Im extremely fortunate that my symptoms are relatively mild.
My friend in college was schizophrenic.
He opened the door and stopped, staring at the empty hallway.
Unsplash / Dan Burton
He asked me to come to the door and tell him if something seemed weird.
I walk up to the door and see nothing strange in the hall and tell him so.
He asks me if I can hear something, I say no.
Unsplash / Dan Burton
He said he heard muffled crying or arguing or something coming from down the hall.
And he saw a pitch black hallway when it was actually fully lit.
He said the hall was BLACK not just dark or dimly lit.
Im not even sure he knew he was sick at the time.
Brother is schizophrenic and had insane hallucinations for about a year before I could get him help.
He constantly believed people were assaulting him, trying to rape him and trying to kill him.
He didnt understand why we wouldnt help him and would lash out at us.
Hes now severely medicated and no where near the person he once was.
Somebody I knew back in high school had schizophrenia, but was taking medication for it.
Schizoaffective disorder here, but thats close enough, I think.
Most of the time my hallucinations are pretty mundane, but I do recall a few extreme ones.
Worst of all would have to have been the time I was convinced I was being abducted by aliens.
I was in bed and staring at the ceiling when a bright light appeared like a circle above me.
And I felt like I was being raised up into the air from a center point in my chest.
But I somehow snapped back into reality, very frightened but obviously unscathed.
That had to have been the most intense hallucination Ive had in my life.
Sometimes Ive been known to talk to (apparently disturbing?)
things that arent there but I have dissociative amnesia and dont often remember doing so.
I dont know, its rough never being sure of anything.
EMS
I had a patient with schizophrenia.
Full visual and auditory hallucinations.
Off of his meds and screaming in public.
Demons were coming out of the ground trying to grab him.
They were yelling at him various obscene things.
Weird part was that once we are on scene, he calmed down and recognized the uniforms.
Fully cooperative, but that was an interesting patient history.
Are you having hallucinations?
Yup.describes them in detail
So how are you so calm right now?
This is normal when I am off my meds and I know I am in an ambulance.
I was decomposing from within and it was spreading outward to my extremities.
And realizing that my reality is not reality was so traumatic and isolating.
Im really not looking forward to the next inevitable episode.
I cant even imagine how bad it must be for people whose symptoms line up with schizophrenia.
As for my scariest hallucination?
I even joked with myself that now Im seeing things too haha.
But when I got to the bathroom, hes there again, standing in the doorway.
I just stand there, speechless, cause what do you say in that situation?
The kid looks at me like Im weird, but then just walks away.
I didnt come out until the staff came and talked me into it.
Number one scariest was the first time.
I had never experienced this before and it sounded just like real people were outside my house.
I almost had a heart-attack.
I went to the window and saw everything was quiet.
I waited, because I thought maybe they are far away.
I waited and waited and then I went out looking for them.
After a while I realized that I was probably going crazy.
The second scariest was when the aliens were coming and they would cut my head off.
But really this is just describing with words, what cannot be described.
Its like trying to describe an acid trip.
You cant really do it.
And this was like 100 times more potent than an acid trip.
Im not schizophrenic but I get psychotic episodes.
My hallucinations tend to stick to one sense but sometimes kind of bleed into eachother.
Hearing something is extremely distracting and annoying but isnt scary (anymore).
Seeing something usually spikes my fear response, as well as tactile hallucinations.
Thank god its never happened before that a hallucination was occupying all of my senses at the same time.
Im not sure if I could handle that.
Boom, next thing you know Im in a full blown hallucination.
I heard a special forces team out the window, as they were sneaking out of my back yard.
Eventually they decided that there was no way to defuse the situation, and they shot me.
I spent about five minutes laying dead on my front porch, then crawled inside my house to die.
I phoned my mom to let her know that Id been shot and that special forces had killed me.
She had me go to the ER, and stayed with me on the phone until I got there.
He knows that Im there, and is coming to get me.
I cant really describe the fear of having special forces snipers aiming at you for two hours straight.
Schizoaffective, bipolar subtype.
Its not a specific hallucination, but sometimes I have very vivid memories of things that didnt happen.
And then everything spirals downwards.
I am a social worker.
Hey finally a question I can answer.
I have voices that tell me theyre necromancers trying to steal my soul and take over my body.
They have a go at convince me theyre real people all day every day.
At one point I totally believed they were real, but I dont anymore.
I proved them to be just voices with logic, thanks to some help from the internet.
It looked like a person, but stretched out.
Hollow face/eyes, just staring at me.
I would look away for a minute, and then back and it was still staring.
I was 16 at the time, and id see smaller versions of these guys everywhere.
But this one was huge, and refused to go.
Eventually I fell asleep, and he wasnt there when I woke back up.
Had a patient with lewy body dementia.
Not schizophrenia, but produced horrific hallucinations.
She would scream and scream and scream all night long.
I would go and sit with her and ask her if something was scaring her.
She saw people waiting in the shadows in the corner of her room.
She heard them laughing.
Saw their faces contourting.
She felt rats crawling up and down her body.
She was still pretty with it and you were able to have lucid conversations with her.
Had a sense of humor like you wouldnt believe.
Sheknewwhat she was experiencing were hallucinations.
But that didnt make them any less real to her.
Eventually she stopped being able to decern what was real and what wasnt.
She died a few months ago.
I worked with her for two years and miss her every damn day.
But Im grateful that she is no longer suffering.
Came to approximately a day later and I havent heard from him since.
I attempted suicide two years ago.
I looked up at his face and it had no features, like Slenderman.
Part of me still wonders if it was a reaper that had come to take my soul.
The scariest hallucination Ive ever had took place in a Target.
I was in the canned food isle when I saw a little girl grab a can.
There was nothing particularly unusual about it.
I, at first, figured it was just a girl getting something off the shelf for her mom.
I know its stupid, but it felt really real.
I felt myself cut my neck and wrists open and was basically screaming.
But then, I knocked myself out of it.
When I came to, I was just standing staring at the cans with tears streaming down my face.
Its the most vivid hallucination Ive ever had, and much scarier than the ones I have everyday.
