First thing's first, I want to point out that no drugs at all were involved with this experience. This happened when I was 14, many years ago. I was pretty big into meditation at the time; I would meditate every evening around the same time, so my mind was pretty adept at reaching that plane of consciousness by this point. I was also experimenting with a program called SBAGen, which generates binaural beats. Though I got different degrees of success with it, there was one particular time that scared the pants off me.

This particular evening, I tried one which had the description "Dreaming while awake". I put on the headphones, turned off the lights/screen, and reached the familiar head-space. About that time, things started to get real funny. The monitor was shifting in size and dimensions, and the wall started waving and popping out really scary faces at me. I then heard a child laughing, the kind of laughter you think of from horror movies and stuff. I turned over to the bunk beds, and there was a cartoonish mushroom-hat character walking across the bed. Then I saw a shadow of a figure in the corner of my eye by my door. When I looked at it, it did not go away. It was literally a black, shadow-like figure with red eyes and it kept walking across my room. The last thing I remember seeing were whispy-like things floating around in the air.

At this point I -threw- off the headphones and ran to the bathroom, poured water all over my face whilst I looked at myself in the mirror, which was waving quite like things do on a shroom trip. My pupils were the size of saucers. I was scared. I went downstairs and numbed my brain with TV for an hour or two before I could convince myself that it was save to go back in my room.

Though things have gotten weird times before and after that using that program, only that once did it -ever- send me that far. It was not unlike a nightmare, but I was definitely still awake. My theory is that I was right on the edge of consciousness, that somehow I had reached a state wherein I was dreaming, but still conscious. An endogenous trip, basically.

Anyone else have a similar experience or care to share their thoughts on this?

Thumbs up for SBAGen.


Doesn't sound cool tho, never had the effect. They say what you encounter on those trips is your fear inside.

It was certainly frightening at the time, but I'm glad to have experienced it. I feel it's given me some insight into my own mind, and certainly given me a lot to think about over the years.

The black figure, I've seen on other occasions. It seems to be correlated with misfortune, but doesn't itself seem like a bad entity. Almost like it tries to warn me of things.

For example, the last time I saw it was in a dream. I dreamt it was standing over me, then I felt it touch my shoulder and I immediately woke up. When I did, I found that there were robbers in my apartment, and was able to get up to deal with that whole mess.

Time before that was the night before someone close to me attempted suicide. I saw it the night before, in the doorway to my room.

Of course take that with a grain of sand. I don't mean to sway anyone into believing in such things. It's just a correlation I've noticed.