Story time: I was in Brooklyn at that time and took a large dose of magic mushrooms with a friend one Sunday evening. We thought we heard strange noises outside around 1AM and went to investigate.
With the world around us oozing and flowing crazy psychedelic colors, we see what appears to be a military vehicle rolling up the block going about 5 miles an hour. We’re standing there confused when the silence is broken by a loudspeaker on the truck, “Stay inside. Close your windows. Stay inside close your windows”. We drop to the ground, terrified, trying to figure out if we’re hallucinating, as the echos of the command reverberate off the buildings around us.
When the truck rolls directly past us we see what’s 20 yards behind it: another army truck with floodlights glaring, flanked by a crew in full hazmat suits with hoses spraying a cloud of something in the air as they pass us walking slowly down the block.
Then just silence, and the sinister shadow of the sprayers backlit by floodlights disappearing around the corner onto fifth avenue heading north toward Park Slope.
There are no words that describe the psychedelic terror I felt in those moments. We legit thought the world was ending and/or there was an alien invasion, and the military was somehow involved like an X-Files storyline come to life.
A few hours later we calm down and are debating whether or not it really happened.
And in the morning we see the flyers all over the neighborhood: mosquito spraying Sunday night, “stay inside, close your windows” They forgot to include, “don’t take mushrooms”.