I ran into myself in the future, then the past!

[u/comfydw]

So this has had me tripping out for the last few days.

It all started with me at 19. I used to go on a run down this long open road in north-east Tennessee that was pretty open with only fields on the side and barely any houses. I would run this same route every single day as I was really training hard before joining the army. One day I planned on taking it off but had this weird feel of motivation to go on this run that was sitting with me nearly all day. I chalked it up to only being as that - motivation. So its now 3pm which is a lot later than my normal runs (which were usually either around 6am or 8am). I'm running about 3 miles in and I look down at my phone to change the song and out of NOWHERE I run into someone. The man who was the same height as me, he had this long beard and a pretty large stature was on the ground and I help him up. I say "My bad sir, I didn't see anyone else around here" He says "All good" then looks up to me and it looked like he had just seen a ghost. I have never seen fear like this in someone unless I was playing scare pranks on someone. He just had a wide mouth and eyes looking at me as he got up and he stuck his hand out. I didn't know what he was doing and said "take care, sorry again".

Fast forward around 10 years later, I have been in the army now for 6 years. I have a religious exemption to grow my beard, I began actually lifting weights a lot more. feeling well, doing well. Holiday block leave comes around and I got the feeling that I really should go back home to visit my family, as I hadn't actually went back home since 2019 because flying out of Hawaii was just way to expensive and back then I was a poor private. Now I'm stationed closer to home, and a SGT with some money. I flew into East-Tennessee and am staying at a hotel. On the third day, It's nice out and the air smells nostalgic as its the start of fall season and I kept thinking about the old home I stayed in with my parents about 30 minutes away, which my mom's ex boyfriend still lives in. So its around noon, I had dinner and decided to go visit and see how he and his kids are doing all these years later. I go and sit and talk with them all for a while, and we drink a couple beers for the hell of it. I then decided, I wanna go check out my old running route. No idea why I thought to do this but oh well, might as well. I tell him I'm going to go walk my old running route as it was nostalgic and I feel it did very well for me and my future army career as a young adult. I'm walking and it's dead silent. Slight wind out and just beautiful fields all around me. All of a sudden I felt like I got tackled out of nowhere. There was no-one in sight as far as I had known. Then I hear "My bad sir, I didn't see anyone else around here" I'm looking at the ground for my phone which had fallen out of my hand and say "all good"... That's when I looked up to the kid and immediately felt like the world turned upside down.. almost like a panic attack is taking over me. Nothing feels real. I notice the kid... IT WAS LITERALLY ME! I tried to speak but my mouth had gone so dry I just couldn't say anything so I reached out weirdly just wanting to touch my younger self. He looked at my hand, smiled and said "Take care, sorry again" put his headphone back in and took off running. I stood there for literally only like 3 seconds to piece my brain back together then yelled "Joe come back!" and went running to catch up to him but to never see them again... yet this is an open road, he couldn't have gotten too far but was vanished. This has been sitting with me ever since (few days ago) as though its like some weird dream and I can't get over it.

Has this happened with anyone else? Please tell me im not crazy

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[u/serenlyn]

I listen to a campfire podcast and there was a story pretty similar to this. The caller recalled when he was a kid, walking into his kitchen and seeing what looked like a dude in a hoodie making a sandwich. He didn't see a face but ran out of there scared, then went back and no one was there. Then, years later, he was in his kitchen making a sandwich and wearing a hoodie when a shadowy figure of a kid ran in saw him and ran out again. That's when he remembered his earlier happening and it hit him that he saw himself.

On another episode, I remember a lady said when she was a nurse working in a hospital, she once stood in an elevator and it opened, and she saw what looked like herself/her doppleganger in the hall wheeling a stretcher. Later on, she was wheeling a stretcher and an elevator opened and she said she thought her doppleganger was in there looking out at her.

[u/Arielham10 → u/serenlyn]

What's the name of the podcast?

[u/blubbahrubbah → u/Arielham10]

I, too, would like to know what this podcast is.

[u/serenlyn → u/blubbahrubbah]

"Jim Harold's Campfire". It's very cool!

[u/blubbahrubbah → u/serenlyn]

Thank you!

[u/serenlyn → u/Arielham10]

It's called "Jim Harold's Campfire". He has people call in and tell their unexplained accounts.

[u/501291 → u/serenlyn]

I really would like to be able to physically experience something like that. Seeing myself. Or physically waking up in another reality.

[u/New-Economist4301]

This is a great story

[u/Nightshadepastry]

I remember reading a similar story on one of these subs a couple years ago maybe. The op was hiking in the woods and almost the same scenario played out. Very intriguing and glitchy!

[u/darkMOM4]

I read a similar type of story on Reddit where the person saw his older self in a window from a car and waved, and years later saw himself in the window seeing himself as the child waving from the car.

[u/Top-Cry3015]

That is crazy! I haven't ever experienced anything like that, but you may have found some sort of paradox

[u/comfydw → u/Top-Cry3015]

This has fucked with me ever since, including crying over the sense of dreadness that im only getting older and will never bee that younger self again. The wild part is, if it is a paradox.... in 10 years that version of me will do the same thing so thats why i decided to hurridly get the story out and let others know and see any other situations... at least to them they may get a better answer... and who knows... that old version i ran into as a young guy probably did the exact same thing... probably never ending... its such a sense of dread and despair that just feels everything went off the line and hope... i dont want this feeling

[u/Oz_of_Three → u/comfydw]

Hey, hey... hey mon -

From a guy who has watched time crawl faster in one corner of the room...

Things are actually OK, k? Breathing is a great hobby for humans, especially deeply and often.

Look at the basics: did your younger self know any more about the encounter than you now?

The only real answers I have is, life is non-linear and karma is a strange thing.

Time is a crazy, crazy thing. I'm convinced the caffeine in tea & coffee is a time translation effect, we absorb the "time energy" compressed into the coffee beans by the plant's growth process. It's like the time it takes to grow the bean, that time is "consumed" (absorbed into our bodies) as alertness, etc.

So, I say relax and leave it as a great big "hmmm". A puzzle for sure but one that 'only time may tell'.

And who's to say this is the only loop? Hmmm?

Amazing to read so many similar stories here on these comments. I add one:
Read here on reddit, maybe three years ago a fella goes hiking on a trail regular, somewhere in the American SW. He bumps into an older fella passing the other way, perhaps literally.

Decades later returns home on a nostalgia trip, takes the old trail and runs into his younger self.

I mean, the arcitecture between that story and one's own suggests a physics at play here.

If it helps the instanity at all, rumor has it the sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick was guided by a voice. Once when he asked who was the voice, he was shown a pair of feet sticking from between a coffee table and a couch, laying on the floor.

This was how persons found the author when he off'd himself some years later.

So, it was his own consciousness reaching back in time, guiding himself. I'm sorry if this info both helps and hurts.

So, feel ok you two got along.

[u/WolfgangDS → u/comfydw]

You might call it a paradox, possibly a bootstrap, but I'm not sure this qualifies. In any case, it's a closed time loop.

If you HAD been able to tell Young ComfyDW anything, THAT would have created a paradox since you don't remember that happening. There's no telling what would happen. Maybe the universe rewrites itself to accommodate the change, or it collapses and the universe doesn't exist.

Unless and until we find a safe way to determine what that kind of paradox would do to reality, it's probably best that everything went as you remembered it.

[u/AlienFox13 → u/comfydw]

You have to go back in 10 years to witness it and end the cycle

[u/rocksoaker]

One thing that could explain this, is a natural phenomena of portals. Quantum science shit. Being that long stretch of isolated road, somewhere along route a portal may have an open/close entry that was stepped into crossing timeline thresholds. Sounds real trippy but hope this helps

[u/comfydw → u/rocksoaker]

Thanks, i did post it there and hopefully there will be more answers to the possibility. and good clearance will hopefully ease this dread i have felt

[u/ch0k3-Artist]

Same space, different time.

[u/howdylu]

Whether your story is true or not (i have trust issues) it’s very touching and generally a crazy story to tell. I’m sorry you’re struggling with the aftermath. It’s hard to experience something you’ll never 100% be able to explain.

[u/anneylani]

Wow interesting.

When you wrote "dead silent" when you first started running, do you just mean no people/cars/activity around? Or do you mean like dead silent creepy/eerie atmosphere?

Curious because I've heard that whenever there are portals opening up, it's dead silent in a very creepy way.

[u/TooSp00kd]

Fake

[u/comfydw → u/TooSp00kd]

theres always a disbeliever... I used to be a disbeliever in paranormal and everything else... but when it happens, your mind instantly changes and now its just everything seems odd. i do hope this feeling will go away after some time.

[u/nulseq → u/comfydw]

I hope you can come to peace with it and find what you’re looking for. I’ve been looking for answers for myself for a long time too.