Hello, I am Robert G. Male. Welcome to WraithStop™. Here you will find links that I think are of interest. Furthermore these are links that I want to keep track of because they have given me either ideas or some other form of inspiration for my writing. Links are listed in order lowest to highest both in the date they are given and the order in which they appear (meaning: read them from the bottom up for a certain day's list). Some of these sites may require you to sign up for free. Without further ado, the links...

Newer Entries

August 2009

August 25, 2009

• Hypnagogia generally refers to the time falling asleep and hypnopompia as waking from sleep. Beyond that though, and of interest, it is about the ability of dreaming during these times, not just dreaming but doing it with an awareness of the waking world. In other words, dreaming with your eyes open. Hypnagogia involves full on visual and auditory, for lack of a better term, hallucinations, because the brain is dreaming. It can be a debunkers reasoning for the dismissal of visions, shadow people, and even alien abductions. Throw in some sleep paralysis and hypnopompia is the explanation of Old Hag syndrome. Two interesting facets of the hypnagogia article are the neuroscience of sleep, and the connection between the hypnagogic state and the inspiration of inventors, authors and song writers.

• Pareidolia is a visual or auditory form of Apophenia, that ties in with some of the theories of encounters with Shadow People. In and of itself it is good fodder for a number of ideas. It's very primitive, and instinctual, part of the process that the brain requires to detect threats. The interaction between that guttural draw of attention and the psychological predilection to believe it over other harder evidence could play into several conflicts of the three (argumentaively four) types. Apophenia would seem to be essentially a false sense of synchronicity beyond the essential base description of seeing patterns where there are none.

• The first article contains some interesting bits that are not seen elsewhere. First a qualifier/caveat, this article also mixes things together by not properly separating theories. People have made connection between these shadowy figures and thought forms/egregore/tulpas. A particularly interesting theory includes alien thought forms. The best part, and its very brief but very evocative, is that some of these entities may be drawn to ghosts. Note also a bit about shadow people acting as harbingers/warnings in a way they tie to Mothman. The Wikipedia article in the "Scientific explanations" section contains a look at drugs and chemicals that induce hallucinations. There it also gets into Hypnagogia. {Ref#5 - Others}

August 11, 2009

• This is a fairly common phenomenon across the globe. The names and meanings ascribed to it are fascinating and have enough variance given the undeniable commonalities. The name in Mexico is particularly evocative, "a dead body climbed on top of me". A lot of the time it is described as Old Hag syndrome and that has its own particular mythology to it and fits into a larger subset of beliefs regarding the superstitions revolving around sleep and night time.

• This is a sad thing. The title says it all about what is going on, but the scale, and the impact of it has to be read. It's hard to imagine the difficulty of not giving a loved one a proper burial and leaving it up to the government. These government required burials and cremations are in addition to the numerous transients and other unidentifiable or unclaimed bodies. Also of note are the statistics on deaths and the numbers for coroner services.

• This is a news story about a real plague in the modern world and the efforts to bring it to a swift and safe end for as many as possible. When it came to my attention it came with an expression of disbelief from the person quoting the article. Something has to be done to grab a plague and stomp it out saving as many lives as possible. What kind of world is it where action to save lives is seen as too extreme if people have to be inconvenienced for a couple days to save them? This alone is of interest to explore in fiction, let alone the setting potential of a place locked down for safety dealing with some other threat that is only exacerbated by the seclusion.

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	Suggested Reading:
	This scary book available at Battered Spleen Productions™.
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	This free scary audio book available at Battered Spleen Productions™.

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