Sometimes life throws you a wild curveball—and you walk away with your signature "go-to" story. From unexplainable coincidences to medical disasters and more, this collection of shocking tales is a rollercoaster from start to finish.
1. Onion Bread Sticks
My parents regularly made onion bread sticks for my great-grandparents. For someone not aware, it’s bread cut into strips and onion soup mix mixed in butter and slathered on before baking until crispy. And that's where this story takes a dark turn.
We found out after both had passed that my great grandma always kept one from each batch and hid it away in a Ziploc. She’d repeat until full and then start a new Ziploc. This went on for ten years. We visited every other month. Imagine finding 60 of those in varying states of decay.
2. In The Nick Of Time
My mom and I were home on a Saturday while my dad was at a riverboat gambling. Mom and I got into a fight so I was upstairs pouting like a typical teenager. I was napping when I heard her start screaming my name.
It wasn't an angry scream, it was a scared scream, which freaked me out. I ran downstairs to find blood everywhere on the floor—all over the dining room and kitchen. Puddles of it. It's coming from my mom's ankle. A vein had ruptured and for a while she didn't realize blood was running out of her as she sat at the kitchen table.
From having learned first aid, I knew I had to get a tourniquet on her ankle to stop her losing more blood. We lived 20 minutes from the nearest hospital and I didn't even think to call 9-1-1. I put her in the back seat with her leg up, wrapped tightly in towels, and drove like mad to get her there.
I kept her talking but as I was getting close to the ER, she was slurring her speech and her eyes were rolling back in her head. The ER personnel got her from the vehicle and did their thing.
Later, I learned the disturbing truth. The doctor told me that if I had been any later she would have lost her life. She lost almost half of her blood. She was diagnosed as diabetic while in the hospital, which helped save her life, too.
As a side note, as the ER staff were working on my mom, I had my grandmother repeatedly call my house phone—this was in the early 90s with no cell phones—to see if she could contact my dad. I was scared he was going to walk in, see puddles of blood and bloody footprints everywhere and have a heart attack from the shock.
3. Thar She Blows
I was once asked to dress as a whale mascot for a parade. I rode on the bumper of an ancient fire truck on the hottest day of the year. It all went so wrong, so fast. Some combination of carbon dioxide and heat caused me to begin projectile vomiting within the costume.
Once I’d done that, I passed out. Luckily I had my flipper secured enough to keep me on the truck. The last thing I heard was some kid saying: "Mommy what's wrong with that whale?" as I began dangling unconscious for the remainder of the route.
I came to as they were loading us into a flatbed to get back to our cars. My dad made me ride on trash bags all the way home. This was over twenty years ago and I can still smell the moment.
4. Three Strikes, You’re Out
I'd say that my best story stems from my unreasonable misfortune with the movie Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Now, hear me out:
The first time I tried to watch this movie, I decided to go to the movie theater to see it with my girlfriend at the time. I was in the tenth grade and we had been dating for like five or six months. I kid you not, as the previews end and the movie is about to begin, my girlfriend pulls the most infuriating move.
She decides that this is the best time to lean over to me and start the whole, "Look... I don't think this is gonna work out" thing. She broke up with me right then and there. We just kinda left the theater after that.
The second time, I had gone back to the theater with some friends. They decided to treat me to a night out after I had been so suddenly dumped by my ex. Well, after actually making it through the previews this time, the movie begins. We're sitting there watching for about half an hour when the fire alarm goes off.
Everyone in the theater gets up a little confused, and proceeds to leave through the emergency exit. Some jerk had pulled the fire alarm, and the entire theater was at the box office trying to get refunds. The line for refunds was ridiculous, so we just left.
The third and final time I tried to watch this godforsaken film I was at a close friend's house, almost a full year later. His mom had cooked spaghetti for dinner, and we (my friend, his mom, his stepdad, and me) decided to put on MI4 to watch while we ate. I was just saying "Man, ya know, I seem to have bad luck with this movie”. when things got real.
My friend's stepdad started choking on the spaghetti. Like, really choking. We had to call an ambulance, and he ended up going to the hospital. My friend and I waited at his house after being assured by the paramedics that he'd be alright. And yet again, I didn't finish the movie.
I've officially decided it's for the best if I just never try to watch Ghost Protocol again.
5. Get A Lick Of This
I was waiting to get the tube on the London Underground. One had just pulled up, but we decided it was too busy, and we waited for the next one. There was a woman who kept staring at me with intense eye contact. She got on the crowded train and continued to stare. She turned to face the man next to her, whose back was turned. I could never have predicted what she did next.
She then, unbeknownst to him, licked his giant afro while maintaining eye contact with me. The doors closed and the tube went away. People think it's too random to be true, but the memory is burnt into my brain.
6. Right Place, Wrong Time
I transferred groups within my company and it was my first day in the new group. I got to my office, and my new bosses were having a smoke outside. I shot the breeze with them and went up to the office to sit in my new spot. I was on the ninth floor, with my back to the window.
I sat down at my computer and turned it on. That’s when it happened. A few seconds later there was a massive explosion behind me. The whole building shook. I ran to the window, and saw a bunch of debris floating in the air, and a lot of birds flying in crazy patterns.
My first thought was a car bomb, but I couldn't see anything looking down. After a few seconds, I crouched down in my window and looked up.
I saw a massive gaping hole in World Trade 1. I was maybe 150 yards away at 222 Broadway, right across the street from St Paul's church, so I had an unobstructed view. I kept staring at the impact site until the second explosion (second plane) woke me the heck up and everyone figured out it wasn't random.
I tried calling out, but all the lines were down. It was election day in NYC, so my grandma was working in one of the polling stations. My parents were on vacation in France. I managed to reach my friend's dad and asked him to call and tell people I'm OK. I’ll never forget what happened next.
I went back to the window and saw people jump. That was by far the worst part for me.
A bit later I did manage to reach my friend. I was on the phone with her when one of the towers started collapsing. I yelled "They're falling" into the phone, threw it down, and ran towards the stairwell. The last thing I heard was, "What's falling”? out of the receiver.
I managed to make it down into a sub-basement with a few other people. Others were in server rooms, and some left the building and ran.
After a couple of hours in the basement, the building's AC system was overloaded, and our room started filling up with smoke and dust. I found some water, and soaked my shirt, wrapped it around my face, and got the heck out.
I walked northeast, past City Hall Park, towards the bridges. Brooklyn Bridge had a lot of smoke blowing over it, so I went to Manhattan bridge, along with a few thousand others. In the middle of the bridge, a couple of military planes flew fairly low over the bridge and everyone hit the deck. That was true terror.
After I made it to Brooklyn, there were a bunch of people handing out water. A church on one side of Flatbush Ave, and a synagogue on the other. It was a very NYC moment. I went into a school and used the phone to let somebody know I was alive.
It was another two hours of walking till I made it home. In the evening, I got together with all of my buddies, and we tried to get a little lubricated. It didn't work. We drank, and nobody felt it. It was too much. I managed to get in touch with my parents the next morning. They couldn't call NY at all for almost 24 hours because the lines were overwhelmed.
You could smell the smoke for months, especially on the subways. It was terrible.
7. She Was Lying In Wait
I got a fast bleep one night to a side room on the ward. A fast bleep means "drop everything you’re doing and attend to this emergency please". When I entered the room, I found no patient in the bed. Not anywhere in the room. I was just about to leave the room and go back out to the nurses station, where there had been a bit of a hubbub when I’d dashed past the first time, when something caught my eye.
I looked up at the ceiling—and couldn't stop myself from screaming. It was a face with wide, slightly wild “psych eyes” peering down at me. She was a lady waiting for a bed in the psych hospital who’d clearly thought the ceiling was the best place to hide from the people trying to poison her. Honestly, I can’t think of another occasion that I’ve been quite so terrified.
Worst thing was that I had to walk—well, dash—back out underneath her to get help from the nurses and security to get her down.
8. A Strange State Of Mind
I came back to the United States—Charleston, West Virginia to be exact—after living in England for four years. My friend failed to meet me at the airport, so I had to rent a car to drive 50 miles to my home. Confused by the new construction around the airport, I stopped at the first gas station to ask for directions.
I asked the clerk at the gas station how to get to the main road going east. The clerk said that if you go east, you'll go into the ocean. I was super confused. He then pulled out a map. I couldn't believe my eyes. Sure enough, I had flown into Charleston, South Carolina not Charleston, West Virginia.
I spent the night in a motel and flew out the next day with a good story and minus $300 in my pocket.
9. Breaking News
My dad is Norwegian and spent his first year of college at the University of Windsor in Canada. There was some initial confusion on his part when it came to enrolling in courses, so he ended up not getting into any of the ones that he needed for his major. He went to the registrar to complain about this. Their response was devastating.
He was promptly told that he could blame himself, and tough stuff, basically. My dad, having always been a clever jerk, decided to give the CBC, the local broadcaster a call. CBC sent a reporter and a camera guy to my dad's dorm, and they proceeded to follow my dad around on campus.
It was a rainy day and the story looked like this: "A hopeful Norwegian boy came all the way to Canada to go to college, but didn't get to enroll in any of the courses he wanted. Here he is, sad and alone, standing alone in the rain on campus at U of Windsor".
So the next morning, my dad wakes up and immediately turns on the TV to see if his story is on the local news: They had told him they weren't sure whether it would be or not. To his disappointment, his story is not featured, so he walks into the kitchen to make breakfast, the TV still on in the background. He was in for a big surprise.
As the local news finish, the national news broadcast starts. Turns out, my dad was the top story in all of Canada that day. He was immediately contacted by the dean of the university, who apologized frantically and ensured my dad that he could enroll in whatever courses he desired.
10. Accident Changes Life
My first day of first grade, I was waiting for the bus with my mother. The street I lived on connected to a very busy huge hill of a main road. I watched this woman zoom down this curve on a bicycle going way too fast and hit a pothole. The worst happened. She flipped her bike and flew over her handlebars and hit a car that was coming up the road.
The traffic stopped and my mom ran to this lady. She took her shirt off and started wrapping her head with the bleeding. I stayed with this lady while my mom ran back to our house and called for help. This was the early 90s and cell phones weren't a thing.
I guess life was a little more trusting back then too, because no one thought twice about a six-year-old caring for a bleeding unconscious woman in the road. But here's the kicker. None of these passengers in stopped cars did anything but stand around and watch.
I truly believe it was this strange and horrifying moment that made me the terribly over-cautious paranoid child I was and pursue nursing as an adult. I will never ever forget that lady, and I never knew what happened to her either after the ambulance came and took her away.
11. From Black To White
I grew up in a place called Taupo, New Zealand, and just out of town is a volcano called Mount Ruapehu. One particular day, I was staring out the window when I noticed a thick plume of ash rising up and told the teacher that it had just erupted.
But me being the class clown, she thought it was just another one of my disruptions, until the quiet kid in class spoke up. She had told us to stay where we are and left the classroom to talk with the other teachers about what to do.
By the time she had come back, the ash had reached us. It was 11 am on a Tuesday morning and now it was as black as night. She then told us that if our parents usually pick us up then to wait in class, but if we lived close by then we could leave.
My best friend lived just down the road and we decided to grab our stuff and leave. I'll never forget the moment we opened the classroom door and stepped outside. Everything was covered in a thick coat of soot and ash and it was just so freaking dark, which made crossing the road incredibly scary.
You could barely see the headlights of approaching cars until they were right in front of you. Thankfully it was the only road we had to cross on our walk home and the rest of the way was through a gully that took us right to my backyard.
The next morning I woke up and it felt a lot colder than it usually did, but I just wanted to watch the morning episode of Captain Planet for once and went running for the TV.
My mother walked in and said "I thought you'd be outside playing with the others". I had no idea what she meant until I looked outside my window. To my amazement, everything was white. It had actually snowed at my house for the first time ever.
Apparently, after a volcanic eruption it causes a "volcanic winter," which can make it snow.
12. This Is Why We Have Two
While I was in training at an army hospital, the doctors would provide free medical attention to civilians that couldn't afford it on their own. One story was about a woman in her seventies who came in complaining about a problem with her anus. And that's not even the bizarre part. When the doctors went to roll her onto her side, one of the guys grabbed her arm, and it just flopped freely like it was just hanging on by skin.
They freaked out and asked her if she was okay and if her arm hurt. She said that it was no big deal, and that it was just her bad arm. As it turns out, when she was 16 years old, she fell down and completely dislocated her shoulder. They didn't have access to medical attention, so she just lived with it like that for over 50 years.
She just conceded that she would never use that arm. He said that it could have been reset very easily without surgery, if they would have taken care of it when it happened. This story makes me so sad every time I think of it.
13. A Curious Combo
My mom had her eye make-up tattooed on, and was in some pain after the procedure. She asked my brother and I to go to the store for a couple of things. It wasn't until we were in the check-out line, receiving funny looks from the clerk, that we realized that we were two lone men buying nothing but cucumbers and vaseline. Somehow, I made it so much worse.
Without thinking I blurted out: "No, it's okay, he's my brother!" We received major stares. I finally just stopped talking, figured there was nothing I could do to salvage the situation, and just accepted the judgment.
14. Santa Or Satan?
Back in the 90s, I worked at an engineering supply shop. It was called Cogs Unlimited, and it was basically a huge warehouse with thousands of different types of cogs and other equipment.
My job was to answer the phone and take the orders, write down the serial numbers and quantity, then pass that on to the other guys who would locate the correct shelf and retrieve the parts to be sent to the buyers.
Anyway, our phone number was similar to the phone number of a Santa phone service. Basically, kids call the number and talk to a voice actor playing Santa. The problem is that we would often get kids calling our number, expecting it to be Santa, but instead are greeted by an unenthusiastic greeting of "Cogs Unlimited".
At first, I would just let them know they had the wrong number, but as it got closer to Christmas, the calls became more and more frequent. I knew I had to do something. If it was a slow day and I got a call from a kid expecting Santa, I would just play the role of Santa, and ask what they want for Christmas, tell them they're on the good list, etc.
It was, however, different if the kid was rude. I remember one annoying little brat who called and demanded an unreasonable amount of presents. As Santa, I let him know that he was on the bad list and will only be getting coal. I went on to say that I'd sent some of my elves over to his house to hide in the garden and scare him.
A few minutes after I hung up, I received a phone call from his furious mother. She was demanding to know why I told her child all those bad things. I had the perfect reply. I told her we just sell cogs, and that she's got the wrong number, and I never heard from her again.
15. Gone, Baby, Gone
On a day out with my dad when I was little, I was playing in the park with a girl the same age as me. I didn’t know her, but she was on her own. We left after an hour or so, leaving the girl on her own. Again, my dad asked her where her parents were.
Later on that night, there was a big story on the news that gave me chills—it was about a girl who had been abducted, and all my family members kept asking me questions about this little girl. It went right over my head at the time, being about five years old. 40 years later, I still think about her.
16. Four Years Had Passed
When I was 10, I rescued this three-month-old puppy from a shelter. I was a pretty shy kid, and I basically did everything with this puppy. She was my best friend. A few years later my parents divorced.
I decided to live with my father and shortly after the divorce, he began to see this younger woman who didn't like dogs. They eventually married and one day I came home from school and my puppy was gone.
My dad had gotten rid of my puppy to fulfill his new wife's wishes. I was heartbroken. But this story has the best happy ending. Fast forward four years later to my junior year of high school. My grandmother gets this call from a shelter who says, "We found your dog".
Despite being completely confused and perplexed as to what they were talking about, my grandma went to the shelter to see what they were talking about. It turned out to be my puppy.
Thankfully, we had put one of those location chips into her. Even though four years had passed, it didn't matter, I had gotten her back again and wasn't going to let anything get in the way. I am now 22, and it has been five years after getting her back. My almost 13-year-old puppy is still with me.
17. Pick A Card, Any Card
We have an outdoor mall in my town, and it has a couple soda machines that take credit cards. I was going around trying out a card that I knew only had 43 cents on it. Obviously I knew I couldn't afford the bottles of soda, but I was bored so why not try.
To my amazement, one worked. I was surprised and tried again. It worked. I used a Costco gift card just for fun. It also worked. Then I got creative. I used my driver's license, which also worked.
So, of course I got my friends to join me and by 10 at night, we’d emptied the machine. Sadly, someone called the authorities because they thought we were breaking the machine. We got pulled over while we were leaving, and were told to wait there while another patrol car checked on the machine.
The machine was physically fine, so there was no reason to keep us. The officer asked why we got so many sodas from the machine—there were close to 100 of them—and I said I had a lot of change to use.
The machine worked for a couple months and I would stop by and get a couple sodas once or twice a week. I went one day and it was being worked on so I left. It didn't work when I tried again. In the end I got over 120 free bottles of soda.
18. Not Just A Dream
I had a weird memory from my childhood about my mom beating some old lady with a bat, like a small one from a baseball stadium. A man came up to her and she picked up a big blade that must have come from the old lady. She cursed a threat at him, but I don’t remember what she said. She NEVER curses. The man then threw over the keys to her car. I recognized them because they had a He-Man keychain, which was the prized possession that I gave her for Mother’s Day.
I asked her about this when I was 15 years old because I dream about it on occasion. It turns out, the whole situation was much darker than I initially thought—My grandparents on my dad’s side had tried to abduct me. I was missing from my other grandma's yard, so she drove to their house on suspicion that I was there. When she was searching for me, my grandfather had gotten her keys to trap her there.
I had managed to get to the car on my own before my mom realized I was even there. The windows were always open on her Gremlin, so I likely climbed up. I was yelling out of the window that I was ready to go. Apparently, I wasn’t even two yet. They still try to contact me via Facebook on occasion. I just block whatever account they send it with. I always send the same message to them because they are staunch Catholics.
“God is punishing you for your sins. He doesn’t forgive you, and neither do we". I am an atheist. Maybe I should tell them that just to really get at them?
19. Weathering The Storm
When I was 15, I had a kitten I named Storm. She was a rescue. I cared for her, but after a month or so, she fell ill. We were poor and had no money for a vet. I nursed her back to health in the best way I could, but after three days, her health collapsed. I knew she wasn’t going to make it, and I stayed by her side, whispering, "It's okay", repeatedly. I was hugging her when I felt her twitch for one last time.
I cried and cried. My dad tried to calm me down, but he eventually let me be, saying that he'll be in the other room if I needed him. I don't know how long I wailed and screamed while hugging my lifeless cat. Emotions started to mix in my head and then nothing. I'm not sure if I passed out or what, but I woke up in my bed and it was morning.
My mom was preparing breakfast and greeted me cheerfully. I wasn't in the mood for it. I asked, "Where's Storm"? Her reply knocked me off my feet. She cheerfully said, “She's just there”. At that point, I was almost annoyed and insulted. My cat was gone, I’d passed out crying over it, and my mom was all giddy. I was about to lose it when, suddenly, Storm appeared, meowing. She brushed against my leg.
I learned it was Saturday again. The coming Sunday was when Storm started showing symptoms. I told my parents this, how Storm eventually passed, and how I "went back", and they did not believe me. But this time, I was prepared for what would happen. Eventually, Storm did fall sick just like I envisioned. Except this time, I did my best to take her to the vet. I borrowed money from my uncle and Storm was given proper care.
She survived the day she was supposed to pass, and she got better. However, a week after her supposed demise day, she fell ill again. Sadly, this time was different. It all happened so fast. In less than 24 hours, she passed—in my arms—again—the same way I first lost her. I tried my best to make what happened to happen again, but I never got back again. To this day I've only told my wife this.
20. The Pirate Of Las Vegas
During a time in my life—when I was post-divorce, deep in debt, living paycheck to paycheck on an impossibly thin budget—I turned in all my airline miles for a free solo trip to Vegas.
I had astigmatism, and couldn't afford corrective lenses, so I went to the optical shop for a free pair of sample contacts so I could see the strip in all its majesty. Little did I know, this would be my downfall. On my first day there, I put in the lenses and accidentally scratched my right eye. Overnight it became painfully infected.
I went to the clinic and was diagnosed with a huge corneal ulcer that threatened to permanently blind that eye. I was given antibiotics, but I needed to be seen several more times because the injury was so severe. I had no insurance and no way to pay for this.
The doctors were great, so I wasn't afraid of losing my eye, but the medical bills on top of my financial situation would have been devastating. I went to the Treasure Island casino gift shop and bought a toy eye patch to cover the wound. Skull and crossbones, of course.
Then, I took the twenty dollars I had in my pocket and went to work. I'm not really a gambler, but I knew the video blackjack machines had the best odds. I built up small wins, and had them cut down by losses, leaving me with only five dollars.
I went for a walk and tried to get my head right. I tried again and lost that five dollars too. I then went to my bank's website, borrowed a $20 advance, and took it out at the ATM. I tried again. This time things came together. I managed to grow that $20 into just over $500, enough to cover my bills.
I stopped there, not wanting to press my luck further. The toy eye patch now hangs on my refrigerator, next to a magnet from the ophthalmologist's office. It's a reminder of the time I gambled for mercy and won.
21. The Old Tape On The Door Trick
I was a part of a robotics team my senior year of high school, and we ended up winning in a regional competition in California and made it to the national in St Louis, MO. Two friends and I shared a hotel room and basically just hung out all night and played video games.
Around the wee hours of the morning, maybe 1-2 am, I decided I wasn’t ready to call it a night and wanted to venture out into the street to walk around St Louis. Upon opening the door, I heard the sound of something ripping.
Those sly chaperones did the ol' tape on the door trick to see who snuck out at night. Now, I was fairly straight edge in high school. I didn't get around to drinking or anything until after I had graduated and never got in trouble at school.
So I was not used to breaking the rules and I really wanted to get out of the situation. I was thinking that I'd be in big trouble and worrying so much about getting kicked out from the team or being suspended. I woke one of my friends up and asked what to do.
He just brushed it off and went back to sleep. So, in my worried state, I came up with a plan. What if all the tape was broken? Then they would have no idea who left their room at night. So, I proceeded to pull off all the tape from all the rooms.
This took a while as I was scared of waking anyone up and basically snaked it, hugging the wall and peering over every corner. Eventually, I had a huge ball of tape and I started wondering, how many rooms do we have just for our team?
Finally the deed was done and I disposed of the baseball-sized tape ball in some planter. By the time I got down to the lobby, I was too tired to go out, so I just hung out by some grand piano they have there.
By morning everyone was wondering who went out and I just kept a straight face, not wanting to get caught. While we're having breakfast downstairs, I overheard someone talking about the missing tape. It turns out there was another team—an all girls team on the same floor—who got in trouble before lights out for having a guy in their room and the whole thing was blamed on them.
In the end, I fessed up to prevent them from getting in serious trouble and had the lobby guy vouch for me that I was just hanging out downstairs hammering out some tunes on the grand piano.
22. How’d That Get In There?
I was in the backyard with my dog for poop time. The dog does a squat for five minutes, which is way too long. I inspect and see a red thing coming out of its butt.
I put a plastic bag on my hand and proceed to pull whatever it is out of my dog's backside. It’s stringy, short, but getting longer. What is this? His intestine? I finally see the clothing tag. It’s my sister's underwear: 100% intact, albeit a little dirty.
23. Right Angle? Wrong Angle
One of my students was a nurse. She was a really pretty girl, about 30 years old, and quite conservative. So when I asked her about horrible things she'd seen on the job, I thought she would share a pretty tame story—especially considering there were three other students in the class, two of them 22. I couldn't have been more wrong. She started by telling me that a guy came into the hospital and he was "swollen" down there.
Was his scrotum inflamed, I asked? "No, no, not swollen," she said. "My mistake. More like..." and here she made a hand gesture which I will never forget. First, the hand raised, perfectly straight, as if to initiate a karate chop. Next, the hand folded in the middle. 90-degree angle. At this moment I began making horrified expressions and the other students, all women, began laughing hysterically.
The best part? His mistress did it to him, not his wife. He ended up telling his wife that he had been riding a bicycle after work and had fallen off and done this horrible thing to himself. His wife, crying and agonized, pleaded with the doctors to save her poor man's little man. However, he told the real story to the stone-faced doctors and nurses, who proceeded to inform the wife of the truth.
24. He Didn’t Wash Up
I was in a restroom, and I was standing next to a urinal just as the guy next to me had finished. I have good peripheral vision and my eyes followed him as he headed straight for the door. I immediately thought to myself: "That's disgusting, he didn't even wash his hands!"
That's when I noticed he was struggling to open the door for a very good reason: he didn't have any hands.
25. To The Left And The Right
My wife and I were scheduled to fly to New Orleans three days after Katrina hit. Needless to say, we had to reroute our destination. For a $50 rebook, we settled on Cancun. We had flown out of Charlotte and were about an hour into the trip.
The pilot came on the intercom and told us to look out the left side of the plane. We did and we were amazed to see the space shuttle taking off from Cape Canaveral.
We both thought this was pretty cool all by itself. But there was more. It was only 10 minutes later and the pilot came on the speaker again. This time he told us to look out the right side. When we looked, we saw that we were actually passing over an enormous hurricane, which I’m pretty sure was Rita. Both of those in one flight 10 minutes apart was pretty amazing.
26. Arachnophobia
One time my younger brother was vacuuming the house and came across a large huntsman spider. Instead of trapping it or getting rid of it or telling literally anyone else in the house he decided to just suck it up in the vacuum and be done with it. He left the vacuum with the bag still inside in the laundry while we went on holiday for a couple of weeks.
We returned to the house infested with tiny spiders. We started stomping on them. They started getting bigger. Eventually, we had to have the house fumigated.
For added horror, feel free to image search "Australian Huntsman" and keep in mind a full-sized one of those bad boys can be as big as your hand.
27. The Man In Black
One time after school, my friend and I were hanging out in her room on the computer, and we heard the front door open and the little "beep beep" alarm go off which goes off when a door or window is opened. We both looked at one another, confused, since both of her parents weren't supposed to be home for several hours, and we both got a weird vibe from the sound.
So we slowly crept to her door, she literally grabbed a bat, and we opened the door and peered down and over the banister to the living room below. What we saw was seriously chilling. I SWEAR TO GOD there was a man in a business suit, with a briefcase, just standing in her living room. The front door was wide open behind him. And my friend was like, "Who are you?! Get out of my house”!!
And he just slowly looked up at us, like he was totally stoned or confused, and was like, "Wha? ...oh...sorry..." and walked out and shut the door. That was almost 15 years ago, and we both STILL remember it and talk about it to this day. At least someone else was with me who saw it! But nobody else believes us when we tell them.
28. Great Balls Of Fire
I was at a New Year’s party at an apartment that was on a golf course. I hadn’t been drinking that night but nearly everyone else was and it was late, so most of them were getting very sloppy. My (inebriated) buddy and I left to go get some Taco Bell, and when we came back we decided to go take a leak in the nearby sand trap.
As I’m looking up I saw an orange ball that was slowly creeping sideways. Confused, I asked him, “Do you see that”? He was confused too and said, “Oh, I know what that is. It’s one of those lantern things you light and it flies up into the sky”. Since it was New Year’s, I totally believed him, but it still looked curious and didn’t have any flicker like a Chinese lantern would have.
As we’re still peeing and looking at the orange ball, out of nowhere another one comes and quickly surpasses it and then the first ball chases after the new one and then they disappear. My friend said, “What in the world was that!? Did you see that”!? I confirmed I had seen the same thing and we both went inside and started talking to people about it.
They either didn’t believe us or didn’t care, but it was absolutely wild. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. and a few points that make it more fascinating is: 1. They were both the same size and brightness which makes me believe they were at the same altitude. 2. The second orb suddenly appeared and it was a clear night from what I remember, so we should have been able to see it approach sooner than we did. 3. The first orb took a second to respond to the second orb.
The interaction I can best compare it to is a kid walking down the street and his friend sneakily running up behind him and saying, “I bet I can beat you home”! If it was a lantern and a sudden gust of wind, the first lantern would have at least started to accelerate before the second orb reached it, but it didn’t. 4. Just like my second point, they both disappeared just as suddenly as the second orb appeared and that shouldn’t have happened either.
The whole interaction was odd and I don’t tell it to really anyone because there’s nothing too fantastical about it besides the fact that it’s another person’s UFO story.
29. The Real Me
I live in the UK, where the limit for going to a bar is 18. I was 17 and going clubbing with friends who were all 18, so I was using an ID that looked a bit like me. Incidentally, my brother had found this ID on the floor someplace.
I had already had ridiculous amounts to drink and stumbled up to the bouncer, and he asked for my ID. In my confusion, I gave him my real ID. The absolute confusion on his face made me realize what I’d done, so I managed to mumble out the words: "Oh sorry man, wrong one".
I then proceeded to swap the real ID for the fake one. To this day, I don't know why I thought that would work. Needless to say, it got confiscated. At least I got a free ride home from law officers.
30. Welcome Back!
I got special permission to work from home because I was a good programmer and moving to another city to be with my wife. Well, after six months we decided to move back. But this is where I got sneaky. I didn't tell my boss, and now I work from home in the same city as the company. It’s been about 10 years.
Every now and then they insist on a face-to-face meeting. I drive to the airport and have them come pick me up from my "flight".
31. Random Screamfest
This happened just about a week ago. I was riding my bike to the gym, and I stopped at a red light. Just then, a woman at the same light got out of her car, and looked me right in the eye and started screaming about how much of a jerk I was.
I had never seen her before, and I had just turned out of my neighborhood so I hadn't done anything to anger her. Everyone around me in the other cars looked just as confused as I was, so I just started laughing and she just got back in her car.
The rest of the ride to the gym was normal. I will likely never get an answer to this.
32. My Hero
When I was eight I lived in a trailer park in Florida. One whole row of trailers were unoccupied, with no power and no water. As any eight-year-old in the early 90s, I played around them, because it was fun. If you've been to Florida you know what fire ants are. If you've lived in Florida you know how they react to having their hills stepped on.
So eight-year-old me, not paying attention, wearing shorts, stepped calf deep into a fire ant mound. Yea, you know where this is going. Instantly my leg was covered in biting, stinging fire ants. A lot of them. Easily 100. Of course it hurts. I start screaming and stomping. That just angers them more. No more than what felt like instantly, this man comes running around the trailer with a water hose. He sprays my legs off and tells me to run home to my mom. I do. Never saw the man before or since.
33. Squirrely Situation
About ten years ago, I was looking out my grandmother's back door. Two squirrels were playing in the yard. A hawk swooped down and grabbed one. As it was batting its wings and gaining altitude, the other squirrel raced up a nearby tree, leapt off, rocketed down into God's Own Doom From Above, and rescued his friend by curb stomping the hawk out of the air. They both ran away and the hawk limped off in confusion.
34. A Lightbulb Moment
We had a shed in our garden with some couches and a TV. My dad always used to nap there after dinner. At one time he installed a light there with a movement sensor because in the winter it would be a bit too dark to find the keyhole and the light buttons inside of it. (And to scare off burglars). The light, however, broke after a while and stayed that way for nearly a year.
A few years ago my dad suddenly had a fatal cardiac arrest in his 50s. We kept his body in the same shed for a week until the funeral, so that people could say their goodbyes. The evening after the funeral, my family walked to the shed to clean it up a bit because there were tons of flowers and other things left behind.
While we were walking there I said, “Shame dad couldn't fix the motion lamp, now we have to walk in the dark”. What happened next is unforgettable. I kid you not, the lamp suddenly turned on after a year of not working. My mother and brothers all witnessed it, but no one else believes me. I'm normally not someone who believes in the afterlife or spirits, but at that moment it really felt like he was still somewhere out there.
35. And Just Like That…
I was at a bar with some friends and a bachelorette party came over. They had these dare things going, and one of them was for the bride to kiss a girl. They came to my group and asked if anyone wanted to do it.
Since I’d had a few drinks, I said yes. This actually changed my life. We started making out and I really enjoyed it a lot. Way more than I imagined. And that's the story of how I realized I'm actually bi.
36. Things Went The Other Way
There were four guys at my school who used party it up and then drive to parties or somewhere else. One night they came to a roundabout traffic and one of them had this glorious idea. Hey, why don’t we drive in a roundabout backwards. Yeah! Let’s do that.
So they turned the car around, kicked in the gear and drove in there backward. Sure enough: “BAM!” They hit another oncoming car. They were completely messed up and now freaking out. Not long after, the authorities arrived.
For some reason, the officer went to talk to the guys in the other car first. It resulted in the most bizarre event ever. After a few minutes the officer comes to the four guys and tells them: “Well boys, you can go. The other guy is heavily under the influence and claims that you drove backwards into that roundabout".
37. Lost For Four Days
I was backpacking solo in the Ventana, California wilderness, and I was about 13 miles out in a loop. Suddenly, the ground beneath me gave out and I took a pretty big fall. When I’d recovered from the shock of falling, I took stock of my injury.
I’d hurt my ankle pretty bad—I later found out I’d torn two ligaments and had muscular damage. It was only because of my sleeping bag and pad that I didn’t have any serious damage to my tailbone. The big problem was this. I had to get out of the wilderness all by myself and with an injured ankle.
The first two nights it rained, which was especially bad because I’d lost my tent in the fall. One night was spent between rivers. I had to get water from plants and rain catchers. I couldn't eat the first day due to shock, so I ran out of electrolytes and then couldn't even think about food without vomiting.
I tried to press on until I completely ran out of juice in the middle of the Devil's Staircase, which is as brutal as it sounds. I laid there until I realized I needed salt. Luckily I had a bullion cube in my bag, so I took a bite of it and watched the color return to the world over the course of a minute.
Now thinking clearly and able to eat, and I was able to get out in another two days. In all, it took four days to get myself out of this predicament. I arrived to safety just about an hour before my brother was going to start my route backwards to find me.
38. Location, Location, Location
I work at a hospital, and one day I got a script for a dewormer with a ridiculously high dose. Higher than I had ever seen before. I thought for sure it was a mistake, so I called the doctor just to be sure. He said that it was no mistake, and then told me what was up. I must say, this is the most disturbing thing I can remember in recent history.
It turned out the patient was someone with Cysticercosis, which is a tapeworm infection. While this isn’t that unusual, what was unusual was the location. The tapeworm infection was in her brain. The doctor and I both agreed there was very little chance of it working, but he said there were absolutely no other alternatives.
39. I’d Like To Lodge A Complaint
I’m a student psychiatric nurse. While on a ward for the elderly suffering from dementia, I had one experience I will never forget. I was helping a client eat, when I got a call from one of the rooms in the corridor. The client I was helping was pretty much done, so I went to investigate, hoping that it wasn't a fall as the call was from a room belonging to a very unsteady lady. Oh god, how I wish it were just a fall.
The lady who called—let's call her Betty—was in the corridor outside her room. The first thing I noticed were her hands. They were covered in what could only be excrement. I asked her if she’d had some trouble in the bathroom. Hey, it happens, sometimes when you're older you may be a bit shaky or confused, and I'm not one to judge the unwell.
So, I move into her bedroom to help her clean up: that’s when the smell hits me. For a second I just stare and try to take in what has happened. What follows is how my brain tried to process what I saw. There were traces of excrement everywhere: on the walls, on the wardrobe, on her clean clothes, on her bed, on the door. I think: that's okay, we can clean this. But there was something strange.
The thing is, I can't see any major, er, "movement," from which it would have come. Then I notice there's something on the floor. As if someone had defecated on the floor and...picked it up? Yes, there's slide marks from someone obviously moving…Oh my god. She has taken a dump on her dinner plate. I saw, on her bedside table, a plate piled high with excrement.
And I just stood there. I stared for what felt like an eternity—more like five seconds in reality. Eventually, I called someone to give me a hand. Perhaps it was a political statement about the state of the food in the hospital, I don't know. Regardless, I now have the best dinner table story.
40. Lighting Struck Twice
I've always loved to gamble, so I had this grand and crazy plan since I was 18. My birthday is on the 22nd of the month and I was going to go to roulette table 22 on my 22nd birthday and I planned to put $22 on number 22 at 22:22. There was so much great numerology in all this that I thought I was going to definitely hit the jackpot.
I got there at 10:15 and me and my mates were waiting for the glorious moment. A few of them were yelling "it’s time it's time!" But my watch still said 10:21. So I said I'd wait. The croupier spins it up, says no more bets and ding ding ding it lands on 22. Everyone was shocked and frankly quite annoyed at me for messing it up.
I was drinking—and rather cocky—so I simply said: "No, now it's 10:22" and placed my bet. The ball spins and spins. We’re all watching it with so much anticipation. It's actually incredible what happened. To our amazement, it lands firmly in 22 again. We all went nuts, even the croupier.
I cashed out my $770 and hit the bar. This is the best story of my life so far.
41. A Smack From God
Several years ago, I was in med school and it was finals week. Of course that meant I was completely sleep deprived. After my last test, I was ready for the long drive home, and knew it would be hard not to fall asleep.
I lived over 30 minutes from LA County hospital, so it was freeway driving. In an attempt to prevent myself from falling asleep at the wheel, I did everything: loud music, windows open, and even smacked myself in the face.
Sadly, nothing was working. I'm driving about 40 mph, because it was LA and that's fast moving traffic, dozing off when all of a sudden I get smacked in the head. My head snaps to the side, I swerve the car, but do my best not to lose consciousness.
I control my vehicle back into my lane, and collect my thoughts to see if I was dying. Suddenly, a freaking pigeon rights itself in my back seat. It flaps its wings a few times and flies back out the window.
That's right, a pigeon smacked me in the head, flying through my window, on the Ventura highway, while I was going 40 mph, woke me up, and the thing survived and flew away. I thought that I was losing it.
Of course I did not fall asleep the rest of the way home, but I thought for sure no one would believe me. Even the drivers around me tried to avoid eye contact with me, as they were probably freaked out. When I got home, I thought how am I going to convince my wife that I didn't just make it up? Thankfully, in the back seat was one large pigeon feather.
42. Caught In The Nick Of Time
When I was 15 years old, I was babysitting for my parent's friends. I was looking after this little girl. We were watching some kids' movies in the living room. This little girl was full of energy, so she was jumping on the couch during the movie. I thought it would be better to let her spend her energy then, so bedtime would be easier.
I sat next to her during the movie just in case she stumbled or fell. Everything was going fine until the moment I decided to get up to go to the bathroom. When I shifted my weight getting up, I double jumped her trampoline style, so she got much more air. The couch was right next to a staircase going into the basement. The railing was just behind us, leading to a 15–20 feet drop right to the bottom of the basement stairs.
She got thrown right over the railing head first into the drop. I threw myself at her and caught her ankle at the last second. I pulled her back onto the couch and sat her down, asking her if she was okay. She just smiled at me and continued to watch the movie, seemingly unfazed by the fact that she almost bit it. She probably didn't realize the danger she was in at that moment. Sometimes I still think about what would have happened if I hadn't caught her.
43. The Beach House
When I was about eight years old, my family rented a house close to the beach. We were supposed to stay there for a week. The drive wasn't very long but as an eight-year-old, by the time we got there, I really had to feed the porcelain stallion a brown bone. We pulled into the driveway and were met by the middle-aged woman who owned the house.
She showed us the place and told us about the town and what to do, etc. My first instinct was to find the bathroom. So, I asked her, and she told me it was the second door on the right after the kitchen. I went inside and opened the bathroom door to an older guy just standing there looking at me. I kinda ducked my head down, said “sorry”, and went back outside.
They noticed I was back pretty fast, and I told them there was someone in the bathroom already. That's when it got weird. The lady looked at me confused and said there was no one else in the house. I explained that I definitely saw someone in that bathroom. After searching the house, we found no evidence of anyone else being there.
After a while, the lady told us her dad had owned the house and lived there, but he’d recently passed. She inherited the house and wasn't sure what to do with it, so she had started renting it out. I’m pretty sure her dad was the dude I saw in the bathroom.
44. It Was A Little Fishy
I was 12 years old and attending a summer camp with a good portion of the lake front as part of their campgrounds. If a kid wanted to swim in the deep end, they were required to tread water for 60 seconds by the dock while a lifeguard watched.
At the end of my swimming test one day, the lifeguard on duty told me I could swim to shore or pull myself up on the dock. Well, kids weren't normally allowed on the dock, so I went with the obvious choice and began to pull myself up when I noticed a weight on my left chest.
It wasn’t really pain, but a noticeable pressure and weight. It was enough for me to stop mid-stride and look down. To my horror, I saw a fish hanging from my chest. I was so confused, and I didn't know what to do.
I knew the fish probably wanted back in the water, so I lowered myself down. As soon as it was submerged again, it swam off. There were teeth marks, and—oddly enough—and little pin pricks of blood, but not enough to form even a droplet. For the next two weeks straight, my left chest was hard and tingly.
45. It Was Ceremonial
I was at a volleyball camp sometime back in high school and it was at the Islamic academy senior high. Don't ask me why, because I don’t know. Anyways, about halfway through the day, I had to pee pretty bad. So I excused myself and went to look for a bathroom.
Eventually, I found it and upon entering discovered that there was no urinal. I thought this was strange. Every washroom in schools usually has a urinal. I checked to make sure I wasn't in the girls. Nope, guys.
Then I saw this little passageway tucked behind the stalls. In that room was this trough. I thought: “Ok, I guess this isn't the richest school around but it works”. Anyways, I finished up my business and returned to the group.
The coach asked what took me so long, and Iold him about the hidden urinal. "Please don't tell me you peed in that". I replied that yes I had. It turns out it was a foot washer basin. A ceremonial foot washing basin for a religious purpose.
I guess that explains why it didn't flush and that there was a tap. For the rest of the week I was THAT guy.
46. Pond Monster
I once saw the Pend Oreille Paddler. He's a Nessie-like creature that plies the waters of Lake Pend Oreille in the United States' Pacific Northwest. Northern Idaho, to be exact. It's pronounced "Pond Oray", by the way. Lake Pend Oreille is tremendous, and gorgeous, with thick forest that grows right down to the water's edge. It's also very, very deep (1,150 ft./350.52m).
It has a lot of huge logs floating in it, too, which can be a hazard to watercraft. My first husband was part of the crew on a racing yacht, and I tagged along early one cold, foggy morning. As we were sailing along, a few of us saw, off to the left side of the boat (we were heading due south), what looked like an absolutely massive tree trunk in the water.
Only this trunk was moving all on its own, in the opposite direction to our sailboat. It was leaving a wide wake in the water, and as we watched, three bumps appeared above the surface. They were the blue-green color of dark water (think lake water in the shade) and they were covered in small scales. We could see an actual space between the humps and the water.
We kept watching in utter silence as it passed us by, until it suddenly just disappeared below the surface. I'm still convinced, thirty years or so later (this was in the 80s), that I saw The Paddler. For one thing, logs don't just rotate on their own. Second, they don't have visible humps like this object did. And third, they can be submerged, but they don't have the wherewithal to submerge that quickly, and that completely. Also, this thing was whisper-quiet. It was a pretty calm morning, too, with no choppy water, so it could not have been mistaken for rough waves. I feel so special and blessed to have seen it that morning, and I would have loved to have filmed it!
47. Babysitters Club
When I was younger, like a little girl, I swear I had a babysitter. She was pale, skinny, had beautiful long hair and was super sweet to me. But she didn't like my parents that much because she'd always leave when they interrupted our playtime. Her name was Stacy. But the weird thing?
Years later when I try to bring this up to my parents or grandmas they act like I'm crazy.
48. He Wanted To Look Like A Cool Kid
My grandpa on my mom's side was a real character. He was a from a medium-sized town, but he was the guy who knew everyone that lived there. Running errands with him would take four times as long as it should have because everyone wanted to stop and talk to him—and he wanted to stop and talk to everyone.
When I hit my growth spurt, I ended up being about the same size as him, so he always joked, "When you outgrow your clothes, let me have them, so I can look like one of the cool kids". It never failed. Every time "Hey, nice shorts. Let me know when you get tired of them. I want to be cool and hip".
A few years ago, my grandpa had a stroke late on a Friday evening. I got a call from my mom letting me know about it on Saturday morning, and she said she'd call back when they had a prognosis. I was at bid day for my fraternity, getting ready to go to a football game with all the new pledges, and I got the call that I should come on home because it wouldn't be long.
I made it back home in time to get to the hospital to talk to him before he went into a coma. He wasn't able to talk, but he was able to squeeze my hand and let me know he understood what I was saying as I told him how much I loved him and what all I was going to do to make him proud.
I hung around for a while on Saturday, and when he slipped into a coma, my parents and my grandma both told me to go on back up to school, because there was no telling how long he would stay in that condition. Monday morning, I got the call that he had passed.
To be honest, I was thankful it was then, and not some long, drawn out process. Fast forward to Tuesday morning. I took the week off from classes because I just couldn't focus. So I slept in a little on Tuesday, and was going to wake up and pack my bags to come home for the funeral.
When I was home on Saturday, I had brought my suit down so my parents could take it to the dry cleaners with all of the stuff they had. This was including my grandpa's suit they intended for him to wear in his casket. On Tuesday morning, I get a frantic call from my mom.
She is in hysterics. I think that something has happened with my grandma. What she said instead surprised and confused me. I hear this: "Go to Dillard's. Get a new suit. Save the receipt". I ask what she's talking about, and she repeats herself and hands the phone off to my dad.
He explains. It turns out, there was a mix-up at the dry cleaners. So when they took my grandpa to the funeral home to be prepared for the funeral, the dry cleaners sent the wrong suit. They sent my suit. So, my grandpa, who had always joked about wearing my clothes so he could be "cool and hip", was now wearing my suit.
They couldn't get it off of him to return it to me, because they had to cut it into pieces to get it on to him. So, my grandpa, who always joked about how he was going to take all my hand-me-downs, was buried in my suit. And every time I wear the new suit that I got that week, I can't help but laugh, because I know if I could talk to him, the first thing he'd do would be to crack up laughing while saying "I told you I was going to get your clothes".
49. He Earned His Name
In middle school, there were a couple kids who were really into anything related to Japan. They were kind of weird and outsiders, but actually really good kids. They never had anything against anyone, but sadly a couple known mean boys had a habit of picking on them.
One day I saw, again, those guys picking on those kids. For some reason, I decided I had enough. I went to those guys and asked them nicely if they could stop picking on those kids who never bothered anyone. They went at me physically and, well, I had to use my own physical force against them.
There were three of them and I managed to beat two of them to the ground, and the third one ran away. After the dust had settled, the principal expelled me for two weeks. When I got back to school two weeks later, everyone was calling me Tetsu.
I found out that those kids I’d stood up for had named me that. A couple years ago my friend told me that Tetsu is Japanese and means "Iron". They’d given me a tough guy nickname, and everyone has called me that since.
50. They Waited On Pins And Needles
Back when I was a kid, my dad was in the army. I was living in Germany at the time and my dad was working at a different base for the week. Friday night came along and he got invited to take a helicopter back to the base we lived on to get there Friday night at a decent time. Alternatively he could take a van and get back in the middle of the night.
So we’re waiting for my dad to arrive on the helicopter. Then we get some horrible news. The helicopter ended up having a mechanical failure, crashing and no one survived. This was in the time before cell phones, so we still didn’t know if my dad had chosen the helicopter or the van.
My family got together and waited to see if my dad would be in the van. In the middle of the night, my dad walks in the door. He had not heard about the crash and was curious why we were all up. I remember that feeling I had when he came in the door and we realized it was him. It was an amazing moment.
51. This Dora Over-Explored
I was seeing a three-year-old little boy in the clinic. His mom noted that for the past week she had noticed a foul smell around this kid's face when she kissed him, brushed his teeth, or got anywhere near his mouth. I examined him a little closer and saw that his right nostril was clogged with something whitish, but obscured by mucus.
I pulled out the alligator forceps and recruited two nurses to hold this kid down—he was actually quite strong. I eventually pulled a wadded-up sticker out of his nose. It was soggy and coated in green slime, but the smell was the worst, just putrid. His mom then told us that she’d recently bought him a set of Dora the Explorer stickers at least a month ago and some were missing. Mystery solved.
52. I’m Still Standing
On a night shift in a psychiatric ward, a patient somehow got out his window and jumped from the second floor. We all ran out and were surprised to find him still standing on the lawn outside. It was an incredible miracle. Mind you, he was screaming his throat out, but he was still standing upright for some inexplicable reason.
As we got closer to him, we realized why he was standing. He'd snapped both his legs straight off in the fall. This caused his splintered shins to impale the soil. It was kind of like a couple of organic javelins. Even years later, I still shudder when thinking about the blood, the creaking of the bones, and the screaming.
53. My Anaconda
I was on a houseboat with my family in the Thousand Islands (St. Lawrence River in Canada). We’d docked on one of the tiny islands for the night. A branch cracked loudly over the boat, and a snake that (to me at that age) looked to be the size of the snake in the film Anaconda fell from a tree and landed across the boat. It splashed down into the water and swam away. Everyone I told believed it was a snake but nobody believed how huge it was.
54. Duck, Duck, Goose
One time I was at home alone and heard something odd at the front door. This was about ten years ago. I opened the door and there were two ducks standing there quacking at me. One was male, the other a female. Anyway, they continued to quack and slowly waddled down the driveway and then down the street. I shook my head in disbelief and closed the door. In hindsight I wished that I followed them, as it seems they wanted me to follow them. That was the only time I have seen ducks in the neighborhood and have not seen any since.
Flickr, Distant Hill Gardens and Na
55. Rainy Days
This is from Bangalore, India. One of the quirks of the city's climate is the occasional isolated spots of heavy rain. There's a running joke of “when you say it's raining in Bangalore, do mention which locality and street too”. So one summer in the late 90s, my friend and I were in the outskirts of the city, and we saw a small crowd blocking the highway.
There was a rain front slowly passing across the road, and the people were watching something. When I saw what it was, I couldn’t believe my eyes. One side of the road was dry while the other side had heavy rain. So we stopped the bike, coolly got down and took shelter beforehand. And from that comfortable vantage point, we saw a parked goods van whose one side was rainy while the other side was dry. It took five seconds for the van to be rained on fully, and another ten seconds for us to be completely surrounded by rain. To date, my memory of this is in a super clear slow motion while my friend doesn't even recall this incident.
56. He Went Over The Handlebars
My fad was cycling home one night from work. As he lives and works in a pretty rural place, there was no light on the road save for his bike light. He comes down a really steep hill, so he's going too fast to pedal, when this flash comes out from the side of the road that he doesn't have time to react to.
The bike instantly stops, he goes flying over the handlebars, and smashes his collar bone. My dad stays still at the side of the road, trying not to vomit from the pain while his bike lies across the middle of the road. A car comes and pulls up.
The driver gets out to see if he's OK, while the other passengers just wander over to his bike and seem to stop there, just staring at it and shaking their heads. A few more cars pull up—remember this is rural, people get nosy—before the ambulance arrives.
Soon there's a crowd of folks standing around his bike as well as around him. When the paramedics cart him past his bike to the ambulance, he realizes what the fuss is about. There's a cat's body caught up in his front wheel.
The stupid little fluffer had gone and run into the side of his wheel so fast it got its head stuck between the spokes. My dad loves cats so he was horrified. Anyway, he's 60-odd so the bone wouldn't heal properly and he ended up getting a sympathetic "frozen" shoulder on the other side after a while, meaning he temporarily lost use of both of his arms.
Then, the doctors decide they had to pull some bone off his hip and graft it onto his collarbone and plate it up to get it fixed. They do the preliminary blood test to see if he is fit for the surgery, and find out he's got leukemia. So yeah, lucky for him in a way, cause now he's getting chemo for the leukemia that would've probably got him fairly quickly if he hadn't hit the cat.
57. This Animal Story Is Crackers
I was in my front yard—in a heavily populated suburban area—when I heard a person screaming "It’s gonna get Riley, it’s gonna get Riley!!" I looked around, and saw a bunny rounding the corner of the house in front of mine. Shortly behind the bunny, I saw a dog rounding the corner.
Shortly behind the dog, I saw a kid, probably about 16, rounding the corner. The dog was gaining on the bunny, the kid gaining on the dog, and just as all three met, a falcon—yes, a freaking falcon—swooped down into the mass of creatures.
I dropped my laundry basket and ran over. When I got to the bunch, I did a lightning fast ocular assessment on the scene. The kid was laying on his stomach holding the rabbit with the dog nipping at the rabbit, and the falcon nipping at either the dog or the rabbit.
My reasoning was that the falcon seemed to be the most dangerous, so I was going to try to kick it in the head to get it away from the kid, dog, and the rabbit. For some reason, I couldn't kick this falcon.
So I grabbed it by the throat—nobody ever believes this part—and picked it up and slammed it down on the ground a little ways away from the fight. Surprisingly, the falcon for some reason stayed on the ground.
I did another ocular assessment and saw that the kid was wearing some camouflage clothes and was holding the lifeless rabbit and didn’t seem to care about what had happened to it. The dog had calmed down, and I noticed that the falcon was wearing leather. Suddenly it clicked. The kid was a falconer.
He was hunting rabbits, and I had just slammed his probably very expensive falcon on the ground—and almost kicked it in the head. I apologized to the kid and asked him if the bird was his. He said it was and that it was okay.
He left with his deceased rabbit, dog, and falcon. It was a weird day for me. I still don't know which one was Riley.
58. The Reading Nook
When I was around 16, my rapidly-growing family finally moved from the house I had spent my entire life in. As you would expect, we spent a lot of time fondly remembering things we used to do in the house as we were packing everything up. At some point, I decided to go into the downstairs closet with a flashlight and read.
Reading in the closet was something I used to do when I was younger to get some peace and quiet. Now, this is one of those deep closets that goes under the stairs. It went back around two meters and then had a left turn into a very low, maybe meter-high space. This space was largely occupied by a mountain of old blankets and stuffed animals.
Of course, that was the fluffiest spot to sit and read. About an hour in, I shifted a little to get comfortable and I heard a low, slow, warped, hoarse voice say, "You always make me happy". I flipped my lid, hit my head on the low ceiling, and practically broke the door down getting out. After hyperventilating and explaining to my family why there was no color left on my face, I went back to see what it was.
It was my stuffed Little Bear from when I was three or four years old. I’d happened to lean on it just right to press his belly. When I pressed his stomach again though…nothing. This poor bear I hadn't played with since I was a toddler used the last of its power—used its dying breath—to tell me I made it happy. You make me happy too, Little Bear…when you're not making me pee myself.
59. Telepathic Teacher
My high school teacher was into spirituality, apparitions, telepathy, etc. One day in class, she said we would play a game. She wrote the name of one of the students on a piece of paper and put it on her desk upside down. She said, “The person whose name is written here will stand up without any hint from me”. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, I was convinced it was me, I stood up...I couldn't believe it.
My name was on the piece of paper. I do not believe in any of this stuff and have wondered for years how it could have happened. Did she know us so well that she could predict who would lose patience or who would imagine their name was written? Or was it some plot to mess with my head?
I never saw the paper, but a bunch of other students did. A few people in class accused me of conspiring with her or that she gave me some sort of sign, but none of that was true.
60. Dancing On The Ceiling
I was helping my dad clean up his friend’s house once. My dad had me climb into an attic over the garage in order to clean it out. I'd never been in an attic before and wasn't told that you need to stay on the rafters.
So, about five minutes into the job I fell through the ceiling. And what did I land on? Right on top of my dad. I was in a cast for the whole summer, but hey, I've got this story.
61. The Man, The Legend
I once met Jim Carrey when I was eight years old on a trip to Florida. When I saw him, I ran up to him and proudly proclaimed "I saw your movie!" Jim Carrey grabbed his chest and yelled: "You saw my boob-ies?!" And I said "No, your movie!"
He then shook my hand and told me, "I saw your movie too, and it was very, very good!" It's funny because now I'm getting ready to head to film school.
62. He Was Missing A Head
EMTs got called to the scene of a bicyclist that got hit by a bus. Upon arrival they found him without vital signs at the scene. This was no surprise, as he’d been decapitated. The EMTs searched for his head, but couldn't find it anywhere. Eventually, they gave up and took the body to the hospital. The doctors there X-rayed the guy and were shocked. The mystery of the missing head had been solved.
The head had been pushed straight into his chest cavity and was sitting where his lungs and heart were.
63. It Broke Her Heart
I'm in veterinary medicine, and kids are what get me the most. Don't get me wrong, adults can be big babies too, but I guess I just feel terrible for the kids because I got to keep all my beloved childhood pets until I was at least well into my teens. The worst one was when I was a receptionist. We had a puppy with a parvo infection dropped off that was already in bad shape. In addition, the family was dirt poor.
It was a cute little lemon beagle. When the owner came in to pick the dog up and heard that even with the best, most expensive supportive care, this puppy might not make it, she opted to just take him home for the short time he had left. There was a little four or five-year-old girl waiting in the waiting room, and when mom came out with the beagle she lit up, ran over, smiling.
She thought the puppy was okay and she’d have it for a long time. The look that went over the mom's face absolutely destroyed me. Horrible.
64. Don’t Do It Harry
I was at a theater in Boise, Idaho for the midnight premiere of the sixth Harry Potter movie. The theater is absolutely packed, and nearly everyone is dressed in their Potter garb.
So, the movie is getting near its climax, and it gets to a super suspenseful part. I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan, I kind of got dragged there, but I'll try to recall the scene.
Harry has to try to save Dumbledore, or something like that, by getting water from a sacred pond or something that has all these creatures in it, and Harry knows that these creatures will attack him.
Anyway, as the suspense is rising and Harry approaches this pond, I witnessed an amazing sight. This one guy in the theater—he’s really tall, super built and looks like a college football player—stands up in the back row dressed all in Hufflepuff and yells "Harry, don’t do it. Harry, I swear to God don’t do it. Harry. Harry!"
And then of course Harry does it and gets pounced on by the creatures. The guy at the back says: "I told you Harry, I told you" and walks out of the theater.
65. Blinded By The Light
So, I’m on vacation, and one of my friends decides to go take a shower, or so we think. He's actually taking a bath. The light switch was on the outside of the bathroom, and we decided to play a harmless prank on him: the classic "turn off the light while you're in the shower" trick.
Well, apparently as we turned off the light, his head was underwater and his eyes were closed. So, as he arose from the water, it was pitch black in the bathroom. The poor guy was convinced that he had gone blind.
He flailed around and jumped out of the tub. He then proceeded to thrash around the room screaming for help because he'd gone blind.
66. Getting Old
I swear I'm not insane, but I was walking home from high school nine years ago and I saw something that I absolutely can't understand that freaked me out badly. I was coming to a crosswalk and across the two-lane street I saw a distinctive-looking girl maybe a little older than me wearing a white dress, and she had a cocker spaniel puppy on a leash that was just sitting on the sidewalk.
I looked away while I was watching for traffic and crossed over to her side, and when I looked up I kind of jumped because the girl in the white dress was now maybe in her late 60s and her dog was a very old, graying cocker spaniel. I don't have eyesight problems and I am seriously certain of what I saw. I still wouldn't tell anyone I know because there's no way they would believe me. The only explanation I can feel comfortable with is maybe hallucination, but that's never happened to me before or since.
Freepik, Racool_studio
67. Fairy Dust
This is going to sound so childish, so bear with me. When I was about 13, I was severely bullied, between the fact that my clothes were all second-hand, my mother was too caught up in sleeping her way down the alphabet to teach me how to groom or do makeup, and I hadn't yet grown into curves, so I was just a chunky weird girl with frizzy hair.
Because of this, I got OBSESSED with fantasy worlds. Lord Of The Rings was my initial escape, and then I began writing. This is when I saw the movie Fairy Tale, and I read up on it as much as I could. I vehemently believed in fairies. I lived in Germany at the time, only a couple miles from a castle. I made fairy houses in the trees outside and in the blackberry bushes on a trail to the library.
One day, my sister and I were walking home for dinner. This gold figure, about three inches high, flew in front of us, hovered for a moment, and flew off, leaving an honest-to-god golden trail of glitter behind it. We looked at each other for a couple minutes, and she goes, "Did you see that too"? Nobody will ever probably believe it, but I swear it HAPPENED. I have never seen anything like it since. There was no face or anything, it was just like this glowing golden roughly humanoid shaped golden thing with wings.
68. Alarm Bells
I was living in Texas. It was around Thanksgiving. I lived by myself and was lonely and missing my relatives (the deceased ones). I heard an alarm going off. It wasn’t my alarm clock. I followed the sound into my storage room and could hear it coming from a pile of boxes. I dug through and found the right box then tore it open.
What I found was devastating. In a bunch of stuff I had gotten when I lost a favorite uncle, there was a travel alarm I didn’t know I even had. It must have been his. It was going off about three years from the day when we lost him. It had been on a Thanksgiving morning. I had just been thinking of him earlier that day. It was so strange but oddly comforting.
Freepik,tirachard
69. Covered From Head To Toe
I went to France about three years ago when I was 22 to visit my dad's side of the family. We're Armenian, but that's where his family lives. His nieces are all in their 40s and two of the three are divorced.
The first night I got there, they insisted on taking me out to a club, which they call a discotheque. So we went and grabbed seats at the bar. I was clearly the youngest person in the place by at least a decade.
The bartender brings our drinks, and as I'm reaching to grab mine, an unforgettable moment occurs. Everything suddenly just goes black. I open my eyes and realize I’d blacked out for a half second.
I feel something on my forehead, and as soon as I reach to touch it, I feel a huge flow of blood just gushing from the top of my head and I'm quickly covered from head to toe. None of my cousins noticed what happened, so I tapped them on the shoulder, they turned around and nearly had a heart attack.
I noticed a bloody scotch glass on the floor, so that had to be the culprit. I went to the bathroom to wash up. The glass had hit me square in the middle of my forehead, yet I never felt the impact. The owner of the bar comes rushing in, freaking out with his hands and legs trembling and speaking to me in French.
I look at my cousin and shrug my shoulders and say I'm fine and don't need stitches. The man was near crying from the thought of a tourist getting hit in his bar. Anyways, I cleaned up as much as possible but there was blood everywhere: on my shirt, pants, shoes, laces, socks, even my watch.
I head back out on the floor in my bloody outfit. The funniest part was that some woman took my spot at the bar and didn't realize she had her elbows sitting in a pool of blood. I pointed it out to her and she ran out of the bar screaming.
The rest of the night consisted of random French people buying me drinks, toasting to the American.
70. Heads Or Tails?
My aunt lived in Canada, and she had relatives there and here in the UK. While both sides liked my aunt, neither of the relatives were exactly fond of each other. When my aunt passed, both the relatives here and in Canada wanted her body to be buried where they lived.
They couldn't agree, so they came up with this horrible solution. Her body was chopped in half and the legs were flown over here to be buried in the UK and Canada kept the top half. I just can't work out who got the better deal?
71. His And His And Hers
I was living in a house with two other friends, and both of them had their girlfriends living with them. I had my room in the basement and they had theirs upstairs. One day I was getting changed when I heard the doorbell ring.
I wasn't dressed yet so I grabbed a towel to answer the door. A little decency can go a long way. I open the door and find a pizza delivery guy. One of the guys had ordered the pizza for himself and his girlfriend.
I give him a shout while I hold on to my towel, making sure this doesn't end up as a dropped towel story. My friend comes down the stairs, turns the corner, and I see he is also wearing a towel.
So there we are, two 20-year-old guys hanging out in a house wearing only towels. The pizza guy’s face is contorting as he was trying not to laugh—because he's a professional.
My friend and I realized what it looked like and burst out laughing. We're giving the standard "it's not what it looks like" response and the delivery guy is giving us the “sure buds I believe you” look.
My friend's girlfriend, hearing all the laughter, decided to come down the stairs to see what all the noise was. I heard her coming down the stairs, turning the corner...and sure enough there she is wearing a towel as well.
Now the pizza guy is looking at the three of us standing around in towels like we were at some European bath house. We decided against explaining and just paid him.
72. Framed
This was in the 90s, pre-camera recording mobile phones. I was staying at my then-girlfriend's house, we were about 16, and at one point we both saw a photo frame that hung on a wall rocking back and forth slowly for about a minute or two. It was in a small room, with no open windows or drafts, no earthquake etc. To this day I have no idea how that could have happened, but we both saw it and were just staring at it. It was pretty freaky at the time.
73. New Set Of Wheels
This was in or around 2015 in Irvine, California. I was skateboarding outside of a Panera Bread late at night, goofing around being an idiot , usual teen stuff. I had left my skateboard on a parking block and was taking a leak in the bushes, when all of a sudden out of nowhere, WHOOOSHHHHH right beside me. I turned around. What I saw was terrifying.
A huge owl had swooped my skateboard off the parking block and flew with it about 50 feet into a big tree. I’d never been so confused. After about 25 minutes, he just flew away. I was able to get my skateboard back eventually. It blew my mind.
74. Crabby
When I was in middle school, my girlfriend’s family used to take me to this hole-in-the-wall, five dollar all-you-can-eat crab shack in Maryland (mid/late 90s). As a fat kid, I was "the ringer" to make sure we always got our money's worth, lol. One night, when I was about halfway through what I would have eaten, I saw a dude eat an entire crab, shell, claws, and all. Like this dude was HOUSING a whole crab, snappin' into it like a Slim Jim.
And it wasn't a soft shell crab, either. You (well, I) could hear the chomping and cracking from several tables over. I remember that I kept expecting to see blood dribbling out of his face, but it never did. I was so awestruck and horrified that I couldn't even move. I couldn't finish my food or anything. No one in our party saw it, because I asked about it on the ride home and everyone thought I was joking. There has not been a single instance in my life since then that I've eaten crab without flashing back to that.
Freepik,wayhomestudio
75. Only The Good Die Young
I'm a junior in high school, and last year a really well respected and well liked teacher passed due to health complications. He was only 32. It affected most of the school, even those who didn't have him as a teacher, as he was always popping into random classrooms to say hello.
After we finished our finals, my buddies and I loaded up two cars with cases of cheap brewskis and went up to Martha's Vineyard for the weekend. We lucked out, and ended up staying in a massive house on a beautiful property, complete with a private tennis court and a zipline across the front lawn.
There was absolutely no adult supervision the entire time we were there. At around 1 or 2 am on the first night of summer, we stopped partying for a while. We gathered on the front porch and lit a few candles.
We dedicated these few moments to our fallen teacher, and we each said a few words about him. We played "Only The Good Die Young" by Billy Joel once everyone had said something. We had our peace, and sat together quietly, remembering that wonderful man. Tears were shed.
76. Please Sign Here
In college, me and my roommate were flat broke. We were literally living off of a loaf of 99 cent bread and skateboarding to class—because the car was out of gas. My mom decided to MoneyGram me $100 to get me through the next month until a student aid check came in.
She couldn't send a wire because my bank account was $100 in the hole, so I would have netted zero. This is where the story got really good. While at the grocery store claiming my MoneyGram, they were doing shift changes, and the new assistant came in distracted and not paying attention. She opened the register and pulled out a stack of $100 bills.
To my amazement she counted them off to $600. She asked me, "Please sign here, Mrs Dominguez". I am male and don’t look at all latin—let alone female. I gladly signed the receipt, stuffed the $600 quickly into my pocket, and bolted out the door.
I immediately filled the car with gas, picked up my roommate, and started throwing “hundys” at him.
77. He Sang Right To Me
A few years ago I went to see Willie Nelson in Waikiki. I could only afford the trailer-trash tickets, which had me seated on the lawn all the way in back—but that was fine. I get a drink, and noticed that the sectioned-off reserved spaces had some empty seats.
This is common in Honolulu, as people from neighbor isles buy tickets, then can't make the show for whatever reason. So, Willie started playing, and I just moved to a seat about 10 rows back. Now, security was all over, checking people's tickets and making them move back to the cheap seats where they—and I—belonged.
But I just thought to myself: "I am invisible, I am invisible". At my height—which is like a basketball player—it was pretty hard. The ticket guys asked people all around me for tickets, but nobody even looked at me.
So, after a while I needed another cold one, went to the long line, went back to the front to see that all the seats were now full, except one—right in front of Willie. I thought, "there is no way I can pull this off".
I sat in the chair, security still rousing people left and right, and Willie sang his old heart out about a meter away for the rest of the show. Not once did anyone hassle me. I found out later that it was a $400 seat, and I think I paid about 18 bucks.
78. His T-Shirt Predicted It
I’m a respiratory therapist in a Level One Trauma Center. One time we had a man come in with an open leg fracture. There was a literal bone, the femur, pointing up and the rest of the leg hanging off and partially resting on the bed. He had been in a motorcycle accident with his wife, who had been riding on the back. The wife didn’t survive the accident.
The worst part of the story was that he was wearing one of those biker shirts that read: "If you can read this, the wife fell off". Pretty horrible stuff.
79. They Just Fell Off
I’m a medical student. I was in the ER one shift and a rather obese man was brought in by his family, who said he'd been very confused lately. I went to go see the patients while the lab results from a standard blood count and chemistry were being processed by the lab. Being a medical student, I didn't have a clue what was wrong with the guy.
After rapidly exhausting my line of questioning on an incoherent patient, I started doing a physical exam. As I removed his socks to check his pedal pulses and reflexes, I noticed that the sock I just pulled off felt like they had rocks in them. Big rocks. Curious, I emptied out the sock onto the bed, only to see that they were his toes. Three of them. It was the most disturbing sight I've ever seen.
The lab results came back, unsurprisingly, with a screamingly high blood glucose—totally off the charts. We figured out what happened. He’d had severe diabetic neuropathy and chronic, extreme hyperglycemia. Because of this, he couldn't feel his toes become ischemic and was too confused to regularly check them, so they had just fallen off.
80. This Coffee Tastes Funny
One time, in the Intensive Care Unit, a patient was coughing up loads of sputum and, between changing the apparatus to catch it, the nurses caught some of it in the only thing they had handy: a Styrofoam cup. After a few moments, when the craziness was over and everyone went back to their day. One nurse, mistaking the cup of sputum for a cup of coffee, took a drink.
81. It Wasn’t What She Thought
After the horrible tsunami that ripped through Asia, I went to Thailand with my church group. We were there to help with the cleanup. Even though I wasn't on holiday, I thought I would buy my husband a souvenir and decided on a cigar.
I carried this in my luggage all the way from Thailand, to Hong Kong, to LA, and back to Texas. I gave it to my husband and we realized it wasn't what I thought at all: It was an enormous joint.
82. It’s For My Dojo
I'm in a show choir at my school, and all of the guys are a pretty close group, hanging out all the time and just generally being stupid. We have lots of stories but this is one of my favorites. One night a while back, we were driving about, bored, and decided to go to the nearest Walmart for some good old Hide 'n Seek.
Once in the store, I took off to the section that held the bean bags. I climbed up on the shelf with them, and buried myself with a single bean bag covering my face. Sitting there, I thought I was safe as it was late and not many people were around.
Because I'm a planner, I decided to come up with a ludicrous story in case I'm caught by an employee. I finish my story in my mind, and I’m sitting contently in my fort. Suddenly, the bag in front of my face is pulled away and I come face-to-face with a lady holding my bean bag and looking at me in shock.
In a panic, I launched into my story just because it was there. I put my finger to my lips and told her "shhhh..." I then proceeded to explain how I was in karate in the city and how we had gotten special permission from Walmart to do a stealth exercise here.
I told her not to tell anyone, as people would ask too many questions and want to do it themselves. "It's for my dojo" I told her again and again. "It's for my dojo. Now please put the bag back, and walk away". She put it back, looking scared, and backed out of the aisle quite quickly.
Five minutes later, when the round was over, I returned a victor and a hero.
83. There Was Spirit In This Guy
When I was about 15, I was just starting to play guitar, and was obsessed with the song called "Spirit in the Sky". I was listening one day, and thinking, "Man, that is a really cool guitar tone, I wonder how he did that". This set off a strange chain reaction.
So anyway, later I'm fooling around on good ol AOL, and I stumbled upon a website owned by Norman Greenbaum, the guy who recorded the song.
On his website I noticed there was an e-mail address. I figured he wouldn't actually be posting his personal email, would he? I emailed him anyway, and asked about his guitar and gear on that song.
I never really expected a reply. Fast forward a few days later: "You've got mail!" And wouldn’t you know it, I actually had a reply from Norman himself . He emailed me and told me all about his gear, and about when he recorded the song.
Not only did good ol Norman respond, but he also attached the sheet music for the song in the email. That was a pretty cool experience.
84. Say “Cheese!”
I was 15 years old. I had just got home from work, so I went to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and get ready for bed. I was in the middle of undressing when I looked to my bedroom window to catch my reflection...and what I saw made me scream. I saw a man's face. I dropped to the floor and turned off the lights. Still watching the window, I scrambled to get dressed.
The face was gone, but I was still watching. Then...a camera. No face, just a camera pointed at me sitting on the floor. I bolted from my room and told my mom and brother. My brother went outside, and our ladder from the backyard was lying there, but there was nobody around. I couldn't sleep for a year after that. I’d just lie there staring at that window.
85. Man Down
Back when I worked the night shift as a security guard, I would experience mild hallucinations due to my poor sleep schedule. One night, I was doing my patrol and I started feeling particularly out of it. I kept getting those flashes of movement in the corner of my eye, but I was convinced it was just my brain screwing up.
At the site I was working, there was a large warehouse filled with chemical waste. There was only one light on in it. As I was going along, I saw a pale shape on the ground and quickly recognized it as a body. My adrenaline spiked and I nearly passed out. My mind blanked and it took a second for me to regain my senses.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a CPR dummy the workers left out for training.
86. Man In The Window
I woke up from a bad dream and went to sleep beside my parents in their room. On the way to their bedroom, I had to pass the front door which had a big window next to it. What I saw made my blood run cold—two guys were trying to break in and when they saw me, they knocked on the window to get my attention, motioning for me to unlock the door.
My mom said it was a dream, but to this day, the image of those two guys at our front window is as real as any childhood memory I have. This happened over 40 years ago.
87. He Was On The Ball
I was golfing with my family, and I hit a ball out of the course and down onto the highway near the course. I chuckled, and for some reason said: "A homeless man is going to find that ball, and it's going to make his day". Later, when we were walking down the fairway of that hole, we saw a homeless man walking down the sidewalk.
He was holding the ball up and called out to us: "Is this your ball?” Needless to say, it was my favorite golfing moment.
88. It Was A Smashing Party
I was throwing a massive house party in Madison, Wisconsin somewhere around 1990. This was going to be a huge party, and I’d even hired a band to play. Well, the band I hired had to cancel at the last minute, so we needed another band to play.
I took a buddy of mine and we went down the street to the Student Union to see if "that one band that always plays there" would come over and play our gig when their set was done. They agreed to do it!
The night totally rocked and maybe I should mention the name of the band that played: The Smashing Pumpkins. Yup, little did we know how famous they would become.
89. Behind Door Number One
I am an American who was doing business in China. I arranged a meeting with a client from Germany at his hotel. So, I go to his hotel and he texts me that he’s coming down in the elevator. The elevator opens, and the only western face I see is a guy who’s also looking for me.
He introduces himself with a thick accent. We talked for half an hour...and then realized our massive mistake. We both figured out that we were supposed to be meeting other people. And, yep, there they were in the elevator area waiting for us: another American and a German. Go figure!
90. Teenagers Bad, Aunt Good
I’m currently a vet tech, but heading to nursing school soon. Once I had a 75 kg (160 lb) mastiff/St. Bernard mix brought in for a supposed tapeworm problem. One of the female techs lifts his tail to take his temperature and squeals then runs away. I look and see maggots around his tail. I start to shave and see that his skin is full—and I mean full—of little holes that maggots are crawling into and out of.
I keep shaving his very thick fur and reveal more and more skin that looks this way. I shave the entire dog up to his last rib before I found healthy skin. The maggots are everywhere. I have him on a grate above a bathtub so I can spray the maggots off. I spent four hours shaving and cleaning him and removed no less than two gallons of maggots from this dog's skin. We know there were more because his entire gut was infected with them.
Later we found out what had happened. It turns out that the owners of the dog were in Europe on vacation, and their four teenage children were responsible for the dog. The wife's sister was watching the children but was terrified of dogs, so she didn't handle it directly. They were leaving this rather large dog with super-dense fur in the rain during a Charleston spring, which means it’s hot and muggy.
The dog probably got a small area of moist dermatitis that got infected and was left untreated and slowly spread through half the dog's body. All four children were present when the veterinarian told them what happened and said that there wasn't anything we could do but euthanize. Not one of them showed the slightest bit of remorse or acted as if they cared.
Only the aunt, who is terrified of dogs, remained with the dog as we gave the injection. She cradled the dog's head in her lap and wept because of how the dog must have felt. He was so good during the entire ordeal and wanted nothing more than for someone to pet his head.
That is the only time I ever cried because of my job.
91. It Just Spilled Out
Pharmacy guy here, but I work with anesthesia during surgeries at night and the worst surprise I had was on a simple operation. An obese woman was having a boil on her arm lanced and drained...simple enough...but the minute the tiny incision began there was this popping sound. To our shock, the skin from elbow to shoulder split wide open. Black goo and puss then seeped out from where she had developed compartment syndrome. It was all over the table.
There's just not enough peppermint gauze in the world to cover up someone's necrotic flesh smell.
92. One Thing Missing: My Clothes
It was the first time my parents left for a week and left me in charge of the house. At the time our dog was recovering from leg surgery, so she couldn't go up and down the stairs. I had to sleep in the TV room on an air mattress.
I decided that with my parents away it was “walk around the house with no clothes” time. So I undressed and crawled into bed. I was also a neurotic teenager, so I locked the door that led to the garage.
About 30 minutes later, I decided I wanted a snack from our small garage fridge. This was my biggest mistake. I went into the garage and thought I had unlocked the door. But I hadn't. There I was, without a stitch on, locked out of my own house at 10 pm. What was I going to do?
My first plan of attack was to find clothing in the garage and ask our neighbor for the spare key, but all I could find was a rain jacket and a towel. It would be glaringly obvious to my neighbor what had happened. At this point my dogs were barking like crazy as I tried to open the door.
I eventually found an old gift card in the door of my car, and—after trying for a really long time—unlocked the door. What a relief.
93. Inked And Regretting It
When I was coming back from Afghanistan—I was 23 at the time—the boys and I had a few too many with some guys in Cyprus. I woke up the next day with a tattoo. This wasn’t so bad, except it was a Wu-Tang tattoo and it was on the lower back position—a place usually reserved for women.
To make matters worse: two of my buddies got Wu-Tang symbols on their butts—with my name in them. I'm now 29 with two children and I hate this thing. I tried laser tattoo removal, but it's junk and doesn't work.
So, I just had my Wu-Tang tattoo cut out by a plastic surgeon. It cost me $1,600. I’m now in the hole for $3,200 if you include the failed laser removal. Wu-tang is not forever and neither are inner demons and shame.
94. Almost Lost Her To A Pea
In 2004, I was dating this girl in my first year of university. I was definitely punching above my weight as she was gorgeous and also a year older than me. I never really got jealous of other guys trying to talk to her, because she would always pull me beside her when they did.
One night, however, we were at the student bar, and I didn't see her for quite a while. One of my friends was like, “Bro, your girlfriend’s totally about to cheat on you tonight". Now, I went looking for her...and what I saw has stuck in my mind.
Here I was: 18 years old, at a small student bar in New Zealand, and there was my girlfriend getting friendly with will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. He ended up just giving her free general admission tickets to his concert and bailed with his security guards before they did anything.
95. Playing Frogger
My husband and I were driving late at night on a rural road in South Georgia about 20 years ago. I’ll never forget what happened that night. All of a sudden there were frogs covering about a half-to-one mile patch of road. You could hear them thumping up under the car. We are talking about a biblical amount of frogs. We still talk about how crazy it was and confirm that it really happened. I don’t think anyone could believe the amount of frogs if they didn’t see it. I wouldn’t.
96. We’re Not In Kansas
I saw a tornado empty a hotel swimming pool. This was in Nebraska, in the mid 90s. We were staying in a room that had a sliding patio door that opened to an outside pool. The building was sort of “U” shaped with the pool in the U part. The storms were bad and the hotel lost power in the middle of the night. I pulled back the curtains by the sliding door to look outside and see how bad it was.
Right then I heard a sound like a combination freight train and steam whistle, and saw the entire contents of the pool just lift straight up out of the ground like someone hit it with a giant shop vac. There was about a three or four second delay where I could only describe the sound as the combination of wind in a cave and water flowing through pipes.
Then the wind pitched REALLY high for a split second and suddenly, it all stopped. Like someone dumping a bucket of water into a solo cup, the water crashed back down into the sides of the hotel. About half of it flooded back into the pool and the rest flowed across the patio area and out to the parking lot and the tornado was gone. Like sucking up an entire swimming pool killed its energy or something and it just all crashed back down.
A bunch of cars were moved sideways and a huge tree fell right next to our car and pancaked them. We had nothing on our car but a few little twigs and leaves. You could see the path the tornado took as it crossed the road and came right into the hotel pool area. There was zero damage to the hotel at all that we could see the next morning.
97. Suited Up
I was probably between the ages of seven and 12. I always used to go out walking with the new phone I got. I’d go around “collecting” kilometers and I watched the steps go up. Simple brain of a child, I know. Anyway, the morning of a weekend I once again would get up early for a walk. It’s about a two minute walk up a farm road to reach a forest.
It might be important to point out that my village is surrounded by small mountains, meaning as you go up this “mountain” you need to look up to see the road ahead. So as I was walking I randomly stopped to look around me like I often do. No one would be up this early and so it would be completely silent and you could listen to the sounds of nature all around you.
As I was coming closer to a turn, my destination was a bench at the top of this little “mountain”, I could see something else. Or rather someone else? A man (or woman, I don’t know) was standing roughly 600 m up from where I stood, around where my bench was. That in itself wasn’t so unusual, farmers go up here all the time.
But what made me stop in my tracks was that this person was wearing completely white attire. And I mean completely: white pants, a white long suit and a white hat. He was also leaning on a cane. In that moment I could swear he looked at me, corrected his hat and turned, disappearing behind the curvature of the little “hill”. To this day I don’t know who that person was. I am quite certain I know most people in our little village and I sure don’t know who would walk up to a bench at the edge of a forest in full white attire this early in the morning just to look at passers-by and then disappear.
98. These Answers Did Not Vary
One test day in college, the teacher had accidentally stapled answer sheets to the back of every test by mistake. A few minutes after passing the tests around, his phone rang and he stepped out. Of course, everyone had noticed the answer sheet, and we had to decide what to do about it.
The consensus was: we would all use it and tear it off after. Our thoughts were that, hopefully, he would never notice. So I checked each of the answers and they were all correct except for the last one—which was a flowchart. We were to draw a flowchart that explained a process.
I checked the answer sheet, and it just said: "answers will vary". So, I drew my flowchart, tore off the answer sheet and walked to the front podium to turn the test in. When I got to the podium I had to know.
I needed to see what everyone else had drawn for their flowchart. I still laugh at what I saw. Almost everyone had written on their test: "answers will vary". I don't remember what the teacher did about it.
99. Heal Thyself
When I was young, I had hot oil spill over the whole right-hand side of my body. It burned the daylights out of me. I was blind in one eye and covered in patches for weeks. One day my mom took me to the hospital to get my dressings changed, and the doctor told her I would likely have to have plastic surgery and skin grafts as it wasn't healing.
When he went to change my dressings, there was not a single mark on me. I had completely healed, and my eyesight was normal. No one believes the story, so I just don't tell it anymore.
100. Holding A Grudge
When my aunt left us, we found notes scribbled on scratch paper hidden all over the house. It was lists of what people had done to wrong her, things like “didn’t clean the yard correctly” and “didn’t buy the right beverage at the store”, all the way to “jealous of my life” and “can’t stand that my family is better than theirs”.
My mother’s was especially brutal, which was heartbreaking. They were friends for the majority of their lives, until my aunt’s unhealthy habits changed her. She passed a bitter, hateful woman surrounded by people who loved what she used to be, but couldn’t stand what she had become.
101. Blood Isn’t Always Thicker Than Water
My friend was in her final year of university. She had strong grades, and a really great internship lined up with a place she dreamed about working at. It almost certainly would have led to a great job. Well, that is, until her parents faked her younger brother's passing on the day when she had three finals back to back to back. The reason behind it all was seriously deranged.
They wanted to test whether she cared more about her family or her career, supposedly. She raced home in panic and grief, getting plane tickets and flying across the country, trying to get deferred exams on short notice. One of her profs, who helmed two of those classes, required a certificate. Well, she couldn't get it, since her brother was alive and well.
She didn't get to graduate because of that, at least not in that semester, and she lost her dream internship. Thankfully, she got a good job after graduating half a year later, though not nearly as good as the one she lost out on. Since then, she's largely cut her parents out of her life.
102. Mystery Man
I worked in McDonald's before I went to university. There was this one man who came through the drive-thru—he was in his late 30s and was clearly a farmer from the look of his vehicle and his dog in the back. He was always pretty quiet, but I remember a couple of times that he tried to make nice small talk. When I worked on New Year's, he asked me how things were and said I should be out having fun my age.
I remember thinking he always seemed really lonely or sad when he drove through since he'd always try to carry a conversation with me. I felt bad having to be quick with him because he just seemed like he wanted someone to talk to. Long story short, he drove through one day and asked if my last name was what he thought it was. After a sideways glance from my manager, I said it was.
He looked really sad and took his hat off. Then he said something that shocked me to my core. He told me that he was my dad. My biological mother didn't know who my dad was, so it was possible. My manager let me go on break to speak with him. He then explained that he slept with my mother around the time that she got pregnant, and he was only 16. He was really apologetic and also seemed ashamed of what he did.
He told me he was sorry he didn't seek me out. He was from a town about an hour's drive away, so that was a part of it. And no one ever showed up to tell him he was a dad or anything. I told him I was happy with my life, but I still gave him my number and told him to give me a ring sometime. So yeah, that's how I met my dad. My biological dad, I should say.
After a few years when I heard from my biological mother again, she agreed that he was who she thought the father was. We went out for coffee three or four times, but we didn't have much to talk about. He and I never really maintained contact—the last time we spoke, he told me he'd been diagnosed with MS. He had a couple of sons, but I was his only daughter and he said that he was grateful we had met.
103. All Good Things Come To An End
I woke up without an alarm, had breakfast, took a bath, and drove half hour to my work feeling great. I even thought to myself on the way, "Lucky me, the traffic is very nice today". Just when I arrived, the security greeted me with the worst words possible: "Good morning, sir, working even over the holiday?" I drove all the way home and had a nap.
104. Step Into My Office
Ever since I was a kid, I loved to fiddle around with staplers. Playing with the automatic ones and doing dumb stuff like any child would, opening the manual ones and swinging it around, stuff like that. One of my favorite things to do was to open up a new strip of staples and break them apart before putting them in. Running my fingers through the staples, counting them, and breaking them apart...I loved it.
There are 210 staples in a standard strip and sometimes I’d break off each individual one until my fingers hurt. I’ve even found strips with 209 and 211 a few times. This progressed from me messing around with staples in Ms. Grady’s second-grade class, to buying a box of staples every other payday to play with, to literally having a collection of different brands and sizes of staples in my college dorm to break apart.
I had a problem, but no one was hurt, so who cares? Well...Fast forward to present day. I am a functioning middle-class adult with a wife and two children. I have a home, a normal car, and an office job. I am by all accounts a normal human being, and I still love staples. Working in an office with a supply room full of staples was a problem.
I’d spend my lunch break in the room opening boxes and breaking apart staples to get my fix before returning to work. It got so bad over the course of a couple years that my boss changed our supplier because the boxes all had broken apart staples and were sometimes ripped. So I had to stop doing that...I turned to Amazon first, buying 10 boxes of staples at a time for about 20 bucks a pop. It wasn’t enough. I went to 20, then 40.
My wife got curious then and asked, “Why are you buying all of these boxes of staples,” but I brushed it off as a work issue that I’d get reimbursed for and knew I had to change my methods. Over the course of a few months I enabled myself. I started using cash only at different office supply stores around my town and neighboring towns.
I would sit in my car and break apart staples before going to the next store. I began to stay out late and tell my wife I would be home soon, so I could go buy more staples from different stores. I opened up a new credit card to put online so she wouldn’t know, but she caught it in the mail. She then got suspicious because things weren't adding up.
This past Thursday after one of my “late nights,” I get home with a trunk full of broken staples and 10 freshly broken boxes in my passenger seat to see my parents’ cars at my house. I walked in and everyone is sitting around like it’s an intervention. Because it is. My wife asked if there was anything I wanted to tell them, and to tell the truth about my problem.
I sat down and kept saying, “What are you talking about?” until my mom said, “Honey, we saw the pictures". Then my wife tells me that my late nights, excuses, and general weirdness about the credit card, and some other little things made her hire a private investigator. This man followed me around to office supply stores and watched me “do something” with what I had in the bag from multiple stores.
It basically looked like I was a drug runner for Office Depot who was using some of the product for myself. At this point, my wife started to cry and my dad shook his head. I had to come clean and all I could muster was, "I...I like staples". The “what the heck” looks I got afterward turned into disbelief, then concern, then fits of laughter when I showed them my car.
I came clean. I backed this up by showing my secret stash of used staples in my attic and explained the purchases on the card to my wife. Right now, my only concern is my dad. He didn’t laugh—just kind of shook his head continually in disappointment without saying a word. Believe it or not, I think therapy or addiction meetings may help, as my wife gave me these suggestions the day after. I was told that although the addiction is not typical in its damage regarding my mental or physical well-being, I do need help.
I am going to go through addiction counseling like any other addict would. Just tailored to my specific issue. Apparently, part of fixing my brain is to know that it is not okay to continue this level of staplephilia. That included cleaning out my car, attic, and not garnering more attention through memorializing pictures, and stuff like that.
My wife initially thought I was having an affair. She didn’t think I was doing substances until she got the pictures. The PI just told her what he saw, and she deduced that I had an undercover type distribution thing going with someone in the office supply business. She admitted that she didn’t think it all through, but her mind was racing and conclusions came as they did.
I do not have autism or any diagnosed mental disability. I am just an addict, and an idiot. I know how stupid the addiction is and so I tried to hide it. It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things I guess, but my embarrassing white lie just spiraled out of control.
105. Their Stay Went Viral
We had some good friends stay at our house while we were out of town for the holidays. We came home to a clean house, maybe cleaner than we left it. Two nights later, our toddler woke up and couldn't stop throwing up. We took her to the emergency room. She stabilized after about five hours or so, just enough time to ring in the New Year under the fluorescent lights.
But then, things for weirder. A few days after, I started feeling like I had a kidney stone or something. I had pain at first, then fever and chills started up. I ended up going to the emergency room as well. I had a bunch of tests done, multiple IV bags of fluid, etc. They hadn’t figured out what was wrong when my wife called saying she wasn’t feeling well either. I knew it all had to be connected.
After about a week or so, we were all better, so we went on with our lives. About a month later, we were recounting our illness events to a mutual friend. That’s when we finally learned what had really happened. He said, "Oh, wasn't that right around the time our friend was in town? We never got to see them because they all had Norovirus that week".
That sure explained the number of sheets that were changed at the house and a couple of not quite dry spots on the bedroom carpet. A heads up before we got home would have been appreciated.
