Was she maybe pointing to an empty chair...or a chair everybody else *thought* empty?
‘Empty chair syndrome’.
I had a Air Force associate tell me this story from late 1980s. He was forced to be an instructor at a school requiring a security clearance to be a student. He had some 18-year old, who’d passed via basic training and was about six weeks into this technical training program.
The gal failed a test, and he was told to review her notes. Oddly, she had a lot of unique figures along the sides of the notes, and her writing made it difficult to read. He asked if she could read it herself, and she responded that ‘Wendy’ could read it.
Ok. They enter back into the class and everyone is sitting there, and he reviews the listing of names for people in the class. No ‘Wendy’.
He notices that there’s a chair empty by this gal he talked to, and walks to the back of the room and asks about ‘Wendy’. He’s told ‘Wendy’ sits in the empty chair.
He had spent a year working for a NY City mental clinic prior to the Air Force. He walks out and goes to the commander. Freaks the commander out, and they hustle her to some clinic on base. Air Force spent a month determining that she’d always had the empty chair ‘friend’. Discharged her and ensured that the parents knew about her issue.