Chapter 55: Redirect loops
Many... interesting things have happened to me and my family, but this one never fails to make my palms sweat and eyes tear from fear. This particular one is my aunt's story, and is 100% real.
My aunt is a retired middle school science teacher. She loves all aspects of the subject; botany, geology, archaeology... During her time as a teacher, she would take "workshops" during the summers offered through the school district. One in particular was set in New Mexico. So, off she went with a group of fellow teachers.
One night after an exhausting day of field studies, my aunt and her group were headed back to their hotel near Roswell. It was around midnight, but the hotel wasn't far from their site. Because of this, they didn't feel like they needed a map (GPS's weren't even thought of yet!). The group passed an old, rinky-dink convenient store on the side of a four way stop, and remebered that earlier in the day, they had passed it on their way to the site. From the stop, they went straight. Ten minutes later, they pass the same store. The group laughed, thinking the sun and their exhaustion had made their memory foggy. Confident, they kept going straight. Ten minutes in, the store is passed again. Worried, the group heads right at the stop. The same store is passed again. They take a left. It is passed again. And again.
I'm not sure how they all finally made it back, but my aunt says that she felt like she was in the Twilight Zone; like the store was a prop in a huge, terrifying joke. Gives me weird chills, man!