Significance Hydrogen in metals alters the electronic structure of such materials and hence modifies the physical and chemical properties. In conventional transition metal hydrides containing atomic hydrogen, the minimum hydrogen–hydrogen distances are around 2.1 Å under ambient conditions (Switendick criterion). Although hints of H–H distances below 2.1 Å in A B 2 alloys have been reported, evidence is inconclusive as hydrogen positions are difficult to locate by diffraction techniques. Here, inelastic neutron scattering is used as a local probe of the hydrogen interactions together with electronic structure modeling of a well-studied and prototypical metal hydride Z r V 2 H x . The results provide evidence for anomalous hydrogen–hydrogen distances as short as 1.6 Å. The findings provide insights leading to the creation of materials with properties such as very high T c superconductivity and other quantum behaviors.