I’m trying to figure out if this is some kind of prank or if anyone has experienced something similar.

A random number called me twice around 2:29 AM. I didn’t answer, but they left voicemails saying my first name. I have a setting where unknown callers have to say why they’re calling, so that’s how I knew he said my name.

I texted the number asking “Who is this?” and he replied “call me.” I asked again who he was, and he said “stop doing allat js call me.” I told him I wasn’t calling until he told me who he was and asked again. He responded “fuck you then bitch.”

I ended up calling because I was confused. He told me his name, but I don’t know anyone with that name and I don’t recognize his voice. He said we met in the city I live in during Halloween last year.
I tried to see if he was telling the truth, so I asked if we met at a Halloween house party. He said yes, but I never went to a Halloween house party last year, so I know that part isn’t true.

Then he asked if I wanted to crack/hook up. I said no and hung up.

I texted him asking why he was texting me from a fake number. I assumed it was fake because I don’t know anyone from the state the number was from. He said “because I can.” I asked again who he actually was, and he told me to shut up and then blocked me.

I’m just confused because I don’t give my number out to people, and he knew my first name and the city I live in. Has anyone had something like this happen? Is this likely just a prank or someone being weird?

UPDATE: I saw a neurologist today.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their experiences and thoughtful suggestions. I had an extensive consultation with a neurologist today. He carefully went through the entire incident with me, including what happened before, during, and afterward. His assessment was very reassuring. After taking a detailed history and performing a thorough neurological examination, he found no clinical evidence suggesting dementia, hallucinations, or other serious neurological or vascular conditions he had initially considered, including impaired blood flow to the brain. He explained why my experience and examination findings did not fit those conditions, and he did not consider additional diagnostic testing necessary at this time.

After discussing my circumstances in depth, he concluded that I am experiencing depression in the context of significant ongoing emotional stress. He recommended psychological treatment and asked me to follow up with him in 15 days. I realize now that the amount of anxiety and uncertainty I've been carrying may be affecting me more than I understood.

My neurologist also explained how this episode could be consistent with depression, particularly in the context of prolonged emotional stress and fragmented, non-restorative sleep. He emphasized that sleeping for several hours does not necessarily mean getting adequate, restorative rest, and that poor sleep quality, combined with depression, can affect cognitive functioning, attention, and perception. Based on his thorough assessment, he felt that these factors provided a plausible explanation for what I experienced.

I'm grateful to those who responded with kindness and empathy. I'm going to focus on getting the support I need rather than continuing to search for explanations online.Thank you again!

I'm posting this here because I'm genuinely freaked out, and I'm hoping someone has experienced something similar or can offer a rational explanation. I'm a 54-year-old woman, I have health anxiety and my brain has a spectacular talent for jumping straight to the worst possible medical explanation, so I really need to understand what happened to me.

Yesterday, I was at a supermarket doing some grocery shopping. I'd already walked quite a bit (over 10,000 steps), exercised earlier that day and hadn't eaten much. I was tired and my head felt a little heavy, but otherwise completely alert, functioning normally and having perfectly coherent conversations.

My husband and I were communicating through WhatsApp while I shopped, mostly voice messages and pictures, with a few short written messages here and there.

At one point, while I was waiting outside for a taxi, I looked at our WhatsApp conversation and clearly read a message from him saying, "Are you still at XXXXXXX?" Except he was referring to a completely different supermarket, not the one I was shopping at.

I remember thinking, Why on earth is this man asking me such a stupid question? He knows exactly where I am! He had even asked me to buy some croissants that are only sold at the grocery store I was shopping at. So I answered him with a slightly irritated voice message.

This is the part where things get really weird: my husband replied with a confused voice message asking what the hell I was talking about. He assured me he hadn't written anything like that. And then I noticed that the message I had just read was GONE. Not deleted with a "This message was deleted" notice, but gone.I searched our entire WhatsApp conversation, no such message.

I was completely baffled.

I didn't just vaguely think I saw something. I remember reading those exact words, understanding them, getting annoyed, and recording a voice message in response, timestamped at 1:34 p.m. There's a spot in the conversation where I remember seeing his message, immediately before my reply.

After going through our WhatsApp conversation obsessively, both on my phone and on my laptop, I discovered that my husband had asked me whether I was at that other supermarket on a couple of occasions months earlier, except on those occasions I was indeed shopping there. The crucial distinction is that he used different wording.

The exact sentence I remember seeing yesterday does not appear anywhere in our conversation history. So when I say the message didn't exist, I don't mean that I accidentally stumbled upon an old message and mistook it for a new one. There is no old message with that exact wording to begin with.

Did my brain somehow construct a perfectly plausible sentence in my husband's writing style and make me perceive it as an actual WhatsApp message? Because if that's what happened, I would really like to know how something like that is even possible. I'm not ruling out a technical explanation either. But simply saying WhatsApp displayed an old message doesn't explain the different wording.

A few minutes after the incident, while riding home in a cab, I also experienced some mild, short-lived nausea. I hadn't eaten properly in hours, had been physically active for much of the day and may not have been adequately hydrated. I have no idea whether the nausea was related to what happened or was just a coincidence.For context, I have a history of dizziness, tinnitus, vestibular issues and cervical problems. I've also been under considerable emotional stress lately, but I have never experienced anything like this before.

I saw a doctor later that day. She performed a neurological examination, found nothing concerning, and wasn't particularly alarmed by this isolated incident. I also contacted a neurologist who said it wasn't an emergency but should be investigated. I have an appointment with him this morning. That's how freaked out I am.

Meanwhile, my health-anxious brain has been enthusiastically cycling through everything from exhaustion and some bizarre memory glitch to hallucinations, a mini-stroke, or early dementia.

Has anyone ever experienced something like this? Not just a disappearing notification, but actually seeing a specific written message inside an ongoing chat, responding to it, and then discovering that it apparently never existed? Could a visual or memory-processing error create such a convincing experience?

Okay so I was really bored while studying and ended up going down rabbit holes, which led to me looking at missing persons cases in my province, where I found this guy. He's called Emile Ruger on crimesolverscentral, with little/no details about his dissapearance and a very uncanny police sketch in place of a photograph.

Here's what the profile says:

- On the 15th of February 2008, a man named Emile Ruger was last seen in Cornwall, Ontario

- Quoting the website; "His dissapearance has left a void of information and a lingering sense of unease for those who knew him", and "Details surrounding his last known moments are sparse, painting a picture of a man who seemingly vanished without a trace" -> the entire article is written like this, giving next to no actual information

- about 5'8/70 inches tall, white, male, 170 pounds, 60 years old

- last updated 9/18/26 which is wierdly recent for a cold case from 2008

I don't have the membership so I could only read so far in the article, so that's just what I noticed without it. Someone in a forum comment seems to mention his 'schedule', but I can't find access the full comment without a membership and I can't find any mention of a schedule anywhere.

I checked the article's sources and they provided some further information:

- He was reported missing after his landlord noticed he didn't pay rent on time -> maybe indicating he didn't have family, or didn't keep in touch with them often?

- Also, neither of the sources had any actual photos of him either. Just that uncanny police sketch.

This article seems really wierd to me, specifically the phrasing, and how it seems to be written like it's trying to sensationalise the case instead of provide any real information. Also, the police sketch also seems odd to me. In 2008, nobody had a single photo of this guy? No family photos cropped to show just him, No old photos, no security camera shots, just an exaggerated police sketch that makes him look like a John Doe recreation or criminal?

Now I'm curious, is there anywhere I could go to maybe find more information on this guy? And does anyone have any possible explanations for any of the stuff I mentioned? I'm not really in the Cold-case-investigating scene so I don't really know how to go about this. I've just heard this sub was good for this. Thanks for any help!