A Reddit user who goes by r/Reiki_in_the_Matrix shared an experience from years ago that still gives them goosebumps. They were making a drive they’d done countless times—from their home in Wisconsin to visit their dad in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Their 2-year-old son slept peacefully in the back seat.
It was a route the witness knew intimately. Dark roads cutting through woods with no stores for miles. A particular stop sign they’d passed at least a hundred times before.
But this time, something was very wrong.
When Familiar Roads Turn Strange
“Within a couple miles I knew something was wrong,” they wrote. “The road was straight when it should have been curvy, but I brushed it off and kept going.”
The feeling that usually accompanied this drive—happiness, excitement—was replaced by something unsettling. Nothing looked familiar anymore.
Then they saw it. A huge white building in the distance that shouldn’t exist. “It was HUGE and white and looked ‘almost’ like some type of large plane laboratory,” they described. But it couldn’t have been built in just the few years since they’d last made this drive. And everything else looked different too.
The Purple Airplane
A few miles later, the witness looked up at the sky.
“I saw what was LIKE a completely normal looking airplane in the sky—but it had flashing lights and was suspended in the sky,” they explained. They knew strong winds could sometimes create the illusion of hovering aircraft, but this was different.
“The plane was PURPLE WITH FLASHING LIGHTS and had weird clouds/mist around it.”
The hair on their arms stood straight up. Goosebumps covered their skin.
Everything Stops Working
Desperate for something normal, they turned on the radio. None of the stations worked. The dashboard clock showed nothing—just blank. They hadn’t seen another car the entire time.
Their phone suddenly wouldn’t work either.
“I wanted to turn around but also had just kept driving hoping I would see something normal,” they wrote. They were about to pull over and go back when they finally saw it—the road they were supposed to turn on.
30 Minutes Gone
Suddenly, the radio worked again. Everything snapped back to normal.
“A MIN HAD PASSED but closer to 20-30 MIN had passed since I left my dad’s house,” they realized. Their son was still sleeping peacefully with their sister-in-law in the back seat. The witness felt “a relief and safety I had NEVER or have ever to this day experienced.”
But something was deeply wrong with the timeline. They’d driven 20 to 30 miles without seeing a single familiar landmark. Then everything was suddenly correct again.
The Memory That Won’t Fade
The witness’s son is now 18 years old. Nearly two decades have passed since that impossible drive. They still remember every detail.
“My dad and I still talk about it,” they shared. “I even got goosebumps as I was telling him this and he saw them. He almost cried trying to explain it or forget it.”
Their father witnessed the aftermath—saw the fear, the confusion, the physical reaction of goosebumps appearing while retelling the story years later.
When Reality Bends
Skeptics might suggest highway hypnosis or simple disorientation. But the witness knew these roads intimately. They’d driven them their entire life, at least once a year for decades.
The purple airplane with its flashing lights and surrounding mist defies conventional explanation. Aircraft don’t hover motionless with strange colored lights and clouds. The complete absence of other vehicles on what should have been a normal highway adds to the strangeness.
The missing time is perhaps most disturbing. Nearly 30 minutes passed, but it felt like only one. The witness covered 20 to 30 miles without recognizing a single landmark on roads they’d driven a hundred times.
A Glitch in the Matrix
The witness titled their post with a simple question: “Where did I go?”
It’s a question that haunts them nearly two decades later. Did they slip into an alternate reality where familiar roads run straight instead of curvy? Where purple airplanes hang motionless in the sky? Where time moves differently than it should?
The witness drove through something that shouldn’t exist. Roads they knew became roads they didn’t. Time stretched and compressed. And somewhere between Wisconsin and Michigan, reality bent in ways it shouldn’t.
They’re still looking for answers. They still get goosebumps telling the story. And they still don’t know where they went that night.
Have you experienced a time slip or glitch in reality? We’d love to hear your story. Send your report to Reports@ParaRational.com
