Mandela Effect

   Have you ever been surprised when you remember something being said or spelled a certain way, but actually found out it’s spelled another way? You have probably experienced the Mandela Effect, where someone has a clear vision of something that never really happened. The majority of us have remembered the exact same events with the exact same details.

   The Mandela Effect all started because of Nelson Mandela, who was the former president of South Africa. In 1980, hundreds of thousands of people thought Mandela died in prison while he was incarcerated. There was a lot of news coverage of his funeral and heartfelt speech of his widow, and the former U.S. President George H.W. Bush thought Mandela died. Mandela was later released from prison in 1990. This event sparked the Mandela Effect.

Many of us can relate to the Mandela Effect of Pikachu from Pokemon. Some of us remember Pikachu having black at the end of its tail. In reality, Pikachu never really had black on the end of its tail. His full tail is actually yellow. Eugene Harris, a Freshman, said, “the Pokemon Effect surprised me the most. I swear his tail had black on it.”

   The Berenstain Bears is a very famous Mandela Effect. Many of us clearly remember it being spelled or pronounced with an E (Berenstein Bears). 90’s babies are familiar with this. The show/book is actually spelled with an A, and there’s no evidence of it actually being spelled with an “E”. Another popular Mandela Effect is Snow White. Most of us remember the famous phrase being, “Mirror mirror on the wall” but in reality it’s actually,

“Magic mirror on the wall.”

   You’re probably wondering what could cause the Mandela Effect. Many of us have a bunch of theories of what it could be. Bryana Supe, a Freshman at PVHS, said “The Mandela Effect could just be people actually not properly thinking in what they see. They assume that a thing is one way but actually it’s another way.”

   Do you remember when the world was supposedly going to end in 2012? There are theories where the world actually did end in 2012 and we just entered a simulation. The simulation causes the Mandela Effect to occur. That is why many of us experience this “false memory” today.

   There’s a lot of science behind it too. The Mandela Effect could just be a false memory. This causes people to mistakenly recalling events. In everyday life we experience “confabulation,” which is the unconscious manufacturing of fabricated or misinterpreted memories. The majority of people experience confabulation in their everyday life, simply by forgetting where they put their car keys or phone. So what do you think, is the Mandela effect just a false memory we experience or could it just be that our world entered a computer simulation?