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People Share Their Craziest 'Glitch In The Matrix' Experiences

So that happened...

People Share Their Craziest 'Glitch In The Matrix' Experiences
Image by Ashutosh Goyal from Pixabay

Blue pill or red pill? That is the question. Everyday feels like a computer game gone awry, or like we're all stars in our versions of the Matrix films. Life too often feels unreal and like a virus is corrupting the download. We all have to be our own personal Neo. Déjà Vu or Matrix, the universe can be a tricky mistress.

Redditor u/mailseuuu wanted to discuss the times when life seemed a bit... off... by asking... Was there a moment wherein you thought it was a "glitch in the matrix"? What are your stories?

I've lost track of the amount of times I lost an item only to discover it in a place I KNOW I scoured earlier. Or who hasn't had a television restart once you've turned it off? How about hearing distant voices in the night? Just me? Let's see...

Vanished

Magic Vanish GIF by VPROGiphy

One time when I was like 8, I was rolling a toy plane (I distinctly remember it was an F117 stealth fighter) across my desk.

It rolled off my desk and just disappeared. I didn't lose it. It just disappeared. There was nowhere for it to go and I never found it again.

56Subject

The Shadow

I have a very visually distinctive necklace. Well one day. After I took it off just it disappeared . I looked and looked for it finally giving up and wrote my necklace off as lost forever.

A few weeks later I was dusting the ceiling fan when I noticed a shadow in the light globe. So I undone the globe from off the fan. Thinking the shadow was maybe a bug. No bug. The shadow was my necklace.

Bunnystrawbery

DOOM

I preordered the special edition of Doom 3 and it came with a little pewter figurine of one of the monsters in the game. I accidentally knocked it off my desk and never heard it hit the ground, never saw it again. My room was carpeted so like, there's a chance I might not have heard the sound it made, but I looked freaking everywhere for it and could never find it. I lived in that room for four years after that, constantly rearranging and moving around, never saw it. And there was nothing under the desk it could've fallen into either. So weird.

HealthyWinter69

On Loop

Oh My God Omg GIF by BarryGiphy

Ejected the CD and the music kept going. Four of us in the car were like "we are dead, this is limbo, what is going on".

tobeofuse

They... just... disappear...

I have a desk that glitches all the time. Whenever I eat on it and I spill a piece of my food, the piece just freaking disappears. It happened to me 3 times this week already.

I call it the "quantum table".

The spilled pieces are quite large (meat, or vegetables). They don't fall to the ground (I've checked hundreds of times). They're not beneath it either (it's a simple table, it has nothing underneath like drawers). They... just... disappear. That amount of spilled food should pile up somewhere! But they are just gone. Forever.

ICWiener6666

Damn Cats

When I wear necklaces I have a tendencies to spin the pendant when I'm stressed. I remember one day I was rapidly spinning a necklace on my way to one of my classes and the pendant flew off. I didn't bother to look for it. I had to get to class and luckily it was a relatively cheap piece of jewelry.

A few months later I move about 1.5 hours away to a new town. About a year into being there, I come home and what do I see sitting on my bed? My pendant. My then gf said she found one of the cats playing with it by the stove and figured it had been knocked under there and they dug it out. But... how?

TheRealGongoozler

See now I knew I wasn't alone. We all have moments that seem like their part of either a ghostly experience or we're all characters in a real life "Truman Show." And I'm not sure that's how I want to become famous.

Huntsville Tales

We visited the spaceflight center in Huntsville a few years ago and I got an A-12 (looks like the SR-71) coffee cup. I started drinking coffee in it every day and for more than a year, everything was normal. I wake up, go pour coffee, drink it downstairs, wash it, then go back to work in my office upstairs.

Sometimes, I get a second cup of coffee and bring it up to my office and then bring it down when I'm done to wash and reset for the next day.

On May 1 of last year, I forgot to bring it back downstairs from my office. Next morning, I wake up and go downstairs to have a cup of coffee like usual in my A-12 cup I got from the Space & Rocketry Center in Huntsville, AL. When I'm done, I wash it and put it away and go upstairs to start work...

...and there's the cup from the day before with an inch of cold coffee in it.

I bring it downstairs, trying to figure out what's going on and the one I just used is still sitting in the drying rack.

I now have two A-12 coffee cups. In the months since, they've both picked up a little bit of their own character, but at the time I brought the original and its doppelcupper together, they had the same scuff marks and were in every way I could tell identical.

I don't have an explanation for how this happened. I don't know how this cup somehow duplicated or why or how to do it again, but what I DO have... is two A-12 cups even though I only bought one.

Chairboy

The Drop

bunny rubbing GIFGiphy

My brother got a lucky rabbits foot keychain. I was tossing it in the air and catching it. One time it went up, but didn't come down. 30 years later I was working in the ceiling and found it on the heat duct that was covered by a drop ceiling.

DarrenEdwards

Which One are You?

There was a girl at a place I worked that I flirted with for a couple months. It was weird because she sometimes seemed a LOT more interested than others, like aggressively.

One day I finally got the nerve up to ask her out and she said yes.

So that weekend, I show up at her house to picker her up, and when the front door opens, there are two of them - twins!

Turns out they took turns working the job, and the one I asked out - not aggressive - was just as nervous as I was, so her sister was acting like a wing...girl (?) to encourage things to happen.

We all got a good laugh out of it, and I dated her for about a year. At work it was always funny to try and figure out who was actually working after that, although I did get better after we'd been dating for a bit.

JerkCircleton

Hannah

Season 15 Kiss GIF by The BacheloretteGiphy

I woke up in the morning and saw a trailer for a movie named Hannah. I was then scrolling through my Google calendar and saw it was my friend Hannah's birthday.

Later on in the night I had some friends come over and we were about to go to a bar, I ordered doordash and the delivery girl's name was Hannah. I went out that night and got a girl named Hannah's number who I dated for about 6 months. Nothing else came up the relationship but that was an extremely bizarre coincidence and follow-up circumstance. It made me really consider the matrix theory.

Ok_Process_9611

All the Coins

I had a quantum carpet in my room as a kid. I remember spilling a jar of change on my carpet a mix of all stuff pennies, dimes, quarters etc.

I found like... A handful of the coins and that's it.

Wasn't a shag carpet that could hide the coins, not like 50+ coins all rolled away out of sight or anything.. But they were just gone.

mergedloki

Tossed

I tossed my first cheapo mp3 player at my desk and it never landed. I figured I overshot somehow and it was in my closet. Nope. Not in any of my shoes, not somehow caught in a fold or pocket. Wasn't under the desk or anywhere else. It simply ceased to exist. Never did find it.

mountainmorticia

Roku Away

Mobile App Streaming GIF by RokuGiphy

My roku remote. i was asleep, it was like 7:00 am and i wake up, I don't see the remote. i assume it fell off the side of my bed near the wall, I check under, nope. not there. nothing. It was just gone. Had a hard time convincing my mom.

Nobody_Exciting

Just Roll

I once found a 20 sided dice (that I had lost a few years prior in America) in the middle of a desert in Israel.

It was the exact same dice as well. I remember because it was the same coloring and had the same scratched off number as well.

BW_Bird

I'm going to get my D&D group together to head off to Israel, I guess. We've collectively lost a bunch of dice.

fibericon

Go Fish

Years ago I lost a can of tuna. I took it out of the pantry to make a sandwich, but then decided to just have cereal, and put it back. Before I got the cereal I changed my mind again and took the can back out of the pantry and set it down. I had been craving tuna on toast with extra tomato and had bought it the evening before specifically to make that.

I get the can opener and the can was gone. I looked all over the kitchen and never found it. I even checked the pantry and sure enough I was missing a can. I had bought a certain number like 4 for a dollar or something. This was in the 90's.

FdgPgn

"abracadabra" 

I was maybe around 5 years old. Pretending to be a magician. I put a pen in this big activity book and waved my hands over it and said "abracadabra" to make the pen disappear. The pen literally disappeared. The bulge you would see of a pen being in a book was gone. Looked through the entire book. Look around the floor. Couldn't find it. Never found it. We moved out of that house when I was 11 and never found the pen.

yoyoyodinono

Trash Miracle

miracle GIFGiphy

I dropped a piece of A4 paper at work and it landed stood up on the short edge. It wasn't bent or folded, literally a fresh sheet of paper just standing all by itself.

Whats more, it happened twice whilst I was at that work place. Never seen it happen again.

PangolinMandolin

Fast Pass

I walked by my colleague who was having a conversation. The convo definitely continued after I passed. I walked another 150 meters, went up a staircase, and walked by a room. My colleague was in that room, talking to another person. I was shook. Later in the day I verified that I had indeed passed her.

I asked how she could have gotten past me and she just said "I'm a fast walker." You ain't THAT fast. She would have had to run up a different staircase, outpace me in the same hall but one floor above. I just didn't see how it happened.

UpsetFuture1974

I Awoke...

My bedroom at the time lead into the living room that you could see into the kitchen. We also had a bathroom that was directly off our room, in the corner. You couldn't get to it unless you were in our room.

I woke up one afternoon. I remember sitting up, checking my phone and lighting a cigarette.

I got out of bed, opened the bedroom door, walked into the living room to turn the thermostat up. I saw my ex in the kitchen fiddling around with the coffee pot. Then he started walking towards the back of the house, into the other bedroom. I said "Hey! You're up early." He looked at me, and kept on walking. I went back into our room and sat on the bed.

After a few minutes I called his name, and he opened the bathroom door and said "yeah?"

Apparently he was in the bathroom the whole time. I was very confused and super freaked out because I could have sworn I saw him in the kitchen. There's no way it was him if he was in the bathroom. It shook me up pretty bad.

Kitty_Britches

Dream Repeat

Occasionally I will fall asleep and dream at night and recognize the dream from when I was a very little kid (I'm 31) and basically pick up from where I left off. This has happened with 5 separate dreams now.

As in I'll dream I'm in a particular place doing a particular thing and remember inside the dream that I left off here when I was 6 and this is what happened before I reached this point.

Deswizard

Sometimes the Universe is sending messages we need to hear. And other times it's just playing tricks on us. Start taking notes of strange happenings. the coincidences add up.

Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.

REDDIT

People Divulge The Absolute Worst Financial Decision They've Ever Made

"Reddit user BlastEffects asked: 'What’s the worst decision you’ve ever made financially?'"

A young woman solemnly holds her face in her hand
Photo by Mehrpouya H

Finacial regret plagues many of us.

From college or medical debt to really bad purchases we almost instantly regret.

Throwing caution to the wind can seem sexy, but that's for people who already have the money most of us are trying to make.

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Content warning: suicide.

There are truly some strange unsolved cases out there, but there's nothing quite like hearing of a person who has vanished as if out of thin air.

While some of these cases have been explained away or even solved, there are some that remain a mystery that truly does not add up, no matter how the puzzle pieces fall.

Curious about these cases, in particular, Redditor yourlastnames asked:

"What missing persons case is the most confusing [to you] or just doesn't add up?"

The Last Ride of Terrance Williams

"Terrance Williams disappeared in 2004. He's the subject of a fascinating podcast called 'The Last Ride.'"

"The short version is that he was taken into custody in Naples, Florida, after being pulled over in the early hours for traffic violations. He was never seen again."

"The deputy that pulled him over tried to conceal the traffic stop even from his own organization, but staff opening a local business saw the whole thing."

"When the sheriff's department finally looked into it, they discovered the deputy was involved in a similar disappearance of a man named Felipe Santos in 2003. To this day the deputy claims no knowledge of Williams's whereabouts, despite being caught out in a series of lies."

- AlanMercer

Paddy Moriarty and Kellie

"Paddy Moriarty and his dog, Kellie. They went missing in an outback town in Australia with a population of 12 people."

"They were last seen leaving the pub riding his quad bike the one-kilometer distance to his house. He or his dog have never been found and no one has been charged in relation to his disappearance."

- Bigred0762

Susan Powell and Family

"Susan Powell went missing from her home in West Valley, Utah, on December 6, 2009."

"She is presumably dead. Her husband, Josh, was the main suspect and just a real piece of work. No one knows what really happened to her."

"Sadly in 2012, Josh murdered their kids and committed suicide after Susan’s parents gained custody of the kids."

- AlexisVonTrappe

"This case is so frustrating since his brother and father are both dead too. We’ll never know what happened to Susan, but I’m positive she’s in an old mine shaft somewhere. F**k Josh Powell."

- burittosquirrel

​The Last Call from Brandon Swanson

"Brandon Swanson. He drove into a ditch and called his parents for help. They stayed on the phone with him for 47 minutes while they drove around looking for him."

"They heard him say, 'Oh s**t,' and then the phone went silent. They eventually found his car far away from where he said he was but he was never found."

- kittengoesrawr

"Reading this was absolutely chilling. It seems at first glance that it's most likely he drowned, but that really doesn't make sense because the water was only 10 feet deep and they would have found the body."

"He just suddenly said, 'OH S**T!' and the phone went silent, but he did not hang up. The phone call continued with total silence from his end. What the f**k happened to him?"

- angelposts

Babysitter Mar Lou Bostwick

"Mary Lou Bostwick. She disappeared July 18, 1972, from Waverly, New York. She was dropped off by her dad to babysit at a friend's house. This was also her 16th birthday. Her mom stopped by later with a cake and presents."

"The people in the apartment told her that Mary never showed up. However, her bag was in the residence. Nothing else was ever found."

"There was another girl around the same age, Sharon Coston, who was abducted and murdered in a nearby town about a year later. October 1983 in Sayre, Pennsylvania."

"There was a man convicted of that, but he always denied doing anything to Mary. One of the people who testified against him and was given immunity was a suspect in Mary's case. Mary's mom thinks there's a connection, but nothing was ever really found."

"I've sadly never seen anyone cover her disappearance on any of the podcasts or YouTube shows."

- Vamp459

Derek Seehausen of San Diego

​"Derek Seehausen. My friend was dating him at the time of his disappearance, and he was actively planning his future in medicine, and was last seen in San Diego."

"I saw him about two months before he disappeared. Please send any tips."

- Hereforit2022Y

The Beaumont Children

"The Beaumont Children. Three kids go to the beach, are seen with a mystery man, and never make it back home."

"Never found out who the man was or where they went. Their parents just recently died without ever getting any closure."

- snguyenx96

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes

"Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes. The whole family (parents and four kids) went missing overnight in 2011."

"Employers, schools, and the extended family received weird letters informing of their absence or departure (one of them saying they are going into a witness protection program). Two weeks later they found the corpses of the mother, the kids, and the dog hidden behind the house."

"They investigated and retraced the father’s whereabouts in the south of France. He was last seen leaving a hotel a few days before. The region was thoroughly searched, but he was never to be found."

- z4zazym

Branson Perry of Skidmore

"Branson Perry, aged 20, disappeared from Skidmore, Missouri in April 2001."

"He was working on his house with a friend, went to the shed to grab some power cords, and was never seen again."

- AdamR91

The Incomplete Story of Marshall Iwassa

"Marshall Iwassa. Good guy."

"He came back to his hometown to visit his family and friends, and everything by all accounts was good. He left to take the two-hour drive to where he was living and never made it. Instead, it was recorded he spent the entire night trying to get into his storage unit and then nothing."

"A week or maybe more, his truck was found 12 hours away on a back road in the middle of the woods burnt to a crisp with belongings thrown about everywhere, no sign of Marshal."

"From what I remember, the family was adamant that some of the things inside the truck, burnt or not, were missing, things they knew he had. The truck was even missing parts."

"It's been four years and there's never been answers. It makes me sad and fearful of long travels. From what I know of him, he was a fantastic friend; I hope they get closure one day."

- devbot8

Out Shopping Asha Degree

"Asha Degree."

"She went missing at the age of nine from Shelby, North Carolina, United States. In the early morning hours of February 14, 2000, for reasons unknown, she packed her bookbag, left her family home north of the city, and began walking along nearby North Carolina Highway 18 despite heavy rain and wind."

"Several passing motorists saw her; when one turned around at a point 1.3 miles (2.1 km) from her home and began to approach her, she left the roadside and ran into a wooded area."

"In the morning, her parents discovered her missing from her bedroom. No one has seen her since."

- EstateWeary5789

The Vanishing Marion Barter

"Marion Barter here in Australia."

"She boarded a plane overseas in 1997 and changed her name beforehand (didn't tell family). She apparently came back to Australia for a few days (according to passenger records) and completely disappeared."

"It's an ongoing investigation at the moment, there is a podcast about it called, 'The Lady Vanishes,' featuring her daughter."

"It's so tragically fascinating."

- CuddlySubject

The Grieving Bryce Laspisa

"Bryce Laspisa."

"He was driving to his parents' house (three hours) after an argument with his girlfriend, apparently due to his alcohol and video game addiction and abuse of prescription medication."

"Partway through the drive, he pulled off the highway and just sat there… from 9:00 AM to 3:'00 PM."

"A roadside assistance guy checked on him twice and said he seemed fine and coherent, and Bryce told him he would be carrying on back to his parents shortly."

"Sometime later, his car was found only a few miles away, driven off the embankment, and he was nowhere to be found. They never found him."

- Just_Raisin1124

News Anchor Jodi Huisentruit

"Jodi Huisentruit was a news anchor who disappeared in the early morning in Mason City, Iowa."

"There were signs that she was abducted and the investigation is still ongoing with new leads nearly 30 years later."

- Have_you_eaten_yet

Three-Year-Old William Tyrrell

"William Tyrrell. In 2014, the three-year-old boy went missing from his foster grandmother's yard whilst playing with his sister. His foster mother and foster grandmother were apparently watching them play outside, and the foster mother went inside to make a cup of tea."

"They then noticed they hadn’t seen or heard him in a while and searched the house and yard."

"In 2021, police began searching national parkland near the grandmother's home for human remains. They also revealed that the foster mother and grandmother were persons of interest in his presumed death."

"Earlier today, the foster mother pled not guilty to assaulting another foster child that was in her care (a 10-year-old girl). She has also been charged with intimidating and stalking a minor. Her husband has also been charged with the same crimes, but plead not guilty to all counts. The foster grandmother is now dead."

"Basically, police believe that William died whilst in the care of the foster family, and they disposed of his body to cover it up. Police are recommending that the foster parents be charged with perverting the course of justice and interfering with a corpse."

"His photos went viral at the time of the 'disappearance,' and he went missing whilst in a Spiderman costume, and the photo that was distributed was taken minutes before."

- Red_bug91

These stories are truly haunting, and it's no wonder that Redditors have worried themselves with what might have happened to these missing people.

We can only hope that answers come for at least some of these cases and that their closest loved ones achieve some sense of closure eventually.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

Senior citizen using a camera
Tiago Muraro/Unsplash

The realization you're getting older can smack you in the face at any given time, and boy-howdy is it fun!

It can be in the morning when you get up out of bed, and your body makes crackling noises, or when you can't seem to keep up at the gym and you cut short your running time on the treadmill.

That's just the physical.

When you suddenly have the epiphany that you're suddenly the oldest one in a group setting, it's humbling.

Curious to hear from strangers online who are no longer the young whipper-snappers they imagined themselves to eternally be, Redditor redmambo_no6 asked:

"Redditors with younger coworkers, what was your 'I’m officially old' moment?"

These moments of realization never get old. But people do.

Senior Kitty

"My childhood cat lived to 21.5 so teaching (freshman biology lab, so students were ~18) became very weird when I realized my cat was older than my students."

– mollusck_magic

Aging In Reverse

"I'm a preschool teacher. It's been a TRIP to watch parents go from Soooo much older than me, to the same age as me, and now they're younger than me!?!?"

– Smart_Alex

The Shook Pediatrician

"My kids pediatrician was also my husband's pediatrician when he was a kid. He was the first kid she had to come back as a parent and she was SHOOK."

– trixtred

Older Together

"See, that's what really kinda drives it home for me."

"I'm not bothered that I'm 48. But that means my school friends are 48, and that's weird for some reason. Like, I went to school with a guy who was wild and crazy. That guy is 48 now, and has a new grandbaby. Somehow, he's old, and I'm just 'getting up there '."

– ThatWeirdTexan

Relics of the past don't just pertain to humans.

Dialing It In

"Had a co-worker ask me, 'Back before cell phones, did you just have to wait around at your house for a call?' Uh, yeah, pretty much."

– Status-Effort-9380

"Reminds me of having to explain the concept of collect calls to my kids. The whole speed speaking where you were for pick up during the recording so your Mama never accepted the collect call."

– DaraScot

Legendary Aircraft

"Various colleagues were debating whether the Concorde had been real. They couldn’t fathom that supersonic civilian aircraft used to exist and now they don’t anymore."

"The Concorde last flew in 2003, when these colleagues were toddlers."

– geckos_are_weirdos

Foreign References

"We were talking about where we were on 9/11, and my coworker went quiet. He wasn’t even born."

"We also had a band that was famous in the 90s stay at the hotel, and he had no idea who they were, meanwhile I was so star struck as they were my entire childhood!"

– Itsagabby

Gravity is not our friend, and not just because of its effect on our faces.

The Day It Went Downhill

"When i fell down the last couple of steps on a stairway. No one pointed and laughed like I expected, instead they helped me up and asked me if I was okay. That’s when I knew."

– day_of_duke

It's About The Recovery

"F'k. That has to be a bummer."

"You fall. You know you're fine. You feel like an idiot. You get ready to wave to the crowd as they laugh and clap. But then... a hand is placed on your arm and you hear 'that was a big fall, are you ok?' You stay in shock for a moment. Of course, you're fine. Everyone is looking at you. They all have concerned faces. Sh*t. Two weeks later, the soreness finally subsides."

– minimalfighting

Ice Slip, You Slip, We All Slip

"This happened to me as well....walking my dog the day after a huge snowstorm. There were some rowdy teenage boys having a snowball fight across the street (schools were closed that day, of course). I slipped on the ice, my feet flew over my head and I landed solidly on my backside. As I struggled to get up I braced myself for the laughter and catcalls, but all I heard was "Are you OK Ma'am??' 'Do you need help??' I was in my early 50s and had never felt 'old' until that moment."

– Ouisch

Conversations with younger coworkers can be fun.

You can quote lines from your favorite TV shows and talk about the latest CD you bought at Target and brag about your new digital camera that takes better pictures than a smartphone.

And then you can watch the blank expressions on your coworkers' faces because they haven't a clue about what you speak.

Yeah. This has never happened to me...

Old.

person getting a tattoo

Collins Lesulie on Unsplash

The art of tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified skin, art and the archaeological artifacts.

The oldest tattooed human skin was found on the body of Ötzi the Iceman from between 3370 and 3100 BC.

Tattooed mummies were recovered in almost 50 archaeological digs across the Earth with locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines and the Andes.

But while advancements in tools and inks have opened up endless possibilities for body art, some designs have garnered a bad reputation.

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