What's the strangest thing you have ever witnessed?

[Major Tom]

Hello everyone. Just something a little off topic. I was wondering what the strangest thing you have ever witnessed was? I will start.

A friend and I were laying on the road stargazing, it was maybe 10 pm. The stars were beautiful and we had also seen a few shooting stars. As we were gazing, we both heard an extremely loud BOOM from behind us. We jumped to our feet, turned around to see a spherical orb zipping through the sky at inhumanly possible speeds and angles. Imagine a fighter jet at top speed x100 making 180 degree turns, then shooting straight up, down, left, and right. Sometimes it would stop instantaneously. The orb did this in the sky for maybe 2 minutes, then made another large BOOM and streaked away. My awestruck friend and I turned to each other after the show and said simultaneously "did you see that?"

The same friend and I witnessed another spherical orb in the sky a few months later, but this time it was much closer hovering in a field about 50 feet off the ground. At first, we thought perhaps it was an oddly shaped hot air balloon, but upon stopping and getting out of the car we realized it wasn't. (Hot air balloons make quite a lot of noise and you can see the flame used to propel them, especially at night). The orb just hovered there absolutely silent, and perfectly still. We watched it for about 10 minutes and then got back into the car and drove away. Others had stopped during that time too, and nobody had an explanation as to what it could be.

These are two incidents that are absolutely true, I would swear it upon my son's name. They were neither positive nor negative, but were awe inspiring nonetheless.

Have any of you ever witnessed something like this or anything else strange? I would be glad to hear your stories. Thanks for reading.

 

[Streetwise]

Two mice having a fight never seen it again they were tumbling over and then fighting again

 

[Sid Delicious]

Major420 - what you described sounds like ball lightening. They are naturally occuring phenomena that normally take place around stormy weather. I've seen quite a few.

 

[Major Tom]

Major420 - what you described sounds like ball lightening. They are naturally occuring phenomena that normally take place around stormy weather. I've seen quite a few.

I have seen ball lightning as well, this was much different, maybe I just didn't describe it that well. Or possibly it appears differently on each occasion. It was also perfectly clear and no storms in sight on either occasion. Also, both times were in spring or fall, when heat lightning doesn't normally occur. It could have been, but it is highly unlikely. Maybe some kind of experimental aircraft? But can't rule out ball lightning either I suppose.

 

[Major Tom]

Two mice having a fight never seen it again they were tumbling over and then fighting again

Are you sure they were fighting? Lol.. Interesting.

 

[Mr Allen]

My teacher once did a bet for Red Nose Day, on how I'd react to her wearing the kind of clothes they'd wear at a Burlesque show, she came into the room flashing her knickers and I was literally like, WTF?!

In retrospect it was quite funny!

 

[Major Tom]

 

[Mattymatt]

I've seen so many strange things that I've lost count. And no, LOL, I wasn't high. In my neck of the world, strange is merely a variation of normal.

 

[Progster]

A priest (Greek Orthdox) driving a public bus.
A random tree miles away from any habited place decorated for Christmas.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Are you sure they were fighting? Lol.. Interesting.

Does a squirrel and a rabbit fighting count?

 

[Beguiling Orbit]

 

[Tom]

One winter, I was just walking along the streets at night after some big snows. In the distance I thought I heard sleigh bells, and getting closer. I stopped and soon a dogsled team and driver came jingling by. Probably not uncommon for Alaska, but very unusual for Long Island, New York!

 

[Judge]

That's easy. Something I once discussed in another thread a while back. Two unsolicited paranormal experiences involving a full-body apparition at very close range. AKA my own grandmother. To date nothing has topped these two experiences.

Of course. I've had many such experiences. I've already posted some of the details regarding formal investigations- solicited experiences. Though my first and second experiences will likely always strike me as the most profound given they were wholly unsolicited involving a full-body apparition at very close range. Bear in mind that these are personal accounts of paranormal experiences- not any "ghost stories" you'd hear at a campfire setting. Here is an account of both of them, kept as a text file as over the years I've been asked many times to recount them in detail.

It was an unsolicited event in 1983. I woke up one morning, getting ready to go to work. Headed towards the hall leading to my vanity and closet and stopped in my tracks to see my 83 year old grandmother at the end of the hall smiling at me. Interesting, considering my grandmother was not visiting and lived nearly 800 miles away. Plus last I heard she was in the hospital, recovering from an illness.

Within two or three seconds she simply vanished. Evaporated into thin air. I still recall shaking my head over what I thought I saw. Seemed so preposterous at the time I just shook it off and left for work. Later I received a phone call from my mother telling me that her mother had passed away the night before in the hospital. I was stunned...but chose to keep what I thought I saw to myself. Within the same month, I did go to my doctor to find out if I had some kind of conscious hallucination. They couldn't find anything overtly wrong at all. Of course I have no pathological history of hallucinations or substance abuse.

I spent nearly the next 20 years in deep denial about this experience, and I eventually started reaching out to other lucid people online who claimed to have similar experiences. And of course, the subject of paranormal investigations started popping up on television. I began to have a sense of validation instead of enduring the usual skepticism and condemnation. But even my own immediate family members balked at my experiences when I finally told them.

In 2003 in the middle of an afternoon in a bedroom, I was working on a computer. I was sitting on a sofa with a monitor on a tv tray facing towards the door. Suddenly through the top of my glasses I noticed someone standing at the doorway which was no more than say three feet away. I just assumed it was my mother who needed something. (I began being a full-time caregiver to her the year before). As I changed my focus and and looked up, instead of my mother standing there it was a woman I didn't recognize. She looked startled as much as I must have. I didn't flinch...but was thinking WTF?

The woman was wearing a red blouse, a black skirt and had her hair in a bun....looking sort of like Olive Oyl from Popeye. Definitely had some kind of nostalgia thing going. But before I could utter a word, like my grandmother she simply evaporated in front of me. Gone. I was speechless. And pretty shook up. This was no hallucination. I was alert and focused working on an old computer operating system, trying to rehabilitate a "legacy" computer in broad daylight. Whoa............but who was this person? What were they doing in my home and why? This time I didn't try to go into denial again. Quite the opposite I couldn't get the woman's startled face out of my mind. I had never seen her before....or so I thought. I couldn't let go of that image. Eventually for some reason, that face started to appear familiar to me, and I started looking at old family photos. Sure enough, I came across that face again. But the picture was dated 1930. It WAS my grandmother. But from another time and place.

No, I haven't had any such "visitations" since by her. However it has always bothered me as to why me? I loved my grandmother, but no more than all my other cousins who frankly lived much closer to her and were more familiar to her. Or was I simply the one grandchild who is more receptive and sensitive to her materializing on this plane? Did she have some kind of "message" for me? I have no idea. It continues to weird me out to this day. Why me? Lately I ponder a bit on whether having mild autism is a factor in this to some degree. I really can't say. But no, I don't have conscious hallucinations or hear "voices".

After that I went from an ambivalent agnostic to something very different. I'm not prepared to explain things in any detail, but for myself I know there is far more out there than we can see. Is it a belief to me? Not really. I just consider myself more of an eye-witness. Do I seek to prove such experiences? No, I can't. Nor do I care. It's my reality. The rest of you must seek whatever your reality may be.

And of course a few years later I got reacquainted with my cousin (from a different side of the family) who has also had paranormal experiences of her own. We both live in the same city now, and occasionally attend paranormal investigations. Interestingly enough, we've both witnessed paranormal phenomena occasionally with several witnesses.

 

[watersprite]

One of the strangest was a loud deep buzzing noise I heard while sitting at the top of a mountain in the desert sw. No bees. No people at all. No aircraft. No birds. It seemed to be coming from a sandstone cliff about 20 feet to my left. It went on for 25 minutes, then stopped.
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A funny/cute strange thing I saw was a tiny forest mouse caught about 3 feet off the ground by his tail on a thorn bush. He was tired of struggling and yet when I approached to free him, he gave a mighty, desperate wiggle and flung himself onto the ground, hitting it already running at max speed.

 

[Flinty]

Back in 1996, I was set up with a woman. When we met she was extremely startled.

The next time we got together she showed me a black-and-white photo of...me.

It turned out to be a doppelganger that was living in England.

 

[Tom]

One of the strangest was a loud deep buzzing noise I heard while sitting at the top of a mountain in the desert sw. No bees. No people at all. No aircraft. No birds. It seemed to be coming from a sandstone cliff about 20 feet to my left. It went on for 25 minutes, then stopped.
------
A funny/cute strange thing I saw was a tiny forest mouse caught about 3 feet off the ground by his tail on a thorn bush. He was tired of struggling and yet when I approached to free him, he gave a mighty, desperate wiggle and flung himself onto the ground, hitting it already running at max speed.

I'm going to guess bees, their nest hidden from view. I ran into such, infrequently, in Nevada desert.

 

[Lula1989]

There was a guy down the street once wrapped in Christmas lights (in September) holding a Bible, in whitey-tighties, singing and dancing who knows what. Pretty sure he was on crack Not to mention this was 6AM on a weekday

 

[pjcnet]

I was a paranormal investigator from 1996 and I later became a member of a very serious and professional scientific only investigation group. Unfortunately things started going really downhill in the field early in the new millennium when we saw the start of various ridiculously fake TV programmes followed by numerous extremely unprofessional groups inspired by the awful shows as well as masses of pathetic paid public "ghost hunts" designed entirely just to frighten people (this is NOT what the paranormal is about). This craze completely took over and destroyed everything, now every known location is taken over by paid public groups that advertise the location like some sort of horror movie and they've made a complete mockery of the paranormal. Back in 1996 there was no fake "ghost hunt" TV shows and no fake public "ghost hunts" what-so-ever, I used quotes as these naff TV shows are what started calling them "ghost hunts" in the first place which is an total utter insult to any proper paranormal investigation. Unlike the false and totally 100% fake TV shows such as Ghost Adventures you have to be very patient for something to happen even in an allegedly haunted location, when things do happen they're often small and it's very common for nothing to happen at all even after spending a whole night at allegedly one of the most haunted locations in the country (on another night something could still happen however if you're very lucky). Apparitions are extremely rare and you could go out for many years and never have the privilege of seeing a single one, obviously on the fake TV shows this is a common occurrence and things that you'd be lucky to experience once in months of investigating happen literally every few minutes plus much more (that's partly why I know they're 100% fake and I've even spoken to witnesses, including the honest owner of The Ancient Ram Inn who was John Humphries while on a private investigation there, a very popular very fake TV programme called Most Haunted showed a member of their crew allegedly being attacked by a "spirit" and the rest of the crew apparently needed to drag him out physically while he was allegedly still under attack, John however witnessed them set all this up beforehand with a carefully positioned unseen mattress that the member of the crew being attacked was able to easily fall back onto when the attack apparently began, viciously knocking him back onto the "floor", John was put up in a hotel by the TV show, but decided to go home early instead while they were still filming.)

Once I went out with a couple of friends who we later formed into a small group to train at the last minute. It was a nice warm Summer's evening and we visited a local churchyard that was allegedly known to the haunted, it was a greenbelt location that had seen action during the English Civil War with numerous arrow marks still visible on the outside of the building. It was dusk and I was talking to my friends sitting on a bench in front of me before we started. I then very clearly saw a women in a long dark mourning dress walking along the path parallel to ours near the gravestones. I whispered to my friends to stop talking in order to give the mourning women respect, but a couple of seconds later her image obliterated almost like her entire substance faded into the background. I immediately went running over to the location which was only around 30 yards away, it was still just possible to see, but I still lit everywhere up with a very bright torch, but she was no-where to be seen. Other witnesses in the past had reported seeing exactly the same dark women at the location, she was thought to be the mistress of soldier who lost his life in the English Civil War, apparently she mourned his death before taking her own life (which was a sin in those days). When I saw her I just assumed she was an actual living women mourning because she was so clear and the whole occurrence only lasted about 8 seconds, but looking back it would have been very unusual to see a women in such an old fashioned dress alone in the church yard at that time of night. We revisited the location on lots of occasions, but was unfortunately unable to witness her ever again. Sadly my friends were facing the opposite direction when I witnessed her and didn't look round in time before she'd vanished, but I know 100% what I saw. It's speculated that such apparitions are a replay of an event in history that repeat, I have also speculated that they could be a tear in time that are created by times of great emotion and/or death.

 

[Benjamin Dover]

Someone once tried to get me to watch some "ghost hunter" television show with them. They seem to be all about finding a ghost; that is, until they think they've found one. When that happens, they start panicking and running away. I do not get the appeal of things like this.

 

[Genevieve]

Cicadas produce a buzzing noise. My grandmother lived in the Nevada desert. I remember visiting in the summers and literally sweeping their dried carcasses off the sides of the house. They are quite loud.