My previous post was made just a few hours ago, so please don’t forget to read that if you missed it.
Cutting to the chase: I got a video of myself having an out of body experience, but it doesn’t look like anything amazing is going on from the video :-P. I suppose I should be bummed out or something, but honestly I just feel really excited! I can’t believe I was able to catch the experience on tape - even though there isn’t anything amazing in the video itself.
I’ve uploaded the uneventful video to YouTube, for those that really want to watch it. The second half is a zoomed-in high-contrast version.
(Note that in my excitement, I accidentally typed the timestamp of 3:55am, when it was actually 3:38am - I must have been thinking of my previous night’s OBE when finalizing the video).
I had been trying to get an OBE on video for about a week, and had just recently perfected my technique. Last night I had an OBE, but it turned out my camera ran out of tape mere minutes before the OBE actually happened. This night, I tried again. I found another setting that extended my tape length from 92 to 94 minutes (by changing the sound from 16-bit, to 12-bit). I pushed the record button, and jumped in bed ASAP - in order not to lose any time on the tape.
I tranced out from 2:05 to about 2:45, listening to music. I shut the music off, then did some more meditation for another 30 minutes. Then I rolled over to my side in order to get more comfortable, and attempt an OBE.
I fell asleep and started dreaming. I was dreaming I was laying in one of my old beds, trying to trance out :-). My mother came into the room and laid next to me. She started talking to me about my sister, and I was getting annoyed, because I was really focusing on trancing out, and wanted to get the OBE on video. My desire to OBE was so strong that even my dream-self kept the mission alive :-).
Eventually I told my mom about my frustration, and she didn’t say anything - just gave me this really strong bear hug. It was really painful, because it wasn’t a nice hug or anything. She grabbed me and started squeezing the breathe out of me. This snapped me out of the dream state, and propelled me into having an OBE. I “woke up” out of body, but laying inside my body.
My right arm was free to move. I checked the clock (while out), and it was 3:38am. I did some quick math and realized I only had a minute or two left on the tape! I started to frantically wave my right arm, and tried to escape my body, but I was mostly stuck (probably because I was trying so hard :-P). All I could do was wave my right arm. So I just kept doing that. After about a minute of that, I jumped back into my body, and wiggled around to wake myself up. I got up, waved at the camera (with my left arm, instead of my right), in order to show the camera where I had just been waving.
I got over and looked at the camera - Tape End! Oh no!, I thought :-). I was about to flip out, thinking I had just missed my OBE for a second night in a row. When I checked the tape, I saw that the tape actually ended right after I had woken up and waved at the camera. I literally had about a 10 second buffer :-). The end of the video on YouTube is the exact end of the tape itself (I just trimmed off the first 92 minutes of trancing out).
It’s 5:40am now, and I really need to get ready for work. I just played the tape again, and it’s getting corrupted for some reason. There are large green bands across the video. Luckily I was able to extract and watch the end before the data corruption took place. I’ll have to mess around with it to see if the tape is really corrupt or not. At least I have the digital data :-).
January 24th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Most likely Im experiencing a bad case of matrixing, but it sure looks like there is some sort of “wavering” in the wall right where your “oobe-hand” is supposed to be waving… Of course, after reading your description I am hardly capable of making an objective analysis…
January 24th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
With so many compression artifacts waving around, I could see all kinds of things
What format did your cam record in? As the scene is still, a difference-calculation could be used to track anything thats not consistent with the other frames of the vid, that is as long as there is little to no compression on the original footage.
Oh and, Congrats!!!!
January 24th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
By the way Sean, Have you considered using high-end image queality and rigging the thing to take Image every 30 seckonds? High-end Webcam perhaps? And take raw-files of course, without anhy compression.
around 20? megs / image. 2 / min 40 megs 1 min = 2400 Megs/hour
4.8 Gigs/2 hours.
14.4 Gigs / 6 hours….
Even doubling the image size would result in lesser than. 30 Gigs/6 hours.
Another method you could use involves same setting, but instead of having the thing “snap” shots for you, use extremely long exposure times. This way, low light conditions will not be a problem. In addition, any visible phenomenon such as “oobe hand waving” would cause a recognizeable pattern in the images.
Taking Images with 1 minute shutter speed might damn well do the trick and get your whole night covered… Lighting conditions must be stable though, otherwise the brighter moments will bork your entire minutes worth of steady darkness…
Sorry for the mess. Should have quessed the consequense of using “greater than” symbol….
January 25th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Thats great you caught an OBE on film Sean, nice work!
January 25th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Antisankari is right, you can really mess around with things like exposure time and what not, to maximize what it is you are looking for. The only problem seems to be cost >.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Those are good ideas. But yes, cost is an issue :-). I’m going to keep using my video camera and try to capture more OBEs. Then in the future, I may move on to more elaborate capture systems. I also want to set up my geiger counter and see if my OBE-self can affect it.
~Sean
January 25th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
You could do a cross-reference by setting up a geiger counter next to you. If your “obe-body” affects a geiger counter set up somewhere else, then lack of that very same body inside of your real body would decrease activity at your real body while you are “having a trip”.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Well, this is certainly (or, at least, ir seems to be) a very big step/milestone for you - w00t & congrats and stuff!
I’m really happy for you as well…and it does seem like something’s happening in the lower-right hand corner as Antisankari says…but then, it might just be the video being weird and choppy as most video camera records are when put on Youtube. ;>.>
Either way…congratulations!
-Alex-
January 28th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
hey, I know this is probably the wrong place to ask, but what happened to UPC? Their website is up for grabs on GoDaddy.com
January 28th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
It´s not up for grabs, just occasionally somebody doesn´t pay the bills ^^
January 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
as much as i’d like to accomplish this feat first
have you seen these http://ghoststudy.com/monthly/apr05/video.htm ?
casual returning to the physical?
i find it very interesting that everything happened during one second, 5fps.. apparently frames before and after show nothing.. all kinds of hypothesis can be made… speed, motion, position..
could the IR be the key? perhaps if you block out all obscuring visible light + some additional ir-leds? some security cameras with motion detertors might be up to the task, what about sony nightshot? (takes the ir-filter out of the way)
January 29th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Ir lights would only help if the thing reflects ir-light. Otherwise it woult actually obscure results.
Do we suspect the phenomenon to emit or reflect light?
February 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
As I’ve said to him before, an OBE is simply a mental effect. It has no physical manifestation beyond your body being asleep.
For a very interesting historical example, you can read the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (A grimoire written in the 1400’s). A woman gave Abramelin a jar of lotion on one of his travels; when rubbed on his feet and the palms of his hands, he went into a sleeping state where he thought (and indeed initially believed) he could fly through the air.
He visited a friend of his back in his home city…. and saw him undertaking a profession that was completely not what he expected to see him doing, what Abramelin knew he should be doing (Sound familiar, Sean? An old story of an OBE on Psipog, I think).
Because of this, he realized that the experience of “flying” was not connected to reality, and confronted the woman who would come to admit that it was a drug.
When I first read this, I immediately connected it to OBE’s. In my understanding, this effect is metnal… it opens up all possibilities for you to move to and explore, and may be useful in a meditative, contemplative application.