Every now and then, we find ourselves sharing a truly unbelievable experience we just had with a friend.
As we see their eyebrows raise in doubt, our inclination is of course to revert to that age-old saying "you had to see it to believe it".
However, even if we were the lucky (or, possibly, unlucky) ones to be in this bizarre predicament, that doesn't make explaining it any easier.
In fact, more often than not, we can't offer anything close to a logical explanation of what transpired, and still find ourselves lying awake in bed at night trying to figure out what just happened.
Redditor /I_Use_Games was curious to some of the truly inexplicable experiences members of the Reddit community have found themselves in, leading them to ask:
"People who have seen something they could never explain. What was the thing?!"
Help From The Great Beyond...
"Shortly after my mother passed away I was going through and organizing her belongings in her room."
"I was talking out loud as if I were talking to her."
"There were some boxes with family photo albums I’d been looking for that I hadn’t been able to find and it was really worrying me."
"I was sitting on the floor and said aloud 'where did you leave those albums, mom?'"
"Very slowly, her closet door opened on its own."
"A slow, creaking movement from nearly totally closed to halfway open."
"I was as terrified as I’d ever been in my life."
"I froze and didn’t move, but I looked at exactly eye level and there was a cardboard box labeled 'Albums' in my mothers handwriting on the lower shelf of the closet."
"I am not a religious or even spiritual person, and I thought that there might be some imbalance in the hanging of the closet door."
"I went back to the door many times and tested it by wiggling it back and forth and leaving it in different positions but it’s never moved that way since."- Virtual-Elderberry31
It's Coming From Within The House...
"In my early 20s I was home alone."
"I woke up to my cell phone ringing but missed the call."
"The phone number I missed the call from was my home phone number."
"I got up and found the cordless phone on the kitchen counter."
"I looked everywhere, but no one was in the house and the doors were all locked."- Sapphire_Sunshine
Scared Leave Me Alone GIFGiphyWhere To Even Begin...
"I fly helicopters for a living."
"I was working on a power line one year and was going back to our landing zone and noticed an opening in the trees what appeared to be a leg."
"I came back and tried to get as low as I could into the clearing, thinking, it was a person, it was a full grown cow that had been completely skinned."
"There were no farms around and the animal didn’t appear to be cut up in anyway."
"I went back to the landing zone picked up one of my Ground crew members and flew back with him just so he could verify that I wasn’t crazy."
"The flight back, we were both kind of in awe because we have no idea how that animal got to where it’s at."
"Even more so that it had no skin on its entire body, it looked like a perfect cow sans skin."- Machismo0311
An Unknown Friend When He Needed One
"Not me, but my dad."
"When I was younger, my biological mom and her husband kidnapped me and took off to another state."
"My dad said that he was finally starting to accept that he may never see me again after nearly a year of searching, and then one day when he was on a walk, this little girl came up to him and asked, 'are you looking for a little girl?'"
"He looked at her, confused, and she just turned around and pointed up the block at a group of kids playing, and said, 'she's right there!"
"He walked closer, passed the girl, to try to get a better look and saw me in the group."
"He turned around to figure out what the little girl's deal was, and she was just gone, without a trace."
"Turns out my bio mom and her husband had come back to visit family for whatever reason."
"I used to call bs because the story is just so insane, but throughout the years, it's the one story of my dad's that never changed."
"Not one detail."
"He's told it so many times that I can recite it word for word, and he's always so f*cking awestruck when he tells it."
"Like I can almost see him racking his brain, searching for the most logical explanation."
"I was ~2-3 when it happened, and I'm now 26."
"He still can't piece it all together to this day."- Western_Avocado9027
homer simpson hugs GIFGiphyA Universal Vision...
"Was talking on the phone to my dad in the garden, about 15 years ago."
"Saw an orange light slowly come up over some trees behind my house then take off straight up at a ridiculous speed."
"Stood there in silence and so did he."
"Explained to him what I’d just seen and he said he’d just seen the exact same thing."
"He was over 100 miles away in Manchester at the time."- srsly_organic
Good Thing It Landed Where It Did...
"I was walking along a park sidewalk blowing off grass clippings."
"Got under some pine trees and through a break in the canopy an 8-10 pound rock came tumbling out of the sky, bounced and chipped the sidewalk and rolled down into a creek."
"Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen."- RickPickle5280
It Can Be A Fine Line Between Dreams And Reality...
"When I was ~19 or 20 and first living on my own, I woke up in the middle of the night once to a pitch black room, but realized I could 'see' as if everything in my room was subtly outlined in a reddish glow."
"I closed my eyes and could still see the exact same thing."
"I then covered my eyes with my hands, but could still 'see'."
"I even got up and tested it by walking around my house with my eyes closed and was able to navigate around all obstacles and even see things like cups on the counters and able to pick them up without missing them."
"After a little bit of this, I turned on the light to confirm everything was where it was, and when I turned the lights back off the effect was gone."
"Overall it lasted about 10 minutes and has never happened again."
"My best guess is that I was still half dreaming and my brain was just able to very accurately represent my memory of where everything was."
"But even if that's the case, I'm very impressed with my brain's half asleep ability to form a full 3d representation of my environment as I'm moving and manipulating small objects."
"Either that, or I discovered a latent superpower."- Shaggyfort1e
scared butters stotch GIF by South Park GiphyAlways Be Cautious Before Following The Light...
"Me and my brother saw light coming through a bricked-off vent in my house about 20 years ago."
"It was a powerful light like there was a mini sun in there."
"Light has never come through it before or since and we both still remember it."- Gutgulper
Some People Are Very Easily Scared.
"My nephew was pointing at a picture on the wall saying 'boo!' and laughing, then the picture fell onto the desk below it."- HouseOfZenith
Maybe Just A Very Good Hiding Job?
"A voice sounding like my friend's sister calling out his name from a tree line in a park, me and friend were walking home near the middle of the night, both of us heard it."
"He was called out 3 times."- Brexrker
film meditating GIF by The Orchard FilmsGiphyHas This Happened Before?
"Actually I still don't understand the concept of Deja Vu."
"It happens to me about twice a year since I was around 18 years old (I'm 44)."
"Just random places or experiences that I swear I have seen and been through before."
"It's so strange."- Nairbfs79
What's More Baffling, The Chainsaws, Or The Nice Clothes?
"A tree fell in front of us while we were driving."
"It almost killed us."
"Moments later a group of men dressed in nice clothes just happened to have chainsaws in their car, that was black and black tinted windows."
"They started cutting up the tree."
"We quickly turned around and said 'nope'."
"I tried to tell myself that it was just Mormons, who happened to have chainsaws in the back of their car."
"I called my mom the other day to see if she still remembers that incident and she does."- Etherealdildoexpert
Who hasn't found themself in an experience they can't explain at least once in their life.
But rather than agonizing in finding the logic behind it, sometimes the best thing to do is avoid looking for an explanation.
And just accept it as a bizarre, one-off experience.