The Glitch in the Matrix: People are sharing eerie experiences where time simply... disappeared.

Welcome.

Settle in for a spooky read courtesy of the trippiest Reddit thread in existence.

No, seriously, we could hang out in this corner of the internet for days, which would probably result in us emerging wearing hats made out of foil and joining the Flat Earthers Society on Facebook.

The ‘Glitch in the Matrix’ thread, named after the 1999 film whereby a ‘glitch’ draws someone’s attention to the fact that they are in a simulation (e.g. when Neo saw the same black cat walk past the door twice), collates stories from people with experiences that cannot be explained, leaving them with the feeling that the world is… not as it seems.

Speaking of strange things, watch Mamamia’s Laura Brodnik interview Dacre Montgomery about season 3 of Stranger Things below. Post continues after video.

Yes, it all sounds a bit far-fetched to us too, but there’s one common experience too many people have had for it to not be a coincidence and WE. DEMAND. ANSWERS.

It involves unexplained gaps of time where the people in question have looked at the clock, then looked back what they thought was minutes later, only to discover that huge chunks of time had passed where they cannot, for the life of them, recall what they were doing.

Others involve instances where they actually went back in time.

WHAT?

As Redditors have suggested, alien abductions are likely to be behind it.

They theorise the person has been captured by aliens, studied (?), then returned to Earth a few hours later with their memories wiped.

It truly is the only plausible explanation.

Here, we explore eight stories of unexplained gaps in time that have certifiably blown our minds:

1. “I saw a bright triangle in the night sky and the time instantly went from 10pm to 1am”

“When I was 12, my cousins used to live across the street from me. Every weekend we would walk over to their house and have a camp fire or something of the sort.

One night we left really early like 10pm (we’d usually stay like until 1am or 2am) because my dad had to wake up at 4am for work the next day. I remember it being that early because my brothers and I were complaining about how it was only 10. So we said our goodbyes to our cousins and walked home.

Right as we got into our front yard I was compelled to look at the sky, and when I looked up it was an incredibly starry night. (Where I live it’s like a small city/town so we get pretty moderate light pollution and can’t really see mass amounts of stars).

I noticed this triangle of nothingness in the sky, like it was the most black nothingness I’ve ever seen. It almost hurt to look at it was so black. I stared at it for a second, then the edges of it glowed purple/blue and got super bright and all of a sudden it shot away leaving a purple streak in the sky. Then for some reason I looked at my watch and it read 1am and I was like no way that’s not right, so I pulled out my iPod and it too read 1am. I also noticed that my parents weren’t outside anymore. So I went inside and everyone was asleep and all the lights were off, and all the clocks said 1am and it felt like it was 10pm seconds ago. After that I didn’t look into the night sky for a solid seven more months.”

2. “I woke up at noon, went back to sleep, and woke up again at 8am the same day.”

“I’m not entirely sure what happened. My phone was plugged in all night and fully charged, and the power hadn’t gone out to create a short – if that’s even possible with an iPhone. But, nonetheless, I woke up at noon.

That’s not out of the ordinary, considering I work the late shift and stayed up until 4am playing Borderlands with my friend. Seeing it was noon and I had four more hours until I had to be at work, I decided to get another hour of rest. Then, I woke up again, and it was 8am.

Like I said, I’m not entirely sure what happened. Or how it happened. All I know is that I’ve been freaked out all day. I didn’t go back to sleep after that. I just got out of bed, made coffee and tried to forget it happened.

The weirdest part is that I vividly remember having a dream where I heard disembodied voices talking about me. I was watching videos on my PlayStation while laying in bed, and I heard one man say something like, ‘He’s sedated when these videos play,’ and another clear voice say, ‘If we can keep him in this state, he’ll never come out of the program’.

Needless to say, I’ve been on edge the entire day.”

3. “An hour completely disappeared and I don’t know how.”

“My job consists of setting up displays at a well known superstore. I set and clean the shelves, pull the old price tags out, put the new tags in, and arrange the product according to the instructions on the sheet. Set up can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, depending on what it is and how much I’m moving around. Two things to note: I’ve worn a watch every day for nearly 11 years, and I’m in the habit of regularly glancing at said watch every 10 minutes or so when I’m at work. The second thing is that at 1am, a call over the PA system is made for the entire shift to go out and collect the carts from the parking lot, as our store closes at midnight and there are no cart pushers after 10pm.

So one day, I’m tasked with rearranging the packaged bedding display (comforters and sheet sets in a bag) a mod that doesn’t take long, even when it’s reshuffling quite a lot. I do the first six sections without a problem, and then move on to the seventh. I pull the old tags off, throw them into my trash bag and glance down at my watch: 12:57 a.m. I step over to my cart, get the tags ready, and start putting them into the holders on the shelves. I finish that, a task that normally takes no more than 10 minutes or so at maximum (depending on how many tags there are. Some mods have over 100 tags per section, but this one had only 12) and glance at my watch again.

1:57 am.

My jaw drops, and I remember that I stared at my watch for a few minutes. There is no way that tagging took an hour to do. It’s never taken that long, before or since. I hadn’t heard the 1am cart call either, though a coworker earlier confirmed that it had gone out. I don’t remember having a zone out or anything, and to me it certainly felt like only 10 minutes or so had gone by. I still cannot account for where all that missing time had gone.”

4. “I distinctly remember checking my phone and seeing Saturday’s date. It was actually Thursday.”

“It was the final weekend before summer ended, and my whole family (like home family and aunts, uncles, grandparents and such) went on a vacation for the weekend to a house we rented in a southern part of the state. It was Friday and we were supposed to go back on Sunday. I stayed up late, past 12am which meant it had become Saturday. I distinctly remember checking my phone and seeing it said Saturday, August 19th.

Then later, as I was staying up on my phone, I checked the time again and it said Thursday, August 17th, 1am. Mind you, I had glanced at the time and saw it was past 3.30 just about half an hour before. For a moment I was just trying to process it. I started thinking if I was going nuts or something, so I texted my cousin who was a few hours away at her house, and ask her, ‘I swear it was Saturday, and now it’s Thursday. Am I going insane?’

My arms and face became tingly and all my hairs stood up when she replied that she was just about to text me and ask the same thing. We thought it was weird but just accepted we probably just got confused.

Next morning, I ask my cousins who were with me if they remembered it being Saturday and they said no, and that it was Wednesday yesterday. I decided to just ignore it and continue, but I never forgot it.”

5. “I woke up, called mum, then went back to sleep. It was the same time when I woke up again.”

“I’m currently on my summer break before I enter college, so I have absolutely nothing to do all day and I have been staying up until 5am and waking up at around 3pm everyday.

About a week ago I had stayed up till my usual 5am and suddenly woke up at 1.12 pm. I looked around the room and checked the time on my phone. 1.12.

I lay in bed for a few minutes waiting to fall back asleep until my mum called. We talked for 10 minutes, as firmly stated on my phone, and I again checked the time. 1:12. Very odd but I thought my phone was just glitching. I looked on my laptop. 1.12.

I got very confused and shook my head and went back to sleep. After waking up after what felt like forever, I checked the time. It was still 1.12.

I rushed out of bed and checked the time on the clock in the wall sat above the couch in the living room. 1.12.

I called my mum and explained it all to her and she laughed it off and said ‘are you on drugs?’. She also stated that her phone said 1.12.

After ending the call the time on my phone had finally changed to 1.15.”

6. “It was the middle of the day, then all of a sudden I woke up in the middle of the night.”

“It was a sunny day (maybe 12pm) I was alone at my house, spending time online and doing just normal everyday-stuff.

Next thing I know, I wake up in my own bed and it’s dark outside. It’s late at night. I have absolutely no memory of how/why I was in my bed and where did all those hours go.

I was completely sober, and I have no medical issues. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before or after this.

I guess I could’ve taken a nap without realising it, but I think I would remember that. It was just a normal day and then it was night, like somebody pressed the fast-forward button.”

7. “I woke up to pee at 4am, then somehow, an hour passed.”

“Early this morning I woke up from sleeping and had to pee really bad, which isn’t unusual for me.

I crawled out of bed and headed towards the bathroom and looked at the clock on the microwave as I normally do when I wake up having to pee. I saw the clock read 4am. I thought to myself ‘I should be quiet getting back into bed, my boyfriend has to be up for work in two hours.’

I went into the bathroom, peed, washed my hands, and walked out. However this time the clock on the microwave read 4.53am. When I got back to bed I had to push my boyfriend back to his side of the bed since he was laying where I was. This normally isn’t a problem when I get up, go pee, and get back in bed but I guess it’s not totally weird it happened either.

I could chalk this up to being tired and misreading the clock, but I swear it said 4.00 am because I remember thinking he had exactly two hours before he had to wake up.

Lost time or just tired? This has never happened to me before.”

8. “I was waiting for my boyfriend on the stairwell for what felt like a really long time. It was actually a few minutes, but he managed to walk down without me noticing.”

“We would usually take the stairwell because it was a lot faster than waiting on the elevator. As me and my boyfriend descend he says ‘Oh shit I forgot my wallet!’ I told him I can wait right here for him. He runs back up the stairs and tells me to just go to the bus stop and will meet me there. Me being my stubborn self I say I’ll wait knowing he’d be really quick.

I was standing in between level three and two still waiting. Time seemed to have stopped. I kept checking my phone but the clock moved saying its only been two minutes. To me it felt like I was waiting a lot longer. I proceeded to just go down and let him meet me there.

When I exited from the door leading to ground level, I checked my phone again and it said 10 minutes had passed. At this moment I really started to freak out. I called my boyfriend and he picked up saying “Hey where are you? I’ve been waiting at the bus stop and you’re not here.”

I told him that I was freaking out and told him how I waited for him. I was getting really mad because I thought he was playing a trick on me. I told him that this isn’t funny. He said he didn’t know what I was getting at and he sounded genuinely confused and concerned.

I told him I’ll be there soon and just kept walking to the bus stop. I saw him and my face was hot and eyes teary because I started to feel so uncomfortable and upset because I didn’t know what was going on.

I asked him if he used the elevator or a different staircase. He said it only took him a few minutes to get his wallet and he went straight back to the stairwell we left together in. I explained to him how I was waiting and how I got an uneasy feeling. I told him how I felt like time had stopped and about my phone fast forwarding. He kept reassuring me that he went down the stairs that we always use.

Somehow we crossed paths without seeing one another.

That whole day I felt myself questioning my sanity and reality.”

Have you ever experienced a “glitch in the matrix”? Let us know in the comments below.