I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the beer store, playing a game on my phone, procrastinating on my mission to buy beer.

I had locked the door from pure paranoia (I’m just a paranoid guy).

A guy on the sidewalk stepped onto the parking lot and walked toward my car. I thought little of it, but I noticed. He got closer and closer, and then he grabbed the handle and tried to open the driver-side door.

It was locked so he casually kept walking like everything was normal.

It was broad daylight. I still have no idea what he would have done if the door had been unlocked. But I was sitting and in the more vulnerable position.

When my brother and I were pretty young, my dad once left us in the car to run in fast and grab something from a grocery store. (I know, bad, but this was several decades ago. It was more normal back then.)

While he was gone, an older man came up to our car and started aggressively trying to unlock the door.

My brother and I froze in fear and just watched as he kept trying to unlock the door. We had unbuckled ourselves to play while my dad was inside, so we were on the floor.

We both just shrunk down into the floor and hid silently, not knowing what to do.

After probably 30 seconds, he put his hands up over his eyes and looked in the car window, then made a frustrated sound and quickly left.

Once our dad came back a few minutes later, my brother and I told him what happened. We were pretty freaked out.

He said the man was probably just confused because he was elderly and thought it was his car. I think that makes sense, but as little kids alone, it was still really scary.

A stranger trying to grab me by the back of my neck as I rode past on my bicycle. He got ahold of my hoodie but didn’t have a good grip. I got away and pedalled like hell.

While I was working downtown one summer, I stopped off in a CVS in the center of the main part of the city to buy some water.

On my way into the store I walked past a homeless black man. He had on a thigh-length coat with a hoodie under it, jeans, and boots that were half laced. The cornea of one eye was milky, presumably damaged at some point and probably blind or nearly so.

I grabbed my water and went to the back of the line, a few feet from that homeless guy. He got a look at me and said with a giant smile “Hi Death_Equity!” like greeting an old friend. I said “Hey man.” hiding how surprised I was and he walked away. I was too caught off guard to find out who he was, I was reeling that he knew my name. I have no idea who he was, but he somehow knew my name. I didn’t have a name tag on, nobody else was in the store with me that could have said my name, I didn’t have a credit card out that he could have read. He either was a voodoo priest who gave his eye for sight beyond sight, or he is someone who knew me and I did not know or recognize him.

When I got back to the truck, I told my coworker about it and was fairly freaked out about this random half-blind homeless guy that knew me by name.

I have spent hours since trying to figure out who that man was to me. I feel horrible knowing that he must have been someone I knew and have forgotten about him as society has. Maybe I went to school with him as a kid? Maybe I met him through work before he was homeless? I wish I knew, but he surprised the fuck out of me.

I was sitting in my pickup outside my apartment listening to the radio and some guy just…got in. I asked “can I help you?” and the look on his face when he realized his mistake was priceless. In his defense Lyft had just started in my area and there was only one other vehicle that looked like mine in that part of the city.

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A patient came into the ER for chest pain. He was uncomfortable and a bit anxious but otherwise normal. The guy was a military officer and very athletic. I go in to draw his blood and get some background information, we’re chatting as I get my supplies ready, and as I’m putting the needle in his arm he says “you’re from the government.” in a very cold voice. I look up and his face has completely changed. He’s furious and looks like a cornered animal. Before I can ask “what?”, he screams it again and rips the needle out of his arm. He kicked me backward and then stood up while screaming “you’re from the government” repeatedly. I get to my feet and he charges, easily twice my size and probably trained to kill. I run to the far end of the ward, he keeps running after me, and the only thing that saved me was having my paramedic boots on. I managed to get one good kick with the steel toe into his shin and brought him down after which I got him into a restraint position and the doc sedated him. I had never seen psychosis suddenly come on like that from a completely neurotypical presentation. A switch flipped mid-conversation and he was determined to kill me without any ability to perceive pain or limit the strength of his muscles. I broke his leg and he was unaffected, still trying to get up and attack me again.

I was out in the garden when a dude waked by. One of us waved, I don’t remember which, and the other waved back, sort of neighborly one hand up for a second wave. By the time he crosses the bush, he has turned back to cross my (luckily fairly large) yard, walking towards me. I run inside, and lock the door and yell at my SO to come downstairs there was a scary man at the door. SO confronts the man while I hide. Dude makes up a story about how someone yelled at him from our balcony, and he thought it was his friend. SO says he doesn’t believe him, and he better not show his face around here again if he wants to make it home alive.

Probably being run off the road and attacked with a knife because I wouldn’t/couldn’t get out of the way of some methed out asshole.

My old car had a gas shut-off if enough big bumps happened.

I was doing 5 over the limit and a dude comes up behind me, honking and going batshit.

The road was a curvy country road with no real way to pull off safely. Too curvy to put my ass on the line speeding up more. So I just waved him around and slowed slightly on a slightly less curved section.

Dude revs up, then starts to jerk into the side of my car.

I brake hard and steer as best as possible to what little shoulder exists.

Passenger side is barely hanging on the edge of a five foot drop, and of course the bump slipping off the paved section hard set off the gas shutoff.

Fine, whatever. The switch to cut it back on is in the fucking rear hatch area.

So I drag my sasquatch ass out out the car to go hit it.

Dude comes screeching back from the other direction. Brakes hard, practically jumps out of the car, pulls a shitty switchblade and comes at me.

Shit went down. I have one small scar, he was worse off. I used to tell the whole story, but people are fucking idiots, and I’m too old for internet bullshit.

I’m guessing the nurse community probably has some outlandish stories to tell here.

I was on a hiking trail … I could see at least 50 meters/yards back.

I stopped and took a couple pictures of some deer super close to the trail. Looked back, then kept walking… Nobody there.

A matter of moments later, I hear footsteps behind me. I had headphones on but I wasn’t playing my music very loud. I take a quick glance back, the guy is wearing a grey T-shirt, a blue ball cap, blue jeans, and white sneakers. Literally the most generic outfit you can possibly have and he’s looking at the ground so I can’t see his face.

I decided to call my friend who’s always home on my phone. He picks up and I just start some BS conversation. Probably 15 seconds later, the dude vanished just as quickly as he’d come.

I don’t know if he was just a really fast walker and my situational awareness was way off that day, but it did freak me out.

I can’t read this thread. I have a few scraps left of faith in humanity I’d like to retain.

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Getting mugged/pickpocketed and having my phone stolen - I was in a foreign country, didn’t speak the language well and lost a lot of precious pictures that I didn’t have time to backup (Google was being a fucking bitch and prioritizing storing some long videos I’d tried to mark as excluded from backup). It felt violating, especially for how cheap my phone was.

A guy followed me around the grocery store when I was around 20. I didn’t have a car and didn’t want to walk home with a stranger following me, so I just walked around the store for ages.

At one point some guy asked me if I noticed anything strange about the guy following me. I don’t remember what I said. At another point, a friendly stranger started making small talk with me, and asked my name. I was nervous but that’s really common around here and I didn’t know how to leave the conversation.

I saw both guys reporting back to the guy following me.

Don’t know what they wanted. I ended up hiding in the women’s restroom for a few hours.