Preclinical Polymodal Hallucinations for 13 Years before Dementia with Lewy Bodies

Table 2

Content of BG’s hallucinations.

N	Content
1	BG heard a feeble noise (“POOF”) of something falling on the bed (one of the souls) and then a noise/switch as if someone was crawling into bed (“WHOOSH”). After a while, she heard her husband’s whisper (“OOOOOH”).
2	As before but without her husband’s voice.
3	She heard the same feeble noise of something falling on the bed (“POOF”) and perceived a vibration at the foot of the bed (“such as children jumping at the foot of the bed”).
4	She perceived a loud vibration at the foot of the bed (“the bed went up and down…I felt like I was jumping…just like during an earthquake”).
5	She perceived a vibration at the foot of the bed and then she saw a little light on the fingertip of one of the souls, pointing out the way to the bathroom.
6	A kitchen seat cushion seemed to be swollen, and the patient felt (with her hand) something moving inside and knocking twice.
7	She felt, for a second time, something moving inside the kitchen seat cushion (which she brought with her in the bedroom) (“such as bones”), and then she heard a noise (“STUMP”) as if someone fell down from the chair, which had a short leg. After a while, she heard 6 or 7 smacks, such as her husband used to do.
8	She heard people whispering and then she perceived the same vibration at the foot of the mattress. In this case, the vibration was strong enough to make a loud noise such as a motor scooter.
9	She heard her husband’s voice saying turn off the fan (in a dialect form: “smursa smursa smursa”).
10	She saw a child in a plastic see-through bag getting out of bed, stopping, and then getting back into bed (“It was something about one meter high, baby-hands and baby-feet, a round little head, a pretty face, it looked at me, it was a child, no hair, it was in a see-through bag, hands and feet visible, privates not visible so I wasn’t able to single out the sex”).
11	She saw the child again and then heard her daughter’s voice saying “mammy.”
12	There were two people (“wandering souls”) talking about her. A man and a woman. The woman said to the man, “she wears a small chain with St. Rita and rosary beads”; he said, “now I go and see.” Then, they got into bed and he said, “Now she’s crying.”
13	She saw a red-haired woman who seemed not to be very tall, perhaps because she was in a see-through case, seated on a battered chair in the bathroom. The hallucination tried to get up from the chair to go and see what there was on the toilette but she slipped and fell down. Meanwhile, BG also saw a taller man, standing near the bathroom against the wall dressed in black. Later, she would describe him with a wide-brimmed hat—a large hat—that covered his eyes and his face. The man and the woman are the same who spoke in the previous episode.
14	The man and the woman were talking and commenting on her deeds. She went to the bedroom and got a pool card to play with. “Ecco, lee a lè prunta de andà a giügà” in a Milanese dialect (“It’s ready to play”). Then, the patient went back to the kitchen. The man said to the woman that the patient went to the kitchen and the woman said, “I want to see.”
15	She felt that the pillow in the armchair was firm and this fact was bizarre because she used it every day. Thus, she thought that it had something inside it, a soul. Then, the pillow seemed to her to have become soft as the soul left.
16	She saw some grooves throughout the bed (3 or 4) and the pillowcase was crinkled. Later, she spoke about the grooves throughout the bed and about the cover that was rolled up, as if the souls went through them. Those signs meant people went through them.
17	She felt a fist on her back coming out from the mattress while she was lying on her bed, such as a fist or a knee or an arm.
18	She heard the voice of an ancient man, 200–300 years old (a croaky voice), who was speaking, but she did not remember anything that he said. Then, the cover slipped off her shoulders and the man put the cover back on her.
19	She heard the voice of a young man from Emilia who said to her, while touching her shoulders, “what are you saying?”. The patient said, “Why? What did I say?” And he answered, “You spoke in your sleep.”
20	One night, the same young man said to her the number 13, but she had never played it and it was drawn three times on the wheel of Venice.
21	The patient had a photo of her husband on the night table, but the souls did not want her to have a photo of her husband. She heard the souls speaking and one of them, pointing to the photo, said in a Milanese dialect, “ah la tegn chi” (“she had it there”). So she took away the photo of her husband and put a photo of Our Lady of Fatima on the night table. Before the voices came, she felt the same vibration at the foot of the bed, which was a sign that souls were coming.
22	She heard the souls talking to each other but she did not understand what they were saying and then she heard a noise like a dead weight falling down. She thought that they had moved one of the souls from the bed and, indeed, the day after, it was no longer there.