Guys, I have to quickly share this one while it's still fresh in my mind --- put this down in the weird "Was that a verifiable encounter with a true pod person out in the wild?" folder.....
I just got home from a short holiday trip out of state. Yesterday morning our group grabbed bagels and morning coffee at one of those Panera restaurants you see around more and more. If you're unfamiliar, this is a bread place famous for its fresh breads, bagels, and pastries, and you can get tasty sandwiches for lunch and so forth. Sort of a daytime eatery.
So we're there chatting and munching away happily. We're in our own little bubble of happy energy at a small round table, joking, oblivious to people around us. After a while I become aware, almost through some sort of peripheral sense (a feeling of something being wrong on the perimeter of my space), that there's something odd going on at this table nearby. Two women are sitting together. One woman faces out towards me and is seated at a booth. The woman across from her is seated at a regular chair across the table from her, and the two of them appear to be sharing a meal.
I had been aware of conversation drifting over from that table but hadn't been paying attention. So I glance over there. The woman in the chair facing away from me is looking down at her food and is happily chatting along at a mile a minute about nothing in particular (I didn't pay attention to the things she was talking about.)
Her friend, a nondescript 30 or 40something blonde, is sitting facing outwards as her friend talks.
Now, here's the weird part. If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it. But anyway.
The woman facing outwards seems to be staring at me. Her entire body is completely frozen up. Imagine someone with a coffee mug raised up towards her face, elbow to that arm stuck in the air, so the arm and the hand with the mug are frozen in the air. And the face is completely frozen in a frowning and shocked looking expression, and she is staring outwards....seemingly at me.
And she does not move, blink an eye, or move that arm that she's holding up with the coffee in the mug ONE INCH.....
For FIFTEEEN FREAKIN' MINUTES...which I time out carefully, glancing over there periodically over and over again.
I do a little surreptitious looking around, wondering if the woman is glazed over and hypnotized because there's a TV behind me or something (thinking of Lyra and her story about the colleague who just suddenly was frozen for a bit while she was hypnotized by something she saw on the office TV.)
But no, no TV anywhere.
At first I was trying not to stare because #1) It's uncomfortable when someone sitting near you suddenly appears to be staring at you in this really weird way, not moving, with a weird expression on their face and #2) thoughts were racing through my head like maybe this woman had a physical infirmity and was suffering from a stroke or some sort of facial immobility.
But as I looked closer, the woman is still sitting there with her arm and elbow FROZEN IN POSITION IN THE AIR, in the act of raising the cup to her lips, except the cup never gets there, and the face is completely stuck in place and there is no movement, expression, or sense of this woman being conscious or ALIVE in the eyes.....and she does not change position, move her eyes or face or arm or elbow, for fifteen minutes or so.
Okay, more weirdness. Her friend seemingly does not notice. The friend is looking down at her food, chatting happily away about something. Neither one of them is on a cell phone from what I can see. And the friend is having a one way conversation, with laughter, self-referential comments, and also conversation back and forth with this woman (at least her end of it) and NEVER SEEMS TO NOTICE THAT HER FRIEND IS COMPLETELY FROZEN AND UNRESPONSIVE AND NOT MOVING ANY INCH OF HER BODY FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES.
At this point, I start trying to psychically scan a bit, to try to figure out just WHAT is going on. Again, I'm thinking, does the friend have one of those rare diseases where the body can just go rigid from time to time or something? I hadn't notice the two women when they came in, I think they were already there when we sat down, so I didn't have a "before" or "after" to measure things against. I don't know if the woman was "normal" before this, so maybe this IS "normal" for her - I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and not jump to some complex metaphysical pod people conclusion. (See, I try to be fair! 
I didnt' get a sense of "ick" off the frozen woman as I would with an energy vampire or negative critter type. The overriding sense was completely mechanical and robotic, a feeling of utter blankness, like this woman was a robot who had just momentary shut down, coffee cup in the air, arm and elbow raised high, and needed to "reboot" or something. And as I paid attention to the woman with her who was gabbing away, she also seemed a bit "off",' like someone who wasn't "real" but had been programmed, to an outside observer, to seem like a normal woman having a normal conversation over a meal....with her frozen robotic friend. (?????)
At this point I lost all interest in my spinach and egg souffle (tasty though it was) and I kept watching. After I had been studying the two women for about fifteen minutes, the next time I looked over, the "frozen" woman was bent down working on her food, smiling in response to the other woman, moving perfectly normally, and completely NOT staring at me like she had been before. NOW the two of them seemed to be forming the perfect, stereotypical picture of two women out shopping having a gabfest over coffee and a snack, interacting with each other.
So now Miss Frozen was COMPLETELY NORMAL! No rigidity in her body movements, no abnormalities with her facial expressions or facial movement as you see with many stroke victims, no apparent problems moving her arms and hands (she was busy buttering a bagel all of a sudden with both hands, the hands were suddenly a whirlwind of activity.)
I have to say this one was REALLY WEIRD. And I'm queen of weird, so that's something!
Any medical folks here know of any physical condition where there would be PERIODIC WHOLE BODY RIGIDITY, of the type where a person's arm and hand are frozen in the air holding a coffee cup, and the face is blank and a little frowning or contorted but not in a terrible or exaggerated way, and then suddenly the person springs back to life again?
And does it make sense for the other woman to have been cluelessly continuing her conversation without once noticing her friend's stillness? I could see if the other woman had an ongoing medical condition and her friend was used to it and regarded it as normal that she might just continuing chatting for as long as it would take for her friend to snap out of it....but wouldn't it make sense for her to gently take the mug of coffee out of her friend's hand while waiting for her friend to come around? Instead, the woman ignored her frozen friend and the fact that she was dangling this mug of coffee and had her arm up in the air for fifteen whole minutes.
I'm thinking about how I've behaved around stroke victims, trying to find that balance between not wanting to embarrass them or draw further attention to their infirmity, yet at the same time being hyperaware of how it might be difficult for them to perform certain tasks and I should be nearby to catch them when they fall or drop something or need help putting on a coat, etc. And that person holding a mug with presumably hot coffee in it frozen in mid-air while the person's body seizes up for fifteen minutes is NOT something I would ignore. I would gently grab the mug and set it aside so as to prevent the person from spilling it or hurting herself when she "unfroze."
You know?
Anyway, consider this an official update to the pod people thread. A potentially live "out in the wild" real, honest to goodness, glitch in the Matrix, honey I need to reboot the robot, type of encounter!
LipstickMystic aka Jennifer