Why can a presence feel real when no one is there?

Sometimes a person feels that someone is close by, even though nobody can be seen. Researchers call this a felt presence or feeling of a presence. The experience can feel vivid; describing it does not decide what caused it.

We looked at two original research papers that tested whether changes to the brain or to body-related sensory signals could produce a similar experience under controlled conditions.

01 / A CLINICAL OBSERVATION

A presence that followed one patient

In a 2006 case report, researchers described a patient undergoing brain mapping before epilepsy surgery. Electrical stimulation at one site near the left temporoparietal junction repeatedly produced the feeling of an unfamiliar person nearby. The reported presence appeared to follow changes in the patient’s posture.^[1]

02 / A CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT

When touch and movement did not line up

In a 2014 study, researchers combined clinical observations with experiments using a robotic system. Participants moved a device in front of them while a second device touched their back. The researchers varied whether the touch matched the participants’ movements in timing and position.

Under some conflicting conditions, participants reported feeling another person nearby or feeling touched by that presence. The authors interpreted the results as evidence that mismatches among movement, touch, and body-position signals can contribute to a felt presence in this experimental setup.^[2]

03 / WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

A useful clue, not a complete answer

Together, these studies support a narrow conclusion: in specific clinical and laboratory settings, altering body-related signals or stimulating a particular brain area can produce a felt-presence experience.

They do not tell us how often this happens, explain every spontaneous experience, or settle what any individual experience means. A controlled experiment can test one possible mechanism; it cannot stand in for all people or circumstances.