Dr. B's Finest Kind Medical clinic and Fish Market

When I worked at one nursing home with a lot of Native American elders, they would at times "see ghosts", especially at night.

Probably such things are just as common in the sophisticated, but like near death experiences or those in mourning seeing their dead spouses/children, people dislike telling others for fear of being called "crazy".

But the NYTimes has an article on such things:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/science/14eyes.html?ex=1096696225&ei=1&en=c70b1849da20044d

Sensory deprivation is well known to cause visual hallucinations, as are many medications.

Ms. Stowens's hallucinations are a result of Charles Bonnet syndrome, a strange but relatively common disorder found in people who have vision problems. Because the overwhelming majority of people with vision problems are more than 70 years old, the syndrome, named after its 18th-century Swiss discoverer, is mostly found among the elderly. And because older people are more susceptible to cognitive deterioration, which can include hallucinations or delusions, Charles Bonnet (pronounced bon-NAY) is easily misdiagnosed as mental illness.

Many patients who have it never consult a doctor, out of fear that they will be labeled mentally ill.

"It is not a rare disorder," said Dr. V. S. Ramachandran, a neurologist at the University of California at San Diego, who has written about the syndrome. "It's quite common. It's just that people don't want to talk about it when they have it."

Researchers estimate that 10 to 15 percent of people whose eyesight is worse than 20/60 develop the disorder. Any eye disease that causes blind spots or low vision can be the source, including cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and, most commonly, macular degeneration. The hallucinations can vary from simple patches of color or patterns to lifelike images of people or landscapes to phantasms straight out of dreams. The hallucinations are usually brief and nonthreatening, and people who have the syndrome usually understand that what they are seeing is not real.

The good news is that "blinking" often makes the visions disappear. The bad news is that medications don't.

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