Piano World Home Page Forums Restricted and Archives The Coffee Room What's your strangest true personal anecdote?

In the story thread, I was reminded of a personal experience, that suggested this question--what is your strangest personal anecdote about something that you observed firsthand?

While I could relate many, this particular one came to mind as a result of the other thread.

One Sunday spring morning about 20 years ago, I was dozing under a wall of open windows, as I had a habit of doing on Sundays, when I was awakened by a roof-shaking "whoomp!" directly over my head. The crash was followed by a string of colorful, heart-felt expletives overhead like the voice of God in a loud male voice, then loud scraping noises and a sudden loud hissing roar of high-pressure gas and a very loud poof! Throwing on my robe, I went out into the back yard and looked up to see a man in a hot-air balloon inches above my roof with immense yellow flames shooting up into the inside of the rainbow collored balloon. As he cleared the roof only some 20 feet over my head, he yelled "Sorry!" Barely gaining altitude, and with little wind to nudge him, he dragged the basket through my backyard cottonwoods and barely clearing the powerlines, still cursing loudly as he made his way north.

I just have to add another one about near calamity with lighter-than-air transportation.

About five years ago, I was traveling eastbound on a major throughstreet that runs east and west just south of the municipal airport. I was on a brief errand for my job and enjoying the outing with the top down on my little red Jaguar convertible, just minding my own business and keeping well ahead of the thick traffic behind, as is my habit. Slightly above and to the north of me, I could see the Budweiser blimp perhaps 100 feet above a mooring mast, at a steep angle, with its tail much too low and not nearly level. As I watched, it continued descending, not toward the mast, but south toward the road. In only a moment, I found myself not looking up at it, but across my bright red hood at the bright red blimp as it perfectly aligned itself with my lane, not more than 1 foot above the pavement and close enough to make me grateful for my anti-lock breaks, while my heart pounded. Visions of newspaper pictures raced through my mind--"Sportscar Collides With Blimp!". In only a moment, it's engines revved mightily and it ascended directly in front of me. So, while you're watching your 2-D traffic, bear in mind, sometimes you gotta watch your 3-D traffic, too.

Okay I'll bite (This may not be the strangest but your first story tweaked my memory):

When I was young, beautiful & thin, I often sunbathed in the backyard. On one such day I fell asleep with a hat over my eyes. Then, Plop .... on my hat .... Plop....Hop....Hop.... onto my chest.....then Hop....Hop onto my tummy - a young robin I could see from under the hat brim. He was almost tickling me with this hop hop, hopping, but I held my tummy steady & didn't giggle. He wasn't moving & neither was I. He seemed to like perching on my tummy. My mother had wandered over to the faucet with her watering can, & as I was pondering how to quietly yet noticeably say, "Mom, get a camera , quick ...," Ker-PLUNK ....., our cat Ker-POUNCED on my tummy & then off again, after the bird. I was very startled, to say the least. Later, despite repeating this story to everyone in my family, my mother kept saying, "Don't be ridiculous dear, I never saw anything.....No bird would ever do that.....You have quite the imagination".

Yet, ..... I'm sure this happened. It could not have been a dream.....Or could it? My mom says she was right there. Hmmm.......

Once while studying for an exam, my wife left to do some grocery shopping. I put my son into an automatice swing, wound it up, and went over to my desk.

Soon the boy was asleep, and the swing gradually wound down and stopped. Everything was very quiet while I got some studying done.

Then, I heard it. "Plop". "Plop" I thought, what in the world was that? Just a single plop, not very loud. I looked around and saw nothing. I went to check on my son, and yes, he had filled up the plastic seat of the swing and it had overflowed to create one large "child pie" on the floor. Man, what a mess!

Dan

<img border="0" alt="[Laugh]" title="" src="graemlins/bigsmile.gif" />

I have thousands of dollars worth of Nikon and Leica gear. I have only once had any one of them with me when something odd happened, even though I've worked off and on doing professional freelance work and newspaper photography. Sure wished I'd had one for the blimp. It would have made a cool ad for Budweiser.

Oh gosh,

It's so funny you mention the Goodyear blimp! About 20 years ago we were over visiting my parents. Everyone was watching Alien on TV. My mother and I were playing Scrabble or something in the kitchen because we were too horrified to watch the movie. Every body was screaming watching the TV when we went in. The thing started coming out of her belly and my mom and I ran outside. It was very dark. We looked up and saw what looked like a UFO flying extremely low over the trees. You could almost touch it. We started yelling "look, look!!!" Everyone ran out of the living room to outside. Well, it was only the Goodyear blimp but it looked like a UFO to us.

I lived in Miami. Let's see anyone beat that.

Regards,

Rick Clark

I'm picturing the movie "Birdcage" right now.

When I moved from my apartment to my first house, I kept the same phone number. It was after the move that I received many messages left on my answering machine for "Evelyn" and "Ruth". The folks who left them were friendly and gave much detail on the coming weekend's outings, biking, canoeing with directions and potluck requests. Funny because the names gave me the idea that they were older ladies. No one ever left a number that I could call back so as to correct them nor were any surnames used.

This went on for 3 years and I envied Evelyn and Ruth and their fun weekends with big, lively groups going on treks across New England!

It was about the time that I was to sell the house, I picked up my mail and in it was a postcard with my address, but addressed to Evelyn and Ruth! (I bought the house from the original owner, an elderly widower)

OK, here are three...

(1) I was driving my older son (then five) to his fourth - and as it turned out to be - last preschool one morning. He has severe ADD and simply wasn't able to focus on the activities, with disastrous results. EVERYTHING distracted him - even while listening to the teacher tell an exciting story to the group, the sudden hum of a snow-plow would claim his attention, and that was that. He'd just get up and walk to the window, oblivious.

Trying to help the situation, I gave him a pep-talk as we were stopped at a long traffic light in front of a shopping center.

"Now, listen, honey, when you get there you just HAVE TO keep your eyes on the teacher's face so you can pay attention to what she's saying. It's VERY important to them, VERY important to me, and VERY important to you too - whether you know it or not!

So, just pretend it's kind of a dare or something...Keep your eyes on the teacher so you can listen [eyes and ears are very connected for an ADD kid] and do what she says. Keep looking at her NO MATTER WHAT ELSE may happen while she's talking. Even...even...if a PEACOCK suddenly walks by! Got that?"

Right then, a peacock with tail unfurled, strolled across the street, right by in front of the car. (End of pep-talk - as if it would have helped We were BOTH extremely distracted.)

No, no, gardens or estates nearby or anything.
************************************************

(two) This same son and I have in some ways a telepathic relationship (which drove him nuts sometimes, when I figured out what he was thinking).

One afternoon as we went running errands (son now about eleven), we played a mind-reading game. We had just heard about an act where a magician would seem to do this on stage.

We started with colors. One of us would visualize the color very vividly, and then when the other felt they had "received" it, they would guess. We switched back and forth as "sender" and "receiver"

Seven out of seven CORRECT trials later, we switched to numbers to make it harder. This time: visualize a number from 1 to 100. Picture it with all your might, and then, again, the other guesses when they feel they see the image.

Fifteen out of fifteen CORRECT trials later, we quit, feeling rather frightened.
*********************************************

(3) This is not strictly speaking a strange anecdote, but it is definitely the strangest situation I have ever found myself in. When I was 20 I left college "over my parents' dead bodies", to travel in Europe. I had a great time, met many people and learned several languages to the point of sounding like a native speaker. (And I DID eventually return to school, doing very well - in sharp contrast to my earlier student-ship)

Situation: I am singing folksongs (sounded great due to extraordinary sound system) in a small Berlin nightclub, while a transvestite stripper named "Carmen" danced and did her/his thing.

(The job had been gotten for me by my then-boyfriend, a young German baron who studied engineering by day and moonlighted driving a cab by night. His full name - spelling of last name is bound to be severely off: Freiherr Bodo Friedrich Konstantin Baron von Hoynigen-Huene. "Bodo" for short.)

Ariel (whose kids think she was born a Mom)

BeeLady, your Evelyn and Ruth remind me of Arnold. One weekend my family kept receiving phone calls for Arnold. "Is Arnold there?" These calls came from old people, young people, males, females, people with accents. It went on all weekend and was driving us crazy. Must have received at least twenty calls for Arnold. Finally, on Monday morning, while we were in school, my mom received a call from Arnold wanting to know if he had any messages.
It was hilarious!

Has anyone had experiences with ghosts. And are you willing to admit it?

I had two separate experiences. Once while ice-skating I saw a vision of an American Revolutionary soldier standing next to a tree. By the time I tried to get someone else to look (maybe 2 seconds) he disappeared.

Also, our first house was across the street from a National cemetary. I was home most all day, every day my oldest who was a baby at the time. Once the radio went on by itself. I thought an alarm went off or something. But, the alarm wasn't set. I didn't give it much thought. A couple of days later a glass sitting in our cabinet with other glasses just shattered. That same day I was walking from the kitchen into the living room and noticed the firescreen was completely moved away from the fireplace. Creepy enough. But, what made it more creepy was that when I went to the cemetery a few days later (I often walk in cemeteries, yes, I know I'm a sick puppy) about six rows in, one of the white crosses was completely uprooted out of the ground and pointing at our house.

This didn't actually happen to me, but to my son and daughter-in-law.

Some of you might remember hurricane Hugo that caused so much damage to Charleston, SC and surrounding areas over 10+ years ago.

My son was in the Navy and out to sea in a submarine on a 3 week trip. Needless to say when he left, Hugo could have been nothing more than a small tropical storm.

When it became apparent that Hugo was indeed going to hit Charleston, my daughter-in-law packed up the car and moved inland and came to our house. Boy was I relieved to see her drive up! Our house, because there was a chance that it would also hit the coast where her parents lived. We were not worried about our son because the sub had been directed back out to sea as it was coming to port. He was safe under the sea.

She locked the apartment up, packed what clothes and sentimental items she could pack in the car and left my son's truck in the condo parking lot. Normally, he would have left the truck on the base, but for no real reason, she dropped him off at the boat.

When she returned my son's truck was the only thing in the parking lot undamaged by Hugo. Had my son parked at the docks, as he normally would have, his truck would have been submerged.

Out of an 8 units in the condo building, their's was the only one that was not condemned for occupancy. Not even a broken window or water damage whereas all the others had both.

Strange how lucky you can be sometimes.

I seem to have attracted a poltergeist. At every domicile in which I've lived over the past 30 years, there has always been a loud, sudden wooden "popping" noise in the ceiling in the kitchen, which occurs at nearly the same time every evening. I never really paid much attention to it, thinking that it was just noise from the building settling. But then a friend, who would come over for dinner quite frequently, mentioned that it seemed that every time he was over for dinner, he heard a popping noise in the ceiling in the kitchen, and told me I should get the ceiling fixed before it fell! When I moved into my newly-built house six years ago, the popping noise followed me.

The stairs to the second floor of my house end just near the front door. As I descend the stairs, I sometimes think I see someone standing just outside the front door through the sidelights. I sometimes will mutter under my breath "Stop trying to scare me", and then I don't notice anything for weeks.

All in all, a rather benign poltergeist.

Maybe Evelyn and Ruth are my poltergeists!

Another small happening was one that gave me the feeling I had done the right thing.

I purchased my old run down S+S from an ad in the paper early on a Sunday morning. My techs came along and the hair on my neck tingled when I played it. I plunked down what was a bargain price, though alot for us as my husband had just been reemployed after a year off. His remarks were always, "Oh, don't worry about it". But I did.

Later that same week before the piano was to be delivered, I took my weekly trip to the dump. There on the scrap metal pile, leaned the plate, with strings and block attached, of an old upright. I took my youngest with me to show him what the inside of a piano looked like. Upon close inspection, I found the serial number to include the same digits (there are only 3) as mine just slightly scrambled!

A few days later an unexpected check arrived in the mail. A relative had had a windfall and decided to use it to pay back money we had loaned years before. We never expected it back. The check was for the exact price of the piano (she knew nothing).

Ok, creepy story:

There is a park in my town which is very pretty. I sometimes went there during the day, but never stayed long because I always got really awful feelings from it. I once went around twilight and actually felt sick to my stomach.

A week later I was speaking with my freind Jess, and we wanted to take a walk. We were thinking of places to go, and she IMMEDIATLY discounted the park. I asked her why, and she told me she hated that place. She didn't have a reason, but she just felt sick when she went there! I was pretty creeped out.

Well, a couple of days later, it was about 10:00 pm, and a girl ran into my room looking very upset, and told me to come out and check up on a close friend, Katie. She explained to me that Katie was walking in the park and had passed out completely, and someone found her and helped to bring her to. When she came to, she was sobbing hysterically. She calmed down very quickly and was confused as to what happened.

Very concerned, I went to Katie's room, and asked what was wrong. She told me that she was walking in the park, and she suddenly got so frightened that it felt like her heart stopped- and she just passed out. She didn't know what frightned her, or why she woke up sobbing. We took her to the hospital, and after a batch of tests, they declared her fine, and that she must have just fainted.

I never went back to the park again.

Yes, BeeLady, there is a God!

Fun story:

One day I was walking back from the music building, which goes through a patch of woods. Now, these woods are nnowhere near any water. So you can imagine my suprise, as I am walking up the path, to hear an occasional, random , "quack"..."quack"...

I tried to adjust my eyes to the dimming light (as it was getting dark), and was suprised to see not a duck, but a deer- not only that, but an albino deer! I continued to hear the quacking, however. As I looked harder, I could see that about 5 feet from the deer, a duck was approaching. The duck calmly walked up to the deer, quacked, and proceeded to walk directly in front of the deer!
The deer, looking slightly puzzled, continued chomping on some grass or leaves. The duck continued his romp the woods. I just chuckled.

MattG,
We come from a very historical part of the country. As I said in other posts, I enjoy walking in cemeteries and battlefieds. This is kinda cool. In Southeastern PA I was walking in an old church cemetery. (Sometimes, I'll be driving along in the country and just stop at old churches, I love history of all kinds.)
In the cemetery I came across many very old graves. Over the years I've seen all kinds of graves. But, these had to be the most extraordinary graves I came across. There were three graves made out of pure rock. Etched into two of the rocks were numbers, one said "SPJ563, the other said TRC273". One had a date on it of 1792. But the third grave was by far the strangest. All it said was DIED.
No name, date or number. The etchings were done by hand. And wasn't even at all. Someone took a lot of time doint it.
But, throughout my wanderings, I never felt creeped out. Even the soldier I think I saw didn't creep me out. Sometimes I feel like I'm searching for something and don't know what.