some years ago i was sitting on my back porch and i looked up and saw a person standing there maybe (at most) 30 feet away in my back yard. they were dressed in light colors and had their hair back in a pony tail. the weird thing is i couldnt see the face. it was like trying to see a face through water, constantly shifting, even though i could make out the shapes of leaves on the the tree right next to them ( i was using the tree to test the focus of my eyes). weirder still, i remember thinking "that looks like me". i wore all black then and still do, and yet i saw that as me (but older). i was 16 and home alone so i didnt dare turn my back on a total stranger standing in my backyard in a very rural area. so i opened the slider and looked away only for a second to step up into the house and when i looked back--the person was gone.

i was an even more devout skeptic then and i didnt become acquainted with the concept of a future self until 2 years later.

i still dont know what it was. there was no place to hide or run to in the backyard. i should have at least caught sight of them running away!

could it be some reverse residual haunting of a future me?

If what you'd seen was in fact an actual occurence and not a halucination or some other form of mind trickery, i'd say it could have been yourself from the future, (more logical than a ghost of yourself that didn't exist yet, my head still hurts trying to wrap around that one)

I've wondered about this stuff sometimes. Every so often I'll survey my achievements and surroundings, so that if by any chance I am appearing as a future-self to my past-self, I'll show my past-self what is to come and what I can achieve.

Now, I've never had as lucid an experience as you did, but for some reason I have a strong feeling that it's possible that you saw your future self, and that we all can or do sometimes see our future selves. Perhaps the reason I'm so sure of this is because I've unconsciously experienced it myself. Or maybe my brain's just wired wrong.

oh, it's wired wrong. doesn't detract from the validity of your post though...

Silence, chickenboy.

must i direct you to my sub avatar name heading?

Must I direct you to mine?

We'd better stop hijacking threads.

guess ill just let you two ninjas fight it out........

If this is true randym23 i bet sometime in your future, most likely after youve almost completely forgoten about this event you will see your 16 y.o teenage self next to the house. (kinda trippy, huh?)

i know ive often thought of that desty. each day subconsciously i find myself trying to spot that moment. luckily i think the future me was happy or at least content. honestly despite the weirdness of it, i found the presence comforting. there have been times the event has even given me hope when i thought my life was going to turn out horrible.
who knows

maybe there are tears in time and i just happen to catch one. or maybe it was a form a precognition.
or maybe 16 year old me and the future me connected to each other across time at a point of significance that i just cant see right now.

i wish i knew!!!!

thanks to everyone for your posts

It's a weird thought, but maybe in the near future we will discover time travel, and your future self was travelling in the past to see his old self (you).