Oddities, Weird Stuff, Strange Things in Our World.
A few weird things happened to me while I was living at Sogenji, a training temple, in Okayama Japan. As far as Buddhist monasteries go it wasn’t very old, about 300 years, but there were some odd buildings and statues there. Above the giant entrance gate, made in the classic Japanese style, was a room …
I grew up in a small picturesque village set on a steep hillside in Wales with only one road in and out. My family home was halfway up a hill, and there are lots of hills, lanes and steps to walk to the bottom of the village. When I was in my teens I had a …
I am a Danish man, born and raised in a small town of 8000. When I was 16 years old, I was in the merchant navy on a trip sailing from Japan to New Zealand. In New Zealand we came to Lyttleton, a small town on the South Island, population 2500—maybe even less back in …
In the 80s, we lived in Donegal, Ireland and drove through Sligo to go to Galway where my Dad grew up, and where we still had family. One of the areas we drove through was absolutely beautiful—it was a place called Drumcliffe just outside the town of Sligo that had a magnificent mountain called Ben …
I was born and raised in Ontario Canada—born in Ottawa but was living in a suburb of Toronto. In the summer of 2000, at the age of 11, I went to Ontario Pioneer Camp. It was state-operated, and there were three separate camps, one for boys, one for girls and one for families. There were …
I had been living about two hours away in Greenville, NC. when I came back to Morehead City see my friends a few days after my birthday. One of my friends decided we needed to party to celebrate. I got super drunk. Her ex-husband showed up at the point where she and I were in …
When I was in 5th grade I lived in Elk Grove Village, Chicago; it was around 1973. My Dad worked for the military at O’Hare. I was an Army brat, so I had flown many times before. This time, it was me and my Grampa flying to Florida to see family. We stayed for a …
I was in New York City in my early twenties and looking for a new place to live. I sat on a bench at the park with the Village Voice in hand, which was the premier paper for apartment listings at that time. A bushy-haired man, who also looked to be in his twenties, …
Here is a true story that happened way back in 1982. I was tired and driving from California to Texas with a U-haul trailer and a woman who was to be my wife (she is an ex-wife now). It was dark, about 11 pm, and I was trying to find a hotel to stay for the night. …
My pal Gary was a salesman in the evening wear department at Neiman-Marcus, Beverly Hills. One day, he sold a fancy, beaded evening gown to a woman. It was quite expensive. They have a very liberal return policy there, and a week later she returned the dress. It sat on the rack for a while, …