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False Memories

" Then, I experienced what can only be described as a trip across the Universe. I saw the beginning and end of time"
It does look kind of like a gateway.
 
Unless...
She had a heart attack while walking to the letterbox.
She was then picked up by an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
She had another heart attack in the ambulance.

So they could both be right.

Sorry to hear of your loss, Iris.
Thank you Mythopoeika but she died about 20 years ago. As far as I remember she was in the ambulance because of the thyroid, but then with hyper thyroid the heart does beat really fast.
 
It does look kind of like a gateway.
I believe that it is.

I thought I was alone in having a magical experience in front of Red on Maroon, but Simon Schama described something very similar in one of his documentary's.

Mark Rothko did mean for his paintings to move people and for people to experience a religious awakening in front of them. It's why the Tate Modern hangs the paintings the way they do and lighst them the way they do. Mark left strict instructions as to how the paintings could be shown, specifically to illicit reactions that made the viewer question the painting, the painter, and the response they were having to the painting.

I don't think that he wanted people to keel over and get brain damage, but he also would be thrilled that some people (me) do react in that way. His painting, his brush strokes, allowed me to see to the edge of time; allowed me to gain an understanding of cosmic vastness and an understanding of the purpose of God and time. All of that in one superficially simple painting, but a painting that is in reality the entire Universe. And that's just Red on Maroon, it shares a space with other paintings that are as equally vibrant and vocal. It's just that for me Red on Maroon connects in such a magnificently wondrous way that I feel a relationship with it. And I happen to think that is wonderful, I have a living, breathing relationship with one of the most important paintings of the twentieth century, and through it, a relationship with the Universe. It's impossible to ask for more!
 
I have a similar false memory to the one of the posters on the first page. In this memory I remember jumping down the stairs and sort of floating until a got near the bottom and fell with a bang. In this memory two of my cuddly toys (pink rabbit and pink teddy) are falling with me. It was probably a recurring dream but it still feels so vivid after all these years.

My other false memory is of being on holiday and walking up some steps and meeting a family who looked just like us. I can explain this though as on one of the photographs from that holiday there are two people who look very like my dad and brother. It's not them though as my dad was always taking the photos and my brother hates having his picture taken so much it's become a family joke.
 
I have a very clear memory from a few years back of visiting my parents farm house and sitting in my Dad's study on YouTube, listening to a song called "Bicycle" by indie electronic band Memory Tapes. The memory very clearly links the song and accompanying video to that study in the old farmhouse.

And yet I know these precise events never happened. My parents moved out of that place in 2005, and the song in question wasn't released until 2009.

For a long time I took the memory on face value. It was only recently when the song came on shuffle on my phone and I was instantly reminded of listening to it in the old farmhouse when I suddenly realised the impossible chronology involved.

Whilst I know there's nothing more than brain trickery going on here, I find it both baffling and fascinating. That "memory" is as clear as day, and had I not corrected myself I would swear on my own life it happened. Makes me wonder what other jumbled memories I'm taking as fact...
 
We are happily anticipating a local art festival, and reminiscing about the first fest, which was a disaster because of heavy rain and wind. We both remember masses of fallen folding chairs but I recall that the only people there were police in wet black slickers. My husband remembers yellow slickers.
 
And yet I know these precise events never happened. My parents moved out of that place in 2005, and the song in question wasn't released until 2009.

I have a few dodgy memories like that, my family lived at 5 different addresses when I was a kid, when I've googled around times that thing I remember came out or aired on the television, a number of them can't actually have happened in the places I recall them as having.
 
I have a few dodgy memories like that, my family lived at 5 different addresses when I was a kid, when I've googled around times that thing I remember came out or aired on the television, a number of them can't actually have happened in the places I recall them as having.
I've also lived at multiple locations, averaging two years per 'home' until I was 18. My memory's of 'when' are tied to a home and are usually accurate. I'm quite good with pop songs as well. Having said that I wouldn't for a moment consider them infallible.
 
Has anyone experienced things that actually never happened?

False memory syndromes are medical curiosities that have had some investigation, especially when connected to physical or mental trauma.

But what about mundane, ordinary memories of things that just couldn't have happened, or which have been established not to have happened? Memories that, on reflection, seem to be imaginary, but which seem totally real?

I will start with this one: My "first" motorcycle test.

I remember when I "first" passed my motorcycle driving test as a teenager. Except that I had to do it "again", several years later, because it seems that it never happened. The inexplicable bit is that I remember the whole episode, including the bike I learned on (which never existed) and - strangest of all - the lessons on how to ride it.

Those fictional lessons were useful, though, because the "second" bike test I did (in reality the only one) was very cheap because I didn't need any lessons! I just already knew the entire contents of weeks of learning, including the occasional scary moment (as an inexperienced learner rider, solo on the road) that reinforced the particularly important safety aspects...

The UK motorcycle test has changed in nature a few times over the years, and my "first" test and its lessons included certain aspects that simply couldn't have happened, because I would have been too young to own and ride a motorcycle at the time when they were current.

The memories of that time are still completely clear. It's almost like they have been transplanted into my head from whoever really took those lessons and did all that L-plate riding.

In due course, I wanted to buy a motorcycle, and was discussing the options with people in the context of comparing it the one I "used to own" (which I never owned). The bit that bothered me was that I couldn't remember the day that I got rid of it. This is obvious now - I never did sell it because I didn't have it in the first place! I rapidly discovered this when everyone else was asking "what bike that you used to own? You've never owned a motorbike". A quick bit of research showed that no, I didn't have the motorcycle category on my driving licence.

So I had to "start all over again" in my 20s, which was highly frustrating, because I "knew" that I had done it all already. I went to a local motorcycle driving school to learn, and discovered that I did indeed already know how to ride a motorbike, including all the wise old safety knowledge and tips that my (fictional) old instructor had imparted, all of which was correct and of a high standard. So I progressed immediately to booking a test, and passed with ease.

Where did these memories come from? Where did the knowledge come from?

I still ride a motorcycle, and have avoided a number of near-accidents over the years by using this knowledge that I gained in my period as a learner. It's been very handy and useful knowledge. But where did it come from?


I have other stuff in my life that I remember clearly, but which did not happen and in some cases, simply could not have happened. Some of it is stuff that is out of place time-wise, for example adult experience memories (no, not naughty ones) from when I would have been a child, or memories of travelling in places I have never been to, or never went to at the time that the places were like that (for places that have changed a lot).

If anyone likes the description above, I will add a couple of these other memories. So does anyone else have this?
 
There can be a middle ground between the extremes of (e.g.) "it really happened, but somehow isn't reflected in the evidence" and "it never happened; it couldn't have happened."

I've encountered situations (mainly with friends or relatives) in which their questionable memories aren't entirely false, but have evolved into a mishmash of actual events, transplanted bits of separate memories, and / or completely novel aspects apparently inserted over the years to hold the elements of the purported story together. In other words - just because the overall story isn't true doesn't necessarily mean that all the elements within it are false.

One of my best friends was a fellow musician from the 1960's up to the 1980's. He habitually mixes 'n' matches memories of actual bands, journeys, venues, gigs, people, and / or incidents into impossible combinations that I have to untangle for him. Each of the pieces are 'real'; it's the latter-day collage he's made of them that's false.

For example ...

Could it be you really learned to ride a motorcycle as a teenager, using someone else's bike you'd borrowed or to which you had ready access, then over time came to (mis-) recall as a bike you'd actually owned?

Similarly ...

Could it be the apparently fictitious first test wasn't an official licensing test event, but rather an exercise to demonstrate your learning to (e.g.) someone who really owned the bike, had served as an informal instructor, and declared you 'ready'?

If I interpret your account correctly, you operated the motorcycle quite 'naturally' when you started over in your twenties. I find the notion of someone climbing on a motorbike 'cold' knowing how to operate it and ride safely a lot less plausible than the notion you'd had some prior experience (e.g., informal training from a friend) and simply forgotten the experiential basis for your eventually confused / confusing memories.
 
You referred to your "(fictional) old instructor"...do you actually have a memory of that person as a flesh and blood individual you could describe and who has a name? Or do you assume/have a vague notion you had an instructor.

The only examples I can think of having someone else's memories are in cases purporting to suggest reincarnation, deja vu and, in a slightly less dramatic way, people who claim memories inherited from organ donors.

An alternative..and one explanation for deja vu as it happens...is that perhaps you lived this alternative life, and got to practice driving, in particularly lucid dreams which are now indistinguishable from memories of real life.
 
Has anyone experienced things that actually never happened?

False memory syndromes are medical curiosities that have had some investigation, especially when connected to physical or mental trauma.

But what about mundane, ordinary memories of things that just couldn't have happened, or which have been established not to have happened? Memories that, on reflection, seem to be imaginary, but which seem totally real?

I will start with this one: My "first" motorcycle test.

I remember when I "first" passed my motorcycle driving test as a teenager. Except that I had to do it "again", several years later, because it seems that it never happened. The inexplicable bit is that I remember the whole episode, including the bike I learned on (which never existed) and - strangest of all - the lessons on how to ride it.

Those fictional lessons were useful, though, because the "second" bike test I did (in reality the only one) was very cheap because I didn't need any lessons! I just already knew the entire contents of weeks of learning, including the occasional scary moment (as an inexperienced learner rider, solo on the road) that reinforced the particularly important safety aspects...

The UK motorcycle test has changed in nature a few times over the years, and my "first" test and its lessons included certain aspects that simply couldn't have happened, because I would have been too young to own and ride a motorcycle at the time when they were current.

The memories of that time are still completely clear. It's almost like they have been transplanted into my head from whoever really took those lessons and did all that L-plate riding.

In due course, I wanted to buy a motorcycle, and was discussing the options with people in the context of comparing it the one I "used to own" (which I never owned). The bit that bothered me was that I couldn't remember the day that I got rid of it. This is obvious now - I never did sell it because I didn't have it in the first place! I rapidly discovered this when everyone else was asking "what bike that you used to own? You've never owned a motorbike". A quick bit of research showed that no, I didn't have the motorcycle category on my driving licence.

So I had to "start all over again" in my 20s, which was highly frustrating, because I "knew" that I had done it all already. I went to a local motorcycle driving school to learn, and discovered that I did indeed already know how to ride a motorbike, including all the wise old safety knowledge and tips that my (fictional) old instructor had imparted, all of which was correct and of a high standard. So I progressed immediately to booking a test, and passed with ease.

Where did these memories come from? Where did the knowledge come from?

I still ride a motorcycle, and have avoided a number of near-accidents over the years by using this knowledge that I gained in my period as a learner. It's been very handy and useful knowledge. But where did it come from?


I have other stuff in my life that I remember clearly, but which did not happen and in some cases, simply could not have happened. Some of it is stuff that is out of place time-wise, for example adult experience memories (no, not naughty ones) from when I would have been a child, or memories of travelling in places I have never been to, or never went to at the time that the places were like that (for places that have changed a lot).

If anyone likes the description above, I will add a couple of these other memories. So does anyone else have this?

Please add more! My own false memories are only about minor stuff.
 
You referred to your "(fictional) old instructor"...do you actually have a memory of that person as a flesh and blood individual you could describe and who has a name? Or do you assume/have a vague notion you had an instructor...

I remember the instructor as clear as day, especially because his name was Jez Hardwicke, and I remember him repeatedly telling me and other candidates filling in forms, etc, that it has an "e" on the end, which is the less common spelling.

I have asked around and nobody who was "on the scene" in that city knows of a Jez Hardwicke. I expect that the DSA would have records of who was ever a qualified instructor, but I don't know how I would access these records (this was all long before doing things on the web came about, I'm 50 years old).

An alternative..and one explanation for deja vu as it happens...is that perhaps you lived this alternative life, and got to practice driving, in particularly lucid dreams which are now indistinguishable from memories of real life.

I'm happy to believe that some part of my mind just invented the whole thing, in the way you say, except that I actually managed to acquire a skill. I don't understand how my mind could have conjured up the ability to change gear with my left foot while operating a clutch with my left hand, since this configuration doesn't turn up on any other type of vehicle that I have ever used.

And if the knowledge sort of passed esoterically into my head from a real person living a real life, who is that person? I'd like to know. How much more of my life's memories are his, not mine, but have never been tested to see if they belong to me or him?


Could it be you really learned to ride a motorcycle as a teenager, using someone else's bike you'd borrowed or to which you had ready access, then over time came to (mis-) recall as a bike you'd actually owned?

Similarly ...

Could it be the apparently fictitious first test wasn't an official licensing test event, but rather an exercise to demonstrate your learning to (e.g.) someone who really owned the bike, had served as an informal instructor, and declared you 'ready'?

If I were to try to nail it all down to totally rational explanations, this would seem to be the most likely, or perhaps the simplest explanation (those two are often related). This would imply that my memory is merely confused or broken, as opposed to completely conjured out of thin air.
 
If there is a Jez Hardwicke, there's no sign of him on the net. Sounds more like a lucid dream that turned into a false memory (if that's possible).
 
If there is a Jez Hardwicke, there's no sign of him on the net. Sounds more like a lucid dream that turned into a false memory (if that's possible).

Yes - that's possible. Back in the 1980's a couple of long-time friends and I were intensely interested in dreaming and worked to achieve recurring lucid dreams. We kept dream diaries and exchanged / discussed our dreams on a regular basis. Some time later, one of those friends made reference to an incident he attributed to his (actual) past. I recognized certain features of his story and asked him to bring out his dream diary from 1 or 2 years before. Sure enough - the story he was then-currently relating as historical fact was documented as a lucid dream he'd come to (mis-) remember as having occurred in waking life.

I've never settled on a clear opinion whether a 'true' memory of a dream experience should be counted as 'false' in the same sense implied in allusions to 'false memories'.
 
I remember the instructor as clear as day, especially because his name was Jez Hardwicke, and I remember him repeatedly telling me and other candidates filling in forms, etc, that it has an "e" on the end, which is the less common spelling. ...

Good! Keep teasing at specific details like the instructor's name. My experience has been that focusing on a particular element can help to trigger associations that cause a forgotten or out-of-reach chunk of memory to suddenly fall back into place.
 
You referred to your "(fictional) old instructor"...do you actually have a memory of that person as a flesh and blood individual you could describe and who has a name? Or do you assume/have a vague notion you had an instructor.

The only examples I can think of having someone else's memories are in cases purporting to suggest reincarnation, deja vu and, in a slightly less dramatic way, people who claim memories inherited from organ donors.

An alternative..and one explanation for deja vu as it happens...is that perhaps you lived this alternative life, and got to practice driving, in particularly lucid dreams which are now indistinguishable from memories of real life.

You could be on to something , i remember having horse riding lessons as a kid, Their was no way I could stay on, then I had a dream about riding and galloping, the next lesson it was as if I was a pro. Something definitely had happened.
I don't know if this is relevant but when you have a lucid dream or any dream for that matter, I wonder where the light comes from to illuminate said dream. Your body is switched off in unconscious mode. Eyes presumably shut, in a darkened room. But the light /photons running the internal consciousness, seem to be the same as what runs in normal waking life. Sound and all the other senses included. Dosn't this rather suggest the illusion of three dimensionality, which would be the safer bet, as it seems a bit dangerous out there. Which must means that we have a lot of information stored, and ways to retrieve it.
 
If there is a Jez Hardwicke, there's no sign of him on the net.
That seems to be so. There are plenty of Jeremy Hardwicks without the 'e', however.

And lots of mentions of Sherlock Holmes, thanks to concatenations like "The celebrated duo of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke are back as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson"...

Perhaps the m/c instructor was a Holmes fan who for some reason had to work under an assumed name! :twisted:
 
OP: I don't want to be funny, and I don't think u are crackers or anything and you won't be locked up but I'd probably look to get a referral to a neurologist.
 
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OP: I don't want to be funny, and I don't think u are crackers or anything and you won't be locked up but I'd probably look to get a referral to a neurologist.

I was thinking along the same lines.
 
Another possibility; could you have imagined the lessons? If you had any interest in motorbike riding might you have investigated, read articles, or talked to riders you knew to see if a motorbike was right for you?

My mother taught me to rehearse in my mind potentially stressful situations. I have mild to paralyzing social anxiety but successfully participated in public speaking competitions and acting on stage in front of a live audience. Sometimes when something was especially important I would even travel to the place to make sure I would be able to get there in X amount of time or find that the entrance I needed was open etc. so with research to know what to expect the novel situation was more familiar and less stressful. My visualizations were very real to me and I've found some evidence of remembering things I never actually did.

I must have visualized so strongly it became part of my memories. Wish I could recall specific example right now but the incidents were few and as I said, committed now to memory.

I understand as well that in crime investigation, (yes I watch those shows) eye witness testimony is variable from witness to witness. Each of us brings something else to our view.
Or you dreamt it. Any help?
 
This in itself might be a false memory but weren't you once allowed to ride a motorbike up to 125cc on a full car license?
I have a vague memory of a motorcycle category on the back of my first copy, along with car, car+trailer, >16 seat minibus, >16 seat minibus + trailer etc. as things I was allowed to drive.
After moving house and getting a new license the motorbike category wasn't included. Did the rules change?

It might have only been 50cc.
I might be misremembering the whole thing.
 
I think you're right. Learner motorcyclists could ride up to 250cc bikes too.

Funny story: I once discussed this issue with the former Mr Snail. My point was that although it seemed dangerous that in theory one could buy a 250 Yamaha or something and ride it home from the shop without ever even sitting on a moped beforehand, surely nobody would be THAT stupid.

Aha, replied the ex, you're wrong, as my brother did exactly that on his 17th birthday!

So he won an argument by proving that his brother was an idiot.
Classy.
 
there were a few incidences a few years ago, where the dvla (at the time) were forgetting to add your motorcycle entitlement back onto your licence if you had to send it to them - change of address for instance.
i have always worked in the motorcycle trade and heard of a few people that this happened to, you had to re sit the test to get the missing entitlement back again - unless you had the foresight to photocopy your licence before sending it in.
Could this have been the case?
 
there were a few incidences a few years ago, where the dvla (at the time) were forgetting to add your motorcycle entitlement back onto your licence if you had to send it to them - change of address for instance.
i have always worked in the motorcycle trade and heard of a few people that this happened to, you had to re sit the test to get the missing entitlement back again - unless you had the foresight to photocopy your licence before sending it in.
Could this have been the case?

I had a boyfriend in my teens who'd been accidentally sent a full driving licence instead of a provisional one when he was 17. We had a LOT of fun. :evil:
 
[...] could you have imagined the lessons? If you had any interest in motorbike riding might you have investigated, read articles, or talked to riders you knew to see if a motorbike was right for you?
[...]
Any help?

This is certainly quite believable, and could have contributed a great deal. I certainly had plenty of friends who rode motorcycles. That's part of the evidence that I never had one during the "fictional" episode; it certainly wasn't a memory of learning in secret. I would have been sure to tell everyone at the time, had it really happened (I talk a lot. Really waaay too much).
Also, although my memory of learning to ride is still very clear from the fictional "first time", I have had to face the fact that I have no memory of buying a bike, selling a bike, or borrowing one, or whose it would have been, or indeed using a bike as its owner, parking it, insuring and taxing it, and all the other stuff i would have done if I had also really taken lessons and a test.

But this doesn't go far enough. I didn't just already have knowledge, I had an actual physical skill. All of it, including the really difficult balance stuff like balancing the throttle and clutch while riding at VERY slow speed around an obstacle course; I didn't just already know how to do this (and it doesn't come easily for most people, nor did I learn it quickly in the imaginary lessons I "had" in my trumped-up memory of learning it "the first time")... I actually was already pretty good at it, as if I had been practicing it over and over and over, like I remember doing, except that this memory was of practice that had never happened. A physical skill, with "muscle memory" and hard-won reactions etc, can't be learned from reading.

[...] the dvla (at the time) were forgetting to add your motorcycle entitlement back onto your licence if you had to send it to them - change of address for instance.[...]
A few people that this happened to [...] had to re sit the test to get the missing entitlement back again - unless you had the foresight to photocopy your licence before sending it in.
Could this have been the case?

I remember this scandal; I had to get my licence photo renewed and made a big deal of recording the details of my licence before waving goodbye to it. It came back with all categories intact, including my (real) motorcycle entitlement.

This can't have happened to me on a hypothetical "first time round" because I had I had already passed my real motorbike test (and car test) when this licence-photo renewal "loss of category" thing started. And that, of course, was after the imaginary lessons and test.
 
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