I saw something on the evening news that I can’t explain

Last night, shortly after 10 o’clock, I saw something on the local evening news that I can’t explain. <br><br>I was lying on my side on the couch, my boyfriend was occupying the one recliner in the room, and my dog was sleeping on the floor between us, curled up on her red velvet cushion. I was half watching the television, half focusing on my phone while scrolling through Reddit. It was a typical Monday night. <br><br>When this story came on, something about it caught my eye, so I watched more intently than I had been before. There was no cause for alarm, or even skepticism. It was just a peculiar story, and it’s stuck in my head, so I’m hoping that maybe someone here has some insight. <br><br>The story took place on an interstate connecting my state to the neighboring one. It’s a busy interstate, especially on weekends, as it connects a couple major cities. Although this incident didn’t happen on the weekend, it was still pretty busy because it was the middle of the day. <br><br>A tanker truck had wrecked, and spilled its cargo of milk across three lanes. It turned out that the driver had a history of reckless driving, and had blown a .14 on the breathalyzer. He will face charges related to a DUI, but that’s not the strange part. <br><br>The camera cut to footage of the crash. Cars were pulled over to the side of the road, and several onlookers had are out picking up full plastic jugs of milk, presumably from the back of the wrecked semi. I thought this was a little strange, but I assumed that they were the driver’s coworkers, or employees of the dairy company whose milk he was transporting. <br><br>Then, I noticed something a little odd. It was the way that these people were behaving, which seemed almost... zombie-like. I’ve seen videos of people picking up beer from the side of the road after a semi carrying beer crashed and spilled its load all down the highway. The people in those videos are grinning, laughing, or otherwise happy, and they scramble for the beer as quickly as they can. <br><br>The people in this video weren’t smiling, or laughing. They seemed as though they had no choice but to do what they were doing. They walked at a slow, steady pace, with blank stares on their faces. Nobody was talking to anyone else. It was as though they were all hypnotized, or under some kind of spell. <br><br>The next segment was a live action interview with the state highway patrolman who had responded to the calls. <br><br>“Were the people stealing milk under the influence of anything?” The reporter asked. <br><br>“I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary,” the patrolman replied, “they all seemed perfectly sober. But, something was definitely off about them. When I approached them, I was met with blank stares, and they didn’t say a word. They just kept picking up the milk, almost... mechanically, I suppose,” he said. <br><br>The reporter went on, “I’m sure our viewers have seen the footage of people picking up the milk jugs by now. What is your take on that?” <br><br>“Like I just said, they all just seemed... off. None of them would respond to me, or acknowledge my presence in any way. There was a woman... it was actually quite disturbing, to be honest,” he paused. <br><br>The reporter gave a sympathetic nod. “Go ahead,” she said. <br><br>“There was a woman, with two little girls, who couldn’t have been more than 6 years old. None of them were wearing seatbelts, and they were all picked up by the ambulance. They looked like porcelain dolls, they were covered in so much blood. The woman kept asking me if she could have a carton of milk for the girls, to give to them before they died. Of course, I told her no, but she just kept asking me, over and over again. It was as though she had no idea what she was asking me. It was... honestly, kind of creepy.”<br><br>The reporter nodded sympathetically, and quickly moved on to another topic of discussion, which was the charges the driver would be facing. <br><br>After the story ended, I looked over at my boyfriend. “Did you see that?” I asked him. <br><br>“Yes,” he said, “that’s crazy.”<br><br>I asked, “Can you think of any reason why people would act that way?”<br><br>“No,” he replied, “I can’t think of any reason why people would act like that.”<br><br>I went back to scrolling on my phone, and almost forgot about the whole thing shortly after that. Shortly after that, I fell asleep on the couch, and woke up when my boyfriend shook me and told me to go to bed. <br><br>I’m posting this here, because this incident happened in real life. It happened on a major interstate, connecting two large cities. People saw it, and reported it. The footage from the news is real. <br><br>I know that this isn’t a made-up ghost story, or a fictionalized account of some supernatural event. <br><br>So what I’m asking, is this: Has anyone ever heard of anything like this happening before?