At Exactly 2:30 PM, 207 People in Grand Central Station Froze in Place. For 5 Minutes, Nobody Knew What Was Going On

Grand Central Terminal in New York is one of the busiest places in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people rush through it every day, and almost nobody stops.

On a cold Saturday afternoon in January 2008, that changed.

A few hundred volunteers met in nearby Bryant Park and set their watches to the same time. They were members of Improv Everywhere, a New York group that stages harmless, joyful surprises in public places. Their founder, Charlie Todd, gave them one simple rule: be doing something ordinary, and when the clock hits 2:30, freeze.

Then they walked into the Main Concourse one by one and blended into the crowd.

At exactly 2:30 PM, 207 people stopped moving at the same moment.

A man froze while tying his shoe. A woman froze while taking a bite of her lunch. Another froze mid-sip of coffee. Some froze looking at maps or train times, and two friends froze while taking a photo. One man dropped a whole briefcase of papers on the floor just before he froze, and left them there. A couple froze in the middle of a kiss.

And then they stayed that way. For five full minutes.

Everyone else kept moving around them, and slowly they started to notice. Travelers stopped and stared. Strangers turned to each other to ask what was happening. Was it a protest? An acting class? People walked up close to the frozen figures, trying to see if they were real. One man, laughing, gently took a phone out of a frozen woman’s hand and then put it back.

A police officer at a recruitment booth watched the whole thing. When Todd asked her afterwards if she knew what it was, she said she had no idea, and that it was the craziest thing she had ever seen.

Then, at the same second, all 207 people simply started moving again, as if nothing had happened. They picked up their bags and walked off in every direction. The crowd broke into applause.

Improv Everywhere filmed it from the balcony and with a camera hidden in a luggage cart. The video became the group’s most-watched ever, with tens of millions of views, and Todd says people have recreated the idea in about 100 cities around the world.

Watch it above. Try to spot everyone who is frozen.