Missing Time Experience?
I just like Star Trek - no other reason for this photo
I’d like to relate a personal experience that I had when I was an adolescent in the hope that others might be willing to come forward and share any similar experiences that they may have had.
I’ve titled this article “A Missing Time Experience?” – with a question mark, you’ll notice – because it does not necessarily fit the “typical” missing time scenario of which we hear. It did not happen late at night on a darkened rural road; there was no UFO sighting involved (that I recall). It occurred in the afternoon, on a sunny day, on a relatively busy street in a bustling suburban town in northeastern New Jersey. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that there even was a period of missing time. Yet, it was strange in the extreme and something that I contemplate regularly to this day, more than thirty years later.
The time of year was late winter or early spring – around March or April, I believe, of 1978. I was in junior high school, seventh grade, and thirteen years of age. It was a weekday at about 3:00 PM and school had just let out. I left the junior high school, which is located next to a hospital in my home town of Ridgewood, NJ. Ridgewood is located about 20 miles from New York City, in Bergen County, a very populated area of the state. I walked, as I did most days, home from the junior high (now a middle school). My parent’s home was (is) located about 1.5 miles from the school along a very direct route. Most of the walk was on the street on which the school was located, followed by a left and a quick right toward the very end of the walk. So, I’d normally just walk out the front door of the school, take a left, and proceed straight for about 1.4 miles, the last 0.10 of a mile being that left and the right, at which point I was at our house.
That was the route that I would normally take, however, I had a run-in with a group of boys that bullied me on a regular basis, so rather than taking a left out the front door of the school and proceeding due south for that 1.4 miles, I’d go left and then take another left at the very first traffic after leaving the school. I’d then walk to the next street over and take a right onto that street, again walking due south. It wasn’t much of a departure from my normal route, as the street ran parallel to the one I’d usually take to get home. I’d been doing that for at least a couple of months in an effort to avoid walking past the homes of the boys who were bullying me. Therefore, I’m confident of the the fact that there was no way I would have become lost or confused of my whereabouts.
However, one day as I began walking home, I noticed that everything seemed strangely quiet, almost muted. The normal noise and bustle associated with the after-school rush of children walking home from school was oddly absent and the quiet was rather eerie. There were still cars and some pedestrians present as I walked down this busy suburban street, but there was an odd, unreal feeling to everything, along with this disturbing muted silence.
The street that I was walking down was called North Pleasant Avenue, and the intersection that I was approaching was at the corner of North Pleasant and Ridgewood Avenue. After crossing Ridgewood Ave, North Pleasant turned to South Pleasant Avenue and I would pass the elementary school that I’d attended the years prior to entering the junior high in September of ‘77. At crossing that intersection and approaching the elementary school, I was approximately 0.8 mile from my home. I mention these facts only to continue to emphasize that this was a route and neighborhood in which I was used to traveling.
As I continued south, from N. Pleasant toward S. Pleasant and toward the intersection of Pleasant and Ridgewood Avenues, I saw the traffic light, the same familiar stores at the corner, and the small parking lot in front of the stores. However, these landmarks appeared to be getting further away as I walked closer to them, and still this odd silence persisted. As I continued to walk toward the intersection, these landmarks continued to appear to recede further into the distance as I approached them. I began feeling very disoriented and anxious – and then, nothing; a complete loss of memory. I simply do not remember anything past the point of approaching this intersection and seeing it recede further into the distance as I walked ever nearer to it.
My next memory was of “awakening” – for a lack of a better description – on another street in a different part of town, a fair distance from where I had started from at the junior high school. I remember feeling very shaken and confused and somewhat frightened. What had happened? And how did I end up in this different area, nowhere near where I’d begun walking, and nowhere near where I’d “blacked out”? This is where things get a bit stranger still: within a couple of minutes of “coming to” my mother pulled up in her car, parking along the curb of the street where I was walking. I opened the door and she looked at me with great concern and said “John, are you alright?” Now, normally my mother did not come looking for me if I was a bit late arriving home from school. Remember, this was the late ’70s and parents were decidedly more relaxed about the comings and goings of their children. My mother never picked me up from school unless the weather was very severe or we had some kind of appointment after school, and as long as I was home by dinner my parents didn’t worry or wonder about my whereabouts. If I didn’t come straight home it was assumed that I was at a friend’s house or had some kind of after school activity.
The fact that my mother knew exactly where to find me was surprising, and I asked her how she knew where I was. She replied that she was home, doing chores around the house, when a voice in her head said “get John, he needs you”. She of course asked me what had happened and I told her about the receding intersection, the strange silence, the memory loss, and of waking up to find myself walking in this other part of town. I had no idea what had happened and to this day I still do not, other than a vague memory or feeling of having been told or shown something significant. Who told or showed me what, and where it happened, I cannot recall, although I feel at some point that I will recall the entire incident. I simply feel that this event was significant for a reason that I can’t explain, but it’s meaning will eventually be made clear to me.
Being that this was over thirty years ago, I cannot accurately recall the time that I “awoke” or what time my mother found me. However, I don’t think it was a great amount of time, certainly not more than hour, and probably less than that. Thirty minutes, perhaps? So the time was maybe 3:30 or 3:45 in the afternoon, I’d estimate. It may have been later than that, but not by much, if I recall correctly. I’ve always felt that the strangeness of this incident is compounded by the fact that my mother was somehow involved and “contacted”. If I had simply blacked out our became disoriented and wandered off, I could accept that as being a possibility – although I had no history of seizures or blackouts. But the fact that my mother was told to “Get John, he needs you” makes me believe that there was some outside design and involvement in this, the nature of which I do not know.
This, I should mention, was not the only strange and unexplained incidents that I had as a child. Perhaps I’ll discuss some of the others in future blog posts. Meanwhile, I’d be very interested hearing from other people who may have experience similar phenomena.
John Carlson is a husband, father, and business owner. He’s been a self–employed Web designer/developer and consultant for almost ten years. John was raised in New Jersey USA where he currently resides with his wife and two sons.
I had a strange incident about 10 years ago: I was at the seaside and taking a walk along the seafront with a friend. We knew what time we had set off because we were on a break from some chef work we were doing at the time.
We stopped to look at some tiny silver fish which were catching the light, wondering what they were, as they just looked like silver glitter in the sea. After watching them for what could have only been maximum 5 minutes we contiued walking. Very shortly after my friend checked her watch and we were both shocked to find that it was about an hour and a half later than it should have been. We are both convinced that we lost an hour, though without any apparent reason for it. The friend in question is a devout Christian, and as we were working on a Christian camp and she was having a spiritually intense couple of weeks she attributes it to that. As an agnostic I have no idea!
Hey Elizabeth – That’s a very interesting story. Thank you for sharing. Interesting also that you weren’t alone, but had someone there that shared in the experience and corroborate. I’m always particularly interested in accounts that don’t fit the typical missing time scenario. I’ll be writing more about that in the future. I have no idea what the nature of these experiences are, but it’s something that I look forward to exploring further. Thanks again!
Once four friends and I were hanging around town what teens do in high school. We’d stopped by the lakefront and we’re just standing around talking. It was getting a little ‘late’ in the evening for us (the cops had been cracking down on curfew laws at the time.) We noted on the clock tower at the lake front that it was 10:15pm and made comments about how we had plenty of time to stay and talk before having to be home at 11:00 pm. I remember looking off for a second during a lull in the conversation and suddenly we all looked at each other as if coming to from a daze. Then I looked at the clock an was shocked to see that it was 10:45. All four of us were freaking out at this point because we’d lost approximately 30 minutes and we would now have to rush to get home. The whole thing was just odd. I would say that maybe I just had a moment of day dreaming or drifting off and just didn’t realize but all of us had the same feeling at the same time.
Missing time experiences like that become a whole lot harder to dismiss when it happens to more than one person. Like I said in the article, I might have been more likely dismiss the whole thing as some kind of mental lapse on my part if it weren’t for the fact that my mother was somehow mentally/psychically ‘contacted’ and knew exactly where I was. Otherwise, you could more easily make the case that you just drifted off, like you said. Weird! Thanks for sharing that. I’m going to see if I can find a couple of good books about missing time experiences. I’ve read Budd Hopkins ‘Missing Time’, which was great, but it was specifically about UFO abductions.
I have had a missing time episode while driving home from work,and, like you, it was bright outside and I was driving on a highway with lots of other cars around me. But, all of a sudden, I was suddenly in a place at least two hours away from where I originally had been. I know this for sure because when I called my friend who was watching my daughter to tell her that I was lost, she was really mad at me cuz she was two hours late for work and she was in the military. What I find interesting is how you said “awakening.” When this incident happened to me, it was as if I was in one place and the next second I was in a completely different town. I was not drowsy or sleepy at all, I was just suddenly somewhere else.
Wow! Thanks for telling me about that, Andrea. This is great. I’m so glad people are telling me about these experiences they’ve had. Makes me feel less alone in this. This happened over thirty years ago, but I still think about it a lot, and I feel that whatever happened during that brief period of missing time holds some kind of significance. What that is, I’m not sure, but it’s nagged at me for many years. I’ve never gone for hypnotherapy, but maybe I will someday soon.
I just had to say thank you for posting this.
Hi,
I’ve found this site as my boyfriend and I have just experienced a loss of time today. It has been the most bizarre experience therefore I have been searching the net for an explanation or at least to see if anyone else has experienced this.
We arrived home today at 3PM. We made a sandwich and watched I TV programme. I checked my watch after this and noted that it was 4.30PM.
After this my boyfriend went off to do a little work on the other side of the room whilst I watched 2 further TV programmes which both programmes including ad breaks account for around 45mins of our time.
After this we played a video game for around 30mins (our console can tell us how long we have been playing).
I then went to the kitchen to prepare for dinner for later whilst my boyfriend organized some of the cables etc on our sound system. We both agree this had taken approx 20-30mins maximum of our time.
When I returned to the kitchen my clock showed it was 9.45PM. I assumed my clock must be wrong. Also when I looked at the vegetables I had just put on to boil what seemed like 20mins ago they were still firm and not as they would be if they had been boiling for the 3+ hours we had lost. I carried on with making the dinner then I returned to ask my boyfriend to check the time on the TV as I thought my clock was wrong. When he saw that it was 10PM he gasped. I was in
complete shock so I called the talking clock to check and we checked the news channels etc for the time and it was 10PM. We sat down and checked the programmes I’d watched etc and have worked out that we have lost approx 3 and a half hours which neither of us can explain what has happened.
We’re both very disturbed and confused about this. I originally put this down to the date as it is the 28th of February as I have always had the idea of us losing time due to us gaining too much time during leap years and time changes etc.
Now I don’t know what to think!
May I also add that I am in the UK hence why my post is showing 6.41PM instead of 11.41PM which is the time here! It did freak Me out a bit there when I saw the posting time until I realised the site would show your time not mine!
Hi Jennifer,
I have no explanation as to what the cause of these types of “missing time” phenomena might be, but I believe that they’re much more commonplace than most people realize. Of course we’ve all heard of missing time experiences within the context of alien abductions, but there seems to be quite a large percentage of these incidents that don’t fit the typical alien abduction scenario – like your story and mine, for example. Mine was in the middle of the afternoon in a very populated area. Yours and your boyfriend’s happened during what sounds like a routine Sunday afternoon at home. It’s very odd, and I’d truly like to understand the nature of it. I know my experience is something that somehow feels significant to me, but I just don’t recall what happened during that missing period of time. I wish I could, because I’ve thought about this for over 30 years and it still bothers me.
Question for you, if you don’t mind: did you and/or your boyfriend feel at all “strange” or disoriented before the period of missing time? Or did happen almost seamlessly, with no feel of going into or coming out of “it” – the blank spot that was the 3.5 hours that you don’t recall? I definitely felt an odd, slightly disoriented feeling and a strange silence before it happened, but when I “came to” – came out of my trance or whatever it was – it was immediate. I just popped back into my normal waking reality. Prior to it happening, though, I had a weird, unreal sensation. The amount of time that I missed was a lot less than yours, although when I came out of it I was in a different area a couple of miles away from where I blanked out.
If any details come to mind over the next few hours, day, weeks, etc., I’d love to hear about them if you don’t mind sharing that information. If you’re not comfortable with commenting on the blog, you can email me john@theparanomalist.com if you’d like to. Thank you for telling me about this. One other thought: you and your boyfriend might want to check each other over for any strange marks or rashes, which are sometimes associated with these occurrences.
Thanks again, and try not to get too freaked out over it. Have a drink and try to relax.
Take care,
John
I thought as much! Folks here in the states don’t use “whilst” very often, and we tend spell “programme” as p-r-o-g-r-a-m. Whereabouts in the UK do you live? I’m hoping to get to England and Ireland sometime this year.
Hi
Sorry for the delay in response. My boyfriend said he felt as tho he was awakened however I didn’t feel that. We were both very much wide awake after we realised that neither of us could work out what had happened. This is very odd for Me as I wake up very early so I’m usually very tired and almost asleep by 10 however on Sunday I was awake until 1am.
Neither of us have any strange marks. My boyfriend felt very ill yesterday morning when he woke up.
One thing I have noted is that neither Sunday or last night I didn’t dream. This sounds silly but I have conditioned myself over years to remember dreams through keeping a diary of them and I very rarely wake up without even a a small memory of a dream. Silly but the only difference I’ve noticed in my life.
We live in lancashire, north west England. There’s lots of odd goings on in England so I’m sure you’ll find plenty to investigate over here
Hi Jennifer,
It’s interesting how you and your boyfriend seem to have had different reactions to the experience. These types of things never seem to be consistent, so it’s hard to draw any conclusions about them and the nature of the phenomena. I wonder if it’s there are just natural “hiccups” in time that occur in specific areas? Although that’s a difficult concept to get ones head around. I mean, if it happened to you and your boyfriend, then it should have happened to other people nearby. That’s not to say it didn’t, though. I can see where people might be hesitant to to talk about something so bizarre. Also, how time itself could hiccup, I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s possible. That would be a question for a someone like a quantum physicist – which I am most definitely not!
Well, the whole thing is very weird, that much I can say. But I know it happened to me, and to this day I haven’t been able to come up with an explanation for it. I used to do a podcast show and one of the authors that I interviewed said she experienced something like this too. She was driving somewhere, if I recall, and she lost several hours and ended up very far from her destination. She too had no explanation for it.
I’ve got a friend who lives in Manchester. We’ve only been in touch over the phone and by email, but I’d like to visit him when I get over there and do a bit of investigating while I’m there. I’m hoping to make that happen this year, if finances allow.
Thanks again for sharing your experience, Jennifer. If you think of anything else or have any other strange experiences I’d love to hear about them. Or if I get up to the Lancashire area maybe you can tell me where the good places are to go for a few beers
John