Bizarre True Stories That Will Shock You

#1 Bees who pay their respects

Margaret Bell, who kept bees in Leintwardine, about 7 miles from her home in Ludlow, Shropshire (England), died in June 1994. Soon after her funeral, mourners were amazed to see hundreds of bees settle on the corner of the street opposite the house where she had lived for 26 years. The bees stayed for an hour before buzzing off over the rooftops. The local press ran a photograph of the bees hanging on the wall in a cluster.

#2 Snake swallows salad tongs

Aaron Rouse of Adelaide, Australia was feeding his python Winston a rat held with a pair of salad tongs when the snake decided he wanted all of it—including the tongs. Rouse tried to pull the tongs out, but Winston would not let go. Before he knew it, the tongs were completely inside the snake! Rouse took Winston to the veterinary department at Adelaide University, where Dr. Oliver Funnell decided to perform surgery. He made a small incision close to the big end of the tongs and pulled them out easily.

#3 Phantom Car Crash

It all began on that dark December Sunday night in 2002 when a member of the public reported seeing a car lose control and leave the A3 around 100 metres before the emergency slip road at Burpham.

Police were called to the scene to search for the wreckage, but were unable to find any trace of a crash – that was until an officer stumbled upon a maroon Vauxhall Astra nose down in a ditch, covered in undergrowth.

There was one irregular detail though - the car had not crashed recently. In fact it had lay undiscovered for five months, confirmed by the additional discovery of a decomposed body nearby.

Hysteria greeted the findings, as it was suggested in the national press that the sighting of the car leaving the road just the night before could only have been a ghostly replay of the fatal crash earlier in the year.

This view was not shared by Surrey Police, with a spokeswoman insisting that the incident had only ever been treated as a regular road traffic collision and the fact the car was obscured by leaves and branches most probably prevented it from being reported earlier.

Even if motorists had spotted the vehicle, she added, they may have assumed it was already being dealt with.

The body was identified from dental records as that of 21-year-old Christopher Brian Chandler from Middlesex, who had been on the run from the Metropolitan Police since July 16 that year. He was wanted for robbery.

One man who will not forget the day in a hurry is Steve Casey, an employee at McAllister’s Recovery, who worked for Maco Recovery Services at the time.

He attended the crash scene the following day to tow the car away, and remembers the skeleton being recovered at the same time.

“The car was badly damaged,” said Steve, who was in his 40s at the time.

“It was written off and rusty, and it was an old car. Someone said afterwards that there might have been a ghost involved, but you aren’t told that at the time. I was just getting on with the job.”

Although he now makes light of the incident a decade on, Steve admitted to being "a bit worried" by the presence of a skeleton during the removal of the car, and said he still remembered what he saw when he drives down the A3 past Burpham.

“I think about it every time,” he added.

#4 Truck spill frees a million bees truck

A shortage of bees makes it necessary to haul bees to agricultural areas for pollination purposes, so it had to happen sooner or later. A truck carrying bees through Coeur d'Alene, Idaho overturned on I-90 in June and spilled up to a million bees. Traffic was backed up for a couple of hours, and drivers were warned to keep their windows rolled up. To make matters worse, Coeur d'Alene was hosting an Iron Man Triathlon event at the same time. That couldn’t have been pleasant.

#5 Balloon Buddies

Laura Buxton released a balloon that ended up in the hands of another girl named Laura Buxton who lived 140 miles away.

Fifteen years ago, the Swindon Advertiser reported on a seemingly remarkable chain of events full of coincidence which had taken place in June 2001. That month, a girl named Laura Buxton was attending her grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration in Staffordshire, England, and with some prodding by her grandfather decided to have a bit of fun with one of the helium balloons adorning the festivities. She wrote out a message bearing the instructions ‘Please return to Laura Buxton’ along with her address, attached it to a gold-colored mylar balloon, and set the combination loose to float off into the sky on a windy day.

#6 Then, according to the Advertiser:

The discovery of a deflated balloon in a hedge has sparked off an amazing series of coincidences for ten-year-old Laura Buxton from Milton Lilbourne, near Marlborough, and her namesake who lives 140 miles away in the Midlands.

The tale of the two Lauras began when Andy Rivers, of Milton Lilbourne, was checking cows in a field and found a balloon in a hedge.

Closer inspection revealed the balloon said “Happy 50th Birthday” and had a label on it with the name Laura Buxton and an address near Stoke on Trent.

Mr. Rivers knew his neighbors Peter and Eleanor Buxton had a daughter called Laura so gave the balloon to them.

That was the start of the discovery of a series of coincidences involving the two girls who live a three-hour drive away from each other and are not related.

Laura, ten, who goes to Kingsbury Hill School, Marlborough, obeyed the instruction on the balloon tag which said: “Please write to Laura Buxton.”

She was surprised to get a telephone call from the other Laura, who is nine and also an only child.

The girls discovered they shared more than a name and just a few months difference in age.

They are both fair haired, in Year 5 at primary school, have black three-year-old female Labrador dogs and have a rabbit and a guinea pig each.

By an even greater coincidence the grandparents of Laura, from Stoke on Trent, Terry and Margaret Buxton, are currently traveling the Kennet and Avon Canal and were moored at Wootton Rivers.

The girls are now hoping to meet one day and the Milton Lilbourne Buxton's have invited their Midlands namesakes to visit them in the Pewsey Vale.

#7 Intruder spends five hours caught upside-down in window

Two freshmen at Nottingham Trent University in England spied an unusual sight as they walked through the campus early one January morning. A man had tried to enter a building through a window when his legs were caught, leaving him hanging upside-down with his rear end exposed. The students talked to him while taking photographs and video, then called emergency services. Police and firefighters responded, but they also had to take selfies before rescuing the man, who said he’d been in that position for five hours. Rescue workers eventually had to break the window to free him.

#8 Unlucky thief caught because gateway car was repossessed

A man in Zion, Illinois, was observed putting electronics into a shopping cart at Walmart and leaving without paying for them. When confronted by store employees, he fled without the merchandise. Police later arrested 25-year-old Che Hearn as he was walking down the road.

When asked why he was walking, he responded that his car had been repossessed while he was at the Wal-Mart, police said.

Investigators determined that the repossession company had followed Hearn to Wal-Mart, police said. The car was towed away when he entered the store, giving Hearn the only option of fleeing the scene on foot, police said.

#9 Whirlwind Children

A nine-year-old Chinese girl was playing in Songjian near Shanghai, in July 1992 when she was carried off by a whirlwind and deposited unhurt in a treetop almost two miles away. According to a wire report from May 1986, a freak wind lifted up 13 children in the oasis of Hami in Western China and deposited them unharmed in sand dunes and scrub 12 miles away.

#10 Car recovered from tree

A driver on the M69 in Leicester, UK lost control of her vehicle on May 17 and ended up in a tree. It is estimated that the car was going at about 100 mph. Both the driver and passenger walked away from the accident or, in this case, climbed out of the tree. The woman who was driving was cited for “driving without due care and attention.” The car was later recovered from the tree by a crane.

#11 Four masked bandits caught in the act

There was a disturbance at an art gallery in November that led to an investigation. Four intruders were apprehended. A Facebook post by the Newport, Oregon police department takes the burglary report to the next level, by describing the perpetrators as a gang of thieves with colorful nicknames, including “Squeaky Feets.” The gallery owner, Cris Torp, said that the raccoons got in through roof vents, which has happened before. But when they recently sealed the openings around the vents, no one knew that the raccoons were trapped inside! The animals had been in the gallery for hours but did little damage to the artwork. “Squeaky Feets” has found fame from the caper, and now has his own Facebook page.

#12 Raccoon rides alligator

Richard Jones of Palatka, Florida, captured a once-in-a-lifetime photograph in June while he was walking along the shore of the Ocklawaha River. He believes his son startled a raccoon, who fled toward the river. The raccoon jumped onto the back of an alligator and stood up long enough to have his picture taken. He immediately jumped away from the alligator as soon as the gator started moving. But the picture looks as if the raccoon planned to ride across the river on his reptilian friend. As the picture was passed around the internet, it attracted all sorts of pun headlines, such as “Florida gator starts Uber-like service.”

#13 Cat gives birth to kittens in birds nest

In May, Henry McGauley of County Louth, Ireland, found a stray cat in a tree. That’s not unusual, but the cat was curled up in a bird’s nest where she had birthed four kittens! The white cat is familiar to the neighborhood, and McGauley's wife Fiona had fed her before. The nest is about eight feet above the ground.

The couple think the nest may have belonged to a pair of wood pigeons who left it a few days ago and now it has furry, not feathered, squatters. Fiona said she will be moving the happy family onto terra firma as the kittens do not have the required wings to ensure a safe landing if they fall.

Henry chuckled as he said: “I always thought the cat was a bit bird-brained but I never expected her to move into a nest.”

#14 Hum Misty for Me

A noise a bit like amplifier feedback had been heard for three years coming from the right ear of a Welsh pony called Misty, according to the Vetinary Record (April 1995). It varied in intensity but stayed at a constant pitch of 7 kHz. Hearing a buzzing in one’s ears is called Subjective Tinnitus; much rarer is when others can also hear the noise. This is called Objective Tinnitus and the cause is still largely a matter of debate.

#15

On Feb. 19, 1994, a woman named Gloria Ramirez was admitted to the Riverside General Hospital emergency room in Riverside, California, with symptoms of nausea, difficulty breathing, and an increased heart rate. What ensued was truly one of the stranger medical anomalies ever documented.

Before the hospital staff used a defibrillator on Gloria, they had noticed her body was covered in an "oily sheen" that had a "fruity, garlicky smell."

A nurse named Susan Kane drew blood from Gloria, but upon doing so, she noticed the blood had a chemical odor. The attending physician also noted there were strange manila-colored particles floating in the blood.

Shortly after taking her blood, Kane fainted and had to be rushed away. A domino effect followed, and several other staff members experienced fainting, shaking, and apnea (irregular breathing).

So many staff members began feeling sick that the hospital declared an internal emergency, and all other patients were evacuated to the parking lot.

At 8:50 p.m., Ramirez was pronounced dead. Her body was moved into an isolated room by two staff members. One of the staffers, Sally Balderas, started vomiting and feeling a burning sensation, and was hospitalized for 10 days after moving Ramirez's body.

Julie Gorchynski, a medical resident who was the second to become ill, had the most extreme symptoms and needed to stay in intensive care for two weeks.

Overall, a total of 23 out of 37 emergency room staff reported feeling ill. A hazmat team searched the hospital for two toxic chemicals that could have possibly caused such results, but neither was found.

A full two months after her death, Ramirez was finally buried in Riverside.

So what happened to Gloria Ramirez? And did something in her blood cause this domino-effect illness in the hospital? In her autopsy, the coroner cited "cardiac dysrhythmia" as her cause of death and detected no strange chemicals.