32896589326509350

article. The immobility produced by other paralyzing diseases—or even splints and casts
for broken bones—may likewise provoke hallucinations. Most commonly these are
corporeal hallucinations, in which limbs may seem to be absent, distorted, misaligned,
or multiplied; but voices, visual hallucinations, and even full-blown psychoses have been
reported, too. I saw this especially with my postencephalitic patients, many of whom
were, in effect, enclosed in immoveable parkinsonism and catatonia.
Sleep deprivation beyond a few days leads to hallucination, and so may dream
deprivation, even with otherwise normal sleep. When this is combined with exhaustion
or extreme physical stress, it can be an even more potent source of hallucinations. Ray
P., a triathlete, described one example:
Once, I was competing in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii. I was not having a
good race, I was overheated and dehydrated—miserable. Three miles into the
marathon portion of the race, I saw my wife and my mom standing on the side of
the road. I ran over to them to say I would be late to the nish line, but when I
reached them and began telling my tale of woe, two complete strangers who did
not even remotely resemble my wife and mother looked back at me.
The Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon, with its extreme temperatures and long hours
of monotony under grueling conditions, can provide an athlete with a fertile venue
for hallucination, much the same as the vision quest rites of passage of Native
Americans. I have seen Madame Pele, the Hawaiian Volcano and Fire Goddess, at
least once out there in the lava fields.
Michael Shermer has spent much of his life debunking the paranormal; he is a
historian of science and the director of the Skeptics Society. In his book The Believing
Brain, he provides other examples of hallucinations in marathon athletes, like those of
the mushers competing in the Iditarod dogsled race:
Mushers go for 9–14 days on minimum sleep, are alone except for their dogs, rarely
see other competitors, and hallucinate horses, trains, UFOs, invisible airplanes,
orchestras, strange animals, voices without people, and occasionally phantom
people on the side of the trail or imaginary friends.… A musher named Joe Garnie
became convinced that a man was riding in his sled bag, so he politely asked the
man to leave, but when he didn’t move Garnie tapped him on the shoulder and
insisted he depart his sled, and when the stranger refused Garnie swatted him.
Shermer, an endurance athlete himself, had an uncanny experience while competing
in a grueling bike marathon, which he later described in his Scientific American column:
In the wee hours of the morning of August 8, 1983, while I was traveling along a
lonely rural highway approaching Haigler, Neb., a large craft with bright lights
overtook me and forced me to the side of the road. Alien beings exited the craft and
abducted me for 90 minutes, after which time I found myself back on the road with