Expert: Jason Stroming - 9/8/2009

Question
QUESTION: I have a pic that i took in my room but i cant identify anything in my room except the floor. I  later looked at the photo but i saw mostly in the upper right section , a image of a man in a suit standing front of a curving path with other people in a line on that path. A lake on one side of path and grass on other side. I  see the sky in the background. The dark spot in the photo I cant understand. In small upper left corner of pic I think its the outside of my house? BTW....I DONT have tv in my bedroom. Do you think there is something to this photo?


ANSWER: Hi Eva,

It's hard to say what this is, as I don't know what this was a picture of. But to me it looks like matrixing, which is basically when the human brain sees images that look like something in what is just a random play of light and shapes. Have you ever seen a cloud that looks like a dog, or a rabbit? That is the same effect. The brain tries to see order in chaos. And since this picture doesn't really show anything, the brain may be trying hard to see something recognizable here.

Jason

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QUESTION: I guess im just wondering if im losing it.. On July 29 my boyfriend was killed. The picture was taken in my bedroom about 2 weeks later .As i was leaving my bedroom i jokingly said let me get a picture of you Johnathan(my boyfriend) and snapped the photo. Of course i didnt get any picture of him..just a messed up pic. A few days later my niece was browsing thru my camera phone and asked about the pic. I hadnt noticed it before. When i first looked at it i saw nothing but a messed up pic. later i looked and saw the man in a suit and people in line behind him by the lake. It seems evertime i look at it i see something else. Maybe i am losing it.
Also i had a weird morning after that...i was awakened by the smoke alarm going off crazily so i thought maybe the house was on fire...i jumped out of bed and checked every room and nothing...laid back in bed and minutes later the alarm went off again...this time i went to neighbor apartment thinking maybe something in her apartment was burning...nothing was burning there. My neighbors daughter came over and it went off again and she heard it too. After figuring it must be just a malfunction i didnt worry about it. I got back in bed and was drifting when i got up after i heard my box fan sounding weird. I ignored it and started to drift again when all of a sudden, my body started feeling strange as if my muscles were being pulled and i tried to get up but I couldnt move at all and i could barely open my eyes. I was able to see my room a little but everything was very blurry. I felt like something strange was around me but i wasnt scared at all but i was nervous.All of a sudden i just thought about my boyfriend and i started talking to him but not with my mouth cause i couldnt move my mouth... which was confusing to me but i told him to do something to make me know its him...Then the radio comes on by itself....I remember next one arm raising up as if i was reaching and then my arm just heavily dropped down on the bed, I was suddenly very cold and shaking and i remember saying in my head Johnathan im so cold, its so cold in here and a minuter later i was warm again..i was able to move all of a sudden and i got up but i was exhausted and fell back on the bed. I got up and it was about 2 hours later. Everyone says i must have been dreaming but it felt nothing like a dream. Was i dreaming..Im so confused.
Lastly...I didnt go pay my cell phone bill so my phone was off but i still receive voicemail. I checked my voicemail from my sister phone and I had a voicemail message at 9:26 pm from Kisha, a friend of mine.The message had a little static.  At the end of her message she said call me when you can bye. About 2 seconds later, a weird computer sounding voice said one word which sound to me like the name JOHNATHAN. What could that be. My friend said o one was with her when she called me.
I paid my phone bill ..Then my phone kept flashing the words " unable to charge"...I took the battery out and the date on my phone was normal and a minute later it changed to 09/18/2014  9:52pm. That was at 4:52pm.

Maybe all of this means NOTHING....but I was wondering if you heard of anything like that happening to anyone else.
I dont know what to think anymore. Everyone is starting to look at me like im crazy.

Answer
I'm not sure what to make of this. Though the morning where you were stuck in your bed sounds like sleep paralysis. The brain basically paralyzes your muscles when you sleep, otherwise you would act out all your dreams. Sometimes when we have disturbed sleep, we only half wake up, meaning our brain wakes up without un-paralyzing our body. We are awake, but it's hard to move, speak or open your eyes. And because you are still partly dreaming, you can have the sensation that something scary is around you. There's an interesting article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis