11 People Attempt to Explain Their Most Insane Paranormal Encounters ...with THEMSELVES

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PUBLISHED Sep. 10 2018, 7:35 p.m. ET

UPDATED Sep. 12 2018, 4:42 p.m. ET

paranormal encounter
Source: istock/distractify

Well, I'll be damned. Just when I thought I'd scraped the bottom of the internet when it comes to paranormal reality and overlapping dimension stuff, it turns out (thanks, internet!) that I was just getting started.

There are a lot more people out there spotting difficult-to-prove versions of themselves and their friends, and the stories are truly freaky! 

Below, 11 different people try to explain how they stepped out of reality and into a dimension where they spotted themselves or their friends, and no one's really sure how to make sense of it.

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1. This story gives me goosebumps.

cars
Source: istock
"I was working as a project manager for an accounting software company. My team had been working with a very difficult client for months ... every time we submitted our work, the client decided that they wanted more, they wanted less, they wanted this changed or that changed. We would make suggestions that they ignored, we would submit again and they would then decide they liked our suggestions. It was dragging on far too long and my team was getting fatigued.
At this same time, my mother's health was failing. She was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer and had about 5 months to live, as it turned out. So I stopped at her house on my way home every day to spend time with her and check on her. She was a feisty old broad, so she took care of herself until she had to start hospice care 3 days before she passed.
So one day at work, my team submitted our latest coding and sent it off to our client. It was a Friday, so I told my team that if this latest work was finally accepted, we would all be leaving work as soon as we heard the good news. And we all sat back and waited. Miracle of miracles, we got that call before noon and our job was finally done. (For the record, our software had gone full circle and was 99% the same as our first submission. But whatever. I don't hold a grudge.)
So we left early that day ... just before lunch. Which was pretty much unprecedented. And I drove to my mom's. After some time I had found the ultimate best route from work to Mom and never varied my route.
I spent several hours with my mom that day and we had a glorious time. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I really felt like our time together that day was significant and blessed.
As it turns out, I ended up leaving her house at about the same time I usually left work. To get home I virtually had to pass my office so I used the same route as when driving from work to mom's only in reverse.
I was slowing down for a stop sign about 10 minutes into the trip home, when I noticed a car stopping at the opposing stop sign. It was exactly like MY car. At the time, I drove a 2003 Pontiac Aztek. Yep ... that sad little car that was cool for a minute before it was blown up in Breaking Bad. And my car was absolutely filthy as I just didn't have the time to deal with it. The car opposing me? Same model, same year, same filth. I even noticed the same dent on the driver's side rear panel.
Of course I was curious, so as we passed each other, I checked out the driver. She looked exhausted and sad. She stared straight ahead so she never saw me. And she was me. Same hair, same face, same hands on the same places on the steering wheel. I was driving PAST MYSELF. I was going home, but I was also driving to my mom's at the exact time I did virtually every other day. THAT poor version of me apparently was still being yanked around by a difficult client and was feeling the stress and strain of another hard day, while THIS version of me was finally done and had a great day with my mom.
I saw the car in my rearview mirror as I realized I had instinctively started to brake. But almost immediately the other car turned a bend and was gone. I was shaken so I pulled over to get my wits back. I kept telling myself I couldn't have seen what I saw. That it just had to be some crazy coincidence. But I knew better.
When I got home, I called my mom. I acted cool, like I just wanted to tell her I got home safe. She wasn't at all surprised by my call, so I knew that I wasn't sitting there talking to her, but there was no question in my mind that I had just witnessed something extraordinary."

- niknamy_nikname_face

2. How many Rebeccas are out there?

mall
Source: istock
"Fifteen years ago, I was working part-time at a clothing store in a strip mall in Ohio. I wanted a second job, so I applied at other stores on the block.
While sitting down at a restaurant filling out their job application, all of the staff gathered about 10 feet from me and stared. I heard them whispering to each other, 'It's Rebecca!' 'Wow, she's back.'
My name is Rebecca, but this was the first time I had been in the restaurant. I was confused, and then it was awkward walking up to them to give them the application (yes, they were still all there watching me.) The woman I handed my application to looked at it and then looked a bit confused. 'Huh, we thought you were the Rebecca who used to work here, but you have a different last name.'
Anyway, that was kind of a crazy coincidence, but it was just that, a coincidence. So I forgot about it.
At the clothing store I worked at, I was reminded of the coincidence when people from the restaurant or who used to work there would come in and think I was the Rebecca they knew. It happened multiple times, and people would start conversations with me legitimately thinking I was her. And someone told the person she was talking to on the phone, 'You will never guess who works here! Rebecca from the restaurant!' And this also happened when I would pick up lunch for my bosses from the restaurant. Someone there told me that Rebecca moved to Florida a while ago.
One day, I was working at the front end of the store putting security tags in clothes, and I saw a woman approach the doors. I can't even explain what I felt, when she came in, but when I think about it, I get chills. I knew who she was the moment I saw her.
At the same time, we both said, 'Rebecca?'
She was in town visiting, and her former colleagues told her about me. Then we both agreed that we looked nothing alike, and we had no clue what everyone was talking about. She left, and the whole exchange was over in a minute. My manager was in the back, and she was so mad that I didn't come and get her, so she could be a better judge of our similarities. I wish I had done it.
I know the story seems anti-climactic, but the thing is, 15 years later, I still remember what I felt when I saw her and how cosmic and totally eerie it was, without even knowing it was actually her. When I think about it, I get chills that last for an hour afterwards. And 'chills' feels like a complete understatement. It all feels supernatural. I felt a powerful and bizarre connection."

- chocolatekittymeow

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3. Actual strangers on a train, though.

train
Source: istock
"I don’t know what happened, if this is just a weird doppelgänger or what it but it creeped me out.
A while back, maybe April break, my mom, brother and I attended wizard world in Philadelphia. We took a train in early morning, spent the day in wizard world, then took our train home.
We were finished with wizard world, but our train wouldn’t be coming for six more hours. We were all tired so we decided to sit at the station and take a nap, read, and relax.
I laid down across a bench with my mom sitting next to me and my brother sitting in the floor. I fell asleep for an hour and a half when I woke up suddenly.
I looked up and sitting at the far end of the bench I was on was what looked like my friend from school. He comes to Philadelphia a lot and sometimes travels alone (he has family around) so that wasn’t uncommon. What was weird is he doesn’t travel by train. I looked at him for a while and saw many similarities with him and my friend. Same shoes he always wears, similar joggers, same haircut. His face looked exactly the same too. I saw he had a lacrosse sweatshirt on and I swear it said my town name.
At this point I was excited so I decided to text him to see if it really was him. I opened snap and texted 'Hey.' I waited and nothing happened with the guy sitting near me. Then I told my friend I think I see him in Philly. He texted me back saying there was no way because he was home. I checked the snap map and my friend was in my town, not in Philly. I was taken back at this. I looked back at the kid sitting near me and I swear it was him. I snapped my friend a picture and he said that it looks exactly like him, and that he had his clothes on.
A train was called over the loudspeaker and the kid got up and walked right by me. I watched him walk almost to the terminal when he went behind a pillar and was suddenly gone. I kept an eye out but I didn’t see him again. (This was very late at night so there was only a small amount of people there, there was no way I could miss him)
My mom was sitting next to me and stayed awake the whole time and takes note of everything around her. I asked her if she thought the kid sitting on the bench looked like my friend. She said no one was there. I explained that it was the kid who was sitting there that walked by us for the last train. She never saw anybody else on the bench and didn’t see anyone walk by when the last train was called.
I don’t know what happened. I got him on camera, he disappeared, and my mother never saw him."

- haleyyyzzz

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4. Wait — weren't you just...

water
Source: istock
 "This happened a little while ago (like, a months ago maybe?) and it still messes with my head. I was walking with a couple friends down the street. Nothing weird or crazy. In the middle of my sentence, I abruptly stopped like I hit a wall (I also felt like my shirt was wet, but I'm going to assume that was some, weird unrelated thing). At first, I thought I ran into a post, but there was nothing there. I thought nothing of it, and keep walking.
Skip ahead an hour or two...
I'm walking the opposite direction drinking from my water bottle. I'm talking to a friend (different one this time) and I abruptly stop, again. I feel like I ran into something and my water bottle spills all over the ground in front of me. I look around, and sure enough, I'm in the same exact spot as an hour prior. I have no clue how this happened and it still messes with my brain (and my concept of reality)."

- TheLastDreadwolf

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5. Glitchy wife, husband AND phone.

text
Source: istock
"I'm a newlywed. We'd been married less than a month when I woke up at 5:30 a.m. next to my husband's sleeping form and saw a notification on my phone. It was a text from him, Sam <3, sent at midnight:
Sam <3: 'Who is this?'
Now, I was pretty sure that Sam was stretched out next to me, snoring away at midnight. I'm a light sleeper and it's likely I would've awoken if he had gotten out of bed or turned on his phone. Still, stranger things have happened. I figured he was playing a weird joke on me or something. I decided to play along so I wrote back:
Me: 'Who is this?'
Seconds later:
Sam <3: 'I asked you first.'
I could feel Sam pressed against my right side, warm and breathing regularly. I looked at his nightstand and confirmed that his phone was still there, dark and silent.
Me: 'Seriously who is this? Why are you coming up on my phone under one of my contact names?'
Sam <3: 'What name am I under?'
Me: 'Obviously there's some crossed wires somewhere. We don't know each other.'
Sam <3: 'Are you in (town I live in)?'
Me: 'Yes....are you?'
Sam <3: 'Yes'
Me: 'Ok there ya go. Wires are crossed. It's weird but I'm sure it happens.'
Sam <3: 'We must live near each other. What street are you on?'
Me: (trying to change the subject because I definitely do not want to tell this person the street I'm on) 'Do I come up on your phone under someone else's name?'
Sam <3: 'I was looking through my contacts and I saw one I didn't remember creating under the name Wi-Fi with a heart built like this <3 next to it. Lol I was just curious who this is. I live on Violet St btw.'
I went cold. My husband's nickname for me is Wi-Fi but pronounced 'wife-y.' It's a silly inside joke. No one knows about it but us....so I had thought. And we live on Violet St.... and we both make little '<3' next to each other's name. And something about this person's writing style was so familiar....
I confirmed that my husband was still slumbering next to me. His phone was still on the nightstand.
Someone was f--king with me.
I turned my phone off, got up and got ready for work. Later that morning I showed the texts to Sam who was baffled. His phone had no messages on it. He texted me to test things out and his message 'hi' popped up right underneath the last message the other 'Sam' sent to me.
I assumed it was someone playing a joke on me, or maybe it really was some technical glitch, but the days have passed I keep thinking, what if that was Sam? A Sam in an alternative reality where we never met? My husband and I have texted each other since with no problems. I tried to put the incident out of my head, but yesterday I started scrolling up to find the messages. They're gone. I did not delete them. They're just gone. If it is another Sam in a different reality, am I there too? If I ever hear from him again should I tell him to find me? I love him so much. I want all his versions to be happy..."
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6. Doesn't sound like just another day at Walmart.

walmart
Source: istock
"Yesterday I worked a 9-hour shift as usual.
8:30 am to 5:30 pm.
I work at Walmart and I'm usually in the food section stocking and helping customers.
Now keep in mind, I got a good amount of sleep the night before, and I'm not under a lot of stress so I don't think I was daydreaming/hallucinating.
Around 10ish I helped a woman find 'Go Veggie' cheese. She stood out because we had a conversation about how the cheese was made completely out of vegetables and I thought that was a pretty neat alternative.
The second person I helped was a young man, (I also thought he was hot so I definitely remembered his face). He asked me to show him where we kept the non-refrigerated cases of Gatorade. Easy peasy.
I finished stocking my isle when another person came up to me, she had beautiful neon purple hair and a cute voice. She just wanted to know where the bathrooms were.
All of this happened between 10 and 1:15, when I took my break .
That's nearly 3 hours...
I came back from my break at 1:50 and went back to stocking.
Around 4, and I s--t you not my friends, the same woman came up to me on the opposite side of the aisle this time and asked me the same f--king question.
Upon greeting her I said 'Heyy you're back!' and chuckled. She just gave me a strange look and continued asking for help.
Ok... I walked her over to the deli and brushed it off. We have regulars come in all the time . She probably just forgot she asked me.
About 20 mins later, Mr. Long-tan-and-handsome asks for the location of his sports drinks again.
I felt uneasy. Maybe they never left the store? It had been almost four hours at this point though. Am I losing it ? .
Naturally, I'm an introverted person. I like observing, people-watching. I notice little things and remember them for no reason.
After that guy I really started looking around, and noticed random little things happening again.
The Pepsi guy pushing his cart to the backroom and almost colliding with an elderly costumer. Happened twice once before my break, and again after .
A teenage guy in Adidas track pants circling the aisles looking for the group of friends he came in with. Twice.
An elderly regular in a wheelchair asking my manager if we have his jarred sauerkraut back in stock.
Twice .
Maybe they came back in? Right?
But the icing on the f--king cake. Purple hair cute voice. Asking where the bathroom is.
Have I lost it ? Did time go in a loop after my break ?
I don't know if this has s--t to do with anything , but for the past few days I have been doing meditations and law of attraction related things to speed up time (just to make work go by faster).
But this...this wasn't faster. This was full circle.
I'm scared but also curious.. I'm going to do the exact same things before work on Friday just to see if it happens again ..

- GracieStrange

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7. This creepy AF story completes a memory she had years and years ago.

crib
Source: istock
"When I was about two, a woman walked into my room with a shirtless man and peered into my crib. Her face twisted with horror and shock as she backed out of the room and screamed in the hallway.
This memory followed me my entire life, it was one of the earliest I had, and one of the most vivid. My mother said someone on drugs broke into the house and my dad chased them out .
I’m not going to smudge the fact that I took a heavy amount of acid one night just for fun when I was 21 and that I know it can alter the way someone takes in things as real and not real. I never thought more of LSD than just a fun trick of the brain, but this experience made me ward it off completely.
I was camping , and walked off at night like a moron and became lost in the woods. I realized the danger I was in because I was tripping pretty badly and knew the best thing to do was stay still and wait even though time felt warped .
I waited under a tree with my head tucked into my lap, when I looked up, I saw a red door just standing freely about 15 ft away.
I couldn’t not walk to it, LSD was fun to me and I liked seeing what would happen .
I didn’t note at the time the fact that it felt as if I was not tripping. Time felt intact and there was nothing out of place other than the door.
I walked through it and found myself standing in a small living room with walls that had wood paneling and smelled like pot roast. I walked into the kitchen, admiring the checkered floors and collection of McDonald’s cups with various cartoon characters on them.
Eventually, I wandered down to the hall, and that's when things became funky. It suddenly felt real, like I could be caught and punished. I ducked into a small room, that was decorated like a nursery, and as soon as I saw the crib, I knew.
I looked over the rail, and there was my younger self, looking back up at me. I felt panic as I turned around and began to quickly leave the home. My husband was standing behind me in the hall. He said something but it was like no air could pass between us to carry the noise.
I ran past him, I wanted to see my parents. The door at the end of the hall flew open and there was my father, his eyes wide with fear and he looked right into mine.
He yelled, 'GET THE F--K OUT!!!'
I began to scream. I wanted to hug him, to tell him it was me and I was so f--king scared and I didn't want to hurt anyone.
My mom appeared behind him with a handgun.
I said 'Dad it's me!!! Mom!!!!'
But she held the gun up and I ran for the door. When I opened it, there was no night sky, no dimly let pouch, just a vast amounts of color that I can only remember as white. I can only visually recall the color white, but I remember the inner dialogue of being overwhelmed by color and trying to grasp physical space.
Eventually as the acid wore off, memory returned and I was tucked into a sleeping bag in a cabin. My husband came looking for me and said he found me clinging to a tree and I remained cationic until I fell asleep.
It took me a long time to talk about it with anyone but I asked my mom one day to tell me more about what happened the night she chased the intruders from our home and she said : 'The women looked scared, she called out 'Dad, Mom!!’ to us and that made it hard for me to point a gun at her, thank God it scare them off because I don't think I could have pulled that trigger looking at her. She's someone's daughter too.'
I found out about four weeks after that trip that I was 15 weeks pregnant after being told my PCOS made it nearly impossible to have kids without medical assistance.
I am 100 percent in agreement that the effects of LSD can do some super crazy s--t to a person. I know what I felt. I know what I saw. I just don't understand what the f--k happened."
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8. Unborn dreamer saves her own pregnant mom's life.

carwreck
Source: istock
"I once had a weird dream where I was driving home and listening to some oldies. It was raining a bit and the wind was quite heavy. After a while I saw a heavy damaged car on the left side of the road. The driver must have hit a tree... I stopped my car to call the ambulance and to look for the driver. It was a woman in her mid-twenties with short curled blonde hair. She was unconscious and there was some blood. She wasn't breathing so I dragged her out of the car to give her first aid. After a while I heard the sirens of the ambulance. I shortly looked in the direction of where the ambulance was coming and then back to the woman. She suddenly had her eyes wide open and a look of total terror in her face. The dream then ended there.
Some weeks ago we celebrated my 25th birthday. I got some awesome presents but one was very special. My uncle made a photo collage of my family. He found them in an old box as he mentioned. I already had some shots so I decided to put it in the corner of my room to the other presents. When I was about to leave the room the collage fell over so I turned back to arrange it properly. While doing it I glanced over the photos. I've never seen old pictures of my parents before so I was quite curious after all. There was a wedding photo of my parents. I recognized my dad he looked really sharp in his suit. Next to him was a lady she was georgious and pregnant. It looked like she had some wounds and/or scars at her arm and at her neck.
Then it all kicked in. She was the woman I dragged out of the car to give first aid. My whole body trembled. I immediately ran to my dad to ask what happended back then. He told me she had a car accident 25 years ago. When the ambulance and police arrived she layed on the street and a man ran away from her body. The doctor told my dad if my mother didn't get first aid in that situation she may have lost her unborn child because of lack of oxygen.
I was still trembling at this moment and could not get a single word out of my mouth. After some time I just went back to my party guests. But I wasn't like celebrating any more. It was all so f--king weird."
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9. Oh, this is so uncanny it's practically casual.

twins
Source: istock
"I was working as an auditor for a chain of grocery stores. We would do physical audits on the stores' inventory for their quarterly earnings statements, as well as loss tally for stores that had been robbed, etc.
One day I had just wrapped up my work and was heading out towards the front of the store when I see my wife walking towards me smiling. No big deal since she works in the mall I was at. I smiled back at her and her face lit up, and I started walking towards her to give her a hug and chat with her.
As I get closer I remembered that she had quit working at the mall, and was now working miles away at the airport... And she was there at that moment. The woman walking towards me slows down and her smile falters just as she reaches me.
'I'm so sorry,' she says to me. 'I thought for sure you were my husband. You look exactly like him!'
'That's ok,' I say to her. 'I know what you mean. You look exactly like my wife.' It's so strange knowing that I have a doppleganger... who married my wife's doppleganger."
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10. Fiancé's father accidentally calls for her before she was born.

landline
Source: istock
"I have been a lurker here for a long time and decided to make an account just to tell this story. This is the most bizarre thing I have ever experienced.
Growing up my grandmother used to always tell me a story about how the week before I was born  her and my grandfather had my parents over for dinner (they lived down the street from each other so this was a common thing). The phone rang just as they were about to sit down. My grandmother picked up and the man on the other end asked for 'Annabelle' which just so happened to be the name my parents had recently decided on for me. This is a relatively unique name, I think, at least for someone in New Hampshire where everyone at the time was naming their daughters Jessica. My grandmother laughed and said 'She isn't here yet, try again in a week' and said she would take his number (this was before caller id) for me to 'call back later.' The man did give her his number and she wrote it down, just as a joke for my parents to remember.
Time went on as normal, I was born and happily named Annabelle. My grandmother for whatever reason decided to keep the note that she had scribbled the man's number down on. It was stashed away in a photo album that was soon to be filled with many pictures of me. She loved to tell this story so I heard it many times.
Flash forward 25 years to tonight. Literally this evening. I was visiting my grandparents with my fiancé (he just proposed two weeks ago) and they wanted to flip through old albums to show him what I was like as a baby. The scrap paper is in there, my grandmother grabs it happily and begins blurting out the story. He'd never heard it before, as this was the first time he'd met my grandparents since we live far from them now. He asks to see the paper and his face goes white and says, 'This was my phone number growing up.'
Now, my fiancé is from Virginia and my family is from New Hampshire, so it's not like our families knew each other even vaguely 25 years prior. He is two years older than me so he had already been born when the call was made to my grandmother and he lived in the same house from the time he was born til the time he left for college. The number was definitely his family's when the call was made 25 years before.
The only conclusion we could come to was that his dad must have misdialed when looking for someone named 'Annabelle' and it just happened to be my grandparents' number. The saddest and kind of eeriest part of the story is that my fiance's father passed away last year. We can't even ask if he remembers..."

- poofpoofloof

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11. Whatever just happened in this hospital, I'd prefer not to get treated there.

ER
Source: istock
"I work at a hospital as an RRT (Registered Respiratory Therapist), and the following happened only a few hours ago.
I was running three floors with 13 patients under my direct care, six of them I have treated for a few days, and I know them in terms of we have talked while I treat them .I am considered a kind person by most patients, so they talk to me and tell me about their lives and about the family, etc. There is this particular lady, 73 years old, terminal patient. I have been treating her for 4 days now, so she knows me well enough to not confuse me with anyone else, as I stated, we have talked before and even joke around. Very nice lady. At around 1:30 am, I was headed to her room to provide treatment, but, as I was walking through the hallway, a code came in, and I had to turn around and instead run all the way to the ER to deal with the code the ambulance was bringing in. I was with that coding patient for a good 25 minutes with all the nurses and the doctor trying to save his life, unfortunately, we couldn't.
After that, I had to continue my normal rounds, and my next stop was obviously the lady I was going to treat prior the code's arrival. So, I went to her room, and she saw me and asked... 'What happened? Did you forget something?'
I thought nothing of it, and told her it was time for her treatment, to which she replied, 'Son, but you already gave me the treatment! Only a few minutes ago!'
I said, ma'am, I have not, did someone come in and give you treatment? (Which should not have happened anyway, as I had with me her treatment chart). She said: YOU gave me treatment only a few minutes ago, you came in like you always do, asked me how i felt, and we talked about adjusting my dose because it's making my heart 'race like a horse' and you said, that you would look into it. Mind you, she was not alone, her granddaughter was there too and she also said that I had been there only a few minutes ago.
After trying to process what she said to me for a few seconds, I asked, ma'am are you sure someone came in here and treated you? To which she replied... not someone... YOU!! You are the only one who treats me at night ... you and that crazy nurse out there.
I was confused and told her to hang on a minute, so I went outside, and went to the nurse's desk where the patient records are kept, to see if anyone had written on it, looking for any treatment anyone else had given her.. but there was none written.
I went back into the room, and said that I still had to give her treatment (obviously I had to or I could have lost my job for that), anyway, As I am treating her I am asking her granddaughter about it, and she also is 100% certain it was me, and that I gave her treatment and that we indeed talked about adjusting her dose.
Now, I am here thinking and asking myself.. WHAT THE HELL!? I was in the ER and there are several witnesses, I was there for a good 25 minutes. But, the patient and her relative claim I was in the room with THEM during that time.
There are no records of any treatment on the main patient records and we RT's carry around a little chart of our personal patients for the shift, and no one else but ME had it, so, what happened here?
I asked the nurse outside at the desk if she saw anyone going in, to which she replied... 'Other than you, no one.' I asked again, are you sure? You didn't see anyone going in?
'Well, no, just you, you went in, were in there a few minutes, came back out, walked right passed me and went down the stairs... and just came back!'
So, the nurse is saying, that indeed I went in the room, then left, and now came back... but, it wasn't ME, I was in the ER!!!!
After this all happened, I talked to the security guard, and asked him to please check the security footage and let me know if someone went in. About half hour later, I came back and he said, that yes, indeed someone went in, looked physically just like me, wearing the same uniform, but couldn't make out the face as I never actually faced the camera, so the footage never caught my face.
So, now, we have footage of 'me' walking into the room, and... brace yourself... footage of 'me' in the ER at the same time!!!!
Needless to say, they are looking into this right now!!"

- ErickStrife

Brb. Need to go freak out in front of a mirror and confirm that I'm still real.

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