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Three Of Us Watched Reality Change

Ghostwoods

Writer, nerd, half-arsed researcher
Joined
Jul 11, 2009
Messages
11
Location
Granada, Spain
It was the summer of 1990, and I was with two friends, D. and S., walking through London, from Camden Town back down along Camden High Street towards the centre of the city. We stopped to wait at a pedestrian crossing for the lights to change — the standard British ‘pelican crossing’, a plain red silhouette of a man standing still.

As usual when waiting for the lights to change, we all watched them impatiently. Eventually they changed, to the normal British green man mid-stride, and we started crossing. As we walked, we kept an eye on the lights to make sure we had time to make it across comfortably.

About half way across the road, there was — quite literally — a ripple in reality, a brief flash of disturbance, and suddenly the lights had changed again… but not back to red.

The plain green guy was now wearing wide-bottomed flares and glasses, had long, flowing hair cascading out behind him, and had a line of stars from in front of his forehead that trailed over his head and down his back, each one slightly bigger than the previous, like some kind of cloak. We all stopped dead and exchanged stunned looks. One of us (I forget which) said “Did you…?”; the other two both replied “Yes” before he could finish the sentence.

Then we remembered the traffic and hurried across the road, and waited nervously for the lights to go red again. Sure enough, on both sides of the road, the red guy had changed too. He was now carrying a briefcase, smoking a pipe (with wisps of smoke rising), wearing a little homburg hat, and he had big brogues on his feet.

We watched at the lights cycle for ten minutes or so, but eventually continued on, feeling really freaked.

A couple of days later, I was talking about it with a group of friends. To my amazement, one of the girls said “Oh yeah, I heard about that.” I muttered something incredulous, and she told me that she’d seen an article in the press talking about how the council had recently changed the lights on that pedestrian crossing.

Apparently it was some sort of tribute about the death of a singer who had been famous in the sixties, and who had lived in that street. She was certain that the three of us there had just not noticed the difference in the lights until we were half-way across the road.

I was far from convinced — the council changing the plates over the lights made sense, but not in less than the blink of an eye. Anyway, L. promised to bring me the article to have a look at our next gathering a couple of weeks later.

A few days later, I went back to Camden to look at the changed lights more closely. The construction was standard pre-LED — they were just black-painted glass, the top section red glass and the bottom section green, with the shapes of the men etched out of the paint, and white bulbs behind.

The figures were based on the original templates of the walk/go men, but with extra details etched out of the black paint to provide the outfits. The glass was bolted in, and took up the entire casing in front of the light bulbs. There was no possible mechanism by which they could have slid down in front of the other plates, or anything of that sort.

Just in case, I hung around at a cafe across the road for about an hour, watching the lights, but they stayed changed. A week after that, I went back again for another look, to get a sketch of the altered designs. I was disappointed to find that the lights were back to being perfectly normal.

It was our regular gathering a couple of days later, and I was quite keen to see the article that L. had mentioned. When I asked her if she had brought it in however, she looked at me blankly. She clearly didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about.

She didn’t remember me mentioning traffic lights, Camden, or anything else, and neither did any of the others there. She had never heard anything about the council changing some pedestrian crossing lights, or even of a sixties singer dying recently. In fact, none of them remembered me saying anything much at our previous gathering. When I re-told the story, everyone seemed quite spooked by it all. I called D. and S. immediately afterwards, and yes, they still remembered it clearly. D. seemed amused by it all; S. was just terrified.

The only explanation I have that can even begin to stand up to Occam is that we briefly swapped into a closely-aligned parallel dimension. If the other two hadn’t been there, I doubt I’d trust my own memory of the event, it was so surreal. But as it happens, I have since had a few other experiences that also look a little like some minor dimensional swapping, although they’re less dramatic.
 
I was looking here:

http://thedeadrockstarsclub.com/1990.html

and there is a surprising dearth of notables from the 60's who died in 1990. Of course, I am not familiar with artists who may have had greater notoriety in the UK so you might check the site and see if any of the names ring a bell.

If it weren't for the fact that this was a shared experience, I would say it seems more like a dream. It just doesn't seem likely that a government body would OK a switch in pedestrian lights, given that the confusion could lead to accidents, injuries, and the ensuing lawsuits.
 
I was looking here:

http://thedeadrockstarsclub.com/1990.html

and there is a surprising dearth of notables from the 60's who died in 1990. Of course, I am not familiar with artists who may have had greater notoriety in the UK so you might check the site and see if any of the names ring a bell.

If it weren't for the fact that this was a shared experience, I would say it seems more like a dream. It just doesn't seem likely that a government body would OK a switch in pedestrian lights, given that the confusion could lead to accidents, injuries, and the ensuing lawsuits.
I did a few searches for "traffic light man/men" on Google and Bing. Found nothing which looked like this "traffic light man".
 
I did a few searches for "traffic light man/men" on Google and Bing. Found nothing which looked like this "traffic light man".

Hey wait - Ric Grech (who played in the rock band, Traffic) died in March of 1990 in Leicester. Coincidence?
 
This one's been round the block several times. I just googled the line that begins "the plain green guy..." and got five hits, including two separate Reddit discussions in 2012 and 2015, the Something Awful Forum and Terrible Minds, and a website called The Glitching.

...So what's your connection to the case, Ghostwoods? Are you the person it originally happened to, or just distributing the story more widely?
 
lemming-animated.gif
 
It was the summer of 1990, and I was with two friends, D. and S., walking through London, from Camden Town back down along Camden High Street towards the centre of the city. We stopped to wait at a pedestrian crossing for the lights to change — the standard British ‘pelican crossing’, a plain red silhouette of a man standing still.

As usual when waiting for the lights to change, we all watched them impatiently. Eventually they changed, to the normal British green man mid-stride, and we started crossing. As we walked, we kept an eye on the lights to make sure we had time to make it across comfortably.

About half way across the road, there was — quite literally — a ripple in reality, a brief flash of disturbance, and suddenly the lights had changed again… but not back to red.

The plain green guy was now wearing wide-bottomed flares and glasses, had long, flowing hair cascading out behind him, and had a line of stars from in front of his forehead that trailed over his head and down his back, each one slightly bigger than the previous, like some kind of cloak. We all stopped dead and exchanged stunned looks. One of us (I forget which) said “Did you…?”; the other two both replied “Yes” before he could finish the sentence.

Then we remembered the traffic and hurried across the road, and waited nervously for the lights to go red again. Sure enough, on both sides of the road, the red guy had changed too. He was now carrying a briefcase, smoking a pipe (with wisps of smoke rising), wearing a little homburg hat, and he had big brogues on his feet.

We watched at the lights cycle for ten minutes or so, but eventually continued on, feeling really freaked.

A couple of days later, I was talking about it with a group of friends. To my amazement, one of the girls said “Oh yeah, I heard about that.” I muttered something incredulous, and she told me that she’d seen an article in the press talking about how the council had recently changed the lights on that pedestrian crossing.

Apparently it was some sort of tribute about the death of a singer who had been famous in the sixties, and who had lived in that street. She was certain that the three of us there had just not noticed the difference in the lights until we were half-way across the road.

I was far from convinced — the council changing the plates over the lights made sense, but not in less than the blink of an eye. Anyway, L. promised to bring me the article to have a look at our next gathering a couple of weeks later.

A few days later, I went back to Camden to look at the changed lights more closely. The construction was standard pre-LED — they were just black-painted glass, the top section red glass and the bottom section green, with the shapes of the men etched out of the paint, and white bulbs behind.

The figures were based on the original templates of the walk/go men, but with extra details etched out of the black paint to provide the outfits. The glass was bolted in, and took up the entire casing in front of the light bulbs. There was no possible mechanism by which they could have slid down in front of the other plates, or anything of that sort.

Just in case, I hung around at a cafe across the road for about an hour, watching the lights, but they stayed changed. A week after that, I went back again for another look, to get a sketch of the altered designs. I was disappointed to find that the lights were back to being perfectly normal.

It was our regular gathering a couple of days later, and I was quite keen to see the article that L. had mentioned. When I asked her if she had brought it in however, she looked at me blankly. She clearly didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about.

She didn’t remember me mentioning traffic lights, Camden, or anything else, and neither did any of the others there. She had never heard anything about the council changing some pedestrian crossing lights, or even of a sixties singer dying recently. In fact, none of them remembered me saying anything much at our previous gathering. When I re-told the story, everyone seemed quite spooked by it all. I called D. and S. immediately afterwards, and yes, they still remembered it clearly. D. seemed amused by it all; S. was just terrified.

The only explanation I have that can even begin to stand up to Occam is that we briefly swapped into a closely-aligned parallel dimension. If the other two hadn’t been there, I doubt I’d trust my own memory of the event, it was so surreal. But as it happens, I have since had a few other experiences that also look a little like some minor dimensional swapping, although they’re less dramatic.

I'm sure I've read this story somewhere before but not on this forum... probably Reddit, as that's the only other forum I tend to read paranormal stuff on. Did you post it on there? Are you the person this happened to?

(Sorry don't mean to sound like I'm interrogating... just I know I've read this before so I'm curious.)
 
I'm sure I've read this story somewhere before but not on this forum... probably Reddit, as that's the only other forum I tend to read paranormal stuff on. Did you post it on there? Are you the person this happened to?

(Sorry don't mean to sound like I'm interrogating... just I know I've read this before so I'm curious.)

It's a story that was posted many, many years ago on the www.paranormal.about.com forums which had new (reader submitted) experiences every month. I could only find a very general archive here;

https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.paranormal.about.com
 
Right, thread locked. Story of dubious provenance that almost certainly didn't happen to the original poster.

Will re-aquaint said poster with the rules of the game via PM.


Opinion revised in light of correspondence with OP--thread reopened.
 
Last edited:
The validity of this IHTM thread's opening story notwithstanding ...
Crossing lights modified to commemorate a famous musical figure are now demonstrably 'real' things ...

It’s now or never pedestrians: German town has Elvis lights
... [The] central German town where Elvis Presley was stationed as a U.S. soldier in the 1950s has installed three pedestrian lights with images of the American rock icon.
The red shows an image of the singer striking a pose at a microphone and the green depicts his trademarked hip swivel dance.
They went online this week in the town of Friedberg, where Elvis ... was stationed at the U.S. Army’s Ray Barracks ... He lived in nearby Bad Nauheim.
Friedberg ... already has an “Elvis Presley Platz” — Elvis Presley Square — and decided to add the three lights as an added attraction for the many Elvis fans who already make the pilgrimage to the town.

Elvis-Xing-Lights.jpg

SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/0b9ec331ebf64b31b7015bca97ddac03
 
Sorry for vanishing for a couple of months. Life has been... uncooperative.

This one's been round the block several times. I just googled the line that begins "the plain green guy..." and got five hits, including two separate Reddit discussions in 2012 and 2015, the Something Awful Forum and Terrible Minds, and a website called The Glitching.

...So what's your connection to the case, Ghostwoods? Are you the person it originally happened to, or just distributing the story more widely?

Yes, it's me. I'm Ghostwoods on both Reddit and Something Awful (the latter rarely now). I also told paranormal.about.com about it before it started feeling like a spam-vector site. I'd completely forgotten cross-posting it to Chuck Wendig's blog though. Poor Chuck. "The Glitching" is mine, and I really want to do something more with it, for obvious reasons.

It just doesn't seem likely that a government body would OK a switch in pedestrian lights, given that the confusion could lead to accidents, injuries, and the ensuing lawsuits.

In London, these things are the decision of the local borough's council, and local councils are notoriously whimsical. We don't have any provision for punitive damages in British law -- and our judges tend to be very pro-establishment -- so lawsuits are much less of a minefield.

I feel like I've read this one before, perhaps in one of those Haunted Liverpool books that are a (very) guilty pleasure of mine, too.

I've given accounts to a couple of investigative teams over the years with a full "do whatever you like with this" disclosure, but I don't remember anyone mentioning printing it. If you do happen to stumble over a book it's in, I'd be delighted to hear about it!

The validity of this IHTM thread's opening story notwithstanding ...
Crossing lights modified to commemorate a famous musical figure are now demonstrably 'real' things ...
https://www.apnews.com/0b9ec331ebf64b31b7015bca97ddac03

That's fantastic! Thanks for sharing it.
 
Here's another example of fanciful pedestrian crossing signals. In Aarhus (Denmark) they've begun using little Viking figures on the signals.

AarhusVikingSignal.jpeg
Danish city puts Vikings at crossing signals

It’s safe to cross when the green Viking is walking, but stop when the red one is standing. That’s the message to pedestrians in Aarhus as it unveils new crossing signals to celebrate the history of Denmark’s second largest city.

City council member Buenyamin Simsek, in charge of technical matters, on Monday unveiled the first of 17 traffic signals featuring Vikings holding axes and shields, but no horned helmets — there is no evidence that Viking helmets really did have horns.

The lights will form a circle around downtown Aarhus, which was founded by the Vikings in the 8th century and became a bustling harbor city.

SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/87bf0b693fda4c74bbf72096080d8d31
 
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