AIBU to ask what is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to you?

[TheEighthMrsSK]

I had an utterly bizarre incident yesterday. For context DH and I are away at the moment, practically the other side of the world from our home country. DH and I were walking along a very busy street, it’s just getting dark, and I become aware of a woman who starts to alternate between walking a sensible distant behind me, to uncomfortably close behind behind me, to walking up right alongside me, with DH on my other side. We have a few repetitions of this, with her following me the length of the street, and then a flash goes off in my face. I am 100% sure she photographed me, it was at such a close range and there was no one else that could have been in the shot. I don’t say anything to her, because I’m not up for a confrontation in a language I only know a few words of. I tell DH she’s following me, and we move to stand in a shop doorway at the side of the pavement with the intention of getting out of her way. I was expecting her to pass us, but she walks right up to me and starts screaming in my face in broken English, the gist of it was: ‘why you look at me? You know me? You look at me! I hate you, you’re evil!’ DH tells her I’ve never seen her before I’m my life and to hop it, and she does. I’ve been trying to work out what the hell happened here since last night, and I’m a bit shaken by it, so please cheer me up and regale me with your stories of weird happenings.

20 odd years ago I was at a train station waiting for a train to take me on a 3 hr (220 miles) journey to my Father's.

Whilst waiting I was smoking a cigarette (I don't smoke anymore) and a woman (only me and her on platform) came up to me to ask for a ciggie which I obliged and we got chatting.

She asked where I was headed and when I told her the town next door to my Father's town (I wasn't going to tell her the truth!) she said oh I'm going home to 'blah town' - Town where my father lived.

I asked where she had been staying down this area and she said with a friend's mate called Dave in town 10 miles away. I said oh I have a brother called Dave who lives in that town.

Carried on chatting and she confesses that she hasn't said goodbye or thanked Dave for putting her up as he was at work at MMM when she left and doing a double shift.
I said my brother Dave works at MMM.

It was my brother she'd been staying with!

When I arrived at my Father's I rang my brother Dave and told him - he was gobsmacked! (and still at work).

It was my 25th birthday and me & my friends ended the night in a dodgy pub in Brixton. There was a crazy looking woman there who kept offering us biscuits. She was v v drunk but kept singling me out & eventually told me that I looked so much like her daughter, that she missed her, that it was funny I was there as it was her daughters birthday today. Said she was turning 25 😬

I didn’t tell her it was my birthday as I didn’t want the drunk biscuit woman to be my real mum.

FYI my mum is alive & well & I have no reason to believe I might have a twin somewhere.

Many years ago I took a few days off work to go to Edinburgh Festival. Drove 400+ miles with a car load of friends, parked up, walked up to the castle for a look around. Paid to enter and just walked on, could hear a voice calling 'Ariela, Ariela!' - which I ignored, thinking there are a few Arielas in the world and I know nobody in Edinburgh so cannot be me that's being called.
Turned out that unknown to me one of the guys in the office was in a band, and they were playing at the Edinburgh Festival, so he was there and had just got to the castle too, and spotted me.
The other weird one was I was in Waitrose picking up a kiwi fruit to buy, my hand had just made contact with the fruit when a loud voice right next to me said 'Ariela, put that down NOW' Shocked I did as I was told - only to find the lady telling me off wasn't telling ME off but her 3 year old Ariela who was picking up grapes!
Ariela is not a very common name!

Leaving a pub in Scotland Jimmy Saville walked up to me and my male friend, pointed at me and told him to watch out because I was a coiled spring. Was pretty funny at the time but now, eugh.

My best friend (university) from one city met my first boyfriend from another city in a completely different city at a festival. And somehow, in their ten minutes of conversation, established the link.

Don’t know if it’s that wierd but it happens an awful lot to me....

I seem to get recognised everywhere I go. Not as myself, but Iv been stopped by a couple in a pub who seemed bewildered that I was at the bar. Came over to say hello and ask me what I was doing there. Turns out I looked the exact same as a girl who worked at their normal local - 200 odd miles away!

Happened again during a Christmas fair in Devon, (where I do not live, or have ties to!) admiring a mans stall of handmade crafty things and he said ‘oh hello!’ I don’t know him but polietly say hello back. Turns out he thought he knew me but couldn’t put his finger on it. He really kept trying to ‘place me’ but I’d never met him in my life.

Those are the two oddest ones (the people really had to be convinced I wasn’t who they thought I was) but Iv had it on buses, in London, at family gatherings (not MY family obviously lol, but friend of a friend, or ex partners etc.)

Must just have one of those faces!

Purple time slip!!

Ariela is not a very common name!

Is Ariela your real name?

My DD is Ariela, chosen quite specifically as it’s uncommon. 6 months after she was born DM and I went out for the day, DD was at home. A lady walked past with her newborn who had personalised ever so slight tacky everything on that said Ariela. Given that we’ve never met another before or since it threw me a bit!

Surfinbird this happens to me too!

Most recently, about a month ago. I started a new job and one of my new colleagues said "don't you remember me?". Er no? "we used to work the same shift at xxx" he said. I have never even been to the town let along work there.
It is usually people just saying "I really recognise you".
We must just have that type of face

Not that weird I’ve obviously got ‘one of those faces’ that people recognise too. Most recently one of the staff in my local Aldi always used to stare at me when I went in, until a few months she asked if I was from Liverpool and if my name was ‘blah blah’.

I live on the opposite side of the world where I grew up. I have an xH in my home country. In my new town I made friends with a school mum whose son rides the bus with mine. They also play a sport together.

Recently they travelled to a third country for a wedding. During that time they met up with some friends for dinner and posted a pic on Facebook. The friends in the photo were my xH and his 2nd wife.

I still havent mentioned the connection to my friend as that’s a can of worms that should stay firmly shut. 🤯

When my friend went to university I arranged to visit her one weekend. Driving around for ages to find the address I finally found the house and asked for her. The guy called out her name and a girl the image of her walking down the stairs. I said 'Hi, sorry I'm late etc' This girl is just staing at me and I realise it's not my friend. I asked for my friend by her full name and the girl says that's her, same name. I then ask if this is the correct address and am told yes same address! I couldn't get through to my friends phone all evening and when I told her the next day she was so annoyed I hadn't turned up! She thinks I made it all up and the only way I can explain is she knew the girl and deliberately gave me wrong address as a prank. I doubt it though as the girl and guy were pretty wary not like people involved in a prank.

I was on the tube there was a man sitting opposite me looked scruffy but normal either way..was silent for about 6 stops. There were others on the tube too.

A woman gets on with a baby wrapped on her chest and goes to sit next to the free seat were the man is

He starts shouting about she cant sit there and swearing then gets up stands by the door and for around two stops is singing swearing and shouting to himself then he gets off

Mine is when I was a teen I had this feeling I knew the name of this stranger on the train platform. I went up to him and said your name's tom and it was. My friends with me were laughing. We got on the train and being an annoying teenager I said to two more stranger the initial of their first names. Both were right. We got off train with amazed passengers. I told my mum. Never been able to do it since.

Op don't feel shaken up. It reminds me of a girl I know of who has serious mental health problems and had been sectioned for shouting at people in the street like that. It's not personal. She might have been paranoid or something.

Years ago stayed at Cley Mill in Norfolk and opted for the evening meal on the Saturday. Instructed to meet in the main room for pre-dinner drinks and we were one of four couples staying that weekend.

The owner, wanting to get everyone comfortable went round the room asking for introductions. First couple 'I'm so and so and this is my wife, Autumn'. Next couple, 'I'm so and so and my wife is also Autumn'. Third couple, exactly the same and then eventually us! Four couples and the wives all had the same name. Mine isn't an unusual name but I rarely meet another 'Autumn' and never four of us at the same time

Many moons ago I had broken up with my boyfriend in Italy and was all cried out for hours, standing alone in the airport in Milan. Randomly, an American man walked up to me and said 'I've been looking at you standing there alone and I just wanted to say you look beautiful'. Believe me when I tell you that I am far from beautiful, but I kept it with me. No idea why, he was going on a flight to New York I think, but he gave me strength when I was falling apart.

Not mine but my parents and the weirdest coincidence I know. My parents used to just take their car over to Europe for several weeks on holiday, wandering around and stopping where they could get a room. One year they were over in Germany and had stopped in a small pretty town in the late afternoon to see if the local Inn had a room. They did, and, as they were registering, the bar door opened and a young woman shot into my dad's arms, yelling Uncle X! The innkeeper looked at my mother and said 'I hope she has the right uncle'. My mother grinned and replied 'she has'. Neither my cousin nor my parents knew the others were in the same country, and neither had a planned schedule but were just wandering where they felt like. Yet they managed to end up in the same Inn in the same small town in a large country.

A very close relative died a few days ago. I was talking about him to DM as i was driving home yesterday. He had a very distinctive, particular kind of car, vintage looking but modern build and custom made. He pretty much saved for 50 years for it. Anyway, as we were talking about him, one of these cars pulled in behind me. It turned off at the next junction. They are extremely rare and I have never seen one in my village in the 18 years I have lived here. I am not superstitious, but!!

Years ago a boy in my class became ill so I went to the office to call his parents. The first emergency contact was mum, but she had recently remarried, her new name hadn't been updated and I couldn't remember it.

Me "Hello, this is 2ofsteds at leafy lane primary, is that Fred's mum?"
Lady "Yes, is everything OK?"
Me "Fred is not very well and has been sick, would you be able to pick him up?"
Lady "Yes of course, I'll be straight there."

Cue 15 mins later a very irate mum turns up demanding to know why I had called her exMIL instead of her. It turned out that the new computer system had mixed up all the contact details when they were transferred from the old system. What I still can't work out is why Fred's grandma said she was his mum (his dad has a different name and no brothers so can't see any way to mix this up) and said she would pick him up, rather than say I had the wrong number. Instead she phoned his mum and passed on the message.

Once, when I was in my late teens, I was walking through a housing estate to my friend's house. The houses were quite nice by the usual standards of council houses around here, and had generous gardens front and back.
I noticed a child of about 3 playing alone in one of the gardens, and she stopped as soon as she saw me and stared with wide, dead eyes. And then she spoke.

"You're a wee whore," she said.

I was somewhat taken aback, and stopped dead in my tracks to look at her.

"No, I'm not," I said.

"Yes. You are!" She replied.

I stared at her for a few seconds until she slowly nodded, and then turned and continued playing.

I told my friend about it, and she thought it was hilarious, but I was a little freaked out.

I've posted this on MN before. When we didn't all have mobile phones, I walked past a telephone that was ringing in the middle of a city centre street phone bank and - as people occasionally did, but I never did - I suddenly decided to pick it up.

The person on the phone was someone I knew, trying to reach me. They'd mis-dialled my number, and accidentally called a random public telephone, right at the moment I walked past it (they had no clue where in the world I was) and I decided to answer it. One of those strange things, I guess.

Surfinbird - do you think you might somewhat resemble a famous person? I have a relative who looks quite a lot like Jan Leeming (used to be a news presenter) and she regularly had strangers thinking they knew her from somewhere all the time. We've concluded that her resemblance makes people think she looks familiar to them but they don't make the connection between her and the lady that presented the news every evening.

Ofsted she pretended to be the Mother so she could learn why you were calling. Plain, old-fashioned nosy.

Unicorn that's sad! I hope she hadn't learned it from someone saying it to her.

A few years ago I was sharing a room with my sister as my family had someone else staying with us. We were talking and I (somewhat meanly) decided to scare her by saying there'd be a major earthquake next week. She asked a few questions about it but didn't seem too concerned, and after a while I felt guilty so told her I'd made it all up. A few days later she mentioned the earthquake and joked that it didn't happen.

Very early the next morning I was woken by intense shaking and screamed at my sister to get out of bed. When my family checked the radio (we'd lost power) we found out our city had been hit by one of the country's biggest earthquakes in decades. Thankfully no one died, though there were some close calls and a lot buildings were badly damaged. My sister and I were a bit that I had 'predicted' it.