A Discovered Time Traveler

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

I am a time traveler. This fact only recently came to my attention as it took some time for the facts regarding my present existence to awaken me to this reality. At first it was very hard to accept and I simply dismissed everything. One cannot ignore forever the elephant in the room.

In 1996 I had an epiphany of a religious nature, which was quite out of character since I was an agnostic and teetering on the verge of declaring myself an atheist. After all, all of my colleagues and friends were atheists and socially atheism is an appropriate worldview for a scientist. However, this revelation struck me like a ton of bricks and information was imparted to me of which I could not have had any prior knowledge. That being said, I will not discuss the nature of that epiphany, since it is not the focus of my disclosure here. I am simply writing because there is no person with whom I can discuss this, so I was hoping that some of you could be of help or at least offer alternative explanations.

This vision in 1996 began with me as a young child of about 5 (I was 29 at the time). My first response was panic because I had been abducted and had been shrunken in size. Imagine, if you will, suddenly being 5 again with the knowledge of who you are now, your arms and legs being short, chairs being too big, etc. Anyway, in this vision I aged over many years until I reached my age in real life, so I estimate about 24-25 years elapsed. I have lived the last 17 years guided by that vision and have struggled to come to terms with it. Until recently, I took the 25 years time to be allegorical only in nature. I now find, regrettably, that assumption is wrong.

To be blunt, some events of the past are now either events that happened differently, exactly the same but about 4-5 years later, or did not happen at all. When some of these events are news events that I have talked about at length with people and were the events of the day, and so I have a long history of “knowing” them, and now I find that they did not occur at all, I am left speechless.

In retrospect, many aspects of my life after the vision seem to make more sense within the context of my new interpretation of the situation. Even my wife was concerned at the time (1996) that I was having an affair, since I was completely different to her in the bedroom. As she put it, she felt as though she was sleeping with a different man and this took some getting used to. I was still me, as far as I was concerned, but she was different as well.

So I now conclude that I in fact was taken back along my own worldline approximately 25 years, allowed to grow up again in a different place (which was a symbolic landscape) and then re-merged with the world. However, this is not exactly the world I left, but one very very close. Nearly everything I have read and can of course remember is the same as I recall it, but there are differences. I have been documenting the differences, but I must rely on my own recollections. I only wish I could remember more in detail so that I might uncover even more differences.

I have considered psychiatric syndromes and none seem to fit. I am competent in my job and have friends. I am considered emotionally healthy and stable. These memories do not fit the standard model of false memory syndrome since many of them are not traumatic or personal in nature, but have to do with world or national events. So what then?

Do any of you think this is even remotely possible?

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

I suppose I should follow on with some data, since the first part of my post made several allusions, but did not give any facts. Here is what I have uncovered so far to date. There are likely other anomalies, but these are all I have found so far.


Examples of Collected Anomalies:

1.
My History: Athens, Greece, a TWA hijacking occurred in March of 1983 – Plane was grounded, was resolved after 3 days following a request to have food and water brought out. A Greek commando team emerged from food service truck, entered though the landing gear. All 5 terrorists were shot, no passengers killed. I saw this 3 days before it happened and was convinced I had seen it on the news each night, told classmates about it in algebra class. None had heard of it, including my algebra teacher. I chalked it up to my classmates being a bunch of boneheads who do not follow current events, but arguing back and forth with my algebra teacher, I could not understand how she failed to see the story on the news or miss it in the paper. I recall the famous photo of the terrorist issuing demands out of the cockpit window holding the pilot at gunpoint. I gave my classmates updates each day. When the crisis was resolved, I went home only to have my mother tell me in a panic that a plane had been hijacked in Athens, Greece, and that Americans were on board. I told her that was old news, that it was already over and told her how it would end. She insisted that it had just happened that afternoon. The next day at school, nobody wanted to talk to me, including my friends. They were really creeped out and this went on for about 3 weeks until the frost broke, so to speak. My algebra teacher even told me that something special had happened to me and that I should speak to a priest about it (she was Catholic). I remember seeing Learning Channel documentary on the event in 1992. Same story. Saw it with my wife and future brother-in-law, neither of which now have any recollection of the documentary.

History Now: TWA 847 hijacking in Athens occurred in June, 1985 when I was no longer in high school, so I could not have had a conversation with the aforementioned people. The famous photo of the terrorist issuing demands out of the cockpit window holding the pilot at gunpoint still occurred but was taken at the airport in Beirut, Lebanon instead of Athens, Greece. The hijacking consisted of back and forth flights across the Mediterranean between Lebanon, Algeria and Egypt. The Mediterranean hop scotch of flights was bizarre enough that I would have noticed had I experienced it through news reports. I cannot imagine that the international community tolerated that amount of brazen manipulation. In my timeline, that plane never got off the ground.

2.
My History: Achille Lauro hijacking occurred in June 1983. Disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer killed by was thrown overboard alive and he subsequently drowned at sea.

History Now: Achille Lauro hijacking occurred in October 1985. Disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer killed by being shot and his body was thrown overboard

3.
My History: The lack of security resulting from the TWA hijacking spoiled the Athens, Greece bid to host the 1984 Summer Olympics, which were instead (ironically) held in Athens, Georgia. Many commentators joked about the irony of the associated name in months leading up to the Summer Games (Winter games were held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia) which angered Greek government, who issued a series of statements to the press claiming that their airport security was not an issue and that the IOC was playing favorites with the Americans. By the time the games started, talk was toned down. I remember Athens building a sizable Olympic village out past the university. I remember that Mary Lou Retton and Carl Lewis won all their medals there, in the little city of Athens, Georgia. The winter Olympics was in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.

History Now: 1984 Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles. The IOC in 1996 initially convinced the city of Athens, Georgia that they were selected at the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics. It was held instead in Atlanta, though many events were held in nearby Athens as well as an appeasement to the city since substantial amounts of money had already been invested. I have had several conversations over the years about the Olympics in Athens, Georgia, only to end up arguing with people about it. I had never heard of an Olympics being held in Los Angeles, but apparently here it was.

4.
My History: (I realize that the topic of this show is time travel and marvel at the irony). Death of actor Dean Stockwell from stroke at age 57 in 1993 while vacationing in France. I remember interviews with Scott Bakula on Good Morning America and he discussing that the producers decided not to substitute another actor, that fans of the show would not accept the change and that a final episode was made from pre-existing, unused footage. Reporters speculated Stockwell's death resulted from his heavy cigar smoking. Bellisario pieced together a show ending by using an unused season ending shoot to close out the show.

History Now: Dean Stockwell is still alive and acting. I saw him in several movies that came to cable afterward and simply thought that they were shot before his death (for example, McHale’s Navy). When Manchurian Candidate came out in 2004, I first suspected something was very wrong. Looking up information about Stockwell I also found that Ernest Borgnine did not die of a massive coronary arrest in 1995 (he appeared in McHale’s Navy remake also), but was alive and well. Mr. Borgnine recently passed away this past July from kidney failure.

5.
My History: Rodney King Riots occurred in April of 1988 (King was attacked in May 1987). Copy-cat riots across the country included Shreveport, LA. The new chief of police (Charles Gruber, recruited from the LA County Sheriff’s Department) had only been in office for 2 months. Rioters attacked and overturned his patrol car, setting it on fire and injuring him in the process. I remember this happened when I was in college. My friend’s grandfather’s store was burned to the ground in the riots. His grandfather, Sam, had built that store up from nothing when the family first immigrated to the US from Italy. I recall my racist work colleague, Joe Frasier, using the riots to justify his dehumanizing views of African Americans. I had to listen to this rant from him for 2 years on a regular basis. Anytime he wanted to denigrate black Americans, he would always bring up that Rodney King was really a criminal and that the response of the black community, including the community in Shreveport, proved his twisted point. In October of 1990, Joe was fired and went to work at a local bank selling mortgages. The riots now are recorded as occurring in 1992. At that time I lived in a city with some history of racial tensions and I went out to clubs where, if there had been race riots even in other cities that year, I would not have done so. The Rodney King riots, while still relevant, were old news.

History Now: Rodney King Riots occurred in April of 1992. [I was married and in graduate school, living in another city]. Chief of police was Charles Gruber, hired from Quincy, Illinois (the first non-native chief of police), not known to be a hub of drug gang violence. Rioters attacked his patrol car, but he withdrew from the crowd unharmed. Court documents refer to the 1988 riot event as the Cedar Grove Riots and name Sam Digilormo as the owner of the Sack-n-Pack Grocery. Riot was result of the shooting of drug dealer after Cynthia Johnson and Tamala Vergo attempted to buy drugs. Vergo shot the dealer and a bystander. Police arrived, then a crowd and the riot began. The irony is that I went to high school with both of those girls as if some strange synchronicity is at work. They were in no way connected to anything regarding the riots in my timeline.

I realize this is a long post and appreciate your patience if you take the time to read it. Regarding time travel claims, you could say I have an iron-clad argument that reads like an alternative history novel. Difficult to refute and based solely on my own testimony. Those are the facts and I have only recently determined that this happened to me.

 

[Einstein]

It does appear that you have memories that no longer coincide with your present reality. At least you seem rational enough to talk about it. This kind of stuff has been happening to me all my life. But I never considered myself being a time traveler as the cause. But I have considered the altered reality could be the result of other real time travelers tampering with the timeline. That way your memories remain intact, but reality changes instead.

And I came up with another concept that bears some thought as well. Not everyone has perfect vision, or hearing. Perhaps the function of our memory is not fully understood. We can remember into the past, but not the future. But does everyone conform to those believed standards? Perhaps there are those of us with memory capabilities that allow us to remember future events, and also events that did happen on alternate timelines. This concept would go hand in hand with psychic abilities. So I tend to just think of it as a gift. Since not everyone has this kind of gift. Just consider yourself one of the lucky ones that gets to see and experience more of reality than the average Joe.

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

Thank you for your input Einstein. I am working from the assumption that were a time traveler to alter the past, our memories would similarly be altered. The past we would have experienced as events unfolded would be dependent on those changes and we would be unaware of a change. If someone was changing the past routinely, we would likely have no knowledge of it since the world would be exactly the way we experienced it.

The only approach that seems to fit, in my opinion, is that either the multiple universes hypothesis is correct and I have been deposited into a very similar universe to my original one or (and this seems like even more of a reach), the universe was "rewound" like a video tape and then proceeded to unfold in a slightly different manner.

Regarding the events I experienced which differ, it was probably easier for me to detect those alterations. Most folks, though this is changing these days, tend to live the in the same place, work the same job and hang around with the same people day in and day out. I have had a rather chaotic life with many moves and many jobs since the nature of my work is mainly short-term contractual. That being said, I can distinctly relate events during those years to specific times and places where I lived, worked, etc. That makes it a bit easier to pinpoint the dates.

Would those past/future memories be extremely visceral? I lived those experiences and I am quite certain they are not vividly remembered altered realities. I did not remember several different versions of events and topics I have discussed with family and friends relating to some of those events were old topics. Now it seems those conversations never took place.

 

[Florida_Jim]

I find your situation fascinating Mr. Sonian. You aren't alone in remembering the past differently. Jonathan Winters died a few days ago, much to my surprise given that he died two decades ago of a heart attack and was given a touching tribute by Robin Williams (they had worked together on "Mork & Mindy"). These "altervus" have been occurring to me since May, 2001.

Interestingly, the recent discovery of a Higgs Boson at CERN may shed some light on the nature of these experiences. Apparently, we are indeed living in a multiverse. Variations in history on many similar (but not duplicate) Earths could be the cause of our memory discrepancies. If the human brain is actually a quantum computer, the mind (consciousness, spirit, soul, etc...) could be traversing into alternate realities along a vast network of brains that belong to the collective you and me. The question is, what jostled us loose? In my case, I believe it started with a single, HUGE alteration to a parallel world's past, created by myself and facilitated by a time/dimensional traveler. In your case, it may have been something more supernatural. I don't know, so feel free to elaborate.

The topic has fascinated me for twelve years. It's presented me with theories on the nature of reality. For example, I can imagine how we could have true free will in a finite multiverse. Each choice we make shifts our consciousness to a world where that choice has already been determined. The next choice shifts us again. The multiverse could be a "set in stone" object, right from the start, while still allowing us real free will. Simple and elegant in design while incredibly complex to understand, given our limited point of view. I no longer discount people's differing recollections. We can all have lived the past differently yet also be in this very moment together.

I look forward to reading more about you and your experiences, if you are willing to share.

 

[Einstein]

Geoffrey

I lived those experiences and I am quite certain they are not vividly remembered altered realities. I did not remember several different versions of events and topics I have discussed with family and friends relating to some of those events were old topics. Now it seems those conversations never took place.

I don't feel the memories are altered realities either. But it is the path through time that you took. The way I look at it is every time you make a decision, you reach a fork in the road of time. Both paths exist. But you only take one. But suppose there is an alternate version of you that takes the other path. Then it points toward the possibility that there would be an enormous number of alternate versions of you that take the other paths through time for every decision you make. But we all share those paths through time. You might make a decision that puts you down a path through time where your Uncle swears on a stack of bibles that you did not come to visit him last year as you remember it. This theory does seem to fit the observations. And I do believe everyone has had conversations with old acquaintances that reveal the both of you have different recollections of events the last time you two were together.

The point I'm trying to make is that your brain may be connected with all those other versions of you. So merely be making a decision, your brain automatically switches you with an alternate version of you. On a timeline where that path of choice is real. But if you look around, you might also notice some discrepancies. Like a building seemed to appear out of nowhere in an empty field over night. Or maybe a celebrity that you remember passed away, is now alive. Or your uncle claims you didn't visit him last year. And the list goes on and on.

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

One thing, however, sticks in my mind. When I awakened from the vision in 1996, I was disoriented and did not recognize where I was, I did not recognize my wife and I had the same feeling as when the vision initially began. One of being forcibly taken from home to another place, although I was in fact home. It had just been so many years that I had forgotten and I had come to believe that this world was something I simply dreamed. My wife can attest that I was not the same person who went to sleep next to her the night before.

Also, I should mention that the anomalies only seem to span the years of the vision, which I estimate are from 1971/1972 to 1996. There have been no other incidents of which I am aware that are anomalous since that time. My history only during those 25 years appears to be altered, but since then I share the same memory of historical events that everyone shares. So in my mind, the world has been as it has been historically recorded for the last 17 years.

Nonetheless, keeping an open mind I will meditate awhile on your hypothesis and consider all its aspects. After all, I have no tangible evidence to go on, only memories. Perhaps I am having some retroactive delusion. If so, it is rather elaborate.

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

Florida_Jim: I am curious. What occurred between you and a dimensional traveler to alter the flow of time?

 

[Florida_Jim]

Ah ... that's a long story! I've written about it here and elsewhere many times, but I'll sum it up. Between November 2000 and March 2001, a man who called himself, "John Titor" posted here at TTI (and elsewhere) claiming that he had come from an alternate version of the year 2036. You can Google that and read for days.

His story was fascinating, but I believed him to be an anti-government, militia, doomsday-prepper type of person who was using fiction to promote his cause. At one point, he claimed he would be making a stop in the Spring of 1998 before returning to his own time. He offered to forward a message to our past selves. I took him up on that offer.

Spring 1998 was a very difficult, pivotal time for me and my family. Titor's offer became an enticing thought experiment. I wrote an email to my younger self that warned of what was coming in 1998 and how to avoid the problems I had lived through. Then, I went further, and gave myself vast amounts of future knowledge. This included three years of news, stock market charts and lottery drawing statistics. I also included all posts and data from Titor, with the idea of using the vast fortune I bestowed to accelerate the development of time travel.

As one layer of proof, I included a couple of photos of my son and nephew. They were young at the time, so three years of growth would be immediately revealing. I then compressed all the data into nested, password-protected zip files. In the plain text, I asked six questions that only I could answer correctly. The answers to the first three questions (when combined as a single phrase without spaces) opened the first layer. The answers to the second three questions opened the final layer and unzipped all the data. I intentionally left the details in the enclosed personal message vague, assuming anyone could read it - saying things like, "your wife" or "at home" instead of giving names and addresses. When completed, I emailed the 1.4MB file to Pamela Moore, who was coordinating the collection and forwarding of the messages to John Titor. Pamela joked with me that it must be nice to have broadband because she spent the night downloading my file over dial-up.

Titor stopped posting at the end of March 2001 and that was it, until around mid May. I began experiencing intense Déjà vu-like feelings, then noticing things were different. Suddenly, a Walgreens drug store was on a corner that had been empty land just a day before. My mind couldn't process this and I began to doubt myself. I didn't understand how I could have missed its construction but chalked it up to faulty memory. Then, I had an experience that caused me to shed all doubt. My family and I took a trip down to Vero Beach, Florida to spend the day shopping, dining and seeing a movie. On the way into town, coming from I-95, we saw several empty lots with "Coming Soon" signs for various stores. Adjacent to those lots was a recently built Linens-N-Things where my wife bought something. I stayed in the car with my son while she shopped. In the car, I had that strange Déjà vu-like feeling again. Unlike Déjà vu, where you feel like you have already seen or experienced something before, this felt like something was different and out of place (I call it an "altervu"). We spent the day at the Indian River Mall, leaving at night after the movie. Driving back to the highway, I saw a fully-stocked Rooms To Go furniture store on what had been one of those empty lots! I immediately exclaimed to my wife something like, "Where did that come from!?!" to which she casually replied, "That's always been there." I was flabbergasted! I asked her repeatedly about the empty lots from earlier in the day but she dismissed it (the way I had dismissed the Walgreens) as faulty memory. That's when I knew I had stepped into The Twilight Zone.

I contacted Pamela about my experiences and she told me others who had sent emails to Titor were having similarly bizarre experiences. Pamela and I had one altervu in common at that point. The Burger King logo had changed - overnight, from our perspective. Pamela even inquired about it and found out they had changed the logo a year or two earlier. I also found a Rooms To Go store in Melbourne, Florida that was sitting on a recently empty lot. I went in and talked to a sales manager. He told me the store had been there for ten or eleven years!

From that point until today, I occasionally experience altervus. My wife is my sounding board. I always check her memories against mine to know if I'm just being forgetful or if something has changed. Einstein has mentioned his life-long experiences. I know of three other people who were not connected to Titor in any way, yet experienced altervus. Their common denominator is Zeshua, a self-proclaimed time-communicator from 2025 - 2026 who has posted here on TTI and interacted more extensively with our small group by email and within a private forum.

Geoffrey, please understand that you will probably receive extensive ridicule while posting here. Many pretenders have come here to have a laugh at the expense of the so-called "stupid" people who believe time travel is possible. The reality is, most of the people who hang around here are very intelligent. We're also very skeptical. Despite my experiences, I have no empirical evidence. This is just my story. I can not say that John Titor or Zeshua or anyone else can be, or do what, they have claimed.

Unfortunately, I spend little time here because of the onslaught of pretenders and the negativity of the good people who have been "burned" so many times before. It gets old, fast. With this in mind, your mention of Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula hasn't gone unnoticed. Your story revolves around you traveling within your own timeline and ending up in your younger self's body. This was a plotline in an episode of "Quantum Leap". Pretenders often drop a small clue in their initial posts to see if we pick up on it, then laugh at our expense if it goes unmentioned ... so I'm mentioning it. Feel free to bow out gracefully - no harm, no foul. Otherwise, please carry on with your story; it's very interesting.

Also, if you are a science fiction fan, I recommend you watch the 2004 - 2009 reboot of "Battlestar Galactica". Dean Stockwell plays a major part in the series.

Welcome to The Twilight Zone!

 

[Skarpz]

I've experienced an office depot sign that changed it's sign to become different, a traffic stoplight zone with a new street that I never noticed before but people said it was always there. Also, people have memories of me being in this town longer than I know I've been in this town and even had memories of me that never happened in my mind even with people I know I've never known. That's just some of my experience similar to yours.

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

Florida_Jim: Very interesting. What you have experienced does sound very similar in many ways to my situation. Likewise, many old topics of conversation with my wife or events we jointly experienced prior to 1996 happened quite differently in her recollection or did not happen at all. To put things bluntly, prior to last month I did not believe that time travel was remotely possible and thought that, apart from the speculations of physicists, any person stating that they had done so was looney. I thought I myself was simply loosing my mind. However, facts are facts despite the rest of the world not knowing about them.

It appears that the clever message you sent to your younger self may have been a link to "disconnected" you in some way such that you are able to retain your memories of what the world was like prior to changes. That being said, that Titor must have been authentic. I did a little internet search on him and will simply have to get back to that later. There is a lot of material out there about him. I wonder why changes have not occurred all at once, but you experience them gradually over time. Is it a local effect, as in you must be the observer for the changes to initiate?

I was also wondering about the coded messages you sent to your younger self. Do you now have "old" memories of the information enclosed? Do you recall experiencing excitement in the past at seeing your future son and nephew? Just curious and trying to determine how all this works.

In my case, I did not have a person who could send information back to "disconnect" me. I am sticking with either the alternate universe or the rewound video tape idea.

Regarding the whole Quantum Leap issue, I seriously hesitated to mention it and noted the irony of it in my initial posting. However, it was my favorite show (along with Star Trek, all flavors) and its sudden cancellation was a big disappointment. There may have been other shows and other deceased actors who later are not now deceased, I just probably did not watch them and was not paying attention.

All these things aside, that incident in 1983 made a big impression on me, although my classmates reactions were completely negative and life was difficult for 3 weeks time. It made me a believer that psychic and prophetic phenomena were possibilities and that I had experienced an authentic example. All the other issues which were the results of disagreements over current events I just ignored for years, never bothering to verify whether I was incorrect in my recollection or not. But 1983 was a pivotal event in my life, as was 1996, and I was completely shocked when I started digging around and found that it just never happened. In fact there were no hijackings that year and the TWA incident, with that famous photo, occurred after I was already out of school. Its really difficult to grapple with something that was such a big blow up at the time and that affected your outlook on the world for years only to disappear. I just felt like I was losing my mind.

So, I posted here expecting healthy criticism and hoping to speak with people who may have spent a little time thinking about this stuff. My wife just simply thinks I am losing it. To her, all of this has been new information I have mentioned after 1996. It is also difficult to imagine that she is really not the same person literally that I married and that my real wive is stuck with some weird version of me in my original universe.

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

Skarpz: Did you participate in that Titor experiment also?

 

[KerrTexas]

I didn't participate in any Titor experiments, however, find the above accounts to very interesting. I also experiended an odd event back in the late 1970's. I too felt a moment like Deja Vu, but, different.

We were driving through a remote section of the Mojave Desert. I felt strange, and had a "pre" memory(?) flood into my mind.. I saw in my mind a particular colored truck that had become stuck in the sand. I also remembered(?) us trying a few methods to get it out of the sand, failing until a different method was tried, and we got it out. I shook off the feelings and continued driving down the road.

We came to a turn-off, and for some reason felt compelled to go in a particular direction. Coming up over a rise in the roadway, to my utter astonishment there was "the" truck stuck in the sand. From what I had "remembered" before, didn't try the failed attempts, but, used the method that had worked in the pre-memory and we got the truck out of the sand.

Almost every detail of the pre-memory was exactly the same as the events un-folded. Unusual feelings through-out the episode, so much so, will never forget it. Still contemplate on the dynamics of that event to this day. Good to read the above experiences - thank-you for sharing.

 

[Florida_Jim]

I was also wondering about the coded messages you sent to your younger self. Do you now have "old" memories of the information enclosed? Do you recall experiencing excitement in the past at seeing your future son and nephew? Just curious and trying to determine how all this works.

The short answer is no, I did not receive an email from my future self in 1998. However, I did have a very vivid dream after the altervus had begun. The dream is as clear to me today as it was in 2001. I dreamed that I was the head of a large research facility, founded and funded by me, to develop practical time travel. In the dream, I was in my luxurious penthouse office speaking with one of my scientists when a call came through. Another scientist suggested we turn our attention to superfluids. Then I woke up. Two things: 1) The dream seemed to be taking place in 2001, synced with me in real time, 2) I had never heard of superfluids before. That day, I happened to visit NASA's website to see if there would be any rocket launches that week. To my incredible surprise, the front page article on NASA's site was about superfluids and their macro-quantum behavior (such as flowing back up into the faucet instead of out). I was stunned. I learned a new word in the dream, and then learned its meaning while awake.

I, and others who participated in the "email to the past" had other dreams of alternate realities. In one dream, I was single - never having met my wife or having my son. That frightened me. All the altervu events frightened me, really. I never knew if I'd wake up one day and find my family gone, with nobody but me remembering them. Fortunately, nothing that drastic has ever occurred. Most altervus are minor changes with little personal consequence, for which I am thankful.

I'm curious Geoffrey - did you discover letters, family photos, or home videos that match your wife's memories but not yours?

 

[Geoffrey Reynolds Sonian]

KerrTexas: Very interesting stuff. Makes you wonder if your experience was more psychic than a time anomaly. Maybe they are actually one and the same thing. I imagine driving up on the truck was a bit spooky. The optimal solution out of the trials and errors is extremely telling. Psychologists explain deja vu as our brain remembering something that we just experienced and assigning an incorrect time to it, akin to fooling with a timestamp on an email or a file. The fact that your experience was so potent that it encouraged you to turn around in the middle of nowhere to find the very truck in your vision says something else is at work. Very interesting indeed.

Florida_Jim: I was never a person who kept a diary and I do not have an extensive collection of photo albums, but there might be something important in one of those. I would have to look through them. Most of our photos are still in envelopes and are with my wife (we are separated), but I have a few. That approach might be useful for uncovering some other undiscovered anomalies, however most of the incidents I cited above occurred before she and I were married, the exception being #4. Anyway, it's worth having a look. I just might find something recorded that I do not remember and am sure did not happen. All the events I have uncovered really have no immediate bearing on my life. Question is, are there changes to my past, things I said and did that friends and family remember that I do not. I have not come across any so far.

I think I just need to crack some contemporary history books and see what shakes out. If I was a historian, anomalies would be easy to spot. Problem is, I am not and a lot of that 25 year time span I was either a kid, partying in college or had my nose to the grindstone in grad school, so not paying attention at all times to the world and its goings on.

 

[Einstein]

My first odd event occurred when I was just a boy. I used to ride my bicycle around town to get anywhere I wanted to go. One place I used to visit was a local police station. Occasionally I would stop by and chat with the police. They all seemed to like me. So one evening my dad took us all somewhere in the car. Looking out the window I seen the familiar surroundings as we approached the location of the police station I used to visit. But the police station was gone. In its place was just an empty field. I was just a bit alarmed. I asked my dad what happened to the police station. But he wouldn't listen to me. Later on I rode my bicycle out to where I remember the police station was supposed to be. But it wasn't there anymore. I estimate I was around 12 years old at the time.

It did occur to me that maybe I could do some experiments just to test and see if my conscious mind might actually be moving to altered timelines where things are slightly different. I surmised that altered versions of myself on other timelines would likely have altered habits or daily routines slightly different. So I decided to alter some basic daily routines. Just to see if I would notice any minor changes in my surroundings. It is my theory that my mind might get confused about what timeline it was supposed to be oriented in, if my daily habits were altered. I have done these types of experiments many times. Mostly just for amusement. My latest altered habit was to wear my T-shirt inside out and a different shoe on each foot. Just to see if there was an alternate version of me that really wasn't too concerned about things like that. Well, it wasn't too long before I noticed something that did seem to be out of the ordinary. I have a mirror hanging on the wall in the foyer just on the way out my front door. There has always been a crack in the lower left corner ever since the furniture guy cracked it when he brought in my couch, delivered from the furniture store. It's been like that for years. But not anymore. The crack went away on the day of the shirt and shoe experiment. And the crack hasn't returned yet.

Of course it really helps if you have a good visual memory of your surroundings. And I think most people don't. So little things like a cracked mirror might go unnoticed by most people. But most people do catch the bigger stuff. And I suppose lots of folks will just chalk it up to memory glitches. Or just plain ignore it as not being real at all. But its real to me.

 

[bowtiesarecool]

I find your situation fascinating Mr. Sonian. You aren't alone in remembering the past differently. Jonathan Winters died a few days ago, much to my surprise given that he died two decades ago of a heart attack and was given a touching tribute by Robin Williams (they had worked together on "Mork & Mindy"). These "altervus" have been occurring to me since May, 2001.

Interestingly, the recent discovery of a Higgs Boson at CERN may shed some light on the nature of these experiences. Apparently, we are indeed living in a multiverse. Variations in history on many similar (but not duplicate) Earths could be the cause of our memory discrepancies. If the human brain is actually a quantum computer, the mind (consciousness, spirit, soul, etc...) could be traversing into alternate realities along a vast network of brains that belong to the collective you and me. The question is, what jostled us loose? In my case, I believe it started with a single, HUGE alteration to a parallel world's past, created by myself and facilitated by a time/dimensional traveler. In your case, it may have been something more supernatural. I don't know, so feel free to elaborate.

The topic has fascinated me for twelve years. It's presented me with theories on the nature of reality. For example, I can imagine how we could have true free will in a finite multiverse. Each choice we make shifts our consciousness to a world where that choice has already been determined. The next choice shifts us again. The multiverse could be a "set in stone" object, right from the start, while still allowing us real free will. Simple and elegant in design while incredibly complex to understand, given our limited point of view. I no longer discount people's differing recollections. We can all have lived the past differently yet also be in this very moment together.

I look forward to reading more about you and your experiences, if you are willing to share.

Geoffrey, Florida Jim is right. You likely will receive a lot of ridicule. And I don't know how much "constructive" criticism you'll get, but you will recieve criticism. I hope you won't let that drive you away. The block button is your friend. This site was actually apparently created by people who don't even believe in time travel and there are many who come here for the reasons Jim says. I was seriously considering leaving because I didn't see any point in continuing here if that were the case. However, I have come to believe that there are some people here who are generally interested in the subject and having intelligent conversations about it and willing to try to help those who come here seeking answers. Such as these nice people who have replied to you. At least, I think they are sincere. You never know on the Internet (no offense, you guys). I haven't seen much in the way of negativity from those who have been burned as Florida Jim mentioned, but I haven't been here very long. What I have noticed is that most of them just leave. Which is unfortunate because a lot of them are supposedly working on different experiments and had interesting things to say. For all we know, they had the last laugh and aren't here anymore because their experiments succeeded. The only negativity I've seen from a user who people made fun of is one who calls himself TimeCrime. I think he had arguments with the moderators/administrators/whatever they're called and/or some other users (I'm not sure what went on. I think it was before I came.) The funny part is..they banned him..and then let him come back. And they made fun of him and banned him, but then were interested enough in him to research him enough to know what all the other websites he has or frequents on the web are and what all his usernames are on them. I took a look at his blog and he seems rather obsessed with them as well, so I don't know. All I know is that if he's saying what I think he's saying (I'm not sure because he speaks in computerese, so I get a bit lost), which is that messages can be sent through time, then that has already been proven by science, so I don't know why they're making fun of him. Apparently all these "scientists" are not up on current developments in science. So I hope you will just ignore the critics and do whatever you came here to do, and I wish you luck.

Florida Jim...I'm pretty sure all of us that are posting on these boards are in the same universe at this time since we are talking to each other. So I'm pretty sure I'm in the same universe as you. I am quite sure that Jonathan Winters did die a long time ago. I didn't hear anything about his death recently. Are you claiming to be going back and forth on a daily basis or something? I'm confused as to your meaning.

Hmm...you are right..I looked it up. It said Jonathan Winters died April 2013. How bizarre. I could swear I remember him dying ages ago as well. Back when he was on Mork and Mindy as you said.

That's really strange. Why would anyone change a timeline to make it so an actor was ailve or dead? Come to think of it, I could have sworn that I heard that Dean Stockwell died recently too. But Geoffrey says he's alive now and died long ago in his other history. I'm going to look that up too...

Hmm..no date of death.

You guys are freaking me out!


I've never understood the concept of time travel "by accident"..but you've really got me wondering now.

I've been interested in the subject of time travel for a really long time now...and even if I lose interest in it for years at a time...it always springs up again. And then I'll have these synchronicities happen where I'll suddenly find old notes I took at a lecture or something that I haven't seen in years and didn't even know I still had.

You're beginning to make me wonder why I'm so drawn to it.

 

[Troy Titor]

This is my very first post, as I've only been lurking until now. Just to make sure everyone understands, the "Titor" in my name is a joke. I don't claim any relation to him at all. Hell, I was only a wee lad when he showed up 13 years ago.

Anyways, over the course of my life, I've had these weird...occurrences, you could call them. Back in Elementary school (5th grade to be precise) , I was sitting in class at the end of the day, working on homework, when all of a sudden my teacher looks directly at me and asks why I didn't do the job she asked me to do. I promptly respond with an "I'm sorry?"

Apparently, I had had a whole five minute conversation with my teacher about preforming the job for her, yet I have, to this day, no recollection of ever discussing any sort of job with her. In fact, at the time I fervently denied it, as I believed myself perfectly innocent. When I asked a classmate for help, they replied that they did see me talking with the teacher. It's not that I don't have memories of that frame of time, I just remember a five minutes different from the rest of the world's memories.

This hasn't been the only case, but it is quite memorable for being the very first one I experienced. Ever since then, I have had several cases of memories not linking up with the rest of the world, such as extended philosophical discussions with several friends, only to have them deny the discussion ever took place (This could possibly just be them messing with me, but due to the "Classroom Incident," I've never ruled anything out).

The most jarring of all the incidents (And the one most likely to be bullcrap) was one I later came to call "Groundhog Morning." I had a "dream" that just kept repeating the same span of time, my morning preparations for school. I could have dismissed this as a dream, had I not been able to roughly predict nearly every friend's first words to me at the bus stop after I "woke" up, and the vividness of the dreams themselves.

Other incidents include recurring premonitions, such as expecting a certain song to come on next on the radio, and then hearing it play mere seconds later, randomly bumping into a friend in a public place, yet "expecting" them to be there the whole time, and working incredibly hard on assignments, going to grab a snack downstairs, then returning only to find the assignment either half-complete or filled out "differently," as in I originally answered a Discussion question by talking about how Holden Caulfield (from "The Catcher in the Rye") wanted to stop kids from losing their innocence, only to return to my assignment and find my answer changed to one discussing Holden's wish to return to simpler times.

ITT (Implied Thread Topic): We all discuss our various experiences with the "Reading Steiner."

 

[Troy Titor]

The topic has fascinated me for twelve years. It's presented me with theories on the nature of reality. For example, I can imagine how we could have true free will in a finite multiverse. Each choice we make shifts our consciousness to a world where that choice has already been determined. The next choice shifts us again. The multiverse could be a "set in stone" object, right from the start, while still allowing us real free will. Simple and elegant in design while incredibly complex to understand, given our limited point of view. I no longer discount people's differing recollections. We can all have lived the past differently yet also be in this very moment together.

I look forward to reading more about you and your experiences, if you are willing to share.

Jeez, everyone else has cool stories about the world drastically changing, and all I have to share is a few inconsistent memories and a (highly unlikely) time loop. I've never even spoken with Titor, although I wish I could have. It would have been a very interesting conversation, and there are other questions I'd like to get answered from him.

 

[Florida_Jim]

Jeez, everyone else has cool stories about the world drastically changing, and all I have to share is a few inconsistent memories and a (highly unlikely) time loop.

Don't feel badly. I found my experiences very traumatic at first. It's funny what you get accustomed to over time!

I've never even spoken with Titor, although I wish I could have. It would have been a very interesting conversation, and there are other questions I'd like to get answered from him.

John Titor didn't have all the answers. He didn't build the machine that brought him here and he wasn't a scientist. Even the scientists of his 2036 didn't have all the answers. As my online friend Peter Novak pointed out, time/dimension travel was only two years old when Titor departed for his mission. This was just a guy named John. He was picked because his grandfather helped develop an old computer and John was educated as a historian. He was a soldier and was briefed on the basic physics behind the machine's design. When he offered to send an email to our past selves, he claimed that we would not experience changes because we lived on a different "worldline". He was definitely wrong on that account! Titor also mentioned theories circulating in 2036 - that memory, precognition and psychic phenomena might be attributable to living in a multiverse. He scoffed at some of the theories, which I found amusing considering his own claims!

My altervus have lifted the proverbial curtain. I come from a very empathic family and when one of us was in a bad mood, the others felt it and magnified it around and around. This led me to desire logic and science as a teen. I wanted to squash the irrational with the rational. I stopped trusting my gut in favor of trusting my rationality. That was a mistake that I paid for time and again. I now trust my intuition and instincts and let them overrule my logic. Life is much easier.

We all have the free will that allows for bad choices. We also have built-in instincts that make life better. The buildings appearing out of thin air made it very difficult for me to dismiss things that aren't rational. As a result, I have had many experiences that could be considered paranormal. I prefer to think of them as enhanced normality. We all have the capacity to develop the skills needed to be psychic mediums, or predict the future, or experience remote viewing. You just have to drop your guard and let your intuition supersede your logic. I was fortunate enough to get a big kick-start, thanks to Titor and Zeshua. It doesn't require interaction with people from the future though. Anyone can do it with time, education and practice. That's what I believe, for what it's worth.