Report: "A few years ago, I was relaxing at my home when I suddenly got a vision of my former home (childhood home)," reports Edie. "It was the living room, painted blue, so I knew it must be 1994 or earlier. (The room was painted beige after that.) I saw my sister playing with a young child. I assume hers, as she had a child in 1989 and another in 1990.

"As I watched this very brief vision, I knew I was there -- the same way I know I'm typing this now.


I've never had this happen before or since. It was shocking to me, because I don't have paranormal or religious experiences normally."

Response: Your report, Edie, reminds me of a scientific experiment that was in the news recently: Doctors transport a patient to his past by zapping the brain to make him hallucinate.

The experiment took place at the Feinstein Institute in New York, where doctors implanted electrodes in the brain of a 22-year-old man who was subject to epileptic seizures. When they stimulated certain areas of his brain -- specifically, the cortex around the hippocampus -- he saw visions of his past: scenes from his family's pizzeria and his local train station. They were able to pinpoint these areas of the brain where memories of houses and buildings seem to be stored. And they found that stimulating different parts of the brain resulted in different types of hallucinations.

This very much sounds like what happened to you. Obviously, you did not have electrodes attached to your brain, but something might have given that area of your brain some unusual stimulation that resulted in your vision.

Could similar phenomena be responsible for the visions these other readers have experienced?:

• Strange Night Apparition and Visions
• I had a "vision"
• Evil Vision and Little Black People
• Shocking Mirror Vision
• Guardian Angel Vision
• Vision of Long-Ago Murder

The experiment described above does not explain, however, visions in which future events are seen!