24. MadameSparks
About 15 years ago, my aunt was coming to visit from 8 hours away, and she always called us at the halfway mark at a restaurant she stops at. She did this, but didn’t show up when she was supposed to. This was before cell phones got entirely popular and we didn’t hear from her at all.
The next day, she finally shows up. She acts like nothing happened, doesn’t give any sort of acknowledgment that she was a full day late. When she finally understands what’s happening, she doesn’t really react. She just says that she needed to go lie down for a bit and to wake her for food. While she’s changing, she calls my mother in to show her the ring of dried blood around her hips. No lacerations or anything that would have caused the blood. She goes home the next day, distraught and confused.
A week later she had to have her ovaries removed.
25. JimDixon
It was a sunny spring day. Three friends and I were walking through a wildlife preserve in a marshy area alongside the Mississippi River near St. Paul, Minnesota. The trail was dry because it was built up a bit, but all the terrain nearby seemed to be in a natural state, a flood plain, I think. There were a few small trees but mostly tall grass. For some reason, we stopped walking and were standing still and talking. While we talked (or maybe while the others talked; I must have been a bit bored) I looked down and stared absentmindedly at a couple of puddles at the edge of the trail. Water was trickling slowly across a patch of mud that separated one puddle from the other. The far side of each puddle disappeared into the grass.
As I watched the trickling water, it slowly came to a stop. Then, after a pause, it started trickling the other way. I told my friends: “Hey, see that water that’s trickling right there? A minute ago, it was going the other way.” They all started watching. A minute or so later, maybe less, the flow gradually stopped, paused, and reversed again. We watched it go through a couple more cycles before we got bored and left.
Not exciting, I suppose, but puzzling.
