Part I - How to Run a Ghost Hunting Group: Interview with P.R.G. Founder & Director Jennifer Lauer

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

“I wanted to go out and investigate. I wanted to learn, and of course I wanted to out and find ghosts – [that excitement] usually only lasts about a year… and then, and you can see a big pattern in ghost groups, if they’re not organized and they don’t keep active and that drive is not there and they’re not learning anything…You have to want to progress. You have to want to learn from what you’re doing.” 

Jennifer Lauer is the founder of the Paranormal Research Group, (P.R.G.) [formerly the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group.] The organization recently expanded to include Pennsylvania as well as Wisconsin. In this interview Lauer shares some very thoughtful information about how she founded and continues to run this very successful paranormal investigation group. If you’re thinking about starting a paranormal group or revising group protocols, this is a must read article. Lauer has also co-written two books and is a frequent public speaker on the topic of paranormal investigation.

Robin: So, Jennifer, why did you start the group?

Jennifer:  I’ve always had a large fascination for the paranormal. I grew up with a father who was very open-minded and I remember being eight years old, sitting at the kitchen table and talking about everything from life after death to UFO’s to out-of-body experiences.  So I think that’s always been in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do with my life. I was raised that way.  I had some experiences growing up, some weird experiences I couldn’t explain.   In 1999 I didn’t know you could do this, that people like me really existed, that you could really investigate and research the paranormal. I think I was watching a television show on parapsychologists and it really intrigued me. And I thought, “Wow, I really want to do that.” And then, of course, I found out that you don’t really make money doing it [laughs]. I realized it couldn’t be my main job. But it has always been what I wanted to do with my life.

Robin: So, what was your first step? You saw the television program and what did you decide to do from there?

Jennifer: Well, I started talking to other people about the field, asking around, watching more television…figuring out who could I contact, who I could get involved with.  I started seeking out books. Loyd Auerbach had an awesome book, “ESP, Hauntings and the Paranormal.” He has a second book on case studies. And that’s where I started investigating a little more about the field and the world of parapsychology.

In 2000 I designed the website and all of a sudden people were just flocking and I found out that a lot of people were into this stuff. A lot of people are really interested in the area of parapsychology and ghosts.  By 2004 we had over 70 members, and it just got to be too much. Because everyone wanted to go on investigations and you can only take so many because we want to put a lot of effort into them and really get a feeling for them and what is going on.  And you can’t really do that when you have 30 people running around a house. You just can’t.

Members were getting upset because it would take six months to get on an investigation. So we cut back.  And I think where we’re at right now is the right place, somewhere between 3o and 50 people in general, and I think that’s where I would like to stay. That’s because not everybody investigates.

Robin: From what I’ve been reading off your website you have a two-tier group? Can you explain how that works?

Jennifer: Yes. We have two tiers as you said. We have the investigation group and then we have an Associate’s group. The Associates group does pretty much everything we do, because we’re very active, we stay active in the community. We do trips and tours and we teach at universities and colleges throughout the Midwest and just a variety of things. We’re always busy doing something. So those people are active in the group by helping with our fund-raising and they can help and be involved that way. And in that way they can show their support and feel a part of the group. However, they do not go on the investigations, they’re not trained to do investigations. Those people are good with that, because they want to be a part, and they want to be involved, but maybe they’re not scientific or they don’t understand everything the way that they should to be an investigator. There has to be a certain mind set.

And then we have the Investigation Team. They do all the investigations and then do everything else as well.  But the Associate Members can also bump up if they want. If we have an opening for an Investigator, if someone quits, and if we have an Associate that wants to bump up we can do that. Associates don’t want to be involved enough to do the work, but they want to be involved in the investigation process and know what we’re finding out…learning first-hand from us what is going on and how to understand it better. And that’s where it’s nice.  They get to be part of us, they get to feel like a family, but they don’t have to have any special talents or even the desire or drive to want to go out and do it themselves. There are just different people in the world…

Robin: Sure, so they get to live vicariously.

Jennifer: Yes, exactly. And it helps us as a group too. Because those people…we can assign tasks to them if we need help with something, they’re more than happy to get out there and do the things that we ask. They’ll ask, “hey, we want to be active, we want to participate, so what can we do?” For example, I’ve got the party coming up [10 year anniversary party for P.R.G.] and I need decorators. They’re going to love to do that, they’re getting free food, free booze – all they have to do is decorate the site for us.

Robin: Seems like a great idea. I have to ask. You got interested in the paranormal, you did some research on your own and then you started a website. Why didn’t you do what most people would do and find a group and join that? Why did you trek on out on your own?  It seems like a very courageous thing to do, but…

Jennifer: Well, yeah, I’ve always been kind of a leader, I think.  And for one thing I didn’t think there was anyone else in the area doing this, I didn’t know of anyone else or what they were called. All I knew was what I wanted to do and what I was interested in. Back then, in 1999, ghost hunter wasn’t a big term.  So you might have to travel a couple of hours to get to a decent group. At the time I just wanted I just wanted to research and learn, and others followed.  I don’t know. It’s just kind of who I am and how I handle things.

Robin: Well, I like that. It shows a certain amount of courage to just go out there. So, when you started your own group what was it that you did want to do? What were your goals?

Jennifer: I wanted to stay active in the community. I wanted to provide as much information about the field as possible to other people.  I wanted to go out and investigate. I wanted to learn. And of course I wanted to out and find ghosts - that was always a goal. And I wanted to…I guess like any other group out there, you’re just excited to be doing what you’re doing because you’re learning something new and you’re searching for that unknown. I think a lot of people really find that exciting.

It usually only lasts about a year or two and then, and you can see a big pattern in ghost groups, if they’re not organized and they don’t keep active and that drive is not there and they’re not learning anything – that’s the big thing to keep learning and exploring and growing. Because if they’re not learning anything they’ll just be spouting the same stuff over and over again, and it gets boring  it gets to be repetitive and no one wants to do it anymore, and the ghost group just dissipates. And I’ve seen that 100 times.  Everyone wants to start their own group [laughs]. I see it a lot. But you have to have a certain goal in mind.  You have to want to progress. You have to want to learn from what you’re doing, not just stay repetitive because after awhile, that’s boring. I mean, it’s exciting in the beginning, but if you’re not willing to learn and move on and discuss different angles and different opportunities and look at things differently – just like anything else, just like your job – you learn and you grow and you develop new ways of doing things and you look at new techniques and theories. I really think you have to treat it almost like a job.

Robin: Ok, so in the ten years that you’ve been around, what have you learned?

Jennifer: Wow, I’ve learned a ton, especially from Dave [Schumacher – Anomalies Department Director]. Dave has been a huge boost to the group.  He is definitely the person who has put our group over the edge as to where we wanted to be. Dave is really an awesome guy when it comes to technology and understanding parapsychology. But he has a hard time running a group. He does what he does, and he does it magnificently, but he doesn’t like to deal with a lot of people on a regular basis. And so that’s what I do. We’ve noticed that this is just a marriage of wonderful things, since we’ve combined.  I take care of the group end, and I make sure that he’s happy with the way things are going with our people. He’s developed his relationships with the other people in the group. But if there’s an issue it comes to me not him. So he doesn’t have to deal with it. It’s perfect.

But he, on the other hand, brings us all of the wonderful information and technology, and insight and up-to-date information that our group needs to keep us going.

And then we started meeting other people along the way, like Cindy Heinen, she’s our EVP specialist, and she is amazing. We’re all in it, and it’s like a big happy family, but we have very specific goals in mind. And those goals change every year, because we want them to. We don’t want to do the same things we did last year.

Robin:] I see that you have two books and you’re teaching in colleges, did you foresee any of this?

Jennifer: No, no I didn’t foresee any of this at all.  I’ve never been one for publicity or fame or fortune. In 2004 my Dad died and being that he and I had spent so much time discussing these topics together. After he died I really put a stronger emphasis on research and finding out about things. Because when someone you love dies you want to try and make sure that they’re ok or are they just in the ground laying there?  You don’t know. Dave could tell you how it’s become a much stronger push, after my dad died, to find some answers. And I think we’re getting close to getting some answers on certain topics. I can’t be too specific on things because it’s a work in progress. We may not get any answers in our lifetime but I guess my overall goal is to do as much as we can so that someone else can take over and reach those goals by the work that we’re doing.

Author’s Note: In Part II – How to Run a Ghost Hunting Group: Interview with P.R.G. Founder and Director Jennifer Lauer, Lauer describes the process they go through planning and running an actual paranormal investigation.

Resources

Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook: Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press LLC. Dallas, TX.

Auerbach, Loyd (1986) ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist’s Handbook. Warner Books. NY, NY.
Fluxgate Magnetometer http://beta.globalspec.com/search/products?query_2=flux-gate%20magnetometer&comp=4934&pg=0&pageSize=10&show=undefined measures the strength and direction of magnetic fields.

Lauer, J., Schumacher D. (2007) Investigating the Haunted: Ghost Hunting Taken to the Next Level. Xlibris Corporation. Additional Copies of the Book can be ordered at Orders@Xlibris.com

 PRG.’s website (2012) www.http://paranormalresearchgroup.com/

Part II - A Spirited Debate: What are Ghosts Anyway?

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

Included in Part II are the opinions of Dr. Loyd Auerbach, Parapsychologist and Professor at JFK University, Dr. Robert Baker, Professor Laureate, University of Kentucky and Dr. Ronald Finucane, Historian.

Few questions are like to elicit a stronger response than the question, “do you believe in ghosts?” The naysayers will quickly and adamantly deny any such possibility and call you a fool for asking. The non-committal’s will shrug and move on to another, more comfortable topic. And the dabblers and the believers will expound for long minutes recalling odd experiences they have had.

Truthfully, few topics are as divisive as this one. Those who deny the possibility often do so from vehement religious beliefs.  And, make no mistake; science became the religion of the 20^th century, with its scriptures as dogmatically adhered to by its followers as any religious zealot.  Proponents of science vehemently defend the notion of science being able to answer all questions with a rationale answer. The world around us, they tell us, is the only reality, and anything unexplained simply a riddle not yet solved. 

On the other hand, those who believe in the paranormal have a vested interest and will fight to support their beliefs just as strongly.  After all, a belief in spirits is a belief that the soul survives death. And that is a very attractive notion.

Whether you’re a believer, fence sitter or fierce non-believer it is undeniable that people have been seeing (and hearing, and smelling) ghosts since the dawn of mankind.  Not every person among them is a fool, charlatan or notoriety seeker. Indeed most people who experience something paranormal are absolutely normal. Many are reluctant to even talk about their experience, afraid of being ridiculed.  The paranormal knows no class bounds. Emperors and peasants, politicians, and garbage collectors, a paranormal experience can happen (and has) to anyone.  (See my series on famous people and the paranormal to find out what the many of the greatest minds thought on the subject.)

So what is the explanation for these odd events?  There are as many answers to that question as there are people who have experiences.  Compiled here are the opinions of many experts both within and without the field. These are the words of writers, thinkers, scientists, college professors and lifelong investigators.  This is what they have to say about the possibility of ghosts. 

Pros

The Psi’s Have It

Loyd Auerbach has a Ph.D. in Parapsychology and is a professor at JFK University in Northern California.  He is an author, long-time paranormal investigator and a mentalist performer.  In his book, A Paranormal Casebook: Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium he makes the same point as does Taylor.  He notes that the term ghost is used broadly and generically to describe a whole host of phenomena. He lists three broad categories that he says parapsychologists agree to use, although he concedes that sometimes activity can indicate a combination of the three. He lists apparitions as the first category. “An apparition is our personality (or spirit, soul, consciousness, mind, or whatever you want to call it) surviving the death of the body, and capable of interaction with the living (and presumably other apparitions). It is pure consciousness….Apparitions are seen, heard, felt, or smelled…by people through the process of telepathic communication (Auerbach, 2005).”  Because the entity has no form, they must send information telepathically to a receiver, whose brain’s process the signals and interprets them.

Hauntings are the second main category Auerbach describes. He says hauntings are recorded stimuli which become embedded in the environment - what parapsychologists refer to as Place Memory. Visual images, smells, sounds and emotions all appear to be able to embed themselves into a location and those who experience phenomena are doing so telepathically (psychically). “Objects we’re told, ‘record’ their entire history, and some can decipher that with psi [the new term for telepathy] (Auerbach, 2005).”  While the stimulus radiates and is perceived and interpreted by the receiver, the ‘haunting’ is without consciousness.

 
The third category of ghosts are poltergeists (a German word meaning noisy ghost).  Auerbach takes the popular view that poltergeists are not ghosts at all but disturbances caused by the psi ability of a living agent. In poltergeist cases the main phenomena are physical effects – knocking sounds, objects levitating, objects appearing or disappearing, unusual behavior of electrical appliances etc.  “The model we work from is called recurrent spontaneous psycho kinesis, or RSPK.  It is PK (psycho kinesis) that occurs without conscious control…It doesn’t come from a ghost or apparition but someone living or working in the environment… (Auerbach, 2005).”  Poltergeist experts agree that the human agents in poltergeist cases are most often psychologically distressed teenagers.

Justification

According to Auerbach, only apparitions are a soul or consciousness of the departed.  He says that the theory of the apparition depends on the belief of consciousness.  “Unfortunately, the existence of consciousness and an understanding  of what it is or might be is still up in the air as far as mainstream science is concerned….If we can’t prove consciousness in the body/brain where we assume it is, how can we prove the existence of consciousness outside the body?”  Auerbach sidesteps the issue of needing to prove the existence of ghosts scientifically by stating that parapsychology is primarily a social science, though parapsychologists do bring in instrumentation to measure activity.  “The best evidence,” he says, “comes from people (witnesses). The best cases are those where there are multiple witnesses and information is provided by the ghost that can be verified later (Auerbach, 2005).”

Loyd Auerbach, Ph.D.

Professor and Parapsychologist

Cons

 Human Constructs

Dr. Ronald Finucane, Historian, has an unusual take on the whole ghostly debate. He says essentially that ghosts are a construct created by grieving people as a defense mechanism.  However, he’s says that simply because they were created by the mind doesn’t mean that for that person (people) they don’t exist.

“Ghosts can be used by particular members of the family as a method of self-defense…psychological self-defense, when things are going badly in the rest of the family’s existence. Perhaps this is a way of seizing upon a certain amount of certainty for the people involved, or the individuals involved….In a sense ghosts are in people’s heads, but in another sense, culturally and emotionally, they do exist for them. Indeed for many other people in our society, they are a human construct, so is music, so is poetry. I mean we have to accept these things, these ghosts are a construct of the human mind (Hauntings, 1997).”

Ronald Finucane, Ph.D.
Author of Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead & Cultural Transformation
Professor of Medieval History

 University of Kentucky Professor Emeritus, Robert Baker (now deceased) was an avowed ‘ghost buster’ believed, “there are no haunted places, just haunted people (Bernstein, 2005).” He argued that in his 50 years studying ghostly phenomena, he came across nothing that deterred him from that stance. According to Washington Post writer, Adam Bernstein, Baker was first and foremost a skeptic, but a skeptic that worked with people who believed they were being haunted or tortured by “unexplained forces.”

Baker believed that one should start from a position of non-belief when dealing with unusual phenomena – “ghosts, UFO abductions, lake monsters, remembrances of past lives (Bernstein, 2005).”  Instead, Baker thought that odd experiences were better explained as “mental states.” For example, he felt hallucinations could explain alien abductions, or "waking dreams," might explain ghostly phenomena seen, “in the twilight zone between fully awake and fully asleep (Bernstein, 2005).” Quoted in the 1997 documentary Hauntings, Baker concludes that ghosts are “an invention of the human mind. And they have invented ghosts because they provide a great deal of psychological satisfaction in people who believe in them. It fills a gap, a void in their lives (Hauntings, 1997).’”

Robert Baker, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Noted “Ghost Buster”
 

Resources

 Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook; Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press, LLC. Dallas, Texas.

 

Bernstein, A. (2005) Obituary: “Psychologist, ‘ghost buster’ Robert Baker.”

Washington Post, August 13, 2005 12:00 AM.

Documentary Produced by The History Channel (1997) The Unexplained: Hauntings.

Conover, Rob. a former private investigator turned paranormal Investigator http://robconover.net/default.aspx

Steiger, Brad (2003)  Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, MI.

Taylor, Troy (2007)  Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings. American Ghost Society. White Chapel Press: Dark Haven Entertainment. Decatur, Illinois.

Part I - A Spirited Debate: What are Ghosts Anyway?

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

 Included in Part I are the opinions of Troy Taylor, ghost hunter and author, Leon Lederman, Nobel winning Physicist,

Few questions are like to elicit a stronger response than the question, “do you believe in ghosts?” The naysayers will quickly and adamantly deny any such possibility and call you a fool for asking. The non-committal’s will shrug and move on to another, more comfortable topic. And the dabblers and the believers will expound for long minutes recalling odd experiences they have had.

Truthfully, few topics are as divisive as this one. Those who deny the possibility often do so from vehement religious beliefs.  And, make no mistake, science became the religion of the 20^th century, with its scriptures as dogmatically adhered to by its followers as any religious zealot.  Proponents of science vehemently defend the notion of science being able to answer all questions with a rationale answer. The world around us, they tell us, is the only reality, and anything unexplained simply a riddle not yet solved. 

On the other hand, those who believe in the paranormal have a vested interest and will fight to support their beliefs just as strongly.  After all, a belief in spirits is a belief that the soul survives death. And that is a very attractive notion.

Whether you’re a believer, fence sitter or fierce non-believer it is undeniable that people have been seeing (and hearing, and smelling) ghosts since the dawn of mankind.  Not every person among them is a fool, charlatan or notoriety seeker. Indeed most people who experience something paranormal are absolutely normal. Many are reluctant to even talk about their experience, afraid of being ridiculed.  The paranormal knows no class bounds. Emperors and peasants, politicians, and garbage collectors, a paranormal experience can happen (and has) to anyone.  (See my series on famous people and the paranormal to find out what the many of the greatest minds thought on the subject.)

So what is the explanation for these odd events?  There are as many answers to that question as there are people who have experiences.  Compiled here are the opinions of many experts both within and without the field. These are the words of writers, thinkers, scientists, college professors and lifelong investigators.  This is what they have to say about the possibility of ghosts.

Pros

Justification

Long-time paranormal investigator, Troy Taylor, is the author of 50 books on the subject of ghosts, and founder of the American Ghost Society of Illinois.  With his vast experience investigating he admits that he has experienced events that defy rational explanation.  He understands that science mocks any hint of the supernatural, but says that this doesn’t mean that hauntings are not real. “Unfortunately, the supernatural does not conform to the idea of repeatable experiments. We can measure, document and record, but ghosts do no perform on command, which is what scientists demand….Thanks to this, science tells us ghosts cannot exist (Taylor, 2007).” 

 Taylor points out that, despite the stance the scientific community takes, many Americans believe in the possibility of the supernatural.  “Nationwide polls tell us that more than 1 in 2 Americans believe that houses can be haunted and more than 20% believe that people can communicate with the dead (Taylor, 2007).”

He goes on to point out that people have been reporting experiences from before written history, and that they still occur today in our so called ‘modern age.’  This he says makes the scientific community uncomfortable, “Not because they are afraid of ghosts but because they are afraid that the grip they have tried to impose on society, demanding that we not believe in anything supernatural, has started to slip once again (Taylor, 2007).”

The scientific stranglehold on reality slipped once before, with the Spiritualist movement of the 1800’s.

“Angered that new innovations in the scientific world had  started to break the monopoly that superstition and religion had on society, they immediately set about to debunk everything possible…And while many hoaxes were exposed there were just enough genuine mediums…to send many of the scientists back to their universities and laboratories in fear (Taylor, 2007).”

And a notable few, such as Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge, actually became spiritualist converts using their private time and resources to investigate paranormal phenomena – often to the detriment of the professional reputations. While most people believe that investigators have done little to prove the validity of ghosts in the 150 years of research, he says he disagrees with that assessment, because while we cannot scientifically prove the existence of ghosts, he says we can verify hauntings historically.

What Are They?

So what are ghosts? Taylor points out that paranormal events are extremely varied, making one simple explanation impossible. He does explain that most ghost ‘experts’ do not believe that ghosts “are literally the ‘spirits’ of people who have died and have remained at a location.  This is not to say that they reject the possibility that some hauntings are caused by the activities of the dead, though they don’t believe that the ghosts themselves are the actual forms of the dead.” While this may be a popular notion for novices, Taylor explains that most ghost hunters believe that haunting are not the doings of the dead. Mainly they scoff at this notion because many locations leave no historical evidence of past tragedies or deaths. Therefore, why would the “dead person” be hanging around? “And they also add that no evidence exists in many locations to say that any past personality is present there (Taylor, 2007).”

However, Taylor says he disagrees with this theory:

 “…I agree that many locations do not boast events that might spawn ghosts, but isn’t it possible that the ghost may have stayed behind for other reasons altogether?....There are likely many reasons for hauntings….Just like the theory about what causes a place to become haunted, the idea that a ghost (or type of haunting) could be a single all encompassing thing is a nice idea, but an unrealistic one (Taylor, 2007).”

He explains that the word ghost is an umbrella term in the field of paranormal research, a term that is used to describe both spirits (actual human personalities) and apparitions (recordings of past events) [his terms]. Because of the wide variety of activity, he concludes that “no one theory can be used to describe them all adequately (Taylor, 2007).”
Troy Taylor
Author and Paranormal Investigator

 Cons

Paranormal Phenomena Fail to be Scientifically Verifiable

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, Leon Lederman scorns the whole notion of ghosts, primarily from the standpoint that the paranormal fails to produce in a laboratory setting. “’You don’t have haunted houses. You have either gullible people or some dishonest people who are making this all up. Science has no room for ghosts.” No ghostly phenomena, according to Letterman, are scientifically verifiable, nor do the claims meet the demands of the scientific method. “The claim that I see it, I have to prove it. It goes beyond I can see it to I have to prove it. The burden is on the owner of that site or the writer of that book, and in 400 years of innumerable claims no one has succeeded in convincing the scientific community (Hauntings, 1997).’”

Leon Lederman, Ph.D.

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist

 Resources

Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook; Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press, LLC. Dallas, Texas.

 Documentary Produced by The History Channel (1997) The Unexplained: Hauntings.

Conover, Rob. a former private investigator turned paranormal Investigator http://robconover.net/default.aspx

Steiger, Brad (2003)  Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, MI.

Taylor, Troy (2007)  Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings. American Ghost Society. White Chapel Press: Dark Haven Entertainment. Decatur, Illinois.

The Essential Science of Ghost Hunting: Two Sleep Anomalies Investigators Should Understand

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey
“What I came across were two completely normal occurrences of sleep that could explain a great number of the strange reports, and at the very least calm the nerves of quite a few clients along the way.“
She knew that the dark man was in the house. She could hear the front door opening and the quiet footsteps on the stairs. Any moment now the intruder would be in her room. She needed to get up, she needed to get the bat from under the bed or the phone off the dresser. She needed to hide. She could hear those footsteps getting closer and closer. Her heart was racing, her hands shaking, and then she saw the dark form in the doorway….

The next moment she was awake and still sure the intruder was there. The dream had felt so real. However, in a panic she found that she could not move, not one inch. What was wrong with her? Was there something or someone holding her down?

As fearful as this scenario was for me, I realized later that the experience I had was actually a very normal function of dreaming. I’ve come across numerous reports from people claiming they had experienced paranormal phenomenon during the night while they were asleep, and have actually experienced some strange phenomenon I myself couldn‘t account for, until doing some research into the science of sleep. What I came across were two completely normal occurrences of sleep that could explain a great number of the strange reports, and at the very least might calm the nerves a few clients along the way.
Hypnagogic Hallucinations

You’re settling in for the night, just drifting off to sleep and then suddenly you hear your name called. Realizing you’re all alone you wake up frenzied. You swear you just had a visitor from beyond call your name. However, it’s more likely you experienced a hypnagogic hallucination. These strange little “dream” sequences occur in the first stage of sleep (NREM 1). In other words, a sleeper is likely to experience them within the first 20 minutes of settling in for the night, which can cause the illusion that they are that much more real.

Indeed in the first stage of NREM sleep (non-rapid eye movement sleep) a subject isn’t even technically asleep. At this point they also are not technically dreaming, according to sleep researchers. Dreaming is a function of REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep). Sleepers don’t actually enter the REM state until 70-120 minutes after falling asleep. Whether technically asleep and dreaming or not, however, sleepers can experience these odd little dream states called hypnagogic hallucinations. These are in effect, “odd, but vividly realistic sensations,” or strange little hallucinations that can feel quite real to the sleeper (Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2010). For example, a sleeper might hear someone call their name, or have a sensation of falling, floating or flying, according to the authors. These can feel shockingly real, and can even cause the sleeper to jerk awake. While strange, these hallucinations are quite normal to the sleep cycle.
Sleep Paralysis

Another quite normal experience is sleep paralysis. This usually occurs later in the sleep cycle, normally during a REM period of sleep. As stated earlier REM (rapid eye movement sleep) is when a sleeper is technically dreaming. During this period the brain waves of sleepers accelerate to that of a waking person. The eyes of the sleeper move back and froth rapidly behind closed lids. Blood pressure and heart rate can fluctuate rapidly. Muscles often twitch uncontrollably. We are in effect locked effectively in the dream state actively participating in our own little fantasies. It is during REM while our minds are so actively engaged that our bodies go into a state of sleep paralysis. In other words, our bodies become immobile to the demands of our brains. There is undoubtedly a very sound physiological reason behind this phenomenon. If our bodies reacted to our brains while soundly asleep and dreaming we might end up flailing or falling, or otherwise hurting ourselves or others. Our brains therefore impose this paralysis on our bodies to protect us from ourselves. If, however, the sleeper is startled awake, as in the first scenario, she will awake to find herself quite unable to move. They will most likely remain paralyzed for a half a minute or more, before normal movement again becomes possible. It should be noted, too, that some subjects can experience sleep paralysis when first awakening in the morning. Again, this is a perfectly normal function of sleep, that can however, cause distress to the unaware.
References
Hockenbury, D.H., Hockenbury, S.E. (2010) Psychology; 5^th Edition. Worth Publishers: New York, NY.