So Supernatural - DARK WEB: Reality Shifting

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

A strange trend has been spreading across TikTok and social media known as “Reality Shifting”. Thousands of people claim they’ve discovered a way to leave this world and transport their consciousness into alternate realities through meditation, scripted rituals, and sleep techniques. Believers insist the experiences are real. Skeptics dismiss it as a mass internet-fueled fantasy. But the question remains: is this psychology at work… or something science can’t yet explain?   For a full list of sources, please visit: https://sosupernaturalpodcast.com/dark-web-reality-shifting   Did you know you can listen to So Supernatural ad-free? Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies. So Supernatural is an Audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social! Instagram: @sosupernaturalpod Twitter: @_sosupernatural Facebook: /sosupernaturalpod Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The older and wiser you get, the more you realize just how precious every second of life is. But some moments, even the tiniest ones, may feel a bit more important than others. I want you to just stop and think for a second about a tiny little moment that changed the course of your life. Maybe it's a time you missed a flight and you spent hours in the airport and met a stranger who ended up becoming your best friend. Or maybe you got stopped at a traffic light right before a huge accident happened. Maybe you spilled some coffee on someone who later offered you the opportunity of a lifetime. Or maybe you're like me and your job brought you to a new city where they rented a place for you

and your roommate became your husband. And yes, that was over 20 years ago. But what I'm saying is the world unfolds around us in mysterious ways, guiding us towards what feels like our destiny. But do you ever sit back and think about how different your life would be if those little things never happened? I think about this all the time. I believe every single moment in my life, good, bad, big or small,

has led me to this precise moment. We all know how much I love Marvel and DC, especially Loki, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and Superman and Lois, which have all dabbled in the multiverse. I sometimes wonder if there's a very different version of me living a totally different life in an alternate universe like one of my favorite superheroes. Would other Rasha be gay like me?

Would she be a podcaster? or would she be a professional softball player, or maybe she's hooping it up in the WNBA? Is our beautiful mother still alive in that other universe? Although I love my life and everything I've built for myself and our family, our Ohana, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about what that other Rasha was up to. If only we could take a peek.

Well, according to the Internet, you can't. Today we're talking about a growing online movement of people who say that they can visit alternate dimensions. They can spend days, weeks, or even years there, and then seamlessly return to their own. They call themselves reality shifters, and according to them, anyone can travel through the multiverse. All you need is to tap into a power that we all have hiding inside our selves. I'm Yvette Gentile. And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecorero. This is so supernatural.

Well, I mean, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. The web and social media are full of misinformation, fake news, AI-generated content, and then there are the rabbit holes, the deep, long rabbit holes that pull you in at 2 a.m. and do not let you go. Well, reality shifting is one of them. Thousands of people online claim they've consciously moved their awareness to an entirely different reality. Some say they've spent what felt like years in a world they built themselves

only to wake up in their beds minutes later. Is it real or just mass delusion? Today, that is what we want to uncover, because mixed in with all the online hoaxes and misinformation, sometimes you find something that doesn't have a clean explanation, something that a lot of people are experiencing independently all over the world. And reality shifting might be one of those things. Let us introduce you to a Canadian woman named Kristen Datou.

In 2020, she was 19 years old and, like most of us, feeling, restless at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Kristen couldn't see her friends in person, attend real-world classes, or do much of anything for that matter. And like many of us, her biggest connection to the outside world was the internet. So she spent her hours scrolling on TikTok, and that's when Kristen saw a post that caught her eye. It was talking about reality shifting.

Kristen had seen the term on social media a few years before, and back then the post had implied it was some kind of witchcraft or dark magic. And since Kristen had never been interested in the occult, she'd never paid much attention to it. But this TikToker described reality shifting in terms that had nothing to do with spells or rituals. Instead, it almost seemed more scientific. They explained that infinite alternate universes weren't just a theory. They really existed. And it was possible to send your consciousness to any dimension you wanted. They claimed everyone had this ability inside themselves already. All you had to do was get into the right mindset. But only your mind would travel. Your physical body would remain safe and

sound right in your home universe, which was good because according to the TikTok post, you could get physically hurt or even die while traveling between realities. But your body would remain safe and sound right here. In some cases, you'd also find that time passed very differently in the other universes. Some people have claimed to spend months or even years in these alternate realities, but when they got home, only a few hours or minutes had passed. Okay, we know it sounds wild, and Kristen thought so too. But the post also included some instructions on how to get into the right mindset to do it herself. And she figured, what was the harm in trying?

Worst case scenario, reality shifting was a hoax. Nothing would happen and she'd manage to kill a few hours, get a good nap, right? Best case scenario, Kristen would experience, I don't know, something incredible. To start, she had to enter a meditative state where she was very relaxed and very calm. So she put on some gentle music, lay down in bed and did her best to clear her mind. According to the videos, it was that easy. But several minutes went by and nothing happened. Eventually, Kristen sat back up again,

probably feeling a little bit ridiculous for falling for the entire thing. A few days went by and then one afternoon Kristen was lying in bed trying to catch a midday nap. And she began doing all the same things she'd done during her previous attempt. She was breathing deeply and lying in bed with her eyes closed and she felt relaxed and basically at peace with the world. And that's when she suddenly felt a cool, gentle breeze blowing across her face. The thing was, Kristen had closed her bedroom window before lying down for her nap. There shouldn't have been a breeze inside, I mean, at all.

So she opened her eyes, and that's when she realized she wasn't in her room anymore. She was somewhere she'd never been before. It looked like a fancy bedroom and a British man. mansion, and there was an open window letting in the breeze. And all of the furniture was very old. It appeared to be from the 1800s. And that's when Kristen remembered something from the videos. She was in a place known as the waiting room. That's the term reality shifters used for the stopping point between universes. It's where they go after they've left our dimension, but haven't made it to a new one yet. Kristen remembered hearing.

that each waiting room was unique. Some people waited in forests or temples or remote cabins. But there was one feature every waiting room had in common. They were all quiet and peaceful. People went there to unwind and get into the right mindset during the shift. Kristen said she still didn't believe she'd actually gone into a new reality. It seemed too incredible. So she pinched herself to check if she was dreaming.

And guess what? The pinch hurt. This seemed real. At that point, she tried to remember everything she'd seen and read in that post days before. The user had claimed there were infinite alternate universes. Anything you can imagine is real somewhere. And reality shifters need to choose what kind of dimension they want to travel to before they can actually get there. So Kristen figured she was in this waiting room because she hadn't picked.

a destination yet. She took a moment to think about what kind of world she wanted to visit, and she remembered her favorite anime series called My Hero Academia. It was set in a world where superheroes and villains were real. The main character was a student at a school for heroes, learning how to master his powers, and he regularly went on action-packed adventures with his friends and classmates. Kristen liked the idea of being in a world similar to that one. So she did some deep breathing exercises to keep herself calm. And she repeated phrases like, I'm going to shift over and over again. Eventually, she became so relaxed, she actually dozed off. When she woke up again, she said she was in the universe she'd imagined, one full of superheroes and mouth.

magic powers, a girl after my own heart. From there, Kristen claimed to have an amazing adventure, but she didn't go into detail. We do know that when she woke up, she wasn't lying in her bed anymore. While her consciousness had been in the other universe, her body had gotten up, gone through her usual daily routine all on its own, which proved to her, she hadn't just been dreaming. Kristen began doing meditation and deep breathing exercises consistently until she got really good at putting herself into the right mental state. She said she gained the ability to transport

her mind at will anytime she wanted to. Sometimes she went straight to her superhero universe skipping the waiting room entirely. Other times, she explored the 19th century manner just to see what it was like. And Kristen realized the manner was much bigger than just that one house. It was full of other buildings and people. Some lived there working as butlers and maids. Others were members of that universe's noble elite. They all had their own dreams and goals and were willing to scheme or betray one another to get exactly what they wanted. Kristen said she spent hours in the waiting room universe getting all caught up in its politics. And back here in this reality, she stayed in touch with TikTok's reality

shifter community. She looked at other people's posts to see if their experiences were similar to hers, and she shared details of her own travels. What she found was she was not alone. Her experiences were very typical. Lots of people struggled to shift the first time they tried but got better with practice, and it was common to shift to realities that resembled existing movies and TV shows. While Kristen's experiences weren't unique, she still became a very well-known reality shifter in that online circle. Eventually, she even made a how-to video full of tips and tricks new reality shifters could use to travel to other dimensions. Within a year or so, it racked up more than one million views. She also gave interviews about her experiences to the BBC and,

and The Washington Post. She spoke openly about her experiences and made one thing very clear. She hadn't imagined her experiences. She wasn't lying or making this up. In their articles, the reporters dismissed Kristen's adventures as fantasies or dreams.

No matter what she said, they would not accept that her story was real. But people on social media believed her. Post-reading hashtag shifting realities racked up almost 10 billion views on TikTok during and after the pandemic. And a Reddit community called Dimension Jumping attracted over 42,000 members. Many of these posts discussed methods and tactics that could reliably trigger reality shifting.

So we figured why not share them with all of you. Okay, well, imagine you want to visit another universe. The good news is you don't need any high-tech equipment or rare matter. powers, almost anyone can do it. Usually, you start by deciding what kind of universe you want to jump to. This is called a desired reality, or DR for short. The DR can be almost anything. It can be very similar to our dimension with just one or two little details changed. Maybe it's a world where you landed a dream job that you didn't get here, or where your childhood crush actually became your lifelong partner, Brad Pitt.

Michelle Rodriguez. Or it might be wildly different, because it exists in a different time. It could have different laws of physics. The more clearly you can picture the DR, the easier it is to get there. Some people even go so far as to design specific rooms or buildings to shift to. Or they'll specify other individuals they want to meet in the DR and what their relationship looks like. This process of specifying every aspect of the DR in advance is called scripting. Once your script is written, you can move on to the next stage, and that is meditation.

Reality shifters have strategies to make the meditation stage as effective as possible. One of the most popular is called the Raven Method. The Raven Method involves lying flat on your back, with your legs and arms spread out around you. Ideally, you don't want to be touching anything. You close your eyes and slowly count to 100. But between each number, you'll whisper an affirmation about reality shifting to yourself. So it might sound something like this. One, I'm going to shift.

Two, I'll make it to my desired reality. Three, nothing will keep me away from my DR. And of course, it goes on and on until you reach 100. It seems very similar to Shabasana in yoga. Like when you're lying on your back, yes, with your hands and legs spread apart. I mean, this is at the end of your vinyasa. you know, where you drift away and then you count back to come back to your mat. So, yeah, this is fascinating.

Well, some people have found that the Raven method doesn't work well for them. Instead, they find it helpful to picture a moving space like a train or an elevator. In their imaginations, they're in their current reality, or CR, as they call it, when they start their journey. But once they've reached their stop, it's in the DR. Others will sit in a private area, like under a tree in their yard, and then they'll picture a scene right out of Alice in Wonderland. A person from their DR runs by them, and they get up to chase that person, then they fall into a rabbit hole, which is an interdimensional portal. There are dozens of methods reality shifters used to get to their DR, and there are just as many methods to return to the CR.

Some people simply decide to go to the CR and find themselves back in their original universe, like waking themselves up from a dream. We first learned about reality shifting from a member of our family who has actually tried to shift, and they find it helpful to come up with a particular code or phrase while they're scripting. When they say it out loud, they instantly transport back to their CR. Others lay down and closed their eyes when they're ready to. to return. They meditate and whisper affirmations just like they did when they entered the DR. But this time, the affirmations are phrases like, I'm going home or it's time to go back.

But some people warn that if you don't have a reliable way to get back, you could get stuck in your DR permanently. What's shocking is there are tons of stories about people who have reality shifted using these methods. But others discovered these abilities. before they ever heard of reality shifting or join TikTok. I mean, just take this story from a woman named Join. She was born and raised in the Netherlands, and today Join is very active on TikTok and posts a lot about reality shifting. Join says the first time she left the CR, she didn't even realize it.

She was playing with her stuffed animals only for them to come alive. And as she got older, she was utterly confused. by her memories of living, walking, talking toys. But in 2020, she found something that helped her basically make sense of it all. Like a lot of other young people, Joanne felt restricted by the shelter-at-home orders. She spent a lot of time scrolling TikTok and saw countless stories from other reality shifters. As Joanne watched their accounts, it was like something clicked into place. She suddenly understood it was possible to send her consciousness to another universe.

And that must have been what had happened to her as a child. She'd slipped into a dimension where her toys were alive. After this, Joanne became very involved with reality shifting. She studied the different methods people used to get from one universe to the next, and she learned how to visit any DR at will. Along the way, she developed a deeper understanding of how parallel dimensions worked. And Joanne came to believe that everyone on Earth,

reality shifts every single day. Reality shifting works almost like manifestation. For those who don't know, the idea behind manifestation is that you can make your dreams a reality, just by believing in them. Those who practice it say it's like making your mind a magnet for your desires, It's the law of attraction. We grew up with a mother who 100% believed in manifestation and visualization.

If you believe something strongly enough and imagine that it is real, it will become your reality. A dream job you always wanted, a check in your mailbox, having a hit podcast. If you believe strongly enough that it will come to you, people practicing manifestations say it will happen. Except Joanne sees it slightly differently. She believes you hop to a universe where you already have that skill or where you're slightly better at it just by thinking about it a lot. And most people don't even realize that they've traveled to this other reality because their new DR is so similar to their original CR.

So my question is, what is the difference? Well, Joanne says she's visited a lot of parallel. dimensions over the years, some that are barely different from her own. There are so few differences that she hardly noticed a change, like the DR with the talking toys, but also others that are very different from her original CR. In fact, her favorite is one of Roshes 2, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Joanne's DR, Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Dr. Strange are all real. The plot points from their films have all happened. With one exception, Joanne is in a committed romantic relationship with Loki, the trickster god and brother of Thor. Joanne claims she's

been going to that universe for eight years, and she and Loki have been together long enough to have three children together. All right, Joanne, I'm not mad at you. going after my favorite bisexual superhero. But those claims make a lot of skeptic's spidey senses tingle. After all, it's one thing to say you've traveled to an alternate universe where toys are alive, but to live in a dimension akin to the MCU? That's even harder for skeptics to believe. And as much as I do want to believe it, it seems very unlikely that the Marvel Cinematic Universe

actually exists. It's a work of fiction created by writers, directors, actors, and comic book artists. And yet countless reality shifters say they've gone to the worlds of their favorite books, movies, and TV shows. There are even multiple people who say they're romantically involved with the same fictional character, Harry Potter's Draco Malfoy. Now, we don't support J.K. Rowling here at So Soup, but I get wanting to date your favorite fictional character. Which is why skeptics say there's no way reality shifting is actually a supernatural phenomenon. Instead, they believe it's psychological. According to a clinical psychologist named Ihab Yousef, accounts of reality shifting sound an awful lot like lucid dreaming. And that's a dream

in which you know you're asleep and you can take control of the narrative. In scientists, aren't entirely sure why we have lucid dreams, but Dr. Youssef notes that many reality shifters claim they go to their DR after lying still, closing their eyes, breathing deeply, and just relaxing. It's very possible they fall asleep while meditating, and since they're expecting to travel to another universe, they may have a lucid dream about going to that reality.

If the dream is vivid enough, the reality shifter might wake up believing they actually jumped universes. The explanation could be even simpler, like all of these reality shifters are merely daydreaming. For the most part, there's nothing wrong with having an active imagination. We all like fantasizing about being richer, more famous, or more influential. But psychologist, Ellie Sommer, says in certain situations, fantasies can become psychologically harmful. This is called maladaptive daydreaming. It can happen when people use their imaginations to avoid upsetting or stressful things in their real lives. For example, someone going through a difficult breakup or divorce may want to pretend a nicer, more attentive

partner is passionately in love with them. Or someone could lose their job and then, get lost in imaginary scenarios where they win the lottery and never need to work again. The danger is that people could become more invested in the daydream than in real life. They might stop trying to fix the problems that made them start fantasizing in the first place. When the fantasies start interfering with real life, the daydreams become maladaptive, according to Dr. Sommer. And it's notable that reality shifting began trending online during the the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when a lot of people were very stressed and looking to disassociate.

And of course, daydreams about being able to leave your home and travel to other universes would be very appealing. And some reality shifters did become more invested in their DRs than their CRs, just like Dr. Salmer warned. It's difficult to get into hard numbers because the phenomenon is so new. But some people report their DRs feel more real than the CR. They want to invest more in their alternate universe friendships because their relationships in this world don't feel as deep or as meaningful. Okay, so I can see how it's possible that some alleged reality shifters are just daydreaming or having lucid dreams.

But many people say their experiences are very real. And they know they're not fantasizing because they can tell the difference. And some reality shifters say they are able to travel while they're wide awake without needing to lie down or close their eyes. And there's a small number of reality shifters who say they've gained skills in their DR, abilities you'd only develop through real-world experience, not through daydreaming or fantasizing. For example, Kristen Dattoo told a CNN reporter she spent a lot of time in her 19th century aristocratic waiting room. She got caught up in its interpersonal politics and shifting alliances, and along the way, she became very good at reading people, advocating for what she wanted,

and seeing through empty flattery. She became an expert at navigating complicated political situations. It's worth noting that she was a freshman in college when she first got into reality shifting. And by the time she was an upper classman, she knew how to put her newfound skills to work. She decided to major in international relations and affairs. After she graduated, she started studying for her master's in global affairs. But some shifters don't want to use the knowledge from their DRs to make their CR better. Instead, it seems much easier to stay in the alternate universe as permanent residence rather than as visitors. Take this story from the early 2020s, when a 19-year-old named Naj had a huge falling out with

their friends. Nage was a non-binary college student who lived in Ohio, and after their social circle collapsed, they felt very alone with no one to support them. Eventually, they found solace in video game called Dokey Dokey Literature Club. There was a character in the game named Monica, who Najd developed a crush on. Now, Naug understood Monica didn't actually exist, and they would never get to meet Monica in real life. But somewhere along the way, they discovered the reality shifter community on TikTok, and they saw a bunch of creators saying there were infinite parallel universe. Anything you could imagine was real somewhere,

and you could go to any dimension you wanted to. As soon as Naj heard about reality shifting, they began studying the phenomena. They scripted a universe where Monica was real, and when they tried to cross over, well, it didn't work. But Naj was discouraged. In an interview,

they acknowledged that first-time shifters often make multiple attempts before they successfully cross over. Their struggles were common, except there was one thing that made Nage different from other shifters. They didn't just want to visit Monica's world. They wanted to move there, permanently. On TikTok, they had seen numerous posts referencing a phenomenon called perma-shifting.

It's impossible to say if anyone has successfully perma-shifted, Because remember, when you reality shift, your body doesn't travel to an alternate universe with you. Only your mind does. And allegedly, when your consciousness leaves your body, it keeps functioning without you. Reality shifters say that while they're in their DRs, their physical forms still wake up, walk around, talk to people, go to work or school, and live normal lives. They're just running on autopilot without their minds to guide. them. Much like Kristen experienced when she returned from her DR. Some people claim they've spent weeks or even months away from their CR just to come home and realize nobody noticed they were gone.

Their bodies and their lives kept on going without them. One TikToker who goes by Gina shifted long enough to miss several days of class. She let her body handle her homework while her consciousness was elsewhere. When she got back, her GPA had plummeted. Without her mind around to do the work correctly, her body had failed multiple assignments. It may sound impossible for our bodies to function without our consciousness around, or even for us to travel to other universes just by thinking about it. But there is evidence that suggest other dimensions do exist. The science here is very technical, way above my pay grade, and I'm simplifying a lot.

But in basic terms, our universe is constantly expanding. If it's getting bigger, that must mean it's moving into new space that wasn't part of our reality before. No one knows what's in that unoccupied space, but it could be another universe. Astronomers have also detected a lot of radiation at the far reaches of the universe, except it doesn't behave like radiation is supposed to. It's hard to get into the specifics of what it's doing wrong because that would involve some very advanced concepts. But some researchers think there's one obvious explanation for why the radiation is acting so weird.

It didn't originate in our reality. It's from somewhere else, where the laws of physics work very differently. Some research suggests there's at least one dimension where time, flows backward rather than forward, and other realities might have even stranger setups. However, it's also possible that some universes look very similar to our own reality. Some believe we're constantly creating alternate realities every second of every day. The idea is that if you flip a coin, two universes are created, one where it lands on heads and another where it lands on tails.

If you're debating about whether to call an old friend to catch up, there's one reality where you do it and another where you don't. That means there are millions of realities that are very similar to our own. So if alternate universes do exist, what's to say we can't travel between them, even with the powers of our own minds? Especially because, according to some recent scientific studies, thoughts can be more powerful than we ever might. realized. And you've probably heard of the placebo effect because we've talked a lot about it on So Supernatural. It's a phenomenon in which people can heal or beat infections just because they believe they'll get better. But there's a related concept called mental rehearsal, a process where athletes imagine themselves winning races or lifting heavy weights or shooting

game-winning free throws. Studies show people who have regular mental rehearsal. alongside physical workouts tend to be faster, stronger, and better at sports than people who only exercise in the real world. And I 100% believe this to be true. Because when I... I didn't realize I've done that my entire life with softball. Yeah. And when I do marathons, I visualize myself crossing that finish line and people yelling and screaming and, you know, and I'm just like in my bliss, right? So yes, I believe that to be true for sure. It just goes to show that if you can visualize it, you can create your reality, and our minds are pretty powerful tools, after all. Whether it's real or not, I'm not surprised people are drawn to the idea of reality shifting. Life in this world isn't always fun, glamorous,

or exciting. Sometimes we have to deal with setbacks, strained relationships, health scares, unnerving political developments. The list can go on and on. It's tempting to think we could simply write a script, do some meditation, and then travel to another universe where things will work out. But if these other universes are real,

they're probably not as perfect as we'd like to imagine. Suffering and adversity are, and always will be part of the human condition. And overcoming obstacles is truly what makes us all stronger, which is why it's worth investing in our PR, our present reality, because there's beauty, value, and infinite potential in the here and now. This is So Supernatural, an audio chuck original produced by Crimehouse.

You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at so supernaturalpodcast.com. Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all-new episode. I think Chuck would approve.