I was in my car in a parking lot waiting for someone in a store. I glanced up and noticed a light fixture hanging by a wire and swaying in a mild wind. A few seconds after I saw it, it lost its grip and fell to the ground.
Driving on the freeway there was a car pulling a trailer, just ahead of me in the next lane. As I looked at it, the trailer hit a bump and became detached from the hitch, veering wildly (but safely) off the road.
Years ago my wife and I were driving to Niagara Falls. We were on the highway in Michigan on the way to the Blue Water Bridge to cross over into Canada because it’s a little quicker that way.
In front of us was a car veering all over the highway. And by ‘all over’ I am not exaggerating. This person was veering wildly back and forth across 3 lanes. He almost went completely off the highway or crashed into a concrete buttress many times but managed to catch himself at the very last second and veer back onto the highway. Fortunately there was very little traffic, being early morning on the weekend. This went on for several miles. I was leery of trying to pass the person and also felt responsible to stop in case the person crashed, which seemed inevitable. My wife called the police and gave them the license plate number and location.
Eventually we got separated- can’t remember exactly how, the person may have suddenly exited the freeway. So no idea what ultimately became of the situation. I hope the person finally decided to stop the car and either sleep it off or get proper medical attention.
When I was growing up, I heard from various people that when you check your car’s oil, etc., you should always make sure that the hood is fully latched afterward, or else the wind created by driving could catch the hood and force it open.
A few years back, I was driving around town, and I heard a BANG. Over on the other side of the road, I saw a car whose hood was forced open, and was lying back onto the windshield. I could see enough detail to tell that the windshield would have to be replaced.
This is the only time in my life so far that I have seen this, and I have never found anybody else who has experienced or witnessed such a thing.
When I was a teen, I had a pet fish in a tank on our balcony. Somehow I forgot all about it. But days later, I went on the balcony to find one day that the tank was completely dry and empty of water - yet the fish was still thumping and contorting about, very much alive. I have no idea how it lived.
A couple weeks ago I knew a local AM radio station (WKIX) was off the air, so as part of my weekly grocery shopping trip I decided to drive by the transmitter site to see if there was anything interesting going on. I got there just in time to see the last two transmission towers falling to the ground, as part of the station demolition.
The now gone tower site is in a small business area located along a road named Towerview Court. As there are no longer any standing towers, I wonder if they plan to update the road name…
I was living on the Upper East side of NYC in the early 90s. Maybe 92 or 93. I was walking to the subway one morning at about 7:30 am. I saw a woman coming down the street, naked, except that she was wrapped in a clear plastic bag (like from dry cleaning.) She was clearly in distress and ducked into a half-phone booth kiosk. Luckily, a police officer was around and brought her a blanket to cover her up. Always wondered what that situation was.
Two similar events stand out, both while hunting. I’ve told these before, so apologies to those re-reading the tales.
First. While scouting for elk (no rifle) I noticed some really large mountain lion tracks beside the truck when I returned to it. Standing next to one, I realized they were considerably larger than my own boot and this was a really large animal. I followed the tracks all the way around the truck, back to the driver’s door again. Then I realized there were more tracks than a few minutes ago and one almost certainly had been made after my boot print near it. I jumped into the truck and slammed the door, then laughed at myself for locking it. Sat there awhile and looked all around, but ever saw the animal.
Second: Returning to deer camp one night (different state), my headlights illuminated another really large cat. This one appeared black with its back about the height of my hip. It was crossing the dirt road and disappeared into the woods. I stopped and looked for it (from the truck) with a powerful flashlight, but could find nothing. It was so large that I was spooked enough the next morning to stay in camp. I wasn’t enthusiastic about heading out in the pre-dawn darkness to my stand. There was a small group of old guys who never hunted and I was quietly having a cup of coffee with them at the picnic table. After a bit, the oldest one turned to me and said: “You saw the panther, didn’t ya?”. I was surprised and just nodded. Then he stated: “Don’t like to go out there no more once ya seen it.” I found out later that there had been several sightings of this animal over the years, and most of the camp dismissed them as rumors.
I really wasn’t as scary as you might think. I merely slowed down and pulled over onto the shoulder (I could still see ahead by peaking underneath the bottom part of the hood).
It would have been a lot iffier if I had not already been in the right lane.
Some time around 1982, my siblings and I were taking a different car than the ‘rents’ to Grandma’s house for Christmas Day. Twenty-five mile trip. The temp was 0 degrees and the wind chill was -50 F. Started counting the number of broken down vehicles on the way; 150 cars, give or take. It was like Radiator Springs had its own zombie apocalypse.
Weird as in, unexplainable? When I was 11 I saw a UFO in the sky. It was a bright green light, larger than Venus but smaller than the moon, traveling extremely fast from east to west. This was probably 10pm and I was at a summer camp. Several of my fellow campers witnessed it also and it was a popular topic of conversation for the rest of the week. I still have no clue what it was.
Weird as in, something explainable that I never would’ve thought I’d be a witness to? One evening I looked out my living room window and saw my neighbors making a porn movie. I lived in a 5th floor corner apartment and they were a floor above me in the building across the street. A man and a woman in full coitus surrounded by what appeared to be a pro lighting setup with another woman running a video camera and a fourth with a microphone on a pole held over the couple. I didn’t have curtains on my windows and since I wasn’t about to watch a free show I left and went across town for an unplanned dinner out. When I came back the apartment where the fun had been was dark.
My mother claims this happened to her. She said she was turning off a county road into the parking lot of a convenience store and when the car bumped onto the dirt of the parking lot the hood popped up. Since she wasn’t going fast she slammed on her brakes then inched forward until she was to the edge of the parking lot and then got out and closed it. There was no damage.
It happened to some friends of mine last year…while they were driving the vintage MG roadster that they had just bought. (They were uninjured, and they were able to get the car repaired.)
Years ago, I was driving into downtown Chicago on the Eisenhower Expressway, on a Saturday morning. As I was driving, I saw the right front wheel come completely off of a car that was ahead of me, in the far right lane.
The driver of that car was able to quickly get his car onto the right shoulder, while dragging that corner of the car on the pavement. Meanwhile, the wheel went bouncing to the right, off of the road, and bounced up an embankment. It bounced off of a cyclone fence at the top of the embankment, just as I drove past it, and then continued its bouncing, back down the embankment. I watched in my rear-view mirror as it began crossing the inbound lanes of the expressway, and as other drivers swerved out of harm’s way.
I was out in the desert at night and saw something large and green flash across the sky and then come apart into 5 or 6 brilliant white fragments which appeared to hit the ground. It was truly fabulous.
Over 30 years ago we were on a 6 lane Los Angeles freeway in bumper to bumper traffic moving about 60mph. Abruptly a car that had been parked in the emergency lane on the left started moving and drove across all 6 lanes of traffic before hitting the fence. We also saw a big eyed, shocked looking man at a nearby call-box, so we assumed it was his car and he hadn’t remembered his parking brake.
That was weird. The amazing part of the whole story is that despite the speed and thick traffic, everyone came to a stop without hitting anyone else and then just drove on when it was over.
When I was a kid, a caught a couple of Eastern newts, and put them in a terrarium. They seemed to be happy enough in there, but eventually, they both escaped. Months later, my dad asked me to look for some water leakage in the crawlspace in our basement. As I was shining the flashlight around, I saw both of the newts, and they seemed to be doing fine. Note that this space was completely underground, with no real access to the outside (not even vent holes). So, I was pretty sure they were the newts I had lost. My room was on the 2nd floor of the house, and one wall was directly above this crawlspace - they must have walked through a gap in the baseboards, and fallen down the inside of the wall all the way to the basement.
I also had my hood fly open while I was driving. I couldn’t see shit but fortunately there was nothing on the shoulder of the road where I pulled over. The hood had gotten warped out of shape, but a nice man stopped and helped me get it shut again so I could get home.
(They were uninjured, and they were able to get the car repaired.)