my most surreal experience was when i was sleeping one night… and i was alone at home… i think it was around 2 am… and all of a sudden… the light flicks on… stays on about 1 second and flicks off… i would understand if it was some power surge or something like that… but heres the kicker… i heard the light switch flick on and off…
after that my heart didnt race… it went mach 5
sorry for the double post
Two college-related strange surreal experiences:
One fine day I was driving down the street where all the crackwhores/college student live, and I saw a large group of men, all wearing black plastic garbage bags, with holes cut out at the arms and neck. One of them was holding a garden hose, and the water arced out of it. I studied them for a few seconds as I was driving by, and one of the guys took a flying leap, hit the wet grass, and skidded for a ways.
The only thing I can think of is that they were drunk and wanted to play slip-and-slide, but a rather low-tech version. It was strange.
The second one happened recently. I stay a couple of times a week in graduate housing. It is as quiet as a tomb in that building. If I hadn’t seen a few people in the elevator I would think it was deserted.
So one night I was reading Property and thinking about future interests when I hear this rhythmic banging on my window. My room is three stories up. There is no way anyone could reach it, and there is no ledge a bird can perch on outside. I briefly considered freaking out, but went to the window to find out what in earth was making that noise.
Turns out it was an empty Sprite can. On a string. Hanging from a window two stories up.
The string was just long enough for the can to hit my window, and the wind was causing it to bang loudly. I examined the can. It was empty. The string was tied around the metal pull-tab.
I still can’t figure this one out. Why would someone tie a can with a string and hang it from a window? When it was empty? I mean, I couuld see them maybe trying to hide something like pot in the can, but if they were why would they hang it so low?
Oh well. Maybe someone can help with this one. I am still clueless.
I know I’ve written about this incident before on the SDMB, but a half-hour of searching for the post has not turned it up. I suspect it was lost during the Winter of Missed Content. So I’ll re-create it here.
It’s the spring of 1984. I’m in the fifth grade. I remember that in math class an assignment was given on a Tuesday that would not be due until Thursday. Procrastination was a trait of mine even then, so I was planning on doing the assignment on Wednesday night.
The following day, the teacher asked for the assignment to be turned in. I remember looking around in mute astonishment as my fellow students began passing up their papers to the front. I ask the teacher why we were turning in the assignment a day early.
The teacher calmly and politely informed me that it was Thursday.
Honestly, I was floored. I had absolutely no memory of the day before. I looked in my notebooks and found notes that I had taken the day before, in my own handwriting, with yesterday’s date on it, and I had no memory of writing any of it. I’m racking my brain for any recollection of the day before, and none of it comes. It was as if someone else had lived my life for a day.
This freaked me out beyond words, and when the teacher saw that I really was genuinely bothered by this, she told me after the math class was over that I could turn in the assignment on Friday with no penalty.
To this day, this incident is probably the most surreal moment in my life, and it still bothers me.
It’s fun to see this thread resurrected; I read it before but I’d forgotten most of these stories. Mine:
I was in a store in the mall with a friend paying for some purchases when suddenly a man in a gorilla suit walked in, laid a banana on the counter, and walked out again.
To this day I have no idea what that was about.
I used to a have great dane…the coolest dog I ever owned. This dog was extremely smart, protective of kids, and apparently explosive. For those of you who don’t know, deep chested dogs, like danes, explode with no warning. Yeah, kinda threw me for a loop too, but thats what the vet said. Its called bloat, their stomachs twist, they swell up, and die. Some times it takes days and you can save them. Some times it happens quick and you cant. Mine was a quick one. I go outside to call the dogs in, and see dog number two standing in the yard staring at the porch with a disturbed look on his face. I never saw a dog look like that, but hey…this was a night for firsts. I look down at the patio and see my beloved Great Dane, blowed up like the federal deficit, his collar looking 8 sizes two small and a pool of dried blood by his mouth, and well, you don’t wanna know what was coming out the other end, but he was dead as Michael Jackson’s career.
So, let me tell ya friends, there is one thing worse than seeing your beloved pet laying there looking like something out of tool video, and that is trying to figure out what to do with a dead, exploded, 160 pound dog…by yourself, with a bad back. At this point, I did what most keyboard players would do…I called my bass player. He was the go to guy in the band for all the problems that arose, and this was a problem. Plus his dad was Italian, wore an Armani suit and carried a gun, and didn’t seem to have a job but managed to acquire a major restaurant chain. I figured he would know what to do with a body. I left the message on his machine, “Hey man, this is badger…My dog offed himself, and I’m not sure what to do about it. Give me a call”. I then called another friend, who’s family owns a tombstone factory and who is into self mutilation and heavy metal. Maybe he would know. He said he would help, but not until in the morning. He just put his kids to bed, and his ol’ lady was gone…I didn’t ask…
So, Me and the other dog had a restless night, and the next morning I got up and went and picked up my friend and his kids. On the way back, we stopped by Wally world, and got a plastic tarp, a shovel, a pick, a jug of bleach and bottle of ammonia. We came up with this plan on the way back (I swear we weren’t stoned…just thinking like we were). The idea was to use the bleach to sanitize the patio (it was covered with…well, we wont get into that). The ammonia was to soak the grave we were going to dig with the pick and shovel, so the other dog wouldn’t get curious. The tarp was to wrap him in. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 120 degrees at least, the dog had now been exploded for a good 15 hours or so. We walk up to the door and there is a note from the human society on my door. Someone complained about me exploding great Danes in my back yard. I called the number on the note and told them I had nothing to do with the demolition, and that I was trying to take care of it but I had to go for help. They guy sounded glad that he didn’t have to help, and said ok. The kids wanted to see the dog. My friend looked out back and said told them that wasn’t happening. He walked out and threw the tarp over the crime scene, we tried to dig. This is Texas. There’s a reason we don’t have basements around here, and I discovered that without a jackhammer, dynamite, or at least a few more Great Danes we were not going to be able break apart the rocks that existed just a few millimeters beneath the surface. A grave, even a shallow serial killer grave, was not going to happen.
About that time the phone rang, it was my bass player, right on time as usual(he was a good bass player). He headed over and took over the situation like the Wolf in Pulp Fiction. He called animal control, and got them to agree to come pick up the remains. They called back and said they would need the dog at the curb. I lived in a nice neighborhood at the time. Well manicured lawns, nice houses…I was already the bad influence in the area, I can only imagine them coming out and seeing an exploded dog the size of a zebra lying on my curb. I started to panic. My two dear friends took over…remember the adage; friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies. Well, I’m here to tell ya that’s what we had here. They made me stay in side (not that they had to twist my arm or anything), and folded the dog up in the tarp, then in a huge piece of cardboard that I had saved for working on my car. They duct tapped the box up like a big ole Great Dane taco, and drug it to the curb. I walked out with my friend to see help put up the tools in the garage, and when we walked back around the house, we see the bass player stumbling around like a bass player at 3 AM on a Saturday morning. The patio appeared to be on fire. I had just about had enough of this shit, it was like living in a Salvador Dali painting commissioned by Quentin Tarrentino. There was smoke pouring off the concrete. There was an empty bottle of ammonia, and an empty jug of bleach. There was a bass player with a pompadour and a mop. We grabbed the bass player and drug him into the yard, out in the fresh air. I yelled something incoherent at him about being out of tarps and boxes, and that you don’t mix bleach and ammonia…Apparently he didn’t know this. He does now, so at least someone learned something out of all this.
I called the Veterinarian, and told her what happened. I expected a reaction, but she said, well, that happens some times. She said that people try all sorts of stuff to prevent it, elevating their food, giving them dry food, wet food, small amounts of food, food all day, sacrificing chickens, and none of it apparently has any effect whatsoever. There is a mod out there you can do to your Dane, where they sew the stomach to the ribcage, but we didn’t know about this mod, and its not exactly a DIY kind of thing. About that time the Animal control guy showed up. He insisted on disassembling the taco and just taking the filling. We got the hell out of there before he did, and went for food. NOT MEXICAN, btw.
Ok, so I was a chubby nerd of about 14 with bad hair and bad glasses - zero sex appeal. Two students from my junior high were to be sent to Baylor in Waco for some kind of weekend leadership conference, and my History teacher, convinced I was some kind of genius, chose me. Wow, a trip. An airing! Which of my bad black clothes (gah!) shall I bring?
First surreal moment: the kid from another school licks the TV screen in our hotel room and declares that he “likes women with big, slappy asses.” Woah.
Set-up:
On sign-in at the event, I espied a young thing, the kind I thought only I could appreciate. Her beauty wasn’t obvious, let’s say, but I was nevertheless completely taken with her. Anyway, I discreetly admired the little details of her whenever I got a chance, but I never talked with her - not one word. It made me tense, but it was nice at the same time.
Cue Second Surreal Moment/End of Universe:
At a presentation on the last day, she was seated directly in front of me, without anyone else near. She turned around, looked my straight in the eye, and said, clear as day: “Do you want me to give you head?”
I swear, the universe crunched and banged twice before I mustered an answer under her steady, gorgeous gaze.
“…What?!” I choked.
She repeated it, I swear to god. “Do - you - want - me - to - give - you - head?”
Under those circumstance, I didn’t know who I was. My chest compacted my heart into a meatball and I died, but she was still waiting for my answer.
“…What?!” I choked.
She held her gaze for two more long moments, then slowly turned around, leaving me to look at her hair and slowly put together the pieces of who and where I was and what had just happened. I was semi-shattered for hours, adrift in the surreal world I’d wandered into.
In the long car ride back, it suddenly crystalized: she had said “Do you want me to move my head?”
(If it didn’t happen, does that make it more or less surreal?)
In our town, there’s a fellow who dresses up as different WWF wrestlers and stands on the sidewalk next to one of the main drags in town to posture and show off. I’m not sure who he’s currently dressed as, but the costume is red and includes a mask. We saw him when we were on our way to the mall about two days ago, holding a wrestling championship belt over his head and cheering.
Back when I first moved here, he portrayed “Sting” with KISS-like makeup and black clothes. The first time I ever saw him he was executing flying leaps from a short business sign on a busy intersection, and yelling something (whatever “Sting”'s slogan is, I suppose.) Not ever having seen him or heard about him before, you bet I found THAT a totally surreal sight. Since then, after having heard from long-time residents what a fixture “the wrestling guy” is, we’ve gotten used to him. Now when we drive by him, I’ll comment to my daughter, “Look, there’s the wrestler guy,” and she’ll say something like, “Oh yeah, there he is.”
I’ve actually met the guy, (for a while he worked at a local department store) and when he’s not in wrestling mode he seems like just a regular guy… But with quite an unusual “hobby”.
About 25 years ago, my father was in town and stayed in my house. During the evening, I had the most vivid dream of my life, about a plane crash at night. There were emergency vehicles everywhere, and firemen were hosing the fuel off of terra cotta tiles. It was near a mission style church. I got up, fixed a pot of coffee and was still shaking my head and reeling from the horror of the vision when my father got up, came in to the living room and said “I had a horrible nightmare about a plane crash!” When I told him I had had the same dream, he walked out of the house.
okay, let’s see…
my friend and i (we go back to about 4th grade) share the same birthday, April 1st, 1985. She is 12 hours older than i am (incidentally, my mother remembers being in the same hospital room as her mother). for our 12th birthday, we had a joint party with all of our friends. we were both really into the Garfield comic strips at the time and so we bought each other some of the books. We both got three books for each other, and one of them was the same book.
i was driving to/from work on day during summer and it was either late morning or dusk, i can’t recall. but as i’m driving down a -normally busy- road, a buck just dashes across the street infront of my car, through someone’s driveway and into the woods. he appeared to emerge right out of an apartment complex that sits along the road, just pranced across the road, stunned the two people in the driveway as they washed their truck, and into a very thinly wooded area. i don’t know where he was expecting to go . . .
sophomore year of high school, my parents got the scatterbrained idea to take a trip to cancun for thanksgiving week. we’re standing in a long line in the airport to get our luggage checked and (were we in cancun already? i believe we were) i looked at a man infront of us and pointed out to my dad that his luggage tag said “Quakertown, PA” - we’re a town over, hailing from Montgomeryville (all suburbs outside of northeast philly). So my dad said soemthing to the man about being from quakertown. Turns out they went to high school together and knew each other. My father lived on one side of the train tracks (no, i’m not lying) while this man lived on the other. Later, my father related to us that the man was apparently a trouble maker when my father knew him in grade school (wrong side of the tracks, yuk yuk) but what was he doing in cancun? he was doing missionary work with his children for their church. blinks 
when i was about 10, my family took a trip down to DC to see a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit of Vermeer paintings at the national gallery. my mother had called in advance to make sure we could buy tickets when we arrived and she was told that tickets would go on sale at 12, so we would be fine. we arrive at the gallery and go up to the ticket booth only to be told that the tickets are all sold out. “What do you mean?” sez me ma, “I was told that they wouldn’t go on sale until noon” (the time that this conversation took place). “No, actually, they just sold out.”
my mom was upset, practically in tears, when these two older ladies in fur coats came up to us and offered us two of their extra tickets for free, as the rest of their party would not be able to join them. my mom was so elated, she didn’t know how to thank them. so my mother and i took the extra tickets (which worked out fine as my brother and father were content enough to see the Arms & Armor exhibit for the gazillionth time) and went through the exhibit. At the end, we talked to the two ladies for a bit. Turns out that the one shared my birthday, April 1st. blinks For a few years, i innocently referred to them as the Art Angels.
oh, i can’t believe i forgot this one, it’s really good.
5. the summer after i turned 14, i was down the shore with my family for our traditional two weeks in Sea Isle City, NJ. for once, i had made a friend, and so we were playing in the ocean when the girl’s sister called her. She yelled “Hey, Hayley!” and we both turned around. Ha, we shared the same first name and didn’t even realize it. Well, our mothers thought this to be absolutely adorable. The next day, Hayley and I were walking around and my mom called out “Hayley Jo!” using my middle name as a matter of distinction between the two of us.
we both turned around.
Her name is Hayley Jo Jacobs, mine is Hayley Jo Charles. We were both named after Hayley Mills, the actress, though her middle name has a different origin than mine. but still.
oh yeah, and when our neighbors across the street first moved in, we discovered that their little girl’s name is Hayley. She looks and acts like I did when I was her age, it’s a little weird. She and her brother are the same years apart that my brother and I are, as well.
maybe you don’t think the name is all that uncommon but for 18 years, i have been the only Hayley and the only Charles in every yearbook i own from grade school.
(incidentally, right after i started dying my hair a shade of bright red, Mr. Personality debuts on tv, and there was a comment in the Washington Post, or something, about the “red-headed Hayley” who was the subject of that show.)
Back in the days when I went to NC State, I lived in a rooming house. I walked to school daily and passed a CPL power plant on my right.
One day I’m walking by the power plant and notice it’s entirely covered with birds. Thousands of little black birds. They were all just sitting on the wires and transformers. Just like the playground scene out of Birds, only 100 times bigger.
I stared at them for a while, then walked on. Never saw that many birds in one place since.
Here goes; a while back I worked at a small company that mada mobile homes, and the whole team pulled an all-nighter to finish a new model for a upcoming show. When I drove home, I had been up for a little under 24 hours.
Driving down a foggy country lane on my scooter I saw something appear through the fog. At first I thought it was someone on a bicycle, but when I stoppen because the road was blocked I noticed it was a real, and rather large ostrich!! (Funnily enough, ostriches aren’t that common in the Netherlands…)
While I stood there, eye to eye with an ostrich, contemplating my sanity, or lack thereof someone came out of the driveway from a nearby farm and slowly approached the ostrich, pulled a burlap sack over it’s head and walked it away. I continued home, and went to bed.
The next day I went back to the same spot, an suddenly saw a sign for an ostrich-farm I hadn’t noticed before in the 3 years I had been taking that route.
Go figure…
I’m from that neck of the woods and I remember it. I don’t think it rained frogs, though. For some reason, they appear after a rain. I get them in Cary, IL every couple years. I also was in one in Oklahoma when I was a kid. There were so many you couldn’t even walk without squishing one. I don’t know why they suddenly show up, but they do.
This is an interesting thread, two stories too add…
(1) You should never meet your heros…
I’m a huge fan of the motorsport Formula One, and specifically of Jordan the Irish team run by Eddie Jordan (who’s a bit of a celebrity here)
When this story happened I’d only been really into the sport for perhaps a year, it occurred around 1996.
I grew up on a farm and when cattle and sheep had to be moved from field to field myself and my cousins (enough to make a small army) had to help move them to ensure that it was done safely, as they had to be taken over public roads, if quiet country lanes. All sideroads had to be blocked as they moved.
It was like a complex military operation but always ran fairly smoothly as we were well practised.
Anyway this day I was moving ahead and had to stand in a small sideroad to block it when a small family car drew up, a red peauguot 306, with one person in it. I flagged him down, and when he rolled down the window told him what was happening and it would only take a few minutes. He said no problem and for the next 5 or so minutes I stood in silence beside the drivers door with the window rolled down as we both watched the sheep go past. As the last moved past he nodded, rolled up the window and drove off. At this point my cousin, who we’ll call Barry because thats his name, came running up breathless, he’d been trying to get my attention for the past few minutes.
“Did you know who that was!!!”
“No?”
“That was Eddie Jordan!”
And it was and all…I’d just spent 5 minutes in a private interview with one of the most important people in my favourite team in my favourite sport and we’d said nothing to each other all…
(2) Sirens
I stayed in New York for several months a few years ago. In the UK the nuclear attack warning siren had a very distinctive noise which had been drilled into our minds my government messages and occasional tests over the years (however it no longer exists) but its a noise I’ll never forget. And I happen to have an interest in the subject and have read quite a bit about it.
I’d been in NY for a couple of weeks when during a heavy thunderstorm I’d fallen asleep only to hear in the early hours of the morning the eerie wailing of the nuclear attack signal!
Half-asleep and totally chilled I leapt out of bed only to be greeted by the room lighting up with the most amazing flash…this was it we were under attack and my time had come…took several seconds to realise that the flash had been lightning from the storm and no-one else in the house was panicking.
Too my hosts great amusement I determined in the morning that the local fire-alarm sirens had exactly the same noise as the attack sirens at home…
One of those very eerie moments that I’ll never forget…
My moments are nearly as surreal as some of the other ones stated here but they certainly freaked me out.
I went down to Charleston one weekend a couple of years ago with a couple of friends of mine, to visit some friends of ours.
Driving down the highway, approaching the city of Charleston, we passed what I assume had to have been the Charleston airport.
Where there was a jet. Hanging in midair.
I have no idea what kind of plane it was; I’m not too versed in those sorts of things. I guess it was a 747 or some similarly large passenger jet. Whatever it was, it was not the sort of plane that should’ve just hung in midair like that without moving at all.
My friends saw it too, and they were as perplexed as I was.
Relatedly, I was riding with a friend of mine one night a month or two ago when we were driving around the backroads of the county we live in; I was staring out the window, as I tend to do, and I saw some lights moving in the sky. I figured it was a plane or something (this wasn’t too far from the local podunk municipal airport), but they were moving kind of fast, and then they just… eerily stopped moving.
I was driving and I saw a kid on the sidewalk next to me, riding a scooter. About a block later, I saw what appeared to be the same kid, riding in the same direction, but there was no way he got that far. Remember that cat in The Matrix?
It was dark, and they were both wearing (apparently) all black, so the illusion is easily explained, but it was still a surreal experience.
Damn, bdgr, you made me laugh until there were tears on my face. You tell a better story than Jim Anchower.
As for me, I randomly ran into a friend of mine from Houston–while I was walking down the street in Hong Kong. A few years later, I met a hostel mate from Taiwan–while I was in the McDonald’s just off of Wall Street in New York.