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False Memories

gerardwilkie said:
When I was a kid , about 5 or 6 , I seem to remember seeing a HUGE spider, about the size of a dog going through my parents back garden. I rushed in to tell them but there was nothing there when we went out to look. It scared the bejeezus out of me , and the thought of it still does. It was the early 1970s , so maybe I was exposed to some kind of hallucinogenic (there were magic mushrooms growing in the back garden). Other options are a false memory , a genuine if unlikely monster, or perhaps an interdimensional arachnid. Hated spiders ever since.
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Benylin - a medicine commonly given to children for cold relief, causes hallucinations.
https://www.addiction.com/a-z/benylin/

This has given plausible explanation for a lot of my childhood Fortean related experiences.
 
SkepticalX said:
When I was in my 20s, I worked as a radio and television journalist. As a news person, I was constantly immersed in life's unpleasantries. It got to the point where I really became somewhat detached from the violence and tragedy I reported. It was a defense mechanism, but it became one of the driving reasons I got out of the business. It seemed like I was being robbed of part of my humanity.

The reason I mention it is because, during that time, I started to have a series of extremely unsettling dreams. I dreamt that, at some point in my past, I had committed a serious crime. The details were vague (no names, times, or places) but the dreams were vivid enough that, upon awaking, I was left with the truly unsettled feeling these were true events that, somehow, I could not consciously recall.

The dreams went on for several months, On more than one occasion, I would wake up in a sheer, cold sweat convinced that the police knew who I was and were on the verge of clapping the cuffs on me. In some cases, the dreams bothered me the entire day before I could finally convince myself they were not real.

I got married and took a job with a different radio station in another state and I don't recall having the dreams after that. Since then, I have never had any dream experiences that have disturbed me a fraction as much. I sometimes wonder (since my job took me to police stations, courts, even morgues) whether I had somehow tapped into the another consciousness and their desperate thoughts surfaced in my dreams.
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I've read similar accounts in discussions about reincarnation.
Feeling guilt, anxiety, depression or a profound sense of loss, due to experiences in a previous life, crops up quite regularly.
If you believe in the whole karma thing, your actions in previous lives can affect your mental or even physical state in this life.
Of course, if you're a celebrity in the focus of the media, saying that you believe in such things is tantamount to committing professional suicide, as erstwhile England football manager and New Age guru Glenn Hoddle found out.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I've read similar accounts in discussions about reincarnation.
Feeling guilt, anxiety, depression or a profound sense of loss, due to experiences in a previous life, crops up quite regularly.
If you believe in the whole karma thing, your actions in previous lives can affect your mental or even physical state in this life.
Of course, if you're a celebrity in the focus of the media, saying that you believe in such things is tantamount to committing professional suicide, as erstwhile England football manager and New Age guru Glenn Hoddle found out.
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The dreams might have been the person's natural anxiety about the state of the world expressing itself as guilt, as in a feeling that 'terrible things go on which I know about but can't stop'. The subconscious can do things like that.

A change in circumstances seems to have cured it for the OP.
 
escargot said:
The dreams might have been the person's natural anxiety about the state of the world expressing itself as guilt, as in a feeling that 'terrible things go on which I know about but can't stop'. The subconscious can do things like that.

A change in circumstances seems to have cured it for the OP.
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Absolutely. Was just pointing out that, from a non-Western or New Agey point of view, the past lives/ karmic explanation would probably be proffered.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Absolutely. Was just pointing out that, from a non-Western or New Agey point of view, the past lives/ karmic explanation would probably be proffered.
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But then the past lives/karma can be offered up as the explanation to just about anything. Had something bad happen to you? Probably karma...
 
CuriousIdent said:
When I was very young I have a memory of playing in the front garden of my Parents' house, when an Air Raid siren started going off. I could remember vividly seeing our neighbours all coming out of their houses wondering what was going on. This was the 80s and it proper shit me up, at the time.

For years though, I would recount this to my parents who had literally no memory of it at all. We assumed it to be a false memory. Some general fear of The Bomb from an earlier era.

Only it turned out that I was right. It really did happen! I discovered a few years back that what we had heard was the Early Warning Siren down the road in Coventry - which had accidentally been set off.

So I'm claiming that my Parents' memory of this *not* having happened is the false one...
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They used to test them regularly in the 80s, I remember a young lad bursting into our work canteen scared out of his wits by the siren.
 
Your eyes can lie, or rather your memory.

An eyewitness’s identification of an accused defendant often provides some of the most dramatic and powerful evidence in a criminal case.

“Do you see in this courtroom the person you saw fire the fatal shot?” asks the prosecutor. “Yes,” says the eyewitness, pointing to the defendant, adding for good measure, “I will never forget his face.”

But in fact the eyewitness is frequently wrong: inaccurate eyewitness identifications appear to be the single greatest contributor to wrongful convictions. For example, they were introduced as evidence in over 70 percent of the more than 360 cases that the Innocence Project, using DNA analysis, later proved were wrongful convictions. Nearly a third of these cases, moreover, involved multiple misidentifications of the defendant. By comparison, the next-most-frequent contributor to wrongful convictions, misleading testimony by forensic “experts,” was present in 45 percent of these cases, and the third-most-frequent factor, false confession, was present in about 30 percent of them.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/20...utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Our Lying Eyes
 
When I was at school we had a demonstration of the 'eye witness effect'. We were having a talk by a police officer about his work, in the classroom. About half way through, another police officer knocked, came in, handed the guy talking to us some papers, then went out. At the end of the talk, he asked us to write down a description of the woman who had come in.

There were twenty five different descriptions. Some of them VASTLY different (I, for example, had 'remembered' her as having dark roots to a blonde dye job - she had no such thing). She came back in and we compared the written descriptions. Some were accurate in some respects, but nobody had remembered everything in detail.

It was a valuable lesson. If you don't know you should be noticing someone, your brain doesn't really take in much detail.
 
Today at t'supermarket I DEFINITELY remember putting a bottle of juice and some trifles in my basket. They didn't arrive home, curses.

Must've changed my mind at the last minute. I did buy various other tempting treats such as a hot chicken jalfrezi (two actually) for Techy and some gnocchi and sauce for me.

No juice and trifles though. Techy suggests I look at the receipt. What's he saying?
 
I was watching the news the other day about the Edvard Munch exhibition and was about to turn to my colleague and say that I had seen The Scream. I haven't, I haven't even been to Norway. I have seen The Girls of the Bridge when it was in Cologne and his works in Stuttgart and Leipzig. We also had a print of The Scream in the living room when I was young. For a nanosecond, all that conflated to make me believe I had seen The Scream.
 
escargot said:
Today at t'supermarket I DEFINITELY remember putting a bottle of juice and some trifles in my basket. They didn't arrive home, curses.

Must've changed my mind at the last minute. I did buy various other tempting treats such as a hot chicken jalfrezi (two actually) for Techy and some gnocchi and sauce for me.

No juice and trifles though. Techy suggests I look at the receipt. What's he saying?
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You ate the trifles and drank the juice!

I forgot to get chocolate digestive biccies.
 
escargot said:
Today at t'supermarket I DEFINITELY remember putting a bottle of juice and some trifles in my basket. They didn't arrive home, curses.

Must've changed my mind at the last minute. I did buy various other tempting treats such as a hot chicken jalfrezi (two actually) for Techy and some gnocchi and sauce for me.

No juice and trifles though. Techy suggests I look at the receipt. What's he saying?
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Did the checkout assistant maybe leave them in the bottom of your basket? (This is dependant on the type of checkout - if it was a belt type one then it could just be that they slipped to the end of the belt and didn't get packed with the rest of the shopping). I've sometimes served a customer, taken things out of their basket, packed them into their bag, totalled up and finalised the sale then, after the customer left, found a couple more items in the bottom of their basket, which is tucked in against my right hand side but lower down, so I can't really see it properly.

Maybe that's why Techy said check your receipt. You might never have paid for them, and it might be down to the checkout operator.
 
catseye said:
Did the checkout assistant maybe leave them in the bottom of your basket? (This is dependant on the type of checkout - if it was a belt type one then it could just be that they slipped to the end of the belt and didn't get packed with the rest of the shopping). I've sometimes served a customer, taken things out of their basket, packed them into their bag, totalled up and finalised the sale then, after the customer left, found a couple more items in the bottom of their basket, which is tucked in against my right hand side but lower down, so I can't really see it properly.

Maybe that's why Techy said check your receipt. You might never have paid for them, and it might be down to the checkout operator.
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Nope, it's totally my own doing. Found and checked the receipt and there's no sign. Silly me.
 
I did something similar when we got my young dog as a pup. I went shopping for a collar with my youngest daughter, and we both agreed that we needed a RED puppy collar, as the other two dogs also had red collars and we were, as my daughter said 'a red-collar family'.

So we carefully selected a puppy collar of the right colour and size, bought it, brought it home - whereupon to our collective astonishment, we found we had bought a BLUE collar.

Neither of us is colourblind, we know, absolutely, that we discussed getting a red collar and picked up a red collar. My daughter even wondered if red collars were so popular they'd only had one left in the shop and the assistant had switched it for a blue one at the 'bagging' stage. Which seems a little far-fetched to me, but there is no other explanation as to why BOTH of us thought we'd bought a red collar, only to end up with a blue one. (She's got a red collar now. She grew out of the blue one in about a fortnight).
 
I was going to start a new thread about this (calling it something like 'tracking down elusive memories') but as it seems nobody has posted in here for over two years, perhaps it should go in here instead. If the Mods want to re-locate this post, I have no problem with that.

Essentially, I am seeking validation for something which I have a slightly unnerving memory of from my childhood. I have tried searching online to see if anything remotely similar came up, but to no avail. It seems odd when nearly anything you type in as a search on Google finds what you are trying to dig out from the abyss of your memory. If you can't find anything about it on Google it makes you doubt the reality of it. Weird.

Before I go into what I CAN'T find, an example of something I did find. For years an irritating jingle-like nonsense refrain used to pop into my head as a kind of ear-worm and bug me for a few days before disappearing again only to come back months later. I was always unable to pin down what it was or where it came from. So I decided to try Google one day, typing in the words phonetically as I recalled them, not expecting anything to come up. So what I searched for was "domo origado Mr Pusscato". It turned out I had misheard the lyrics of a weird song by the group Styx which actually goes "domo arigato Mr Roboto" - the song being "Mr Roboto". Somehow it had seeped into my brain years ago without me being aware of it and stayed lodged in there for years. Finding it actually seems to have exorcised it, thankfully.

Now onto the thing I can't track down, so if anyone can help out with a recollection of anything similar I will be glad to hear of it. It comes from my early school years. I vividly remember the class sitting in the assembly hall while a female teacher played a piano, plinky-plonky style, and we kids all sang along a simple ditty. We had a little song sheet (or book?) with the words of the song and a rather creepy little illustration above the words. The words, as I recall them, we're as follows :

'Come into the garden,
Come and see what we have found
Come into the garden
I'm a Lortal too'

At least that is how I remember them, but they might not be spot on. It seems odd that they don't rhyme. Maybe some of the words have slipped out of my brain. I have no more idea now than I did then what a 'Lortal' might be!! The accompanying illustration was of a small, dark, fuzzy-looking imp-like figure of somewhat sinister aspect (did it have blank white slanting eyes??) that appeared to be creeping out from some undergrowth - but again that could just be how I remember it. Part of me wonders if maybe it was more peeping out than creeping out. Either way it did creep ME out!

My appeal to all you Forum dwellers is : does anyone remember or know of anything remotely similar? Or has anyone any idea of what a 'Lortal' is? I remember at the time thinking 'I've never heard of a Lortal, but hey, I'm only about five. Maybe it's one of those things you get to hear about when you get a bit older'.

All help gratefully received!

Thanks,

Kam
 
The title is (The?...) Lortl Song. It was published in the Spring 1969 BBC Radio for Schools pamphlet.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Tune-Radio-Schools-Spring/dp/056308023X

Here are the lyrics ...
Here are all three verses of the "Lortl Song", transcribed from the aforementioned BBC pamphlet:-

1. Around my father's garden the Lortls are at play,
And everyone who sees them says "Oh how sweet are they!"
But little do they know that they're out to have some fun,
"Come into the garden, See if we can trick someone.
Come into the garden, Hurry, everyone!"

2. When you go in the garden Upon the path you tread;
But Lortls much prefer dancing On the flower bed.
(The worms get rather anxious And wriggle underground).
"Come into the garden, Blow that pile of leaves around.
Come into the garden, no-one make a sound!"

3. A Lortl is a creature with big ears and a grin,
But he's the one behind you if you slip on a skin.
You may not all believe me, but what I say is true.
"Come into the garden, I've a secret word for you.
Come into the garden - I'm a Lortl too!"
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SOURCE: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=159349#3776204

According to the bulletin board thread where I found the lyrics this song was broadcast as early as 1966.
 
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Synchronicity:

Rhymes with Orange.jpg(Today's "Rhymes with Orange" comic.)
 
I remember singing
Come into the garden,
See if we can catch someone
Come into the garden,
Hurry everyone!'

But, like many songs we sang at infant school it meant nothing and we just sang it because we were told to.

I was eternally grateful to the well-informed teacher who actually explained the words to hymns, when we got to top class. Otherwise I'd probably still believe that 'there is a green hill far away, without a city wall' meant that all hills should have walls around them.
 
catseye said:
I was eternally grateful to the well-informed teacher who actually explained the words to hymns, when we got to top class. Otherwise I'd probably still believe that 'there is a green hill far away, without a city wall' meant that all hills should have walls around them.
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Yup, that particular one puzzled me too. I read an explanation in a book or I wouldn't have known.
 
I remember the Lortal song, which I have rationalised in memory as "I'm a mortal too" probably as a result of all those RE lessons at my strict church school. That said I don't think the school actually re-wrote it, just my brain trying to make sense of the song.
It is a bit of a weird song for young children to be taught .
 
Eyespy said:
I remember the Lortal song, which I have rationalised in memory as "I'm a mortal too"
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Yes, Eyespy, I was a bit muddled about that too. Whenever I tried to recall the details of that song, I used to ponder if it had been 'mortal' rather than 'lortl'. Seems I settled on remembering as 'lortal', as sort of cross between the 2 words! And I also think I wondered if that last line was 'I'm immortal too'.

I completely agree that it was a bit of a creepy song for us little darlings to be chirruping. As a kid, it left me with a weird feeling of 'I'm not sure what this is about, but maybe it's something you get to understand when you're older'. It weirded me out a bit - and it obviously left an impression!
 
I read somewhere that hypnosis creates false memories or unlikely situations.

Besides everyone has bad past memories that people would probably prefer not to remember.

And I don’t think hypnosis is real, and could be the direction that the interviewer is trying to force the patient to take.

Just like nerve medicine, it does not send the problem away, but the problem is still there in the end.
 
I had a false memory of marrying this beautiful English Rose who really loved me and we were going to be together for ever and ever and ever. Then one day I realised I had actually married a miserable middle aged battle axe who couldn’t wait to kick me out of the house and keep the kids, my dog and the car and awarded me the privilege of paying for it all.

In all fairness she probably had false memories of marrying this sporty guy with loads of curly hair and a six pack. Then she realised he was actually short, balding and the six pack was in fact a Party 7.
 
Ok I think I’m going mad. I live near the Dartford Bridge and knew it was 30 years old this year. But I could swear that the stone at the front of it said July 1991. The picture attached proves it doesn’t. I think someone’s messed with my timeline.
 

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MorningAngel said:
Ok I think I’m going mad. I live near the Dartford Bridge and knew it was 30 years old this year. But I could swear that the stone at the front of it said July 1991. The picture attached proves it doesn’t. I think someone’s messed with my timeline.
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FWIW ... This photo of the bridge's opening (dedication?) in October 1991 suggests the marker never mentioned a month at all.
 
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