Can a genuine paranormal experience be induced by unnatural means?

This is a very long story, too long to type here. I'll try to condense it to the very basics..but some things I will leave out.

Before it happened: I was a bit manic, mentally unstable due to a variety of reasons. Over the period of a week or so I noticed my senses were becoming heightened. Auras were suddenly visible to me with a bit of concentration, mine especially. It was violet and blue with bright turquoise flames.

Soon after: I have always been fascinated with extraterrestrials, but even more so during this period. Anyway, one night I was laying outside looking at the sky. Feeling quite alienated from society, as I've always felt... I attempted to mentally contact some extraterrestrial being. I felt a connection was made. With what I didn't know, however.. I didn't really care at the time.

And during the next week or so.. things remained the same, regarding my senses being heightened. Except I began to see (with increasing frequency) shadows on the wall. Just one though.. A shadow of this skinny, long arm with long claw-like fingers. It would stretch across the wall towards me, with its fingers doing this grabby motion-- and then once I reached out to touch it, it would quickly recoil.. then slowly come back. On one occasion I felt this pressure pressing against the my hand, until I was being pushed against the wall. I actually wasn't frightened by any of this, not initially at least.

The next development: I was in my backyard one afternoon, wandering around for no apparent reason. I started to feel a presence around me.. and then I saw a tall shadow on the grass, standing next to me. When I turned to face it I tried feeling the air, seeing if I could touch it and again.. I just felt a pressure, like a large bubble. The shadow on the grass would then disappear and reappear elsewhere.
Soon there were 4 or 5 of them, appearing and reappearing in various places, sometimes moving in unison.. At that point I got a little panicky, and probably imagined most of the things that happened in that next hour.

Later on I was in my living room and I felt that presence again. The only way I can describe this presence is: electric and omnipresent. Like this thing, this force hovering around, right over you, invading your very being. But it wasn't that bad at this point, it was new to me, I wasn't paranoid yet.
I began to see a face (sometimes two) projected in the air/on the wall, or in other places in front of me. It was like a hologram, a very fuzzy one.. I couldn't really distinguish its features. It large eyes, large features in general but it wasn't your typical cartoonish alien. It was staring at me, and saying something to me-- I could see its mouth moving but the sound was very muffled, mute much of the time. When I could hear it, it was unnerving..very hard to describe: it was a crackling, clicking, hissing sound. no distinct words, just that ongoing sound.. it would radiate throughout the room, too, like it was echoing, then suddenly it would be right by my ear. Its presence was electric, and its voice sounded electric as well.
(Something worth noting: During this time, my hair would go static periodically. As in, standing on end. Both my mother and my friend verified this.. their hair didn't go static, just mine).
As the day went on, this presence grew stronger and more intense, more distracting. Wherever I went, I felt it all around me, occasionally hissing/crackling something into my ear.

By evening I was becoming quite frightened. It felt like my reality somehow shifted. The entire world looked completely different.. the same but not. I can't begin to explain what this felt like.. I had never been this frightened in my entire life. There was an incredible, totally soul-crushing feeling of impending doom, all around me and in the pit of my stomach.. I didn't feel safe anywhere; other people appeared to be automatons and I felt completely alone. I could not see this "thing", the presence, but I felt it all around me-- this tremendous negative force that hated me and wanted me dead.
I am normally a calm, non-paranoid person... but by night I could not contain myself. I was completely hysterical-- crying, screaming, running around, covering my ears because its voice was becoming louder and more frequent.
Next thing I know, I was in the car, being driven to a mental hospital. During this it was storming pretty badly which only added to the whole ambiance.. And I could see the "thing" more clearly now, it was literally everywhere and in everything; I saw its shadow hovering over the car.

I was admitted into this short-term mental hospital. I was prescribed Seroquel, and felt mostly normal again.. though still seeing the claw-hand sometimes.. after a week I was out and functioning normally.

However. During that whole experience (prior to the seroquel), I was taking Wellbutrin, 300mg. In the hospital, my psychiatrist never mentioned that my "hallucinations" could have been caused by the wellbutrin that HE prescribed me prior to the whole event... he kept me on it.
I stopped taking the wellbutrin soon after, and all of this stopped... I haven't see anything like that since then but I'm still a bit traumatized from that one night.

So I have a few questions, actually..
-Is it possible that some portion of that experience could have been real? That maybe the Wellbutrin was just a catalyst, tweaking me brain to perceive things I wouldn't have been able to otherwise?
-If the above is possible, then is it also possible that I was interacting with some entity of some sort...Maybe a thought-form of some thing that fed upon my fear?
-Are strange experiences like this the same as those caused by things like '___', '___', mushrooms and the like?
-And can those ever be real, genuine experiences on some level-- despite being caused/forced in an unnatural way?

And lastly... if anyone has had a similar encounter, be it hallucinated or not.. like with the shadow hands for instance, do share.

[edit on 31-5-2008 by SpaceGypsy9]

Hallucinations have been reported by users of Wellbutrin. Additionally, what you've mentioned is not unlike I've seen in patients with shizophrenia. I know that Seroquel is used in the treatment of both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, so without knowing what you've been diagnosed with, it's hard to say whether what you experienced could have been caused by the Wellbutrin or a schizophrenic episode. Our perception if very susceptible to error and influence, so in all likelihood, it was a result of either the medication or mental illness.


That may just be the psychologist in me talking, and there's no way I can dismiss a true paranormal experience as a possibility (after all, they're quite hard to document by a third party and don't always repeat themselves). All I can really tell you is that what you described (contact with extraterrestrials, apparitions, what seems to be shadow people, etc) are very rare and likeli are only true experiences in a handful of cases, and the chances of them happening all at once are miniscule. I won't say that you didn't have a paranormal experience, but it is much more likely that it was all the resuklt of the medication or an underlying mental illness.


If you have any more experiences, you should post them here as well.



Good luck.

-Tsuki no Hikari