Any scary/weird running experiences?

Upon returning to the United States, I had difficulty adjusting to civilian life and wandered the country as a drifter for almost a decade. In December 1981, I traveled to a small town in Washington (actually Hope, British Columbia, Canada), in search of a fellow U.S. Army Green Beret buddy. He learns that his friend died from cancer the previous summer due to exposure to Agent Orange.

I attempted to find a diner in town, and maybe a temporary job. The overconfident town sheriff Will Teasle did not welcome me, judging negatively because of my long hair and scruffy look. I disobeyed the sheriff's order to stay away from town, as I had done nothing wrong and believed such banishment to be a violation of my freedom of movement, and most of all he i was hungry. I returned to town soon afterwards and was promptly charged with vagrancy and subject to harassment from the deputies.

Since this zombie has been bumped....

Several years ago, I was running after dark when I ran into a tree branch that scraped the very crown of my head. Annoying, but not especially painful.

Then it happened again...except I wasn't under a tree.

When I got home, my wife looked at the top of my head and saw four slightly bleeding claw marks. Best guess is that an owl thought my bald spot was a mouse or a rabbit, and tried to make me his dinner.

I always run with a hat, nowadays.

I was running on the shoulder on a country road in the early morning and heard a sound behind me. A pickup truck had crossed the road and had its left tires on the shoulder behind me. I dove into the ditch alongside the road as the truck went by. The teenagers in the truck gave the middle finger as they passed. After that I got a carry permit.

I was running in the dark on a sidewalk alongside a high stone wall made of irregular rocks and overgrown with vegetation. The sidewalk was cracked and bumpy and I moved way over by the wall to get good footing. I could feel my shoulder brushing against the vegetation. Then suddenly there was a loud "bang" in my skull as I was smitten on the side of my head, having run my head into a protruding rock. I staggered but didn't fall and came to a halt. I put my hand up to my head and felt hot liquid, and was terrified that I'd split my skull open. But when I tasted the liquid on my hand it was just salty, not bloody, and I realized it was just my sweat. I carefully probed my head and felt nothing amiss, and carefully jogged back home. I had a mild headache for an hour or two and a big bump on my head for a few days, but was otherwise OK.

slow and old wrote:

I was running on the shoulder on a country road in the early morning and heard a sound behind me. A pickup truck had crossed the road and had its left tires on the shoulder behind me. I dove into the ditch alongside the road as the truck went by. The teenagers in the truck gave the middle finger as they passed. After that I got a carry permit.

So you’d have shot at them then? Is that what you’re implying if you’d had your permit at the time?

I have four experiences that weren't too scary, but could have gone badly.

1: I running along a bridle path with some ferns/shrubs along it's bank, and suddenly heard some barking/growling behind all those plants. I looked up and came face to face with this unleashed black guard dog of some type, staring right at me and looking like it was going to charge at me. I just stared for a few seconds and then kept running, hoping it would ignore me. I now realize this was an incredibly dumb idea, as dogs instinctively chase what runs, and this one looked really pissed off to start with. Luckily, he did just ignore me, and nothing came of it.

2: I was in the last 200m or so of my run in heavy rain. I suddenly heard a REALLY loud thunderclap, and saw a lightning bolt strike horribly closely to me. I SPRINTED home, but this was actually less scary than number 1, because the lightning happened too fast to really engender fright. I didn't feel scared running back, but then I didn't feel anything - it was like my body just activated and said "let's get out of here, you can think about it later".

3: Running along an isolated bike path in a really rough area at 3pm on a Saturday. I would not have done this normally, but this was when I was new to the area and didn't realize how unsafe it could be. I hear a swarm of motorbikes behind me, and turn to see a gang of 4 on an obviously stolen motorbike riding towards me. I stopped and turned to face them, and played as dumb as possible - played it like I had no idea what was going on and was just nicely letting them pass. They might well have just gone past, but what actually happened was they all freaked out, turned 180 degrees, and high-tailed it out of there. I was mystified for a minute - did I just scare off a gang of people by stopping and turning like Schwarzenegger?Do I have a new career as a superhero? No, actually - there happened to be a cop right behind me, who was acting on a call of a gang of bike thieves joyriding up and down the trails.

4: Running during lockdown, and didn't want to run over a 200m bridge that was only about a metre wide and had people walking in the opposite direction all along it. I stick to the road, running in the cycle path, then jump up onto a slightly uneven concrete part of the bridge that is further from the cars than the cycle path out of courtesy. I run slowly along this, then stumble for a second, and just keep going. It wasn't until about a minute later that I think that if my toe had caught the jutting stone at a slightly different angle, I would have likely had my head crushed like a watermelon by a truck.

5: Age 12, new to running, and decide to run 5 miles for one of the first times ever. Realized I had to sh!t 2 miles in, but back then I had this mentality that if I stopped for ANYTHING unplanned, be it a shoelace, a car, or... this issue, then the run didn't count and I'd be furious with myself for the rest of the day. So I kept on. My God, the last half mile was a race against nature. I couldn't speed up as opening up my stride would release the brown tides, but I couldn't stay the same speed as I might not make it to my porcelain throne. I somehow made it home in time, and that was the end of that mentality. This was the longest-lasting descent of terror I've had on any run.

Another weird/creepy thing related to running, but that din't happen on my runs, include being turned away from my usual route by the police because a man who used to live a few doors away from me in a different town had been found murdered on the trail 300m away, right next to where I would run almost every day. I believe the crime is still unsolved, but it was strongly suspected to involve gangsters and a property deal - the guy was a property broker in his 40s/50s, and had been killed "professionally".

+1. Not much in life hits you with more adrenaline/fear than the starting line in a championship/important race.

yepe wrote:

+1. Not much in life hits you with more adrenaline/fear than the starting line in a championship/important race.

WTF? If you are a competive runner then you should be feeling calm and focused.

Idk man I've never been that way. It goes away the second the gun goes off though. Never been scared by other things that people are usually scared by but the starting line hits different.

I was doing an 18 mile run a couple of years ago in January in a remote area. I noticed something in a snow drift ahead and as I got closer realized it was a dead guy frozen in the drift. I flagged down a car and had them call it in. They never did figure out how he ended up there as it was miles from any populated area.

I’ve got a few:

- 1992, serving in the former Yugoslavia with ethnic cleansing going on behind closed doors I ran around rural roads, and all the locals carried guns

- 1999, working at a former radar station in northern Labrador, I ran 5k downhill on my own and then the same 5k back up; it dawned on me near the bottom that I had no place to hide if a polar bear came along, and I wasn’t packing

- following year running outside a town in Nunavut, I was about 4-5k out when the wolves’ howls got too spooky. I knew in my brain that wolf attacks are extremely rare, but I couldn’t convince my gut and turned tail and ran back

- same run, at the fringes of town the sled dogs scared me way more than the wolves, because I could see how big, hungry and angry they looked

- southern France in 2007 I was running on some country roads at dusk, and heard big anamils running fast nearby in the woods. I think they were boar. I turned on the afterburners to get back

- me and an older buddy were victims of a drive-by boobing; out for an easy social run during a local festival, a car with four young ladies slowed as they passed us and started yelling at our sweaty shirtless selves, then the two on the passenger side flashed us, scarring me for life ?

Also, I’ve travelled a lot and run in a lot of pretty sketchy places. The only city I’ve visited where I was too scared to go for a run, based on warnings about local violent crime, was Dhaka, Bangladesh.

I was on vacation and running in Palo Duro canyon on an 8 mile out and back. Exactly at the turnaround point I decided to relieve myself a little bit off the trail. While doing that, on the ridge to my left, maybe a half mile away, I heard a coyote howl. A couple seconds later I heard more a little closer. Needless to say I ran the last half quite faster than the first.

Another time I was getting in a morning run early around 5:30 am at either the late fall or early spring where it’s still pretty dark out, but not quite night time still, pre dawn i suppose. I ran past a house whose habitants are pretty weird. one is maybe a 40 year old man who looks like he does meth, always wears a coat and pants even in 100+ degree weather, missing teeth, long rat tail, etc. On the way back however as I ran past this house again he was riding up and down the street on a kids bmx bike. That enough is quite strange, but I turned the corner past his house and noticed out of the corner of my eye he was following me. I had to take some really weird cut through paths and get running pretty fast before I felt comfortable going back home.

In college I was out for a run during a pitch-black night. Cloud cover, no moon, tree cover, I could barely see the road. Narrow country roads with no shoulder. I thought to myself I probably shouldn't be doing this right now, should probably just do laps around campus, but I continued, needing to get 9 miles in that evening.

I saw car headlights behind a hill and knew there was no way he'd see me so I got off the road and into the ditch to the left. He didn't see me and passed pretty close. Scary enough and I should have turned me around.

A couple minutes later I see a face 3 feet away right in front of me. We both screamed, handlebars went into my gut and pedals into my shins. I'm on the taller side so the front tire fit neatly between my legs. Strangely he fell down and I didn't. Turns out it was a friend of mine who was riding his bike back to campus fast because it was so dark.

Lots of adrenaline pumping at that point and I almost tried to continue my run. My shins were a little tender though so I walked the mile back to campus. Once I had some light I could see the bone on my shins. I'm a lot more careful running in the dark now.

I was running in the evening, maybe around 8pm when the sun was starting to set, and there was this tall man (mid to late 40s) walking very strangely in front of me on the sidewalk. I proceeded to run on the side of the road next to him and as I passed him he looked over and gave me a dirty look (for what reason I don’t know). Then, he kind of grunted a “hey!” And he started running after me .... I didn’t want to find out what he wanted so I picked up the pace to about a 6:00/mile pace and figured he couldn’t keep up with me for more than 2 minutes. I looked back a few times and he was getting further and further away but it wasn’t until I got back into a more populated area that I let my guard down a bit. Thank goodness I’m a decent runner and can handle a pace like that for a while. Definitely an odd/uncomfortable encounter to say the least.

EricM wrote:

I was doing an 18 mile run a couple of years ago in January in a remote area. I noticed something in a snow drift ahead and as I got closer realized it was a dead guy frozen in the drift. I flagged down a car and had them call it in. They never did figure out how he ended up there as it was miles from any populated area.

It seems like a lot of people are stumbling over dead bodies... obviously there's selection bias given the thread topic, but what are the odds of this happening to a lifelong serious runner at some point? Surely smaller than this thread would imply...

HM guy wrote:

It seems like a lot of people are stumbling over dead bodies... obviously there's selection bias given the thread topic, but what are the odds of this happening to a lifelong serious runner at some point? Surely smaller than this thread would imply...

I have been running outdoors almost every day for about 40 years, in the early morning, on the streets near wherever I was living, in eleven different neighborhoods in seven different cities in five different states. I have seen all manner of roadkill but have never encountered a dead human.

amkelley wrote:

HM guy wrote:

It seems like a lot of people are stumbling over dead bodies... obviously there's selection bias given the thread topic, but what are the odds of this happening to a lifelong serious runner at some point? Surely smaller than this thread would imply...

I have been running outdoors almost every day for about 40 years, in the early morning, on the streets near wherever I was living, in eleven different neighborhoods in seven different cities in five different states. I have seen all manner of roadkill but have never encountered a dead human.

You haven't been 45'ed yet

I was running out near Utah Lake in Provo, Utah back in the early 80's by myself. A pickup truck came down the small road in my direction and the passenger opened up the door as if to hit me with it. They did close the door and it prevented me from having to jump in the ditch. I guess that's what happens when a non-LDS BYU student/athlete goes running in the Provo area.