Contents

Introduction

A Coffee in a French Surreal Café

A Meal at a Flying Saucer Restaurant

Meeting Old Friends (?) at a Ruby Tuesday’s Restaurant

Weird Places in Idaho

Whole Town Disappeared?

Ice Cream in a Non-Existing Town

No Drink for Snow Boarders in the French Alps

Introduction

I think that some experiences that seem very realistic, although a little strange, are actually orchestrated by certain non-human beings. They might be a certain type, race or kind of aliens, or maybe the traditional Faires/Elves/Sidhe. They are able to control the brain/minds of an entire group of people inside their cars while they are driving on the road, making them believe they have a very real experience of visiting a cafe or restaurant. This would imply that the mind of all these people were put together into a single holographic (by lack of a better term) projection/environment/experience. A hologram or virtual reality in which one can walk around and that is interactive with the strange beings.

All this is happening while driving and sitting in a car on a busy road, or maybe they unknowingly parked to the side and sat in the car the whole time while being in this kind of trance.

Then there is the question “Why?”. Why would certain beings go to the trouble of putting an entire group of people through the same experience in a virtual reality or holographic environment? Was something else going on with those people? Did the apparent experience serve as a screen memory to hide a real experience they are not supposed to know about? We hear a lot about screen memories in alien abduction cases, although these are very simple in comparison with the stories below. Or are these aliens, or fairies, just having fun with the humans?

I wonder how many more of these intricate, complex mind experiences other people have gone through without realizing that what they thought was real actually never happened in our physical world. As you can see in these stories, there are always elements that do not fit in our normal human world. This suggests that these beings do their best to create a faithful replica or our world, but there will always be elements that do not match, and will be noticed as strange or weird by the human participants. Maybe they do this even on purpose.

There are some indications that the entire event might be carried out by special technology these beings posses, such as an artificial intelligence (IA), which can construct seamlessly a preprogrammed event and beam it into the brains of unwitting persons, who take the entire experience for real.

A Coffee in a French Surreal Café

The following is a story I found in an early 80s Dutch paranormal magazine. It is the experience of Dutch "paragnost" (=psychic) Andre Groote. I have included it here, with his permission, because it brings up the interesting concept of an altered reality. His experience dates from 1972.

Our vacation in France was coming to an end. We (Andre, his brother and sister-in-law) were getting bored with the city of Nice, going daily from the hotel to the beach and from the beach to the hotel. Every night we had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where we could eat for half-price because we committed to the entire week. Halfway through we regretted it, but a promise is a promise, so we stayed.
We left early in the morning, taking a different route from the one we had arrived by. A large part of this route would take us through the French Alps. The first night we spent in something you could hardly call a hotel - a fruit juice bar would be a better name. We were having a chat at our table after dinner was finished when the owner of the place joined us. Up to that moment he had spoken correct French to us. Suddenly he started to speak German. He acted like I was someone from the Israeli Secret Service, and he started to excuse himself for his war past. I looked at him and thought: it is not possible that a man with such kind eyes has done such bad things. He gave the impression that I had been after him all his life and that in the end, he had decided to stop running away from me. He was looking for forgiveness. He spent an entire hour telling me everything he had done wrong. We were all perplexed, and I no longer recall what I replied. It probably did some good, since after all what did I have to forgive him for? Was there some connection to my memory of the ghetto of Warschau, where I had lived with my brother? We sat at the table looking at the man. While he talked it was as if he was fading slowly before our eyes, as if the entire scene was unreal, but the next day when we woke up, we were still in the same fruit juice bunker. However, the German Frenchman had disappeared. It was as if he had never existed, and that was how it felt too.
This day would be one of the strangest days of our lives. All of the following happened that morning. We left the hotel and stopped shortly to get gas, after which our car acted like there was something wrong with it. We couldn't understand it. There was almost no traffic. By the time we realized that nothing was the matter with the car, we saw a mountaintop covered with snow on our right. We had gained a lot of altitude, the car was all right. Upon arriving at the highest point, traffic resumed, and we decided to have some coffee. Suddenly I said: "Here!". My brother, Ben, stopped immediately; we were in front of a low house. A very small sign said "Café". To the left of the house was a slightly taller barn. Hay hung out from two open doors on the second story. It was a strange French house, little windows, a low green door. We all had to duck to enter. Once inside we went to the table near the window. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. In the direction where the kitchen ought to be, there was a curtain instead of a door. It was such a weird place. On the table was nothing except an ashtray, in Delft blue, with the word 'Indien' on it. This object intrigued me enormously because I had never seen one in France before. Even stranger, in each corner of the room was a very thin little shelf with a huge boulder on it. One would expect it to crash at any moment. The other strange thing is that we didn't even go up to have a look at it from close by. Instead we just sat at the table as if petrified. We had already been sitting there for a while, and still no one had shown up. We were also surprised to notice that suddenly it was so still. We no longer heard anything from outside. It was a strange, unreal silence. The first sound we heard was that from a parrot. Then we heard more parrots. Then we heard many bird songs. It was as if a choir in the distance gradually approached. We had the feeling we were in the middle of a jungle. We experienced all this without speaking to each other.
After the first movement of the curtain in the door opening, the head of a yellow cat appeared, looked at us, and withdrew. The curtain was gently pushed aside and the strangest being I have ever seen stepped through. A woman? Yes, but she had the kind of wispy beard as an adolescent might have, and a moustache. And legs! Such beautiful legs I had never seen in my life before. I couldn't tell her age. Her skin was light and ageless, almost gray. She came up to our table and asked with a very soft voice what we wanted to order. Although none of us can speak French, we all understood her perfectly. We realized this much later. We ordered coffee and she disappeared behind the curtain. Magda got our attention by calling out in a surprised voice: "Look at that!" We looked in the direction she pointed. Through the window we saw a garden full of tropical plants and flowering cactuses. You must understand that we were high up in the French Alps, and we had never seen so many tropical plants and cactuses.
Magda had to go to the bathroom, but she didn't dare to go outside. So Ben went outside to look for the bathroom. He was gone for quite a while. When he came back, he sat down cautiously and whispered to me: "You really have to go out to the bathroom, because I have never seen anything like that before." "What do you mean?" I asked him. "I don't really know, but it looks that there is a flying saucer behind the house. It looks like a bit peppermint, missing a corner, a Menthos peppermint. Even the color is exactly the same, white with gray. There is no opening." From that moment we felt even stranger, and I didn't really want to go outside to have a look. Although everything was peaceful, I had an eerie feeling. Then we all began to get very cold, and although Magda had to go urgently to the bathroom, she didn't want to go. The coffee hadn't arrived yet and I think we had been sitting there for some 25 minutes.
I finally decided to have a look outside for myself. It was completely silent, there was no traffic at all. The garden was fantastic. Even on the mountain side there were cactuses, and it smelled delicious. The bathroom looked like a picturesque little house, and the huge Menthos was there, invisible from the road because it was behind the house on a kind of big table with three legs. After having a look first at the objects, I thought: it looks like mattress foam, a kind of foam plastic. However, when I touched it, it felt as hard as stone. It was an incomprehensible object. And the corner that was missing was not to be found anywhere near. It really looked like a constructed flying saucer, as if it were a museum piece from long ago. I went back inside. The woman still hadn't shown up, and the three of us felt as if we were totally alone in that house, because the bird choir was gone too.
But shortly after I came back, the elf came in to bring the coffee in a beautiful coffee set, all of it in the same Delft Blue as the ashtray. The coffee tasted like everything except coffee, nevertheless it was delicious. Magda was getting more and more anxious with the moment. Normally she is always cool in any situation, but this time she couldn't handle it and wanted to leave as soon as possible. I called the woman, who had disappeared behind the curtain. "Madame, could we get the bill please?" But she didn't come. So we put some francs on the table, left the place and drove on. A strange thing happened to me when we left. As we drove away in the car, I saw, psychically, a white figure in the opening of the hay barn. It didn't look at all like the woman from the house; this one had blond hair and was dressed in a long, white dress.
"When we drove away, all three of us were icy cold. Back on the road, and having driven for about a minute, we were suddenly amazed that traffic on the road was so intense. We couldn't understand it. How was that possible? Sitting inside the house we didn't hear any cars. Back on the road it was busy. Had this been real? We had to know. At first, it was as if we were not allowed to turn around to have a look.
"Only a couple of kilometers further on we got the strength to turn the car around. A very strange thing happened. Suddenly a life-size cook, with cap, white shirt and arms outspread, stood at the side of the road.
"We drove back, but we were unable to find the place and the house. We knew for certain that we hadn't come from a side road. It was on the main road that we had drunk coffee in a paranormal house with non-existent beings, plants and a UFO. I can assure you that we drove back at least 20 kilometers, and then back again on the same road to find that particular place. There was nothing else than the road and the French Alps, without cactuses. Late in the evening we went to a hotel somewhere in Germany. We were hungry; as if we had used enormous amounts of energy. We ate almost as much food that evening as we had during our entire vacation.

A Meal at a Flying Saucer Restaurant

Recently I found another story, eerily similar to the above story, from an even earlier date that was published in The Apro Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 12 (1982):

An article in a March, 1982 edition of the National Enquirer pointed out the possibility that there may exist a proliferation of latent abduction cases (i.e., reports of UFO abductions which have not come to light because the "abductee" is unaware of the experience). APRO's address was given as an agency which suspected abductees could contact, which resulted in a literal flood of letters.

Most of the letters are interesting, many from people who had experienced dreams about UFOs, unusual interest in UFOs, etc. One of the more interesting letters came from a woman in a Western state (we are withholding her identity and location to protect her from unwanted mail, telephone calls and curiosity seekers in general). However, the general gist of her experience and that of her companions is as follows:

"I know I was in a UFO," she writes. "The time was July 2, 1953 or 1954. I was on a vacation in Oregon along with my mother, brother, sister, two daughters and stepdaughter, and two nephews." She then goes on to say that small events from the trip have been "coming back" to her and she has discussed them with her mother on occasion. Her brother has the conviction that from the time their group "entered the place" until they left, and were well down the road, they were probably "programmed."

The lady was driving on US 97 in Oregon and had noted that the gas gauge showed that the car was getting low on gas so she was watching for a cafe or a gas station. They were driving in hills, about 10 miles south of the 97/138 Junction, and came around a bend in the road and saw a big, round-shaped restaurant, all lit up. As soon as the car got close, the engine sputtered and stopped, whereupon they coasted into the "beautiful covered parking area," where 3 or 4 other cars were parked.

The place had exceptionally bright lights, Mrs. R. said, and when they entered the building they found themselves in a circular enclosure where everything was well lit, very bright and the walls seemed like mirrors. The group sat at a table of a kind she had never seen before; it appeared to be made of glass or plexiglass.

After they were seated, the children all decided to go to the rest rooms and left the table. Mrs. R's brother, Cliff, beckoned to his sister to come over to where he was standing and looking into another room. The two looked into a big, round room and said it appeared as if it was going to be made into a cocktail lounge or dance floor. It was a huge, round room with lots of windows around it about two feet from the ceiling.

The family did not remember having seen the "restaurant" before and assumed it was a new establishment just being built up close to the summit of the peak they were driving to. They were, at the time, southeast of Crater Lake, Oregon.

The "people" in the restaurant were all blonde and "petite" and Mrs. R. recalls that they all looked alike. She does not recall any conversation but it seemed that they all ordered and ate a meal. The waiter and waitress at their table were about 4 1/2 feet tall and slender. All of the "people" in the establishment were wearing silver uniforms and boots, the latter of which had black trim of some kind around the edges of the soles and the heels were black. There was an emblem on the front of the boot, but she does not remember specifically what it was.

Mrs. R. remembers telling her mother that the place was "really unbelievable," and asked the waitress where she got the uniform, and the girl answered, but she (Mrs. R.) does not recall what she said. Mrs. R. recalls that the voices of the "people" she talked with were soft and musical.

Mrs. R. says she recalls picking up their ticket and going to a round-shaped cage-type place to pay the bill. The group then left and got in the car which didn't start, but sort of "coasted" out to the highway. She also remembers her mother telling her that they had better find a gas station as soon as possible. Partway down the hill as they went around a curve, the car started by itself. She discovered she had over 1/2 tank of gas, so she decided that they could drive into Chenult and gas up there.

When they arrived at the intersection connecting with the Crater Lake road (State 138), there were two snow plows and a truck. Workmen were plowing out the road to the lake, and told Mrs. R. and her family that they had to have it open for the 4th of July traffic. She asked one of the men when the new big cafe had been built up on top of the hill, about 8 or 10 miles away, and the man looked at her "as if I was a nut or something." She explained that they had just stopped and eaten there and asked how far it was to the nearest gas station. The man said it was about 10 miles to Chenult.

When they arrived at Chenult all the children got out of the car and ran for the rest rooms and Mrs. R's stepdaughter pointed out that she had left her purse at the restaurant. After they had gassed up, they all got back into the car and headed back to the cafe.

Mrs. R. drove back along the route but when they got to where she thought the restaurant was located, they couldn't find it. Her brother suggested that perhaps she had taken the wrong road, but Mrs. R. explains that there was no other road. They drove on for some distance but never did find the cafe, so they drove on back to Chenult.

When they arrived at Chenult, the snow plows they had seen earlier at the junction were parked there, and the men were in the cafe. The family stopped and ate, but every time they tried to mention the cafe up on the summit, the people gave them strange looks, and when they left, the people seemed glad to see them leave.

Mrs. R. says she is sure that she and her family were in a UFO. It didn't register with her at the time, but occasionally since, she and her mother, especially, have discussed the strange experience. Then, about two years ago, when she brought up the subject to her mother, her mother said: "Yes, I remember, but sometimes when I think of it now I have a funny feeling, like maybe we were a surprise to them (the "people" in the cafe)."

This one incident allegedly took place about 28 or 29 years ago. Mrs. R. is now 61 years of age, her mother is 82, the brother 44, the daughters 39, 41 and 42. Her sister is 39 and a nephew is 35 or 36. The other nephew is deceased.

Mrs. R. says that the recall really started in about 1969, and she had discussed the incident in great detail (as much as is possible) with her mother, one daughter and her brother. Details have become clearer with the passage of time. She has been back to the area several times but has never found anything which would account for their experience. She also remembers that after visiting the "cafe," and arriving at Chenult, she found she had the same amount of money she had had before the visit to the cafe, and concluded that they hadn't stopped anywhere.

Meeting Old Friends (?) at a Ruby Tuesday’s Restaurant

I found, by accident, another story that shares the same characteristics of the two stories in the above. It is on the Reddit website, posted in 2013. I wonder who is behind this phenomenon. It is clearly orchestrated by someone. It does remind me of the old stories of the Fairies (the tall human-looking fairies or elves, also called the Sidhe) who would sometimes allow an unsuspecting wanderer into their realm and castle to eat and drink, and sometimes dance. In our modern days nobody believes in that anymore, and a side-road restaurant is more in line with present-day Americans. Are we dealing with the same kind of beings having fun with humans? Anyway here is the Reddit post:

My best friend found this subreddit. He told me I need to share this story. It’s kind of weird and unbelievable. I have no proof it happened, but if you want to hear a story…gather around.

In the winter of 2009 my brother and I took a road trip from Portland, Oregon to Port St Lucie, Florida and back again. We made the trip to visit my sister who lives in Port St Lucie. She and her husband just had their first child and my brother and I were excited to see the newborn.

On the trip to Port St Lucie we took a combination of freeways from the northwest all the way down to the southeast corner (basically a diagonal route), but several times throughout our voyage we were tremendously delayed by snow. The trip which should have taken no more than three days ended up taking five. Because of this delay, we had to cut short our visit with our sister’s family.

On the trip back to Portland we decided to take I-10 the entire way. This stretch of freeway runs all the way from Florida to Los Angeles and would completely keep us away from the snow. The I-10 route added several hundred miles, but we both needed to be home for work the following Monday, and this was a sure fire way not to be delayed.

The first day of the return trip was uneventful, but we did manage to drive 1,300 miles from Port St Lucie to San Antonio before stopping for the night. The plan was to make it all the way to Las Vegas the next night, which would leave us with about a fourteen hour final day drive. The trip was going well. It wasn’t until we left San Antonio that the glitches started happening.

The car we took on this trip was a 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid. The entire trip we had been getting right around 35mpg (this is digitally displayed on the dash), so we had become very aware of how many miles we could squeeze out of a tank. We knew to refuel around 350 miles, but we also knew we could stretch that number into the low 400’s if need be.

About 100 miles outside San Antonio, I notice the fuel gauge was dropping noticeably faster than usual, so I clicked the button to change the dashboard display only to see the car was getting barley 26mpg. At first I was shocked, but I reasoned it to possibly driving uphill the entire way (I still don’t know)? I thought throughout the course of an entire tank of fuel that it would eventually balance itself out and we would finish the tank within that 35mpg range. I was wrong.

I kept a very detailed log of this entire trip, and this one stop in Fort Stockton, Texas is the only anomaly in the entire book. The car which had consistently held around 35mpg suddenly finished an entire tank off at 25.8mpg. That is over 100 mile difference in the vehicles normal range. I still to this day cannot figure out why there was such a drastic shift in fuel consumption in that 300 mile stretch from San Antonio. I’ve reflected on that tank of gas several times since this happened, and I have almost come to the conclusion that it was an intentional glitch in order to make us pullover where we did.

Our original plan was to refuel about 50 miles later in a town that I cannot remember, but we obviously ran short on fuel. Anyway, with our GPS programmed to Las Vegas, Nevada, we headed back onto the road in which the GPS directed. Pretty soon after we got back on the road we realized we were no longer on I-10 heading west, instead we were north on highway 285 (here’s a TIL for some people. Evenly numbered highways and freeways are heading East/West while odds are north/south). We didn’t think much about being off the interstate because many times throughout the drive we had been directed onto bypass highways. We assumed this was just another such instance.

After about an hour and a half of driving on highway 285 we crossed into New Mexico, which was about two hours earlier than we should have crossed the border. By this time we realized the GPS thought this was a more efficient way to go to Vegas even though by all accounts it is about an hour faster if we had stayed on the 10. We were annoyed, but decided to just stick it out with the GPS and keep heading north through New Mexico.

Nearly five hours after refueling in Fort Stockton, my brother and I were hungry and decided it was time to find somewhere to eat. Driving through this part New Mexico is kind of lonely. There are very few towns, and where there are towns, they are small and on the verge of becoming ghosts. I think their economies are built around helping travelers fill up their gas tanks. Other than that, I cannot see a reason for them to exist.

My brother and I have talked about what happened next so many times, but we still cannot figure it all out. We passed through a small town with a couple gas stations and we know the town was named Vaughn, NM, and then about 20 miles later we drove through a town call Encino, NM which did not have a gas station (that we can recall). In fact, the second town didn’t really seem to have much there if anything. I wasn’t sure if anyone was living there. I seem to remember questioning why it existed in the first place, but then quickly dismissing it and driving right through.

Not even ten miles after passing through Encino, NM, we surprisingly came upon a city/town that wasn’t loaded in the GPS. This wasn’t a big deal, because I was using a cheap handheld that lost its signal all the time, but usually the only things it didn’t display were newly built roads and recent construction areas. This city was definitely not brand new, so I figured the GPS was being buggy. The oddest part of finding this city, neither of us remembers seeing any warning we were coming up on a town of this size. It had several fast food joints, restaurants, hotels, motels, grocery store (Albertsons maybe) and even some bars. If I were to guess, I would say this city was roughly 10-20k people.

We decided to pull off and grab a bite to eat. Normally we probably would have grabbed some fast food, but my brother saw a Ruby Tuesday’s and really wanted to try it out. There were a couple Ruby Tuesday’s around the Portland area at the time, but neither of us had been there. We had just heard they had a pretty good salad bar, and I guess my brother was in the mood for something other than fast food. I went along with the suggestion because I was sick of eating junk.

((((((for the rest of this story, I will be N and my brother will be G)))))

We pulled into the Ruby Tuesday’s parking lot, got out of the car and walked in the restaurant. Immediately upon entering a waitress who was milling around the hostess station says, ‘Oh my word, is that N and G?’ Both my brother and I answered that it was indeed us, and the waitress went on to ask how life was in Portland. Suddenly it clicked, this girl knows who we are, but we are over 1,000 miles from home. Did we know her from back home?

My brother and I both gave very basic vague answers to her question, and I could tell she was kind of unsettled that my brother and I were being evasive. When we were seated, my brother immediately asked me where we knew her from, which was the same question I was going to ask him. I told him that I had no idea who she was, and that she obviously had mistaken us with some other people. Not more than a minute later this guy bartender comes up and says, “No fucking way, G and N. You back for jobs?”

What? My brother went on to tell the guy they had us mistaken with some other people. He laughed and dismissed my brother’s response as a joke. The bartender continued on seamlessly and started asking us how we fared in the three month anatomy and physiology course we had taken at Oregon State.

I remember thinking all of the sudden; this is not a coincidence anymore. My brother and I had taken a three month 15 credit A&P class at Portland State University when we were in our early 20’s (We were late 20’s when this interaction happened). Finally, I asked the guy exactly where they knew us from, and he just kind of paused and started looking me over. Then he said, “Oh damn, you guys just look really similar to some people that used to work here.”

He apologized and claimed he had to get back to work. After a bit, our food came and my brother and I noticed they had switched out our waitresses from the girl who recognized us when we walked in. That wasn’t a big deal, although a bit strange. Next a guy who I can only guess was the manager starts walking over to our table with a big smile on his face. As he gets within about ten feet of us he kind of starts looking over my head and stops. I think someone behind me was directing him not to talk to us. After he received the message he sharply turned 90 degrees and walked away without saying a word.

This had quickly become the most awkward meal of our lives. It went from people acting like it was a celebration for us to have shown up to everyone avoiding eye contact with us at all cost. After we finished up with our meals the waitress came told us the cash registers were frozen and that our meal was on the house.

I really wanted to ask the waitress what the name of the city was that we were in, but I also really wanted to get out of there. After leaving the restaurant we were running pretty low on gas, so I decided to refuel before we got back on the highway. I assumed the name of the city would be printed on the receipt. We were not that lucky.

This city strip was a one way road on the eastern side of the highway. When we left Ruby Tuesday’s the only way to turn was right, and it headed straight back to northbound 285. In order to refuel I would have to head north on the one way street and turn right on a side street to head back to the southern part of town to the gas station. The only available right hand turn off that one way street was closed so I was forced back onto the highway without fueling up. About 20 minutes later we found a truck stop at the intersection of 285 and I-40 where we finally filled up.

The rest of the trip was very ordinary. We talked at length about how weird that Ruby Tuesday’s was in the middle of New Mexico. We came up with solutions about how we had doppelgangers with the same names. We joked about how people that look similar follow the exact same paths in life regardless of their upbringing. We talked ourselves into it being a major coincidence. When we finally got back to Portland we decided to do a little research and find out the name of this town.

Here is the google maps picture of that stretch of highway.

http://i.imgur.com/sY3NB89.jpg

We know we refueled at a truck stop at the intersection of 285 and I-40, which means that we had to have passed through Vaughn and Encino, so there should be a city between the truck stop and Encino. I don’t see anywhere on the regular map or the satellite map where this little city could possibly be. We have never really been able to answer what happened that day. I can still vividly remember the waitress’s face of unease by the way my brother and I were behaving, the bartenders’ voice change when he figured out we were not the people he thought we were, and thinking the manager looked identical to the actor Ken Moreno. My brother and I know this stuff happened, but we have never been able to find the solution.

Weird Places in Idaho

The following is a really interesting story of a family traveling through Idaho and coming upon three strange places. It does not involve a restaurant or cafe, but the story is similar in that sense that it involved getting food (this time milk) in a lodge with strange people, and a rest-stop along a road with 'invisible' beings. Although the family did not go back to check out the place, the lady in question did notice that the scenery was not real.

My name is Jen. My husband Justin and I were traveling to Idaho to go to Silverwood. I had never been in Idaho. I was very familiar with the area. It was extraordinary hot on a July weekend. We had our three children with us. We were trying to find a place to stay and camping. I don't know how we got so lost on the trail. We went through long paths and roads, into this lodge. This lodge was just weird. I can't even explain it. It looked like some cute little country place, like an old Western like situation, in the middle of the woods. You walk into it and it felt like some weird Steven King movie, like when you walk in you feel you know everybody from somewhere or there is some type of significance to them. I went in to get our daughter milk, because it was so hot that the milk we had in the car was not safe to give. So I go in to ask for milk in a cup, and I notice that this one man who behind the counter in the bar, kept on looking at me and staring at me. I see the Seattle Mariners umbrella in a corner by the newspapers. I don't know why, but I keep looking at it the entire time I am waiting to get this milk. We are from the Seattle area, driven out from Lake Ontario in Washington state. It was just weird. The people. Everything took so long. I couldn't figure out the significance of the people just staring at me. As I had walked in, there were a lot of people outside in a pick-nick area. They were having a pick-nick or a party or something. There were about twenty to thirty people out there. I didn't take much notice of it when I went inside, but they all had guns on their side. Being in the lodge took forever. I paid four dollars for the cup of milk. I talked to the gentleman. I told him my whole life story. That is how long I was there. By the time I came out the kids and my husband were tired. The people from the pick-nick area came up to the lodge entrance where I was. I went from being where nobody was to all those people with guns. They were acting strange. I say “hey”. Nobody wanted to talk; it was just that body language. Everybody was approaching slowly, like in some weird zombie movie. I was very happy to get back into the truck. As soon as I did, my husband Justin pointed out: “Did you notice that they were all carrying guns?” I guessed that we would find out later. Maybe a gun law had passed in that state, and they were happy carrying guns. But it was so weird. We had to figure out our camping spot, and a store, so we don't have to pay for it in a lodge or so when our daughter need it again. It was so hot, the kids were complaining. I don't even know how much further we traveled. It was like forever, I would say miles and miles. The roads became thinner. There were some great places that we both wished that we had taken pictures off. The roads were so thin, at one site huge dips and trees, and everything. It was really neat. We went further and further down the road. My husband said “he there is a little lake we can go down to.” We went down a road, that was less exciting, less maintained, and then we found mobiles, and trailers and small houses. As we went down the lake, it was like the hills have eyes, that kind of crap. Things were just weird. People we encountered were definitely unique and weird. I don't know how to describe it. We had that overwhelming feeling that we cannot stay here. We were trying to find a place to turn around, because we had that urgent feeling to get out of here. It felt like 'wrong turn' kind of situation. We had to get out. As we were leaving we are back on the road, but we realized that we were not going back the way we came in. There was only one option. How did that happen? It felt like we were traveling forever, to find a camping spot. Then we hit a rest area along the side of the road. I told my husband “Finally, something seems familiar.” This actually seems like a rest-stop, not some weird place with a bunch of people and not populated with some interesting things, weird signs, or warning signs. We finally got to what seems to be a nice restaurant, with a beautiful view. Or so I thought. We get out of the car. My oldest daughter travels into the bathroom. It was in the shape of a hexagon. Or an octagon. Like a yurt or something. It was only a toilet, one that you could not flush. No sink. No windows. There is large block wall, and I am peering out to all the beautiful forest and everything. My husband also wants to go to the bathroom, so he travels further down the path. He figures he let the girl using the restroom, and he and his dog went down to go to the bathroom further down. He finished doing his bathroom. He looks at a post explaining the things are going on this area, and then he feels this presence behind him. He turns around to say “I am sorry”, when he realizes this person is translucent. The person doesn't look like he is wearing a clear suit or something. I am still standing on the rock, not realizing what he experienced. I am realizing that everything I am looking at is like a green screen. I felt like if I had a slingshot, I could have flung something out there and hit something that is supposed to look to be so far away. It looked like huge screens in front of me, at least three. You really had to look to find the seam. I was trying to show my husband Justin when he came back up the path. He looked like he had seen a ghost. He was sweating, and he looked scared. He looked like he had seen a ghost. And me, I wanted to tell him “look, it is not even real, everything I thought was so wonderful.” In the mean while he didn't even pay attention to me. He was going through his own thing. He explained to me that he was scared, that he wanted to leave. He tried to tell me what he saw. The dog had run off way ahead of him. He said “I saw someone that wasn't even there.” He was freaking out. While he was trying to convey this to me, he asks where is (our oldest daughter) Ashley. I am saying that she is in the bathroom. While I am saying this (we were not that long there, maybe four or five minutes) she starts screaming. She said she saw somebody in the bathroom. There is no window. I have been standing there at the side where there is the entrance. I would not leave her alone, my other two kids were asleep in the car. She said “Mom, there was somebody in here, I don't know where it went. The door was shut, I was there the whole time. I don't know how she saw it. Later on she said she saw someone just like what appeared to Justin and then disappeared. I hadn't seen anyone, but when I went into the bathroom, and it is huge and echoing, to check on her and her situation, on what was going on, I felt that someone was there. Something like out of Harry Potter, someone is there breathing but you can hear them but you cannot see them. I could have said “Everything is fine, honey, there is nobody here.”, but that would have been a complete lie. Then Justin screamed “Let's go, let's go!” he wanted out of there, the car was already started. He got the dog, we barely jumped in and shut the door. I didn't even have the chance to get my safety belt on. I asked him what was the matter. Up to that point he hadn't explained everything to me. In the car we all started sharing what we had experienced. The moment he said that about the guy in the suit, I said “Yeah, there are indeed invisible.” You can't see anything, but I could feel somebody else's present. I could hear somebody breathing. I wish we had stayed or gone back, because I wanted answers, just the green screen alone. I could see the scenes. I was trying to point it out, but he didn't really want to look. He wanted to tell me what he experienced. There were people there that you couldn't see. There is a presence. I felt I was in this trance. I wanted to figure out more about this place. I was ready to explore more. My daughter and husband were like “No, no way”. We had such a strange experience when trying to find something for camping. It was the 4th of July weekend. We extended our stay because our girls were on summer break. They had never been to Idaho. I thought this would be awesome. We ended up so freaked our about Idaho. We drove out of Idaho into Montana, where I had never been before, just to sleep at a rest-stop, because we were so scared, and we didn't want to stay anywhere in Idaho. We have never returned since. I was crazy. I felt like some type of weird government place, something we were not supposed to see. The whole way home, this was hours and hours, we hit eastern Washington, the Spokane area, and I didn't feel fully safe. I felt like we learned to much. We stumbled upon something we shouldn't know. Everything was out of weird movies. I can name five or six movies, and I can put them all together. That is what we were living. I still think about the faces that were in that lodge, and all the people that were just staring at me. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Even the bartender, he seemed very young; he probably wasn't even old enough to serve alcohol. He kept me there so long, he kept asking so many personal questions. I told my husband I felt so stupid that I shared so much with him. It felt that it was all part of the same kind of thing, something we weren't supposed to do. The fact that we were so scared to go back that way. How was it possible that there was only one way in, and we went out another way (I guess she refers to the lake area). It felt very twilight zone.

Source: Expanded Perspectives podcast Seeing is Believing

Whole Town Disappeared?

In the following account, it is a Love's stop along a highway where they purchased some food. Nothing unusual happened, except that a woman complimented him on his looks. However no purchases showed up on the credit card of his friend. That is something a man would remember. Love's refers to Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores (commonly referred to as Love's) which is a North American chain of truck stop and convenience stores in the United States.

Okay guys. I'm a huge skeptic on these things. But something happened. I about once a month make a drive from NYC down to TN. I always go thru Virginia on 81. I love the gas station Loves. I will typically only stop there for gas and a rest. One time I was driving to TN with my bestie & saw a sign for a Loves. We of course stopped. This little town was right before Roanoke VA and called Sharpe. We went in and used the bathroom. Even spoke to a woman and she complimented my looks. Got some snacks, checked out & made our way on. There were lots of people there. Cars, getting gas. A dairy queen, a Exxon next door. I mean just so normal!!! I stopped at the next Loves as well in Grahams Forge (max meadows) Fast forward to my next road trip down a month later. There isn't many stops in Virginia and I knew I was getting closer to Roanoke so that there would be a sign coming up soon for that Loves in Sharpe. It never came up. I went on thru Roanoke and stopped at a Shell there. When I went in I was so confused. Went to the bathroom and searched for probably 20 minutes for this. Pulled out my GPS, Google, etc. Nothing about Sharpe!! No loves has ever been in that area. Never even anywhere near that area. There has never been a loves near there on 81. I asked the lady at the front and she was like, no def does not exist. I haven't seen it since. Just that one time. What is happening!?? I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since it happened about 3 months ago. It's starting to drive me nuts!! This is not an illusion. I don't have any history of mental illness. My friend also remembers this stop and she was so freaked out that she actually started crying and just was terrified as we distinctly remember this stop because a woman stopped me and told me how beautiful she thought I was and we talked about how sweet she was. I'm just freaked out y'all. After this incident my mind has been opened you can say and I've noticed other things (mandela effect type stuff which I know isn't allowed here). someone please weigh in. I'm so freaked out I made this profile just to get insight. Thx in advance! (Reddit)

In the comment section, he remarks:

Funny enough, my friend used her card. And she has also been so weirded out by this. She got all her transactions mailed to her. She saw Love's purchases, but we were able to search all the store numbers and found them. We didn't see any unknown store numbers. So basically we didn't see anything for the Sharpe Loves. Which freaked her out even more, and I've been freaked out.

Ice Cream in a Non-Existing Town

The following also qualifies for this article because the town is also on a highway, and the family stopped to eat ice cream, which is another food activity.

For various reasons, I don't believe that reality is stationary. I've had too many incidents that would indicate that not just my reality...but REALITY as a whole has changed. I once came across a town in Colorado that didn't exist. I was southwest of Denver on Hwy 285 (an area I've been very familiar with my whole life) when on one occasion my then-husband, myself, and my two daughters came upon a town that didn't belong there. But there it was.

I was astonished to see an entire functioning town that I had never seen before, with people, houses, and cars. I saw no school, but there was a post office. We noticed a couple of interesting shops, so we stopped and walked around. We had ice cream, and sat wondering where on Earth we were. I don't recall the name of the town now, but at the time I went so far as to write it down. Later, when I checked on a better map than the one we had in the car, I confirmed that the town did not exist. And let's not forget that this is a part of the state that I knew like the back of my hand for 20 years prior to this! To say this was interesting is an understatement. Of course on other trips through the area, the town was not there.

It could be said that when we discovered the town that wasn't there, we had taken a wrong turn. This explanation is just not a possibility. I know that often enough things like that can happen, but this was not one of those times. (Reality Shifters)

No Drink for Snow Boarders in the French Alps

In the following experience, the British snowboarders didn't actually eat or drink, but the story is valid to be included here because the pub was the only building with people, and thus the only place of interaction. interesting too is the change in the environment before and after going through this village. In the comment section the writer clarifies that "It was Les Arcs in the French Alps. It was over ten years ago so can't remember the specifics of what lift we were near at the time, although I do remember we were staying in the resort at 1600 metres, but the path we took was much higher up the mountain." 

This happened about twelve years ago when myself and three friends went skiing together in our late teens. We were actually snowboarders, and at a reasonably advanced level for our age. There was a school ski trip going to the same area as us, but being slightly more advanced than most of the school and as we were in sixth form and all legal adults in the eyes of the law, We decided to go to the same resort at the same time, but independent from the school. The teachers weren't happy as they essentially had no control over us on the trip, so we could stay out drinking or go off exploring by ourselves and not have them to answer to.

We had been out boarding for the day when the school party made the decision to go home due to reports of a 'storm' on the way. The storm turned out to not be so bad, so we decided to persevere. We had picked a point on the map that we were trying to reach, somewhere high if I remember correctly, but eventually the weather started getting the better of us, and we were stuck in the middle of a white-out. For those of you haven't ski'd in a white-out, it's essentially blizzard conditions where you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. Not ideal for snowboarding to the say the least.

I remember the four of us had gotten off a frozen chair lift and boarded down to a little ridge where a sign post was directing us to all the nearest available pistes. I can't remember which one of us made the decision, but we somehow ended up ignoring the signs that would have taken us down the side of the mountain we all knew and instead took a different route, down the other side of the mountain. This is where it gets weird.

The piste wasn't a very well maintained one, no markers near the edge and it was very narrow, so we had to go two at a time. It wasn't even part of the colour coded piste system (blue for easy, red for intermediate, black for advanced). Not long after we set off, the blizzard conditions stopped. That wasn't that strange, weather on the mountains can be unpredictable to say the least. But then the snow started to run out. I've been skiing many times and there has always been a few occasions where the snow gets a bit thin, but I mean that the snow literally just stopped, forcing us to take off our boards and walk the rest of the way. So we walked, and we walked, down this rocky mountain path with no other skiers in sight for what felt like hours until we eventually reached the bottom where we found ourselves in a small mountain village that we'd never been to before. I had visited this resort a number of times with family friends but had never seen or heard of this village. There was no ski lifts in sight, no signage for the resort, just a small, quiet and slightly run-down village. Realising we were a bit stuck and with nobody that keen on walking back up the mountain we'd just come down, we decided to ask for directions.

There was nobody about in this village at all. It was like a ghost town. We knocked on doors, we looked in gardens, but there was nobody. We were about to give up and make the decision to walk back the way we came, when a pub that had been previously empty, suddenly wasn't. It was like the customers had just come out of thin air, sat outside drinking beer on a small decking area. None of them were wearing any kind of ski gear, and they all looked at us strangely, like we were the odd ones for carrying boards and ski jackets with us. One of our group asked them for directions, but they only spoke French, and the longer we stayed the more freaked out we were by how hostile they seemed towards us. Not in an aggressive way, they were just clearly quite disgruntled at our presence in their village. My friend asked if we could buy a drink, but we were met with a curt 'Non!.' Eventually one of the old men outside the pub pointed towards a bus stop on the edge of the little village, and we all trudged over, a little pissed off at their lack of hospitality but conscious that if we didn't move quickly we might miss the last lift back.

Eventually a bus did arrive, there was a free mountain shuttle bus that would pick you up and take you to the different places on the resort. We got on without thinking much of it, just keen not to waste the rest of the day's skiing. I do remember noticing that as soon as we left the town the blizzard was back in full force, we had all taken our jackets off in the strange little town but things got colder again as soon as we left. It was only when we met up with the teachers and other students from the school that we realised how bizarre the whole situation was. They naturally didn't believe us, especially when we couldn't even point out the route we had taken or the village on any of the piste maps. The school had hired French ski guides for the beginner level students, and even they didn't know where we'd been either.

The next day we re-traced our route, and for the life of us we could not find the same mountain path or the sign post pointing towards it. It was like it had just vanished. We came back up on the same chair lift that we'd all been freezing our nuts off the day before, ski'd down to the same little ridge, but couldn't find the route we'd taken only a day before. To try and prove that I wasn't going mad, I even rode the shuttle bus its entire route at the end of the day to try and prove that this village existed, but the bus didn't stop there once. As far as we can all tell, (or unless we all got our bearings completely wrong) the village had either vanished, or was never even there to begin with. (Reddit)