Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by my newest supporters,
Speaker 1: Don Cassandra, Gina, Jessica, Patsy and Ricky. Thanks for making
Speaker 1: the show possible. Tonight, I'll be discussing a fascinating series
Speaker 1: of events that caused one of my listeners to view
Speaker 1: reality from a completely different perspective, and if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: it's made me question my initial beliefs on the subject
Speaker 1: of the Mandela effect as well. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: fascinating information to get to, so please sit back and
Speaker 1: join me as I enter the strange and fascinating world
Speaker 1: of the unexplained. I'm your host, Nick Ryan, and this
Speaker 1: is Paranormal Mysteries. The term Mandela effect was coined by
Speaker 1: paranormal researcher Fiona Brome in the late two thousands. It
Speaker 1: originated from her discovery that she and many others falsely
Speaker 1: remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison during the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: when in reality, Mandela was released in nineteen ninety and
Speaker 1: then passed away in twenty thirteen. So you're probably asking yourself,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal. People misremember things all the time,
Speaker 1: and you'd be right. Our memories are easily manipulated, which
Speaker 1: is why I've always been interested but question the validity
Speaker 1: of the Mandela Effect. But what you may not know
Speaker 1: is that there are many people that have had firsthand
Speaker 1: life changing experiences with this phenomenon, experiences that can't easily
Speaker 1: be dismissed as false memories, experiences that point to something
Speaker 1: far stranger that seems to be happening to our reality.
Speaker 1: Tonight's experience comes to us from a listener that would
Speaker 1: like to remain anonymous. In September of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: Anonymous posted their account on the website Medium dot com,
Speaker 1: and a couple of days ago, they reached out to
Speaker 1: me directly and shared their story. What I found interesting
Speaker 1: is that Anonymous contacted me on the very same day
Speaker 1: that I posted a message on Patreon about the Mandela
Speaker 1: effect and a possible link to the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. However,
Speaker 1: after talking with Anonymous, I learned that they never saw
Speaker 1: that post, which in my opinion, is more than just
Speaker 1: a coincidence. So, based on current events and the recent
Speaker 1: shutdown of CERN's large Hadron collider this past June, I
Speaker 1: thought that I should share this information with you as
Speaker 1: soon as possible, so let's begin. This is Anonymous's experience.
Speaker 1: I am a rational adult. I'm nearly fifty years old,
Speaker 1: and I've never seen a ghost or anything that I
Speaker 1: would think is in any way paranormal. I've been a
Speaker 1: huge fan of horror movie since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and I've watched more hours of ghost hunting television shows
Speaker 1: and the like than I could ever possibly count, but
Speaker 1: I've still never seen anything that made me believe in ghosts, spirits, demons,
Speaker 1: or anything of that nature. I would love to believe
Speaker 1: that Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster are real, and I
Speaker 1: have looked for evidence of such, but I've never found it.
Speaker 1: Based on the size of the universe and the number
Speaker 1: of exoplanets that have been discovered in recent years, I
Speaker 1: definitely believe in life outside of this planet, but I'm
Speaker 1: not absolutely convinced that we've been visited by aliens. I
Speaker 1: have seen some fairly compelling evidence that we have had
Speaker 1: other worldly visitors, and I think it's likely, but I'm
Speaker 1: not completely convinced yet. That's not to say that I
Speaker 1: think that any of those things are impossible. I just
Speaker 1: haven't seen any hard evidence of them. I think most
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories are nonsense. I believe that we landed on
Speaker 1: the Moon. I know the Earth is a globe and
Speaker 1: not flat. I do not believe that nine to eleven
Speaker 1: was an inside job. But I know that the UN
Speaker 1: US government and the governments of nearly every country on
Speaker 1: this planet are corrupt and have done terrible things in
Speaker 1: their citizens' names. If I see an intriguing headline in
Speaker 1: a news article, I actually read the article, rather than
Speaker 1: making assumptions based on the headline. I follow up by
Speaker 1: reading other articles by other writers and other publications about
Speaker 1: the same events. I do this to fully understand, rather
Speaker 1: than allowing myself to be sucked in by one person's
Speaker 1: opinion or take on an event or an idea. Although
Speaker 1: I was raised in the Church, I am no longer religious.
Speaker 1: Most religions are not compatible with rational thought. In other words,
Speaker 1: I am not easily fooled. Now. I know that my
Speaker 1: memory is not infallible. There have been plenty of times
Speaker 1: that I have gotten events confused, and certainly times that
Speaker 1: confabulation has gotten the best of me and convinced me
Speaker 1: that multiple things were in some way connected or part
Speaker 1: of the same event, only to learn later that it
Speaker 1: was merely a trick of the brain. I also know
Speaker 1: that there is a difference between one but humans remember
Speaker 1: and what humans know. I don't remember my name. I
Speaker 1: know my name. I don't remember the alphabet. I know
Speaker 1: the alphabet. I don't remember where I was and what
Speaker 1: I was doing when I witnessed the second plane hit
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. I know where I was and
Speaker 1: what I was doing. I remember that somewhere around nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, I got a new bike. It was a
Speaker 1: white Huffey with neon green highlights. I don't remember if
Speaker 1: I got it for my birthday or for Christmas, or
Speaker 1: if my parents just bought it because I needed a
Speaker 1: new bike. I'm not sure if I got that bike
Speaker 1: when we were living in the first house that I
Speaker 1: remember my parents owning, or if it was the next house.
Speaker 1: I think it was the second house, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I know that I got the scar that is still
Speaker 1: on my left arm when wrecking that bike by sliding
Speaker 1: on loose gravel riding around an unfinished cul de sac
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood. That event is an anchor memory involving
Speaker 1: that bicycle. I would not remember that bicycle as vividly
Speaker 1: as I do. If it had not been for that event, now,
Speaker 1: many of you will not believe the story that I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you. You will think that I'm either confused,
Speaker 1: a lunatic, or even a liar. I can fully understand
Speaker 1: that I was beyond skeptical when I first discovered what
Speaker 1: many people refer to as the Mandela effect. I could
Speaker 1: never have imagined that I would believe what I do
Speaker 1: today when I first learned of it. I cannot prove
Speaker 1: any of what I'm about to tell you. By using
Speaker 1: what most people would refer to as reality, you will
Speaker 1: easily be able to disprove everything I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 1: All I ask is that you read my story in
Speaker 1: its entirety, and then ask yourself if it's really possible
Speaker 1: that all of this is just bad memory. If that's
Speaker 1: not possible, I hope that you can rule out the
Speaker 1: possibility of me being a lunatic or a liar and
Speaker 1: can understand why I'm left with no other reasonable explanation
Speaker 1: for the things that I have seen other than that
Speaker 1: in fact, reality has somehow been altered. I do not
Speaker 1: claim to have an explanation for this altered reality. I
Speaker 1: have some theories, but I don't think it's likely that
Speaker 1: I will ever truly understand what caused this. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would be beyond skeptical of anyone who claims to
Speaker 1: know for certain what caused this, even after the events
Speaker 1: that I've witnessed. I am not concerned about my mental stability.
Speaker 1: I am not crazy or insane or delusional. And if
Speaker 1: I ever claim to have discovered the answer to what
Speaker 1: has caused this, I hope that I shall at that
Speaker 1: point begin to question if I've gone over the cuckoo's nest.
Speaker 1: This is a subject that receives ridicule on the level
Speaker 1: equal to, or possibly even greater than that which is
Speaker 1: laid upon the flat Earth believers. It's a subject that
Speaker 1: I rarely discuss with people that I know, unless I
Speaker 1: have felt them out, and I know that they have
Speaker 1: experienced at least some of the things that I have,
Speaker 1: and will therefore be open to discussing this rationally rather
Speaker 1: than just assuming that I'm a lunatic or a liar.
Speaker 1: I am not trying to get famous or make money
Speaker 1: by telling this story. It seems like everyone is always
Speaker 1: trying to sell a book when they tell an unbelievable story.
Speaker 1: Not selling anything My goal is simply for you to
Speaker 1: hear this story and hopefully be able to conclude that
Speaker 1: I am indeed as rational as I claim to be,
Speaker 1: but that this story is not possible in the reality
Speaker 1: that we understand. Chapter one discovery. I suppose that the
Speaker 1: best place to start this story is in the winter
Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen, in twenty sixteen. In some ways, it
Speaker 1: begins around nineteen eighty, but I'll get there later. I
Speaker 1: wish I could tell you the exact date that I
Speaker 1: first heard the term Mandela effect, but I cannot. It
Speaker 1: seemed irrelevant at the time. I had no reason to
Speaker 1: think that this moment was going to alter my understanding
Speaker 1: of reality and even my life in the way that
Speaker 1: it has. There was no reason for me to commit
Speaker 1: that date to memory, and I formed no significant anchor
Speaker 1: memory around the date. Although it has never been my
Speaker 1: sole source of income, I have worked as a musician
Speaker 1: in many different forms since nineteen eighty nine. On the
Speaker 1: night that my discovery began, I was playing an acoustic
Speaker 1: duo show with an old friend that we will call Eddie.
Speaker 1: Eddie and I played in a couple of bands together previously,
Speaker 1: but were in different groups at the time. If we
Speaker 1: both happened to have an empty date on our calendars,
Speaker 1: we would often play one of these acoustic shows together.
Speaker 1: We had been doing this for about a year and
Speaker 1: a half at the time. It was cold that winter night,
Speaker 1: As is customary when playing guitar in a local bar,
Speaker 1: once or twice a night, we would take a break
Speaker 1: so that we could refill our beverages, use the restroom,
Speaker 1: and go outside to smoke cigarettes. I think it was
Speaker 1: the only time I ever played at that venue, or
Speaker 1: was even there. It was on the east side of town,
Speaker 1: closer to where Eddie lived, and while I don't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the venue or even what it looked
Speaker 1: like inside, I do have a clear visual memory of
Speaker 1: the outside area where we were standing and smoking. When
Speaker 1: Eddie asked the question, what do you think about the
Speaker 1: Mandela effect? He asked, what do you mean? Mandela certainly
Speaker 1: had a huge effect on global politics. I replied, Wow,
Speaker 1: you've never heard of the Mandela effect. No, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. Well, it's a phenomenon where
Speaker 1: a large group of people remember an event or an
Speaker 1: object differently than what history says it is. Well, no
Speaker 1: one's memory's perfect. Yeah, but this is different. What do
Speaker 1: you remember about the death of Nelson Mandela? Not a
Speaker 1: whole lot, I said, Okay, A better way to ask
Speaker 1: the question is what do you remember about Nelson Mandela's
Speaker 1: life story? Uh? Well, he was in prison when I
Speaker 1: was young. I'm not really sure what he was in
Speaker 1: prison for, but it had something to do with apartheid.
Speaker 1: At some point he got out of prison, and later
Speaker 1: he was elected president of South Africa. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal that had seemed unlikely to occur in
Speaker 1: the years prior. He became important on the world stage.
Speaker 1: And then he died I don't know, sometime in the
Speaker 1: last five years or so. Interesting. And he said, a
Speaker 1: lot of people, myself included, remember him dying in prison
Speaker 1: in the eighties. I then literally laughed out loud at this.
Speaker 1: I knew that this was absurd. I have been an
Speaker 1: active observer of politics and world events since my early childhood.
Speaker 1: I attended presidential candidate rallies before I was even old
Speaker 1: enough to vote, not because my parents dragged me to them,
Speaker 1: but because I was intensely interested. I wrote papers in
Speaker 1: school and I joined the speech team just so I
Speaker 1: could talk about politics. I even convinced my father to
Speaker 1: vote for a candidate of the opposing party for the
Speaker 1: first and only time in his adult life. As a
Speaker 1: result of those papers, I knew for a fact that
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela did not die in prison. It was a
Speaker 1: ridiculous notion. No, that's wrong, I said, Okay, hold on,
Speaker 1: here's another one. Do you remember those bears that had
Speaker 1: the series of children's books. There was Papa Bear, Mama Bear,
Speaker 1: and Brother Bear. Do you mean the Berenstain Bears. I said, hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they were called, But many people remember them
Speaker 1: as the Berenstein Bears. That seems reasonable that many people
Speaker 1: would get that confused. I said, Berenstain is an odd name,
Speaker 1: and any names end with Steen. I even remember less
Speaker 1: intelligent kids calling them the barren Steinbears spelled st ei n,
Speaker 1: or even the barren Steen Bears spelled st e e n,
Speaker 1: but it was Berenstein. Okay, he said one more. Can
Speaker 1: you describe the Monopoly Man? Sure? I said. He's an
Speaker 1: old guy with a round face that wears a suit,
Speaker 1: a top hat, and he carries a cane. Anything else?
Speaker 1: Eddie asked, Uh, he has a mustache. You don't remember
Speaker 1: him with a monocle. Edie asked, oh, yeah, sure, I said, Well,
Speaker 1: Eddie said he doesn't have one, really, I said nope.
Speaker 1: Eddie replied, well, there's hundreds of different versions of the
Speaker 1: Monopoly game, so I'm sure there are multiple versions of
Speaker 1: the Monopoly Man as well. True, Eddie said, but not
Speaker 1: a single one has a monocle. Hmm. I thought that
Speaker 1: seems odd, but also easy to confuse. He is a
Speaker 1: rich guy, and that's a common trope in media for
Speaker 1: a rich guy to have a monocle. Well, Eddie went
Speaker 1: on to quiz me about many others so called Mandela effects.
Speaker 1: Most I got right and some I got wrong. A
Speaker 1: few rubbed me the wrong way, but nothing that he
Speaker 1: had brought up that night gave me any kind of
Speaker 1: existential crisis. I was easily able to write them off
Speaker 1: as my memory being imperfect, but this conversation did intrigue me. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: it wasn't because I was suddenly convinced that reality had
Speaker 1: somehow changed, but I thought the idea sounded like an
Speaker 1: interesting concept for a sci fi story. I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to try my hand at writing, and even started a
Speaker 1: couple of novels, but I was never happy with them,
Speaker 1: and I abandoned the ideas before completion. As I sit
Speaker 1: here years later writing this, the irony of the situation
Speaker 1: does not escape me. I intended to write a work
Speaker 1: of fiction on the subject, and instead I'm telling you
Speaker 1: my true story. When I got home that night, I
Speaker 1: poured myself a drink and I sat down at my
Speaker 1: computer to start looking into what people online had to
Speaker 1: say about the Mandela Effect. I wanted to start gathering
Speaker 1: information from my upcoming writing. I quickly found Fiona Brom's website,
Speaker 1: which at the time was Mandela Effect dot com. It
Speaker 1: has since been converted to a YouTube channel and redirects
Speaker 1: to that channel. Of course. The first two things that
Speaker 1: I read about were the death of Mandela and the
Speaker 1: Berenstain Bears. Many of the other things that Eddie had
Speaker 1: quizzed me about earlier in the evening were listed as well. Again,
Speaker 1: many seemed wrong to my ears or eyes, but in
Speaker 1: most cases I remembered reality just as it was right now.
Speaker 1: I thought most of them were rather silly. It just
Speaker 1: seemed absurd that someone would get worked up over the
Speaker 1: spelling of Oscar Meyer or even Oreo double stuff cookies.
Speaker 1: It seemed even more absurd. When I read the possible
Speaker 1: explanations for these quote unquote changes to reality, it seems
Speaker 1: that many people were convinced that this was all proof
Speaker 1: that we were living in a simulation similar to what
Speaker 1: is portrayed in the Matrix movies. Others thought that it
Speaker 1: was proof of alternate dimensions collapsing on one another, or
Speaker 1: even our consciousness moving from from one timeline to another,
Speaker 1: possibly as a result of what Cern is doing with
Speaker 1: the large Hadron collider. Some thought this was proof of
Speaker 1: time travel, and some thought this was all somehow being
Speaker 1: manipulated by their god or even the devil. Even though
Speaker 1: I thought that all of these quote unquote explanations were preposterous,
Speaker 1: this was gold as far as sci fi plots go.
Speaker 1: So I continued to read, and that's when it happened.
Speaker 1: It would be many months before I understood how important
Speaker 1: the next passage that I read would become. Quote. Many
Speaker 1: people remember seeing a painting of King Henry the eighth
Speaker 1: of England holding a turkey leg That painting does not exist.
Speaker 1: Wait a second, hold on, what do you mean the
Speaker 1: painting doesn't exist? Of course it does. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: that painting years ago. I even know why it was
Speaker 1: made in the first place. Turkey was not native to Europe,
Speaker 1: only the Americas. Because England had colonies in America, turkeys
Speaker 1: had been imported into England. It was considered a delicacy
Speaker 1: and could only be afforded by the rich and powerful.
Speaker 1: Henry commissioned this painting of himself with a Turkey leg
Speaker 1: to flaunt England's power and money in the face of
Speaker 1: its rival France. I didn't use the term at that time,
Speaker 1: and in fact I had never even heard of the term.
Speaker 1: But this knowledge of why the painting exists is what's
Speaker 1: called an anchor memory. All the other things that I
Speaker 1: had read about on this website up to this point
Speaker 1: that didn't seem right to me were easy to write
Speaker 1: off is bad memory because I had nothing else to
Speaker 1: tie it to. This one was different. This wasn't something
Speaker 1: that I remembered. This is something that I know. This
Speaker 1: also wasn't just a misspelling or a different word in
Speaker 1: a song that could easily be misheard. This is something
Speaker 1: that I'm very familiar with that you were now telling
Speaker 1: me just doesn't exist and never has. Nope, it wasn't
Speaker 1: possible that this painting didn't exist. It's clearly been lost
Speaker 1: to time somehow. I'm not sure how that would happen
Speaker 1: between nineteen eighty and two and sixteen, but I suppose
Speaker 1: it's possible, so I headed to Google. This had to
Speaker 1: be wrong. Poor Fiona is just confused. The painting exists.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation that can easily
Speaker 1: be found. Well, it didn't take long before I found
Speaker 1: myself on Reddit looking at people talking about the missing
Speaker 1: painting and other supposed changes to reality. I wasn't alone.
Speaker 1: Lots of other people know that this painting existed. A
Speaker 1: few of them even remembered the same explanation that I
Speaker 1: knew about why it was painted. It was painted by
Speaker 1: Hans Holbien the Younger, likely in fifteen thirty seven. It
Speaker 1: was hung in Whitehall Palace, which was destroyed by fire
Speaker 1: in sixteen ninety eight. All the surviving copies are just that,
Speaker 1: copies made by other artists. There are plenty of them,
Speaker 1: and they all differ a bit, but not a one
Speaker 1: of them portrays him holding a turkey leg. In some
Speaker 1: cases he's holding a pair of gloves in place of
Speaker 1: the turkey leg. This is where it gets complicated. I
Speaker 1: already know what you're thinking. You think that I and
Speaker 1: thousands of other people saw the gloves and thought it
Speaker 1: was a turkey leg and just got confused and have
Speaker 1: been carrying around the wrong information for decades. I would
Speaker 1: love to believe that, honestly, but that is not the case.
Speaker 1: The gloves look nothing like what I saw and learned
Speaker 1: about years ago. It also makes no sense whatsoever that
Speaker 1: I and thousands of other people would insert a turkey leg,
Speaker 1: of all things, into this memory. It's absurd for a
Speaker 1: painting to show the King of England holding a turkey leg.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons this painting is remembered so
Speaker 1: vividly by so many of us because it seems so
Speaker 1: out of place. In addition, you won't find anyone that
Speaker 1: remembers him holding a pork chop or a slice of pizza.
Speaker 1: It's always a turkey leg. This is when I learned
Speaker 1: about what we that experienced this phenomena referred to as residue.
Speaker 1: Residue is a reference to a reality change that appears
Speaker 1: in popular culture writing or even news stories. There is
Speaker 1: plenty of residue for the existence of this painting. There
Speaker 1: was as a Happy Day's episode where the father dressed
Speaker 1: as Henry the Eighth for Halloween, but referenced that his
Speaker 1: costume was not complete until he had a turkey leg
Speaker 1: in his hand. There is also an image of Cookie
Speaker 1: Monster from Sesame Street, also dressed as Henry the Eighth
Speaker 1: holding a turkey leg. There are dozens of other ridiculous
Speaker 1: cartoon images of the same thing. Most of these were
Speaker 1: not created until well into my adulthood, so it's not
Speaker 1: possible that I saw these images as a child and
Speaker 1: then confused them with what the actual Holbion really looks like.
Speaker 1: It also certainly does not account for my knowledge of
Speaker 1: the history behind the decision to create the painting. Now
Speaker 1: most of you will ignore that and continue to believe
Speaker 1: that I'm just confused, but that's not the case. I
Speaker 1: knew about this painting well before I had ever found
Speaker 1: any of those images. On a side note, if you
Speaker 1: google Henry the Eighth Tricky Leg today, you will find
Speaker 1: plenty of recreations of what I and others remember. Those
Speaker 1: are not real. All of them are photoshop recreations created
Speaker 1: by people that remember this painting to rep present what
Speaker 1: it looked like. Unfortunately, these recreations now exist for almost
Speaker 1: every reality shift in existence, and it only serves to
Speaker 1: further confuse the issue. I ended the night confused, but
Speaker 1: not in any way was I convinced or even humoring
Speaker 1: the idea that reality had somehow changed. I was confident
Speaker 1: that this painting was merely lost. For days, I didn't
Speaker 1: look any deeper into the Mandela effect, but I did
Speaker 1: spend countless hours online reading everything I could about the painting.
Speaker 1: I found scans of old textbooks that I had used
Speaker 1: in school, and in one of those books I even
Speaker 1: found the Holby in painting No Turkey. This confused me
Speaker 1: even more. This was a high school textbook. I had
Speaker 1: known about this painting since elementary school. How is it
Speaker 1: possible that I had seen the quote unquote real painting
Speaker 1: in high school but didn't realize the turkey leg was
Speaker 1: missing at that point. How was I, in my forties
Speaker 1: walking around with all this information about a painting that
Speaker 1: didn't exist before I continue. Please consider showing your support
Speaker 1: by subscribing, sharing, and giving the podcast a positive review.
Speaker 1: You can also visit me on Patreon, buy me a coffee,
Speaker 1: or a PayPal, where you can make a donation or
Speaker 1: become a member. You can even join my Patreon for
Speaker 1: free and get access to future updates, and of course
Speaker 1: just being a listener is the best support of all,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful to have you here. Now, please stay
Speaker 1: tuned and I'll be right back. After these brief messages,
Speaker 1: Chapter two exploration, I called Eddie the next day and
Speaker 1: I told him about my night. He was surprised that
Speaker 1: I had given the subject any more thought after how
Speaker 1: I had responded the night before. Over the next few months,
Speaker 1: we talked repeatedly about the subject, including the missing Turkey
Speaker 1: leg painting and many more things that just didn't seem right.
Speaker 1: Neither of us were at this point convinced or even
Speaker 1: seriously considered that this was in any way paranormal or
Speaker 1: beyond rational explanation. I was still sure the painting existed
Speaker 1: but had somehow been lost. All the other things that
Speaker 1: seemed wrong to me were easy enough to find reasonable
Speaker 1: explanations for taking the mystery out of them. So many
Speaker 1: examples that people would cite on Reddit or other places
Speaker 1: online just seemed ridiculous. They were easy to rationalize with confabulation,
Speaker 1: poor spelling, or other normal explanations. Also, this wasn't consistent
Speaker 1: across the board. Not everyone agreed about all these changes,
Speaker 1: which surely makes it seem like this whole thing really
Speaker 1: is just poor memory. After all, not even Eddie and
Speaker 1: I could agree on what seemed like it had changed
Speaker 1: and what didn't. He remembers Mandela dying in prison. I
Speaker 1: do not. Things have either changed or they haven't. If
Speaker 1: reality has changed and some of us remember some changes
Speaker 1: but not others, then this must be a memory problem.
Speaker 1: It's not like that ridiculous old phrase printed on the
Speaker 1: passenger's se mirror, which read objects in mirror may be
Speaker 1: closer than they appear. They either are closer or they're not.
Speaker 1: There's no room for may in that sentence. The same
Speaker 1: concept applies here. Not to mention, some of these people
Speaker 1: seemed truly insane. We were now learning about something that
Speaker 1: believers called a flip flop. A flip flop was described
Speaker 1: as an event in which a person would discover that
Speaker 1: something they remember is not the same in current reality,
Speaker 1: but later would revert back to what they originally remembered
Speaker 1: it being, while at the same time all evidence that
Speaker 1: it had ever been anything different was wiped from existence. Crazy.
Speaker 1: This is too much. These people were either lying or lunatics. Additionally,
Speaker 1: these supposed flip flops would happen for different people at
Speaker 1: different times. You would see them discussing it, and one
Speaker 1: person might say that it just reverted for them today,
Speaker 1: whereas others would say that they saw it flip back
Speaker 1: a year ago. The one thing that was somewhat interesting
Speaker 1: about this supposed part of the phenomenon was that it
Speaker 1: was always the same few Mandela effects. It was not
Speaker 1: widespread across the entire collection of things that people say
Speaker 1: they remembered differently. Mostly it was people that would say
Speaker 1: that they grew up with fruit loops spelled frt and
Speaker 1: then had witnessed it being fruit loops spelled fruit for
Speaker 1: a period of time, sometimes years, and then suddenly switched
Speaker 1: back to fruit loops spelled froot. There are also plenty
Speaker 1: of people who say that they grew up with fruit
Speaker 1: loops spelled fruit, but it has since changed to fruit
Speaker 1: loops spelled frt. The other one that you would see
Speaker 1: commonly was people saying that they grew up with flint stones.
Speaker 1: Then it became the Flynn stones without the T, which
Speaker 1: doesn't even make sense because flint is a type of stone,
Speaker 1: and then it changed back to flint stones. There are
Speaker 1: also plenty of people who say they grew up with
Speaker 1: flynn Stones and then watched it change to flint Stones. Again,
Speaker 1: this is too far gone for me to consider a possibility.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. I have never personally seen anything other than
Speaker 1: flint Stones or fruit loops spelled frot. These people are
Speaker 1: either nuts or they are online trolls. We both completely
Speaker 1: discounted this part of the phenomenon. The next time that
Speaker 1: both of us were totally taken aback by a reality
Speaker 1: shift was when we discovered that Dolly, a character from
Speaker 1: the James Bond movie Moonraker, didn't have braces. Neither of
Speaker 1: us are what you would call James Bond fans. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen very many of those movies. My dad was
Speaker 1: a huge fan. When I was a kid, I was
Speaker 1: more of the Star Wars type, but when Moonraker was
Speaker 1: released in nineteen seventy nine, he thought that maybe I
Speaker 1: would enjoy the movie since Bond was going to space,
Speaker 1: so he got me to watch it with him on VHS.
Speaker 1: I really don't remember very much about the movie at all.
Speaker 1: I didn't enjoy it the way that he hoped. I
Speaker 1: found it cheesy and there were no lightsabers. There was
Speaker 1: only one scene in the movie that struck a chord
Speaker 1: with me. The villain Jaws, a menacingly large figure whose
Speaker 1: teeth had been replaced by huge metal jaws portrayed by
Speaker 1: Richard Keel, had just been in an accident and was
Speaker 1: covered with debris. Entered Dolly, a nerdy, tiny, cute girl
Speaker 1: with glasses and pigtails portrayed by Blanche Revallec. She helped
Speaker 1: Jaws to free himself from the mess that he was
Speaker 1: buried in. Once he stood up and brushed himself off,
Speaker 1: he looked down at Dolly and smiled, his silver teeth
Speaker 1: gleaming in the sunlight. She then slowly began to smile back,
Speaker 1: revealing a mouthful of braces. This was still cheesy, but
Speaker 1: because of their shared metal mouths, the pair instantly fell
Speaker 1: in love. It's quite an absurd scene around a silly joke,
Speaker 1: but I laughed hard at that, and the scene stuck
Speaker 1: with me. Eddie remembers exactly the same thing, and so
Speaker 1: do thousands or possibly millions of others. The problem with
Speaker 1: this is that Dolly does not have braces, so the
Speaker 1: scene doesn't even make sense. She doesn't have braces in
Speaker 1: modern streaming copies, not on older DVD or Blu Ray copies,
Speaker 1: not even on VHS copies that Bond fans have had
Speaker 1: since the nineteen eighties. Some people have tried to claim
Speaker 1: that it was in the original theatrical version but removed
Speaker 1: from all subsequent versions, but that's not possible. First, they
Speaker 1: didn't have CGI in nineteen eighty that was capable of
Speaker 1: doing such a thing realistically. Also, Eddie and I watched
Speaker 1: this movie for the first time on VHS, not in theaters.
Speaker 1: It even came up on a James Bond forum online
Speaker 1: that is filled with hardcore Bond fans that know these
Speaker 1: movies inside and out. Huge numbers of those people agreed
Speaker 1: Dolly had braces, but she didn't. The actress was even
Speaker 1: asked about it in an interview and confirmed that the
Speaker 1: character never had braces, nor was it ever considered. Many
Speaker 1: people will claim that the explanation for this is that
Speaker 1: Richard Keeled did a commercial in a foreign country and
Speaker 1: language in two thousand and six that referenced this scene
Speaker 1: from Moonraker. He is shopping in a supermarket and asks
Speaker 1: the cashier, a very much grown adult woman, if they
Speaker 1: accept the Sempo Mini visa card. She says that they do.
Speaker 1: He then smiles and says that he's going to get
Speaker 1: a few more things. As he walks away, she smiles,
Speaker 1: revealing a mouthful of braces. This is a ludicrous explanation.
Speaker 1: Eddie and I saw the original scene around nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: twenty six years before this commercial was created. Also, it
Speaker 1: was never shown in the USA, and I don't speak
Speaker 1: the European language used in the commercial. I certainly never
Speaker 1: saw this prior to researching Dolly's braces. Additionally, this commercial
Speaker 1: would make absolutely no sense if Dolly didn't have braces.
Speaker 1: The commercial was made in two thousand and six, three
Speaker 1: years before Fiona Brome started popularizing the idea of the
Speaker 1: Mandela effect online, and many years before it became even
Speaker 1: slightly well known, So it doesn't make sense that this
Speaker 1: was visa trolling the Reality Shift believers either. By this time,
Speaker 1: Eddie and I were starting to get pretty involved in
Speaker 1: this topic. We were both looking at online forums and
Speaker 1: discussing things nearly every day. We had both found many
Speaker 1: things that seemed to differ from our memories, but neither
Speaker 1: of us were too freaked out by it. At this point,
Speaker 1: there still had to be some sort of rational explanation.
Speaker 1: Especially since the vast majority of things that seemed wrong
Speaker 1: to us were just things from movies, TV shows, advertisements,
Speaker 1: and the like. It seemed very feasible that this could
Speaker 1: all just be online manipulation. Maybe this was a test
Speaker 1: the government was doing, some kind of psyop. That seems reasonable.
Speaker 1: Even the turkey leg fit into this category. It was
Speaker 1: still just all online. I hadn't seen any physical object
Speaker 1: in my daily life go through a change like this,
Speaker 1: at least I hadn't realized that it had. It was
Speaker 1: then that I encountered the Mandela effect that changed everything
Speaker 1: for me. Dolly and the Turkey leg had already had
Speaker 1: me convinced that there was something more to this than
Speaker 1: just bad memory, But up until this point, I was
Speaker 1: still confident that there was a rational explanation for all
Speaker 1: of it. That was about to change. I was a
Speaker 1: child in the early eighties. It was a different time.
Speaker 1: We didn't have cell phones or handheld video games that
Speaker 1: could keep our interest for more than a few minutes.
Speaker 1: If you were taking a long car ride with your parents,
Speaker 1: the only entertainment we had to pass the time was
Speaker 1: the radio, conversation and the scenery. Inevitably, I would eventually
Speaker 1: get bored with all these things, And it was then
Speaker 1: that I stumbled onto something that would go on to
Speaker 1: fill my mind for countless hours of car rides with
Speaker 1: what I considered to be the first somewhat philosophical question
Speaker 1: that I ever pondered. It happened when I was old
Speaker 1: enough to read and first discovered that warning on the
Speaker 1: passenger's side mirrors of the cars that my parents and
Speaker 1: grandparents owned. Objects in mirrors may be closer than they appear,
Speaker 1: was the phrase, but it was engraved permanently onto those mirrors.
Speaker 1: It was an odd phrase. How is it possible that
Speaker 1: objects may be closer than they appear? They either are
Speaker 1: or they are not. It's not possible that they might
Speaker 1: be closer. I spent countless hours over the years looking
Speaker 1: at that phrase and pondering its meaning. I had conversations
Speaker 1: with family members and friends about it. I know that
Speaker 1: I asked my father why it was worded that way,
Speaker 1: and he explained to me that the passenger's side mirror
Speaker 1: is a convex mirror and that it can distort images.
Speaker 1: This was not true of the driver's side mirror, just
Speaker 1: the passenger side. He told me that it was probably
Speaker 1: worded that way because lawyers were involved. Somehow this wording
Speaker 1: would protect manufacturers from legal trouble. That, however, didn't make
Speaker 1: sense to me. It seemed that such an inexact phrase
Speaker 1: would make it more likely, not less likely, that someone
Speaker 1: would get confused and probably cause an accident. Just like
Speaker 1: the oddness of the tricky leg in a King's painting
Speaker 1: embraces on an adult woman in a James Bond film.
Speaker 1: The strangeness this wording stuck out, stuck in my head
Speaker 1: and caused me to have deep thoughts about it. However,
Speaker 1: this one was on a level many many degrees higher
Speaker 1: than Henry or Dolly. Those were things that I saw,
Speaker 1: accepted and moved on from. The mirror was different. I
Speaker 1: spent a large amount of time thinking about it for
Speaker 1: years on end. In the final days of July of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, just after my seventeenth birthday, my parents
Speaker 1: came home with a new car, or at least it
Speaker 1: was new to me. It was a used nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six Mercury Cougar. I had been driving my grandmother's Buwick
Speaker 1: for the previous year when I first got my driver's license.
Speaker 1: The cougar was a coupe, so it had a far
Speaker 1: spoor to your field than the old Lady car that
Speaker 1: I had been using. It was also the newest car
Speaker 1: that anyone in the house had at that moment. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure of the exact year and models of the
Speaker 1: cars that my parents were driving at that time, but
Speaker 1: they were from the early eighties or very late seventies.
Speaker 1: I sat down in the driver's seat and fell in
Speaker 1: love with the vehicle. Compared to everything else that I
Speaker 1: had driven at that point, it felt like a spaceship.
Speaker 1: It had a digital display for the speedometer and the
Speaker 1: gas gauge. It even had a cassette player and the
Speaker 1: speakers sounded good. This was a dream come true. Before
Speaker 1: I even put it in gear, I glanced over at
Speaker 1: the passenger's side mirror that I had spent so much
Speaker 1: time pondering over the last ten years, and there it was.
Speaker 1: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Hallelujah. They
Speaker 1: finally fixed that stupid warning. I didn't know if there
Speaker 1: had been a change to the law or if this
Speaker 1: was something that Mercury had done in their own but regardless,
Speaker 1: it was fixed. I was very pleased with this, just
Speaker 1: under a year later, the first Jurassic Park film was released.
Speaker 1: In one of the most iconic scenes in the movie,
Speaker 1: the t Rex is chasing the main characters that are
Speaker 1: trying to outrun the dinosaur in a jeep. The camera
Speaker 1: then cuts to a shot of the mirror, which is
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of the car and the shot
Speaker 1: in the movie. It's the driver's side mirror, not the
Speaker 1: passenger side. I have never seen a warning on the
Speaker 1: driver's side, as it's not a convex mirror. But hey,
Speaker 1: it's just a movie. But regardless, the warning that I
Speaker 1: remember with maybe was there. It solicited a huge laugh
Speaker 1: when the monster's wide open mouth was displayed in the
Speaker 1: mirror just above the well known warning. Just under a
Speaker 1: year after the release of Jurassic Park, in April of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, one of my all time favorite recording
Speaker 1: artists released a new album. Meatloaf was introduced to the
Speaker 1: public with his debut in nineteen seventy seven, Bat Out
Speaker 1: of Hell. I didn't discover that record until nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: I heard it for the first time driving that nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six Mercury Cougar. My girlfriend at the time had
Speaker 1: been a fan for years already, and she popped the
Speaker 1: cassette into the tape deck one night when we were
Speaker 1: on a date. I fell in love with the record,
Speaker 1: and I still listened to it frequently. So to say
Speaker 1: that we were excited a couple of years later when
Speaker 1: it was announced that he was releasing a new record
Speaker 1: would be an understatement. The first single from Batot of
Speaker 1: Hell Too, I'd do anything for love, but I won't
Speaker 1: do that, only serve to add to that excitement. When
Speaker 1: the album was finally released, we went to the record
Speaker 1: store to buy it the very first day it was available.
Speaker 1: We cranked it up and I fell in love with
Speaker 1: this album as well. I quickly decided that my favorite
Speaker 1: song on the album was track six. Objects in the
Speaker 1: rearview mirror may appear closer than they are. I thought
Speaker 1: that this was wonderful that Meatloaf's writer Jim Steinman had
Speaker 1: referenced the now outdated language from the warning label. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a direct quote, but it captured its essence poetically.
Speaker 1: After that day, I never gave any further thought to
Speaker 1: the old warning except when I would listen to that
Speaker 1: song until twenty seventeen. I'm sure that by now you
Speaker 1: know where I'm going with this. The original version of
Speaker 1: this warning never existed. You can scour every picture online
Speaker 1: that you want, and you won't find it unless it's
Speaker 1: a recreation. You can go to junkyards and look at
Speaker 1: old cars going back for days, decades, and decades, and
Speaker 1: you won't find it. You can go to car museums,
Speaker 1: you won't find it. You can watch Jurassic Park again,
Speaker 1: or find the old Farside comic that made a similar joke,
Speaker 1: but you won't find it. I know because I've done
Speaker 1: all of this. I have spent more time researching this
Speaker 1: missing warning than anything else I have studied for the
Speaker 1: last several years. It is simply impossible that the warning
Speaker 1: featuring may be never existed. Yet in this reality, that
Speaker 1: is a true statement. When I first saw the changed
Speaker 1: warning in nineteen ninety two, I assumed the law requiring
Speaker 1: it had been changed, or that the manufacturer had done
Speaker 1: it on their own. None of this is true. Passenger
Speaker 1: side mirrors were not standard equipment on vehicles until the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, when the requirement was added to the Federal Register. However,
Speaker 1: they were available on many models before they were required
Speaker 1: by law. The first passenger mirrors were not convex. They
Speaker 1: were normal mirrors. I can't find a definitive answer as
Speaker 1: to when the first convex mirrors were you, but I
Speaker 1: guess it caused some problems because they originally had no
Speaker 1: warning labels. The federal government got involved in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight when it modified Title forty nine of the US
Speaker 1: Code and began requiring the warning. The law took effect
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one. This is described in forty nine
Speaker 1: CFR Federal Motor Safety Vehicle Standards, also known as FMVSS.
Speaker 1: It's in section five seven one dot one one one
Speaker 1: dash Standard number one one one. Rear view mirrors have
Speaker 1: the following. Each convex mirror shall have permanently and indelibly
Speaker 1: marked at the lower edge of the mirror's reflective surface,
Speaker 1: in letters not less than four point eight millimeters nor
Speaker 1: more than six point four millimeters high, the words objects
Speaker 1: in mirror are closer than they appear. That's right. Since
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the law, the very beginning of
Speaker 1: the warning's existence, the US federal government has required that
Speaker 1: any convent VX mirror placed on a motor vehicle must
Speaker 1: include the warning that says are closer a vehicle could
Speaker 1: not have been sold in the United States with a
Speaker 1: convex mirror that said maybe closer. The law has been
Speaker 1: updated many times since then, but this section has never
Speaker 1: changed yet. I'm not the only person who remembers the
Speaker 1: old warning. We are everywhere. If you look at online
Speaker 1: forums or ask people in your real life, you will
Speaker 1: not have any problem finding plenty of people that remember.
Speaker 1: May be if you do ask them, don't feed them
Speaker 1: the line, just ask if they remember the warning being
Speaker 1: different when they were younger. You will find plenty of
Speaker 1: people that can quote the exact wording that I remember.
Speaker 1: If they are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, they will simply
Speaker 1: not believe you when you tell them such a thing
Speaker 1: never existed and could not have existed based on federal law.
Speaker 1: Many will say that there must have been certain manufacturers
Speaker 1: that use that warning. However, that cannot be true, as
Speaker 1: the cars could never have been approved for sale if
Speaker 1: they didn't have the exact of the warning correct. Additionally,
Speaker 1: if that were the case, these mirrors should be easy
Speaker 1: to find in junk yards. There should be millions of them.
Speaker 1: There is not one. I will never forget the sinking
Speaker 1: feeling that enveloped me when I first read that the
Speaker 1: warning that I had as indelibly engraved into my brain
Speaker 1: as it was into those mirrors had never existed. This
Speaker 1: was quite simply impossible. This would be as impossible as
Speaker 1: learning that the alphabet really went hijk mnlop. Yet here
Speaker 1: I was. It was a fact. For a moment I
Speaker 1: did not believe it. Someone was playing a trick on me.
Speaker 1: Someone has hijacked the Internet. This must be some sigh
Speaker 1: up by the government to see how we'll react. But honestly,
Speaker 1: after Dolly and the Turkey leg not to mention dozens
Speaker 1: of other things that felt very wrong to me, but
Speaker 1: that I had previously written off as just bad memory.
Speaker 1: This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I
Speaker 1: was not prepared for the straws that would crush them
Speaker 1: camel's skull and flatten not camel. The residue that surrounds
Speaker 1: this reality change is overwhelming. I could not possibly list
Speaker 1: all of it here, and others have done a far
Speaker 1: better job of compiling it online. Just google the phrase.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere, from David Letterman's Top ten lists to the
Speaker 1: sitcom cheers, to advertisements, news articles, and cartoons. Some of
Speaker 1: you will decide that all of these references in media
Speaker 1: to a warning that never existed is what makes me
Speaker 1: think that it did exist. I find that line of
Speaker 1: thought to be beyond insulting. I wasn't having those deep
Speaker 1: thoughts about the ridiculous wording because of jokes on TV
Speaker 1: or advertisements that I never saw until twenty seventeen. I
Speaker 1: was looking directly at the mirror, every mirror on every
Speaker 1: car for a decade. Besides, why would all those references
Speaker 1: get it wrong? But every single one matches word for word.
Speaker 1: When I told Eddie about this, he was shocked. He
Speaker 1: remembered the original warning just like I did, and had
Speaker 1: the same thoughts as I, wondering why in the world
Speaker 1: the phrase would be so imprecise. However, it didn't seem
Speaker 1: to impact him in quite the same way that it
Speaker 1: had me. I was fully on board with some kind
Speaker 1: of spooky explanation for the entire phenomenon. At this point,
Speaker 1: he was still very intrigued and seeking a logical explanation. I, however,
Speaker 1: had moved beyond that line of thinking. It got even
Speaker 1: crazier when I started talking to people online as well
Speaker 1: as in person about the mirror warning. As I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I know almost the exact date that I became aware
Speaker 1: of the change in wording. It was very late July
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. I don't ever recall seeing the
Speaker 1: original phrase after that. If I did, I would have
Speaker 1: just assumed that it was an older model car and
Speaker 1: had been produced before what I had guessed was a
Speaker 1: change in law. However, I had talked to people both
Speaker 1: online and people that I know in real life, and
Speaker 1: some of those people claim to have seen this warning
Speaker 1: as recently as a few months ago on their vehicles.
Speaker 1: I have also seen people say that their car currently
Speaker 1: still has the original warning, only to walk outside and
Speaker 1: be flabbergasted when they see objects in mirror are closer
Speaker 1: than they appear engraved on their mirror. It seems like
Speaker 1: most people that recall the original warning haven't seen it
Speaker 1: since the eighties or nineties. But I have even talked
Speaker 1: to relatives that I love and trust that weren't even
Speaker 1: born yet in nineteen ninety two, yet they also remember
Speaker 1: the old warning. How is any of this possible? Could
Speaker 1: these people be lying? Yes, some of them could be,
Speaker 1: especially faceless nameless strangers on Reddit, but not everyone reality
Speaker 1: is not what we think it is. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what it is, but it's not this firm thing that
Speaker 1: we have all believed. Reality is malleable. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed tonight's episode, and please be sure to join me
Speaker 1: next time for part two, because if you've found tonight's
Speaker 1: episode interesting, I think you'll agree that the second half
Speaker 1: is downright fascinating. And with that being said, I truly
Speaker 1: appreciate Anonymous for coming forward with their experiences, and as always,
Speaker 1: if you've encountered the unexplained, you can share your experience
Speaker 1: with me at Paranormal Mysteries podcast dot com. Remember that
Speaker 1: all experiences, no matter how strange, are always welcome, and
Speaker 1: until next time, stay open minded and stay safe, because
Speaker 1: the next person that comes face to face with a
Speaker 1: paranormal mystery might be you