Have you ever had one of those experiences that you just can't explain? Like, it's not necessarily a supernatural thing, but the only way to describe it is there was a glitch in the "simulation"?
Well, people on Reddit are sharing their "glitch in the matrix" experiences, and honestly, some of these are so creepy and unexplainable that they gave me chills. I also included the prevailing theory that commenters on each story agreed on. Read on, if you dare:
1. "If I told you what I saw last night you would not believe me. Like i can't even wrap my head around it. So here it goes..."
"I went to do laundry around 2:00 a.m. with my oldest son. After we put the laundry in, we went to a McDonald's drive thru to get something to drink. The drive thru was packed with about five or six cars ahead of us. I noticed none of the cars were moving forward and it had been like five minutes already waiting. So I decided to go around the car in front of me to the next drive thru lane (McDonald's has two lanes). As I'm pulling around them I look into their car to see why they are not moving, and I kid you not both people — driver and passenger — looked dead! Heads tilted all the way back, eyes shut, not moving, dead!
I freaked out and tried to pull out of the drive thru entirely going around the other cars just to get out of there, and the next car I passed, all the passengers also looked dead! Heads tilted back, eyes shut. I panicked thinking maybe they were all shot or someone killed them all so I f***ing hit the gas and got the f**k out of there. My son called 911 and told them what happened and they sent an officer to check. A few minutes later the cop called us back said everything was fine at McDonald's.
Mind you, my son saw it too. We both saw the car in front of us the people looked dead. This s*** was terrifying, it literally looked like one of those rapture movies or end of the world type of s***. Needless to say I can't wrap my head around what we saw or why. I'm still scared over it."
TL;DR: All the other cars at the drive thru at 2:00 a.m. were not moving, and everyone in the cars looked completely dead. The cops checked later and said everything was normal. What did they see?
Top theory: Excluding the possibility of hallucination due to fatigue... some kind of jumping between parallel universes.
2. "Before making an offer on our house, my husband and I went for a viewing with our 3-year-old daughter whom we'd left with a babysitter the first time we saw the house. As we walked in, I told her she could choose a bedroom. She said, 'I want the Dinosaur Room!' and ran upstairs. Ok, 3-year-olds say random stuff. A moment later, she called out 'Here it is!' and sure enough, the closet of her bedroom was covered with dinosaur stickers."
"My husband, the realtor, and I were all freaked out. The kid acted like she knew the stickers were there, but none of us remembered seeing them before and we certainly hadn't talked about them. The house was vacant and immaculately clean; it was an estate sale. We left the stickers up."
TL;DR: A couple's 3-year-old daughter somehow knew that their new house had a room with a closet covered in dinosaur stickers, even though she had never been there or seen pictures before.
Top theory: A ghost or other paranormal entity in the house communicated with the child.
3. "This was circa 2002. I was about 8. Me, my dad, and stepmom at the time were on our way from California to Tennessee by plane. Once we landed, we got out of the plane and waited for my dad to turn on his phone to call my aunt who was waiting for us at the airport. We wait a couple of minutes and my dad has a ton of missed calls from my aunt freaking out about where we were. He called her back and she’s asking us where we’ve been, and [says] that they’ve been waiting for two and a half hours. We were pretty confused because our flight got there in a normal amount of time without delays, but we somehow lost two and a half hours of our time (time change from CA to TN aside)."
"Once we met up with them down at baggage, our carousel was completely empty of luggage and other passengers. We had to go pick up our baggage somewhere because they had been unclaimed for too long. Still don’t know what happened or how we lost this much time. Felt very weird and surreal for the rest of the night."
TL;DR: Family of three takes a cross-country flight, but finds that they somehow lost two and a half hours of time...even counting the time change.
Top theory: Time slipping or another type of temporal anomaly.
4. "Something weird is happening in our town and only my family seems to notice. The first thing we started noticing were duplicates. We would see someone somewhere only for them to inexplicably end up somewhere else. For example, my mother and I saw and chatted with an old friend at the grocery store and when we arrived home later we saw on Facebook that this person was out of the country on vacation and had been for a few days. They have no memory of speaking to us either."
"I've taken phone calls that were duplicates of calls I had already taken with the other person swearing we hadn't spoken yet.
The scariest thing though has been the deaths. There have been four deaths in our community of very well known and influential people and every one of them has died twice. We hear about their deaths and see all the RIP posts on Facebook. We see the community fundraisers put on to raise money for the funerals and even see the cars at the church or funeral home only for these same people to die a week or two later and all the RIP posts and fundraisers happen again.
Only our family seems to notice these things happening. My mother and siblings and my two kids. We don't know what's happening and it is starting to scare us."
TL;DR: A family keeps encountering duplicates of people in their town, with it even going so far as there being two separate funerals when someone dies.
Top theory: Ruling out a carbon monoxide leak causing hallucinations... some kind of quantum jumping between parallel universes.
5. "When I was little my parents had a painting of a soldier in uniform. I could see it from my bed when the door was cracked. SEVERAL times I saw the man in the painting move his head and look at me. The scariest experience was after I begged my parents to get rid of the painting. My dad calmed me down and I started to drift to sleep. But I had that feeling where you know you are being watched. When I opened my eyes (and I have never forgotten this) the soldier turned his head and SMILED! The next day my dad threw the painting away."
"Years later my dad told me he had heard me moving around in my bed and was looking down the hall trying to decide if he should go check on me again. While glancing down the hallway, HE saw the man in the painting turn his head and smile!"
TL;DR: Creepy soldier painting turns and smiles at kid, which you could chalk up to an overactive imagination...except that years later, the dad admitted that he saw it move too.
Top theory: Paranormal activity
6. "This is, without a doubt, the scariest and most unexplainable thing that has ever happened to me..."
"One Saturday night, several months ago, I attended a birthday party at a friend's house. There were about 40 people in attendance, split between the basement and the main floor. I didn't go down to the basement even once, because the music down there was extremely loud (which I hate) and most of my friends were on the main floor anyway. My best friend had given me a ride to the party, and we stayed together the whole night.
A few days later I ran into a distant friend of mine at school, who had also been in attendance. He took out his phone and started showing me some of the photos he'd taken that night. He got to one that showed him and a girl posing for the camera, in the basement — with me standing in the background, smiling and looking in the direction of the camera, but not quite at it.
I obviously freaked out and told him I hadn't been in the basement. He told me he had seen me there for several minutes. He said he had tried to say hello, but I had seemed distant and distracted.
I called my best friend, and she confirmed that I had been with her the entire night. I was not drunk/drugged, I drank nothing all night but a water bottle that I brought with me.
To this day when I think about the picture, it scares the shit out of me. There must have been another me in the basement."
TL;DR: Person goes to party, later sees a photo from the party of themself in a part of the house that they didn't step foot in all night.
Top theory: Doppelgänger
7. "Last spring when my son was three years old, we drove by a big white church. This church is one that we pass often driving around town. It is also the place of his current preschool, but at that time, he attended a different preschool and had NEVER stepped foot in or talked about the big white church. So we drove by one day and he said, 'Oh there’s the church that I ate cereal in.' My husband and I looked at each other and I said, 'What do you mean? We’ve never been there before.' We asked some additional questions but he didn’t really answer. However, he was very adamant about being there and eating cereal."
"This happened during a very difficult time in our lives. My father in law was on hospice and dying of cancer. For weeks, we were up and back to my in laws house — this church being along the route. He said it a few more times and then never mentioned it again.
Fast forward to today — he currently attends preschool at said church. He has been going since September and we love it. It is Christian though we aren’t very religious. Anyway, I got the monthly newsletter and it mentioned that next month is pajama day where the kids wear pajamas and...eat cereal.
I told my son and asked him if he remembered eating cereal there before. He said no and had no recollection of saying that he did.
Is there an explanation to this? It gives me chills when I think about it."
TL;DR: A 3-year-old kid recalled having a cereal day at a preschool that he had never actually been to. Later, he actually ended up attending the preschool and having the cereal day he was talking about.
Top theory: Kid was remembering a past life.
8. "My voice said something else...
"This just happened and my fiancé and I are a little freaked out.
He couldn't find his phone and I offered to call him. When he found his phone he answered on speaker and said 'hello' while next to me. I answered with 'hello' too, but when we heard my voice coming from his phone it was me clearly saying 'hey.'
We looked at each other and I ended the call. We couldn't come up with a rational explanation (which does not mean there isn't one, we just couldn't think of one).
It made me feel like those scenes in horror movies where a character is standing in front of a mirror and their reflection doesn't match their movements."
TL;DR: Person says "hello" into the phone, but their voice comes out of their fiancé's phone saying "hey."
Top theory: The fiancé's voice from a parallel universe came through the line instead.
9. "This one doesn’t have to do with me but more with my mom. This happened on a Friday. I was walking home from school. Everybody knows the feeling, you're done with all the crap from the past week and ready for the weekend. Once I got home I left my backpack on the couch. My mom had a shocked look on her face. I asked her what was wrong. 'I picked you up early for a dental appointment, but now you’re here,' she told me.
"I was not spooked, just a little confused. I gave her a hug and went to grab my backpack off the couch, where I left it when I got home. It was not there. Keep in mind there was no one in the house but us. I asked my mom if she moved it, she didn’t. After looking for a while, I found it in the passenger seat of my mom’s car. I felt confusion and shock at the same time. I walked home, there is no way it could’ve just teleported to the car like that. I still have no idea how it did that."
TL;DR: Kid walks home from school, arrives to find mom shocked because she swears she picked kid up early from school and drove them home. What's weirder is the backpack that the kid set down in the house was somehow in the car.
Top theory: Doppelgänger
10. "This is a relatively short story but still creeps me out to this day because of how certain I am of it. So I was working in Pittsburgh, PA in a travel job where I would stay in hotels throughout the week and then travel home for the weekend. I got off at 5:00 per usual and before I got on the PA turnpike I stopped at a mom-and-pop style gas station to fuel up for the trip home. Got my gas, went in paid for it and headed for the turnpike. I drove for maybe two an a half hours before I decided I was going to pull off and get a quick bite and use the bathroom. I punched in my GPS the nearest gas station and headed to it. And I swear to god I pulled into the EXACT SAME mom and pop gas station!"
"I walked in to get a burger and almost fell over I was so freaked out. Finished up in the station walked out to the truck and my GPS reflected I was in the same spot. Those two and a half hours of driving completely erased as it was after 7:00. I should've been halfway home. The only logic I have is I fell asleep at the station, but surely someone would've woke me up if I was there that long. I remember the drive and the gas in my truck reflected I had been driving. It's my only ever glitch and still baffles me."
TL;DR: Person drives straight for two and a half hours but ends up in the same spot.
Top theory: Time slipping, possibly due to alien abduction.
11. "Just a bit of backround, no serious mental health problems other than some mild anxiety and depression, I take 25mg of Zoloft so I don't think I'm tripping or hallucinating. This morning I woke up for work, left a little earlier than usual because I woke up before my alarm. Filled my water bottle, grabbed my access card and got in my car and drove off. My commute is the same every day..."
"Forty minutes, its mostly interstate, theres ALWAYS traffic. While my car is warming up, I pick an album to listen to for the drive there. I usually make it about 3/4ths of the way through an album before I get to work. Every day is a new album. So I did all that. I drove to work, I remember being cut off, I remember being in standstill traffic towards my exit, I remember the album I listened to, I even remember responding to a text using Siri. I remember seeing a type of car I've never seen before in the US, I remember thinking to myself Im glad it's not as hot today. I definitely drove.
So I get to work, pull into the same parking space I take every day. Step out of my car and lo and behold...I'm still in front of my apartment building. Forty mins later, almost done with the album I put on. Wtf was I doing?? Where did I go??"
TL;DR: Person drives 40 minutes on their morning commute, has full memories of the commute, but when they step out of their car, they're still at home.
Top theory: Glitch in the simulation, person lagged back to the spot they left from.
12. "One night I was scrolling back in my Instagram feed, not sure why I felt like doing that but I was weirdly compelled to. And I came across a selfie of myself where I had a very strange and unattractive smile. It had no likes — most of my photos have around 50-80 since my friends are active on it — and I don’t remember taking it or posting it though it was from a week before, max. It spooked me bad and I deleted it. I did not see a copy of it in my camera roll."
"It happened seven years ago and I still think about it. What happened? Was that even me?"
TL;DR: Person finds selfie they never took on their Instagram feed, and what's worse, they look slightly different in it.
Top theory: An electromagnetic leak from a parallel universe.
And finally, the one that personally creeped me out the most:
13. "When I was about 17, my friend and I used to hang out at the mall religiously. But there was one day that we went that still sticks out in my mind years later. It was closer to evening and the lights were all half off which we’d never seen before. But the mall was still open as far as we could tell, although at least a third of the shops were closed and empty. We couldn't figure out why, there wasn't a holiday or anything else that we knew of. That was unusual, but not so strange as to have no plausible explanation. Maybe they had a power outage or they were doing electrical maintenance or something. Something about the atmosphere made it feel eerie though. the dim lights, the setting sun, the familiar bright and bustling area now darker and quieter. But the part that struck us was the other people there..."
"There weren’t as many people around as usual but almost everyone we encountered would watch us. Their eyes would follow us and people openly stared expressionlessly at us. Not the typical glance at a person walking past. It was as if they seemed surprised to see us there and their eyes would trail us long past whats considered socially appropriate.
We both noticed immediately and at first we felt like celebrities. We drank it in thinking we must’ve looked really good that day. But we weren’t wearing anything special enough to garner this much attention. We kept checking with each other, looking at our reflections, making sure we didn't have something on our face or something otherwise attention drawing, and we didn’t.
Still, it continued. I remember that we both saw two parents with a young child in a stroller all watch us simultaneously as we walked by. and that was when we were both like, 'Ok this is getting weird, why are people looking at us like this?'
We tried to ignore it but around 85% of the people we passed took notice of us. People of widely varying demographics: elderly people, children, other teens we didn't recognize, shop clerks and other customers when we’d enter a store, people at other tables in the food court.
We thought maybe it was because there were fewer shoppers around. We started trying to see if people were staring at everyone that passed by, but we didn't see a single person looking at anyone else like that. Instead we’d catch people looking dead at us from like 40 feet away ignoring the other passersby. I remember people eating pretzels on a bench stopping as they saw us. Watching us as we approached, watching us as we walked past, looking over our shoulders to see them watching us as we walked away. It started to feel like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
It wasn't like there was open malice, annoyance or intimidation exactly but it wasn't like they were amused, attracted, or intrigued either. These weren’t friendly glances. It was uncomfortable, like we didn't belong somehow and everybody knew it.
We’d normally spend hours or even the whole day at the mall but we barely lasted 45 minutes before we called my dad to pick us up again, to his surprise. And he noticed it too when he got there! We were super creeped out, but when we went back the next weekend everything was normal and we never experienced anything like that again."
TL;DR: Teens go to the mall, and find that almost everyone there is staring at them as they walk by.
Top theory: Either everyone else at the mall was dead, or the teens had jumped to a different reality and weren't supposed to be there.
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