Nobody Believes Me — Something amazing happened to you?

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

i dont even know where to start because every time i try to tell this out loud i hear how it sounds myself anyway. three years ago i was traveling to a funeral for a distant relative in another city. bus ride, five hours, i slept the whole way. woke up at some stop — twenty minute break, everyone got off to stretch. i got off too, bought coffee from a kiosk, sat down on a bench. there was a woman sitting next to me. elderly, ordinary looking. we started talking, just to pass the time. she asked where i was headed, i said to a funeral. she said she was sorry for my loss. then she asked, do you think about it much? about death? i said well, lately yeah, stressful job, anxiety. she went quiet for a moment and said "you know, everything is going to be okay for you. you in particular. i can just see it." i didnt think much of it. people say all kinds of things. the bus started moving. i went back to my seat. after a while i looked around — the woman hadnt come back. she wasnt on the bus. i figured she must have gotten off at that stop. okay, fine. arrived, funeral, the usual. two days later heading back. and heres the thing. im waiting for the bus, talking to a distant aunt i hadnt seen in years. i tell her about the stop, the woman. i describe her — grey coat, hair pulled back, thin-framed glasses. my aunt gives me this strange look and goes, wait. takes out her phone. scrolls through photos. shows me. it was her. the same woman. my aunt says thats my neighbors mother. she passed away. in april. i was going to the funeral in october. i still think about it — maybe it was just someone who looked similar? maybe i remembered wrong? but i have a very strong visual memory, its actually something people notice about me. and the coat. and the glasses. and the way she was sitting. and thats not even the strangest part. the strangest part is that things genuinely did get better for me after that. and i dont know what to do with that.

I have a son. He's still little. We started noticing strange things back when he was just a baby. During the period when he cried a lot from colic, a glass baby food jar would crack — and it happened more than once. Once a vase cracked too. But at the time we were just puzzled, wondering how his crying could possibly cause something like that. Then it got worse. When he got a bit older, my wife and I had a serious argument one day — we weren't screaming at each other, but we were definitely raising our voices. Our son wasn't crying, but he was just standing there staring at us, and then we heard a crack. A fracture had appeared on the window. We were in shock. At that point you can't just chalk it up to a weird coincidence or loud crying anymore. He doesn't go to kindergarten. He went for about a week, and then something bad happened. He came home and said he never wanted to go back — that the kids were mean, that two boys kept pushing him around and calling him names. And wouldn't you know it: that very same day, a window in his classroom shattered. The teacher said someone must have thrown a rock from outside. Let's just say there's reason to believe the glass wasn't broken from the outside. Have we taken him to any specialists? No. I don't want my child hauled off for some kind of experiments. But I don't know what to do either. I can't keep him locked away at home his whole life just so nobody notices. I'm posting this in case anyone has already dealt with something like this. If you have, hit "Been there." At least I'll know we're not the only ones — and that everyone else is just keeping quiet about it too.