# Fairly common condition among children where imagination leads to hallucinations? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 23, 2001, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191 "2001-10-23T22:57:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jb\_farley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jb\_farley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jb_farley)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/21 "2001-10-24T15:19:23Z")
huzzah! ---
**Author:** ![tsarina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f4b2a3/32.png) [@tsarina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tsarina)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/22 "2001-10-24T15:23:22Z")
I remember standing up in my crib once and seeing a shadow fall across my floor that was cast from the light in the hallway. I distinctly remember that it looked like the shadow of a little boy, almost like Peter Pan. I looked up at my doorway, expecting my brother to be standing there. There was nothing there - I looked back and forth a few times, but the shadow stayed. I remember thinking, “Hmm, that’s strange”, but not getting freaked out by it. It would have happened before my third birthday, when I started sleeping in a bed. I’ve always wondered about this… ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2001, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/23 "2001-10-25T01:47:28Z")
**tsarina** , I’m beginning to believe that not being frightened by these types of images is perhaps a common thread. **jb\_farley** , you said the hand coming out of the gap in the books was “creepy”, is that only your feeling of the image now, or did you feel that way at the time of seeing it, too? ---
**Author:** ![DaveRaver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daveraver/32/1078_2.png) [@DaveRaver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveRaver)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2001, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/24 "2001-10-25T03:18:02Z")
When I was little (5 or 6 years old), I saw an angry giraffe poke his head in my window as I was going to sleep. It was really scary and of course I hid under my covers and made sure that no body parts were sticking out of my blanket! I believe this happened on 3 different occasions. It was not a dream, and I think maybe when you’re that small, you are more open to seeing things in other dimensions that adults, who are more set in their beliefs of reality, cannot see. ---
**Author:** ![Ring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Ring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ring)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2001, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/25 "2001-10-25T03:53:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Some folks never learn to reason abstractly… we call these folks republicans. As Winston Churchill once said, _“If you’re twenty and not a liberal you have no heart. If you’re thirty and not a conservative you have no brain”_ (Fiscal that is) > [@](#): > > I think it was in a Dr. Salk, the neurologist, book called “Anthropologist on Mars” I believe that was _Oliver Sacks._ ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2001, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/26 "2001-10-25T13:20:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by capybara \* > \*\*Anecdotal tale: I had some very funky hallucinations-- in light, no shadows or anything, when I had fevers when I was 5 or 6-- extremely realistic-- for example, my sister’s Snoopy and Peanuts bedsheets floating across the room to smother me. Not the “imagination” kind of hallucinations, or clever optical illusion, but the full blown indifferentiatable-from-reality type. I started screaming and my parents came in and popped some baby aspirin into me and everything calmed down in a couple of minutes. \*\* I’m fairly sure that the hallucinations I previously described in this thread were not fever related, but your post did remind me of the one time I did have a fever-hallucination. I was 16 or 17, had a bad flu, and while lying in bed I hallucinated that I was a castle; not **in** a castle, but **was** a castle. And dragons were flying around me. Sounds kind of neutral, but I remember it being very unpleasant for some reason. Probably just discomfort from being sick, mostly. ---
**Author:** ![jb\_farley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jb\_farley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jb_farley)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2001, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/27 "2001-10-25T13:40:11Z")
**revtim** , i honestly can’t say. i think i was freaked out, but i don’t know if i was freaking or would be freaking if it happened now. i think i was about nine. my memory for all things more than a year old is fucking terrible. i hate it. but, if i had to place money on it, i’d say i was freaked. i’ll have to talk to my brother. jb p.s.- how in the hell did i mangle the word ‘Emperor’ so badly? ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2001, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/28 "2001-10-26T16:40:52Z")
**jb\_farley** , one thing I forgot to ask you about was whether or not you think your younger brother really saw the images too. I wonder if he just said he saw them too, like kids might do? ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2001, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191/29 "2001-10-27T19:11:33Z")
Yes, I am pathetically resurrecting this thread, since I still haven’t got my answer from the question in the OP. Thinking on it more, I suspect that it was mistake to call it a “condition”, as if it were a disease. More likely, it is simply some that harmless thing that happens that was being described in a medical manner in whatever I was reading about it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fairly-common-condition-among-children-where-imagination-leads-to-hallucinations/89191.md?page=1)