Since I can't go out anywhere, I have found myself sitting by my lonesome on Friday nights scrolling the web. I was scrolling Wikipedia when I came across and article discussing false perceptions. These false perceptions are the result of the human brain 'coming up with stuff' that really is not there. This manifests as hallucinations. Sometimes this can happen when someone is really tired or stressed. At other times, hallucinations can arise when an abnormal preceptory stimulus is applied to one's senses. In the case of a Ganzfeld experiment, named after an German word for 'complete field', hallucinations can arise when a uniform stimulus is applied to any individual sense or all senses at once. This uniform stimulus can be white noise played over headphones, looking at a field of evenly intense light, or laying in a bath of warm water. In each case, hearing, sight, and feeling are equally stimulated. As time goes on, the body 'gets used to' this stimulus. And if time continues on, the brain no longer 'sees' new stimulus to react towards.
After reading this Wikipedia article, I did not expect the effect to be that strong and I wanted to try it out for myself. I covered my eyes with a cloth and set up a red LED lamp to shine on my face. I wore my over-ear headphones and listened to white noise at a comfortable volume. After about 20 minutes of laying in the warm tub, I precepted slight rumbling sounds within the white noise which I'm sure weren't really there. I would say it was sort of like meditation or daydreaming. Generally underwhelming but seems to be sort of a real thing? The whole ESP thing with respect to Ganzfeld experiments is a load of baloney though. That's pseudoscience. It is popular for pseudoscience folks to engage with some element of real science to peddle their stick. Maybe COVID will make pseudoscience more lucrative? If it hasn't already :/
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