Glitches in the matrix are those odd moments when everything you thought you knew about the world, about physics, about yourself, seems to turn upside down. One can call them paranormal events, or perhaps psychological illusions.
Do we accept this as a natural, or perhaps unnatural, part of life? Not sure whether you’d have taken the red pill or blue pill? Skeptical that the red pill would even do anything? Scared that taking the red pill simply leads to waking up with a kidney missing in a tub full of ice? I digress.
Let’s go to Reddit for some anecdotal proof that sometimes, things happen that can make the most skeptical among us think that we’re living in a weird simulation. Tons of people piled in to tell their creepiest experiences with the matrix, whether it was getting caught in a glitch or seeing it bug out. But don’t freak out reading these stories, just go with the flow.
43. Where Did My Time Go?
Ten years ago I was returning home from a road trip with two friends. I received a phone call from my parents asking when we would be arriving, and I explained that we were about 25 minutes away.
About a minute later we came around a bend; it was a full moon and we could see the reflection from a lake below us and other than that the road was completely empty. Suddenly everything went completely dark in the car, no lights from the dash or gauges or headlights on the road.
The music also stopped and re-started at the beginning of the CD we were listening to.
There was now a vehicle pulled over by the police about 1/4 mile in front of us that hadn't been there a split second before. I assumed I had dozed off for just a second as it was late. I thought it was still quite peculiar, though. After about a minute, the driver of the car turned the music all the way down and said: "did that just happen to anyone else?"
The other passenger in the back seat sat forward abruptly and exclaimed: "I thought I just fell asleep...". We then realized that the clock in the car was reading an hour later than it just had a minute before.
To keep ourselves from freaking out we decided that the car had possibly had a momentary electrical failure and reset the clock to an odd time, turned off the dash lights, headlights, and gauges, and restarted the CD player. But when we arrived home 25 minutes later, we were one hour late.
I am missing an hour of my life, and to this day have no idea how it happened.
42. Hearing Voices In The Car
When I was like 10 or 11 I was going to the beach with my aunt and her friends. There were two cars of us. To get there we had to go through a very large industrial area. We didn't know the direction, so our car was following the other. Suddenly, they did an unexpected turn and so our driver had to take a sharp bend.
In that moment we heard a very clear, loud voice inside the car saying laughing "Sharp bend, hm?!". The driver immediately hit the brakes. We looked at each other, puzzled: we all recognized it as a voice not belonging to any of us.
In the very same time, we noticed that the other car has stopped as well. The other driver got out of the car with a scared face and shouted to us: "Did... did you hear that as well?".
They heard the very same thing inside their car. The area around was full deserted.
UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems
41. Dream State Telling You The Future
When I was a teenager I had two really intense dreams one night. The first one was about an online friend of mine calling me to say she'd broken up with her boyfriend, and I sang a few lines of Seal's "Don't Cry" to her over the phone. The second dream was finding a (real-life) friend’s dead body floating in her bathtub.
I didn't think anything of it up until I went on my computer that evening and the online friend chatted me to tell me her boyfriend broke up with her. I immediately asked if I could call her, and she said no. I remember thinking that it meant something like I could change it.
Not long after, my phone rang, and it was the real-life friend from the dream calling me. I was completely freaked at this point, but talked to her normally... she was just talking about school and stuff... up until I realized I heard a splash in the background.
I asked her, "Are you in the tub?" and when she said yes I felt like my heart had stopped. I asked her, "What did you do?". She didn't answer me right away, and then after a very long pause, she told me she'd taken an entire bottle of pills and chased it with mushrooms and vodka.
She'd gotten scared waiting for it to hit her... so she called me so she'd hear someone's voice. I hung up and called 911. By the time they got there, she was unconscious but alive. Today she's a mom to a beautiful little girl, and she's ok.
40. No Car Pile Up
I'm way too late to this party but this is a true story that nobody believes. I was driving northbound on I-5 into Seattle at about 3am. It was raining very, very hard and I drove under the Convention Center in downtown Seattle, which is like a tunnel.
When I got out from under the center, I saw something that made me slam on my brakes and skid to a stop in the middle of the freeway. There were five cars upside down in the middle of the road.
I thought I had happened upon a horrible accident, but then I realized there was not a single person in sight... the cars were completely empty... no headlights on... no cops.... no fire trucks... no ambulances... no tow trucks... and then I realized what made me hit the gas and get out of there... not a single dent on any of the vehicles.
They were just sitting there, upside down in the middle of I-5. It has freaked me out to think about ever since and everyone thinks I'm making it up but that was a glitch if ever there was one. I checked the news for days afterward and couldn't find a report. Weeeeird.
39. Feeling The Bug In The Matrix
I was waiting for the bus next to a busy road and I was starting to feel anxious, so I decided to stand up and walk about 50 feet away. I already felt better.
So I started walking back and at that moment I saw a truck lose control and demolish the spot where I’d been 20 seconds before.
Since then, I believe that people have destinies.
38. Memory Error or Sage?
I was sitting in my car with my dad and I distinctly heard my sister (who was at home) say, "Are you guys almost home? I'm scared" in a very specific, concerned tone of voice. Two seconds later, my dad's phone rings. Guess who's on the line?
My sister. She said, "Are you guys almost home? I'm scared" in the same concerned tone of voice. I was pretty freaked out.
37. Alternative Life
I had a long, involved dream where I was a vendor in a fish market. I remember getting up early, dressing, doing a whole morning routine, going to get tea, heading out to the docks, buying fish, loading them in a cart and going to get ice, then haggling for ice, buying some less fresh fish while I was at it, then going to a market to my stall, setting up and selling fish all day.
It was so real. I talked to friends, smoked nasty cigarettes, haggled customers, ate lunch, had tea and just lived through the day. At the end of the day, I cleaned up, counted my cash, paid the stall rent, went home, cooked some of the fish I hadn't sold, along with some veggies and rice that I'd traded for.
I drank more tea, relaxed for awhile, then drew a hot bath, soaked and smoked some more cigs, then went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up refreshed, ready to go down to the docks to buy fresh catch... Except I was in my house, next to my wife, truck parked outside and it was Saturday—no work. My wife and I were getting geared up to go skiing in Oregon and the car was already packed. Weird thing was....
In the dream, I was single. And a smoker (I'm not). And the whole long dream had been in fluent Chinese. The effortless kind of fluency that only comes from a lifetime of speaking it. Oh, and I had been Chinese in the dream.
I'm a big, hairy white dude—somewhat fluent in Spanish and I know a little bit of Russian, but I've never.... It was just weird. I've never worked in a fish market.
I wonder who I was. I wonder what that was.
36. Take Me Home
This happened back in college. I was driving home from my cabin in Northern Wisconsin through the Indian reservation. There was a man on the side of the road sort of limping along and I pulled over and asked if he was okay. He said yes, he was fine; he just needed to get home because his wife decided she still loved him. They'd had a fight.
I asked the man where home was and surprisingly it was the same city where I went to college (about two hours away). I offered him a ride. He didn't talk much. He was tired. When we got into town he started giving me directions.
"Just down here. It’s close," he said. "Take a left at the lights."
"Okay," I said.
"Right here," he said, pointing. “After the white truck."
"Here?" I pulled into the driveway.
"Yes."
"Shut up," I said.
"What?" he asked. He was grinning like he knew what I was going to say next.
"I used to live here," I told him.
"You don't say."
"Yes. Upstairs. Apartment number three."
"Yeah. That’s ours!" Now he was smiling ear to ear. "Small world," he said.
He thanked me for the ride and got out of my car and walked through the front door of my old apartment building. I know it was just a coincidence but it was one of the strangest moments of my life.
35. Child Support Comes In Handy
I got a call from a police officer telling me if I didn't pay some old fines within a week he would come arrest me. The total was $267.63. It was about 2 weeks before Christmas so I was really sweating it.
The very next day I got a check in the mail for $267.63 for overpaid child support throughout the year. Craziest, most unexplainable thing I've ever had happen to me.
34. Get Away From The Car
I was heading home with my dad, we stopped at a drive through. I start feeling more and more anxious for no reason, to the point where it makes me lightheaded and sick to my stomach. We have to wait a little bit ahead because they gave us the order wrong. So I sit there, feeling like crap, and it suddenly comes to me an urge to call my brother.
He was trying to call us, he was in a car accident. No one died, some got seriously bruised, he was only shaken. I told him to shut up and get as far away from the car as possible.
He didn't understand but followed through, trying to call some of his buddies, and I could hear them calling him a wuss, him giving up and getting far and then a loud noise, people shouting.
After the whole thing was over he told me what happened. His drunk friend tried to impress some girls in the car, hit the gas, drifted and hit the bottom of the car on some rocks, completely messing with the engine. They stood near the car, the driver still inside trying to turn the engine back on.
The hood burst in flames and the car started to burn fast, the driver managed to get away but got severely hurt. Some of the guys and girls who stood around were hurt and burned too, but not as bad as the driver. My brother was the only one with light bruises from the whole thing. He told me that when I ordered him to get away from the car he was in front of it, inches from the hood.
I never experienced anything like this before and after, just this once. It's just a weird memory, I don't remember what I was thinking, I remember it like watching a movie and seeing myself and everything from an outside angle.
33. Can Your Spare Some Money So I Can Creep You Out?
I was catching a train in one particular city about 15 minutes from where I get off. While I wait there is a woman with glazed eyes asking people for money. She came up to me, stopped briefly, and asked "Excuse me, could you spare some money? My brother is in the hospital and I'd like some money to buy him some flowers."
That's rich I thought. Drug addicts are getting more and more obvious with their lines. "Here's $5." Gave it to her without even looking her in the face, convinced of her intentions.
Anyways, my train pulls up and I get on. I look through the glass at her walking around asking others for money as the train pulls away.
The train arrives at the station 15 minutes later, and I walk down and out to the bus stop. There is only one bus the direction I'm going, and just my luck! It is there waiting when I get off the train. So on the bus I hop, and wait for the bus driver to finish reading his paper before the doors close and we embark down the highway.
About 5 to 10 minutes of travel later, the driver pulls over for a routine stop. The doors open, and to my complete astonishment, the woman from the train walks into the bus. A dozen roses in hand. She looks me right in the eyes as she walks past to take her seat.
How in the blue hell did she get there? I took the train before her. I watched her at the train stop from inside as we pulled away. I went over a river. I caught the first and only bus going this particular direction. And not only did she beat me there, she had time to go to a store and buy a dozen roses.
To this day I have no idea how this happened.
32. That Kid’s Dad Was The One
Hope this counts: I've stopped telling people this story as no one ever believed me. I'll never forget it. It's been driving me crazy for 30 years. I'm sorry for the length of this.
When I was a kid in England, in primary school, around 1987-ish, a new kid joined the school on a temporary basis for a term. He had an American accent and was ginger. His name was Lee. Before he left us, he brought into school what today would look sort of like a tablet computer but this was very thin with brown tanned glass.
He had cartoons on it—he totally loved cartoons and movies. I swear this happened. I didn't dream it.
It was amazing. There was a crowd of kids who saw it and their reaction was interesting because they liked it and wanted one, comparing it to the Nintendo Game, watches, and calculators, but sort of accepted it and didn't think it was magical—but it certainly was.
I said to him it was like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy prop used in the TV series. He didn't know what I meant. He kept it away from the teachers and didn't bring it back in.
I kept asking him questions about his 'calculator TV’ and he just gave vague answers and saying he didn't know, but when I asked where he bought it, he said his Dad got it from the US. One other thing he said, he saw a movie which "had every cartoon character ever". A few years later, I realized he was talking about Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which came out soon after.
This was 30 years ago and you can imagine how difficult in all this time it’s been to describe this thing as we haven't had ubiquitous tablets everywhere. I used to draw diagrams of it and show it to people. I went crazy when I saw the Tom Hanks movie Big—the scene where he pitches a hand-held comic book video device... my parents just sort of acknowledged it, humoring me.
When Star Trek: TNG came out and the Padd was shown on screen I went "That's it! That's the thing!"
Eventually, the tablet PC came out and I remember thinking “finally, at last.” The video iPod was further confirmation. Today, it's obvious that it was a tablet computer, and my story sounds more convenient and bull.
I suppose I could track some of the other kids down on Facebook to prove this—I bet they would remember. Naturally, no one believes me.
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31. Your Cousin Is Inside Your Brain
Once I was sleeping over at my cousin's house. We were sharing the basement and I woke up at around 3 am. I remember looking around the room and thinking to myself: "I wonder if anyone else is awake?"
My cousin then verbally responded in his sleep: "Yes, I am."
30. Deja Vu Life
I get true deja vu.
I don't get the 'feeling' of deja vu by itself, I dream of my deja vu. Some of the best examples I can give are probably these two.
When I was 8, I dreamed about walking through a house, I'd never seen this house before. Then when I was 9, my parents told me that they were building a house, when I moved into that house when I was 10, the floor plan, carpet, walls, ceiling, everything was exactly the same as it was in my dream from two years before.
The house was completely designed by them, so it's not possible for it to be similar to a house I'd been in previously.
When I was about 13, I dreamed about working in some retail place, which was odd because I wasn't old enough to work in one of those places for years. During a school-based work experience when I was 15, I was working at some retail place and on the third day, when I randomly sat down to take a drink of water, everything clicked.
The room looked exactly the same and the next two minutes of events and conversations happened exactly like they did in my dream.
These two are probably the scariest, but I get minor ones once a week to once a month. It's especially scary when the conversations happen exactly as I dreamt them.
29. Deja Teleportation Vu
I've experienced deja vu a couple of times when I was younger, and while that is certainly freaky, nothing beats its opposite, “jamais vu,” which I experienced twice during a period of work-related stress a few years ago.
On both occasions, I was driving in my car, in perfectly familiar surroundings near my home, when suddenly I had no idea where I was or where I was going. It was like being instantly teleported to a foreign country.
It only lasted seconds, but very creepy nonetheless. Until it happened to me, I had no idea that this even existed.
28. I Saw You Drop My Gameboy
During a spinal tap procedure, I was put under. While under the anesthetics I had what I can only explain as an out of body experience seeing as how my viewpoint was from above my body looking down on the procedure.
I watched the whole thing and saw that the doctor knocked my Game Boy off the tabletop while walking by, batteries ejecting from the fall. One fell in sight and he picked it up but the other was next to the front left wheel under the bed out of his view… but not mine.
I woke up groggy and told him where my other battery was and he was shocked when he found it there. To this day it still weirds me out.
27. Twin Life
I used to live in North Carolina a few years ago and still regularly go back to visit friends. While I was there, me and my friends, who are now in college or have graduated, ran into somebody who we had known, although I didn't know her very well, back in high school. A few days later I flew back home to Texas.
The next day I went to the grocery store and was walking down the aisle when I see a girl that looks EXACTLY the same. I did the biggest double take I've ever done. Being 1,400 miles away from the city where I knew the girl lived, it seemed absolutely impossible.
As it turns out, after I called my friend about it, the girl I had been talking to in North Carolina has an identical twin in Texas who just happens to live in the same city as me... For a couple hours, I thought I was crazy though…
26. Dreams Freaking The Whole Family Out
One morning when I was 15, my dad looked tired and stressed. I asked him what was up. He said he had an awfully realistic dream of me ending my own life. He said in the dream he came into my room to find me hanging from my neck in the closet. It bothered him so bad that he actually came and checked on me while I was asleep.
Not too big of a deal, but not cool as I thought.
20 minutes later my sis comes into the room, fresh from waking up. She looks at me and 1st thing she said was "I had a weird dream. I came in your room and you had shot yourself in the head. It was messed up."
I told her that dad had a dream about me killing myself last night too, and had him explain it to her. We just kinda sat there in an unnerving silence. I've never been suicidal but that freaked the whole family out.
25. Shared Sibling Dreams
One night I had a dream about being in a car with my sister at the church we went to. For some reason, it started going out of control, so I jumped to the wheel and tried to keep us from dying. Later I told my sister about the dream, and she had the exact same dream, but instead, she was the one at the wheel and not me.
24. In Hindsight, The Dream Wasn’t So Stupid After All
I’ve always had those deja vu dreams, the ones that a lot of you have already been talking about, where the events in your dream happen in real life, days or years later... Because of these dreams, knowing what would happen next played a role in saving my life, I suppose.
My dream was simple: I was driving down from the mountains back home with friends in the car after (what I vaguely remember) was a snowboard skiing trip. The conversation was, I suppose, the usual for a long car ride, playing "I spy" and just stupid stuff.
Then, the song “All Star” by Smash Mouth came on. I remembered it because everyone started singing along. We were speeding down the mountain and after signaling into the passing lane, all of a sudden, a huge car wreck happens right in front of us, happening so fast that cars were smashing into each other. One of the cars rolled right off the mountain, over the divider.
I was too close to avoid it and so I pulled to the right, which caused the car behind us to plow into the side of us, rolling our car to the opposite side of the road. I remember just a fuzzy feeling, being upside down, and glancing around the car and just seeing my friends mutilated. It sends shivers down my spine to even think about it. I woke up in tears, I was just so frightened and scared... it was so surreal.
This is where the glitch begins, Years after the night I had that dream, my friends and I decided to get together to plan a small trip to have a ski and snowboard day for the first snowfall. We knew a storm was coming so we headed up the mountain. Good runs, fresh snow, it was overall a great success, we had gotten exactly what we had come for. We packed our things, headed down the mountain, and it clicked, the same stupid car banter, "I spy," and then Smash Mouth “All Star” came on... it had happened, I was in my nightmare.
The wreck happened just as I remembered, but I didn't pull right like I did in my dream, I pulled to the left, into the opposite lane, and somehow just avoided it. Everything slowed down, it was like I was in my own world, and everything happened the same, except for my actions.
We pulled to the side of the road and called 911, I broke down, it was too much... I was scared and shaking, but somehow that stupid dream saved my life.
23. Using The Matrix To Win The Lottery
I've won the lottery twice by playing numbers that I saw in dreams the night before. First dream was me entering the numbers 4906 on a keypad for some reason and the second dream months later was me using a bottle of 409. I only won a couple of hundred bucks but it's better than nothing. I got exact matches both times.
22. Spoiling Your Exam
Back when I was in fifth grade, I remember sitting in class about to take an exam. It was one of those where the teacher would write down the question and we would all write the answer on our sheet. After about the third question, I started to realize that I had already seen these questions, in the same order and knew the answers.
I honestly remember it being like groundhog day, where I had this deja vu moment like I had already sat through the test the previous day.
I raised my hand and said we had already done these questions, and I got this dumbfounded look from the teacher and classmates. I looked around like seriously, I'm the only one realizing this? "Oh really?" our teacher says, "what's the next answer?"
I went up and wrote the next several answers that just came to my head. He looked down at his test, verified the board, then canceled the test.
Spent the rest of the afternoon with the teacher and principal being accused of compromising the test. The principal had him go through all his notes and lesson plans to see if he had briefed the test by accident in the past. They asked the other kids, nobody else remembered—they all scored poorly on the test.
21. Who Needs Sleep Anyway?
About a year ago I had a terrible nightmare.
It started off me waking up in bed during a thunderstorm. As the room illuminated again and again from the flashes of lightning outside I realized that the bed I was laying in wasn't mine. The head of the bed was against the wall the door was located on, and from my perspective, I couldn't tell if it was open or closed.
That is until I saw the face. At first, just the nose and jaw broke past the door frame, but then an entire face slowly passed through the doorway. I tried to yell, "Who the heck are you, where am I?" but it felt like I had lost my voice. No matter how hard I tried to scream, nothing came out and this person continued to enter the room, looking dead ahead, away from me.
Then, just as the person was completely into the room, their head snapped towards me, and it locked eyes with mine. I tried to get out of the bed but felt completely paralyzed. The person's started making their way to me, but with every step, their body contorts in ways that would break a normal person's bones.
Their neck snapped so the back of their head touched their back, their jaw layer flat on their chest, their arms had broken at the shoulders and migrated to their back like wings. Just terrifying stuff. And just before they reached me, I woke up.
The next day I told my mom about it and went into great deal about the room. Turns out it was almost an exact copy of my room when I was a baby. We moved out of that house when I was super young, like I have no idea what the insides to any room look like. Just kinda weird I guess.
20. A Call From The Other Side
A little backstory...I was a total idealist back in high school so, when choosing a college, I chose to go somewhere that none of my friends were attending so that I could strike out on my own in a "finding myself" sort of way.
Well, I ended up making a few really close friends during my first semester. I mean, these guys became like family to me in a matter of months.
One day during winter break one of those guys, my buddy Kimbo, had gone back home to visit friends and family and on his return trip to our college hit a bad patch of ice and got into a car accident and was killed. It hurt deeply for a long time and I still think about him all the time.
Anyway, a few weeks after Kimbo's accident me and the rest of the guys were getting back from a party off campus and as we were standing outside our dorm building smoking a cig I felt my phone vibrating, and when I pulled it out, I saw that I was getting a call from Kimbo's phone!
Dumbfounded, I showed my friends the phone quickly and then answered. When I picked up it just went directly to his voicemail which played the same message it always had…
It never happened again and we never really talked about it but for me, it was one of those "someone's looking after me" moments. I hadn't been doing very well after his death but seeing his name show up on my cell phone screen one final time made me feel a whole lot better for a time and really helped me get out of the slump I was in.
I have no idea how his phone could've possibly called me and I doubt I ever will but this was one "glitch in the matrix" that I'll forever be thankful for.
Rest in peace, Kim. But feel free to call again.
19. General Tso’s Playing Tricks On The Mind
Me and my friend were at a Chinese Restaurant, and we ordered a General Tso chicken dinner and a shrimp lo mein dish. When we sat down we took out both boxes and set them on the table about two feet apart. My friend opens the first box and we see a shrimp lo mein dish. It has all the things in there...noodles. Shrimp. Fried rice.
He closes the box and opens the other box. Inside that box is another shrimp lo mein dish. Shrimp. Noodles. Fried Rice.
"Oh," I think, "they must have mixed the order." I was just about to say this when my friend says out loud "looks like they made a mistake and gave us two..." as he opens up the first box again. Inside of it is a General Tso chicken dinner order. General Tso chicken, white rice, and an egg roll. He froze and looked at me...I looked back at him...and we sat in silence.
it took us five or so minutes to collect ourselves. I have no idea what happened.
18. When Monkeying Around Doesn’t Go Wrong
Was monkeying on the handrails of a balcony on the fourth floor of my building and fell off, as two of my buddies watched in horror.
I remember seeing the concrete floor approaching as I fell head first and thinking "Oh no, I'm going to break my wrist!" (Why just my wrist?)
Next recollection is seeing my buddies yelling, from up there, "Are you OK!? ARE YOU OK!?"
I look up, I say: "What happened?"
They did not see me actually hit the floor, they just ran outside and saw me already standing looking up.
Not a scratch, not a bruise, nothing hurt. I don't remember hitting the floor, standing up, nothing. No memories exist for those one or two seconds.
None of us three ever understood what happened. But we all saw it and agree on what happened.
17. Freaky False Memories
I knew my uncle had died.
My mom had called me and told me the news. It was very sad. She told me in the middle of work and I told one of my coworkers. He expressed his condolences on my loss.
A couple of weeks later, my sister mentioned my aunt and uncle doing something. I said, "but...he's dead." And my sister said no, he wasn't.
I called my mom. No, he wasn't dead.
To this day I'm still not sure how much of it my brain imagined and how much was real. Did I really talk to my coworker? Was I even on the phone with my mom at all that day?
It still freaks me out knowing that my mind could fabricate so complete and real a memory like that.
16. The Doll's Actually Alive
When I was around 6 or 7 years old, my uncle who had just visited from the Philippines showed us a doll that sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" when you pressed a button on her hand. He brought it with the intention that one of my girl cousins might want it, but in all honesty, we all thought the doll was creepy—especially since it sang the song in a slow, ominous manner.
Not knowing what to do with it, we took out the batteries and threw it back in the box that my uncle had put it in. Right after we left the room, all we heard was a muffled "The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out."
The doll was still singing WITHOUT ANY BATTERIES. No one was in the room at the time, which means no one could have replaced the batteries nor pressed the button on her hand. It still baffles us to this day.
15. What Happens In The Shed, Stays In The Shed
I had just turned 22 and my parents had sold their house and purchased a place out in the country. On the property, there was a big shed that wasn’t far from the house. I decided to turn it into my place. I felt kind of uncomfortable in the shed sometimes, but my dog kept me company so it wasn’t so bad.
Anyway, I had been in there maybe two weeks and one night I'm on the computer, my dog asleep at my feet, and I need to pee so I get up and go outside to piss. It's a beautiful clear night and the stars were incredible. Next thing, I hear the shed door slam behind me.
I turn immediately and try to open it but it won't budge. Now from inside the shed, I can hear my dog start to growl, quietly at first then louder, now he's barking and I'm panicking trying to get the door open.
I must mention that I'm 6’5” tall and well built, play sports, etc., but even ramming my full weight into the door won't open it and I'm really panicking as my dog's barks turned into whines, then whimpering, then silence. With all my might I slam into the door and it flies open.
The light is off inside now and it's pitch black, it won't turn back on and I'm in complete darkness. Can't see my dog anywhere and I stumble around trying to find a flashlight. Finally, I find it, pick it up, and turn it on—I wasn't prepared for what I'd see next... My dog had literally squashed itself into the furthest, darkest corner of the room, his eyes closed, and he’s shaking violently.
I immediately moved towards him and as soon as I got within reach of him, he leapt at me into my arms and wouldn't move. I picked him up and I swear I've never ran so fast in my goddamn life. I never stepped foot in that shed ever again and my dog wouldn't even go near that part of the property.
I don't know what happened in that shed that night but I'll never forget it.
14. Dining In Another Dimension
About a year ago, my girlfriend and I went to eat dinner at Chipotle. It's in a smallish shopping area with a burger joint and Pei-Wei neighboring the Chipotle...one of those kind of upper-class type shopping areas.
We pulled into the parking lot in front of the establishments at around 5 pm on a Friday evening to find an empty parking lot. There were no tables outside, there were no cars in the parking spots, not a person in sight and even the lights inside the buildings were off.
Completely confused, I took the car in a sort of loop around the building in order to leave. The only thing of interest was a single fire truck parked alongside the building, headlights on, but no emergency lights, and no one in the truck. It struck us a little odd, maybe a fire in the building?
As we pull around the backside of the building and then finish looping around, we drive past the front facade of the building...
Except this time every parking spot is full, tables are outside with patrons at them, food half-eaten. There are people walking around, and the lights inside the buildings are all on. But the fire truck was gone. Mind you, it took less than 30 seconds to make a circle around the building. Easily one of the strangest things I've ever experienced. More Adjustment Bureau than Matrix-glitchy.
13. Matrix Glitching To Prevent Suicide
When I was 15 I was incredibly depressed and struggling with my OCD and anxiety. It got to the point that I decided to kill myself. I arranged everything—note, when, where, how etc.—and waited.
I waited about a week until my parents went out to dinner. I attached a note to my door telling my parents not to come in and to just call the police, got dressed in my nicest clothes, showered, did my hair, and put a suicide note in my shirt pocket.
My father had a number of guns and I chose one of them to do the deed with—a Beretta 92 handgun or something like that. I went into my bedroom, turned on some music and laid down on my bed. I put the barrel into my mouth, sang a few lines of “Free fallin'” through tears and pulled the trigger.
Then it went into a third-person type thing where I was just watching myself. I saw myself lying dead on my bed, slumped over, and bleeding everywhere. I watched myself lie in my own gore for what seemed like forever. Then suddenly it felt like all the wind get knocked out of me, and I was back in my body.
*click*
The gun jammed. I just threw it onto the ground and sobbed into my pillow for hours before cleaning up everything and going to sleep. I have no idea what happened that day, but I'm more grateful than you can imagine. After that, I really made an effort to turn my life around, and it did. It's scary thinking that I wouldn't be here right now if it worked.
12. Orange Cats Unite!
I was moving into a new apartment where my new roommate had a long-haired orange cat named Floyd. I was taking trips from my car to my room moving boxes in and Floyd was outside. Each time I went inside and then came back out to my car, there was another orange cat outside sitting directly next to Floyd.
This repeated until there were four total cats. All sitting in a row watching me.
11. Kelsey Grammer Speaking For The Satellite
Might not be the best one, but this one comes to mind: So the television was completely gone because of a storm—this was when we had satellite TV. Mom's playing with the remote flipping randomly between channels trying to find anything that still works (my parents are TV addicts, ok?).
She leaves it on a random channel puts the remote down and says “Looks like the satellite's out” to my father. Just as she finished the statement; the static cuts out and clear as day we hear Kelsey Grammer as Frasier say “NOT ANYMORE” followed by a laugh track.
10. How About We Don’t Try That
Have someone hold you by the wrists about a 30-degree angle to the ground face-down. Relax your body and just hang there for about 60-seconds. Then, with your eyes closed, be slowly lowered to the ground, arms stretched above your head; again, stay relaxed.
You will feel as though your arms pass through the ground and hang straight down in front of you.
It's bizarre!
9. Saying Goodbye
In about 2003 or 2004, my mother, who is absolutely not a believer in ghosts or "glitches in matrices" and would never exaggerate a story, told me about a dream she had which I have never forgotten.
She said she had dreamt about an old family friend who was dying of lung cancer. In her dream, she was hanging out the washing on the clothesline in our backyard when suddenly he walked through the trees and called out to her. She noticed he was wearing a pilot uniform. She was shocked to see him looking so well, and exclaimed “Oh my god! You look well! Why are you here? Come and talk to me!"
He answered "Sorry, no, I've only come to say goodbye to you, and to tell you I'm so much better. But I can't stay, I've got to go now, goodbye."
And off he walked, past her, through the yard and out of sight. For some reason, my mother woke up, rolled over and looked at the time. It was 5:23 am. Later that day she got a phone call from his wife. He had passed away at that exact time.
8. Ghost Detector Saves The Day
This happened to my dad so it's not exactly a personal story. Anyway, my dad was driving down a long lonely highway in Ohio doing about 90 in his Z28 with a radar detector. Rolling hills and whatnot meant that cops could hide at the bottom before you could see them and slow down.
So, all of a sudden, his radar detector starts blaring and he slams on the brakes. Right over the hill, there's a squad car running radar. He's super relieved, but when he looks at the detector, it's not even on the windshield. It was unplugged and in the glove compartment. What the heck.
7. The Night Shift
I used to work at a juvenile detention center in a small town. I worked nights, and on this night I went in at 9PM.
When I got to work, my supervisor asked me what I was doing there. I said "I work tonight.". And he said "But they said you called in sick a few hours ago." I was a bit confused and said, "It must have been someone else and they got the message wrong."
Then things got more weird.
When I relieved the guard on duty and settled in for the night, I looked at the the message that said I called in. It said that I had called at 6:50 and said that I had gotten sick while out cleaning up after the storm. There had been a storm the night before and it was a bit bad, but not anything that I had to go out to clean up. It was truly weird.
The supervisor came into the control about that time. He was also a friend of mine outside work and we started talking about it, and how odd it was. I decided to call my wife at home and tell her about it while he was still sitting there. I picked up the phone and dialed.
After two rings a man picked up the phone and with a raspy voice said "Hello?"
I did not know what to say for a few seconds. I looked at the phone to make sure I dialed the right number, and I had. After a few seconds the person said "Hello?" again in the same raspy voice.
I said "Hello. who is this?"
"This is Taylor who is this?" the person said.
My head started spinning because my name is Taylor also.
I said in almost a scream "Where is Ann?"
He said "Ann's in bed. Who is this?"
I dropped the phone and told my supervisor to ring me out, I had to get home, and I took off towards the door. I could hear Dave pick up the phone behind me and say, "Hello?" followed soon after by "What the hell!" rather loudly.
I ran to my car and drove home faster then what was legal, my mind racing the entire time.
I busted through the door and my wife was sitting watching t.v. and was shocked at me being home. I asked her who was there and she said no one has been here. After a rather long talk with my wife, I went to call the prison to tell them what was going on, but the phone was dead.
I went back to work and when I came in Dave was acting weird and asked me "How the hell are you doing this?". He told me that when I left, he picked up the phone and the person on the other end sounded like me. He kinda freaked out and hung up the phone.
A minute later as he could see my car leaving the parking lot, I had called back from home and asked what the hell was going on. He said that I was a bit irate and said I was sick and did not feel like playing these games and was telling him to stop prank calling me and hung up.
After convincing him I had no idea what was going on we went back to work.
Later, I find out that the phone line for my area had been knocked down the night before by the storm. This is absolutely the strangest thing that has ever happened to me.
6. Physics Bends To Save A Life
I got in a motorcycle accident about six years ago. I'm going 45 through town and a woman, who didn't see me, turns left in front me. It could only have been a millisecond but I remember weighing my options and thinking if I should try and go over the car or under it by laying the bike down. I put the bike down.
It went straight under her car, I went diagonally. I Slid across the pavement wearing no helmet, no jacket—just jeans and a cheap zip up hoodie from Walmart.
So I slide for 80 feet or so—not sure on the exact measurement but it was a long way—on the pavement and when I stop, I just stood up and the only thing wrong was that there was a hole in my hoodie cuff about the size of a dime. Not a scratch anywhere on me.
I remember looking at it, then at my mangled bike, and just screaming in my head "PHYSICS DON'T WORK THIS WAY"
5. You Are Dreaming
I have a sleep tracking app on my phone that has a setting for lucid dreaming. It will start saying "You are dreaming" repeatedly in a woman's voice with a bit of an echo. I was at work one day when I started hearing the voice randomly every few minutes or so.
I checked my phone and as soon as the screen turned I woke up in my bed as the sun was rising. A bit freaked out I went to take a shower. Then on my way to work I started to hear the voice again through the radio.
When I turned my car off, a bit freaked out again, I once more woke up in my bed as the sun was rising. This happened about 3 or 4 more times, all at different times of the "day." I didn't trust reality for about a week after that and still refuse to use that particular setting of the app.
4. There’s Someone Sitting At The Computer
Oh, I have a story! One time my wife and I were coming back from a dinner night out. When I opened the door of the house, she was sitting at the computer working, as I usually find her when I get home, nothing unusual. Except she was entering the house with me...
I shrugged it off and carried on, we went to bed and I told her that I saw her sitting at the computer, and she goes dead serious and told me that when I opened the door, she saw herself sitting at the computer working...
Creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced... The fact that our neighbor's two-year-old daughter used to point to the TV when it was off and tell us that the person on the screen was making scary faces and that she wanted it to go away, didn't help us getting much sleep that night...
3. Speaking To Yourself
It happened in early 2000 when I was working at a juvenile detention center in a small town in Oklahoma as a corrections officer. I was working nights at the time and went to work at 9 pm.
This one night when I arrived for work my supervisor looked confused and asked me what I was doing there. I said "I work tonight," and he said, "But they said you called in a few hours ago saying that you were sick." I was a bit confused and said: "It must have been someone else and they got the message wrong."
After everyone else showed up for work that night it was a bit weirder, but we carried on as usual and assigned everyone their places for the night; I went to work in the control room where I usually work. The control room is the center of the prison that has direct control over the cameras, doors, phones, and everything.
After I relieved the guard on duty and settled in for the night, I looked at the message that said I called in. It said that I had called at 6:50 and said that I had gotten sick while out cleaning up after the storm. There had been a storm the night before and it was a bit bad, but not anything that I had to go out to clean up. It was truly weird.
The supervisor came into the control about that time. He was also a friend of mine outside work and we started talking about it, and how odd it was. I decided to call my wife at home and tell her about it while he was still sitting there. I picked up the phone and dialed. After two rings a man picked up the phone and with a raspy voice said "Hello?" I did not know what to say for a few seconds. I looked at the phone to make sure I dialed the right number, and I had.
After a few seconds, the person said "Hello?" again in the same raspy voice. I said "Hello. who is this?". "This is Taylor who is this?" the person said. My head started spinning because my name is Taylor. I said in almost a scream "Where is Ann?". He said "Ann's in bed. Who is this?". I dropped the phone and told my supervisor to ring me out, I had to get home, and I took off towards the door. I could hear Dave pick up the phone behind me and say "Hello?" followed soon after by "What the heck!" rather loudly.
I ran to my car and drove home faster then what was legal, my mind racing the entire time. I busted through the door and my wife was sitting watching TV and was shocked at me being home. I asked her who was there and she said no one has been here. After a rather long talk with my wife, I went to call the prison to tell them what was going on, but the phone was dead.
I went back to work and when I came in Dave was acting weird and asked me "How the hell are you doing this?". He told me that when I left, he picked up the phone and the person on the other end sounded like me. He kinda freaked out and hung up the phone.
A minute later as he could see my car leaving the parking lot, I had called back from home and asked what was going on. He said that I was a bit irate and said I was sick and did not feel like playing these games and was telling him to stop prank calling me and hung up. After convincing him I had no idea what was going on we went back to work.
Later, I find out that the phone line for my area had been knocked down the night before by the storm. This is absolutely the strangest thing that has ever happened to me.
2. Glitching Your Life Away
As I type this I am already feeling deja vu. I've always wanted to share this part of my life with someone but have never been able to. So... I'll just tell a bunch of people on the internet.
One day I was walking to work and all of a sudden had an urge to walk a different path than usual. I work downtown in a big city. It was a strange spur of the moment urge to walk a different way that changed my life forever.
I turned into an alley I had never seen before. As I remember it, I made it about 15 feet or so when an actual "glitch" happened. Everything in my mind scrambled. I felt like I didn't have a body anymore, just that I was a semi-conscious entity floating through some weird dimension.
All of a sudden in the array of different colors and shapes a vision came to me. It was a bunch of strange looking people that in my mind resembled businessmen in suits. They looked startled and panicked that I could see them. One of the "people" made a quick movement and everything turned to black.
When I regained normality, I was on a completely different street. It was the same street that I always use to walk to work. I felt sick, and severely disturbed/depressed.
I've never done any hard drugs, never experienced any hallucinations, never have had anything like this happen to me. The weird thing is, when the glitch was correcting itself and I could see those "people" watching me like a caged animal I had the feeling that I knew I was being controlled. It still bothers me very much to this day.
1. Nothing Is The Same Anymore
A long time ago I had a conversation with an old workmate who described much the same thing.
The detail is hazy, but he said one day he in his house when he felt a sudden NEED to go outside an stand on his lawn, he claimed it was the strongest clearest feeling ever, and on doing so he experienced a sort of "wobble" he just said everything was screwed up for moment, and he experienced a feeling of detachment/outside-ness. When it passed he turned to go back inside.
Now, while talking to me he got quite upset at this point and asked me not to think he’s crazy but he said the next thing he saw was his car parked in the street and it was the same model/registration but a different color.
He was so thrown at this, and then more so because then his wife came out to ask what he was doing, and he said he realized "She was in all appearances his wife, but somehow not his wife.” He said from that point on, she liked foods she had claimed to hate before, and sometimes brought up memories that he said had zero relation to things they had done in the past.
He said things like his route to work, was still the same but somehow different, he said there were buildings on the way that either he had missed in the six years he'd driven past them five days a week or had just "appeared" overnight. He even said some people he remembered from other departments in work had just vanished, and asking about them brought total incomprehension from other people.
He was a totally regular healthy guy, but he said he measured his life in relation to that afternoon. There were things that happened before the change, and everything afterward. He went to say he was now living his life with a feeling that about 15% of it had spontaneously changed that afternoon.
We moved on and drifted apart since then (different jobs) but I've never really felt so sure about the permanence of "reality" ever since.
