Missing Time and Memory Anomalies

The Travis Walton Disappearance (1975)
On November 5, 1975, Arizona logger Travis Walton was struck by a beam of light from a hovering disc-shaped craft in front of six coworkers. He vanished for five days. When he returned, confused and dehydrated, he claimed to have been aboard a craft where beings examined him. Multiple lie detector tests supported his honesty, and the case remains one of the most credible abduction reports ever recorded.

The Missing Hour of the Hills
Betty and Barney Hill were driving through New Hampshire in 1961 when they saw a bright object in the sky. The next thing they remembered, they were 35 miles farther south with no idea how they got there. Under hypnosis, they described being taken aboard a craft and examined by non-human beings. The "missing time" lasted roughly two hours and included disturbing sensory impressions neither had discussed prior to regression.

The Empty Road Phenomenon
Drivers around the world have reported pulling into their driveway hours later than expected, or arriving early without explanation. One 2022 report from Oklahoma involved a man who drove 12 miles home, but GPS showed his vehicle stationary for 47 minutes along an empty stretch of road. He recalled seeing a fog-like shimmer and a sense of stillness, but nothing else. His dash cam shut off just before the gap in time.

Disappearing Time in the City
Some accounts come not from remote woods or highways, but urban sidewalks. In London, a woman on her lunch break walked two blocks to a cafe--but her coworkers later told her she was gone for 90 minutes. She remembers placing her order and hearing static or wind, then blinking and finding herself back outside the office building. Her phone clock had jumped forward, and security footage showed her walking in circles near a park bench.

Mind Theories and Explanations
Neurologists have proposed several theories to explain missing time episodes, including micro-sleep events, temporal lobe seizures, or transient global amnesia--a condition where short-term memory stops recording for several minutes or hours. Some researchers suggest intense emotional states or endogenous chemicals like DMT might cause altered perception. However, these explanations do not fully explain cases involving multiple witnesses or simultaneous equipment failures.