Has anyone had an uncanny (or perhaps paranormal) experience alone that was confirmed years later by someone? [View all]

You know, something that gave you nagging doubts about it reality that when you found someone else with the same observation at the same time you were ecstatic to have had it verified?

Mine goes like this. I grew up in the St. Louis area and in 1968 (I was 11 at the time) and my parents left me in charge of my little sister for a good part of the day for the first time while they were out antique hunting about an hour south. While they were gone, there was a significant earthquake stemming from the New Madrid fault. Reports from the region had it rolling for up to 2 minutes about 80 miles southeast. It must have lasted at least a minute for us.

Now here is the kind of freaky part. It was a Saturday, and I had cartoons on for my sister. One had just finished and George of the Jungle was about to come on, and when it did there’s that memorable part where he goes “boing” in to a tree while they sing “Watch out for that tree!” Well, that is exactly when the quake hit and the animation was shaking and flashing afterward while things continued to rattle. I scooped up my sister—who somehow doesn’t recall any of this—and go out through sliding doors into the back yard because my brain said the rattling might be bad guys trying to get in and I could see that there were no bad guys out back.

In the immediate aftermath while debriefing with friends, nobody had the paired experience of cartoon and quake. Nor did anyone, when I would periodically ask, recall when I was in high school or college at U of Mo. I had started college in ‘75 and my parents moved out of state my fall semester and I did not live in the St Louis area until I moved back in ‘08 to take a teaching post at an area college. Now in the age of the internet, I had long since confirmed that the earthquake indeed had struck at 11:01, right at the top of a tv hour and so the cartoon thing tracked, but still had not met anyone who recalled the cartoon impact mating up with the quake. At the first opening day meeting I attended, I was telling this new colleague roughly my age in my story about living in the area until ‘75, etc and she was telling me she had been a lifelong resident and I asked her if she recalled the earthquake. And she said she had, and at the risk of coming off a complete flake I asked here if she recalled the cartoon/quake synchronicity and she said yes! And she, too, had asked all her life anyone shared that memory and I was the first person she had met as well with the same experience. We were both ecstatic to have had the whole thing confirmed some 40 years later.

Pretty sure it was the first impact here that coincided with the quake: