The Mandela Effect
One of the most requested phenomenas we have been asked to discuss on the show in the last few years is the enigmatic Mandela Effect. This phenomena gets its name from one of the original believed examples of the Mandela Effect. A significant amount pf people believed that Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s, while he was incarcerated in prison. In reality, he was actually freed from person and passed away in 2013 as a free man. The explanation for so many adamantly believing this, and similar phenomena varies but most theories ascribe these impossible memories by saying people are experiencing memories from alternate realities and/or memories from a parallel universe(s). Some believe that they slipped into another reality by accident (or, who knows, maybe on purpose), or have somehow received incorrect memories.
The term was first coined by paranormal writer and researcher, Fiona Broome, when she created a website dedicated to her recollections of Nelson Mandela’s death in prisons during the 1980s. As noted above, this never happened. However, Broome has detailed recollections of news coverage and more relating to his death.
After sharing her thoughts, she found more and more people who also remembered his non-existent death, and from there the pheonmea had a name and started getting its legs.
What is the difference between some misremembering or having a bad memory and the Mandela Effect? Even after researching this, I don’t have a succinct or easy answer. However, one of the quickest ways I can boil it down is that a large percentage of the population agrees or experienced similar happenings to the false memory. Instead of just a simple misremembering, multiple people (in some cases dozens, in other cases thousands) of people all remember the same thing that never actually happened.
Some other popular Mandela Effects (if you’d like to dive down some rabbit holes before going deeper):
I am your father vs. Luke, I am your father (in the movie, Darth Vadar never says Luke)
Looney Tunes vs. Looney Toons logo (Looney Tunes is the correct answer)
The Berenstein Bears vs. The Berenstain Bears (the ‘real’ answer, at least in this reality, is the Berenstain Bears)
We haven’t proven the existence of parallel or alternate universes yet, so believing in the Mandela Effect requires two notable leaps:
That parallel or alternate universes exists
That we can unknowingly (or not remember) slipping between them and/or gain information from them without realizing it.
That’s a pretty big leap, especially for something as small as many of these occurrences seem. That being said, you could push further into the woo-woo and say that those who are in the know of the parallel/alternate universes are aware and clean up these memories, only forgetting small pieces of pop culture here and there.
While not quite as astonishing as parallel universes, some researchers believe that instead of a supernatural explanation, there is a natural explantation: the misinformation effect. This effect, as described by Kendra Cherry, is ‘the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event. Researchers have shown that the introduction of even relatively subtle information following an event can have a dramatic effect on how people remember.” Shockingly, the human brain is pretty adept at falsifying memories. Other psychological explanations for the Mandela Effect may be reduced to significant priming, use of hypnosis, and even misinterpretation or misunderstanding.
It is important to remember, no matter what, that memory can be very unreliable, and there are many limits to human memory.
Thanks to Golden for suggesting this topic to be covered on Blogstonishing 2022!
The image is from Henry Gray (1918) Anatomy of the Human Body, specifically highlighting the hippocampus where powers of memory lay.