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.

Creased 🤣

Whenever I go to Paris a nutter goes out of their way to talk to me. This one I’ll never forget as it was v sinister on reflection, not just odd.

in 2013 outside the Notre Dame, a drop dead handsome young man came over to the bench I was resting on, whilst waiting for my friend. As with another PP, he was ridiculous handsome- movie star looks, teeth and body- and could have spoken to anyone, but he chose me- not ugly, but overweight, unglamorous and a hot, sweaty, exhausted mess in the humidity.

He started by making polite conversation, progressing to asking for a pen and then asking where I was staying. V charming, chatty and keen. But as he seemed so weirdly keen and was so incredibly handsome, as an already suspicious, paranoid, cynical person, my radar was on alert after about 30 seconds.

My (gay) male friend came back from taking his pics soon after and the evil look the gorgeous guy gave was quite disturbing, really nasty and filthy. He also muttered various angry words under his breath and disappeared just like that into the shadows from whence he’d appeared.

To this day, I think we escaped something quite horrible- trafficking as in the Liam Neeson film Taken, an assault or at the very least, a robbery.

It’s not put me off Paris per se, but has made me even more aware of weirdos. This frightened me as he was so handsome, so oddly keen and the nasty expression on his face came from nowhere.

Trust your gut instinct and never give out unnecessary details when travelling.

In a busy train station in Switzerland, my man and I were on the platform waiting for a train and eating ice cream (magnum type). A random young bloke came up to me and asked me, in German, if he could have a taste of my ice cream! (I speak German so understood him). I was pretty taken aback so all o said was no, you can’t, and he glared at me and flounced off in a huff. There was no other interaction or conversation. So bizarre.

The man on the train who insisted that my mum was famous. He kept asking me over and over again, despite my assurance that she definitely wasn’t.

He eventually declared that my mum was definitely Cheryl Baker. I mean, I’m blonde, but nobody else has ever spotted a resemblance.

I was about 16 and with a group of friends who just laughed the rest of the way home.

@HazelBite

You’ve just reminded me of a school trip I went on at 17 in the late 80s - it was to Russia and of course pre Glasnost and there was quite alot of resentment from some citizens against Westerners.

We had a lovely tour guide called Natasha, who was taking us around Moscow - we were all fairly well behaved grammar school girls but obviously in quite high spirits and consumed by the novelty of it all.

We we’re all standing round Natasha in the big department store - GUM as it is known and listening to its history and the economic reasons for lack of stock etc etc.

I was at the back and suddenly someone punched me quite hard in the region of my kidneys, not really violent but enough to make me spin round and exclaim - it was a tiny old lady with a face like thunder who rattled off a stream of angry Russian….. I was utterly bemused, and Natasha intervened, responding to the woman sternly and off she went grumbling away.

Turns out some of the die hard old guard really really didn’t approve of Westerners and their capitalist ways.

I wonder if he wanted the name or your (supposed) surgeon, or if he thought you were wearing false ones, and he wanted to buy them from you?

Outside Charing Cross station waiting for a cab when this bloke comes up to me and says: “your dog reminds me of my dogs back home. I breed them you know.” I asked what breed of dogs they were and he replied: “Rhodesian Ridgebacks.” (My dog was a golden lab/retriever cross.) I asked him where home was (he had a broad London accent) and he said (I live in Mexico, but I’m over here sorting out probate for my dad.) I said I was sorry for his loss and he said (yeah, he was 103. He died 10 years ago.” I exclaimed that it was a long time to get probate sorted and he said “yeah, it’s all the government’s fault. They used to call it death tax.”

I was almost sorry when the cab arrived.

Mine is probably boring compared to some of these, but it's when I used public transport in my early teens.

One was some older man who I think decided I'd been staring at him on the bus. I hadn't. He was seated in front of me but kept looking round behind him. When it was time for him to get off the bus he started shouting in a loud voice, directly looking at me, asking why I'd been staring at him. I must have looked really puzzled, which I was, as then he shouted 'No, it was you old man' to an elderly man, then offered to fight him. His girlfriend tried to calm him down then ushered him off the bus.

Another bus one was where I'd just got onto a double decker bus, and it was completely empty downstairs, apart from me. One man got onto the bus at the next stop, and ignoring all the empty seats decided to sit next to me on my double seat. I said 'excuse me' and got up to move to another seat on the bus. He asked why I was moving and if I was getting off. I ignored him. I did feel bad at the time, but in retrospect I think it was the correct thing to do.

I don't use the bus now thankfully. Most of the weirdness happened there. I'm aware that people may not have been well.

Perhaps it was me when I had two in nappies 😂

I remembered another...
Drove around the corner and through the park (same one) to get to the main road and there is a man walking towards me in the middle of the road with a guitar on his shoulder. He looked angry and like he was having a loud conversation but there was no-one else around. I was only doing 15 but I slowed even more and angled away to the other side of the road to avoid him. When I got closer, he took the guitar off his shoulder and started swinging at my car while shouting that I was in the road and couldn't drive there. I swerved, sped up and once I'd passed him, he put the guitar back on his shoulder and carried on walking.

I saw him several times before and after that, and would describe him as one of the local alcoholics. A few weeks later he was arrested for kicking off in the local asda and assaulting people in the street/damaging parked cars as he tried to get away.

Maybe I don't live in the nicest of areas 🤔

I was on a train back from London in my early 20s when a guy came and sat next to me. I was a bit put out because there were lots of empty seats and I didn't want someone sitting next to me really. I carried on reading my book and about an hour into the journey he passes me a note that says "are you a nurse?" I was wearing a green dress and black cardigan because I'd been to a meeting so maybe he thought that was a uniform. I handed him the note back and said "no". Luckily he got off a few stops after that but it was strange.

My auntie was once sitting in Euston station on the way back from a break in London when an older lady who had been sitting with a family near by came up to her and stared at her for a moment. She then leaned in and said, "Don't worry, I'm back with your dad. We miss you but we're still here whenever you need us."

She then walked away. Turns out she wasn't with the family she'd been sitting with and this was so interesting because my auntie had literally just lost her mum - her dad had died many years before.

My auntie has never forgotten and she fully believes it was her mum come to comfort her.

One of the first time my mum and dad visited us in London, we were walking home from a restaurant dinner outside the British museum when a tbf very drunk man in a suit walks towards us with his willy out pissing all over the pavement, he wasn't holding it just letting it do his thing veering left and right. We had to give him a wide birth Very weird

Another time in ASDA, my son was about 10 months old in his buggy and started crying, this woman walks over and I thought she was going to try and appease him but she stick her head right in the buggy and shouts in his face, FUCKING STOP CRYING. Gosh that really freaked me out

When I was much younger and cooler my friends and I were driving to an outdoor rave which was about 80 miles away. About halfway there my friend in the front seat was smoking a cigarette and flicked the butt out of the window. The wind blew it in the open back window so the driver quickly pulled over so said butt could be removed before it set the car on fire.

At the side of the road was a wallet with a small amount of cash and some cards,
inc a driving license of a guy about our age.
We took it with us thinking we could post it back to the owner.

Arrived at the rave and halfway though I saw a guy that looked familiar, it was the owner of the wallet! Turns out he had stopped at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to go for a pee and must have dropped it by mistake.

When I was about 18/19 I was approached by a man (early twenties - nervous type) in a park claiming to be a trainee hairdresser and he asked if he could cut my hair for free - he had a cape and a chair etc. This next bit I really can't believe now... I let him (he took a tiny amount off) and then said I would pay him to put my hair up for the end of year ball at the weekend. He turned up, on time, at my halls of residence and attempted to put it up. Eventually we both agreed he didn't really know what he was doing so I paid him half and off he went. I don't think he was a trainee hairdresser at all. WTF was I thinking on so many levels?!

On a train in my early twenties, headphones on minding my own business. Middle age guy sits across from me, after about ten minutes he taps my leg and motions for me to take the headphones off so I do.

He then asks "Are you German"....I say (in my thick West of Scotland accent) that I am not German.

Man then says "Oh well you look German" and that was that.

Still not sure what it means to 'look' German?

Many years ago. Buying my 1st flat, aged around 23.
Couple selling were around 60. Quite well to do. One of their portfolio of flats.
I was there around 15 mins (it was small).
Before I left the woman said: 'you look just like XXX'
XXX was the name of a missing woman whose body had just been discovered.
Nationwide news (it was particularly grisly).
I must have looked shocked (apart from the wierdness of it, I didn't look similar)
She said: 'perhaps you are her?' Her husband didn't blink.
I dealt with the lawyer from then on.

@SlightlyJaded , I worked in Soho in London for over 20 years from about 1990 and was told repeatedly, by many different people, that I had a clone. Or I’d be asked why I’d rudely ignored someone last night in such-and-such a place when I’d never even been there. I was so curious to see how alike we’d actually be in the flesh, and was convinced I’d eventually bump into this woman as it was such a small world in those days, but I never did. I always wonder if she got told the same thing!

On Christchurch Road in Reading, two blokes approached me, pointed to the church spire and asked if it was the Eiffel Tower. They seemed to be deadly serious and very disappointed when I said 'no'. I then had to spend quite a lot of time explaining they weren't in the right city (although Reading isn't even a city) or even in the right country. They wanted to know how to get to Paris from Reading. They were quite sweet but it was challenging as their English wasn't good.

A lady once started speaking to me. I thought she was just a bit lonely. My children were with me and she asked about their father I said he was not around. She then asked about my dad and I said he had recently died. She then started going on about me and my children will be going to tell and my dad died because of my sins. I just walked away.

But over coming weeks months even she kept approaching me in the street and saying things about me and kids going to hell. One time she stopped me at the cash point and started going on I told her I was busy and to leave me alone I told her she should not be so close to me at a cash point . In the end I said one day your going to say something to the wrong person and end up with a slap. She then started getting back into her car . Saying god will protect her. I replied is that why your getting in your car. She stopped doing it after that

I did see her harassing school children at one point and i told her to leave them alone.

Oh God I've just remembered mine and it was horrible.

I was at uni in a different city (aged 19), and I had gone for a job interview in an area I wasn't familiar with at all. As I got off the bus and tried to get my bearings, I realised that it was getting dark and there wasn't a single soul around. The road was absolutely empty. Then suddenly I saw a middle aged ish woman coming towards me so I thought I would ask her for directions for the building I was searching for (no smart phones /sat nav etc). She stopped and looked at me and said 'are you x from Birmingham?' I said no I'm not from Birmingham. She kept looking at my face and smiling this strange smile and said 'you're x from Birmingham arnt you. You are arnt you?' I said no honestly I'm not from Birmingham, I've never even been to Birmingham, and as I said that, she slapped me very hard across my face. So suddenly that I didn't even realise it was a slap until my head stopped reeling and I looked at her face, and I will never forget the look of pure hate in her eyes. I ran away from her as fast as I could and when I looked back she wasn't there.
I was in tears in the interview and the staff were so lovely and caring but didn't know of any crazy ladies in the vicinity so I've put it down to mistaking me for someone who had stolen her husband and eaten her child and moved on 😂

Agree with this.

I had a very odd encounter with a stranger once about fifteen years ago but remember it as if it was yesterday. There was a local carnival so people, including myself were lining the streets. This man came right up to me and reeled in horror/disgust (actually screwing his face up and saying ‘eugh’) and making direct eye contact with me. I’d never seen him before in my life and was ‘attractive’ so it was just so weird and random.

I helped a young woman with a small baby with her tray in an M&S cafe, we then shared a table as there wasn't much space, and I held the baby a bit.
She told me her life story, she'd had the baby with a man she barely knew and they were getting married in a month, she insisted I come to the wedding as she didn't have anyone to invite, she took my phone number. When we got back to the cars (I helped her with her bags to her car) she gave me a foot massager because she was a podiatrist and I said I'd had plantar fascitis.

Never heard from her, which was lucky because I certainly didn't want to go to a random wedding!

so many of these stories are men stopping women and making them feel uncomfortable…..

Both of mine are. I have lots more bus examples involving general sexual harassment, even the bus drivers(!), not fitting the 'odd' criteria of the thread.