When I was a kid (eighth grade, I think?), I went to summer camp in Michigan for about two weeks. At summer camp, as boys at summer camp often do, I met a girl. We spent most of camp together, then traded emails and phone numbers (home phone numbers, because it was around 1999) and whatever else and promised to stay in touch.

I flew home from camp, got off the plane in Atlanta, and… she was standing at the end of the jetway. Her original flight to California had been canceled, and they rebooked her on a flight connecting in Atlanta, but then her original flight was delayed and she missed her connection. So, she was in the Atlanta airport and didn’t know anyone or what to do.

(Sidenote: it’s sort of bizarre to imagine flying as an unaccompanied minor without a cell phone in 1999.)

So, she and I left the airport, met my parents, and explained the situation. We drove to our house, where she called her parents. If I recall correctly, she explained, “No it’s okay, I went home with this guy I met at camp.” I’m pretty sure her father was going to somehow commandeer a plane and fly to get her at that moment (pre-2001 security, after all), until my parents got on the phone and explained things. And then she was booked on another flight later that evening, so we drove her back.

But that few hours in between was the most surreal experience: someone who I had spent two weeks with in a completely different location, familiar to us but unfamiliar to anyone else we knew (except people we met at camp), suddenly in another place that was deeply familiar to me but completely unfamiliar to her.

There’s a word sort of related to this: context collapse. And that applies to the fact that suddenly my parents and this girl I’d met at camp were together in the same place, but that doesn’t quite capture what was so surreal. What was surreal wasn’t the merger of multiple audiences. This was more about the place: it was about my home turning from my home into a place that I show and explain to someone who I only know from a very, very distant place.

A few years later, I went to Hilton Head Island on vacation with my then-girlfriend’s family for the first time. This was an annual trip they had done for years and years before with over 15 family members, to the same hotel, on the same dates, and so they had their routine and cadence for how everything went. I remember her mentioning how weird it was for me to be there, and—being a silly teenager—I was probably a bit offended. But in retrospect, I can see exactly what she meant: this place whose context had always been a family vacation was taking on a different feel. It wasn’t about the combination of people—I’d met her family for several holidays in the past—but it was being in a place that carried a particular context and having that place take on a different context.

Around that same time, I participated in a summer theater trip with my school. We went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to perform a theatrical version of Pilgrim’s Progress, and stayed for a month (I think?) on the campus of the University of Edinburgh. While there, we lived sort of a dorm life: hanging out with classmates, rehearsing in one of the common rooms, eating in the dining hall, etc. 15 years later, I traveled to the Third ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale, only to discover it was also on the campus of the University of Edinburgh: this place that had become familiar to me (if now only distantly) took on a different feel, shifting from a place for high school kids enjoying a school trip to a place to engage with in some vague professional capacity.

All of these experiences had something in common: a sense of a singular place—my house, a resort at Hilton Head, the campus of the University of Edinburgh—that had become almost synonymous with a certain type of experience suddenly being thrust into a different kind of experience. It’s sort of like context collapse, except context collapse is focused on the people, whereas these experiences are characterized more by the places. And it’s a really surreal feeling.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m in the midst of experiencing this again, and I wanted to find a word for it. It feels like the kind of experience for which there would be some obscure German or French word, and one comes close: the German unheimlich, which refers to an experience that is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar in an unsettling way. But unheimlich has a negative connotation, and this feeling I’m describing is neutral at worst. And I thought maybe there might be a word in a book like The Book of Obscure Sorrows—still one of my favorite books of all time—to refer to this, but I’m not at home so I can’t check. So, I turned to AI for some brainstorming help.

Here’s the experience right now: I’m at the Online Learning Consortium’s 2025 Accelerate conference. While it’s rotated amongst the various Gaylord hotels in previous years, this year it’s at the Swan & Dolphin at Walt Disney World. The Swam & Dolphin, interestingly enough, is part of the same resort complex as the Disney Boardwalk Hotel, which is where my family and I have stayed the last three times we’ve been to Disney World. We’ve loved staying here because it’s within walking distance of two of the parks, and has a lot of sort of pop-up events nearby and nice areas to explore. So, we’ve become quite familiar with it: it’s amazing how only three trips totaling maybe 15 days total have embedded it in my mind so well.

But now, rather than being here with family, visiting parks and getting coffee from the cafe downstairs and visiting the gift shop for various sundries, I’m here for work. I have a well-established work travel cadence. I have a well-established vacation cadence. They’re two very different mindsets. And yet, to transfer the work mindset to a place that I’ve only ever associated with vacation is… well, surreal. Uncanny, but not in a bad way.

I feel like it warrants a name. It could describe a lot of situations. A new teacher going from sitting as a student to standing in front of a class as a teacher. A former child returning to their childhood home with their significant other for the holidays (especially if they sleep in the guest room!). A newly-promoted boss sitting as the denizen of their new office instead of a visitor. Dropping your kid off at the college dorm you yourself lived in. Giving a guest lecture at your own former university. Visiting an office you used to work in.

Or, since I’m at Disney World right now—perhaps a cast member visiting Disney World as a guest?

I brainstormed with the help of ChatGPT, and we landed on a term I think I like: alterlocus. I like that term because I feel like it emphasizes the place rather than the individual feeling: it suggested a lot of terms related to one feeling one’s own role shifting (roleglitch, self-echo, identity overlay), but I feel like this is really about the place and one’s relationship to it, not just one’s own feeling in the place. I like the term alterlocus for this: a place where a different version of yourself remains present, and could in theory come back.

I feel like the term could be a noun referring to a specific place—”The Swan & Dolphin is such an alterlocus for me because I’ve been there both for vacation and for work”—but also a noun referring to the feeling—”I had such a sense of alterlocus when I walked up the stairs of Glenn to move my son into college.”

Maybe if there’s a new edition of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I’ll find afterlocus in it. If so, allow me to provide a succinct definition:

Alterlocus: The uncanny feeling that a place still holds a different version of you—a version which may yet return in the future, and a version that has a very different set of responsibilities and priorities instantiated in that shared place.