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THE POSTMAN GLITCH

Carl Grove

In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the notion that we are living in a kind of simulation, a
form of virtual reality. Although the idea is actually incredibly ancient, it was given a new lease of life by a
motion picture called The Matrix. In the film, people who appear to be living in 1980s America are actually
the victims of a super computer that has bred them to be used as sources of electricity. To keep their brains
active they are kept in The Matrix, a programmed illusion. If we are in some kind of simulation, then we
might expect small clues and program malfunctions to give the game away. And that is exactly what so-
called Glitches in the Matrix appear to be. Having had a lot of unusual experiences in my life, I have
certainly noticed some of them myself. Things disappearing then later on reappearing. Empty bottles
becoming full. Two tubes of toothpaste becoming three. All relatively minor happenings. But one day I
encountered... The Postman Glitch.

At the end of February, 2018, an extreme cold spell hit Britain. Temperatures as low as
-10 degrees Centigrade were registered, and snow began to fall. By the 1 st of March, snow
across East Anglia had piled up. There had been no postal deliveries for two or three days.
A bitterly cold wind was blowing. It was impossible even to take our little dog, Meshia, out
for a walk. Instead I had been taking her downstairs from our first floor maisonette (second
floor for US readers) and into the back garden for her toilet activities.

At one o'clock, the doorbell rang. I went downstairs and opened the door. It was a
postman – not our usual very neat and tidy man, but a rather unkempt and unshaven fellow.
He had a parcel that contained something my wife had ordered from China via eBay. I
signed for the package and closed the door, then took it upstairs. I took Meshia downstairs
around 2.20pm, taking with me a small kitchen flame-throwing gun that my wife used to
singe her lasagne with – I used it to defrost the padlock of one of the sheds in the garden.

Then, around 4pm I took Meshia down for another toilet break. As I walked her back
through the gate that leads to the back garden, I was idly contemplating the paw prints she
had left in the snow and contrasting them with my much larger shoe prints. I suddenly
remembered the postman. Where were his prints? They weren't there. Nor were there any
prints at all on the main path leading from the road! I took Meshia inside and went quickly
upstairs, then grabbed my camera and hurried back. I took a picture from the front door
showing the two sets of prints, but not, of course, showing the prints of the postman that
should have been there.

A little later I realised that it would also help to have pictures showing the front path
and the front garden. It will probably help to look at the very rough sketch map on the next
page, which shows the layout more precisely. The entrances to our maisonette and the next
one are directly opposite each other. Halfway between the two the front path runs from the
gate to the road, which is a very quiet and narrow street. Our front garden had been covered
with blue slate chippings, and in the middle I had constructed a wooden structure on which
were around 12 potted plants. Sometimes postmen and other delivery people would cut the
corner and go across the chippings to save time, so I thought it wise to get some more shots
to show that that had not happened in this case.
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Here is my very crude plan of the front gardens and footpaths:

A ROUGH SKETCH SHOWING THE LAYOUT OF THE FRONT

GARDEN (NOT TO EXACT SCALE) AND THE LOCATIONS OF
MESHIA'S PAW PRINTS AND MY OWN SHOE PRINTS
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Here is the first photo that I took, timed at 4.10pm.

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A bit later, I took the further pictures showing the view towards the road.

The melted area of snow marks the position of a drain cover.

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^
The key element in all these pictures is the area shown HERE. That is where the
postman must have been standing when he was handing me the parcel and I was signing for
it. All you can see are Meshia's prints on the right and my own distinctive sole patterns on
the left. The second major element is that there is no sign of prints on the main central path.
Nor are there any markings at all on the snow covered chippings to the right.

But that is not all. The next night, after I had taken our dog down for her final toilet
exercise, I glanced up the front path. It was no longer free of markings. On the right side
was a long impression in the snow, as if a 15 foot pole had been laying there while the snow
fell and had now vanished. But at the entrance on the road there were now some very small
footprints, as if made by a young child. They came down the middle of the path and when
they reached our opposite neighbour's lawn turned towards it, gradually fading away as they
reached its edge, almost as if whoever was making them had become lighter and lighter as
they went.

I now regret not trying to take a shot of those bizarre markings. I knew it would be
very hard to get a picture under very low light conditions, against the street lamp
illumination, so decided to wait until the morning.

Unfortunately, there was another heavy fall of snow overnight...

I suppose that if you can accept small objects vanishing or appearing in your home,
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then postmen who don't leave tracks in the snow shouldn't cause you any special concerns.
But somehow the fact that this happened outdoors, in broad daylight, and involved another
human being, raised the bar a bit. The fact that I was also allowed to get some photographic
evidence of the glitch is noteworthy; almost as if these things are happening more frequently
now for a purpose – to confirm, perhaps, that our apparent reality is not at all what it seems.

A few days later our regular postman came with another parcel. I wondered whether to
tell him what had happened. Would he think me utterly crazy? Or playing some weird joke
on him?

I asked him, first of all, if he knew the rather untidy postman who had come on that
day. He smiled and said he did. So I told him that he had brought us a package but hadn't
left any footprints in the snow.

He burst into laughter and smilingly said that he would tell him the next time he saw
him...

Finally, here is a view taken from Google Earth showing the front garden from the
direction of the road. This is how it was eight years prior to the incident, but the basic layout
is the same.

Carl Grove © 2021