A Memorable Experience

The Ganzfield Effect is what should happen if one should be placed under a red light, place two ping-pong ball halves over their eyes, and listen to loud static. However, some take it too far...

I like morbid things. I can't apologize for it. I enjoy looking at the pictures, fake or not, of the dog with five legs, even if one was deformed. Those weird videos on Youtube, that you only find when it's two in the morning and you're dead with exhaustion, but you still don't want to go to sleep yet, so you decide to scare yourself into a frenzy and end up not going to sleep for several more hours. And when you wake up, you wonder what the heck you were thinking when you find a video of a woman with finger nails over five feet long, or "actual proof" of a supposed alien found outside a military base, laying on the ground, as if waiting for someone to find it.

That's me.

Anyway, the point of me telling this story is to, well, get my story out, basically. Because during the month of November of 2008, I went through an experience I can only describe as...thought provoking. And even then, I'm not sure those are the right words for it. Be assured, this an actual event that I'm surprised that authorities didn't know of until months, months later, after I almost completely forgot about it. Now, it's as if someone got inside my brain, wrote it down on a piece of paper, and super glued it in a way that no amount of peeling would ever get it off.

I was a junior in college, aiming to get my degree to two major fields of study: psychology and biology. I know it was a bit of risk to shoot for two majors, and believe me, the workload was constantly heavy, with eleven page papers due at the end of the week, two lab experiments to be completed within the course of a few days, you get the picture. It wasn't easy. However, there were a few perks that people majoring in my fields of study got to take place in. These included activities like, working in a lab with trained scientists who were participating in some of the strangest experiments that were far more interesting than those I did in high school, meeting with different types of therapists who would take us on field trips around the building and give us free books and pamphlets about how you really could change someone's life, and CDs with recordings of a mix of scientists, doctors, and different types of therapists talking about how the mind worked. And that, was one of my favorite parts. I was able to get in touch with Ms. Tara Chepsky, a rather more well known psychologist and scientist. (At least, she was well known where I was, which was suburban town of Henry County, Montana.) She happened to be on most of the recordings I've listened to. She seemed to be particularly interested about why our minds worked in a certain way and how the brain perceives things differently than others. I remember her saying something about the fear factor, and how she wished there was a way to find out why certain things were seen as frightening to people. I sent her an email asking if she could tell me more than what I've heard on the recordings, since I've already listened to all of the ones by her I had. Instead of e mailing me back, I received a rather obscure letter from her about a week or two later, that my professor gave me with a confused look on her face. I didn't even know how she found what school I went to. In the letter was a flier, if you can even call it it that. It was a piece of neon blue colored paper that had appeared to be rumpled up and folded several times, as if someone had thrown it away. On the flier, everything was written with a combination of pencil and Sharpie, not in a design made on a program before printing it out. And it was written as if the person who made it was in a rush, or didn't seem to care to put effort into it. On it, it said:

volunteers wanted for a week long memory experiment

ages 18-25

must be in good physical and mental health

This is an experiment in which physical and mental strains will put the brain to a test

Al participants will be payed in $20 at the end

-Dr. Chepsky

"She's a busy woman, you know." My professor said as she read the paper over my shoulder. "I guess she was in a rush to get whatever she's talking about started that she didn't bother to make the fliers look more compelling." I had to agree. I've seen fliers posted against wooden telephone poles and taped against metal mailboxes, asking for the same thing, but they were always welcoming looking, and was guaranteed to be one hundred percent harmless. But this...it caught me off guard. It just didn't seem right, a professional like Dr. Chepsky putting little effort into something she must have cared about enough to create. But nonetheless, I was still interested. It took me a couple of days to get in contact with Ms. Chepsky again, because she didn't put any contact information on the flier. I had her work e mail address, but she never seemed to check it. I e mailed her like I had three weeks earlier, but received only an automatic response.

It wasn't until Friday, November 11th, that once again, my professor approached me and told me that she had contacted her, and told her to tell me the information I needed about the experiment. She had an odd look on her face as she told me the news.

"She wants you to meet her at an old school building. I think she said something about how it's been remodeled just for the experiment, repainted and things like that. It used to be part of Central Catholic High School, the rich school, not to far from here. I guess they didn't need it anymore."

She paused for a second. "It's strange. I've never heard of a school doing that, let alone a Catholic school giving up one of their buildings just for a one time experiment. I'm actually pretty curious to why they gave it up so easily."

"Well, Dr. Chepsky's a pretty pervasive person." I said, remembering a news article she was featured in, in which she had been arguing with a fellow scientist over some kind of issue about plants. Or something of that matter. It wasn't too interesting, to be honest, as it was not my current interest.

Two days later, I arrived at the the place I was directed to go to. To my surprise, it didn't like like it had been renovated at all. It had been repainted a bright white color, which made it stand out from the other buildings, but other than that, it looked the way I've seen it in pictures: A small, post office sized building, with special darkened windows that made it difficult for you to see what was going on inside. In front, there was a door made of smooth wood and painted dark green, with a bronze, dirty looking doorknob attached. In front, there was a small cement staircase that took you inside. There were about ten other people, almost equal, gender wise. Six women and five men, who all looked older than me, and had an unnerving look on their faces. They knew about as much about the experiment as I did, but I guess the thing that bothered me most was although they were volunteers, there was something in each of their eyes that told me there was more to the story of how they came to be in the same predicament as me.

It was about eight in the morning, and none of us spoke to each other as we waited for Dr. Chepsky. It was an awkward, uncomfortable silence as we all stood around for nearly an hour, looking around, sighing, messing with our phones, and occasionally pulling out the same flier that I had gotten to see if this was indeed the right place. It wasn't until nearly 9:15, quite awhile after we were supposed to meet, when Dr. Chepsky showed up. It was rather a relief to see her, not only because of the boredom and constant awkwardness, but she looked like she did in the photos I've saw of her: Long, curly black hair that fell past her shoulders, hazel eyes that sparkled in the sunlight, and dressed in a way that made me feel safe, as weird as that sounded. She looked like a school nurse, dressed in the traditional pale blue clothing, with a white jacket covered in colorful flowers over it. She wore a name tag and a stethoscope around her neck, clipboard in one hand, pencil behind one of her un pierced ears. Although seeing her was somehow comforting, it was also rather strange. She seemed to be in a rather happy mood, a little too happy if you asked me. I mean, don't get me wrong, if you're going to conduct an experiment, you probably want your patients to be assured that they would be safe and that nothing negative would come of it, right? But she...I felt like I was back in high school, when teachers would force a smile and have that fake, perky voice that always irked me. You know, the one that would force a laugh when you turned in something late, or missed a deadline for a project. It was pretty uncomfortable.

She smiled at all of us as one security guard stood in front of the front door with his arms crossed, staring into space behind his sunglasses, not looking at any of us, as if we weren't there. "I'm very excited to have the opportunity to work with all of you, and from the bottom of my heart, I thank you all for coming. We're going to try to get this done as soon as possible, but lunch will be served and there will be ten minute breaks in between each session. I'm assuming you're all eager to know about my little project since you didn't know too much ahead of time, so, I'm going to tell you a little more about this before we actually begin." The smile still hadn't left her face as she paused to take a breath. "This is a little test I put together to see what the human mind can do. My goal is to figure out if and why the brain makes false memories, and how it happens. And to do that, you will each be put to a series of small tests, nothing too long or hard, then be placed in a certain room in the building for a few minutes. Then, you're going to report anything unusual or interesting that comes about it. Sound simple enough?"Now by this point, we were all a bit skeptical. Everything she said was vague, and kind of un-reassuring, if that makes any sense. Like how a doctor tells you about the shot they're about to give you, or how an operating procedure will go, but won't directly tell you how much pain they'll feel, or the side effects afterwards. But since we were already there, we didn't want to annoy her by voicing our concerns, and nodded in response. She looked at all of us with that too happy, bright red lipstick covered smile, which personally made me think she knew something we didn't, like she was hiding something from us."You guys aren't a very chatty bunch, are you?" She laughed a little as she motioned to the guard to open the door, who did so without a word.

Inside, the first floor, (yes, there were other levels to the place, despite it being so small) was cleared of all furnishings. The walls were repainted white, as it was on the outside. A little bit of sunshine peaked in, despite the tinted windows, and the lights were replaced with those rectangle shaped ones, the ones you'd see in a laboratory, or most schools, that really light up the area. The floor was made up of titles, so although the place didn't seem that big, you could hear the doctor's heels echo as she lead us around the building. It really did have a hospital like atmosphere; it wasn't pure silent, but it was quiet. There was white noise coming from somewhere, from what I assumed to be fans or an air conditioning vent, presumably in different parts of the building. It wasn't too hot or too cold, yet, I kept tightening the sweatshirt I was wearing, as I kept getting goosebumps, which came from a mix of excitement and nervousness. The air didn't have a particular scent to it, nothing foul, nothing sweet, no smell of wet paint, which somewhat calmed my nerves a bit. She lead us around the first floor rooms, which were pretty much like the main one, except in each one, a single chair with metal legs sat facing a blank wall that wasn't turned towards the tinted window that were also in all the rooms. And the floors were carpeted with dull colors, rather than the tile in the main room and hallways. We then made our way up a small, narrow staircase that echoed our footsteps as our sweaty hands hung onto the silver railing.

Upstairs, we saw some rooms that were in the same conditions as the others, with the exception of one. There was a larger room, the first room in the upstairs hallway. In that room, there was a cot. Well, it was sort of like a cot combined with the kind of couch that you'd lay on in a therapist's office. It was black, with a rolled up, pillow like material that was attached to the head of it. Instead of the normal light, it was replaced with one, bright red one. It made the room hotter than usual, causing everyone but the doctor to sweat or adjust their sweatshirts. There was a small cardboard box sitting close to the cot, but I didn't get a chance to see what was inside as the doctor stood in front of it as she spoke to us. "This is where the main testing sessions will be. I'll be taking you in one at a time, and you'll lay down on your back, with your shoes, socks, and glasses, if you're wearing any, off."After that, she picked a couple things out of the box, and I felt my stomach and heart drop at the same time, if that's even possible, but I have no idea how else to describe the feeling I had at that moment. In one hand, she held what appeared to be a ping pong ball, cut in half to where you could see the white colored inside. In the other, she held a pair of red headphones, which was plugged into an iPod.  She smiled that unnerving smile once again as she looked around at us. Particularly, me.

"I'm going to tape both of these over your eyes, then put the headphones over your ears, where you will be listening to a static sound, like a radio that won't tune in. You'll keep those on for a little bit with this light shining on you. After that, you'll take them off and I'll ask you a few questions about how you feel and if you felt relaxed, normal things like that. Then, you'll be done!"

Her voice was cheerful, as if she's done this dozens of times.Like I said before, I enjoy bizarre, unusual, out of the ordinary things. What she was talking about was something I read online a few weeks back, an obscure technique known as the Ganzfeld Effect. Basically, it was an alternative to tripping on acid. From what I remember, if you did it right, you're supposed to have screwed up hallucinations of some sort.Everyone was looking at each other, back at her, then back at each other again, some with rather amused expressions, others looked extremely skeptical, and some were just plain anxious. Obviously, this isn't what we had in mind when we signed up.Dr. Chepsky refused to say anymore, shooing us all out of the room, except one of the men, whose name was Steven. He seemed pretty chill about the whole thing, even though he kept running his hand through his messy brown hair when she explaining the process of the experiment. A habit, he said when one of the others questioned him. She then told us each to go into one of the smaller rooms by ourselves and remove our shoes, sit in the chair, and stare at the wall in silence. She claimed it was an exercise she learned that helps clear the mind, a relaxing technique. It took another few minutes for her to collect everyone's electronics and get everyone into a room, so it wasn't until about 9:30 AM until I heard the door lock with a click, and I was left with my own silence.

I nearly jumped out of my seat when I heard the door open again. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I guess I must have did whatever she asked us to do correctly, because nearly two hours had passed and now Dr. Chepsky had returned, saying it was time for ten minute break before the next set of testing started.Two hours? It felt like only a few minutes! What the heck could I have done, could she have done, to put me into what seemed to be some kind of weird trance?! I felt as if I had just woken up from a long nap, refreshed, relaxed, and more awake. When I mentioned this to the doctor, she smiled that smile once more and said: "You must have fallen asleep, sweetie. Just with your eyes open. It's more common than you think, you know." She winked before walking away, her heels clicking down the hallway. To this day, I still didn't know exactly what happened. Steven was back in the main room with the others, but something was...different about him. You know how you feel right after you get off a ride at a fair, and it was a lot faster than you expected? That's what it looked liked. At least, for the most part. His eyes were widened slightly bloodshot, his pupils dilated. The rest of his body had gone pale, especially his face. The only expression that I could read from him was what seemed to be paranoia. He was staring straight ahead, as I was earlier. Whenever someone touched him, he jumped back and twitched, or jerked his head, along with continually biting his nails, hugging his arms around himself, and shuffling his feet. "Steven?" Bro, you alright?" I asked, concerned for his well being. No answer. I got right in front of him and did the old wave-your-hand-in-front-of-someone's-face trick to see if that would get his attention. Suddenly, it seemed a wire connecting sanity to his brain seemed to snap loose, and he went ballistic, grabbing one of the girls that happened to be his girlfriend, jerking her arm in weird positions, screaming over and over with hot tears dripping down his now flushed face."Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy" is all I could understand from him as me and the others yelled for Dr. Chepsky and tried to restrain him. "Dead box dead box dead box dead box dead box..." was the next thing he kept saying, over and over with a horrific look in his eye before reaching over and scratching the girl's neck with his nails, causing her to bleed. After that, he vomited violently before collapsing on the floor, passed out.

It was only then Dr. Chepsky returned and saw Steven laying a pool of his own regurgitation, only to step over him carefully, as if he were nothing but a stick in the middle of the sidewalk. At the point, I would have loved to say that I was out and fled the building like my life depended on it, but that didn't happen. I don't know why I was compelled to stay. Maybe it was the fear of trying to leave and the consequences of that. Besides, the guard was still solemnly guarding the what seemed to be the only exit.

At the end of the testing session, Steven's girlfriend, a pretty woman named Larissa, was in the same state that Steven was in after he was testing on. She wouldn't stop twitching and jerking her neck to the side, as if she just couldn't help herself. There was a little bit of blood trickling down from her nose and either into her mouth or over it, then plopping onto the floor or on yellow blouse she was wearing. I offered her a tissue, but there was no response from her. Then suddenly, as with Steven, she fell into a pit of sobbing and yelling almost completely incoherently, like how a little child would act after being frightened, or getting injured. During this incident, she dug her teeth onto the corner of one of the walls and bit into it hard over and over again, causing a couple of her teeth is break off in small parts, but she didn't notice. She kept doing that repeatedly, and the doctor didn't do anything but make a note of it on her clipboard, and left her to her activity, right next to the still passed out Steven.

By now, I was obviously terrified out of my wit's end, but I guess the fear was affecting my way of thinking, because I didn't even think about leaving. It was lunch time now, and I had no appetite, but because I hadn't ate any breakfast and the fact that I knew we were going to be here a lot longer than I originally thought, I had to force myself to eat something. Dr. Chepsky walked into the main hall, carrying several brown paper bags, as if a Marsh or Krogers were located thirty feet away and was able to buy in under ten minutes. There were items spilling out of her arms, but she ignored it as she started handing out giant, full stocks of celery, half gallons of milk, cartons of raw eggs, etc. She literally crammed them into everyone's arms, (with the exception of Steve and Larissa) no plates or silverware in site. There were plenty to go around, but she insisted that we eat fast so we could continue the experiment, so a couple of us were literally stuffing food into their mouths and swallowing without chewing, causing them to nearly choke, but they didn't seem to care so much. They ate like they've been imprisoned and starved for a couple of weeks before finally receiving a meal.

I was scared. Really, really scared. There was no way I could go back into the room and somehow, freaking pass out for who knows how long, so I ran to the door and managed to pull it open, but the guard was standing on the grass, right beside it. He seemed to glare at me through the thick sunglasses he wore with an unreadable expression before slamming the door shut once more, this time, locking it from the outside with a loud click. The doctor made her way down the stairs and her wide eyes set on me as her grin started making my stomach burn as I started fleeing down the hall, yelling, screaming for anyone, one of the people, Larissa, Steve, the guard, anyone who could possibly get me out this place, but they all seemed to had faded from existence because I didn't see any or hear any of them after that. That was when l came face to face with the doctor, who didn't say a single word to me, but snatched me by the elbow and yanked down the hall as I struggled to get loose from her. I was flipping out, I tried to scratch her with my nails and even tried to bite her arm to get her to release me, but nothing worked, even when I stopped walking all together and she simply dragged me, my shoes making an echoing, heavy sound. I was thrown onto the bed. I screamed, cursing into her face, and even managed to kick her pretty hard in the stomach.

Before I blacked out, all of my muscles suddenly relaxed, and I became almost completely numb. I felt like I was having some kind of version of sleep paralysis, even though I was wide awake. I felt like I was able to move, but couldn't make myself. And because of this, I was left vulnerable. The ball halves were placed on my eyes and taped there with what felt like duct tape, maybe something similar. But one of the halves were lopsided, so the tape was ripped off of my flesh rapidly, plucking some stray hair with it, along with a bit of skin, as I felt liquid trickle down my face and onto my neck, not bothering to be cleaned up as it was re-taped onto me. The headphones were placed over my ears and loud, muffled static filled my head. I could feel my ears wincing in pain as the sound overpowered my thoughts, not being able to think about anything except that dang static. I think she said something to me then, but I couldn't hear her. Not only that, but when the red light was turned on and faced right on me, I felt the leftover blood drying, sticking to the right side of my neck, which was now starting to sweat. In fact, I was sweating profusely within a couple of minutes, or at least that's how long I thought it was. I didn't really know how long it took, only that it happened quick, and either my nerves were shot or the medicine was taking another effect, because that's all I could remember before blacking out, or maybe I fell asleep. Either way, I started to see things, things that no living being should ever see.

From what I remember in the dream, or hallucination, for a better word, I saw a whiteboard, the kind in classrooms, and some writing on it, written in blue marker. That's all I saw for what seemed for a really long time before I saw a figure. I couldn't tell if it was a large dog, or maybe a child, but he picked up the marker that was in the holder at the end of the board, and stuck it into his nose, pounding it in repeatedly before it broke the flesh and popped out on the other side. The child clapped their hands and jumped up and down as part of its bloody, snot covered nostril hung there for a moment, before dropping onto the floor. Then, I heard some piano music being played while the child squealed with joy, and the scene slowly faded away.

Next, I saw what appeared to be an animation of a young boy on a powerpoint presentation while a metronome played at a steady beat in the background. Then, the animation switched to a picture what appeared to be a poorly costumed woman, dressed like a zombie, holding up a bag with a bright orange, smiling, jack o lantern on it. After about thirty seconds, the screen went blank. A tall man walked up with his hands behind his back and stood in front of the screen. He then removed the jacket he was wearing, revealing that on the lower right side of his body had a large, bloody, deep wound in it. He put his hand inside it and pulled out a chunk of flesh, and proceeded to take a large bite of it, skin stretching like cheese from the chunk to his mouth as he chewed it off and swallowed it. He seemed to be talking to someone on the other side of him, but I couldn't see who it was. He continued to eat at the ball of fresh for awhile until the image seemed to go blurry and fade away, and that's when the picture changed once more, but it only lasted about thirty seconds, probably even less, but it appeared to be the top of an elderly person's hand. In the middle of it, a smiley face was drawn in red marker. The little circle puffed up slowly, getting bigger, then exploded, blood covering the person's hand. The hallucinations continued in this pattern, like it was horror movie when whatever it was that was about to jump out at you, the scene changed, but the situation didn't improve.

When I woke up, all of my emotions seemed to combine as several waves of relief, nausea, terror, and anger came over me. Nausea came from the burning in my stomach and the pounding in my head, the sound of the metronome still ticking. Relief because I was in a bright clean room that belonged to my local hospital, and so on. It took awhile to come completely to my senses, but when I had regained what I lost of my sanity, my doctor told me what happened.

"She wanted to push the brain to the limits of its potential." he said. "Even before she got the idea for an experiment like this, she was still known to "go too far" when it came to activities that pertained to subjects such as this.

""What do you mean? What else did she do?"

"Lots of things. Before she started working with people, she worked with animals pretty often, and she was arrested twice for trying to operate on them while they were still alive."

Apparently, when she started the experiment, she injected us with a variety of different drugs, ones that I've never heard of, with the exception of LSD, to see if she could make the hallucinations stronger than usual as with just the Ganzfeld thing. I think she said something about how certain drugs and other medical techniques could be used to erase certain memories, sort of like internal hypnosis, and replace them with different ones, ones that the hypnotist could give by asking simple questions, or having them wake up and erasing their identity, replacing it with something else. This was the goal she aimed for. Police had found me before permanent damage could be done, but most of the other people who were with me had a lot brain damage, leaving them mentally ill, most likely for the rest of their lives.

Now, I've...mostly recovered. I still have flashbacks about that day, now and again, but only on occasion. I don't know what happened to Dr. Chepsky, because she had managed to escape the police when they showed up on the scene. I know that she's still out there, somewhere, perhaps under a new name, continuing with her experiments, lecturing at universities, selling her podcasts...

It's been awhile since the experiment happened, and my life has came back together for the most part. I met a young woman when I was at the bar. She was one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen, with long, curly black hair and beautiful hazel eyes. She had the brightest smile that I had ever seen. She told me she worked as a psychologist, and really liked science, like I did. Her name sounded so familiar to me when she told me. I was pretty sure that I'd had seen it somewhere before.

If only I could remember.