I can think of a couple weird things that happened while I was driving. One happened not long after I got my license and first car. I was driving a friend home last one night, close to midnight, driving down a two-lane twisty-turny country road thru a wooded area, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. All of a sudden, my friend yells "Watch Out!", but I already saw the old woman stepping out into a road. I swerved around her, didn't hear any thump or anything, but didn't see her in my mirror. I was already on the brakes, so I stopped and backed up. We got out and looked all over for her. Nothing. We got back in the car and started to go, but as we rounded very the next curve we found a huge tree blocking the road. Had we been going normal speed, 50-55 MPH, there is no way we could have not hit it. Don't think we would have walked away from that one. We turned around and went back about three miles to a bar to call the state police. We took them out to the site, and they called for a crew to cut the tree up and move it. I saw a camper-trailer in the trees, so I walked over to ask about the old lady. They young couple said they inherited the land from his great-grandmother about a year prior, and there were no other occupied houses nearby.
Another story, not quite as weird. Thanksgiving Day, about 15 years ago, I was home visiting family (I'm the only one living out of my home state). We picked Mom up and was taking her to my sister's place for dinner. Mom's in the front seat, and my wife's in the back; they're talking away and I'm tuning them out. Driving on a country road I had driving a hundred times or more, so I knew it very well. It was a typical rain-drizzle / foggy day. I was going up a long hill in fourth gear with my hand on the shifter getting ready to throw it into fifth as I would be topping the hill into a sweeping left-hand slightly-downhill curve. For some reason, I thought to myself "Hate to round one of these curves and find an Amish buggy." Just as I starting pushing the clutch in, I saw it: an Amish buggy. I slammed the car into third gear and somehow managed to not hit it. And to this day, I know -- I know for a fact -- that if I wasn't thinking about Amish buggies, there is no way I would have been ready to react properly and avoid hitting the *blinking* thing.
About six months ago my folks went to visit friends in Cape Cod. Nothing new there, they do it every year. I come home from work and do the usual routine (fix dinner, check for messages....etc) at one point i realize i'm super low on Soda and decide to have an Snapple rather than going back down to the store (It's about 10;30pm) So I take the Snapple into my room. take a smal swig from it and then....nature calls. I leave the Snapple on my night table, grab my iPad and do my business. After i'm done I go back to my room and sit at my desk where I watch Lethal Weapon 4. Eventually, I get thirsty and step over to my nightstand. The bottle of Snapple is still there........ but it's empty!
My UFO story: A couple years ago, a friend and I were stopped at a very busy intersection, waiting for the light to turn green, when something very shiny and fast flew right over my car. We drove in circles around the neighborhood, hoping in vain to see it again. After I got home, I spent hours online looking for pics that looked like what I'd seen. I eventually concluded that it had to have been some kind of radio-controlled model plane, but it was a really big one -- at least several feet across -- and it was being flown in a really stupid place.
There's a few I can think of. -While working at a grocery store, a man once asked about the bottle machines. I said "cans, or...?" He replied "that's right, Cancer." He then started talking about Zodiac signs and said I was a Pisces (I am). He then went on some tangent about people needing The Bible because they want something to believe in. -This one's probably the creepiest. My brother got the game "Oblivion" on a less than legitimate disc (I've bought it since). We played it one day and noticed a bunch of glitchy white figures standing around the game area. Some of them had their arms extending out, which of course was reminiscent of a crucifix. Eventually one of them was upside down and I insisted we stop playing. I then realized it was Good Friday. -I've seen a few orb pictures. My aunt showed me one while at the Masonic Temple in DC, and I've also seen one taken while we were at an old Plantation on the Virgin Islands. -I once saw three orange lights in the sky. They were definitely not stars, and it made no sense for them to be airplanes. There was a communication tower in the area, but it wasn't in that spot and I only saw them once on a route I went on hundreds of times. I've seen similar incidents shown on videos online, and the comments are full of people who have seen them. All of these have could logical explanations (the last one being possible Chinese Lanterns), but there it is.
I think the human mind is capable of playing "tricks" on itself... even when there appears to be no tangible reason for it. Ever had the feeling of deja-vu? I used to get it fairly often, like once or twice a month. I'd become so attuned to it that I tried to prepare myself so that I could write down what was about to be said before it would be... but time and time again, I couldn't. What I eventually learned is that it's something to do with how the mind stores information. We have general regions for short term and long term memory. But it's not 100% delineated. Sometimes information gets stored in BOTH places at once. And that's why you get this feeling like it's old information at the exact moment you're experiencing it. But deja-vu tends to work in spurts and "in the moment." However, it can happen on events experienced earlier on, where the experience is "shifted" in time. Another challenge is that every time you recall a memory, the experience of the moment augments and colorizes that memory with how you feel, what you're thinking, etc. So in essence, you end up "rewriting" the memory in subtle ways... and over time it can end up changing in a notable way. One other problem is dreaming. You can have a dream about a past memory and then that dream can intermingle with the real memory and alter its nuances. Lastly, there is the power of denial. I've got an excellent memory that is usually very consistent. I've had it proven with old photographs. My sister has actually subconsciously altered her memory of our stepfather. She remembers events differently than I do. And I've actually proven to her that my memory is very accurate... but she refuses to accept some of the things I remember. That's the power of denial -- it can completely alter a person's ability to remember things properly. So it's unfortunate, but human memory can be a very unreliable record of past events. Memory shift/alteration can happen to anyone. Thankfully it's not the norm... because if it were, nobody would remember anything consistently and we'd find people debating endlessly about how events unfolded, with never reaching an agreed conclusion.
I don't really have any stories like this, just a long run of weird synchronicity in the early 2000s. One of my favourite subReddits is Glitch In The Matrix. These days a lot of stories are "oo, I had a bad dream or I misremember", but there are a lot of very strange one, making me sure there's several parallel realities out there. This is one of my favourites. So I guess a little context is in order. My girlfriend and I had been together about a year at the time, never had big problems, we are both pretty relaxed people. Never have had a big fight, never had trust issues, the whole shenanigan. So one day I was out in front of my apartment building smoking a cigarette, this was before we lived together. I had seen her the night before, had a nice dinner, gone out to a bar, then gone to my place, after which she took a taxi home. So as I'm standing out in front of my apartment building, she pulls up in a taxi. I wasn't expecting her, and was pleasantly surprised to see her. I put out my cigarette, smiled and walked up saying something like "Hey, what are you doing here?" (in a very friendly way). She scowls at me, and slaps me square across the jaw. Obviously I'm dumbfounded, and at a loss for words so I just kind of looked at her. She never said anything, just barged past me into the building. I followed her up to my apartment, asking her what was happening the whole way, she goes into my apartment, grabs her bag and some of her stuff she left there, throws a few things at me, breaking a glass or two and knocking down a bunch of stuff on a shelf. She calls me a pig, says she knows everything, and that I've broken her heart. I'm trying to figure out what's going on obviously, and she stops on her way out when I touch her sleeve, glares at me again and slaps me. She tells me something like "I hope I never see you again" and walks out. I followed her to the street and she got in her cab, and drove off. The street was pretty empty, this was maybe 8-9am, and i watch her drive off. At this point I'm just lost for words, scared and sad. Then, as I'm watching the cab drive away, someone hugs me around my waist from behind. I turn around, and its her, in running clothes (she was wearing heels and a leather jacket before), and I went completely pale. She said "hi" in her usual happy-go-lucky tone, then noticed my look and said "what's wrong". I spun around, no taxi. It had literally driven away 5 seconds earlier, no way it could've turned in that time, and all the lights were red. I didn't say anything to her, just ran upstairs. Her bag was gone, things were still broken, my door still wide open. So then I told her. We were both monumentally confused, there's no way I could have mixed her up with someone else, and she's an only child. We had security check the cameras, and sure enough, Me following a girl to my apartment. The angles weren't great, and the film wasn't great quality, but it was pretty easy to see me and my face, but hers was always hard to make out looked a hell of a lot like her, but never a clear shot. No way it was the same girl. Still creeps me the fuck out, and we don't talk about it. EDIT: Someone in the comments made me realize I should add to the follow up of this: we did file a police report, they came, gathered up all the broken stuff, and found only my fingerprints and my girlfriend's on them, same with my door, and this girl got into my building herself, which means she knew my door code. Her typing it in is on the footage. I just hope I never see her again. EDIT 2: Brought up in a conversation with /u/ZapActions-dower I had a conversation with a professor at columbia (family friend) about this situation "hypothetically", not wanting to sound the fool. He teaches something like philosophy and other things to do with superstition and explaining the unexplainable. One of his explanations was very close to this. Somehow, a "mirror" of our world, running a nearly identical timeline, folded over ours or collided with ours temporarily. Maybe she saw me at the bar the night before with another girl (my girlfriend), not seeing her face, and decided to break up with me the next morning,coming to my apartment. Then the amount of a disturbance that resulted in caused our two worlds to break apart right as she drove away. I'm not really one to believe in those things, but after this, I don't consider anything impossible. Also, that makes me wonder, if that's true, how much did that fuck up this mirror world? Things can't possibly be the same there now, she broke up with me. I don't know. its a lot to think on. EDIT 3: Thanks everyone for the theories and suggestions! This is the first time my girlfriend and I have gone into thinking about this in a while, and this is the first time we've been able to think about it without being really shaken and scared. It's sort of fun actually. Keep it coming! I'm trying to make sure I get back to everyone, unless you post something that's already been said so be sure to read! its been awesome so far! If i fall asleep i'll get back to you in the morning. Thanks again!
^ Very entertaining... but I absolutely don't believe the parallel universe "overlap" for a moment that allowed a person from "the other side" to cross over for a bit and then return. If indeed there are parallel universes and a cross-over occurred, I don't think it would be so "neat"... I think there would be loads of chaos going on and there would be a huge rash of similar reports from people experiencing things very peculiar, but then mysteriously going back to normal.
I'm sure a lot of these unusual or paranormal events have scientific explanations. When I was walking in the company garage this morning, I noticed someone had walked into a room. When I went in there, they were gone! Explanation: The room was an elevator lobby, so whoever entered in there would have gone up or down. Case closed.
Wonder what the other girl made of the whole thing when she eventually figured out there were now two bags — the one she took, and the one still in alt-boyfrend's apartment.
My weird experiences are noticing a street light going off while I'm driving. It's been happening for several years, though not at the frequency it used to. I'm not talking about the same street light on the same strip of road, I'm talking about street lights on various roads in various cities. One time I was driving by the nearby mall and the entire mall went dark. I've experienced this multiple times in cities and in other states. I've mentioned it to friends, but they say they never notice it, but according to them, they're too focused on the road. While riding with me, I've had two friends notice it right as it happened on two separate occasions. So at least they knew I wasn't nuts. Hell, it happened tonight on the way home, but the frequency of this has been diminished over the last year or so. At it's height, it was quite often, maybe a light or two going off every two or three nights somewhere on the road. I remember being weirded out the first time I noticed it driving through a small town on the way to my dads. Once two lights went out there, and I generally noticed it happening when I was just thinking about real life things. I wish I would've tracked the locations this happened when it was more frequent, just for laughs. I generally chalk it up to an ability to pay attention to more things in my peripheral vision while driving. And I generally wonder about the state of the "grid" for me to notice it in so many different places. The frequency with which I encountered it was such that if I were the type to believe in such things, I would've attributed some greater meaning to it. Like I'm really dead, or some Twilight Zone shit.
Well, Occam's razor and all that, but in that subreddit, there are more than you might admit. People driving through towns that don't exist. People walking through walls as you watch, but don't seem to be ghosts. Others assuming family member is home because they see them walk up the path to the house... only to see them come home 'again' an hour later. Stuff like that. And the minor ones: Dropped items disappear in mid-fall, and reappear days, weeks, years later. Too many doppelgangers. The list goes on. I'm pretty skeptical, and lately a lot of them have been, to me, bad dreams and literal coincidences. But it doesn't explain the ones that don't fit...
There have been multiple times where I've been walking on a street with someone and a street light suddenly starts to flicker, then goes back to normal after we've passed. A girlfriend was walking with me who said "OMG, what does that mean? Is that a good omen or a bad omen?" I decided it would be best to walk by it again. It flickered once more. But instead of continuing to walk, I said "Just wait a few moments right here." And in about 15 seconds later, the light went back on full. Waited for a full 30 seconds, then we started walking again. I kept an eye out... then suddenly saw the light starting to flicker again. Nobody walking underneath it. I don't know where you live, but until street lights were switched to LED lights, in places I've lived there would be one or two on any given street that would flicker--from momentary oscillation to all out super-dim for a minute or two before going full on again. I've seen this LED street light replacement program slowly progressing in my area (some streets have them all replaced, some not). I'll bet you anything once ALL streetlights are LED, you will never see this manifestation ever again.
You do have to take all of this with a "grain of salt." It's the Internet. People post all kinds of things. Absolute truth is very hard to find. The disinformation machine is out in full force. So many venues are becoming suspect. I don't know what is the psychological condition or reasoning that allows someone to participate in such foolery--being a propagator of false information. Some speculate that there's an entertainment factor, sitting back and watching a seed of false info blossoming into a massive multi-day, week, month propagation. I've periodically seen things that are very peculiar on the surface. My sister and mother have a penchant for finding "unusual coincidences" in things and getting all excited about some hand of fate at work. I've got a penchant for dispelling such nonsense. And you know what? In the face of facts, they still linger on their dream of it being some "benefit from above." It's infuriating, and alarming, to see people do this... and it's what I think explains so much of what's going on these days. The social media and networking that's possible allows such belief systems to blossom. I don't know how things will ever go back to normal.
Never thought about that. At the height of it even I was thinking "Okay, this is weird, what if it does mean something?" But then had to remind myself that I never encountered it walking, nor has any other mechanical device displayed this. Just while driving. Throw in the amount of streetlights I'm seeing and yeah, it's just not a thing. Yeah, memory is weird. About a year ago my dad, sister and I went to a family reunion with cousins we haven't seen since I was in my early teens, about forty years ago. So I see them at this family reunion for the first time since the early 80's and though they've been changed by time, and haven't thought about them in decades, I remembered them. It was strange. But as I was talking to the boy, he starts telling me that he remembers me picking him up and either carrying him, or throwing him in some manner and that he always loved it when I did that. I have zero memory of this. I tell him he was probably thinking of my older brother, but he insists that it was me. No memory. I tell him again and he again insists it was me. I was a small and skinny kid back then and wasn't given to picking kids up. My older brother was bigger and stronger than me, so most likely it was him. Later his sister and I are talking and she mentions that she always loved coming to our house when she was a kid and she says something like "I always remembered the steps in front of your house." I asked her "what do you mean?" She says something about two or three steps on our front porch. I tell her that we didn't have any steps on our front porch, and she insists that we did. I explain that our front porch was raised from ground level by about an inch, and that you weren't really stepping up in anyway that was noticeable. Again, she insists, so I call my sister over and she listens to our cousin and my sister looks at me then tells her that our house didn't have any steps in the front. Our cousin still insists and after several minutes finally relents a little. But it was strange how in both cases these two remembered things so differently. Well not just the internet, conspiracy talk shows too. There are about three guys at work who buy into various conspiracies to different degrees. One of the guys started telling me that the moon landing was faked, and when I tried to explain it wasn't, he started going into details about why it was, unfortunately I couldn't remember all the rebuttals to this, but know by experience that conspiracy people automatically discount any explanation to the contrary as part of the conspiracy. He also mentions that the Earth is flat (I couldn't tell if he was joking), so that's easier to counter, but he still doesn't believe it and starts rattling off talking points. Like I mention photo's from space, and he tells me they're all computer generated. I remind him that computer generated photo's have only been around for a couple of decades, but not when the Apollo guys were flying. He says they were doctored. So we go back and forth and I tell him you have to take this stuff with a grain of salt. I then start telling him about "Project Paperclip", a top secret program post WW2 that secreted high ranking German scientists out of Germany for the specific purpose of developing experimental technologies relating to invisibility screens, rocketry, and time travel. I name some of the scientists then explain how a couple were assassinated, how three disappeared, and by this point my co-worker is listening raptly. I explain how various technologies we have stem from this project and how the project was folded into another project related to UFO studies due to the acquisition alien technology at Roswell and how everything I just said was completely made up on the spot. He lurched out of his reverie and said "What?" I said I literally just made all of that up and explained that there was a real "Operation Paperclip" that got German scientists out in the later days or after WW2, but that everything else was made up on the spot. He's like "Wow, I was interested in seeing where all this was going" To which I replied "Exactly." I then pointed out how he believed or gave serious consideration to everything simply because I spoke in a confident, authoritative way, used a lot names that sounded real, while throwing in a lot of dates. I then told him to apply that to radio talk show like Art Bell's where they do this, while throwing in some music. Like too many people that go for this stuff, they also seem to miss that everyone of these people that go on about conspiracies are usually selling something....books, videos, etc. And that all the talking is just the sales pitch. He stopped and gave it some thought, but we got distracted by work and I've never followed up. Hopefully that gave him some pause to think more critically. Unusual coincidence 1: yesterday a buddy of mine who works at a mail place got an envelope with the name "Michael Jackson" on it. So he starts kidding around with another employee telling him "Michael Jackson is coming", and the other team member is like "Meh, not interested in this joke". The other guy keeps telling him that Michael Jackson is coming. So an hour or so later, a dead ringer for Michael Jackson shows up (dude was a Michael Jackson impersonator complete with "handler" for show) weird thing is....he wasn't there to pick up that envelope, they assumed it was his, but he was there to rent a computer. Awkward coincidence: My friend got a pic with the guy and then asked him about what he does and what gigs he was playing. He said the guy even sounded like Michael Jackson and that he even sang. So my friend asked him what his next gig was and he said he was going to talk to kids at a middle school! Awkward! Oh Michael, will you never learn?
@The Lensman - great stuff! That bit about the cousin remembering steps when there were none, and the other cousin insisting that YOU used to lift him up into the air, when it had to be your older brother... terrific examples of "memory by desire." Did you and your brother look alike for a period of time? Or... did that cousin have a closer relationship to you than your brother? I was thinking that while he got along with your older brother, he may have enjoyed your company more. So for him, he would have preferred it was you... and then in time the memory became that. Your other cousin sounds like she crossed wires with another memory. While I have an excellent memory, I have on rare occasion discovered that I remembered something a little "off" from what it really was. And I had to correct myself twice, because the initial memory was so strong. Your story about fooling your co-worker is an excellent example of the conspiracy theory pitfall personality. People who WANT to believe something and anytime they hear what they want to believe, they anchor onto it. My father is turning 85 years old next month. Overall he's very lucid for his age. You'd think he was in his early 70's. Well, he is retired and has a lot of time on his hands. He watches YouTube videos like an addict and has gotten roped into conspiracy theories. Chemtrails, 9/11, SandyHook, and so on... The insidious thing is that these deplorable people out there adept at creating videos produce these impressive and semi-professional displays of falsehoods. It's so incredibly horrible for society. "Why would they do it? They want to expose the truth!" That's how my father sees it. He doesn't understand the psychology. Not to mention the monetizing of YouTube whereby people will create ANYTHING that could become click-bait in order to make money. I have explained to my father how the false evidence is created. "But they have a retired general backing it up!" Yes... after people are in retirement, freed of their protocols and restrictions, they lapse into obscurity. Some of these people want to get their name out there. So they'll support some conspiracy theory if it gets them on video. Who knows, they might even be paid to do it. I used to like the HISTORY channel until it became a conspiracy theory peddling outlet. Some of the crap they produced, using Mitch Pileggi to narrate them (Agent Skinner from the X-Files) was astonishingly false. I had a couple of co-workers who believed that crap. So many gullible people out there. My Dad wasn't aware of these videos so I was sure not to tell him about them (asked if he watched anything from the History channel, being general). The real trouble is that when there really is a conspiracy... like the very likely one by the CIA that had JFK assassinated (Oswald couldn't have worked alone -- Warren Commission was a joke)... then things that aren't become fair game. Like 9/11 when WTC building 7 came down in seeming "free fall." From the surface, it sure looked like demolition. Trouble was, the tremendous fires that weakened the building weren't in obvious view. And, the construction of WTC 7 was very much like the towers (unusual exoskeleton design)... which repeated what happened to them. But people don't want to accept that -- they'd rather believe Larry Silverstein's coincidental insurance claim benefit had to be planned, and WTC7 was lined with explosives so that tons of information would be destroyed that could reveal 9/11 was an inside job (partial, if not all). Most legends are disinformation of a kind... and their intensity doesn't wane until generations have passed. But then can rear their ugly heads again. Like the Illuminati.
Mine will be atypical, as it involves a computer screen. Circa 2002, I'm playing The Sims, and had clicked the create a family button to make a new Sim. Back then, just before you started making a new character, it listed the families or people available to move in. This one time, I viewed the list, but something was off: every single family had this low-resolution face next to them. It was the head of a white guy with brown hair and sunglasses, with a weird facial expression....think of it as a bro face, of a drunk guy going "Duuuu-uuuuuude!". It freaked me out for some reason, and I canceled and went back in -- and it was gone. This was one of those up-all-night-because-i'm-young-and-its-summer kind of nights, so it may have been a hallucination, I don't know. I never saw it again, and I didn't stop playing The Sims on a daily basis until about 2005, when I moved on to The Sims 2. I don't know if that was a weird easter egg, a computer glitch, or a brain-glitch.
Off topic, I hardly ever play The Sims anymore, though I have TS4. Have you ever downloaded the "Wicked Woohoo" content? Fun stuff!
My interest in Sims 4 is practically nonexistent at this point -- I'm still slowly exploring all of The Sim 3's different aspects. I still prefer The Sims 2 -- I tend to go on Sims 3 binges once a month or so. I haven't modded TS3 at all, but my old copy of The Sims 2 had something called Autonomous Casual Romance, which allowed sims to pursue romance on their own. I turned it off after the novelty wore off.
My sister in law tells the story about shortly after the birth of my niece she woke up to check on her and saw a man standing between her and the crib. She rolled over to wake my brother, but when she looked back the man had vanished. Shortly thereafter they came over from Spokane to Seattle to visit and as we were going through some old family photos, I pulled one out and Suzanne starts pointing and exclaiming, That's him! That's the man I saw at the foot of our bed! It was a photo of a young man in his late twenties/early thirties, my mom's father, taken shortly after he married my grandmother. He'd been dead for close to ten years by that point and since my sister in law lived in Spokane and hadn't been to Seattle before the birth of my niece to visit the in-laws/grandparents/relatives she had no idea what my grandfather looked like; yet she had described the outfit he was wearing down to a T. We figure that my niece has a guardian angel watching over her.