By Hannah Lathen/ campus editor

When simply forgetting the facts turns into a phenomenon dealing with parallel universes and time travel, you’ve reached the Mandela Effect. 

The Mandela Effect phenomenon occurs when a large mass of people remembers the same things that are untrue. People will have a clear, distinct memory of something happening or existing in great detail that never did.

The Mandela Effect started when author Fiona Broome attended a conference and noticed that many people had a distinct memory of Nelson Mandela dying in a South African prison in the 1980s.

In 2010, Broome published a website explaining this theory where thousands of people have shared their experiences with what she named the Mandela Effect.

The most popular example, was about the children’s book series, The Berenstain Bears. Many believe that the name of the books has always been Berenstein, not Berenstain.

In Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, people claim the original line the Evil Queen says into the mirror is “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” when, in fact, she actually says, “Magic mirror on the wall.”

It only gets creepier. In Star Wars: Episode V-Empire Strikes Back, probably the most popular line in the movie and the whole Star Wars series is “Luke, I am your father.” However, the actual line is “No, I am your father.”

The alleged theory behind this phenomenon is that we are sliding in and out of different realities or that people from the future are traveling back in time and details are being changed as a result.

Some of the examples given to back up the Mandela Effect are eerie to say the least but are still not immune to resulting from human error.

I remember things wrong all the time and catch myself with false memories. It is very easy for the same thing to happen to others.

With all that is streamed through the media, we are bound to hear something wrong and still hold on to it. With many of the examples, once you hear something, it can stay in your memory.

Maybe there is a deeper explanation to why mass numbers of people are remembering the same details and events wrong, but we are not to the point to classify it as proof of alternate realities or time travel … yet.