Have a story that worthy of telling around a campfire?

[mad dog]

Years ago I worked alongside a very cool lady in a big NYC bank IT group. We became friends, and I often hung out with her and her family out in the suburbs where we both lived.

One night I had this incredibly vivid dream about her family. Set in this bizarre house and property. Long, strange dream. Their house was set in the middle of a freeway, which is strange enough. Stranger was the back yard. Not a straight line anywhere. There was a jagged fence, all points and protrusions. Hard to explain, but it was striking, strange.

So next day at work I tell her about this dream. We're both laughing at the odd imagery. A couple months later she and her husband move into a new home in the same town. She calls me up and says "Something you have to see." I go over and she takes me into the spacious backyard. Which is set up against some kind of town property, an easement. And there is a high fence along the back. No straight lines. The back of the property is carved into deep points, and the fence follows. Like no other suburban property I've seen. It was exactly what I'd seen in my dream. Pretty damn strange.

 

[mad dog]

One more, from my Idaho cousin Charles. He was a devoted hiker, spent one summer hiking the length of Idaho, north to south. He'd be on trails for weeks, would stop in various towns and load up on provisions.

So one day he stops for lunch on a high mountain promontory, sits on a fallen log and starts eating a peanut butter sandwich while reading a paperback. At one point he senses something behind him. Looks over his shoulder. A giant grizzly is standing behind him, bent forward, intently staring at his sandwich over his shoulder.

Charles slowly put the sandwich down on the log, butt scuttled to one side, grabbed his pack and made it out of there. That was his closest bear encounter in a long summer of hiking.

 

[thunderbyrd]

Years ago I worked alongside a very cool lady in a big NYC bank IT group. We became friends, and I often hung out with her and her family out in the suburbs where we both lived.

One night I had this incredibly vivid dream about her family. Set in this bizarre house and property. Long, strange dream. Their house was set in the middle of a freeway, which is strange enough. Stranger was the back yard. Not a straight line anywhere. There was a jagged fence, all points and protrusions. Hard to explain, but it was striking, strange.

So next day at work I tell her about this dream. We're both laughing at the odd imagery. A couple months later she and her husband move into a new home in the same town. She calls me up and says "Something you have to see." I go over and she takes me into the spacious backyard. Which is set up against some kind of town property, an easement. And there is a high fence along the back. No straight lines. The back of the property is carved into deep points, and the fence follows. Like no other suburban property I've seen. It was exactly what I'd seen in my dream. Pretty damn strange.

and you're left wondering "WHY". why i the heck can't i dream a longshot at the track? or something that would save somebody from danger? heck if i know.

anyhow, i did learn a lesson about this strange phenomenon many years ago. i had a dream that i was talking to a young woman with black hair in the front lawn of a large brick building. this young lady had a distinctive speech impediment.

in a month or two, i was indeed speaking to dark-haired young lady in the vicinity of a large brick building. and she had the speech impediment, just as i'd dreamed. we were becoming friends until i told her about the dream. she never spoke to me again and avoided me. i was a nutcase.

talking about things like this can make you appear quite nutty to some people. and that's why a lot of people never speak of it, i think.

 

[mad dog]

Another strange one I just remembered.

I was exercise walking on the running track in town, as I often do. The track is set next to a large set of concrete stands, with stairs coming down from the parking lot.

As I come around the backstretch, I see someone standing at the top of the stands. Walking a little further, I hear him shouting "Is that you Michael?" Which is my name. But I don't recognize him. He comes down further on the stairs, and I can clearly see, this guy is a stranger.

So I say "Yes, I am Michael. Do we know each other? Your face is not familiar." He laughs and says "Oh no. We don't know each other. I'm just checking to see if I can still do this." Still laughing, he turns and leaves.

Do what? Read minds? I remain totally mystified by that encounter.

 

[ReverendRevolver]

I'm sure should have a few. Troubles remembering them......

My first fulltime job was at a computer store. The building it occupied was the original town newspaper building in the city I live in.
Front part of the second floor, and the whole first floor proper were used, the third floor, basement, and multi floor press room were just storage.
I had to occasionally dump rain catching buckets from the leaking roofs, which I hated doing for a few reasons.
First, although it was 2005ish and I was 16, parts of the roof looked to be asbestos.
Second, several people had died there during the newspaper days (2 fell in the press, a couple people heart attacks in office areas, and the parking lot was once a taxi dispatch station where the radio guy snuffed himself one night with a .38. Anyway...). When you went in the back second floor office space, adjacent to the press room, you'd see lights and objects in your peripheral vision that weren't there when you turned to look. I'm normally really skeptical, but that place had something going on.
The worste part was the not haunted part of the second floor had carpeted rooms that hadn't been swept in 25 years, dust clouds shot up when you stepped. Tried to vacuum it. Killed the vacuum.
So, I just cut through the "not there lights and silhouettes" part, because I wasn't sneezing and hacking up grey snot for a week when I did.
Place is a gravel parking lot now. Probably for the best.

My other stories are less boring, but a bit heavier: my best friend in high school(and my drummer in at least 2 bands) had a somewhat shaky home life. When we were 18, his mom and step-dad were separating. His house (and he had 16 and 14 year old sisters and a 11 year old brother) became a party house. His step-dad stayed at an RV by the shop he worked at.
One night, she gets drunk, takes pills, hatches a plan. Calls ex husband (also drunk) saying she wants to reconcile.
They talk. He goes to pee. She puts something in his beer. He sees its not right, goes and dumps it. She jumps on his back and stabs him multiple times with a kitchen knife.

He lives. Calls 911, police find her hiding under a car a few blocks away.
She barely gets sentenced because he doesn't want to send the mother of his children to prison forever. (Nicer guy than me) they were on good terms by the time a heart attack did him in almost 15 years later. She was really tore up about it, strangely.

Anyway, so my friends homeless. Stays with some idiot "mma fighter" who's dad has a "biker gang".
My friend talks up these guys at practice. We know they're a joke, and he frequently blows smoke, think nothing of it. (Only one motorcycle in the neighborhood, on cinder blocks. Called the "death demons" or something stupid).
So, a local man gets murdered, stabbed to death. Not anything concerning, into drugs, pedophile on the offenders registry, whatever.
2 dudes who lived with the same family my friend crashes with get arrested for it.
Then he does.
Turns out, the 2 dudes (20 somethings, mentally handicapped) were told by the guy they lived with to kill this guy, because his ex girlfriend found out he was a pedophile and put a "hit" out on him. My friend was with them before and after the "act" and burned thier bloody clothes. They stabbed the guy 79 times.
Both "stabbers" Killed themselves in county, before trial. My friend was 18 at the time, got 18tolife for providing them a weapon and burning evidence.
He's got 5 years until parole is an option.

The guy that ordered the "hit" as a condition of them living there?
Not a thing. I see him, his son, his methed out wife every once in awhile. She's a shoplifter. Not a very good one, judging by her rap sheet.
It just goes to show that no matter how much of a joke you know someone is or a group of people are, they're still able to end lives and ruin others by complicity.

That's more scary than any ghost stories I've forgotten. By far.

 

[tubedude]

I wonder if it was politics or religion that they were arguing.

Maple or Rosewood.