Hi all! I'm usually one to keep my posts about things within our own dimension, but I guess since I had a strange experience, this is the best place I have to go. I will now bore you with excessive backround information before relaying the actual experience. So, I'm a sophomore at Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, MA. I live in a dorm called Torrey hall. I live in the add-on area, but the first floor of Torrey used to be the campus health center. Torrey located right next to the new heath center and the athletic complex. Hospitals and the like can be creepy to begin with, which doesn't help. It is the winter exam period right now, and my roommate is gone for a few days, leaving me alone in the room. Since I was alone, I locked my windows and my door before going to bed. I am in a corner room facing the health center. there is no one living on one side, and no one living directly across from me, it's just a stairwell. NOW THE JUICY PART! Last night (December 15th) at about 11:30PM, I was lying in my bed, facing the center of the room, my roommated bed being on the other side. I was QUITE awake, as I had been studying all day and I was recovering from a severe Diet Coke caffeine overload. As I stared, wide-eyed and caffeinated, the room began to get misty, like a white fog. I thought, "This is weird", and I tried brushing any of my white blonde hair out of my face to see if maybe that was dangling in front of my eyes, causing the mistyness. Nope, still foggy. Then, the mist, rather slowly, began to converge and form a shape. The mist-thing took on a ribbon or eel like shape and began floating around the room. It "swam" like a flatworm (picture a moray eel swimming, but up-an-down instead of side-to-side). It was like watching a critter swim in an aquarium. Eventually, the spectre developed beady looking eye-like structures. The only thing I could think was, "OOOOOOOOOOOkay... I REALLY wish I could go to sleep now". I continued to peek out from my covers at it with a general expression of until I decided it would be best to just pull the blankets over my head and let "it" have it's room-swimming fun. Seemed harmless enough. I don't have a history of these kinds of experiences. The school has been around since 1837, and there are plenty of ghost stories going around, most of them giggleworthy. I haven't heard of one about a ghost flatworm. The only things that are known to happen in Torrey is footsteps above or behind you when no ones there, and the sounds of furnature being moved around on the floors above you when no one is there to do it. So...let the psycho bashing begin...

Here's a picture of a flatworm:
http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/site_resourc..._s_flatworm.jpg

DIET COKE??? You're NUTS!!!! Gross!

Seriously though you sound pretty rational to me. Exactly how much caffeine did you have and how long had you been awake when this happened? I know how college students can be, having been there myself, and am wondering if it could have been brought on by exhaustion + stimulants.

Paranormally speaking I've never heard about anything in this respect but I'm not the most experienced on these boards so it's possible others have.

Were the lights off?

Sounds like spirit energy manifesting I changed my mind from what I wrote before. I find from experience that caffine can sharpen the senses more.

Heh, well I came to my senses and now I'm drinking root beer. I usually don't use caffeine except for during final exams, that way, it works when I really need it. I was perscribed Adderall for years, and was taken off a few months ago, so that's one less stimulant. I'm stressed, but I wouldn't say exhausted. I always try to get a minimum of 5hrs a night. Since I don't normally use caffeine, and I'm a bit stressed, things might get a little wonky
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Yes, SwampGator, the lights were off, but my window shades are up and the windows are HUGE. The campus is well-lit so there is plenty of light pouring inside for me to see by.

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Anvil- Spirits are definately a possibility. It's never the first conclusion I jump to, but I certainly won't rule it out. Like I said, this campus is old and plenty of stuff happened long before I was even born. If it IS some sort of paranormal phenomenon, a ribbon/flatworm/eel seems like a weird way to manifest oneself.

Yes...obviously only you know exactly what you saw in your head, but spirit energy can often start to form like 'helix formation/shape', could have been a vortex as well It's just the shape you described caught my interest!

Well.. You must be really caffeine sensitive to have a caffeine overload from diet coke... It takes me three 23.5 oz. cans of Jolt in an hour to overload... But I must dissagree about caffeine hightening senses.. Usually a overload means you take so much caffeine you crash in exhaustion, at least with me that involves warping vision, constant twitching... I know this, as last tiem this happened to me I was in the proccess of drawing a storyboard for an animation project... Don't storyboard with warped vision...

If it was a hallucination, it wasn't caused by diet coke.. Unless that artificial sweetener caused it. *hates artificial sugar* I would venture to guess it was a dream of sorts, caused by the extreme exhaustion caused by too much caffiene, causing you to begin to fall asleep as you were still awake, causing hallucinations.. I think they're called lucid dreams or soemthing...

Then again.. It could be any number of 'real' phenomena.

I remember vividly what I saw. I wish I could make an animation of how it moved. I'll try to draw it and scan it in.

I'd still not rule out a lucid dream. My best friend once got up to get a drink of water, only to look down and see a section of her floor appear like it was looking down at an aquarium. The only reason she's certain it wasn't real.. is because her floor obviously couldn't have been an aquarium. Still, it was so real she walked around the spot, certain she'd fall if she stepped onto it.
This isn't to say I completely believe that it was simply a dream. I'm a firm believer in the bizarre and abnormal... I wouldn't even rule out an unknown being made of energy. However in my mind, the most likely of all explanations is a particularily odd lucid dream.

If anything would happen to me like that, i would get an heart attack.

It could have been a dream, I've just never heard of a ribbon being before. I remember seeing "vorticies" as a child, but I'm pretty convinced that, as a kid, I mistook the fuzzy look of the world when you've woken up in the midde of the night as something scary. I found out the dumb ghost legend for my dorm. Apparently a little girl followed a marble down an open elevator shaft. If it's true, that's one DUMB kid. Darwin Award worthy. Would the marble be worth it? I lost my marbles AGES ago and didn't chase them at all, ESPECIALLY not down an elevator shaft.