“She Was Living In Our Walls”: 69 Stories That People Can’t Tell Because Nobody Believes Them

I was completely undressed and five years old when I met the Prime Minister of England in 1966. My family was camping in the Scilly Isles. Returning from the beach, my mother would strip me down in front of the tent. She went into retrieve a towel and the Prime Minister walked by our tent, I engaged him in conversation. While inside the tent, my mother heard voices and returned to find me, hand on hip, in the buff, telling the Prime Minister about my brothers.

Nurse here.

Night shift, I walked to an elderly lady who apparently was speaking alone, I knew she had dementia. She told me she was talking to her husband, pointing to an empty armchart. Told her to say goodnight, for it was time to sleep. She did so, and tucked in to sleep.

15 minutes later, I got a call from the family.

Her husbad had died... 15 minutes ago.

When I was a kid I was at the beach and waded afew yards out but not very deep into the water with my mask and snorkel to check things out when I heard people shouting and pointing and saw a large dark shape in the water coming my way. I went under and saw that it was a big ol manatee. I was able to pet it running my hand along most of it as it swam by. My mind was blowed.

A foster cat escaped from the room I had her in. We searched high and low with no luck and sadly assumed she must have gotten out of the house. 3 months later we discovered she was living in our walls the whole time. Took another 6 months to catch her.

I still can't believe this happened...

Back in 1996, I wandered into a thrift store in St. Louis and bought this strange, handmade hat—clearly meant for long hair. Picture something between a Rastafarian cap for dreads and a cloth beanie, in brown and blue stripes.

The next week, I flew to Seattle for the Fringe Festival. As cliché as this sounds, one afternoon I was outside, kicking around a hacky sack with some friends, when this guy walks up to me and says:

“Hey, were you in St. Louis recently?”

“Yeah, I go to school there.”

“Did you buy that hat at [the thrift store]?”

“…uh… yeah.”

“Yeah, I made that. I just moved here last month and donated a bunch of stuff there before I left.”

I still can’t wrap my head around it—of all the thrift stores, all the cities, all the people, at that specific time...

Because of that bizarre little twist, I’ve never thrown out that hat. It’s tucked away somewhere in a box in the basement. Probably THE strangest moment in my life.

I worked at a store in LA a few years ago and Sylvester Stallone came in to shop (in itself not an unusual occurrence). We were standing at the front chatting and he gets a FaceTime and he goes “It’s Arnold I gotta take this” and my coworker was like “Like Schwarzenegger???” and he laughed and was like yeah and then answered and turned the phone around so we could all say hi to Arnold lol.

When I was about 6 years old lightning struck the telephone pole down the street, and a ball of lightning rolled along the power lines, dropped onto the street, rolled up the sidewalk and then across the street heading directly towards me and my friend. We were playing under the carport. The lightning ball splits into two, with one rolling at each of us directly as we are frozen in fear, and the one lightning ball clips the end of a metal workbench that’s just a foot away from us, and the lightning ball bursts into thin air, the other ball bursts into it, and that was it. Both lightning balls exploded into thin air. My friend and I were just a split second from our demise.

I was jogging around the block a little after dark.  A bear came out of the bushes of a house I was going by, and started running next to me.  It’s a black bear and not too large, so I was mildly concerned but not panicky.  I knew sudden changes might startle it, so I kept going with the bear next to me.  After maybe ten yards I saw we were headed toward a second bear in the next driveway, so I decided it was time to wrap things up.  Keeping speed constant to avoid startling any of them, I started a wide arc to U-turn and head back the way I came from.  They didn’t follow.

My very tame and talkative budgie Indigo escaped my house and flew down the street. I couldn’t find him and searched for hours calling his name. The following day I got a call from my daughter’s school. The deputy principal told me that a budgie had landed on my daughter’s shoulder during lunch. I raced down to the school and sure enough, it was my budgie Indigo, in a box in the school office. The school is close to my house and not an unreasonable distance, but the fact he found my kid at a school with hundreds of students and stayed with her was an incredible thing. I love him so much and I treasure his company even more now that he is home again.

If anyone is wondering how he escaped, i occasionally let him fly around the house and sit on my shoulder. There’s a side door at my house with a torn fly screen at the bottom that my dogs walk through to go outside. Indigo loves my dog and rides on her back sometimes. The dog went outside with Indigo on her back, and I couldn’t intervene fast enough.

I now lock every door before letting Indigo out of his cage.

I go my friends cat to unlock her patio door which let us in while she wasn't home.

Did it again in front of her to prove it.

My friend didn't know she was pregnant until she was literally having the child. This girl is so laid back and chilled out when she says she didn't feel any different, I believe her. She never got a belly (she's pregnant again, and her stomach is ginormous), and she never had any nausea or any other signs. She still had her period. "Didn't you feel the baby moving and kicking?", "...I thought it was heartburn". I'm the opposite of her, so I'd have been to the doctor right away.

All of this happened around the time she broke up with the baby's father. They were together for years, and it was a shock for everyone. She was stress eating and going out partying every weekend. Whenever anyone asked her about her behaviour, she'd snap at them, so they dropped it. 2-3 weeks before birth, she flew with another friend for a girls' holiday, where she alone drank 1.5 litres of rum over a week. Plus all the drinks in the pub. The week after that, she visited me where I lived, and she said her clothes were getting tighter. Now, she's a small woman. Gaining weight is nothing compared to me. So I said, "Ah, stand next to me all night, you'll be grand!", and we made her laugh.

A weekish later, she's at home and had a stomach ache. She stayed out of work. She lived with her parents at the time, so she came downstairs at 6 pm, holding the wall and saying something was going on. They go to a doctor's out-of-hours place, and the Dr just visually looks at her and goes "You're in early labour". My friend goes lol hilarious. She was whisked to the Maternity hospital, and she started labour at 10 pm, baby was out at 10:07 pm.

The child didn't have fetal alcohol syndrome, thankfully. She was so small, and her feet were turned in at the ankle because she had been tucked up in my friend's rib. Shes a healthy child now. The whole friend group was in shock for a while. We were afraid to hold hands with a man, let alone anything else. It was shocking.

My grandmother worked at a fabrics factory back in the 60s and would chat with the handsome, charming delivery driver who brought the materials in his lorry. They’d have tea and biscuits during their breaks and chat and flirt. She said he was handsome and she was a bit smitten.

Some years later he popped up on the tv and was actually the Yorkshire ripper. I suppose she got very lucky when she met and married my grandad.

I got yelled at for slamming my door after getting reprimanded by my parents. Our dog jumped up with his 2 paws and slammed the door, they never believed me lol.

A few years ago I was riding a Citibike down 9th Avenue in Manhattan when my front wheel hit something on the bike path and threw me overvthe handlebars. I don't know what gave me the presence of mind to do this, but somehow it came to me to lean back as I was flying off of the bike. I did it so we'll that I ended up landing on my feet, superhero landing style. I wasn't injured at all. I noticed a guy on the sidewalk staring at me with his mouth agap, seeming totally shocked by what he'd just seen. I gave him an exaggerated bow, picked up the bike (those Citibikes are built like tanks!), and rode away.

I was hospitalized for five days with a severe cornea inflammation in both eyes. In my left eye the inflammation left a little scar. I don't notice it anymore, but for a few days I had one spot where it was like looking through a tele lens. I could read a license plate 100 meters away with my naked eye (I'm actually heavily myopic).

I once met a random stranger on vacation and turns out we lived like 2 streets away back home, still feels fake.

As a kid living in a military base on a tropical country, I went into an outdoor bathroom stall at night by myself in the dark and when my eyes got used to the darkness, I realized there was ***something*** on the back of the stall door. 😳

The leaned in a little closer and realized I had locked myself into a tiny bathroom stall with an ENORMOUS monitor lizard clinging to the door.

If you don’t know what a monitor lizard is, please be grateful lol. It’s the closest thing we have to dinosaurs still walking the earth- grow to be about 10 feet, are carnivorous and aggressive as hell. This video is like 4 years old so pre AI and gives you a pretty good idea how awful these things are

I sat for a moment carefully evaluating my options - Scream for my mom? Crawl underneath into the next stall? Try to climb over into the next stall? After rejecting all of those, I decided to slowly open the door by pulling it with my foot from the bottom and squeeze past it while hoping it did not attack me. Once I got out, I started shrieking my head off and the lizard had to be removed from the bathroom.

I’ve told this story several times over the years during job interviews lol. “Tell us about a time you handled a stressful situation,” 😂.

At the age of 16 I went to a small cute cafe with a friend in Heidelberg (Germany, I am German). I had to use the bathroom after while and went to the ladies room of the cafe. After I had finished my "business" I approached the ladies room's sink to wash my hands. While doing so another woman enters the ladies room walking straight to the stalls. After about 10 seconds she returns telling me "You have to leave now!". I'm like "What? Why? Uhhm okay, just let me finish washing my hands".

While leaving the bathroom I could see why: The Queen of Sweden was waiting outside and wanted to use the bathroom :D. Until then my friend and I hadn't been aware that she has been sitting with her brother and some other family members/friends (I guess?) in a hidden corner of the cafe the entire time :D.

So that's how my friend and I accidentally met the Queen of Sweden on a private outing with her german family :D.

I was making a trek from Mississippi to southern Missouri for Christmas in 1990. I was driving a Mitsubishi Presis (just a rebranded Hyundai Excel) with no snow tires or chains. My wife and my two sons from my first marriage were in the car with me. Boys were 8 and 12 years old.

Started the day with rainy conditions. I did not plan on stopping the night to save on Hotel costs. But we hit bad weather in Arkansas that just got worse as we drove. When darkness fell, I found myself in heavy snow on a two lane road. I was having difficulty seeing the road with the fresh snow.

I found myself following a Semi Tractor trailer. My only option was to follow his tail lights. We followed him for what seemed like a long time but was likely around 45 minutes. My wife and I agreed we needed to find a hotel ASAP. The first small town we encoutered did have a hotel. I glanced to the side of the road and saw the rooms available sign. Before I left the road, I looked back to thank the truck for guiding us.... There was no Semi. The road in front of us was empty.

The hotel was nothing special. It was a cinder block walled structure with very poor heating. My wife and I cuddled in one bed and my sons slept in the other. We woke up to a picture postcard view of fresh snow and a cold but beautiful day. Classic scenes of over the river and through the woods to Grandmothers house we go come to mind. We finished the trip and had lunch with my Mom at her house.

Even today, I shiver when I think about that night. My guardian angel guided us to a safe place to sit out the storm we were not prepared for.

In my 20s, I was jogging in a city and was hit by a (slow) car at a cross street. Our combined momentum somersaulted me across the hood and I landed on the opposite side, on my feet, unscathed.

To this day it is the most athletic-looking thing I’ve ever done, without even a close second.