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Personal Rememberence Of Altered Timelines

MrRING

Android Futureman
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Aug 7, 2002
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(Hope I haven't started a thread like this before, but I don't think I did for fear of getting the Crackpot Theory Of The Year award... oh well...)

Does anybody else here have times when they can remember some event as having happened - then later, you find out that you were wrong and what you remembered never happened at all - even though you remember specific details about the event?

For me, then only evidence I have is dead celebrities. For whatever strange reason, I have over the years had about five different times when I would see a report of a celebrities death, then years later hear it again after going along on the assumption that they were dead, since I saw news reports from some time before.

My theory (provided that it isn't just all in my head, which could certanly be the case) is that on a very minor atomic level, the world is contantly flipping between alternate versions of itself, and that these casual slips would never get noticed unless there was somebody whose life was changed and you know about it (i.e. a celebrity dying one year, or many years earlier than they should). Maybe it's a function of memory, I just can't fiugure out why I keep remembering these things.

But, if I'm right and this is a larger than my craziness-type phenomenon, does anybody else here remember alternate timelines, maybe celebrity life or deaths, or other kinds of things, maybe even personal memories?
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
My theory (provided that it isn't just all in my head, which could certanly be the case) is that on a very minor atomic level, the world is contantly flipping between alternate versions of itself, and that these casual slips would never get noticed unless there was somebody whose life was changed and you know about it

I cited that as a theory to explain deja vu (as in the deja vu is caused by you remembering the other reality)
 
THere was an actor about ten years ago not very famous but one that I knew of that I read about his death and even saw it on tv only later to see him in several movies and then see an announcement that he died a couple of years ago.
 
Well, I don't think it is that unusual that a celebrity is reported dead without them being dead. Not due to alternate timelines, just sometimes exaggerated news stories or unsubstantiated rumours.
 
As an anecdote, I could have sworn that, while I was at University, that I head that Philip Madoc, the actor had died. It would have been around the time Richard Feynman died which was also near my birthday. Yet, as far as I am aware, the good Mr Madoc is alive and well working for HTV in a drama series and doing theatre... long may he do so...

For those who don't know the actor, the was the German U-Boat Commander in the legendary 'Don't tell him your name, Pike!' episode of 'Dad's Army'. Apologies to our Continental and Trans-Atlantic readers for keying off such a UK centric reference.
 
There's a road near my parents which I used to regularly walk down which has one roundabout and I swear it used to have two. I don't know when it stopped having two and started having one, I just know that it used to have two. For years I just thought I'd had a bit of a dimension slip until one day I realised I may have just been dreaming the second one. Of course I lived there when I was very young so maybe the road seemed a lot longer than it does now and my young, foolish mind thought that it must have two roundabouts.
 
It also happens to me regarding celebrities. I remember I heard about Bob Hope being dead a couple times, and also some Mexican actors, who lately turn out to be quite well.
 
"Does anybody else here have times when they can remember some event as having happened - then later, you find out that you were wrong and what you remembered never happened at all"

A most unusual occurance once presented itself to me about eleven years or so ago. I was in Leeds, I'd travelled up from London for an interview at the University there, and was waiting in a room full of applicants, about thirty or so. People who knew one another (small numbers of two or three) huddled together but largely the room was silent because nobody knew each other. I say silent but the radio was on.

There was an announcement on the radio that a light aeroplane had in the last hour crashed into an unidentified flying object over some county somewhere, near to a civilian area (I think it may have been just outside of Birmingham). The unidentified flying object was described as unlike anything anyone had ever seen, and that local fire departments were having a devil of a time putting out the blaze which had begun to spread. There was also word of bodies found thrown from the wreck, and the item did mention that the light aeroplane had only the pilot on board and yet something like about six bodies had been found though it was difficult to determine if some of these bodies weren't people on the ground. It was an item inbetween other news items delivered with as much serious intent. Infact as I recall it was the opening item. What followed afterwards was politics, an agricultural article and short piece about a football stadium and then the weather. It was radio two so it'd made national news.

Anyway, it was an item that certainly brought me out of my shell a little and as it was playing I noticed that nobody was really reacting to it. The groups of people chatting hadn't stopped chatting, and those staring at the floor and not talking had barely blinked. there was no connection. The article was quite long as they began to talk about the possibility of visitors from other planets etc. There was even concern about widespread panic, though judging from the room I was in, there was no danger of that. Anyway, just after the article I turned to the person next to me and asked, "did you hear that?" and they just looked at me and said, "hear what?" Well I assumed there and then they'd just been lost in their own world and just hadn't heard (you know how you do). I went on to say "the radio, the ufo crash." the fella next to me just said, "no, I didn't hear that." but he was intriged. The conversation went flat quickly after that and silence was resumed. An awkward moment.

So I went into the interview...the radio could be heard, actually quite loudly in the hallway outside the interview room. I actually started by commenting on the remarkable news, but they said they hadn't heard it. understandibly so, they were no doubt interviewing at the time. but what struck me as odd was simply no-one was talking about it at all.

Anyway, I left the interview and picked up a ride home to london with people from Sheffield. I was talking to them about it, and they'd heard nothing either. we put the radio on. no follow up story. nothing. got back to london, I scoured the papers, the news channels. nothing. It was only then that it hit me that maybe, just maybe nobody else did hear it...it must have been my addled imagination. but the thing is I DID hear it. There was an entire news item on it, which I sat and listened to whilst waiting for my interview. I have ever since that day searched and searched for the item in question, cross referencing sightings etc etc...but nothing. There's not even any record of it having been a hoax news item.
 
"provided that it isn't just all in my head, which could certanly be the case"

Sounds like classic false memory stuff, which often has plenty of detail.

Of course, on a philosphical level, one man's false memory is another man's parallel universe...but in that case psychologists are very good at creating parallel universes with Bug Bunny in Disneyland...
 
Re: Re: Personal Rememberence of Altered Timelines

LobeliaOverhill said:
I cited that as a theory to explain deja vu (as in the deja vu is caused by you remembering the other reality)

Another example of great minds thinking alike? :D

The thing that makes this sem like a real phenomenon is that I can remember the news article of someone who was supposed to be dead, remember the outpouring of grief on tv shows, and I remember even tributes of showing their films, and thinking that "yes, this person is dead" for quite some time, only to have it all dashed by their sudden re-apperance.

The earliest of these happened in the 80's with MICKEY ROONEY. It was right around the time he did a christmas film where he was a grandpa who died and got a Christmas wish to return to life & spend the holiday with his grandson. My memory was that all the news stations were talking about the irony of his death coming so soon after that kind of film, and it sent the rating sthrough the roof, and I recall television shows that had clips from the Andy Hardy series of films, things like that. The next thing I knew, about two years later, Mickey Rooney was listed in some new production and I was shocked. I thought maybe it was a misprint, but none of my friends or family remembered his earlier death.
 
I know what you mean. It's happened to me too. I think you only register the 'death' of someone because someone dying is an arresting thought for anybody. I'm sure it happens very often with lesser events but you don't register it as strongly and therefore its much easier to think you imagined it.

Perhaps in the waiting-room you had a day-dream. Everyone sat together silently would induce you to go into a reverie, especially if you were warm. On the other hand, it's difficult to believe you were relaxed enough to day-dream considering the fact that you were up for a job interview!! Unless you're a cool cucumber.:cool:

This kind of thing will be impossible to verify but its a very interesting thread.
 
Hook, maybe you were sleeping lightly. One of those situations where you are asleep but still aware of your surroundings?
 
gl5210 said:
Hook, maybe you were sleeping lightly. One of those situations where you are asleep but still aware of your surroundings?

After a while that was the explanation I attributed to it, even though there were a number of contributing factors that would normally make that explanation unlikely. I think maybe, even though I was fully aware of what was going on around me, my brain decided to entertain me with a completely fictional news report.

For example. There was a time when I was a kid, I had a nightmare that someone was in my room, but at some point I woke up and it wasn't a person it was a jacket on the back of my bedroom door. yeah, that old classic. but the "at some point I woke up" was blurred. there was no definition between dream and the waking world. But this interview experience however wasn't like that. It was like a "LIVE" experience basically. Not like a dream...more real. I've no doubt that what happened was like some sort of dream rather than some government plan to hit everyone with a "forget what just happened" ray. But it was just so real. I heard everyword, nothing was out of the ordinary except for the report itself. The LIVE sensation was that as it was happening I was just looking at everyone thinking, "you can't hear this?" And he other unnerving factor was how long I was aware this was happening.

You know, some people when they get stoned on weed, basically what can happen is (at least this is based on my experience of it) they're thinking something and then they can't remember if what they just thought the said aloud or if it was an inner thought. Like wise sometimes if they think about doing something a moment later they can't remember if they thought it or if they actually did it. And no...I wasn't smoking weed.

Thing is the mind in this instance soon catches up withitself to reassure the person, "no, this is the reality, this is what you're really doing."

This experience in the waiting room however was more like a live feed.

That make sense?
 
Yeah, although the "smoking weed" experience I can't relate to as I have never done it. But I have had the dream experiences and you describes the sensation very well so I understand. Maybe you were in a state to "tune in" to an alternate version of reality and because you weren't distracted you were able to hear. THere is so much about the brain we don't know or understand.
 
Read this link for the background.

The above link describes an episode of the tonight show where guest Zsa Zsa Gabor asked Johnny Carson if he'd like to pet her pussy (cat) and Johnny said "Sure, if you move that damn cat out of the way!"

Yes, this is relevant to the topic at hand.

I was listening to the radio where they were talking about this incident (which apprently never happened.) It freaked me out because I had a memory, clear as a bell of watching it. We have a VHS tape collection of the Best of the Tonight Show and even now the memory of me watching it is extremely strong. I remember the position I was sitting in (on my knees to the right of the TV.) And I remember my mouth dropping when I heard Johnny say that.

So, when I was listening to the radio and heard them say it never happened, I was SURE that they were mistaken. I dug out the tapes and started fast forwarding thru every one. Sure enough, I couldn't find it. Then I watched them all more slowly and it never showed up.

I find it extremely intersting that this memory I have, which is extremely strong, never happened.
 
It probably did happen. THere was a similar incident on the Newlywed Game. For years they denied it happend and claimed it was a UL but, someone went through all the shows tapes and found it proving it actually HAD happened after 20 years of denial. So most likely this is a similar incident.
 
gl5210 said:
It probably did happen. THere was a similar incident on the Newlywed Game. For years they denied it happend and claimed it was a UL but, someone went through all the shows tapes and found it proving it actually HAD happened after 20 years of denial. So most likely this is a similar incident.

The actual clip was found and used in the feature film "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind". Snopes says:

Claim: In response to a question from host Bob Eubanks about the "most unusual place you've ever made whoopee," a female Newlywed Game contestant responded, "That would be up the butt, Bob."
Status: True.


SNOPES

But the earlier example of the Zsa Zsa quote is pretty interesting, when groups of people remember something that is no longer recognized as hapening. Kind of like the famous "Thunderbird" photograph that so many people remember seeing...
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
The actual clip was found and used in the feature film "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind". Snopes says:

Claim: In response to a question from host Bob Eubanks about the "most unusual place you've ever made whoopee," a female Newlywed Game contestant responded, "That would be up the butt, Bob."
Status: True.


SNOPES

But the earlier example of the Zsa Zsa quote is pretty interesting, when groups of people remember something that is no longer recognized as hapening. Kind of like the famous "Thunderbird" photograph that so many people remember seeing...

Ya, it really does fall under two different phenomena. "Collective manufactured memory" and remembering altered timelines.
 
gl5210 said:
Yeah, although the "smoking weed" experience I can't relate to as I have never done it. But I have had the dream experiences and you describes the sensation very well so I understand. Maybe you were in a state to "tune in" to an alternate version of reality and because you weren't distracted you were able to hear. THere is so much about the brain we don't know or understand.

This is just it though. I don't think it was a tuning in to an alternate version of reality. An alternate perception maybe. But not a parallel where there's a contium based on the "what if" of a UFO crashing into a light aircraft outside Birmingham.

Have you ever seen "Slackers"? At the begining of that film a kid in the back of a cab is talking about Wizard of Oz and how there's a whole other movie out there where Dorothy goes down a different path on the yellow brick road. And so when you make a choice theres a version of you that makes the oposite choice to the one you made etc. Well all that sort of is nice enough on paper. but I think all that is sort of a denial of our own actions effecting others. Which in a sense is why we would rather believe in "what if" worlds...alternative realities as it were.

As for not smoking weed. You've missed nothing. It's a very overated experience.
 
Hook Innsmouth said:
As for not smoking weed. You've missed nothing. It's a very overated experience.

Smoking weed seems to be a very subjective experience. I get a pretty positive experience from it, including (seemingly) enhanced senses (I know i've heard little details in songs that I never noticed before.) Other people have negative experiences...paranoia, dizzyiness or getting tired. It really seems to differ from person to person. I'd never reccomend trying it though due to legality issues.
 
Not as exciting as the Thunderbird photograph, but I have a vivid memory of watching The Goodies and the Beanstalk as a child, and seeing the Goodies being chased by a lorry with a crane on it. Hanging from the crane was a giant model of a goose, which was bombing Bill, Graham and Tim with golden eggs.

When I saw it again on DVD last year, I was very surprised that the scene where the Goodies are bombed was nothing like I remembered, even though I was sure that is what I had seen (they get bombed by loads of geese, not one, and it's done with crude special effects).
 
Blue Peter did a 'Making of' article on that particular episode, hence I remember seeing the Goose on the crane too. It was shown a few times on 'Ask Aspel' over the years as well.

sidebar... The Goodies on DVD seemed a little odd since I always remember it being colour shifted. Now they've corrected the colour it jars with memory :)
 
Blue Peter did a 'Making of' article, which showed the bird hanging fromthe crane. It was shown a few times on 'Ask Aspel'
 
That must have been it, thanks! Mystery solved.
 
Four years ago I spent an afternoon rambling around my Northern Kentucky home town, a pleasant river city of some 7,000 souls, intending to use the place as as a setting for a novel. I'd lived there for 20 years of my childhood and young manhood, in two shifts (1941-1955, 1958-1964).

My memory was fairly clear that the town had TWO railroad bridges, solidly-constructed stone and steel edifices dating from the 1880s.

Yet on my 1992 visit there were THREE. The "new" one was obviously of the same date as the others.

It is located within a block-and-a-half of my childhood home. I would
have had to pass under it nearly every day.

Even so, I don't remember it.

My younger brother, who was with me, had no problem at all with the third bridge. "It's always been there."

I STILL don't remember it.
 
The above link describes an episode of the tonight show where guest Zsa Zsa Gabor asked Johnny Carson if he'd like to pet her pussy (cat) and Johnny said "Sure, if you move that damn cat out of the way!"

Strangely enough, I was told that this incident originally involved Raquel Welch, and Johnny actually said, "But what about the cat?"

I've never seen the episode, though I am a fan of the old Carson show. My friend swears he personally saw this, though I haven't talked to him in a while to ask him about it again. Interesting.
 
Lengthy discussion about Thunderbirds moved from this thread, and deposited in the Thunderbirds thread. I know it was relevant to this thread in as much as there's a folk memory or somesuch of a pic of a Pterodactyl shot in the US in the 19th Century, apparently, (and yes, I remember it too) but that's covered in detail on the dedicated thread.

Back OT here - how often does anyone else have clear and abiding memories of an entire conversation with someone, who then denies having that conversation entirely (or at least seems to have no memory of it whatsoever?)

Happens to me all the time. I know I didn't imagine it, can describe what my co-conversationalist was wearing, what time of day it was... also goes the other way, when I am assured I was told directly about something and I can't recall it at all.
 
I once told a friend of mine about a conversation I overheard in a shop. He interrupted me, saying "You didn't hear that at all. I did. I told you about it the other day!"

He was right, too.
 
Back OT here - how often does anyone else have clear and abiding memories of an entire conversation with someone, who then denies having that conversation entirely (or at least seems to have no memory of it whatsoever?)

I have an example of this.
Around seventeen years ago, my boyfriend and I used to be involved in activites that could have exposed us to HCV (hepatitis C) infection. We'd always returned negative results. Around four years ago I said to my boyfriend how odd it was that after such a long time he had tested positive, considering he was no longer involved in any risky behaviour and hadn't been for at least a decade. He replies that I was imagining things. That he'd never returned a positive test and definitely had not told me that he was HCV positive. I can still remember the discussion, where he sat, what he was wearing, and yet he was adamant he'd never told me any such thing.
Fast forward to around November, last year. Boyfriend has gotten back from the diabetes clinic (hence the blood tests), and he tells me that he is HCV positive. My jaw just dropped. I knew he hadn't been involved in any risky behaviour and he was sitting exactly where I remember him sitting and in the same jacket, when I'd had the (imagined?) conversation.

Now, I know some will say, "oh he's lying. He obviously was still putting himself at risk up until relatively recently". And to be fair, I haven't been with him for every moment of his life but I am absolutely certain that he had not been doing anything he shouldn't have been.

So, basically, I imagined or dreamed the conversation that we were going to have, at least four years prior to the actual event.
 
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