Sci-fi has taught us that there is likely more to life than meets the eye. Even though we live in this reality, it is not unfathomable that our perception of it overlaps with other layers of reality. It’s a complicated thing to think about.
Hear from these Redditors' experiences, as they share the moments where they experienced abnormal, unexplainable, and mythical things in their own lives. Fair warning though, some of these may spook you.
1. Woman Of My Dreams
When I was around 20, a few years ago, I kept having dreams about a woman with long black hair named Aroura (pronounced A-roar-uh).
They were different dreams but for some reason, her distinct face and name always ended up in them. It got to the point where I would wake up frustrated and confused, trying to google her name or find out how I was connected to her.
After a few months, she stopped showing up and I dismissed it, thinking my brain was just being a "scumbag." Fast forward a few years later, Halloween 2009, I'm in the car with a friend stopped at a gas station.
I'm about to pull out and merge onto a highway when I get a phone call from a random number, so I stop the car but no one answers. There was a person behind me who grew impatient, honked at me, and then swerved in front of me instead of waiting for 2 seconds for me to move.
The second they got on the highway, some silver Civic lost control of their wheel and crashed into the car that swerved in front of me. I called the cops and waited at the gas station for them to come.
Turns out the drivers of both cars died. It 100% would have been me if I hadn't gotten that phone call. Called it back a few hours later out of gratitude and curiosity, rang 3 times, and went to voicemail.
"Hi, you've reached Aurora, please leave your name and number." Never had goosebumps like that in my life. Called it again the next day, because I was that confused about the whole situation.
Some woman answers, and we get to talking, I tell her my entire story including the dreams I had. She tells me she doesn't know how I got her number and that she never called me as far as she remembers.
Weird. I ask her if she has a Facebook to confirm if she is in fact the woman in my dreams. Check her facebook, holy crap, it's her. If that's not a glitch in the matrix then I'm just crazy.
Sarax11
2. Extended Conversations
This happened about 15 years ago. I called my friend up and he wasn't home so I left a message on his answering machine. I said, "Hey, it's me KILLALLEXTREMISTS. Sorry, I missed you, I’ll call you later. Bye."
I then hung up and left the house. I made no other calls. Later that day he called back and said, "Wow, that was quite a message you left. Who was that girl you were talking to?"
I was like, "What are you talking about? I wasn't talking to any girl!" Well, as it turns out the message didn't end after I said "Bye".
I had to go over to his house and listen to this message a few times. After my initial message that I did leave (as quoted above), there was a slight pause and it continued on for another 30-40 seconds or so with me talking to some girl.
It was my voice, but a conversation I never had with a girl whose voice I didn't recognize. You could compare it to the message I know I did leave and the two voices were indistinguishable.
Not just the voice but, you know, talking mannerisms. It was my voice. Also, references to my occupation and activities were the same.
Basically, in this conversation, I was talking to this girl about going skiing but I had to go down to my shop and work on a car first, which totally correlated to me.
Then the message just stopped. It was recorded on one of those digital answering machines that recorded the message to a chip so there was no tape I could have taken and gotten analyzed, unfortunately.
Also, neither I nor my friend had party lines so that's not an explanation. It was very freaky, I can't explain it, even to this very day.
KILLALLEXTREMISTS
3. Houdini Act
Driving home on a storm day, I see that a sideroad up to the local golf course is blocked off by flashing barricades. I also spy a Mercedes parked past the barricades with its hazards on.
I stop and walk up to the car to see if they need help (I'm an EMT), I shine my light in the back seat to see a man slumped over apparently asleep.
Thinking I've got a few drunks, I move up to the driver's window, tap on the glass, and shine my light in, the driver is sitting bolt upright, unmoving staring straight ahead.
My window tapping or light doesn't cause him to blink, flinch, or move. I look over and the passenger is slumped forward onto the dash.
This begins to creep me out, I call down to the Sheriff's station and request a Code-2 (no lights/sirens) unit up to my location to help me check them out (doors are locked).
While on the phone I walk back to my truck to get my go-bag, as I'm on the phone with dispatch, she asks me to get a license number for the car just as a PG&E (power company) cherry-picker truck comes rumbling down from up the closed road.
I move to go around the truck to get the plate number, and the car is gone. I talked to the driver of the truck and he said there was a 80-foot tree down across the road, and that he didn't think it'd be open for a day or so.
So the question is... the hell did the car go? Tree up one way barricades down the other. It's kept me a bit unsettled when stopping at accidents/hazards since then.
markofshame
4. Deja Vu At School
This happened to me in third grade, and it scared me so much I started crying and had to go to the office to talk to the principal about it.
I was in the hallway for misbehaving, and my neighbor Tad (a year younger than me) came walking out of a class to my right, passed in front of me, and headed down some stairs.
We said "hi" to each other. About 20 seconds later, he walked out of the same class, passed in front of me, and headed down the stairs.
I just stared at him, confused and afraid, and he looked back like, "Why the heck are you looking at me like that". I never realized how much it was like Matrix deja vu.
klsi832
5. Haunted by a creepy old man
At 12 years of age, my mom let me stay in the truck as she went grocery shopping. As I wait I see an old Guy walking towards the truck with an indescribable look at me as if I know too much.
He stops 5 feet from the truck looks at me for a couple of seconds and heads back the exact way he came. It was rather traumatic for some reason and very confusing at that age.
5-6 years later my dad was showing me home videos of us at Yellowstone. At Old Faithful, I noticed the same Guy. He had the same look and same clothes peering at us on camera and at me through the TV. I'm freaked out just telling you this.
Parrot-Tamer
6. Time Lapse
Oh man, I have one of these that INVOLVES the Matrix. I got my wisdom teeth out in 2000 right around the time that the original Matrix came out on VHS.
I was bombed completely out of my mind on Percocet after coming back from the surgery (I had awful wisdom teeth), and my mom basically just dropped me in bed and went and rented the movie for me because I'd never seen it in theaters.
I remember being irritated that the sun through the window was making the TV glare but being too out of it to get up. A little bit after the black cat glitch in the matrix scene, I passed out and apparently slept for about eight hours.
The tape in the VHS machine kept rewinding itself and playing over and over again. I woke up and the movie was at roughly the same spot as when I passed out, but it was completely dark outside. Zero time lapse for me.
Completely lost my mind. Started freaking out and screaming because I thought I'd discovered the secret and somebody turned off the sun. I remember crying and trying to explain to my panicked family, who have never let me live it down.
Coolhandlucas
7. Shared Memory
I think the strangest glitch I've found was back when I was in high school. I was talking to a friend on the phone, describing a dream I had.
The dream was about an ice skating rink, and then he started to describe the rest of the dream to me from the opposite point of view. It was a while ago so I don't remember everything, but we both described the scenery, what the people were doing, etc... It freaked me out when it happened.
EmotiveBubble
8. Can’t ever get rid of me
My dad had this little toy monkey that he used to call his "favorite child" and tease me and my siblings with it. Not in a bad way, but it was really frustrating to us and we spent hours trying to steal it from him.
Well anyway, one day we finally got it and threw it into the garbage after drawing on it and mangling it for a bit. My dad laughed and searched for it a bit but basically figured we had thrown it out and gave up after a week or so.
Anyway, a few years later (when I was about 17), I was walking down the street in Toronto (I don't live in TO, and was just visiting friends) and saw this little orange object on the side of the road.
When I walk over to it, I pick it up and see that it was the EXACT SAME FREAKING MONKEY. It even had the black Sharpie lines on it from when we drew all over it.
I honestly cannot even come up with the chances of that happening, especially considering our garbage is sent to a local dump and is nowhere near Toronto.
Matics
9. Road Hypnosis
I'm late to the party, but this has freaked me out forever. I was a satellite installer and I was driving between two small towns in North Carolina, Statesville, and Taylorsville.
It's about a 20-minute drive of a perfectly straight 2 lane road with pretty much nothing but trees on either side. It's the middle of the day and I'm driving along listening to Howard Stern on Sirius when all of a sudden I go from wide awake to falling asleep.
Meaning, one second I'm normal, and a second later my head is drooping down and my eyes closing and what snaps me out of it is my car bouncing like I just hit a speed bump, but I'm still in the middle of the road.
Howard Stern is still in the same sentence but my GPS signal says it is lost, and then I hear "Recalculating" and when it comes back I realize I am about 12 miles further down the road than I was, and I had missed my turn by 5 miles.
My immediate thought, even though I consider myself a level-headed atheist was that I fell asleep, hit a tree and died, and was now in some weird afterlife.
It was such a strong feeling that I drove to the nearest gas station, got out headed inside with a sweaty palm feeling that the cashier inside was not going to be able to see me. To my relief she did, and I bought a Red Bull.
I still think I was hypnotized by the road and drove on some weird autopilot for a while, but losing the GPS signal, and not missing any of Howard Stern is explainable to me, I even used the Sirius ability to rewind and there was none of the show that I missed.
TheThirdWheel
10. Voices in the basement
I used to work in a building that had three levels of sub-basements, with the piece of lab equipment I typically worked on in the lowest basement. I had the only key. There was a wired phone in there, and I did work late some nights... but not this night.
I was sleeping alone in my apartment when I woke up to a call on my cell phone from my girlfriend at 3 AM, she was in hysterics and asking why I scared her.
Apparently, she received a call from that basement phone just a minute earlier, with someone who sounded like me slowly repeating her name, until crackling and fading out.
My apartment was 10 miles away from work. I thought she was lying, but I saw the 3 AM call from the basement phone logged on her cell myself. Still freaks me the heck out.
[deleted]
11. Acorn Day
My friend used to put up a recurring away message, back in the day when everybody had AIM. She was a Beatles super-fan and put up a sentiment from John and Yoko: "Acorns for Peace".
Well, one day I was walking around my college campus thinking about it, but failing to remember the full quote. In my mind, I kept thinking, "Something for peace... something for peace... what the heck is that away message?!"
Right then, some chick on a cell phone walks by me and screams out "ACORNS!!!" I realize this is not a super freaky story, but it made my day at the time.
It's not every day someone screams out "ACORNS" in your vicinity at the exact right time. It was a funny little occurrence.
Hotdogcolors
12. Same person, just a different door
I have two stories that are just as weird as heck. Both of them are things I just would not believe if someone else told them to me, but I can swear with every fiber of my being that they happened as I write them here.
The first happened a couple of years ago. I can't remember the occasion, but my mother and I had gone to A&W for lunch, and we were both sitting there eating our meals.
We happened to be seated pretty close to the washroom doors, so I noticed everyone going in and out. The first person to come out is this old man who's kind of hobbling along.
He walked past and I looked at him and went on with my meal. Not 30 seconds later, another man comes out of the bathroom, and at this point I get a little freaked out because I realize it's the exact same person. Same limp, clothing, face, everything.
A couple of minutes later, the same thing happens except it's an old woman this time. She comes out, then 30 seconds later comes right out of the bathroom again.
My mom took a look at me and said "You look like you've seen a ghost." I just kind of stammered a bit then wrote it off as me being crazy.
The next story is more weird, in my opinion, and is the single strangest occurrence of my life. This happened when I was about 9 years old, but I can still remember it... vividly.
We were visiting family in Nevada with my dad, and they lived out in a very dry area in a fairly good-sized trailer. A couple of days in, I was playing outside with my cousin, pretty much just messing around in the dirt.
At some point, I look up. Right next to the house is a... field I guess? Surrounded by a wire fence, probably originally for livestock. But anyway, there's this guy standing there.
This is a good 300 or more feet away, so I cannot see him clearly at all. Queue the weird. As soon as I look at this guy, I have what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience.
My body pretty much just went into lockdown, and I was no longer seeing through my eyes. And I wasn't just floating there or anything... I was in that man's body.
Through his eyes, I could see two little shapes playing across the field, but I could just FEEL that he saw the shapes as animals. And then I realized he was holding a freaking shotgun.
After that, I regained my body and blurted out "We have to go indoors," offering no explanation to my cousin, who thought I was nuts.
I didn't tell anyone because I just didn't know how to express it to other people back then. I've only since told my brothers but I don't think they believed me.
Still freaks me out when I think about it today because it's the only time I've ever lost control of my body. It was almost like a dream but the whole thing felt like it was happening in slow motion.
Valokai
13. Closure in a street
I used to work in music and toured with this band. The guitarist (Josh) of the band's best friend (Matt) had died a couple of years back.
He always talked about the kid and he seemed like a great guy. Josh always had this recurring dream where Matt was standing on this abandoned street which, supposedly, was metaphorical for purgatory.
Josh had all these conversations with Matt in these dreams and because he had overdosed unexpectedly, he felt like his spirit was not able to move on.
At the end of the dreams, Matt would take a bulb from the street light on the street they were standing in the middle of. Josh described these dreams in extreme detail and I could pretty much picture what the street looked like.
Fast forward to about 6 months into touring with these guys. They were huge Bright Eyes fans and wanted to stop in Cassadaga, Florida (Bright Eyes' singer wrote an album there and it's a really creepy, spiritual medium place.)
It might be worth noting that 6/7 of the people I was with are all atheists. So we drive into Cassadaga around 2 or 3 am and drive around. Suddenly, this big black dog comes in the middle of the road and just stops and looks at us.
The guys in this band were weird as heck and were saying things like "Follow the dog! It's trying to show us something!" And in my mind, I'm just thinking they are all idiots.
We followed this dog for a few blocks, as it was walking pretty slowly. All of a sudden, we turn a street, and the dog bolts. We try to speed up but Josh says "Stop the freaking van. This is it."
We are all confused and he gets out of the van and looks around. "This is it. This is the street in my dreams." We hung out for about 15 minutes and from the way he described the street, from having houses on the left to a park on the right, it was definitely the street.
As we get in the van, a street light goes off and we just drive off. He claims he never had any more dreams about it, as that was closure on everything
americanslang59
14. Doppelganger
My dad used to get up Around 3 AM every morning for work. Starting at a very early age I would wake up on my own and wander downstairs to see him before he left.
One morning when I was about 4 years old, I made it to the bottom of the stairs and noticed that the front door was ajar. I opened it up and saw my father in his favorite workshirt making his way down the driveway to his truck in his typical workout (plaid shirt and dickies).
I swung the door open wide and yelled for him to come back for a hug before he left. He slowly turned around and just STARED at me and started walking back towards the house.
He was looking so strangely at me that it started to scare me and I began crying and asking what was wrong. Just as he had almost reached me a pair of arms encircled me from behind in a bear hug.
I turned my head to see my understandably freaked-out father staring at his doppelganger (in the SAME outfit). The double took one look at my dad and ran down the driveway, meanwhile, my dad yanked me into the house and locked the door.
Wierdest morning EVER. Never did quite figure that one out. I would not trust my 4-year-old memory of the event if it wasn't also witnessed by my father.
He won't really talk about it these days but my mom has since told me that he called out of work and she spent the day reassuring him he wasn't a nutcase.
Desk_jockey26
15. Gravity Malfunction
I was in class one day, sitting in a group of three people including myself. We were talking and my friend dropped his pen on the desk.
I saw it stall in mid-air for a second then drop on his desk.
My friend asked, "Did anyone else see that? Please tell me you did"
All my friends saw it, and it was just the weirdest thing I've ever seen. To this day I have no explanation for it. The matrix simply glitched.
Deathmoon68
16. Phasing Monkey
I had a monkey on my key chain back in high school. This chain was three links long. One day I was walking out to my car and I heard something hit the ground.
I looked down to discover the monkey with links one and two of the chain still attached to the ground and link three still attached to my belt.
All of the links were still fused together, my only guess is the chain phased itself apart. It was quite a weird experience for me.
Jared_Jff
17. Infinity Loop
Holy crap, I remember something crazy happening to me in elementary school. We would all hang up our bookbags on hooks on the wall every morning.
At the end of the day, we would go get them and pack our things to leave. Well, one day I went to get mine. Somehow, a small loop in my bookbag had gone into another small loop on the bookbag beside mine (think of a chain. It was like that)
There was literally no possible way this could have happened. They were both close-looped pieces of fabric. Me and the other bookbag owner just stood there for five minutes trying to figure out how it could have happened.
There was no possible way. I ended up just cutting my loop to separate them. I still think about it every once in a while.
Blightning65
18. Skateboard and Car Accident
I was a sophomore in HS at my GF's house watching a movie. It was around 10 pm when the flick ended. I proceeded to skateboard home (I only lived about 2 blocks away and it was a pretty quiet suburban neighborhood.)
I'm skating down the hill towards a larger street (larger but never really busy, especially not at night) when I reach the intersection I nail a rock. (I had planned on blasting across the street since no cars were coming in either direction)
I fly off the board and skid a good 3 or 4 feet on my head, right shoulder, hip, and knee. I rolled to my back and screamed out in agony. The pain was so bad I couldn't really move.
I look up the road and about 30 yards off is a car coming down the way... and where I landed... I was right in its path. Two-lane street.
I was right in the middle of his lane. My head was aligned with the wheel. I tried like hell to move. I screamed. I yelled. I couldn't do ANYTHING!
The car was about 15 yards off. He doesn't see me. Makes no attempt to swerve. 10 yards. I hear him barreling down. I close my eyes. Brace.
Nothing. Open eyes. Look where the car had been. Nothing. I then heard the car behind me. Look where it was supposed to be in the other direction. Tail lights cruising up the road. I hadn't moved. He didn't swerve.
It was like he passed through me... or I passed through him. There isn't really any way he could have passed over me, not with the way I had landed and was positioned in the street. It was a little car.
I can't explain it. I got up, terrified, bloody, and baffled. Hobbled home and went to sleep. No one believed me. But it's freaking true.
Iaminfamy
19. Lock Pick
In middle school, the entire 8th grade class had to do this thing called a "cultural fair" where we research our lineage/cultural roots and present it after school at night for all families to see.
Me and a buddy are cruising the empty halls out of boredom before the whole thing starts and for some stupid reason, I bet him 10 bucks I can open any locker, and he gets to choose which one.
He takes my bet and picks a random locker. He jiggles the handle and spins the dial on this a few times to make sure it's locked. I remember it was locker #424.
So I look at him, go "Psssshhh! Watch this..." I spin it, 6 right, 24 left, 34 right. I remember thinking, these numbers sound right in my head. The latch lifts up and it swings open.
Counter-strike
20. Know it all
Back in high school history was always my thing, and I was doing well in the class. The teacher decided to split people into teams for a group quiz, but he would pick the hardest questions he could think of.
My group ended up winning with all the answers correct, mostly because of me (to be honest and immodest). So someone on the other team goes, "Jesus Christ, danger_mcboom, did you memorize the frickin book?"
He then opens the textbook to a random page, and asks, "What is the little factoid on the side of the page on page 492?"
I had no idea, but right before the quiz, I had my book open on a random page and read a little factoid thing on the side which was about the genocide in Rwanda, appropriately titled, "Genocide in Rwanda."
It was the only thing I could think of, so I replied, very calmly, "Genocide in Rwanda." His mouth dropped open, he slammed his book closed, and said very matter-of-factly, "Screw you."
I have no idea what the chances would be of him opening to the exact random page my book had been opened to and asking about that one little paragraph I just happened to read. It remains my favorite memory to this day.
Danger_mcboom
21. Fire from above
Two years ago I had a dream that a meteor ripped through most of my house and my neighbor's house. It reminded me of something out of a war movie when a bomb goes off and my roommate and I are disoriented and semi-deaf as we walk around the fire and rubble screaming and looking for roommates and neighbors.
It felt very real and painful and it was all very horrific, I woke up really shaken and told my roommate about it in the morning.
About three hours later my whole house started rumbling and we heard the sound of a turbine engine powering down directly over my house followed by two huge explosions.
We run outside and there is billowing black smoke. We run around the block to the houses on the other side and see two houses completely ripped through by a fighter jet.
The houses were completely destroyed and what was still standing was on fire, we tried walking around and yelling to see if anyone was in the houses.
It was then that my roommate reminded me of my dream. I like to say coincidence because I don't believe that, but I still can't explain it.
Squirly
22. Where did it go?
I was driving home from my girlfriend's one night, going home the back way. Where I live is very flat, so the road I was on was dead straight with no bumps small hills, or any places the road got higher or lower or anything like that.
So I'm just driving straight, got my high beams on because there's no one around, and I can see everything in front of me. There are no houses on either side, no driveways, just fields.
Nothing behind me either. Out of nowhere, a car appears about twenty feet in front of me, driving in the opposite direction on the other side of the road.
I was going pretty fast so I passed them quickly, and when I looked in my rearview, there was nothing there.
Freaked me out so bad I had to pull over and gather my thoughts before I could keep going. Still freaks me out to remember it.
[deleted]
23. Trenchcoat Jimmy
My family owns a house on Cape Cod. The previous owner was a troubled man with an autistic son named Jimmy. Jimmy was known for putting on a trench coat and fedora, climbing trees, and shooting cats and dogs with a BB gun.
When my parents moved into the house, they found a bunch of toxic paraphernalia in a bedroom. They put it in the shed, told the former owner they had a week to get rid of it, and then threw it out.
Of course, at the age of seven, I didn't know any of this. That's when I was "visited" five nights in a row by a figure in a trench coat and fedora.
He didn't have any detail; he looked like a silhouette like he was being powerfully backlit but with no light source. He would stand in the corner of the room, sit there crouched, or sit on the bed opposite mine (my brother's bed, but he was at summer camp at the time).
One time, he sat in a rocking chair, and when I looked later, he was gone but the chair was still rocking.
After a few nights of this, I told my parents about it. My mom called it a nightmare, but my dad was intrigued. He told me to tell the figure, "Jimmy, I don't have your stuff."
So the next night, when the figure appeared again in the corner of the room, I said, "Jimmy, I don't have your stuff." And Jimmy walked right over to me, put his face an inch away from mine, and then disappeared. I never saw him again.
Years later, I found out about the history of the house. I've often wondered if I had heard it before, and somehow suppressed it and then imagined my encounters with Jimmy. But he was and remains entirely vivid to me.
samreich
24. Dream Cheater
Not sure if this relates, but... about two years into my relationship with my GF (we'll call her Susan), I had a dream about my ex. The dream itself was quite odd.
I was in my room (at my mother's house, where I lived at the time) being intimate with my ex. I knew I was cheating on Susan, but didn't care.
So in the middle of it, I look over to the window (which you can see the back porch from) and Susan is there, watching us, crying and mortified. I then woke up.
I thought it was a weird dream, but dismissed it. A few days go by and Susan and I are hanging out in my room. She brings up this weird dream she had a few days prior and describes my exact dream except from her POV looking through the window.
Freaked me the heck out, didn't say anything about it at the time. I still haven't said anything (five or six years later). It still weirds me out.
[deleted]
25. Three People In a Two People Room
I was working in a decades-old nursing home out in the middle of the woods in PA as a nurse aide on the night shift. My wife won't come visit me at work because she insists it, "looks like a Rob Zombie video".
A resident pulls the mechanical call bell in the bathroom for assistance. I flip it off and help her back to bed. As I'm exiting the only way in or out, the call bell goes on again.
I look back and it's not the electronic one in her bedroom, (which blinks slowly). It's the mechanically-operated one you have to physically pull in the bathroom, (which blinks twice as fast).
The lady is close to 400 lbs. & non-ambulatory; there is no physical way she could've pulled that bell, I sure as hell did not, and there was no one else around.
Direbowels
26. Camera From Beyond The Grave
My father died in 2008. A night before visiting his house for the last time, he appeared in my dream, where he handed me a black camera in a plastic bag, and specifically said "Take this camera, as I won't be needing it anymore", and I took it from him.
First thing in the morning, I visit his house, where most of the stuff has already been moved by my uncle, and open one of his wardrobes, find a sealed cardboard box deep inside, rip it open with a knife, and take out his retro black camera.
Apparently, my uncle missed that one and took off all his other electronics but the camera. All I can say is that this experience was a proper communication and it significantly eased my pain, knowing that something remains after a loved one passes.
Snammcom
27. Bandroom Mysteries
Of course, I'll preface this with the usual "I'm not a superstitious or generally spiritual person" but...In high school, I was in the drumline, and we usually practiced early in the morning prior to school starting.
We were inside the band room that day because it was fairly cold. So anyway, I'm doing my thing, playing the tenors (toms for the layman) and I drop one of my mallets.
I turn to pick it up and I can't find it... There are about ten feet of open bare floor surrounding me and nowhere to be found. My instructor stops us and basically just asks me what the problem is.
So several of us start searching around, can't find it. I say screw it and grab a spare set. About twenty minutes later, the band director walks in, unlocks his office, sits at his desk, and knocks on the window.
I look up and he picks up the mallet off his desk with a look like, "What is this doing in here?" I could verify that it was mine because I marked each set.
Nobody had gone in or out, no gap under the door, and the locked room, ended up on the desk. There were 15 of us in the room at that time and there was a unanimous "NOPE!!!!!!" moment. I was stunned and one of my buddies came unglued.
We pretty much canceled the rest of rehearsal right there and many of us were pretty bugged about that for the rest of the day.
I couldn't concentrate on anything for almost a week after that. Eventually, my brain just filed it away under "unsolved mysteries" and I went on with life.
Nddl04
28. Long time buddies
When I was looking at colleges I was walking down a stairwell to see a building when I passed a girl about my age. We both met gazes, passed, and then at the same time stopped turned back around, and looked again.
For a moment we just stared at each other. It was like I had just run into someone I had known my whole life but had never seen before. At the same time, we asked 'Do I know you?'
Confused, we spent a few moments trying to figure it out. We swapped names and shared where we were from, and where we had traveled but there was no match-up at all. Nothing.
She apparently felt the same way, like she'd known me all her life. We didn't know anything about one another but there was this unexplainable, undeniable connection.
Her parents, who hadn't realized she had stopped and had continued walking came back and hurried her off before I could get her phone or email. Julia, if you're out there ... message me.
Zombatart
29. Doubling the stakes
Ever since I was a kid, I have had what I call "doubling" occasionally happen around me. I put something in a pocket, then later find it in another pocket, as well as the original in the pocket I had put it in.
And yes it has happened to money before (score!). The most standout example was when I was a teen at camp. All the leaders had engraved plastic nametags, and we were only issued one.
I used to keep moving mine between my hat and my shirt. At the end of camp, I just crammed all my stuff in a duffel and headed home.
Later when I unpack the first thing I do is pull out my hat with the tag on it. "OK, so that's where I had it last." And of course, a minute later I pull out a shirt with the same nametag pinned to it.
I also experienced a similar phenomenon when I was a kid. For a few years, it happened on a daily basis, but haven't seen it in a long time - someone would place something in their pocket/backpack, etc, but when they went to grab it later it would be missing.
I would then reach into my pocket/backpack/whatever and pull the item out. I initially got accused of being a thief, but when it happened repeatedly when I hadn't even been within 20 feet of the victim my friends and classmates stopped doing so and just kind of accepted that that would happen around me.
Nymaz
30. Disappearing Cigarettes
I was walking up a hill in Portland Oregon and found a pack of American Spirits on the ground. It was almost a full pack, missing only two cigarettes.
A week later in San Francisco California, I bought a pack of American Spirits, and after smoking two I put the pack in the inside pocket of my jacket.
The next time I went to smoke the pack, it was entirely gone. I checked in all my pockets but there was nothing. It was truly gone.
Robotbigfoot
31. The Mysterious Quantum Popcorn.
I was eating popcorn in front of the TV and dropped a piece. When it should have hit the ground, I heard a faint "pop" noise.
My mom was a stickler about messes, so I looked all over, under the couch, under the TV stand, everywhere, and couldn't find that popcorn.
About a year later, I'm watching TV again, and I hear the same faint "pop". I look down, and right between my feet, is a freshly popped kernel of popcorn.
I picked it up, and it was still warm. I'd been sitting there for at least an hour, and there was nobody else in the room.
ChaosMotor
32. Aquaman?
I can't explain this, and I hardly believe it myself. I've only ever told a couple of people, all of whom refused to believe it could happen.
On two occasions I have breathed underwater with no mechanical assistance. I was about 11 when it first happened. I was swimming one afternoon in the diving well at my gym.
The pool is about 14 ft deep, with a fairly small surface area. I've always been a strong and confident swimmer, and love to dive to the bottom of the pool and flip over, open my eyes, and look up at the surface.
So, I dive down, and sitting against the wall I have the overwhelming urge to breathe in. I refuse this thought, disbelieving and scoffing at my brain's sheer strangeness.
But the thought comes again, and it is utterly convincing. I can't explain why I decided to breathe in. I just know that I wouldn't ever choose to do that, but in this instance I did.
I took the most careful, mincing breath in. I could feel great pressure, but I breathed normally. It was the air I breathed and not water.
I took 4 full breaths while sitting at the bottom of the pool, and after each breath, I became more horrified and agitated. My disbelief was outstanding.
I kinda freaked and shot to the surface quickly as I could. After I rationalized a bit, I calmed down. My logical mind kept thinking that somehow I'd had a bubble of air caught on my face, for how else could I have breathed like that?
But over the years of trying to make sense of it (30 years old now), I recognize that air always finds its way to the surface expediently. It won't just "catch" around someone's face.
I tried to do it again that day, diving and diving, trying to replicate the experience. Got quite a bit of water up my nose before I gave up.
It did happen a second time, same pool, 4 years later. I took 5 breaths, same feeling of overwhelming confidence that it would be ok to breathe.
I couldn't explain it the second time either. Very strange. Glitch... I don't know. No one has ever believed me, but I've only ever mentioned it to a select few.
I still can't figure it out. I wonder if there are any physics/logical thoughts on this? I also wonder if this has happened to anyone else.
Glassjailer
33. Future Terminator
I used to work at a deli at a supermarket but hadn't in a year maybe. Then my friend who was still working there said some hot young lady cop came in with a really old picture of me asking where she could find me.
My current address was available and sadly a more recent mug shot was also available. She had a picture of me when I was 18 (I was 25 when this happened).
I thought it was a Terminator. Then in the proceeding months was pulled over numerous times for crappy reasons, 5mph over, running a yellow, etc., and was held at the traffic stop for way longer than usual and never given any citation.
On one occasion after 20 minutes of being pulled over, a black unmarked incredibly tinted crown vic pulled behind the cop car.
The cop seemed to have been waiting for it. Nobody came out but the cop walked over to it and spoke with whoever was inside for a little while then they let me go. Now years later I swear I see sketchy cars drive past my house.
[deleted]
34. Massive Photo Bomb
One of my friends has a family photo on her wall of her family in Florida back in 1998 and about 4 years ago we were all round at her place for a party and one of the girls burst out crying.
When she finally calmed down she said that in the background of the photo, a family is walking past and it's her, her mum, dad, and brother and she's more or less looking into the camera! We all laugh about it now but it's so weird to look at.
[deleted]
35. Alien Ball
I'm walking into work and going through one of the aisles. the aisles have shelves and stands that are completely bolted to the ground so there's no empty space under them, they're completely sealed off.
As I'm walking towards my department a random super ball rolls out from under the stands. My mind was blown. I then picked it up, bounced it and it hit my friend in the face.
i_amn_asiansuperhero
36. Floating Cheetos
I have a strange and inexplicably vivid memory from my childhood. One day I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog at my uncle's house and eating Cheetos.
I got particularly engrossed in the game and started to reach over for the Cheetos without looking.
I patted around on the floor with my hand before taking my eyes off the screen.
When I finally turned to look for the Cheetos, they were floating a foot off the floor. The instant I realized that they were in the air, they dropped to the ground.
I ran out of the room screaming.
faitswulff
37. The mysterious old lady
So my family and I moved when I was in third grade. Before we moved my parents brought me and my siblings on a road trip to introduce us to our future house.
It was owned by this nice old man who did a lot of self-repair over the years (we still find little oddities every now and then undoubtedly left by him).
I walked inside, waved at a kind-looking old lady in a rocking chair, walked around, and then we left. Nothing odd. Except for one small detail.
As we left the house, I was a little confused. "But Mom," I asked, "I thought you said [owner of house] lived by himself. Who was the old lady?" My Mom gave me a three-headed look. "What old lady?"
My family agreed with her. There wasn't an old lady sitting in the living room, and the owner's wife had died recently. Yeah. I have a couple of other weird stories about that house if anyone's interested.
Shepardownsnorris
38. Mind Overdrive
At 16 years old, sitting in a circle of friends at a party, stoned, someone I had bad relations with threw a lighter at my head without warning from the side.
I couldn't see it because of my long hair, but I caught it like a ninja, turned slowly, and stared at the thrower who went pale, and never messed with me again. No idea how I did that.
Sitting in a bar with some friends, laughing, joking, pop! Something in my head went pop and I felt like my brain had been reset for a split second.
Talked to others about it, but they had no idea what I was talking about. Then I said "Garry's here". I thought he was here for some reason. About 20 seconds later, Garry walks into the bar.
Still not sure what happened. Tell him about it all later. He says he came because I called him. I checked my phone, did not call, he has no record of it either.
It's like someone reversed time and messed up some of the details of the memory wipe. Those are the two most memorable I can think of.
Oh, there was also the time I got really stoned and this block of chocolate on my computer desk disappeared. It just kind of gradually vanished over a couple of hours.
wafflestomp
39. Sleep Walking
I'm sure this has been posted before, but there are two things that have happened to me that were sort of "reality glitches"
The first time was when I was lying in my bed in my dorm room and looking out the window at the falling snow at night. My roommate was across the room in his bed doing the same thing and we were both talking about how nice it looked when bam I blinked and suddenly it was daytime.
I look around confused and don't see my roommate anywhere in sight. Freaking out and thinking that everyone in the world has disappeared, I go looking for him and eventually find him and I ask him what happened.
He had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and I asked him where the night went, what he said freaked me out big time.
"We were both looking out the window at the snow when you just got really quiet and didn't say anything when I asked you questions so I assumed you were asleep, but when I looked over you were just staring there with your eyes open looking out the window and actually blinked a few times. I just thought you were sleeping with your eyes open."
Grooth
40. The Great Shift
I was driving home from college one day and I pulled up at a red light at an intersection. The car in front of me was one of those aqua/teal Honda Civics that were popular in the mid to late nineties.
I look to my right. The gas station marquee says something like: "Always be aware of your surroundings when you Shift." That's not verbatim, but I remember "Shift" being capitalized for some reason.
I thought it was kind of peculiar and that's when I noticed that the car immediately to my right was, in fact, another of the same colored Honda Civics.
Okay - interesting coincidence. Then I figure, "What the hell - how funny would it be if. . ." and look in my rearview mirror. Yep. Aqua/Teal Civic is behind me. So I look to my left.
Sure enough - same car. I'm surrounded by them on all sides. I chuckle to myself, thinking it's nothing. The light turns green and we begin to move.
Three of the Civics move into the right lane. As they're traveling next to me I notice that they have no license plates. There are drivers, and the interiors are all tan or ecru.
They all merge onto a Northbound route and I continue on my way. For the past fifteen years, I've maintained that I somehow "Shifted" (hey -the marquee's words, not mine) into a dimension other than the one in which I was born.
I bring this up when things seem really off in the world. It was a weird experience for me and something I think back to from time to time.
Jonuggs
41. Otherworldly entrance
There is a creepypasta story along the lines of this. Every family in every town on every continent has one. It's a cabinet, not particularly odd, not out of place.
The paint was peeling on the corners, and the knob was a bit loose. The inside smelled like dust and the paint wasn't the same as the kitchen walls.
You hid in there once during a game of hide 'n' seek. No one told you it doesn't open back into your reality. Don't worry, you can't tell the difference. But everybody misses you.
Tiranui
42. I know you
Right after high school, I got a job lifeguarding at a water park resort. I had been there about a year and by that point, dreaming about work was pretty routine.
The dreams weren't usually about anything dramatic like rescuing a distressed swimmer or doing CPR, but on this particular occasion, I had a dream that one of my co-workers rescued an unconscious boy from a particular pool.
In the dream, I was only assisting with the first aid, not the primary in the rescue, but I remember clearly what the boy looked like.
I went back to work the next day after the dream after having a few days off and about halfway through my shift I saw the kid from the dream walking through the park with his family.
They were still in their street clothes and had just checked in, so there was no way I could have seen him before. I nearly fell out of my chair.
He didn't drown, but holy crap was I careful to keep an eye on him the whole time he was visiting. Dreams are right sometimes you know?
DystopiaNoir
43. Unanswerable Question
I remember being in Japanese class with my friends. We had just gotten out of calculus and were discussing random math stuff under the din of the rest of the kids waiting for the teacher.
Eventually, I asked my friend "...Wait, what would 0 squared be?" At THAT moment, the entire class goes silent for about a second, then resumes like nothing happened.
Nobody was listening to us or paying attention. We always joked afterwards that I crashed the universe, and it had to reboot.
Mechroid
44. Runaway cat-twice
About a year ago, an online friend's cat ran away. He was inconsolable since he grew up with the cat and it was basically one of his best friends.
I vaguely recalled him telling me a long time ago that the cat had run away for three days once and had gotten stuck in a local barbecue restaurant while it was closed for the weekend.
I didn't mention it, because I figured it would make my friend more upset. Three days later, the cat comes back, smelling like barbecue sauce because it got stuck in the restaurant over the weekend.
My friend swears the cat had never run away before, and I could find no record of the supposed "cat ran away" conversation in any of our chat logs. He never even mentioned there was a barbecue restaurant near his house.
[deleted]
45. Portal, maybe?
My sister and I were walking down an aisle in Wal-Mart looking for back-to-school supplies. We're looking at notebooks or whatever, and she moves closer to the aisle.
This bracelet just falls to the ground. I saw it just... Appear there.
I'm sure it was a trick of my mind or something, but it was almost like someone had just dropped it there. It fell, it wasn't thrown.
I don't know, it freaked me out. Especially because when I pointed it out to my sister, she recognized it as the one she'd lost months ago.
[deleted]