Have you ever met a stranger, who you never saw again, that you still think about?

[Backinthe1960s]

It was at my local stamp club. We didn't get many new members turning up so when one did we all to used to make a big effort to make them feel welcome. It was the night of our annual quiz and he and I were in the same team. He seemed a really nice bloke with a vast knowledge of stamps and postal history and I thought he would be a good recruit for the club. Afterwards we went for a quick drink at the local pub, he paid for a drink for the two of us, then he went off towards the gents toilet.

I never saw him again and he never came back to the stamp club. For ages I wondered what happened to him.

I had an odd encounter when I was 19. I was going through a bad patch with feeling a bit lost and low and was travelling in Goa with a friend.

A stranger came up to me and showed me a ring with a face on it and asked if I recognised him. I said of course not and was a bit 'off' as didn't usually talk to people I didn't know. But seconds later it was as if I had the wind taken out
of me as it hit me like something almost primeval that I did know that face (which is never seen in my life so it was as if from within me) and I felt an odd fear.
I still don't know what it meant and is probably be wary if the stranger came up to me again but id want to ask what he meant and who was on his ring and why he asked me!

I literally had a sense of screaming in my head when I realised I knew the face on the ring as my rational self said of course I wouldn't . It was the oddest thing and I think about it often - it was so unlike me and I'm a very rational person.

I can think of three people that I still wonder about.

The first was a man I saw as I was walking to work one day, probably ten years or so ago, he was walking towards me and looked to be in a bad way.

He looked like he'd been sleeping rough and also was cut and bleeding from several places. His face had this sort of shell shocked look. As we reached each other I asked if he was alright but he just kept walking and didn't reply.

We were outside the local hospital at the time, so I think he was making his way to A&E. I watched him go around the corner but I still wish I'd followed him just to make sure he got there and perhaps offered to get him a drink from the machine while he was waiting to be seen.

The second one isn't exactly a stranger, he was a doctor, or actually I think a registrar, at the hospital where I was giving birth to our daughter. She was very premature, and we knew she was going to die.

There were complications and I was very ill, and they were talking about sending me to theatre, but that would have meant that I certainly would have been away from our daughter when she died, and DH would have had to choose between being with me and being with her. I would have insisted he stay with her, but I would have been heartbroken to miss a second of her precious life.

It was awful and very distressing, but this one doctor stepped in and completed the procedure in the delivery room, meaning we both got to stay with our daughter for the two hours she survived. I still feel so grateful to that doctor today, and think of him and hope that good things happen to him.

We thanked him at the time, and I told him how much his actions meant to me, but there really aren't the words to describe just how much it meant or how thankful I am. Dr Singh, you're probably not reading this, but I'll say it again anyway, you gave us something we could never have gotten back, time with our daughter to tell her we loved her and say goodbye. We had two hours with our newborn that I would have rather died myself than missed out on, and that was thanks to you and your kindness and skill. Thank you.

The third was a woman at the same hospital, maybe a year later, when we were expecting our third child. She was sitting inside the quiet room we had been taken to a couple of years earlier when we lost our first son to stillbirth, and she was crying and holding hands with one of the midwives. I saw her as the door was opened, just for a split second or two. I think she'd probably either just been told she'd lost her baby, or was waiting for the scan to find out. I hope in her case she had good news rather than bad, although I'll never know.

Some amazing stories on here. Mine are more mundane, but I'll share them anyway.

I was at Gatwick airport in my early twenties (over 20 years ago now) and saw a woman ask on her own in flood of years. I went over and asked if she was alright, of there was anything I could do. She put her hand on me, and started talking but hadn't said much when what I assumed to be her husband came over. He was clearly angry with her. I can't remember what he said, but she looked at me with sad eyes and said, 'thank you, I have to go'. I do wonder what happened to her.

Before that, possibly ages 19, I was on a train from Glasgow, going to visit a friend. I was sitting reading a book, but became aware that the guy sitting diagonally opposite on the other side of the aisle was staring at me. It really annoyed me, I didn't look at him, I just carried on seething and reading. He got off at an earlier stop to me. I looked up when he was standing at the door to be struck by that thunderbolt. He looked at me and I looked at him, he left the train and walked down facing me, and the whole time we were just looking at each other. I was tempted to run off the train, but didn't.

I looked for him on my return journey, but didn't see him. It was hundreds of miles from where I lived anyway (I tell myself). Just wish I'd have looked up at him instead of getting annoyed at him while I was on the train... Ah well.

Huge - your story about the doctor is lovely, and I hope he is reading it.

I have a few.

1. Years ago, as teenagers, my best mate and I had all our stuff stolen (money, coach tickets, everything) whilst at Glastonbury so we had to hitchhike out of there. We managed to get a lift off these two guys part of the way home. We fell slightly in love with them because they seemed so much older (20s!) and they chatted away. They fed us at the service station and when it was time for us to get another ride, I still remember they got out of the car and waved us off. I remember being excruciatingly embarrassed because it was obvious we had a crush on them.

1. On a train journey, when I was about 20, I sat opposite a middle aged man who was obviously getting very drunk and a bit loud. Everyone moved away but I was too embarrassed, especially after he said that just because he was drunk didn't mean that he wasn't a nice person. I was a bit bunny in headlights. He started singing the first line to "it's a rainy night in Georgia" and then said I bet you even know that song. I said "I swear it's raining all over the world." He went all quiet then and calmed down and proceeded to tell me that he was on his way to see his dad, who he didn't like and hadn't seen for years, but who was dying. We talked until I got off at my stop, I can't remember what about though, but as I was getting up from my seat he simply said thank you. I do wonder what happened with him and his dad. Poor man.

1. On a flight to the Far East. Aged 26. I was travelling on my own to meet up with friends. I noticed a stunning young woman in the departure. She was Asian like me but that's where the similarity stopped because she was all tall, willowy, beautifully made up in lovely clothes. I was a wreck having gone through surgery and a long term illness, wearing joggers and trainers. As it was, we ended up being sat next to each other on the flight. We got on really well. We also chatted to the passengers (mostly tourists) around us. When she went to the toilet, I was chatting to the older couple behind us. They thought that the young woman and I were travelling together. I said something like oh, I don't know anyone like that in my real life, she's so gorgeous. The older woman said "oh she's very glamorous but your beauty shines right through from the inside." I think that is the most beautiful thing anyone has said to me. I will always remember those lovely words.

*dont even know

This needs bumping!

Growing with 5 siblings and being one of the older ones, I had to mind the younger ones. We all went to a funeral then onto pub for tea with the deceased man's family. Very rural tourist spot. A couple sat enjoying their lunch spotted me and came over to my parents to tell them how lovely I was, looking after my brother and sisters. The man tapped my nose and told me how good i was just before they left. When they were gone i remember wishing they were my parents so turns out I wasn't so nice after all (grin)

My parents are great, I just felt lost in the crowd sometimes.

I had just turned 21 and was on a safari holiday in Africa. We all had separate lodges along the river and all the guests ate together at a long dining table. One day I got sat next to this businessman ten years my senior, spitting image of Jamie Dornan. God, he was so attractive. We talked the whole way through lunch and I got the impression he was flirting with me.

After lunch, I went back up to the wrong lodge by mistake and ran into him sitting on the terrace (Freudian slip?). Was embarrassed and apologised. Chatted a bit more, he was curious about the people I was there with (my employers).

Got sat next to him at the bar later on and then he said something about "My wife..." Cue . He left the next day: I always wonder what happened to him. Can't even remember his name, unfortunately.

I was driving to the shops and few months ago and I saw a man swaying in the street and falling over. He kept standing up and falling over. He couldn't walk more than 3 steps. He was walking in the road and cars were just driving around him. He was clearly drunk. I drove past and felt bad. I turned back and stopped the car. He was standing up and swaying. He was drunk and I could tell her was disabled.

I started speaking to him and he told me that he was disabled due to being hit by a car as a child. Really hit a nerve as my sibling was also hit by a car and left severely disabled. I told him I was concerned and he said no one cared about him :(

He said he was going home and trying to get to the station. He started walking off and fell again hitting his head. He already had cuts and bruises on his face and head. I offered to drop him to the station about a mile away. He was really sweet and it was just sad. It sounds dangerous but he was harmless. I dropped him there and he got out and was falling about the place.

I called the police and said I was concerned and told them where he was. Not sure what happened.

In 1996 I was walking through Bank on the long walk from the Northern line to the Central line and I passed an anorexic girl. She was absolutely skeletal, I would say weighing 4 stone or so, walking at the speed of a snail and obviously using every ounce of non-existent energy to stay upright and keep putting one foot in front of another. I spent a few years with an ED in my teens and early 20s, never as bad as that though, and it was like looking at how my future could have been.

Every time I pass the point I saw her I think of her. I imagine she's long dead but she has stuck with me in a way I would never have anticipated.

Yes, when DD was about 8 weeks old I had PND. I was walking home with her in my sling and I could hear footsteps of someone behind me coming quickly. Paranoid that they were going to come talk to me about the baby (as people do when you have a really little one) I tried to walk faster but couldn't. My not wanting to engage and feeling so depressed was a symptom of my PND.

She did come to talk about the baby. But after saying how lovely DD was it was like she saw into my soul and started telling me that I was a good mum, that it was ok to feel sad and that she could tell that I loved DD. I was in tears. She walked me all the way to my building door, talking about her own experiences as a mum and giving me emotional support.

I've always been so grateful to her, she was such an angel who showed me that things could get better...and soon after that DD started smiling (i.e. I had some feedback!) and I eventually recovered from PND.

This thread is lovely.

When I was a teenager I left home and moved abroad. One night I was sat on the porch of the house I lived in when the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen got out of a car. I literally couldn't breathe. It was a physical, visceral reaction. He crossed the street and walked up the sidewalk to the porch and sat down next to me. I can still tell you time time/date/ what we were both wearing and the reg of his car. That night we went out dancing and my knees shook for hours.

He was kind of a surrogate son to the family I had just moved in with. It was months before I could even speak to him properly. I simply couldn't function around him. It turned out he felt the same way. We were together (despite many visa/ age/ money) issues for some years until we just couldn't be anymore. We stayed friends and even now, 20 years on, we meet very occasionally. We live 8,000 miles apart now but somehow we can sometimes meet. We have never been unfaithful to our spouses either.

Whoops. My point in telling that was to say that years ago free we had broken up, I was waiting for a train to NYC from Chicago when his absolute double stood next to me on the platform.

We ended up sitting next to one another all the way to NYC (a journey of some days back the ) & just clicked.

When we got to NYC he gave me his number and told me to call him the next day. He worked in the WTC.

I didn't because he had the same name as my recent ex-beloved and I felt too shaken by the encounter. 10 days later I headed home & 2 days later the WTC was hit on 9/11. I could never bear to find out if he'd survived.

Years ago, DP (now DH) and I were in a pub near where we lived. While DP was at the bar a couple came and sat at the table next to us. I was immediately fascinated by them as they both radiated a nervous energy and chemistry and initially assumed they must be on a first date.

However, shortly after sitting down, the woman started asking about her date's children, and his response was clear that he was still very much in a family unit with his children. I also noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring, and his female date was wearing a huge engagement ring.

Chemistry aside, things started platonically, however as the evening continued it became clear we were watching an affair unfold, and they became more and more intimate.

I overheard them making arrangements so they could bump into each other in the train station (with their OH's in tow) so they could legitimately go for a drink together on her birthday.

As the drinks flowed they got more passionate and emotional until the female of the couple burst into tears saying that she couldn't be his second best and he would never leave his wife and she loved him etc. He stared into his pint glass. She then leant over and kissed him passionately and they left together (I assume to the Travelodge next door).

It was like watching a soap opera and I don't think DP and I spoke to each other for the entire evening, we were too engrossed. It was both horrendous and fascinating at the same time.

I often think about that couple, and their poor respective partners and whether they met for a drink at the station and if the partners ever found out.

When I was 16 I went to an Open Day at Canterbury Uni. On the bus back to the station I saw a gorgeous young man, we kept catching each other's eyes, and ended up getting on the same train, sitting in eyeline to each other.

Trains being what they are, there were issues, and this brought us chatting and travelling together back to London.

We then mutually decided to spend the evening sight-seeing in London rather than getting our respective trains home.

A delicious moment running across the road had us holding hands, and before we had to part for the night and finally head to our different parts of the country, we kissed.

It was all so wonderfully exciting and innocent that I still think of it now, nearly 30 years later... If we had ever met again, no doubt real life would have upped and smacked us in the face!

Not sure how I missed this thread the first time round! Started reading and thinking I don't have any but a few have come to mind now.

The first was a girl I met, she wasn't technically a stranger as she was a friend of a friend. I was part of an online antenatal club on a now defunct parenting site, we'd met up at one of the members houses for a weekend. I was feeling a bit out of my depth as all the other girls seemed really similar, all gorgeous and confident and girly girls whereas I was shy and quiet and didn't really "get" most of their conversations. We went out for drinks and the girl whose house it was invited a few other friends, and one of them I just clicked with instantly. This very very rarely happens to me, I felt like myself for the first time in ages just chatting to her. I lost contact with the other girls not long after that but I still think about her, it must have been ten years ago now.

The second was a couple I met when staying in a lovely B&B in Scotland, in a desperate attempt to save my marriage. It ended up failing anyway because the husband was an abusive twat. This other couple were just so lovely to us, me especially. I think they realised there were issues between me and H and so if they saw me alone they'd talk to me about music or something. H accused me of flirting with the bloke and trying to bed him (he accused me of that on the aforementioned antenatal club meet up as well, he just didn't like the idea of me speaking to other people) but even though he was attractive I had no intention of flirting, he was just nice to me and so was his wife. Their relationship was one of the things that made me finally give up on H and leave.

Mine isn't terribly intersting.

When I was 20 and pregnant with DS1and trying to sort my maternity pay through citizen's advice as i'd started a new job whilst already 12 weeks pregnant. I got chatting to a lovely old lady outside. We walked into the town centre together. Sat on a bench and chatted some more. As I went to leave she wished me well with the baby and handed me one of those address labels you stick on the back of envelopes and asked me to write and send a picture of the baby when it arrived.

She seemed lovely and friendly and unfortunately between our meeting and the arrival of DS I lost her address on the small sticky label. I always felt bad about not writing. As I think she would have genuinely appreciated it.

Love this thread-can't think of anything to write at the moment ..

several people, all around the same situation.

friend and I travelling through Africa, got mugged at knife point one evening. Next morning we needed to get across town to the bus station and we were really shaky.

One of the girls from the hostel we stayed in took us to the bus. She spoke to a Pakistani family on the bus and explained our situation. The elderly father of this family helped us on the bus and then stood there, looked round at all the bus's occupants and said very clearly, These girls are with me. I felt as if quite a few people 'backed off' in some way I can't describe.
We needed to get off the bus at Mombassa, at a small insignificant place. When we were nearly there I asked someone on the bus where we were, and the man behind us heard me. He was a huge black guy with the most enormous smile I have ever seen. He grinned and said he was getting off there and he would help us.
Sure enough he got off, found us a safe taxi with his friend and was generally so lovely, to these 2 stupid tourists. I asked him his name - Solomon. We got safely to the place we were staying in, and we never saw him again. I am sure he was an angel.

another one -
age 18, first car (battered citroen diane) on my way to my boyfriends, first time I had driven a long journey on my own, first proper journey in my new car. I had to go down M4 and round M25. M25 had just opened, and there were no service stations, and none on the M4 either.
I ran out of petrol in the middle lane of M25 just where M23 joins, so 5 lanes of traffic. I sat in the car and panicked. This guy pulled in on the hard shoulder, ran over, I jumped out, we pushed the car to the hard shoulder and then he jumped in his car and disappeared.
I think he probably saved my life. I didn't even get to thank him,

I have two, both took place on trains.

I was reading a book on my iPad, when an elderly gentleman asked me how I felt it compared to reading a book in print, and I got into a conversation with him. He was in his 90s and had been a research physicist. He was Jewish and had escaped Nazi Germany in the nick of time. His family had all got out separately and had taken some time to find each other. He had been instrumental in the setting up of one of our leading Universities. At the end of our journey, he shook my hand and thanked me for indulging an old man. I told him that it had genuinely been one of the most interesting train journeys I had ever had.

The other was when I was sitting in a train carriage that was empty apart from one other woman. I looked up from my book and realised that she was crying. I wrestled with my inherent Britishness and eventually said that if she would like to be on her own, just say, but if she wanted to talk about what was wrong, that was okay too. She told me she was fine in a way that made me think she wanted me to pursue it a bit, so I asked her again if she wanted to talk.

It was what would have been the fifth birthday of her twins who had been stillborn. She had gone on to have other children, but the pain had never left her. I asked her what their names were and she said nobody ever asked that, nobody ever thought of them as real people. We talked about them all the way home on the train.

In my lunch break at college nearly 20 years ago I used to chat with the Big Issue seller who stood at the entrance to the local shopping centre. Found out his first name and that he wanted to go to college to become a nursery nurse. Sometimes I wonder if he achieved that and if he got his own house. I should post on the FB group for that town to see if anyone knows him.