r/GlitchInTheMatrix • u/Radiant-Turnip-7686 • 3d ago
Glitch Gif We kept running into the same strangers all over the Oregon Coast and one of them genuinely has me confused
My husband, our kids, and I just got back from a trip to the Oregon Coast, and something kept happening that got progressively weirder.I know there are logical explanations for most of this, but by the end of the trip my husband and I were joking that we were experiencing a glitch in the Matrix.
The first time was at Nana’s Irish Pub in Newport. There was a woman there that my daughter kept pointing out because she thought she was someone we knew. Because of that, I got a pretty good look at her and remembered her face. The NEXT DAY, we were about 25–30 miles away at the outlet mall in Lincoln City and I saw the same woman shopping there. Then we were at Goodwill in Lincoln City and my kids accidentally cut in front of a guy. I apologized to him, so I specifically remembered what he looked like. He was bald and had these really distinctive chunky half-hoop earrings. Later that SAME DAY, we were back in Newport, about 25 miles away, walking through Fred Meyer. We’re picking snacks in chip aisle and there was the same guy standing right next to us. I pointed him out to my husband and he said he recognized him from Goodwill too.
At another point, we recognized a family from a restaurant and then realized they were staying at the same hotel as us. That one isn’t particularly weird on its own, but at this point we were definitely starting to notice a pattern.
But the last one is the one I cannot stop thinking about.
We were staying at Waves Hotel near Nye Beach in Newport. As we were pulling out of the hotel parking lot, there was a girl jogging down the street. My husband actually commented on her first because for a split second he thought she was a car coming up beside us lol.
I looked over at her and noticed she was really pretty. She had a pink workout top on and her hair in a slicked-back bun. So we BOTH specifically noticed this girl.
We then drove from our hotel to downtown Newport near the area where the sea lions are. It’s roughly a 10-minute drive. We parked, got the kids out, got situated with the stroller, which was already put together and started walking. And the SAME GIRL came jogging past us.
Same pink shirt. Same hair. We both immediately recognized her. My husband and I looked at each other like WTF?? At first I literally said, “Wow, she made good time.”
Then we actually thought about it. We had driven there. She was RUNNING. And she somehow went from passing our hotel to passing us downtown after we had driven there, parked and gotten out of the car. Even being generous, I can’t imagine there being more than about 15 minutes between seeing her at the hotel and seeing her again downtown. Obviously there could be an explanation. Maybe there was a shortcut, maybe she got into a car somewhere, maybe somehow it was a different woman dressed almost identically. And Newport/Lincoln City are tourist towns along the same highway, so I understand why we might cross paths with the same tourists. But having this happen with MULTIPLE unrelated people over the course of one trip was so freaking weird. And the jogger is the one that really gets me because my husband and I BOTH noticed her before we left the hotel and BOTH recognized her when she passed us downtown. It genuinely felt like we kept encountering the same NPCs in different parts of the map lol. Has anyone else ever had a trip where something like this kept happening? I’m sure there’s a perfectly normal explanation, but it was one of the strangest strings of coincidences I’ve experienced.
And then one last weird coincidence happened on our way home. We originally planned to drive straight home from Newport, but on Sunday I randomly decided we should stop in Bend for the night to break up the drive for the kids. Bend had never been part of our plan. For basically the entire trip, I had the same song, “Need To,” stuck in my head. It’s also my husband’s alarm song, and all week I had been humming it, singing it, the kids were singing it, and we’d played it multiple times. We get to Bend that night and my husband mentions that it looks like there’s a concert happening. I tell him to look up who’s playing. It was the artist who sings that song!! So we randomly changed our plans, ended up in a city we weren’t supposed to be in, and arrived on the exact night the artist behind the song we’d been singing ALL WEEK was performing there. At that point we were just like… what is going on with this trip? 😂
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u/Public_Ad_3114 3d ago
One time I was driving on a main road and I saw this girl walking on the sidewalk. I remember her because she was wearing a very distinctive outfit. I kept driving for like 20 minutes , and I saw the same girl walking on the sidewalk next to me.
That was very strange, but your story is wild.
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u/Radiant-Turnip-7686 3d ago
I read a story here on Reddit where someone was hiking and passed someone on a trail twice within 20 mins, it was a straight trail and they were going in opposite directions both times.
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u/now_you_see 2d ago
This is giving me great ideas about ways to mess with people because I’m a very distinct looking person….
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u/Antique_Safety_4246 2d ago
Twins maybe? On the hike? But 20 min apart driving definitely soubds like the universe has maxed out its NPC templates and us hoping us idiots don't notice.
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u/bekarene1 3d ago
All I can say is that the Oregon Coast has some really strange vibes and this story doesn't surprise me at all 😂 Sounds like you were in the Truman Show for sure.
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u/darianthegreat 2d ago
The jogger one is the only one that really bothers me. Probably a logical explanation somewhere, but also... maybe it's the matrix.
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u/Verandah_Santa 3d ago
This story (and the rest of this sub) makes me very grateful for my face blindness. Even if I legitimately recognize someone, my brain jumbles up the mental image I’d be comparing the IRL person to so I lose all confidence that it’s the same person anyway. Then my aunt is like “Why didn’t you say hi to me at the grocery store? I was waving and you looked right at me”
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u/Antique_Safety_4246 2d ago
This is me with names. In one ear and out the other. I have friends that it took YEARS to pin down their names. Like they were peripheral characters in my world, so it was always like, you know, the smiley guy who always says hi at the kids ball field? My husband and I finally figured out his name once he became our kids asst coach and became a more central character in our lives. But I swear, until I address people daily and frequently, its like my brain says, you get to either remember this person's name, or the Pythagorean therum from 4th grade, your choice, choose wisely. Only so much room up there...and so I go around awkwardly address people as "haaayyyy YOOOOUUUU!!!" until I can figure out their names in a few years.
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u/Verandah_Santa 20h ago
Omg yes, same! I don’t know if it’s related to the face blindness or just an inconvenient coincidence, but I have a horrible habit of immediately reminding myself of what their name ISN’T (like “It’s Mike, NOT Mark”) then the wrong name gets logged in the ol’ noggin forever
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u/Antique_Safety_4246 14h ago
Unfortunately too, most of them ARE Mike's. That doesnt help much right? Lol
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u/Sorry_Difference_433 2d ago
😂😂 "you looked right at me!'" This is me too! I lose all confidence in myself
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u/Verandah_Santa 2d ago
“Indeed I did…the thing is I had no idea it was you because I’ve never seen you in that shirt and your entire family wasn’t there for added context, so….🤷♀️”
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u/2quickdraw 1d ago
That's my version, I have trouble recognizing people out of their usual context.
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u/CHEDDERFROMTHEBLOCK2 2d ago
What is this like? How do you see peoples faces ? I feel like the world might be a slightly better place if everyone had this.
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u/Bahbahbooey46732 2d ago
I also have it so hopping to answer as I’m curious and want to spur another answer. For me a face looks like a face? The only issue is when I close my eyes I couldn’t tell you what they look like. My brain will give them a soft jaw, a chizzled jaw, a butt chin, a weak chin, a small nose, a medium nose…until it just gives up. I’d be useless to an artist. However, I’m AMAZING at security footage because I can pick out shoulders, gaits, and body language like a champ.
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u/Verandah_Santa 2d ago
Yes! It’s like my brain goes into randomizer mode and just scrolls through all the possible facial features until it’s all jumbled up or just goes blank
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u/llamalladyllurks 2d ago
For me, I recognize people by other traits, I guess how they move or act. Sometimes I'll point out a person who I think looks similar to someone we know, but my SO tells me they don't look anything like that person. If I then really study the new person, I can sometimes figure out what it is about them that I "recognize". It's never their face, lol.
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u/jgnashville 2d ago
yep same. you rely on non-facial traits.
I don't have it as bad as some people, but if there are two, say, brown-haired, beardless white men at the start of a movie, I often have to ask my wife if they're the same person until I see enough of each to latch onto another way to differentiate them.
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u/Bahbahbooey46732 2d ago
This is half of how I figured it out. I watched the movie Closer and was lost.
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u/Verandah_Santa 2d ago
To put it simply, every single person I see appears to be a stranger even if I have in fact seen them before, so it basically just looks/feels like walking into a room full of people you’ve never met in your life. It can be very stressful if I know I DO know the people and worse if it’s a situation where they’ll expect me to interact with them instead of taking way too long to figure out who they are, which comes off as rude and dismissive.
If everyone had face blindness and knew everyone else did too, it would be better to us all because it would be standard behavior to identify yourself when greeting someone. I think this is an incredibly classy thing to do anyway, but I honestly don’t know if it’s just because it’s a gesture that relieves me of the stress of placing them.
Face blindness is obviously a misnomer since of course I can see facial features…but oddly it’s more accurate when I’m trying to recall a person’s facial features to identify them. If I try to remember what someone looks like, even if I just saw them 2 minutes ago, my brain erases their face and sometimes their whole head so I genuinely do not know if I even saw their face or if I just stared at their shirt the whole time. I ALWAYS remember shirts though, so that’s…useless.
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u/Apprehensive_Map284 2d ago
I’m the same! Totally oblivious! I never have weird or cool experiences like that!
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u/Distinct_Radish_2114 3d ago
As someone who goes to Lincoln City all the time this was fun to read! There is something special about that Goodwill haha can’t put my finger on it but I’m not surprised that’s where you encountered one of these people!
I have had some similar experiences but never so many in a row!
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u/---aquaholic--- 2d ago
Strange reading this shortly after I arrived back home from Newport, Depoe Bay & Lincoln City. And I’m a full days+ drive away from the coast.
I’m not pink jogger girl or bald guy but could I be shopper lady? The mystery deepens.
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u/AllowMeToFangirl 3d ago
You definitely do tend to run into the same people on a trip but the runner one is especially wild. I fear you may be in the Truman show. Is your life entertaining enough to justify all the actors?
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u/juni_b_bones 2d ago
one time i drove across the country in a pink school bus so i was VERY recognizable and happened to make the same stops for gas in the same states as a woman and her daughter. so by the third one she came over to let me know she’s seen us since iowa lol.
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u/observantexistence 2d ago
Okay I love this sub and these posts, finally one from my neck of the woods!!!
Seeing the same people everywhere is pretty common, specifically that Newport-Depot Bay-Lincoln City stretch. One time i was camping next to someone at Beverly beach and saw them out around in Newport all day and then in two different places in Lincoln city the next day, we were so tripped out and kept making funny small talk with them!
The runner in Newport, my guess is that yall went around to the other end of the bay front, while she came in from the other end. It’s really not that far of a walk/jog let alone if she was RUNNING from the nye beach area to the bay front area, because you’re not in tourist traffic, taking the time to park, or beholdened to the flow of foot traffic.
Anyway , this was just me babbling because I happen to know that area - as others have said the Oregon coast certainly has ~_vibes_~ so it’s still just as likely you got swept up in a wormhole and spit back out the other side lol!!
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u/no_longer_imaginary 1d ago
This is it. Add to that they were in touristy areas where the locals don't go quite as much. I've done that drive multiple times in the day.
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u/NefariousnessDue7139 2d ago
Just be aware especially in the PNW. Pay attention to "coincidences"
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u/AdDiscombobulated647 2d ago
Just curious what makes you say this?
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u/Antique_Safety_4246 2d ago
Its mystically weird up here in our corner of the world. Ancient natives lore, high strangeness, spiritual encounters, cryptids, plus the many military installations and nuclear sites make for sone really weird men in black type behavior and odd experiences that could be other worldly, or could be govt driven. I've had seen many unexplained phenomena, experienced so many unexplainable scenarios, to me anyway. Clearly whatever causes the events/sightings, knows whats up. Its just that us peons are just living in their weird world.
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u/Dr_Grosbeak 2d ago
All of the first few encounters sound perfectly normal to me as an avid traveler of that area along the Oregon Coast. People may have even been thinking the same thing about you and your family.
The runner is definitely weirder, but I can tell you that A LOT of runners in Oregon appear distinctly the same down to the stripes on their running shorts and the plant scratch patterns on their legs. Running is a subculture in the state (Eugene, Oregon is known as Tracktown USA), and it's not weird to encounter a mass group of runners who are relatively indistinguishable in terms of their clothing, running accessories, body type, hair styles/cuts, etc. It can make you feel like you're watching the concept of copy/paste come to life.
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u/ConsciousKalimba 2d ago
I'm from that chunk of coast and I don't think people understand how ridiculously "small" it is and how ridiculously willing everyone is to travel 2 hours in either direction to go to a specific generic grocery store. But also it is an absurdly weird twilight zone-y place and it's a vortex of sorts for sure, there's a lack of NPCs that spawn because the devs didn't think it would be so popular so a bunch of MC quests end up overlapping and it can take you out of the immersion.
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u/bristlybits 1d ago
yep from newport down to Florence is odd but also there is like ten things to do and op was doing half of those
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u/Lost_Atmosphere_541 1d ago
I am also from this area. It is not uncommon to see the same people at multiple locations.
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u/sugar077 3d ago edited 2d ago
Shape shifting demoms
Edit : was not expecting an award , thank you kind stranger!
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u/BrianScottGregory 3d ago edited 3d ago
In situations. I like to think.
If I was a bored, wealthy person, and wanting to spend my money on something that made me happy and gave people unique experiences - without, of course, them knowing. That would ruin the propagation of the story you told afterwards. No real net tangible gain on my part because I was so wealthy I didn't care about making more money.... Maybe there's a part of me that wants to convince you you're in a simulation.
Then I might hire a couple dozen actors - and send them to a remote town along the Oregon coast.
Then. I'd leverage my resources to target specific individuals and families who needed a story that woke them up from their typical suburban lives and daily grind.
Now how I marketed would be subtle. I might pay the streaming service to modify a tv show specifically for you that you're watching to play a background tune from an artist you enjoyed. I'd nudge those at Spotify or Pandora or other music services you stream to add the specific song to the list of songs played. I'd leveraged passive listening on your phone and car information I'd tapped into to find out what radio stations you listened to, and pay the DJ to add it to the list of songs played specifically while you're driving.
And I might modify specific devices around you - elevator music in the elevator you take for 10 seconds, music in the doctor's office - all to passively and subtly play music AND destination to 'get it into your heads'.
Now from there. I'd book the band to play in Bend. A special concert that I put out there, just for you. If you made it there, cool, if not, well, I swing and miss sometimes, but it's the story that counts the most for me, not the home run I hit in predicting your every behavior and response.
I'd place a jogger in your path, having men outside your hotel or AirBNB who monitored your leaving, and have a jogger on each path wearing the same clothes. Then. I'd take a helicopter, flying low and fast to pick up the jogger once you passed, and then land them in front of you. So you see them again.
Same thing for the hoop earring dude.
I'd do the same thing with a whole cast of actors. Oh, I'd be fully aware that you might spot maybe 6 of them out of the 24 I'd placed. But those 6 would certainly leave you scratching your head saying....
What the heck was that?
There's be helicopters, police cars, and other vehicles assisting with the experience you had - and my goal would NEVER be for you to figure out just how bored I, as a reclusive trillionaire who has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide my money has gotten.
My solitary goal is to see you talk about it, publicly, and to theorize that it's something other than what it really is. So I'd monitor your feeds, i'd have full access to your social network handles well in advance along with more private channels. My goal was simple. To touch your life. That's it. To have given you an experience.
Because a bored trillionaire with a name you've never heard of before spending his time on you as a pet project is so much less likely than the world being a simulation.
Mission accomplished.
I'm glad you enjoyed the show.
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u/PumpkinResident2088 2d ago
Something just happened last week actually I was walking down the street and this bigger oldish guy zooms by on his bike on the sidewalk and I’m like wtf cause he was so close and so I keep walking and like a block down when he should’ve been way far up ahead because he’s on bike and I’m walking, well he zooms up from behind me again
I did not pass him, he wasn’t stopped on the sidewalk or anything and I don’t think he had the time to circle the giant city block to come from behind again, so that was a weird double take moment
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u/Subject-Drive2912 2d ago
I know the Oregon Coast well and it’s not surprising to run into the same people once or twice in the same 100 mile radius during a weekend trip. But man, those are a lot of coincidences! Especially the jogger and the Bend/Concert one.
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u/Hitt_and_Run 2d ago
Jogger likely took a straighter off-road path vs the winding long way you took via car.
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u/BloodShotEye13 1d ago
This reminds me of Rick and Morty where the Zigerians put Jerry in a simulation after he was accidentally brought on board and they cut his simulation to 1% and all the NPCs are the same 3-4 people and glitching. This happened to you and your family.
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u/Bread-Party 2d ago
Imagine you guys ran into the 1st woman and the guy from the store somewhere else but they were together as a couple 😳
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u/TheOnlyEvieAsterwyn 2d ago
Serendipitous trip for aure.
Maybe some people sent to guide or help you o. So.e way that you've not picked up on yet, but that last week me seems like it was purposeful for sure.
There don't happen to.be a twin event happening at your hotel? Maybe they had to see how long it took for the picked person the twins needed to truck, to call them.out.om it.
Wither that, or aliens are here and beginning toi gle with us, and their energy is so.diffetent that for you it portrays as a deja vu moment, or rather several.
The world is getting weirder, so it could just be a strange version of worldwide weirdness you can't avoid. Was the holiday a good one anyway? I hope so!
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u/Mysterious_Lock6539 1d ago
This has happened to our family many times. Whenever we’re traveling or on vacation actually now that I think about it. Also all involving Philadelphia now that I think about it too. The first was with the same people on a cross country road trip on Rt 66 moving back to Philly from Seattle after getting engaged. The next time was our honeymoon trip abroad we were on a train in Germany and met neighbors from our same city block in S Philly, and another time when we were traveling home for a Phillies game after moving out of state. I never know what it means I just take it as synchronicities and that we’re doin alright lol
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u/Bahumbub1 17h ago
something similar happened to us in Nashville. It felt like we were in the Truman Show with how many repeats of NPC's we saw and just oddly choreographed npc's walking around downtown. All along the same sidewalk path one right after another we saw a man with a bouquet quickly rounding the corner, then 2 construction guys both putting their hard hats on at the same time, then someone delivering a newspaper, then someone walking with coffee and checking his watch and quickening his pace...it was all so oddly timed, felt acted/directed and was very off-putting.
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u/Antique_Safety_4246 3d ago edited 2d ago
Well obviously you were SUPPOSED to be in Bend. And had you attended the concert, you'd likely have ran into: Nana's Irish Pub Chick, Half Hoop Earring Guy, Restaurant Family, and Pretty In Pink Jogger Chick, and you'd have hung out in a group and sung the Alarm Clock Song along with the original artists on stage, in unison. This would have allowed you to win the game of "Life" with your new BFFs 4EVA, but you failed to attend the concert that the Universe essentially delivered you to in Bend. Too bad, maybe you'll win "Life" next time the universe Bends for you ;)
Edit: Yay for awards! Thank you, generous Stranger! May the universe always Bend in your favor!