Ask Lemmy

This isn't just one weird thing that happened; it's a big, puzzling mystery that my family and I have all experienced. It's about a strong, clear smell of jasmine flowers that just shows up out of nowhere, always at night, and always without any clear source, leaving us completely confused.

The first time this really got our attention was late one night, around 1:45 AM. My brother Thangaraj and I were really into watching "Dark" – its final season was actually being shown at that time – in our kitchen on the first floor. We picked that spot so the sound wouldn't bother our parents and our other brother, Vijayaraj, who were sleeping downstairs. The night was quiet and peaceful. Then, suddenly, a super strong, almost too much, jasmine smell filled the whole room. It wasn't faint; it was so strong we could barely stand it, but we couldn't ignore it either. This was strange right away because we're all allergic to perfumes and scents, and nobody in our house ever uses any. So, it was definitely not from inside our home.

We immediately tried to find out where it came from. I ran to the balcony to check the street below – it was totally empty, which is normal for our quiet area, even though it's growing, just 6 km from Sivakasi town. Thangaraj went to the highest point of our house, the water tank, trying to spot anything. We thought about everything: maybe the farming land behind our house (part of it is used for animal food, but nothing there smells like jasmine), or perhaps the many factories. There are about 250 firecracker factories within 25 km radius, but they all close by 5 PM. When they burn their waste before sunset, it smells like chemicals, totally different from jasmine. We spent a good 15 minutes looking everywhere, but we couldn't find anything to explain that strong, lasting smell. It was a truly confusing experience that we just couldn't make sense of.

What makes this more than just a personal story, and a truly fascinating mystery, is that it happened again. About a year ago, my other brother, Vijayaraj, had almost the exact same experience, but in a completely different place, about 3 km from our house. He was working late on a Saturday night, between 8 PM and 10 PM, with three other people. They were unloading oil packets from a truck near a police checkpoint and a graveyard. That area is a bit more developed than our home, but still mostly rural. The key thing is, all four of them, without talking about it first, said they smelled the exact same strong, unknown jasmine scent. It was something they all felt, clearly, and it had nothing to do with our house.

The fact that many different people, in different spots, at different times (but always at night), have all smelled this very strong, exactly the same jasmine smell, and there's no good reason for it from our homes or the areas around us, makes it completely unexplainable. It's not a made-up feeling, not a plant we know, and definitely not from any factory. What in the world could it be?

To be honest, we still don't have an answer. However, to help us avoid panic if this strange smell ever happens again, we've since planted jasmine in our home garden.!

Yellow arrow - Agri land.

Red arrow- Jasmine plant in our home garden. (Planted a year ago)

Last year I was sitting in my house alone when I distinctly heard the microwave buttons click one by one. Beep, beep, beep and START. I flipped the fuck out. There was nobody there, but the plate was spinning and the microwave was on with nothing in it. I had to go turn it off, it was scary as hell. I have no idea how this happens but I'm scared it may happen again and it catches fire with nobody home to stop it.

Absolutely. At the end of a hotel party, a friend put down lines of “trail mix” (ketamine+coke+MDMA). But it was actually just ketamine. I’ve done my fair share, I’ve been in holes, I know how it is. But this was a LOT. Like, I wasn’t sure how it all fit in my nose. It FAR surpassed one mg/KG of body weight and I was winding down off other stuff, about to head to my room for the night. So the six of us in their room all did our line, and laid in beds and chairs. Then suddenly I felt myself falling. QUICKLY. Not like any other hole I’ve been in. Like a speed elevator down, while I’m laying next to my partner in a bed, comfy. But then things got WEIRD. I lost all perception of time and feelings. I would have been terrified, but I didn’t know what terror was. Then I saw it all. It was like the veil of reality was pulled back and I witnessed things that our minds weren’t supposed to see. But I saw them. And I was there forever. Except forever wasn’t a thing, because there was no time.

I haven’t done K since, and that was like seven years ago. It was neat, and also insanely horrifying.

My friend and I saw a ghost, and we don't believe in that nonsense. Late one night we were playing Starcraft in my room which is set up so a window looks into a hallway that leads to a courtyard and then into the main house. We heard the gate click open as someone approached so we looked at the hallway window and both saw what looked like a tall person in a plain white shirt with indistinguishable features. The face was blurry, I couldn't tell you what color skin this person had. My friend immediately opened the blinds to the courtyard to see who was here so late, but there was nothing. We walked out to the courtyard and looked around and couldn't see anyone or anything. There's no way for a person to hide anywhere here except for walking back out which we would have seen. I still can't explain it today. Maybe it was a plastic bag blowing past the window, but then what caused the gate to open and make noise?

Once, when I wasn't doing so well mentally, I threw a tub stopper at a wall. I never found it again and my apartment has since been thoroughly cleaned numerous times

No. Never. My life so far has been desperately explainable by the natural sciences. Not even a challenge. This weird thing I experienced as a child ? cognitive bias. That other strange thing when I was a teen ? hallucination. That baffling encounter in the corn fields years ago ? aliens. Nothing of note, really.

As a matter of fact I'm having one right now, searching for my camera's memory card. I know for a fact that it was on my desk a couple of days ago. I have not used it in the meantime and I'm usually really careful with it as it was quite expensive. But now it's just gone and I've searched the whole damn room for it but it just fucking vanished into thin air apparently. I think I'm going nuts.

When I was a kid, for a while my mother, one of my sisters and I lived with my grandpa. Grandpa loved his caine and other white spirits and would drink until he went and passed out in his room. Then he would start shouting in his sleep and have big fights and arguments with someone. Usually when this started, someone would go to wake him up and tell him to shut up (as suggested by him).

Anyway, one day the three of us excluding grandpa were sitting around in the lounge doing whatever, when next thing we heard grandpa shouting in his sleep from his room. So both me and my sister go to tell him to sit up. And we both saw the shape of a person in his bed and heard him sort of mumble "ah, fine, ok, sorry." And that was the end of the shouting and we went back to the lounge to carry on watching TV or whatever we were doing.

Next thing, a car pulls up outside and out gets grandpa and his friend. They had both been out the whole day and grandpa wasn't actually home that whole time.

That's easily the biggest unexplained experience I've had in my life. The fact that all 3 of us heard him shouting and that both my sister and I saw him in his bed still freaks me out today.

C development does that for you.

Closest I can think of was maybe a little less than 2 decades ago now. I vaguely remember it, but some time after my grandpa had died, our landline got a call. I was in the room with my grandma and mother and my mom went to get the phone. There was no number, but instead just his name. Pretty sure she answered, but nobody replied. The line was dead.

My mom swears it was something like my grandpa, in the afterlife, calling to tell us that everything's gonna be okay despite his recent passing, but I don't buy into that kinda religious spiritual stuff

Other than that, I have memories from when I was younger that I cannot confirm or deny because the only people I know who might have an answer probably wouldn't remember and I'd feel real weird asking them about these memories completely out of the blue. One is me supposedly going on a trip with the family of one of my older brother's friend's family to a city/town ( don't remember name ) in a nearby county ( name not included for obvious reasons ) in the same state and me being in the basement in a house we stopped at for some reason. That's a very vague memory. Same with an unconfirmed memory where I swear I went with the mother of this friend to some berry picking place and was stuck in their van once we got back to their place, with nobody coming to help me get out. Very vaguely remember that I couldn't open the van door for some reason. I'd probably chalk that one up to me being a kid and time moving by relatively slow from my perspective, making it seem like forever when it was probably just a couple minutes of me trying to get out.

Both vague and highly unconfirmed, but I am more concerned about the memory of a mystery road trip that I somehow ended up involved in that my parents don't remember. Wouldn't expect them to since they weren't there, but the fact they don't remember this supposed trip happening adds to the mystery.

From your description 'too low to the ground' sounds like it was probably ball lightning ... which can do all kinds of goofy shit depending on the weather or how it was created. I've never seen any good videos of BL on Youtube, but there might be newer ones.

Don't know D.C. at all but if you were anywhere near a marsh, maybe 'swamp gas'?

Once, but I don’t think it was aliens or supernatural or anything. I was walking home down embassy row in Washington, DC and we crossed 16th St near the White House, and we saw something that looked like a ball of lightening but that way too low to the ground. I asked, “Did y’all see that too?” and complete strangers agreed they did. There was no sound.

Obviously, in that neighborhood, you don’t assume “aliens!” or anything. It was weird to us civilians and I’m quite sure there’s a scientific or classified explanation. But it was definitely a “What the fuck was that?” moment for a half dozen strangers just walking down a busy street.

It didn’t move around or look like images of ball lightening, though it looked like lightening in a sphere in many ways. If it was some electrical explosion, we’d have presumably heard it. So, who knows? Governments and atmospheric conditions do weird shit sometimes.

Definitely explainable by mere coincidence, and only really a little strange but in the interest of contributing more content to Lemmy:

In 2015 I had a dream that I met with Markiplier in person. I don't remember the details of anything, but I remember him extremely distraught, crying, like someone had died and me trying my hardest to console him. The very next day he posted the video talking about his friend Daniel Kyre's passing. Im certain there was no post or anything that I saw regarding this before seeing that video.

I had very frequent nightmares and also watched a lot of Markiplier at the time, so it's really just a timing coincidence.

Yes. Having memes made about me.

When I was little, little, like 3-4 years old, I had a dream where a man I didn't know was in my room. He told me not to be scared, and I told him I wasn't. He had a weird, gravelly voice, but I could understand him fine.

He just wanted to know how the family was doing, did so and so get married, that kind of thing. Family gossip.

When I woke up I told my grandmother who turned white and got out a photo album.

I pointed to one of the pictures and went that's him! Who is he?

My great grandfather Claude, who had had throat cancer and a tracheotomy. He died 2 years before I was born.

I was driving home from LA with a friend. While on the freeway, in the middle of nowhere, and no cars near us, we hear a noise like a hand knocking on the driver side backseat window. There was only the two of us sitting in the front, and there was nothing in the back seats. We confirmed with each other that we both heard the noise, and that it was strange. I was very curious, and it was daytime, so I pulled over to the side to check things out. Nothing. Even a highway patrol officer stop by to check up on us. (Don't worry, we didn't get shot, even though we were non-white, it was a less divided time back then).

To this day, I cannot even imagine what could have made that knocking sound on the window. 😬

Yes, but I can't explain it.