My Personal Story/Report/Account of Odd Occurrences

Introduction

The following is my report concerning a series of events and experiences that have occurred to me between the years 2009 and 2011. Some of these events have been odd, out-of-the-ordinary, or just plan bizarre and have appeared to define my own personal rational explanations. This of course does not mean that there are no pedestrian and rational explanations. After all, the following report is taken from my own personal, and admittedly, subjective viewpoint. I will do my best to offer the best objective account of my experiences that I am able. In doing so, I will not insert any speculative, theories, beliefs, or interpretations of the events that have happened into the report itself. I will not attempt to place the events that have occurred to me in a preconceived theoretical or speculative framework. Let me say without absolute resolve and certainty: after much speculation I have arrived at no complete or coherent understanding of why these events have occurred in my life. For these answer, I am still searching.

The Report

To the reader, I ask of you the following requests: (1) Please, feel free to speculate or expound on my experiences. You may offer whatever speculation, hypothesis, theory, or similar personal experience you have. (2) Any reader is free to critique, question, rationalize, or even dismiss any experience or event that I have reported or posters speculation--all I ask is that the conversation remains civil and polite. Please, refrain name calling, sarcasm, insults, and unnecessary derision towards myself or other replies. (3) Please, feel free to ask me questions concerning the events I have experienced, but please be aware I do not have answers or evidence for everything in this report here--for that I apologize. (4) While, I understand that this story is quite lengthy, I ask that you read the whole report before commenting. I truly, truly apologize for its length, but I couldn’t condense the story down further without it losing its coherence. For this I truly apologize and thank you for your time and patience.

For those who are curious about my past activity in this forum: I will offer you a link to my past thread replies. This is in fact, the first thread I have made since joining ATS. Until somewhat recently I have been little more than a lurker and thread "replier" to some threads.. Here is the link In these posts and replies you will find that I have taken a diverse set of perspectives on various topics in this forum. Some of the responses have been more intellectual, political, and skeptical in nature and others have been out-right speculative, conspiratorial and "out-of-the-box", so to speak. I am offering this link, so that readers may have a proper understanding of my personality, mind-frame, and so on. Perhaps, you will see (or not--which is fine) that I can be both rational, skeptical, thoughtful, and conspiratorial, speculative and suspicious of "main stream" thinking. In other words, I am a complex and contradictory character--like most people--neither a pure skeptic, nor pure "believer" (as some might put it). I have no particular religious faith: I consider myself both a weak agnostic and an ignostic: as such, there will be no religious or spiritual speculation placed in this report, however such speculation by the reader and posters is fine and will not be treated with any hostility on my part.

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Sometime between the 24th and 27th (as I don’t quite remember the date, exactly) of April 2011 I awoke from a state of deep sleep in Alexandria, VA Hospital, after having made an attempt on my own life through a combination of over –the-counter-medicine and alcohol. After drinking this concoction in hopes that it would shut down my kidney or liver, I walked to the D.C. metro train station from the parking lot of a nearby mall, located in Bowie, Maryland and hopped a train on the D.C. Metro System. Upon entering the train station and getting on the train I immediately passed out on the first car of the train—into what I recall I very deep sleep.

The next memory I have was of male picking me up by the shoulders—after that I passed out. The following memory was of me waking up in a intensive care unit(?) in a hospital in Alexandria, VA. I was told that I was found (but, I was not told where I was found) and that I had had my stomach pumped and that I was good condition. In my emotional state I revealed that I was angered by this outcome and that my act was intentional. The nurses who had been with me and had given me the status of how I had arrived at the hospital noted what t I told them and left. From here I was given more medicine through and IV and I went back to sleep.
For the next day or two, nothing out of the ordinary transpired other than regular check-ups by nurses and a doctor. I was also given a 24-hour nurse to watch me (so I presumed) .

I was asked by a resident psychologist whether I had any friends or family to call. I did, in fact have a friends and family in the area, however due to my own personal embarrassment over my attempt; I asked that the hospital refrain from contacting them, to which they agreed. I would like to note that the hospital asked me whether I would like to contact my family or not.
One more day went by and I administered a few more drugs to help me “sleep”. Drugs whose names I cannot recall. Nothing out of the ordinary happened during my time here in the ICU, except for the following event:
On the last night of my stay in the intensive care unit, I had a conversation with an elderly (maybe 70-something to 80-something years in age) patient sharing the same room with me.

The conversation was quite bizarre and, as far as I can tell nonsensical. Present in the room was another nurse who did not participate in our conversation other than few responses. I do not remember every detail of the conversation, but I do remember a key point. During our conversation the other patient asked me whether I had recently read “Atlas Shrugged”. I did not bring this topic up, nor did I ever bring this topic up to anyone that I had met in the hospital. I had recently read “Atlas Shrugged”, but I never finished the book, because I had either lost or misplaced the book some months back. I never could find the book or where I had placed it—it just seemed to have disappeared (however, I am not suggesting that it did literally “disappear”). In fact, it was the very last book I could recall having purchased and read. (I would also like to note, that this report has nothing to do with the philosophy or arguments in that book, it just happened to be a book I had read, lost, and now appeared randomly in conversation with a total stranger).


(please do not post replies yet)

I did find this reference to that book odd at the time, but I didn’t press any further on the matter. The conversation soon petered out and being both bored and unable to fall asleep I began writing a poem (as I occasionally enjoyed writing and reading as an on and off hobby).
The poem would have been meaningless to this report if it wasn’t for the following very peculiar event. While writing this poem, I started the poem off with a specific line, which was this: “In the land of the Living and the Dead”. As of now, I do not recall the rest of this poem for two reasons (1) I never really finished it while in the ICU and(2) I lost the piece of paper I wrote it on in that very same room. To understand why that particular phrase of the poem is important, I must refer to events that had occurred prior to this event and after.

Before moving to D.C., I lived in Atlanta, Ga. I had recently graduated from college. At the time I was living with a friend and his father and working as a part-time tutor. On the off time, I happened to run into a local (whose actually name I will refrain from using), who I will simply call “Devin”. This Devin character was as far as I can tell a normal guy. He was four or five years my senior, working as a real estate agent and was heavily involved at a local church. One day while hanging out at book store in Atlanta, he plopped down beside me and we got into a pretty good conversation. We instantly became good buddies and started hanging out. In quite a short period of time we managed to really bond as friends, but for some reason I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I should have been wary of Devin. To be fair, I had no particular reason to have had this feeling, as he had been quite nice throughout are short time as acquaintances. Eventually, I told him we no longer could hang out together, to which he replied: “Well, I guess I’ll just have to watch you from a distance.” At the time, I found that statement to be odd and out of place, but I did not press further on the matter.

A few months after my attempt I had a strange desire to contact Devin. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to call him, but I did. After calling him, I got into a brief conversation about recent events. Nothing was out of the ordinary until Devin made his final goodbye, which was this: “Welcome back to the Land of the Living”. Before I could respond to his goodbye, he hung up. I have no explanation for why he might have used this particular phrase to end our conversation. A phrase, which seemed to reference the first line of a poem I had written in a hospital in a completely different time and space from Devin. In fact, I do not recall ever having mentioned my time at the hospital or my suicide attempt during our conversation over the phone. This event still remains a mystery to this day. I have not contacted, nor attempted to contact Devin to this day—though I should.


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(please do not reply yet)

Eventually, I was “interviewed” by a psychiatrist who informed that I was going to be taken to another hospital for psychiatric treatment. I told this psychiatrist that “I wouldn’t be able to afford that” to which he replied that it would have to, anyway. I asked if there was another option and he replied that I could refuse, but I would be faced with a court order from the State of Maryland to have evaluation as I had become a “Danger to myself and the public.” I responded by saying “So, basically I have no choice?” He gave me a hapless shrug and I signed the paperwork consenting to evaluation.

I was moved to the psychiatric ward of a new hospital located in Alexandria, VA after that conversation with my fellow patient in the ICU. I was taken to the ward by ambulance and checked in. I was put into a rather sizable room with other patients. The room had several smaller rooms (for patients), I central desk for the staff, a tv room a cafeteria, another room for (what appeared to be to me, locking up out of control patients) and a coffee room for the staff. In all in all it looked like what I would expect a psychiatric room to look like, sans the stereotypical padded floors. There were not locks on the doors and so on (no doubt for patient and staff safety). Anyway, I was shown my room and asked a series of questions about. Some questions were about my health, depression, anxiety level, etc. Others questions were about my education, career status, family, best course in college, etc. The interviewer offered me some quick career advice and then left to attend to some other matters. She than informed me that some events in the room would seem “strange” to me, but that it was normal.

I left the room and went into the main room, where other patients seemed to be milling about. Some of the patients were peculiar, but I will get to this in a moment. While walking through the room, in no particular direction, I noticed a few books stacked on a nearby counter by a few chair. I went to check them out. Most of these books were fictional stories that were set in the period of Roman Empire (which was notable/convenient for me, because I had always had an interest in ancient Greek and Roman history since childhood.) But the book that really caught my eye (and was also out of place) was “The Scrivener”. Again, this ordinary and seemingly arbitrary book would have no point to this report had it not been the following event that took place a week (or perhaps two) before my attempt:

While hanging with a college buddy who was living in D.C., we decided to go to an off-brand African-themed restaurant near Howard University (whose name I cannot recall at the moment.) While there we met up with another friend from college who had recently won a Rhodes Scholar award to Columbia University in New York. The conversation was that had taken place as we were eating was normal (for college students anyway), which centered around and intellectual discussion about futurism and how societies elite technocrats were forming a sort of mystical aurora around themselves that seemed like “magic” to the public because fewer and fewer everyday citizens understood how the technology they used actually works. I would like to note, that I do not personally subscribe to this notion and that I did not engage in this conversation, mainly because it was completely over my head, intellectually.

Eventually this conversation began to focus on me, in which my Rhode Scholar friend noted how he was disappointed in my lack of ambition during my college years (which was true). He noted that I reminded him of the main character Bartelby from the book---“The Scrivener”. I agreed (having read the book for a class, but not having finished it), but asked my friend “Whatever happened to Bartelby, again?” to which he responded “Oh, I think he killed himself.”
To this day, I find the presence of that particular book in the psychiatric ward to be intriguing, in relation to my previous conversation with my friends, however I will not speculate further on the matter. It could have simply been coincidence—it may not have been. I am not sure at this point in my reflection on these events.
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(ditto)

After taking the book back to my room to read later in the day, as I awaited further instructions by the resident counselors and psychiatrist, I decided to walk the larger room again. In the room was chess set sitting on a table surrounded by chairs. Sitting in front of the table was another patient who appeared to be my age or younger. Bored I sat down in front of him and asked whether he wanted to play chess. He agreed to and we started playing. I asked “Bob” (not his real name) why he was patient and he replied that he had schizophrenia. I, in turn, told him why I was here. During the middle of the conversation and some few turns into the chess match he looked at me with a puzzled and knowing look and asked “You don’t remember me, do you?”

I could not recall ever seeing this person before in my life and so I responded in the negative. He looked at me with some curiosity and laughed, before we continued our game and conversation, which went normally. Bob, as far as I could tell was a genuine schizophrenic. He had three distinct personalities as far as I could tell: (1) a rapper, (2) a mischievous child and (3) himself at his appropriate age. Concerning his belief that we had met before, I simply dismissed it as the delusion of a schizophrenic and I have not speculated further on this event, even today. Other patients ranged from somewhat normal and functional to highly dysfunctional. However, I will note that many patients seemed to exhibit one type of personality or emotion throughout my stay in that room. They would express either anger, or sadness, or introversion, or mania or catatonic behavior. I did find this to be curious, but not out of the question for the psychiatric ward. I did however mention to another patient that I noticed that some of the other “patients” seemed to mimic an emotion a person may experience, and that singular emotion only. Her response was “You weren’t supposed to notice that” to which I responded “Well, it is too late, because I did.” To this day I have not explanation for why that patient would respond with that particular comment.
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(ditto)

Another thing I found weird in this ward were two off-pink colored phones that were attached to the walls of the room. The phones were not next to each other but across from each other—with one being on a separate wall from the other. The phones themselves had dial pads with all the appropriate numbers and symbols. One of the phones had a cord attaching the head-piece to the main body of the phone, while the other had no cord at all (and appeared to have been damaged).

On the wall around the phones were various scratch marks and phone numbers. Every 10 to 20 minutes these phones would ring. I made several attempts to answer, however no one would answer (or was on?) the other line, each time I picked up the phone to answer. In an attempt to figure out what was going on with these phones, I tried to make a call on the phone. I dialed the numbers of people that I knew. When that failed I then tried the numbers that had already been scribbled on the wall. Of course, no call would go through and there was no dial tone.

After two days of this, I simply gave up attempting to answer or use the phones when they would ring. I did however, see two patient answer the phone and use it, however she did not have a conversation; she simply picked up the phone, said “hello”, put the phone back down and walked away. She did not seem the least bit flustered or puzzled by the phone, like I had. I also had another patient pick up the phone when it wrung and have carry on an irate conversation with one of her family members (her mother?) over the phone; however this was the phone with no cord attached to its base. I concluded she was having a delusional conversation with herself.

At any rate, I found this to be very disturbing and confusing at the time. I reasoned that perhaps the phones were therapy of some sort for some of the patients, but I wasn’t sure. Finally, I went to one of the counselors and asked her about the phone saying “Ok, ok, so the phones don’t actually work, right?”
Her response was to look at me, like I did not know what I was talking about and refer to the phone at the employee work desk in the center of the room. I had not bothered to access this phone, mainly because we were told not to mess with objects at the desk and that we were not allowed to use the phone. Anyway, I did in fact use that phone (which looked completely different from the other phones in room) and called my family who later on picked me up.

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(ditto)

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Sometime after this event, I and the other patients were ushered into the television room. The room seemed normal with basic cable television and the occasional movie (the two movies I saw were “Batman” (I think the version with Michael Keaton) and “Body of Lies”. The group was allowed to discuss their feelings about being here and their treatment program. Everybody expressed their views—some people were satisfied with their program, others complained that the bevy of drugs they were on that never seemed to work and made things worse, and other people were simply too mentally unstable to make coherent comments. The session continued on normally until the following event:

The counselors decided to play a sort of documentary film about a writer who had progressively developed symptoms of schizophrenia. What was off about the subject of the movie was just how specific it was to my particular case. The patient in the movie was a writer who graduated with an English degree, who had suddenly become very depressed and over the course of several years began to mentally disengage from reality. The documentary went on to say that the guy began writing a mysterious book (I think it was a spy novel, but I’m not entirely sure). The movie then went on to say that before he could publish he lost all his mental faculties. The documentary ended with some sad commentary by his daughter. The group was asked to comment. A few people commented and “Bob” (the schizophrenic) noted that he couldn’t relate to the character.

The odd thing was that I could relate to this character, because I had recently graduated from and English degree and was now suffering from depression. At the time, I found the choice of this particular documentary to be both disturbing and unsettling. Perhaps the counselors were trying to find a video that I could relate to? Perhaps this was their subtle way of telling me I was going to suffer from schizophrenia or how to look for signals of schizophrenia (however, this explanation does not quite cut it, because no professional ever gave me this diagnosis, I was given a diagnosis of “manic depression”). I would also like to note that I have never suffered hallucinations or other visual or auditory affects. I have only suffered from depression, which was usually triggered by some type of personal mishap or loss. The purpose of showing the patients and myself this video (which seemed to offer no real hope or happy-ending—at least that was how I felt at the time) was puzzling.

I would also like to note that before a group session on a previous day, I was reading a book out loud, to myself, in my empty room. I was bored and there was nothing else to do and I didn’t want to talk to patients I didn’t know, particularly the more violent and disturbed ones. Later in the day, a group session was commenced and the group was asked to share some hobbies that enjoyed doing. Another group member (who seemed the most “sane” out of all the members in the group) noted that he liked to read to himself out loud. Again, that could have been a coincidence, I don’t know.

At some point, (I think 2 or 3 days into my stay there) I was put on drugs (I cannot recall the name of the medication—but I recall one of the drugs being Seroquel.) The one effect I recall having from these drugs was the following: time seemed to literally slow down and distort. In one instance I recall one of the counselors freezing in place for a minute or two like a statue, while other patients and counselors moved around him in slow motion. I recall other patients slowing down in time as I seemed to move at “normal” pace around the cafeteria (in which this even took place). I also noticed that this “time distortion” did not seem occur outside the cafeteria, which I now, at present, find odd.

Despite the odd distortion I sat down to eat the (school cafeteria-like) meals they had prepared for us. What I noticed was that “Bob” (the schizophrenic) was sitting next to me and he was eating a breakfast, while were all eating dinner (and it was dinner time, as far as I could tell). I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible, because the dinner schedules seemed to be tightly controlled and no personal request seemed to be made. I think this experience(out of all the ones I have so far mentioned) can simply be blamed on the medication. Perhaps someone with experience with psychiatric medication can shed some on light on whether this is a normal side-effect of drugs or not? I have never had an experience like this in my entire life—neither before, nor after.


(ditto)

I would also like to make some side another side note concerning my stay at this hospital that I found notable. On the counter of the main desk was a bowl of what appeared to be sand. In that sand was one purple plastic token with a pyramid with an eye on its center (or top?). I found this to be a curious thing to be in the room. I know that that symbol has meaning to some of the people here on ATS. I also would like to note that prior to these events, I was never into conspiracy theories. In fact, I was very much against them and had several arguments with my friends derailing their speculations. I did keep the coin out of curiosity and as I far as I know, I still have it.

There will be future additions to this report, as there are many more strange occurrences that have happened before this event and after this event. But, because I’m running out of time and this story is long I will come back to follow up later on. These events, however, are the ones that stand out to me.
In closing I would like to say again, I do not claim to have any speculative or theoretical framework for why these events have occurred. I’m basically posting this here so that I can get some external ideas from you guys. As of yet I have found no underlying link to some of these events. I accept the possibility that nothing bizarre or out of the ordinary has happened to me at all, and many of things could have just been coincidence or perhaps the wanderings of my own mind looking for connection and meaning when there is, in fact, no such connection. However, it would be insincere for me to say that my internal intuition and feelings (my “gut”) agree with my head---because they do not. These events are reported to the best of my memory and with best intentions in mind.


I will now open myself up to speculation from (and with) you guys—I have my own thoughts and some of them correlate with theories that I have found here on ATS (and all over the web). I humbly apologize for any grammar or spelling mistakes. I also apologize for any writing that may be unclear or cluttered. I will do my best to re-explain any confusion or misunderstanding that might arrive due to clerical errors.

Thank you and good luck. I look forward to responses.

-The Ghoster


---You can reply , now---

In your last post, what symbol are you referring to? Time slowing down?

Originally posted by PrplHrt
In your last post, what symbol are you referring to? Time slowing down?

EDIT: I forgot to add a portion of my write up to the post, PrplHart and other readers. I added in my very last post above. Sorry!!!


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I'm sorry---I meant the symbol on the plastic purple coin (or token?) I found at the ward. It had the picture of a pyramid with an eye. Basically a version of the pyramid you see on the dollar (American dollar, that is). That symbol pops up a lot here in reference to the Masons or Illuminati or whomever.

-Ghoster

reply to post by theghoster

It is damn weird that you opened this thread today.

I had a dream last night that I was in a society that was confined to a huge hotel-like structure. The wealthiest and most highly educated people lived on the top floors.

These floors could only be accessed with colored tokens. Purple did not come up in my dream, but you see my name.

I too was a bit confused about the coin mentioned. Thank you for clarifying. So far your story is very interesting and I look forward to reading more. It doesn't bother me, but if it is possible to fix your story with more breaks or paragraphs the others who read will hopefully not come down on you about the "wall of text". Other than that, in my own life books play a very big part...but I won't de-rail your thread. Personally, I don't believe that the
happenings in one's life are coincidence...perhaps more like markers along one's path.

reply to post by 4LPH483T50UP


Alright, I'm breaking up the paragraphs as we speak. Thanks for your input. Perhaps there are no coincidences?

@ PrlpHrt: That is kind of strange. I will try to find this coin/token and get I picture of it, if I can. It had some writing on it, as well, but I don't recall what it said, exactly.

reply to post by theghoster

I am very interested to see it. Your experience is interesting.

reply to post by PrplHrt


Actually, Prpl--not only do I notice your name, but your signature. The dead and the living...?

-Ghoster

reply to post by theghoster

Took the red pill and have seen too much. Morpheus was right. There's no going back.

reply to post by theghoster


A few questions if I might...

Do you own a car, what kind, and do you service it yourself ex.change the oil?
Have you ever noticed strange smells where you are living?

Is your story a treatment for a screenplay?

Actually, another detail to this story I forgot to add, but is crucial.

In the same weeks leading up to my attempt, the other college buddy sitting at the table during the previously mentioned discussion did a few things that, thinking back, no catch my intention. (1) He showed me a movie called "The Sunset Limited" in which one of the characters saves another character from committing suicide by a passing public train. (2) He also asked me whether I would leap off a high structure with my eyes closed ---i.e. --would I take a leap of faith if I could? (3) He also showed me another move---I think with Tom Cruise--called "Eyes Wide Shut" about some weird sex cult or something. Jesus Christ the more I think about this, the weirder it gets.

-Ghoster

Originally posted by olaru12
reply to post by theghoster

 

A few questions if I might...

Do you own a car, what kind, and do you service it yourself ex.change the oil?
Have you ever noticed strange smells where you are living?

Is your story a treatment for a screenplay?

Yes, a 350 Z, no and yes. Also, no, but I understand why you would ask that. Trust me, this is story I couldn't make up if I tried--I just don't have the damn imagination for it.

Edit: Also, on a side note, I knew these experiences would sound too bizarre/insane when I wrote it, and well --they do. But as far I can tell, they happened.

-Ghoster

Thanks for your story. Although as of now I cannot make any real sense out of some of the seemingly coincidences you experienced, I do have a question.

Why or what led up to the events of you wanting to take your life, commit suicide? If this is too painful to recall or discuss I can respect that.

Secondly, can you recall or speak of any significant events that may have scared you or frightened you during you younger years of age, under the age of 8?

Thanks and best of luck to you.

Originally posted by ItDepends
Thanks for your story. Although as of now I cannot make any real sense out of some of the seemingly coincidences you experienced, I do have a question.

Why or what led up to the events of you wanting to take your life, commit suicide? If this is too painful to recall or discuss I can respect that.

Secondly, can you recall or speak of any significant events that may have scared you or frightened you during you younger years of age, under the age of 8?

Thanks and best of luck to you.

Actually, I would rather opt not to talk it. No big reason, just not comfortable.

And also, no--i didn't have too many big upsets as kid. Nothing out of the ordinary for the average
kid, you know?

-Ghoster