With smartphones being omnipresent, any spontaneous occurrence can be preserved for posterity.
Because if there's no snap to prove something you witnessed that left you speechless, it never happened, right?
Such is our modern way of validating our existence, where any moment in time is an Instagrammable opportunity.
So, what happens if a significant incident is worth relaying to your friends but have no backup to your solo sighting?
That was something Redditor samuligeige explored and asked:
"What's something insane that you witnessed with your own eyes but no one believes you because there's no proof?"
Animal sightings outside the confines of a zoo but not necessarily in their natural habitat will always be jaw-dropping.
Wayward Marsupial
"A wild kangaroo… in Denmark, in winter. I got some blurry pictures, some believe me, other give me 'oh you saw Sasquatch' vibes."
– Embarrassed_Run6055
Oh, Deer, We Can't Bear It
"We had the same thing in West Virginia, also in the snow. Lots of drugs were blamed at first, but no, it was an escaped kangaroo. Bears are a trip too. Not seen personally, but I've lived in bear country and it's amusing what they get into."
"Acts of vandalism at the car dealership? A bear. Break-in at the school? A bear. Stealing leftover pizza in employee housing? A bear. Climbing in my boss's kitchen window, stealing a pizza, then climbing back out? Also a bear."
"A deer jumping through the window into a sixth grade English class? Eh, that was probably just the deer. In case you didn't catch on, bears love pizza. Fortunately they love bacon more and can be bribed away from indoor pizza with outdoor bacon."
– terminator_chic
Wildlife Customer
"An adult bull Moose walked into the local grocery in the middle of the day, headed to the produce section and started eating fruit. Everyone outside my town doesn't believe it but nobody within the town will ever forget."
– MysteriousMrX
Are You Lion To Me?
"In middle school, walking home from a friend's house. I went to pet a doggy. Looked like a big golden lab, facing away from me. I got about 3 feet away and it turned toward me. Mountain lion."
"In the front yard, right near the sidewalk, of a Chicago suburban house in an unremarkable neighborhood."
"I had nightmares for weeks. Finally, there was another sighting next town over, and it made the papers, and then all the stories came out about pets going missing, rabbit heads found in yards, and all the associated madness."
"My dad still thought I imagined it - I was a small kid, and it was a big lion."
– SaveFerrisBrother
Lone Howler
"I saw a white wolf one day when I was walking the dog with my mom. She had dropped behind a ways and as I round a corner from the park there's this creature 4 feet tall at the shoulder and it's looking at me with an intelligence I'd never seen in a canine before."
"I had been told all my life that this area didn't have wolves so I thought it had to be some genetic freak of a giant white super husky or something. Finally it turns and walks away into the bushes and I go back to warn my mom."
"Fast forward a few months and I see this documentary on the return of sea wolves to coast of the pacific northwest and just about the southernmost range it's showing is right where I saw this wolf."
– ChipotleLaw
What are the odds?
Can't Make Heads Or Tails About It
"When I was about 6 I was running down the stairs at school, first to leave the classroom at the end of the day."
"I pulled a 50p coin from my pocket, but dropped it. It bounced down the stairs, and when it hit the floor at the bottom, landed perfectly upright on its side."
"For non English people, 50ps are a huge, thin, seven sided coin, and this is just so impossibly unlikely to happen."
"I stood and stared in disbelief, and tried to tell everyone that rushed past but no one seemed to believe me/care. Eventually I picked it up and went home with no one to share the moment with."
"One of the most exciting moments of my life."
"Edit: wow I can’t believe how validating sharing this and getting a positive response has been THANK YOU all for believing me."
– quichejarrett
Nature's Validation
"When I was in middle school at a sleepover, my friend and I were talking about our favorite foods. He said his favorite was meatball marinana and I said it's marinara. So we made a bet (it was raining outside) that if lightning struck the place where I pointed within a minute that I was right."
"He said that it was too long so we changed it to 10 seconds. As soon as I said 1, it struck exactly in that place. We were so hyped we almost woke up the other people, but no one believed us."
– ffj_
You had to be there.
Elderly Couch Surfer
"When I went to visit my grandparents in Florida, I SWEAR I saw a woman who was riding a motorized couch on the sidewalk. Like it had wheels and evidently some kind of engine that allowed it to roll around, and she was controlling it with a joystick."
"We were driving too fast for me to take any pictures before she was out of view."
– justBarrels
The Long Shot
"When I was a kid, maybe 12 or so, I hit a hole-in-one on the golf course. I'm not a good golfer, and I genuinely hate being outdoors. No one believed that I got a hole-in-one except my dad, who forced me to be there and saw the magical shot with me."
– hamsterpookie
Vanishing Act
"This happened to my mom and I, but nobody believes our story."
"I was at the kitchen table studying when I was 16, my mom was cooking dinner. A fly was buzzing around and she swatted at it with a dish cloth, the same dish cloth that was on her shoulder being used as a hand wiping rag while cooking. While waving the cloth around, she let go of it, it flew somewhere behind her, and then it... was just gone. I mean gone gone."
"We both overturned that entire kitchen and even pulled out furniture (like the fridge) looking for it until we started to feel crazy. Was there ever a rag? Was she just using her hand and not a rag to swat at the fly and we were mistaken? It was so bizarre."
"Years later when the house was completely empty because we were moving out, we both went back in there and did one final look. No rag."
"So I guess in some alternate dimension, some gnome was sitting around and a portal opened to dump a wet cooking rag on it because what other explanation is there."
"EDIT: Wow! I didn't expect this comment to get so much attention + comments about similar stories. I mean, surely some of our stories have logical explanations, even if we ourselves don't know what they are; but what if there is some kind of real phenomenon that does this in other cases?"
"I saw the dish cloth leave her hand and fly behind her! It looked like it went in a downward direction toward the floor, except it wasn't on the floor. Like... what the hell? I still feel weird even talking about it and it's almost 25 years later."
– DruidWonder
You can never wait for the unexpected and have your cameraphone at the ready at all times.
The best moments are when happy accidents like those mentioned above happen and you don't have your device in hand.
Just savor the moment and delight at the thought that fate gave you a private performance that is worth preserving in memory than on a digital file.
