Come again?

Have you ever had the peculiar sensation that you're re-living, moment by moment, something that had happened before?
Of course you have.
Most likely you even know what it's called: deja vu.
(More - much more - about deja vu in a future post.)

Typically, it involves a sensation of a situation being repeated, without any sensory evidence that a repetition of any sort is taking place; and the time of the supposed "original" event is usually perceived as unidentifiable. In other words, people don't usually get a feeling of a deja vu about an event that took place a minute ago. (Unless, of course, you are participating in a mind-numbing board meeting - but I digress...)

But since the advent of the internet people have become aware of another, apparently similar type of event, often - and perhaps incorrectly - also described as deja vu: the apparent exact repetition of an event, involving the same factors (people, circumstances, etc.), within a time frame that would normally make the repetition of said event physically impossible.

For example: you see a person come out of a house - a house that you know without a doubt has no back or lateral doors -, stop for a moment to look at his or her wrist watch and then walk down the street.
A minute later, you see the same person come out of the same house, through the same (and only) front door, stop for a moment to look at the wrist watch, repeating every gesture in minute detail, and walk down the street - again.

Interestingly enough, many people seem to have experienced this. And even if some of these experiences could undoubtedly be attributed to insufficient attentiveness (or worse), others baffle the mind.

This delightfully illustrative short account comes from Cynthia Sue Larson.

The Lady Appeared... Twice

In fact, something seemingly similar happened to me, in early January 2008.

I was watching a live newscast.
I watched three segments in a row, then I stepped out of the room (I don't remember what the reason was, and it's not important). When I came back, I sat behind my desk to do some work. The TV was on all the time.

Not a minute had passed when I heard the anchorman announcing the first of the three segments that they had already shown. I remember thinking to myself "Oops...", but didn't bother to even turn the head. After all, even the best of journalists can make mistakes and reread an announcement or whatever.
But then the segment began - and it was the same one as before.
So were the following two.
To convince myself beyond reasonable doubt that it wasn't a "false memory" or anything like that I started repeating word for word the sentences that I had remembered from before. They were identical - even the anchorman's jokes were the same!

But still, no big deal. I was merely surprised to see the network switch to what I naturally thought to be the replay of the newscast for audiences overseas - before the live show was even through!
They had never done that before.
But, as I found out soon enough, they hadn't done it on that occasion, either... It had been a LIVE broadcast, just like on every other occasion I had watched it. And the anchor is a very reputable journalist who would have noticed if he were rereading the same segments that he had read a minute before - including the jokes he improvised.

Or would he?

Whatever it was (or was not), in retrospect this occurrence seems all the more remarkable because around the same date - give or take a day - another odd thing happened:

I was standing in my living room doing a yoga exercise. It was shortly after dawn break, and I saw the line of street lights being turned off. A few (perhaps five) seconds later - I saw them go out for the second time.
Naturally, I was somewhat startled: after I had seen them go out for the first time they hadn't been turned on again (to be then turned off again), of course.
I suppose this must be very difficult to grasp; and I certainly know it isn't easy to describe.
It was as if someone had hit a "replay" button - with no visible interlude (no visibly different state) between the two apparently identical events.

I am observant. Not much escapes me, I must say. (Literally: I must say it, because only I know myself, and so I know this wasn't simply an "attention" issue.)
That's what makes it so puzzling.

I usually like to speculate on the possible causes or sources of various phenomena - and the "weirder" they are, the better.
But in cases like these I really don't know what to say. Jumping to conclusions - any conclusions - would be counterproductive and possibly deceptive, at best.

The wisest thing to do, in my opinion, would be to keep collecting accounts of such events - and keep an open mind - and see where the evidence takes us.

Lost (in) time

I have always, even as a child, suspected that there may be something quirky about "time": that it may not be all that it seems to be - or not to be.

But before I discovered the internet, I had no idea that so many other people had occasional... »issues« with time/space. And it took me a relatively long time to google for »lost time« - just to see what would come up (apart from Proust, of course.)

Nor did I have any idea that so many people seem to associate this phenomenon (be it subjective perception or something else) with UFOs and/or with "spirit activity" (scroll down to "lost time").

But the odd occurrence I am about to describe has nothing to do with either "spirits" or UFOs, even if they do come and visit us and/or influence our perception of timespace. That much I (seem to) know.

What exactly it was, I don't know.
You decide.

Salvador Dalí, Soft watch at moment of first explosion, ink on paper, 1954.

It happened one mid-afternoon in the summer of 1999 or 2000.
I was waiting, somewhat impatiently, for a re-run of a TV documentary which was scheduled to start about 25 minutes later.

I checked the hour, turned on the TV to see whether there was any change in programming - no, there wasn't (checked it against the printed programming in the TV guides, too) - and turned it off again to do some work at the PC.

As I sat down to work, I glanced at my PC clock and then at another clock in the living room. (Both were always on time.) I opened a document file... and closed it again, almost immediately (certainly before writing a single word) - I decided I was in no mood for work, after all.

So I got up, sat on the sofa and turned on the TV again - just in case... But of course the documentary I was waiting for was still some 20 minutes away, according to both the schedules and my clocks. And obviously there had been no sudden change in the programming; the channel where the documentary was coming up was still showing a different programme, exactly according to the schedule. I turned the TV off. (Yes, I have this mania of never leaving the TV on if I am not watching - sue me.)

So I got up again and went to the kitchen, to have a drink - but not before checking the hour on my monitor screen and on the other clock. (Needlessly - about a minute, at most, had passed - but automatically.)

I crossed the two or three metres that separate my sofa from the kitchen. I opened the fridge, took out a drink, closed the fridge door and went back to the sofa. Still bored, I switched the TV on again... and there was my documentary, WELL under way!
(How do I know that? Because I had seen the programme before, but had missed the first part of it - that's why I wanted to watch the re-run. What I saw when I turned on the TV was the part I was already familiar with.)

At first, I was incensed (at the TV station, for its highly irregular programming - or so I thought). I took the TV guide again, checked the schedule, checked the clocks... and discovered that, somehow - I have no idea how or when - 20 minutes had passed since I last checked the hour.





What happened there?
Or rather... HOW did it happen?

I have no idea.

I do know that it was NOT a »seizure«, as some people are quick to suggest.
I mean, who on Earth has seizures standing in their kitchen and not even notice it?
Besides, what kind of "seizure" exactly - and I emphasise: exactly, i.e. am asking for a scientifically rigorous definition - would that be, especially considering I had never experienced any before?
(But then, the most »scientific«-sounding explanations are usually the most ridiculous and in-credible ones. The often flippant tone that comes with them doesn't help either.)

I was under no influence of drugs (don't use them), alcohol (I rarely keep even a drop of booze in my home, and that wasn't one of those rare occasions), or any type of medications. As far as I can remember, I had slept normally the night before.

The weather, by the way, wasn't unusual in any way - not that I can remember. (I mention this because an electrically charged atmosphere seems to be much more conducive to time/space anomalies.)

Whatever it was that happened, I do know I am by no means the first, the last or the only person to have experienced this.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of accounts of this kind.
To read more about such experiences, go here and here.
(And if you had one yourself, be sure to drop us a line.)

But if you'd rather forgo timespace speculation and invest your time in Marcel Proust's quest (always a wise investment, if you ask me), go here.
It is a totally delightful website; I could not recommend it warmly enough. The time you spend there, or indeed with Proust himself, may be lost - but never wasted.