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The moment when you realize time has slipped away without explanation ranks among the most unsettling human experiences. That feeling of "how did I get here?" or "where did those hours go?" isn't just disorienting—it's downright terrifying when you truly can't account for lost time.

Missing time has fascinated me since childhood when I first encountered it on Unsolved Mysteries. That particular episode featured Robert Matthews, who in 1966 experienced what felt like minutes but discovered he'd lost over an hour after spotting strange lights in the sky. Through hypnosis, Matthews later recalled being abducted by aliens—connecting missing time and extraterrestrial encounters in our cultural consciousness.

This phenomenon exists at a fascinating crossroads between paranormal research and legitimate medical science. While many associate missing time with alien abduction narratives that gained prominence in American culture throughout the 1980s and 90s, neurological conditions like dissociative amnesia and dyschronometria offer scientific explanations for these temporal gaps. The question becomes: when you lose track of time, is it your brain misfiring, or something more mysterious?

The episode culminates with a friend's chilling firsthand account of losing nearly three hours while babysitting. Without any history of blackouts or medical conditions, she checked the time at 7:53 PM, heard a sound upstairs, investigated, and returned to discover it was suddenly 10:46 PM. Years later, she still cannot explain what happened during those missing hours.

Whether you're skeptical or open-minded about the paranormal, missing time challenges our fundamental sense of continuity and control. After all, when we lose time, we lose a part of ourselves—our narrative becomes fragmented, our sense of agency compromised. The next time you find yourself unable to account for minutes or hours, you might wonder: was it just your brain playing tricks, or did something truly unexplainable occur?