Have you ever been absolutely certain you checked a spot, only to find the missing item sitting there moments later? Reddit user Tardegrades experienced this unsettling phenomenon in their own bedroom, and the inexplicable details have left both skeptics and believers scratching their heads.
The incident occurred when Tardegrades was home alone. As they explained in their post to r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix, “I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom and sat my phone at the foot of the bed. I went to the kitchen to get a drink, and came straight back to the bedroom. My phone wasnt there.”
Simple enough so far. We’ve all misplaced our phones. But what happened next takes an ordinary moment of forgetfulness and twists it into something far stranger.
The Impossible Discovery
At the foot of the bed where Tardegrades had placed their phone sat a single sheet of paper—an 8×11 sheet they’d set there earlier to read later. Following the logical steps any of us would take, they picked up the paper and looked underneath.
Nothing.
“The piece of paper was the only thing on the bed,” they wrote.
Still not panicking, Tardegrades walked back to the bathroom to check if they’d absent-mindedly left the phone there. No phone. When they returned to the bedroom, however, reality seemed to hiccup.
“There is my phone on the bed, ON TOP of the piece of paper I had just lifted and looked under,” they explained, adding a detail that makes rational explanations even more difficult: “Also, it was a just a thin piece of paper, it wouldn’t have held the weight of the phone.”
The witness’s confusion is palpable in their simple question: “How did this happen?”
When Your Brain Plays Tricks… Or Does It?
Reddit user ChaosPeach-Reaper offered the most common skeptical explanation: “This is a classic example of the ‘missing object right under your nose’ phenomenon. Sometimes our brains just gloss over things when we’re searching, especially if we’re expecting to see them a certain way.”
It’s true that our brains can filter out objects during searches, a phenomenon psychologists call “inattentional blindness.” We become so focused on what we’re looking for that we can overlook it entirely, even when it’s in plain sight.
But Tardegrades insists they had thrown the phone onto the bed initially and specifically checked under the paper. If the phone had been under the paper the entire time, the thin sheet wouldn’t have supported its weight—it would have been obvious. And if the phone had been beside the paper, why wouldn’t they have seen it during their search?
User cooperstonebadge suggested an even simpler explanation: “Your phone was in your hand. You put it down on the paper and went to the bathroom to look for it.”
To which Tardegrades firmly replied: “It wasn’t. I had thrown it on the bed.”
More Sinister Possibilities
Some commenters took the incident in a more unsettling direction. User Low_Cream1167 warned: “You have somebody living in your closet or in your attic.” Another user, Winipu44, added the term “Phrogger”—referring to people who secretly live in others’ homes.
While this might sound like paranoid speculation, user pickypawz offered sound advice: “Actually yes, it’s always better to look at real-life or ordinary explanations, especially since it could affect your safety. Did you check behind doors, under beds, etc?”
Fortunately, when asked by DaniGirlOK if there was any other weird activity in the home, Tardegrades responded simply: “Not really. Pretty boring here.”
Objects That Slip Between Worlds
This case echoes a common theme in glitch in the matrix reports: objects that temporarily vanish, only to reappear exactly where they were supposedly already checked.
User NurseNikky shared their own frustrating experience: “My cheese stick fell through a black hole by my bed. Never found it. Half eaten with the wrapper on. Luckily your phone didn’t end up with my stupid cheese stick.”
Similarly, bonononononono described an even more baffling incident: “Sheets of paper I had left on top of my bed, with an open highlighter pen on top, disappeared. Except I never found the papers. I came back to my room after stepping out for 2mins and they were gone, with the highlighter just sitting open bleeding on my bed.” When they moved from the apartment years later, the papers still hadn’t turned up. They call it their “underwhelming paranormal experience.”
User kilos_of_doubt offered a thought-provoking perspective on why these experiences might matter: “Think about all the people that claim to have video and photo evidence of some crazy stuff. Honestly, I thought I did too. And then they experience this… Fast-forward a few weeks when they want to show their friends, Cuz they remember that they put the video or photo in question in their favorites, aaaaaaand it’s gone.”
They continued with an unsettling conclusion: “If there’s things that can fade into and out of our perception at will, handling us must be so easy.”
Reality Check or Reality Glitch?
So what really happened to Tardegrades’ phone? The skeptical explanations—inattentional blindness, memory distortion, or simply holding the phone the entire time—don’t quite fit the specific details of this case. The witness insists they threw the phone down, specifically lifted the paper to check underneath, and found nothing. The paper was too thin to hide the phone’s weight.
Could this be a genuine glitch in the matrix, a momentary breakdown in the fabric of everyday reality? Or did Tardegrades’ brain create a false memory of checking under the paper, while their eyes failed to register the phone sitting in plain sight?
As UnicornsNeedLove2 playfully suggested: “Someone in a parallel universe briefly had your phone.”
Whether you believe in simulation theory, parallel universes, or simply the fallibility of human perception, cases like these remind us how little we truly understand about consciousness, memory, and the nature of reality itself.
You can read the full discussion and additional comments on the original Reddit post.
Have you experienced a glitch in the matrix or glitch in reality? We’d love to hear your story. Send your report to Reports@ParaRational.com
