The title is perhaps a bit misleading, as I didn’t really hit someone with my car. They ran into me, when I was backing up, and it was only a small bump, they were not hurt in the slightest. I also am not sure if this post fits this community? It’s not “horror” exactly, but the whole thing makes absolutely no sense, I’ll try to explain…
Yesterday was a typical early September day in Alaska. The air was crisp outside in the morning, then warm again by afternoon, so the sweater I had thrown on was making me too hot. It was Labor Day here in the US, so I was off work, and I made a quick trip to Target to grab a couple of things. As I was pulling out of the parking space to leave, I checked my mirrors as well as my backup camera; again, it was a perfectly clear day, and my car was freshly washed so I could see out of the mirrors, windows, and backup camera perfectly. There were no people or other cars in sight, so I started to back out of the space, keeping my eyes on the backup camera. I was about halfway out of the space when someone seemed to drop out of the sky right behind my car, if you’ve ever played a video game, it was like they “no-clipped” into the space directly behind me.
I yelped and braked as quickly as I could, but the back of my car still bumped into the person, and they too yelped and fell backwards. I immediately threw the car into Park and leapt out, running around to the back to see if they were okay.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I said, rushing to the person’s side, who I could now see was a man around my age (late 20s to early 30s). “Are you alright? I swear I had my eyes on the backup camera the entire time, it must have glitched or something and I didn’t see you until you were right behind me.” I gently took his arm and helped him to his feet. He was white with blue, red-rimmed eyes and disheveled brown hair. He wore blue jeans that were a little dirty, and a blue cardigan type sweater. His face looked wild and scared, and I found myself wondering if he was on drugs. At first he pulled away from me, but then he grabbed my arm and inspected it. I was surprised, and said nothing for a moment.
“It’s okay!” He said quickly, his voice as erratic sounding as his appearance. “It was my fault. I mean it wasn’t, but it wasn’t your fault. It’s…” He dropped my arm then and gazed around, suddenly wrapping his arms around himself.
“Where… Are we…” He looked at Target, and then at the road beyond it, and at the mountains in the distance.
“Target…” I said slowly. “Listen man, did you um… Did you take something?” I asked him. “I’m not trying to get you in trouble, I swear, I just am confused as to what’s going on. Are you sure you’re alright? Did you hit your head when you fell?” He whipped his head back towards me and the look in his eyes, though still wild and erratic, seemed sad. He shook his head slowly.
“No… No I didn’t take anything, and I didn’t hit my head.” He took a deep breath and grabbed my wrist again. I was surprised and tried to pull my arm away but he held on. “Please… I’m sorry, I’m not trying to… Just… Are you real? I know I sound insane but please just answer me. Are you real?” His voice was so genuine, and so scared. I nodded.
“Yes… I am real. I mean, as far as I know,” I tried to joke. He moved his fingers over my wrist, as if trying to feel my bones under the skin. Then he quickly took his hand back.
“I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath again. “Where are we, I mean, what city? And…” He trailed off and looked at my car, then back to Target, which coincidentally has recently been renovated. “And what year is it?” I raised my eyebrows. I was still at this point pretty convinced that this man was tripping on something, but I had hit him with my car, so I decided to humor him.
“We’re in Anchorage, and it’s 2023.” He furrowed his brow and blinked rapidly.
“2023? What? And wait, Anchorage? Where is Anchorage? Is this the US?” I stared at him.
“I really think we should get you to a hospital,” I said carefully. He shook his head adamantly.
“Please, please just help me get my bearings.” I sighed.
“Anchorage is in Alaska, which yes, is part of the United States, though not the contiguous United States. And it is Monday, September 4th, 2023. Labor Day.” I took my phone out of my pocket then to prove it to him. I showed him the display that read “Monday, September 4, 2023”.
“What is that…” He murmured, gingerly taking the phone from my hand and inspecting it. Now I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was an actor of some kind, pretending to be a time traveler or something.
“It’s my phone,” I said. “My cell phone. Do you… Do you know what a cell phone is?”
“Yes, of course, I have a cell phone,” He said, as if in a daze. “But it doesn’t look like this.” He handed the phone back to me and fumbled in his jeans pocket, and produced a silver Motorola Krzr. I gaped at it and plucked it out of his hand like he had done with mine.
“Wow, I haven’t seen one of these in like 15 years!” I said, flipping the phone open. It was dead. I had a pink Razr when I was in middle school in 2007 and 2008 and I loved it, and many of my peers had Krzrs.
“What do you mean? It’s… It’s a popular phone,” The man said quizzically. “I’ve never seen yours. It kind of looks like that new Apple thing but…”
“A popular phone? A krzr? Sure in 2007,” I said, handing the phone back to him.
“But it’s… It should be 2009…” He said, somewhat hopelessly.
“What? They were popular in 2009?”
“No, right now. It’s… I thought… It should be 2009.” Now I furrowed my brow.
“I was 15 in 2009…” I said carefully. “I’m 29 now… It’s 2023. Ask anyone.” I swept my arm towards the store where people had been coming in and out. The man stared at me, then looked at the store, then back to me, and then suddenly he was crying. He sat down on the curb, sobbing into his hands. I stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. Finally, I sat next to him.
“Hey… I’m going to call someone, okay? I think you need to be checked out.” He shook his head fiercely when I said this, and grabbed my arms.
“Please don’t. Please. They’re just going to think I’m crazy. Please, let me call my family.” I stared at him, and against my better judgment, decided to trust him for the moment.
“Okay,” I said, unlocking my phone and handing it to him. He stared at it hopelessly. “Oh, sorry…” I said, reaching over and opening the phone keypad. He still just stared at it. “It’s a touch screen, you just touch the numbers.” He did so comically, poking each one with an outstretched finger, punching in a New York number. The line rang a few times, and then a woman’s voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Jenny?” The man asked, his voice cracking.
“Who is this?” Jenny asked him.
“It’s Dean.” He was crying again. The voice on the phone gasped.
“Listen Mister, whoever you are, that’s not fucking funny. I don’t care how long it’s been, for you to call here and pretend to be my brother–”
“Ask her to Facetime you,” I whispered to him. He looked at me, confused. I took the phone from him.
“Jenny, don’t hang up,” I said. “Are you on an iPhone right now?”
“No, this is the landline; who the fuck are you guys?”
“Jenny, I’m almost as confused as you, okay? Just… Do you have an iPhone?”
“Yes…” She still sounded angry, but now maybe a little hopeful.
“Call this number back on Facetime. Please, just do it.” Jenny said nothing, and then she hung up.
“What does that mean? What did you just tell her?” Dean asked me.
“Give it a second, I think she’ll do it,” I said.
“What is Face Times?” I didn’t have time to answer though, because then my phone was ringing with the Facetime call. I pressed the button to answer it and passed the phone to Dean. He immediately broke into sobs again when he saw her, and then she did too.
“Dean??” Her voice was shrill through her tears. “Mom!” She screamed at the top of her lungs. “Dad!!” Their parents came running at her screams, and asked her what was the matter. “It’s Dean!” She exclaimed, thrusting the phone at them. The next few minutes were chaos. The four of them were crying and yelling into the phone and at each other, and everybody was asking Dean where he had been for the last 14 years. I sat on the curb next to Dean as this all unfolded, shocked and confused. I kept looking at my hands and counting my fingers, trying to deduce if I was dreaming or not, but it seemed that I wasn’t. Finally, Jenny asked to talk to me.
“Dean, Dean honey, who are you with? Let me talk to her.” Dean passed the phone back to me.
“Who are you?” Jenny asked me, her voice elated. “How did you find him? Do you know where he’s been?” I told her my name (Claire), and that we were in Anchorage, Alaska, and that I had only met him shortly before when he materialized behind my car.
“I… I don’t know if he knows where he’s been,” I told her. “I think he’s in shock, he didn’t know what year it is or how he got here…”
“What? He… Oh my God… Dean, has someone been keeping you captive?” I turned the phone so that Dean could see her too. He shook his head.
“No I… There were no people, where I was… There were things, sometimes, but it was mostly empty. It was mostly just me. But… I knew I had been gone weeks, maybe even a couple of months, but it can’t have been 14 years I… That doesn’t make sense.”
“Dean, honey… Are you on drugs?” His mom asked him. Dean shook his head again.
“No! There wasn’t even… I mean… There was barely food or water there… I actually don’t even know how I survived for the weeks or months that it felt like I was there… I feel like I’m waking up from a dream.”
“Dean…” That was his dad. “We have to call someone, okay? You need to be checked out. We’re going to call an ambulance, and the three of us are going to be on the next flight to Alaska, okay? You, ma’am… Claire? Would you be able to just make sure he gets to the hospital? I think he’ll be okay there with the medical professionals until we can get there…”
“I can stay with him,” I said. “I’ll have to call my husband, and my parents, but I don’t want to leave a potential kidnapping victim alone.” They thanked me profusely, and then we hung up so that I could call and ambulance.
The ambulance came and took Dean to our best hospital, where he currently is with his family. My husband met us there yesterday afternoon, and he and I both stayed with Dean until his family arrived this morning. My husband, Paul, has a couple of theories as to what happened to Dean that are very different from the kidnapping and drug theories that I had come up with. The first thing he said was that it sounds like Dean was stuck in the Backrooms, but I discounted this pretty quickly, because not only are the Backrooms not real, the concept of them has only existed since 2019, which is ten years after Dean disappeared, so even if it was one of those things where people’s belief in something somehow makes it actually exist, they couldn’t have existed in 2009.
His next theory was that Dean was abducted by aliens. I believe that aliens exist, of course, but I don’t know how advanced I believe they are, nor have I heard of an abduction lasting so many years like that. With abduction cases, it seems that most people are either abducted and returned to exactly where they were taken from within a couple of days, or they are abducted and never seen again. So this explanation is possible, but I am still not sure if I think it’s very likely.
His last theory was that Dean somehow ended up in another dimension, like he was somewhere in the multiverse. Again, I am not sure if I for sure believe that the multiverse exists, but as insane as it sounds, I think this explanation might be the most plausible. Even if Dean was on drugs, he can’t possibly have been on drugs for the last 14 years, and his preliminary tox screens have come back clean anyway. There’s also the fact that he hasn’t aged… He was 31 when he disappeared in 2009, and everything about him indicates that he’s still 31. His “younger” sister Jenny was 21 when he disappeared and is now 34, making her three years older than her “older” brother. This is a big part of why Paul think that there’s something supernatural, or outside out realm of understanding happening here. I don’t know what to think.
I can of course update as we get more information, but I wanted to see if perhaps anyone else has any theories that we haven’t come up with. I am posting this with permission from Dean and his family, as we are all so confused. They are elated to have their son back, of course, but it just makes no sense. Dean has been resting a lot, but has promised to give us as many details about what for him was only a few weeks when he is lucid and awake.