Tachysensia / Fast Feeling / Alice-In-Wonderland Syndrome

I don't even know where to start. This is quite possibly, the scariest thing I must've ever experienced in my life.

Dear reader, my name is Clint. I'm from Warri, Nigeria. Last year (Nov, 2021) I woke up one morning feeling sick. My temperature was pretty high and I was sweating like mad. I was alone in my apartment in a neighboring state from where my family lived.

I called a friend to come over and help me get some medical attention. He came and took me to his personal doctor. I got diagnosed with malaria and typhoid. She gave me two injections to make me feel better, but she said I'm gonna need to be taken to the hospital for proper treatment.

I called my mom and told her about how I was feeling, and she opted to come take me home. On the evening of the next day, my mom and dad drove over and took me back to our home state. On our way home, we had a flat tyre and got stuck in the middle of the road at night. I think I hit my head somewhere when the tyre burst. I'm not sure.

Anyways, we managed to change the tyre and kept going. I was still feeling kinda sick on our way home but it wasn't as bad as the previous day. When we got home, I took a shower and tried to get some sleep, and then - the strangest thing started happening to me.

At first, I noticed that everytime I close my eyes, I see very scary images of being on the road, constantly moving on high speed. I kept getting hit by several vehicles, and each hit morphs into another hit, and another and so on until I open my eyes. When I closed them again, I also started seeing weird images like scary hands with long claws, then they start morphing into the inside of the mouth of some grotesque animal, which morphs into images of piles of naked people, then morphs into me being on the road and getting hit by vehicles and another vehicle, and so on.

I had no control over my thoughts anymore. It's like my brain had forgotten how to relax, and just fall asleep. So, there I was on my bed, next to my already sleeping younger brother, fighting to fall asleep. Suddenly, I heard a loud splashing noise next to my head. I got out of bed in shock. I woke my brother up and asked him if he heard the noise. He asked, "what noise?".

I immediately covered my ears when he started talking and I asked him to stop shouting, it's too late to be talking that loud. He explained that he wasn't talking loud. He got up and headed for the wardrobe to get something, that's when I noticed something is terribly wrong with me. His footsteps were so loud like they were next to my head!

I left the room in fear and headed upstairs to meet my mom to explain what's happening. It's was like someone turned the volume up on life. When I got to her door, I was so scared of even knocking. Knocking was so loud. I then covered my ears to brace for when she opens the door.

Indeed, when she opened the door, it was so loud. I also noticed that covering my ears doesn't help because, the sound of my hands touching my ears, was wreaking havoc inside my head. I went into her room and told her what was happening. I had to tell her to whisper when she talks. She picked up her phone and dialed her pastor.

When he picked up, I could hear what he was saying on the phone after she told him what was going on. She wasn't even standing close to me, nor was the phone on "speaker". She was meters away. I started telling her what I'm hearing the pastor say. "I can hear him! He's saying you should place a wet cloth on my head", I said crying.

The ceiling fan in her room was getting louder and louder. I heard yet another loud splashing noise. It was coming from the cat fishes my mom was breeding downstairs in our backyard. It was as if my head was the pond itself and the fishes were in it. She went out of her room to wake up my dad and all five of my other siblings. When they all came into the room, I lost it.

I was screaming and begging them to be quiet. At this point, I started crying like a child. My head felt like it would explode any moment. While I desperately wanted my entire family around me, the sound of their presence was killing me. My mom went in the bathroom to get a bucket of water. She soaked a towel in it and tried to get my head wet.

As soon as it touched my head, I immediately wrestled her hands off my head, because now I realized that not only do I excruciatingly HEAR it all, I can also excruciatingly FEEL it all. Everything! The ground beneath my feet, the clothes on my body, the tongue in my mouth, my eyes in their sockets, organs inside my body, everything! I could even perceive the smell of everyone's breath. Everything!

As if all this wasn't enough, the visual effects of this experience gradually commenced. Everyone and everything started to slow down gradually every passing minute. I literally thought, "this is it, I'm dying". I kept trying to describe what was happening, but it was as if nobody could hear me.

I was trying to grab hold of my dad. They all kept slowing down rapidly until, "woooooosh!", it all hit a turning point!

"aaaaaaaarrrrrrgghhhhh!" I closed my eyes and screamed beyond my lungs! When I opened my eyes, suddenly, everything and everyone was so fast. Like 5x faster than what I would consider to be reality's normal speed.

Then, they started to slow down a bit, gradually back to normal speed. I cautioned them not to touch me. They didn't listen. My dad and my elder brother held me to make sure I don't hurt myself or run away. They probably thought I was going mental.

I started to question my very existence. "Am I dying?", "Is this what death feels like?" I felt so alone and helpless. I noticed that when I say something, it took a few moments for anyone to react to what I've just said. Apparently they started slowing down again.

I begged them to let me go, as I wanted to lie down on the bed. They did. This whole time, my temperature had risen to critical heights and I was already drenched in my own sweat. Soaked. I just lay there on the bed and they all started praying. I told everyone to try not to touch me. I still couldn't close my eyes cause I was still seeing very violent images.

You may not be aware if you're not from this part of the world, but we usually don't say "I love you" to our families. We show it. But not this day. I had to tell them that I loved them all for the first time in forever. I wasn't sure I would make it till daybreak.

We all kept singing and praying for what seemed like 30 minutes. It was the first time I saw my dad cry. My sister couldn't bear seeing me like that, she left the room. I told someone to go call her back, and I noticed no one reacted an inch to my instruction until a few moments later, when everyone turned towards me, almost as if to listen to what I've just said moments ago.

[I'm trying really hard not to use any swear words in this article]

I was losing my mind.

After sometime, everything and everyone stabilized. It all synchronized and returned back to normal. My sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. I was finally able to relax a bit and I thought it was over. I asked for the time and they said, it's 2am. It's been like 2 hours. I was kinda freaked out, cause the whole thing felt like maybe 45 minutes to me.

At that point I didn't even know what to believe anymore, because my sense of time had just been twisted beyond measure. I had no idea what my brain just did to me.

I had to change my shirt cause it's soaked with sweat. Then, I tried to get some sleep in the company of my mom and dad as everyone went to their rooms.

After like an hour or so, as I lay next to my dad on the bed, it started happening again. I noticed my mom getting faster as she walked around the room. Things are getting loud again. I immediately told them about it. We had to start heading for the hospital, it couldn't wait till morning any longer.

My dad changed his clothes and we went downstairs to the car. When I got outside, the sound of power generators from surrounding buildings where ripping through my brain. My mom and elder brother came along. My dad got in the car and I had to caution him not to close the door too loudly.

As we drove to the hospital at around 4am, I started feeling everything so intensely again. The collar of my shirt kept touching the back of my neck ever so slightly, causing me severe irritation. Things began to jump into my vision. Trees, people walking, anything. I could even clearly read the LED signs on buildings so far away.

Gradully, it looked like my dad was driving at really high speed. I could hear the car engine so loudly and even though I knew it wasn't really happening, it was scary nonetheless. I asked my brother sitting next to me at the back whether we are going fast. He told me "yes". Even though I knew he was lying, it's was comforting to hear him say that. It made me feel like I'm not alone in my suffering.

I remember worrying about what daybreak would feel like. If at night time like this, when the world around one is usually quiet, I'm still suffering. The world around me by day time would kill me, I thought. There would be more people, more vehicles, more noise!

By the time we got to the hospital, my situation had gotten worse. Since the hospital is a public place, I couldn't tell people to be quiet. Nurses were moving to and fro. Some dragging their feet on the ground. Sound of a baby crying, sound of the fan, the TV, people talking, I was losing it, I started to scream again right there in the hospital.

I was immediately rushed to the emergency unit, where my family and some medical staffs had to wrestle me down to give me a shot of something which effectively knocked me out.

The next thing I saw when I woke up, it was afternoon, my mom told me they had given me several drips of medication. Everything was back to normal. I had something to eat and asked them what the doctor said was wrong with me, they told me I had been diagnosed of Malaria II and Typhoid II.

I'm like, WTF... All that was malaria? WTF!

I didn't believe it. I don't think the doctor knew what was going on. After all was said and done, I got discharged the next day. The trauma I felt kept me up at night for weeks after all that. If I had any sleep at all, I kept waking up to the sounds of anything.

Things still sounded kinda loud even after the hospital.

Took me quite a while to be fully NORMAL.

Fast forward to some months later, I was searching the internet for what happened to me. I found a medical phenomenon known as Tachysensia. When I looked up the symptoms, it matched the description of what happened to me. I noticed that it is not yet widely known.

So I decided to share my experience online. Hopefully, someone finds this and know that they are not alone.