38 People Share 'Glitch in the Matrix' Stories That Left Them Speechless

From hearing unsaid words to seeing people who don't exist—people have witnessed all kinds of things that made them believe there is a glitch in the matrix.

Reality might be different for everyone, but what happens when it seems to flicker and glitch before one's eyes? Many people have encountered bizarre things that made them question their reality, and some opened up about their experiences online.

Many Redditors shared mind-boggling and logic-defying personal experiences where they couldn't differentiate their imagination from reality. These firsthand accounts, recounting inexplicable phenomena, challenge our understanding of what's real and what may just be a wrinkle in the cosmic code.

Comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

1. I Was Fluent in Chinese

u/ohfail: This is not creepy but so vivid and distinct that I still think about it years later. I had a (subjectively) long, involved dream where I was a vendor in a fish market.

I remember getting up early, dressing, doing a whole morning routine, getting tea, heading out to the docks, buying fish, loading them in a cart, and getting ice.

Then, I haggled for ice, bought some less fresh fish while I was at it, and then went to a market to my stall, where I set up and sold fish all day. It was so real.

I talked to friends, haggled customers, ate lunch, had tea, and just lived through the day. In the end, I cleaned up, counted my cash, paid the stall rent, went home, cooked some of the fish I hadn't sold, and slung with some veggies and rice that I'd traded for. I drank more tea, relaxed, drew a hot bath, and went to bed.

The following day, I woke up refreshed, ready to go to the docks to buy fresh catch.... Except I was in my house, next to my wife.

My truck was parked outside, and it was Saturday—no work. My wife and I were getting geared up to go skiing in Oregon, and the car was already packed.

The weird thing was that in the dream, I was single. And a smoker (I'm not). And the whole long dream had been in fluent Chinese. The effortless fluency that only comes from a lifetime of speaking it. Oh, and I had been Chinese.

I'm a big, hairy white man, somewhat fluent in Spanish, and I know a little bit of Russian, but I've never.... It was just weird. I've never worked in a fish market. I wonder who I was. I wonder what that was.

2. Who Recreated My Voice?

u/KILLALLEXTREMISTS: This happened about 15 years ago. I called my friend, and he wasn't home, so I left a message on his answering machine.

I said, "Hey, it's me. Sorry, I missed you. I'll call you later. Bye." And then I hung up and left the house. I made no other calls.

Later that day, he called back and said, "Wow, that was quite a message you left. Who was that girl you were talking to?" I was like, "What are you talking about? I wasn't talking to any girl!"

Well, as it turns out, the message didn't end after I said "Bye." I had to go to his house and listen to this message several times.

After my initial message that I did leave (as quoted above), there was a slight pause, and it continued for another 30-40 seconds or so with me talking to some girl.

It was my voice, but a conversation I never had with a girl whose voice I didn't recognize. You could compare it to the message I know I did leave, and the two voices were indistinguishable. It was not just the voices; the talking mannerisms were also identical. It was my voice.

Also, references to my occupation and activities were the same. In this conversation, I was talking to this girl about going skiing, but I had to go down to my shop and work on a car first, which correlated with me.

Then, the message just stopped. It was recorded on one of those digital answering machines that recorded the message to a chip, so there was no tape I could have taken and analyzed, unfortunately. Also, neither my friend nor I had party lines, so that's not an explanation. It was very freaky, I can't explain it.

3. I Didn't Say That!

u/TrainingPassenger8: This just happened, and my fiancé and I are a little freaked out. It happened when he couldn't find his phone, and I offered to call him.

When he found his phone, he answered, turned on the speaker, and said "hello" beside me. I replied with "Hello" too, but when we heard my voice coming from his phone, it was me clearly saying "Hey."

We looked at each other, and I immediately ended the call. We couldn't come up with a rational explanation (which does not mean there isn't one; we just couldn't think of one).

4. Waving at Strangers

u/kerwapple: I remember being pretty young, like 9 or 10, and I was in a pub car park in England (Southend).

I remember seeing someone in their teens in the window of a house looking over the car park. They waved at me, and I felt like I knew them somehow.

My parents asked who I was waving at, and I said it was just some lady in the window over there. I didn't think much of it.

Fast forward ten years. I was at my nan's new house. I remember walking into her room (which I was never allowed to do) to the window.

I then realized I was in the house looking over that same parking lot and remembering that interaction years before.

Then, a girl around 9 or 10 in the car park waved at me, and I waved back. I felt like I knew her. I could not explain it and have never told anyone about it. It freaked me out.

5. My Mother's Earrings

u/pissysissy: It was after my mom died, and I dropped an earring she gave me down the sink. They were both on my dresser the following day. I cannot explain it.

6. An Unexpected Experience

u/TraceBot9000: I've experienced déjà vu a couple of times when I was younger, and while that is undoubtedly freaky, nothing beats its opposite, jamais vu, which I experienced twice during a period of work-related stress a few years ago.

On both occasions, I was driving in my car, in perfectly familiar surroundings near my home, when suddenly I had no idea where I was or where I was going. It was like being instantly teleported to a foreign country.

It only lasted seconds, but it was very creepy nonetheless. Until it happened to me, I had no idea this existed.

7. The Phone Call Glitch

u/lou3189: I don't know how crazy this is compared to others, but this happened last night while I was on the phone with my girlfriend.

I was telling her about my day and ended my sentence with, "It shouldn't be like that." I then heard static and my voice echoing, repeating the sentence, "It shouldn't be that way."

The phone call returned to normal, and my girlfriend couldn't remember which one she heard. Did I glitch out to another parallel universe where I chose to end my sentence with the other words?

8. I Didn't See That Coming

u/[deleted]: I knew my uncle had died. My mom had called me and told me the news. It was unfortunate.

She informed me during work, and I told one of my coworkers. He expressed his condolences on my loss.

A couple of weeks later, my sister mentioned my aunt and uncle doing something. I said, "But...he's dead." And my sister said no, he wasn't.

I called my mom. No, he wasn't dead. To this day, I'm still not sure how much of it my brain imagined and how much was real. Did I really talk to my coworker? Was I even on the phone with my mom at all that day?

It still freaks me out knowing my mind could fabricate a memory like that so completely and accurately.

9. The Painting

u/Adventuredepot: I removed a painting from the wall during a late evening cleaning, put it away, and returned to the wall to see a never-before-seen painting on the same spot. It put a chill down my spine.

10. The Drinking Glasses

u/Rlysrh: At my dad's house, we have several sets of drinking glasses in various sizes, all the same style.

I don't know why, but I think they stopped selling them in the UK, and we got some from France when we were on holiday.

They come in packs of 4, and my dad remembers already having four sets and buying two more sets in France to make 12 glasses.

One day, we found a 13th glass and had no idea where it came from. We couldn't have picked up just a single one anywhere because they only come in sets of 4, and we'd remember if he'd bought an extra set and broken 3.

11. My Sister's House

u/BanditSixActual: This happened around 1991. It's the middle of the night. I'm standing in my sister's living room, and it must be a full moon because even though it's around 1 a.m. and the lights are off, I can see clearly.

There's a mixing bowl with popcorn kernels at the bottom on the floor in front of the TV and some rental VHS in a pile nearby.

I hear a noise and turn around to see my sister's usually very friendly labrador retriever looking like Cujo. Fangs bared, snarling, hackles raised.

Suddenly, there's a bright flash of light, and I wake up like I hit the bed from a great height. I think, "That was a weird dream."

Eventually, I fall back to sleep, and in the morning, I call my sister, planning to tell her the story, but she preempts me by telling me about the weird thing that happened at night.

They woke up to the sound of the dog snarling at about 1 a.m. Her husband thought a prowler was in the house, so he went to find the dog.

She was standing in the living room, snarling in the middle of the room. My sister's husband couldn't see anyone, so he flipped on the light.

No one was there. The dog stopped snarling and walked to the bed like nothing had happened. My sister's husband checked the property and went back to bed.

We talked a bit, and I found out they watched some rental movies. My sister said, "Of course we had popcorn. Why?"

My sister is sometimes a little woo-woo, so I decided not to tell her about my night. She lived about 450 miles away, by the way.

12. The Strange Man

u/Parrot-Tamer: When I was 12, my mom let me stay in the truck as she went grocery shopping. As I waited, I saw an old guy walking towards the vehicle with an indescribable look at me as if I knew too much.

He stopped five feet from the truck, looked at me for a couple of seconds, and headed back the exact way he came.

It was rather traumatic for some reason and very confusing at that age. About six years later, my dad showed me home videos of us at Yellowstone.

Then, I noticed the same guy, with the same look and same clothes, peering at us on camera and at me through the TV. I'm freaked out by just recalling this.

13. When Did I Post This?

u/Psychological-Ad7281: One night, I was scrolling back in my Instagram feed. I am unsure why I felt like doing that, but something compelled me to.

I came across a selfie of myself where I had a bizarre and unattractive smile. It had no likes. Most of my photos have around 50-80 since my friends are active on it, and I don't remember taking it or posting it, though it was from a week before.

It spooked me badly, and I deleted it. I did not see a copy of it in my camera roll. It happened seven years ago, and I still think about it.

14. The Woman at the Train Station

u/your_a_moron: I was catching a skytrain in one particular city about 15 minutes from where I get off. While I waited, a woman with glazed eyes asked people for money.

She approached me, stopped briefly, and asked, "Excuse me, could you spare some money? My brother is in the hospital, and I'd like some money to buy him some flowers."

That's rich, I thought. People with an addiction are getting more and more evident with their lines. "Here's $5". I gave it to her without even looking her in the face, convinced of her intentions.

Anyway, my train pulled up, and I got on. As the train pulled away, I looked through the glass at the woman still asking others for money.

The train arrived at the station 15 minutes later, and I walked down and out to the bus stop. There is only one bus where I'm going, and just my luck! It is there waiting when I get off the train.

So, I hop on the bus and wait for the bus driver to finish reading his paper before the doors close, and we embark down the highway.

After about 5-10 minutes of traveling, the driver pulls over for a routine stop. The doors opened, and to my complete astonishment, the woman from the Skytrain walked into the bus.

She has a dozen roses in her hand. She looks me right in the eyes as she walks past to take her seat.

How did she get there? I took the train before her. I watched her from inside at the train stop as we pulled away. I went over a river. I caught the first and only bus going in this particular direction.

Not only did she beat me there, but she also had time to go to a store and buy a dozen roses. To this day, I have no idea how this happened.

15. Returning Home from School

u/Maleficent_Horse687: This one doesn't have to do with me but more with my mom. It was a Friday when I was walking home from school.

Everybody knows the feeling—you're done with everything from the past week and ready for the weekend. Once I got home, I left my backpack on the couch.

My mom had a shocked look on her face. I asked her what was wrong. "I picked you up early for a dental appointment, But now you're here," she told me.

I was not spooked, just a little confused. I hugged her and went to get my backpack off the couch, where I left it when I got home. It was not there.

Keep in mind there was no one in the house but us. I asked my mom if she moved it, but she didn't. After looking for a while, I found it in the passenger seat of my mom's car.

I felt confused and shocked at the same time. I walked home, and there was no way my bag could've just teleported to the car like that.

16. "Sharp Bend, Hm?"

u/pistacchio: When I was 10 or 11, I went to the beach with my aunt and her friends. There were two cars of us.

We had to go through an extensive industrial area to get there. We didn't know the direction, so our car followed the other. They suddenly made an unexpected turn, so our driver had to take a sharp bend.

At that moment, we heard an evident, loud voice inside the car laughing and saying, "Sharp bend, hm?!"

The driver immediately hit the brakes. We looked at each other, puzzled because we all recognized it as a voice not belonging to any of us.

At the same time, we noticed that the other car had also stopped. The other driver exited the car with a scared face and shouted: "Did... did you hear that as well?". They heard the very same thing inside their vehicle. The area around was fully deserted.

17. The Mysterious Sentence

u/[deleted]: One time, I heard myself, the computer, and the TV say the same sentence in synchronicity. I question the reality to this day.

18. Hi Wally!

u/Battle_Narwhal53: It's not my story, but my grandpa's. So, he served in the Navy and didn't come home for five years.

When he finally got home, he saw his old friend Wally on his way back. Wally was getting on his usual bus, and my Grandpa shouted, "Hi!"

Wally didn't respond, but my grandpa didn't think much of it because he knew Wally didn't have the best hearing. Wally got on his bus and looked my Grandpa in the eye as the bus drove away.

Later, after my grandpa got home and talked to his dad, he asked him how Wally was doing and told him about how he had seen him earlier.

His dad was silent for a minute and asked if he was sure it was Wally. My grandpa said yes, and his dad replied, "Wally died six months ago."

19. The Connected Dream

u/EmotiveBubble: The strangest glitch I've found was back in high school. I was talking to a friend on the phone, describing a dream I had about an ice-skating rink, and then he narrated the rest of the dream to me from the opposite point of view.

It was a while ago, so I don't remember everything, but we both described the scenery, what the people were doing, etc. It freaked me out when it happened.

20. That Was Unexpected

u/[deleted]: I went to bed in my bed and woke up in my then-girlfriend's bed. I was woken up by her shock at my being there.

I didn't have a key. No windows were open. She lived several miles from my house. No substance abuse was involved.

21. The Invisible Route

u/Thundersalmon45: I was at a friend's house when I was 10, and we went upstairs and down the hall into his room, but when we went through the door into his room, we actually went through a door into his kitchen.

We stood for a second, looking at each other, wondering what just happened. His mother asked if we had forgotten something because she thought we had just run to the stairs, turned around, and ran back. Then, we went to his room and asked each other if that actually happened.

22. His Question Made Me Think About It

u/[deleted]: I was on vacation in Florida visiting a friend. We were walking on the beach on a perfectly sunny day when everything went black for a second.

I think it was weird, but I explained it away, thinking that my eyes were playing tricks on me until he looked at me and asked, "Did everything go black for a second?"

23. Was That a Glitch?

u/SlayerS94: I was traveling past a high school, and the band was out playing. I watched and heard them, as did the others in the vehicle.

It gets quiet as we go around the corner, and we look over, but there is no band! All of them are gone!

We all looked at each other and had to question if we had all just seen a group hallucination. Almost 50 kids and adults disappeared in a matter of a second. Glitch?

24. Against Gravity

u/ProjectZeta: One time, I spilled a bowl of SpaghettiOs, and as I was cleaning them, I noticed one on the ceiling. Nine feet up.

I didn't even DROP the bowl. I just tipped it onto the counter by mistake, but sure enough, a single O was stuck to the ceiling.

25. The Shampoo Bottle

u/DishExtra4145: Once, I was staying at a cousin's house and taking a shower when I accidentally knocked a shampoo bottle off the toilet.

I heard it hurt the ground, and it even knocked over the trash, but when I went to retrieve it, I couldn't find it.

It simply disappeared. I spent 30 minutes trying to find it, but it was gone. It disappeared as if it never existed.

26. My Friend Never Came

u/nithararith: One day, when I was about eight, I didn't go to school because I was sick. My friend was supposed to bring me homework, etc., but he never came.

My granddad came home from work, and he told me that that friend was dead. I was devastated. That night, I had a dream. I was with my friend at a playground next to our school, and we were talking, then he told me that he was safe and it didn't hurt when that car hit him.

The next day, my mother wanted to talk to me about that situation and asked me if I wanted to know what happened. I told her that I knew everything because my friend told me.

She thought that my granddad had told me, but he had not. He said he did not want to tell me without her knowing it.

That night, I had a dream where I was talking to him again. We were playing and having fun, and he told me he really had to go and we wouldn't see each other again. The next day was his funeral, and I really never had a dream about him ever since.

27. My Girlfriend Was Scared

u/[deleted]: I used to work in a building with three sub-basement levels, and I typically used lab equipment in the lowest basement.

I had the only key to the lowest level. There was a wired phone in there, and I did work late some nights, but not this night.

I was sleeping alone in my apartment when I woke up to a call on my cell phone from my girlfriend at 3 a.m. She was in hysterics and asked why I scared her.

Apparently, she had received a call from that basement phone just a minute earlier, with someone who sounded like me slowly repeating her name until their voice cracked and faded out.

My apartment was 10 miles away from work. I thought she was lying, but I saw the 3 a.m. call from the basement phone in her phone's call log. It still freaks me out.

28. My Goldfish

u/[deleted]: When I was 10, I had a pet goldfish disappear on me. I suspected it was my best friend's dog who ate the goldfish, as he was always very interested in the contents of the bowl.

When I confronted my friend with this theory, he informed me, to my amazement, that I never had a goldfish. Why did I have the bowl?

29. The Frozen Strangers

u/[deleted]: About two years ago, I went to collect my husband from the ferry after work. My husband got into the car, and as I drove slowly out of the car park, we both noticed two people standing a few meters away from us.

It looked as though they were strangers, older-looking professionals, both walking to their separate cars in different areas of the car park.

The man was reaching into his side bag, and the lady was further ahead than the man, with her head turned to the right. I know their exact positions because they were completely frozen on the spot!

My husband and I sat there watching the frozen strangers, not saying anything to each other, and then all of a sudden, it was like someone pressed the play button, and the two strangers just continued like nothing had happened.

My husband and I promised each other that we would never forget the weird experience. I can't remember exactly how long they stayed frozen like that, but it was long enough to freak us both out!

30. The Same Conversation

u/[deleted]: For one day, everyone I was talking to was having the same conversation with me (the topic was disability studies), and none of them knew each other.

For example, in the morning, I was discussing with my professor. Later that day, a friend who didn't attend the same class as me brought it up.

In the evening, another friend mentioned wanting to do their master's in disability studies. It was the weirdest situation ever.

31. Vivid Dreams

u/Elnendil: One night, I dreamt about being in a car with my sister. We were going to the church we usually went to. For some reason, it started going out of control, so I jumped to the wheel and tried to keep us from dying.

Later, I told my sister about the dream, and she said she had the same dream, but she was the one at the wheel instead of me.

32. I Thought It Was My Husband

u/MckayofSpades: Every night, I go to bed about two hours before my husband. I always wake up when he comes into the room.

One night, he was gaming with a friend, and hours later, I heard him sneak into the room and crawl across the floor so he could pop up and scare me.

I felt the floor shake, and he bumped clumsily against the side of the bed in the dark. I held out my hand and asked him not to scare me. I was already scared enough and begged him just to take my hand and come to bed.

I couldn't see anything in the room, but I knew he was there. I just waited for him to jump up so I could move on and go back to sleep. That's when I heard him talking to his friend in the other room. I was frozen.

I know there's sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming or something that explains this, but I would have sworn on my son's life that someone had crawled across the floor and jostled the bed.

Eventually, I worked out of fear enough to grab my phone and text my husband to come in, turn on the lights, and check under the bed. But it boggles me how real it felt.

33. The Out-of-Body Experience

u/ScoobyD00BIEdoo: During a spinal tap procedure, I was put under anesthetics. Once the operation began, I had what I can only explain as an out-of-body experience.

My point-of-view was from above my body, and I looked down on the procedure. I watched the whole thing and saw that the doctor knocked my Game Boy off the tabletop while walking by, and the batteries ejected from the fall.

One fell in sight, and he picked it up, but the other was next to the front left wheel under the bed, out of his view but not mine.

I woke up groggy and told him where my other battery was, and he was shocked when he found it there. To this day, it still weirds me out.

34. Everyone Noticed the Glitch

u/deathmoon68: I was in class one day, sitting in a group of three people, including myself. We were talking, and my friend dropped his pen on the desk.

I saw it stall mid-air for a second, then drop on his desk. My friend asked, "Did anyone else see that?" All my friends saw the pen stall. It was just the weirdest thing I've ever seen. To this day, I have no explanation for it.

35. The Entire World Slowed Down

u/Danne660: The entire world has slowed down for me a couple of times in my life. My best guess is that some adrenaline spike is causing my brain to overdrive.

36. The Ambulance Suddenly Disappeared

u/benjtom: I had just pulled into my workplace's parking lot and was walking towards the building. It was like 3 in the afternoon, broad daylight.

All of a sudden, I heard an ambulance's siren start sounding. Naturally, I looked down the road to try and see the ambulance. I see it approaching and decided to watch it for a bit.

It was quickly getting closer and about to pass right by me. However, a large SUV was waiting to turn out of the parking lot and onto the road, blocking a few meters from my view.

The ambulance passed behind the SUV, probably about 50 feet away from me at most, and I vividly remember the siren becoming completely silent in that instant. The ambulance had vanished as it passed behind that SUV.

I was so confused. The road had few cars then, and it was broad daylight. I did a triple-take and ensured I didn't just miss it.

I had a clear view of the road in both directions, and the ambulance couldn't be seen anymore. No more siren either. I walked up and down the road, trying to find it for a solid minute. But nope, it was gone.

I was well-rested, and I didn't have a history of hallucinations. It seems dismissible, but I was completely aware of what happened. I can't explain it to this day.

37. After My Wife's Death

u/ynmkr: My wife passed away a year ago today. I had some odd things happen, like a couple of old meaningful pictures that I swore were in storage appearing.

The strangest one was that I vacuumed the carpet, and as soon as I was done, a diamond ring was on the ground right where I had just cleaned. It was like she was saying, "Hey, this one is real. Don't lose it!"

38. The Dog That Never Existed

u/bustypirate: I am 100% sure I vividly remember a dog that doesn't exist. When I was 16, we lived on the other side of the province, and my uncle had this little Jack Russell Terrier named Crue.

One day, Crue went missing. Several months later, he turned up at a humane society over an hour away, and we were all shocked this little dog had made it so far.

Anyway, that was almost 20 years ago. The other day, I talked to my parents and said, "Whenever I hear about Jack Russell Terriers, I think about Crue and that stunt he pulled." They had no idea what I was talking about.

They insisted my uncle had never had such a dog, and I must have dreamed about it, etc. Honestly, anyone else who would have remembered this dog has been dead for a long time, and I don't even have any pictures of my uncle. I have no way to prove this dog existed, but I'm sure he did.

As we wrap up this compilation of peculiar encounters that have left many pondering the boundaries of reality, it's clear that the human experience is a tapestry woven with threads of the inexplicable. These glitch-in-the-matrix moments, shared candidly by individuals across diverse walks of life, remind us that the world's mysteries often lie just beyond the edges of our understanding. Have you ever experienced something similar? We would love to know about it!