# Remembering things that didn't happen **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 4, 2009, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768 "2009-01-04T02:07:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![aokocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@aokocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aokocher)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/61 "2009-01-16T19:36:15Z")
A study by Elizabeth Loftus demonstrates how false memories can be planted in research subjects. It was conducted in 1997, at a time when lots of “therapists” hypnotized patients and led them to believe they were abused–sometimes in outlandish satanic rituals–when they were children. You might remember hearing about some of the crazier ones on shows like 20/20. In the study, subjects were given stories to read about their own childhoods, three of which were true (as told by the subject’s parents or other close relative or friend) and one made-up scenario in which the subject got lost in the mall (which also was verified to have NOT happened by the parent or relative). A surprising number of people reported remembering this fictive stressful situation. To read further: [http://cogprints.org/597/0/199802007.html](http://cogprints.org/597/0/199802007.html) Also, I believe that later studies have correlated susceptibility to forming false memories with high fantasy-proneness, but as I can’t think of a source offhand, I won’t say it’s for sure. Makes sense, though. ---
**Author:** ![FalconFinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@FalconFinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FalconFinder)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/62 "2009-01-16T20:04:25Z")
I have two memories like this, but I’m not convinced they’re wrong. My first memory has to do with the George Michael video for “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. I was at that concert where they did the filming of the video. When it finally surfaced on one of the music television shows, one of my nieces happened to tape the video knowing I’d been there. I hadn’t seen the video yet and when I saw it, I was stunned to see the ending shot. It was a high level zoom (the boom camera) to the Elton John side of the stage and then into the audience sitting there in the bleachers. The last thing I see is a hand, barely lit, doing the sign language sign for I love you. I was pointing it out excitedly to my niece and nephew who were watching it with me because it was MY hand! I recall rewinding the tape to watch where the camera zoomed in, because our seats were easy to pick out due to our proximity to the stage and where it zoomed in. Any time I saw the video after that, it was cut off sooner! How frustrating! Fast Forward many years later when a DVD compilation of George Michael videos is released. I buy it, thinking I can finally see the full version! I see the camera zoom in, and just as it should have gotten to that point, the freaking thing fades out!!! Now I wonder if I hallucinated it, or if they edited it later because the ending really did go on after the song ended for a few seconds. My second weird memory glitch is from a Def Leppard concert. I can swear that when I saw them in June of 2003, they sang a song that rarely ever gets played live. However, the set lists I can find show no mention of it. Other people from that same show have sworn it wasn’t played. I can recall where I was sitting, what I was doing when the song was being played and the words used to announce the song. After much digging, I did find that it was played at a concert I’d seen 11 years prior! The show from 1992 I was nowhere near the stage, nor was I in floor seats, but my memory has me placed on the floor at the 2003 show where I swear I heard the song. It stuck out because it was a song I wasn’t familiar with and it’s a vaguely depressing song so I wanted them to get onto the rest of the show with something more upbeat. Just too weird!!! ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/63 "2009-01-16T20:27:05Z")
> [@Alice\_The\_Goon](#): > > The\* Challenger\* explosion. The camera was actually on the commentators during the explosion, not the space shuttle. But you will find tons of people that “remember” seeing it happen live. Perhaps they were [watching CNN](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4JOjcDFtBE). ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/64 "2009-01-16T21:12:09Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > He’s facing to the right. A dime is to the left. A quarter is to the left. And the nickel… > > dammit! Which way is the nickel facing? Until 2006, the nickel faced to the left. Currently, the nickel faces towards the viewer. > [@Hunter\_Hawk](#): > > I think Loftus has done research on inducing false memories. For example, people have claimed to remember seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney resorts. I was going to mention this. Loftus was also able to get people to remember seeing Ariel at Disney resorts at visits occurring _before_ the release of _The Little Mermaid_. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/65 "2009-01-16T21:35:19Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Many people falsely remember seeing the “Episode IV” on _Star Wars_’s opening crawl in the 1978 re-release, when it didn’t actually get put on until 1981. And then, there are the people that think Greedo shot first… > [@muttrox](#): > > Cite? It was Johnnie Cochran’s famous [Chewbacca defense](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense#Chewbacca_defense) that did it. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/66 "2009-01-16T22:12:53Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > But Ruth did hit it, the debate is where he pointed before he hit it. In my mind, it doesn’t matter what or who he pointed at. When you make a pointing gesture in baseball when someone is riding you, that means “This one is going to make you shut up.” > > He may not have called the spot of his shot, but Babe Ruth damn well called that home run. The interesting question is then of course “How often did he call a home run, but miss the next pitch?” Which is related to the false-memory issue, because humans are really good at forgetting misses and remembering hits in situations like this. Examples are cold-reading ‘psychics’ ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/67 "2009-01-16T22:39:22Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I prefer my version. Just like I prefer my version of what Hannibal Lecter says to Clarice about the survey she presents him with: “Did you really think you could dissect me with this blunt little instrument?” He says “tool,” which is inelegant to my ears and misses an excellent opportunity for a pun. ---
**Author:** ![Rich\_Mann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@Rich\_Mann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rich_Mann)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/68 "2009-01-17T01:06:52Z")
For a long time my sister insisted thet she could clearly remember me being attacked by dozens of cats in the street in front of our house. My other sister and brother also seemed to remember it, although not as clearly. I didn’t remember such an event at all, but it did seem vaguely familiar–as if I had heard about something like that before, somewhere. Finally she brought it up with our mother. Mom quite clearly remembered Sis coming to her, crying, after waking up from the _nightmare_ in which the attack took place. * * * Regarding the “Thunderbird photo”; I very clearly remember going to the school library when I was in the fourth or fifth grade and seeing the photo in a rather slim book with a sepia-toned photo of a man’s face on the cover. I still insist that I could not have been influenced by other people’s reported memories of the picture because I had never talked about it with anyone nor read about it until after I spontaneously recalled it from my youth and thought to look for it on the 'net. I was surprised both by the fact that it wasn’t anywhere to be found and by the number of other people looking for it and talking about it. Understand, I’m not claiming that the photo depicted real events–just that such a photo existed. I have no theory as to why it is so hard to find, and I don’t blame people for doubting that it ever existed. ---
**Author:** ![Arglefraster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@Arglefraster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arglefraster)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/69 "2009-01-17T01:49:39Z")
There’s an urban legend that Oprah threw Tommy Hilfiger off of the show because he said that if he’d known so many black people were going to wear his clothes, he’d never have gotten into the business. My ex and his sister both swore they had seen the episode on tv. Snopes disproved it, and when I showed him the Snopes page, he was baffled. I’m very prone to this kind of thing. More than once, I’ve told a story about something I “remembered” happening to me, and it turned out it was a story someone had previously told me that actually happened to them. One memorable (heh) occasion, I was telling a story to a group of friends that included the person it actually happened to. He called me on it, pissed because I was “lying” about it happening to me. I don’t deliberately co-opt other people’s stories, I just somehow integrate interesting stories into my memories, without realizing I’m doing it. ---
**Author:** ![CheapBastid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8baadc/32.png) [@CheapBastid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CheapBastid)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/70 "2009-01-17T02:00:21Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > There’s a famous episode of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson where Zsa Zsa comes on carrying a cat. She arranges herself on the couch, then says to Johnny, “Would you like to pet my pussy?”. Johnny replies, “Sure - move the damn cat.”. > > Millions of people claim to have seen it. Didn’t happen. No record of it live, it’s true, but [Jane Fonda](http://youtube.com/watch?v=FBO-qdWAAAs) told the story live, which was almost as good. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/71 "2009-01-17T02:11:05Z")
I also saw the Challenger explosion live. We lived in rural West Virginia and had one of the old C-band satellite dishes. We had a raw feed of the NASA channel. It had snowed the night before, so school was cancelled that day. IIRC, the consensus was that launch wasn’t going to happen that day (they had already put it off a few times) and it was still below freezing at the Cape at launch time. So, we watched regular programming until about 10 minutes before launch, realized that we hadn’t heard anything about a scrub, so we flipped over and saw it live… ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/72 "2009-01-17T17:10:06Z")
Alot of people have heard the line “That’s great, but what does it do?–It doesn’t _do_ anything, that’s the beauty of it” None of them can ID the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/73 "2009-01-17T19:24:53Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > If as many people who claimed they were going to Roman Polaski’s house but cancelled on the night of August 9, 1969 actually went there, they would have outnumbered the Manson killers 100 to 1. “If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock.” /Buffy quote off Yeah, see the work of Elizabeth Loftus (cited above). Great stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/74 "2009-01-17T19:45:07Z")
I have a really disctinct memory of being on an airplane and the pilot announcing the Challenger disaster, but my dad insists I wasn’t on an airplane at the time and a pilot wouldn’t announce that in-flight anyway. As clear as the memory is, he might be right. Memory is a weird thing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/75 "2009-01-17T21:41:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Alot of people have heard the line “That’s great, but what does it do?–It doesn’t do anything, that’s the beauty of it” > None of them can ID the movie. A year or two ago, someone here managed to unearth the movie clip that that came from, and it was from some obscure old movie nobody had ever heard of. The speculation is that some radio DJ was playing random movie clips between songs, as some do, and that most of the general public first heard the line from such a radio clip. ---
**Author:** ![Gotterfunken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/58956e/32.png) [@Gotterfunken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gotterfunken)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/76 "2009-01-17T22:16:15Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > It is in the movie, but apparently only in a few very early cuts or something like that. Were **Morbo** around he might be able to give a better explanation, being a movie guy and all. > > -Joe Here is an earlier thread where we discussed that particular scene (and Morbo’s Betamax tape) at great length: ["Say, Lucas, About Those Scenes That “Never Happened”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=279595) ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/77 "2009-01-17T23:05:48Z")
I remember Bill Clinton reminiscing about blck churges getting blown up by bombs (in Arkansas). Except there were never any church bombings in Arkansas-they happened elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2009, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/78 "2009-01-18T08:52:25Z")
> [@Cosmic Relief](#): > > If I’m not mistaken, many people claim that they saw movie footage of the Kennedy assasination on the day it occurred in 1963 (either live, or in a newscast later that day). This is impossible because the Zapruder film was never broadcast publicly until the 1970s. The Zapruder film was one of _four_ films taken of the Kennedy assassination. The others were taken by Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore, and Charles Bronson (not the actor). The Muchmore film was purchased by United Press International on November 25, 1963, and shown on New York television station WNEW-TV on November 26, 1963, four days after the assassination. Many other films were taken in the seconds immediately before or immediately after the assassination by Robert Hughes, F. Mark Bell, Elsie Dorman, John Martin Jr., Patsy Paschall, Tina Towner, James Underwood, Dave Wiegman, Mal Couch, and Thomas Atkins. Some, such as the Wiegman and Couch films, were shown on network television later that day. ---
**Author:** ![gurujulp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba9def/32.png) [@gurujulp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gurujulp)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2009, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/79 "2009-01-20T23:39:32Z")
I have had this happen several times- but I don’t recall many… Back when I was in middle school I remember very clearly showing my mother a novel that I had borrowed from a teacher when I was home over the weekend. On Monday morning I asked her for it, sure that I had left it with her. I recalled the discussion we’d had about it and all. It was in my desk at school in a classroom where I had left it the previous Friday. There is no possible way she had seen it or that we had the conversation I remember… ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2009, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768/80 "2009-01-21T00:57:30Z")
> [@CheapBastid](#): > > No record of it live, it’s true, but [Jane Fonda](http://youtube.com/watch?v=FBO-qdWAAAs) told the story live, which was almost as good. speaking of miss Fonda, she wasnt nude in the opening credits of “Barbarella” no matter how many people think she was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remembering-things-that-didnt-happen/479768.md?page=5)