People Describe Their Real Life “Glitch In The Matrix” Moments

March 22, 2021 | Josh Mendelssohn

People Describe Their Real Life “Glitch In The Matrix” Moments


We all have moments where things happen that are so bizarre, they seem to defy all logical possibilities. But some of those moments are crazier than others. From disappearing objects to knowledge we never should have been capable of having, these moments shock us each and every time—and never fail to leave us wondering what the heck we just experienced.


1. Stairway To Heaven

One time, many years ago, I was going down the stairs in my house and went past my brother along the way, who was coming up the stairs at the same time. I said hi to him and he sort of mumbled back at me. I then arrived downstairs and walked through to the kitchen, only to find him standing there. How the heck can you possibly explain that one??

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2. Special Guest

As a kid, I remember lying in bed at night waiting to sleep. I must have been about six or seven years old at the time. My brother was in the other single bed fast asleep, and a babysitter was looking after us. The babysitter was our older cousin. As I was laying there, I distinctly remember feeling someone or something tickling my feet.

I know it wasn't my brother. But the bedroom door was fully locked and it never opened, so it couldn’t have been my older cousin messing around either. A decade later or so, I was talking to my mum. We were just generally chatting about weird things that had happened to us over the years. She mentioned that she once heard me as a five-year-old, chatting away in my bedroom and giggling.

As my brother was out with my dad at the time, she went in to see what I was doing. What she saw made her freeze in her tracks. She said I pointed to the chair in the corner and said I was "talking to the old lady with the glasses." There was no one sitting in the chair at all, according to her. She said the worst part was that there really was an old lady in the family that used to live in this house.

She passed in that very bedroom, and that was her chair that the family had left behind from when we recently moved in. I don't remember my alleged chatting with the old lady, but I 100% remember the tickling of feet. The chair was in the corner of the room at the base of my bed. Part of me wants it to just be my cousin messing around with me. But I just know he wasn't in the room.

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3. Penny For Your Thoughts

I was once showering and, after about 10 minutes in the shower, I hear something ping and hit the floor. I looked down and saw a penny. I was pretty perplexed as you can imagine, but I figured whatever. I thought I’d just keep it, as I imagined it could be good luck. I kept the penny in my wallet for a few years in a zipped-up side pouch.

I never really told anyone about it, because it was kind of pointless to talk about a random penny that I was superstitious about. So, a few years later while at a music festival, a girl in our tent woke up to find a penny in her butt crack. We all laughed it off as having had a wild night. However, I remembered the lucky penny that I had in my pouch.

And when I looked for it in the zipped pouch, I was shocked to find that it was gone. I told my friends about this, and they didn't believe me. I think they threw the penny away, too, so I no longer have it. I still to this day have no idea where this penny came from, how it ended up where it did, or where it is today.

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4. Great Minds Think Alike

This story happened when I was only about 11 or 12 years old. It was the early 70s. Dad came home one Friday and announced that we were going to King's Island, a fairly new amusement park. We were supposed to be going the following day. I begged him to let me invite my friend Chris to come along. He said okay, as long as Chris could pay for his own ticket.

Great! Off to the phone I went. I pick it up, and there’s no dial tone. I say: "Hello?" Suddenly, I hear Chris’ voice say: "Hey, is that you?" I go: "Chris? I was just calling you, what's up?" What Chris said next was so bizarre, it’s unforgettable. He told me: "I was calling to ask if you'd like to come to King's Island tomorrow, but you have to pay your own way."

No phone ever rang, yet we both called each other at the exact same time, to ask the exact same thing.

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5. Time Is On Your Side

I moved away from my hometown a few years ago for school and I now live three hours away from my friend’s house. I usually drive down once a month or so to visit him, and it has pretty much always taken me three hours to drive down. On rare occasions, if traffic is really good, it may take a little less time. More in the range of two hours and 45 minutes.

Now, I've done this drive dozens of times, so I know the route very well. The distance between my house and my friend's house is 178 miles. A few months ago, my brother and I started driving down to our friend's house at exactly noon. As soon as I got into my car, I texted my mom and friends to let them know that we were coming down for the weekend.

The drive itself was nothing noteworthy. Traffic was lighter than normal, but as I said nothing else happened that was out of the ordinary. I tend to go a little over the speed limit of 70 miles per hour, but never faster than 100 miles per hour. Going anywhere near that speed is way too dangerous for public roads with other people around.

Once we arrived at my friend's house, they were confused as to why we were so early. When I checked my phone, I made a disturbing discovery. It was only 1:30. We made it to their house in an hour and a half. We drove 178 miles in 1.5 hours. That equates to an average speed of 118 miles per hour throughout the entire trip. Granted, I drive a sports car.

My car’s speed is limited to 124 miles per hour for top speed, and there is no way I could keep it pinned at that speed for the entire way there. Between fear of getting a ticket and the engine definitely not allowing it, this just wasn’t a possibility. To say we were surprised would be a major understatement. I never use my phone while I'm driving and I rarely look at the clock in my car, since my attention is always on the road and on other drivers.

There is no logical explanation that we could come up with for what happened. I knew for a fact that I never went above 100 miles per hour the whole drive, and I knew exactly what time we had left, since we have text messages showing the exact time we said goodbye. And our friends have confirmed that we did indeed show up at 1:30.

The only illogical explanation I can think of is that we experienced some sort of time dilation, but I say illogical since that theory is only applicable to particles traveling near the speed of light. Not a car going less than 100 miles per hour. I guess I will never know how or why I experienced this apparent glitch in the matrix.

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6. Thank Your Lucky Stars

I find that, if I stop trying to control everything and let things happen as they will, the universe will send the exact person or thing that I need right to me and make it seem like a coincidence. For example, I lost my job a few years ago and went home feeling totally dejected. I decided to rest for that night and not stress about a job hunt until the next morning.

Then, the next morning, I was awakened by a phone call from this guy who was a friend of my ex-boss, who'd just opened his own restaurant and wanted to know if I wanted to work there. It was like the universe had gift-wrapped me a new job and deposited it into my lap. Another time, I had found a new apartment, which was only a few blocks away from my old apartment.

I was heading to my old place to pack my stuff up, not really sure how I was going to get it all packed and moved by my lonesome, but I had that same feeling. That feeling of “it will work itself out.” I think my phone had lost all its battery, so I stopped a random guy on the street to ask what time it was. He asked me casually what I was doing, and I told him, "Oh, I'm about to pack and try to move all my things."

And this rando said, "I'll help you!" For some reason, I wasn't wary of him. I felt like it was meant to be. So he came with me to my old place, helped me pack, and then helped me carry my stuff over to my new place. He was super nice and helpful, and it was like it was all meant to be. Almost like he had been put there, right on that particular street corner at that particular moment, to fix my predicament.

So I guess there is just some random glitch in the matrix that sends things to me to solve my problems whenever I have them!

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7. Wild Goose Chase

When I was attending college, a friend and I were walking back to our dorm rooms late one night. I attended a school with a primarily white population of students. As we were getting within about a half-mile of our dorm building, we were laughing about some joke when we suddenly noticed a man in torn clothing, running at us full speed.

We both slowed our pace to a crawl as he kept coming at us, unaware of what was going to happen. The man got closer and closer, and when he passed under a street light, we noticed a few things that were odd. He was A) sprinting away from something, and B) holding a rather large bowl of fruit in his hands. He sprinted right past us without even regarding our existence.

When we looked back to where he had come from, we were greeted by a truly bizarre sight. There was what appeared to be a bear cub sprinting in our direction. Both my friend and I began taking steps away slowly, and just as we were about to start following the man in the same panicked manner, the animal took a B-line for a curb toward what appeared to be a sewer drain.

The closer it got to the drain, the smaller this animal appeared until it was the size of a small mouse, and it went straight into the drain and completely out of sight. Then it got even weirder. The closer we got to the drain, the more it seemed to fade from our view. When we moved over a bit and were standing right next to the curb, it quickly became clear that there was actually no drain there whatsoever.

We proceeded to walk back in silence to the dorms. We still have no clue what happened that night, but I remember several other things during my time at that school that were also unexplainable.

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8. Snack Time

My daughter and I were on the couch one day when she was younger, and we heard the sound of popcorn. Like, as if it was popping in a microwave. It wasn't a constant popping, but more like one or two pops every ten seconds or so. Then, the entire living room filled up with the smell of buttered popcorn. We both smelled it.

Yet no one was making popcorn. The microwave itself did not smell like popcorn, and the smell was only observable in the living room. I went as far as to open the heating vents to see if there was a rogue bag of popcorn in there. If it was just the smell and not the sound or vice versa, I would easily explain it away. But since it was both, this was one of the strangest events that I’ve ever experienced.

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9. Unstable Connections

One time, I was playing Minecraft with friends over Skype on my desktop PC, when I disconnected from Minecraft. I was still chatting with everyone on Skype when I checked my browser. That also wasn't functioning. So, I got up and decided to check the router, announcing to everyone that I was doing so. I checked it and it was fine.

So, still unable to connect, I asked the group, "What should I do?" And someone jokingly replied: "Check if it's actually plugged in!" I stood up while saying: "Well, how would I still be talking to you if it wasn’t?" I was assuming it was either a bug or a partial disconnect. At this point, I saw my Ethernet cable unplugged and sitting about two centimeters away from the back of my machine.

I announced this over Skype to everyone. And as soon as I did, the call dropped. This freaked me out for years until I saw a demo of someone scanning a VGA cable from across the room and managing to get an approximation of the picture. I guess I believe that part of the connection was able to make the jump across the centimeter or so gap or something like that.

But I didn't move anything at any point and my partner at the time witnessed it as well. Luckily, or I'd have thought I was mad! It wasn’t Wifi either—my computer didn’t have the card for it at the time. I had even theorized at the time that it was some kind of surveillance installed covertly on my computer that routed my internet via a different medium.

But either way, it freaked me out. I guess I will never know for sure.

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10. The Rain Check To End All Rain Checks

I have a weird one. Back in October of 2005, I met my now-wife. We had first hooked up on a Saturday night at a gig in the city, and we arranged to meet again the following Wednesday night for a drink or a coffee. I remember feeling like absolute garbage on the Wednesday morning after being out the night before at a bar for my birthday with my buddies, drinking and whatnot.

I really did want to call her and see her again, but I felt so lousy that I just knew I wouldn’t make a good impression. I had no energy, looked and felt like something the cat had dragged in, and I just wanted to sleep. I was really dreading calling her to postpone, in case she would take it the wrong way and think that I was trying to ditch her.

When my cell phone rang that afternoon, I answered it automatically without really registering the number, as it was on an old crummy Nokia with a green two-inch screen. It was a girl’s voice on the line, asking me if I would mind if she took a rain check on our date that evening. She said she was hoping that we could meet up again the following weekend instead, as she was really tired from work.

Totally relieved, I said it would be no problem at all. When we met up again on the following Friday, we got to talking and I confessed that I was glad she had postponed our date, as I felt terrible the previous Wednesday. Her reaction was mind-blowing. She replied that she hadn’t called me on Wednesday afternoon and that she hadn’t rain-checked our initial date.

She had, however, been expecting my call, and she told me that she had just assumed I didn’t call her because I was being a jerk. She said when I actually did call her on the following Thursday to arrange the date, she changed her opinion and thought I was okay. My phone record showed that I had accepted a call on Wednesday afternoon that lasted three minutes, but the number came up blocked.

I guess in hindsight, I could have investigated further by asking the cell phone company to obtain the details of the blocked number, but I didn’t really think too much about it back at the time. Now, as time goes by, I sometimes wonder if whoever I spoke to on my cell phone on that Wednesday afternoon intervened in our lives in some way for some reason.

We are married with children today, and from time to time when I contemplate the event, some Marty McFly and Back to the Future type ideas come into my mind. Who the heck knows? I just know it was something odd as a cod.

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11. The Inside Scoop

I took a hard news versus soft news journalism class in college, where one of the assignments was to write an obituary for one of my grandparents. The professor told us to write it on a deceased grandparent, but if all of your grandparents were still alive then we had to choose one. In my case, all of my grandparents were still alive.

I procrastinated the assignment until the night before it was due, because it seemed like a dumb assignment. Scramming for an easy grandparent to write about, I gave my mom a call and asked her for some basic biographical information about my maternal grandfather, who was still alive. As we were talking about my grandpa's career, my mom couldn't recall the name of one of the companies he had worked at.

She lectured me about waiting until the last minute to write the assignment, because it was late in the evening. It was already 10:30 PM where my grandpa lived, so she wasn’t sure she’d be able to reach him in time. However, she said she would give him a call to see if he was still awake and ask him to answer that question since my assignment was due the following morning.

When my mom called my grandpa, my grandma answered the phone in a panic. My grandma frantically explained that the paramedics had just arrived and were performing CPR on my grandpa, because he had abruptly stopped breathing and passed out. My mom was able to stay on the phone with my grandma until they took my grandpa to the hospital, where he was declared deceased upon arrival.

In the time my mom and I had been talking on the phone about my grandpa's "obituary," he had started dying completely out of the blue, and then eventually passed on. He had been otherwise healthy, especially considering his age. We ended up using the obituary that I wrote for that writing assignment as his actual obituary. It still freaks me out whenever I think about the timing.

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12. Dressing For Success

I've written about this before, but it’s one of the weirdest things that I've ever experienced. When my now ex-boyfriend and I had just gotten together, I went out and bought him some new shirts. We had just fallen in love and I saw a shirt that said “Love Life” on it in big red bold letters. The shirt was all white, with only the words on the front.

It was a little inside joke between us I guess, because we would use that phrase to describe our life and named our business “Love Life.” He really loved it and wore it a lot before it sat in the closet for a couple of years. Well, a couple of years go by, and let's just say that “love life” was now a horrible definition of our relationship. He was a horrible guy.

Anyway, I'm cleaning out the closets one day and getting rid of old clothes. And there’s the shirt. I pull it out and the shirt now reads “Low Life.” It looks the exact same way it looked before, but the words very clearly say low life. I immediately ask him if he remembers the shirt and what it said, and he tells me “Love life.” Well, as soon as I show him the shirt, he flips out the same way I did.

Both of us know that the shirt never said low life. Why would I buy anyone a shirt that said something like that? Let alone for my own boyfriend? It felt like I had just flipped dimensions into the reality where my ex-boyfriend was a completely terrible jerk, and so the shirt I bought him reflected that. It was honestly pretty weird and surreal.

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13. Gone Before His Time

I remember my mom telling me that my cousin died from an overdose. The next year, nearly to the day, she calls to say my cousin—the same one—died. I replied “Yeah, from an overdose, right?,” she was shocked that I already knew. I thought she was somehow messing with me until she showed me the date of his passing. I still can’t really explain that one.

A lot of people have theorized that he could have overdosed before and survived, making it that I incorrectly assumed that he passed the first time. But the weird thing is that I barely knew anything about this cousin. My mom’s extended side of the family is very big, with 22 first cousins, more than 40 second cousins, etc.

So there’s a lot of cousins that I’ve never met personally, including this one, and I specifically only remember being told about his existence in the context of his substance use and how it contributed to his passing, since my other relatives speculated that it was intentional and not accidental. Basically, I never really knew much about him while he was alive and didn’t even really know his name.

So, while it’s very plausible that I could have heard about him overdosing beforehand, the way I remember it is very different. Memory is a fickle thing though, so who knows.

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14. Doing Some Reflecting

I'm a security guard at a distribution warehouse. Sometimes, I have to work the graveyard shift. During this time, the only people on the premises are me and the occasional truck driver bringing in a late load. Our guard shack is concrete, with sliding glass doors on the sides, no locks, and big windows in front and back.

Sometimes when I'm the only person on the premises, I'll see a reflection of someone walking past the shack. Every inch of this shack and the yard is covered by security cameras. No one has shown up on the footage when I see these reflections. I always check after. I have no idea who or what is causing these reflections…

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15. Silver Spoon

When I was about 15 years old, I was eating some cereal and accidentally dropped my spoon onto the kitchen floor. I watched the spoon fall. As it hit the floor, it just vanished into thin air. I was shocked. I thought that surely my eyes were playing tricks on me. It must have just bounced away and gone out of sight or something.

I spent 30 minutes searching the entire kitchen for that spoon. I was honestly kind of freaked out by what I had seen. I tried to think of every possible place it could have gone. There weren’t many places it could have ended up. Eventually, after looking everywhere I possibly could, I gave up on the search. And I never found it.

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16. Time To Fold

I once fell asleep wearing a certain pajama shirt. Yes, I am sure, I remember putting it on. Then, I woke up in the middle of the night, freezing cold, only to soon realize that I had no shirt on. I turned the light on and there it was, folded neatly on top of my bed table. I still don’t know what happened that night, but it has never happened again.

My first thought was really terrifying. I suspected that someone must have undressed me. I guess it’s possible if I would have slept very heavily or something. But that means some unknown person must have been inside my house, and that creeps me out just to think about. Some people have suggested that I might have been sleepwalking, but I’ve never done that before or since.

Nevertheless, it seems like the only reasonable answer that is actually plausible! But if that’s the case, I’m darn good at folding clothes in my sleep, so maybe I should do it more often!

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17. The Cat With More Than Nine Lives

When I was little, I used to have a Thomas the Tank Engine book with fold-out parts and flaps. There was this one part which was like a shed, and you could lift a flap to see inside it. Inside was all the usual gardening and shed paraphernalia, but there was also a black cat seated in there. Here’s the glitch, though. I swear the cat wasn’t always there!

I used to love that book, but every time I read it I would get to that page and guess whether the cat would be there or not. Not a clue what that was all about really, but it creeped a young me out to no end.

Caught on Home Security Cameras factsPixabay

18. A Dogged Search

A couple of weeks ago, my dog Koda came into my room and started to try and jump on my bed, which she was successful at doing after a couple of tries. Eventually, I gave her a little nudge to, you know, get off my bed. She jumped down and left. Then, I heard my phone ring downstairs, so I walked down and answered it.

It was a call from my grandma, who said she had made some food. So I said okay, I will stop by and come eat. I get my jacket on and get ready to leave. I get my keys and grab my dog's leash to take her. We get in the car and drive for about ten minutes until we arrive. I was eating and talking to my grandma about things. But when I was getting ready to leave, I couldn't find Koda.

I searched everywhere. In the backyard, in the front, outside. She was nowhere to be found. After a good hour of searching my grandma's neighborhood, it started to get dark. It was about 9:30-ish, so I decided to come back home and search again the next day. I left and went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up because I heard something downstairs.

When I went down, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was my dog. At that point, I just thought “Wait, what?” Later, I came back to my grandma’s house to tell her that I had found my dog. As soon as I arrived, I told her about how Koda was at home, and I thought to myself “Did I even bring her here in the first place?” I asked my grandma and she said yes I did, because I had left the leash in her living room.

I then asked my grandma to watch the footage on her security cameras from last night. And there was no footage of the Koda in the street or leaving the front door. But there was footage of her entering the house with me. I went home later and Koda was still there. And to this day, I still don't know what the heck happened.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsPxHere

19. Frankly My Dear, I Don’t See A Dam

Long ago, when I was a kid, my younger brother and I were riding our bikes on the embankment alongside the river and we saw a huge dam-thingy along the river. I grew up in this town and I never knew we had a dam. When we got home, I told my mother that it was the first time I had seen the dam, and she did not know what I was talking about.

Later, I returned to the spot, and there was nothing there. My brother does not remember the incident, but I know that I had seen a dam as clear as day. I guess it must have been my imagination, but it's still very strange. I did not dream it, since my brother remembered that we were there. He just doesn't remember the dam.

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20. Say Cheese!

In college, I delivered pizzas for a local pizzeria to make money. I once had a delivery that should have taken about 20 minutes. When I returned to the store, the manager asked me what had taken so long. I asked him what he meant and he pointed to the computer, which was showing that I had been gone for an hour and seven minutes.

I don't remember delivering the pizza, only returning to the store when I was finished. I have no idea where I was during that entire time. I don't drink or use any mind-altering substances. 20 years later, I still have no idea what happened.

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21. Losing Money

I once dropped a quarter and it just disappeared into thin air. I never heard it hit the ground. I spent a good ten minutes looking everywhere for it. I looked for it under the furniture, under the hem of my pants, and all around. And it was absolutely nowhere to be found. It just literally disappeared and ceased to exist. No idea how that was possible!

Dumbest Person FactsPixabay

22. Stay Cool

I once poured some freshly boiled water into a glass, then walked over to the other room to check my emails on the computer for less than one minute. I am very sure that it was less than a minute, because the same short song was still playing the entire time. Nevertheless, I walked back and the glass of water was room temperature.

I might just have had a stroke. Never checked.

Weird House Rules FactsPiqsels

23. Card Shark

I was sitting on my porch and had my debit card on the table in front of me. I went inside to get something to drink. The patio furniture never left my sight, and I had a six-foot-tall privacy fence around the entire yard. I also lived alone. When I went back outside, it was just gone. I searched EVERYWHERE. Inside and out. But I couldn’t find it.

Nothing was withdrawn from my account, so two days later I canceled the card and requested a new one. Two weeks later, I went out to sit on the porch, like I did every day, and the old card was just sitting right there on the table. It just freaking appeared. There was nothing else on the table. It just was gone. And then it wasn’t.

I repeat, I lived alone at the time. The porch was completely screened. When searching, I literally took off all the cushions on the porch and destroyed my house looking everywhere I possibly could. And the table was just your typical glass patio table. I sat out there every freaking day and there wasn’t anything on it. It was only after two weeks that I found it just sitting there on the table. I genuinely have no explanation.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsPixabay

24. Take Two

Not long after the attacks on 9/11, on a Friday, I got up to go to class and had one of those mornings. I broke a glass while getting something to drink, then I tripped over something while going to my car. I was then late to class due to a wreck on the way there, though thankfully not one that involved my car. While at school, we heard about a plane crashing.

Something about the wings blowing off. I went to work, then went home. The next morning, my roommate wakes me up, asking if I'm skipping class today. After he convinces me that it is still Friday, I get up and go to class. I then noticed that the glass I had broken was no longer broken. On the way to work, I passed the same wreck in the exact same spot.

All day long, I waited to hear about the plane crash, but it never happened. It ended up kind of a normal day. Then, the next day, the news broke about how authorities had just apprehended the attempted “shoe bomber” and prevented his attack. I have wondered many times if someone somehow ‘rewound’ that day to stop the attack and if I somehow didn't reset with everyone else.

Dumbest Things Heard factsShutterstock

25. It’s My Party

I once had a dream about some kid that I had never seen before, dancing at a busy party. He was wearing a blue shirt, black pants, had Bieber Hair, and there was a purple strobe light on the wall behind him. I wake up, think to myself: "Huh, what an odd dream," and carry on with my life. Several years later, I was at my cousin's wedding reception.

I was just chilling and hanging out with a different cousin. Then, the music comes on and we start jumping up and down. And then I realized that I was reliving the dream. Same clothes, same hair, same purple lighting in the background. I somehow predicted the exact situation that my cousin and I would be in and the exact way he would look years before it happened…

The Wizard of Oz FactsShutterstock

26. Let’s Lock The Door And Throw Away The Key

So, before my husband and I were married, we lived separately. He would come over and spend time with me, then leave later at night like around 11:00 or 12:00. He left one night out my front door, which has three locks. There’s a lock on the knob, a deadbolt, and what I call a hotel lock. It's a lock where you flip the long piece over onto a short peg and then the door can only be opened a few inches.

Well, on this particular night, he left and used his key to lock the knob and deadbolt. But I thought to myself that I should go lock the hotel lock too. I come downstairs and find that it’s locked already. Needless to say, there was absolutely no way that he could have locked it from outside. I have no clue how that could have happened.

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27. The Key Point

I was ten years old, and playing in grandma's front yard. She keeps her yard immaculate, award-worthy. It's dusk, and we’re all at a family get-together. My mom says "Toss me the car keys," so I do. My throw is short by finger lengths. I assume they landed in the short grass, but we never found them. That was thirty years ago. The yard has been mowed hundreds of times. The house is still in the family, and still well taken care of. Yet no keys, ever.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsPixabay

28. The Summer of ‘69

A couple of months ago, I was making a 12-hour drive and stopped for gas and snacks at some point along the way. Prior to me leaving for this drive, I was talking with my dad about his birth year, 1969, and how great a year it was. We noted how my favorite music peaked then, the moon landing, etc. When I stopped to grab my snack, I picked up a few things and the price equaled out to $19.69.

I thought this was interesting in and of itself. But then when I got gas, I filled it all the way up. Lo and behold, the total for that was $19.69 as well. Weird, right?

Glitch In The Matrix FactsShutterstock

29. Accidental Prophet

A few months before my first car accident, I dreamed about it happening. Everything from the sounds to the placement and the smell was all the same. The thing is that the girl driving tried to get me to find a different ride, because she didn't want to do any extra driving that day. And after the crash, I told her about my dream. Her reply made my blood run cold.

She said she’d had the same one the night before and that's why she didn't want to drive. Freaky stuff, dude!

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30. The Bells Are Ringing

My partner and I both have the same vivid memory of something happening that never actually happened. We are both convinced that our friend was with us at another friend's wedding, and that he fixed the sound system during the reception. Except that the friend that we remember fixing the sound system was not at the wedding, and does not even know the person who was getting married.

But we both distinctly remember our friend not only being there, but actually saving the day. We sometimes catch ourselves talking about it and once praised our friend for saving that wedding. And he was like: "What? Who's X? I wasn't even there."

Bridezillas factsPiqsels

31. Cat Got Your Tongue?

Once when I went with my grandmother to her friend's house, I was on the porch by myself with the grandmother's friend's cat. All of a sudden, the cat looked me right in the eyes and said the word "Meow." It didn't sound like a cat meowing at all. It sounded very convincingly like a human carefully enunciating the word "Meow."

Two syllables, in their most thoroughly unconvincing cat voice. Like someone intentionally doing a very poor impression of a cat, as a joke. But it was perfectly in time with the movement of the cat's mouth and there was no one else around, so it had to have been the cat saying it. So yeah, I met a cat that could talk, but the only word it knew was "meow."

Glitch In The Matrix FactsUnsplash

32. A Tale Of Two Cities

One time, I was getting on an airplane and I saw this red-headed kid yelling out for some dude named “Sebastian” at a different gate. When I landed in the city I was flying to, I stepped off the plane and immediately noticed a different red-headed kid calling out for a different “Sebastian.” It gave me one of the weirdest feeling that I’ve ever had…

Breaking the Rules FactsShutterstock

33. Falling For It

One time, I was walking my dog. On his leash, there is a little plastic attachment that holds his poop bags. I accidentally dropped the leash onto the ground. I heard the plastic hit the ground. But it somehow ended up back in my hand. Imagine dropping something. Hearing and seeing it drop. But then somehow, it’s in your hand. All in under a couple of seconds.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsPxHere

34. I Just Came To Say Hello

A few nights back, I was wide awake in the guest bed at my place and heard quiet footsteps. I then heard my wife say “Hey” gently at the door. It seemed weird, so I got up to see what she wanted. What I found was chilling. She was fast asleep in bed. Before you ask, I was in a separate bed as I have a cold and have been snoring really loudly. But still.

Scariest Things They've Woken Up To factsShutterstock

35. If You Could Read My Mind

One time, I was going to lunch with two coworkers. We were discussing another coworker. One coworker made an assessment of the coworker we were discussing, and I agreed with him. He immediately looked at me and said he didn't say that. But he acknowledged that he was thinking it. Coworker Two agreed that he didn't say it.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsShutterstock

36. Lighter Than Air

I once kicked the air while I was walking. I felt my foot hit something as my foot was at its highest point in the air, and I stumbled over whatever my foot had hit. When I looked up, I discovered that there was nothing there.

Lawyers wish could forgetUnsplash

37. Tomorrow’s Another Day, Or Not...

I swear I once repeated a full day, from start to finish, back when I was about 10 years old. I don’t remember much since it was so long ago, but I do remember noticing that it was the same date as what I thought yesterday had been. Besides this, nothing pops into my mind about the details of what the experience was like. But I still remember how weird it felt.

Worst Kids FactsShutterstock

38. A Long Distance Call

I was reading on my laptop in my bedroom, when suddenly I heard my best friend calling my name, and it sounded like she was talking through the phone. I look around for my phone, thinking she has called and somehow one of my siblings has answered and has hidden the phone somewhere in the room to prank me. But things got very weird, very fast.

No phone around, nor siblings, and meanwhile my bestie is still talking: "Answer meeee. Why aren't you talkiiiingg???" She then goes silent. I get really nervous, start crying, and ask my siblings if they have something to do with this. I then start to wonder if I am going crazy and hearing voices. They all try to console me. Later, I find my phone downstairs. Not anywhere near where I had heard the voice coming from.

The next day, I tell my friends about the experience, and my bestie says that she did in fact call me last night. She claimed that I did answer, and then she kept calling my name for a couple of minutes thinking I was playing with her, until she eventually hung up. To this day, I don’t understand how the phone just answered the call on its own, or how I was able to hear my friend’s voice from all the way upstairs.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsShutterstock

39. Crash Landing

When I was little, I had a wooden doll crib that rocked. It was maybe about a foot and a half long. I kept it on the other side of my room from where my bed was. One night, I had one of those dreams where you feel like you're falling and it wakes you up. When I woke up, I made a disturbing discovery. The crib was sitting on top of me, on my chest and abdomen.

Now, I feel like this is an important detail to add. I sat straight up when I woke up from the dream, and the crib fell off of me onto the floor and made a really loud noise. Some people have proposed that it might have been sleep paralysis, but I've never experienced sleep paralysis before or after. And if it had been, I don't think I would remember the crib falling onto the floor.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsShutterstock

40. When Charles Is Not In Charge

One time, in the middle of the night, I heard somebody scream my name. They just suddenly screamed: “CHARLES!” at the top of their lungs. Nobody was there, and my parents were both asleep. Later that same month, my dad was making coffee, and he heard me whisper in his ear: “Dad!” But when he turned around, nobody was there.

I have zero recollection of doing this. I have sleep paralysis a lot, which may explain the first one, but I have no idea how my dad heard me talk to him while he was working in the kitchen. I don’t believe in ghosts, but this does creep me out...

Scariest Things They've Woken Up To factsShutterstock

41. Keep A Song In Your Heart

There was one morning before school when I randomly thought to myself, “I haven’t heard the song “Hey Ya” in a long time. It was a good song though.” Just a meaningless whatever while brushing my teeth. A little while later, I arrive at school and all of my friends just randomly mention to me that they have the song “Hey Ya” stuck in their heads.

They were all humming it all day and, when I asked them about it, they said they had just thought about it out of the blue that morning. None of us had heard the song recently enough to all be reminded about it. Nor were any of us capable of thinking up any reason why we all might have been thinking about it out of the blue on this particular day.

Brightest Things Said By Dull Students factsShutterstock

42. It’s All In The Game

I started this board game and card club about a year ago. Myself and a small group of friends have been playing the "Agrecola" board game a lot. For some reason, I frequently hum the lyrics to a Rage Against the Machine song while we play this game. One of the guys I play with was going to another city with some of his friends, and they found a board game shop where you could play some games in-store.

They found Agrecola on the shelf and started setting up a game. When they had it all set up and were ready to play, my friend heard someone behind him tapping his fingers against a table and singing the words to the same RATM song I was always humming. He freaked out, turned around, and expected to see me sitting there.

But it was just some other random dude humming the same song.

Glitch In The Matrix FactsFlickr, Oliver Hallmann

43. A Hair-Raising Sight To Behold

Just today at the mall, I saw at least ten men with the exact same bleached haircut in the food court. I think the universe’s character generator is broken…

Glitch In The Matrix FactsUnsplash

44. Can’t Get Enough

I have several times had "multi-plane deja vu," as I like to call it. Basically, it means that I'd have a deja vu moment about something, not too odd. But then later, I'd have the same exact deja vu moment again. So the same exact incident would keep repeating, and I’d keep remembering it. And it was always super specific things, too.

Online Dating FactsUnsplash

45. In Dreams

I have dreamed of at least two or three situations in vivid detail before they actually happened. Each time, they happened exactly as they did in my dreams. It can't be a simple case of déjà-vu, because I specifically remember dreaming about it. So it’s not just a general feeling of familiarity. I have no idea how to explain these instances.

Hotel Horror Stories FactsShutterstock

46. Location, Location, Location

I once had an Android phone that had a Google "Cards" feature option. This feature would notify you of how far you were from home at various times, like "15 minutes to home" if you went out somewhere. I thought this feature was annoying and useless, so I kept it turned off. After several months of no Cards notifications, the feature randomly appeared to turn back on by itself.

I’m just sitting at home alone one night when a Card pops up saying "35 minutes to home." I thought that was weird, since I was home. So I looked at the map to see where it thought I was. It was pinning me at a random intersection on the other side of town. For the time being, let's call that intersection “1st St. & Story.”

I think to myself, “That's weird, I'm not even close to where it thinks I am. I don't even know where that is, I've never been to that area.” I go to my Cards settings to turn the feature back off, but it says it's already turned off. "That's weird." The next night, the exact same thing happens again. "35 minutes to home from 1st St. & Story." What the?

I was still definitely not over there. I check the Cards settings and the notifications are still turned off, so I have no idea why I'm getting a notification. Then, a few days later, a friend and I are out running errands. While driving, he misses his intended exit, so he takes the next one. Once on the streets, I ask "Where are we? I've never been here before."

Suddenly, a car to our right tries to turn left and crashes right into us. He messed up the wheel to the point where it was unable to turn, so he pulled forward to the curb to call a tow truck. We had our kids in the car, so I called my sister to come and pick us all up. When my sister asked me for the location, I looked up at the street signs. The intersection was 1st St. & Story...

Harry Styles FactsMax Pixel

47. I Dreamed A Dream

Not sure if anyone will believe me or not, but screw it. Here goes. When I was in high school, my friend Phil took his own life. I never really knew the specifics. All I know is that he shot himself at one of the local parks. Fast forward to six years or so later. I'm asleep in bed next to my wife one night. I'm having a fairly normal dream.

In my dream, I was at a store doing something or another, I can't really remember the specifics of the beginning of the dream. What I do remember is bumping into Phil in the store. When I saw him, everything suddenly got super weird. He actually looked like himself, not like in most dreams where people will be certain people but not look like them. This guy actually looked like the real Phil.

He looked at me and smiled and said "Hey, man." At that moment, the dream got crystal clear. I asked him if it was really him and he said it was. He told me we were gonna hang out for a bit and, after that, the dream got super lucid. He showed me how to make stuff and generally we just messed around doing weird dream things.

Suddenly, I realized that my dream was coming to an end. I turned to him and asked him if I was about to wake up. He said yes, but said that he’d had fun coming to hang out with me for a bit. I don't know why, but I asked "So why'd you do it man? Why'd you take your own life?" The way he answered chilled me to my core. Not necessarily what he said, just how he said it.

He replied, "My girlfriend cheated on me, man." He said it like it was a question he'd answered before. Like when someone asks you what your first job was, and you've responded with the exact same sentence so many times that it just falls off of your tongue effortlessly. Except I had known his girlfriend, and they were the kind of couple that everyone admired.

I said "Sophie? Sophie cheated on you?" His eyes lit up like he realized he was talking to someone that actually knew him in real life. He said, "Yeah man, Sophie cheated on me." We gave each other a hug and he wished me well. I woke up and felt super strange. It was somewhere around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. I closed my eyes and thought: "Phil, if that was really you, I need you to give me a sign." It was at that moment that things got even eerier.

Right after I finished that thought, my phone started ringing. It came across as an unknown number and only rang twice. I knew I wasn't dreaming anymore because my ex-wife woke up and sleepily asked me who was trying to call me so late. To this day, whenever I think about that story, I get chills. Hope you’re okay, Phil, wherever you are!

Glitch In The Matrix FactsUnsplash

48. In The Hole

When I was a kid, there was this house right before the entrance to my subdivision that was in this super deep valley. I remember calling it "the house in the hole" and thinking about how much it must have sucked when it rained, and how great of a sledding hill the sides would make in the winter. Then, one day, we were passing it, and there was no valley. It was at the same level as the road.

I asked my mom what happened to the hole and she had no idea what I was talking about. To this day, even though I no longer live in that area, I always stop and take a look at that house whenever I drive past it. Just to check if there’s anything that could explain what I had been seeing.

Home alonePexels

49. Total Eclipse Of The Matrix

I have a childhood memory that still haunts me to this day. In my kindergarten class back in the USSR, I distinctly remember the sky going dark for some time and the teacher rushing us all inside. Then, after an unknown amount of time, it went back to bright again. My parents denied that there was a solar eclipse that day. I couldn't find any record of one either, though I should check again. Nevertheless, I distinctly remember that happening.

Irene Of Athens FactsWikimedia Commons, Thammarith Likittheerameth

50. A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

I was going through my grandma's pictures after she passed. We found a picture of what appeared to be my husband's mom posing with my grandma. This couldn't possibly have been his mom as they didn’t know each other at the time, but it looked just like her. And that’s not all. According to the note on the photo, this person also shared the same first name as his mom. No, we aren't related. Yes, we've had our DNA analyzed.

What Is My Life FactsShutterstock

Sources: Reddit,


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