Weirdest, strangest, scariest thing you've ever seen

I was broadcasting a high school football game at a stadium where a town street runs just beyond the end zone. About 200 freeloaders gathered there to watch the game without paying. Midway through the third quarter, I see five flashes of light and hear five pops. Players hit the ground, but luckily (in context) the five bullets hit their intended target outside. One dead. Game over. Nobody else hurt. The principal of the host school comes up to us to emphatically state the incident happened on town property, and not on school grounds. Good thing the bullets knew to stay off school grounds. We stay on the air until both the team and spirit buses leave from the school we were covering leave and we receive confirmation that all students that took the buses were safe and accounted for -- maybe an hour after the shooting, but it felt like three.

My broadcast partner and I stop in at a McDonald's about 10 minutes down the road. The casheir who was taking our order appears distant. We talk for a moment, and she said that her boyfriend was at the game (well, on the town street), and she hadn't heard from him. I often wonder if her boyfriend was on the business end of that deal.

 

That is horrible. The sounds of a dying animal will haunt you forever.
Another dog story. This one from adulthood. I was in my apartment around 10 p.m. one Sunday night and heard a couple of dogs fighting over something in the courtyard. This was a fairly rural area with a courtyard that led to the street. I think the dogs, a couple of white labs, came from a house across the street. After a minute I realize they're fighting over an armadillo, which is still alive. They'd let it run for a minute, then one would grab it and take a bite and the other would try to get it. At one point they played tug of war.
My apartment was on the second floor, so I'm watching from the balcony and can see this badly injured armadillo breathing heavily its last breaths while these dogs fight over him. I felt terrible for the animal, but I wasn't about to go get in the middle of two large, excited dogs to take away their kill.

 

A friend and I closed down the bar after work one night and were outside getting ready to head home. There were a lot of people milling around outside a little dance club down the street that had just closed as well. We saw a fight broke out, and say a guy running into the parking lot about 30 feet from where we were standing. He popped the trunk of a car and pulled out a gun. When he fired a round in the air, we booked back to the front door and the bartenders let us back in until things settled down.
Same bar, different night, saw a skirmish in the smaller parking lot between a couple of drunk guys. One guy pushed the other up against the big plate-glass window that was probably 20 feet by 10 feet. The window came crashing down, and they had to call the paramedics because it gashed they back of the guy's leg pretty good.
SAME bar, different night, a co-worker goes to use the bathroom, but the door is apparently being held shut. He goes back a few minutes later and some drunken fools had completely destroyed the bathroom stalls. Was one of the most pointless things I've ever seen.
Glad I don't go that bar too often anymore.

 

About four years ago, I was walking my dogs when we went around the corner of my house and saw a woman getting ready to walk her dogs. I have a Rat Terrier and a Boston mix. She's got two mastiffs. My RT woofs. Not a loud bark, but that sort of short, quick "woof" just to say she sees them.

That "woof" set off the mastiffs, who come charging toward us dragging this poor 100-pound (maybe) woman with them. It doesn't occur to me for about maybe five seconds that I ought to get me and my dogs going the opposite direction. I start running, pulling my dogs but the mastiffs catch up, this woman screaming at them to stop as they're pulling her.

The female mastiff gets the rattie, grabs her by the neck and starts flopping her around. I get around it's neck and start trying to free my dog. I finally got my hand wedged in its mouth and it releases my dog. During this, I couldn't see my dog's head. I think it was actually inside the mastiff's mouth. But I'm relieved to see her start to run toward the back porch. The mastiff runs, but doesn't see her duck under the porch. And somehow, I don't know why but the other mastiff and my other dog didn't get involved and neither get hurt.

The rat terrier had a huge gash on her back:


That's her the next day after she came back from the vet with a stint in her wound. I had to take drop medicine into it for a week.

The owner of the mastiffs was fined, had to pay for the vet bills and was told she had to get rid of the dogs, which she did.

The sight of my dog being flopped around like a toy still spooks me.

 

I caught on fire.

I also watched a drive-by shooting in Memphis one night while we were at a stoplight.

Homeless guy pulled a knife on me when I was a bartender. We started fighting, it wasn't until he was unconscious that I stopped and realized he somehow hadn't cut me.

 

Wow, this could use some elaboration. Spontaneous human combustion, or did you fart near an open flame?

I really like this thread.

 

Had bizarre phone call from one morning (I was SE of the afternoon paper) from a former longtime coach. He's was trying to call his son and couldn't remember the number... Turns out he was having a stroke.
He got dressed that morning and couldn't remember how to tie his shoes. He knew something was wrong. He was trying to call his son and dialed the paper's sports line.
We were able to get him some help and he recovered.

When I was a restaurant manager a foursome came in to eat, one man was pale and sweating. He looked like shit. It was pretty easy to see he was a walking heart attack. And he was telling his wife and the other guy, he didn't feel well. If I recall, a few people told them group the guy needed to go the hospital. Apparently an all-you-eat-buffet is more important.
Sure enough, 10 minutes later he's collapses on the floor in middle of the store. He was in 30s or 40s. Not very old, tall and skinny.
I called 911.
A weird twist... this guy came over claiming to be a doctor. But instead of treating the patient, he wanted in the office to use the phone. I said him No. Company policy: NO one except managers are allowed in the office. 911 had already been called and paramedics were on the way. Pissed off, he goes back over to check on the guy, who's conscious and alert, but laying flat on his back.
They load the guy up and the "doctor" lays into me for not letting him use the phone. I try to talk to him and he just turns and walsk out. As waitress comes up as soon as he leaves.
"That guy tell you he's a doctor," she asked.
She tells me he's a undercover cop.

 

Driving a tractor that had a leaky fuel line. It caught fire, I stopped and jumped off to the left. The tractor's gas tank exploded and imbedded shrapnel in a tree off to the right. Cops said if I'd jumped that way I would have been killed.

Instead, I ran about 20 yards, looked down and saw my left leg from the thigh down was in flames. Stop, drop and roll. Stand up, look down at the fried chicken skin covering my leg and pass out. Wake up in the back of a pickup truck going 100 mph down the turn lane of the busiest street in the city with a police escort to the hospital.

Surgery, debridement tank sessions, a week later I go home. Two more surgeries to do skin grafts the following summer. And a very nice settlement from the county - since the accident happened on their land and with one of their tractors.

 

Good Lord. Folks around here have a lot of interesting stories. Thanks for sharing. And burn wounds absolutely suck - can't think of much that is worse - maybe eye injuries, amputations, and groin wounds. But burns are way up there.

 

Couple of years ago the wife and I were in Chicago for vacation. Our big thing is to just walk around and see what there is to see, and we were out one night in downtown around 10 p.m.
We were across the street from the Excalibur night club, which seemed to be having some sort of gay S&M night going on. Lots of men dressed in leather outfits that made it look like a Village People reunion. We're sort of giggling at the spectacle (these outfits were just way over the top) when some skanky, meth head looking woman comes up and asks us for money so she can "get some meat for her kids."
I tell her no, I don't have any, and quickly cross the street. As soon as I get to the other corner, I see this big, mean-looking son of a bitch walking down our side of the street. Skank had crossed the street with us as well, and no one other than the people waiting in line at the club are in sight.
I sensed that the big guy was trouble and paused at the corner. Skank made a left turn, big guy crossed the street as well, and they met up about 50 feet further down and were obviously together.
My wife and I hustle back to Michigan Avenue as fast as we possibly can to get somewhere more public. No one is on Michigan, either, except for a group of European tourists who thankfully are on our side of the street. As we're walking, big guy comes around the corner and is walking toward us. I drag my feet a bit so that we're somewhat near the Euros and in a group, and as he passes he gives me a death gaze and spits on the sidewalk. Soon as he's past, we make a damn beeline for the hotel and don't go out walking any more that night.

Big guy had that evil look of an animal on the hunt, and we were the prey. I have no doubt we were seconds or maybe a few more feet of walking away from being robbed or worse. It gives me the willies thinking about what might have happened if those Euros hadn't been walking down the street when we turned the corner. The whole incident just freaked me the hell out.

 

I've been lucky so far (touch wood, and thank you God) that I haven't had any bad stories. Closest one came a couple of years ago. My oldest and I saw some cop cars and an ambulance go up our street. Curious, we walked down to the corner, where we saw the cars, EMTs and firefighters surrounding a car at a house a short ways down the street. We turned to go a little closer, and a firefighter stopped us, pointed at my boy and said, "You don't want him to see this."

As he said that, a woman in the distance started bawling. It was enough for me. We went home.

Next day, we found out the guy was working underneath his car and the jack slipped out from it, with the car falling and crushing him to death.

 

Ugh. That's pretty scary. I've spent a lot of time in Baltimore and other cities, and I don't make eye contact and I don't engage in conversation. I just grunt, act like I no comprendo, act like I might be a bit mentally ill, and keep on walking.

That summarizes how I post on sj.com too.