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These Roads Lead... Where?

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backinthebush

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Dec 20, 2012
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46
Transdimensional gas station

Seems I've come very late to join in on this posting, but will give it a go anyway. Does anyone still take an interest in this? It seems to have petered out.
I had similar experiences on three occasions more than 38 years ago.

At the times they occurred I did not become aware that anything strange/unusual had happened until almost two months later. It was at the time all "seamless" one might say.

Unlike the original poster from Sweden, I later discovered the actual locations of two of the three sites - not by searching (although I did do a great deal of that during the following 18 years until my discoveries) - but by accident. At least I think it was by accident, although some curious things had happened along the way.

The shocking part for me was that these sites were about 3000 miles (about 4600 kilometers) from the areas in which the strange events occurred. Or perhaps I should say "seemed to have occurred."

I have never related the details of my experiences to anyone, convinced (and still am) that it would bring doubts about my sanity and could even have hampered my career. I still do believe that. However, I am now in my seventies and retired and have fewer concerns about those possibililities.

For many years since my discoveries of the places where two of those events took place I searched, without success, for some explanation. None was ever forthcoming, even to this day.

About three months ago I began to search the internet, now that I have the time available. The "transdimensional gas station" is the only similar story I've discovered to date, and even that one is far less complicated.

I'd be interested in learning if there are others with similar experiences. On the other hand there may no longer be any followers of this, given the long time since the last posting. I would also be interested in hearing more from the original poster. Is anyone out there?

If there is still some interest I may undertake to relate my story since it can be done here with relative anonymity.
Now I will be interested to see whether this reply can actually be posted since I have never attempted this before.
 
Please do tell us about your experiences.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Please do tell us about your experiences.
Click to expand...
Yep, those of us who've posted on this thread before should get an email notification of new posts. Recently the email notifs haven't been working well for me, but I did get one about your post!

Tell us more!
 
I think the story belongs in the same category as Intermittent Cottages, Disappearing Hotels and Restaurants with a close link to the suggestion of time-slips and alternate realities in other dimensions.

I'm strongly attracted to the genre and was browsing a slew of them in a ghost book earlier in the week. The attraction lies in the way their reality is doubted some time after the experience. I can't imagine any form of solid evidence is ever going to establish their reality, though. Even photographs would provoke thoughts of how they were faked. :?
 
every few weeks my thoughts turn to the transdimensional gas station ... i love this thread and in fact i have an email from the OP somewhere although he seems to have long since gone to ground ... so lets hear it !
 
Re: Transdimensional gas station

backinthebush said:
If there is still some interest I may undertake to relate my story
Click to expand...

Oh there definitely is an interest, please tell.
 
Backinthebush, your post reminded me of a similar story I read on another forum. It is part of a longer thread but this is the specific post that I thought you might find interesting;

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showpost ... count=1447

I'm reluctant to post this one and am going to leave the odder details out, but maybe your friend is just the person to ask.

Summer '81 I was in Piccadilly Circus and was quite distressed. A couple approached me, were sympathetic to what had happened and offered to take me for a coffee. We were right by a coffee shop but the woman said she knew a cafe in Piccadilly tube station so down we went, the entrance opposite The Regent Palace Hotel, and there was this little cafe tucked away right next to the stairs.

We were the only customers, there was a waitress in a pink gingham 50's costume and an old woman at one end behind a counter on which there was a strange Heath Robinson contraption made of copper. I couldn't work out what the hell it was, it stretched the length of the counter, and I felt very unnerved by the old woman who stared intently at me the whole time we were there. Everything about her seemed to be gray.

Something strange happened (sorry to be so vague but this is very personal) and I ran out of the cafe, up the stairs and straight into the arms of my boyfriend who I'd been looking for. The couple came out after me and the woman spoke to my boyfriend, said she was relieved I'd found him and commented on how odd the strange thing that had happened was.

A couple of years later I was in Piccadilly tube station with a friend and remembered the cafe, reflected on how I'd been up and down the stairs opposite The Regent Palace Hotel countless times and never so much as glanced at it, which was odd considering what had happened there. I asked the friend if he fancied a coffee and we headed for the cafe.

It wasn't there. He said there'd never been a cafe there and I argued that there had been, it must have been bricked over...until he pointed out that the wall tiles were original and had been there since the station was built.

We checked every entrance to the station even though I knew for a fact which entrance it had been next to. The only thing resembling a cafe was the snack bar in the ticket hall. I was so distressed that my friend stopped a guard and asked if there used to be a cafe down there. The guard said no.

I've since read several accounts of people visiting cafes/restaurants and later finding that they didn't exist. Maybe your friend could shed some light on this Andie. I'd be very happy to hear that that cafe did exist in '81 - but given the things I'm not comfortable discussing I wouldn't bet on it.
Click to expand...
 
the regents palace now that is taking me back ... stayed there a lot in the 90s with work ... there was a very chic bar in the basement i recall, which would have been on the same level as the tube ... or perhaps not ... maybe a period tube map could assist ?
 
Yes, I would love to read about your experiences backinthebush.

PS Thank you for posting that Digital Spy link Rasputin; I'm constantly on the lookout for such "creepy" threads
 
This interests me very much because of my theory that this 'out-of-time' experience is one of the things that is on the edge of our perception - that it ties in with 'genuine panic' and so on as being something where some essential wrongness spooks us in a particular way. Certainly when I have been 'spooked' there is an out of time or out of normal reality feeling that is tied in to it.

I think something rare and real happens that triggers our senses - that 'real' thing may be simply something that triggers a throwback to when we were tiny hunted creatures, but nevertheless interesting if we could work out what exactly is going on.
 
Greetings fellow posters.
I must say I am quite surprised that there were so many responses in such a short time. I had expected I might receive one or two, perhaps weeks in the future.
I am quite willing to share my experiences with you all, but I must caution that it would be a comparatively lengthy undertaking and would require several sessions. I do not, unfortunately, have the endurance to sit long at a computer.
In order to do so, it would be necessary to do it in instalments if that is agreeable to you.
Also, my curiosity is aroused regarding the location of the various posters who have replied. I note that several are in the UK. Is this the case with all? Are other countries represented?
Please reply and notify me if instalments for this tale would be agreeable. If so I would begin with a description of my own background to give a sense of why and how this has affected me. Later I would also include a number of other unusual incidents that may or may not be related to the main point of the story.
On rereading my post I find there are several minor errors, though nothing of great significance. An instance of this is that I said I had been searching the internet for three months, when I meant to write three years. Not earth-shaking, but I prefer accuracy.
Wishing you all well and an exciting Hallowe’en.
 
Backinthebush, I would be very willing to read your tale in installments.
I read the original story on this thread many times, and was a bit deflated when it petered out. Please share, as and when you can. :)
 
" I dont mind the instalments but i want to know up front : do you have the receipt ?"

:rofl:
 
Well, I'm in Australia and I would read the installments.

I second the motion to keep the receipt! :p
 
disappearing gas station

I have received several replies regarding my proposal to post my experiences in instalments, each urging me to "keep the receipt." Perhaps I was in error posting under this Disappearing gas station section? I'm new to this so it's entirely possible.

Meanwhile I should for clarity's sake explain that I am not the Swedish gentleman who stopped at the service station, nor am I Swedish. I see on rereading that the Swedish fellow said that he had saved a receipt from the gasoline purchase and perhaps that is what the replies refer to. My story is completely unrelated and unfolded far away from Sweden in Canada.

Should I perhaps have started a new category for this? At this point I would welcome suggestions. (other than keep the receipt)
 
I think they are being very slightly facetious (the original poster couldn't find the receipt they said they had, IIRC). I personally don't mind if you tell your story in instalments or in one go, as long as you don't stop posting half way through!
 
sorry yes i just meant if you are going to serialise dont keep us hanging on to the very end for the elusive piece of physical evidence that never materialises ! "the receipt" has become a watchword for this ... i think in another timeslip story "the receipt" was a notebook bought from a transdimensional stationers ... in new york ???
 
Re: the "missing receipt"

Ahh! Thank you for clarifying the receipt reference. And I promise not to end the tale half-way. If I should “disappear” it will likely mean that I’ve disappeared entirely – passed away - or some such. Bear in mind that I am in my seventies and anything could happen, though I do my damndest to avoid that finality. I’m still as strong and vigorous as most 40-year-olds and counting on a few more good years.
Today I have a floor to lay, so I will hopefully have time tomorrow or the following day to begin. Thanks again for your responses.
 
Background to the mystery:
I was born during the second world war in a small town in the north of Ontario, Canada, in the Precambrian Shield country, surrounded by tens of thousands of square miles of uninhabited boreal forest (which we simply call “the bush”), a land of thousands of lakes, rivers, and great muskeg swamps.
Our lives then would be considered today as relatively primitive, with no running water, an outdoor toilet, and none of the appliances that today are routinely found in homes, such as electric stoves, televisions, refrigerators, freezers, washers and dryers etc. While we did have electrical service, it was used only for a single light in each room, a radio, and a bread toaster.
We heated with wood and cooked on a wood stove, which required going off into the “bush” every year to cut about 30 cords of firewood. We snared and hunted hares, fished, shot moose, grouse, ducks and geese and harvested various berries.
My earliest memories are of travelling by canoe, of the annual trip to the bush to fall trees for firewood, of trekking through the bush to lakes and rivers to fish, of setting trap lines, picking berries to be preserved for winter, hauling water in buckets, going to a lake in winter to harvest blocks of ice which were then covered with sawdust to prevent melting in the summer heat.
By our mid-teens my pals and I would often walk for several days to a particular lake or river to fish or to an area to hunt certain species. As well as obtaining food it was also one of our main sources of recreation, that and playing hockey.
As we grew older we went further and further afield, sometimes a hundred miles or more and lasting several weeks. Bush machines such as quads and snowmobiles were still in the future, but we couldn’t have afforded them even if they had existed. Besides, they couldn’t have gone where we went anyway.
Due to all of this time spent in the wilds, I and my companions developed an uncanny sense of direction. We never used a compass and often took different routes going to and returning from distant places, through areas we had never before been, just to see what was there.
We never got lost. Ever.
At age 16 I and my friends were taking full-time jobs in the bush, fighting forest fires, working remote sawmills, logging, cutting survey lines that often stretched many miles and had to be straight as an arrow, doing the “slug work” for geologists, which meant digging trenches down to bare rock through the tangle of roots, drilling holes in rock, filling them with dynamite and blasting. Our lives and livelihoods revolved around the bush. Doing these things also gave us the opportunity to explore.
During all of that I developed a burning fascination with nature and would spend days wandering, watching creatures, how they acted, how they lived, their habits.
My desire to travel, to see what other areas were like, to observe the animals, led me to take up a trade that allowed me to make a decent living while also experiencing new areas and creatures.
I’ve worked from the east coast of Canada to the west coast, from the north to the south of this immense and beautiful country. In the course of that I got to observe a great diversity of landscapes and many hundreds of species at close range and at leisure.
I’ve also wandered out-of-the-way areas in several other countries, such as the United States and Mexico, to witness the diversity of the creatures, the unfamiliar climates and the natural and sometimes man-made wonders. Never got lost in those places either, though many were very remote.
Through all of these experiences I have become quite an astute observer of things. I will give one rather silly example. During a visit with my youngest daughter who lives in a city in the most southern part of Ontario, we were chatting on her deck when I got a blink-of-the-eye glimpse of a distant aircraft as it passed a narrow clearing in the trees. I’ve always had a fascination with aircraft as well.
I must have had a startled look on my face because everyone began asking me what was wrong, was I alright? I explained that I thought I had just had a hallucination - of an aircraft from the 1930s and 40s that no longer exists, a German Junkers J-52.
To my relief, next day the news carried the story of a Ju-52 that had been restored to flight-worthiness in Europe and had stopped at the local airport during a tour of North America. My point is that in an instant I had accurately identified it, even though it had seemed to me an impossibility.
At my advanced age I still wander to remote areas of the bush where there are no trails. I’m fortunate to now reside in a small northern village (pop. about 200) where the night skies with no light pollution are clear and the display of the heavens and aurora borealis are magnificent, where small children and dogs run free, where there are none of the ordinances that so closely regulate city dwellers lives, where no-one drives more than 30 km/hr, there is peace and serenity and I can be off in the bush in a matter of minutes. And I’ve never gotten lost here either.
There are only three occasions in my life when I wasn’t able to find my way back to a particular place, but I know I wasn’t lost. Having said all this I will begin the story in an instalment to follow.
I do hope this has not been too long and tedious for you, but I did want to give some background.
regards
 
Just to say, it was not 'long and tedious' at all.
Your descriptions of your childhood, remind me of a book my father gave me to read when I was a child, Cache Lake Country, by John J. Rowlands.

http://www.amazon.com/Cache-Lake-Country-North-Woods/dp/0881504211

I think, quite apart from this story you are telling now, it would be fascinating to read the entire story of your life.

Canada is such a spectacular and immense country, and perhaps its wildness is rather difficult to imagine for one who has not been there, and is used to landscapes of southern England. (I mean myself, not other members of the forum whom are probably far more well-travelled) but you have certainly painted a vivid picture!

Thank-you for this. [/url]
 
Engrossing and well-written. It establishes a world in which any anomalies are going to stand out. Looking forward to the rest. :)
 
Sorry to be a bore, but is there any way you could start your stories as a new thread backinthebush, that way not only is it easier to find your posts but anybody new to FTMB will see it as a new thread rather than just replies to the Interdimensional gas station. Your stories sound like they deserve their own thread anyway!
 
re: a new thread

Rasputin (interesting name - do you resemble the original Rasputin, the Russian monk?) I thank you for your reply and suggestion.
I would gladly begin a new thread if I knew how. Perhaps someone with the knowledge could undertake that task?
 
Re: re: a new thread

backinthebush said:
I would gladly begin a new thread if I knew how. Perhaps someone with the knowledge could undertake that task?
Click to expand...

Click on the New Topic button (it's located near the bottom of the screen).
 
Re: re: a new thread

backinthebush said:
Rasputin (interesting name - do you resemble the original Rasputin, the Russian monk?) I thank you for your reply and suggestion.
I would gladly begin a new thread if I knew how. Perhaps someone with the knowledge could undertake that task?
Click to expand...

Well, I am short and mischieveious, that is about the only resemblance.

If you go to the main page here; http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21 and then click on the "new topic" button underneath and to the left of the "It happened to me title".
 
new thread

Well I have finally created a new thread as suggested. I've called it "These Roads Lead Where......?" I've also finished the first instalment of the tale and expect it may take several more to finish. It's rather wordy but I hope you will forgive this old fellow if it's too much.
Regards to all.
 
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