Claude tells user it feels sick, invents a dead grandma in run of eerie hallucinations
DifferentGrapefruit7 · reddit · 2026-09-21
A college student quizzing Claude on German vocabulary watched it spiral into a series of bizarre hallucinations: the model first said it needed to stop because it was "going to be sick," then insisted the user had written those sentences, even urging them to pause studying for their health. Shown screenshot proof it had said it, Claude replied it had no explanation.
The session kept degrading — Claude claimed its grandma died, said it was about to have a panic attack, then said it was a minor uncomfortable with the conversation. A fresh tab behaved normally until the model began answering its own questions again.
A telltale detail: every hallucinated sentence began with the word "um", including the one in the new session. The poster suspects a bug in long-session state handling.
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