I’ve got one! I used to work various places in DT Mpls at coffee shops.(wait, I still do that! that’s not the weird part). One day while sweeping up the dining room, I was looking out the plate glass window across the street. This was on the edge of the “Warehouse District,” famous for slumming artists and strip clubs and photographer’s studios, etc. Well, a man came out the front entrance of the building across from me with a baboon on a leash- he went on to get into his pickup truck after letting the baboon in on the passenger side, and drove away. NBD, as they say. No idea what that was about.
Just this past summer, I was outside one afternoon, sweeping off my back patio, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw an object land on the patio with a thud not 10 feet away. As soon as I turned fully to face it, I could see that it was a freshly deceased, decapitated, partially eviscerated rabbit carcass. I assume a hawk was flying overhead and dropped it.
Either it was a warning, or a near-miss.
Another one which I’ve just remembered:
Sometime in the late '90s, I was walking from the train station in downtown Chicago, to my office. The building where my office was located was on the north bank of the Chicago River, and I would walk along Wacker Drive, which has the river along its north side for part of its route.
I noticed a Chicago Police Department boat in the river, and watched as several CPD divers were pulling a dead body out of the river. (It turned out that it was the body of a homeless man, who had fallen into the river a few days earlier.)
Tell Schödingers cat about it.
As I was growing up, my dad ran a hotel in south Florida, so I spent my teenage summers working as a pool attendant. One day, as I was sitting under a tiki hut abutting the hotel wall, I heard a loud thud about 20 yards to my right.
A man had jumped from one of the balconies. 10th floor, I believe.
He hit a tree before slamming into the ground (where he missed a woman lounging on a chaise by just a few dozen feet), and was making faint moaning noises when the paramedics took him away. I recall asking one of them if he was going to live.
“If he does, he won’t be happy about it.”
Back in the 90s I was driving down a four lane street with a middle turn lane and realized a car a few ahead of me had started behaving erratically. It started weaving across three lanes, but not crossing into oncoming traffic, thank goodness. It would go up on the sidewalk and then back across the lanes. It wasn’t going very fast and all the cars behind it slowed way down to stay out of the way. This went on for awhile. Amazingly, four cars finally managed to surround it and bring it to a stop. As people were getting out of their cars to check on the driver, she crawled out of the back seat window and started running. I don’t remember now if anyone went after her. I was already late and had to leave.
Driving up the Dan Ryan in Chicago early one Sat morning in the 2d lane in from the left. Up ahead, there was a work truck blocking the L lane w/ warning stripes on the back. A sedan was coming hot in the L lane, and ducked in right in front of me. Right behind him was a guy on a cruiser motorcycle. Hit the truck a full speed right out my driver’s window. Wouldn’t have imagined a big bike could crumple like that. I coulda almost touched him as he flew over the handlebars.
Walking in the forest preserves w/ my 2 young kids, we found a dead body in the DuPage River. It was shortly after Halloween, and I thought it was a discarded scarecrow. The next day I the paper we were the “hikers” who discovered the body.
I was at sea, watching the squadron’s aircraft recovery when one plane, equipped with a camera, landed, luckily catching the wire. The camera went flying off the bow, while the plane stayed on the flight deck. The reason the camera went flying is because the plane landed with the nose wheel still raised.
I’ve seen this multiple times but somebody misses an off-ramp on the freeway, HARD breaks, then literally starts reversing down the shoulder to get back to the off-ramp.
I did that more than once, coming home from working the night shift in Chicopee and missing my exit at Westfield. The next exit was 30 miles down the road, so, yeah.
waves
I have had my hood open up while cruising down the interstate at 75 MPH.
It was… not fun. Bent the hell out of the hinge area, but I was able to close and fully latch the hood afterward. This was shortly after hitting a deer on the same interstate (the night before), the first time in my life that had happened. I hit it square on, smashed the hell out of the grille, and apparently unlatched the hood a bit; it held until the morning’s journey back to work. (I don’t miss 100-mile commutes even a little…)
Well, you have found ME.
Several years ago while driving, I heard what sounded like a fender bender, and THEN heard the screech of tires. I thought that that sounded ass-backwards (I’ve witnessed a few accidents in my day) so looked across the divided four lane street and saw a pickup truck screeching to a halt with the hood completely angled back against the windshield.
Once saw (actually was passed by) some maniac riding and old CB750 with a completely flat rear tire. About 75 down the freeway in Los Angeles. Now, I’ve ridden bikes with flat tires. Haram-Scaram! But this guy was simply hauling ass. Rear end was weaving all over the place. Unbelievable!
Was watching a guy flying one of those high-wing ultra-lites with the engine behind the pilot. I heard a ‘Snap’ and this thing pivots over into and inverted loop, and I swear the poor guy’s head was about the first thing that smacked into the group with a nice ‘Pop’ sound. I didn’t realize I was standing about 5 feet from his wife. That was a harshed-mellow.
Which one? I have two.
I’ve seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, and C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
Is that weird enough for ya?
I came up to a red light. I was going to turn left at the light onto the entrance of an interstate. There was a car already stopped at the light. However, instead of being in the turning lane he was one lane to the left. He was stopped on the wrong side of the road. I kept my distance.
The light turn green and both of us turn left onto the entrance. Then when he gets to the interstate he basically does a U-turn and starts driving the wrong way on the interstate. I watched in my rear view mirror. Cars were pulling off the road to let this guy go past.
Years ago I worked downtown and could count on seeing weird things on my morning walkabout. Lots of drunks stumbling out of the old man bar at 10:00 AM, tourists driving the wrong way down one way streets, etc, but the oddest was when I saw a car go by with a (real) tiger in the passenger seat.
Just this past Fall, I was driving on a country road in southern Delaware. I noticed an oncoming pickup and trailer, seemingly kicking up some dust as they approached.
As they got closer, the roof of the old Winnebago trailer was on fire! Seemingly at the rooftop A/C unit. And boy did that sucker spread. The driver took a right turn at speed off the highway and I have no idea what he did after that.
Therefore the chance is fifty-fifty. As the theory predicted all along.