What if you stopped for gas and realized you’d driven into the past?
That’s exactly what happened to Reddit user oilburner75 during a solo road trip through Georgia in the fall of 2018. He was on a simple mission: buying truck fenders from a seller in Acworth. The transaction went smoothly. He loaded up his purchase and headed back home.
Then he stopped for gas.
An Indescribable Feeling
“Upon entering the gas station every thing was suddenly different,” he wrote in his account on r/Paranormal, which has since captivated thousands of readers. “It was an indescribable feeling. Something had changed.”
The change wasn’t subtle. Behind the counter, something was profoundly wrong with the tobacco products. As someone familiar with these items, he immediately noticed that none of them displayed the federally mandated warning labels that had been required for years. The designs on the smokeless tobacco cans looked dated, like something from 1999 or 2000.
Then he noticed the prices.
Everything on the racks cost roughly a third of what it should in 2018. The drinks and sodas displayed labels that looked decades old. There was no credit card reader on the counter, something that had become standard years earlier, even in rural areas.
“I asked the woman behind the counter why they were selling outdated tobacco and drinks,” he recalled. Her response only deepened the mystery.
She handed him a can, insisting everything was fresh and not out of date. The expiration date read July 2000.
The Moment of Realization
“At this point I could not believe what I was seeing. It freaked me out so bad I left.”
He didn’t pay for gas. He didn’t linger to investigate. The realization that he might no longer be in his own timeline sent him straight out the door. He drove 20 miles down the road and stopped at a different station.
“It genuinely freaked me out because I knew that I was no longer in my timeline if time travel or a time slip had actually happened,” he explained in a follow-up comment.
When another Redditor asked about the gas prices, he confirmed what the pumps displayed: “Right at a dollar. Maybe 1.03?” He’d simply assumed they hadn’t updated the sign in years, a common enough sight in rural areas.
But it wasn’t just the sign.
Searching for Evidence
“To this day I have looked everywhere on google maps and cannot locate this gas station. There is simply nothing there.”
The traveler tried repeatedly to find the location using Google Earth and Google Maps. He remembered it being on Baker Road in Acworth, somewhat off the main highway. He recalled it being close to a parking lot, maybe one or two blocks away. He’d been near the Publix grocery store, which he remembered clearly because it was his first time seeing that chain.
When local Redditor runswithscissors94 jumped into the thread, they tried to help pinpoint the exact location. “I’m from Acworth,” they wrote, attempting to match the description to known gas stations in the area.
The discussion revealed something interesting: the traveler remembered the gas station being nearly in the Publix parking lot, to the left of what appeared on current maps as a car wash. “The sonic drive in must be the carwash I thought it was by guessing from google maps,” he concluded after studying the area online.
But no gas station appears there now. According to current mapping, only a Sonic restaurant occupies that space.
A Pattern Emerges
What makes this account particularly intriguing is that it’s not unique to Acworth.
Multiple commenters pointed the original poster toward a viral story circulating on TikTok about a remarkably similar experience at a gas station near Valdosta, Georgia, several hours south. In that case, a woman described an even more detailed encounter with what she believed was a genuine trip backward through time.
“Wondering where in GA you were,” wrote phriend75. “There is a viral story on tiktok right now, about a gas station somewhere around Valdosta where someone had a similar (but more detailed) experience like this. She claims she went back in time. After telling this story, a man wrote in describing a story his father (who worked at gas station) told about people who showed up from the future, and it seems these two stories are connected.”
The original poster hadn’t heard of the Valdosta incident when he shared his experience. His response: “I was in Acworth GA, that is very wild! I need to dig more into that story.”
Several other commenters also mentioned having strange experiences at gas stations in Georgia, suggesting a potential pattern of temporal anomalies at these locations.
The Skeptical View
Of course, conventional explanations exist for what the traveler experienced.
One possibility involves memory distortion. The human brain can play tricks under stress or fatigue, especially during solo road trips. Details might have been misremembered or conflated with other stops along the journey.
Another commenter, Visible-Ad-8663, suggested a more earthbound explanation: “I have heard stories like this before about stores being full of old merchandise and it actually turns out they are running some kind of money laundering operation. Like the front of the store is just a front for something else so they wouldn’t replenish old merchandise and just let it sit.”
This theory would explain the outdated products but doesn’t address the apparently fresh expiration dates, the missing credit card reader, or the period-appropriate prices.
The traveler himself addressed skeptics who questioned specific details, particularly regarding tobacco warning labels and credit card readers. When challenged about the timeline of when these things became mandatory or common, he defended his observations with detailed knowledge of smokeless tobacco regulations.
“Smokeless tobacco began to have small warning labels in 1986 on the side of the can just like cigarettes. Hardly noticeable. The cans DID NOT have a big 35% coverage warning label until Obama passed the law on that,” he explained, demonstrating familiarity with the industry that lends credibility to his observations.
Regarding credit card readers, he noted: “Credit card readers were still very uncommon in places in the south until probably 2010. Not everywhere down there was up to date. Even in my town in Virginia things like that were hit or miss.”
Another commenter who grew up in rural areas during that era backed him up: “Grew up in a small 1 store/ gas station town in the 90’s, then lived there again in the early 2000’s as a young mom! Never had credit card readers or anything modern. So I totally can put myself back in that era!”
Why No Photos?
Many readers wondered why he didn’t document the experience with his smartphone. His answer is telling.
“Didn’t come to my mind until I was on my way back home. I wish I would have. It had completely freaked me out badly seeing that and realizing I was likely in a different time period, unaware if I could even get back to the present.”
This reaction, whether experiencing a genuine anomaly or a profound moment of dissociation, rings true. The fight-or-flight response doesn’t typically include “stop and document this scientifically.”
When Redditor VaderXXV joked that they would have used the opportunity to call their younger self and give stock tips, the original poster’s response was more grounded: “Was for me, hope I never have this happen again.”
Breaking His Silence
Perhaps the most striking aspect of this account is how long the traveler kept it to himself.
“This is the first time I have spoke about what happened since 2018. I stopped telling people about it because people thought I was simply crazy.”
It’s a familiar refrain in glitch in the matrix accounts. Experiencers often remain silent for years, fearing ridicule or questioning their own sanity. Only when they discover others with similar experiences do they feel safe sharing their stories.
His decision to finally post about it six years later connected him with a community of people who took his experience seriously. Some offered theories about thin places and dimensional overlaps. Others shared their own inexplicable experiences.
“I think it’s the multiverse theory in action and some folks operate at a certain frequency that unbeknownst to them, may ‘tune’ them in to a parallel dimension,” wrote Zestyclose-Raisin367, offering one interpretation. “The Irish call some places ‘thin’ or where the veil to the other world(s) is thinner and you can slip or see those on the other side.”
You can read the full discussion and comments on his original Reddit post.
Questions Without Answers
What happened on that Georgia road in 2018? Did a traveler genuinely slip backward through time, if only briefly? Did he stumble into a parallel dimension where the year 2000 never ended? Or did fatigue, stress, and coincidence combine to create a powerful false memory?
The missing gas station adds another layer to the mystery. If it was simply an outdated store running a cash operation, why can’t it be found on any map? Why don’t local residents remember it?
And why do similar stories keep emerging from Georgia gas stations?
The traveler himself doesn’t claim to have all the answers. He simply knows what he experienced, and that experience was profound enough to haunt him for six years before he felt ready to share it.
Whether the explanation lies in quantum physics, dimensional theory, or the complexities of human perception, his account raises fascinating questions about the nature of time and reality.
Some mysteries resist easy answers. Some experiences defy conventional explanation. And sometimes, a simple stop for gas becomes something far stranger than anyone could anticipate.
Have you experienced a time slip or glitch in reality? We’d love to hear your story. Send your report to Reports@ParaRational.com
