Strange "glyphs" instead of numbers on hospital patient elevator

a reply to: Sillyolme

Your post was condescending. Nothing funny about it. For them the experience was very real.

originally posted by: Skada
Or maybe if it was a Psych hospital, they use those glyphs so the "guests" don't roam or escape.

Yeah I thought that but the thing is the elevator needed a key as it was a staff/patient hospital and when I left, I used a different one and the digits were normal. I really wanted to say something about the display at the time but I thought that it would look really bad had I done that and I knew I was still exhausted, so...

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Honestly it was almost certainly a hallucination. It was regular numbers and your brain was not working correctly and you thought it was something it was not.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: Sillyolme

Your post was condescending. Nothing funny about it. For them the experience was very real.

I didn't get to see what SOM said, but I do have to point out that it doesn't matter if they think they were being chased by a real leprechaun on a real unicorn, it's still NOT real at all, and that's something your profession is supposed to help them realize & understand.

OP rode the proverbial Crazy Train all the way to the ward, and is trying to convince themselves they weren't off their rocker and mysterious glyphs were on the elevator buttons. Dude/dudette was definitely not in their right mind & they'd be doing themselves a world of good to recognize that the reason for being there to begin with & seeing glyphs went hand in hand.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof


Did You see a humanoid figure (athletic build; male) w/the head of a Jackal or similar type canine?

originally posted by: DigginFoTroof
It was certainly not braille or any other current language or alphabet used, especially not in the US. As I said, they looked like runes or glyphs and those look much different than braille. I thought about the hallucination thing and that seems plausible considering the circumstances but it seems that whenever people see strange things like this it is always passed off as such and I just don't believe that everyone is hallucinating odd things which are almost always associated with "alien" symbols, sightings, etc. That is the reason I posted in the grey area. I don't know why I would hallucinate glyphs on the elevator readout (it was a red digital that used a complex LED array, similar to the black bars on digital clocks/watches but it had many more bars in odd arrangements within each "digit" block - to allow for the display of more complex shapes) and still be able to read the poster in the elevator, my patient wristband, etc. I would think that it would be odd to hallucinate in one place but not others.

I have seen elevators with "strange" glyphs. There are LCD display called fourteen segment displays. Some of them actually looked like Klingon as the up and down arrows actually had a diagonal line through them. I made a video of one when I had to use a swing-door elevator (half elevator cab, half regular house door)

en.wikipedia.org...

Multi-segment display

originally posted by: stormcell

originally posted by: DigginFoTroof
It was certainly not braille or any other current language or alphabet used, especially not in the US. As I said, they looked like runes or glyphs and those look much different than braille. I thought about the hallucination thing and that seems plausible considering the circumstances but it seems that whenever people see strange things like this it is always passed off as such and I just don't believe that everyone is hallucinating odd things which are almost always associated with "alien" symbols, sightings, etc. That is the reason I posted in the grey area. I don't know why I would hallucinate glyphs on the elevator readout (it was a red digital that used a complex LED array, similar to the black bars on digital clocks/watches but it had many more bars in odd arrangements within each "digit" block - to allow for the display of more complex shapes) and still be able to read the poster in the elevator, my patient wristband, etc. I would think that it would be odd to hallucinate in one place but not others.

I have seen elevators with "strange" glyphs. There are LCD display called fourteen segment displays. Some of them actually looked like Klingon as the up and down arrows actually had a diagonal line through them. I made a video of one when I had to use a swing-door elevator (half elevator cab, half regular house door)

en.wikipedia.org...

Multi-segment display

Thank you for posting this. I'm pretty sure this is what it was and if you have 2 of these digits next to each other they can make some shapes that are pretty unusual as compared to the standard 8 digit LCD. Looking at these makes it much clearer what I saw. I wonder why they use lowercase for some of the floors, it seems odd.

a reply to: stormcell

Your link explained that they used these displays for the old style pin ball machines from the 60's, since they offer more combinations for things like displaying player names. The trunk of possibilities for a simple 4^4 matrix is 256 for example.
OP's confusion might have been due to not being able to see which segments were actually lit.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: LABTECH767

They were having a psychotic episode, not sure what you mean by "crazy". I do not consider psych patients crazy.

Im very appreciative of the help you have provided people, but I fully agree with LabTechs list of outined possibilities. No level of certainty was ascribed to any of the ideas, just possibilities.

Ive been on both sides of the fence to know he is covering bases that are legitimate considerations.

I get that in your field you sometumes deal with people that are borderline irreconcileable, and you basically have to firmly tell them "it's all in your head" to get them to "come back to reality" and in most cases that is essentisally a necessity to help the person realign with normalcy and accepted social standards.

However, ive been in the thick of it, and can confidently say, in retrospect, some of the things my mind perceived seemed like mechanations of my own mind, actual paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations, other perceptions, not so much, especially when other people verify the weird events and occurrences, one of whom was my own psychiatrist on numerous occasions. The reason he didnt lie to me was because he realized after a year or two that I was not only stable and smart enough to handle whatever it is i deal with, he also had first hand experiences that verified my assertions.

It bothers me a tad that the field of psychiatry has so many folks that draw the line at "its all chemical imbalances in your head caused by nothing except your genetic failings and possibly drugs." I am very sure there is much more to the puzzle, regarding perceptual causation.

Again, folks like yourself should ultimately be commended for the work you do, but coming from someone who has been on many sides of this, including dealing with psychiatrists for 10 years, ill certainly say, not all doctors are equal, nor do they all share the same beliefs about what is real and isnt real, or could be, couldnt be real. It varies depending on the individual, and if any single psychiatrist claims to "know" in absolute terms, I assume they're either calming a person down so that the patient or person can realign to a more calm and stable state (not unlike assuring a child that theres nothing to worry about), or, that doctor is simply full of it and big headed.

Question to the OP, do you smoke cannabis?

a reply to: CreationBro

Also, troof, as far as advice goes, if this experience is fresh and recent, I have some pointers:


-If you smoke cannabis, i would reduce or stop usage of it for at least a few months. Anyone that says thc isnt legitimately psychoactive and cant induce psychosis or pseudopsychosis is fooling themself. It can and it does.

-If you really want to pursue this whole glyph thing in any way, what i would do is write them down the best you can, or even whatever they may have looked like. Then, leave it be. Let yourself recuperate and ease your mind. Keep it simple for awhile, and relax, then, take a gander at the glyphs later on down the line with a fresh mindset.

In my experience if we tackle these thing with the experience still fresh it can potentially lead to obsessing and anxiety which can distort any actual, legit information that can be gleaned from it.


Best of luck to you.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

I changed it didn't i?
But don't tell me what I intended Mr psychiatrist. That I believe is called projection.

a reply to: Nyiah

I wrote a sarcastic agreement that it was a secret alien hospital. I thought better of it and changed it almost immediately. Before I was chided for my bad taste. I'll live with it.
I meant it as a joke but it was not kind.

Reading the whole thread, I realize that you could be right.

Having been around secret societies, you have to understand their mentality (and sometimes strange sense of humor) and their disorder. They have to feel together so they need strange things to kind of remind them they are "part of the brotherhood" kinda thing. People think hospitals in the USA are part of one big operation but they aren't. There are perfectly private ones that if one wasn't noticing, they might admit you. I'm not taking anything crazy, I just mean they would just process your admittance like any other insurance claim (even they have to pay by the rules).

However it would be funny if you did have a brush with one of the stranger ones. Organized crime, eccentric rich people with time on their hands, etc. etc. I wouldn't worry about it.