Ghost Adventures. 2.5 - Bird Cage Theater

And if this is your first time, you may not know that one of my very favorite, probably my very favorite thing to do on this podcast is to read a listener story.

I solicit listener stories at my email address, alreadyscaredpod at gmail.com, where you, if you have an experience with a paranormal, aliens, or anything else, you're welcome to share it with me.

Make sure and say it's okay to read on the podcast, otherwise I won't.

This is from Michelle.

She says, first, the hat man.

In the spring, leading up to my PhD candidacy, example in proposal defense, I ended up having really terrible insomnia and got a prescription for Ambien.

I decided to take it half an hour before bed, thinking it would kick right in around the time I went to bed.

But that was a mistake because it kicked in quickly.

while I was still in my living room trying to finish up some emails.

As it kicked in, I felt dizzy, and I remember sitting back on the couch, starting to see double of my laptop screen and realizing I should probably give up trying to finish those emails.

And then I looked up behind the coffee table and saw the shadow people.

There were eight to ten of them, standing kind of loosely in a semi-circle on the other side of the coffee table.

And though they didn't seem to have defined features, they had distinct enough shapes that they looked like men and women of various heights with the silhouettes of what looked like formal clothes, coats, hats.

And second from left, directly across from me, was a taller man who was wearing a tall hat, possibly a top hat or a bowler hat.

And though I couldn't make out eyes, it felt like he was staring directly at me.

I got the impression that they were watching me and they knew I could see them and that they disapproved because I was not supposed to be seeing them.

and I had the impression they were like Victorian mourners sadly standing around my coffee table the way Victorians might stand around a body during a wake held in the home of a parlor.

But I was still awake and quite lucid, so I knew they had to be just an ambient-related hallucination, but they still freaked me out, so I gathered all my pets to get them safely away from the bedroom, even though I felt a little silly because I knew they weren't real, as the shadow people seemed to stay put in the living room.

I ended up calling my boyfriend who was away on a trip and talking to another friend he was with and they decided to call the paramedics to check me out.

I remember the paramedics arriving and them asking to make sure I secured my dog in a room and sitting on the couch while they checked me out while I tried to avoid looking or making eye contact with shadow people who were still on the other side of the living room.

kind of standing or milling around, but seemed to stay well away from the side I and the paramedics were on.

The paramedics said I'd be fine, and there was nothing to do except try to sleep it off, so they left.

And I went back to my room, where I spent the rest of the night, up with my pets and lights on, because I was too scared to sleep in the morning.

I never took Ambien again.

But some Googling informed me that hallucinating is a very common side effect, that the psychiatrist who prescribed them said she'd never heard of it as a possible side effect, which I find kind of concerning.