I was in theater class in community college and a cute girl asked if I wanted to hang out, so of course I said yes. Turns out we were hanging out at her boyfriend’s apartment, which was ok because we were smoking some weed and there was a hot German exchange student there too. At one point the boyfriend and the German girl head upstairs and I’m alone with the cute theater girl who seems to be getting annoyed. She goes upstairs to check on them and that’s when I notice the 50 something year old toothless crackhead who has been milling about (people were coming in and out, front door open) is now standing rather close to me. He looks right at me, unzips his pants, pulls out his dick, and says to me “go ahead”. As politely as I could muster I simply said something like “no thanks, I’m good” and awkwardly make my way upstairs. The cute theater girl seems really angry and that’s when I notice her boyfriend and the German girl smoking crack. “Ah”, I thought, “that explains the crackhead downstairs”.

Cute theater girl storms out, but I’m too high and don’t really care, plus the very hot German is still there, so I just crashed there.

It all worked out because the theater girl dumped the crack smoking boyfriend and had rebound sex with me, so in the end it was totally worth it.

Then there was the other time I was kidnapped by crackheads… But that’s a story for another time.

This might pale in comparison with all the other replies here, but one incident really made me uneasy.

I was seated inside a train minding my own business. I was wearing a loose shirt and an even looser pair of walking shorts. The shorts were made of thin and glossy material. It wasn’t thin enough to expose my underwear but it readily shows any bumps or whatnot.

The train wasn’t that full, and there were lots of empty seats. The train had longitudinal seating (two rows of seats facing each other, with some standing space in between. There’s also an area where the train can “bend”. This area has no seats of course. I was seated next to this “bendy area”.

I remember having difficulty staying awake and was seated in an increasingly loose way. I caught a glimpse of a guy standing in front of me. He was leaning against the train walls and was on his phone.

Now, the train isn’t the most quiet, but I distinctly heard an unmistakeable camera sound which jolted me awake. Selfie cameras on phones wasn’t yet a thing back then and the way his phone is oriented, I can see the phone’s camera lens pointed at me. The guy, noticing that I noticed the sound, quickly put the phone back in his pocket.

I might be wrong, I hope I was wrong, but I thought a stranger took a photo of me just a meter or two away from me.

That’s it. Kinda underwhelming, I suppose but I was kept wondering why that guy, if it’s indeed the case, took a picture of me.

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 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.

Backpacking in a conservation area in Colorado, which means fewer people but also fewer rangers than a national park. Passed a guy and he was a little off but whatever and I kept moving, maybe he’d just been on trail for a while or simply didn’t want to interact.

Then I pause for food and he passes me, whistling and seeming to put a lot of effort into not making eye contact. Then he stops and I pass him again. Then he passes me, then before too long he stops so I pass him again. Over and over, I ended up passing him at least six times despite keeping a steady pace. Every time, he is whistling and not looking at me.

When I’m done for the day, I set up and started prepping to sleep. I heard him whistling in the distance. I packed up and walked as fast as I could with minimal light until I finally stopped around 3am. Setup camp with no light. Didn’t sleep a wink listening for anything that sounded like a whistle. I didn’t see him the next day.

So my take on the man or bear thing: bears won’t track a human through the woods for miles and miles.

I’ve also been attacked by a random dude on a bus that probably had some mental health and/or drug issues. That was scary, but the hours + stalking + mental and physical fatigue of the backpacking stalker was far more draining.

Question, if I answer being kidnapped for half a week in a guestroom, does that make them still a stranger?

Possibly ambiguous answers aside, I’d have to say it’s a long story that concerns what crazy things people do at a ward.

Someone tried to mug me when I was walking back to my dorm room.

A guy in a rugby jersey, with the build of a rugby player, grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted in my face “I don’t care if I die tonight!” And headbutted me right in the forehead After I told him I didn’t have a cigarette. Luckily I was with 6 friends, they took care of it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.