Locked in a Dark Room For Months on End?

[Astronomical_Wildcat]

Suppose someone was locked in a decent sized room.

Eating and sleeping accommodations are available, and they are free to wander around. There is no one for them to talk to, though. And it's very dark. There are no lights in the room, nor is there anything in the room that could produce light.

How would someone fare in that situation?

[Gaidin]

So, about the only thing short of sensory deprivation is the fact that you can wander into walls. I'm no doctor, but pretty sure crap's going wrong with people.

[Ace Pace]

Suppose someone was locked in a decent sized room.

Eating and sleeping accommodations are available, and they are free to wander around. There is no one for them to talk to, though. And it's very dark. There are no lights in the room, nor is there anything in the room that could produce light.

How would someone fare in that situation?

This sounds like solitary confinment and we already know how well people fare in that situation.

Hint: They don't.

[Ralin]

So, about the only thing short of sensory deprivation is the fact that you can wander into walls.

And the ability to injure themselves.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Suppose someone was locked in a decent sized room.

Eating and sleeping accommodations are available, and they are free to wander around. There is no one for them to talk to, though. And it's very dark. There are no lights in the room, nor is there anything in the room that could produce light.

How would someone fare in that situation?

They go insane. They would slowly go insane if just in that room for a protracted period WITH light, without light they go insane quickly.

[biostem]

I've also heard that in long periods of darkness, the eyes can sort of "misfire" or start picking out extremely subtle differences in light levels, which are generally interpreted by the brain as, shall we say, very unpleasant shapes/form.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I've also heard that in long periods of darkness, the eyes can sort of "misfire" or start picking out extremely subtle differences in light levels, which are generally interpreted by the brain as, shall we say, very unpleasant shapes/form.

In general, any sort of prolonged sensory deprivation will lead to weird hallucinations. If you have noise-cancelling headphones playing steady white noise and something to completely block all light from your eyes, you can induce hallucinations anytime you want.

[Purple]

In general, any sort of prolonged sensory deprivation will lead to weird hallucinations. If you have noise-cancelling headphones playing steady white noise and something to completely block all light from your eyes, you can induce hallucinations anytime you want.

How difficult do you think this would be to set up? Also how long would it take before I start seeing an effect? And would there be any long term consequences to worry about?

[biostem]

In general, any sort of prolonged sensory deprivation will lead to weird hallucinations. If you have noise-cancelling headphones playing steady white noise and something to completely block all light from your eyes, you can induce hallucinations anytime you want.

How difficult do you think this would be to set up? Also how long would it take before I start seeing an effect? And would there be any long term consequences to worry about?

Sort of a tangent, but this is kind of what bothered me about the Matrix series - once you realize you're in a VR environment, you'd think you would have an easier time bending/breaking its rules. Similarly, if you knowingly and intentionally put yourself into a state of sensory deprivation, you would probably have a much higher degree of resistance to any effects, given that you know what's going on. If you were forced into such a state, without any knowledge of when or how you could end the experience, it'd probably occur much faster.

[Zeropoint]

Sort of a tangent, but this is kind of what bothered me about the Matrix series - once you realize you're in a VR environment, you'd think you would have an easier time bending/breaking its rules.

I've never figured out why everyone seems to think that. In the case of the Matrix specifically, it appears that the system intercepts motor control nerve impulses and feeds those into the simulated muscles inside the virtual world, and translates the data generated by the simulated sense organs into signals that get injected into the subject's sensory systems. In this way, the subject experiences seamless "wearing" of the virtual body. The question that I'd ask is "how does knowing that this is what's happening result in the simulated muscles contracting with a greater force?" Sure, knowing that it's "not really real" might let someone push past their mental limits a bit, but the code presumably has restrictions on how much force a muscle of a given cross-section can produce.

I know that World of Warcraft isn't real, but knowing that doesn't let me ignore the limits the code places on my character.

[Lost Soal]

Sort of a tangent, but this is kind of what bothered me about the Matrix series - once you realize you're in a VR environment, you'd think you would have an easier time bending/breaking its rules.

I've never figured out why everyone seems to think that. In the case of the Matrix specifically, it appears that the system intercepts motor control nerve impulses and feeds those into the simulated muscles inside the virtual world, and translates the data generated by the simulated sense organs into signals that get injected into the subject's sensory systems. In this way, the subject experiences seamless "wearing" of the virtual body. The question that I'd ask is "how does knowing that this is what's happening result in the simulated muscles contracting with a greater force?" Sure, knowing that it's "not really real" might let someone push past their mental limits a bit, but the code presumably has restrictions on how much force a muscle of a given cross-section can produce.

I know that World of Warcraft isn't real, but knowing that doesn't let me ignore the limits the code places on my character.

Only thing I can think of is its a by-product of their hack into the system. The matrix no longer has direct control of the impulses so there is some flexibility. That or their accessing part of the code responsible for the agents and "the One" since Neos abilities are intentional, so the potential is in the system.

[Lord Revan]

Sort of a tangent, but this is kind of what bothered me about the Matrix series - once you realize you're in a VR environment, you'd think you would have an easier time bending/breaking its rules.

I've never figured out why everyone seems to think that. In the case of the Matrix specifically, it appears that the system intercepts motor control nerve impulses and feeds those into the simulated muscles inside the virtual world, and translates the data generated by the simulated sense organs into signals that get injected into the subject's sensory systems. In this way, the subject experiences seamless "wearing" of the virtual body. The question that I'd ask is "how does knowing that this is what's happening result in the simulated muscles contracting with a greater force?" Sure, knowing that it's "not really real" might let someone push past their mental limits a bit, but the code presumably has restrictions on how much force a muscle of a given cross-section can produce.

I know that World of Warcraft isn't real, but knowing that doesn't let me ignore the limits the code places on my character.

Only thing I can think of is its a by-product of their hack into the system. The matrix no longer has direct control of the impulses so there is some flexibility. That or their accessing part of the code responsible for the agents and "the One" since Neos abilities are intentional, so the potential is in the system.

so they essentially have access to the console commands?

[LaCroix]

They are running of their own modified os and simply project their signal into the simulation. It's like you have a simulation game where everyone has their signal running through a router that balances their signals so that everybody has the same FPS and ping, and corrects signal spikes that are above the given maximum input values for actions to make the world realistic, and someone has a bypass directly to the server.

I think that Neo has some bug in his mental projection (which is parsed by the system while he interacts) that gives him root access via exploit...

[Jaepheth]

In general, any sort of prolonged sensory deprivation will lead to weird hallucinations. If you have noise-cancelling headphones playing steady white noise and something to completely block all light from your eyes, you can induce hallucinations anytime you want.

How difficult do you think this would be to set up? Also how long would it take before I start seeing an effect? And would there be any long term consequences to worry about?

This was part of an infographic that made the rounds a few years ago:


Wikipedia on the Ganzfeld Effect

One person who tried it:

Haunted Skeptic Exclusive: The Ganzfeld Horror Experiment
Posted by Editor@HauntedSkeptic
Trick of the Mind: Modified Ganzfeld Experiment Reveals Horror Lurking In Scumbag Brain

I was alone, well-nourished and completely sober in a clear state of mind. I had waited all day for the evening to present an opportunity that only the veil of night could promise with optimal result. Having sliced two ping-pong balls in-half earlier whilst maintaining care to avoid logos and seams in my field of vision, I positioned myself in bed with iPad-on-chest. I cued up the white noise, laid back and placed a tiny cup over each eye, now producing a muted filter of pinkish-warmth against the piercing glow of a solid-red screen cranked up to full-brightness. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I felt calm (if only for a moment).
Within 10 seconds before I could fully cover my ears with a pair of professional studio monitors, I sensed an alarming physical presence in the corner of the room. My animal instincts heightened. I could imagine it looming…waiting. I recoiled in horror. “SON-OF-A-BITCH,” I blurted without hesitation.

Right. I need to reset and find my ‘calm’ again.
—Would the rest of the evening be like this?
It sounds like raving madness.

A popular tool once used amongst parapsychologists, Ganzfeld became a predecessor to the traditional Zener cards for testing the veracity of ‘extrasensory perception’ claims. The premise of the original Ganzfeld experiment was thought to produce better results than Zener whereby partial sensory deprivation of the ESP ‘ thought receiver’ would benefit via the use of ping-pong ball eye-filters against a red light source combined with auditory white noise—rendering the subject virtually free from external distraction.

In putting the receiver into a relaxed state of mind beforehand, the subject would ‘go under’ with assistance of partial sensory deprivation and attempt to ‘tune-in’ telepathically, discerning messages being ‘sent’ from a random assortment of material by an unknown participant in another room. The ‘receiver’ would speak aloud whatever they ‘saw’ or ‘felt’ describing the experience to another observer during the experiment, who would in turn record their thoughts. After this portion of the procedure, the ‘receiver’ would then be shown a selection of four images and given the opportunity to ‘pick up on’ a ‘correct choice’. The results of the experiments, however, were statistically inconclusive. Without even accounting for obvious preconceived notions of influence to help fluff the numbers, less than some 25% of receiver guesses would ever be found correct in these instances — a factor that given the parameters combined with chance, most of reasonable people would consider ‘null’.

However, tonight I wanted to utilize the concept of sensory deprivation a bit differently. I wanted to experience the Ganzfeld effect firsthand— though with a few tweaks to the original ‘experiment’, and performed quite informally for the intended purpose of personal entertainment.
What Inspired Me

In recent years Ganzfeld has been touted by popular science blogs with pretty infographics (absent its overt paranormal roots) purporting to produce standalone, hypnotic results. The challenge, especially given its origins, I couldn’t resist. Reading up on some of the forums, I’d learned of the effect’s alleged hypnotic properties ranging from having odd thoughts to hearing voices— and for some of those with more illicit experience— the effect supposedly mimicked the audiovisual psychedelic phenomena tied to that of psilocybins.

I was still dubious as to these claims but if I could at least produce a relaxed, almost meditative state from it (nothing too sub-normal), I’d feel quite accomplished. I could in turn write-off the Ganzeld effect and it’s nonsensical hallucinogenic properties, at least for myself, happily proclaiming to everyone that ‘I felt nothing different’ as I look ridiculous lying safely in bed.
Quite the contrary.

My brain would reveal something much darker and lucid; something far more terrifying than any previously perceived notion of a Hollywood construct.
Would this be a mistake?
Elaisson and Turrell's art in lighting best depict colors seen through the eyes of a Ganzfeld participant. via ArchLighting

Elaisson and Turrell’s art best depict colors seen through the eyes of a Ganzfeld participant. (ArchLighting)

I decided to alter the parameters of the experiment slightly, gradually increasing screen brightness and white noise volume incrementally. With adjusting screen brightness first, I felt fairly safe and normal. If anything, I felt quite pleasant and at home with my surroundings in the comfort of my room. I thought I could easily have slipped into a state of pleasant fantasy and perhaps slumber. As I maxed out the screen brightness again, I began slowly increasing white noise. This immediately made me feel psychologically subjective to my own vulnerabilities. I felt like prey to an unknown source of fear. There was something in the room, my mind could have sworn it— only to be interrupted by the rationalization that it was all a psychological construct inside of my scumbag brain.
Was this what delusions must be really like?

…This would easily become the most terrifying experience in the whole of my life.
It was time to switch things up again.

Although I didn’t feel like I had set myself up for a ‘bad emotional trip’ I had to do something different.

I turned the screen back down to minimal brightness, and substituted the white noise for a song I felt emotionally positive about (Alan Parson’s Project’s ‘Nucleus’, on-loop, from their ‘I Robot’ album). It’s a song which I often find myself in a quite relaxed and daydreamy-state after listening to… though to my surprise, I noticed even MORE horrifying results than before.

I felt something push down on the edge of my bed now and move slowly up to rest by the inside of my left knee. I could feel a great force pressing down on the mattress traveling up the sheets. The bed shook. I began to tremble.

Still telling myself it was all a creation of the mind and my body’s own network of fibrous muscle tissue responding to a false trigger sent by my overactive neurons, I continued to turn the volume up louder. One of my eye filters slid off of my face, but I still had my finger on the rocker-switch, unthinkingly continuing to turn the audio volume up to max levels. As I gently placed the translucent cup back over my eye, I exhaled a sense of calm… knowing I just witnessed the safety of my surroundings and immediately felt no residual presence of anything in the room.

My sigh of relief would be soon interrupted. In a snap, it was back. On my chest, I could feel the temperature change and condensation of hot breath billowing against my face from something hovering millimetres over me.
In my mind I immediately thought the word: ‘werewolf’.
I was breathless in horror.

The moment I had whispered the word aloud inside of my head, a visceral pain shot through the front of my neck that I hadn’t felt in ages. Since a minor spinal fusion a few years back, the sensation itself should have been impossible and could only best be described by the ‘ghost limb’ neural phenomena. My REAL peripheral nerves have been severed in the area for quite some time. Even from the inconspicuous incision, I can still only feel a numb tingly sensation with touch from just below the chin to the tip of my collarbone. This pain was illogical— but I couldn’t tell that to the rest of my nervous system. Things flew in separate directions. My iPad trailed across the room like a lightweight comet-streamer tethered to the end of my large headphones, and ping-pong shrapnel shot out of sight. I kicked everything off my bed down to the bare mattress topper, let out a 3-second-delayed long-scream of emotional torment, and finally had a taste of what it was like to completely lose my mind in mere seconds.
Never.
Again.

After collecting myself and without regard for any of my other personal effects now resting somewhere off in dark space, I grabbed the only thing nearby (a butane jeweler’s torch) and lit a candle over my shoulder. I don’t smoke anymore but could have persuaded myself to indulge without much thought.

This was a lot to mentally swallow.

It was at that moment I knew just how easy it would be for the mind to mistake the normal for the paranormal,

The real for the surreal,

Biological intuition in a blur of adrenaline for psychic foresight,

Darting eyes for dancing shadows on the edge of darkness at the peak of fatigue by three-in-the-morning;

It would be so easy –
To develop belief out of nothing but primal instincts.

My fight-or-flight mechanism combined with the simple myth of a silly creature I’d never imagined to be at the forefront of any personal nightmares. It was likely something completely random.

…Suddenly, everything made sense. I was both excited and terrified.

If anything, I’d revered Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman as one of my favorite classic Universal Horror personalities. Even American Werewolf in London was (and still is) a massive joke to me, though I enjoy the hell out of watching it. Nothing could be as silly and preposterous a mythical character (save for a few other B-movie tropes), but I could tell that with just a little bit of encouragement and depravity— it’s not difficult for the undiscerning to be made to really believe absolutely anything.
Anything.
Lon Chaney Jr.

Lon Chaney Jr. as ‘The Wolfman’ via WhatCulture
…And that was the real horror.

A horror that, out of over 7 billion people walking this planet, I was only one-of-few who had probably come to terms with such on a personal level, unlike the vast majority of Earth’s demon-haunted population— yet it still haunts me very much on a universal level to consider how people can so willfully be lead down a path of pain and torment by irrational beliefs.

(Was this what cosmic visionary Carl Sagan was going on about all of those years?)
Some believe this experiment to hone-in on paranormal, psychical, supernatural or magical abilities…but in separating and singling out each of these controlled elements one-by-one, it was quite easy for me to discern that it’s all a ruse in my beautifully twisted mind — A creative mind operating at the extremes of depravity, dying for anything but the personal hell of simulated nothingness. When the light and sounds were gone, it was simply ‘all over’.

[Ziggy Stardust]

How difficult do you think this would be to set up? Also how long would it take before I start seeing an effect? And would there be any long term consequences to worry about?

It's not that difficult to set up, and you'd usually start experiencing some sort of effect in about 15-20 minutes. And no, there are no long term consequences to any form of hallucinogenic experience unless you do it with completely unbelievable frequency (like, many hours a day). That said, it's not guaranteed to give you incredibly vivid hallucinations (hell, the Ganzfeld procedure, which is the most common of these, was originally invented as a pseudoscientific way of proving that people have natural telepathic powers...though sensory deprivation in general as a means for inducing visions dates back to the ancient Greeks).

The ideal way to do it is with noise-cancelling headphones playing a continuous loop of white noise in a quiet and isolated room, with some sort of plastic over your eyes (usually cut-up ping pong balls) and a continuous source of low-level red light in front of you. The version Jaepheth described is a sort of poor man's approximation; which very well may give you some sort of experience, but it isn't as guaranteed because it isn't as tightly controlled. And its actual effects will vary wildly from person to person (just as with any other hallucinogen), so it's impossible to predict what degree of effects you will experience. Some people just sort of fall asleep when put in that situation, others trip balls.

And, certainly, this is only one method. There are plenty of others. Hell, there's the "Prisoner's cinema" ... some people will start experiencing vivid hallucinations if they just stay in a dark room for a long enough period of time. I personally can see some pretty spectacular, lucid, and striking phosphenes if I just keep my eyes closed for a while and stare at the back of my eyelids (which sometimes makes it hard for me to fall asleep, in fact). There are also commercial "mind machines" and "dream machines" you can buy online (like this one), which are essentially just walkmens and a strobe light, but they tend to be expensive (and all of the same caveats apply as above ... there is no guarantee they will work).

[Purple]

This is so cool.

[Zeropoint]

I once made a pair of glasses to flash red LEDS against my closed eyes at some specific frequency, because it was supposed to help the user get to sleep faster. It didn't work.

[Purple]

What I do not understand is the insistence on pingpong balls. Surely any old piece of cloth should do as long as its thick enough to cover your eyes and make sure no light gets in?

[Lord Revan]

What I do not understand is the insistence on pingpong balls. Surely any old piece of cloth should do as long as its thick enough to cover your eyes and make sure no light gets in?

well it's kind of hard to find cloth (due to the way they're made) that blocks all light while hard plastics like pinpon balls block light naturally.

[Imperial528]

Going by the description, any plastic or material that is opaque enough for detail to be removed but allows light in should do. I think pingpong balls are used because they will totally isolate your eyes' fields of vision from all perception of their actual environment while still allowing the red light in.

[Jaepheth]

What I do not understand is the insistence on pingpong balls. Surely any old piece of cloth should do as long as its thick enough to cover your eyes and make sure no light gets in?

I think it's just one of the cheapest most readily available ways to turn a point-ish light source into a much more diffuse light field.
Back when I was planning on trying this I was just going to get some swim goggles and either paint them or lightly sand them until they scattered light enough... then I never found the time or enough interest to actually follow through.

[Ziggy Stardust]

What I do not understand is the insistence on pingpong balls. Surely any old piece of cloth should do as long as its thick enough to cover your eyes and make sure no light gets in?

Ping pong balls are actually made out of celluloid, and that just happens to be a rather handy material for diffusing light. There's nothing that special about them; they are just very cheap, practical, and easy. Cloth probably wouldn't work too well, but most types of plastic should.