As humans, we like to try and make sense of the world we’re living in. But sometimes, the world just doesn’t want to cooperate. From defying the laws of physics to halting time itself, there are some events that witnesses simply can’t accept as real—yet, as far as their senses can tell, that’s exactly what they are. Here are 50 first-hand stories about some crazy “glitch in the matrix” moments that people out there have experienced.
1. Nutty Behavior
Once, when I was 12 years old, I spent the day at an amusement park with a neighbor and one of his classmates. I'd never met the classmate before, but he was a cool guy and we were all just chilling—going on roller coasters, spending money on the stupid ring toss game and not winning anything—the usual amusement park shebang.
At one point, we went to a food stand and he reached out for some chocolate bar. Out of nowhere, I blurted out a strange warning: "Dude, you're allergic to peanuts." Only after saying that did I realize he was about to eat something with peanuts in it. Also, I'd never met the guy before, so I had no way of knowing he was allergic to peanuts.
But the words just came out, and they turned out to be accurate. He was like, "Woah, how did you know?" And we agreed that there was no real explanation. Life is just weird sometimes. Anyway, we went back to riding roller coasters and I never saw that guy again.
2. Coming Out Of His Shell
I used to have a pet turtle when I was younger. One morning, when I walked to my kitchen, there was my turtle crawling on the floor. I picked him up, thinking he had escaped his aquarium...but when looked inside, my turtle was still in there. My parents didn't buy me another turtle and we have no idea where it came from. But we had two turtles from that day on.
3. People Watching
Every morning, on my way to work, I go through a shopping mall. On one of the benches, there would always be an elderly man sitting, appearing to wait for someone. The guy was fairly anonymous, but he always had some small flair that made him look like he was trying to be hip. He wore a golfer’s cap, a vest, logger boots, etc.
Every morning, when I walked by, I noticed him and always wondered who he was waiting for. For four years, as I walked by, I never saw him actually meeting someone. Then, I got a new job and started work in another part of town. Three days in, when I walked from the subway towards my new place of work, I stopped in my tracks—it was the same guy, sitting on a bench!
4. Going Out With A Bang
For the longest time in my life, I would frequently hear random noises that sounded like they were out of this world. Sometimes, it would be static or explosions. I found out later that I have a disorder known as exploding head disorder. It's basically your brain glitching when it transitions into sleep. It often scared the heck out of me before I found out what it was.
5. The Long And Winding Road
This has freaked me out forever. I was a satellite installer and I was driving between two small towns in North Carolina. For those wondering, the towns in question were Statesville and Taylorsville. It's about a 20-minute drive of a perfectly straight two-lane road, with pretty much nothing but trees on either side for the whole route.
It was the middle of the day and I was driving along, listening to Howard Stern on Sirius when all of a sudden, I went from being wide awake to falling asleep. One second, I was normal, and the next, my head was drooping down and my eyes were closing. I snapped out of it when my car bounced on a bump, but I was still in the middle of the road.
Howard Stern was still in the same sentence, and my GPS signal said it was lost. And then I heard it "recalculating." When it came back on, I realized something odd—I was now about 12 miles further down the road than I was a few seconds ago, and I had apparently missed my turn by five miles. My immediate thought, even though I consider myself a level-headed atheist, was that I fell asleep, hit a tree, lost my life, 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 a sweaty palms instinct 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 had missed. In case you're wondering, my butt felt fine—so I know it wasn’t aliens.
6. The Voice Of Reason
When I was about 15 years old, I remember having a dream where all I could see was darkness. I could hear people talking over the darkness, though. I remember hearing my mom saying, "It's almost done," and "You're doing great," and "It's gone," but I didn't think anything of it. About three months later, my earrings got embedded inside my ears and I had to go to the hospital to get them cut out.
While there, they applied freeze spray onto my ear. The spray went into my ear and obviously touched my eardrum, knocking me out. But the craziest part was...I could still hear things. While I was out, all I saw was darkness and my mom said the exact same things to me that I had heard in my dream just a few months before. No one believes me, but it was mind-blowing!
7. Wait A Second...
I watched a little boy run up and kick a soccer ball. Then, everything stopped for the slightest of milliseconds before I watched him run up and kick the ball again. Basically, I saw the exact same moment happen twice. It was as though time skipped like a needle on a record, but I was unaffected. I didn't move, but I wasn't frozen and then replayed like everyone else.
I was an observer with full control over my body. I've never experienced anything similar ever again. It was so clear. I still have the frozen moment in my mind perfectly. I started panicking immediately after it happened. I had to sit down. It felt so incredibly real. Even if it was just a hallucination, what did everyone do for that second? There were no other glitches, no clicks forward.
So I had an extra second that nobody else did. Am I a second older than the rest of the world? Did I travel back one second in time? Did something unimaginable happen to me in an alternate universe? Did I have a mini-stroke? Who knows.
8. Born To Be Great
I share my name with my great-grandfather on my father's side. I never met him as he passed 20 years before I was born. He was apparently six feet tall, "eccentric," and obsessed with intellectual pursuits. But he was so prone to get lost in thought that he would often forget to do important things. The other members of my family are all fairly short.
My father is the tallest at 5'8" and he is very straight-laced, conservative, and blue-collar. But unlike the rest of them, I am over six feet. Apparently, I’m the second coming of my great-grandfather. In addition to our name and unusual height, we share the same tendencies, personality, general appearance, and a whole lot more.
A week before I got married, my brother was going through old records and discovered some information about my great-grandfather's first wife. That's when I made the most interesting discovery—no living family member ever met this woman, as she passed young in the 1930s. Lo and behold, according to these records, she’d had the same name as my wife. Am I just reused content?
9. No Shirt, No Service
I was trying to sleep late at night and the T-shirt that I was wearing was getting itchy. So I took my shirt off while still in bed and threw it down from the top bunk of my bed. I heard it drop to the floor, but then I kept on hearing it drop to the ground over and over again. This went on for a while. I was wide awake and I knew I wasn't just imagining things.
I’m still confused about it, but I never mentioned it to anyone until today.
10. With You All The Way
Once, when I was a kid, my mom and I were outside taking pictures of old cars to sell in the backwoods area of our yard. All of a sudden, my mom heard rustling in the bush and she told me to run. I had flip-flops on, so I kicked them off and booked it. Behind me, I didn't hear my mom, but I heard a rusty clanking sound; as if something had jumped on the cars.
While running, I still didn't see my mom. I got into the house, all panicked, and when I turned, I immediately gasped—there my mom was, sitting at the table reading the paper. I asked her if she heard the same sound on the way inside and she told me she was never even outside. What the heck??
11. A Sight To Behold
I once took off my glasses because something had made me laugh so hard that I cried. I went to the bathroom, washed my face, came back, and my glasses were gone. They were nowhere to be found. Two weeks passed, and I got new glasses to replace the missing ones. I then got home from a friend's house and took off my shoes.
That's when I got a call from the same friend less than five minutes later, informing me that I had forgotten something at his house. I went to put on my shoes there they were—my missing glasses, folded perfectly, sitting on top of my shoes...the same shoes that I had worn every single day since the glasses had gone missing. They were placed so evenly between both shoes that it almost looked like an art display.
12. Jeanie In A Bottle
When I was 10 years old, I lived in an eight-foot camper. I slept on the top bunk of the bed. While I was lying there, my jeans were annoying me, as I had taken them off and put them next to my head. So I flung them towards my feet. The next occurrence threw me completely off-guard—they immediately flew back at me and landed in the exact same spot where they were before I threw them.
This happened two times in a row. I have no idea why or how they would move on their own.
13. Time Flies
I sat down holding some food on a stick and closed my eyes for a brief second. When I opened my eyes again, three hours had gone by and the food had disappeared from my hand. I have no idea how to explain that.
14. A Pat On The Back
As a kid, I used to have incredibly realistic dreams of things that hadn't happened yet. They usually involved completely mundane things, and they would happen shortly after I dreamt them (usually within a couple of days). For this reason, it became hard to differentiate between my dreams and reality. For example, I spent years believing that my brother had impaled me in the back with a butter knife.
My parents tell me it never happened, and I've always thought it was just one of my dreams. It's so weird though because it was just so real. The memory of being attacked by him is so vivid that I can remember even the little details—the time of day, what we were all wearing, the type of butter knife, etc. But that's not even the scariest part.
The spot on my back—right where I had dreamed I was impaled—well, it always tingles. Sometimes, it even turns a deep shade of red.
15. Stranger Danger
Since I was young, I've experienced what is apparently called "depersonalization." The very first time, I was probably six or seven years old. I remember clearly that it was a very sunny day, and I was walking somewhere holding my mother's hand. It was the first time I'd been allowed to wear sandals instead of shoes. Where I lived, there was a lot of broken glass on the pavement.
We were waiting to cross a road and it happened—I suddenly felt this sense of complete alienation from myself. I was not me. This body wasn't mine. I was just occupying it and I was something more. It was a very strange experience. It's happened probably two or three more times since then; just a feeling that I am unfamiliar with my own self.
It's also happened once with my brother, who I'm very close to. That day, I looked at him and had an intense feeling of "Who is this?" It lasts just a few seconds and it is quite eerie. It's as if all the familiarity you have about yourself and others, and all the attachment, just completely disappears for a few seconds.
16. The Thing Is...
I used to live and work at Ayers Rock in Australia, and during that time, I had been struggling with depression. One day, as I was crossing some sand dunes with groceries, I suddenly had this feeling like I'd had enough. I wanted to end it all and I figured I'd do it when I got home. As I walked through the sand, I noticed something pretty big coming towards me.
I looked up to see what it was, but I couldn't make it out. Nevertheless, I still sensed that whatever it was kept getting even larger and larger, and as it came nearer, I felt my whole body begin to vibrate. It was like I was in a really heavy storm or something because this thing was IMMENSE...and POWERFUL. At first, I thought I was in its way and that I was going to be annihilated.
But later on, I realized that this thing was going to pass me. I could tell that it had noticed me and I became overwhelmed with love and compassion. Then it spoke, and its echoing words sent chills up my spine. "Breathe," it said to me calmly. So I did. I breathed in as deep as I could and felt months of sadness, loneliness, and self-loathing immediately become replaced with a pure feeling of joy.
I was weightless. I was happy. Nothing else mattered. And as I stood there, the thing just "strode" past me, leaving me with tears streaming down my face and all my groceries spilling in the sand.
17. Thinking Inside The Box
When I was younger, I got this magazine that came with a bracelet. I'm not sure what they expected us to do with them, to be completely honest. There were only one of those bracelets included in any given one of these magazines. Well, I put mine in this box with all my random stuff in it. A couple of months later, I saw it lying on the floor in front of my window.
At first, I thought my cat might have been playing with it. But it turns out, that wasn't the case at all. When I went to put it in the box again, I saw it. Another one was still in the freaking box. That stupid thing duplicated itself and I have no clue how.
18. Telephone Tag
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.
It was 3 am in the morning, and she was in complete hysterics. She kept asking why I scared her. Apparently, she had received a call from that basement phone just a minute earlier, with someone who sounded like me slowly repeating her name before crackling and fading out. My apartment was 10 miles away from work. I thought she was lying, but I saw the record of the 3 am call from the basement phone logged on her cell with my own eyes.
This still freaks me the heck out every time I look back on it.
19. Put Your Lighters Up
Last weekend, I went out drinking with some friends. While outside for some fresh air, I noticed a little white smiley face on my orange lighter. I didn't think anything of it strange until a few hours later when I went outside again and inspected it. The freaking smiley face was gone. I had in my hand a plain orange lighter. In my mind, I was so confused.
Still, I brushed it off and didn't say anything about it. Fast forward another hour or two, I pulled it out of my pocket just to check for the third time, and bam—there it was, the little white smiley face, smiling back at me again. At that point, I thought to myself, “Holy cow, okay. I’m intoxicated. I need some backup.” So I said to my friends, “Hey, look at this cool little smiley face.”
That way, the next time the little bugger vanished again, I could bring it up to them and confirm my sanity. Well, the night ended before I had the chance to inspect it again. But when I got home and performed my mandatory pocket dump before bed, I was surprised at what came out. I just stared at the items in front of me, confused as ever.
Not only did I have two different orange lighters, one with a smiley face and one without, but I had also somehow accrued three additional lighters through some magical wormhole connecting my palm and the front right pocket of my jeans.
20. Haven’t We Done This Before?
My friend and I would often sit in my car outside of his house in the same spot and just chill. We'd always have a blast, but then I started to notice something extremely peculiar about our hangout sessions. Every single time, we'd have the exact same conversation...like, word for word. It was like deja vu, except for hours and hours on end. I got so paranoid that I started thinking that aliens were controlling my brain or something.
21. I’ll See You In My Dreams
Many years ago, I woke up after what was easily the most vivid dream I'd ever had. In this dream, my life had simply gone on and on. I got married, moved, changed jobs, had a house, had kids, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then, suddenly, I woke up and I was back in my small Boston apartment lying next to my girlfriend, and it was like a large part of my life had never happened.
The closest way I can describe it would be the feeling you'd get if you woke up one morning and found yourself wherever you were 15 or 20 years ago. Everyone you'd ever met in those years never existed. Every life achievement you'd had was a lie. Every memory was false and your entire life had been instantly rewound back to a random moment many years in your past.
I was so traumatized by this that I remember waking up and sobbing uncontrollably for hours like I was grieving for the passing of all of my family, which in a way I was. But the most inexplicably bizarre part to me was how mundane the dream was. Nothing dreamlike or surreal happened. It felt absolutely like real life. The only difference was the time scale.
In this dream, the time that elapsed was easily at least 15 or 20 years. To this day, I can still recall bits and pieces of the dream, including vague memories of my family's faces. And I can start to feel like crying again. And sometimes, I can also start to get emotional at the thought that someday I may not remember anything of the dream and all of those people and life memories will be gone forever.
I'd never had anything like that happen before, nor since. But it's still one of the most deeply scarring events that have ever happened to me, and one that I have yet to explain or understand.
22.
Reading Ahead
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 darn 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 six books in the series 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 the next week and it was no longer there. It slipped my mind after that for a bit, but about a month later, I went to Barnes & Noble to try and get my copy.
That's when they dropped a mind-blowing revelation on me. They told me it hadn't come out yet, and that the release date for the book was six months in the future. 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 it appeared when I had held it in Best Buy, months before it came out.
23. Phoning It In
Several years ago, I stopped to get gas on my way to meet up with my girlfriend for dinner. This was a little before smartphones were a thing, so all I had was a silver flip phone. Getting out of the car, I managed to drop it on the ground and accidentally kick it right as a car drove by. It was run over and shot out from under the car's tire across the gas station lot.
When I found it, it was all scratched up. It wasn't smashed, but it wouldn't turn on. I spent most of the dinner annoyed because I was broke and I didn't want to have to pay for a new phone. But when we got back to our apartment later that night, I had the most mind-boggling experience—the first thing I noticed upon walking into the room was my silver flip phone sitting on the kitchen counter, completely unscathed.
Somehow, I had managed to hallucinate dropping and then kicking my phone, before watching an identical phone get shot across the lot and then finding it. The antenna on the top of the duplicate even had the same bite marks from where my cat had tried to eat mine. Did my phone spontaneously clone itself and teleport back onto my kitchen counter?
24. Beauty Sleep
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 started drifting 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 shook me to my core when I read it: "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.
25. A Quiet Meal
I once went out to dinner with my boyfriend in a very crowded, very loud Thai restaurant. This was about nine years ago. We were practically yelling at each other across the table, trying to maintain a conversation over the hustle and bustle. Then, completely out of nowhere, all the noise just stopped entirely. All at once.
I stopped talking mid-sentence because I realized I was now yelling in a silent room. Every hair on my body stood on end. Everyone around us was silent and still. The kitchen sounded motionless. Everything was absolutely quiet for maybe about two full minutes. Then, as quickly as the silence fell, the restaurant came back to life. It never happened again.
26. Stormy Weather
I was 10 years old and it was winter. My mom made me go out and shovel the snow. 10 minutes later, I finished up and walked back inside. Then, my mom went to look outside and asked me to go back out and "actually shovel the snow this time." Confused, I walked out and saw that all the snow was still there, so I had to shovel it all over again.
27. Time Is On Your Side
So I used to take substances back in high school. One thing I noticed was that I had a knack for always looking at the clock at 4:20 pm somehow. I thought it was so cool that I would be minding my own business and then boom, I'd glance at the clock at 4:20 pm on the dot. It always happened without fail, and I never thought it was strange.
That is until I stopped taking substances after high school. Cold turkey, I just moved on. From that moment on, I then always looked at the clock at 3:16 am instead, and with the same consistent knack as before. It always happened randomly without thinking about trying to do it. Since I was raised Christian, this time always made me think of the famous Bible verse John 3:16.
Now, here comes the real glitch. I woke up one morning on a school day. Sure, I was a little tired, but I was awake enough to notice that it was too early for my alarm to have gone off, which would normally be around 6:30 am.
The window let some light in, so it was before that time. I leaned over and out of bed to glance at my phone clock. It said clearly on the screen that the time was 3:16 am. I thought there was no way that could be accurate. And in the very same moment, before I could even process anything, the screen changed before my eyes to 5:45 am.
I was wide awake then and really weirded out. I still glance at the clock at 3:16 am sometimes.
28. Yesterday Once More
I woke up one morning and realized that the day before had happened, yet I had no recollection of it whatsoever. I could not seem to recall a single thing that had transpired during that entire 24-hour period. I did not have any substances, drinks, or bumps on my head. Bits and pieces eventually came back to me later that evening.
29. Just An Average Guy
I was probably about 14 or 15 years old when this happened. I was done with school for the day and had tennis practice right after, so I was walking outside to my bike. At the school exit, I passed a person entering the building. There was absolutely nothing special about the appearance of that person, but for some reason, we locked eyes and I felt uneasy.
It's hard to explain, but he was so average in appearance that he actually stood out to me. Anyway, I got on my bike and started pedaling fast because I was running late. About a kilometer and a half later, I was on a straight sidewalk and I saw a figure in the distance walking towards me. When he came into view, I was shocked. Sure enough, it was Mr. Average staring directly at me.
There was no way he could have been able to get there before me in such a short time. I used all the shortcuts and was going pretty fast on my bike, so even if he left the school in a hurry, he wouldn't have made it. I passed him again and, about five or ten seconds later, I decided to stop and turn around to look at him one more time.
But Mr. Average had completely vanished. To this day, I remember everything about that encounter clearly, since it seriously freaked me out.
30. Time To Face The Music
I once borrowed a pair of Apple earbuds from one of my friends. When I was done with them, I gave them back to him. I usually keep my own earbuds in my pockets, so one day after being home all day, I reached into my pocket to pull my pair out. To my surprise, I pulled out the pair that I thought I had given back.
So I called my friend up and gave him this second identical pair. A few days later, this same exact thing happened again. I had no idea how that could have happened. We started off with one pair of Apple earbuds between the two of us, and now we had three. I would assume that at some point I unwittingly just grabbed another pair by mistake that had belonged to someone else, but I don't get out much and no one in my family owns any Apple products.
31. Fly Me To The Moon
Yesterday, my sister and I were talking and she mentioned that on her way home from taking a friend to work, they had seen a jet frozen in the air. I thought it was fascinating and I hoped I'd see it too, because I was going with her the next time she took that route. Sure enough, the next night, when we got to the exact same spot where she claimed to have seen it the previous night, there was a jet frozen in the air.
I totally flipped out when I spotted that. I was in absolute awe. I couldn't believe that I was seeing it for myself. But I had read that things like this can often be an optical illusion, so I stared at it for a good minute without it moving, waiting to see what would happen. That's when things got even weirder—after a few minutes, it resumed flying. Just like that. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
32. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
I was sitting in my car, watching a thunderstorm when I suddenly got this weird feeling. It felt like I had been sitting there with another person in the passenger seat the entire time. I could sense that they were there for the majority of the time, but at a certain point, that sensation disappeared and it was like the person suddenly vanished from existence. The weirdest part of all?
I still have what appears to be their house key that was left behind, but I have no idea who the person was or where he or she lived.
33. I Saw The Light (Or Not)
I once threw a light bulb into an empty trash bin from a few feet away, but I didn't hear it land at the bottom of the bin. I immediately decided to pick it up, to take note of what type of bulb it was so that I could replace it. But it was gone. It had totally disappeared. My roommate witnessed this too, and we never found it, even as we were moving out at the end of the semester.
34. A Helping Hand
This happened 25 years ago, but I still remember it so clearly. We would always wake my dad up by going into his room and jumping on the bed on weekends. He worked a lot during the week, so he was usually gone by the time we woke up most mornings, and he'd be home after we had already gone to bed. Weekends were usually the only time we really saw him.
So anyway, my brother and I were about six and seven years old at the time. We went into his room one weekend to wake him up in the same way we always did—by jumping on the bed. All of a sudden, while he was still lying there, we heard a tapping noise. We asked him, "What was that?" He replied, "I'm tapping on the window." It didn't make sense since he was still lying in bed on his back at the time.
He was also at least about eight feet away from the window, in the upstairs bedroom. Then, we heard it again. Tap, tap, tap. Us: “Dad!! What is that?” Him: "I'm tapping on the window. Here, watch!" So he put his arm behind the pillow and shook it around a bit. All of a sudden, a hand appeared outside the window as if someone was crouching down and had just reached up.
Tap. Tap. Tap. I looked at my dad, and he just laughed. I couldn't comprehend it at the time. When I brought the incident up to him later, trying to clarify what had actually happened, he had no idea what I was referring to. I still have no idea now if this was just something I just wanted to see, so my mind convinced itself it was there or something. But I've never forgotten it.
35. A Dog Eat Dog World
I was in the living room with one of my dogs and she started acting really strange. It looked like she needed to throw up, so I opened the back door and let her outside. Then, I went to go tell my nan, the only other person who was home. My nan told me to shut the door, but I told her the dog was still outside. My nan said that she had the dog, but I told her I had just seen the dog go outside.
So I shut the door and when I went into my nan's room, my dog was sitting by the bed with her...
36. The Long And Winding Road
I live in the middle of absolute nowhere. To get to my town from my university, there is a mountain pass road that is very secluded. At one point, there are no exits or places to pull over for a good six miles because it's literally on the side of a huge mountain. It is fairly straight, too, so you can see in front of you and behind you for miles.
Anyway, one night, I was driving home from school, and at the little secluded six-mile stretch of no shoulder and no exits, I saw a car behind me at about one mile in. I looked back again about 30 seconds later and it was gone, with no trace of it in my rearview mirror at all. Here's the messed up part—there was nowhere for it to have gone besides over the surrounding cliffs.
I would still have been able to see it somewhere in my mirrors if that didn't happen. Creeped me the heck out, to say the least. I really hope this was just a glitch in the matrix and that someone didn't actually plummet 3,000 feet to their demise without so much as making a sound or leaving a trace behind. That would not be a very pleasant way to go...
37. The Voice Of Reason
When I was around 20 years old, I kept having dreams about a woman with long black hair named Aurora. They were all 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 who she was and how I was connected to her.
After a few months, she stopped showing up and I dismissed it, thinking my brain was just playing games with me. Fast forward a few years later, to Halloween 2009. I was in the car with a friend, stopped at a gas station. Just as I was about to pull out and merge onto a highway, I got a phone call from a random number. So I stopped the car and picked up the call, but no one said anything.
There was a person behind me who grew impatient, honked at me, and then swerved in front of me instead of waiting for two seconds for me to move. The second the car got onto the highway, the driver was met with a cruel twist of fate—some silver Civic lost control of its wheel and crashed into the car that just swerved in front of me. I called the authorities and waited at the gas station for them to come.
Turns out, the drivers of both cars didn’t make it. It 100% would have been me if I hadn't gotten that phone call. I called it back a few hours later out of gratitude and curiosity. The phone rang three times and went to voicemail. The recording said: "Hi, you've reached Aurora. Please leave your name and number." I've never had goosebumps like that in my life, before or since.
I called it again the next day because I was so confused about the whole situation. Some woman answered, and we got to talking. I told her my entire story, including the dreams I had. She told me she didn't know how I got her number and that she never called me as far as she remembers. Weird. I asked her if she had a Facebook to confirm if she was, in fact, the woman from my dreams.
I checked her Facebook and, holy heck, it was her. If that's not a glitch in the matrix, then I'm just completely crazy.
38. Getting The Message
My story is about what I like to call “the parallel universe answering machine.” 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. I'll call you later. Bye." And then I hung up and left the house. I made no other calls.
Later that day, when he called back, he threw me completely off-guard. "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 to hear it for myself.
After my initial message that I did leave, there was a slight pause and then it continued on for another 30 to 40 seconds or so with me talking to some girl. It was my voice, but I was having a conversation that I never had, with a girl whose voice I didn't recognize. You could compare my voice in both of the messages and they were indistinguishable.
Not just the voice but, you know, the talking mannerisms too. It was indeed my voice. Also, the references that were made to my occupation and activities were accurate. Basically, in this conversation, I was talking to this girl about going skiing, but I told her I had to go down to my shop and work on a car first, which totally aligned with my real life. But it gets even creepier.
It was recorded on one of those digital answering machines that recorded the message to a chip, so there was no tape that I could have taken out and had analyzed, unfortunately. Also, neither I nor my friend had party lines, so that's not a potential explanation that could explain this phenomenon away. It was very freaky, I can't even explain it.
39. You Can’t Help Those That Won’t Help Themselves
Driving home on a stormy day, I could see that a sideroad up to the local golf course was blocked off by flashing barricades. I also saw a Mercedes parked past the barricades with its hazard lights on. I stopped and walked up to the car to ask if they needed help, as I'm an EMT. I shone my light in the back seat to see a man slumped over, apparently asleep.
Thinking I had a few intoxicated folks on my hands, I moved up to the driver's seat window and rapped on the glass. I shone my light inside once again, and the driver is sitting bolt upright; unmoving and staring straight ahead. Nothing I did to get his attention caused him to blink, flinch, or move. I looked over to the other side of the car and the passenger was slumped forward onto the dash.
I started to get creeped out, so I called down to the sheriff’s station and requested a backup unit up to my location to help me check them out. All of their car doors were locked. While on the phone, I walked back to my truck to get my go-bag. As I was on the phone with dispatch, the receptionist asked me to get the license plate number of the car.
A truck passed by at just that moment and once it left the scene, I was shocked—the car was suddenly gone. I then looked up the road and saw that it was still blocked off, so I had no idea where it could have driven off to. 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 would be open for at least another day or so.
So the question is... where the heck did the car go? Tree up one way, barricades down the other. It's kept me a bit unsettled when stopping at accidents or hazardous scenes since then.
40. Getting Schooled
This happened to me in the 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 (who was a year younger than me) came walking out of a class to my right. He passed in front of me and headed down some stairs.
We said "hi" to each other. Then, about 20 seconds later, he walked out of the same class again, passed in front of me, and headed down the stairs. I just stared at him, confused and afraid, and he looked back at me and said, "Why the heck are you staring at me like that?"
41. A Spectator Sport
When I was 12 years old, my mom let me stay in the truck as she went grocery shopping. As I waited for her to come back, I saw an old guy walking toward the truck with an indescribable look directed at me, as if I knew too much. He stopped five feet away from the truck, looked at me for a couple of seconds, and headed back the exact same way he came.
It was rather traumatic and very confusing for me at that age. Five or six years later, my dad was showing me home videos of us at Yellowstone. During a scene at the Old Faithful, I saw a detail in the background that gave me chills—the same guy, giving the same look, wearing the same clothes, peering at us on camera.
42. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
I was hanging out at a friend's place back in 2008. He had a cool shed and we'd hang out there every weekend. It had four sets of bunk beds, tables, a fireplace, TV, fridge, the whole lot! One night, we were all relaxing in there when I needed to pee. I walked out the front door of the shed and started to walk to the right. Suddenly, I found myself stopped in my tracks.
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, there are empty fields and trees. It was dark by now. The lights from the house were 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 five to ten 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." Then, he spoke, and I got chills. 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 have 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.
43. Beware Of Darkness
I got my wisdom teeth out in 2000, right around the time that The Matrix film came out on VHS. I was whacked completely out of my mind on painkilling substances after coming back from the surgery (I had awful wisdom teeth), and my mom basically just dropped me in bed 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 I was too out of it to get up and adjust the blinds. A little bit after the “black cat” scene in the movie, 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 it had been when I passed out, but it was now completely dark outside. It felt like zero time lapse from my perspective. I 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.
44. Dream A Little Dream Of Me
I think the strangest glitch I've ever experienced was back when I was in high school. I was talking to a friend on the phone, describing a dream I’d just had about an ice skating rink. Unexpectedly, he interrupted me, then started to describe the rest of the dream back to me from the opposite point of view. It was a while ago, so I don't remember everything, but we both described the exact same scenery, what the people were doing, etc.
It freaked me out when it happened.
45. Monkey Business
My dad had this little toy monkey that he used to call his "favorite child." He loved to tease me and my siblings with it. Not in a bad way, but it was really frustrating and we spent hours trying to swipe 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 he eventually figured that we had thrown it out and he gave up after a week or so. Anyway, a few years later, when I was about 17 years old, I ws walking down the street in Toronto and saw this little orange object on the side of the road. When I walked over to it, I was stunned. It was the exact same freakin’ 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.
46. Blast From The Past
I had a friend in high school. Let’s call him Bob. Bob was a very nice fellow, and while we weren't that close, we had similar tastes in music and we'd share CDs from time to time. This was in the late '80s, way before digital file-sharing. Anyway, we eventually graduated and I moved several hundred miles away to college. As a result, Bob and I lost touch.
When I left for college, I had one of Bob's CDs still in my possession. It was "Beat," by King Crimson. Fast forward 10 years. I'd graduated college and was knee-deep in my career. I had finally saved up enough money and bought my first house. In the new house, while unpacking, I saw the CD in a box. It had been years since I last saw it. I thought: "Gee, I really should track down Bob and return this."
Right then, the doorbell rang, and when I opened my door, my face went white. It was Bob. And the first thing he said was: "Hey, you wouldn't happen to still have my King Crimson CD, would you?" I looked down. I was holding it in my hand. I handed it to him, and his mouth dropped open. We exchanged pleasantries, then I asked him how he found me at my brand new address. I don't remember what his answer was.
He eventually took off...and I haven't seen Bob again since.
47. Night Terrors
One night, when I was about 18 years old, I was out for a drink with a friend. We had just one or two rounds, not much. I went back home and fell asleep pretty quickly while watching Skins, with the lights on. At around 2 am in the morning, I woke up in a heartbeat, as if I just had a nightmare. But I couldn’t remember anything about that.
I noticed the lights were on, and then a second later, my entire room went dark. I felt pretty stressed out at that point, so I hurried out of my bed to turn the lights on again. The moment I flipped the switch, I started to feel a pain in my hand. When I looked at it, my face went white—it was bleeding badly. I quickly went to wash and wrap it, confused as to what had just happened.
I went out of the house for some fresh air, then went back to sleep. Never had any explanation.
48. It Was All Downhill From There
When I was young, I was watching TV when I heard a few loud bangs as if someone had fallen down the staircase. I ran out to see what had happened, but there was nothing there. Just as I went back to sit down again, the strangest thing happened—my brother fell down the stairs. It was as if I had not seen the future, but heard it. I was terrified.
49. Coming Attractions
I occasionally get visions of moments that will happen later. I once saw myself at a friend's funeral while he was still alive. I didn't think anything of it at first, but then he passed unexpectedly a few weeks later. I also knew that a client of mine would pass within a year, and he did. At the time, he appeared perfectly healthy, but within the year he was diagnosed with cancer and he lost his life.
Thanks to my visions, I know that one cloudy morning, I will get the call in my car that my stepfather has passed. He is in his 70s and suffers from Parkinson's, so this one isn't that paranormal, I don't think. My creepiest vision has yet to be fulfilled, though—it involves a blue pick-up truck on the wrong side of the road coming straight at me.
50. Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?
This happened when I was about nine years old, but I can still remember it vividly. We were visiting family in Nevada with my dad, and they lived out in a very dry area, in a fairly good-sized trailer. A couple of days in, I was playing outside with my cousin, pretty much just messing around in the dirt.
At some point, I looked up. Right next to the house was a field surrounded by a wire fence; probably originally for livestock. There was a figure of what seemed to be a human standing there, but he was around 300 or more feet away from me, so I couldn't see it clearly at all. Queue the weird. As soon as I looked at it, I had what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience.
My body pretty much just went into lockdown, and I was no longer seeing through my own eyes. And I wasn't just floating there or anything. I was in its body. Through its eyes, I could see two little shapes playing across the field, but I could just feel that he saw the shapes as animals. And then, I realized a shocking truth—it was holding some sort of rifle.
After that, I regained my own body and blurted out, "We have to go indoors," offering no explanation to my cousin, who thought I was nuts. I didn't tell anyone because I just didn't know how to express it to other people back then. I've only since told my brothers, but I don't think they believed me. This still freaks me out when I think about it today because it's the only time I've ever lost control of my body.
It was almost like a dream, but the whole thing felt like it was happening in slow motion.
Sources: Reddit,
