My cursor goes weird and my Mac freezes

2 things. It is possible there is a kernel extension installed that is interfering, so you might try either booting into Safe mode, or disabling any 3rd Party kernel extensions (http://EtreCheck.com can help showing what 3rd party kernel extensions are installed on your system)

Or if you have a 15" Macbook Pro, it is possible the discrete graphic GPU chip is failing. This is a very common Macbook Pro problem in a few generations of 15" Macbook Pro. If that is the case, then you could force the 15" Macbook Pro to use the integrated intel GPU with gfxCardStatus. I have a Late 2011 15" Macbook Pro with this problem. While I've re-tasked this Mac to file server duty, gfxCardStatus has allowed me to keep this Mac in service and not freeze and/or panic by forcing it to only use the integrated intel GPU.

gfxCardStatus is a free menu bar application that keeps track of which graphics card your MacBook Pro is using at any given time.

<https://gfx.io/>

You can force a Macbook Pro to use the Integrated intel graphic via gfxCardStatus

.

The above does not work on Sierra and beyond, HOWEVER, this version works on High Sierra:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/32581726#32581726

https://github.com/steveschow/gfxCardStatus/releases/download/v2.4.4i/gfxCardStatus.app.zip

You say you've had this problem on your MacBook Pro - does that mean you've seen this cursor before?

Some of the older 15" Macbook Pro models with discrete GPU chips have had the GPU chips fail causing graphic glitches on the screen, the Mac either freeze or panic.

My Late 2011 15" Macbook Pro would have the screen get all pixelated and generally messed up, and then my Mac would panic.

My screen never looked like what you posted, but having a GPU failure is very common for older Macs, which is why I was leaning towards this as a possible cause.