Strangest encounter with a stranger?

[elevenspowers]

Today I went to the cash point outside Tesco and a man walked in front of me diagonally and we almost clashed and so I moved back (assumed he was walking to the entrance) and he just stared at me.

He was on the phone talking, with his back to the cash point, staring at me carrying on his conversation. So after about a few seconds I was like “are you using the cash point” - he responded yes but then still carried on his conversation. I was just like 😬 ok ….

Probably not that weird, but it’s fresh in my head.

That would freak me tf out

It was my first visit to Bristol with a friend who was raised there. We were walking down a quiet street and moved aside for a family of 4 to let them pass. Two adults and 2 children. They passed by, stopped and simultaneously turned to stare at me. It wasn’t just a glance but what felt like a lengthy coordinated stare. It seemed very bizarre and my friend even commented and asked whether I knew them. Years later, he still mentions it!

That made me laugh because I was travelling to the airport on my own for the first time. I had pre booked my seat and got on at the originating stop. The only other passenger got on ahead of me and sat in my seat! I thought it would get busy so immediately told him I had booked that seat and he apologised and moved. I took my seat and found we weee the only passengers for the entire 1 1/2 hour journey. I must have looked completely mad 😂

That made me laugh because I was travelling to the airport on my own for the first time. I had pre booked my seat and got on at the originating stop. The only other passenger got on ahead of me and sat in my seat! I thought it would get busy so immediately told him I had booked that seat and he apologised and moved. I took my seat and found we were the only passengers for the entire 1 1/2 hour journey. I must have looked completely mad 😂

Sounds like you were in his way and he didn’t like being rushed whats strange about that..
strange to me is reading/ playing with my dc in the childrens section and a really strange lady using the computers said she was going to cut my hair off, what am I doing in the city and swearing profanities in the library!

You sound like a massive racist tbh @WhatDoIDoNow3

I'm a Londoner, so is my mum, so were my aunts/grandmothers, so is my daughter .

I don't drive and have used public transport in London my entire life, over 40 years

And no, we don't spend our lives being terrorised by terrifying "ethnic" [sic] people or being threatened with rape every day.

London is a place where literally millions of people from every country in the world mostly manage to get along with each other pretty happily. Shame that you are so determined to see the bad in anyone who isn't white.

The train seat ticket one- wondering what about you made her think you couldn't possibly have been the person to reserve the seat. Things like that happen to me, I'm perpetually confused.
Not strange, but nice that the lad behind me in the cue offered to buy my milk as it was a small carton and therefore it was obvious I lived alone- not in a chat-up way, just in a charity type of way. I thought it was adorable

queue

Donkey's years ago, I was waiting for the bus near my local Sainsbury's in London, next to a lady a bit older than me. She was eyeing my shopping and suddenly said 'Could you sell me some food?' I said 'sorry, what?' She said 'I haven't had time to stop all day and I'm starving. Could you sell me some fruit?' So I pulled a banana out of the bag and she gave me 20p for it. I didn't want to take the money but she insisted.

On the train with my mates when I was about 18/19 going to a club in Islington… a group
of Australian traveller lads get on and start being annoying… my friend brushed her hair as we were about to get off, one of them grabs the brush, pulls down his pants and starts brushing his pubes. We get off the train, he gets off, we move faster, he moves faster, we start running, he chases us, we run all the way to the bar, he waits outside for an hour.

eventually he left. So weird.

At the pub celebrating my birthday. Found another woman whose birthday it also was on the same day, she joined for drinks back at mine! I don’t see her again, then a year to the day, my birthday, i walk into a garage and there she is! I wish her a happy birthday 🥳. I think we are both freaked out, in a pleasant cool way. So weird.

I don't think it crossed his mind for a second. 😁

Years ago I was in a bar/restaurant with a boyfriend when an elderly man who'd been sitting at the bar tossed a very small, tightly folded piece of paper on to the table between us and walked out. I opened it up, it was about the size of four postage stamps, and in teeny tiny elf's writing that I could barely make out was a short poem about the way I looked. I can't remember what it said, but there was nothing creepy or insulting, just observations on specific aspects of my appearance. Very odd!

A man came to our door whilst we were out - our lodger answered it. The man asked if it was alright if he has a bonfire. Our lodger assumed he meant in his own garden (as you would), said "fine with me" and didn't even bother to tell us. The next day I looked out of the window to find someone stoking a bonfire in our garden! He lived in some flats and had climbed over our fence to burn his garden waste and fence panels in our garden.

I have worked in loads of public facing jobs, and anyone else who has done would agree that over time you see a lot of 'strange' and weird stuff, most of it just seems odd because the people are different to you, or because you are seeing small moments of their lives without context.

However there was one incident that still gives me goosebumps when I remember it, I can't explain it. and I am in no way woo.

I was working in a busy shop, a long counter with lots of cashiers. A lady came to my till with her items and as I was scanning them she seemed very smiley but also strangely in awe of me. I don't know how else to describe it, she was acting like she knew me, but not talking at all, just watching me, more like I was a celebrity.

Clearly I am not famous, I was just a teenager scanning random crap at a till. But she did seem oddly familiar, not like I recognised her by appearance, more like she just felt known to me, it felt strange. Maybe that was just because of how she was behaving.

But then when I was nearly done she said.
'you're going to be alright, Joni' and she put her hand on mine in a very warm and affectionate way. She then said
'it's going to be ok - one day you'll get everything you want, you'll see'.
Her eyes were glistening and then she took her bag and walked out of the shop in a calm, even way.

I was utterly stunned and shocked. There was no way she could have known my name. If she hadn't called me by name I would have assumed she mistook me for someone else.

She didn't say anything else at all - no pleasantries or whatever.

It was so so strange but the experience stayed with me.

Could she have read your name tag from your uniform and want to affectionately tell a young girl that everything would be ok in the end?

No we didn't have name tags and I had only worked in that shop for a few days - some of my colleagues didn't even know my name. They were equally baffled by the whole thing!

A man once approached me at a bus stop at 8am and tried to sell me a plastic bag full of meat. That was odd, even for Glasgow.

I was driving my horse box today, narrow country lane, guy in a van pulls over so we can pass safely. Winds his window down, and I thought, here we go…. What he wanted to know was whether my horsebox was one he’d driven previously, how the hell am I supposed to know????!!!

Ooh this is a cracking thread but also gives me very little faith in humanity 😬

I'd been meaning to set up a thread like this after our recent encounter.

Picture a small quiet village on a Monday afternoon...

Went to the church to meet the vicar for the first time and discuss our upcoming nuptials. The church is empty as he'd only arranged to meet us and there's no way that anyone would have known anyone was at the church at this time. The doors were closed, lights off and we were tucked round the corner, with our backs to the entrance.

Half way through we hear the door open and a random voice says 'is this a Catholic Church or CoE?'. Vicar replies and then man responds back with 'oh I really need to take a poo, can I use the toilet' 😂 at this point me and partner are creasing up and have to sit waiting very awkwardly whilst the vicar escorts the man to the toilets in the adjacent building and he takes a good 10 minutes!

Just keep wondering what were the chances of that happening at that exact moment in a quiet sleepy church on a Monday afternoon?! Just chuckling thinking about it now. Maybe we should see it as a sign from above? Was he sent to interrupt the meeting? What does it mean...

If I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, of course he could have had issues/ disability but it wasn't obvious and I think it was mainly the lack of discretion. Just a very strange encounter with a stranger at a strange time!

Many years ago, on my last day on an Easter holiday in North Wales, I had to bump start my ancient crap old car and give it a drive before leaving. Turns out there aren’t many places to turn around on Welsh country roads. I was flagged down by an elderly lady. Normally I would never stop, I was about 18, but she was an old lady in the middle of nowhere so I felt obliged.

she hopped in and started chatting in Welsh. I apologised, said I didn’t speak Welsh. So she said she was going to the library in the next village to return books. So off we went.

After a minute she spotted the Easter egg in the little storage bit at the front of the car. ‘Ooh, is that chocolate?’ She says. ‘Erm, yes, would you like some?’ ‘In a minute.’

few minutes later we arrive in the village and I pull up by the library. Got a few awkward seconds she just sits there.

’sorry, would you like some chocolate?’ I say.

’oh yes.’ Proceeds to pull out a sandwich bag, bags up half my egg and leaps out the car with not a backward look……

to add insult to injury, my dog ate the rest of my egg when we stopped off to stretch our legs on the journey home 😔

Driving down a road one day just a regular 30mph road through a small town centre, the route took me past a newsagents/off licence on my left which had parking bays parallel to the road. As I drove past one of the parked cars which was facing the way I was coming from, the driver started gesticulating angrily at me. This was at least 5 years ago and I still think about it. She was in a parking bay on the opposite side to which she wanted to travel and I was driving in the road - how could she possibly have thought she had right of way? And if she wasn't thinking that, what on earth was she thinking?

I am somebody's stranger. A few years ago I was on a train journey home after an overnight meeting up with friends to celebrate the end of our post-grad course. My seat was at a table, and opposite me was a woman with paper cups and 4 cans of G&T. We chatted a bit and she said that she was celebrating nailing an important sale. She wanted me to celebrate with her and offered me a drink. I responded by pulling out the leftover box of wine from the night before, accepted one of her paper cups and had a drink with her!

I've had a few but the 2 that stand out the most.

1. I was 16 and at a&e at 3am with a work colleague. While my colleague was being seen to, i was in the waiting room and a man sat next to me, told me how beautiful i was and asked if I'd like to go for a walk around the hospital grounds with him. Wtf?

1. On the last train home with a friend, she got off 2 stops before me. A guy sat on the seat facing me kept staring at me and flicking open a flick knife. He got off at the same stop and allsorts was going throughy mind, i was petrified! Rather than walk out of the train station to the bus stop home, i called a cab and stood for 10 minute's waiting, cacking my pants in case he reappeared!

Not that weird, but walking around a big M&S clothes department one day, and a woman was loudly whistling Hey There Delilah for a couple of minutes. This was years ago, but it stuck with me as it was so odd.