Everyone experiences a 'glitch in the matrix' at some point. Life goes wonky. Reality becomes a little skewed. Odd things happen that you can't otherwise explain. Instead of trying to make sense of them, sometimes you just have to accept that weird stuff happens. The best thing you can do is share it. Get it off your chest. Just watch out for Agent Smith.
45. Double Shrimp
Me and my friend were at a Chinese Restaurant, and we ordered a General Tso chicken Dinner and a shrimp lo mein dish. When we sat down we took out both boxes and set them on the table about two feet apart. My friend opens the first box and we see a shrimp lo mein dish. It has all the things in there...noodles. Shrimp. Fried rice. He closes the box and opens the other box. Inside that box is another shrimp lo mein dish. Shrimp. Noodles. Fried Rice.
"Oh," I think, "they must have mixed the order." I was just about to say this when my friend says out loud: "Looks like they made a mistake and gave us two..." Then he opens up the first box again. Inside of it is a General Tso chicken dinner order. General Tso chicken, white rice, and an egg roll. He froze and looked at me... I looked back at him... and we sat in silence.
It took us five or so minutes to collect ourselves.
44. Someone Is Cloning This Woman
I was catching a SkyTrain in one particular city about 15 minutes from where I get off. While I wait there is a woman with glazed eyes asking people for money. She came up to me, stopped briefly, and asked, "Excuse me, could you spare some money? My brother is in the hospital and I'd like some money to buy him some flowers."
That's rich I thought. Users are getting more and more obvious with their lines. "Here's $5." Gave it to her without even looking her in the face, convinced of her intentions.
Anyways, my train pulls up and I get on. I look through the glass at her walking around asking others for money as the train pulls away.
The train arrives at the station 15 minutes later, and I walk down and out to the bus stop. There is only one bus the direction I'm going, and just my luck! It is there waiting when I get off the train. So I hop on the bus and wait for the bus driver to finish reading his paper before the doors close and we embark down the highway.
After about 5-10 minutes traveling, the driver pulls over for a routine stop. The doors open, and to my complete astonishment, the woman from the SkyTrain walks into the bus. A dozen roses in hand. She looks me right in the eyes as she walks past to take her seat.
How in the world did she get there? I took the train before her. I watched her at the train stop from inside as we pulled away. I went over a river. I caught the first and only bus going in this particular direction. And not only did she beat me there, but she also had time to go to a store and buy a dozen roses.
To this day I have no idea how this happened.
Image by Ria Algra from Pixabay
43. Off The Radar
This happened to my dad. He was driving down a long lonely highway in Ohio, doing about 90 in his z28 with a radar detector. Rolling hills and whatnot meant that cops could hide at the bottom before you could see them and slow down. So, all of a sudden, his radar detector starts blaring so he slams on the brakes. Right over the hill, there's a squad car running radar. He's super relieved, but when he looks at the detector, it's not even on the windshield. It was unplugged and in the glove compartment.
42. The Tad Clone
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.
41. Old Guy Guardian
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 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, same look, same clothes peering at us on camera and at me through the TV. I'm freaked out just telling this.
40. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
At a friend's place back in 2008.
When we were all teenagers, we had a cool shed at a friend's that we'd hang out in every weekend. It had 4 sets of bunk beds, tables, a fireplace, a TV, a fridge, the whole lot!
One night we were all hanging out in there when I decided I needed a pee. I walked out the front door of the shed and started to walk to the right when I stopped.
Now let me explain the layout here. As you walk out of the shed, his house is to the left and to the right is where we all parked our cars - further out you're left with empty fields and trees.
It was dark by now, the lights from the house illuminating the space between the house and our cars, but trailing off just past them. As I took a step to the right (intending to go behind the cars to relieve myself), I saw my friend's older brother standing there.
I watched him for a good 5-10 seconds as he stood there, facing into the darkness. He then proceeded to walk behind a couple of trees and a car before he disappeared.
Confused, I walked back into the shed and asked my friend what his brother was doing by the cars. The conversation went as follows:
Me: "Hey man, what's your brother doing by the cars?"
Him: "What do you mean?"
Me: "He just walked off behind the cars."
Brother: "I'm right here."
I looked over and there his brother was, sitting down on one of the chairs with a drink. He was wearing the exact same clothes as I saw him in and the only way to get into the shed was through the door that I was standing in the way of.
To this day, I've no idea how it all happened. I'm guessing I was just seeing things, but the fact that I watched him walk around for a good 10 seconds has always puzzled me. I've never had anything else like that happen.
39. Monkeyshines
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 for 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.
Anyways, a few years later (when I was about 17), I'm walking down the street in Toronto (I don't live in TO, was just visiting friends) and see 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 STUPID 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.
38. What About Bob?
I had a friend in high school. He was a very nice fellow, and while we weren't that close, we had similar tastes in music and we'd share CDs (this is in the late 80s, way before file-sharing). Anyway, we eventually graduated, and I moved several hundred miles away to college, and we lost touch. When I left for college, I had one of these friends CDs still in my possession ("Beat", by King Crimson).
Fast forward 10 years... I'd graduated from college and was knee-deep in my career, had finally saved up enough money and bought my first house.
In the new house and while unpacking, I see the CD in a box - hadn't noticed it in many years, and thought... "gee, I really should track down my old friend and return this".
Right then, the doorbell rings...
It's that friend.
And he says, "Hey, you wouldn't happen to still have my King Crimson CD would you?"
I look down... I'm holding it in my hand.
I hand it to him, and his mouth drops open (mine probably already is). We exchange pleasantries. I probably asked him how he found me, but I no longer remember. He eventually takes off.
I haven't seen him since.
37. This Book Hasn't Been Released Yet
I was walking through Best Buy one day a couple of years ago and I walked past a rack of books. Sitting on the rack was the last book in the Dark Tower series from Stephen King. The front cover had the picture of Roland in front of the Tower with the field of roses behind him. I held the book in my hand and looked it over. I remembered being puzzled about why it was in a Best Buy, but whatever.
I'd read the first 6 and had been waiting for the last one but my spending money was low that week. I set it down and decided to come back next week after I got paid to buy it.
I went back next week and it wasn't there. It slipped my mind after that for a bit, but about a month later I went to B&N to get my copy. They told me it hadn't come out yet, the release date for the book was 6 months later. I preordered it then.
When the book actually came out I went to pick it up. I described the cover out loud to make sure I wasn't crazy. The clerk handed it to me and there it was exactly as I'd held it in Best Buy.
36. Doom On A Country Road
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 eyes closing and what snaps me out of it is my car bounces 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 passed away, and was now in some weird afterlife. It was such a strong feeling that I drove to the nearest gas station, got out, and headed inside with sweaty palms, 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 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.
35. Please Leave Your Alternate Reality At The Beep
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. Sorry I missed you, call you later. Bye." And then I hung up and left the house. I made no other calls.
Later that day he called back and he says, "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 continues 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. 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 had 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.
I may have connected to an alternate universe through a telephone answering machine.
34. Cheating The Reaper
I was a sophomore in high school at my girlfriend's house watching a movie. It was around 10 pm when the flick ended.
I proceed to skateboard home (I only lived like 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 fly off the board, 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 heck 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. Hear the car behind me.
Look where it was supposed to be in the other direction. Taillights 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.
33. The Locker Whisperer
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.
My buddy and I 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.
32. Objects In Mirror May Disappear
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 the opposite direction on the other side of the road. I was going pretty fast so I pass them quickly, and when I look in my rearview, there's 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.
31. Ghost Of The Evil Past
My family owns a house on Cape Cod. The previous owner was a wackjob with a son with special needs. The son was known for putting on a trench coat and fedora, climbing trees, and shooting cats and dogs with a BB weapon. When my parents moved into the house, they found a bunch of Nazi memorabilia 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, or 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, "I don't have your stuff."
So the next night, when the figure appeared again in the corner of the room, I said, "I don't have your stuff." And the figure 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 the child. But he was and remains entirely vivid to me.
30. Dream Cheats
About two years into my relationship with my girlfriend, I had a dream about my ex. The dream went like this:
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 my girlfriend 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 my girlfriend 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 my girlfriend 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.
29. Ring My Bell
I was working in an old nursing home out in the middle of the woods in PA as a nurse aide on the night shift. 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 heavyset and non-ambulatory; there is no physical way she could've pulled that bell, I sure as heck did not, and there was no one else around.
28. Final Closure
My father died in 2008. A night before visiting his house for the last time, he appeared in my dream, where he handed to me a black camera in a plastic bag and specifically said, "Take this camera, as I won't be needing it anymore." I took it from him.
First thing in the morning I visit his house, where most of the stuff is already 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.
27. Love Across Naps
Back when my husband and I first got together, we used to work opposite shifts. One day I was napping in our apartment before I went to work. As I was drifting off, I had this strange feeling like he was right there, laying with me. It was really comforting and warm, so I drifting right into a dream where we were napping together outside in the sun.
I woke up about 30 minutes later, feeling totally refreshed. My phone vibrated with a text message from my husband. It said, "Just took a nap on my break. Thanks for joining me. Cool, huh?"
I decided to marry him in an effort to absorb his powers.
26. Leave What You Take
I was walking up a hill in Portland Oregon and found a pack of smokes on the ground, only missing two. A week later in San Francisco CA, I bought some, and after using two I put the pack in the inside pocket of my jacket. Next time I went to use them, the pack was gone.
25. Drowning in Dreams
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 see 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 I was very careful to keep an eye on him the whole time he was visiting.
24. Sleeping With Ghosts
My friend from high school had me and another friend over one night for a sleepover. We went to bed pretty late and the next day went about our merry way. A few days later I got the camera developed that I had been using around that time to only be freaked out. There were a few pictures of us asleep in Jessica's bed and no one else had been at her house. To this day it creeps me out.
23. Past Meets Present
Once in middle school, I passed myself walking home. He was a little boy who looked exactly like me -- exactly. He had my same favorite shirt on and was wearing a blue towel as a cape just as I did. The same hair color (mine is dark brown now, but I was blonde as a child). He was running full force, and when he saw me he stopped, just as I did. We didn't say anything, it just happened. My friend was walking behind me, about 100ft, and didn't see any of this.
22. Do I Know You?
At a party in college, I was walking out the back door for a smoke when another guy opens the door to come in. We look at each for a split second and I yell his name and he yells my name and we hug and spend a few minutes catching up, as we hadn't seen each other in years. After five minutes we stop talking, look at each other hard and I say, "We've never met, have we?" and he responds, "I have no idea who you are." But we both knew each others' names.
21. 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.
Quantum popcorn.
20. Phantom Connections
I was using my desktop computer. The Internet was working perfectly fine and after about 30 minutes it stops working for me. I lost the connection. I tried resetting the router and restarting my computer a couple of times and it did not work. I looked at my router again and noticed that there were only two Ethernet cables. One was going to my Xbox and the other was going to the modem. There wasn't a cable going to the desktop. I looked behind the desktop and the cable was connected to it, but the other end was nowhere near the router. Someone had to have moved it in order for it to be where it was (my router is on the floor, it's not on top of the desk). So the way I see it, I was receiving a phantom Internet signal for 20 minutes before it went out. My desktop has no wifi capabilities.
19. Who's Calling?
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.
18. Acorns!
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.
17. Attack Of The Clones
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.
16. Counting Your Eggs Before They're Peeled
We have a breakfast laid on at work every morning, just a simple buffet of eggs, bacon, what have you. Nothing huge and it's really only to feed about a dozen people or so. I am usually one of the first guys from my team to get to work and the kitchen was deserted as usual. I walked into the little kitchen, there was a ceramic egg tray thing with 12 eggs in it, like the bottom half of an egg carton with a socket for each egg. All spaces are filled with warm freshly boiled eggs.
I take one, walk over to the garbage bin, shuck the shell then I walk back over to the food and stop. There are 12 eggs in the tray again. No one entered the room while I was peeling the thing. I touched the mystery egg it was the same temp as the other eggs around it.
Not a big thing, nothing major, but something very strange. Given one does not get presented with strange eggs from a parallel universe every day I peeled and ate that one too. Found strange quantum egg at breakfast. Ate it. Did not gain superpowers.
15. You're In The Matrix
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 completely out of my mind on painkillers 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. I 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.
14. Dream A Little Dream
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 about an ice skating rink, and then he starts 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.
13. Uh-oh, Spaghetti-Os
One time I spilled a bowl of Spaghetti-Os, and as I was cleaning them, I noticed that one was on the ceiling. 9 feet up.
I didn't even DROP the bowl. I just tipped it over onto the counter by mistake... but sure enough, a single O was right there, stuck to the ceiling.
12. A Pen Drop
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?" 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.
11. Fundamental Glitch
I woke up one morning when I was 16 or so, and realized that I had forgotten how to tie my shoes. Like, this action I had done every day almost since I would walk, was wiped from my mind. I had to learn all over again.
10. And Her Name Was Aurora
When I was around 20, a few years ago, I kept having dreams about a woman with long black hair named Aurora (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 weird.
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 answered. 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 get on the highway, some silver Civic loses control of their wheel and crashes 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.
I 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. Ask her if she has a Facebook to confirm if she is, in fact, the woman in my dreams.
Check her Facebook, holy heck, it's her. If that's not a glitch in the matrix then I'm just crazy.
9. Another's Dream
Not creepy, but so vivid and distinct that I still think about it, years later. I had a (subjectively) long, involved dream where I was a vendor in a fish market. I remember getting up early, dressing, doing a whole morning routine, going to get tea, heading out to the docks, buying fish, loading them in a cart and going to get ice, then haggling for ice, buying some less fresh fish while I was at it, then going to a market to my stall, setting up and selling fish all day.
It was so real. I talked to friends, haggled customers, ate lunch, had tea and just lived through the day. At the end of the day, I cleaned up, counted my cash, paid the stall rent, went home, cooked some of the fish I hadn't sold, sling with some veggies and rice that I'd traded for. I drank more tea, relaxed for a while, then drew a hot bath, soaked, then went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up refreshed, ready to go down to the docks to buy fresh catch... Except I was in my house, next to my wife, truck parked outside and it was Saturday - no work. My wife and I were getting geared up to go skiing in Oregon and the car was already packed. The weird thing was...
In the dream, I was single. And the whole long dream had been in fluent Chinese. The effortless kind of fluency that only comes from a lifetime of speaking it. Oh, and I had been Chinese.
I'm a big, hairy white dude - somewhat fluent in Spanish and I know a little bit of Russian, but I've never... It was just weird. I've never worked in a fish market.
I wonder who I was. I wonder what that was.
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
8. Jamais Vu
I've experienced deja vu a couple of times when I was younger, and while that is certainly freaky, nothing beats its opposite, jamais vu (a situation that one recognizes in some fashion, but nonetheless seems very unfamiliar), which I experienced twice during a period of work-related stress a few years ago.
On both occasions, I was driving in my car, in perfectly familiar surroundings near my home, when suddenly I had no idea where I was or where I was going. It was like being instantly teleported to a foreign country.
It only lasted seconds, but very creepy nonetheless. Until it happened to me, I had no idea that this even existed.
Photo by Zach Meaney on Unsplash
7. The Disappearing Mercedes
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 inebriated guys, I move up to the driver window and rap on the glass and shine my light in, the driver is sitting bolt upright, unmoving staring straight ahead. My window rapping 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 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 an 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... where 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.
6. Who Is There
I work as a security/nighttime attendant at an apartment building. It's 24 stories and one of the oldest buildings in the city.
One night I'm sitting here when the phone rings at about 3 AM, and I answer. "Hello how can I help you?" The voice on the other end sounded female, but was totally garbled and the only bit I could make out was "23rd floor." I tried to tell the person I couldn't understand them and asked what apartment they were in, but again garbled response and "23rd floor."
After the 3rd time of trying to understand them and the same response, I said since I couldn't understand them I'd come up and to meet me in the hallway.
So I go to the main elevators, and both are up on the (surprise) 23rd floor. Luckily, we have an older service elevator and it's only on the 7th floor so I call it down. I get it and hit the button for the 23rd floor, but it won't move and the inner door won't close, so I go to unlock the reset panel and boom we start going up, the door still open. I'm freaking out, and the elevator is shaking because it goes pretty fast and is old. As I'm going up, I just stay towards the back and finally I reach floor 23.
I step out, the door closes just fine, and I look around the hallway. There's nobody around. I walk along slowly trying to listen for anyone awake who might've called, but there's nothing. So now I head the opposite direction and go towards where the regular elevators are and when I get to them they are just sitting there with their doors open. I was pretty freaked out but I knew it could just be the elevators on the fritz, so I get in and figure I'll just reset them when I get to floor 1 when I hear the sound of the back stairwell closing.
So I quickly get out and go to the stairwell and lo and behold, no one's there, but the maintenance door to the machine room is ajar, and at that time I'm the only one in the building with a key. At the top of the building is a large machine room housing all the really really loud machinery that does stuff in the building and allows access to the roof. I don't like going into it because it's creepy as heck and no one ever goes there, so at this point, I'm seriously freaked out but I muster up and head in.
I shout "Hello?!" and there's no response. The lights in this room flicker because they're poor fluorescent bulbs so I can't see well either, but at the end of the room I can make out the roof access door. It's slightly open. So I slowly continue forward checking the space in between each machine as I walk by, and there's no one there so I open the roof access door. I can't see anyone ahead of me on the roof but there is a slight wrap around and if there was a jumper or something I needed to be sure so I step out and leave the door ajar like it was.
Almost immediately, the door is pulled shut. Now I might've written it off as wind or something, but this door is hard to shut and hard to open. Really hard. I immediately grab the handle and hank it open, slam it behind me and run straight for the maintenance door. It automatically locks when it's closed so I slam it shut too and go back to the 23rd-floor hallway, get into an elevator (doors still open) and go all the way down to the first floor.
I go back to the main lobby and as soon as I sit down, the phone rings. I pick it up, don't say a word. It's the garbled voice again only audibly saying "23rd floor." I hung up the phone, turned the ringer off and spent the rest of the evening just staring at the parking garage security monitor.
There's been a bunch of creepy things happen at this building, It's basically like the Overlook Hotel at night. I walked past a dark room here on the first floor once and swore I saw myself standing inside it. The next night as I'm inside said room cleaning, the lights flip off and I turn around to see a quick flash of myself walking past.
5. The Undead
I knew my uncle had passed away.
My mom had called me and told me the news. It was very sad. She told me in the middle of work and I told one of my coworkers. He expressed his condolences on my loss.
A couple of weeks later, my sister mentioned my aunt and uncle doing something. I said, "but...he passed away." My sister looked at me like I was crazy and said, "No, he hasn't."
I called my mom. No, he wasn't gone.
To this day I'm still not sure how much of it my brain imagined and how much was real. Did I really talk to my coworker? Was I even on the phone with my mom at all that day?
It still freaks me out knowing that my mind could fabricate so complete and real a memory like that.
Photo by VÍctor Daniel Giraldo on Unsplash
4. The Shed
I had just turned 22 and my parents had sold their house and purchased a place out in the country. On the property there was a big shed not far from the house that I decided to turn into my place. Now I felt kind of uncomfortable in the shed sometimes but my dog kept me company so it wasn't so bad.
Anyway I had been in there maybe 2 weeks and one night I'm on the computer, my dog asleep at my feet and I need to pee so I get up and go outside. It's a beautiful clear night and the stars were incredible, next thing I hear the shed door slam behind me.
I turn immediately and try to open it but it won't budge. Now from inside the shed, I can hear my dog start to growl, quietly at first then louder, now he's barking and I'm panicking trying to get the door open.
I must mention that I'm 6 foot 5 and well built, play sports, etc but even ramming my full weight into the door won't open it and I'm really panicking now as my dogs barks turned into whines, then whimpering, then silence and with all my might I slam into the door and it flies open.
The light is off inside now and it's pitch black, it won't turn back on and I'm in complete darkness. Can't see my dog anywhere and I stumble around trying to find a torch, finally, I find it and pick it up and turn on my torch and I wasn't prepared for what I'd see next... My dog had literally squashed itself into the furthest, darkest corner of the room, eyes closed and is shaking violently.
I immediately moved towards him and as soon as I got within reach of him, he leaped at me into my arms and wouldn't move. I picked him up and I swear I've never run so fast in my life. I never set foot in that shed ever again and my dog wouldn't even go near that part of the property.
I don't know what happened in that shed that night but I'll never forget it.
Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash
3. Daddy's 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 work shirt making his way down the driveway to his truck in his typical work outfit (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 in the house and locked the door. Weirdest 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.
2. Final Call
A little backstory...I was a total idealist back in high school so when choosing a college I chose to go somewhere that none of my friends were attending so that I could strike out on my own in a "finding myself" sort of way.
Well, I ended up making a few really close friends during my first semester. I mean, these guys became like family to me in a matter of months.
One day during winter break one of those guys, my buddy had gone back home to visit friends and family and on his return trip to our college he hit a bad patch of ice and got into a car accident and passed away.
A few weeks after the accident, me and the rest of the guys were getting back from a party off-campus and as we were standing outside our dorm building, having a smoke. I felt my phone vibrating and when I pulled it out I saw that I was getting a call from my friend who passed away!
Dumbfounded, I showed my friends the phone quickly and then answered. When I picked up it just went directly to his voicemail which played the same message it always had. It never happened again and we never really talked about it but for me, it was one of those "someone's looking after me" moments. I hadn't been doing very well after he passed away but seeing his name show up on my cellphone screen one final time made me feel a whole lot better for a time and really helped me get out of the slump I was in.
I have no idea how his phone could've possibly called me and I doubt I ever will but this was one "glitch in the matrix" that I'll forever be thankful for.
Photo by Søren Astrup Jørgensen on Unsplash
1. Who Said That
When I was like 10 or 11 I was going to the beach with my aunt and her friends. There were two cars of us. To get there we had to go through a very large industrial area. We didn't know the direction, so our car was following the other. Suddenly, they did an unexpected turn and so our driver had to take a sharp bend.
In that moment we heard a very clear, loud voice inside the car saying laughing "Sharp bend, hm?!" The driver immediately hit the brakes. We looked at each other, puzzled: we all recognized it as a voice not belonging to any of us.
At the very same time, we noticed that the other car has stopped as well. The other driver got out of the car with a scared face and shouted to us: "Did... did you hear that as well?".
They heard the very same thing inside their car. The area around was fully deserted.
