New York Wonderland

5:06 p.m

I finished my shift, and now I’m going to do what has been bothering me all day.  I’m going to go through the cars and look at whatever ads she did that caused her (in my opinion) to start acting that way.  

In the first car, I stand where she was standing and look at the ad she saw.  It is an ad describing “Que Viene el Coco”.  There is a picture of a woman protecting her children from a hooded figure.  This figure, Coco, ate naughty children.  I immediately recalled her biting the child’s leg and her mother saying that she “should have behaved.”

I go to the next car, where she had her second “episode”.  I sit where she sat and look up.  There is an ad about A Mobius Strip, with a little blurb describing mania and hysteria.  Brunette #2 was definitely hysterical.  

I get out and go to the next and last car she was on.  I walk through the car and lean on the pole she was leaning on.  I look at the ad that she looked at before her eyes glazed over, and saw yet another ad that gave information, this time about something called “The Cotard Delusion”.  Apparently, people who went this thought they were legitimately dead.

How strange…..

7:52 a.m

According to the tape labels, this car is seven carts down.  How did she get there so fast?  She doesn’t seem winded.  Is that even the same girl?  She has the same face, but, her long brown hair is now scraggly and unkempt.  She seems nervous stepping into the train.  She keeps looking around, as if watching out for something.  There are more people on this car.  A few people look up at her as she steps into the train, but quickly go back to what they are doing.  She slowly walks to the pole in the middle of the car and leans against it.  A woman pushes past her to read a train map.  She does it without any regard for the girl, almost as if she didn’t see her.  Brunette #2 pouts and sighs.  A child giggles nearby and she looks up, the sound catching her attention.  She cannot see the child, and so, goes back to her own world.  She looks towards the woman who pushed her earlier and her eyes rest on an ad above the train map.  She stares at it, reading it, and again, her eyes glaze over.  Her eyes stay that way as she walks to the woman from earlier.  She waves her hands in front of the woman, and the woman….doesn’t react?  The girl tries again, but gets no response, so she moves to the next person.  It is a young man with a hat and low-hanging jeans.  He is sitting with his legs spread.  She steps in between them and waves her hands in front of him.  He does not respond.  She stomps her foot, but to no avail.  She tries this with a few other people, but no one notices her.  She pinches herself, hard, but doesn’t seem to feel it.  She touches the pole, but does not grab onto it for some reason, for some reason, acting like she cannot.  She smiles and the train turns, with the sun shining through one side of the train.  As it does, she seems to illuminate and people look up from their phones or books.  Some of them seem shocked.  The last person she was trying to get the attention of, an old man, lurches back into his seat, obviously surprised that she is in front of him.  People are gasping and covering their mouths.  They are surprised to see her, as if she wasn’t there the whole time.  She also seems surprised and people reach out to her, but she evades them all.  They look at their hands, as if they touched her and their hands went right through her.  The train stops at Queensboro Plaza, and she rushes off, with people staring at her in amazement.  She does not get on another car.

7:47am

Brunette # 2 goes to find an empty seat in the corner. She seems to be acting normal.  Her knee-high socks are at different lengths; one covering her knee, and the other loosely hanging around her ankle.  She doesn’t seem to care.  She seems to be reading an ad on the wall across from her, but her face says she’s confused by what she’s reading.  She tilts her head, as if it would help her understand what she was reading.  Once again, her eyes glaze over.  She suddenly stiffens and her eyes widen.  She slowly looks down at her feet, and begins to scream.  She starts kicking, flailing out of her seat.  She falls onto the train floor and pushes her way away from her seat, screaming “GET OFF ME.  DON’T TOUCH ME” at something under her seat.  There is nothing there.  She backs up into the train door, still sitting on the floor.  She whips her head around to her right and seems to see something else.  She gets up and starts running to the other side of the car, but trips in a few feet.  She pushes herself up and puts her hands in front of her face.  She looks at them in horror, sobbing now.  “Are these claws?”, she asks herself.  Claws?  Her nails are long, but not bad enough to be described as claws….  She gets up and staggers to the other end of the car.  She leans against a pole, but pushes herself off and looks at her behind.  She starts to pet something a few inches above her body, as if stroking a tail.  She looks at it in wonder, not for long, as she looks over at the seat she was sitting in earlier.  Whatever she saw seems to be coming after her.  Could she be faking these reactions?  Who’s attention is she trying to get?  There’s no one else in the car.

She backs away into the train door that connects the cars.  She looks behind her, as if contemplating actually opening the door and leaving the car, but she turns and gets on all fours.  She hisses, as if back in the state she was in in the last car.  The train is suddenly enveloped in light, coming from the windows.  It’s gone aboveground, approaching Court Square.  The light distracts her, and she turns to the windows, to see where the light came from.  She looks back at whatever she was backing away from and stands up straight.  It seems to be gone.  She sits in a seat near her and gets off at Court Square….only to show up in another car.  

7:41 am

The train stops at Vernon-Jackson Avenue.

A few people get off the train. A mother and young daughter, approximately around the age of 4 get on and stand near the doors opposite of the second brunette girl. A quick sweep of the car shows that all of the possible suspects are stable, none have had any change in activity. The mother who recently boarded is reading something on her ipad while her daughter is looking at our second brunette girl in question. This seems to agitate the brunette a bit, she is shifting her feet and awkwardly looking around. Her eyes rest on ad across from her on the wall.  She seems to be reading it, and her brows furrow in concentration.  Her eyes glaze over and almost immediately, she snaps out of it.  As the little girl is relentless with her fixed gaze, brunette #2 stares back.  She looks and sounds as if she is almost growling at the small child. Growling? can’t be, girls do not growl. Whatever this girl is doing does not seem to phase any passenger on the train, not even the little girl’s own mother, who is still fixed on the words upon her screen.  I cannot help to notice the tension though, between brunette #2 and the little girl. Brunette #3 seems to have struck up an animated conversation with the old man she is seated next to, it’s getting loud, you can see others start to look in their direction. But wait, while that is happening.  I notice a quick movement near the second door of the cart. It’s brunette #2! and her teeth are latched on to the little girl’s leg! The little girl’s mom just looks down, shakes her head and gives a quick push to brunette #2 and continues to read, as if this was a normal interaction for her young daughter to have with a preteen girl. “Didn’t I tell you this would happen if you didn’t behave?” she muttered.  The little girl is screaming, terrified of Brunette #2.  Brunette #2 looked around and as the doors opened at the Hunter Avenue stop.  She runs off on all fours.

What?? Now showing on cart #2’s camera appears brunette #2. But didn’t she just get off the train? Well at least she’s back to walking on two feet.

7:32 am

The train stops at Grand Central-42nd Street.

About 30 people or so pour in through the three doors on this cart. The suspect in question is a girl described as having dark brown hair and carrying grey jansport backpack, around the age of 12. The commotion of the 42nd street stops calms down as the train departs from the station, all passengers are either calmly seated or standing. There are four brown haired adolescent girls on this cart at this particular moment, it could be any one of them. One is seated between one of the young school boys and a large man in a suit, her head is down, brown hair falling all over her face as she’s looking at the book that is laying upon her grey backpack in her lap. Doesn’t seem to be an imminent threat. I’ll move on. The second brunette girl is leaning against one of the train doors wearing knee high socks and a dark blue skirt, she probably goes to school with the three young school boys who are now becoming a little rambunctious. She shares the train door with a middle aged woman, they do not seem to know each other however they share a few words. Doesn’t seem to be our girl. The next brunette is seated on the far end of the train next to the original old man reading his paper, she has her grey backpack on the ground between her feet and a large sketchbook in her lap. The last brunette is seated directly across from her, with her grey backpack on her lap, she has headphones in and seems to be playing a game on her phone.

As of now, none of these girls look too suspicious.

Cart #1

Camera feed from 7:30 am December 3rd shows the following:

Everything seems to look normal, a relatively empty train for this time of the day. There is an older man reading a paper on the far end of the cart, and in the middle, a group of 3 young school boys seem to be finishing up their studies before school.

Historical Document

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde display a split personality disorder in the novella. While Dr. Jekyll creates a potion that turns himself in Mr. Hyde so he can both remain a respected doctor and fulfill his vices without being identified, he loses the ability to control the transformation between the two. Ultimately Hydes personality sticks and Jekyll can no longer transform himself back, in which case he decides to commit suicide. It has been reported that the author of this novella, Robert Stevenson, was suffering from an intense fever while writing this novella, fevers can often illicit hallucinations. Also while writing this, Stevenson kept in contact with a woman in a mental institution who was suffering from split personality disorder. Many people believe it was not a fever induced story but that Stevenson was on drugs while writing the novella, however his wife and son claim it was fever and nightmare which gave the inspiration.

Historical Document

The little prince was created by Antione de Saint Exupery and was published in America in 1943. The book was inspired by an event that the author had in 1935. In this year got into a plane crash, and landed in the middle of the Arabian. desert a long with his pilot. They were stranded for about a week, and began to experience hallucinations because of the heat. This experience led him to create the story of a man who was flying a plane and gets stranded in a desert where he meets a little boy who calls himself the little prince. The author uses this story to teach kids not just about his experience in the desert, but how he felt in his in transition from living in France to North America, such as loneliness and sadness. This story presents psychosis to children using emotions other than common fear.

Historical Document

Dracula was Published in the United States in 1899. Here’s a brief summary of the story: it is about a man named Jonathan Harker who goes to visit Count Dracula to give him legal help with a real estate transaction. When he visits the castle, he slowly begins to realize that the count isn’t a regular person and tries to escape. This article speaks about the psychological background of the story. The author of this writing claims that Jonathan Harker was going through a development of paranoia. He compares this character to a case study  that happened around the same time Dracula came out, of a man who is referenced to as Judge Schreber. In the case study, Schreber goes through different stages all dealing with delusions and hallucinations.  These stages included: having hypochondriac thoughts, having sensory hallucinations and delusions of being chased, and mystic/religious mania which included being harrassed by demons.

Brief Reactive Psychosis 1868

Historical Document

This document references to different case studies  in the past 2 centuries of people that suffered from Brief Reactive Psychosis. This form of psychosis was originally called Hysterical Psychosis, which according to text, occurs after someone has experience some form of traumatic event in their life. One of the cases that it references to is a case study that was published in 1868 about a woman named Van der Hart. Before experiencing symptoms of Psychosis, this woman suffered from repeated abuse, rape, drowning, and her finance committing suicide. After going through all this, she began to experience the following symptoms: periods of continuous talking, some amnesia, hallucinations of reenactments of the traumatic event, delusions, seizures, depression, and suicidal urges. What helped her to be cured was going through hypnotic therapy.