Unexplained — Nobody Believes Me

My grandmother used to tell us this story. She always said it was about the time they met an alien. It happened many years ago, back in the early 1930s. They lived near a forest — just an ordinary forest. They'd go there to pick mushrooms and berries, hunt game, the usual. Then, out of nowhere, people started disappearing. Four people vanished in just one month. You might chalk it up to wild animals, but the only wildlife around there were foxes, hares, and wild boar. So naturally, people became afraid to go into the forest. And then, not long after, a man wandered into their village. They saw him come right out of that very forest. My grandmother described him as oddly dressed, carrying strange gadgets, speaking in a peculiar way. He seemed completely lost, like he had no idea where he was. About those gadgets — she said he had a metal bracelet on his wrist, and after they'd given him a good steam in the bathhouse, he pressed some buttons on it, and within five minutes all his scratches were gone. He also kept staring at some little box that had glowing pictures and numbers on it. He kept shoving it in front of the men's faces, showing them strange maps, asking where he was. So they figured a UFO had landed nearby. They called it in to someone higher up, but nobody believed them and no special services ever showed up. And then the man just vanished. My grandmother said the alien must have sensed something was off and fled. Anyway, when I was a kid listening to this story wide-eyed, I truly believed he was an alien. But now, years later, I think — come on, no alien would blow his cover like that. And that little box of his sure sounds a lot like a modern smartphone. So now I believe that man somehow ended up in the wrong time. And judging by the fact that we still don't have anything like that bracelet he wore, he wasn't even from our time — he was from even further in the future. And what about the people who disappeared? Maybe they were displaced in time too? By the way, after a while, people gradually started going back into the forest, and there were no more disappearances. So the anomaly was short-lived — it lasted maybe a month or two. If it was a time portal, as I suspect, it may have closed or moved somewhere else. As for that man, they never heard anything about him again. Maybe he found his way back, or maybe he quietly lived out the rest of his life there, in that time.

I'm renting a house. Old, wooden, with high ceilings and creaky floors. The owner let it go cheap. At the time I figured I'd just gotten lucky. First month, nothing. A house is a house. But then I noticed that every evening when I got back from work, the front door was slightly ajar. Not wide open, no. A two-finger gap. Lock intact, bolt in place, yet the door was cracked open. Every single day. I changed the lock. Didn't help. Then came the footsteps. Not at night, during the day. I work from home on Wednesdays. I'd be sitting downstairs at my desk, and upstairs someone would be walking. Slowly, heavily, like an elderly person. Corner to corner. I'd go up, nothing there. I'd come back down, the footsteps would start again a minute or two later. As if it had been waiting for me to leave. I set up three cameras. One in the upstairs bedroom, one on the staircase, one by the front door. And this is where things got truly strange. The footsteps are AUDIBLE on the recordings. The camera picks up sound, the microphone catches impacts on the floor. But on the video, no one. An empty room where something is walking. I sent the footage to a few people. They all said the same thing: floorboards shifting from temperature changes. Right. Floorboards that shift exclusively on Wednesdays, when I'm home. And then something happened that kept me up for two nights straight. I have this notebook. Nothing special, just a regular notebook. I left it open on the kitchen table, went to the shop. Came back and the notebook was open to a different page. A blank one. And right in the center, in pencil, in shaky handwriting, there was a single word. "wednesday" My pencil had been sitting next to the notebook. I remember this clearly, because it's always there. I took a photo, showed my friends. "You wrote it yourself and forgot," "you're messing with us," "someone comes over while you're at work." I live alone. The owner doesn't have a spare key. I changed the lock. After that I deliberately started leaving the notebook open. Every day. Two weeks, nothing. Then, again on a Wednesday, a new entry. Same handwriting. Two lines: "dont leave dont like when it's dark" I started shaking. Not from fear. From realizing. It doesn't just "exist." It's lonely. It waits for Wednesdays because on Wednesdays I'm home all day. It opens the door when I come back. It walks around upstairs while I'm downstairs. Not to scare me, just... living alongside me. I wrote in the notebook: "Who are you?" The next morning, beneath my question: "been here a long time" And below that, smaller, almost hesitant: "you're good the ones before you were bad" I kept trying. Asked different things. Sometimes answers appeared, sometimes they didn't. The handwriting was always the same. Large, trembling, the letters unsteady, like the hand wasn't used to writing. Or had forgotten how. Many times I asked "Who are you?" There was never an answer to that, but one day a page simply read: "dont remember" Five months have passed now. I still live here. On Wednesdays I work from home, the door cracks open when I return, someone walks around upstairs. We correspond through the notebook. It's the strangest thing in my life. Last week the owner called, asked how the house was. I said fine. She went quiet for a long time, then just said goodbye. The notebook is almost full. Yesterday I bought a new one. Left it on the table, open to the first page. In the morning it said: "thank you" Nobody believes me. But I have a notebook where someone who's been here a long time writes to me.

This happened last Tuesday and I still can't sleep properly. I was walking home from work around 7:15 PM, same route I take every day — down Maple Street, past the church on the corner, left on 4th Avenue. I had my earbuds in, listening to a podcast. Everything completely normal. Then I felt this weird pressure in my ears, like when a plane descends too fast. My phone screen flickered and went black for maybe two seconds. When it came back on, the time said 7:04 PM. I thought the clock just glitched. But then I looked around and I was back at the START of Maple Street. Not where I was — I was a full 11-minute walk backwards. I still had the podcast playing, but it had jumped back to a part I already listened to. I walked the rest of the way home in a daze. When I got inside, I checked my phone's step counter. It logged the steps TWICE. 1,847 steps for Tuesday when I usually get around 900 on that walk. My screen time was weird too, it showed the podcast app closing at 7:14 and then somehow opening again at 7:04?? I told my roommate. He said I "zoned out and walked in circles." But I didn't. I went back to the exact spot the next day at the same time. Nothibg happened. I've gone every day since. Nothing. I don't know what happened. But for 11 minutes last Tuesday, something moved me backwards through time, and I walked the same stretch of road twice. No one believes me. My roommate jokes about it. My mom said I should "get more sleep." But the step counter logged 1,847 steps. Explain that.

You know how in fairy tales they say witches always have a black cat? That cats can see supernatural things? I don't know about the supernatural stuff, but let me tell you about my cat. He's a ginger, no particular breed. The only quirk he really has is that he absolutely hates guests and always hides when someone comes over. He also loves catching toy mice and bringing them to us, but that's a whole other story :) Anyway, back to the guests thing. Over the past year, we started noticing he'd go hide about 20 minutes before guests even arrived. We were baffled — how does he know??? We figured we just had a super smart cat who somehow learned to understand our speech, or at least the word "guests." We were genuinely impressed! But here's where it gets weird. One time, a friend showed up completely unannounced — we hadn't discussed it at all. And yep, the cat had already hidden beforehand. The next time, we deliberately ran an experiment. We arranged a time with friends in advance but said absolutely nothing about it at home, and just watched the cat. Ten minutes before they arrived, he went behind the couch. How??? How does he know??? After that, I read a ton of stories about animals sensing earthquakes and other disasters before they happen. Now I get nervous every time the cat gets alert. One time he suddenly jumped up out of nowhere, completely tense. I'm thinking — what's happening? Is an earthquake coming? What did he sense??! Turns out he spotted a moth. So yeah, I try to stay calm about it now. But still, his ability is genuinely mind-blowing. Do your pets sense things before they happen?

I'm 17. And I'm a medium or something like that. I can't predict anyone's future, I don't get prophetic dreams. But sometimes I have these sudden visions. In class, standing in line, or even just doing the dishes. They only last a couple of seconds. But the feeling that I was definitely somewhere else in that moment — not here — is so vivid. I even remember the smells. Usually it's nothing major. Like, I saw a new girl being brought into our class and introduced. And two days later it happened. Or when I was little, I had a vision of my sister on stage with some hot guy in front of a huge crowd, and I told her she was going to be a superstar. A few weeks later she went to a concert of her favourite band, and when she went up to give them flowers, one of the members hugged her and she actually danced with him on stage for like 10 seconds. I mean, she obviously didn't become a superstar, but it really did happen. And by the way, it doesn't always play out exactly like my vision. For example, once I saw a girl riding a bike on the other side of the street, crashing into something and flying onto the road, right under a car's wheels. Three days later, it almost happened exactly like that, except this time a guy caught her. Not like in a romcom — they both ended up on the ground — but at least not in the road. So I believe fate isn't set in stone, and even someone just passing by can change everything. Maybe I only see one possible version of the future. What really bugs me is that most of the time these visions are completely useless (like, great, I saw myself walking to school or having dinner with my family — so what?). But something like what question is going to come up on an exam, or like a winning lottery number — that's never happened. Not once.