World Class Hugs

By Rachel Puryear

For most of us, the idea of stumbling upon a mysterious place, only to find it’s not there anymore later; sounds like the realm of fiction – or even an overactive imagination.

However, a number of people claim to have experienced exactly that, and have shared their stories to willing listeners on the internet – and they, largely, sound like sane enough, thoughtful people.

In this particular post, stories derived from subreddits tell people’s tales of encountering places that looked and felt real to them at the time, but that they could not find again later. In some cases, they were familiar with the surrounding area, and surprised to find a mysterious place that they’d never seen before, only to be unable to find it at all again later – despite diligent searching. In other stories, people encountered strange towns and stops along the road while traveling, but couldn’t find them again later next time coming through that way.

So, how are these things explained? Naturally, the most sensible-sounding – and tempting – answers are to assume that the people posting these stories were simply mistaken, they were confused about where the place they found was, or even that they imagined it or just made it up. These kinds of answers do likely explain at least many such stories.

The aforementioned logical explanations are what I would generally presume to be the correct ones, upon hearing a story like that. Not necessarily that the person was lying – indeed, many people do sound sincere in their stories, and are baffled by what happened – but that they are simply mistaken. Or, perhaps, that even otherwise mentally healthy people can experience a rare, but impactful, hallucination or delusion occasionally, and perhaps for unknown reasons.

But if you look a bit further across the internet, there are many more stories like this. They’re posted by people from all walks of life, the specific details of the stories vary a great deal, yet they have a common theme amongst them of someone encountering a strange place only to find later that it’s disappeared.

Can all of them just be making it up? Or delusional? Or perhaps they experience the Mandela effect? Maybe, at least in some of the situations.

Or perhaps there’s a logical explanation for this kind of phenomenon that we just haven’t found yet.

But it does also make one wonder if perhaps there’s more to this world than we think.

What do you think? Have you ever experienced a disappearing place for yourself? If so, what’s your own story?

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