EYE SPIRITS

The mysterious Charles Bonnet Syndrome causes complex and realistic hallucinations in sufferers' peripheral vision:

It had been many years since I had last seen Don, one of my favourite college lecturers, so I was delighted to bump into him at a conference. Back in the old college days he had been something of a Sean Connery look-a-like and was much admired by the girl students, so it was a shock to see him now carrying a white stick and being accompanied by a (rather attractive) girl helper. He informed me that he had recently become registered as blind, yet it was apparent that he could still see to a limited extent. He explained that he had some usable peripheral eyesight but that his central area of vision was seriously affected; it transpired that he was suffering from “macular degeneration”.

...“Visions? What do you mean, Don?” I asked, totally nonplussed. He outlined several forms of hallucination that were plaguing him. The first one to manifest was what Don described as looking like “a ball of string or basketwork, a globular shape with an aperture on one side”. He would see this image as if projected onto walls or other surfaces. He could sometimes make out a small face inside the aperture, and on the occasions this became particularly evident the basket-like effect would adjust around it like a bizarre head-dress. A similar effect was the occurrence of a “pool of pale grey light” which would often appear a few yards in front of him when he was walking along. Faces would also appear within this strange pool of light.

Read the full article at http://www.brainwaving.com/2010/03/18/ey...