In 2008, while in college, I worked night security at a bank building that had 12 floors. My job was to walk around at night and check for unusual
activity-break-ins, etc. There was plenty of unusual activity, but it never made it into my report, because it sounded so crazy. For starters, there
was the 11th floor. The 11th floor had more vibes than a harpsichord factory. You know that feeling you get when someone is standing right behind you,
looking over your shoulder? The 11th floor felt like that
all the time. I mentioned it to one of the other guards once, and all he would say
is, “Yeah, we all feel it. You just do your checks on that floor as quick as you can and get out and don’t think about it.”
The entire building made me feel strange. Once, I had a peculiar experience whereby it seemed that time was much distorted. I was moving incredibly
slowly, almost in a trance or a fog. I became extremely tactile, wanting to touch various objects, and my sense of touch was incredibly enhanced. My
two hour check of the building took five hours, because I couldn’t move quickly. I wasn’t frightened about this; instead I felt a sort of syrupy
calm about it. I know that sounds like I was on something, but I promise that I wasn’t. The company that I worked for hires security for companies
in "sensitive" areas all around the world, and besides drug testing, they investigate your background completely. The initial application was 16 pages
long, not counting the psych profile. They wanted information on every job I’d ever had, everywhere I’d ever lived, and 10 character witnesses. So
suffice to say that a crazy druggie wasn’t going to hold the job that I held.
Another time, I was standing on the roof of the building, and I felt myself slipping into this sort of trance, where I was barely able to move, think,
or feel. The only bit of consciousness that I had was that there was a small part of me that was still self-aware, and that part of me was clinging to
a tiny life raft bobbing up and down in a giant ocean of nothingness. Instead of being terrified, I found this experience to be “right,” and I
enjoyed the ride, but something inside told me I had to be careful not to stay in that place too long. Eventually, I broke out of the “trance,”
but it was very difficult.
The next year, a fellow guard gave me this subliminal CD to listen to. He told me to put it on repeat and listen to it every night for 40 nights, and
I would begin to manifest my desires. I thought it was kind of ridiculous; if he knew so much about getting what you desire, why was he still a
security guard? Nevertheless, I did this, and right after the 40th night, the 11:11 thing started happening to me.
This probably happened several times before I began to take notice of its frequency, because, as many people have pointed out, there is nothing
particularly mysterious about it. 11:11 happens twice a day and digital clocks are everywhere.
What began to capture my notice, however, is that it never seemed to happen when I was thinking about it or looking for it. I would have a sense of
heightened awareness and simply know that it was 11:11. I would turn my head, there would be a clock, and sure enough, it would read 11:11.
I had never heard of the "11:11 phenomenon," so there was no reason for me to go looking for it, or to start seeing it everywhere. But I did see it
everywhere. What made it even stranger was that I would be somewhere, not even looking for a clock, and my eyes would be drawn like magnets to a
digital clock in the room. 11:11. every time.
I began to think that I had simply trained myself to look for a clock at 11:11. Perhaps, like the person who begins jonesing for a cup of coffee at
9:05 each morning because that is when he usually gets his caffeine fix, I had simply synched my internal clock to this meaningless, twice-daily
occurrence.
There were some problems with this theory:
1.) I was seeing 11:11 on digital clocks, cell phones and LED boards, but never on wind-up clocks. A learned response should have had me noticing
11:11 on wind-up clocks as well.
2.) I would sometimes see 11:11 on clocks that had the incorrect time. On one occasion, I drove past an LED board that said the time was 11:11. A
block later, I passed another LED board which read 11:17. It was impossible that six minutes had passed. If I were simply trained to look for a clock
at 11:11, I wouldn't have felt compelled to look at one at 11:16. (Or at 11:05, depending on which clock was correct.)
3.) My schedule had a lot of randomness, so there was no "set schedule" for me that would bring about a time-prompt habit.
I read about a type of behavior called conformation bias, where people tend to notice only the things which reinforce their belief system, and ignore
the things that don't. In this case, people experiencing the 11:11 phenomenon frequently looked at clocks and just never remembered when they didn't
show 11:11.
What began to happen after I started investigating this phenomenon was that I started noticing clocks as they read "1:11" And 2:22. And 3:33. And
4:44. And 5:55. Multiples of 111. I estimated that I looked at the clock about 30 times a day, and about half of those times resulted in 11:11, or a
time that was a multiple of 1:11.
The probability of this happening is pretty small. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. One of the time-multiples of 11 occurs 12 times a day, so your
chance of looking at a clock-even on purpose-and seeing one of them is 12 in 1,440 or 1 in 120. If half the time I look at a clock it results in an 11
multiple, the odds of such an occurrence are 1 in 60.
Now, 1 in 60 doesn't seem like bad odds when compared to say, the lottery, but it's still significant. If you had a pile of 60 quarters, and you had
someone mark one of them, blindfold you and you reached in and picked up one and it turned out to be the marked coin that would be pretty cool. If you
did it three or four days in a row, you'd be incredibly lucky. But if you did it every day for a year? You'd be suspected of having godlike powers.
Why a digital clock? I have no answer for that. 11:11 on a digital clock is the same backwards as forwards and upside down. In binary “1” means
“yes” or “on”.
Then, my eyes started being drawn to the clock at 11 minutes past the hour. (2:11, 3:11, etc.) I thought I was going crazy. I decided to exorcise it
once and for all. I would throw a big party for all of my friends on 11/11/11 and when nothing happened, I’d be free.
I threw the party, and UFO’s did not show up. My third eye wasn’t opened. Nothing much happened at all (unless you count getting drunk and kissing
a married woman.)
But 11:11 continues to stalk me. I still see it, but not as often.
What the heck does it mean?
edit on 5-2-2013 by Snsoc because: clarity