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Wiped From The Face Of The Earth

C

Crookshank

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Dec 26, 2011
Messages
87
Only a few of years ago this happened and it was one of many experiences I had round about the same time. I was getting ready to go out convinced I was going to see some very dear friends at Mc Donalds in town. I knew them well and we worked together and everything and I was sure this had been arranged and everything - then as I was about to call one of them I realised I didn't have any of their numbers.. in fact.. I began to slowly realise that not one of them actually existed.. it was a bit disorientating as I was sure I knew these people and yet.. I didn't know them and I couldn't have known them. Either I am completely insane to have thought I knew non existent people or.. just maybe... something wiped them from the face of the Earth entirely - a time traveller perhaps? Did I slip into another universe and not realise..? This happened a few times in 2007 and 2008.. I kind of got used to it and didn't say anything.. but now looking back on it.. I wonder. Haven't experienced anything like it since.
 
Could it have been the result of a very realistic dream?
Very occasionally I'll dream of something and I'll awaken completely convinced that the events have happened. It's definitely the exception rather than the norm, but it does occur. The dream-memory can seem real to me for anywhere from seconds to hours.

When I was younger it tended to be that it was Christmas morning or my birthday and as I've gotten older it tends to be important family events or deaths - in one particularly bad one it was the death of my mother - but it can be mundane stuff too.

As a child I remember excitedly running downstairs to open the presents only to discover no tree, no decorations, etc.
As an adult, I've had one dream where it was Saturday, although it was actually a weekday, which led to me missing work since I "knew" it was Saturday.
The particularly nasty one about my mum dying seemed so real that it wasn't until a couple of hours later that logic kicked in and over-rode the grief enough for me to question how it could have happened if I'd only spoken to her yesterday.

I only offer this as a possible explanation from my own experience.

I do like the universe-slip idea though. I've always been fascinated by the idea that people may sometimes accidentally "fall" into another version of reality. Part of me wonders if that could account for the cases of people who vanish from the face of the earth, and also those who seem to turn up with no past or speaking unintelligible languages.
 
Thanks - its a possible explanation i've toyed with as well. I do have realistic dreams - some of them you could write a novel from lol - but I usually know the difference. Whats wierd about this is, that I genuinely don't remember these people - like my memory has been wiped, its like...I remember the connection and I know them etc but if you were to ask me details - looks, personality etc - couldn't recall any of that, just the actual association with them - and yet if I was to describe a dream person I could do that pretty well... its just one of those wierd things I guess. Science has shown that particals can be in the same place at the same time... its Quantum physics.. and kind of out there... but if it has any kind of effect on reality, perhaps we "Slide" all the time - after all.. what if this is the dream?
 
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

~Chuang Tzu
 
Indeed - I suppose it could tie in to various Fortean phenomena. Several I can think of off the top of my head are:

a) The people who disappear (we have a thread for them somewhere) - perhaps these have slipped out of our version of reality and into another almost identical one, not even knowing in most cases, or perhaps suddenly finding that certain people/places/events don't seem to be as they were. Perhaps the forgetting part is the brain papering over the cracks?

b) People who you are convinced had died, even to the point of remembering it being on the news, but it turns out they hadn't (for which we also have a thread!) - perhaps this could happen if you yourself have slipped from an almost identical reality where the person really did die into one where they hadn't died.

c) Shops/buildings that disappear (again, I think there's a thread! There's definitely one about a petrol station in America somewhere on the board. It was in the IHTM board, and I think it was called The Transdimensional Gas Station). In this case the building is where it always was, it's the person who visited it that has slipped into a version of reality where it was never built in the first place.

Of course all of these suppose that if people do slip into alternate realities, they're ones that are very similar to the one they originated in.
Otherwise, if it was that frequent, I reason that we could expect very different variations of human life to appear out of the blue now and again.

Maybe it's something along the lines of the amount of energy required to pass through whatever barrier normally prevents this kind of thing. It would maybe take less energy to travel to a universe which was directly adjacent (and therefore very similar) than one further 'away' (and thus quite different), much as it takes less energy to move an object a millimetre in a certain direction than it does to move it 10 metres.


Getting back to the dream idea, I've pondered myself sometimes about what if dreams in general are glimpses into the memories/lives of alternate versions of oneself? I like the idea, but then dreams where I'm flying like Superman etc. would seem to rule this out :)

Edited to fix a typo
 
When I was a youngster, I used to have a recurring dream of lots people stood at a bus stop in front of a laundrette on the other side of the road from me. I knew some of the folks in real life, but some I had no idea who they were. Then, perhaps months later, I would meet one of the bus stop people in real life. The dream happened up until my teens, but I even met a couple of the bus stop people in my early twenties.

I suppose the rational explanation is that I was dreaming generic people, and then met someone similar in real life, but when ever I met a bus stop person, the connection to my dream was very strong, for instance, I would remember that the individual was stood under a certain letter in the laundrettes name.

Maybe the people that 'slipped' away from you, slid over to me!
 
I think I put in the 'minor strangenesses' thread about my odd visit to the dentist where the receptionist and hygenist were entirely different to the normal ones, the appointment system was different, and when I queried it the receptionist said that it had always been the way it is now and she'd been there for years.

I've since found the appointment card for the appointments on the system they never had with the hygenist who was never there (!). A slight glitch in the matrix maybe? Or just a brush off from the new receptionist?
 
I wonder if it is me then who has passed from one reality to another very similar one - more to the point, if this did happen, maybe in my other reality I have vanished, or was I replaced with another version of myself? Who knows? Its just one of those strange experiences. I have ideas that when we die, we only die in one reality and then we pass over to another one where we are still alive and we continue on that alternate time line as if nothing had happened. Maybe I simply remembered dear friends in my "other " life. It was one of the strangest things I've experienced - I wonder why it was only for that short time and now it seems to have faded away - haven't had an experince like it since.
 
b) People who you are convinced had died, even to the point of remembering it being on the news, but it turns out they hadn't (for which we also have a thread!) - perhaps this could happen if you yourself have slipped from an almost identical reality where the person really did die into one where they hadn't died.
Click to expand...

Wonder how many times I think I've heard Peter Falk was dead only to find out days or weeks later he was still alive. Unfortunately it finally happened last summer.
 
Yeah i know what you mean by thinking people who are alive that aren't but what about those that apparently never existed? Maybe there is something to time travel after all.
 
So you don't not have any stuff from these people? Emails or phone calls registered in the phone log? Do you have any names you can try to look up on the internet?
 
No - because they never existed and therefore there is nothing from them - only my memory pattern ... which faded almost instantly - it was like one minute I knew them the next.. I had no idea who they were and I only remember the connection.
 
quite a scary thread that ive been trying to understand since you first posted but it seems you are saying that ... you had the very strong feeling of having made an arrangement with close acquaintances but there were no such acquaintances there was only the firm idea that you had made the arrangement with someone ( plural )

i dont see the connection with time travel or many worlds/parallel dimensions since as you say the acquaintances never existed anyway ... weird memory glitches and ... at the time you mention 2007 - 2008 were you going though anything relevant emotionally ?
 
I wasn't going through any emotional turmoil or anything - was just living my life, working etc. I have only one image in my head that makes me think these people existed at least somewhere in time - its just of someone turning around and smiling - and I have the sense that I am in quite a large group of people and we are all friends.. i feel attachment, connection etc, as you would in a large group. The thing about time travel I suppose I'm trying to say is, that if someone was able to travel in time and interact with people from the past they could alter the timeline kind of like - if you were to go back into the past and kill someone, that could change how the new future pans out... you gt me?

I can't explain why I felt I was going to meet some very dear friends and then all of a sudden realising they didn't exist - I don't know what caused that sensation. Perhaps it was something medical - and chances are thats how it would be assessed - but think about it, what would it be like if someone did alter the past, how would we experience it? I think most of us would carry on and not notice - and I think some of us would notice especially if we really loved the people who disappeared... you see?
 
Crookshank said:
No - because they never existed and therefore there is nothing from them - only my memory pattern ... which faded almost instantly - it was like one minute I knew them the next.. I had no idea who they were and I only remember the connection.
Click to expand...

Do you remember any of your 'lost' friends' names? (if so, they could possibly be checked).

Do you have continuity of memory through the event? I mean, do you remember a smooth sequence of getting up (or whatever), getting ready, picking up the phone...?

How did it feel as you transitioned into this reality? Was it like waking up? Were you disoriented, dizzy or confused?

And were you really dressed to go out?

Have you ever experienced any other odd shifts of consciousness? Any odd smells or feelings of detachment? Ever 'phased out' for a few moment while wide awake and going about your day?
 
I play cards once a fortnight, and for the last couple of months a guy I used to know quite well a few years ago has joined our group - or so I thought, until tonight. I thought his name was Gary, but from conversations overheard it seems his name is really Chris, and he's well known to some of our other regulars.

Which puzzles me - is he just someone who looks like the Gary I knew, and I misidentified him, or has reality jumped tracks somewhere? :?
 
Not to belittle the opening poster, but -- sometimes dreams can throw you for a loop. Maybe in every hundred dreams there's an "uber-dream" that one can't easily separate from reality.

When I was a kid, dreams were usually just another form of entertainment. (One of my favorites was, a crack opened in the playground at school, a big green dinosaur climbed out and trashed Hoover Elementary. Go to it!) One morning when I was about eight or nine, however, I got up, ate breakfast, went to school, spent long hours reading the lessons and listening to the teacher, walked home --

Then I woke up. It was morning, and indeed my mother woke me so I could go to school! I'd dreamt a whole dreary day at school! I was so adamant that I'd just come back from said institution that I all but refused to go again, because I was damn tired! But parents won, as usual.

I recall even checking the newspaper date -- nope, no missing day, or extra day, or however it would have worked. Apparently, rather than the usual cartoonish antics, my subconscious dished out a totally realistic entire school day.
 
Do you remember any of your 'lost' friends' names? (if so, they could possibly be checked).

Afraid not - they don't exist in this timeline - you wouldn't find them.

Do you have continuity of memory through the event? I mean, do you remember a smooth sequence of getting up (or whatever), getting ready, picking up the phone...?

Yes.

How did it feel as you transitioned into this reality? Was it like waking up? Were you disoriented, dizzy or confused?

It felt normal - no dizziness but a little confusion as to how come I thought these people existed.. it was quite strange.

And were you really dressed to go out? Yes

Have you ever experienced any other odd shifts of consciousness? Any odd smells or feelings of detachment? Ever 'phased out' for a few moment while wide awake and going about your day?[/quote]

I do tend to zone out now and again - I get easily tired is all.



Hello Amarok - just want to say something here - my experience would probably be classed as something medical - not disputing that at all, its just a strange thing and maybe if something like that did happen, what would the experience be like? I have no proof either way - its just a wierd experience - which I have thought about as being the result of a "dream" well a damn big one if you ask me. I know the difference between them.
 
rynner2 said:
I play cards once a fortnight, and for the last couple of months a guy I used to know quite well a few years ago has joined our group - or so I thought, until tonight. I thought his name was Gary, but from conversations overheard it seems his name is really Chris, and he's well known to some of our other regulars.

Which puzzles me - is he just someone who looks like the Gary I knew, and I misidentified him, or has reality jumped tracks somewhere? :?
Click to expand...

Yep, you've slipped into a parallel universe. Funny, I seem to remember you being the Rear Admiral who lead the Task Force to the Falklands...
 
rynner2 said:
I play cards once a fortnight, and for the last couple of months a guy I used to know quite well a few years ago has joined our group - or so I thought, until tonight. I thought his name was Gary, but from conversations overheard it seems his name is really Chris, and he's well known to some of our other regulars.
Click to expand...

Our church organist is named Gary, but I always think of him as Eric and have to remind myside. I don't think I've ever known an "Eric" who looked like him.

(He's good, too: excellent ragtime on the pipe organ.)
 
Hi, Thanks for sharing. I find your experience fascinating ... your theory of a distortion of the timeline caused by some "time travelling" phenomena is a mind f**k and though a conclusion I admitedly would not have immediately drawn, one I'm glad you pointed out nevertheless as it seems to make as much sense as anything, given the premise. The fact that you were actually dressed and ready to meet these people is just so compelling to me! For some reason I don't understand, how you describe your frame of mind when the experience took place compels me to (want to) interpret your experience as something manifested in your reality as opposed to "in your mind" ... but equally as odd, it seemed almost like an inherently familiar experience that I was finally reminded of while reading through the thread, though as far as I know, I've NEVER experienced anything even remotely similar. It was as if I just remembered or had finally come to the realization that such glitches in our reality take place on a regular basis and our brain phases their memory out as way of cleaning up afterwards, and we're typically not supposed to remember in order for reality to function with a semblence of sanity :shock: Or, it could be a case of over-caffeination and a bad case of 'The Mondays' lol
 
Could have been anything - I had never experienced anything like it till then or since then. It was wierd.. and a bit disorientating.
 
did you say it happened a few times though ... or that there were related occurrences?
 
Well it was just that I'd be walking home from work and thought I would be seeing a special person at a familiar place.. or I'd pass a house and get a kind of memory echo or something of having been in there..

Yes I know it sounds like Deja Vu. Whatever the explanation there were q few of these experiences and i didn't count them.
 
I'm interested in the build up to the 'event'.

For how long were you preparing yourself for going out? How long did the delusion (for lack of a better term) exist?
 
Synchronous said:
I'm interested in the build up to the 'event'.

For how long were you preparing yourself for going out? How long did the delusion (for lack of a better term) exist?
Click to expand...

The funny thing is I don't know. As far as I can remember I was doing a perfectly ordinary thing - you know, bath, hair, make up..etc, spoke to my daughter, told her I was just going to see... at McDonalds - could't remember the persons name - looked at my phone expecting to know the number - only family numbers on there and a couple of friends.. then it was all disorientating.. couldn't really say how long it lasted to be honest.. daughter just laughed at me - it may have only lasted that day, I have no idea. You're right though it would probably be classed as a delusion - I just would have thought a delusion would have lasted longer - temporary delusion? Its wierd right?
 
Very weird!

I don't know if at was a delusion, it just seemed an appropriate term as I typed.

Very odd indeed - I'd certainly be tempted by the alternative reality hypothesis if it happened to me, but I guess no-one would want to think of themselves as delusional.
 
That sounds really weird and it must have been unnerving for you. It reminds me of a Richard Matheson short story, Disappearing Act - though I can't remember what the expanation at the end of it was!

cheers
Dan
 
Well unless I really did shift realities somehow - it could have been something like Deja Vu or a temporary delusion or Petit mal fit or something - guess we'll never really know but it was a very strange experience indeed.
 
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