The Transdimensional Gas Station

[catseye]

Or did David eventually figure out what actually happened and decide it was best to let it drop?

This is precisely why, when I have an 'odd' happening (like the vanishing baking sheet) which subsequently turns out to have a perfectly mundane solution, I always like to report back. But I think some people are overcome with embarrassment ('I realised I'd taken a wrong turn and been looking in the wrong place all these years') and just go dark, so it remains a mystery.

 

[BS3]

Anyway, to go back to the original post, I suspect what lay behind this experience is precisely what lay behind my own vanishing petrol station experience. Put together the two things that

- Their municipal colleague didn't recall a filling station on that road
- They didn't recall seeing one previously either

The obvious answer is that they weren't on the road they afterwards thought they were, but instead on some similar but parallel route (eg the minor road from Västra Harg to Sya, looking at the map). The reason they didn't notice this is obvious: their attention was focused on the petrol gauge, not their surroundings. This is really just a sort of environmental version of the distraction technique used by stage magicians.

The rest can be explained by unreliable memories of what the garage actually looked like, and perhaps by its closure in short order afterwards. There's nothing else in the account which seems out of place with stopping at a little used garage with an elderly proprietor, and maybe fairly stale petrol.

 

[bugmum]

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.

It's amazing how these tiny petrol stations can just vanish. There used to be a really old-fashioned ones as you drove up onto the Blackdown Hills on the A303. I know exactly where it was, but you'd never think so to look at it now.

 

[Giant R]

It's amazing how these tiny petrol stations can just vanish. There used to be a really old-fashioned ones as you drove up onto the Blackdown Hills on the A303. I know exactly where it was, but you'd never think so to look at it now.

When I was 11 or 12 my mum and dad had a motorbike and sidecar and I used to ride on the pillion. We sometimes used to go up the M1 motorway to Toddington services just for a cup of tea and a snack and ride home (often when my dad was 'testing' out the bike after a rebuild or before a long run). On the way there I used to see on the right hand side what looked like a relatively modern 1950s-60s style petrol station which seemed to be empty and just in a field with no road nearby. It always fascinated me, I have no idea of its history but wonder if it was a road that was closed and subsequently removed/ grown over when the M1 was built. I must study some old maps one day

 

[BS3]

It's amazing how these tiny petrol stations can just vanish. There used to be a really old-fashioned ones as you drove up onto the Blackdown Hills on the A303. I know exactly where it was, but you'd never think so to look at it now.

Yes, small rural filling stations used to be a lot more common 30 or so years back, particularly on the old trunk roads. I know that bit of road (it's a lovely part of the world) and can imagine one being there!

I think a lot of them were run as small, one-person businesses. I distinctly remember stopping at one in rural north Wales in the mid 1980s because my Dad needed to pick up some paraffin; the elderly woman running things went out to a sort of shed out the back and poured it into a container from a bigger one using a funnel. Very low tech. And typically, of course, I can't now find where that place was on a map either!

 

[Mungoman]

What if this T.S.G actually was there for a period of time, created by the vagaries of existence and perception, far above our ken - then it wasn't, because those circumstances had changed...

I reckon that there are some things that just need to be acknowleged and then accepted.

 

[BS3]

How about here, on the parallel road to Sya:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/g9Xth78nMLEimpbMA

- Shed type structure alongside the roadway, just after a wooded area. If I'd have been asked what this building could be, one of the things I would have thought is "an old garage".

- House set a little back, with cladding tiles on the outside

Perhaps this was it and they simply took the parallel road out of Vastra Harg.

 

[BS3]

If you look closely there is also a bit of grey-painted equipment partly hidden by a young tree. What's that? If not a petrol pump, is it some other bit of garage related equipment? It doesn't look very 'domestic'

 

[BS3]

The only things against this explanation are a) the building was said to be on the right, travelling towards Mjolby; this is on the left (though note that the grey 'pump' / whateveritis is in the right position); and b) the shed was said to be corrugated metal and "tarpaper"; this has a tiled roof. In both cases I think this can be explained by recall of events nearly 20 years later.

In its favour is the door and window in the right place, the garage-like arrangement of hard standing out the front, and the distinctively tile clad farmhouse. So...I think this was it, and they just weren't on the road they later thought they were, given they were worrying about fuel. If they'd accurately described their location, perhaps their colleague would just have said "Oh, that old place, I thought Gustav would have retired by now". And that would have been the end of it.

 

[catseye]

There was an old petrol station near me (one of the few where - ten years ago - a man would put the petrol in for you and you'd pay through your car window; very primitive.

It closed, was cleared, land sold for building and houses put up on the site so fast that anyone who only visited this corner of rural Yorkshire say every couple of years would have been baffled on a return trip to find the lovely personally attended garage they remembered was a collection of houses (which, admittedly, look fairly new).

 

[BS3]

I've just realised that the original poster said that they'd driven about 5-7km from Vastra Harg and were going through a wooded area before noticing the petrol gauge. So I checked the distance by road from Vastra Harg to the building above. Google says 7.1 km! The woods are close into the road just a couple of minutes' driving before you get to this point.

 

[SimonBurchell]

What if this T.S.G actually was there for a period of time, created by the vagaries of existence and perception, far above our ken - then it wasn't, because those circumstances had changed...

I reckon that there are some things that just need to be acknowleged and then accepted.

Absolutely - I posted on another thread that I experienced something minor but utterly, utterly inexplicable (a screw disappearing from my closed fist - I felt it there, then I couldn't feel it any more, no transition at all). It bothered me so much that for several nights I was unable to sleep due to the blatant impossibility of what had happened. I just spent long portions of the night running it over in my head and analysing, and discarding, mundane explanations. On something like the third night I gave myself a good mental shake and thought something like: "Get a grip. It's not the first paranormal experience you've had, and it might not be the last either. Just accept it and move on." Once I did that, my mind was no longer wrestling with it, and I was able to sleep again... In your wise words I just "acknowledged and then accepted".

 

[Mungoman]

Absolutely - I posted on another thread that I experienced something minor but utterly, utterly inexplicable (a screw disappearing from my closed fist - I felt it there, then I couldn't feel it any more, no transition at all). It bothered me so much that for several nights I was unable to sleep due to the blatant impossibility of what had happened. I just spent long portions of the night running it over in my head and analysing, and discarding, mundane explanations. On something like the third night I gave myself a good mental shake and thought something like: "Get a grip. It's not the first paranormal experience you've had, and it might not be the last either. Just accept it and move on." Once I did that, my mind was no longer wrestling with it, and I was able to sleep again... In your wise words I just "acknowledged and then accepted".

Stuff happens, doesn't it - like the screw that was in your hand...then it wasn't...Weird.

Here's something like that, that inspired my reply to T.S.G Simon. It can be found at 'Odd, Unexplainable Appearances'.

This happened to me and my Mum.

I was living on a property (farm) with my parents about 20 K's north of Goulburn. We grew potatoes and raised poll herefords

It was about 16:00, on a winters afternoon, and I'd just finished ploughing one of our river paddocks.

We had the Wollondilly river running through our place, running south to north with the farm house on a slight rise of 20 metres or so above the level of the river, and the farmhouse being about 100 metres away from the river. On the other side of the river, apart from small trees twinning the river, the land lay cleared away for miles - dead flat.

I'd shedded the tractor and was sitting on the verandah with my Mum, having a coffee and just talking about this and that, looking across the river, onto Old Man Toparas's potato fields - about 300 acres in size.

As we chatted we noticed an area just on the other side of the river (about 150 metres away), what looked like a small single storied house appear - it took about 30 seconds to appear from vague opaqueishness, where we could see through it, to something solid and impenetrable.


I looked at Mum and Mum confirmed that She also was seeing the same is me.

Over five minutes, we silently watched these single storied buildings appear over an area of twenty acres or so, all built exactly the same - flat roofed, with large windows, awnings and sills at the top and bottom of the windows that were intended to lift up and lower down to meet in the middle and cover the windows.

We watched this for approximately ten minutes or so, and then watched them all fade away to nothingness.

Mum was a bit of a 'spook' and strange things happened around Her, so us kids just took it as normal (sort-of), but this was the most implausible thing I'd ever seen, and I'm still blown away by it. After the houses had dissolved, we talked about it and I tried to come to some form of a rational explanation - big mistake - so every couple of years I go back to have a look, but nothings changed. So far.

Well that's my bit of wierdness - have you ever seen things appear?

 

[BS3]

However, I don't think the experiences above, with screws vanishing or buildings appearing directly within witness perception, are the same order of thing as this supposed "transdimensional gas station"; they are much, much stranger. No one saw the gas station appear or disappear and the later feeling that it did is in fact easily explained.

There is a set of buildings very closely matching the witnesses' description on the parallel road (Pikallevagen) from Vastra Harg to Sya, at about 7km from Vastra Harg - about the distance they thought they had travelled. They were simply on a road parallel to the one they thought they were on, distracted by the low petrol gauge and subsequently by the misfiring engine. The garage had an elderly, eccentric proprietor but there is nothing strange about that - there's a very similar place not 5 miles from me. No one recalled the garage because the witness said he was on the direct road from Vastra Harg to Mjolby, not the one via Sya. All the other 'strangeness' was created within memory, rather than in direct perception.

 

[brownmane]

I have a strange memory that has remained with me since I was younger, but not sure exactly when it came about.

I went for a car ride with my dad and grandfather. This is not unusual as my dad always went for jaunts around the countryside, checking out crops, meandering down back roads. It was a sunny afternoon and I was in back seat with my dad driving.

We came to the crest of a short hill with the road going down into a short ravine area with a small wooden bridge crossing up the other side. The was a white house at top of ravine on the other side, opposite side of the road.

All my dad said was "the bridge is out" and we turned around. I remember nothing else about the trip.

The weird part is, when he said that the bridge was out, it creeped me out. This trip caused me many nightmares over my younger years. All I would dream is coming to the base of the bridge with nothing spanning the water and it would be disturbing to me.

I have never been able to find this scene again - a ravine with a small bridge spanning a creek and a white house at the top.

I even, many years later, asked my dad about this trip, but of course he didn't have any particular memory about it.

To this day, I don't know why I reacted to a simple scene with fear, nor do I know why I had so many nightmares resulting from it.

Of course I could have dreamed of the original event, but even as a kid, did not believe that.

 

[BS3]

I have a strange memory that has remained with me since I was younger, but not sure exactly when it came about.

I went for a car ride with my dad and grandfather. This is not unusual as my dad always went for jaunts around the countryside, checking out crops, meandering down back roads. It was a sunny afternoon and I was in back seat with my dad driving.

We came to the crest of a short hill with the road going down into a short ravine area with a small wooden bridge crossing up the other side. The was a white house at top of ravine on the other side, opposite side of the road.

All my dad said was "the bridge is out" and we turned around. I remember nothing else about the trip.

The weird part is, when he said that the bridge was out, it creeped me out. This trip caused me many nightmares over my younger years. All I would dream is coming to the base of the bridge with nothing spanning the water and it would be disturbing to me.

I have never been able to find this scene again - a ravine with a small bridge spanning a creek and a white house at the top.

I even, many years later, asked my dad about this trip, but of course he didn't have any particular memory about it.

To this day, I don't know why I reacted to a simple scene with fear, nor do I know why I had so many nightmares resulting from it.

Of course I could have dreamed of the original event, but even as a kid, did not believe that.

It's possible that the bridge was never actually replaced and the road closed, which is why you never went that way afterwards - a couple of minor roads that formed part of regular childhood journeys for me were later shut (one to become a cycle path, and the other closed entirely) so the journey is not just changed, but no longer actually possible.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Brownmane:

Did you actually see the bridge being out (damaged; gone), or did you rely on your father's statement to know it was out?

I'm asking because you described the general scene but didn't clearly indicate you'd seen the damaged / missing bridge. You said you were in the back seat, and presumably both your father and grandfather were in the front seat. Whether or not you saw the bridge has a bearing on whether it was your direct observation versus the reaction of your father alone that spooked you.

 

[RaM]

A few years back I was on the way home on a bike from the Isle of Whithorn it's out
towards Stranraer on the coast, I stopped at a small fuel station and for some reason
found it quite odd, the shop seemed much bigger and better stocked than I expected
from the outside and the young bloke who looked a bit like Shaggy on Scooby Doo
just kept trying to keep me talking, though he did say and this was mid afternoon
that I was only the second customer he had seen that day, so maybe just a bit lonely
how the place stayed in business I don't know but it was a bit creepy.





I have a feeling this may be the place but it was a wooden shed and run down at the time,
the bungalow is new and they only sell Diesel now.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.7...4!1s-5EwIQI-f5nzoSM-IBfuQQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

 

[brownmane]

Brownmane:

Did you actually see the bridge being out (damaged; gone), or did you rely on your father's statement to know it was out?

I'm asking because you described the general scene but didn't clearly indicate you'd seen the damaged / missing bridge. You said you were in the back seat, and presumably both your father and grandfather were in the front seat. Whether or not you saw the bridge has a bearing on whether it was your direct observation versus the reaction of your father alone that spooked you.

I can't understand why the whole thing spooked me.

I would not have been watching everything ahead, but likely looking out the side window, if not also slightly daydreaming. It was a warm sunny day, leading me to believe that it most likely occurred in summer or early fall.

We were just coming out of an open curve on a gravel road. The top of our side of the ravine was open fields. Going down toward the bridge (which we did not do) was a lightly wooded, slightly darker (due to being wooded) area. I didn't directly see the bridge condition, just that it was a wooden bridge. I don't know if the bridge was damaged or flooded over. There were no signs of warning that I saw. Again it was mostly my dad's comment that drew my attention to this space. The small wooded darker area continued up ahead past the bridge to the white house. I could see no further ahead as we turned around at the top of the hill before hitting the ravine area.

My dad's comment was only matter of fact, nothing to really cause me to think something was wrong.

I do have visceral reactions to certain outdoor spaces for no reason. As a kid, my (rural) bus route home travelled down a rural road that I felt odd towards. I also had nightmares about this road. No other road the bus travelled down bothered me. I still do not like the way this specific road makes me feel.

 

[hunck]

I can't understand why the whole thing spooked me.

I would not have been watching everything ahead, but likely looking out the side window, if not also slightly daydreaming. It was a warm sunny day, leading me to believe that it most likely occurred in summer or early fall.

We were just coming out of an open curve on a gravel road. The top of our side of the ravine was open fields. Going down toward the bridge (which we did not do) was a lightly wooded, slightly darker (due to being wooded) area. I didn't directly see the bridge condition, just that it was a wooden bridge. I don't know if the bridge was damaged or flooded over. There were no signs of warning that I saw. Again it was mostly my dad's comment that drew my attention to this space. The small wooded darker area continued up ahead past the bridge to the white house. I could see no further ahead as we turned around at the top of the hill before hitting the ravine area.

My dad's comment was only matter of fact, nothing to really cause me to think something was wrong.

I do have visceral reactions to certain outdoor spaces for no reason. As a kid, my (rural) bus route home travelled down a rural road that I felt odd towards. I also had nightmares about this road. No other road the bus travelled down bothered me. I still do not like the way this specific road makes me feel.

Do you know which area the drive happened in? You mention a ravine - do you know which ravine it was or are you not sure & there’s several ravines around which could be the one?

 

[brownmane]

Do you know which area the drive happened in? You mention a ravine - do you know which ravine it was or are you not sure & there’s several ravines around which could be the one?

No. My dad enjoyed roaming the countryside. As a family, we always went for hours long Sunday car rides. In those days, one of us kids could actually lie and have a nap in the back window of the car! And then race for the washroom when we got home lol.

He did like to go down roads that he knew had crops, just to check out the crops. He also enjoyed going down random roads that he didn't necessarily know where they went.

Many times we'd get down a road that was mudded out and he'd try to get through, only to get the car stuck and then we'd be pushing it out. I think he liked the challenge of all of us telling him not to drive through because he'd get stuck.

The regular area of travel would be about 41 sq km, so to figure out an area that I might have been in at that time is next to impossible. I was young enough, that I probably hadn't even learned how to figure out directions.

 

[PeteS]

I can't understand why the whole thing spooked me.

I would not have been watching everything ahead, but likely looking out the side window, if not also slightly daydreaming. It was a warm sunny day, leading me to believe that it most likely occurred in summer or early fall.

We were just coming out of an open curve on a gravel road. The top of our side of the ravine was open fields. Going down toward the bridge (which we did not do) was a lightly wooded, slightly darker (due to being wooded) area. I didn't directly see the bridge condition, just that it was a wooden bridge. I don't know if the bridge was damaged or flooded over. There were no signs of warning that I saw. Again it was mostly my dad's comment that drew my attention to this space. The small wooded darker area continued up ahead past the bridge to the white house. I could see no further ahead as we turned around at the top of the hill before hitting the ravine area.

My dad's comment was only matter of fact, nothing to really cause me to think something was wrong.

I do have visceral reactions to certain outdoor spaces for no reason. As a kid, my (rural) bus route home travelled down a rural road that I felt odd towards. I also had nightmares about this road. No other road the bus travelled down bothered me. I still do not like the way this specific road makes me feel.

I know a couple of people who are utterly freaked out by bridges of any sort. Add the fact that a bridge had collapsed and they would be almost hysterical. I suspect that there is some deep seated reason for this. I can easily imagine a child being freaked by the thought of a damaged bridge.

 

[PeteS]

Yes, small rural filling stations used to be a lot more common 30 or so years back, particularly on the old trunk roads. I know that bit of road (it's a lovely part of the world) and can imagine one being there!

I think a lot of them were run as small, one-person businesses. I distinctly remember stopping at one in rural north Wales in the mid 1980s because my Dad needed to pick up some paraffin; the elderly woman running things went out to a sort of shed out the back and poured it into a container from a bigger one using a funnel. Very low tech. And typically, of course, I can't now find where that place was on a map either!

I remember in the early sixties seeing old petrol stations in both urban and rural areas where pumps were less than a metre from the front of a building and in effect in the road so that when you stopped for petrol you were blocking part of the road. These must have dated back to the 20's or even earlier. Long gone of course. Occasionally you can spot them when watching old British films.

 

[BS3]

I remember in the early sixties seeing old petrol stations in both urban and rural areas where pumps were less than a metre from the front of a building and in effect in the road so that when you stopped for petrol you were blocking part of the road. These must have dated back to the 20's or even earlier. Long gone of course. Occasionally you can spot them when watching old British films.

Yes, I think I remember similar ones still existing (not necessarily in use; maybe in one or two places) as late as the 1980s. I think there may have been a change in safety regulations at some point more recently which did for a lot of the older pumps.

Going back to the original subject of the thread, I've looked up some information on "stale" petrol and understand that while rarely an issue these days, it was occasionally a problem when there were a lot more rural, lightly used garages. So I think the supposed "wartime petrol" is explained as well.

I also have a strong suspicion that the grey bit of equipment outside the likely-looking building at Karlsberg near Vastra Harg may well be an air meter, used for inflating tyres. So I think the "transdimensional gas station" is, tentatively, solved - it was just a normal rural garage.

 

[escargot]

This is precisely why, when I have an 'odd' happening (like the vanishing baking sheet) which subsequently turns out to have a perfectly mundane solution, I always like to report back. But I think some people are overcome with embarrassment ('I realised I'd taken a wrong turn and been looking in the wrong place all these years') and just go dark, so it remains a mystery.

Reminds how my late father would never admit he was wrong. His stubbornness caused trouble in the family.

My response to that detestable personality flaw is to ALWAYS own up to my own misapprehensions. If this goes down badly with others, that's their problem. Deal with it.

Read a story years ago about a man who wouldn't admit to making the Teapot Error. That's when you'd notice (normally when you were tiredly making your last pot of tea late at night) that the tea caddy was empty.

You'd naturally open a fresh packet of tea and tip the lot into, not the tea caddy but the teapot, and then pour the hot water in before you realised your error.


The bloke I read about tried to pass off the resulting mess as 'Bottled Instant Tea'. His wife was of course having none of it, but he measured out and drank it diluted with hot water until it was all gone because he Did Not Make Mistakes Like That.
Made sense to him, of course.

 

[PeteS]

Reminds how my late father would never admit he was wrong. His stubbornness caused trouble in the family.

My response to that detestable personality flaw is to ALWAYS own up to my own misapprehensions. If this goes down badly with others, that's their problem. Deal with it.

Read a story years ago about a man who wouldn't admit to making the Teapot Error. That's when you'd notice (normally when you were tiredly making your last pot of tea late at night) that the tea caddy was empty.

You'd naturally open a fresh packet of tea and tip the lot into, not the tea caddy but the teapot, and then pour the hot water in before you realised your error.


The bloke I read about tried to pass off the resulting mess as 'Bottled Instant Tea'. His wife was of course having none of it, but he measured out and drank it diluted with hot water until it was all gone because he Did Not Make Mistakes Like That.
Made sense to him, of course.

My late father was really stubborn in relation to map reading which he always did. Often he would get it wrong but when I was driving I would ignore his directions and get there without difficulty.

Of course I always mansplain my (alleged) errors, to be met with a lot of eyerolling and sighing, which has no effect, but continues anyway.

 

[PeteS]

I also have a strong suspicion that the grey bit of equipment outside the likely-looking building at Karlsberg near Vastra Harg may well be an air meter, used for inflating tyres. So I think the "transdimensional gas station" is, tentatively, solved - it was just a normal rural garage.

I'm not familiar with foreign equipment, but my first thought was that it is a junction box for electricity or telephone wiring installations. You could be right, but it looks to be in very good condition for apparently decades old.

 

[Ringo]

I'm not familiar with foreign equipment, but my first thought was that it is a junction box for electricity or telephone wiring installations. You could be right, but it looks to be in very good condition for apparently decades old.

It is an electrical junction box mounted on a cut-off telegraph pole with a tin metal cap.

This sort of structure and layout are 10 a penny down there. This almost certainly isn't the place in question as the building doesn't match the original description in building materials or layout.

After driving around there multiple times, I can say that many places "could have" once housed the structure but there isn't anything standing today which matches the description.

 

[BS3]

It is an electrical junction box mounted on a cut-off telegraph pole with a tin metal cap.

This sort of structure and layout are 10 a penny down there. This almost certainly isn't the place in question as the building doesn't match the original description in building materials or layout.

After driving around there multiple times, I can say that many places "could have" once housed the structure but there isn't anything standing today which matches the description.

Oh but it does match really quite closely compared to other buildings along either of the two roads leaving the village they were in:

- 7 km or thereabouts from the start point
- A long shed, long side along the road, and close to the roadside
- Walls made of corrugated metal
- Front wall has a single window (shelves are visible in it in the 2011 Street View)
- Farmhouse behind with Eternit (cement) tile hung walls
- A few minutes down the road from one of the few points there is forest on either side of the road

That matches nearly every point of description that the 'witness' actually gives. And because of the road it's on, also explains why he couldn't find it again.

The only things that don't match are the "tarpaper roof" and the side of the road it was on, but that can easily be explained by the fact this was a 20 year old memory (if true in the first place). What's more likely, that or a "transdimensional gas station" he could actually buy petrol from, and get a receipt?

 

[BS3]

I think overall my feelings on this one are the same as my feelings about the time travelling French hotel. The stories had their basis in a real experience which is fairly simply explained, with a lot of later elaboration of incidental 'strangeness', none of which amounts to very much.