Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, December 2025
Experiencers and Synesthetes
by: Brent Raynes
It has been noted how after some traumatic incident, researchers certainly noticing this with the near-death experience, that many people claim to have found themselves awakened to psychic abilities. Some researchers in recent years have also noted how psychic abilities and synesthesia (also called multiple sensing) may evolve together.
Synesthesia is something I touched upon in this column in the October issue. In The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences (2007), author P.M.H. Atwater (a near-death experiencer herself), after personally studying hundreds of such cases, found that synesthesia is indeed an aftereffect of near-death episodes. In fact, a clinical study of NDEr’s by Richard J. Bonenfant, Ph.D., had found that two-thirds of them had symptoms of synesthesia. “This alone is a major neurological finding!” Atwater noted.
From a Native American “shaman” who grew up in a small Colorado town I toured a few years back where many strange things allegedly happened from UFOs, balls of light, MIB-type figures to shape-shifting witches, Skinwalkers, and even Bigfoot, I learned how she developed her psychic abilities at an early age. She had also, she stated, been a victim of childhood abuse. She shared that around 8 years of age she began receiving “lessons” from a voice (or voices) that called her “Child.” It all began at a “special spot” of hers down by a nearby river. Read her description and pick out for yourself the elements that scream out synesthesia in her own words. She explained:
“I watched the light as it appeared from out of the trees, a light blue orb of light. I wasn’t scared at all. I guess I was transfixed by what I saw. If anything, I felt at complete peace as I watched this light. As the light came closer and closer, I could make out that this light was not just light, it was a woman. A woman made of light. ….. I can remember every single detail of this woman. Her hair was long and wavy with two braids at each side of her face that were pulled back. Her dress was also just made of light blue light that waved as if there were a breeze but there was no wind at all. Her face was full of love and compassion, a kind of love I cannot describe in words. She came and placed her hand right at the side of my face, very light, so that her palm was holding my cheek. This is all I remember of this experience. The next thing I remember was waking up in the morning. I was still lying in the very same place I had laid down the evening before. There was a small herd of elk across the small running river to the west of me, an owl above my head, and I remember it being cold. I could watch the steam literally rise up off the elks backs as they began to rise up from sleep and began to graze on the meadow grass, but something was VERY different! The elk had this color moving through them, sparks of color that moved like falling snow or slow moving water. I watched for awhile, rubbed my eyes and looked again. Still there! Everything looked different. Everywhere I looked things had colors running inside of them. Not just a color but moving alive color! The owl, the grass, the trees, even the water. I must have looked insane to anyone who could have seen me. I spent hours on my hands and knees looking at the soil, the ants, staring at a blade of grass, giggling and then rubbing my eyes again and again, but every time I opened my eyes, I could still see this color moving through things.”
“It wasn’t until I went home that I discovered there was something else just as amazing and I have to admit a bit confusing! I was still dazed, excited, confused, nervous about seeing colors but now there was something else. Not only did different people have different colors moving in them but almost all of them, with the exception of some infants, had an image of an animal in their chest or next to them! As you could imagine, growing up in a small Mormon community, I didn’t pipe up about what I was seeing. In fact, I thought I was going crazy and spent many years as a kid being embarrassed of how I saw things. The next few years were hard for me. One because I didn’t know what was happening to me and I didn’t want anyone to find out that I was so ‘weird.’ Things got even weirder as I started to understand how I could communicate with animals. Even now I’m very aware of how this must sound to someone who can’t quite understand this. I still have a hard time putting into words how this actually happens, but I will try.”
“Knowing where an animal is, even what species and sex the animal is without even seeing it, happens in many ways and with all the senses. It is a taste, a sound, a texture and a color, and even a number. All of these things happen quickly and almost simultaneously. Each animal is different, so, for example, if there is an elk on the road a mile up ahead around the corner I will get the taste of pine needles in my mouth, a feeling of coarse wet fur and the number 4, the color brown like tree bark. Compared to knowing there is an owl in the tree outside the house while eating dinner in the dining room it feels like the number 8 and is dark purple and is like a cool breeze at night. This is the best way I can describe it and how it happens. This is also how I understand animals and what they are ‘saying’. It’s not with words. It’s with textures and tastes, colors, and feelings. If they are scared it’s bright yellow or orange. I feel panicked and it’s a pitch or a sound in my head. Aggression is red, the number 9 and feels annoyingly hot.”
One major “alien abductee” in 2015 shared this with me. “Regarding synesthesia, as long as I can remember that is how I see and hear. I did not know until fairly recently that it was not the norm. To put it simply, I hear sound as shape and colors have sound. I can see what I understand to be auras around people and other organic and non-organic objects. It is very difficult to explain how I see and hear as to me it is how it’s always been. To get some idea of just how difficult it is to describe just try and describe an elephant or a tree to someone that is blind. Then get them to draw it.” “Unfortunately, we did not ask the question regarding synesthesia in our surveys, even though, after the fact, I have discussed with many experiencers that they had synesthesia,” Rey Hernandez, the driving force and spokesman for the extensive UFO contactee experiencer survey for the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences informed me. UFO author and researcher Preston Dennett added, “Regarding synesthesia, I haven’t done any formal surveys, but I can say that a few of the contactees I have interviewed report having experienced this.” Margie Kay, a musician, remote viewer and an RV trainer, and a member of the Mutual UFO Network’s Experiencer Resource Team (ERT), posted a few years back this statement: “I like the story a college professor who told us about Handel. He locked himself in a room for weeks, barely taking food or water the entire time. When he emerged, he had written The Messiah but never took credit for it or money. He said that all he did was listen to the angels play and write it down. An amazing piece, to say the least. I was very interested in this at the time because a year earlier, when I was a senior in high school, I had an out-of-body experience while playing The Messiah at a concert. I felt a warmth coming from three feet in front of me. Then it moved through my string bass and into my solar plexus, then I was suddenly both in my physical body playing the instrument, and beside my body on the right side watching the entire orchestra and audience. I saw streams of different colored light emitted from the instruments and out to the audience, often playing around people’s bodies. I heard a voice say, ‘You are watching healing take place.’ Then I moved back into my body. That was a life-changing experience and led me to study the effects of color and music. To this day, I hear color and see music.”
There’s a lot more that could be said and presented here on this subject, but as I’m facing a deadline and with the time it takes for pulling all of the pertinent information together to present things properly, this will have to be it for now.
Thanks for taking the time to read this column and if you have any personal thoughts, insights, and personal experiences with such matters, your feedback would be most appreciated. I can be reached at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
