Most of the things that happen in life can be explained by evolution and science. But then every so often something happens that defies it all, forcing you to question everything and making you wonder if maybe there is some kind of other-worldly realm that might overlap with this one. These are the "glitch in the Matrix" moments that can be terrifying or thrilling, or both.
Someone asked Reddit: "What's your creepiest 'glitch in the matrix' or unexplainable thing that's ever happened to you?" Here are 27 people sharing the creepy "supernatural" things that happened to them that can't be explained by science or logic.
Warning: might make you question everything.
1.) From theMan_theBeard:
When I was a teenager, my family lived in a big 115 year old brick house. Plenty of creepy stuff happened but one night I was heading to bed when the door between the first floor kitchen and the basement stairs absolutely SLAMMMMMMED shut. It had a unique sound that I recognized immediately as the kitchen/basement door.
There were no windows open that could've caused a draft. Our dog was asleep on the second floor. I was on the second floor. My parents were both asleep in the third floor attic (had been converted to a master bedroom).
None of us could've shut the door.
Fuckin terrified, I worked up the courage to go investigate, carrying my hilariously teeny pocket knife for protection. As I went downstairs I turned on every light.
When I reached the kitchen, the door was wide open.
Even more freaked out I ran back up to bed (leaving the lights on).
A minute or two later, I heard a definite "sssshhhh ok ok" from downstairs.
I laid in bed and was ready to accept my demise.
Eventually I somehow feel asleep and in the morning I was there first downstairs (I woke up before my parents and dog) and found that the lights were all off and the basement door had been shut again.
2.) From Adventuredepot:
Removed a painting from the wall during a late evening cleaning, put it away and returned to the wall to see a never before seen painting on the same spot, put a chill down my spine.
3.) From cowgirlinthesand2:
Weird but happy. About 5 years ago in November we lost our family dog to cancer. She was the dog my children grew up with, loved by all. At the next Christmas, at the end of the day of gifts, food and family, as I was picking up, I found a tiny pewter dog figurine sitting on the mantel. I asked everyone who had been at the house that day if they left it. No one had. Okay, weird, but took it as a good omen. When my eldest went back to college at the end of that Christmas break, he asked if he could take the little figurine, to remember his dog. Of course, I said yes. A week or two later, picking up around the house, there was the figurine again! I called my son, and said, “You forgot the dog figurine!” He said, “No I didn’t, it’s right in front of me on my desk!” I had now found a second figurine!! Again, no one claimed any knowledge of it. No idea how....but I still have the two of them tucked away on a shelf to this day.
4.) From BanditSixActual:
This happened around 1991. It's the middle of the night. I'm standing in my sister's living room and it must be a full moon, because even though it's around 1am and the lights are off, I can see clearly. There's a mixing bowl with popcorn kernels in the bottom on the floor in front of the tv and some rental VHS in a pile nearby. I hear a noise and turn around to see my sister's normally very friendly labrador retriever looking like Cujo. Fangs bared, snarling, hackles raised. Suddenly there's a bright flash of light and I wake up like I hit the bed from a great height. I think "That was a weird dream." Eventually, I fall back to sleep and in the morning I call my sister, planning to tell her the story, but she preempts me by telling me about the weird thing that happened in the night.
They woke up to the sound of the dog snarling at about 1am. Her husband thought there was a prowler in the house, got a gun and went to find the dog. She was standing in the living room snarling at the middle of the room. He couldn't see anyone, so he flipped on the light. No one was there, the dog instantly stopped snarling and walked to her bed like nothing had happened. He checked the property and went back to bed.
We talked a bit and I found out they watched some rental movies and "Of course we had popcorn, why?" My sister is a little woowoo at times, so I decided not to tell her about my night. She lived about 450 miles away by the way.
5.) From mrsbmw330xi:
I was on vacation on Florida visiting a friend, we were walking on the beach on a perfectly sunny day when everything went black for a second. I think it was weird but explained it away thinking that my eyes were playing tricks on me until he looked at me and said "did everything go black for a second?"
6.) From kerwapple:
I remember being pretty young like 9 or 10 and I was the car park of a pub in England (Southend). I remember seeing someone in their teens in the window of a house looking over the car park. They waved at me and I felt like I knew them somehow. My parents asked who I was waving at and I said just some lady in the window over there. Didn’t think much of it. Fast forward 10 years. I was at my nans new house. I remember walking into her room (which I never was allowed to do) going to the window. I then realised I was in the house looking over that same parking lot and remembering that interaction years before. Then a girl around 9 or 10 who was in said car park waved at me and I waved back. I felt like I knew her.
Could not explain it and have never told anyone about it. It freaked me out.
7.) From Dolios6757:
When I played baseball as a kid, they were handing out the trophies at the end of the season. They called out the names of the kids while we received our trophies. They're happened to be a kid with the same name as me. We met after the ceremony because it was weird since our last name isn't a very common one. We had the same birthday and everything. We looked alike, both our Dad's were named Derek and both of our sisters were named Lilly. As a kid, I found it cool. As an adult, I find it cool and also disturbing
8.) From nithararith:
One day when I was about 8 I didn't go to school because I was sick. My friend was suppoused to bring me homework etc. but he never came. My granddad came home from work and he told me that that friend was dead, I was devastated. That night I had a dream. I was with my friend at a playground next to our school and we were talking, then he told me that he is safe and it didn't hurt when that car hit him. The next day my mother wanted to talk to me about that situation and she asked me if I wanted to know what happened. I told her that I know everything because my friend told me. She thought that my granddad told me but he did not. He said that he did not wanted to tell me without her knowing it. That night I had a dream again and I was talking to him again. We were playing and having fun and he told me that he really had to go and we wont see each other ever again. The next day was his funeral and I really havent had a dream about him ever since.
9.) From Thin-Man:
So, back in 2016, I was injured at work and for about six months my life consisted of going to physical therapy and being confined to bed until I could walk again. With that in mind, I had a lot of time to read books. One of the books that I was reading was “Ex-Heroes”, by Peter Clines.
Now I don’t know about anyone else, but when I read a book I like to “cast” the characters in my head, coming up with how they look. One of the minor characters in this book was named Ilya and, because I know someone named Ilya, and because the book is set in Los Angeles where I live, the Ilya in the book became the Ilya that I knew in my imagination. But then, something strange started to happen. The Ilya in the book made specific references to movies like “Aliens”, a movie which the Ilya I know is a huge fan of. The Ilya in the book was a big fan of firearms, as the Ilya that I know is. Put into words, these details seem slim, but there was something so strange about the character in this book that I eventually reached out to the Ilya that I knew to ask about it.
Turns out that Ilya knows the author, Peter Clines, who had put him in the book! What are the odds that I would choose to buy a random book, with a story that takes place essentially on my street in Los Angeles, and features someone I know in real life as a minor character? That blew my mind, and it’s easily one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had.
10.) From friendshipwins:
This summer I bought my girlfriend a last-minute birthday trip to go kayaking around the San Juan Islands off the Washington state coast. After a long drive and ferry trip, we found the tour group of about 20 people and were then shuffled into a shuttle van for a ride to the beach.
Now, my girlfriend has a unique name similar to the name of a famous painter. Let's say it's Rebecca Warhol just for fun (it's not). She's a little ray of sunshine, and started chatting with the middle aged woman sitting next to her on the shuttle as we waited to leave. The woman noted that she had always loved the name Rebecca, as it was her mother's name. They made pleasant small talk in the van until the tour guide passed around the sign-in sheet for all of us to fill out. That's when things got strange.
My girlfriend wrote her full name on the sheet and passed it on to the woman, who immediately shouted "Oh my God," and started crying. After a few minutes of total confusion, she told us "Rebecca Warhol was my mother's full name, and these islands were her favorite place in the world. She passed away this summer from cancer and we've traveled hundreds of miles to spread her ashes here." We were STUNNED. I literally picked a random date, time, and tour company, and THEN we were split into the same group as this woman AND my girlfriend was sitting right next to her on the shuttle. What the hell? She continued by saying, "My daughter told us that Nana Rebecca would be with us on this trip, and I didn't believe it until now." It was the most unbelievable coincidence we had ever experienced, and has totally convinced me that there's more to this world than we think. As my brother later said, the Universe winked at us that day.
11.) From Watermelly3:
About two years ago, I went to collect my husband from the ferry after work. My husband got into the car and as I was driving very slowly out of the car park we both noticed two people standing a few metres in front of our car. It looked as though they were strangers, older looking professionals, both walking to their separate cars in different areas of the car park. The man was reaching into his side bag and the lady was further ahead than the man, with her head turned to the right. I know the exact positions they were in because they were completely frozen on the spot! My husband and I sat there watching the frozen strangers, not saying anything to each other and then all of a sudden it was like someone pressed play and the two strangers just continued on like nothing had happened. My husband and I promised to each other that we would never forget how weird the experience was. I can't remember exactly how long they stayed frozen like that but it was long enough to freak us both out!
12.) From MckayofSpades:
Every night I go to bed about two hours before my husband. I always wake up when he comes into the room. One night he was gaming with a friend and it was hours later I heard him sneak into the room and crawl across the floor so he could pop up and scare me. I felt the floor kind of shake and felt him bump clumsily against the side of the bed in the dark. I held out my hand and asked him not to scare me, I was already scared enough and begged him to just take my hand and come to bed. I couldn’t see anything in the room, but knew he was there and just waited for him to jump up so I could move on and go back to sleep. That’s when I heard him talking to his friend in the other room. I was frozen. I know there’s sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming or something that explains this, but I would have sworn on my sons life that someone had crawled across the floor and jostled the bed.
Eventually I worked out of the fear enough to grab my phone and text my husband to come in and turn on the lights and check under the bed. But holy shit, it boggles me how real it felt.
13.) From taterbugg82:
Two things. Each was witnessed by at least one other person and both were while driving. Once at a stop sign in a neighborhood. All of these little sparkles started swirling around in mid air roughly 3-4 ft off the ground out of nowhere. The group of them were roughly 2 ft wide by 3-4 ft tall. It lasted 3-5 seconds and then they were gone. No one was around and when I asked my passenger if he saw it too he breathed a sigh of relief and said yes. We spoke about it a little more but there is no reasonable explanation. The second happened when myself and 3 friends were driving down an empty country road. Very straight stretch. A man on a bike appeared. Someone said to watch out for him, so not to hit him and then he disappeared. Our minds were blown to say the least. Just “poof” and he’s gone.
14.) From HoldTheChimichanga:
I died. I saw it, I lived it. Either it was another world with a version of me that died I saw or I'm going crazy but I DIED.
We had a pep rally in school and after it was finished we had to go back to class. Well, my friend and I were not into that so we wanted to to across the street to Sonic. Across the school there is not heavy traffic, but if you don't pay attention you could get hit.
Well I remember walking with him and he dropped something so I went across the street first. I just saw a red Tahoe heading right for me and I got hit.
I remember everything. I remember gasping for air, I remember waking up and sleeping again. Then nothing. All of a sudden I was back in the stadium again and the EXACT SAME WORDS came out of the principal's mouth. My friend wanted to go get sonic but i was freaking out. Was asking him everything.
I thought it had to be a dream, so I went with him just to see what would happen. He dropped his stuff again and I waited. To my horror, that same red Tahoe showed up. I told him that I'm going back to school, I ain't dying again.
I can still see the other version of me on that street just messed up. Not even moving.
15.) From _Diakoptes:
A friend and I went to a buddy's house for a bday party. Stayed up playing halo 2 and hanging out. We all crash in the basement.
R (friend who came with me) and I got up at the same time. Not like one after eachother, we both got up at the same time after being asleep for a few hours and rushed to the bathroom.
R was more athletic than me (probably still is) and beat me there. I ran upstairs, barely getting my head over the toilet before puking my guts out. R was doing the same thing in the basement. I was wearing a wooden cross my grandmother mailed me from Romania (I'm not religious but I appreciated the gift as I had never met her at that point). Cross somehow became detached from the cord, fell on the tile and broke into two pieces.
So we both call our respective mothers and get picked up. By now it's like 3-4am.
Felt sick up until we left the house. Once I was in the car and a few blocks away, felt perfectly fine.
R reported the same thing to me that day over MSN Messenger. Felt perfectly fine after a few blocks.
Got the pictures developed a few weeks later. Theres a picture of us on the couch rocking some Halo and the whole room looks like it's filled with mist. Super spooky. I've been looking for the pic for a long time and I can't seem to find it anymore, but every few years my sister and I search my mom's photo albums for it.
16.) From setyh:
I have a jade Buddhist necklace I bought in China about 10 years ago. It dissappears for months at a time only to reappear somewhere obvious like my desk, my dresser, in a drawer I use every day. I just say it goes on a trip and will come back eventually.
17.) From Danne660:
The entire world have slowed down for me a couple of times in my life. My best guess is some kind of adrenaline spike causing my brain to go into overdrive.
18.) From KitKeating:
1985. My ex wife and I were sleeping. There was a small sliver of light coming in through the window from a streetlight, so the room and bed were dimly visible. Our black Pomeranian was at the end of the bed asleep.
I dreamt that I woke up, reached down to pet him, and he turned into a glossy black bivalve/oyster thing which opened up to reveal rows of gleaming glass teeth. I woke up to my ex backpedalling up the bed over the pillows towards the wall.
I asked "what's wrong??" She said, "what is that shiny black clam thing with the teeth at the end of the bed?? Where's the dog?"
We had had the same nightmare at the same time. This still gives me a chill.
19.) From popcornexit:
I've got several kids and night terrors are always a bit freaky, but once you know it's normal and what it's like, you kind of get used to it. But my middle child had something happen a couple years ago that didn't seem like it could be a night terror. He's almost five now and has been pretty advanced in academics for a while (somehow learned how to read the names of numbers and colors and such and I accidentally found out one day when I caught him reading what I had written).
He came into my room very upset one night. Night terror. Except he was fully awake. I know they can seem like they're awake but they're not. But I had him doing math. 3+2 is? ... 5. Asking very high level questions about things. He seemed fully alert and aware. But he was seeing something my wife and I could not see. Something threatening and scary. "The fly" was going to get him. He shrieked ear piercing screeches, consistently turning away and back to the doorway into my master bath where he saw this thing that was invisible to me. This happened for a few nights, too. I could only reassure him that he was okay and nothing was there and we would protect him. "You're okay. You're okay, " I'd tell him.
He always darted down the hallway between his room and mine for a few days after this, reassuring himself by saying "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay" as he ran. Poor thing. Freaked my wife and me out completely.
20.) From Chaithecat:
I was driving about 50 mph, and a car ran a stop sign on an on ramp and pulled out right in front of me. I remember bracing for impact and then I was about 300 yards down the highway and I saw the car at the ramp in my rearview, just about to pull out.
21.) From delboy83:
Around 12 years ago I had a dark purple 3 series BMW which I drove to work and parked in the same spot for around 3 years. I sold the car due to mileage and wanting something a little more reliable and purchased a different car.
1 week later, I turn up to work to find my purple BMW parked in my parking spot. I was totally WTF?
Turns out that we had a work-experience kid start that day, and his dad had dropped him off in my old car that he bought 2 days earlier.
What are the chances of that? I've never met this kid or his dad, and yet here was my old car in my/its space.
22.) From Stockero1:
I was walking my dog and I was almost to the driveway when I looked down for some reason and I looked back up and I ended up being back at the road about 6 blocks away from where I thought I was. I was so confused but my dog looked completely fine.
FYI- I don’t drink or do drugs, I’m still pretty young
23.) From WhereIsAmandaCrew:
I once clocked out of work at 6pm (like I always did at the time) and began my hour long train ride home.
After I had found a seat, I went to sleep and woke up just before my station. From the station, it is a short bus journey (10-15 minutes) to reach home.
During the entire journey, I didn't use my phone and I don't wear a watch so I didn't really notice the time anywhere.
When I reached home, my family surprised me with "You're home early, everything alright?". I look at the wall-clock and it is about to be 6pm. I was too shocked to understand what happened. Checked other watches, cellphones etc and the time is absolutely right.
A few days later, the admin emailed us the timesheets for the month (times clocking in and out), and every single days for me was around the same 6pm. So it certainly wasn't me having left work earlier.
To this date, I haven't figured out how I gained between 60-90 minutes that day.
24.) From benjtom:
I had just pulled into the parking lot of where I worked and was walking towards the building. It was like 3 in the afternoon, broad daylight.
All of a sudden, I heard an ambulance’s siren start sounding. Naturally, I looked down the road to try and see the ambulance. I see it approaching and decided to watch it for a bit. It was quickly getting closer, and it was about to pass right by me. However, there was a large SUV waiting to turn out of the parking lot and onto the road, blocking a few meters of the road from my view. The ambulance passed behind the SUV, probably about 50 feet away from me at most, and I vividly remember the siren becoming completely silent in that instant. The ambulance had vanished entirely as it passed behind that SUV.
I was so confused. The road did not have many cars on it at the time, and it was broad daylight. I did a triple-take and made sure that I didn’t just miss it. I had a clear view of the road going both directions, and there was no more ambulance to be seen. No more siren either. I walked up and down the road, trying to find it for a solid minute. But nope, it was gone. I was well rested, not on drugs, and I didn’t have a history of hallucinations. It seems dismissible, but I was completely aware of what happened, and I can’t explain it to this day.
25.) From QueenOfTheYautja:
A total of 3 times in my life I have had memories of seeing movies/movie trailers that hadn't been made yet. It's not even a feeling of Deja vu, it's a clear vivid memory of seeing the movie before.
Edit: the movies were the blind side, devil and Prometheus.
26.) From bustypirate:
I've told this story before and could go into a ton of detail but here's the short version.
I am 100% sure I vividly remember a dog that apparently doesn't exist. When I was 16 we lived on the other side of the province and my uncle had this little jack russell named Crue. Crue went missing for several months and then turned up at a humane society over an hour away and we were all shocked this little dog has made it so far.
anyway that was almost 20 years ago and the other day I was talking to my parents and was like you know "whenever I hear about Jack Russells I think about Crue and that stunt he pulled" and they had no idea what I was talking about. Insisted my uncle had never had such a dog, I must have dreamed it, etc. Honestly anyone else who would have remembered this dog has been dead for a long time and I don't even have any pictures of my uncle. I have absolutely no way to prove this dog existed but I'm sure that he did.
27.) From ynmkr:
My wife passed away a year ago today. Had a some odd things happen like a couple of old meaningful pictures show up that I swore were in storage. The strangest one was I vacuumed the carpet and as soon as I was done a diamond ring was on the ground right where I had just cleaned. It was like she was saying "Hey this one is real don't lose it!".
28.) From 842734:
I don’t personally remember this, but I would see my dead grandfather all the time when I was a kid. From the ages of 7-9 there was probably 10 different incidents.
My dad was an absolute pansy when it came to “ghosts” (which I don’t really believe in) and wanted to take me to the doctor. My dad had one of those bathrooms with a separate toilet room and no one that lived in the house closed the bathroom door unless they were bathing. I was playing runescape and my dad asked why the bathroom door was closed, and I said it’s because grandpas in there. That’s the only one I actually remember.
There was maybe two other bathroom incidents and some incidents when I would sit on the floor and watch tv with my dad and he would tell me to go sit in the (what was once my grandfathers) chair and said i couldn’t because grandpa was sleeping.
I don’t know how creepy these are tbh but they freaked out my family for sure.
29.) From steampunker13:
I was working on my motorcycle in a dirt lot where I had crashed it trying to do a sick drift, breaking off the clutch lever and the gear shifter. I had brought a wrench set with me and I was using one of them to take off a bolt when I put it down on the ground to finish unscrewing the bolt with my hand. Two minutes later I went to pick it back up and it was gone. I ran all around this dirt lot looking for it to no avail, luckily I had a spare in the car. Fixed the bike and drove back to my apartment to shower as I was filthy. I walked in my room and sitting on my desk was the wrench. I was dumbfounded.
30.) From mYl1ttl3PWNY:
I remember driving my car to this intersection in this rural area and I'm checking both sides because of terrible blind spots. In the corner of my eye my mother is sitting there and says something like "it's all clear my way"
I look back and she isn't there. My mother had been dead for a few years at this point. This was also in the middle of the day and I've never had it happen since.
31.) From zootnotdingo:
When the song “The Final Countdown” was released in the 80s, I already knew it. It was brand new, just released, but I knew the tune and the words and could sing the whole thing beginning to end. I believed for a while that it was a cover version, but it wasn’t.
![]()
