Here’s a familiar scenario, you put your keys down and leave the room for a minute. You come back and the keys are gone. You know exactly where you put them, but they’re just not there. You search all over the room for them - on the floor, under the couch, between the couch cushions - and you still can’t find them. Later, you walk in the room and there they are, right where you thought they were to begin with. Or, you find them in some odd place where you know you didn’t put them. Sound familiar? If so, you’ve just experienced Disappearing Object Phenomenon (DOP).
Unlike ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, Aliens, or Shadow People, DOP is not a very sexy subject. In a nutshell, the phenomenon is simply: things disappear, then you find them again- big deal, right? But it is a big deal because some of the phenomenon being reported is so odd, so incredibly impossible, that it changes people’s entire perception of reality. How do I know this? Because I have had four incredible DOP experiences, and they literally changed my belief in the rules & regulations and behavior of matter itself. Before I get to my stories, let's take a look at some of the research being done on DOP.
DOP is a phenomenon that is difficult to classify. Psychical researcher Mary Rose Barrington came up with the acronym JOTT (Just One of Those Things) to describe anomalous experiences that do not fit into current categories of paranormal classification. She also has a name for displaced objects. She calls these “jottles”. Ms. Barrington divides jottles into six different categories:
Several years ago, I came down to the kitchen in the morning and made myself a cup of coffee. I always keep the sugar bowl on the ‘shelf’ on top of the stove. By this, I mean the shelf that is part of the stove, right above where the clock and buttons for operating the stove are. Here’s a photo of the green sugar bowl, and the location where I keep it.
Unlike ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, Aliens, or Shadow People, DOP is not a very sexy subject. In a nutshell, the phenomenon is simply: things disappear, then you find them again- big deal, right? But it is a big deal because some of the phenomenon being reported is so odd, so incredibly impossible, that it changes people’s entire perception of reality. How do I know this? Because I have had four incredible DOP experiences, and they literally changed my belief in the rules & regulations and behavior of matter itself. Before I get to my stories, let's take a look at some of the research being done on DOP.
DOP is a phenomenon that is difficult to classify. Psychical researcher Mary Rose Barrington came up with the acronym JOTT (Just One of Those Things) to describe anomalous experiences that do not fit into current categories of paranormal classification. She also has a name for displaced objects. She calls these “jottles”. Ms. Barrington divides jottles into six different categories:
- Flyaway - Where an object inexplicably disappears from a specific location and is never seen again
- Walkabout - When an object goes missing from one location and is found in a different location
- Comeback - When an object disappears from a specific location, then reappears at the same location after a period of time (this can be minutes later, or years later)
- Turn-Up - When a familiar object is discovered in an unexpected location
- Windfall - The appearance of an object that is not familiar to the experient.
- Trade-In - This involves a trade or swap of one object for a different object.
Several years ago, I came down to the kitchen in the morning and made myself a cup of coffee. I always keep the sugar bowl on the ‘shelf’ on top of the stove. By this, I mean the shelf that is part of the stove, right above where the clock and buttons for operating the stove are. Here’s a photo of the green sugar bowl, and the location where I keep it.
I took the sugar bowl off of the shelf, spooned out some sugar for my coffee, and returned it to the shelf. I then walked into the family room no more than 15 feet away, and sat down to have my cup of coffee. A few minutes later my son walked into the kitchen and asked where the sugar bowl was because he wanted sugar for his cereal. I told him it was on the stove, but he called over to me that it wasn't there. I told him that I had just used it and had put it back, but he insisted it wasn't there. I told him that I was so positive it was there that he would have to pay me $5 when I showed it to him. I walked over to the stove and sure enough the sugar bowl was not where I had left it.
There was no one else in the house at the time, so I assumed that I was mistaken and that I hadn't put it back on the stove - but where was it? My son and I looked all over the kitchen for the sugar bowl – on the stove, in the cabinets above the stove, on the shelves next to the stove, and on the kitchen counters. The sugar bowl was nowhere to be found. This was extremely puzzling, as I knew that I had just used it, but since we couldn't find it I took out a bag of sugar from the pantry and gave my son sugar for his cereal.
I went back in the family room which is in full view of the kitchen and finished my coffee. About 10 minutes later I walked into the kitchen to get a glass from the cabinet next to the stove and there on the stove in its regular place was the sugar bowl! I actually gasped when I saw it. I called my son down from his room and asked if he had put it there, but he swore he didn't. He confirmed that the sugar bowl had not been in its usual place, and that we both had thoroughly looked all over the kitchen for it.
Remember, there was no one else in the house at the time and I could see the kitchen the entire time I was in the family room drinking my coffee. As you can see, if you are looking in the cabinets above and to the left and right of the stove, you can easily see the shelf. There is no way that we both could have missed seeing the bowl had it been on the shelf. The disappearance and reappearance of the sugar bowl is a total mystery.
This next story is taken directly from an email that I sent to a friend immediately after it happened on 13 February 2012. I sent the email at 6:55 AM.
"Hi -- Just a quick but STRANGE story about my morning. I was in our ‘master bathroom’ getting ready for work. I had used a pair of scissors earlier this morning to cut open a package and they were still on the bathroom counter. I was worried that my three-year -old daughter would get a hold of them and hurt herself, so I took them out of the bathroom to the vanity just outside the bathroom door and put them in the top drawer. As I put them in the drawer I was thinking that I would put them right in the front rather than push them to the back of the drawer so my wife would be able to find them, and so no one would cut their fingers on them if they rummaged through the drawer looking for something. I put the scissors in the drawer and closed it. I then went directly back to the bathroom, shaved, and brushed my teeth, then I walked into the bedroom to finish getting dressed.
I never left the bedroom, and no one came in the room while I was getting dressed. After I got dressed, I walked back into the bathroom. As I was combing my hair I looked over and the scissors were back on the bathroom counter!! They weren't in the exact same place as they had been before I had put them in the drawer, but they were in the same general location. I was really stunned. I clearly remember putting them in the drawer, and even remember noticing which way the points of the scissors were facing when I put them there."
This next story happened while I was at work. I walked into my office and sat down at my desk in front of my computer. I went to put my hands on the keyboard to login, but noticed that it was missing. The monitor was on my desk, as was the computer itself, but the keyboard was missing. I sat there for several seconds, surprised that there was no keyboard. The desk is very old, and I noticed all of the scratched wood on the desktop - something I don’t normally see because it’s always covered by the computer keyboard.
I went around to the back of the computer to see if it had somehow fallen off the desk. I checked the computer port where the keyboard should have been plugged into and found that was empty. I checked the floor under the desk to see if it was there, but it was not. After searching for a while I assumed that the computer technician had taken it way to replace it for some reason, so I got up from my desk and moved to my colleagues computer which was on the other side of the desk. I logged in and did some work online.
A few minutes later my colleague came into the office. I explained that I was using her computer because the keyboard to mine was missing. A short time later I got up from my colleague's computer and went to my side of the desk to retrieve some papers. I was totally shocked to see my computer keyboard sitting in it's usual place!! There is absolutely no way that I could've missed it. I had sat at my computer looking for it for quite a while. I am positive the keyboard was gone. I never left the room the entire time this incident occurred, and my computer was right across from me the entire time it was missing. No one could have returned it without my having seen them as they would have to have passed by me to get to my side of the desk.
This last story involves something a little bigger than a pair of scissors, a sugar bowl, or a computer keyboard. It involves a missing car!
One Friday evening my daughter, Carly, borrowed one of the family cars to visit her friend in a neighboring town. She said that she might stay overnight at her friend’s house, and if she did that she would be back sometime in the morning.
Early the next morning I had to drive my son to the train station. We got into my car and drove up the driveway and we both commented that Carly must have stayed over her friend's house that night because the car was not in the driveway. When I came home from the train station, I looked to see if the car was back but it was not. I assumed that Carly was still at her friend’s house.
Later that morning, my wife went for her daily run. She went through the garage, ran straight up the driveway, went for her run around the neighborhood, and ran back down the driveway to the garage. When she came into the house I asked her if the car was back yet, but she said it was not.
I started to get concerned because I hadn't heard from my daughter, so I called her cell phone.
She picked up immediately. I asked her where she was and she said that she was upstairs in her bedroom! "You're in your bedroom? Where is the car?" I asked. She said it was in the driveway. I told her it wasn't there, but she insisted that it must be because she parked it in its usual spot when she got home the night before. I looked out the window and sure enough the car was sitting in its regular spot! It is absolutely impossible that three people could have passed the car without seeing it.
By the way, people often ask why I never noticed that she was in her bedroom. When she was in high school my daughter was not the neatest child on the planet, so we always kept her bedroom door closed. It was closed when i went to bed that night, and closed when I woke up the next morning, so it never occurred to me that she might be home.
Theories
Poltergeists
A poltergeist is described as a playful ghost, and some believe that poltergeists are to blame for disappearing/reappearing objects. There are a few problems with this theory. First of all, one would have to have a lot of objects vanishing and reappearing for it to be blamed on a poltergeist. Secondly, poltergeist activity is almost always extremely disruptive and it usually centers around an adolescent. Although objects may appear and disappear during poltergeist cases, these are usually bizarre occurrences where objects which are often unknown to the people in the house appear out of nowhere. This includes jewelry, money dated from decades earlier, and showers of stones falling inside of a home. Lost keys? I don’t think poltergeists think that small!
Alien Interference
If you have any interest in UFO phenomenon, then no doubt you've heard stories of abductees experiencing missing time. Time is a funny thing. It doesn't behave the way we think it does. In a sense, time doesn't really exist. Time is subjective, so if some sort of inter-dimensional being such as an alien were to invade our space, their mere presence may affect the way we perceive time in our little slice of the universe. Now, I don't think aliens wanted some sugar, borrowed my sugar bowl, then returned it. But then again ... you never know!
Temporary Invisibility
This is interesting because it is exactly how it felt when my computer keyboard went missing. After it turned up, I felt as if I must have been looking right at it, but I just couldn’t see it. This seems impossible since I was sitting right in front of where it had been and where it turned up again, but that's how it felt afterward. Why would an object become invisible? One reason could be because of a …
Dimensional Shift
If we accept that there are more than three dimensions then it’s possible that my computer keyboard somehow shifted into another dimension, then shifted back. Or something even creepier might have happened. I might have temporarily shifted into another dimension where my computer keyboard didn’t exist. The dimensional shift theory and the parallel universe shift theory (see below) may also explain the existence of ghosts. Ghosts may be specters from other dimensions, other universes, or other times.
Parallel Universe Shift
This is my favorite theory, and the one that I feel best explains DOS. Think of the world you live in right now. You may be married, have four beautiful children, a dog, and a nice house. Now imagine layer upon layer of other possible worlds that you also live in. There may be a world where you never married, you have no children, and you live in an apartment where they don’t allow dogs. Or another world where your life took a totally different direction and you became a Tibetan monk or a TV weatherman. Layer upon layer of different realities just as real as the one that you are currently focused on. None of the other ‘yous’ are aware of each other, but together they make up the total-you. The real you is the sum of all of their parts. What if missing objects are really just a brief refocusing of our attention into one of these other worlds. It makes a lot of sense that things would not be where we expect them to be. In a slightly different version of my life in a parallel universe, I might keep my sugar bowl somewhere else. Very much like Alice going through the looking glass and seeing her house looking almost the same, it's very possible that we slip in and out of these other versions of our lives without noticing; that is, until something is missing from where we expect it to be.
Resources
VIDEOS
There was no one else in the house at the time, so I assumed that I was mistaken and that I hadn't put it back on the stove - but where was it? My son and I looked all over the kitchen for the sugar bowl – on the stove, in the cabinets above the stove, on the shelves next to the stove, and on the kitchen counters. The sugar bowl was nowhere to be found. This was extremely puzzling, as I knew that I had just used it, but since we couldn't find it I took out a bag of sugar from the pantry and gave my son sugar for his cereal.
I went back in the family room which is in full view of the kitchen and finished my coffee. About 10 minutes later I walked into the kitchen to get a glass from the cabinet next to the stove and there on the stove in its regular place was the sugar bowl! I actually gasped when I saw it. I called my son down from his room and asked if he had put it there, but he swore he didn't. He confirmed that the sugar bowl had not been in its usual place, and that we both had thoroughly looked all over the kitchen for it.
Remember, there was no one else in the house at the time and I could see the kitchen the entire time I was in the family room drinking my coffee. As you can see, if you are looking in the cabinets above and to the left and right of the stove, you can easily see the shelf. There is no way that we both could have missed seeing the bowl had it been on the shelf. The disappearance and reappearance of the sugar bowl is a total mystery.
This next story is taken directly from an email that I sent to a friend immediately after it happened on 13 February 2012. I sent the email at 6:55 AM.
"Hi -- Just a quick but STRANGE story about my morning. I was in our ‘master bathroom’ getting ready for work. I had used a pair of scissors earlier this morning to cut open a package and they were still on the bathroom counter. I was worried that my three-year -old daughter would get a hold of them and hurt herself, so I took them out of the bathroom to the vanity just outside the bathroom door and put them in the top drawer. As I put them in the drawer I was thinking that I would put them right in the front rather than push them to the back of the drawer so my wife would be able to find them, and so no one would cut their fingers on them if they rummaged through the drawer looking for something. I put the scissors in the drawer and closed it. I then went directly back to the bathroom, shaved, and brushed my teeth, then I walked into the bedroom to finish getting dressed.
I never left the bedroom, and no one came in the room while I was getting dressed. After I got dressed, I walked back into the bathroom. As I was combing my hair I looked over and the scissors were back on the bathroom counter!! They weren't in the exact same place as they had been before I had put them in the drawer, but they were in the same general location. I was really stunned. I clearly remember putting them in the drawer, and even remember noticing which way the points of the scissors were facing when I put them there."
This next story happened while I was at work. I walked into my office and sat down at my desk in front of my computer. I went to put my hands on the keyboard to login, but noticed that it was missing. The monitor was on my desk, as was the computer itself, but the keyboard was missing. I sat there for several seconds, surprised that there was no keyboard. The desk is very old, and I noticed all of the scratched wood on the desktop - something I don’t normally see because it’s always covered by the computer keyboard.
I went around to the back of the computer to see if it had somehow fallen off the desk. I checked the computer port where the keyboard should have been plugged into and found that was empty. I checked the floor under the desk to see if it was there, but it was not. After searching for a while I assumed that the computer technician had taken it way to replace it for some reason, so I got up from my desk and moved to my colleagues computer which was on the other side of the desk. I logged in and did some work online.
A few minutes later my colleague came into the office. I explained that I was using her computer because the keyboard to mine was missing. A short time later I got up from my colleague's computer and went to my side of the desk to retrieve some papers. I was totally shocked to see my computer keyboard sitting in it's usual place!! There is absolutely no way that I could've missed it. I had sat at my computer looking for it for quite a while. I am positive the keyboard was gone. I never left the room the entire time this incident occurred, and my computer was right across from me the entire time it was missing. No one could have returned it without my having seen them as they would have to have passed by me to get to my side of the desk.
This last story involves something a little bigger than a pair of scissors, a sugar bowl, or a computer keyboard. It involves a missing car!
One Friday evening my daughter, Carly, borrowed one of the family cars to visit her friend in a neighboring town. She said that she might stay overnight at her friend’s house, and if she did that she would be back sometime in the morning.
Early the next morning I had to drive my son to the train station. We got into my car and drove up the driveway and we both commented that Carly must have stayed over her friend's house that night because the car was not in the driveway. When I came home from the train station, I looked to see if the car was back but it was not. I assumed that Carly was still at her friend’s house.
Later that morning, my wife went for her daily run. She went through the garage, ran straight up the driveway, went for her run around the neighborhood, and ran back down the driveway to the garage. When she came into the house I asked her if the car was back yet, but she said it was not.
I started to get concerned because I hadn't heard from my daughter, so I called her cell phone.
She picked up immediately. I asked her where she was and she said that she was upstairs in her bedroom! "You're in your bedroom? Where is the car?" I asked. She said it was in the driveway. I told her it wasn't there, but she insisted that it must be because she parked it in its usual spot when she got home the night before. I looked out the window and sure enough the car was sitting in its regular spot! It is absolutely impossible that three people could have passed the car without seeing it.
By the way, people often ask why I never noticed that she was in her bedroom. When she was in high school my daughter was not the neatest child on the planet, so we always kept her bedroom door closed. It was closed when i went to bed that night, and closed when I woke up the next morning, so it never occurred to me that she might be home.
Theories
Poltergeists
A poltergeist is described as a playful ghost, and some believe that poltergeists are to blame for disappearing/reappearing objects. There are a few problems with this theory. First of all, one would have to have a lot of objects vanishing and reappearing for it to be blamed on a poltergeist. Secondly, poltergeist activity is almost always extremely disruptive and it usually centers around an adolescent. Although objects may appear and disappear during poltergeist cases, these are usually bizarre occurrences where objects which are often unknown to the people in the house appear out of nowhere. This includes jewelry, money dated from decades earlier, and showers of stones falling inside of a home. Lost keys? I don’t think poltergeists think that small!
Alien Interference
If you have any interest in UFO phenomenon, then no doubt you've heard stories of abductees experiencing missing time. Time is a funny thing. It doesn't behave the way we think it does. In a sense, time doesn't really exist. Time is subjective, so if some sort of inter-dimensional being such as an alien were to invade our space, their mere presence may affect the way we perceive time in our little slice of the universe. Now, I don't think aliens wanted some sugar, borrowed my sugar bowl, then returned it. But then again ... you never know!
Temporary Invisibility
This is interesting because it is exactly how it felt when my computer keyboard went missing. After it turned up, I felt as if I must have been looking right at it, but I just couldn’t see it. This seems impossible since I was sitting right in front of where it had been and where it turned up again, but that's how it felt afterward. Why would an object become invisible? One reason could be because of a …
Dimensional Shift
If we accept that there are more than three dimensions then it’s possible that my computer keyboard somehow shifted into another dimension, then shifted back. Or something even creepier might have happened. I might have temporarily shifted into another dimension where my computer keyboard didn’t exist. The dimensional shift theory and the parallel universe shift theory (see below) may also explain the existence of ghosts. Ghosts may be specters from other dimensions, other universes, or other times.
Parallel Universe Shift
This is my favorite theory, and the one that I feel best explains DOS. Think of the world you live in right now. You may be married, have four beautiful children, a dog, and a nice house. Now imagine layer upon layer of other possible worlds that you also live in. There may be a world where you never married, you have no children, and you live in an apartment where they don’t allow dogs. Or another world where your life took a totally different direction and you became a Tibetan monk or a TV weatherman. Layer upon layer of different realities just as real as the one that you are currently focused on. None of the other ‘yous’ are aware of each other, but together they make up the total-you. The real you is the sum of all of their parts. What if missing objects are really just a brief refocusing of our attention into one of these other worlds. It makes a lot of sense that things would not be where we expect them to be. In a slightly different version of my life in a parallel universe, I might keep my sugar bowl somewhere else. Very much like Alice going through the looking glass and seeing her house looking almost the same, it's very possible that we slip in and out of these other versions of our lives without noticing; that is, until something is missing from where we expect it to be.
Resources
- http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/11/the-weird-world-of-vanishing-and-teleporting-objects/
- https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-disappearing-object-phenomenon-2595929
- https://www.ashtarcommandcrew.net/profiles/blogs/jotts-and-jottles-objects-that-suddenly-disappear-and-reappear
- http://blog.spiritualparadigm.org/consciousness/disappearing-objects-phenomenon-explanation/ (Good submitted stories at the end)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/51go4p/theory_dop_disappearing_object_phenomenon/
- http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/physicists-outline-10-different-dimensions-and-how-youd-experience-them
VIDEOS
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIjIG5jfRZ4 - A woman's experience with a watch that suddenly appeared in her sink.
- https://youtu.be/sqwGo4kQejg One man's experiences with DOP
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzjrlxXK1vU - World renowned channeler of Esther Hicks' audio which attempts to explain missing object phenomenon.
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