Each case below combines witness logs, instrument traces, and post-event cognitive interviews. Conclusions remain provisional, occasionally unsettling, and surprisingly repetitive in the least imaginative ways.
Finding: Intent recall dropped 42% within 900 ms of crossing domestic thresholds; recovery was replaced by fabricated rationale in 3/5 participants.
Notable detail: Participants frequently "remembered" a practical reason for entering the room only after being asked twice, and those reasons changed between interviews.
Finding: Diary and wearable alignment showed abnormal wake clustering at 03:17 ±2 min over 28 nights across unrelated households.
Notable detail: Environmental controls removed obvious noise triggers; subjects still reported waking "as if finishing an unfinished sentence."
Finding: High-contrast reading tasks produced repeated line reacquisition immediately after long blinks, with subjective certainty of forward progression.
Notable detail: Confidence ratings rose while actual page progression fell, suggesting PDE prefers smooth narration over boring facts like line numbers.
Finding: Participants traversed identical corridor nodes while reporting monotonic movement; camera data contradicted all self-reports.
Notable detail: Adding a novelty marker (single red chair) reduced loop duration by 18%, implying environmental sameness amplifies sequence rewrite risk.
Finding: Short-edit text insertions appeared during user-absent intervals under 5 seconds, with keystroke timings matching local typing signatures.
Notable detail: Insertions were grammatically correct but semantically odd, often completing a sentence in a tone the user described as "technically me, spiritually not me."
Finding: Familiar-name retrieval dropped sharply in high-transition social settings; subjects reported “blank static” before substitution errors.
Notable detail: A one-second pause-and-anchor protocol cut substitution errors without improving confidence, which is exactly the kind of humility metric we like.
| Signal | Collection method | Confidence notes |
|---|---|---|
| Timestamp drift | Paired device logs + network time correction | High confidence after calibration. Sensitive to background sync delays. |
| Recall mismatch | Immediate post-event interview vs delayed retelling | High confidence for trend; low confidence for granular chronology. |
| Transition risk | Doorway, stairs, station gate location tags | Moderate confidence; improves with repeated-route mapping. |
| Typing ownership divergence | Keystroke cadence + foreground activity audit | Moderate confidence; strongest when paired with screen recording and idle-state logs. |
| Wake-window clustering | Wearable pulse variance + bedside timestamp button | Moderate-high confidence; limited by participants who "forget" to press the button while being very sure they did. |
For standardized intake and bias controls, follow the interview order protocol before assigning causality. If a case feels dramatic, slow down. The archive rewards boring rigor and penalizes cinematic enthusiasm.