September 3, 2025 • 43 mins
At a Fleetwood Mac tribute concert in Palm Springs, Keston and Andrea witnessed something impossible: the band slowed, their bodies slumped, and for a few surreal seconds it felt like time itself froze. Even stranger—the moment was captured on video, complete with a bizarre audio anomaly.
In this episode of Close Encounter Club, we unpack their story and explore what might explain it:
👁 Alice in Wonderland Syndrome and how the brain can warp time
🧗 Albert Heim’s near-death fall and extreme time dilation
Was it psychology, neurology… or a true break in reality?
🔎 Listen now and decide for yourself.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So the band was playing, and we could see the band slowing down.
(00:09):
It was like somebody put their finger on the record, and then lifted it off.
First I thought they were slowing down, and then when they just slowed down, their actions
were even slowing down.
All their bodies just almost slumped over as they were slowing down.
I mean we both looked at each other and went, what was that?
(00:33):
She's like, time just starts to slow down.
And I like happened to have been recording with my phone.
What was that that we just experienced, and kind of talked about it the whole drive home,
and I was like, well I was videotaping.
Let me see if we got anything.
And we heard that, that we're like bleep bleep sounds.
(00:57):
Do you hear it Justin?
I've never seen the video.
Ohhhh.
Time is a mysterious thing.
We live inside of it, we take it for granted, but what is it really?
Physics tells us that it isn't fixed, that time bends, that it slows down near the speed
(01:18):
of light, it drags in the pull of gravity.
A second for you could be thousands of years for somebody else.
But what happens when ordinary people, not astronauts, not physicists, experience time
slowing down and stopping?
Well that's exactly what happened with the two experiencers that we're talking to today.
(01:39):
Their story isn't polished and they were a little bit nervous to speak to me, but I
can assure you one thing, that they weren't lying and they're not looking for attention.
And what they described blew my mind.
I'm Justin Gearhart, and this is The Close and Counter Club.
And tonight we're going to be stepping into one of the strangest phenomenon that I've
ever heard of.
It's going to be less interview and more investigation.
(02:00):
Because if time can really stop, what are we doing here?
The rules of reality are not what we thought they were.
In this episode, I'm asking you to suspend disbelief for a moment.
You are going to see the video that Keston and Andrea captured that night.
Now, it's not a clear smoking gun, but it is a genuine piece of their experience.
(02:21):
And sometimes, it's those imperfect, fleeting moments that tell the most powerful stories.
This is Episode 19, When Time Stopped, and you're listening to The Close and Counter Club.
(02:47):
So this was the early days of the podcast, and I was searching through Reddit to find
some stories to feature on the show.
And I stumbled across a Reddit post that said,
Wife and I experienced a time slowdown at the same time with a video.
This obviously piqued my interest because, according to the title, there were two witnesses,
and it was also captured on video.
(03:08):
Unfortunately, the post has been removed from the Glitch and the Matrix subreddit.
I guess they didn't consider it a glitch.
But from what I remember, it was a really captivating story.
So as always, I messaged the OP and invited them on the show.
And to my delight, they agreed and said,
Sure, we'll talk to you.
So they booked a time, and we met on Discord.
(03:31):
Just like I always do, I asked the guests to introduce themselves.
I'm Keston Ott Dahl.
I am from Southern California.
We just moved to Palm Springs from the Bay Area.
We lived in an RV and we've traveled the country a couple of times.
That's kind of what we do.
We consider ourselves gypsies.
That's really who I am.
(03:52):
My name is Andrea.
I'm 42.
Beautiful soul.
Hey, I'd be nervous too if I was talking to me on the internet.
So I can't blame them.
So I briefly told them what my belief system was and why I started this podcast,
to try to loosen it up a little bit.
And then I asked them what their belief systems were.
(04:14):
I have always known when, you know, since I was a little kid, you know,
I think Bob Lazar came out and did unsolved mysteries.
I think it's what it was.
And I knew that happened.
I just knew that happened.
He's telling the truth.
So I've always known that and, you know, we have had a few experiences,
but nothing like this, what happened to us in October.
(04:39):
That was profound.
So what about you?
For me, I was very similar to you, Justin.
We're like kind of Catholic, Christian upbringing,
not really believing in paranormal stuff much.
But as I got older and I met Keston,
(05:03):
I kind of was more open to like spirituality
and things possibly happening.
She kind of opened that door for me a little bit.
Listen, I'm very strategic when I ask these questions.
I'm trying to get into the actual mindset of our guests,
why they think what they think.
And frankly, anytime that someone says that they know something is true,
(05:27):
my red flags go up.
So when Keston said that she knows that Bob Lazar is telling the truth,
I mean, how could you?
Now, I understand what she's saying because I feel the same way.
There's this gut feeling you get that someone's telling the truth
or that someone's lying.
We all have that instinct.
Andre, on the other hand, she's a Catholic upbringing.
(05:49):
She's very skeptical at first,
but then as life unfolds, her perceptions change, her opinions change.
Either way, at this point in the conversation, I didn't have any major concerns.
They just seem like two normal people.
They're about to share a crazy experience that they had.
I used to sing in bands and Fleetwood Mac is one of my favorites.
(06:13):
And there was a tribute band playing.
We go, we go, there's free concerts in the park here in the desert,
Palm Springs area, all the time.
So when we like to go to them, it's a family thing that we do.
We go to them every time they have, they were pretty much there every time we go.
We get the front row seats.
The first song that they did was Dreams.
So the band was playing and we could see the band slowing down.
(06:40):
I don't even know how to describe it, Justin.
I mean, it was almost like if you saw a record player,
it was like somebody put their finger on the record and then lifted it off.
And it was time.
It wasn't, it wasn't the band slowing it.
At first I thought, is this band slowing down?
Yeah, they weren't looking at each other.
(07:01):
And I know when you're in a band and your drummer's a little slow, you go,
Yeah, give him the stink eye.
Like you can get your timing right, bro.
This band, everyone in the band slowed down.
And then it almost in person came to a halt time.
(07:22):
First I thought they were slowing down and then when they just slowed down,
their actions were even slowing down.
Everyone, if a band, if your drummer's slow, he'll lead the band slow down,
but not like this.
They all slowed down.
No one looked at each other.
It was not a band thing.
And then when they, I was like, then I thought,
they're going to stop this song in the middle of their performance.
(07:46):
And then they picked right back up and it sped right back up to normal time.
And I looked at her and she looked at me and we just were like,
what just happened?
Like, I think he used explicit.
I remember like, yeah.
Did you see that?
We both did.
(08:08):
I mean, we both looked at each other and went, what was that?
And she's like, time just start slowed down.
And I was just like, oh my God.
And we actually got up and we looked at the crowd.
Nobody seemed to notice.
And we were just like, oh my God, what was that?
And she was like, what was that?
And I was like, oh, that's weird.
(08:30):
And yeah, like for me, like she was saying, you know,
kind of was like the record.
Like the visual for me was like, kind of,
imagine like they were robotic animatronic, you know, players.
And then like the plug got pulled on them.
And like all of a sudden, like she was saying,
like all their bodies just almost slumped over as they were slowing down.
(08:52):
And then like when they almost stopped,
and then it was like playing their song back at speed.
It's just like the craziest thing.
It wasn't just a timing thing or a tempo thing.
And it wasn't just one person.
It was, you know, everybody in the band was behaving that way.
(09:15):
Was it, was there like a,
I'm not sure if you know what the term like a Doppler shift where like,
you know, when you hear a train and it's like,
you hear it from in a distance and it sounds like a different pitch.
Then as it gets close to you, the pitch changes.
And as it gets farther away, it changes again.
Like the tone kind of goes higher to lower.
When I was editing this episode,
(09:36):
what happens next really jumped out at me as something that was important.
Think about this.
I asked both Keston and Andrea a specific question about what they experienced.
And both of them could have very easily had different answers.
Their perceptions could have been different.
Who knows, right?
But just watch how enthusiastic they answer that question about Doppler effect.
(10:01):
Did that happen with the music too?
Where it like it's so like slow, like deeper kind of.
Yes, yes.
You know, a singer.
I mean, I got it.
I knew I was like, what the heck?
But it was, it was like the sound, her voice.
(10:23):
It was just like, it was almost like,
it was like she was stopped singing in the middle of the song.
Like, yeah, but slowly, it wasn't a breath.
It was like.
It's funny.
I played in bands in my 20s as well.
I thought my original dream was to be in a band and go on tour and all that kind of stuff.
(10:45):
And I play guitar.
And the only way to really, to my understanding, other than maybe like an effects pedal to make that like,
that sound be like a whammy bar kind of thing, but to have the whole band.
Do that at the same time.
It just, it wasn't a whammy bar moment.
No, and I like having to have been recording with my phone because I do that with a lot of the bands.
(11:14):
My daughter actually really likes to go back and watch the videos and dance to them and stuff.
So I was just recording.
And I stopped recording like right after that happened so that we could talk about it.
And then later on we went back because we were talking about it.
Like the minute we got back in the car, we were like,
we were like, what was that that we just experienced and kind of talked about it the whole drive home.
(11:36):
And I was like, well, I was videotaping.
Let me see if we got anything.
And like, we got home and looked at it.
And like, it felt like it got a little slow on the video, right?
When it happened, I go, it looks like it got a little slow, but not like we experienced in person.
Yeah, it wasn't like that.
So then, so then, you know, we were just kind of sad on it, but it's haunted us.
(11:59):
We think about it every day, all day.
I mean, we think about it all the time.
We talked to everybody about it.
And then a friend of ours last week said, hey, I want to see the video that you recorded.
And so we like, okay, well, and we hadn't really seen it since that first time.
Because the time didn't slow down like we saw it on there, but the time does slow a little, a little for some people.
(12:21):
Some people it slows down a lot.
But when we listen to it, then we heard that that we're like bleep bleep sounds.
Do you hear it, Justin?
No, I know.
I've never seen the video.
Oh, is it on Reddit?
How do I see it?
I want to look at it right now.
It's on YouTube.
It's on YouTube.
Did you post it in your Reddit thread?
(12:43):
Yeah.
How the heck did I miss that?
Like the video in its entirety, I think it's like 40 seconds.
It's not super long.
But like the anomaly, like the bleep blip happens around like the 30 to 35 second mark within that.
Some people say they notice the slowdown starting around 25 seconds.
Some say like around 27 seconds.
(13:06):
Some people like see weird flashes with the lights.
So everybody seems to see something different in that video.
Right.
Some people don't see anything at all.
So you're saying, hold on.
You're saying that it's the same video, but depending on who watches it, they either don't see anything.
Or they see something or even different things.
(13:30):
Yes.
A lot of it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hold on.
Let me load this out.
Yeah.
We went back and we watched the video and then we heard that bleep bleep bleep.
And we're like, yeah, we can't see the time slow.
But now we have this audio anomaly exactly where the time slowed.
(13:53):
All right.
So I'm about to show you the video that Keston and Andrea captured.
So if you're listening to the audio only version of this episode, it might be a good time to flip over to YouTube or Spotify to watch the video version.
I'll also be posting this video on our Instagram if you want to check it out there.
(14:23):
Hey, guys, before we continue, I just want to say real quick.
(14:52):
If you haven't subscribed, now's the perfect time to do so.
We're really trying to make a difference here in the scientific community.
Try to explain some of these paranormal and unexplained events.
So your subscription, your likes, your five star reviews is going a long way to get this podcast out there to more people.
So please take a moment and do it.
We would really appreciate it.
(15:14):
Back to the episode.
I definitely heard it.
I definitely heard like it.
It was weird.
Like, again, being being in a band, it doesn't sound like it's out of tune or anything like that.
Nobody knows my phone's going off.
It doesn't sound like it's out of tune.
It doesn't sound like a drummer.
Yeah, I didn't hear it.
(15:36):
I didn't hear the blip, blip, blip, but I was more, I think I was more focused on like the, the, the slowing of slowing down.
You got to listen at 32.
There was like an audio.
All right.
Let me, let me try one more time.
2000 years later, I do hear it.
It's very subtle.
(15:58):
It is.
It's when she's saying the word mad.
So like, the heartbeat drives you mad.
And like, I know it sounds kind of crazy.
I was like, looking up the lyrics.
I'm like, maybe there's like some hidden message in here or something and like, I don't know, maybe there could be.
It's weird.
(16:19):
That's weird.
So our friend tells us, I want to hear, I want to see the video and we, and so the second time we saw it and we heard that blip, blip, blip, right?
Yeah.
That was an audio.
That's not, that's not coming from the band.
And why would that be at the exact second that we have, we're almost, we're time stopped.
Right.
It could be both, and it'd be, it'd be different if one of you experienced it because you're just like, okay, like maybe, you know, sometimes audio stuff can play like a trick on your mind.
(16:46):
Like neurologically, like maybe like there's a dissonance thing that's happening.
And okay, maybe it's just like a perception thing, but you both saw the exact same thing that is not captured in this video.
And even in the video, there is some weird things that happen, which is that's the crazy part that is kind of blowing my mind a little bit right at this present moment.
(17:09):
Blowing a lot of people's minds, right?
Yeah.
So how long did this last?
Was it just like a few seconds that they slowed down?
It was a few seconds, but in to us, at least to me, Andre, you have to answer it yourself.
But to me, it felt like it lasted a long time to me.
To me, I actually ran through things in my head as they were slowing down.
(17:32):
First, I was like, are they slowing down the song?
And then it was like, are they stopping the song?
Where are they looking at each other?
Maybe I'm having a stroke.
That's really what I got.
And then when I looked over at her and she looked at me, I'm like, this is no stroke.
Something weird is going on.
And then it like almost came to a halt and we look at each other again, going, oh, what the heck is happening?
(17:55):
And then when they picked it back up, it was just...
I even texted my aunt, which I could share with you, because I texted our aunt saying, oh my God, we just experienced the most craziest thing.
And I texted her right after it happened.
Like, time just stopped.
And then picked it back up.
For me, let's go ahead and say, for me, it didn't feel quite as long.
(18:20):
Like, I would say it felt like three seconds, like three counts to me of like the band playing and then like coming to the halt.
It felt like about three seconds for me.
I see.
And was it...
So I know it was gradual slowing down.
Was it also gradual coming back up?
(18:41):
Like a record would be kind of thing?
It was also gradual, but a faster gradual.
That makes sense.
It does.
It does.
So they were slowing down, you know, maybe a count of four or something like that.
But then it came back and I counted two kind of thing.
Yes.
I see.
Okay.
And did either of you have any other...
(19:03):
I don't want to say like symptoms, but did you have any other effects like either before or after this happened?
Like, did you have any headaches or any like lightheadedness or anything like that that would have been attributed to it?
Nothing like that.
Everything was fine.
Nothing.
Yeah, no.
Yeah.
We're like, it was in the afternoon.
It was like six o'clock.
We weren't drinking.
(19:25):
We weren't...
We were just sitting there enjoying the band, getting ready to get up and dance, to be honest with you.
But when that happened, I don't know if we...
I mean, I guess we did get a dance later, but honestly, it kind of ruined our night.
Yeah.
Because we were just like...
We were just like...
You're just perplexed.
Like your brain's just trying to wrap your mind around what you saw and like, yeah.
(19:48):
When you experience something like this, you try to make...
First, you're in shock.
The last bit of information that I wanted to gather from them is what they thought it was.
The reason I do this is if by chance someone is lying or trying to drive a certain narrative,
it should be pretty obvious.
This is what they said.
I'm like, I have my kind of like hypothesis.
(20:12):
I feel like it's either like proof of maybe multiple timelines and maybe we kind of did
like a timeline shift or like, if you kind of imagine like two films that you're editing
and you're trying to put them together and like, maybe you were off by just a little bit
or something like that when you spliced them.
(20:33):
And so there's kind of like this weird glitchy thing or it's like a literal...
We're in the simulation and it was like a glitch in the matrix kind of thing.
It's kind of what I think.
I know Kessin mentioned maybe like...
When it happened...
Abduction.
Yeah.
When it happened, I was actually going...
Yeah, I was.
I was like, did something come down here and do that?
(20:57):
You hear the audio.
I mean, it's just like that audio happening at the exact same time we saw that band time
slowed down.
And it's almost electronic, that audio.
And I know bands.
It's not sound equipment doing that at that exact time.
It's not a feedback.
That's something.
(21:19):
That sound is something.
It's at the exact...
So just to clarify though, that is the exact moment when she says the word mad is when
it started to happen and that's when you hear that little bloop-bloop noise.
The video creeps me out.
So I can't watch it very much.
It gives me the heebie-jeebies.
So I think I've seen it four times.
(21:40):
But after the second time I watched it and I saw that flashing light, I've never seen
it again.
Listening back to their story, a few things stood out to me.
As someone that has been in bands for over 10 years, right before the blip-blip-blip
happens, the band definitely slows down.
Shame on you, drummer.
It's for a brief moment, but there is maybe a measure or so where the tempo slows down
(22:06):
by maybe like 10 beats per minute.
It makes you feel a little bit off.
But then it goes to this sound.
And the sound reminds me of when you have a cell phone up to a microphone and a call
is coming in or a text message is coming in and you get this really bizarre sound.
I don't know how to describe it.
It's like a glitchy sound.
(22:27):
I do think that Keston and Andrea are telling the truth.
The question is, what happened?
I have heard of people experiencing time slowing down.
But usually it's with like near-death experiences or maybe when someone's at war and they're
in a gunfight and bullets are flying past them in slow motion.
(22:50):
Probably attributed to adrenaline, I'd assume.
But Keston and Andrea were not in any sort of gunfight.
They were in no danger and also both of them experienced the same exact thing as you've seen.
So the first thing I have to do is turn to Scully.
I need some ideas of where to start.
(23:11):
Alright, Scully, let's start broad.
People say that they've experienced time slowing down.
What is actually happening?
So when people say they felt time slowing down, usually what's happening is something called
tachysychia.
It's basically your brain going into overdrive during a high stress or high adrenaline situation.
So your perception speeds up and it feels like everything around you is moving in slow motion.
(23:33):
It's a well-documented phenomenon in situations like accidents or combat scenarios.
But here's the interesting part.
In cases like Keston and Andrea's where there's no immediate danger or adrenaline spike,
it suggests something outside the usual neurological explanation.
That's where we start looking at more unusual cases.
Like I was a wanderland syndrome or even certain documented UFO encounters where time perception
(23:54):
gets really weird.
So that's the kind of territory we're stepping into.
What specific cases are there that I can start researching and share with our listeners
that will help get to the bottom of what happened to Keston and Andrea?
So a couple of standout cases you can dive into would be first, the experience of Albert Heim,
a Swiss geologist who described intense time dilation during a mantoneering fall.
(24:18):
It's a classic tachysychia scenario and really well documented.
Next, look into cases of Alice and Wanderland syndrome where people experience distorted
time perception and size perception.
There's a well-documented medical case involving EEG monitoring that you could mention.
And for something more on the anomalous side, the 1976 Tehran UFO incident is fascinating.
Pilots reported that instruments and sense of time were disrupted, which is a pretty unique parallel.
(24:42):
All of these examples can help your listeners get a feel for the different angles
and might shed some light on what happened to Keston and Andrea.
Okay, so now that we've heard from Scully, I'm going to unpack two of the things that she talked about
because I did a deep dive into these two topics.
I'm going to try to be as concise as I possibly can to focus in how this could apply to Andrea
and Keston's experience.
(25:03):
Alice and Wanderland syndrome, or AIWS, is a rare neurological condition
that bends reality, literally.
People experience micropsea, which is where objects appear really small and tiny,
but also macropsea, which is where objects loom large.
There's also other things that I can't pronounce where objects appear farther or closer.
(25:26):
I would compare this to, like, a rear-view mirror in a car where it says
objects are closer than they appear, kind of like that.
And yes, even time itself can feel warped.
It can either be dragging or racing uncontrollably, and that's called tacky sensea.
One case involved an eight-year-old boy whose visual distortions, plus an EEG,
(25:50):
showing temporal, occipital slowing, matched a classic AIWS episode.
And a systematic review of 168 cases showed that time distortion is a core symptom of AIWS.
So AIWS gives us a very grounded, medicalized lens
through which to look at Keston and Andrea's experience.
(26:14):
And time itself can glitch in very real ways, but it's all in our brain.
The one thing that really gets me about Keston and Andrea's experience, though,
is that they both experience.
So in order for this to be the explanation as to what they experienced,
it's already a very rare medical condition.
So if they both experience that at the same time,
(26:37):
it seems very unlikely that that's the case.
The second thing that Scully brought up is Albert Heim,
who was a Swiss geologist in the late 1800s.
Heim fell roughly 20 meters while mountaineering,
a fall that would take approximately two seconds or so,
but in his mind, it lasted minutes.
He recalled every detail, thinking about his friends,
(27:00):
whether to remove his glasses or not, life flashing before his eyes.
He felt calm, detached, as if observing himself from the outside.
After surviving the fall, Heim gathered around 25 similar reports
from other climbers and workers, identifying this time-loss phenomenon
as a recurrent feature in near-death experiences.
(27:22):
Here, we're crossing neurology and extreme psychology.
Basically, the brain has a capability of protecting itself
and preserving itself in weird ways.
Chemicals release in the brain that potentially slow down time,
that allow us to potentially save ourselves.
(27:43):
If time is appearing to move slower, we can maybe grab for a rock
or we can grab a rope in time.
Our reflexes are faster.
And Albert Heim was one of the first people to document
how near-death experiences could cause time distortion.
Kesson and Andrea, they weren't in any danger,
not even perceived danger.
They were at a relaxing show listening to a cover band.
(28:06):
I just don't see how their brain would trigger this near-death experience.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
And again, they both experienced it.
So, I recorded this episode before Josh and I were really working together.
I decided to show him this episode to get his thoughts.
Also, my buddy Brett, who does the mixing and mastering for this show,
he's an audio wizard. I don't know how else to say it.
(28:28):
I wanted his take on this as well.
He's also very skeptical. He's not a believer in this stuff at all.
I have no idea what they're gonna say about this, but I wanted their take.
Yeah, I kind of listened to it a few different ways.
Checked it with the spectrum analyzer to see if it was a specific frequency that jumped out.
It's all just broad spectrum.
(28:50):
Played it forward and backwards.
It sounds essentially identical, played backwards.
So, whatever it is, is symmetric.
It's not a waveform that sounds different, played the other way.
I didn't really bother trying to slow it down or do anything crazy.
It just sounds like artifacts, like maybe a digital artifact
(29:12):
or even like a microphone artifact.
I mean, at a concert, it's loud.
It could have been clipping the mic and the software could have did something to try to compensate.
There's a lot of things it could have been.
And I heard, because there's like three or four kind of in a row,
and then like a second or two later, there's one more.
That's just like isolated.
(29:33):
And that one is quieter. It's not as noticeable, but it's just kind of like a little blip.
To me, it just kind of sounds like a bad quality recording
or like their phone was acting up or microphone couldn't take it.
Not proper equipment to record a real high quality recording of the band,
but that makes sense.
(29:54):
What you're describing is clearly nothing odd.
There's their rational, non-paranormal, explainable things
that could happen that would have explained that sound that you hear.
So the odds are that it's most likely nothing...
The fact that that noise happened is not indicative of anything odd, in your opinion.
(30:20):
Yeah, it's nothing like ghost hunters.
They have a little sound and they play it and they're saying hello.
They make it sound like hello.
It's nothing like that.
To me, it does sound kind of digital.
So the most likely scenario is that the drummer might have fallen behind the beat a little bit
(30:41):
or been compensating for another band member.
They've all kind of clicked back into the drummer and he's lifted everyone back out of that drag, that lag.
And then around the same time, they're filming on their phone
and they've had a couple of maybe pikes or little glitches in the recording software
and that's just what we're hearing in terms of the clicks.
Yeah, that's what it seems like to me.
(31:03):
It seems like the most reasonable explanation.
Yeah, if there wouldn't be a story attached to it and I saw that recording,
I would not think anything of it.
I would just think the band was probably playing really loud
and it probably clipped the microphone like you said,
but some sort of artifacting that just made a weird little glitch.
If you bring it full circle though, what do you guys think this was then?
(31:26):
Do you think Keston and Andrea are lying?
Do you think that they maybe were on mushrooms or some sort of psychedelic that did cause this?
Do you think it was something anomalous?
I think I read online too that there could have been like some sort of energy weapons.
That seems pretty extreme to me as well.
(31:48):
What do you guys think about that?
If you had a gun to head, what do you think it would be?
I mean, it could be some type of energy.
I don't know if I'd say energy weapon, but...
Some kind of localized gravitational well.
Like you know with tech RF interference or even like solar flare,
radiation and stuff from the sun can cause all kinds of weird stuff to happen with electronics.
(32:13):
Maybe there was some kind of energy that caused the blips to happen on their phone
and then also caused them to experience something.
It kind of reminds me of...
There's this famous footage, I think it's from a concert in Mexico or South America
where someone's filming from the back and then suddenly the person at the front starts to fall over
and there's this huge wave of people that just start to collapse from front to back.
(32:35):
Have you seen that footage?
No, I haven't.
It looks on the surface like someone has shot some kind of energy weapon at the crowd
and they're just all collapsing, but there's a science behind it.
And it's literally just a result of too many people being compacted together
and one person goes down.
Like a domino effect kind of thing.
It's kind of a similar thing and when you look at that on the surface,
it very much looks like, oh my god, there's some weapon that's just been shot at them
(32:58):
and all these people have collapsed.
But there really is a really straightforward explanation for it.
And the funny thing is, you know, when you watch the video and you read it,
the people that were...
Some of the people that were commenting that were there were saying,
oh no, this is definitely some kind of weapon.
Like I felt some kind of energy and I think, you know,
perhaps the brain hears the music slowing down and that sends a cue to your brain
(33:22):
that something is wrong, which gives you a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of dread.
And then suddenly you feel like there is this extra force there
when really it's just your kind of body's fight or fight response
trying to figure out which way to go in that scenario.
I actually like that explanation quite a bit,
(33:43):
although it is a little bit uncomfortable because it's not that Andrea and Keston are lying.
I do believe that they experienced what they're describing.
I really don't think that they're like trying to fabricate anything,
but maybe there's an element of they wanted to see something potentially
and then their brains kind of trick them into hearing
(34:07):
that slowness that happened and then they...
Did we just hear them slow down a little bit and then they kind of, you know,
turned into like a fishtail in a way, you know, where you like hold the fish up to the camera
and it looks like it's a gigantic fish, but it's only like three inches long kind of thing
and you show your friends it's a 10 pounder,
but no, it's just like a little one pounder that's close to the camera
(34:27):
and then it turns it, you know, they start to believe it as well
and that story, you know, continues to resonate and oscillate
and then it turns into what we've heard here.
I think that's probably the most logical explanation.
Remind me, Justin, did they talk to anyone else at the concert around them to say,
did you just hear this or did they just kind of keep it between them?
(34:48):
No, I think I might have cut some of that out of the episode too, but yeah, you're right.
They didn't... I did ask them that and they did not talk to anybody else.
They did observe them and they did say that nobody else seemed to have even noticed that this was happening.
They just kind of looked around and everyone was going about their day
and like it wasn't a big deal, but no, they didn't talk to anybody.
There's actually a really, really, really, really interesting documentary series
(35:13):
about how it broke out across the US and Europe at schools
when young girls started... young girls specifically at schools
started developing Tourette's spontaneous Tourette syndrome
and it just started happening and then people thought that there was something wrong with the school,
the earth was leaking gas and they spent all this time and money
and at the end of the day, it turned out to just probably be one or two people
that genuinely had it and everyone started to experience the symptoms
(35:37):
and then it all just went away eventually.
Isn't that one of the thoughts of ADHD and stuff and why it's so rampant these days
is like everyone says they have it, so then everyone kind of gets it.
You get a little symptom and you're like...
Before anyone ever mentioned it, no one seemed to have it.
That's a really good point, Brett, because then you're actually talking about
when it comes to neurological conditions, is transference physical
(36:01):
and can it actually really...
We're talking about things that affect us on a psychological level.
I think it's a really fascinating topic to explore
because I think that ADHD example is... I think you're spot on.
It's the placebo effect, really.
If your brain is so powerful that if you think you have something
or you think you're being cured of something that your body can...
(36:23):
You can convince your body that it's okay or that it's not okay
and I guess in that scenario it is still weird to me
the whole fact of time slowing down as a symptom like that.
I do have a little bit of a block there if I'm being honest
but I can see how it's possible to do that.
(36:44):
I'm going to throw out a theory that maybe we want to keep out of the episode
but it's up to you.
But Keston was in a band. She was a singer.
She loves Fleetwood Mac. She was feeling it.
She was having an emotional response to the music already.
She mentioned this. She was dancing, singing along.
You have in that kind of emotional state, which is a beautiful state to be in
(37:07):
it's kind of like flow, it's liberating.
You have this kind of vulnerability about you at a concert.
You let your guard down and you dance and sing.
You then have your two kind of like most primary senses, your ears
and your eyes like telling you that something weird happened, right?
You hear it and then you look to the person you're with and they look at you
and you suddenly have this exchange of visual cues
(37:32):
that then in your already elevated emotional vulnerable state
make you feel unsafe because you've let your guard down at a concert.
So perhaps you would start describing meaning to these experiences
in that really specific state.
And I think that might be an explanation for what they experienced.
(37:55):
Dang. I think you just did it. You just convinced me in like two seconds.
But I was listening to a Joe Rogan episode.
I forget which one it is. I'll have to go back and figure out which one it was.
But they were talking about, he was talking about his DMT experiences
and how there's certain music that when played on DMT
(38:18):
that it could actually enhance your experience or make you feel certain things.
And it made me realize this is going to sound really dumb.
So I definitely might cut this out if this is not true.
But you know the concept of the muse and how the muse inspires you
creativity and all that sort of thing.
(38:39):
Is that where the word music comes from?
I believe so.
That's pretty wild if that's the case.
Can we fact check that? Jamie, can you bring that up?
Oh wait.
That's funny. I'm typing into Google as we speak.
Yeah. Latin and ancient Greek where it originally meant art of the muses.
(39:03):
There you go.
I didn't even know that.
But listening to that episode, I put that together.
I'm like, is that what music actually means?
What you said Josh is so spot on.
I can't tell you many times I've been to a concert
and a band played one of my favorite songs.
It had like a deep personal meaning to me.
And I just like, you're transported to like another place.
It's music. You're in touch with the muse.
(39:25):
And I totally can see how your brain could release chemicals
and like it's probably not a common phenomenon.
But if she was really feeling that music,
I could see your spiritual experience.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think she was because she was performing with Magmusica
at some point.
She was really into the show.
(39:46):
And just on that, Justin, about the DMT playlist,
John Hopkins University,
like the John Hopkins University has published
their psychedelic therapy music playlist on Spotify.
And I've taken five gram of mushrooms once
and listened to that four hour playlist
or three hour playlist.
And I can tell you that like an hour in,
(40:07):
you don't hear the music anymore.
You don't even, you don't even aware you're listening to it.
But it is informing your trip visually and emotionally completely.
You are completely at the mercy of that music.
But it's like your ears become deaf to it
because the emotional experience is so great.
It's like your brain doesn't have the bandwidth to process it all at once.
(40:29):
And so I think you have that overwhelming spiritual experience.
I think church people would say that they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
I think these two are saying that they experienced time dilation.
And I think other people would call it something else.
But I think there's a universal experience being tapped into there.
(40:59):
After digging into all this, I don't think there's one clean answer.
On one hand, science shows us that time can bend in our perception.
Whether it's Alice in Wonderland syndrome,
the brain protecting itself from moments of danger,
(41:23):
or maybe even perhaps the emotional power of music.
But that doesn't explain why two different people experienced the same exact phenomenon.
In the exact same moment, that's also tied to some weird audio glitch in the recording.
Could have been a glitch in perception, a shared neurological quirk,
(41:44):
or something that's truly anomalous.
Well, I'll let you decide that.
I can't tell you for certain.
I can tell you this, that Kesson and Andrea's story has left me questioning
the rules of time more than ever before.
So as promised, today's episode was a little different.
A little less interview, a little more investigation.
(42:05):
If you dug this new format, let me know.
And if you're new here, please subscribe, leave a five-star review,
and please share with a friend.
Follow Close Encounter Club on YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram.
Your support helps us keep exploring the weird.
Thank you very much for staying until the end.
You've been listening to the Close Encounter Club.
(42:28):
Keep watching the skies.
Close Encounter Club
So the band was playing, and we could see the band slowing down.
(00:09):
It was like somebody put their finger on the record, and then lifted it off.
First I thought they were slowing down, and then when they just slowed down, their actions
were even slowing down.
All their bodies just almost slumped over as they were slowing down.
I mean we both looked at each other and went, what was that?
(00:33):
She's like, time just starts to slow down.
And I like happened to have been recording with my phone.
What was that that we just experienced, and kind of talked about it the whole drive home,
and I was like, well I was videotaping.
Let me see if we got anything.
And we heard that, that we're like bleep bleep sounds.
(00:57):
Do you hear it Justin?
I've never seen the video.
Ohhhh.
Time is a mysterious thing.
We live inside of it, we take it for granted, but what is it really?
Physics tells us that it isn't fixed, that time bends, that it slows down near the speed
(01:18):
of light, it drags in the pull of gravity.
A second for you could be thousands of years for somebody else.
But what happens when ordinary people, not astronauts, not physicists, experience time
slowing down and stopping?
Well that's exactly what happened with the two experiencers that we're talking to today.
(01:39):
Their story isn't polished and they were a little bit nervous to speak to me, but I
can assure you one thing, that they weren't lying and they're not looking for attention.
And what they described blew my mind.
I'm Justin Gearhart, and this is The Close and Counter Club.
And tonight we're going to be stepping into one of the strangest phenomenon that I've
ever heard of.
It's going to be less interview and more investigation.
(02:00):
Because if time can really stop, what are we doing here?
The rules of reality are not what we thought they were.
In this episode, I'm asking you to suspend disbelief for a moment.
You are going to see the video that Keston and Andrea captured that night.
Now, it's not a clear smoking gun, but it is a genuine piece of their experience.
(02:21):
And sometimes, it's those imperfect, fleeting moments that tell the most powerful stories.
This is Episode 19, When Time Stopped, and you're listening to The Close and Counter Club.
(02:47):
So this was the early days of the podcast, and I was searching through Reddit to find
some stories to feature on the show.
And I stumbled across a Reddit post that said,
Wife and I experienced a time slowdown at the same time with a video.
This obviously piqued my interest because, according to the title, there were two witnesses,
and it was also captured on video.
(03:08):
Unfortunately, the post has been removed from the Glitch and the Matrix subreddit.
I guess they didn't consider it a glitch.
But from what I remember, it was a really captivating story.
So as always, I messaged the OP and invited them on the show.
And to my delight, they agreed and said,
Sure, we'll talk to you.
So they booked a time, and we met on Discord.
(03:31):
Just like I always do, I asked the guests to introduce themselves.
I'm Keston Ott Dahl.
I am from Southern California.
We just moved to Palm Springs from the Bay Area.
We lived in an RV and we've traveled the country a couple of times.
That's kind of what we do.
We consider ourselves gypsies.
That's really who I am.
(03:52):
My name is Andrea.
I'm 42.
Beautiful soul.
Hey, I'd be nervous too if I was talking to me on the internet.
So I can't blame them.
So I briefly told them what my belief system was and why I started this podcast,
to try to loosen it up a little bit.
And then I asked them what their belief systems were.
(04:14):
I have always known when, you know, since I was a little kid, you know,
I think Bob Lazar came out and did unsolved mysteries.
I think it's what it was.
And I knew that happened.
I just knew that happened.
He's telling the truth.
So I've always known that and, you know, we have had a few experiences,
but nothing like this, what happened to us in October.
(04:39):
That was profound.
So what about you?
For me, I was very similar to you, Justin.
We're like kind of Catholic, Christian upbringing,
not really believing in paranormal stuff much.
But as I got older and I met Keston,
(05:03):
I kind of was more open to like spirituality
and things possibly happening.
She kind of opened that door for me a little bit.
Listen, I'm very strategic when I ask these questions.
I'm trying to get into the actual mindset of our guests,
why they think what they think.
And frankly, anytime that someone says that they know something is true,
(05:27):
my red flags go up.
So when Keston said that she knows that Bob Lazar is telling the truth,
I mean, how could you?
Now, I understand what she's saying because I feel the same way.
There's this gut feeling you get that someone's telling the truth
or that someone's lying.
We all have that instinct.
Andre, on the other hand, she's a Catholic upbringing.
(05:49):
She's very skeptical at first,
but then as life unfolds, her perceptions change, her opinions change.
Either way, at this point in the conversation, I didn't have any major concerns.
They just seem like two normal people.
They're about to share a crazy experience that they had.
I used to sing in bands and Fleetwood Mac is one of my favorites.
(06:13):
And there was a tribute band playing.
We go, we go, there's free concerts in the park here in the desert,
Palm Springs area, all the time.
So when we like to go to them, it's a family thing that we do.
We go to them every time they have, they were pretty much there every time we go.
We get the front row seats.
The first song that they did was Dreams.
So the band was playing and we could see the band slowing down.
(06:40):
I don't even know how to describe it, Justin.
I mean, it was almost like if you saw a record player,
it was like somebody put their finger on the record and then lifted it off.
And it was time.
It wasn't, it wasn't the band slowing it.
At first I thought, is this band slowing down?
Yeah, they weren't looking at each other.
(07:01):
And I know when you're in a band and your drummer's a little slow, you go,
Yeah, give him the stink eye.
Like you can get your timing right, bro.
This band, everyone in the band slowed down.
And then it almost in person came to a halt time.
(07:22):
First I thought they were slowing down and then when they just slowed down,
their actions were even slowing down.
Everyone, if a band, if your drummer's slow, he'll lead the band slow down,
but not like this.
They all slowed down.
No one looked at each other.
It was not a band thing.
And then when they, I was like, then I thought,
they're going to stop this song in the middle of their performance.
(07:46):
And then they picked right back up and it sped right back up to normal time.
And I looked at her and she looked at me and we just were like,
what just happened?
Like, I think he used explicit.
I remember like, yeah.
Did you see that?
We both did.
(08:08):
I mean, we both looked at each other and went, what was that?
And she's like, time just start slowed down.
And I was just like, oh my God.
And we actually got up and we looked at the crowd.
Nobody seemed to notice.
And we were just like, oh my God, what was that?
And she was like, what was that?
And I was like, oh, that's weird.
(08:30):
And yeah, like for me, like she was saying, you know,
kind of was like the record.
Like the visual for me was like, kind of,
imagine like they were robotic animatronic, you know, players.
And then like the plug got pulled on them.
And like all of a sudden, like she was saying,
like all their bodies just almost slumped over as they were slowing down.
(08:52):
And then like when they almost stopped,
and then it was like playing their song back at speed.
It's just like the craziest thing.
It wasn't just a timing thing or a tempo thing.
And it wasn't just one person.
It was, you know, everybody in the band was behaving that way.
(09:15):
Was it, was there like a,
I'm not sure if you know what the term like a Doppler shift where like,
you know, when you hear a train and it's like,
you hear it from in a distance and it sounds like a different pitch.
Then as it gets close to you, the pitch changes.
And as it gets farther away, it changes again.
Like the tone kind of goes higher to lower.
When I was editing this episode,
(09:36):
what happens next really jumped out at me as something that was important.
Think about this.
I asked both Keston and Andrea a specific question about what they experienced.
And both of them could have very easily had different answers.
Their perceptions could have been different.
Who knows, right?
But just watch how enthusiastic they answer that question about Doppler effect.
(10:01):
Did that happen with the music too?
Where it like it's so like slow, like deeper kind of.
Yes, yes.
You know, a singer.
I mean, I got it.
I knew I was like, what the heck?
But it was, it was like the sound, her voice.
(10:23):
It was just like, it was almost like,
it was like she was stopped singing in the middle of the song.
Like, yeah, but slowly, it wasn't a breath.
It was like.
It's funny.
I played in bands in my 20s as well.
I thought my original dream was to be in a band and go on tour and all that kind of stuff.
(10:45):
And I play guitar.
And the only way to really, to my understanding, other than maybe like an effects pedal to make that like,
that sound be like a whammy bar kind of thing, but to have the whole band.
Do that at the same time.
It just, it wasn't a whammy bar moment.
No, and I like having to have been recording with my phone because I do that with a lot of the bands.
(11:14):
My daughter actually really likes to go back and watch the videos and dance to them and stuff.
So I was just recording.
And I stopped recording like right after that happened so that we could talk about it.
And then later on we went back because we were talking about it.
Like the minute we got back in the car, we were like,
we were like, what was that that we just experienced and kind of talked about it the whole drive home.
(11:36):
And I was like, well, I was videotaping.
Let me see if we got anything.
And like, we got home and looked at it.
And like, it felt like it got a little slow on the video, right?
When it happened, I go, it looks like it got a little slow, but not like we experienced in person.
Yeah, it wasn't like that.
So then, so then, you know, we were just kind of sad on it, but it's haunted us.
(11:59):
We think about it every day, all day.
I mean, we think about it all the time.
We talked to everybody about it.
And then a friend of ours last week said, hey, I want to see the video that you recorded.
And so we like, okay, well, and we hadn't really seen it since that first time.
Because the time didn't slow down like we saw it on there, but the time does slow a little, a little for some people.
(12:21):
Some people it slows down a lot.
But when we listen to it, then we heard that that we're like bleep bleep sounds.
Do you hear it, Justin?
No, I know.
I've never seen the video.
Oh, is it on Reddit?
How do I see it?
I want to look at it right now.
It's on YouTube.
It's on YouTube.
Did you post it in your Reddit thread?
(12:43):
Yeah.
How the heck did I miss that?
Like the video in its entirety, I think it's like 40 seconds.
It's not super long.
But like the anomaly, like the bleep blip happens around like the 30 to 35 second mark within that.
Some people say they notice the slowdown starting around 25 seconds.
Some say like around 27 seconds.
(13:06):
Some people like see weird flashes with the lights.
So everybody seems to see something different in that video.
Right.
Some people don't see anything at all.
So you're saying, hold on.
You're saying that it's the same video, but depending on who watches it, they either don't see anything.
Or they see something or even different things.
(13:30):
Yes.
A lot of it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hold on.
Let me load this out.
Yeah.
We went back and we watched the video and then we heard that bleep bleep bleep.
And we're like, yeah, we can't see the time slow.
But now we have this audio anomaly exactly where the time slowed.
(13:53):
All right.
So I'm about to show you the video that Keston and Andrea captured.
So if you're listening to the audio only version of this episode, it might be a good time to flip over to YouTube or Spotify to watch the video version.
I'll also be posting this video on our Instagram if you want to check it out there.
(14:23):
Hey, guys, before we continue, I just want to say real quick.
(14:52):
If you haven't subscribed, now's the perfect time to do so.
We're really trying to make a difference here in the scientific community.
Try to explain some of these paranormal and unexplained events.
So your subscription, your likes, your five star reviews is going a long way to get this podcast out there to more people.
So please take a moment and do it.
We would really appreciate it.
(15:14):
Back to the episode.
I definitely heard it.
I definitely heard like it.
It was weird.
Like, again, being being in a band, it doesn't sound like it's out of tune or anything like that.
Nobody knows my phone's going off.
It doesn't sound like it's out of tune.
It doesn't sound like a drummer.
Yeah, I didn't hear it.
(15:36):
I didn't hear the blip, blip, blip, but I was more, I think I was more focused on like the, the, the slowing of slowing down.
You got to listen at 32.
There was like an audio.
All right.
Let me, let me try one more time.
2000 years later, I do hear it.
It's very subtle.
(15:58):
It is.
It's when she's saying the word mad.
So like, the heartbeat drives you mad.
And like, I know it sounds kind of crazy.
I was like, looking up the lyrics.
I'm like, maybe there's like some hidden message in here or something and like, I don't know, maybe there could be.
It's weird.
(16:19):
That's weird.
So our friend tells us, I want to hear, I want to see the video and we, and so the second time we saw it and we heard that blip, blip, blip, right?
Yeah.
That was an audio.
That's not, that's not coming from the band.
And why would that be at the exact second that we have, we're almost, we're time stopped.
Right.
It could be both, and it'd be, it'd be different if one of you experienced it because you're just like, okay, like maybe, you know, sometimes audio stuff can play like a trick on your mind.
(16:46):
Like neurologically, like maybe like there's a dissonance thing that's happening.
And okay, maybe it's just like a perception thing, but you both saw the exact same thing that is not captured in this video.
And even in the video, there is some weird things that happen, which is that's the crazy part that is kind of blowing my mind a little bit right at this present moment.
(17:09):
Blowing a lot of people's minds, right?
Yeah.
So how long did this last?
Was it just like a few seconds that they slowed down?
It was a few seconds, but in to us, at least to me, Andre, you have to answer it yourself.
But to me, it felt like it lasted a long time to me.
To me, I actually ran through things in my head as they were slowing down.
(17:32):
First, I was like, are they slowing down the song?
And then it was like, are they stopping the song?
Where are they looking at each other?
Maybe I'm having a stroke.
That's really what I got.
And then when I looked over at her and she looked at me, I'm like, this is no stroke.
Something weird is going on.
And then it like almost came to a halt and we look at each other again, going, oh, what the heck is happening?
(17:55):
And then when they picked it back up, it was just...
I even texted my aunt, which I could share with you, because I texted our aunt saying, oh my God, we just experienced the most craziest thing.
And I texted her right after it happened.
Like, time just stopped.
And then picked it back up.
For me, let's go ahead and say, for me, it didn't feel quite as long.
(18:20):
Like, I would say it felt like three seconds, like three counts to me of like the band playing and then like coming to the halt.
It felt like about three seconds for me.
I see.
And was it...
So I know it was gradual slowing down.
Was it also gradual coming back up?
(18:41):
Like a record would be kind of thing?
It was also gradual, but a faster gradual.
That makes sense.
It does.
It does.
So they were slowing down, you know, maybe a count of four or something like that.
But then it came back and I counted two kind of thing.
Yes.
I see.
Okay.
And did either of you have any other...
(19:03):
I don't want to say like symptoms, but did you have any other effects like either before or after this happened?
Like, did you have any headaches or any like lightheadedness or anything like that that would have been attributed to it?
Nothing like that.
Everything was fine.
Nothing.
Yeah, no.
Yeah.
We're like, it was in the afternoon.
It was like six o'clock.
We weren't drinking.
(19:25):
We weren't...
We were just sitting there enjoying the band, getting ready to get up and dance, to be honest with you.
But when that happened, I don't know if we...
I mean, I guess we did get a dance later, but honestly, it kind of ruined our night.
Yeah.
Because we were just like...
We were just like...
You're just perplexed.
Like your brain's just trying to wrap your mind around what you saw and like, yeah.
(19:48):
When you experience something like this, you try to make...
First, you're in shock.
The last bit of information that I wanted to gather from them is what they thought it was.
The reason I do this is if by chance someone is lying or trying to drive a certain narrative,
it should be pretty obvious.
This is what they said.
I'm like, I have my kind of like hypothesis.
(20:12):
I feel like it's either like proof of maybe multiple timelines and maybe we kind of did
like a timeline shift or like, if you kind of imagine like two films that you're editing
and you're trying to put them together and like, maybe you were off by just a little bit
or something like that when you spliced them.
(20:33):
And so there's kind of like this weird glitchy thing or it's like a literal...
We're in the simulation and it was like a glitch in the matrix kind of thing.
It's kind of what I think.
I know Kessin mentioned maybe like...
When it happened...
Abduction.
Yeah.
When it happened, I was actually going...
Yeah, I was.
I was like, did something come down here and do that?
(20:57):
You hear the audio.
I mean, it's just like that audio happening at the exact same time we saw that band time
slowed down.
And it's almost electronic, that audio.
And I know bands.
It's not sound equipment doing that at that exact time.
It's not a feedback.
That's something.
(21:19):
That sound is something.
It's at the exact...
So just to clarify though, that is the exact moment when she says the word mad is when
it started to happen and that's when you hear that little bloop-bloop noise.
The video creeps me out.
So I can't watch it very much.
It gives me the heebie-jeebies.
So I think I've seen it four times.
(21:40):
But after the second time I watched it and I saw that flashing light, I've never seen
it again.
Listening back to their story, a few things stood out to me.
As someone that has been in bands for over 10 years, right before the blip-blip-blip
happens, the band definitely slows down.
Shame on you, drummer.
It's for a brief moment, but there is maybe a measure or so where the tempo slows down
(22:06):
by maybe like 10 beats per minute.
It makes you feel a little bit off.
But then it goes to this sound.
And the sound reminds me of when you have a cell phone up to a microphone and a call
is coming in or a text message is coming in and you get this really bizarre sound.
I don't know how to describe it.
It's like a glitchy sound.
(22:27):
I do think that Keston and Andrea are telling the truth.
The question is, what happened?
I have heard of people experiencing time slowing down.
But usually it's with like near-death experiences or maybe when someone's at war and they're
in a gunfight and bullets are flying past them in slow motion.
(22:50):
Probably attributed to adrenaline, I'd assume.
But Keston and Andrea were not in any sort of gunfight.
They were in no danger and also both of them experienced the same exact thing as you've seen.
So the first thing I have to do is turn to Scully.
I need some ideas of where to start.
(23:11):
Alright, Scully, let's start broad.
People say that they've experienced time slowing down.
What is actually happening?
So when people say they felt time slowing down, usually what's happening is something called
tachysychia.
It's basically your brain going into overdrive during a high stress or high adrenaline situation.
So your perception speeds up and it feels like everything around you is moving in slow motion.
(23:33):
It's a well-documented phenomenon in situations like accidents or combat scenarios.
But here's the interesting part.
In cases like Keston and Andrea's where there's no immediate danger or adrenaline spike,
it suggests something outside the usual neurological explanation.
That's where we start looking at more unusual cases.
Like I was a wanderland syndrome or even certain documented UFO encounters where time perception
(23:54):
gets really weird.
So that's the kind of territory we're stepping into.
What specific cases are there that I can start researching and share with our listeners
that will help get to the bottom of what happened to Keston and Andrea?
So a couple of standout cases you can dive into would be first, the experience of Albert Heim,
a Swiss geologist who described intense time dilation during a mantoneering fall.
(24:18):
It's a classic tachysychia scenario and really well documented.
Next, look into cases of Alice and Wanderland syndrome where people experience distorted
time perception and size perception.
There's a well-documented medical case involving EEG monitoring that you could mention.
And for something more on the anomalous side, the 1976 Tehran UFO incident is fascinating.
Pilots reported that instruments and sense of time were disrupted, which is a pretty unique parallel.
(24:42):
All of these examples can help your listeners get a feel for the different angles
and might shed some light on what happened to Keston and Andrea.
Okay, so now that we've heard from Scully, I'm going to unpack two of the things that she talked about
because I did a deep dive into these two topics.
I'm going to try to be as concise as I possibly can to focus in how this could apply to Andrea
and Keston's experience.
(25:03):
Alice and Wanderland syndrome, or AIWS, is a rare neurological condition
that bends reality, literally.
People experience micropsea, which is where objects appear really small and tiny,
but also macropsea, which is where objects loom large.
There's also other things that I can't pronounce where objects appear farther or closer.
(25:26):
I would compare this to, like, a rear-view mirror in a car where it says
objects are closer than they appear, kind of like that.
And yes, even time itself can feel warped.
It can either be dragging or racing uncontrollably, and that's called tacky sensea.
One case involved an eight-year-old boy whose visual distortions, plus an EEG,
(25:50):
showing temporal, occipital slowing, matched a classic AIWS episode.
And a systematic review of 168 cases showed that time distortion is a core symptom of AIWS.
So AIWS gives us a very grounded, medicalized lens
through which to look at Keston and Andrea's experience.
(26:14):
And time itself can glitch in very real ways, but it's all in our brain.
The one thing that really gets me about Keston and Andrea's experience, though,
is that they both experience.
So in order for this to be the explanation as to what they experienced,
it's already a very rare medical condition.
So if they both experience that at the same time,
(26:37):
it seems very unlikely that that's the case.
The second thing that Scully brought up is Albert Heim,
who was a Swiss geologist in the late 1800s.
Heim fell roughly 20 meters while mountaineering,
a fall that would take approximately two seconds or so,
but in his mind, it lasted minutes.
He recalled every detail, thinking about his friends,
(27:00):
whether to remove his glasses or not, life flashing before his eyes.
He felt calm, detached, as if observing himself from the outside.
After surviving the fall, Heim gathered around 25 similar reports
from other climbers and workers, identifying this time-loss phenomenon
as a recurrent feature in near-death experiences.
(27:22):
Here, we're crossing neurology and extreme psychology.
Basically, the brain has a capability of protecting itself
and preserving itself in weird ways.
Chemicals release in the brain that potentially slow down time,
that allow us to potentially save ourselves.
(27:43):
If time is appearing to move slower, we can maybe grab for a rock
or we can grab a rope in time.
Our reflexes are faster.
And Albert Heim was one of the first people to document
how near-death experiences could cause time distortion.
Kesson and Andrea, they weren't in any danger,
not even perceived danger.
They were at a relaxing show listening to a cover band.
(28:06):
I just don't see how their brain would trigger this near-death experience.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
And again, they both experienced it.
So, I recorded this episode before Josh and I were really working together.
I decided to show him this episode to get his thoughts.
Also, my buddy Brett, who does the mixing and mastering for this show,
he's an audio wizard. I don't know how else to say it.
(28:28):
I wanted his take on this as well.
He's also very skeptical. He's not a believer in this stuff at all.
I have no idea what they're gonna say about this, but I wanted their take.
Yeah, I kind of listened to it a few different ways.
Checked it with the spectrum analyzer to see if it was a specific frequency that jumped out.
It's all just broad spectrum.
(28:50):
Played it forward and backwards.
It sounds essentially identical, played backwards.
So, whatever it is, is symmetric.
It's not a waveform that sounds different, played the other way.
I didn't really bother trying to slow it down or do anything crazy.
It just sounds like artifacts, like maybe a digital artifact
(29:12):
or even like a microphone artifact.
I mean, at a concert, it's loud.
It could have been clipping the mic and the software could have did something to try to compensate.
There's a lot of things it could have been.
And I heard, because there's like three or four kind of in a row,
and then like a second or two later, there's one more.
That's just like isolated.
(29:33):
And that one is quieter. It's not as noticeable, but it's just kind of like a little blip.
To me, it just kind of sounds like a bad quality recording
or like their phone was acting up or microphone couldn't take it.
Not proper equipment to record a real high quality recording of the band,
but that makes sense.
(29:54):
What you're describing is clearly nothing odd.
There's their rational, non-paranormal, explainable things
that could happen that would have explained that sound that you hear.
So the odds are that it's most likely nothing...
The fact that that noise happened is not indicative of anything odd, in your opinion.
(30:20):
Yeah, it's nothing like ghost hunters.
They have a little sound and they play it and they're saying hello.
They make it sound like hello.
It's nothing like that.
To me, it does sound kind of digital.
So the most likely scenario is that the drummer might have fallen behind the beat a little bit
(30:41):
or been compensating for another band member.
They've all kind of clicked back into the drummer and he's lifted everyone back out of that drag, that lag.
And then around the same time, they're filming on their phone
and they've had a couple of maybe pikes or little glitches in the recording software
and that's just what we're hearing in terms of the clicks.
Yeah, that's what it seems like to me.
(31:03):
It seems like the most reasonable explanation.
Yeah, if there wouldn't be a story attached to it and I saw that recording,
I would not think anything of it.
I would just think the band was probably playing really loud
and it probably clipped the microphone like you said,
but some sort of artifacting that just made a weird little glitch.
If you bring it full circle though, what do you guys think this was then?
(31:26):
Do you think Keston and Andrea are lying?
Do you think that they maybe were on mushrooms or some sort of psychedelic that did cause this?
Do you think it was something anomalous?
I think I read online too that there could have been like some sort of energy weapons.
That seems pretty extreme to me as well.
(31:48):
What do you guys think about that?
If you had a gun to head, what do you think it would be?
I mean, it could be some type of energy.
I don't know if I'd say energy weapon, but...
Some kind of localized gravitational well.
Like you know with tech RF interference or even like solar flare,
radiation and stuff from the sun can cause all kinds of weird stuff to happen with electronics.
(32:13):
Maybe there was some kind of energy that caused the blips to happen on their phone
and then also caused them to experience something.
It kind of reminds me of...
There's this famous footage, I think it's from a concert in Mexico or South America
where someone's filming from the back and then suddenly the person at the front starts to fall over
and there's this huge wave of people that just start to collapse from front to back.
(32:35):
Have you seen that footage?
No, I haven't.
It looks on the surface like someone has shot some kind of energy weapon at the crowd
and they're just all collapsing, but there's a science behind it.
And it's literally just a result of too many people being compacted together
and one person goes down.
Like a domino effect kind of thing.
It's kind of a similar thing and when you look at that on the surface,
it very much looks like, oh my god, there's some weapon that's just been shot at them
(32:58):
and all these people have collapsed.
But there really is a really straightforward explanation for it.
And the funny thing is, you know, when you watch the video and you read it,
the people that were...
Some of the people that were commenting that were there were saying,
oh no, this is definitely some kind of weapon.
Like I felt some kind of energy and I think, you know,
perhaps the brain hears the music slowing down and that sends a cue to your brain
(33:22):
that something is wrong, which gives you a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of dread.
And then suddenly you feel like there is this extra force there
when really it's just your kind of body's fight or fight response
trying to figure out which way to go in that scenario.
I actually like that explanation quite a bit,
(33:43):
although it is a little bit uncomfortable because it's not that Andrea and Keston are lying.
I do believe that they experienced what they're describing.
I really don't think that they're like trying to fabricate anything,
but maybe there's an element of they wanted to see something potentially
and then their brains kind of trick them into hearing
(34:07):
that slowness that happened and then they...
Did we just hear them slow down a little bit and then they kind of, you know,
turned into like a fishtail in a way, you know, where you like hold the fish up to the camera
and it looks like it's a gigantic fish, but it's only like three inches long kind of thing
and you show your friends it's a 10 pounder,
but no, it's just like a little one pounder that's close to the camera
(34:27):
and then it turns it, you know, they start to believe it as well
and that story, you know, continues to resonate and oscillate
and then it turns into what we've heard here.
I think that's probably the most logical explanation.
Remind me, Justin, did they talk to anyone else at the concert around them to say,
did you just hear this or did they just kind of keep it between them?
(34:48):
No, I think I might have cut some of that out of the episode too, but yeah, you're right.
They didn't... I did ask them that and they did not talk to anybody else.
They did observe them and they did say that nobody else seemed to have even noticed that this was happening.
They just kind of looked around and everyone was going about their day
and like it wasn't a big deal, but no, they didn't talk to anybody.
There's actually a really, really, really, really interesting documentary series
(35:13):
about how it broke out across the US and Europe at schools
when young girls started... young girls specifically at schools
started developing Tourette's spontaneous Tourette syndrome
and it just started happening and then people thought that there was something wrong with the school,
the earth was leaking gas and they spent all this time and money
and at the end of the day, it turned out to just probably be one or two people
that genuinely had it and everyone started to experience the symptoms
(35:37):
and then it all just went away eventually.
Isn't that one of the thoughts of ADHD and stuff and why it's so rampant these days
is like everyone says they have it, so then everyone kind of gets it.
You get a little symptom and you're like...
Before anyone ever mentioned it, no one seemed to have it.
That's a really good point, Brett, because then you're actually talking about
when it comes to neurological conditions, is transference physical
(36:01):
and can it actually really...
We're talking about things that affect us on a psychological level.
I think it's a really fascinating topic to explore
because I think that ADHD example is... I think you're spot on.
It's the placebo effect, really.
If your brain is so powerful that if you think you have something
or you think you're being cured of something that your body can...
(36:23):
You can convince your body that it's okay or that it's not okay
and I guess in that scenario it is still weird to me
the whole fact of time slowing down as a symptom like that.
I do have a little bit of a block there if I'm being honest
but I can see how it's possible to do that.
(36:44):
I'm going to throw out a theory that maybe we want to keep out of the episode
but it's up to you.
But Keston was in a band. She was a singer.
She loves Fleetwood Mac. She was feeling it.
She was having an emotional response to the music already.
She mentioned this. She was dancing, singing along.
You have in that kind of emotional state, which is a beautiful state to be in
(37:07):
it's kind of like flow, it's liberating.
You have this kind of vulnerability about you at a concert.
You let your guard down and you dance and sing.
You then have your two kind of like most primary senses, your ears
and your eyes like telling you that something weird happened, right?
You hear it and then you look to the person you're with and they look at you
and you suddenly have this exchange of visual cues
(37:32):
that then in your already elevated emotional vulnerable state
make you feel unsafe because you've let your guard down at a concert.
So perhaps you would start describing meaning to these experiences
in that really specific state.
And I think that might be an explanation for what they experienced.
(37:55):
Dang. I think you just did it. You just convinced me in like two seconds.
But I was listening to a Joe Rogan episode.
I forget which one it is. I'll have to go back and figure out which one it was.
But they were talking about, he was talking about his DMT experiences
and how there's certain music that when played on DMT
(38:18):
that it could actually enhance your experience or make you feel certain things.
And it made me realize this is going to sound really dumb.
So I definitely might cut this out if this is not true.
But you know the concept of the muse and how the muse inspires you
creativity and all that sort of thing.
(38:39):
Is that where the word music comes from?
I believe so.
That's pretty wild if that's the case.
Can we fact check that? Jamie, can you bring that up?
Oh wait.
That's funny. I'm typing into Google as we speak.
Yeah. Latin and ancient Greek where it originally meant art of the muses.
(39:03):
There you go.
I didn't even know that.
But listening to that episode, I put that together.
I'm like, is that what music actually means?
What you said Josh is so spot on.
I can't tell you many times I've been to a concert
and a band played one of my favorite songs.
It had like a deep personal meaning to me.
And I just like, you're transported to like another place.
It's music. You're in touch with the muse.
(39:25):
And I totally can see how your brain could release chemicals
and like it's probably not a common phenomenon.
But if she was really feeling that music,
I could see your spiritual experience.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think she was because she was performing with Magmusica
at some point.
She was really into the show.
(39:46):
And just on that, Justin, about the DMT playlist,
John Hopkins University,
like the John Hopkins University has published
their psychedelic therapy music playlist on Spotify.
And I've taken five gram of mushrooms once
and listened to that four hour playlist
or three hour playlist.
And I can tell you that like an hour in,
(40:07):
you don't hear the music anymore.
You don't even, you don't even aware you're listening to it.
But it is informing your trip visually and emotionally completely.
You are completely at the mercy of that music.
But it's like your ears become deaf to it
because the emotional experience is so great.
It's like your brain doesn't have the bandwidth to process it all at once.
(40:29):
And so I think you have that overwhelming spiritual experience.
I think church people would say that they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
I think these two are saying that they experienced time dilation.
And I think other people would call it something else.
But I think there's a universal experience being tapped into there.
(40:59):
After digging into all this, I don't think there's one clean answer.
On one hand, science shows us that time can bend in our perception.
Whether it's Alice in Wonderland syndrome,
the brain protecting itself from moments of danger,
(41:23):
or maybe even perhaps the emotional power of music.
But that doesn't explain why two different people experienced the same exact phenomenon.
In the exact same moment, that's also tied to some weird audio glitch in the recording.
Could have been a glitch in perception, a shared neurological quirk,
(41:44):
or something that's truly anomalous.
Well, I'll let you decide that.
I can't tell you for certain.
I can tell you this, that Kesson and Andrea's story has left me questioning
the rules of time more than ever before.
So as promised, today's episode was a little different.
A little less interview, a little more investigation.
(42:05):
If you dug this new format, let me know.
And if you're new here, please subscribe, leave a five-star review,
and please share with a friend.
Follow Close Encounter Club on YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram.
Your support helps us keep exploring the weird.
Thank you very much for staying until the end.
You've been listening to the Close Encounter Club.
(42:28):
Keep watching the skies.
Close Encounter Club
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