# Creepy "Inside" Encounters **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 9, 2018, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742 "2018-06-09T07:48:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/1 "2018-06-09T07:48:10Z")
Do you remember this scene in Woody Allen’s _Annie Hall_ (1977)? \ ***Duane:** Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you’ll understand. Sometimes when I’m driving… on the road at night… I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The… flames rising out of the flowing gasoline. **Alvy Singer:** Right. Well, I have to - I have to go now, Duane, because I, I’m due back on the planet Earth.\* I had a similar albeit not quite as disturbing experience this week with an acquaintance. Acquaintance. Not much chance we’ll grow closer. But he wanted to tell me something “because you’re an educated man,” he said. He then went on to detail how Hitler and many high Nazis escaped to South America and ruled a little Nazi empire for decades. Said this was all detailed on the History Channel. Uh-huh. Well. Anyone else have a similar creepy experience? Someone letting you in on some secret something since you’ll “understand.” ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/2 "2018-06-09T08:11:36Z")
I have had just a couple of those in my life. My hypothesis is that they are doing their own special version of the “argument from authority” fallacy - that because you were in their estimation “an educated man”, the mere fact that they **told** you the crazy story lends it more credence. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/3 "2018-06-09T08:50:22Z")
I have a friend that constantly tells me of her extra-marital affairs. I tell her I don’t need to hear this shit. I don’t think she really has affairs. I don’t know what her reasoning is. But, what you gonna do? Not talk to anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/4 "2018-06-09T14:12:05Z")
I had one about how misunderstood and misrepresented the Nazis were. They may trigger a lot of these exchanges. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/5 "2018-06-09T14:22:57Z")
Not too long ago a guy at a grocery store was telling me about how he was stocking up on supplies for unspecified upcoming Global Troubles. He said that people in other countries were doing the same, but the US government/media was preventing Americans from hearing about it. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/6 "2018-06-09T14:46:36Z")
Once upon a time I had a conversation with a new coworker who did not stick around very long… She noticed that I had a book with me and asked me if I liked to read. When I said I did, she asked if I thought it was “worth the risk.” This struck me as odd, so I asked her what she meant by that. First she stated that reading is “dangerous” and I got the idea that she was one of those people who thought reading could give people the wrong ideas. A fundamentalist of some sort maybe. But that’s not what she meant. She then confided that she’d once been a big reader herself, but that then disaster had struck and she’d been drawn into another world while reading and hasn’t been able to escape. Then she spent several minutes lamenting about how horrible the people that were supposed to be her husband and son were, and how badly she wished she could return to the “real” world and her “real” family. I struck her as pretty nice for someone from “there” but a lot of people sucked. Uh huh. Okay. I don’t know if she had some flavor of Capgras syndrome or was schizophrenic or what, but I do know that she absolutely believed what she was saying. Needless to say, this sort of thinking and a tendency to pick fights with coworkers meant she didn’t stay employed there very long. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/7 "2018-06-09T15:19:44Z")
I don’t know if this counts, but I had a coworker one time who was just very very weird. She had lots of pictures of family, boyfriend, etc. on her desk though. Then someone saw those pictures at a store…in the same frames… She had bought them and left the demo pictures in them to display. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/8 "2018-06-09T16:14:23Z")
Years ago I walked into a local barbershop for the first time. Most of the chairs were taken and it is a one-barber-shop, so I was thinking about leaving and returning some other time. The person currently getting his hair cut was an adult with Down Syndrome. An older guy who I assumed to be his dad was standing next to him. A television mounted on one wall was tuned to Fox News. Someone said, “What a retard!”. I cringed, but nobody else seemed bothered. Then a story about the president (Obama) led to someone saying, “I still can’t believe we have a n\*gger in the White House”. I froze, glancing around the room, but the only comments were murmurs of agreement. I left. I never went back. When people ask me why I drive over an hour each way to get my hair cut I tell them this story. ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/9 "2018-06-09T16:56:14Z")
In 2001, I attended a Summer University and one of my classmates was a quiet, soft-spoken man. He must have been in his late 40s but it was difficult to tell - he had kind of a baby face. He certainly seemed harmless and well-grounded. But one day when we were walking back to our dorm, he told me completely out of the blue : “Do you know that I was abducted by aliens once ? Do you want to hear the story ?” Uh hum… that was interesting, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/10 "2018-06-10T04:44:54Z")
I had a creepy experience at the supermarket one night. In front of the clearance rack, a wizened woman with a heavy Slavic accent asked me, “Are you American?” When I said yes, she asked, “of what extraction?” I told her Danish. She then said, “I thought you were northern European. I am Ukrainian…” Then, apropos of nothing, she grabbed a packet of leftover clearance Passover napkins off the shelf, pointed at the Star of David, and added, “… but not THAT. Trash!” Seriously. In the 21st century, inside the Beltway. I was dumbstruck, and asking myself, “did she actually just DO that – out of nowhere – in front of a total stranger?” She was staring at me expectantly, though, so I stammered vacantly, “how quaint.” She then asked me, “do you know Ukraine?” Helpful as ever, my brain tossed out the only Ukraine fact at the front of my mind: “Mila Kunis is Ukrainian.” Then I mentally berated myself, “Idiot! Isn’t Mila Kunis Jewish? This nutcase is going to fly off the handle.” Fortunately, though, she didn’t seem to know who Mila Kunis is, and she wandered off to inject someone else with venom. ---
**Author:** ![campp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creepy-inside-encounters/815742/11 "2018-06-10T12:20:07Z")
We are friends with a woman and were at a party one night. This woman’s sister drew in my wife and told her the whole story about how her first husband was really the Zodiac Killer. She had long boring intricate stories about how all the dots connect. I had forgotten to warn her about it. And our friend kept looking at my wife and rolling her eyes as if to say, “I’m sorry about her”. Whenever the Zodiac Killer gets referenced (not that often), we always add “You know, Cathy’s husband” and giggle.