be blurry without the glasses but clear with them?

What I mean is, it would be a good test of whether there is something in the room with you to see if the apparition adhered to at least one law of physics (clear with them/blurry without). What do you think?
 
Interesting question ...

If you remove your eyeglasses and there's no change in the clarity of the ghost-image, that would suggest you are not 'seeing' the ghost by way of light reflecting off a physical entity.

Because visual focus is a feature of your eyes (etc.) rather than the objects you see, you should see a difference in focus for any and all objects visually detected by way of reflected or radiated light.
 
Ah, you put it better than I did, but that's what I was getting at. A lot of people see ghosts when they wake up in the middle of the night, and nobody wears their specs to go sleep, but then again it'll be dark so they probably wouldn't be able to judge how blurry or otherwise the spectre was.
 
I'd have to guess that if you wear glasses and see something that shouldn't be there, then whipping your glasses off and seeing a blurred image would NOT constitute proof of its actual existence. If your mind was able to conjure up a false image, or hallucination, then it should be clever enough to make it blurry for you at the opportune moment...simply because you're used to seeing things blurry with the glasses off. :_pished:
 
With my eyes, I wouldn't see the ghost without glasses unless it was very, very close... 8)
 
Has anyone ever seen a ghost wearing glasses? And if the ghost's glasses were to fall off mid-spook could they be appropriated?

Would make for a better eBay auction than the fabled ghost in a jar...! :lol:
 
I don't recall reading about spectres in spectacles, but surely there are a few? Unless being a ghost improves your eyesight 20/20?
 
I am very very shortsighted, -10 for those who understand these things. Looks like this The odd thing is that I am so used to my poor vision that I often don't know if I have my contacts in or not. It's not as obvious as you might think, especially in low light.
I have often wondered if I were to see a ghost when I was in bed at night if they would be clear or not.
If I ever do I'll be sure to let you know.
 
You are quite a bit more short-sighted than I am, and my eyesight is really bad.
In the dark though, my eyesight seems to improve a little.
 
Surely this test would work for non spectacle wearers too?

If you carried a pair of prescription glasses with you and put them on when the spook appeared, everything else should go blurred but not the spook?
 
Mythopoeika said:
You are quite a bit more short-sighted than I am, and my eyesight is really bad.
In the dark though, my eyesight seems to improve a little.

The only time I don't have glasses on or lenses in is when I am asleep. If I get up in the night to go to the loo then I don't bother to put my glasses on or turn on the lights. I can see better in the dark than normally sighted people.
 
Re: spectacles wearers, I've sometimes pondered this, in relation to people reporting seeing things (like UFOs, ghosts, cryptids etc) which other people might think were probably not actually there (like hallucinations) : I wear glasses nearly all the time (to correct my short sightedness). So what if I saw something weird while wearing them, and then took my glasses off while still looking at it. If what I was seeing was actually there, I would see it all blurry, as I would see anything else. But surely, if the thing was an hallucination, and a product of some malfunction of my brain, wouldn't I still see it in sharp focus, with all the real stuff around it looking blurred? Next time I see something weird, I hope I have the presence of mind to try out my theory. I'll report back.....
 
... So what if I saw something weird while wearing them, and then took my glasses off while still looking at it. If what I was seeing was actually there, I would see it all blurry, as I would see anything else. But surely, if the thing was an hallucination, and a product of some malfunction of my brain, wouldn't I still see it in sharp focus, with all the real stuff around it looking blurred? ...
Quite possibly, even most probably, but IMHO not absolutely guaranteed.

For one thing, viewing conditions might make it difficult or impossible to judge differences in relative focus with such a quick A / B test. There's also the possibility the visual anomaly is actually located near or far enough away to remain in relative focus with unaided vision (depending on whether you're near- or far-sighted).

If the anomaly had been quite intense or bright, there's also the chance you might still be seeing an after-image.

There's a considerable amount of "discretionary parsing / assembly" of visual stimuli going on in your visual processing. Once your brain locks onto a particular interpretation or gestalt for an object it can be difficult to shake it off and evaluate the object's appearance anew.

My standard tactic isn't to remove my eyeglasses. I shift my gaze away (up / down / to the side) for at least one or two seconds. If the anomaly shifts with my gaze and stays in the same relative position within my visual field it's definitely something happening somewhere in my own circuitry (from cornea to brain).

I would say the second-best tactic would be to cover both eyes (while keeping the eyes open) to see whether the anomaly still seems visible. The third-best tactic would be to shut both eyes.
 
I would say the second-best tactic would be to cover both eyes (while keeping the eyes open) to see whether the anomaly still seems visible. The third-best tactic would be to shut both eyes.
Fourth-best tactic? Run away!
 
EnolaGaia said:


I would say the second-best tactic would be to cover both eyes (while keeping the eyes open) to see whether the anomaly still seems visible. The third-best tactic would be to shut both eyes.

Fourth-best tactic? Run away!

My response was different from both of you. First tactic from me would be to punch em on the nose. Hallucinations aren't solid. If they are not close enough to touch then I do not recommend approaching.
 
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Look up Visual Release Hallucinations, which includes Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Some people with deteriorating eyesight compensate by hallucinating apparently real objects based on the limited information their eyes and optic system in general can give them. Sometimes these hallucinations take the form of smallish human beings, which can be quite detailed.

People with significant vision loss may have vivid recurrent visual hallucinations (fictive visual percepts).[4] One characteristic of these hallucinations is that they usually are "lilliputian" (hallucinations in which the characters or objects are smaller than normal).[5] Depending on the content, visual hallucinations can be classified as either simple or complex.[4] Simple visual hallucinations are commonly characterized by shapes, photopsias and grid-like patterns.[6] On the other hand, complex visual hallucinations consist of highly detailed representations of people and objects.[6] The most common hallucination is of faces or cartoons.[7] Sufferers understand that the hallucinations are not real, and the hallucinations are only visual, that is, they do not occur in any other senses, e.g. hearing, smell or taste.[8][9] Visual hallucinations generally appear when the eyes are open, fading once the visual gaze shifts.
 
Option 1,2, and 3 try to get near for a better look
option 4 sit with mouth open.
 
Oh, this is an excellent idea. There's plenty of stories where one person sees a full or partial apparition, and someone else only sees a white smudge, so you'd think the phenomenon isn't entirely dependent on environmentally present light rays. There is no reason for the removal of glasses to make that image more difficult to see, because it can't be there in a physical sense. But I wonder if anyone, glasses-wearer or not, would see a currently-present apparition with their eyes closed..
That, and on the other end, my current glasses have some weird subtle results from differently colored/refracted light (these pick up more strongly on yellows than my previous pair, I think they have a purple tint, also wearing polarized clip-on shades does funny things to perceived cloud color). I'd be curious if, when it comes to UFO stuff (where objects are said to have weird hazes, or strange lights), I might see things differently with glasses on and off.
 
This is from an essay I wrote years ago:
"A fascinating conundrum in this issue of perceiving ghosts was mentioned in a Facebook discussion fairly recently. One gentleman had seen an apparition and noted that it was in focus - AS IF HE WAS WEARING HIS GLASSES. Everything else was blurry, as you would expect from someone with vision problems, except for the ghost. This implies that whatever he was seeing had bypassed his visual system, or had not been picked up by his eyes at all - and was the by-product of something occurring in his brain."

I can't be sure which facebook group or when, but I think it was The West Midlands Ghost Club.
 
Interesting. Either it was akin to a waking dream, and triggered by the brain, or it was an outside stimulus triggering the vision, however that would operate.
 
Most human brains are underemployed so they get bored and start playing out different scenarios, sometimes they get fact and fiction mixed up
 
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