Sitnam's Stories II

Hello,

Lately I've been reminiscing on some of the more notable experiences in my life. It occurred to me that such anecdotes may provide some insights. Insights of sovereignty, bravery, knowledge, intuition, and protection.

This is part 2 of 3 (planned)

Similarly, this also occurred roughly a decade ago. Around the same time as the first story, give or take a few months.

This time, I even had witnesses, or maybe more aptly active participants or co-experiencers who, to this day, could corroborate the following if asked. This one is quite long, so I'll gloss over a lot of the group's dialogue. Onto the tale.

Myself, and a group of friends, were visiting a nearby town for an event we were participating in and, both wanting to see the sights a little and take advantage of an absolutely gorgeous day, began making our way toward a well-known eatery on foot.

As we progressed, eventually a drum line suddenly appeared and began to perform in the middle of the road up ahead. It drew a massive crowd and our group was effectively blocked from progressing further.

We notice an alley and one of us, let's call him "Nick", suggests, "Hey, let's cut through here and continue on passed the crowd." We agree and proceed thru the alley.

On the other side was a large plaza, complete with oversized central water fountain and filled with people just simply enjoying life: people playing Frisbee, walking their dogs, birds chirping, dogs barking, the drum line playing in the background. We briefly take it all in and continue onward in the direction we were headed. What luck, it seemed like it would be a straight line to our destination.

Minutes later, we come upon an old church to our left and as we pass by some of the group point it out as it was pretty notably out of place, wedged between other much more modern buildings.

We press on, and minutes later find ourselves at another plaza, complete with giant fountain like the first. Exactly like it. We find it odd but chalk it up as an old/tourist town quirk and press on. I recall how, notably, while still quite populated, the people there felt less animated.

A few more minutes and we pass another old church to our left. Some of the group point out the oddity but we continue to chalk it up as an old town quirk. We press on.

Another large-fountain plaza. Some of the group begin to voice their concerns. This doesn't feel normal. The people in the plaza were sparse and I recall nearly all of them were facing away from us, unmoving. But we could still hear casual conversations, birds chirping, and dogs barking, tho the drum line had since fallen out of earshot. The weather was now overcast. Nick convinces us to keep going.

Another church. At this point, we're all getting concerned, except Nick. Nick pleads with us to keep going and we begrudgingly comply.

A dense, blueish fog rolls in.

We happen upon yet another fountain plaza. But this time there were no people. No birds chirping. No dogs barking. It was eerily silent. Nicks begs us to continue on and, against our better judgement, the group complies.

Until we see another church in the distance. We draw our lines in the sand. Nick wanted to keep going but the group is too sketched out to continue. In the moment, I mentally recalled a time that I once read about some Japanese spiriting away elevator game, where participants would take an elevator and ride it to a series of different floors before getting off that would send you to another realm. You had to go back in the elevator and ride it to each floor in reverse order to return. I suggest we should retrace our steps exactly and lead the group back.

In the same-but-now-reverse order things got strange, they incrementally returned to normal. We cut back thru the alley and, with the drum line now gone, continue on our original path without further issue.

After the trip, we scoured Google maps to see if we could find a street with four fountains and four churches but none of us were able to.