What Is The Strangest Thing You've Ever Seen?

[Twitch]

When we were slogging through the bush somewhere in S.E. Asia way back when our point man was "Viking," a 6'6" 245-lb. hulk that lived for a fight. He was merrily hacking throuh the vegitation with a machete in a machine-like rhythm when he suddenly came face to face with a king cobra at his eye level.

He simply kept his motion up and sliced off the its head. It was a monster too measuring some 18' which is the upper end of their maximum size which allowed it to coil with so much body so high.

 

[Big Man]

Having worked in a state mental hospital for almost 30 years, I think I am immune to "strange things".

 

[Grnidwitch]

When we were slogging through the bush somewhere in S.E. Asia way back when our point man was "Viking," a 6'6" 245-lb. hulk that lived for a fight. He was merrily hacking throuh the vegitation with a machete in a machine-like rhythm when he suddenly came face to face with a king cobra at his eye level.

He simply kept his motion up and sliced off the its head. It was a monster too measuring some 18' which is the upper end of their maximum size which allowed it to coil with so much body so high.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

(faint)

 

[Dr Doran]

Wowzers. Nothing comes to mind for me, but one of my brothers had a good zen moment.

He had gotten up early in the morning, and went outside to get the sunday paper, drinking coffee, in his bathrobe. A somewhat noisy VW Beetle was making it's way down the far end of the street. He thought - it being quite early yet - "I wonder who the clown driving that car is."

Of course, as the car drove on by, it did, in fact, contain a clown in full makeup. He stared agape, and the guy waved at him.

My father, in addition to being a professor, was a magician and clown on the weekends. He used to drive to children's birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, often in Beverly Hills, in full clown regalia. I'm sure there were a few sightings of him like that. He lived in fear of being stopped by a cop while on the freeway.

But he never drove a VW.

 

[dhermann1]

2 things

Strange - wonderful: northern lights
Strange - horrible: I was 4 blocks away from the World Trade Center when it fell. We watched it through the office window as it came down. Our office building was engulfed in the dustcloud. When we finally emerged around 12:30 PM, we came out into a world of eerie dead silence, like after a new snow fall. The dust absorbed the sound of your feet walking. Very very very strange.

 

[Tommy Fedora]

Years ago I was hunting in the Catskills with a friend of mine and we came upon a beautiful waterfall about 8' wide and 8' tall. As we stood in front of it gazing at its beauty we realized something just wasn't right. Then we realized we were standing directly in front of the falling water. The water entered the ground at the bottom of the waterfall and emerged about 100' down the hill as a spring. Strange, but beautiful.

 

[WH1]

Strange - wonderful: northern lights
Strange - horrible: I was 4 blocks away from the World Trade Center when it fell. We watched it through the office window as it came down. Our office building was engulfed in the dustcloud. When we finally emerged around 12:30 PM, we came out into a world of eerie dead silence, like after a new snow fall. The dust absorbed the sound of your feet walking. Very very very strange.

Wow. Not quite that intense but surreal. We went to the funeral of a friend killed in the Penatgon that day. The funeral was a full military at arlington as we were following the funeral procession through the cemetary we came over a small rise and the pentagon with the impact zone was in full sight. he was laid to rest only a few miles from where he died. Sad and very surreal.

 

[Tommy Fedora]

When my sister and her husband lived in Groton Mass a few years ago, they each saw at different times the same image of a wiry old man in a black suit that they dated to about 100 years ago standing in the doorway of their bedroom. The following week they were joking about the image to try to ease their tension when their cd player came on at full blast for 5 seconds and then shut off. To play a cd you have to turn the unit on, then turn the cd player on, then hit play.
They sold the house soon after.

 

[Archie Goodwin]

I saw all sorts of strange things after Katrina that I never thought I would see in the United States. New Orleans at night was one of the worst: soldiers in humvees patrolling the streets with machine guns; Marines behind sand bags guarding the Children's Hospital (the drug addicts were doing anything to get a fix); and, the unbelieveable absence of lights everywhere.

 

[Rockapin-up]

In 1983 I was driving through a weird country road off Highway 10, I think, in Texas, and picked up a smiling hitchhiking girl. She was wearing a white dress. She said she needed to get to her parents' house, about 45 minutes up the road. She was very friendly. After some banter and a little flirting, we were getting along pretty famously and I suggested we pull over and have some wine and watch the sunset. We did that and began making out. She was eager and lonely and attracted to me and we went much farther than we should have. . Some wine got on her dress in an odd pattern, like a triangle, on her left breast. We got back in the car and by the time we got to her parents' house the sun had set. I dropped her off. I promised to come back in a month but I was very busy that month and before I knew it a year had passed before I returned to Texas. I felt bad, and looked and finally found her parents' house. They were in their 80s, which was odd. I asked them if their daughter was around. They got very upset and the mom started crying. The dad looked angry and asked where I was from. I told them that I had given her a ride the year before and then dropped her off at their house and I didn't know why they were so upset.

They pulled out an old framed black and white photo from the forties. They said, "here is a picture of our only daughter. She was assaulted and killed when she was hitchhiking on that road in 1946." In the photo was the girl, smiling. She was wearing that white dress. There was a triangular shaped stain on the left breast.

My wife's parents were riveted when I told them this story on the day I first met them, over dinner at their house in Poland. Her mother asked me if it was true. I said, "No. I was only 13 in 1983." ... (Sorry. Had to do it.)

HHHaaahahahah I knew I read this story somwhere else. Even the show Super Natrual did a take on this story

 

[Mojito]

HHHaaahahahah I knew I read this story somwhere else. Even the show Super Natrual did a take on this story

"The Vanishing Hitchhiker"! A story so popular and ubiquitious it was used in the title of a book on urban folklore.

I've heard so many variations on this classic - including versions local to where I live. Two locations near where I lived have been named as the place where it happened - related to me by people in utter earnestness, convinced by the "friend of a friend" to whom it "really" happened.

 

[Dr Doran]

"The Vanishing Hitchhiker"! A story so popular and ubiquitious it was used in the title of a book on urban folklore.

I've heard so many variations on this classic - including versions local to where I live. Two locations near where I lived have been named as the place where it happened - related to me by people in utter earnestness, convinced by the "friend of a friend" to whom it "really" happened.

The collection of urban legends is by Jan Harold Brunvand, a Minnesotan folklorist. He wrote many more books in which he collected urban legends. My favorite is the one where the woman goes on vacation in some tropical nation, gets it on with a younger native boy, he gives her a present and tells her to wait until she's on the plane to open it, and when she does, it says "Welcome to the wonderful world of AIDS, American b#tch." I read that in one of Brunvand's books, and a month later a co-worker told me the story and insisted it happened to her mom's friend. I said no, it's a legend, but she kept insisting. We were working in a bookstore cafe, and I ran downstairs, found the book, and showed it to her. She ate some crow as well as some humble pie that night.

 

[Jerekson]

An epsiode of Veggietales, translated into Spanish.

 

[Mojito]

fftopic: That reminds me of the friend who insisted that the Giant Sumatran Water Rat yarn had happened to her uncle and his friend. These days I'd just direct her to Snopes.com, but at the time it was very difficult to persuade her that the story was an urban legend. She was quite hurt I didn't believe her "first hand" anecdote. lol

 

[Spitfire]

Some friends of mine had rented a small cottage in the country many years ago. It was an old farmhand cottage, which belonged to a large estate in the south of Sj?¶lland.

One of the first weekends after they officially took over the place, I - along with two other friends - were invited to stay for the weekend. A sort of workingweekend. After working hard the whole day and evening, we sat down in the kitchen for a late - and wellearned - dinner.
These friends of mine also had a dog - a Golden Retriever - a steady and grown up dog. Suddenly during dinner it got up from its sleep under the table, and began to growl, while it looked straight at the empty wall. There was absolutely nothing or nobody. Then his - the dogs - eyes sort of followed "something" from the left corner down and up the wall towards the ceiling. After some more growling and sniffing around, the dog went back to sleep again. But we were puzzled - to say the least.

This was the only time I saw this, but my friends told me it happened several times after. And they decided to find out what it could be. When they asked at the estate, they found out, that the cottage had been rebuild some 55 years ago. And that there actually had been a staircase in the kitchen, exactly where the dog was looking, leading up to the - now unused - loft.

But not only that - they also heard about the poor farmhand, who had hung himself on that loft 120 years ago.

I spend many nice weekends in that cottage and were never bothered by anything. But the dog could obviously sence something, we could not.
Strange!

 

[Dr Doran]

My real one this time (don't read this if you are eating):

I used to have a pet tarantula. I'd feed it live crickets. I would buy them by the dozen for a buck at an aquarium supply shop. One time I bought a dozen and fed Octavia a couple and put the rest in a plastic round tupperware container. I put holes in the top with an awl so they would have air; I put a bottle cap in it with water so they would have water. I put a piece of bread for them to eat. I went on vacation for about a week. When I got back, I checked up on the crickets. There weren't crickets in the tupperware container, but a solid mass of writhing green fuzzy mold with cricket legs trying to vainly escape. It was the grossest thing I had ever seen. I threw it out the window. This was on Russian Hill in San Francisco around 1993. What happened was, the bread had caught some mold. Perhaps it got wet from the water. The mold grew OVER, INTO, AND AROUND the carapaces of the crickets. Their chitinous exoskeletons became not only festooned with mold but enlaced and imprisoned.

Absolutely disgusting and ... the strangest thing I have ever seen.

 

[Jerekson]

Whoa.

 

[LizzieMaine]

An epsiode of Veggietales, translated into Spanish.

Oh gee, flashback to a childhood trip to Quebec, sitting in a motel room transfixed by Popeye cartoons dubbed in French, with all the voices done by the same actor. "Je suis Popeye l'homme de marin!"

 

[Dr Doran]

Oh gee, flashback to a childhood trip to Quebec, sitting in a motel room transfixed by Popeye cartoons dubbed in French, with all the voices done by the same actor. "Je suis Popeye l'homme de marin!"

In Poland, although they have a thriving television production sector of their economy, they also import a great many American shows. ALL the voices are done by ONE GUY. the male voices. the female voices. the young voices. the old voices. the black voices. the white voices. the asian voices. the german voices. the chinese voices. on all the shows. on every channel.
I hope he gets paid well.

 

[staggerwing]

Strange, as in leaves you scratching your head? A while ago, I was driving through my neighborbood. A group of 4-5 young men were standing on the corner. They were late teens to early twenties, and well dressed (sport coats, ties, etc.) Among them was a young lady of about the same age, also well dressed. She was...umm..."well endowed." Around her neck she wore a sign with the single word "Pneumatic" positioned over her ample...umm..endowments. Still has me wondering.