You know when you see something incredible, and you turn around to tell your friend only to realize that nobody saw it except you? These people know how you feel.
This piece is based on an AskReddit thread. Link on the last page.
One time, when I was about 10 years old, I came home after school and was making myself a salami sandwich. I pulled the bag of salami out and took out two slices. I smacked the two slices together, and suddenly they became one.
I tried my hardest to separate them, but there was no seam or anything that I could split them up with. I even showed it to my mom but not a single person believed me when I told them. I fused two pieces of salami together.
bike_rack
My friend and I were watching basketball in the early days when Charles Barkley was a commentator. We both remember him apologizing for calling a team “midgets” and saying that he now knew it was offensive. But as they were going to commercial, we both heard him say into a hot mic: “Besides, they shouldn’t hate me, they should hate God.”
My friend and I were amazed, and convinced he would be fired. But not only did we never hear about it again, the clip doesn’t even exist online anywhere. It’s as though we had a double delusion.
phdcandidate
As a child, I touched some weird plant in our garden. I think it stung me. Then I saw everything in inverted colors for short time. After tripping like crazy for a few minutes, I went back to normal. I was in such shock that I couldn’t explain it to my mom. I just went to her crying.
Novacryy
I slipped on icy stairs last winter, and I swear: I saw my own butt crack as I fell. No one believes me.
cyborgdad
I was having a secret smoke one night. When I was finished, I went to put the ashtray in my hiding place on the top of a high cupboard in my kitchen.
Instead of getting the footstool I was on my tiptoes and stretching up to put the ashtray up there when I lost my balance and the ashtray slipped out of my fingers and fell down to the floor.
I ducked out of the way so I didn’t get covered in ash or get hit by the heavy glass ashtray and I heard it hit the ground behind me loudly and then clatter as it rolled.
I sighed as I knew I’d have to clean up ash from the floor and was annoyed at myself for being clumsy.
But then when I turned around to where I had heard it land there was nothing there.
I honestly spent about thirty minutes looking all over that kitchen for the ashtray or even a trace of ash on the floor but there was nothing. It and its contents had simply vanished into thin air.
I went to bed totally freaked out that night and had another look the next morning but it was still gone. I’ve never seen it again since.
cuddlemycat
When I was 5, I liked to mix various liquids. I was playing chemistry, I guess. One day, my grandma let me play with all her bathroom liquids.
I mixed her shampoos and creams and cleaning products. (I realize now this might have been dangerous if I had mixed ammonia and bleach, for example.)
Anyway, I swear I created a white liquid that produced a single black bubble that would come to the surface and pop at a regular interval. No one believes me, or maybe no one cares. I guess it’s not that cool.
Bingochamp4
When I was about 6, my entire family was helping to build my grandparents a new house. I was helping my dad move some really long 2x4s from the lumber pile when a mouse ran out from under the board I had moved. We lived out in the middle of the woods, so mice were no big deal to any of us.
I did a double take though because THE MOUSE WAS FREAKING BLUE. I don’t mean the sun reflected off its fur and it had a blue sheen to it, I mean a brilliant, royal blue. He was running fast but I got my dad to notice it too and he agreed that the mouse really was royal freaking blue. We’ve told multiple people, my mom included, and no one believes us. But we know what we saw.
Totally_Not_Anna
I was at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. I walked up to the cuttlefish tank, and for some reason all 20 or so of the cuttlefish rushed over to me. It was a big tank, maybe 10 feet long. I walked the length of it, and they followed me. I walked back, and they followed. A few other people saw and tried it themselves.
But alas, the cuttlefish only had eyes for me.
My best guess as to the cause is that the guy who feeds them is my doppelgnger.
Drumlin
My house shares a dead end alley with a brewery. Real cool guys, great beer. Not a bad neighbor to have! Their kitchen does good work too.
One of the neighborhood squirrels has figured this out. He got a taste for their chicken bones. So I’ll see him go into the garbage, fetch a chicken wing, then go over to the grease dumpster which is the most foul thing in human existence, and that little glutton will dunk that chicken bone in the grease and start tuckin’ into it like it’s his favorite thing. I’ve seen him do it a few times. Nobody believes me.
That squirrel is roided out, too. He looks like one of those buff kangaroo photos. He has weirdly huge nuts. Sometimes he will perch on my garage roof to take a leak.
I think he’s organizing a gang in the alley.
theSchmoozer
Once, when I was a teenager, I was watching a movie by myself. The TV room had two chairs separated by a couch. I was on the chair to the right, and at one point I laughed really hard at the movie. I heard someone else laugh and saw what seemed to be a girl my age double over in laughter in the other chair.
The weird thing is that it didn’t startle me; it just felt nice to share some laughter. Then I realized that I was alone in the house and the chair was empty. So I turned off the TV and went outside in a bit of a panic.
hablocomogringo
When I was 10 years old, I saw my dog catch a crow out of the air then just gently release it.
Hof354
There was something stuck in my grandmother’s garage crashing all over the place. I opened the door, and saw something that made absolutely no sense.
It was a kangaroo, and we don’t live in Australia. When I went to tell my family, it came through the door and jumped across the field. Everyone thinks I was making it up because nobody else was there to see it, but I know what I saw.
nocsha
When I was around 10 years old, I went down to the lake when I was on holiday. When I got down there, I vividly remember a massive ball of lightning just hovering. And then it struck the middle of the lake. I never ran so fast in my life. I went full speed all the way back to the little house we were staying in.
SheepishEffect
I was playing poker with a few friends. I was dealing and somehow managed to deal a royal flush on the board, giving every person a royal flush. This was well into our game and the cards were definitely well-shuffled. Don’t forget – I’d also placed the burn cards down. The odds of this are so astronomical that, apart from the friends I was playing with, no one will believe it happened.
Dotman_95
When I was a kid, they started putting missing children on milk cartons. Every morning for a few weeks, I would look at this boy’s face on the side of the milk while I ate my cereal.
Then one day a car went down my street while I was playing outside, and there was a boy in the back seat with his face up close to the window looking out. I’m 99% sure it was the boy from the milk carton. I told my parents but they didn’t believe me.
fafa_flunky
In the 1990s, I was such an exercise freak. I did at least 4 hours a day of walking and hillclimbing. I was getting cut off from current events, TV news, etc.
One day, I was on my way home around 3PM. I was crossing the street in front of our local grocery store when I saw this guy on the other side of the street. His hair was a mess, standing on end. His clothes were all over the place. Not ripped, but disarranged. It was like he walked out of a bomb blast, but he was clean somehow. He was looking around, silently, clearly confused.
Homeless people were pretty uncommon in that area, so I didn’t think he fit the bill on that score. Plus he didn’t seem to have a clue where he was. If he lived on the streets, it would stand to reason that he might know his way around the neighborhood.
That night I saw something on the local news that added to the mystery.
They said on the news that a school teacher a couple of towns away had drowned earlier that same afternoon. They flashed his picture. It was the man I saw. I’d swear to it.
vrosej10
I saw a man dressed as a confederate soldier walking down my street as I was heading home from work. There was a school bus coming and he stopped on the other side of the road, as if to let the bus pass before crossing. I stopped at the stop sign. We looked at each other, the bus passed, and then he was gone.
rayofkeywork
I don’t believe in alien invaders. I’m sure there’s life on other planets; it seems ridiculous that we’d be completely alone. But I imagine you couldn’t keep a visit from interplanetary species a secret.
That said, I swear to god I saw a tall thin, long armed, long legged thing walk from one wheat field across the road, in front of my car and over into the other field. I thought my eyes were just playing tricks on me so I didn’t say anything for a second but then my friend in the seat next to me said, “..wait… did you see something just now?”
No idea what it was but I saw. But it was something.
iftherewasanotherway
A chameleon escaped from a bag when my friend was giving it to me, and it leapt into a big pile of snow. I looked around for it for a while, but I couldn’t find it so I gave up. Several weeks later, the snow all melted and I found the lizard partially frozen to the ground. I peeled him off and put him in one of those little plastic tanks by the radiator in my house.
Within an hour or two the lizard was hopping around the cage like nothing ever happened. It lived for several years after that, and was known to my friend and I as Jesus the resurrection lizard.
enslavedbyvegetables
I’m in line at a cafeteria. The guy in front of me is holding a pudding cup. Someone walking by stumbles and falls into pudding cup guy, knocking his pudding cup out of his hand. While everyone is looking at the stumbling guy, the pudding cup goes a good two feet straight up in the air.
Pudding cup guy was totally focused, and at the last second he turned and caught the pudding cup behind his back. He looked at me, smiled and that was that. No one else saw it.
shardcommondale
I was at the airport. I saw a businessman with a carry-on wheely bag get off the escalator. He turned the corner and broke into a sprint carrying the bag by it’s small strap handle on top.
He swung the bag forward and let go of the strap handle. While it was in mid-air he grabbed the currently unextended extending handle, pressed the button and on the back swing extended the handle and landed it on its wheels and continued sprinting, all without breaking stride.
WildxYak
In 1994, on a farm in the southern Midwest US, five-year-old me had this huge yellow lab. She was the sweetest dog in the world, but one day she suddenly lost her mind barking and ran outside.
Being 5, I followed her and watched her run out into the cow pasture (where the cows were suspiciously nowhere in sight). Then I saw her start going toe-to-toe with a huge grey wolf.
That area at that time was definitely not wolf country. Coyote sure, but there is no way this thing was a coyote. This creature towered over my lab, and I had seen plenty enough coyotes before to know that this thing was not that. I was terrified.
My lab barked her head off right in his face. After about a minute, he tilted his head, turned around, and disappeared into the woods. We found all the cows at the opposite end of the pasture circled around the two calves we had. They were never that terrified of coyotes, and they had no fear of domestic dogs (my lab literally climbed over them when they laid down and would tug on their tails).
I will go to my grave saying it was a wolf I saw, but nobody believes me of course. I’ve spent years researching wolves and wolf hybrids but every picture I’ve seen of both the animal and the paw prints he left behind says it was very very very much more wolf than coyote or dog or even a mix.
WolfGirl94
I saw my neighbor walking down the road in a red party dress around 3AM. I wasn’t drunk or on anything. He denies it and the rest of the neighborhood thinks I’m making it up. I saw you Tim. You and I both know.
RabidRoosters
One day I was looking out the window of my office and four semi trucks drove past one after each other. They were in order Costco, Cosco, Cisco, Sysco. Half the people I mention it to don’t care and the other half don’t believe me.
crm115
Late to the party, but I’ll post my story. When I was about 7 or 8, I was at my grandmother’s house in WV to spend the night, along with my brother and sister. It was Friday night and we were watching old school TGIF. There was a knock on the door and I jumped up to answer it (my grandma was in her bedroom and didn’t hear it.)
I opened the door and no one was there. I stepped out and looked to the left and right. To the right, beside the door, my grandma kept a small table. Sitting on that table was a mandrill – one of those primates like Rafiki from The Lion King. I don’t remember it moving, I just saw it sitting there staring at me.
I freaked out and slammed the door. My grandma came running out and I told her there was a monkey outside. She, my brother, and sister ran to the door to see the monkey. I’ll never forget when I ran out. That table was empty. My grandma told me I shouldn’t tell tall tales.
That’s been over 20 years ago and my brother and sister still make fun of me for “seeing a monkey.” I’ve done google searches about mandrills escaped from the zoo in rural West Virginia, but no such luck.
Brenvol
I saw a bunch of crows, twenty or more, gather around in a circle. I took a closer look and saw three other crows in the middle of the circle, all on their backs. And some crows from the circle would hop in and try to peck at the three in the middle while they cawed and tried to defend themselves with their feet.
I know crows are smart and all but didn’t expect this level of social behavior. It went on for a while before a kid ran in and scattered them all.
poopellar
One time, when I was playing billiards with a friend, the cue ball passed right through one of the other balls like one of them was made of thin air. We both saw it, we both freaked out. For reference, the cue ball was teetering on the edge of a pocket, and was physically blocked off by the other ball. There was no possible way to strike the cue ball without hitting the other ball, yet somehow, the cue ball went through it like it wasn’t even there.
I like to attribute it to a glitch in the Matrix.
Laurcus
I saw a white light hover in the distance between two mountains. It moved up, then down.
At that point, I called my buddies outside to watch it. We witnessed it move side to side, then in a perfect clockwise circle, then counterclockwise. Next it started doing tight figure eights one way, then back the other way. We watched it then move diagonally to the left then back to centre, diagonally right and then back to centre.
During this, we discussed the possibilities of what it could be, a helicopter, a skilled pilot, a series of spotlights? The speed at which it moved and the fact it didn’t waver slightly and the fact the motion was so fluid left us without an explanation.
As we discussed and watched the movements, the light moved even faster up, down and diagonally. It the sped off to the right at a speed we could barely focus on. It was now about three kilometres on the other side of the mountain and then suddenly it took off straight up and out towards the stars till it was gone.
builditup123
I was at my mom’s side when she passed away. I swear, seconds before she departed, I heard her and my grandmother (who had died in the 80s) behind me. Mom said, “I really look awful,” and Grandma said, “It’s time to go.” I turned around but the sun was coming in through the window so a little bright. It was at that very moment that mom passed away.
discogeek
I was snorkelling in Hawaii once, and I swear I saw something that looked like a clear chameleon, but as soon as I got close it buried itself in the sand. I still vividly remember discovering a new species.
willstuh
When I was about twelve, I was riding in the back seat of the family car. I looked over and the car next to me had three people sitting in the front. It was a man, woman and another man. In that order. At the stop light, the woman leaned down and the two men leaned in and started making out.
This was the 1980s, and it was the first time I had ever seen anything like this. I was so confused.
vsmile13