Lightning strike triggers 20 hours of vivid and bizarre hallucinations

Vaughan of Mind Hacks came across a paper about a 23-year-old woman who was mountain climbing and got struck by lightning (a "bolt from the blue" in a sky that was "clear and sunny"). Upon waking from a three-day-long medically-induced coma, she experienced a series of hyperreal hallucinations that remind me of drawings from one of R. Crumb's sketchbooks.

These exclusively visual sensations consisted of unknown people, animals and objects acting in different scenes, like a movie. None of the persons or scenes was familiar to her and she was severely frightened by their occurrence. For example, an old lady was sitting on a ribbed radiator, then becoming thinner and thinner, and finally vanishing through the slots of the radiator.

Later, on her left side a cowboy riding on a horse came from the distance. As he approached her, he tried to shoot her, making her feel defenceless because she could not move or shout for help. In another scene, two male doctors, one fair and one dark haired, and a woman, all with strange metal glasses and unnatural brownish-red faces, were tanning in front of a sunbed, then having sexual intercourse and afterwards trying to draw blood from her.

These formed hallucinations, partially with delusional character, were in the whole visual field and constantly present for approximately 20 h. At the time of appearance, the patient was not sure whether they were real or unreal, but did not report them for fear that she might be considered insane.

Bolt from the blue triggers bizzare hallucinations