We all know that there are people out there who just aren’t right. We also all tend to assume that anyone we meet is not one of those people. However, given that there are only so many people out there in the world, it seems pretty likely that sooner or later one of the crazy ones is bound to come into contact with one of the rest of us. So what exactly does it look like when someone meets a truly unusual person? To shed some light on these questions, here are 42 stories of the moments where people experienced that very moment.
1. Federal Climate Policy
The plumber we once called to do some work for us was nice enough—until he started explaining to my wife that Hurricane Sandy didn't really happen and that all of the big storms are really due to the government "shooting electrons" into the sky.
2. And What Did You Do Today?
I watched a dude try to have a full-on conversation with a basket of bananas that were on sale at a gas station this morning.
3. Arts and Crafts
At my library, a lady once came up to the reference desk and said: "This pen you gave me doesn't work." She opened her journal and flipped through multiple pages of scribbles until she found a blank one. She then aggressively scribbled all over that page and said, "See? Nothing is coming out!" even though she had clearly just scribbled black ink all over the page. She then started giggling and walked away.
4. Let It Bleed
A girl who at first seemed perfectly normal was sitting next to me on the bus one afternoon. Out of nowhere, partway through the bus ride, she began digging into her face with her dirty nails until she began to bleed. She then licked the fresh blood off of her fingers. She no longer seemed perfectly normal…
5. Something to Remember Me By
Cute girl starts flirting with me. Says I'm cute and funny. Nice. Next day, she invites me over to her house to have fun. Parents aren't home. Nice. The time finally comes and I arrive at her house. Wearing only short shorts and a sweater, she invites me into her room. Says she has a surprise for me. Nice. I get into her room and she takes off her clothes.
I notice something. She seems to have carved my name into her arm multiple times with a razor. It was literally written all across her forearms. Fudge. She then says it’s my turn to cut her name into my forearms, to show that I want her just as badly. Fudge. I turn around and walk away.
6. Red Light District
My old boss! He believed that all of the traffic lights in the city were turning red on him on purpose, so that the police had time to search his house.
7. That’ll Do It...
I realized that my coworker was a little nuts when he started explaining how the whole world was filled with "clues" that he personally had to decipher in order to find the buried treasure that would save humanity from its potential doom.
8. House Guest or House Pest?
I was in my apartment with my girlfriend. My roommate came home with this friend of his who is a bit off his rocker. My roommate is a bleeding heart type and was trying to help get this guy back on his feet by setting him up at a halfway house. My roommate's guest proceeds to start hitting on my girlfriend, standing way too close to her, and constantly trying to touch her hands, arms, and face.
My girlfriend was freaking out. I wasn't in the room at first, but I entered to see this guy cornering my girlfriend against the wall. I immediately told him to get the hell out. My roommate's friend then proceeds to tell me that it's fine, as he was invited in the house. I tell him to get out again. He tells me that he'll kick my butt, because he was invited in and therefore he gets to do whatever he wants...including hitting on my girlfriend and cornering her against her will, apparently.
It was a very gross vibe. Before I even got the chance to, my roommate stormed into the room, grabbed his friend by the hair, and hauled him out of the house. The last I heard of that guy, he was thrown in jail for trying to rob an armored car at a Wal-Mart, during his shift working at said Wal-Mart.
9. A One Woman Show
I had just moved to a fairly major metropolitan city. One evening, I was walking around just checking out the neighborhood and feeling really good about my new options. After a while, a woman, probably in her mid-40s and reasonably well dressed, began walking down the sidewalk towards me. She appeared to be dancing a bit.
I figured that she had earbuds in or something. As she got closer, I realized she did not. Instead, it turned out she was merely dancing to her own bizarre murmur of “Damn KKK, always stealing my welfare checks!” in a continual, low monotone stream flowing repeatedly from her mouth.
10. Angels and Demons
I was hired because the previous man doing the job was found unconscious on the floor by the morning crew. He claimed to have been abducted by aliens and demons. Apparently, he needed some time off from work to properly recover. Well, I had the pleasure of getting to know him quite well over the next little while. He was responsible for training me.
He hadn't had a day off in seven years prior to this incident. He was afraid to. He had been in prison for 10 years prior to finding this job, for armed robbery. I picked him up one night for work. He lived in a shack with a dirt floor. It had two buckets, one being used as a living room chair and one being used as a toilet. One night, he told me that he was living there because he is the last of the Mohicans and needs to lay low.
He also mentioned that he is currently working on finishing his own version of the Koran. Then, one night, he comes into our restaurant coughing and hacking so bad that half of the customers literally got up and left. He was constantly stumbling and crashing into tables. He eventually sat down. I told him that since he was sick, I would be more than happy to drive him home and cover the rest of our shift.
He said, "No way, son. I'm healthy as I've ever been!" I asked what he meant. He explained that he had just taken a bucket, mixed bleach and ammonia (a BIG no-no), draped a towel over his head, and breathed the fumes in for about three hours. Why? To clear the demons from his body, of course!
11. Tragic Hero
My little sister has always wanted to be an author ever since she was a little kid. She practices like hell. She was 12 when she first showed her work to my former friend's mom. The woman had a bunch of fancy degrees in the field of literature, so her opinion meant a lot to my sister. She read my sister's short story and crudely told her that she had no future in writing, as her grasp on literature was far below average.
My sister left the room and immediately burst into tears. She quit writing for three whole years. She used to be so proud of her writing; she even ran a blog and posted it publicly for people to see. She'd let friends and family read it. That writing blog remains un-updated since back then. To this day, she never shows her work to anyone anymore.
Why any grown adult would feel it appropriate to speak to a young child so harshly and cruelly is beyond me. I have never looked at her the same again since then—and regardless of how many fancy degrees she may have, there is something clearly wrong with her.
12. A Turn for the Worse
My brother was a straight-A student and legitimately a really smart kid. He went to some fancy culinary school and graduated. Then, for no apparent reason, he decided to get a part-time job at Wendy's and started smoking a ton. He does little else with his life. I seriously can't figure out what happened, but in my book there is something wrong with him.
13. The Guest From Hell
My mother's idiot, alcoholic, substance-abusing cousin was back in town for a few days. His mother got tired of babysitting him—he's in his mid-40s—so she asked my mother to take him in for a while. The same exact day, my stepfather had a heart attack. Since my mother couldn't be there to help as she had planned, she decided that he could come over and my aunt and I could deal with him instead.
Now, I have never liked this man. Ever. Even before the meth, he was always a loud, talkative jerk who didn't know when to shut his trap. He once even pestered me into knocking him over a table as a teen. So, I wasn't happy about this responsibility at all. Still, though, I didn't want to make waves. Given the circumstances, I was already stressed out like crazy.
So, I mostly just tried to ignore the guy by listening to some music with headphones. I didn't want to leave him alone with my aunt, because she can't fight, but all seemed to be well so I stepped out for a few minutes. As I’m walking back in, I suddenly hear what sounds like the word “Satan” being shouted out. Kinda weird, but I figured there was probably some logical explanation.
However, as soon as I saw the expression on my aunt's face, I immediately realized that something was very wrong. To make a long story short, he had been telling her about how Satan had snuck into his house. He claimed to have hidden behind a door and watched the whole thing go down. And, yes, he meant this very literally.
Apparently, his girlfriend was now planning to murder him because of it. It turns out that by my aunt and myself sitting around quietly and not really conversing with him that afternoon, he slowly developed the idea in his head that we were probably working with his girlfriend to try and help her murder him.
14. Mirror Mirror On the Wall
You know how they say that eyes are a mirror into the soul? I once went into a local restaurant and this person came to my table and said, “Hi, my name is Swayze and Swayze is crazy!” I looked up into her eyes and immediately thought, yep.
15. Horsing Around
When I was around eight or nine years old, my dad drove me to Dallas to see a football game with a bunch of family friends. One of the friends had a wife who I had met once before. When she first met me, she immediately asked: “What’s the one thing that you want most in the world?” I said “I dunno.” She said, “Well, when I was your age, I wanted a horse.”
Apparently, this lady had since forgotten that we had already had this conversation—because the minute we met up with the group at the hotel lobby, the first thing she asked me was “What’s the one thing you want most in the entire world?” Naturally, having learned my lesson the first time, eight-year-old me dutifully says “A horse.”
She is absolutely thrilled, while everyone else gasps in shock and disbelief. When we all go out to dinner, she sits right next to me and goes on and on about how I’m just exactly like she was when she was my age. So, so much like her—and she gazes deep into my eyes as she says it, too. Later that night, when a lot of the other couples and kids have gone for a swim in the pool, I’m sitting inside by the hotel patio—once again being hovered over by this woman.
She continues to lean into my space and coo excessively about how I’m just so much like her. Just....so....so....exactly like her. She lights up a cigarette, takes a deep puff, thoughtfully shakes her head, and smiles as she stares at my face. I’m basically curled up in a ball on my chair at this point, trying to get away from her without actually fleeing.
Meanwhile, my father is way too busy socializing with his friends to have noticed that I’ve been taken hostage by this crazy woman. He basically left me with her for the night. Every time he passes through the patio to get a beer from the cooler, she yells out “Get this girl a horse!”, but he just jokingly laughs it off and snaps a “No!” back at her.
This would just lead to her arguing back, in full seriousness, “Yes, dammit! Get her a horse! Now!!!” And this repeats every time she sees him for the remainder of the evening. Eventually, everyone went to bed—and I never saw her again. Decades later, my father went into therapy and finally found himself. He realized that he could do better with his parenting and fixed a lot of things up in his life.
He has always hinted that he has felt badly about “the past,” but I wonder if that includes for not rescuing me from Crazy Horse Lady!!
16. Sounds Like Reasonable Behavior
I once had a customer who ripped his shirt off because I refused to hang a crucifix up in the movie theater. Then, he threw the crucifix at me and screamed about demons.
17. Bike-Thru
He was pacing back and forth by the drive-thru window of a devastatingly flooded Dunkin’ Donuts, talking out loud about how he needed to get a new bicycle. No, the Dunkin’ Donuts was not open. "Today would be a really good day to get a bicycle. Greatdaytogetabicycle, greatdaytogetabicycle. GREAT DAY. BICYCLE. But the color...it can't be red because Danny's bike was red. Red and bluuuuuueeeeee, like Superman. BUT DANNY'S GONE. GONE FISHIN', GONE MISSIN', GONE! Tiger Woods wears red all the time. I could be like him! Red bicycle, red bicycle, red bicycle, red bicycle, red bicycle, red bicycle..."
18. The Hypocritical Oath
A friend of mine has always wanted to be a doctor and has been undergoing training and education for it for years. She then one day casually tells me that she doesn't want to deal with people's conditions and doesn't want to bother with their "first world problems." She also added that sick people are only seeking sympathy. Alright then.
She probably should have been an insurance approval agent with that mindset!
19. Mad Magazine
I once had a male coworker who would put obviously cut photos from a magazine of beautiful women in a frame on his desk, claiming that they were his girlfriends. He would talk about these "girlfriends" for months as if they were real, and then, would call in sick for a few days as his “girlfriend” had died in a tragic way (usually a car accident or something similar).
Then, a new photo would appear on his desk a few weeks later and the process would start all over again. One time, he asked another one of our coworkers out on a date and she said: "Why would I go out with you when everyone who dates you ends up dead?" A fair question, I’d say!
20. Time for a Bathroom Break
So I’m driving back home from a fire scene in Iowa one night. I’m in the middle of freakin’ nowhere, surrounded by corn, when I realize that I need gas and I have to pee. I stop at the only Casey’s I had seen in about 50 miles or so because I also wanted some pizza. There are two other people at this Casey’s with me beside the workers.
One is a young woman, and the other is an older guy who looks to be in pretty rough shape. I’m parked at the gas pump as I watch the guy walk inside. I finish pumping my gas, go inside, and head straight for the restrooms. The bathrooms are on the left wall down a short hallway. As you’re walking down the hallway, there’s a bulletin board with a bunch of fliers on it on your right side, and the bathrooms are on the left.
The men’s bathroom is in the back left corner of this tiny area. The area with the bulletin board is slightly smaller and creates kind of a bottleneck. Anyway, I try the door to the men’s room and it’s locked. So, I stand back and wait for a little bit. After several minutes, out walks the old dude I had seen earlier. He smells terrible, his clothes are real ratty and stained, and he’s just got this dead look in his eyes.
As he approaches, he looks me straight in the eye, smiles real big, and says hi while not moving from in front of the door. Needing to go really bad at this point, I just kind of nod and squeeze my way by him into the room. He turns with me as I attempt to go into the bathroom, and I quite literally had to shut the door in his face.
I intentionally spend an extra minute in the bathroom hoping he’ll be gone by the time I come out. It was already an extremely weird encounter and I was not down to have it continue any further. But, of course, when I open the door, he’s standing right in front of the bulletin board, blocking my only exit. He is also rubbing a poster with one finger over and over again.
I walk towards him, hoping that he will just move out of my way. All of a sudden, he turns to me and says “She’s really cute!” Not knowing what in the world he’s talking about, I just kind of nod again and motion that I want to get by. He then says: “It’s such a shame what happened to her. I don’t think I knew her. Too bad.” I still have absolutely no idea what the heck this dude is talking about, or why he’s still talking to me and smiling.
I let out a grunt of an “uh-huh,” wanting this terribly awkward encounter with this clearly messed up person to end as soon as possible so I can leave and never come back. He then completely turns to directly face me, with one finger still rubbing on the poster, and says, “She is really cute, don’t you think?” I again struggle out an “uh-huh,” feeling thoroughly freaked out at this point and still with zero freakin’ clue as to who or what this crazy dude is talking about.
He then abruptly turns and walks away with no further comment. I book it out of the store to my car as fast as physically possible, before realizing that I still wanted some of that damn pizza. No way Freaky Old Man was going to stop me from enjoying some nice lukewarm gas station pizza! So, I went back inside. I grabbed my pizza and, out of curiosity, I walked back over to where our little encounter had just occurred.
It turned out that the poster he had been rubbing the whole time was actually a picture of a missing 14-year-old girl.
21. Baby, You Can’t Drive My Car
I knew my neighbor was crazy when she walked out into the middle of the street in just a bra and underwear and started swearing at random people—even yelling at the cars passing by.
22. Deeply Disturbing
I was once babysitting a kid who turned out to be crazy. I thought it was pretty weird to be babysitting a 16-year-old at 18, but after a while we became friendly and he started to open up to me. For who knows what reason, he then decided to casually tell me about how he assaulted a 9-year-old. I immediately realized that I was there because his mom didn't want to leave him alone with his 11-year-old sister...
23. Seize and Desist
I once knew a guy who would fake seizures for attention. I suspected that he was faking it all along because it never seemed quite right. For example, whenever I started to shout out "Okay, I'm calling an ambulance!" he would immediately come to with zero side effects. It happened a number of times. Each time, he would fall over "seizing" and the second I yelled "CALL AN AMBULANCE!" he propped right back up no less than one second later.
He would usually then put in some comment like "Don't worry, I'm good now!" One time, I actually did call an ambulance, even after he protested and begged me not to. When it actually showed up, he was freaking pissed. I said, "Hey man, you have seizures so often that I felt like you needed medical attention!" Of course, the doctors didn't find a single thing medically wrong with him.
He wouldn't talk to me for weeks after that—but then all of a sudden, his "seizures" became far less frequent. Anybody that fakes that kind of thing for attention is screwed up in the head.
24. Your Friendly Neighborhood Creepy Old Lady
My very sweet, elderly next-door neighbor once knocked on my door to explain to me that God had promised her my house. She just casually said, "Oh, you should have seen how beautiful it was the day you moved in. I touched your door, and I knew right then and there that God wanted me to own your house someday. You may live in it now, but He promises that it’s only temporary."
It gave me the creeps, but I didn't say anything because her husband mows my lawn for free.
25. Mr. Plow
I once saw a guy I know out early in the morning plowing a snowless parking lot. A lot of sparks and running into fences ensued.
26. Hitting Close to Home
I realized that someone I knew was crazy when she started arguing with me about a doctor's refusal to perform a 10th unnecessary surgery in a quest to get pills. I divorced her shortly after...
27. Shipping Not Included
I was at a family wedding one time, and there was this guy I had never met who was amazing on the dance floor. He had decent moves, but it was more that he was so dedicated to his dancing, so charismatic, that he just really drew your attention in and caught your eye. Anyway, my father-in-law got to talking to him, and he eventually drew me into the conversation.
The dancer guy had apparently been telling my father-in-law in great detail about a recent incident during which he had emptied his bank account—an account which he had shared with his wife—bought a boat, and sailed it from the US to Denmark on a whim. He then checked into a hotel and stayed there in a drunken stupor for several weeks before it finally occurred to him that he needed to tell his wife where he was—oh, and also that he couldn’t afford a boat.
Partway through the conversation, it became obvious that he was clearly talking a bunch of gibberish and nonsense. However, he was very engaging, so we didn’t actively try to extricate ourselves from the conversation. Eventually, his wife came along and dragged him away. We all felt kind of bad for her.
28. A Whole New Scale
I discovered that the guy next to me on the train was crazy when he casually informed me that the place I was on my way to was full of reptile people. I stuck with my man until the end of the 14-hour Greyhound trip, listening to his lunatic ramblings the entire time. He wasn't the "Take your head off and run around the bus" type of crazy, more like the "Cool crazy stoner type" if that makes sense.
29. A Discovery of Biblical Proportions
My co-worker: "So let me tell you about the time I found Noah's ark…” Thankfully my wife came out of the office just then & told me we needed to get going.
30. Not-So Fast Food
I once went into a McDonald's and this woman claimed to have recognized me from some of the college classes we had apparently had together. Well, at any rate, she seemed pretty certain, and she seemed like she could be familiar: two eyes, a nose, some hair. I might have seen her before. Within a few minutes of our conversation beginning, she started telling me that her friend was psychic, could feel people's energy, and could read her mind.
Now, that's not the weirdest thing I've ever heard and I'd have probably been ok if it had ended there. Then, she started telling me about the radio DJ out of the next town over, who was allegedly watching her in her house with video cameras he had hidden in her shower. She knew that he was watching her because, during his broadcasts, he would always play certain sound effects and tell certain jokes about her every time she farted.
I told her that I had to get going because I was just there for a carry-out order and there were some people waiting in the car.
31. What a Heel!
I started to suspect that an acquaintance of mine was a little crazy when I heard that he had just pooped in his shoe and thrown it at someone. I've got so many stories about this guy, but that one is my all-time favorite.
32. Hooray for Hollywood
Years ago, I was walking down the street in Los Angeles when a woman, who looked like she could have been in her 50s but was probably only 30, walked right up to me and screamed “Get out of my head!!” twice, right in my face, and then just ran away. I was only 16 years old at the time and it scared the living crap out of me.
33. What Came First? The Chicken or the Crazy Man?
I was in the smoker’s section of a club a couple of years ago. So I'm sitting there enjoying my drink and my filthy cancer stick, when all of a sudden this guy in a full denim outfit walks over and asks me to sit and talk with him. Now, I was not fully sober by this point, so I was like "Yeah sure, that sounds like a great idea!"
So we're sitting down, and this guy straight up blurts out "After we shake hands, we'll be connected for life." So I laugh it off, shake his hand, and brace myself to see where the conversation goes. This guy immediately starts playing the worst game of 20 guesses ever, trying to get my age. It took him such a long time.
So I feel like this guy has probably just been dropping acid and is tripping, but then he gets really weird and dark all of a sudden. He starts telling me he senses a beast in me, and goes on for a while. I tried to change the subject, he’d mentioned that he’s vegan. He says: "Well, I'm a vegan 99% of the time, but the beast needs to eat. I feed him chicken nuggets 1% of the time. Every night, I go to McDonald's and buy him 20 nuggets. You should let your beast free sometimes too, or else you'll become all beast and come back to life as a chicken someday."
I just walked off at this point while he was still talking. It all sounds so ridiculous, but the dude was actually super dark and sinister. I went back in after a while and the guy was still sitting in the same spot—except now he was with four other people who were all sitting around him and listening to his every word like it was gospel.
I feel like I witnessed the start of a cult.
34. No Free Rides
A customer at the movie theater where I work once came in and told me he was going to murder me (in front of his family) because I wouldn't let him sneak into a movie without paying.
35. An Unlisted Number
I am a police officer. I once got called to an old lady's condo because she was hearing noises in her attic and was worried that somebody was hiding up there. I went up to take a look, and it was all good. I went back three more times over the next few days. Finally, I told her that it could be an animal getting in from somewhere that I couldn't see, but that there was absolutely no way that any human could be up there, as it was a wide-open, flat space with no room for anyone to have hidden in.
Then, she told me that she believed it was the government sending agents to spy on her because she had very valuable information inside of her head. She was worried that they were planting mind-reading devices in her home. So, after some amusement, I told her "Look, we're not really supposed to do this, but..." and then I called my Sergeant.
"Hey, Sarge, is Mrs. Larsen on the list? ...Yes, yes, THE list...Oh, really? Well, that must be a mistake, she's not supposed to be on it. Cancel the operation for her immediately, please...Sure, I'll wait…Oh, really? That was fast! Great, I'll tell her. Thanks so much!" and hung up. I told her "Ma'am, it seems you WERE on the government’s spy list, but it was obviously an accident. You have now been removed, and I promise you that nobody else will bother you anymore. You're all good now!"
And it must have worked, because I never heard from her again. The funny part was that I called my Sergeant completely out of the blue and, while he knew I was on a call at this lady's place, he had NO idea what I was talking about on the phone because I was just talking over him the whole time. The whole time, I was just spewing my script for this lady to hear, while Sarge was on the other end of the phone going "What in the world are you talking about?... Are you having a stroke or something?... I don't understand this at all..."
36. No Remorse
One time, I was having breakfast with my roommate and her friend. Her roommate started to tell us about how he was riding his motorcycle the day before and almost hit a pedestrian on the crosswalk. My roommate and I were obviously like "Oh my gosh, that's horrible!" and, I'll admit, I let out a bit of a shocked laugh.
Nevertheless, I wasn't prepared for this guy to go completely stone-faced and say "Why is it horrible? He was in my way!" His delivery of that sentence was waaaay too serious to have come off as a joke, and the way his face and eyes just sort of hardened as he said it really freaked me out. We were waiting (and hoping) for him to crack up and say he was kidding, but he never did.
37. I A-Door You
A random shirtless dude who was walking around downtown came up to me and my dad on the street to let us know that he was part of the “kingdom of doors.”
38. Executive Order
I work at a Cadillac dealership and a raggedy-looking guy once rode up on his bike. The minute he walked in, I could tell that he seemed crazy. We typically just ignore bums unless they're causing a problem. If they just wander in, mind their own business, and take a pack of pretzels and a water bottle, whatever—we just let it go.
So, when this guy wandered in, we let him do his thing for a couple of minutes without saying anything. Then, he suddenly wanders straight up to our manager, who pulls himself up. "Can I help you, sir?" The guy was visibly twitchy. "Yeah, so, Donald Trump is the president and I was just talking to him on the phone. He said he wants me to have a nice car."
The manager nods, looking completely serious. "Did the president also give you money for this new car? Do you have any way to purchase one?" The guy is still undeterred. Now, a few other younger sales guys are trying to look tall and buff, and they start circling the guy in case he gets violent against our 65-year-old manager. "No, no, he says I should just get one. Trump wants me to have nice things."
Manager is again nodding seriously. "And I understand that, but I'm just the manager. I can't give out cars for free. I don't own the cars, sir. I have to sell them." The guy was still determined. "Okay, okay, but let me put it this way: are you a father?" Now, I don't know what argument he was going to try and make about free Cadillacs and fatherhood, but a swarm of macho salesmen quickly hustled the guy back to the bike that he probably stole from the Walmart down the block.
"Do you think the owner is over there?" the guy asks, pointing across the street to the Ford/Lincoln dealer across the way. Our manager frowns, thinking, before saying "I'm not sure. But you can go ask!"
39. Leader of the Pack
My little sister (7 years old) always talks about eating people and how blood tastes just like metal, which tastes good in her opinion. Not only that, but she is also going through a phase where she thinks that she is an actual wolf. I don’t know what to do anymore.
40. Bearing It All
I used to work in a cell phone store. One day, this lady came in and asked me to fix her iPhone because her internet wasn’t working. I took one look at the phone and immediately saw that the background was a picture of her completely naked, proudly lying on the floor. Also, her internet was working completely fine…
41. A Not-So Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
During my student placement in a psychiatric hospital, I was once tasked with teaching an ax murderer how to relax. I knew something wasn’t right when he started casually telling me the story of how he killed his next-door neighbor for ringing the doorbell.
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42. Love Letters
I knew a kid in high school who wrote a letter to a friend on our graduation day, telling her that he had always loved her. He also wrote that he wished she had picked him to be her boyfriend and that, if he ever had the chance, he would kill her actual boyfriend so that the two of them could finally be together.
43. Lifesaver
I work as an ER nurse and had a patient with a little dizziness, a little nausea and a swollen abdomen. She was fairly bright, able to talk, and nothing seemed too horrific. But she was turning a grim gray color and breathing quickly. Our average wait time today was two hours. I could have put her back in the queue and moved on.
But I had a little dark feeling that there was something sinister happening here. So I called our most senior doctor out of a consultation and asked him to see her. Right now. Ever heard of your abdominal aorta? Enormous blood vessel that can pouch out, suddenly rupture, and make you bleed internally to death in minutes?
It’s called a burst AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm). You’ve heard of it now. That’s what she had. I’ve never seen one before. But now I have. Within five minutes, she was barely responding. Within ten, her blood pressure had dropped to a barely sustainable level. Within twenty minutes, I was pouring blood into her and eight people were around the bed.
Within an hour, she was on an operating table clinging to life. But because I raised the alarm, and because my team worked their butts off, that woman is still, somehow, alive. Feels good, man.
44. Some Devastatingly Flawed Logic
I worked at a daycare. One of the mothers gave me the heebie jeebies. She would show up randomly and be like "my baaaaaaby, I neeeed my baaaaby." Like, moms love their kids and miss them, but her obsession with her daughter really made me feel weird. She ended up killing her daughter so that she could be an angel. It really messed me up when I found out.
45. Tragically Right to Be Worried
My mom called me when I was out with a friend. She told me my brother didn't come home last night. She was very worried, even though this is not the weirdest thing for a 21-year-old. I went straight home, and we both felt like something bad had happened. At home, his phone was on the couch in the living room so we couldn't contact him. We called the police and after a week of investigation, his body was found drowned in a nearby lake. I miss him every day.
Sources: Reddit,
