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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Jughead_J0nes on 2024-11-18 04:04:20+00:00.

You know that optical illusion where you’re driving by a plane coming in to land, and you’re both moving at the perfect speed and the perfect angle, and it looks like it’s not moving at all? I’ve seen this dozens of times, and it never bothered me, until it destroyed my life.

I’m a pretty regular person, at least professionally. I show up for work at 6:58 AM every day, and leave right at 4:00. So when I noticed a 737 doing the “not moving” illusion two days in a row, I didn’t think anything of it. Nothing beyond “Hey, I saw a plane there yesterday.” The third day I figured it just must be the same flight. The 2:30 in from Chicago or something. It quickly became a fixture on my drive home, a little joke I had with myself. “There’s the magic plane again!”

After a week or so I had a day where I worked late. Nothing too bad, 15 extra minutes or so to finish up a project. When I drove back home, there it was, in the same spot, doing its same illusion. This confused me more than anything. I didn’t think the world was ending, but the chance that the plane happened to be 15 minutes late on the same day I was, seemed pretty much impossible. I thought that maybe it was a different flight, but the plane looked like the same model, same airline, and I don’t think two planes would land so close to each other on the same runway, right?

The next day I got curious, so instead of taking a little overtime I decided to leave 15 minutes early and break even on the week. When I took the curve onto the highway, there it was. The same plane 15 or so minutes early this time. If the fight being delayed the same day I was is almost impossible, the same flight being 15 minutes early the same time I was is definitely impossible. It really shook me, and I didn’t think about much else when I got home, or at work the next day.

I decided to run a little test. I felt on the verge of crazy, and even my test felt a little silly at the time. When I got off work, instead of heading straight home, I found a parking lot near the airport, an Arby’s. I parked and found my “magic plane” in the sky, expecting it to just fly by because I was at a different angle. I figured the optical illusion would break if I wasn’t driving. I was wrong, because it wasn’t an illusion. The plane stayed there. Minute after agonizing minute, it just hung in the air, refusing to move.

I stayed there for a half an hour, every second begging the plane to move. I tried to convince myself it had a crazy headwind. I even tried to convince myself it might be some new experimental commercial aircraft that could hover. I mean as wild as that sounds it seems more probable than a plane just… stopping. I stayed until I saw one plane land and another take off. That’s what finally convinced me I wasn’t going to see anything change.

Thank god it was a Friday, I couldn’t imagine going to work the day after that. I barely made it home. It was like driving after learning my Dad died, just so full of emotion that basic function was hard.

When I did get home, I didn’t do much. I just showered and tried to go to sleep. I guess eventually my brain just got tired of running the same few explanations and gave up.

I felt better in the morning. I managed to sleep off the shakes of the previous night and put together a decent breakfast for myself, trying to fill the gap of a skipped dinner. I contemplated going to the doctor, but I could only imagine the incredulous look on her face as she shipped me off to a shrink. I was always scared of doctors anyway. I ended up spending that weekend holed up, just watching movies and YouTube. I realized that I was gravitating towards things with movement, finding them more comforting than anything else.

The next few work days went by with very little of note. It might be more crazy than the plane itself how fast I adapted to it being there. I just kinda… didn’t look up. I knew it would be there, but I somehow managed to convince myself the whole situation was fine. As long as I didn’t look at it, I didn’t have to think about it too hard. Over that week at work my headspace slowly started to fill back up with the normal drudge any office type worker thinks about. PTO, deadlines, the works.

I asked a couple of my coworkers about the plane at the start of the week (indirectly of course, asking if they know the illusion I was talking about) and only got confused looks and segways to other topics. I left it alone after that, and by the end of the week I only thought about the plane when I was passing it on the highway. Again, crazy how quickly it became normal. I think that’s why it shook me so hard when I saw a tree off the highway that refused to move.

There was a breeze. I know there was a breeze. All the trees around this one were moving, just a gentle back and forth of their branches. This one was stuck. I guess it’s possible the trees around it were blocking the wind, but it was more than just not moving. It was stuck. Like pausing a movie. Even when something isn’t moving it has some sort of life to it, some imperceptible sense of change. This tree didn’t have that.

I took off work and went to the doctor the next day, yelling at myself for normalizing the plane so quickly. I should’ve gone the second I stopped and confirmed it was frozen in air. Like I said, doctors scare me. I don’t like being poked and prodded just for the doctor to tell me I’m actually fine and not to worry. I figured it was time to get over that, though, considering at this point I was genuinely scared I was losing it. I have some health problems that run in my family. My Dad died of some heart thing they never really got to the bottom of, and his Dad before that. I didn’t think some genetic heart issues would translate to going insane but I’d be willing to go with just about any theory that made a semblance of sense.

The doctor told me exactly what I expected to hear. Physically I was fine. I could tell she wanted to just ship me off to a shrink, but I insisted the problem had to be more material. I did do a psych evaluation, but that turned up nothing besides the obvious. Sure I was acting strange, but that all related back to the stuck things, easily explained by stress, nothing to imply why I was seeing them in the first place. After squabbling over a brain scan for what felt like hours the doctor relented, warning me that insurance would most likely not cover it. I told her I didn’t care and would pay out of pocket if I had too.

I never want to do an MRI again. I think I’d rather let my brain rot if fixing it meant going back in that donut of hell. If you don’t know, an MRI machine is LOUD, like can’t hear your own thoughts loud. Weird rhythmic thunking and clanging noises just driving into your head. I won’t embarrass myself by trying to type out the sounds but trust me, they’re awful. I was in there for 30 seconds of my 20 minute scan before waves of panic washed over me, made worse by the pads and tape that were immobilizing my head. I didn’t think I was claustrophobic when I went in there, but I sure as hell do now.

The worst part of it was that the MRI showed us… nothing. I guess it showed us something by showing us nothing. The scan came up clean. There was no tumor, no shadow, nothing. So either things really are getting stuck, or I’m just going crazy.

I went home. I put up all my PTO, told work I had a family emergency, and got on the road. Pulled an 8 hour drive in one go. I nearly ran out of gas but I really didn’t want to stop. The more I moved the less chance I saw something stuck. I still saw them though. I counted three on the drive. A sign on a chain link fence, a bush next to a stop sign, and a section of a wheat field. All frozen. I wonder how many I missed. I have to assume there’s more I just never saw.

I felt better after a few days at home. A nostalgic sense of normalcy was exactly what my head needed. Even just a change of scenery seemed to help. For the last half of the drive or so, I didn’t see any of the stuck things. Either my brain just started to calm down on the way back home, or the stuck things were somehow localized. I don’t know which one I was hoping for, but I didn’t really care. The stuck things felt far away, and that brought me some peace.

My Mom wasn’t totally sure what was going on, but she was happy to have me home. I hinted at what was going on with the stuck things, but dropped it when I could tell she wouldn’t understand. I ended up just telling her work had been stressful and I needed a reset, which seemed to satisfy her.

Three days into my impromptu vacation I felt good enough to go out. I called up a few high school friends and asked if they could hang out. I don’t make it back home that often, so even though they have their own lives to pay attention to, three of them managed to make time, which I appreciated. We went and saw a movie, which ended up being a mistake. As we walked into the theater, I saw my first stuck person.

I just glimpsed her out of the corner of my eye at first. A woman sitting on a bench, presumably waiting for someone. I barely saw her, but the fraction of a second I did was enough. I’m too good at spotting the stuck things. I could just tell something was wrong. I couldn’t look back, I just kept my head straight and walked right into the theater. My stomach dropped, and I spent the movie fighting off a panic attack. Did the stuck things follow me here? Am I causing them? Are they actuall…

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