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42 Real Glitches In The Matrix That Might Freak You Out
Human brains have a way of noticing patterns. Indeed, it’s a pretty important part of our survival. So it probably shouldn’t be any surprise that most of us notice those interesting little incidents that seem too convenient to be real.
We’ve gathered stories from people who had their “glitch in the Matrix” moments, when some weird repetition or coincidence all came together to make them think twice. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own stories in the comments down below.
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#1
I met a man while working that I thought was really handsome. Had a bit of love-at-first-sight. We talked and I secretly wished for a sign to pursue. The next day I walked outside my apartment at a time I normally am relaxing after work - my crush is parking his car across the street. I suspiciously ask “what are you doing here…” he said “I live here!” We had lived RIGHT across the st from each other for 3 YEARS. We are now married.
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#2
When I was like 3 months pregnant with my first child, I had a vivid dream about standing in a bathroom and hanging up shower curtains and a little boy walked into the room and asked "what are you doing Mummy?" And I replied back with an explanation. I remembered his face, his blueish green eyes and curly dark blonde hair.
About 3 years after I had my son, I moved across Canada and got a little apartment unit, my mother went shopping for supplies to stock up with and one of those items was a dark green plastic shower curtain. I didn't think anything of it, and went to the bathroom to hang it up. My son walked in, looked up and said "what are you doing Mummy?" And before I could stop myself I was reciting word-for-word what I said in my dream. To my son, who has blue-green eyes and curly dark blonde hair.
#3
One day I was walking home, and a random old “homeless” man jumped in front of me. I stood, frozen in fear as we both stared each other down until he finally says “hey..don’t go that way. Turn around” for some reason my entire soul said to trust him, so I did. When I turned around to thank him he was gone. Literally vanished into thin air..I Got home to find out a girl was m**dered on that
Very same street I was supposed to take at the exact moment I met the man.
#4
Newborn stage dreams are vivid. One night I had a nightmare my baby drowned in his bassinet, which was right next to my bed. I woke up in shambles and took him out immediately. held him in the rocking chair. “He’s safer in my arms “ is all I could think in my head. About 20 minutes later I woke up panicked because I realized I had dozed off with him in the chair. I went to lay him back down, and his bassinet was filled with water from a leak we didn’t know about that was right above it.
#5
One time I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought was someone calling my name. I could’ve sworn it was my deceased grandma so I knew I had to be dreaming and went back to sleep. The next morning my sister told me she had the weirdest dream that our grandma had called her name from downstairs and it felt so real. I told her I’d experienced the same. Later that day my daughter who never met our grandma said “I dreamed an old sweet lady was lost in our house and I helped her”.
#6
I’ve lost things, only to find them somewhere else. Like in another state, or somewhere I’ve never been. I once lost an engraved pocket knife and looked everywhere for it. I gave up and two weeks later I went to a house party of someone I just met that night, and when I got out of the car I stepped on something in the dirt. I bent down to scrape it off of the ground/dirt and it was my knife. Dried mud and all. I opened it and my name was on the blade. Wild.
#7
I once received a voicemail from a friend, asking if we could get together and catch up over a drink or something. Except there were two problems. 1) I was 16 or 17 and definitely not old enough to drink (or at least outside people’s basements where I’d actually “get drinks” with a friend. 2) The voicemail came from me. It was distinctly, without a shred of doubt, my voice. But I never made that call or left that voicemail, for anyone.
#8
The day after my mum died in hospice, I was in her room gathering her things. I was about to bend down to pick something up when a whoosh of pure light and energy flooded straight through me. It was mum. I know it was.
#9
I had a dream I punched a friend in the eye, odd but didn't tell anyone. The next day I was hanging out with that person and they just brought up out of the blue that they had a dream where I punched them in the eye.
#10
My big one that I always think about is that once or twice a month I’ll be reading a word at the exact second someone says it on tv or in real life. Out of the billions of words in the world, how does that keep happening.
#11
Before he was born, I vividly dreamed of dying during my c-section with my son, I saw my son swimming in blood in my belly. I told my doctors that I was going to die and to make sure they had my blood type on hand. I told my doctor of my dreams. She ended up severing an artery during my surgery, I crashed. Four blood transfusions. 16 days in hospital. my son was in nicu/picu for over two months. I know that my dreams were just a premonition of what was to come.
#12
I left my house to walk to work one day, completely on time to be there 5 minutes early to unlock. I lived less than a 5 minute walk away through a neighborhood. Nothing unusual happened on the walk. I arrived twelve minutes late to work with a bunch of upset coworkers waiting for me. I’ve never been able to explain that unexpected time loss.
#13
Shazam was a movie that Sinbad starred in and was released in the 90s. Now people are saying it never existed.
#14
This is not something I’ve shared publicly before. One day, I was walking with a friend who was worried her boyfriend was about to call it quits, and as I’m listening, a completely unrelated thought flashed in my head and I burst into full, heavy tears. I said, when my dad dies, my boyfriend won’t be able to be there for me.
Two weeks later, my dad died in a sudden accident. My boyfriend broke up with me the day after his funeral because he wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle my grief.
#15
Lived in NYC for 30 years, through blackouts and terrorist attacks but never felt scared of other NYers. One day during morning rush hour, I'm on the platform, the subway pulls up and I step aside to let people exit the train before I get on. One guy steps off and I'm paralyzed with fear. He didn't even see me, but my brain screamed, "He **lled me." Past tense. I couldn't get on the train. Just watched this benign nondescript man walk away, oblivious to me. Never felt that before or since.
#16
11/6/2024 I seriously felt like I shifted timelines when I saw those horrid results of the election. I never felt so off in my own skin. I felt a real physical shift. It was 4am & I walked over to the window to look outside & it looked omnious & I was in Hawaii at the time. I will never forget it. 🤷🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️😩
#17
The same person walked past me 3 times on a street within 5 minutes from the same direction there’s no way that was possible
#18
We lived in a house that had a friendly ghost. We moved into this house after our medically fragile daughter was born. She was on infusions up to 12 hours a day and every day she had a 50/50 chance of survival. Her fairy mobile above her bed would dance, she would coo at the ghost, our Siberian husky would “talk” to it, etc. We later found out the neighborhood was built on an indigenous burial site (BOO!), but we are grateful for the love these ancestors showed our family during a horrific time.
#19
When I was in 3rd grade (2004) I was outside at recess with my friends and suddenly everything went pitch black like God switching off a light. You couldn’t see or hear a thing. I thought in that split second I was the only one who experienced it but then it was like the lights got switched back on and my friend’s immediate reaction was “WOAH!!.. you saw that right!?” It felt like a long blink while also being deaf.
#21
My friend and I, in college, waiting for a tech to unlock the door to the studio. The tech arrives and reaches for the keys attached to his belt and the next second he is holding the door open. 3-5 seconds disappeared - time skipped the part where he should have used the key to unlock the door and open it. All 3 of us saw it happen. It’s was such a strange moment.
#22
Onetime/2002, I was driving from LA to our home in SF for the weekend w/my dog. About 7hrs, normally…stopping once to let the dog out & get gas. Well, after driving over the grapevine maybe 2hrs, there was something in the sky that caught my attention. Watched it. Then, I was suddenly near the Bay Bridge. Left late around 4pm. Got to SF at 8:30 without stopping. Don’t think about it too often. It was strange. Still had gas, and my dog slept the entire ride. Home before dark.
#23
Leaving a parking lot after making a delivery, this old woman was leaving the lot right ahead of me. i had passed her on the way in, big chunky colorful earrings and a blue patterned shirt, silver sedan. she turns right, goes around the corner onto the side street we were next to. same moment her car vanished, the same car driven by the same woman turns the corner on my left side, turns into the parking lot, parks in the spot she had just left. i felt like i was insane the rest of the day 😭
#24
I was bathing my 3yo, with my back to the door. I see his eyes move like he’s looking at something behind me, so I turn around but see nothing. My son says “Daddy’s home!” I’m like no, no one’s there. Then I hear my 1yo who was in another room call out “Daddy!” I call their dad and he’s still at work. So not a ghost… but also not in the house with us
#25
I stopped in at a truckstop in Louisiana and went inside to get a sub sandwich, When it was my turn to order the fella says- Oh hey man you back again for another sub? I said no I just got here. No you were here at the start of my shift. A girl comes out from the back and says- hey you're back again. You must've loved the sandwich I made earlier. I told them that I was in Georgia earlier. Buddy says, unless you have a twin who works around here, it was definitely me they served in the morning.
#26
I once made an hour’s journey in 30mins despite being UNDER the speed limit. Even my partner in the car with me said “where did 1/2 that journey go?”
#27
I was like 13-14 probably and was talking to this strange homeless guy at a bus stop once. He started giving me all this random unsolicited life advice. I didn’t know how to respond so just kinda agreed with him. At one point during the convo I turned my head for like a millisecond to see if the bus was coming- and when I turned back this dude vanished into thin air. There was nowhere he could have ran to fast enough to be completely out of my line of sight that fast. I thought I imagined him..
#28
An ambulance came straight at our car at full speed when I was a kid with zero way of not getting hit head on since there was no way around us, we braced when they reached like a foot away from our front end and in less than a second the ambulance was behind us as if you just paused time to swap our vehicles
#29
Had a dream I was playing with this toddler , light skin, hazel eyes. I loved him so much and was sad when I woke up. Three years later, i was playing with my nephew, light skin, hazel eyes and it clicked. I just smiled and hugged him.
#30
When I was eight or nine, I had a bad dream and went to my mom’s room. When I got there, she wasn’t in the bed, but her boyfriend Don was. I asked him where my mom was, and he pointed silently to the light under the bathroom door. When I went over to to tell her I had a bad dream, the first thing I said was that Don let me know she was in the bathroom. She told me Don wasn’t over that night.
#31
I was in the back of a cab and something exploded right next to me. Literally the air next to me went “bang”. Loud enough for me to freak out and loud enough for cab driver to stop the car. We both looked around for the source of the explosion, including inside my handbag (such as a lighter) but nah we never discovered what it was. Very odd.
#32
No one will believe me, I barely believe me and I lived it, so no worries.
When I was in 4th grade, I dreamt I was attacked by a little girl. I woke up with scratch marks.
Could’ve been me, whatever, I move on with my day. Her face keeps popping into my head though, so angry.
Later that day, I’m on the playground and climb up high enough to see the pattern of her face in the grass.
I had friends confirm I wasn’t seeing things. Everyone talked for days about the creepy face on the field.
#33
I was in Amsterdam with a friend just casually walking around and suddenly I hit an invisible wall and fell backwards and down! My friend just said, well I guess we’re not supposed to go that way!
#34
I was listening to music on my iPhone through the car. I wanted to listen to ‘Jet’ by Wings, but I had this deep feeling of knowledge that I didn’t need to ask Siri to play it because it had just started playing on Gold 104.3.
I switched to the radio and it had just started.
#35
Almost every day. Things like:
thinking about something then seeing something related to it 5 minutes later.
Parking my car and when I leave the store, somehow the exact same car is parked next to mine?
When I get Deja vu (happens a lot) I feel like I’m in a foggy state and my words aren’t my words, I’m just following a script.
I have what I call “epic dreams” where it’s like I’m watching a movie and sometimes they continue in another dream another night. Or the same dream for a long time.
#36
One morning I woke up in a panic thinking I slept through my alarm set at 9AM. I sleep with my phone under my pillow and reached for it to check the time. 8:42. Perfect I go back to sleep. For a WHILE. I wake up thinking hours have passed and I reach for my phone but it’s not there. Weird. I get up outta bed and my phones on the floor. ? Ok it fell. I pick it up and check the time. 8:42AM.
#37
I'd wished to have a daughter my whole life. After my second son was born, I was discussing with my husband still wanting to try for one someday & my oldest, who was about 4 at the time, overheard. He walked up to me, gave me a kiss on the lips and said, "There Mommy, now you'll have a girl." (he thought kissing made babies) A few months later, I found out I was unexpectedly pregnant - with my daughter. 😁
#38
Don't know if it's a glitch in the matrix but I had a friend move to New Zealand and he was always telling me to move down from the UK and give NZ a try. Long story short the printing press I worked on was sold to a NZ company and they needed someone to run it. It was going to a place in NZ called Upper Hutt. I called my friend to see if it was anywhere near him, we couldn't believe it, it was 5 minutes down the road! Unbelievable
#39
I swear I learned in primary school that a year is 364 and a leap year 365. Somehow that changed to 365 and 366. Ironically I know more people who remember this.
#40
duolingo dutch kept aligning situations and statements with my life on the day they would happen. I know some things can be generally common coincidences but it was always very specific, non-recurring things. The amount of times I said “no f**king way” in the last three years of using that app…
#41
I was merging onto the 134 going
East at the 134/5 split in moderately busy but slow daytime traffic, so I was paying attention to my surroundings, obviously, but I looked down at the passenger seat for a second to secure something that was rattling around. When I looked up again a moment later, I was all the way past Glendale. Before anyone says I zoned out, here’s the thing: the song I was listening to on the radio didn’t miss a beat. No skip in continuity whatsoever.
#42
Things that I know I put in specific places end up in other places.
Also, Fruit of the Loom having a cornucopia and then not still weirds me out.
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