✕
Thompson
12/2015
It was December 23rd, 2015 (or Christmas Eve Eve, as my sisters and I would call it). I was 15 years old. My mom was driving my two younger sisters and me home from our grandpa's house after we'd spent the day shopping with him and our uncle. It was snowing, and the sun had almost completely set; it was dark enough that we had our headlights on. We were going southbound on Rt 528, approaching the 4-way intersection of Rt 528 and Rt 166, where we would then turn right. We were talking about our day and listening to Felíz Navidad on the radio, and as we got closer to that intersection, I saw a car coming over the hill in the wrong lane, coming straight toward us. What happened next happened in the span of just 3-5 seconds.
We all stopped talking. None of us screamed or made a sound. My mom didn't hit the brakes. I looked around the car at my mother and sisters. Their eyes were wide and unblinking, but they were completely expressionless otherwise, staring straight forward, sitting perfectly still. Their faces gave me this awful feeling that I can't quite put into words. It was like I was looking at my family, but they weren't there; they weren't in their bodies. They seemed lifeless, or soulless or something, and I was simultaneously grieving for them and expecting to die in the next few seconds.
Then I blinked, and we were driving west on 166, just beyond the intersection. My mom and sisters were animated and talking again, as though they'd never stopped. It was so sudden and jarring, it took me a second to remember what had just been about to happen, but when I did, it felt far away, like it had been hours ago, but only seconds had passed. Felíz Navidad was still playing. I snapped my head around to look back at the intersection for the car that should've hit us. And there was no car anywhere around. I have no memory of it hitting us, but also no memory of us making that turn.
I don't think I spoke again for the rest of the drive home, but when we got there safely, I asked my mom and sisters if they'd experienced that too (though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer). None of them had, but my mom believes me 100%. It's strange, we'd just been talking about quantum immortality earlier that week... it's sort of like all of our consciousnesses "jumped," but theirs jumped a few seconds earlier, and went somewhere different than mine. That's my best guess at what happened, anyway.
Submitted by:
Crista