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The Transdimensional Gas Station

Carl is right, a digital image of a grubby old receipt would prove little or nothing. The physical receipt might prove interesting under competent analysis, but again such things can be faked with sufficient motivation.

Disappearing photos are as annoying as they are common in these topics. My dad took a Polaroid photo of a very strange object, seemingly floating above a building, in the mid 70s. ...

The story of this photo and discussion about it is now located in this dedicated thread:
My Father's UFO Photo
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/my-fathers-ufo-photo.68645/
 
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CharmerKamelion said:
Did anyone ever find David? And his transdimensional receipt?
His original post was so detailed, heartfelt and intriguing, but so much seemed to hinge on him having the hard proof of the receipt. I wonder if it eventually melted away, perhaps reclaimed by the alternate reality it came from....?
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As discussed earlier (August 2019), the van they were driving apparently belonged to the civic authority (kommun) for whom they were working that summer. They returned the van to the kommun garage.

The kommun would have been responsible for reimbursing the young men for the fuel they'd purchased. If they'd requested reimbursement they'd have submitted the hardcopy receipt to the kommun. The most likely place where the receipt ended up was somewhere in the kommun's accounting files (as opposed to staying in David's friend's wallet*).

The fact the receipt was placed in the wallet suggests it was important, and the most substantive reason it could have been important would have been as documentation needed to support a request for reimbursement.

* NOTE: Go back and check the original text. It wasn't the author (David) who put the receipt in his wallet. It was the unnamed friend / co-worker.
 
This thread has never caught my attention.

Three reasons: the original story read like what we'd now call Creepy Pasta, it looked to me like a couple of blokes to whom it'd never occur that they could have just got lost, and because it began at a time when I couldn't spare the energy to argue the two above points.

It all seemed to rest on the 'proof' to be found in the receipt which was unsurprisingly never produced. If I'd been on top form at the time I'd've ripped right into that for a start.

We've discussed timeslips and the like at length and usually come to rational conclusions.
Can remember describing a few experiences of my own where I'd misapprehended the location of some place or other and couldn't find it again, only to work it out in minutes once I could look it up online instead of having to drive there.

Also, the board used to attract wags who'd post farfetched yarns. I could spot the clues right away but plenty of others were taken in.
This thread was always a yarn to me.
 
escargot said:
This thread has never caught my attention.

Three reasons: the original story read like what we'd now call Creepy Pasta, it looked to me like a couple of blokes to whom it'd never occur that they could have just got lost, and because it began at a time when I couldn't spare the energy to argue the two above points.

It all seemed to rest on the 'proof' to be found in the receipt which was unsurprisingly never produced. If I'd been on top form at the time I'd've ripped right into that for a start.

We've discussed timeslips and the like at length and usually come to rational conclusions.
Can remember describing a few experiences of my own where I'd misapprehended the location of some place or other and couldn't find it again, only to work it out in minutes once I could look it up online instead of having to drive there.

Also, the board used to attract wags who'd post farfetched yarns. I could spot the clues right away but plenty of others were taken in.
This thread was always a yarn to me.
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Not necessarily a yarn and, like a lot of personal experiences related on here, there may be a simple explanation like you suggest. As I've mentioned before what I find fascinating is the effect of those experiences on some people who remember them for decades.

I know what you mean though;)
 
PeteS said:
Not necessarily a yarn and, like a lot of personal experiences related on here, there may be a simple explanation like you suggest. As I've mentioned before what I find fascinating is the effect of those experiences on some people who remember them for decades.

I know what you mean though;)
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It's a yarn. The non-existent receipt is the clincher. :chuckle:
 
escargot said:
It's a yarn. The non-existent receipt is the clincher. :chuckle:
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Well, it may be, but I wouldn't rely too much on the question of the receipt. Slips of paper can all too easily go missing. If I was a hoaxer and I had posted this story, I would have made sure to have some plausible-looking scrap of paper to back up the tale!
 
As I've mentioned before, I'd probably just assume this is a good yarn if not for my own, strikingly similar experience, which has its own thread. Still, this is a very interesting thread for other reasons. I don't get why the receipt is so important to some people. It would not prove anything unless it was analyzed by a competent lab, but weird old paper is not that hard to find. Again, from my own personal experience, my dad's photo of something weird has gone missing, so that stuff happens. The thing that baffles me, though, is the attempt to find some way those fellows were somehow mistaken. This just seems silly to me, even intellectually dishonest. It's a great story, either complete fiction or some weird shit happened to them. I don't see any plausible middle ground unless, of course, they were morons. Morons are, generally, not good writers.

Sorry for the repetition, but it does seem to be the order of the day.
 
Carl Grove said:
Well, it may be, but I wouldn't rely too much on the question of the receipt. Slips of paper can all too easily go missing. If I was a hoaxer and I had posted this story, I would have made sure to have some plausible-looking scrap of paper to back up the tale!
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I think exactly the opposite. Someone stringing people along only needs to promise they have the relevant proof to keep the fun going.
 
Well, as with so many things, I don't know what to think. I said somewhere back in this thread that maybe David the OP was doing a bit of creative writing. If so, I have trouble figuring out what people get out of making stuff up. But it happens, in all walks of life, so I suppose it's human nature. Maybe it's a yarn for a yarn's sake. Or did David eventually figure out what actually happened and decide it was best to let it drop? Or, as someone else speculated, maybe he went back to find the place, succeeded - and this time he couldn't get "back"..... I doubt we'll ever know.
 
While we are rehashing this, I'll mention what I consider to be a much more damning aspect than any "missing document". It's the simple fact that no one, as far as I know, has been able to reconcile the detailed information in the OP about locations and routes, with reality. I think Ringo has spent some considerable time in the area, looking for the route the two guys would have taken. This was their route back and forth to work for some weeks, as I recall, yet it does not make sense when looking at real geography.

This is, of course, very common in fiction. Elements of various towns in a given geographic area might be conflated and fictionalized to provide what seems to be a real setting, with details that support the narative. A story might be set in Shelbyville, for example, and it is strongly implied that everything takes place in Indiana. Okay, you find a Shelbyville, Indiana, but the row of seedy Victorian houses across the main street from the town park, a few blocks from the train station, never existed. Doesn't matter because it's fiction.
 
I thought I would go back and read the first few pages of the thread. I don't get a feeling that the story is fake, it is very well written and the replies that the poster gives to questions seem direct and honest. But as the thread progresses he seems to be experiencing increasing problems in his personal life, refers to marriage breakdown and then to "living out of boxes." If he is not an incredibly clever deceiver then under such circumstances one can easily imagine odd bits of paper getting lost. I moved last year and lost several important and irreplaceable items, no idea how or where they went!
 
Carl Grove said:
I thought I would go back and read the first few pages of the thread. I don't get a feeling that the story is fake, it is very well written and the replies that the poster gives to questions seem direct and honest. But as the thread progresses he seems to be experiencing increasing problems in his personal life, refers to marriage breakdown and then to "living out of boxes." If he is not an incredibly clever deceiver then under such circumstances one can easily imagine odd bits of paper getting lost. I moved last year and lost several important and irreplaceable items, no idea how or where they went!
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Weird, just reading your post and the whole forum disappeared in front of my eyes.
 
CharmerKamelion said:
Well, as with so many things, I don't know what to think. I said somewhere back in this thread that maybe David the OP was doing a bit of creative writing. If so, I have trouble figuring out what people get out of making stuff up. But it happens, in all walks of life, so I suppose it's human nature. Maybe it's a yarn for a yarn's sake. Or did David eventually figure out what actually happened and decide it was best to let it drop? Or, as someone else speculated, maybe he went back to find the place, succeeded - and this time he couldn't get "back"..... I doubt we'll ever know.
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Some of the paranormal experience accounts on Reddit are blatantly creative writing and usually by teenagers. Too much incremental detail and the narrative structure is always too rigid, as is the timeline. Also, they switch to narrating the story from a bystanders point of view, forgetting it is meant to be their own personal experience. They always stand out like a sore thumb.

This one? No idea, other than their have been quite a few more interesting 'missing/phantom place' experiences that haven't received 23 pages of speculation and comment, perhaps its the creative title :)
 
Austin Popper said:
Carl is right, a digital image of a grubby old receipt would prove little or nothing. The physical receipt might prove interesting under competent analysis, but again such things can be faked with sufficient motivation.

Disappearing photos are as annoying as they are common in these topics. My dad took a Polaroid photo of a very strange object, seemingly floating above a building, in the mid 70s. ...

The story of this photo and discussion about it is now located in this dedicated thread:
My Father's UFO Photo
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/my-fathers-ufo-photo.68645/
Click to expand...
I’m sure there are plenty of old receipts around if you know where to look*. Get one and then build a story around it. You’d have some “proof” but it would still be BS.

* just checked and here is a unused pad of 1950s fuel station receipts for just £8.00 https://solar70design.com/products/1950s-french-avia-oil-receipt-pad
 
Here's a receipt from a Swedish gas station from 1966.
1629472789587.png
 
escargot said:
This thread has never caught my attention.

Three reasons: the original story read like what we'd now call Creepy Pasta, it looked to me like a couple of blokes to whom it'd never occur that they could have just got lost, and because it began at a time when I couldn't spare the energy to argue the two above points.

It all seemed to rest on the 'proof' to be found in the receipt which was unsurprisingly never produced. If I'd been on top form at the time I'd've ripped right into that for a start.

We've discussed timeslips and the like at length and usually come to rational conclusions.
Can remember describing a few experiences of my own where I'd misapprehended the location of some place or other and couldn't find it again, only to work it out in minutes once I could look it up online instead of having to drive there.

Also, the board used to attract wags who'd post farfetched yarns. I could spot the clues right away but plenty of others were taken in.
This thread was always a yarn to me.
Click to expand...
Well done you.
 
escargot said:
It all seemed to rest on the 'proof' to be found in the receipt which was unsurprisingly never produced. If I'd been on top form at the time I'd've ripped right into that for a start.
Click to expand...
The receipt was never in the possession of the person who posted the story (David).
 
Carl Grove said:
I didn't get that feeling when I first read the story. But a lot of nasty things, illness or worse, can happen to people. I took four years to track down the witnesses to one possible time slip case, found that one of them had died, and then got no further response. It's a frustrating business. Another witness spoke of a photo showing his family besides a house that subsequently vanished, but was never able to find it, it seems. It's as though we are just allowed little glimpses into these phenomena, but no hard evidence -- although, to be honest, would a receipt or even a photo really provide solid evidence? I had a very odd glitch experience, a postman who didn't leave any prints in the snow when he delivered a package, and I took several photos of the scene -- my short article is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9nmssej971jrnt/THE_POSTMAN_GLITCH.pdf?dl=0
But all it shows is a snowy scene with no postman's footprints, so what sort of evidence is that?
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Carl,
Did you ever see the postie again and did you find out what he said when your usual postie spoke to him about the incident?
 
Floyd1 said:
Carl,
Did you ever see the postie again and did you find out what he said when your usual postie spoke to him about the incident?
Click to expand...
Never saw him again, and didn't see the regular one for a while either, although since we moved he has been delivering again -- not sure he'd remember after a few years.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The receipt was never in the possession of the person who posted the story (David).
Click to expand...
It seems a lot of people keep missing this. I find it very useful with threads like this, to go back and read the OP once in a while. In this case, I think the details about the receipt might be in one of David's replies to questions from other users here.
 
I have my own modest addition to this thread.

A few years back I passed a fairly old fashioned (though not implausibly for Wales) petrol station and made a mental note to get petrol there on the way back later that day. I took the same route back and...you guessed...couldn't find it. Indeed despite very carefully going over my route with Google Street View, I've never found it since. I'm sure the answer lies in a minor confusion over my location, but you can see how these stories develop.

On a related note, there also used to be a small, very old fashioned garage with a set of ancient pumps on the A41 that my family used to drive past regularly in the 1980s. I've never been able to find the site of it despite a clear memory of the stretch of road it was on, and the sites of other closed filling stations still being visible years later.
 
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