Strangest things you have ever seen firsthand.

[Popster]

This story is so unbelievable......I still have trouble believing it myself.

I had a contract with the Nigerian Govt many years ago.  I decide to find out as much as I can about the country before moving there for the two year agreement. I contact a local Nigerian professor at a local junior college and he cordially invites me and wife to meet for dinner.....at the end of the evening he gives me his brother's address (which will be about 70 miles from the city I will be staying in) and asks me to go visit him.

Fast forward 2 months.  My wife and I decide to book our trip to Nigeria through Europe with stops in London and Rome. After a couple of days in London....we go to Rome.....after a couple of days in Rome, we go to the Airport to catch our plane to Lagos, Nigeria.  The ticket line is long and slow and the man in front of me is pushing a box along that has the same name as the brother I am supposed to meet in Nigeria.  I figure the name is a coincidence and common (like Jones or Smith). I summon the gumption to tap on his shoulder to inquire if he knows the brother........well this man WAS the brother......

What world can be so small and the timing so perfect as to meet someone thousands of miles from where I am to meet him, all by coincidence.  Synchronicity at it's best!!!!!!!!

[Spanky]

All right, really strangest thing I've seen first person (though it was third person),
 
As a hippie young man, I attended a party.  Much of it spilled into gatherings on the front lawn.  (hold your judgment for a bit).  I may get banned for this account, or at the least warned, so have avoided its telling. 
 
I had ingested a 60s chemical.  Not your normal.  I squatted on the grass in a rough circle with others.  Nearby was a street light.  At a point I found myself in the street light, still squatting, and looking down on the yard, and seeing myself and others in the yard.  I was aware I was squatting in the street light.  I saw myself setting on the lawn, and the yard and those around me, clear as day. 
 
Now, the normal interpretation was simply a stoned illusion.  But, by then I had, had many many experiences induced by many many concoctions.  Despite ignorant representations of psychedelic hallucinations notwithstanding since, it just doesn't happen.  Immediate environments drip, wave, undulate with abandon under the influence, but actual hard-core hallucinations are reserved for psychotics and those hard core racers who run for days and nights at a time with no sleep. 
 
I am neither a spiritualist, nor a believer in any acceptable sense, so I was always looking for a reason for the phenomenon.  I didn't understand how it could happen, and it nagged me for years intellectually.  On re-readying Julian Jaynes, he offered an analogy.  To paraphrase:   "Picture yourself last time you were swimming in a pool?"  What do you see.  Chances are you see yourself in third person, looking down on yourself in the pool.  It doesn't take a dream, only a remembrance.  Orthodox brain evolution theorists supports this. 
 
There is a part of the brain that enables this view.  I've not the least idea why.  What it means in terms of brain chemistry or evolutionary development is speculative, but it's real. 
 
Something in the chemistry triggered this view, and it was the damndest  thing I've ever seen.
 
Spanker

[Ivortheenginedriver]

Shit, I mean IceWizard (sorry I couldn't help myself, please, please, please dont take offense, shit happens ) thank you for sharing. Funny as hell, well told and brave. Good man.

Linville - thank you for contributing as well

Spanky - Excellent story and thank you for sharing. I used to have the same thing happen to me when the dentist gave e nitrous as a child. I always saw myself in the third person from the ceiling. So while I would call BS on most trip stories like this I believe. Thank you for the story.

Popster - thank you for sharing. The world is  small place indeed. At first as I was reading I thought you were going to tell a story about a pre internet Nigerian Prince scam. Thank you again. And keep the stories coming, as long as they do not identify you I do not see a problem with them.

---

I guess it's my turn again....


About 8 years ago, I stopped at the local gas station to get gas, and maybe even smokes, I think they were still legal then. As I pulled up to the pump I noticed two guys (separate cars) at another bank of pumps fighting over a girl. Not fist fighting but the usual push and shove fights that are the most common type in my experience. I decided to watch the show. As it unfolded one of the guys (the one that apparently won the fight as his girl was pumping the gas) went in to pay for his gas. The other guy went to his car and pulled out a baseball bat. He then proceeded to the car where the girl was pumping gas and began to go to town on it. Windshields cracked, rearview mirrors destroyed, destruction aplenty. Just then the guy who was with the girl came out of the gas station and saw what was happening. So he goes to his battered car and guess what, he gets his own baseball bat out and heads over to the original the other guy car and starts going to town. This was the first and only baseball bat fight I have ever seen outside of a video game. After they had both done sufficient damage to each others cars they began threatening each other, and the girl with the bats. About that time their higher brains must have kicked in because they all just got in their cars and left.

So there you go, one of the top five things on my list, gas-station baseball bat fight. Sorry if it was at all confusing.

So who's next?

[forme]

Several years ago we were travelling on icy roads and came across LE. His car was upside down in the ditch, and he was up top installing tire chains.
I’m guessing he was installing the tire chains to make it look as if he had taken every precaution before wrecking his cruiser. He didn’t seem to want my help.

[BoomerB]

I work in a fancy highrise office, in which no fewer than 3 times in 15 years i have heard of stories involving the ladies room. Apparently someone liked to just spray the walls and doors down with the brown.

Now on the city green, a block from prestigious yale university, a couple homeless gentlemen were working on their sword swallowing act. That's a euphemism btw. They were going downtown, despite already sitting on a bench downtown. No judgement here, just a weird but true story.

[Ivortheenginedriver]

Thanks Forme and BoomerB, the checks in the mail.

Who knew how badly this thread would turn to shit.

Once when one of my children was an infant, she was very constipated, so I fed her juice. Apparently too much because as I was changing her I got caught in a literal shitstorm. With the PSI of a pressure washer, she began spraying shit everywhere, but mostly my face. My eyes, nose, ears, and most of the furniture in the living room. I wouldn't say it was the strangest or weirdest thing I have experienced, but definitely the shittiest. I got pinkeye so bad it caused me to lose the better part of my vision until I saw the eye doctor and received eye drops for it.  Worst case of conjunctivitis he had ever seen according to him. I have never seen any kind of physician wash their hands as many times as he did during that visit. I wouldn't be surprised if he burned his clothes after he acted like I was such a dirty, shitty person. I felt like patient zero.

[Anamcara]

Haha ha! Oh Ivor, that is both hilarious and horrifying. My friend who has a little one refers to these events as "caca explosions." Now my own story is not nearly so dramatic, but as we are "shootin' the shit" on this thread so to speak, I'll add it here.

Some years ago, a friend and I go to the movies and order popcorn with nutritional yeast topping. Now it is very tasty, but apparently a bit hard on the digestion. So the movie gets out, we are walking home, when at almost exactly the same moment, it hits us. Oh, no! What to do? Fortunately there was a gas station on the route so we ran into the bathroom and each take a stall. If anyone else was in there, I feel very bad for them. The sounds and smells of that evening will not soon be forgotten, and I'd never willingly inflict that on anyone.

Take home message: be very,very careful about eating nutritional yeast.

[Popster]

As Ivor said: "Who knew how badly this thread would turn to shit."

[Sudsy]

Hello, I had a hot air balloon crash in my back yard with 4 passengers,3 of them where taken to the hospital the other one was fine.I am the one who called 911 I saw the whole thing happen.

[IceWizard]

Ok... I can't stand it...

Years back I was going to work for Dell... Well they had "training" class before you could actually do anything.

The evening before I had a few bowls of beans and rice, not thinking anything about it.

The next morning I take my seat on the front row and class starts. Now there's appox 35 people in here and more than half were females, when it hit... Gass... Lots of it... My stomach was swellin like a carnaval balloon..

The more I tried to wait till break, the bigger I seemed to get.

So I got up and out the door I went. Now the bathroom was across the entire back of a building as long as a football field, but I was on a mission.

When I burst into the bathroom, I did a quick look toward the stall on the far right and when to the one on the left... I saw no feet, so when I cleared the door on that stall, I fired one off that was longer than a hoe handle and sounded as if something aweful got hurt.

Then silence, but terribly relieved.

Then a voice came frome the far end stall and said,"Hey, are you alright over there?"

Freaked me out! I answered in a rather "shrill" voice so he wouldn't recognize it later. Then when I left, I jumped from the little short wall, all the way out the door so he wouldn't get a look at my shoes...

I never did find out who was in there... Hopefully he didn't either...

Ice