 Stories and content and weird darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. The Mandela Effect That phrase never meant anything to me. Spooky, I guess, but it wasn't something I thought about for more than five minutes. I mean, honestly, until college, I didn't even know what it was. I'm not one for conspiracy theories or ghost stories or anything like that, so what would you expect? I wish I was still so ignorant. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the podcast, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you're already a weirdo, please share the podcast with others. Doing so helps make it possible for me to keep creating episodes as often as I do. Coming up in this episode, I'm pulling an old creepypasta Thursday episode off the shelves and dusting it off for you. It's a story by D. D. Howard called The Girl the Universe Forgot. While listening, be sure to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com, you can sign up for the newsletter to win monthly prizes. Find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated. Watch old horror movies for free. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, fold your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. It all began in my life science class. I was 20 at the time, and it was pretty close to the end of the fall semester at FSU. My professor, Dr. Alnalt, had given us our finals early because she had a heart and didn't want us to be studying for everything at once. She figured doing our finals before everybody else gave us time to study hers without any distraction, and then gave us time to study everybody else's with a little less stress. I loved her for that. But part of me wishes she never had decided to bless us that way. You see, on the last day of class, most people skipped. Everybody knew we weren't really doing anything and everybody just wanted to be done for the semester. Still, some of us were bound by the attendance policies on our scholarships and others just out of curiosity to Dr. Arnalt showed up. I personally was present because I loved her class. One more hour and 15 minutes of her teaching was a win for me. Heck, I had nothing better to do. She began the class slightly differently than she usually did. We'd often start out with a current event from earlier in the week, something about GMOs, the dramatically declining population of giraffes, or something else relating to life science. But today we looked at an older article and something far from relative to biology. It was about the Mandela effect. I'd never heard of it before. Most of us hadn't. But she was passionate about it. The old lady was usually pretty sprightly while teaching. Cholaric when somebody disagreed with her, but man, today she was ecstatic. All right, to those of you considerate enough to show up to my class today, I have a treat for you. I'm going to teach you all about something that you'll probably never forget. Or maybe you'll blow it off, I don't know. But if this intrigues you like it did me, I'm sure you'll be happy you arrived. Can somebody tell me when Nelson Mandela died? Well, everybody looked around, confusedly, and then a girl raised her hand. He died a couple of years ago, 2012, I think. She slowly nodded, studying the class like she was waiting for something, and she found that something. Seagrave. She pointed to a boy in the class. Why the confused face? Well, I thought he died like a while ago, the 90s or something, in prison. She beamed with delight. Wow, class, is Amanda right or is Cole? Everybody seemed conflicted. Most of us were like me and honestly had no clue either why. But a couple of people agreed with Cole. One person agreed with Amanda. Amanda, Dr. Arnold commended, you're closer to correct. He died from a respiratory tract infection on December 5, 2013. But why did some of you think he died in prison in the early 90s then? Seagrave, you thought that. Badar? She motioned at one of the guys to explain, where did you come to that conclusion? That's where we learned that in seventh grade, in my World History class, it was part of Black History Month. Yeah, same here, one of the girls nodded. Black History Month when I was a kid. He died and then there was this thing about his wife trying to sue some company? Exemplary. Dr. Arnold was more complacent than I'd ever seen her. You remember all of this being said, except, strangely enough, it never was. None of this was ever said. Go to Google and search Nelson Mandela Death. You'll find nothing about the 90s or prison. For that matter, type in Nelson Mandela Prison Death. You won't find a CNN article or a documentary about his funeral which was televised all over the globe. You won't find his purported cause of death and you'll find nothing about the riots in South African cities afterward. Because none of that happened. Oh, this left me a little weirded out. Most of the class was silent now and waiting for her to make some sense of this. It's a phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect. She grinned, a complete mystery, an enigmatic anomaly on earth with no scientific explanation. And from that point, the hour and 15 minutes flew by. I thought five minutes had elapsed when it was time to be dismissed. It left me absolutely mind-boggled. Basically, it's this theory that Nelson Mandela did die in prison in the 90s. But then, something happened that somehow reversed this event and he went on to live decades longer before dying again in 2013. Though some of us don't remember Mandela dying in the 20th century, others do. They remember the news coverage, the papers, the heartfelt speech from his widow, but all of it vanished from the universe when this event took place and rewrote history. And all that's left now is this huge collective memory. These people that know he died like this and all remember that same thing somehow but it's wrong. Personally, I don't remember being told Mandela died in the 90s, but a lot of people did and still do. There are two theories behind it. The first and less common is time travel. They say somebody went back in time and altered an event just slightly, but it created a ripple effect that resulted in something changing dramatically. Here's just a made-up example for you. Bob married Sally. Bob and Sally met downtown sometime back in August of 2005. Bob's dog just got ran over and he was grieving and when he saw Sally walking her dog he couldn't help but walk over and talk to him. Before long, they were in love and married. Well then, Jake goes back in time to that same town around the same time. Jake's driving on the road about the same time Bob's dog got run over, but since Jake's driving and he's in front of the car that hit Bob's dog and since Jake is a better driver, he comes to a halt and never hits the dog. The dog runs back over to Bob completely fine. So now, when Bob goes downtown, he doesn't think twice when he sees Sally walking her dog and they never say a word to each other. They each get married to somebody else and now their son who could have cured cancer or something never even existed. But time travel is believed to be entirely fictional and improbable. The more common theory is that there are several universes all alternate and that sometimes they, for lack of better words, rub shoulders or essentially cross paths like two cars in a really minor accident, a fender bender. Universe A rear ends Universe B and almost everything is the same except Universe A needs a new bumper. Well, in literal terms, now something between Universe A and B is swapped. Nelson Mandela lived to 2013 and died of a respiratory tract infection, not in prison in the 90s, and now everybody in Universe B thought he died from a lung infection instead of in an African jail. That's one commonly believed theory. After Dr. Arnold's class, I looked more into it and there are other examples too. Take the Berenstain Bears, for example. We all read those books as kids, right? Or at least our parents read them to us. Well, without looking, how was the name spelled? Berenstein S-T-E-I-N or Berenstain S-T-A-I-N. Which one? If you said Berenstain with the E, you were one of thousands of others that would bet their house that you're right. But you're wrong. It was never spelled that way. And what about Curious George? Did he have a tail? What position is the thinker making? Is his fist pressed against his head or is his hand not even balled up, slumped into his cheek, his fingers extending all the way to his chest? Curious George does not have a tail and the thinker is doing the latter position. These things may seem silly but if they're wrong, why do so many people believe them to be true? Personally, I have my own theory about the Berenstain Bears and Curious George. When you read the name Berenstain, it looks Jewish or German. And like many Jewish or German surnames, you think of it as ending in S-T-E-I-N instead of S-T-A-I-N. Take for instance Goldstein or Goldstein. Peristine or Peristine or heck, Einstein. We all know that name. Berenstain with the A-I-N just doesn't look right and over time our minds fill in the A with an E. The same with Curious George. He's a monkey for goodness sakes. Of course we think he has a tail. He's even commonly portrayed hanging from a vine with his head down and his butt up in the air as if he's hanging from his tail. These are more likely the power of suggestion through external factors or memories of these simple things we're altered. But then you have the thinker, King Tut's burial mask and of course Nelson Mandela. If the thinker really is posing with his hand in a relaxed, non-curled, flat motion pressed against his cheek which is folding over his knuckles, why do we remember his hand completely balled up and resting against his head? And not just us, but popular cartoons depict it this way as well. Why do so many people make this mistake? And King Tut's burial mask. What's on top of the mask right between his eyes? There's a figure depicted there, an animal, to be more specific. For those of you that thought snake, duh, well you're like me, but you're wrong, at least partially. There is a snake, but also a bird. A bird that looks so outlandish and unnatural on the mask that I can't even look at it without shaking my head. The bird is more obvious than the snake. There couldn't have been two animals. It looks ridiculous, you might think. Well look it up on Google, see for yourself. I remember in sixth grade I had a World History textbook with that burial mask on the cover. I looked at that thing every stinking day. Heck, when I was nodding in class, that's where my eyes fell, down onto the cover of that book which was sitting on my desk. I never saw that bird. I thought maybe it could have just been the angle, but that bird sticks out so far there is no way you can't see it, unless the mask was turned completely away from you, which it never is. And if it was, you wouldn't be able to see the snake either. I'm not the only one that remembers it looking like this. Popular cartoons draw it wrong like that all the time too. There was always a bird on that thing though, since 1323 BC. Well enough of my rambling, you might be wondering what all of this has to do with me. You see, after Dr. Arnold's class that day, I couldn't get this off of my mind. I was so spooked out by it, so morbidly intrigued that it just occupied my thoughts. I felt like a victim of it, but still, it wasn't some grand epiphany of mine, some life-changing philosophy. After all, I was too busy studying for exams to ponder it that often. But all of that changed when I sat down with my friend Asher a week later for breakfast. Asher and I had been friends since 1st grade. We met at Tallis City Christian Academy in Michigan, in a town with a population of less than 10,000. It was always freezing there, dreary and gray and silent. You could see the whole town from a five-story building. The remiles and miles of abandoned cornfields and the only real moneymaker in the town was its small harbor at which fishing occurred. I discovered later on that apparently in other countries, Tallis City, Michigan is known as the birdwatching capital of the world. Purportedly, a vast array of bird species migrate there and is great for birdwatching. I never noticed that. All I can remember is the snowy gray skies, the silent cornfields and the feeling that if the place was wiped off the face of the earth, no one would notice. Naturally, the public school was puny, but the private school hardly existed. In my class, there were 15 of us, 16 if you included the teacher. So I thought, I'm starving, man, Asher sighed, walking ahead of me into the diner. It was early on a Saturday morning. It was the last week of the semester and we had been studying like crazy. We figured our day would be spent doing the same thing as usual and amalgamation of studying endlessly and resisting the urge to buy Adderall, which was pretty prominent on the campus around that time. But my day didn't consist of that at all. We sat down at our usual booth, Ash's hair as red and messy as usual. He was a ginger and a mischievous one at that. He was a prankster and barely passed his classes. He was here for the booze and the girls and his grades reflected it. But as friends do, I forced him to study and pass. Still, breakfast was a school-free zone. All mention of classes and tests was off limits at the diner. Here, we wanted to rid our minds of it all. The last time we bent up, I went on and on and on about the Mandela effect to the point he wanted to shove scissors in his ears, so I tried not to mention it this time. I'm telling you, man, he sipped his coffee. When this is over, we're partying like crazy, like crazy, Sean. I don't want to remember where I am when I wake up that morning. I chuckled. A man for sure. I just sometimes wish we were back at Tawas Christian. I mean, not back in Tawas City, but just the classes. We thought they were so hard. We both laughed. God, we were wrong. Yeah, that was a whole different universe, crap is so easy compared to now. And there was only 14 of us in total, unless you include Ms. Davis, who was creepy and crazy. Wait, 14? I think it was 15, man. He looked confused. Nah, bro, 14. Me, you, Aaron Engels, Tyler Mahoney, Zach O'Toole, that quiet girl named Grayson, Elizabeth Norman, that one kid, I don't remember his real name, but we all called him Taz. We called him Taz because he talked so fast nobody could hear what the heck he was saying. I chuckled, as I remembered him. There was Brian Reed, Amy, the twins, George and Jordan Reynolds, and what nerdy kid, Dylan, and then Ms. Davis, that's 15, including her. And Eve. He squinted his eyes. Who? Eve, the shy girl, remember? Short blonde, brown eyes, didn't talk to anybody. He shook his head. That was it, man. There was 14 of us. No, dude, I replied. There was Eve. I've been waiting for you to name her this whole time. He just looked at me like I was telling him Brad was a liquid. Asher, are you messing with me? Stop, dude. I'm not messing with you. There just wasn't any Eve. I distinctly remember 14 of us. Remember four girls, ten guys? No, no. I shook my head. Five girls, ten guys. That's how it was. Her name was Eve. She didn't talk to anybody, and we both never said anything to her. You're messing with me, and it's not funny. I actually started to feel panicked. I've been reading all that crap about the Mandela Effect, and now you're just trying to freak me out. Come on. Stop it, man. Well, now he looked frustrated. Stop with that Mandela crap. There's no Eve. You're sleep-deprived. What? I was getting annoyed now, but also terrified. All of this hysteria I'd embraced lately as I considered if the effect could be real left me feeling hopelessly crazy, as Asher argued with me. I knew there was an Eve. She went the tallest Christian with us. Her face was easy for me to recreate in my mind. Sean, he looked at me intently. Are you messing with me? No, I replied, trying not to sound panicked. It was such a simple situation. Asher just forgot about her. It was over a decade ago, and she wasn't by any means a notable student. She shied away from conversation, sitting in the back of the room with nothing to say. She only talked when forced to by Ms. Davis, and none of us struck up conversations with her. Bro, you're just forgetting about her. She was quiet, man, like really quiet. First grade was a long time ago. Maybe, he shrugged. Honestly, though, no, I can't be, I can't be. I remember that class easily. There were 14 of us. You must be thinking about something else. Don't tell me I'm thinking about something else. I felt hopeless. What the hell was that? He glared at me. Man, this isn't funny. You know that Mandela crap has been freaking me out. Please, Asher, stop. I was pleading, but he looked horrified. Sean, I'm not effing with you. Why are you getting worried, bro? Here. He slipped me his coffee. Just relax, man. Relax. It's not a big deal. You're fine. She was there with us, Asher. Remember reading group? There were 15 of us. There were five of us in each group. Eve was in my group. No, man. I mean, you're right about there being five in each group, but Ms. Davis was in a group. Remember? No, she walked around and supervised, I argued. Asher, Eve was in my group. I know she was, because every time she was forced to read, she'd choke up and not say anything. And then the few times she did read, I was always enamored to actually be hearing her voice, because I never did, like nobody ever did. Asher was still in silent. Both of us knew what we knew, but one of us had to be wrong, right? Dude, I begged. I... her car. Remember that, at least? Her mom dressed nicely in a dress always. She came to pick Eve up in that fancy black car. I never cared about cars, and I still don't. In my senior year of high school, I thought that Ultima was a car make. I couldn't tell the difference between a Porsche and a Honda, but I remember her car because it was so nice looking. It was probably a Cadillac or something. Come on, man. We used to always think it looked cool when it came into the pickup loop. Her mom was the first to arrive every day. Eve would get up quickly from her lone corner on the bench and trudge over to the car, and her mom would come out dressed nicely, even if it was snowing and hug her every single time. She always smelled nice because her mom hugged her every morning, too, and got her perfume on her. Now, Asher started looking worried. Sean, he shook his head, I don't remember her. I'd say you're thinking of somebody else from another school, but we've gone to the same school since first grade, and I don't remember her ever. Maybe it was someone you met in preschool? No, no. We both talked about her. She was in my reading circle in Miss Davis' class. What about after that? You're only talking about first grade. I don't remember her after that. She must have moved, but she was in first grade. That's probably why you forgot her. She moved, and you just remember all of us that graduated fifth grade there. No, man, I remember first grade, too. She wasn't there. Miss Davis was my favorite teacher. I remember that year easy. There was not a girl named Eve. I don't really know why, but at this point I felt like crying. I mean, imagine all your life you never believed in ghosts, and then you see this horror movie or something, and there's a scene where the main character is looking in a mirror, and then his reflection stops following him and does its own thing, and it's horrifying. Well, after that, you just keep thinking about that scene because it scared you so much. But hey, it's just a movie, right? It's not real. And that's the only thing keeping you from never looking in the mirrors again. But then you figure out the movie is based on a true story. Okay, anybody could say that. It's based on a true story, like all horror movies. Just because it could be true doesn't mean it is. Nothing's hidden close to home. And then it happens to you. You get out of the shower. You're drying off, and you happen to look into the mirror. You raise your towel to dry off your hair, but when your reflection comes into view, its arms are at its side, and it's staring at you. Holy crap. You're terrified now. I mean, it's real. It happened to you, and there's no denying it. Well, that's how I felt at that diner's table. Maybe it wasn't as concrete, but I knew Eva was in that class. I remember her like the back of my hand. But Asher didn't. Not at all. It was just like the bird on King Tut's burial mask, like the thinker's flimsy hand stretching the skin on his cheek, like the absent footage of Nelson Mandela's huge funeral in the early 90s. I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. For the rest of the day, I didn't study anything. I was too overwhelmed. I tried my hardest to assimilate Eve into a preschool memory, but that was incompatible. She did not fit there. She didn't fit at my old church. She didn't fit in my neighborhood growing up. She didn't fit anywhere but Miss Davis' first grade class. Finally, that night, I called my mother on the phone. At this point, I wasn't entirely convinced I was witnessing the Mandela effect. Some part of me figured Asher had just smoked too much reefer at high school and forgot about her. And I knew how to find out if I was right. I told my mom that she wouldn't hear much from me this week because of all the studying that I'd be doing, which she totally respected, so she was pretty surprised when I called her. Hey, Sean! She sounded excited. What's up? Hey, Mom, I wanted to ask you something. Do you remember a girl named Eve in Miss Davis' class? A short blonde girl with brown eyes? That's a random question, she replied. No, it doesn't ring a bell. On your seventh birthday, you invited over all the kids, but I don't remember an Eve. Yeah, I invited her but she didn't come. I remembered that. She was really shy, that's probably why you forgot her. Well, I have some pictures of you in first grade. I could send them to you and you could point her out to me if you see her in them. Why are you asking anyway, honey? Well, Asher doesn't remember her either, it's just kind of weirding me out a little. A chuckled, trying to hide my nervousness. It'd be cool if you sent those pictures. Do you have the one of the whole class? The one with all 14 of you? The words left me severely uncomfortable. 15? There were 15 of us, Mom. No, 14, I thought. But, Mom, yeah, just send me the pictures if you can. Okay. Is everything okay, Sean? Just feeling weird. It's weird nobody remembers her. I don't have the class picture, she sighed. I wish I did. Asher's mom might see if Asher can get it from her, but I'll send you the ones I have. Okay, thanks, Mom. We talked a little bit more after that, but my mind was not occupied by the conversation. All I could think about was Eve. I could remember her short body, her perfect posture, the quaint dresses she wore to class. I could remember her scent that to this day still appeared sometimes in supermarkets or in a lecture hall for a fading second, just long enough to remind me of first grade. I could remember her voice when she finally worked up the courage to read in our reading circle. I could remember everything about her. I knew I'd be able to point her out if she showed up in any of the pictures. Still, what bothered me was this. The Mandela effect is a smooth criminal. It's articulate. Pinpoint exact. It leaves no trace behind. Here's what I mean. The thinker, for instance. A lot of people remember taking pictures with the statue. They know the thinker didn't look the way it does now when they took that picture, so they go back and they find their old vacation album, brushing the dust off and reluctantly finding them posing with their ex-wife before the statue. And all the work and awkwardness of thumbing through the old album was for nothing because, in the picture, the thinker is doing exactly what they remember it wasn't doing. Even weirder are the pictures that went viral of people standing right in front of the statue posing with their fist against their head. They're in front of the damn thing. Don't you think they maybe noticed it wasn't doing what they thought it was doing and not pose incorrectly right in front of it? But maybe they're not complete idiots or just downright oblivious. Maybe when they took that picture there, it was pressing its fist against its skull. And then, when the Mandela effect occurred at some untraceable, inexact moment in time, the picture changed. But only the statue. It left everything else that wasn't the statue the same, resulting in the bizarre image of people posing incorrectly right in front of it. I knew that if this was the Mandela effect that I was dealing with, there'd be no point at all to receive these pictures. Whether or not Eve was standing there when the picture was taken 13 years ago, she wouldn't show up in them now. The only way to catch the Mandela effect is through relative things, like the people posing wrong in front of the statue. And this wasn't relative. If the universe pulled Eve from existence, then she wouldn't be present in any of the Polaroids. But I wanted to check, anyway. Maybe something would stand out. My mom sent four pictures. The first was of me, Asher, Brian Reed and Taz and Norman playing at Aftercare one day in the mud. The second wasn't useful either, just me and Asher sitting at a picnic table one night at Open House. The third picture, however, was interesting. It was of the Christmas concert. All 15 of us were taught three church songs to sing at the concert, and our parents came and watched. It was humiliating for all of us, except maybe Aaron, who was born to be a star, but it was especially embarrassing for Eve. This photo jogged my memory immediately, and what made it so strange was the formation of the girls. In the picture, you can see all of us on stage. There's one riser on the stage, and some of us were standing on it, while the others were standing in front on the stage itself. On the left side are the boys, five in front and five on the riser. On the right are the girls, three in front, and one on the riser between two of the girls. Looks like somebody is missing in the picture. You have Aaron on the left, and then Amy next to her, then Elizabeth next to her, and then Grayson standing on the riser between Aaron and Amy. Eve would fit perfectly between Amy and Elizabeth. Perfectly. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story on the website, and I might use it in a future episode. The Girl the Universe Forgot was written by D. D. Howard, and is of course a story of fiction. Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music, and now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. John 3, verse 17. Forgot did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. And a final thought by Robert Shuler. Tough times never last, but tough people do. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.