What is the strangest or scariest thing you have found or seen while running?

First that comes to mind: I was running directly across the street from the Emergency Room entrance when I saw a truck hit a motorcyclist directly and at a fair speed, sending her flying onto the pavement where she was wailing in pain. The location was convenient at least: she was practically in the ER parking lot.

I am warming down after out state meet in XC with a teammate. We are on the back of the course and we see this runner lying on the ground, cold as ice, and it appears he is hyperventilating. He was as pale as I had ever seen. We didn't know what to do (it could have been asthma for all we know), but my teammate stayed to warm him and try to calm his breathing and I ran back to the finish line to get help.

I felt as if I was running another race and was very sore from the first one. It only took a couple of minutes, but I was wondering why I wasn't the one who stayed! They got him help and he recovered and the coach wrote my team a thank-you. They were looking for him and thought he finished and they missed him. No one saw him go down. The poor guy was a good runner and his health event cost him a good state meet. It was very cold and I wonder if that caused the problem.

I stopped to pee on some single track trail, when I finished and started again (got about 4-5 steps in) I heard some rustling behind me and a black bear was coming out of the thick to sniff where I just “marked.” I dropped a pretty solid mile uphill after that.

also saved a lamb once on a bike ride. It had escaped the barbwire fencing and was about to wander onto the road. Once I plopped it back over the fence I was confused for momma and it ran along side me the length of the field.

I got bit by one in my neighborhood, owned by some well-off homeowners. It didn't break the skin but tore my running tights, which i hit them up for 50% of the cost to replace. It was all civil enough, not scary, and the dog was kind of not overly aggressive but seemed to be kind of playing and nipping, though it could really jump (like up to chest height and the bite was pretty far up on my thigh).

I still use the tights since you hardly see the hole in the black spandex.

I've never seen the dog since and I wonder if they got rid of it.

Another time I had a guy ask me if I wanted to get shot (that's what he said) when he encountered me walking up his side yard walkway to tell him that he left his car lights on. I see him once in a while now and we're actually fairly friendly.

my shadow moving so slowly

While running in the night, I saw a blue alien that dragged me into flight in the starlit sky over lightless woods, which was incredibly exhilarating and scary at the same time, and then took me on a tour of an event horizon making me dread getting spaghettified, but we just smoothly sailed along the curved spacetime after which it finally dropped me back home with my watch showing the exact time when I am about to start that nighttime run, and while running in the night, I saw a blue…

About ten years ago I was on holidays in Thailand. Got up early for a run and it was so dark with almost no street lights (no head torch either). Just ran on the edge of the road, following the white line.
Thought that I could see a light ahead. It appeared to be swaying and very slowly getting closer to me. After about a minute I focused at the last minute to see an elephant only metres ahead of me.
I swerved but still brushed my shoulder against it as I went by. Turns out that there was three elephants being ridden into town for tourist crap. And the light was that of the handler who never made a sound to warn me.

The only truly scary moment I've had was a long gravel bike ride where I miss judged the route and found myself walking out of pitch black, heavily wooded trails with nothing but a dying red taillight for a light source -so more a lack a seeing anything scared me.

Other assorted encounters of note:

Grew up in a rural area with a lock of black bears so I've ran into them a lot of time's -including on my home XC course behind my HS day before hosting a meet.

Also right on the trails behind my HS there was a large cannabis grow-op with a couple of friendly but no-nonsense rednecks that kept watch over the crop -had to make a late summer reroute to the XC course trail to hide it from view when I realized how big and how many plants their were.

Running mile repeats during a vacation in Hawaii once came across an old dude collapsed with groceries strewn everywhere. Helped him up and luckily a neighbor showed up to get him home -turns out he just got out the hospital for a heart condition THE DAY BEFORE and was pissed that they were trying to make hime eat healthy so he hiked to the corner store to get cheetos and beer.

Once had a porcupine pop out of ditch right in front of me and had to hurdle it while the dude took a swing at my ankles with his tail.

I think I've written about this before but many, many years ago I was running out in the desert and I found a lot of unmarked graves. The sad thing was the size of them. RIP.

they were small?

A young man hiking with two sheathed katanas across his back.

An old man laying down in the middle of a trail at star gazing. I thought it was a body... He proceeded to complain about my headlamp ruining his 'night vision'.

A man dressed as a clown on a 14500ft mountain (Mount Whitney, CA USA)

A woman dressed as a clown on the same 14500ft mountain, different day.

A man carrying a guitar on the same 14500ft mountain.

An old man carrying a full sized shovel and pick axe, but not part of a trail mantainence crew. He also had an oldschool full frame 80+ liter backpack.

Countless animal encounters, to include bear, skunk, mountain lion, bobcat, rattlesnakes, a honey bee swarm and believe it or not, an adult male elephant seal.

I saw someone running wearing a mask. That was pretty weird.

I once saw a hobby jogger

Besides a dead body, a victim of a murder, nothing to note.

I turned a corner, and the streetlamp threw my shadow across a lady walking the same direction I was running. It scared her and her blood curling scream scared me. Now I cough or try and make some noise to let people aware someone is near them. I've said good morning or evening before, but that has produced some startled reactions too.

I was on a long run in college one winter, the route went out in the country a ways and came back in. Running past a farm I looked over and there was a baby calf steaming below its mom because it was freshly born. It was steaming because it was cold and the calf was wet from the birthing fluids.

Another run in college I heard a sound like a big stack of plastic crates tipping over. A block later I saw a girl laying in the road with her lower separated from her upper leg after getting hit by a car while riding a moped. The stack of plastic crates was the plastic from the car/moped smashing into each other.

Was getting ready to cross in a cross walk and a car just blasts through the intersection going way over the speed limit with headlights off. If I didn't hear it coming, good chance I could have been hit.

A few times I've seen this reflection in the windows of cars or stores as I'm running by, and it appears to be this old guy who looks like he's trying too hard for how slow he is. Not a good look (at all).

And I've been seeing him more often recently....