somebratinamask:

birdsbugsandbones:

blackestsins:

the-tabularium:

nikniknikin:

blackbearmagic:

no but seriously I still get chills thinking about turning off my headlamp in the cave and The Hand That I Did Not Actually See, and it’s been twelve years since it happened

it’s such an unreal experience

like

you turn off your light in a cave and wave your hand in front of your face

and

you can see this shadowy thing moving in the black space where your hand is

it looks like the same shadowy thing you would see in your room at night if you waved your hand in front of your face, it’s there and vaguely hand-shaped, and your brain recognizes it as your hand because your brain is aware of where your hand is and what it is doing

But You Are Not Seeing Anything

Inside a cave, there is No Light. No matter how far your pupils spread, there is no light for them to draw in, no light to put an image on your retina.

But your brain just Fucking Assumes that because it knows where your hand is and what it is doing, clearly it can see it.

So it creates a shadowy thing for your eyes to be seeing.

Brain is like “there’s a hand there”

Eyes are like “yup sure thing brain I can totally see it”

Brain is like “nice”

but there is no hand, you cannot see the hand, you are seeing a literal actual hallucination in the cave because your brain thinks it knows best

Caves are awesome, but also terrifying. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

we once went spelunking, and a our guide said that once he was in a cave with a stream, so he could hear running water, and his brain was like ‘oh, running water? that means there must be Ducks out there’. and he saw like…low light shadows of ducks. that his brain just Put There.

As a cave guide: we call that ‘cave blindness’! True darkness absolutely wigs your brain out – we’re such visual creatures that after a while our brain throws a hissy after not seeing anything. Sensory deprivation is a very real kind of torture. We have a huge, deep cave system at work and there are a lot of places where you’re hundreds of meters in solid rock in this tiny, dark, still space.

I like to turn my torch off, sit down with my back against the wall,  and wait to see how long it takes before I start seeing things or feeling like the ground is moving, or hearing things. Because I know I’m not – I’m in complete darkness, utter silence, sitting in rock that hasn’t moved in hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Proof that brains are Ridiculous and over-react to a lot of stuff!

Oh god, this is so cool to know! I always have to close the door of my bedroom when i go to sleep, because when i lay down and look into the dark hallway, i S w e a r , is see someone standing there. I thought I was just paranoid lmao!

@blackestsins  Seeing figures in lowlight conditions is less likely to be your brain straight up making you hallucinate (yes, cave blindness is technically a hallucination) and more probably a type of pareidolia!

Human brains are hardwired to pick faces and humanoid shapes out of literally anything. We are geared to recognize patterns. We love patterns! It’s part of why we love music, and have languages! It’s also probably got a lot to do with people seeing ‘ghosts’ in images.

You can literally think of it like your  brain’s facial recognition asking you ‘Would you like to tag a friend?’ when you’re looking at the dappled shadows of leaves on the ground. Your brain is so good at picking out shapes that it fools itself and misinterprets completely benign stuff as a face or a figure.

In your case case of dark figures in doorways, which is by no means uncommon, your brain is working overtime in a lowlight situation, we can’t see all too well at night so it kind of… over-values the limited information it’s getting because hey, it’s safer to take a guess that something is there when nothing is, then to not recognize a very subtle hint that something is there. Your brain can ‘see’ a shape there and it’s going to place the ‘safe’ bet of it being ‘something’,  even when it’s literally just the outline of your doorway. An over-reaction, sure, but hey, brains are trying their best!

I got a particularly bad case of this when I moved  into a new house. I would have bet money that someone was standing in the middle of my hallway,  which I can see through my open door. I couldn’t figure  out where the shadow was being cast – until my neighbours put  up fairy lights and suddenly the Dark Figure In The Hallway had a flashing outline. It turns out that the window in my laundry lined  up with that spot on the hallway, and the ambient light of the night was casting the shadow of the corner of my washing machine and clothesrack onto the hall!

@eyesocketsandsuits