Is Deja Vu Paranormal?
Do you ever get an odd feeling that a situation, location, or conversation you’re having is eerily familiar without any recollection as to why?
What about being able to predict an event because you swore that you witnessed it before? Today, we discuss déjà vu.
Is déjà vu an odd occurrence easily explained by science or is it paranormal and a glitch in the matrix? Listen now!
What is Deja Vu?
Deja Vu is a French phrase that describes the feeling as though one has lived through the situation before. It is a memory where someone feels as if they’ve already done something before.
I think there are a fair amount of people that have experienced at least a certain degree of deja vu, but let me set the scene and give an example.
Let’s say you’re at the mall, maybe visiting a new city somewhere and checking out the local mall.
You walk in, check out some stores, definitely hit up Old Navy, walk around, whatever.
As you’re leaving, you notice that the escalator in the middle of the mall is broken.
It catches you off guard and seems a little similar, but surely you’ve seen other broken escalators before; no big deal.
But then, you see this kid running through the mall; why he’s running, who knows, but he’s wearing a red t-shirt, and he’s heading straight for the broken escalator.
Whether it is the imagery, whether it’s the way the person is running, maybe it was from a movie, maybe it looks like an escalator in a mall you’ve seen before with someone sprinting, but your body is supercharged with this intense feeling that you’ve been here before, and you’ve seen this before.
That is what some people experience, but taking it a step further, as the kid in the red shirt is running towards the broken escalator, you get this feeling – oh no, it’s going to start up as soon as he’s stepping on it and he’s going to trip.
And it does. And he does. And you’re incredibly confused as to why this situation seems like it’s happened before and why you knew it was going to happen.
End scene.
In this week’s paranormal podcast, we are going to get into more of what deja vu is, some of the science behind it, scientific explanations, potential paranormal explanations, and then some really interesting deja vu experiences!
Let’s Dive Into What Deja Vu is
Now, that’s a bit more extreme, but there are multiple layers to deja vu.
You may be way more familiar with the first half, just acknowledging something someone says or an event or scenery appears very familiar, and like you’ve been there or experienced it before.
Very literally speaking, Deja Vu is French, and it translates to mean “already seen.”
Essentially, deja vu is the sense that you have already witnessed something – whether it be an event or someone saying something or just a landscape – but it’s combined with the cold hard fact that you know for a fact deep down you’ve never experienced it before.
And even if you’re not sure, you’re not able to retrieve the actual memory you feel like you’re deja vu is referring to.
It is this internal battle that amplifies this strange feeling. On one hand, this experience is all to familiar.
On the other hand, you are positive you’ve never been to a certain place or had every facet of this moment lined up before.
It often catches people off guard to the point that they transparently display confusion on their face and friends or family typically ask, what is it?
It is thought to be the equivalent of a small brain “glitch,” with two streams of thought colliding.
Pop quiz, hot shot. What percentage of people are reported having experienced deja vu?
According to Very Well Mind.Com, it is apparently about 97% of people. So, just about everyone has had a false memory of an exact situation.
Studies show that there are some characters among people who experience deja vu frequently or multiple times.
These characters include:
-Folks that travel often
-People that easily remember their dreams
-Often occurring between the ages of 15 and 25
In terms of health, it is believed that deja vu is also connected with epilepsy.
This is due to the fact that it affects the temporal lobe of your brain, where vision is interpreted.
Just as a refresher, epilepsy is a disorder in which nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed, causing seizures.
Epilepsy may occur as a result of a genetic disorder or an acquired brain injury, such as a trauma or stroke.
During a seizure, a person experiences abnormal behavior, symptoms, and sensations, sometimes including loss of consciousness.
There are several types of seizures, but it is simple partial seizures, also known as focal onset aware seizures, that are most often associated with deja vu experiences.
The History of Deja Vu
A little history for you about Deja Vu.
St. Augustine, an ancient philosopher, first referred to the concept of déjà vu in 400 AD as “false memoriae,” but French philosopher Emile Boirac was the first to use the term déjà vu in 1890. The first use of the phrase in the scientific world was from F.L. Arnaud, a neurologist who proposed to use it at a meeting of the Societe Medico-Psychologique.
What Does Déjà Vu Feel Like?
For those 3% of people, let’s ask our friends over at Cleveland Clinic.
“In 1983, Dr. Vernon Neppe defined déjà vu as a “subjectively inappropriate impression of familiarity of a present experience with an undefined past.”
In simple terms, that means that when you have déjà vu, you feel like you’re experiencing something that you almost certainly couldn’t have.”
They also emphasize:
It’s not like taking the same bus route each day and recognizing the scenery — that’s familiarity. Déjà vu, on the other hand, is when you feel like you’ve had this exact same conversation or experienced this current situation in the past, all while also knowing that it cannot have ever happened before.
Impact of Déjà Vu
In terms of impact, for the majority of people, déjà vu has no serious impact other than a bit of a feeling of confusion momentarily or strong feelings of familiarity.
However, that is when deja vu is a relatively rare occurrence. If you find yourself experiencing deja vu regularly, which is defined as a few times a week or more, then it is recommended by medical professionals that you reach out to a neurologist.
What Causes Deja Vu?
Déjà vu is thought to perhaps be abnormal signaling within the medial temporal lobe, which governs memory processing, particularly visual memories.
Conditions that can cause deja vu to be a more reoccurring experience include:
Schizophrenia
Epilepsy
Anxiety
Vascular dementia
Going back to our friends at Cleveland Clinic –
“Déjà vu is caused by dysfunctional connections between the parts of your brain that play a role in memory recollection and familiarity,” Dr. Khoury explains.
You have two temporal lobes, one on each side of your head — right above your temples. They play an important role in helping you to:
Recall words.
Remember places you’ve been.
Recognize people.
Understand language.
Interpret other people’s emotions.
In each temporal lobe is a hippocampus, which contributes to many of these functions and is responsible for storing your short-term memories. Occasionally, like during certain types of seizures, your hippocampus and surrounding brain tissue can be activated, causing you to have memory experiences like déjà vu.
“This causes a disruption of recognition memory systems, which gives you that false sense of familiarity,” Dr. Khoury says.
Perception Theory
One theory is that sometimes, what happens is really a matter of split perception, and someone is processing a sight twice because they may have been distracted or their vision was obstructed for some reason.
The second perception, immediately after the first one, becomes the one that is consciously experienced—but it feels unfamiliar because we are not cognizant of the first experience, which we only partially processed.
So, the idea is that you don’t fully perceive something that is happening due to distraction, then when you actually do focus on the event and acknowledge what is happening, you experience deja vu due to not being fully cognizant of the first perception.
Less than 100% Aware
People who are tired and/or stressed often report episodes of déjà vu.
This is thought to be because fatigue and stress typically affect both long- and short-term memory.
Dopamine
A hypothesis is that excess amounts of dopamine may be implicated in experiences of déjà vu.
In studies of temporal lobe epilepsy, the research shows that elevated levels of dopamine were detected in rodent models of temporal lobe epilepsy.
One strange cause of déjà vu8 is the use of the flu medications amantadine and Proin (phenylpropanolmine).
A case study writes about a man who took this combination of medications to treat an infection of the flu and began experiencing several episodes of déjà vu per hour—which stopped upon him stopping these medications.
Both of these medications, among their flu-symptom-reducing properties, work on the dopamine system, and it is thought that these déjà vu episodes were caused by an excess of dopamine in the system.
A Study:
Testing déjà vu in the psychology lab
Prompted by Brown’s work, my own research team began conducting experiments aimed at testing hypotheses about possible mechanisms of déjà vu.
We investigated a near-century-old hypothesis that suggested déjà vu can happen when there’s a spatial resemblance between a current scene and an unrecalled scene in your memory.
Psychologists called this the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis.
For example, imagine you’re passing the nursing station in a hospital unit on your way to visit a sick friend.
Although you’ve never been to this hospital before, you are struck with a feeling that you have.
The underlying cause for this experience of déjà vu could be that the layout of the scene, including the placement of the furniture and the particular objects within the space, have the same layout as a different scene that you did experience in the past.
Maybe the way the nursing station is situated – the furniture, the items on the counter, the way it connects to the corners of the hallway – is the same as how a set of welcome tables was arranged relative to signs and furniture in a hallway at the entrance to a school event you attended a year earlier.
According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, if a previous situation with a similar layout to the current one doesn’t come to mind, you might be left only with a strong feeling of familiarity with the current one.
To investigate this idea in the laboratory, my team used virtual reality to place people within scenes.
That way, we could manipulate the environments people found themselves in – some scenes shared the same spatial layout while otherwise being distinct.
As predicted, déjà vu was more likely to happen when people were in a scene that contained the same spatial arrangement of elements as an earlier scene they viewed but didn’t recall.
This research suggests that one contributing factor to déjà vu can be a spatial resemblance of a new scene to one in memory that fails to be consciously called to mind at the moment.
However, it does not mean that spatial resemblance is the only cause of déjà vu.
Very likely, many factors can contribute to what makes a scene or a situation feels familiar.
More research is underway to investigate additional possible factors at play in this mysterious phenomenon.
Now let’s get to the fun part!
Could Deja Vu Be Paranormal?
A multiverse theory
Physicists have looked at the concept that alternate universes exist and possibly coexist simultaneously. Quantum physics dives into this.
A 6th ssense
So, this paranormal-ish theory pushes the narrative that we either have a 6th sense that we can only tap into temporarily.
The idea is coupled with the fact that we only use just a 10% small percentage of our brain regularly.
Perhaps, could those rare moments we use more and have these otherworldly experiences, one of which we classify as deja vu?
It would be like seeing a color that we’ve never seen before, kind of like in The Giver when Jonas starts seeing the color red if you’re familiar.
Although the pushback on this theory is that a few articles claimed that the 10% brain usage is a myth, and we do actually use the majority of our brain – Healthline says throughout the day, we use just about every part.
The second pushback on this is, what sense would trigger deja vu? Unless it’s a sense that ties into another theory, like the multiverse, perhaps.
Let’s move on to one that is more fascinating.
Could Deja Vu Be Past Life Experiences?
We did a whole episode on past lives and stories of past lives, and I haven’t listened to it since we dropped it, but I have a feeling it may have touched on deja vu.
So, what if deja vu is experiencing a memory that you, your soul, or your past life experienced, and you did not?
This is different from multiverse because it is not claiming that you are experiencing a replica of the same exact experience on a different timeline.
Rather, something in this life is eerily similar to something you experienced in your past life, similar but not the same, and that familiar triggers deja vu.
Of course, since it’s a past life, you are unable to retrieve the specific memory, so you’re left feeling confused and unsettled.
The theory believes this is passed down from one life to the next through cellular memory.
Here is a quote from TUC Mag.Net
“theory of cellular memory, where the brain is not the only place that is able to store memories. That the physical body can also recall experiences. That holds many influences and drives certain wants, needs, and desires out of life. Many believe that cellular memory stores important information about our past lives. Giving us hints about what decisions we made in our past lives that we should not make in this life.”
Being a clairvoyant and being able to see the future
Maybe it’s a form of being clairvoyant or being able to see the future. Although, is it really seeing the future, or is it just knowing that you’ve experienced a place without being able to retrieve the memory?
The idea of seeing the future kind of plays out in some of the encounters and stories we have which is coming up right now.
Deja Vu Encounters
Reddit and Bustle
These stories are a bit on the stranger side and lend themselves to more of Deja Vu’s paranormal explanations. It wouldn’t be that interesting of a story for someone to enter a doctor’s office and say they got deja vu looking around the clinic like they’d been there, you know?
These definitely fall more in the glitch in the matrix and see the future.
ONE
About one year ago, I had a totally mundane but really strange dream about being in a stranger’s house.
It was very detailed, and I really paid attention to the pictures on the walls, furniture, decorations, and other small details in this unknown house. Really weird I remembered it for so long, but anyways:
Yesterday I was invited to a party at a friend of a friend’s house. I didn’t know my friends’ friends and had, of course, never been to their house before. I love meeting new people, so I agreed to come.
The moment I stepped into this house, it was the exact same as in my dream! The same furniture was placed exactly like in my dream; it was even the same goddamn pictures!
I remember it SO clearly that I am 100% sure I dreamt about this house before visiting. It was really weird and unsettling in some kind of way.
TWO
When I was in my early 20s, I was out driving around with my best friend, and we went to a part of town where we’d never been.
At one point, I turned into a neighborhood to turn around and go back home.
As soon as we were heading into the neighborhood, everything went crazy in my head.
I’d been there before; I knew I had! But the neighborhood couldn’t have been more than a year or two old, and I’d never been to that part of town.
I was really freaking out, and my friend was amazed.
Never have had anything as weird happen since.
THREE
I was probably 13 or 14 at the time. I was in my room, sitting at my desk, doing homework, and eating my dinner (which I had about half finished) when I hear a knock on my door.
I told whoever it was to come in, and it was my mom, holding my dinner. This made me very confused because, as I said, I was just eating it.
I say as much to my mom, and she points out that she just finished making dinner and that there is no food on my desk. I look down, and my dinner has disappeared.
To this day, I still have no explanation for this.
FOUR
Back when I was about twelve years old, I went to a Boy Scout camp in the mountains of Colorado.
All of the attendees would be spending their nights in enclosures called “wall tents,” which are really just metal frames over which some thick canvas has been draped. (If you imagine a child’s drawing of a house, you’ll be on the right track… although the smoking chimneys are only present if something has gone disastrously awry.)
These shelters can serve as protection from weather and noise, but that’s about it… and they’re decidedly not the sort of place you’d want to hide if a bomb was about to go off.
Anyway, on the morning of my first day at the camp in question, I was sitting in my tent, trying to unpack the various things I’d need during the day.
My friend Peter – another Boy Scout – was sitting across from me, telling me a story about having received a concussion when he was younger.
Suddenly, as he was describing the aftermath, an urgent flash of images went through my head, all of them accompanied by that bizarre sense of déjà vu; the idea that I’d experienced this before:
I saw an enormous log come crashing through the back “wall” of our makeshift house, and I could almost feel my teeth smashing together as the marauding wood assaulted my head.
Feeling somewhat silly (but still a touch panicked), I jumped away from where I had been sitting… just as an enormous log came crashing through the canvas and onto my cot.
It turned out that some of our fellow Scouts had decided to carry a “bench” back from the woods.
When that had proven to require too much effort, they had taken to rolling it, then hoisting it end-over-end after nearly losing it a few times.
(Really, that seems like it would have required more effort than just carrying it, but we weren’t the tightest knots in the handbook if you take my meaning.)
One ill-placed push had caused the log to tumble toward my tent, and if I hadn’t leaped away, Peter wouldn’t have been the only one with a concussion story to share.
FIVE
I had a serious deja-vu back when I was in elementary school.
I just walked into the cafeteria to go and buy a slice of pizza and sit down with my usual group of acquaintances.
Very usual routine. I go and sit down and suddenly snapped into that feeling. The feeling like you’ve been here before, in this exact way.
Not just here, but exactly here in exactly this way.
I realized just before my friends turn to greet me at the table, and I felt like I knew what they were going to say and how they would say it.
The thing with this deja-vu was that I had the jump on it. I realized I was experiencing deja-vu just before it happened. Being a little kid, I had to prove I had superpowers, of course.
So I just turned to my friend, mimicking the way I remembered him turning to me, and said what I remembered he’d say, and further, how he’d react to me mimicking him.
He said something to the effect of “Hey (name), What’s up? Wow, we said the same thing… Stop it!”
I copied word for word, movement by movement, at the same time he did.
I don’t know how we looked to everybody else, but in my mind, we were the perfect mirror. That’s where the deja-vu stopped, but I felt like some sort of superhero.
Unfortunately, nobody cared for my “super” deja-vu.
Does Deja Vu Have an Anatomical Origin, or Could It Be Paranormal?
What do you think, Bizarros?
Could Deja Vu be paranormal?
Could you be experiencing a past life? Or maybe the odd feeling is that you slipped into another universe?
Does that mean that people with epilepsy could maybe be experiencing something different than the rest of us?
Let us know in the comments if Deja Vu is paranormal, medical, or both.