You apparently call this "The Mandela Effect". I call it parallel shifting. Whatever.

Starting in the fall of 2015, I began experiencing a series of strange events. Things I distinctly remembered happened completely differently according to other people involved, which was easy enough to ignore. People can be wrong. I can be wrong. Both have happened before.

I had a new morning commute. I had studied the map of it, programmed my GPS, knew every turn. For the sake of the story and without revealing any details that could out the location, my route was as follows:

1. Take Little Back Road to Big Highway, go right
2. Take Big Highway to Townsville Road, go left
3. Take Townsville Road to Smith Avenue, go right
4. Take Smith Avenue to Your Location, on the right

So I did those things. Right as I was about to turn on to Townsville Road, my GPS quit. I ignored it, as I knew my next turn and approximately where it was along Townsville Rd. I came to a stop light. There was road construction, and across the street from me there was a sandwich shop with a bearded mascot giving a big thumbs up. I looked at the street sign, wondering why Smith hadn't come up yet. The street sign said River Street. I didn't recall a River Street during my perusal of the local map. Something felt off. I kept driving. I kept driving to the very end of Townsville Rd. I tried my GPS again, and it took me on a long and circuitous route to Smith Ave, not back along Townsville as expected. That night, driving home along Smith, I came to the spot where the construction was, where the sandwich shop was. My head whipped around to the street sign. SMITH EFFING AVENUE. Whole lot of nope. I was uncomfortable, beyond uncomfortable. A road had completely hopped positions. All I wanted to do was go home, so I got on Big Highway and put the pedal down.

I knew the way home on Big Highway like the back of my hand, especially at night, where my turn off was marked by the great glowing sign of a tractor dealership. So I passed the McD's about 1/4 mile before the tractor dealership and the start of Little Back Road. Except the tractor dealership never appeared on the side of the road. The turnoff did, but I noticed in time that it lead directly into a stand of trees so did not take it. Nor did the landscapers appear, whose sign was equally bright and also was an entry to Little Back Road. I kept driving, and wound up at the hardware store on a completely different highway ten miles away and unconnected to any of the roads I took coming home, and in not enough time to have made it there, even with the pedal down. It happened again, a road swapped. Heart thundering, I meandered home, my GPS failing every time I opened it. I was baffled, frightened, and wondered what the hell kind of trouble I'd be in trying to explain this to my husband.

The next day, Smith was in the right place, but River was...everywhere. I passed River in three places along Townsville and Smith. The way home was almost normal, except that the turnoff that lead to the stand of trees was still mysteriously there, but shortly before my real turnoff at the tractor dealership. When I got home, I looked at the map of the town, and found that River ran only through downtown and only crossed Smith once many miles down the road from my destination. That seemed to piss it off, whatever was doing this to me, because I started seeing River road in totally different towns where it should not have been, towns that had no River Avenue. It was like the world was switching realities all around me, and nobody noticed but me even after I pointed it out. It either hadn't happened, or nobody remembered. I felt like I was going mad. I told my therapist about all of it and how terrified I was that my meds had stopped working after two years of successfully not being bipolar as a mfer.

And then I suddenly had proof. A few days later, I drew a drawing for my mother (she was staying with my husband and I) of a cartoon character she hates saying how much it loved and respected her as a friend. I waggled it around at her, let her look at it, and then folded it in half longways and crumpled it up. Into the trash it went. A few minutes later I went to annoy her some other way, and the drawing was tacked to the mantelpiece in her room. Never folded. Never crumpled. I just pointed at it and yelled "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?" She looked at me and said something to the effect of "with a thumbtack?" And I explained that I had crumpled that bastard up and threw him in the trash where he belonged. Nope, she snatched him away from me and hid him while I was dangling him in front of her face.

I can tell you that 100%, even my most delusional manias could not have made me believe that I had done something completely different than what I had actually done, and I wasn't manic.

It has continued from there. People I never met who related the great times we had together, rock shows I never went to. Not DID type of things, because it's not like I had been a different person or sleepwalking or something like that. I was me, I just wasn't actually there as the me I am. It keeps happening. I regularly expect things to just be different when I wake up one day. Used to terrify me, but I guess even horrifying things become normal if they happen to you often enough.

I have concluded that I am somehow swapping with my alters in similar parallel universes. I have determined no mechanism nor any reason for this swapping.

The most recent I noticed was that a moon of Jupiter I was obsessed with as a kid doesn't exist and never existed. It was called Alecto, and I remember the picture of it in my book about Jupiter quite clearly. It was primarily a creamy yellowish color with dark grooves or canyons on its surface and a slight graying at the northern pole, and (in the 1990s when I read about it) the astronomers who wrote the book expected that it was primarily made of dirty ice, not too horribly different from a comet. I thought it looked very beautiful and somehow exotic, and now it's gone. I can find no photo of this moon under a different name. I even checked Saturn to see if I'd accidentally confused which planet it orbited. But it's just not there, and it never was.

Time quake, infinity !

Strange indeed.....I have heard the part about the cartoon character before...have you posted that bit previously? Also there is a poem about the moon by Alecto ....just for curiosity

Have you ever noticed however that with these so called Mandela effects, its never EVER anything seriously important? Just small details, tiny things, often personal....leads me to believe its you (as in us) that is in error or confusion or whatever..I don't know

Before this "thing" had a name wayyyy back in the 1970's similar things happened to me and to my mum....but all went back to normal pretty quick. I really do think its a memory thing somehow otherwise the entire world would be experiencing such shifts

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

Apparently the people of the world do experience it quite regularly.

I posted about it on reddit, but deleted it because...well it sounds bonkers. And I've had an account here before but I'll be damned if I can remember it (plus I sign up for everything on the internet with a throwaway email for privacy reasons) so who knows, at least bonkers is less bonkers here.


Also given that it was posted on Reddit, and was up for a while, it's possible somebody else reposted it....which I hate to consider.

I once drove up a road looking for a turning which was lined with fields and there was a large old house/mansion on my right. It was a straight road and after about a mile past the house I decided to turn around and go back up the same road just in case i had missed the turning. Upon my return I was expecting to see the house on my left but there wasn't one there. I drove for about 3 miles to check it wasn't more that a mile I had drove past the house I had seen but nothing!

The problem with the brain is that whatever it feeds you is always perceived as reality. You say you'd always know when something is unreal even at your highest mania. And I say that you wouldn't know at all.
That in itself brings up a lot of philosophical questions.
Of course you could be hopping timelines or [and don't rule it out], your brain has hiccups which of course coming from your brain will feel real.

Everything we ever see, feel, touch, smell is just tiny electrical impulses that only start meaning something once our brains start decoding them appropriately. I could give you false stimuli via an electrode somewhere in yoru brain and you would get a 'real' experience.

Your account is also written a bit like a story, so I can't really rule out that it may be one.

Idk if it's the Mandala effect, I had something similar to the Cartoon happen also.

I bought a large package of Ramen, in Cups, Cup Noodles.
Opening it, I took one of the many cups out of the package, and put it in the pantry.
I changed my mind a minute or two later, that I wanted Ramen, and while I was still holding the cup I went to put it back in the pantry.
The large package of Cup Ramens was gone. In it's place, was a similar container of the same brand of Ramen, but in pouch packages, not cups. Dumbfounded, I put my Cup of Ramen in with the container of pouches and closed the pantry.

a reply to: Hecate666

I have to trust my brain. It has so far been empirically quite reliable, so I have no reason to think it's feeding me garbage.

However, I take offense at your contention that a well-written post must be false because it is well-written. Not everybody who experiences unusual things is a highschool dropout, and some of us are professional writers.

originally posted by: RP2SticksOfDynamite
I once drove up a road looking for a turning which was lined with fields and there was a large old house/mansion on my right. It was a straight road and after about a mile past the house I decided to turn around and go back up the same road just in case i had missed the turning. Upon my return I was expecting to see the house on my left but there wasn't one there. I drove for about 3 miles to check it wasn't more that a mile I had drove past the house I had seen but nothing!

I forgot to mention I was not alone, my partner was with me! And she saw the same!

Are you familiar with the term "treatment" in regards to literature? I think you are...very nice!!

a reply to: olaru12

People process information better when it is presented in a coherent narrative, imo. Paranoid people prefer disjointed ramblings...

a reply to: RP2SticksOfDynamite

Did this by any chance happen in the American South? I've had similar experiences in the Carolinas, houses that are there one moment, turn around because you're lost or done aimlessly driving, and then they are gone as if they'd never been.

Man I hope so! A whole shift please and step on it! I'm in a hurry to blow this popcorn stand and be moven on up to a deeelux apartment in the sky. This joint is whacked and I am outta here!

originally posted by: NotEntirelyEvilSpock
a reply to: Hecate666

I have to trust my brain. It has so far been empirically quite reliable, so I have no reason to think it's feeding me garbage.

Whoa , there ! Was ( you're brain ) feeding you garbage when you were diagnosed and prescribed medication for your bipolar disorder ?
Please don't be so touchy ... you put this out there .

For the record - something weird's going on alright , and not just with you . Full version of theory to explain , please ?

originally posted by: NotEntirelyEvilSpock
a reply to: olaru12

People process information better when it is presented in a coherent narrative, imo. Paranoid people prefer disjointed ramblings...

The experience you provided would damn sure make me paranoid. Is it save the cat or the hero's journey?

originally posted by: PhyllidaDavenport
Strange indeed.....I have heard the part about the cartoon character before...have you posted that bit previously? Also there is a poem about the moon by Alecto ....just for curiosity

Strange. I distinctly remember reading this entire post before also. With a different title though.

Alecto (Ancient Greek: Ἀληκτώ, English translation: "the implacable or unceasing anger") is one of the Erinyes, or Furies, in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, she was the daughter of Gaea fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when Cronus castrated him. She is the sister of Tisiphone (Vengeance) and Megaera (Jealousy). Alecto is the Erinys with the job of castigating the moral crimes (such as anger), especially if they are against other people.

Looks like you've provoked the anger of the Admin of the Matrix...
It's time to repent.

It could be that the storage and/or working memory for their object in the simulation is being affected by errors and the error correction code is slightly off.

If it becomes more unstable then they will probably disappear. Probably not the first.

originally posted by: NotEntirelyEvilSpock
a reply to: RP2SticksOfDynamite

Did this by any chance happen in the American South? I've had similar experiences in the Carolinas, houses that are there one moment, turn around because you're lost or done aimlessly driving, and then they are gone as if they'd never been.

No UK!

If you don't like my writing style, find me and critique me on a forum for writing. If I posted it before and left ATS, it's likely because of the same poor quality responses. Nobody knows anything about this crap, they just report it if it's happened to them (which is useful for statistical purposes) or say "nuh uh". And because I'm a lot about protecting my own anonymity, names of streets, individuals and times of day will have been altered from version to version. I understand that you've been duped by randos before, so please understand that bit. if you find my old account that would be great, if it shows when it was created I can get back into it and bomb it or whatever. Regardless, yes, I have posted this account elsewhere. I have never received an answer beyond "nuh uh", "prove it", and other dumb**** internet knuckle-dragger comments that are as useful as homeopathy.

If you have a problem with that, if you have a problem with the fact that I very plainly stated that I have bipolar that is well controlled on medications that still work according to every doctor... I'm not going to bother addressing those concerns anymore.

Somebody DID actually ask a reasonable question, which is what theories do I have? I have no theories, I have only some data, if you can even call it that. What I know based on what I'll just call "astral projection" because it's more complicated than I'm in a mood to describe, I was able to determine that whatever "my" consciousness is, whatever "I" am, as opposed to what the parallel versions of me are, shifts slightly and replaces the version of me in that new universe. It happens at random and is not noticeable probably because the world is just so damned similar every day anyway. It appears synced in time; that is, I do not move forward or backwards in time. I do not know how it happens, I do not know why it happens, I do not know if something is doing this, I don't know what happens to the me I'm replacing. I have consulted with others of my esoteric order, and they have no idea.

I'm fishing, I suppose. I'm looking out for an answer in the sea of weirdness, because it's surprising how many people who are real and legitimate and know what they're talking about and have something crucial to share or learn, and who get run off of here because of the constant and unending bickering.