Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

I hope I get a lot of replies on this. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I know I'm not the only one whose had a strange life. To me, it's a way of us getting to know one another better and maybe having a good laugh. Some could even think of using their strangeness as a plot in a book.

This thread is about the strange happenings in your life--and it has to be true, no made-up stories--o.k.?

Here's my first one: When I was a young girl, the house where we used to go and get our hair done was also a funeral parlor. So, every time we'd walk through the front door, you'd have to walk pass the parlor which always had a dead body in a casket. I still remember those bodies to this day.

I only feel safe in my imagination.

Nabeel, I know exactly what you mean:) Right? I've only listed one!

I was drowning in a river when I was little. Luckily my mom plucked me out!

hrm the only thing strange in my life i guess i could say was when the time i was in training to be an exorcist and when i was in a wiccian coven. i used my experiences as a background for several paranormal/ supernatural/magic girl novels i have written.

For many years I was a magnet for ghosts. Maybe I still am and the ghosts are just sneakier now.

I used to a merchant navy officer and one night on a voyage from Bombay (as it was then) to the Persian Gulf at 3.50 am local time 9th June 1968 I saw a light, which looked like a moving star. I followed the light through binoculars expecting it to be a plane. I couldn't see any side lights or the shape of a plane. It was a very clear night and the sea was calm.
The light was very bright. It curved over the ship and headed south. It was not moving fast so it was easy to follow.
It was close to the change of watch so I called the 2nd officer to the bridge (I was 3rd officer) and we both observed this strange light. At about 17 degrees above the horizon it stopped moving, as we watched a second light appeared to the right of the first, which approached the ship. This passed astern and and headed northerly.
The 2nd officer left the bridge and I moved to the front of the bridge to see a third light approaching from dead ahead.
This light passed us on the starboard side and headed towards where the second light had gone. The sky was cloudless so I couldn't estimate the light's height above sea level.
I still have the rough copy of my report with the weather - no moon - very clear 83 f 1003.3 mb on a course of 307 true at 14.5 knots (we were a cargo ship).

When I was in my early teens I lived near to a haunted house. It was a large old colonial mansion, and the owners hired live in caretakers. But the caretakers always ended up living in the large garage instead because they said that the weird things happening in the house made it unbearable.

My parents died when I was fifteen. I was on the verge of a criminal life as a juvenile delinquent. I went AWOL to Canada after being drafted into the Army. After spending time in Canada, I returned to the U.S. to face the consequences. After a few years, I returned to civilian life, married, and eventually moved to an island. I worked my way up to a position as Harbormaster. During my 32 years living on Catalina (during which I began writing for the island newspaper), I dealt with such things as the death of actress Natalie Wood. After retiring, I began writing and published my first book, 'Between Two Harbors, Reflections of a Catalina Island Harbormaster'. This year I published my second book, a novel, 'Five Weeks to Jamaica'.
Life for a teenage orphan was not easy. I overcame the challenges and now feel very good about my personal accomplishments and successes.
Perhaps not truly 'strange', but certainly unique.

I have a similar story like some of you. My grandmother's husband was mean and evil, and a PREACHER! So when she finally put him out of her house, he put a curse on it. So for years she had to deal with demons, or ghosts as some of you say, who lived in a dark closet in the back of her house by day, and at night, they would come out.

When you're trying to sleep, you could feel their presence.

I have another similar story like Geoff, but I'll save that for later. I told you, I had a strange life:)

I had panic attacks when I was in my 20's, but I did not know what they were. I thought I was going to die, and when doctors told me I was basically fine, I thought for awhile that I had contracted some unknown disease. I went thru hell and back again before I learned that I was suffering from panic attacks. But then I could finally begin the long climb out of the dark hole I had dug myself into. To this day I wonder how many others silently endure panic attacks, many probably not even knowing what they are.....

I had a difficult time deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I tried a little bit of everything.

Spent 4 years in a Roman Catholic seminary studying for the priesthood, then enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and spent 13 months in Vietnam, was a member of a Country/Western band for 8 years, had a 33-year management career with the H.J. Heinz Co., was a husband for 35 1/2 years and the father of 5, and now I am the grandfather of 4.

I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. Some people find that strange.

Jim wrote: "I had a difficult time deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I tried a little bit of everything.

Spent 4 years in a Roman Catholic seminary studying for the priesthood, then enlisted in ..."

It's never too late to try something new :)

Strangest thing that happened in my life was and experience I had in the late '80s ('88 or '89) while living with two friends.

We all worked at the same office and were in a synth pop band together. Brian was our band leader and chief song writer. Dennis was the guitarist with authority figure issues. He and Brian were nearing the end of their ability to tolerate each other, so they rarely spoke together.

The house was a rancher style with 3 bedrooms along an L-shaped hall. Brian's bedroom was the first in the hallway, mine was next at the bend of the hall, and Dennis's was at last at the end of the hall. It was either February or March because I had already started growing veggies and herbs from seed under a grow lamp in my room.

One night I was in bed asleep with the grow lamp on (near the foot of my bed). I woke up because the light was really bothering me, which was unusual. But it was like really, really bright. So I sat up and stretched a hand out, moving to turn it off.

Then my body just froze. I couldn't move. I was half-sitting up and my body just wouldn't respond to my brain's commands. That's when I realized that the bright light was coming not from the grow lamp, but from the hallway, and my bedroom door was open.

I tried to look to see what it was but I couldn't turn my head in that direction. I could, however, out of the corner of my eye, see some movement in the hall. There seemed to be something small standing in my doorway and some other small things moving toward Dennis's room. My mind says "gray aliens" but honestly, I did not actually see what they were. Panic started to set in anyway.

Then a calm and emotionless voice in my head said, "It's OK. We don't want you."

Ah. It's OK, they don't want me. I sank back down into my bed and went to sleep.

Now, I know about sleep paralysis and I'd write the experience off to that except what happened the next morning.

I got up a bit late and hurried around getting ready for work. Brian was running late, too, so we didn't talk much until we got in the car to go to work together. Dennis, as I said, was not on speaking terms with Brian. He rode to work by himself usually. But that morning Dennis didn't come out of his room to get ready for work. I knocked and he told me he was calling in sick...OK.

So Brian and I get in the car and I'm bursting to tell him about my "dream" which really didn't seem like a dream. But he says, "Wait, I've GOT to tell you about the dream I had!"...OK.

His dream, which he said seemed totally real, was that he had gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom, which was right across the hall from his room. But when he got in the hallway, there was this extremely bright blue-white light coming from the living room. When he investigated, he found that the light was actually coming from outside and that the front door was open. He went outside to see what the heck was going on...looked out the door and just started screaming.

Then he woke up and it was time for work.

How much would you pay for this story? $29.99? $19.99? But wait, there's MORE!

Of course I told Brian my experience and the two of us just stared at each other. When we got home that night, Dennis was still in his pajamas and was just lounging around. Brian and I had agreed not to tell Dennis about our stuff. But Dennis was unusually talkative that night. He told us he had had this strange dream where he was lying in bed and suddenly there was a bright light. Then he floated off his bed and out the window, tilted upright, and was lifted into the sky in a beam of light. Next thing he knew he was floating back onto his bed. He woke up completely exhausted.

We never did tell him our stories and won't be able to now. He quit the band and moved out soon after that. I lost track of him and never saw him again until October of 2012 at the viewing before his funeral. He passed away from heart issues.

Actually, I say that was the strangest, but I was almost forgetting about another one...not as classically "X-File," but one that was stranger in its presentation, and which profoundly affected me. This I don't think of as an experience in the real world, but more like a vision.

It started and ended with what was clearly a dream. As in the start and finish felt like a dream.

Dream 1
I was sitting in my older brother's bedroom from when we were kids. I was just looking at this desk he had. Outside in the yard I knew there was a middle aged woman who was looking up at the window. It was dream logic where I knew she was there and could see her there even though my dream self did not get up and look out the window.

For some reason the leg of the desk had captivated my attention and I just kept looking at it without blinking, concentrating on nothing else. It was like I was trying to convince myself that the desk's leg was all that existed in the world.

Then the desk leg transformed from a solid object into mathematical formulas, the variables of which were constantly changing.

Vision:
This part of the event seemed totally un-dreamlike. It was hyper real. It was pure experiential sensation unlike anything I've ever known.

The world dissolved into a white fog of mathematical formulas. I was a disembodied observer. I suddenly realized that where I was could be thought of as a more fundamental realm of existence: the realm of possibilities. Our real world, I thought, was merely a consequence of the untold formulas in this more fundamental realm. So, our world is the realm of consequences.

Furthermore, I began to recognize that there were other intelligences in the realm of possibilities. Some were native there, others like me were temporary visitors...the woman in my dream, for example.

Thinking that, and realizing that reality as we know it is the resolution of all the formulas in the realm of possibilities, I reasoned that if one could enter this mathematical realm and alter some of the formulas (or force certain variables) one could change reality. Or, what some people might call 'magic.' People who could do that might indeed be thought of as magicians, witches, or even gods.

Then I realized that I was sinking deeper into the mathematical realm and that at its center was a dark sphere of black unknowable nothing/everything: the void, the absolute, the unknowable. That place that transcends time and space. The mathematical realm was itself given birth at the very event horizon of that unknowable realm.

And I was sinking towards it.

That's when I freaked out and "woke up" into the second dream.

Dream 2:
Sitting back on my brother's bed. The desk leg went from mathematical formulas back to wood. I got up and looked out the window. The lady out there was looking at me. She nodded almost imperceptibly, turned and walked off.

Then I woke for real.

Afterwards I realized this was all rather neo-platonic. It got me very much interested in mythology for a while, and I've used the experience itself and the philosophy involved in several unfinished books, one of which I'll probably finish and publish in the next two years.

Jim wrote: "I had a difficult time deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I tried a little bit of everything.

Spent 4 years in a Roman Catholic seminary studying for the priesthood, then enlisted in ..."

I don't find that strange, Jim, I find it adventurous.

This experience is similar to Geoff's: I sit out at night and look at the stars. One night, a bright light, what I thought was a plane, was moving across the sky. I only half looked at it until it stopped and went back the other way. I knew that was no plane. There's a mountain in the back of my house and every night, that bright light rises up from behind it sparkling red and white then blue and white. I know it's not a star because it moves to a certain point in the sky and stops. Every once in a while it'll do something strange like glow. It's both eerie and enjoyable watching it come from behind that mountain. What in the world is it doing here?

So, I guess there's not a lot of strange happenings to tell about here, but here's my next one:

When I was around 4 years old, I witnessed a woman being murdered. I was hiding under a bed somewhere and I could see her on the floor with blood coming out of her head, and the blood was flowing across the floor. I saw the legs of someone standing over her.

I can't remember it all. They say that's your brain's way of protecting you. Soooo, how was your childhood?:)