Unexplained Personal Mysteries

In My Humble Opinion
1

Over the holidays, my sister and I were reminiscing about a strange thing that we remembered from when we were kids. For a period of about 6 months, we would periodically find a little puddle of… something… on the floor. It looked almost, but not quite, like blood – the closest thing would be the liquid at the bottom of packaged meat. The puddles were tiny, maybe the size of a dime or a quarter at most, and would be isolated in the middle of the floor – no drips or anything around it. It happened probably 7 or 8 times, sometimes once every couple of weeks, but sometimes a month or two between. It was always on tile - sometimes the kitchen, sometimes the tiled sunroom, sometimes the tiled foyer (all rooms which were not connected to each other). Sometimes it would be there first thing in the morning, sometimes when we got home after school. We did have a couple of cats and a dog, but they were confirmed by the vet to be perfectly healthy and unhurt, and were healthy and well for many years afterwards. It didn’t necessarily coincide with when meat had been handled or cooked, and after about 6 months it just stopped, and never happened again.

I hadn’t thought of that in probably 30 years or so until it came up over the weekend, but my sister and I both remember it vividly. My parents have no recollection of it at all.

So, please share your weird what-the-hell-WAS-that stories! (And please chime in with any explanations, too!)

2

Walking down a familiar route one day, I decided to turn down a street I’d never walked before. And found a hundred dollar bill.

3

For no particular reason, I got up one night in the wee hours and walked around the dark house. I stepped out on the back porch, looked up… and the biggest, brightest shooting star I’ve ever seen in my life went right across the center of my vision. A fat neon-yellow crayon streak at least twice the width of the moon, maybe longer.

4

The exact same thing happened to me once when I lived out in the country. I stepped out on the patio in the middle of the night, and a huge shooting star went over my head soooo close! It looked like a cartoon of a shooting star with a long tail. It seemed to be about fifty feet over my head.

Re the OP: did y’all have any pets that might have left those puddles?

5

OP said they had cats and dogs. I’d bet on a cat with a recurring UTI, squatting to piddle out a trace of bloody urine on the nice cool tile floor.

6

I guess I was about 12 years old and walking home from the movies in th rain. My dad decided to come pick me up because of the rain. When he picked me up he asked how I manged to stay so dry walking in the rain. I responded that it seemed to rain in a circle around me. He got very angry and advised me not to be repeating nonsense like this. Bottom line was I didn’t get wet.

7

Maurie, was the dog an unspayed female? I recall from childhood that the dog we had would drip little spots of blood like that when she was in heat; my parents would try to keep her in the house during that time.

8

:smack: Sorry, I missed this: “We did have a couple of cats and a dog…”

I think Miss Mapp is right.

9

My wife and I were walking around one evening in Sucre, Bolivia, and walked past a barber shop, which caught our eye. We stood and looked in for a few moments, and remarked that it looked like it was straight out of the 19th century. It was bright and electrically lit, but every other visible feature seemed straight out of the 1890s, including the dress of the barber, who was busily cutting someone’s hair in the old barber chair. It was like looking at a museum display, or a recreation at a historical site. We continued to talk about it, and went back the next day, and again in the evening, and it wasn’t there. Sucre is a very small town, and we couldn’t have been looking in the wrong block. We walked back and forth and accounted for every store-front, and then waked every street nearby – it just wasn’t there.

10

Whoa. Was it just the one time?

Re my OP and pets, yeah, I can only assume that it had something to do with them, somehow, but they were all spayed, and after an at-home check for any visible issues, we did take them to the vet who found nothing either.

11

On a trip hauling some cattle, hard start to the day.
To my friend who was along for the ride I said, “What we need now is a flat on in inside dual wheel.” Yeah, about ½ mile farther down the gravel road, had a flat on an inside dual.

Hours later and 60+ miles farther North on a twisty & hilly highway, I said, “To cap this day I bet the right front wheel will shear off completely at the bottom of this hill in that left turn coming up.”

Maybe 10 seconds later the right front drops, I can’t control the steering and we grind to a stop on the edge of the highway at a 10 foot deep drop off embankment. Yeah, the lug bolts just sheared off the the wheel & tire, not flat, was trapped under the drum and was being scooted along beneath the truck.

Several hours later as we finally got going again, my friend said, “If you say another word I will get out & walk.”

I have had that type of thing happen flying but never two in a row like that time … I never say anything out loud but I only remember when the things did happen anyway. I bet I had more wrong ‘feelings’ but them I don’t remember.

12

A similar thing happened to me many years ago. I had set out to town to buy a certain type of jewelry. It had a bit of a spiritual meaning to me. I went around town for hours, in every jewelry store I could find, without finding the type of jewelry I was looking for. I became a bit stressed out running around for and in stores as hours went by and at last unhappy to have to go home without what I was looking for. But it was about six o’clock now and the stores closed one after another. This was in the winter and it was getting dark, cold and windy.

I hurried back to the train station empty handed. And there, on the other side of the street from the station building where had I arrived hours earlier, was a very small jewelry store. I ran in there to take a last desperate look before the train left, and wouldn’t you know: There it was. And it was perfect. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was at last and how strange it was that I had missed it when I first arrived. Here I had been running around the whole town, and the store was just right outside the train station!

A couple of days later a friend of mine saw the necklace and since it was of an unusual kind he asked me from where I got it. I said from a little jewelry store on the other side of X Street from the central station in Big Town. He looked at me and said as a matter of factly: “There’s no jewelry store there.”

I was a bit flabbergasted. Weird thing to say, I thought. I mean, obvsiously there’s a jewelry store there – I bought this piece there for crying out loud.

The next time I was in town, pehaps a couple of weeks later, the first thing I was about to do was to look not for, but *at *the store right across the street from the station. I stood there and stared, and I couldn’t believe my eyes: There was no jewelry store on this street.

While I haven’t worn it for twenty-five years, I still have the little trinket. It is in a an bowl here to my left together with some change and what not. It just now occurred to me that I got the bowl from my doubting friend a few years ago.

13

Obligatory XKCD link

14

He, thanks. Yeah, this is one of them stories I never tell people in real life, because it really sounds like something you’ve made up. If not then so today the story is like a cliché.

15

Many years ago I was doing yard work in my backyard. It was very hot and I decided to take lunch break. Around the corner was a deli/pizzeria so I decided to head over direct from my backyard. Normally I would call ahead but I thought waiting there would be a good because to enjoy their Air Conditioning. Also I would have had to go inside to call since this was before I had a cell phone.

I go from my backyard, up the block and around the corner into the place and one of the kids is standing there holding a finished sandwich saying “Here you go”. I was a regular there and ordered all sorts of things but this particular sandwich when I ordered it I ordered it in a special way that was off the menu and that was how they made it. I was confused but they swore I called it in. To this day I have no idea what happened (but it was a good sandwich :slight_smile: )

16

Years ago, before smart phones (not that it matters), I noticed I had a message on my Nokia cell phone. I retrieved it. It was my recorded outgoing message from my answering machine at home.

Explain that.

17

Maybe they just saw you coming?

I used to work in an office a long catty-corner from a decent Chinese place. I found what I liked and ordered it every time, to the point where all I had to do was sit down and the food would appear in front of me within the minute.

By the later days of the year I was there, the food was sometimes waiting on the table for me, still sizzling. They saw me leave the office building and called back the order.

ETA: They thought it was hilarious.

18

Not impossible but I didn’t always order the same thing (just that when order this particular sandwich it was in a special way) plus they said it was called in.

19

I had a couple weird ones with missing cats.

The first one was when we got a new cat, Sammy. He was a total sweetheart to people, but he was awful to our other cats. We eventually had to give him away. Anyway, things to came to a head when one of cats, Mystery, decided she couldn’t take him anymore, and ran away.
One day passed, and another, and another. We went calling, and searching, and she wouldn’t come back. We were devastated.
That night, I was up late, after everyone was in bed, and I… had this feeling. I just knew Mystery was out there. I looked out the door (it has glass panes) and I didn’t see anything, but I somehow had this conviction that if I opened the door, she’d come in. I almost did it, too, but everyone was asleep, and I didn’t want too wake them up and have to explain I was unlocking doors in the middle of the night because of woowoo feelings. I went back to bed.
Next morning, I wake up to my dad shouting. Mystery was back.
My next story is about our other black cat, Enigma. A few months after we got him, he went a-wandering and didn’t come back. Day one, day two, day three. No Enigma.
That night, I had a strange dream. I mean, most dreams are strange, but this one I thought was odd even when I was having it.
It was a grey and rainy afternoon, in the dream. I was standing around, looking out the window, and I saw Enigma come in. I opened the door, and he walked right in like nothing had happened, and went to his dish and ate while I petted him.
I found it bizarre in its mundane, realistic detail. I mean, I’m crouching there, his wet, dirty fur sticking to my hand, and I’m thinking, “This is just what petting a wet cat feels like in real life. It’s the exact thing.”
So I wake up, and I do something I don’t think I’ve done before. I announce to everyone that Enigma is totally coming back today, because I saw it in a dream. Cat in the rain, incoming. (I should mention here that it was summer and it hadn’t rained while I was up for at least a month).
Afternoon… the clouds suddenly come in. It starts raining. It continues raining for the rest of the day, and after nightfall Enigma strolls in, wet and hungry. Yes, he felt exactly like my dream when I touched him.

I’ve been thinking about that day a lot- I mean, that’s some real weird there- and trying to figure it out. I mean, I think it had been raining at night that month. So I suppose I could have been dreaming of rain because I was hearing rain. But I can’t explain the perfect timing, or how it felt so real that I actually went and told people, multiple times, that it was going to happen. Like I said, that’s not the sort of thing I usually do.

20

Ooh, I love unsolved mysteries. Too bad Robert Stack is no longer alive to narrate them.

Mine happened during my first semester in vet school. On my answering machine, I had a message from whom I thought was a woman in my class, asking if she wanted to study for physiology class with me. I called her number in the school directory, and she replied she had no idea what I was talking about. I played the answering machine message back to her. It was only THEN that I noticed the message was full of sexual innuendo. :o

I never did figure out who actually did leave the message, but I did get quite a kick out of it.