We’ve almost always found that real life can be just as weird—if not weirder!—than fiction. Some of our experiences are so odd that they stick with us for years afterward, and we wonder if we simply dreamt it all.
Members of the sprawling r/AskReddit online community recently opened up about the most bizarre encounters that they’ve had with strangers. It just goes to show that you don’t need to go to the cinema for a dose of confusion and (un)intentional creepiness. Scroll down to read just how unusual some people can behave when we least expect it.
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Non-standard behavior is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it shows that there are different norms, values, and ways of living beyond what’s deemed ‘acceptable’ in society. Out-of-the-box thinking implies that someone might have embraced their creativity and looks beyond convention to push social boundaries in whatever they do. They frown upon conformity and traditions.
On the other hand, odd behavior is likely going to raise some eyebrows and concern some folks. The simple reality is that when we face someone behaving oddly, we consider them to be a potential threat. There is a huge difference between someone who is a tad eccentric and someone with serious issues.
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Odd behavior that goes against social norms and common sense makes people feel uncomfortable because they cannot predict what will happen next. Naturally, some folks feel on edge when faced with the types of behaviors that the members of the r/AskReddit community shared.
Most of our priorities have to do with our safety, as well as that of our loved ones. So if you want to be better prepared to handle fringe situations, you should consider spending some time attending self-defense classes. You can also read up on human psychology so that you can get a better grip on why people behave the way that they do.
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Meanwhile, if you constantly have to deal with strangers in your professional life, you may want to invest in negotiation, communication, or crisis-response courses. That way, you’ll have at least some sort of theoretical framework for how to respond in tense and bizarre situations.
And, in case you’re dealing with an actual threat, you’ll know what your options are, whether that’s ignoring the person, appealing to their empathy, deescalating the situation, running away, asking/yelling for help, or—if needed—fighting back.
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What is the most off-putting experience that you’ve ever had with a complete stranger, Pandas? How did you react back then? What do you think the best approach to handling these types of situations is? If you feel like opening up a bit, you can share your thoughts and in the comment section at the bottom of this article.
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I was 14 at a Metallica/Guns N Roses joint concert. Metallica had already done their show and we were waiting for GNR to come on. It was a bit of a wait because, well, GNR. So the crowd is getting restless and people are throwing rolls of toilet paper, cups, beers, trash, whatever they can get their hands on. I'm standing there feeling alright because my section didn't seem too rowdy.
Suddenly, I'm grabbed from behind. The guy behind me just threw one arm across my upper body and pulled me right up into his chest. With his other arm, he pulled the back of his jacket up so it was like a hood over both of us. A second later someone's nachos with gooey cheese sauce comes raining down on us. Then he let me go, and I check it out, not a drop of cheese sauce on me.
I was just so amazed that this guy in a split second decided to save a total stranger from suffering the rest of the concert covered in nacho cheese. Thank you, kind stranger, if you're out there.Working service counter in retail, 1998, expecting my first baby. Young man, very skinny and dressed in brown, comes in, stands several feet back from the counter and looks at me. I greet him a few times, he doesn't react. After several minutes, he came forward and said very quickly: "You're six months pregnant and you're going to have a boy. The dad's not around, but that's okay, you've got this. The baby's coming very soon, early, but don't worry, he'll do good." Before I could say anything, he left the store.
He was right about everything.I was at a bookshop and a random woman walked up to me, and said “I just had to tell you, but your outfit is truly great. Love it!”
This was three years ago and I still think about that compliment to this day. Men don’t usually get compliments and when we do, it stays with us.I was at work and a friend of mine called the work phone and told me a mutual friend had been in a car accident and was dead. A customer heard the conversation. The customer came back into the store a few minutes later with a condolence card. I was touched by their compassion.When I was 15 I used to ride the bus for five hours and 35 miles every Friday so that I could practice with my band. It’s was actually four different bus changes so you ran into a lot of colorful characters (city bus in major metropolitan area). Well one time this older apparently homeless eccentric looking gentlemen boarded the bus with a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag. His lips were stained. He was clearly drunk but not to the point of being a problem or anything. He sat across the aisle from me and I was thinking “oh great here we go” but he was calm and eventually we started conversing. I was uncomfortable at first but we discussed some interesting things and shared our philosophies. After a while his stop came up and this man who I’d never met before and who knew nothing about my background stood up and took my hand in his and kissed it. Now at first I’m thinking “Great this guy is a creep who’s into 15 year old boys” but then I looked into his eyes and realized he wasn’t being creepy at all. There was no devious intention. He looked at me and said “I know the pain you are feeling. You lost your mother. Do not despair: she is with you.” Then he exclaimed “I am a Seraphim of the highest order!” And did a sort of theatrical curtsy and walked off the bus. I was left dumbfounded. The thing is my mother had passed away from cancer less than a year before that and I was feeling completely lost without her. It was the darkest time in my life. How this random homeless wine-o knew this about me I’ll never know. He was like a character from the movie Dogma. Maybe he really was a Seraphim of the highest order. It still gives me chills thinking about it.Grocery store parking lot, a random guy came up to me and gave me five 100 dollar bills and then ran away, yelling "I just bought your soul!" I went in and bought groceries with the cash.I was in a grocery store in Cape May, NJ with my ex MIL. Now I am adopted and I was born in Atlantic City, NJ. I heard this older lady call out a name. Wasn't my name so I really didn't pay much attention. Welp that didn't work. The older lady came up and grabbed my arm "Kelly aren't you going to speak to your grandmother" I looked at this lady and she goes "OMG your not Kelly...but you look just like Kelly but she has blue eyes!" Now this is 1988, so she pulls out her wallet and shows me Kelly's picture...it is ME with blue eyes...I mean it was like a picture of me but with blue eyes. Even my ex-MIL was like WTH!! The lady apologized and walked away before I could even think! All these years I've wondered am I twin? Did I have a sibling that I didn't know about?I used to work in food truck called dem boys sea food. I been work with them for about 2 years. I met bizarre customers during my time working there.
There was this one time this guy and his two kids who didn't have any money on them, I felt bad for them so I payed for his food and the dad great full for me. He told me he'll pay me pay somehow and I told him it was fine.
Few days later the guy come back give me a box full of pants. It was weird at first but I take it anyway. I didn't want to be mean or anything so I take it. Anyway when I get home I checked out the pants, and same were my size so I wanted clean them before I wear them. And before I put them in the washer I checked the pockets just in case if there was anything in them. The most bizarre thing to ever happen to me was there was 100 dollar bill in every single pocket in theres pants. I'm not joking. IN EVERY SINGLE POKET NO JOKE. It was about thousand.dollars ? lucky day in my life.
The only odd part was I ever met the guy and his kids ever again. I think of them sometimes and I hope they're doing alright out there somewhere.
.I was 45, in the parking lot of a Midwest grocery store, putting my purchases into my car. Handsome man about my age approached, speaking English with a thick Italian accent. "Excuse me," he said, "are you married?" "Yes!" I lied. "Oh I'm sorry," he said. "Your face is my favorite.".Once delivered food to do a dudes house, the door was slightly ajar so I knocked and he popped his head out and asked: "you here for the orgy?".
I said no just delivering food and then asked why his door was open out of curiosity and he said "The Irish." Didn't even elaborate but anyway I gave him his food, all it was was a 5 dollar piece of garlic bread and I f****d off forever stuck with that memory.They knocked on the cubicle door of the toilet i was using at a starbucks on a motorway somewhere. i didn't reply. knocked again. i shouted that i'd be 5 mins.
they then said no rush, but please don't flush the toilet after you're done.
........I went to visit Roanoke, VA once. Went into this little restaurant, and the staff was all super friendly, "how you been" "so nice you dropped by" and so on. We were seated, and this lil lady swoops up to the table and says, 'You want your usual?" and I'm like, "lady, I've never been here before" -- and then everyone working there got all indignant, like I was playing a joke on them, or being an a*s. I told them they had me mixed up with someone else, really! They served us, and we left, but the whole time we were there, the staff was staring and whispering and the vibe was incredibly disquieting.
Never went back, never had an experience like that again.I was the designated driver for a group of buddies at my leadership school while I was in the Army. We run up to Baltimore and hit a dance club. I sit/stand around waiting for my group to go. A lady slides up to me, notices I'm a bit bored and proceeds to bite my chest and states "Now you ain't bored!" WEIRDO .I got a message request on Facebook and when I opened the message, a very small Mexican man had sent me a picture of his d**k. I responded, "Why did you send me a picture of a sweaty thumb?" He then got angry and told me that his uncle was a world famous, Mexican Mafia type hitman, and that he was going to find me. Even sent me the hitman's name, which I googled and he was, indeed, a murderer, serving a life sentence for his crimes. He said 'Better watch your back, b***h' and then blocked me. That was 8 years ago and I still think about it.I have had a few really weird ones, but the two that most stand out.
I was at a bus stop when a man approached me and stood close enough to kiss me and said: "You f****n' Kim Kardashian m**********r, you tryn'a kill me? Well you can't! I'll kill you first" And then when the bus arrived very courteously let me go first "after you" and was very polite.
The second was a short bald man at a 7-11 at 3am with a skateboard sliding up behind me, tapping my shoulder and handing me a green envelope that said: You have just met a leprechaun.When I was 19, a lady cornered me in the Walmart near the house I grew up in and tried to recruit me to her church because "it was fate" that we passed each other twice while I was looking for the ice cream toppings. Noped out of that one pretty f****n' fast.Some crazy disheveled guy popped out of a hole at the foot of a large tree and chased us down the mountain wielding a shovel. We thought it was funny at the time but it could've been bad if he caught up to us.As an American living in Japan, pretty much every encounter was bizarre.
Maybe the weirdest was going to a Korean BBQ place in Shin-Okubo for a shared birthday dinner with some friends. There's a very old Korean woman hanging out in the entrance near the hostess stand. I figure based on her dress and how she's acting, she's probably the owner or related somehow. I do notice she takes an interest in me, looking at me more than anyone else in our party. Whatever, I'm a big muscly guy. This place probably doesn't get many beefy white guys. Being stared at isn't new. Anyway, the young female hostess seats us and explains everything, we order. Someone orders thinly sliced beef tongue, among other cuts.
The older woman accompanies a younger server to the table with trays of food, they start grilling the meat. At one point, the older woman picks up the grilled, sliced tongue, slaps some sauce and toppings on it and rolls it up like a little keto taquito and holds it out to me, with her bare hands. I put out my plate, thinking she's going to put it on my plate for me.
She shakes her head and opens her mouth a few times, like a fish gulping water. I know she wants me to open my mouth. My brain just kind of turns off and I shove my germ-phobia down and open my mouth and this ancient Korean woman puts a beef tongue roll in my mouth with her wrinkly, knobby fingers. She then smiles watching me chew, nods and walks away. Didn't see her again the rest of the night.
Absolutely surreal.When I was a kid, this guy in his late 30's or so passed me by and asked for directions someplace. I told him, he said thanks, crossed the street and I continued on my way. A few seconds later I heard a noise like something whizzing past me--I turned around and he was shooting at me with a BB gun from across the street.A Travis Bickle-like guy walked up to me in a bookshop and complained that David Hasselhoff was taller than people think and that it was wrong that some people think he's not that tall. He was outraged. He had many supporting arguments to his main thesis.Back when I was investigating fires, I had a fire to investigate at a Church's Chicken in Memphis. I landed at the airport at like 11 pm and went to drive to my hotel. On the way there, I stopped at a gas station somewhere in the city and walked inside because I was thirsty. The cashier was behind the thickest bulletproof glass I've ever seen and there was an absolutely massive armed guard standing next to it. I walked in, went to the cooler, grabbed my Diet Coke, then went to pay. I noticed while I was waiting that the guard never took his eyes off me. The guy in front of me paid and left and I stepped forward and put my drink on the counter and the guard just kinda stepped forward and said "You're a brave little white boy." Not knowing what he was talking about I just said "thank you?" and the cashier then said "You need to pay for this, get in your car, and go wherever it is you're going immediately." So I did.
I know Memphis has a reputation but I was fine the whole time I was there. Even out late.I was on a downtown A train in NYC one quiet afternoon and a young woman in her 30s got on when it stopped at 34th Street. She looked at me and said, “You’re a Virgo. Am I right?”
Before I could answer she added, “Of course I’m right. I’m never wrong.” She just smiled and got off at West 4th Street.
I am a Virgo.Dude was a stranger to me, but apparently he knew a good bit about me because he came into my work one night and addressed me by name. We didn't have name tags, he said it was his first time there and I was alone so nobody else said my name for him to learn it. After a while he finally tells me we used to be neighbors, by that he meant he lived clear across the block from me. I remembered the house he described as his because of the collection of old cars, but I'd never met anyone who lived there and I hadn't lived in that neighborhood for 6 years at that point.
I was pretty weirded out between that and his obnoxious flirting despite my obvious disinterest but I let it go. He left for a few minutes, came back in with a pointless question and more flirting then left again. About an hour later a regular comes in as I'm closing up and I ask if the guy in the old Mustang is still in front of the building. He says yes, asked why and offered to stay until I left since the guy had been sitting out there for over an hour. It was night time, the building was pretty isolated and I was otherwise alone. Once the creepy guy saw the regular lock the door and cut the open sign off, he immediately started up his car and peeled a*s out of the parking lot.
About a week later, I walk in for my shift and creepy guy is leaving. He goes "sorry for taking your parking spot, I'm on my way out!". That was supposedly his second time there and I wasn't even there yet, how did he know what my favorite parking spot was. Also I'd had 3 cars since I lived in his neighborhood, we aren't friends on Facebook and have zero mutuals...how did he even know which one was mine...Absolutely true story.
I was on break sitting on a bench outside the mall. A guy in fatigues storms out, screaming.
He turns, looks at me, " f**k you! I could kill you with one hand! That would teach them! I'm a veteran! A f*****g veteran, I fought for them, they won't cash my f*****g check. It's a government check. .. WTF who are they?"
And he got really close and noone helped. He kept yelling and threatening to kill me and if I tried to answer he told me to shut up, if I didn't answer he said, " WELL? WELL?" I just frozen to the spot. But I don't know why I didn't cry.
Finally, after 10 minutes he says, " WHY AREN'T YOU CRYING?? CRY. CRY."
A guy finally came over and said " Dude. What is your problem?"
When I finally escaped I went in the bathroom and cry vomitted.One time when I was 17 years old, I was walking into the city I lived on the outskirts of. Some man stopped me and asked if he could touch my skin cause it looked really soft.
Wanting to avoid any kind of aggression if I said no to him, I said yes.
He stroked the skin on my forearm and made a face and sound that I can only describe now from the perspective of being 31 years old as a ‘jizzing in his pants’ reaction.
Once he’d stroked my arm once, he said thank you and walked away.
When I told my mum later on she was fuming and couldn’t believe I said yes. I told her why, and it wasn’t until a family friend (who was there when I was telling my mum) agreed with me and explained further that my mum understood I made the most rational choice.
Weird as f**k.When I was 19-20 years old delivering pizzas a customer opened her door, asked me inside, and asked me to look at her remodeled bathroom. She was insistent I come inside. I humored her because I wanted her to pay for the food so I could leave. She cornered me in the bathroom and tried to kiss me. She stank like booze and cigarettes. I noped out of there quickly.I met the self-proclaimed devil once. I was going through some stuff, and there he was at the mall. He knew my name and the name of the guy I was with. I shook his hand, and it felt electric. I strongly believe it was actually him.Around 20 years ago, my friends and I were hanging out at one of our friends' apartments in a small town in Maine. It was in the middle of a very cold winter. A few friends and I left our mutual friends' place at around midnight to go to my roommate's car to start getting people home. Anyway, on the way to the car, I rounded the corner of a Chinese restaurant, and on the sidewalk, there was a man standing perfectly still. He had a tall, 'dunce cap'-shaped hat on, but it was purple and had reflective gold stars painted on it like a wizard hat or something. I remember stopping as soon as I saw him, as he was, like, five feet in front of me where I rounded the corner. I can't remember what I said, but he never moved an inch, nor said a word. So, we just walked by and went to the car. We dropped a couple people off, hung around at their apartment for a couple hours, then took off to bring ourselves home. We had to drive back through town where this individual had been standing on the sidewalk, and wouldn't you know it, that dude was still standing there, perfectly still, in the freezing cold, in the same spot he had been a couple hours earlier. We coined him the time wizard, theorizing that he hadn't moved because he was phasing out of our time, and his transition from our time to another time just took a long time. IDK, it was bizarre.Woman approached me on the street while I had stopped at a bench to roll a cigarette. As she is asking me to spare a cigarette, she pulls her tights down to adjust(?) them. She wasn't wearing anything else over or below them, while telling me why she has no cigarettes. No hesitation or pause from her, all she wanted to do was adjust them, she didn't even *look* unhinged in any way, everything on display.My friends and I went to a gas station to buy cigarettes circa 3 AM on a weekday, we were around 19. One of them went inside and the rest remained in the gas filling zone. Suddenly a car parks and guys come out of it crying for help. He was saying that his girlfriend was possessed and pointed to the car. In the companion seat was this girl trembling and like in a trance. We tried to ignore him, then he went over her and scream "please come back" and things like that. Then he asked us for help again. We and the gas station guy were speechless. One of our friends told him 'Look, it is not our problem and there is nothing we can do'. The guy kept screaming, jumped in his car and left at full speed god knows where.
We stood there without knowing what the f**k did just happen. The funniest thing is that one of my friends was so scared in the middle of it that he made the sign of the cross over him lol.
