As a Kid, did you see floating objects in the dark ?

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I like closing my eyes when on a drive and the sunlight flickers through the trees with a strobe effect - I get all kinds of geometric shapes - even checkerboards - and vivid colors. Yes, self-entertainment is grand

I actually developed a theory about the geometric patterns at one point but it's pretty far out and best saved for the next time I go mushroom hunting. ^_^

Yes I did; unlike some others who have posted I was terrified of them. I slept with the light on til age 13 or so because of it.

As a child, when I closed my eyes at night before I went to sleep, I would see creepy faces in rapid succession, sometimes morphing into each other. It didn't scare me though, I knew it wasn't real. I was kind of amused by it.
I don't know if this is related to the floating objects and I was wondering if anyone else experienced this.

I had completely forgotten about this until you posted this question!

When I was in Primary school, I used to see tiny red spheres floating throughout the room. It had to be 'pitch black' and no matter where I turned my head, I would see them. They were all the same size and brightness. I don't see them anymore though.

Rats - I'd like to hear the theory!

One night I paid attention to the coloured blobs, and for some reason I became convinced that I was going blind. I cried and woke up my parents. My dad came in and couldn't understand what I was talking about.

I had a weird habit of always assuming that my body had become permanently damaged in some way or other. I used to believe that I only had a finite amount of blood, and every time I got a cut I got worried that I might be running out.

If only i could find it, was reading something not to long ago, about humans and darkness. Why it was such a big problem back in the earlier stages of human history, because humans are actually really bad at doing stuff at night, our mind see all sorts of odd stuff in the darkness and tries to make out patterns.

Probably also the reason that i went to bed with the light on throughout my entire childhood.

I didn't see floating objects, I had something else. When I was about 7-8 years old, I experienced in bed this strange phenomeneon that everything looked smaller than it should have. I used to cry to my parents, "I'm seeing small things!" and they thought I saw some little folks or fairies or whatever. It was like looking through a tube or telescope without lenses. Then all of this just stopped, after a year or so. It was so wierd and frightening.

I had this as a child too, or something similar. It was like everything was in the distance being seen through a tunnel or telescope but also too close up at the same time. I was terrified of it.

I actually considered this theory when I became interested in mysticism and the relation people make to sacredness and geometry, particularly the primary shapes; the circle, square and triangle. Also the freemasons main symbol of the compass and square with the G in the middle. I assumed for years that the G stood for God, but it actually stands for geometry, which is supported by their use of the compass and square in the symbol.

The human eye does not transmit [that I'm aware of, I haven't Googled it and could be wrong who knows?]but it does receive. When you 'look' at something you're not seeing it at all. For one thing, what you 'see' is upside down and the brain turns it right-side up. If all the eye actually receives are rays of the visible light spectrum how is it possible that you properly interpret what anything looks like? Why does a tree look like a tree? Why does a person look like a person and why do people agree upon what those things look like when all the eye actually receives is light and the brain interprets it?

So my theory is that the patterns you see when you close your eyes or get an EEG and they flash that strobe light at you, is that those geometric patterns exist as a part of our mind or maybe even our eyes. The light enters your eye and according to global and mutual consent of some sort in our evolutionary past, those geometric patterns arrange themselves into forms that exist as what we know as physical expressions of our thought and perception.

I have a friend who was born blind so she has no point of reference to pollute her perception of what a human being actually looks like. She has to determine by touch and sound. And all she does see are the patterns. She once asked me to describe a new shirt I had and I wondered why; she couldn't see it, right? When I described it she said, "Oh that's pretty!" I asked her how she could know if it was or not to have that opinion and she said she sees things as patterns when people describe them to her. Red is one pattern, blue, brown, etc are other patterns. But because she was born blind she can't possibly be privy to the 'collective human agreed-upon' translation of the patterns into symbols, or forms.

Everything in the natural world can be broken down into combinations of the three primary geometric shape and their variations, with the circle likely being the first of the primary i.e. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, Divine Proportion, etc.

The conclusion of my theory [hypothesis is more accurate I suppose, since it's all philosophical in nature and signifies nothing meaningful] is:

The eye absorbs rays of the visible light spectrum and decodes it all inside the brain. [with the aid of those patterns, whatever their origin or cause] One could arguably make the claim that nothing exists outside the mind. There is no such thing as "out there". There is only perception. It's all MUSH: Multi-User Shared Hallucination, to coin a phrase used by role players.

Or perhaps the patterns exist as a means of distracting and amusing ourselves.

Or maybe it is BOTH your brilliant theory and a means of distracting and amusing ourselves!

Thank you for indulging me - well done! I am a theory-o-holic, it is my main special interest!

Do you like theory generally?

As I was reading you account, very reasonable I might add - I mean it, well done, I thought of Chalmer's and Clark's extended mind theory and the ensuing body of theory which is developing about active externalism. I just did a paper using this controversial, but I think correct, theory for an aesthetic interpretation account ... my wording is getting awkward, still having morning coffee ... I used extended mind to develop my own theory of aesthetic interpretation - I did an applied study in philosophy - it was a meta-cognitive analysis of the discipline.

You might like Chalmers and Clark if you have not indulged - there is a book by Richard Menary on extended mind so you can see the original esssay and the developing body of thought - pro and con - developing thereafter.

Thanks again, Stanley - I was thrilled you took the time to write this out!!

That was one of my favorite stims as a child--squeezing/pushing on my eyelids until I saw fireworks. It kinda hurt, though.

I once saw a little green man running around on top of my nightstand when I was really little. He hid behind my alarm clock. Must've been hypnagogia, really. Growing up takes the fun out of so much stuff.

I don't know if I exactly know what your talking about, but I understand when you say you see things no one else sees. I have scowered the Internet for years and could never find anything on what happened to me. When I was a child I would see red dots, they would be in a line and doing dances a crossed my preferal vision. Then I would get these weird hallucinations or something where anything that I knew scared my at that age would like appear in little boxes floating in front of my face. Idk if it was my active imagination, or if my brain was for some reason evaluating everything I was scared of, but ik what I saw, I doubt that's what's happening to you though, have you thought of seeing a eye doctor or something?

I saw lots of things that weren't there when I was little, and I still do today!

I saw loads of weird things, and I continue to do so today. I don't tell many people, since a lot of people don't believe in what I believe.