Weird, huh? Read the article and you'll believe in it too.
I think this happens to some of my threads. I post a question and suddenly it's INVISIBLE. Nobody responds.
ALSO, this happens to me often in department stores. Sales clerks will look right through me and will refuse to offer help. As though I don't exist.
And little children will dart right out in front of me like I'm not there.
-- Allen
http://members.aol.com/Rapunz1/invisibility.htmlIn the summer of 1994, I became aware of a very strange phenomenon, human spontaneous involuntary invisibility, which was apparently happening to people in the U.S. When I checked with other researchers and discovered that a number of them had also heard of such cases, I decided to place an inquiry letter in several well-known journals, asking other researchers and the general public if they had any experiences of this nature that they would like to share with me. Besides the publication of my inquiry letter, my inquiry was placed on several Internet bulletin boards. The letters began pouring in, giving me a broader picture of this phenomenon. I want to share a few stories with you and pass on some of the information I have come across during this past year.
My inquiry letter told the story of Vera in Ventura, California, who tried to get assistance in a post office, only to be completely ignored by other customers and the postal clerk. I have kept in touch with Vera and she has had other apparent invisibility experiences in stores and other public places. Sheila in Roanoke, Texas, continues to have invisibility experiences, some of which have occurred in restaurants and at the airport. Glenda in Fort Worth, Texas, has had these experiences occur in a cafeteria and a movie theater. Most of the cases that I have researched have been in the U.S., although I do know of cases in England, Europe, Australia, Puerto Rico and Brazil.
In every case I have heard about or personally researched, the person is physically still present, although unable to be seen or heard. From the point of view of the invisible person, the world looks normal and they have no idea that they cannot be seen or heard by people around them. I will address how this might occur a little further along in this article, but first I want to give a few examples below. The quotes are directly from experiencers’ letters to me.
Jean in Tucson, Arizona, wrote me of her experiences. She has had them occur in the library when she attempted to check out books and in clothing stores. The following is a quote from her letter, showing the humor with which she deals with these occurrences. "I've had this happen in stores, in restaurants, and many places. I remember joking to a friend of mine one time that I felt like I could walk into a bank, help myself to a pile of bills and no one would ever see me because I was invisible. There is no physical reason why I should be. I'm taller than average for my sex and age group (I'm fifty-five years old and 5'9"), referred to as good-looking, and I've always worn my hair red. You wouldn't think a tall woman with red hair, high heels in a purple dress and dangle earrings would be invisible, would you?"
Or the story from a thirty-seven year old man, Peter in Gloucestershire, England, who was at a private party in 1987. He walked upstairs to use the bathroom and was followed by a woman who also wanted to use the bathroom. The woman motioned for him to go first and she stood outside the door to wait her turn. Peter used the bathroom, opened the door and walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He went on down the stairs and walked over to some friends and started talking to them. They all ignored him completely. He though they were playing a joke on him, so he walked away and found his girlfriend and asked her for a cigarette. She, too, acted like she didn't see or hear him. Peter was getting angry by this time and thought the joke had gone too far. He decided to walk back upstairs and catch the woman coming out of the bathroom and ask her for a cigarette. "...I walked back up the stairs and, on reaching the bathroom landing, I came across the girl again who was standing outside the bathroom door, clearly still waiting for me to come out. When she saw me, her face dropped in surprise for clearly she thought that I was still in the bathroom." Peter returned to the party downstairs and everything was normal again and he was able to be seen and heard. When he questioned his friends and girlfriend as to why they had ignored him, they all swore that they had never seen or heard him. Obviously the woman upstairs had not seen him come out of the bathroom and go downstairs.
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