How Does an Evasion Course Mess With Your Mind?

After three or four days on an evasion course, with no water and no reliable meals, the mind starts doing things. Bill Thompson still does not know whether the people he saw were a dream, a hallucination, or real people whose dirt was gone by morning. A doctor who debriefs the course said he had heard the story about 15 times, including people meeting people who were not there.

Bill Thompson started the fire again to warm up and keep evading, then looked at the ground and found no footprints. He thought the people had been sitting on a log, and there was no log. In the government detention part he was locked in a cement room where he could not stand up or sit down. The room was too thin to lie on the ground and only about five and a half feet tall, with senseless violin music behind his head for about eight hours. The room is sensory deprivation after capture. He was dehydrated, had not eaten, and was seeing worms and snakes while telling himself he was hallucinating. Students carry a GPS sensor in a fanny pack so staff know where they are if they get lost or get hit by a car, and staff are not supposed to use it to chase them. The doctor has debriefed guys who thought they were in different parts of the city or in a different area altogether, lost and turned around while people who do the job for a living chased them.

Bill Thompson still holds the same three options: a dream, a hallucination, or people who were there and whose dirt was gone by morning.