Your TWILIGHT ZONE story

[Captain Steel]

This thread is for personal experiences that are similar to a Twilight Zone-type story!

It doesn't have to be some super paranormal incident, alien abduction or near death experience (although we certainly wouldn't rule any of those out) but can just be stories of bizarre coincidences, unusual occurrences, synchronicity or unsolved mysteries.

I'll start with one about a customer who came into a place I was working and claimed to recognize me from high school. I wasn't "on guard" or anything so volunteered the name of the school to which she said she also graduated. I apologized for not recognizing her and I asked, "Class of '82?" She responded "yes."

In hindsight, I realized I was volunteering most of the information, but to the best of my memory I think she mentioned the name of a teacher I'd had when I asked if we were in any classes together - which seemed to confirm her claim (yet, she didn't even look remotely familiar to me).

I asked her first & last name and finally asked if she was in the yearbook. She said she was in the yearbook. (Now, I might not have recognized someone from the 3 years of underclassmen pictured in the yearbook, but I was more than familiar with the graduating class.)

I apologized again, but admitted neither she nor her name seemed familiar to me. (I did admit I'd suffered a head trauma after high school, but as yet had no memory loss from it).

When I got home that day I rushed to my bookshelf and pulled out my yearbook - turned to where her name would be and... nothing! She was not in the yearbook!

So what was this? A gag? A case of a same-named high school in the same state & same year where someone who looked like me happened to attend? I just didn't remember her and she forgot that she'd been somehow left out of the yearbook she claimed with certainty that she was in? A meeting with someone from an alternate dimension who slipped temporarily into mine (or vice versa)?
(And I still think she supplied the name of one of my/our teachers - which seemed a clincher!)

[Citizen Rules]

Neat thread Captain! I thought and thought about any stories I have that are Twilight Zonish but can't remember any but I do have some input to the below quandary.
I asked her first & last name and finally asked if she was in the yearbook. She said she was in the yearbook. (Now, I might not have recognized someone from the 3 years of underclassmen pictured in the yearbook, but I was more than familiar with the graduating class.)

When I got home that day I rushed to my bookshelf and pulled out my yearbook - turned to where her name would be and... nothing! She was not in the yearbook!
.She might have mistakenly gave you her married name which of course wouldn't appear in your high school yearbook, unless she got married really young! Or maybe she made a mistake and forgot that she wasn't in the yearbook, or maybe she believed she was in it, but had joined school after the yearbook had been finalized. In my senior year I thought I was too cool to waste my time getting photographed for the year book so I'm not in it. I don't know if my name is listed or not.

[Captain Steel]

Neat thread Captain! I thought and thought about any stories I have that are Twilight Zonish but can't remember any but I do have some input to the below quandary.She might have mistakenly gave you her married name which of course wouldn't appear in your high school yearbook, unless she got married really young! Or maybe she made a mistake and forgot that she wasn't in the yearbook, or maybe she believed she was in it, but had joined school after the yearbook had been finalized. In my senior year I thought I was too cool to waste my time getting photographed for the year book so I'm not in it. I don't know if my name is listed or not.

These are all logical explanations. But usually a person knows if they are in their own yearbook or not because most senior graduates buy the yearbook. To somehow be left out due to a mistake, being held back, or a disciplinary issue would be a pretty traumatic memory at that age - so most people would always remember that they were not included in their own year book (as you remember your photo isn't in yours).

I do recall she gave me the name she would've been listed under - and I couldn't find anyone in my class that I couldn't account for (maybe I didn't know their full name, but could remember them at school, unlike this lady). And I even went through all the underclassmen (in the event she got held back or got the year wrong) - couldn't find her.

There was no one in my senior class yearbook that I can't at least remember visually from school - which makes the lady's claim questionable since I had no memory of her whatsoever.

This incident occurred at my first job after college (so about 4 to 6 years after high school).

My co-workers at the time were big on pranks, but the ending to most good pranks is a reveal that it's a prank - no one ever stepped forward if this was a prank.

[Captain Steel]

This one dates back to the late 80's and is kind of silly...

I worked in a restaurant and would often get done late. Sometimes I'd go for a walk after I got home to wind down. It was around 3 a.m..

I approached an intersection while on foot as a lone car pulled up to the stop sign at the very moment I reached the corner. I could kind of see the silhouette of the driver and it looked like they had a huge Afro. The hair looked bluish, which I thought was some play of the street light hitting their hair. But as I got closer I could see they definitely had an Afro (much bigger than anything popular at the time) and that it was indeed bright blue!

The driver turned toward me (remember, it's 3 a.m., the streets are deserted and quiet in my sleeping, little town)... I saw a bright red, round nose, giant red lips, and the full regalia of a clown! They first made an exaggerated, surprised "OH!" face at me, then smiled and waved their gloved hand at me. I just stopped, gazed in disbelief and waved back. Then the clown looked back at the road and peeled out.

Just a bizarre encounter in a town where nothing much ever occurred, at a time of morning when you don't usually encounter clowns in cars wearing full make-up.

I remember feeling a strange mix of bemusement and being totally creeped out.

[Captain Steel]

In the summer of 2018 I was working in a supermarket. I started to develop burning red blotches on my chest & neck.

At this same time, my great nephew was born out in Colorado. Within a few hours after birth he developed an unidentified rash all over his body. The rash got extreme and, since he was a newborn, his reaction was deemed to be life threatening. They kept him at the hospital in the neo-natal ICU. Doctors said the rash almost resembled chemical burns!

Meanwhile, back in NJ... I went to the doctor for whatever this breakout on my chest was (mostly because I wanted a note to get out of work). The Dr. said it looked like poison ivy - but I've had poison ivy enough times to know it wasn't: it didn't feel like or spread like it. It felt more like chemical burns. The Dr. gave me a mild steroid cream and a note to put me out of work for a week since I worked with food.

I spent that week meditating & praying a lot about my great nephew whom I had never met. My skin reaction reached its peak and began to fade.

As I returned to work the next week I heard that little nephew's rash had also reached a peak then began to fade - he was now out of the woods, recovering & preparing to go home. He's been a healthy kid ever since.

Just a coincidence? Probably. But I can't help feeling that I somehow took on his ailment over the miles, shared it, and enabled him to recover.

What do you think?

[FromBeyond]

Well mine IS a super paranormal incident.


I haven't told this often, I think I may have here some years ago. I'm gonna make this as short as possible.


I was young and living in a tent. It was winter and I had picked a new place to put my tent. I set my tent up and was just about to get everything inside when I heard very young children laughing (giggling) and footsteps running towards me


The footsteps and giggling went right past me and off into the distance.


I was quite literally frozen in fear


I heard it again coming back, only this time on the other side.


I still was too afraid to move.


They ran past me several times going from one side to other.


I snapped myself out of my inability to move and started pulling my tent down ramming it into my bag.


I WALKED out of those woods, I was too afraid to run, I felt if I ran something bad would happen.


That night I walked out of the wilderness and into the city, I slept around some bins for a block of flats, I was never so relieved to hear the sound of people, cars.


Ive been too afraid to ever spend a night again in the woods alone and I hate that it had that effect as everything was really quite okay up until that point

[Captain Steel]

Such a cool story, FromBeyond!

There's always something extra creepy about disembodied children's voices!

I'd love to hear why you were living in a tent. I take it you were homeless at that time?

[FromBeyond]

Thanks CaptainSteel


I was indeed homeless and it's one reason I don't like to share the story because the inevitable next question is why the **** was I living in a tent. Oh the other reason I don't like to share it much is that somebody might not believe me and it was so ****ing real!


After that night, my last in the wild, I ended up staying in some shelters with probably less savoury types than whatever was in the woods with me that night.


I think one day of going back there to investigate. but I will need a friend with me!

[Captain Steel]

I wanted to bump this thread for Halloween, but as usual, I'm a day late (and a dollar short).

I'm remembering one weird incident when I was a night-shift security guard.

During my rounds, I stopped in a break area in this one building that had vending machines. I got something to drink and threw the can in a waste basket (about a 3 foot tall plastic bucket) near the door. The basket had one of these revolving tops where, when you throw something in, the top rotates. After throwing away my trash, I went to the bathroom that was across the hall from the break room. I was in the bathroom maybe a minute or two.

After exiting the bathroom, I headed for the front door, but noticed that inside the breakroom the garbage can (waste basket) by the door had the top rotating wildly (with far more force than it rotated when I threw my can in there) as if someone JUST threw something heavy in it... but it was the middle of the night an no one was around.

The lid did a few rapid rotations as I stared at it, then the movement gradually subsided.

Ignoring the chill going up my spine, I decided to investigate. First I retrieved the beverage can I'd put in the basket and threw it back in as hard as I could, then timed how long the top spun around. It made one full revolution, and kept moving under its natural momentum for about 4 seconds afterward until it stopped moving.

So, I knew it could not have been still moving from my first throwing the can in there and while I was in the bathroom. Then I checked the exterior - the break room was just inside the building's front door... but there was no one to be seen.

So, I did more tests - to see if someone else could have come in, thrown something in the bucket to make the top spin, but then left before I saw them. Now, from the time I left the bathroom I had a full view of both the break room and the front door. As I timed how long it took to cross the hall I figured out that there was no way anyone else could have set the garbage can lid rotating with such force without me seeing them leave the breakroom, see them in the vestibule, see them leaving the building, or see them in the hallway.

To this day, I have no explanation for this one. There was nothing atmospheric that could have caused this motion - only another person throwing something fairly weighty (like a soda can) into the bucket with a great deal of force. But timing how long it took the lid to stop rotating when recreating the action, there's no way anyone else could have caused it without me seeing them when I came out of the bathroom.

[I_Wear_Pants]

There was a stretch of about a month in high school when I'd think to myself, out of the blue, about an episode of a show I'd like to watch with no discernible reason or foreknowledge of a broadcast, and that'd be the very episode to be aired that evening the second I turned on the TV when I got home. Does that count?

[Captain Steel]

There was a stretch of about a month in high school when I'd think to myself, out of the blue, about an episode of a show I'd like to watch with no discernible reason or foreknowledge of a broadcast, and that'd be the very episode to be aired that evening the second I turned on the TV when I got home. Does that count?

Sure. That happens to me all the time. I'll be trying to think of some celebrity's name, then that evening, they'll be in a movie that's on TV. Or trying to remember an old commercial jingle of some long-defunct place or product, then turning on YouTube and having that same jingle be in some retro-video about the past, and it's first in the cue!

It's synchronicity.

Pragmatists write it off as a simple matter of attention - you happen to recognize the thing you'd been thinking about (out of the millions of other things you weren't thinking about) when you see it BECAUSE you'd been thinking about that thing.

Say you're driving and thinking "I need to find a roofer." You stop at a red light and the truck next to you says, "Need to find a roofer? Call Mel's roofing!" It seems like something paranormal going on, but you may also stop next to a dozen other trucks (or signs or places of business) that mean nothing to you. If you hadn't been thinking about needing a roofer, then the roofing truck would not have registered with you just like the millions of other points of information you can see that have no meaning in the moment.

Some metaphysical thinkers, however, say there's more to it and that synchronicity is actually a skill that can be developed with continuing practice.

[I_Wear_Pants]

Sure. That happens to me all the time. I'll be trying to think of some celebrity's name, then that evening, they'll be in a movie that's on TV. Or trying to remember an old commercial jingle of some long-defunct place or product, then turning on YouTube and having that same jingle be in some retro-video about the past, and it's first in the cue!

It's synchronicity.

Pragmatists write it off as a simple matter of attention - you happen to recognize the thing you'd been thinking about (out of the millions of other things you weren't thinking about) when you see it BECAUSE you'd been thinking about that thing.

Say you're driving and thinking "I need to find a roofer." You stop at a red light and the truck next to you says, "Need to find a roofer? Call Mel's roofing!" It seems like something paranormal going on, but you may also stop next to a dozen other trucks (or signs or places of business) that mean nothing to you. If you hadn't been thinking about needing a roofer, then the roofing truck would not have registered with you just like the millions of other points of information you can see that have no meaning in the moment.

Some metaphysical thinkers, however, say there's more to it and that synchronicity is actually a skill that can be developed with continuing practice.

Yeah I've heard of that too. Where you recognize it because you're looking for it. It's like how you see all of the cars that are the same as yours the second you buy it because it's the same as yours.

It's kind of like a History Channel show where they had a hieroglyph, or symbol of some sort, of a helicopter that only looked like one to us because we've seen helicopters since the 1960s even though it was carved thousands of years ago when there were no helicopters. Wow! Time travel! Right? No, it's just our modern brain matching an ancient symbol to a newfangled technological creation because they look similar. It's not exactly the same, of course. I more brought it up because I've noticed that in things too, where something old looks like something new and it must be time travel! Or it's a weird association our brain makes.

This is mundane, although it was helpful when it happened; I was looking for a Steve Berry book, he mostly writes his Cotton Malone series, in a bookstore, and I couldn't even find the author's little spot, so I asked an employee for help, that's why she's there right?, and we went to the right place, and I told her what I wanted to find and found it two seconds later. I apologized to her for wasting her time when actually she did help; I said the name of the author and the book aloud, and it helped me find it. There is a name for that phenomenon, except I can never remember what the monicker is.

Here's a really boring one; I was in a hospital parking lot, and three cars that were exactly the same shared two license plates; two of them had the same letters, and two of them had the same numbers. The one that had the match for the other two cars was in the middle, and the match was on the matching side.

Here's another boring one; I once ran into the same person in the same three stores in the same day and we did not travel together nor the same way nor at the same time.