worlds where outright complex hallucination is a normal feature of human experience

What sort of hallucinations are we talking about? I sometimes have hallucinations (auditory and visual) with sleep paralysis attacks. One close friend has vivid hallucinatory experiences (sometimes involving the Hindu gods) even outside of bed. It is low status to talk about your hallucinations so I imagine lots of people might have hallucinations without me knowing about it.

I sometimes find it difficult to tell hallucinations from normal experiences, even though my reasoning faculty is intact during sleep paralysis and even though I know perfectly well that these things happen to me. Here are two stories to illustrate.

Recently, my son was ill and sleeping fitfully, frequently waking up me and my wife. After one restless episode late in the night he had finally fallen asleep, snuggling up to my wife. I was trying to fall asleep again, when I heard footsteps outside the room. "My daughter (4 years old) must have gotten out of bed", I thought, "she'll be coming over". But this didn't happen. The footsteps continued and there was a light out in the hall. "Odd, my daughter must have turned on the light for some reason." Then through the door came an infant, floating in the air. V orpnzr greevsvrq ohg sbhaq gung V jnf cnenylmrq naq pbhyq abg zbir be fcrnx. V gevrq gb gbhpu zl jvsr naq pel bhg naq svanyyl znantrq gb rzvg n fhoqhrq fuevrx. Gura gur rkcrevrapr raqrq naq V fnj gung gur yvtugf va gur unyy jrer abg ghearq ba naq urneq ab sbbgfgrcf. "Fghcvq fyrrc cnenylfvf", V gubhtug, naq ebyyrq bire ba zl fvqr.

Here's another somewhat older incident: I was lying in bed beside my wife when I heard movement in our daughter's room. I lay still wondering whether to go fetch her - but then it appeared as if the sounds were coming closer. This was surprising since at that time my daughter didn't have the habit of coming over on her own. But something was unmistakeably coming into the room and as it entered I saw that it was a large humanoid figure with my daughter's face. V erpbvyrq va ubeebe naq yrg bhg n fuevrx. Nf zl yrsg unaq frnepurq sbe zl jvsr V sbhaq gung fur jnfa'g npghnyyl ylvat orfvqr zr - fur jnf fgnaqvat va sebag bs zr ubyqvat bhe qnhtugre. Fur'q whfg tbggra bhg bs orq gb srgpu bhe qnhtugre jvgubhg zr abgvpvat.

The two episodes play our very similarly but only one of them involved hallucinations.

I've sort of forgotten where I was going with this, but if Will would like to tell us a bit more about his experiences I would be interested.