1. A male coworker walked us to our parking garage to protect us from a serial killer…who happened to be him.

My mom worked at Tampa General Hospital in the 1980s, on the graveyard shift with like four other women and one guy. In 1984, a serial killer started a spree during the summer, and his victims were young women (I think they were later discovered to be prostitutes). My mom and her coworkers were all in their 20s at the time, so after one of the murders made the news again, they got really nervous about having to walk back to their cars at the end of their shift in the middle of the night. So the one male coworker, Bobbie Joe Long, walked them to the parking garage, my mom included.

A few weeks later, Long was arrested and charged with all the murders after one of his intended victims escaped.

2. The insane summer Santa of the backwoods.

When I was in first grade I was playing with a bunch of friends in the woods near their house. There was a hill on one side that ended in the backyards of some other houses. All of a sudden we noticed a man in a Santa Claus outfit just standing at the top of the hill, staring at us.

This was particularly odd because it was the middle of summer. We all stared at each other for a minute before he let out a battle cry and came running full speed down the hill at us. We booked it back to my friend’s house and ran inside and locked the doors. No idea what happened to Santa.