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The Transdimensional Gas Station

BS3 said:
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.
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Sorry, close but no cigar.

It's not a "shed" or commercial building made of corrugated iron, it's a typical Swedish out-building for storing wood, garden machinery and sometimes converted into a small guest room. The doorway was on the longside and is now boarded up with a newer door added to the short side, the original had a the door on the side. The walls are not made from metal, they are wooden boards painted with Falu red paint.
The farmhouse behind doesn't have Eternit walls, it too is made from wood and is not in the delapidatde condition the original poster described. Both buildings are roofed with normal tiles and tarpaper would never have been used on either of them due to the angle of the roof.

From the original description, I can picture what he meant as I have seen similar structures driving around Sweden but I can't for the life of me find a picture of one just now.
 
brownmane said:
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.
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@brownmane I'm thinking by the time you went looking for it, you were looking in the wrong place, and even if you did find it, maybe the bridge is still out, the house is gone, and trees are obscuring the entire valley. Side point but did you ever consider that the house was in fact yours in a past life, and the bridge being out (broken, destroyed) caused you alarm because you needed that bridge (in the past life) to get home?
 
Human_84 said:
@brownmane I'm thinking by the time you went looking for it, you were looking in the wrong place, and even if you did find it, maybe the bridge is still out, the house is gone, and trees are obscuring the entire valley. Side point but did you ever consider that the house was in fact yours in a past life, and the bridge being out (broken, destroyed) caused you alarm because you needed that bridge (in the past life) to get home?
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Not sure about past life. I have always had an innate(?) dislike/dread for dark water. By this, I mean plumbing backing up, low lying areas of land. I live near Lake Erie (one of the Great Lakes) and so have been near the shore in many different locations. The ones, other than an open shoreline, that are below water level, just creep me out. I think that the bridge being out at the bottom of a ravine in a darkened area may have triggered this feeling of dread.
 
I was driving down that way about a month ago and saw nothing new I hadn't noticed before. But MUCH further south (4 hours drive away). I drove passed a place that almost matched the description. It was another example of the sort of building the OP mentioned.
 
re the "bridge out" scenario, my old man always keeps his cool behind the wheel, but i vividly recall the moment during one summer holiday when he stopped the car and got everyone to put their seatbelts on before undertaking some manoeuvre he wasnt confident about, this was pre-seatbelt laws in uk and first time id worn one ... seeing my dad respond to the situation that way, imprinted the moment for me

good to see transdimensional gas station thread still fit & healthy, im thinking of buying my own, price of fuel these days
 

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Giant R said:
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:)
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I used to use an old Tomtom (i still have it) and it has loads of old petrol stations on it. It was always suprising when driving past an old one, sometimes it was obvious it was there sometimes I got the feeling it was an old 50s one that was long gone….. I never updated it son I presume it still has them on.
 
What a fantastic story (and I agree with what others have said, very well written). I did intend trying to get an early(ish) night last night but then started reading this thread and before I knew it it was half past midnight, then I was laid awake thinking about it!
@Mystic Wizard, yes it would be brilliant if the original poster turned up again, especially with that elusive receipt!
 
fairly unadorned simple youtube retelling here

interesting comment :
kelly shaw
3 years ago
Reminds me of a weird thing that i saw in 1990. The local barber shop was old and run down. It's front window was covered by a rusted metal grill and inside the barber had the window stuffed top to bottom with bags and umbrellas he sold all covered in dust they had been sat there years. The barber died and a few months later i passed the shop on my way home from work. It had been sold a new barbers sign was above the door and the rusty grill along with all the bags and umbrellas were gone it was a clear window inside were two men giving it a fresh coat of paint to cover the nicotine stained old paint and the single bulb had been replaced by a long fluorescent light it looked great. The next night walking home it was the old shop again with the rusted grill and crap piled high through the gaps you could see the old single light bulb. I couldnt believe it, i passed it each day it was still unoccupied and run down and a month later i changed jobs and did not return home from work that day. Three month's later i happened to pass by again it was new and renovated with the cream walls, large clear window and long fluorescent light inside was a young barber working away. I stopped and looked dumbfounded again thinking this is what i saw originally months ago. Was it a time slip i dont know but when i see time slip cases i always think of that barber shop in Manchester.

UK Paranormal Files
3 years ago
Wow, that's a great story - and does sound like a time or dimensional slip of some kind... thank you for sharing!

felix garnet
3 years ago
Where is the barber shop, Kelly?

kelly shaw
3 years ago
@felix garnet it was on mauldeth road in burnage Manchester near the cricket ground.
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its probably responsible for a few burnage bowl cuts, d you know what i mean
 
Yithian said:
It's deeply frustrating that the OP has never posted that receipt. It would prove nothing, but could throw up countless avenues for investigation. I'd love for the story to be true, but my instinct is to reluctantly brand it fiction. As others have said, an individual with an interest in Forteana (he was here on this board) would be exceedingly unlikely to discard physical evidence that he may have had a reality-warping experience; and if for some unaccountable reason he had, he'd make a lot more of an effort to find it again. His 'one of these days I'll fish it out' -type comments do not ring true whatever his first language.
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I've spent the last little while thinking about this and Yithian summed up my thoughts....As much as I want to believe it happened, I have strong doubts. When OP returned talking about an email exchange that suddenly went quiet, I started to get suspicous. I'd really like to know why Ellis dropped the whole thing.
 
Unfortunately you have accept that for whatever reason people make things up, although this is the worst forum for doing that as it's not full of people trying to confirm their beliefs and people do question what they are told and have on occasion solved some classic Fortean cases by questioning the given facts
 
There are often writerly 'tells' in made-up accounts, frequently used to instill Romantic atmosphere. For example, this...

'However, there were no eldritch feelings of strangeness or anything'

...seems a bit too archaic and altogether Lovecraftian, especially for someone writing in a second language. Who, except for writers and parodists, uses the word 'eldritch' anymore?
 
Steven said:
There are often writerly 'tells' in made-up accounts, frequently used to instill Romantic atmosphere. For example, this...

'However, there were no eldritch feelings of strangeness or anything'

...seems a bit too archaic and altogether Lovecraftian, especially for someone writing in a second language. Who, except for writers and parodists, uses the word 'eldritch' anymore?
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Not someone whose first language, by their own admission, isn't English, anyway. Unless they mean "oblong" as Terry Pratchett suggested.
 
LymeswoldSnork said:
Not someone whose first language, by their own admission, isn't English, anyway. Unless they mean "oblong" as Terry Pratchett suggested.
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I would use eldritch in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, such as "I walked past to such-and-such reputedly haunted location and no eldritch horrors were in evidence"
 
Steven said:
There are often writerly 'tells' in made-up accounts, frequently used to instill Romantic atmosphere. For example, this...

'However, there were no eldritch feelings of strangeness or anything'

...seems a bit too archaic and altogether Lovecraftian, especially for someone writing in a second language. Who, except for writers and parodists, uses the word 'eldritch' anymore?
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Ooo, I missed that....yeah, that is strange, especially for someone who speaks English as a second language. I'll also add the rich detail in some parts, the paragraph about the long wave radio and radio dead spots (if they didn't use it, why mention it?) and very detailed description of the location. Just saying "an old dilapidated gas station" would've sufficed, but they went to list tar paper roof, corrugated metal, asbestos panels; similarly why the detail about the old guy? Readers don't need that sort of detail, as it's not really important to the story.

But the one detail that threw me? Why spend 150 SEK for gas? Current prices are around 18 SEK for a litre of gas, why did they need to fill up the tank when they just needed enough to get back to the home office which was only a few kilometers away.

Robbrent said:
Unfortunately you have accept that for whatever reason people make things up, although this is the worst forum for doing that as it's not full of people trying to confirm their beliefs and people do question what they are told and have on occasion solved some classic Fortean cases by questioning the given facts
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I think the community did a good job of sussing out this one, by the time the OPs account had filtered out of the thread, people were leaning towards fake and that's what makes this forum so uniquely great, that we can objectively debate and discuss with little to no enmity.
 
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