- As children, we're told to never talk to strangers,
and given the plethora of online accounts
surrounding bizarre and ominous encounters with strangers,
that warning still rings true for adults.
Some of those accounts are so steeped in mystery
that they strike fear into all those that hear them.
The following are just such stories.
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Here are 10 mysterious encounters with strangers
that will chill your bones.
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Number 10 is the crouching woman.
Redditor CDC shared her encounter
with a mysterious stranger several years ago,
and it's one which has stayed with her
ever since it happened.
When CDC was a child, she hated walking home after dark.
For some reason, she always had a feeling of dread
that if she turned around,
she would see something following her.
Finally, one night when she went outside after dark
to get something she had left in her family car,
she decided that this fear of looking behind her was silly,
and so she decided to confront it.
As she turned to look over her shoulder,
she realized her fear had been justified.
A woman was crouching down behind her car,
looking straight at her with a wide grin on her face.
CDC ran inside and alerted her mother,
but when they checked again, the woman had vanished.
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Number nine is the staring skull.
Another account of a mysterious stranger encounter
occurred when a man lived across the road
from a bustling city park.
At night, he would sit outside of the house
and enjoy the quiet, taking in the view of the park
and the stars in the sky,
that is, until one night
when he realized someone was staring at him.
Across the street in the park there stood a tall figure.
The figure was dressed in all black,
but most disconcerting of all was the strange mask
that the figure wore which looked like a human skull.
They stared at each other for some time,
that is, until the masked figure receded back into shadows.
Months later, the homeowner found tangled
among the weeds of his garden the exact same mask
that he had seen that night.
The figure had obviously returned
and placed the mask on the property for an unknown reason.
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Number eight is Sheepdog.
One description of a mysterious stranger encounter
comes from Philadelphia.
It involved a young teenager
who was with her family one day.
The area that they were in wasn't the safest,
and so they were very apprehensive,
almost as if they knew something bad was going to happen.
Out of nowhere, a disheveled homeless man
stepped out in front of the family.
Extending his hands, he touched the girl's hair,
and then patted her head several times.
But most bizarre of all is what he said when he did this.
He repeatedly referred to the girl as an animal,
saying over and over "there, there, sheepdog."
The girl's father intervened
and the family moved quickly away from the man,
but the girl always felt apprehensive about the encounter,
and was just glad that her father was nearby,
otherwise who knows what would have happened.
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Number seven is at the blood bank.
Some mysterious encounters with strangers
occur in the weirdest of places.
In one account, an anonymous poster online
described the frightening experience that he had
while in line waiting to donate blood.
This is something he had done several times before,
but this time things took a dark turn.
The poster had his headphones on, and was enjoying
listening to his music while waiting in line.
That was, until he felt something on his shoulder.
Expecting to see someone's hand,
he turned to see that the man behind him
was resting his chin on his shoulder,
and breathing into the side of his face.
The man grinned, saying that he was listening
to the music coming from his headphones.
He then started dancing strangely and yelling loudly.
As soon as he could, the anonymous poster left the scene,
making sure that he wasn't followed by the deranged man.
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Number six is the shrieking lady.
18 years ago, three women were traveling on a deserted road
which cut through a lonely mountain range.
At about 11 pm as their car moved through the silent night,
the driver noticed something at the side of the road.
Driving closer, they realize that it was a woman.
She was crouching down at the side of the road
with a shawl wrapped around her.
The driver and her two companions drove alongside the woman
to ask if she needed assistance.
The woman looked up slowly, revealing a pale,
emaciated face staring up through her long, dark hair.
That's when she began shrieking horribly at them.
Terrified, the driver and her companions drove off
as fast as they possibly could.
The woman chased them along the road and when they finally
lost her on the deserted stretch of dirt track,
they wondered if what they saw was a human at all.
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Number five is a missing eye.
One day, a young woman was walking past a hospital
when she noticed an elderly man on the sidewalk
walking towards her.
As the woman passed, he stopped and asked for help.
The man wanted to cross the road to the hospital,
so thinking nothing of it, the young woman obliged,
but the old man grabbed hold of her hand
a little too tightly.
That's when she noticed the stench of stale tobacco
coming from the man, and his long, dirty fingernails.
When they got to the other side,
the woman tried to pull her hand away,
but the man held on tightly and said
"do you want to see my eye?"
He then pulled the lid of one of his eyes open,
revealing that he was missing an eye,
and asked "would you like to put your finger in there?"
The woman struggled to get her hand free
and she ran off terrified,
as she could hear the old man laughing loudly.
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Number four is the middle of nowhere.
Four teenage friends decided to spend some time
in a cabin in Michigan to relax.
The cabin was owned by one of their grandparents,
and it was so far off the beaten path
that the small track leading up to the cabin
wasn't on any map.
Everything was going to plan.
They went for a swim at a nearby pond,
and then had a few beers before heading back
to the cabin as it got dark.
When they reached the cabin, however, a light was on.
Then to their horror, they saw the outline
of a man standing in the open doorway to the cabin,
looking in their direction.
Fearing for their lives,
the friends hid in the woods overnight.
When they returned to the cabin the next day,
they found nothing had been stolen,
but the panel to the attic was lying open.
They didn't check to see who was up there,
and abandoned the place as quickly as they could.
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Number three is the screaming driver.
A 16-year-old was walking home late one night from work,
when suddenly a car pulled up alongside her
on an empty street.
A man in the driver's seat smiled at her
and then started asking questions.
He asked her if she lived nearby,
and where her parents were.
If that wasn't creepy enough, he then said
"you're a really brave girl for being out alone this late."
He then threatened her before saying "I'll be right back"
and then drove off.
Scared that the man would return,
the girl started running home.
Her anxiety grew when the car reappeared
and the man started screaming at her to get in.
The man continued chasing the girl in his car,
and at the last moment, she dove into a 24-hour store,
and asked the people working there to help her.
That's when she phoned her father,
who came to pick her up,
and she never saw the screaming driver again.
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Number two is the night singer.
When one teenager thought it would be cool
to go on a bike ride at night,
what she encountered made her think twice
about ever doing it again.
She cycled through a web of narrow walking paths
which could through patches of long grass
between two neighborhoods.
After cycling along a particularly isolated path
for 15 minutes, she suddenly heard a strange noise,
the sound of a woman singing.
The voice was humming the melody
to The Beatles song Eleanor Rigby,
sounding scratchy and filled with phlegm.
The cyclist then saw the woman on the path ahead.
She was moving strangely to the tune that she was singing.
When the cyclist took out the flashlight to see better,
the singing woman turned screaming at the girl,
and moved towards her quickly.
The cyclist fled and didn't look back
until she was safe at home.
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And number one is the first responder.
Around 3 a.m. in the morning,
a woman woke suddenly to a loud noise in her home.
Downstairs, something was shouting
and it clearly wasn't anyone that she knew.
The voice asked "is anyone home?"
Unsure of what to do, the woman psyched herself up
and headed bravely downstairs.
Standing in one of the rooms was a tall, bald man.
The woman breathed a sigh of relief
when she saw that the man was a police officer.
He was patrolling the area and saw the door to her house
was unlocked and thought he would alert the homeowner.
The police officer then wished
the woman a good night and left.
The next day, the homeowner phoned the local police station,
asking if there had been an officer
doing rounds at that time.
They had no record of any such officer,
and even now, no one knows who the man was
or what he wanted.