Lily Palmer was not quite 4 when she experienced what her doctors would later call an "acute onset of sensory hallucinations." This photo, taken by Lily’s mother Annette on Halloween night, 1952, purportedly captures the arrival of her disorder. Lily and her Filipino nanny were setting out for a round of trick-or-treating when the child suddenly screamed and began to claw at her eyes.

It was some time before she was calm enough to speak, but when asked what she saw, Lily repeatedly spoke about “things crawling in her eyes.” Several days later, while unsupervised in her bedroom, Lily punctured both of her eyes with one of her mother’s knitting needles.

After receiving medical treatment, she was evaluated and committed. She remained institutionalized for the rest of her life, first at Bellevue (on the East Side of Manhattan), and later at the Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, where she remained until she died of a heart attack in March 2001. A call to one of her former caregivers at Rockland confirmed that Lily’s episodes were most traumatic on and around Halloween night, but for the majority of her life, she could be heard begging and pleading with the staff to help her "get these things out of her eyes."