Skip Navigation
47 comments
  • This isn't just one weird thing that happened; it's a big, puzzling mystery that my family and I have all experienced. It's about a strong, clear smell of jasmine flowers that just shows up out of nowhere, always at night, and always without any clear source, leaving us completely confused.

    The first time this really got our attention was late one night, around 1:45 AM. My brother Thangaraj and I were really into watching "Dark" – its final season was actually being shown at that time – in our kitchen on the first floor. We picked that spot so the sound wouldn't bother our parents and our other brother, Vijayaraj, who were sleeping downstairs. The night was quiet and peaceful. Then, suddenly, a super strong, almost too much, jasmine smell filled the whole room. It wasn't faint; it was so strong we could barely stand it, but we couldn't ignore it either. This was strange right away because we're all allergic to perfumes and scents, and nobody in our house ever uses any. So, it was definitely not from inside our home.

    We immediately tried to find out where it came from. I ran to the balcony to check the street below – it was totally empty, which is normal for our quiet area, even though it's growing, just 6 km from Sivakasi town. Thangaraj went to the highest point of our house, the water tank, trying to spot anything. We thought about everything: maybe the farming land behind our house (part of it is used for animal food, but nothing there smells like jasmine), or perhaps the many factories. There are about 250 firecracker factories within 25 km radius, but they all close by 5 PM. When they burn their waste before sunset, it smells like chemicals, totally different from jasmine. We spent a good 15 minutes looking everywhere, but we couldn't find anything to explain that strong, lasting smell. It was a truly confusing experience that we just couldn't make sense of.

    What makes this more than just a personal story, and a truly fascinating mystery, is that it happened again. About a year ago, my other brother, Vijayaraj, had almost the exact same experience, but in a completely different place, about 3 km from our house. He was working late on a Saturday night, between 8 PM and 10 PM, with three other people. They were unloading oil packets from a truck near a police checkpoint and a graveyard. That area is a bit more developed than our home, but still mostly rural. The key thing is, all four of them, without talking about it first, said they smelled the exact same strong, unknown jasmine scent. It was something they all felt, clearly, and it had nothing to do with our house.

    The fact that many different people, in different spots, at different times (but always at night), have all smelled this very strong, exactly the same jasmine smell, and there's no good reason for it from our homes or the areas around us, makes it completely unexplainable. It's not a made-up feeling, not a plant we know, and definitely not from any factory. What in the world could it be?

    To be honest, we still don't have an answer. However, to help us avoid panic if this strange smell ever happens again, we've since planted jasmine in our home garden.!

    Yellow arrow - Agri land.

    Red arrow- Jasmine plant in our home garden. (Planted a year ago)

  • From your description 'too low to the ground' sounds like it was probably ball lightning ... which can do all kinds of goofy shit depending on the weather or how it was created. I've never seen any good videos of BL on Youtube, but there might be newer ones.

    Don't know D.C. at all but if you were anywhere near a marsh, maybe 'swamp gas'?

  • Closest I can think of was maybe a little less than 2 decades ago now. I vaguely remember it, but some time after my grandpa had died, our landline got a call. I was in the room with my grandma and mother and my mom went to get the phone. There was no number, but instead just his name. Pretty sure she answered, but nobody replied. The line was dead.

    My mom swears it was something like my grandpa, in the afterlife, calling to tell us that everything's gonna be okay despite his recent passing, but I don't buy into that kinda religious spiritual stuff

    Other than that, I have memories from when I was younger that I cannot confirm or deny because the only people I know who might have an answer probably wouldn't remember and I'd feel real weird asking them about these memories completely out of the blue. One is me supposedly going on a trip with the family of one of my older brother's friend's family to a city/town ( don't remember name ) in a nearby county ( name not included for obvious reasons ) in the same state and me being in the basement in a house we stopped at for some reason. That's a very vague memory. Same with an unconfirmed memory where I swear I went with the mother of this friend to some berry picking place and was stuck in their van once we got back to their place, with nobody coming to help me get out. Very vaguely remember that I couldn't open the van door for some reason. I'd probably chalk that one up to me being a kid and time moving by relatively slow from my perspective, making it seem like forever when it was probably just a couple minutes of me trying to get out.

    Both vague and highly unconfirmed, but I am more concerned about the memory of a mystery road trip that I somehow ended up involved in that my parents don't remember. Wouldn't expect them to since they weren't there, but the fact they don't remember this supposed trip happening adds to the mystery.

47 comments