It’s happened to everybody – something happens to you that you just can’t logically explain. What is it? A glitch in the matrix perhaps?
Here, people share their creepiest ‘glitch in the matrix’ stories.
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 spilt 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 tuned 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.
Musicalmoses
I was walking into the hallway from my bedroom, and as I got about 6 feet down the hallway, I was seamlessly transported back to the hallway entrance. This was no deja vu event. At least not like I’ve ever had before or since. I distinctly remember physically walking into my hallway when I suddenly start from the entrance again.
I nearly threw up and crapped myself at that very moment. It literally made me sick and scared. I also remember what happened about a second or so before this “teleportation” glitch. My body started to softly vibrate as if I were some rusty robot. If you can imagine the low-powered vibration of console controllers, but your entire body doing it, that’s what it felt like. It lasted for about 2 seconds, right until I “teleported”. It was somewhat painful to move in that state. I never mentioned it to anyone because, well, obvious reasons.
–lolwutroflwaffle–
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 dead body floating in her bathtub.
I didn’t think anything of it up until I logged online that evening and the online friend came online 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 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.
[deleted]
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.
COREM
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 2 y/o 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…
WhiteZombieCat
I was sitting in my car with just 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
Tog_the_destroyer
I had a (subjectively) long, involved dream where I was a vendor in a fish market. I remember getting up early, dressing, doing a whole morning routine, going to get tea, heading out to the docks, buying fish, loading them in a cart and going to get ice, then haggling for ice, buying some less fresh fish while I was at it, then going to a market to my stall, setting up and selling fish all day. It was so real. I talked to friends, 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, sling 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.
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.
ohfail
This happened back in college. I was driving home from my cabin in Northern Wisconsin through the Indigenous 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 2 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. Its 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. Thats 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.
way_fairer
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. Strangest, most unexplainable thing I’ve ever had happen to me.
BrAnders0n
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 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 shit 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.
donpapillon
I was catching a sky 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.”
“Here’s $5”. Gave it to her without even looking her in the face, convinced of her intentions to maybe buy drugs or something.
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 5-10 minutes travelling, the driver pulls over for a routine stop. The doors open, and to my complete astonishment the woman from the sky 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.
your_a_moron
I once worked in a video store in a very middle class family friendly neighborhood. We’d have to play kids’ movies during the day to promote them. On this day we were playing ‘Bee Movie’ and just at the bit where the main Bee got discovered in the house by humans, an enormous bumble bee flew into the store and started buzzing around the chupa chup display on the counter. My work mate freaked out and was screeching for me to kill it; just like the dude on the TV. I love insects so I ran up and got a glass and trapped it at the exact time the main girl trapped the main Bee in the film. When I got back from letting it out I just gave my workmate a knowing look at let the main girl give the lecture about not killing small creatures for me.
Rachilde
Once I was sleeping over at my cousin’s house. We were sharing the basement and I woke up at around 3am. 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.”
RectumCalamari
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 nine p.m.
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 more weird, 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 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 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 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 heck 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.
crowhorse
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 floorplan, carpet, walls, ceiling, everything was exactly the same as it was in my dream. 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.
KillaStorm1000