I’m sure this has been done before. (Hasn’t everything been done before?)
I don’t know why I got to thinking about this as it happened some ten years ago.
My cousin got into a pretty bad car accident and wound up in a coma. The family was maintaining a death watch as we were told that it was only a matter of time before he succumbed. (At one point the last rites were performed.)
He remained in the coma for days which stretched out to weeks though there wasn’t much in the way of improvement.
One day I decided to pay a visit and my uncle and aunt along with one other aunt were getting ready to meet with the panel of doctors to discuss the best course of action. I was prepared to excuse myself from the proceedings but my uncle said that since I was family I should stick around.
The ensuing discussion was one of the most bizarre things I had ever experienced and it seemed straight out of moviedom. They talked of removing my cousin from the life support machinery which would result in certain death. They discussed experimental surgery which might or might not work or whether they should take him home, feeding tubes, whirring machinery and all and see if that would make a difference. The discussion was replete with my aunt (my cousin’s mom) alternately shouting and weeping, my other aunt quietly trying to maintain order and the doctors speaking more frankly than anything I had ever heard. The whole while I sat speechless and merely observed the spectacle unfold. At the end of the discussion there were long hugs all around with the decision to keep my cousin at the hospital and not take the chance with surgery. When I left, my whole being was numb.
Quick footnote before we open things up. My cousin was eventually released for home while still in a coma. He progressively awoke and in the end lost about 20% motor skill ability and about 10% of mental faculty. He was damn lucky all things considered.
Ok I’ll tell about a surreal experience I just had last week.
I went for my usual monthly appointment for waxing at a unisex spa where I’ve been going for 3 years. I went to the front desk to check and and started heading to the waiting area where there is a large-screen tv and recliners.
The new receptionist said to me “oh we have a place for women to wait over here” and indicated to a large hallway with two chairs. I said “oh I’ll just wait where I always do, thanks” and started to head over to a recliner. She stopped me and said “oh that area is just for men, we have some nice ladies magazines you can read over here”.
I kind of stammered and said “I’ve been coming here for 3 years and I always wait here” but she was insistent that that women weren’t allowed in that area and I needed to go sit over in the “ladies area”.
I didn’t know how to react. It was so bizarre! I sat in the hall not really knowing what to do. I wanted to just get up and leave but I felt like I would be causing a scene if I did. It was embarrassing. I eventually decided to just have my appointment like planned and then send the owner an email.
He did reply saying he was sorry and that it would never happen again.
I came home from work one day and my dog was gone. His kennel had been jimmied and he was stolen. It was weird because I could not accept it and I just kept looking and looking. It felt like a bad dream and I kept thinking I would wake up any minute and all would be well.
No I never did, he was my first dog as an adult, a german shorthaired pointer and I think I treated him more like a son than a dog. We sure did have some good times together. 40 years later I still think about him.
My grandfather’s sister was 14 years older than him, pretty much a surrogate mother as their mother had been 100% tired out with the baby thing by the time he was born, just wasn’t excited about dealing with it all again.
My grandfather was a quiet person. Still waters. His older sister was convinced that they ran deep, though. She was sure he had psychic powers and would tell us stories about it–the connection he had had with their brother, how he knew when the brother was injured, how he saw Death at the moment their brother died. Then my great-aunt would turn her eye on me and say that psychic powers were passed down. He was my mother’s father. I should have inherited the powers.
Yeah, okay auntie. Whatever.
When I was twenty years old she was diagnosed with salivary cancer and eventually moved to hospice. At that point my grandfather was too old to drive himself the distance to see her, so my mother and I went there, picked him up, and drove him to see his sister for the last time. She was a charming person and despite being nearly blind, nearly deaf, and in pain from a large salivary tumor, chirped on and on about how I wore my hair and what kind of clothes I liked and did I have a cat or dog? And held my hand the whole time.
As she talked, I started to see black spots. I got dizzy. I extricated myself saying I needed a drink of water and walked out of the room, where I leaned against the wall and passed out. I came to on the floor outside.
Later that day I told my mother what had happened and she got interested. She said that her father–my grandfather–had done exactly the same thing when his father-in-law, a good friend of his, was dying in the hospital. Came to see him, held his and talked, then stepped outside the room and passed out. Sympathy with the dying.
Don’t know if this qualifies as “surreal,” but it’s definitely disturbing.
When I was in 1st grade, I was going to a different school than the one I went to kindergarten because that school closed. In my class was a girl who would come up to me and try to touch me in the crotch and butt area. I would just push her away and tell the teacher, and it stopped after a few occasions. As far as I remember nothing ever happened with her beyond being told to stop the behavior. Being just 5 or 6 years old, I didn’t really think anything of it at the time, and didn’t think about it at all until I randomly remembered it about a year ago.
We moved the next summer and I attended 2nd grade on at a different school, so I don’t know what ever happened to that girl (or her name, or even what she looked like), but thinking about it now I can’t help but think if that were to happen today, surely some sort of home investigation would occur. Not that that sort of behavior is an ironclad sign of abuse, but from what I know about that sort of thing, it’s generally not a good sign.
He said he was trying to figure out what he was wanting for his spa. He said that he had always felt awkward as a man going in to a unisex place so he was wanting to make it more comfortable for men.
I said that if he wants to have a men only spa that’s fine but if he’s going to provide services for women then they have to be made as welcome as the men. We still pay for our services and women often pay more than men for the same thing.
I pretty much left it at until he figures out what he’s doing, I won’t be returning. It’s a shame too because the lady who does my waxing does a really great job.
I guess really I’m conflicted and still don’t really know if I’ll go back.
When I was in high school, I missed the bus one day and walked to school. Arriving late, I entered the front lobby to exactly what was to be expected–empty silence. Everyone was in class after all.
On walking in, though, I distinctly had the clear impression that someone had died.
And once I got to my classroom, I discovered that in fact someone had died. In fact, it was the other girl who usually waited at the same bus stop with me. We’d only spoken a word or two to each other over the year. (She was a pretty athlete, I was, well, not. She was more interested in listening to her music. I was more interested in reading my book.) And she hadn’t just died–she’d been murdered by her boyfriend and his other girlfriend. With a shovel to the head, in an abandoned field.
So probably what happened was just my brain was a bit spooked by the silence and started generating possible explanations. But damned if at the time it didn’t feel exactly like a “psychic experience.”
Oh yeah, another one. In fourth grade, I was walking around with a friend of mine when a guy stopped his car in front of us, blocking our way. “I got some pictures of wrestlers in the back seat, do you want to see?”
“No thanks.”
“Do you boys like candy?”
“No thanks” and we walked quickly away.
It was exactly like something out of a cheesy PSA.
We went in and told my dad about it, he came outside, and that guy’s car went by again. He was covering his face and accelerated away.
This happened four years ago in the middle of winter. My daily driver was a Jeep Wrangler w/ 5 speed manual transmission.
It was early in the morning and I was getting ready for work. At 6:00 AM I went out to the driveway, started the Jeep to warm it up, then went back inside the house to eat breakfast and whatnot. (The Jeep was parked at 40.071116,-83.927624.)
At 6:30 I walked out of the house to go to work. I walked to the driveway, and… no Jeep. The Jeep was simply not there. It vanished.
So I was standing there, dumbfounded, trying to figure out what happened and what I was going to do. I could only assume someone walked up our (very long) driveway, noticed the Jeep was running, and stole it.
After standing there for a good 60 seconds, I heard a faint sound in the distance. It sounded like a running engine. So I walked around in the dark, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be coming from the creek in the woods (40.070914,-83.926862).
I walked down to the woods, toward the sound of the running engine. Though it was pitch black out, I could see… it was my Jeep. :smack:
After starting it and going in the house, it had apparently rolled down across the front lawn and into the woods. It stopped when it hit a small tree. Good thing the tree was there, else it would have plopped down into the creek.
No I never did, he was my first dog as an adult, a german shorthaired pointer and I think I treated him more like a son than a dog. We sure did have some good times together. 40 years later I still think about him.
I know just how that feels! I got ready for work one morning, got my coat and shoes and keys and headed out the door and - no car. I just stood there like I started thinking crazy things like “maybe I parked it in the back yard and forgot, I’ll go look there”. “Oh did I park in the neighbours driveway by mistake?”
Nope it was stolen! It was found about half a mile away just parked on the side of the road.
One day I had gone shopping at the mall and found out the the store i was looking for was further down the road. I was sitting at the light leaving the mall, I was the third car back. To either side of me was the entrance to a strip mall that ran beside the mall.
As I was sitting there I heard this little voice say ‘turn here’. I looked up and saw the sign for the store I was looking for and so I made the left turn into the strip mall.
No sooner had I parked and gotten out of my truck when I heard squealing wheels and a crash. When I turned around I saw somebody had come across the intersection and crashed into the car that had been behind me that was sitting where I had been sitting. I remember the look lady who had been behind me gave me, like I had somehow done it to her.
In high school my two best friends (A and B, which are their real initials) had a falling out. I was closer friends with B, but I thought she was in the wrong. So when A had invited me to lunch with her and some other friends I started to go with her instead of with B. The little voice said ‘don’t go’. Lucky for me I went off to lunch with B instead. One of the people out with A had a bag of pot on him and when he saw the school administrator he panicked and threw it in the bushes. Of course this attracted the attention of the administrator who found the pot and the entire group was brought into his office and all of them (except for the son of a policeman for whom everybody lied and said he hadn’t been with them) were suspended.
There were a few other times I heard the little voice, but since I listened I don’t know what I could have avoided. The one and only time I didn’t listen I wish I had. It told me not to marry my ex husband.
About 18 years ago, I lived in Asheville, NC, and I was learning to play pool. My friend, that was teaching me, and I would go to the same bar downtown several times a week and play. We would often see this one guy and his girlfriend there, enough that we would say hi to each other when we came in. I moved to Tucson, AZ, and found a neighborhood bar that I liked and started going there to play pool. Shortly after I started going there, I walked in one night and heard “hi”, looked over, and it was that guy and his girlfriend, playing pool.
Another one: After leaving my husband, my two young sons and I lived for two weeks in my parents’ friends’ basement, that had a sliding glass door to the outside, until they got my grandfather’s house ready for us to move into. One night, I dreamed, or I thought I did, that I woke up, sat up in bed, and looked out the sliding glass door and saw a man standing there looking in on us- I could clearly see him because I always left the outside light on at night. Suddenly it went dark and I couldn’t see him anymore. I didn’t freak out or anything, I just laid back down and went back to sleep. I assumed that I had dreamed that. The next day, I went out there and looked at the light, and it was broken. I still to this day don’t know if I did dream of seeing the guy and the light broke by itself, or if there really was a guy there and he broke the light.
I wish I could say what Im going to say anonymously. Ive had several very strange things happen to me in my little life so far.
When I was 4 I had a T&A and somehow nearly bled out. In the hospital I was lying motionless and comatose with a large bore IV just placed in my arm and not taped. My mother spoke to the nurse and the nurse told her, “Oh that little girl isnt going to pull it out. She’ll be lucky if she lives.” Couple days later I went home. Weird.
Car accidents that should have killed me. Lots of those. Once I rolled and flipped a VW with a suicide bumper and landed inches from a huge oak tree, missing a concrete culvert along my merry way. Crawled out the door when the car stopped flipping. The car was totally destroyed according to insurance co.
But the latest was very strange. I was getting a reiki treatment when I felt myself leaving my body. As I left I looked down at my “self” but wasnt particularly afraid. Then I found myself in deep space surrounded by the Nothingness that is All (my term for whatever it was). No sound, no cold, no heat, no feeling or sensation or emotion, no thought. I was simply aware that I was now a part of the energy of the universe. And it was ok with me. I dont know how long I stayed like that, only that eventually I took a breath and was in my body again. I think this must be what dying is. I hope so because it was pretty cool!
We had a bowling team from work. Guy named Duck was standing eating a cheeseburger down by the scoring table when a glob of ketchup and mustard fell to the floor. Larry, a kind of fit, clean cut guy, bends over, wipes the glob off the floor, straightens up, and licks it off his finger. When I WTF!ed to it, he merely said, “Duck’s my buddy”.
Well, this one time I was dressed as a Greek Orthodox priest in a bathtub full of burning spanners while an aardvark painted a bust of Lenin purple. That was pretty surreal.
1993 Storm of the Century. I was in Pittsburgh. I had everything I needed to get me through the weekend, but when the snow started I thought one more pack of cigarettes might be called for. Set out for the convenience store; turned back for an umbrella, because the snow was thick and heavy. Big flakes, falling steadily, and with no wind to stir them up, falling relentlessly straight down. No traffic on the street; no foot traffic. Just white silence. And on the way back, the footprints I’d left going out were already starting to be filled in.
This is so weird I hesitate telling it in real life because I am aware of how embellished it sounds:
Back in my running days, on long runs I would place a bottle of water on the bed rail of my truck; I would run out several miles, loop back and grab the water bottle as I passed my truck, then continue on.
On this one day, I grabbed for the bottle while running. It was a hot day and the bottle was slippery from sweating. It squirted out of my hand.
The bottle traveled upward, bounced off the cab of the truck, bounced off the hood of the truck, hit the ground and bounced right up to me. I caught it in one hand and continued running without breaking stride.
mmm
I started thinking crazy things like “maybe I parked it in the back yard and forgot, I’ll go look there”. “Oh did I park in the neighbours driveway by mistake?”