Have a story that worthy of telling around a campfire?

[mr natural]

Back when we lived up north, the actual temperature hit 23 below zero 1 night and our car battery cracked. Ot was an old car and the bracket that held the battery was a solid lump of rust. I tried everything to get that battery out. Our neighbor was out shoveling snow and saw all of this. He came over and said, “don’t worry, hippie, I got this.” It was around 10 in the morning and he was on like his 3rd beer. So he went in his house and got a hammer and chisel. He aligned the chisel with the bracket and took a mighty swing with the hammer. He knocked a giant hole in the battery and the battery acid splashed on his face. He was standing in the streat screaming and clawing at his eyes. After a while he calmed down, chugged half a beer and lined the chisel up again. He took another swing and the hammer bounced off of the chisel and hit him in the temple. Now there was blood gushing out of the side of his head and he was screaming again. I was pretty freaked out. I told him to go in his house and lie down. I went back to our apartment and soaked my nearly frostbitten feet in warm water in the tub, utterly defeated. 100% true.

 

[thunderbyrd]

i could tell a tale of a mishap at Ft Knox, but no.

no one was injured, miraculously.

 

[Toto'sDad]

Fell of a car hood at 4 am. My neighbours were getting to work. My friends were worried, are you ok dude ? Yeah i am good, just let me fetch my glasses. I can't even imagine what the neighbours were thinking. Close call i guess.

A friend of mine ripped off my underwears from under my jeans and made me a tie.

I guess that is spooky enough for today.
God, was i dumb.

 

[Kandinskyesque]

A more synchronous than spooky occurrence.

I was at my neuro guy (neuropsychologist) about 2 years ago and the subject of how life's direction changed for me after my brain injury was under discussion.

I was talking about first experiencing the feeling of loss after working hard to get into university to study Civil Engineering, and that while believing my recovery from the brain injury was all right, the effects caught up with me in my third year meaning I had to drop out.

I ended up training as a draughtsman then qualifying as an engineering technician, a much lower level than my initial intention. Meanwhile all my close friends and my wife went on to have great careers, while the ongoing and increasing aftereffects of my injury meant having to quit full time work by the age of 31. I've watched the career years pass me by, as those close to me have reaped their hard-earned rewards in their respective careers.
That's still a difficult place to be when those thoughts come knocking.

My neuro guy suggested trying to make peace with the events and I came up with the idea of driving to the university after my session, (a place I avoided), having a wander round and trying to think of the positive aspects of my time there.

I parked up near the university and was walking towards the old student's union. I thought about my friend Wee Mick who I used to drive home from 12 step meetings.
Wee Mick had been the janitor in the student's union for 35 years, lived in a flat/apartment on the roof of the building and was full of great stories. I'd sit in Wee Mick's place after meetings, drinking coffee for hours sometimes. We'd talk about the numerous bands we had both seen at the union.
Wee Mick had famously tried to eject Kurt Cobain from the premises for smoking a joint in the foyer in front of the students after a soundcheck. He nearly succeeded (on principle) and Nirvana's famous QMU gig might never had happened, had he shown his inflexible side of which I'd witnessed a few times.
Wee Mick had died the year before, quite suddenly while visiting his sister in Canada. I felt the loss but remembered him fondly. I still miss the wee fella.

Still walking, my attention was drawn to the mathematics building next door to the union, which was where my friendship with a guy I ended up playing in a band for 15 years began.
He's still a very close friend.
We met at a maths lecture in our first week.
We were both late for the lecture, so we sat at the back of the hall and started chatting, forgoing any chance of catching up on the day's calculus lecture.

Him in an Orange Juice t-shirt, me wearing a Bunnymen one, we talked about music.
He played keys, I play guitar and we couldn't agree on a single band we both liked except one, The Skids. We both loved the band.
So began a great friendship and a few years later a good original material band, that got to play some decent UK venues over the years.

I walked around the corner to the front of the student's union, with a feeling that I was beginning to see the positives in my early life experience at university, only to see the most unlikely situation in front of me.

Standing outside on the steps of the student's union casually playing a guitar and talking to some people, was the lead singer from the Skids, Richard Jobson.

Rather spooked and nervous around the weird coincidence, I plucked up the courage to ask for a photograph with him.
I never mentioned the coincidence/synchronicity to him, I thought that might be a bit too weird of me.
However, a couple of years later, there are times I wish I had.

Pics or it didn't happen...

 

[danielreid27]

Back in the late 70's, my step-father was drunk out in the garage & working on the pickup truck's motor.
So he grabbed a Can of 10w30 Oil.

He then put a 6" Buck Knife on the top & slammed the knife into the can....dang ... he had the blade pointing up & drove his right palm down to the hilt on the knife!!! What a mess...

 

[Sparky2]

I have told this story before, on this very forum:


I am a rational, reasonable man of science.
I don't subscribe to hoo-doo voodoo, nor am I superstitious / given to flights of fancy.
But I must share this true story with you.

It was around 18 years ago or so.
My wife and I (residing in northern Alabama) went to bed at our usual nine pm, and in short order I was sound asleep. It was a Friday night.

At right around one a.m. I woke up suddenly, and I felt convinced that somebody unwelcome was in the house. It was a terrifying sensation, and I nearly had a panic attack.

I secured a pistol from under my pillow and began to search the house with a bright flashlight.

Every nerve in my body was on fire, and, though I methodically uncovered every dark corner and came to realize that the house was secure (and no intruders were inside), I had an unsettling feeling of terror that was very hard to shake.
Eventually, I settled down, and about an hour later, and went back to sleep.

Some time later the next day I happened to telephone my daughter who lived down in Melbourne, Florida. We chatted about this and that, and about the weather, and then she began to relate the story of a misadventure she had experienced the night before.

She had been out with some girlfriends, and caught a cab home to her apartment.
It was late, and the sidewalk was dark as she fumbled for her keys to unlock her ground-floor apartment door.
When she went to put the key in the lock, the door swung inward to the dark hallway within.
The door was unlocked and the door was open.

Scared half to death, she pushed her way into the apartment and called out to see what was up. A breeze blew the door shut behind her, and she then heard some scuttling, hurried noise, from somewhere in the darkened living room. Somebody was in the apartment!
She screamed in terror, wrenched open the apartment door, and ran outside.

She was beside herself with fear, and couldn't stop screaming.
Sure enough, the neighbors woke up and came to her aid.
The police were called, and they arrived in short order and did a thorough search of the apartment.

There was nothing untoward going on, and the place was clean and clear.
She stood in the living room at that point, and related her tale to the cops.
The policemen speculated that my daughter had simply not pulled the door firmly enough earlier in the evening when she had departed, and the door had hung open all evening.

And the noise she had heard when she stepped into the darkness earlier had been her pet ferret, moving about in his cage.
Relieved, she thanked the cops and the neighbors, locked up all the doors and windows, and retired to bed.

I asked her over the phone line, "Joanie, what time was this? What time did you get home from your night on the town?"
"Mmmmm, it was right around two a.m., Dad."
Two a.m.
Two a.m. Eastern Time is one a.m. Central Time.

My daughter's terrifying notion of an intruder in her apartment coincided precisely with the moment I had woken up in abject terror myself.

I told her the story of my own horror the night before, and we compared notes on the timing and the sensations we had both felt (and apparently shared).

I don't know if you call that telepathy, or ESP.
A primordial connection between a daughter and her protective father.
A psychic link that carried over 650 miles, and that woke me from a dead sleep.

Whatever you call it, it was very real, and extremely unnerving.

 

[telekaster1999]

I don't have a campfire story but I have been snipe hunting.

 

[Greenmachine]

We're 13 or 14 years old and swimming in the ocean. Peter is sitting on a log on the beach 30 feet away. One boy poops in the water. Another boy picks it up and throws it at Peter hitting him square in the chest, splattering up under his chin and everywhere else. Peter seems to think it's just mud. Until he looks down and the smell hits. He looks at us. He screams in shock. He charges into the water and furiously washes himself off as quickly as he can. We are dying laughing.

 

[thunderbyrd]

I have told this story before, on this very forum:


I am a rational, reasonable man of science.
I don't subscribe to hoo-doo voodoo, nor am I superstitious / given to flights of fancy.
But I must share this true story with you.

It was around 18 years ago or so.
My wife and I (residing in northern Alabama) went to bed at our usual nine pm, and in short order I was sound asleep. It was a Friday night.

At right around one a.m. I woke up suddenly, and I felt convinced that somebody unwelcome was in the house. It was a terrifying sensation, and I nearly had a panic attack.

I secured a pistol from under my pillow and began to search the house with a bright flashlight.

Every nerve in my body was on fire, and, though I methodically uncovered every dark corner and came to realize that the house was secure (and no intruders were inside), I had an unsettling feeling of terror that was very hard to shake.
Eventually, I settled down, and about an hour later, and went back to sleep.

Some time later the next day I happened to telephone my daughter who lived down in Melbourne, Florida. We chatted about this and that, and about the weather, and then she began to relate the story of a misadventure she had experienced the night before.

She had been out with some girlfriends, and caught a cab home to her apartment.
It was late, and the sidewalk was dark as she fumbled for her keys to unlock her ground-floor apartment door.
When she went to put the key in the lock, the door swung inward to the dark hallway within.
The door was unlocked and the door was open.

Scared half to death, she pushed her way into the apartment and called out to see what was up. A breeze blew the door shut behind her, and she then heard some scuttling, hurried noise, from somewhere in the darkened living room. Somebody was in the apartment!
She screamed in terror, wrenched open the apartment door, and ran outside.

She was beside herself with fear, and couldn't stop screaming.
Sure enough, the neighbors woke up and came to her aid.
The police were called, and they arrived in short order and did a thorough search of the apartment.

There was nothing untoward going on, and the place was clean and clear.
She stood in the living room at that point, and related her tale to the cops.
The policemen speculated that my daughter had simply not pulled the door firmly enough earlier in the evening when she had departed, and the door had hung open all evening.

And the noise she had heard when she stepped into the darkness earlier had been her pet ferret, moving about in his cage.
Relieved, she thanked the cops and the neighbors, locked up all the doors and windows, and retired to bed.

I asked her over the phone line, "Joanie, what time was this? What time did you get home from your night on the town?"
"Mmmmm, it was right around two a.m., Dad."
Two a.m.
Two a.m. Eastern Time is one a.m. Central Time.

My daughter's terrifying notion of an intruder in her apartment coincided precisely with the moment I had woken up in abject terror myself.

I told her the story of my own horror the night before, and we compared notes on the timing and the sensations we had both felt (and apparently shared).

I don't know if you call that telepathy, or ESP.
A primordial connection between a daughter and her protective father.
A psychic link that carried over 650 miles, and that woke me from a dead sleep.

Whatever you call it, it was very real, and extremely unnerving.


View attachment 1042718

i'm not superstitious. but i can tell you without any doubt at all that this kind of thing really happens among human beings quite a bit. there is a side to human consciousness that science has never been able to pin down, predict, or isolate, but is as real as anything. you've experienced it, as have millions of others.

it would really be a step forward if we were able to find some way to control it and put it to use.

the "supernatural" is real. but it's very unpredictable.

 

[Electric Warrior]

I managed the night shift at a supermarket employees told me was haunted. I never believed it. I was in the office with the head cashier and we were talking about it. She mentioned that sometimes people smelled a man's cologne. I distinctly remember mocking the notion.

Within a minute or two, all I could smell was an oppressive cloud of cologne. I asked her if she could smell it and she said "no." I could tell she thought I was joking. I wasn't. It was a heavy scent, I mean oppressive. There was nobody else there and no way for her to manipulate the situation as far as I can tell. We we were face to face the whole time. Nobody else was nearby. Eventually I had to flee the office because I was so weirded out and the smell was so intense. It never happened again.

I am not a superstitious person in the least, but it was as real to me as typing this right now.

 

[ficelles]

The only thing I can thing of that doesn't break the rules is a friend who was long-reining a pony while training him to cart. The pony had blinkers on and a light exercise cart hitched behind and something spooked him, he broke away and bolted for a gate with the cart bouncing around behind. "Oh no he's going to run smack into the gate" we thought, but no, he jumped the gate and took the cart and a gatepost with him and headed off down the road. He'd probably still be going except for running into a ploughed field which slowed him down enough to catch, luckily not hurt. The cart was a wreck though.

 

[JeffroJones]

I'm traversing the great Australian Continent, alone, in my little car.
I love doing that.
So I'm somewhere in the middle, literally the middle of nowhere, stone flat landscape, dotted with saltbush and the occasional hardy tree. It's about 2AM in the morning, and I'm weary after a long day at the wheel, so I look for a place to pull over. It has to be a designated park/camp spot, a clearing bulldozed into the saltbush scrub. I've seen what a road train does to a car pulled over by the side of the road, and it ain't pretty.
Eventually I see the "P" sign = you can park here = so I pull off the road.
Dead quiet.
Pitch black.
Stars overhead like you could reach up and grab a handful.
I am leery of setting up a sleeping bag outside, in the dark.
Just as likely to wake up on top of a bloody ants nest or something.
The back seat is a bit cramped, but beggars can't be choosers, so I settle down for the night.
Just as I'm drifting off, I hear someone scratching their fingernails across the car roof, from front to back, all the way along.
WTF? I grab a torch. Can't see nothing. Heart pounding. I tell myself it was just metal contracting, or something.
Almost asleep again, then - skitter skitter skitter, fingernails on metal.
Holy effing *esus!! I still can't see anything.
Sleep no longer possible.
Now sitting bolt upright in the dark, heart racing, eyes wide as saucers.
Again, skitter skitter skitter! I leap out of the car with a torch and a screwdriver as a weapon.
The darkness is completely empty.
Nothing.
Just mystifying.
My brain seems to have frozen into a WTF?!? loop...
I train the torch on the roof of the car, then there's a shadow, and "skitter skitter skitter!"
Light enters my brain. It's bats.
Water has condensed on the roof of the car in the cold desert air, and bats are skittering their bony little wings along the roof as they swoop past, scooping up precious droplets of water. Bloody bats

:::

 

[Frontman]

When I was younger, I was a wanderer, and whenever I enough money to pay for a full tank of gas (not very often), I would go on long drives to the mountains or desert.

One day I took my car (‘72 K5 Blazer) on a drive up to Big Bear, and back down through Joshua Tree, then to Victorville, and then head home to OC.

It was a good drive, I took the back roads where I could, and leaving Victorville I decided to follow the old 66 instead of the interstate. In those days there were still remnants of old gas stations, motels, and restaurants along the road. There was almost no traffic on the old highway, which was why all the old businesses had closed.

As I was driving down the road I saw a man walking alongside carrying a gas can. As he heard my car coming up, he waved me down and asked if I could take him to a gas station. The next station was a few miles down the road, so I gave him a ride.

He didn’t say anything along the way. He was tall, thin, and hadn’t had a bath or washed his clothes in some time. We got to the gas station and he got out to fill up his gas can, and I went into the station to get a drink.

When I came back out, he asked me if I could give him a ride back to his car. As there was almost never anyone driving up that way, I thought I would be nice and help him out. We got back into my car and headed up the highway.

About 5 miles up, he pointed to a drive leading off the highway, so I turned off, drove through the trees, and saw a beat up Pontiac Trans Am with the big flaming chicken decals on the hood.

I parked in front of the Trans Am, and as I did, the guy in my car quickly pulled the keys out of my ignition. Another man got out of the Trans Am carrying a metal pipe, and started walking to my side of my car.

The guy sitting in my car was smiling, his teeth were rotten, and his eyes were crazy, he reminded me of that hitchhiker in the old “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” It was a scary moment, and I was thinking the worst. I quickly turned my head to look out the back window of my car as if I had seen something. The guy followed my look, and as he did, I reached down next to my seat and pulled out the gun I had stashed there.

I always carried a gun in my car. This was the time of the LA riots, and people had lost a little faith in dialing 911 for help. My gun was an old .45 which I always carried cocked-and-locked. A few years before, I had been offered a ride by Randy Kraft, who ended up in the national news shortly thereafter. I went nowhere unarmed.

I put the gun to the guy’s face and told him to put my keys on the floor, then to open the door, and then to step out and close the door.

The other guy, the one with the metal pipe, froze when he saw the gun. I got my keys, started my car, and then backed out without taking my eyes of either man.

I quickly drove back to the gas station, called the police (sheriff’s department), and they arrived about 30 minutes later. By the time I led them back to where the incident happened, the Trans Am and its occupants were long gone. But the deputies knew who they were.

That was a pretty interesting day, and I hate to think what might have happened if I hadn’t kept that gun next to my seat.

 

[Toto'sDad]

During the most glorious summer of my life, 1959, I had taken a little gal out for the evening. later on, I had a new Ford pickup and told her about a hill I knew out off of Wallace Road where you could see millions of stars. We headed out there, looked at the stars for a bit, then snuggled up in the seat, and I was just telling her about how her eyes put the shinning stars to shame, when she screamed! I looked towards the front of my truck and there stood about as big of a man, as I've ever seen.

He was wearing a white shirt, the keys were in the ignition because we had the radio on, I hit the starter, the engine came to life, I yanked the truck in gear and hit it! He jumped out of the way, but grabbed onto the tailgate as we went buy, I never let up on the gas, pretty soon he figured out he couldn't hold back a full grown 1959 Ford F-100, and either let go, or was thrown off.

I took the gal home, and went down to a local hangout cafe, most everyone my age was gone, but there were a few older guys there. I looked pretty shaken I guess, and the gal who was working the counter asked me what was the matter? I told her my story, and she said let's go look at your truck, when we walked around to the rear of it, the tail gate was actually bent outward away from the bed of the truck. Either that guy was inhumanly strong, or...

 

[PhoenixBill]

I am a man of science. I believe everything can be explained by natural phenomena…

Except for the 0.000001% of things which defy any scientific explanation. Some things occur that are not coincidence.

My father was in World War 2 in Italy, while the shooting was going on. He was very reluctant to talk about it. Sometimes when I was a kid (he died when I was 15) I would sit outside with him on the garden swing at night and he would open up, a little. He told me a couple of ghost stories that he had experienced that made my hair stand up on end, and my dad wasn’t one to invent stories. I wish I could remember them.

He mentioned another time that folks in his family had experiences (I don’t remember the words he used, it wasn’t supernatural or psychic) and he told of something he had experienced outside the war. Again, I don’t remember it. Now folks reading this might dismiss all this, but one evening we were inside while he was outside in his swing alone. He came in the house asking if Uncle Zak was here; we said no. Well I heard him calling me, he said, I looked out front and out back but didn’t see him. Bear in mind Uncle Zak lived 3 hours away. Well an hour or two later we got a phone call. Uncle Zak had died a little earlier that evening.

In the summer we would pile in the RV and vacation all over the US, and back then there were plenty of open spots by the road you could pull off and spend the night. We stopped at one such pullout one evening and I was just walking around a little when I got this incredible sense that we should not stay there that night. I came in, told my dad what I felt, and he simply said ok, we’ll go on. He believed I could have a premonition too so he didn’t question me at all.

One last thing for me. Living in Oklahoma several decades ago, I was taking a nap when I dreamed I was walking around in a white house, looking out the top floor window and seeing a bunch of sailboats anchored in the water in front of the house. Years later, I moved to Nashville, and the realtor took me to look at a house on the lake. A white house and when I was inside looking out the second floor window, I was looking out over a yacht club, with their sailboats anchored right there.

 

[richiek65]

Hitch-hikers are a rare sight around my way, and I rarely pick them up. During a time of major upheaval in my life about 10 years ago, i saw a guy about 60 hitching with a suitcase. He looked clean and well kept but seemed very out of place. He was trying to get to a train station to eventually make his way about 500km up the coast. He'd lost his farm to the bank and was trying to get to a family member who would put him up. I got him as far as I could and gave him what few dollars in cash I had on me (I rarely carry cash). I felt overwhelming sadness for this guy who for some reason, i felt that I HAD to help, or that I was somehow meant to encounter him, I got teary telling my wife about him, no idea what became of him.

Maybe a year or so after that, still going thru major life drama, i come across another hitch-hiker, similar age and again, well dressed and carrying a suitcase. I offer him a ride, he introduces himself as John Morgan, he's down on his luck and trying to get to Eden, a town about 500km south. Now, my two natural children's names are Morgan and Eden. I was more than a little spooked by the coincidence.

I don't think I have seen any hitch-hikers in my area since then, i wonder if both these people were put into my path for some purpose (that I was clueless to), and did the coincidence of my kids names have any meaning?

Edit: both men looked like they were from the 60s/70s..clothing, brylcreemed hair, even the suitcases they carried were oldskool

 

[Spox]

Back when I was about seventeen I couldn't sleep at nights, I still go to bed late, managed to pull it back to about 1.00am but it has crept back to 2.30am and sometimes later but it is better than going to bed at 9.00am which has been my routine for a large part of my life, it started when I just turned fourteen and my brothers death. Every night I wake after between forty minutes and one hour and it sometimes takes hours to get back to sleep.

At seventeen I took a job as the sole night watchman at a housing development at the edges of my city. On the way there houses thinned out then once here there was nothing but fields and scrubland going into the horizon. The houses were being built in a horseshoe shape on a slope, the opening in the horseshoe being the bottom of the hill and entrance and at the top of the hill there was an old building. The building had been a childrens home for unwanted children and orphans. My room was closeby, I had one of the early brick sized mobile phones, it was part of the tiny room/office I had. To charge it I had to take it into the childrens home for some reason. It was winter and I would walk through the rain and sleet or snow in the dark into this building, there was no other electricity in the building apart from my charger and I would have a torch. I am normally an explorer but I never went any further into this building than necessary, the vibe from it was really bad but I was taking a lot of weed and hallucinogenics at the time.

As the winter went into spring and the development neared completion I gladly moved to another site where it turned out that the yard was where women accused of witchcraft were burned in that town...

 

[fretWalkr]

Years ago I was playing a gig and on a break I was talking to some of customers. One of the regulars, who was kind of sketchy, pulled me over and said I want you to meet someone. Okay, so I walk over with him to a group of people. He says I want you to meet the devil. Okay, I'll play along. "How are you doing devil? Is it warm in here or is it me?" And we yuck it up. I shake his hand and he gives me a shark-like grin and chuckles, never breaking eye contact.

By then the break is over and I get back on stage. On the next break, sketchy guy comes over and tells me the guys name and I nearly passed out. He and his brother were notorious criminals who had been tried for brutally murdering one of their cousins over a drug deal. He brother got a 200 year sentence for a double murder and was murdered there.

So I'm making wise cracks to this stone cold killer and calling him Devil. Afterwards I was a little shaken. This was one of those times I was really glad to be in a band where he was enjoying the music. Under different circumstances smarting off to this guy could have gone south fast. Music takes you to some strange places sometimes.

 

[ChicknPickn]

I have only one story, but dozens of versions of it.

 

[drlucky]

My Mom passed in February of 2019. She was 98, and was in a SNF. A few days before she passed I got a call from the nursing home that she was had stopped eating and was slowly shutting down. I went out to see her, not sure how long she would last. She was very tired, said she was "ready to go home". We talked for a bit, then she drifted off to sleep. Two nights later, I was awakened at 2am by the sound of a huge gust of wind rattling my house (blew my neighbor's fence over too).

I knew...

Phone rang not two minutes later...Mom's nursing home.

Mom had passed.

She was a force of nature during her life. I figure the huge gust of wind that woke me up was her letting me know that she was leaving this mortal coil...