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Comment by ojnabieoot | Hacker News Reader

For me (as someone formally diagnosed with schizophrenia): as a child I had a lot of flickering lights/shadows and brief whispers/noises, horrible depth perception, frequent dizziness, and bad temperature coordination (sweating or shivering way too much in response to weather).

One particular indication which I thought was universal but is apparently somewhat uncommon: visual “snow” in low light conditions, meaning that dark rooms look like grey TV static to me. (When my eyes are closed in the dark I usually just see black.)

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When I close my eyes I see "snow", and yes the same thing with my eyes opened in the dark. But this is normal, no? It seems like seeing pure black is abnormal. There will be some kind of noise on the optic nerve, it's hard to imagine it being hard "off".

Seeing snow when your eyes are closed or in darkness is fairly typical from what I understand. Visual snow as a diagnosis is visible at least in reading-level light and against light backgrounds.

I see snow against all colours in a typical office environment. It’s less noticeable in daylight but still there.

I can both see it and "unsee" it. If I'm actively doing something and using my eyes for things I don't notice. But if I'm just sitting listening to music or whatever I can notice the "fuzz" and noise. In low light it's a very fine grain. In daylight it's a coarser pulsing of white and black.

I've always thought this was normal. I've asked a couple other people and they've said they see it too, :shrug:

I've always had visual glows when I close my eyes. Not eye floaters, I only see those when my eyes are open.

When I close my eye, I usually see an outline of bright/dark somewhat matching what I last saw, but desaturated and splotchy.

If I keep my eyes close, the patches kinda drift around. It's kinda fun to watch sometimes but I get bored eventually open my eyes.

I've always assumed its my eyes just adjusting to the dark, or maybe its residual light my eyelids can't filter out.

I always remember the term 'eidetic' and always think I am misremembering the correct term, but it is "eidetic imagery" I am searching for. To me this refers to the phenomenon of seeing above-threshold-of-perception patterns or motions, such as lava-like swirling. As you say, such things can be interesting for a time.

This following link discusses the phenomenon in terms of phosphenes:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-do-i-see-patterns-when-i-...

Arguably, there have been spiritual movements fueled by relative ignorace around these things, with gurus allegedly claiming that they enable these unexpected experiences for their disciples.

> with gurus allegedly claiming that they enable these unexpected experiences for their disciples

I can voluntarily cause a burst of those color patterns by, after closing my eyes, relaxing all my facial muscles and letting my eyes go unfocused. Works best when trying to fall asleep, so I can imagine people unintentionally doing the same during, say, meditation and correlating it with their spiritual leader.

A sort of natural prior is that when you close your eyes, it must be black, right? But it is not, as you observe.

A sociologist who studied the spiritual cultures concluded there were many conformity-related behaviors at work. Oh, yea, I had the experience.

I think I get phosphenes and never had the word for it. I can more or less elicit them on demand by closing my eyes, relax and let them cross slightly. A stroby concentric circle set ensues for a few seconds. Always the same pattern. Red.

I thought that was normal, what everyone saw. Aren't they called something like "phosgenes"?

I guess the optic nerve should see the same in complete dark vs in darkness with eyes closed - if noisy then noise in both cases. But here we are talking about a significant difference between eyes closed and low light.

Same thing here. Male/mid-30s and no psychotic symptoms, so unlikely to get them now, hopefully. I have always noticed audiovisual "brain glitches" every once in a while, but I think that's because I find it interesting to look for them...

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