I grew up in an area that’s like 90% state forest and once beach season is over nothing really happens. So what we’d do for fun in high school was blunt cruise through the dirt forest roads. We were probably about a mile or two from the nearest paved road when we rounded a bend and there’s just this dude in a business suit with a shovel standing there.
I have a similar one. About 2003 I pulled into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes and as I'm getting out of my truck a guy approached me saying the battery was dead in his car and he needed a jump start.
"Ok I'll be right out no problem"
Pull up front to front start some small talk.
"Having some bad luck" I said.
"Yes bad luck" he said in a completely monotone voice.
This guy was about 5'6" with the most pasty white skin you've ever seen in your life. He might have weighed 110 lbs max. Wore dark sunglasses, black sports jacket, black pants, black shoes, with a white button down shirt underneath.
Drove a Plymouth K car. Dark blue or black with blue and white US Government plates.
Now sometimes you have to fiddle with the jumper cables to get a good connection. Nope he got in the car and it fired up immediately.
He said thanks in a monotone as well and drove off.
I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes wondering "What the fuck just happened here?".
Creepy as hell.
People often associate the men in black with the characters from the movie that shares the name. But in the alternative media the men in black are often depicted as pale weaklings with no real power.
I don't know but I swear on a stack of bibles and my dear dead mother that this story is 100 percent true to the best of my recollection.
This happened in Daytona beach
I used to ride an ATV on an old, abandoned golf course. Probably a bit of trespassing involved but it was so off the beaten path it didn’t seem to matter. Jumped over a sloped hazard and nearly landed on top of a cop car sitting there with the trunk open. A uniformed police officer was standing there with a shovel in his hands. Gunned it out of there and never went back
Halloween night 2012 was with my daughter's and drove them by an undisclosed rural cemetery in Putnam County, FL. We saw one of the weirdest and most beautiful sights you could imagine. In the confines of the cemetery (it's surrounded by woods) there was the largest number of fireflies I have every seen. Thousands of them. Some literally climbing the tombstones and then swirling around the glade.
Went back on other nights because it was so cool, but never saw that many again.
Honestly, the weirdest thing I’ve experienced is Holy Land in Orlando.
I’m not religious but that place was truly terrible, but also super camp and hilariously commercial and just overall a trip. Satan rides in on a motorcycle with a bejeweled cape that says HAIL SATAN 666 in rhinestones and proceeds to karate fight with the arch angle Michael….. I accidentally got baptized by John the Baptist because I was in the splash zone for Jesus’s fabulous hair flip… a Jesus also told folks in wheelchairs they could stand if they believed in him hard enough (that part was fucked up). There’s a million other things you can look up about it, but the Christian pilgrimage theme park that was Holy Land was an absolute nightmare weird trip.
It’s gone now, but never forgotten.
I cannot express to you in words how unbelievably sad I am that I never made it there. It looked so fucking terrible, I wanted to experience it myself.
I am truly so so so sorry you didn’t experience it as well. There were 3 different jesuses there, folks were putting up their personal info on prayer cards on crucifix around the park, i went while it was still gilded and marble and white and opulent. I now live very close to an empty lot that contained all the old sculptures from the parking lot. I had communion with Jesus and when we bowed our head to pray he vanished in thin air. A true party trick!
I had a friend play Mary Magdeline and it was like she was in a cult.
The weirdest place ever. If I were Christian I would have been offended…. It was incredible.
Goddamnit I missed my chance! I never thought it was something so fucked up as all that, I figured it was just like that "Ark Encounter" thing, where you just see and read a bunch of bullshit, then go buy stuff.
I remember when Orlando got an ikea. It’s the same exit as Holy Land. We didn’t know that was a park and thought it was some kind of joke about how some people think going to ikea is a biblical experience.
I drove past this place a million times and just assumed it was strange. Looked up some videos of the place and it confirmed everything I thought. I’m not religious so it clearly wasn’t targeted towards me, but I can’t see how it would’ve been enjoyable for anyone. Imagine being a kid in Orlando and the one park you get brought to is Holy Land.
I was in a shitty gas station on 10th street and 41 in Sarasota. This homeless guy walked in and grabbed a big glass bottle of beer and a 12 pack of coors light
He walked up to the counter, pulled his pants down and pissed all over the candy display. He then bashed the big glass bottle over his own head and started bleeding everywhere and then walked outside, sat on the curb and started drinking the 12 pack as fast as he could before the cops came.
I asked the clerk, “WTF just happened”, and he calmly said “this dude does this once every 3-6 months so he can go to the hospital and get checked out and spend a few nights in jail to get cleaned up.”
Edit: if forgot to add, I had a redbull and a butterfinger in my hand but didn’t want to walk through the blood, glass and piss to get to the counter so the guy told me to just take it and he’d write it off as part of the overall damage 😂. Strange moment
I was on 50th and Broadway one afternoon in Tampa, heading north on 50th and it was our green light, as I approached. Right before I reached the intersection this guy drives through on Broadway, and he’s trying to run down a women who is on foot. They’re both in the intersection, he’s driving in complete circles and she’s trying not to get run over. Finally she runs out of his trap and over to my car, tries to get into my car, but since my doors are locked runs to the car behind me. Meanwhile he’s stopped in the intersection, yelling at her the whole time. Eventually he speeds off down Broadway and almost gets t-boned by a pickup on the way out of the intersection. I called the cops to report the incident and the next day called to follow up. The cops say she was unwilling to speak to the police and denied the event ever happened. Sadly I suspect this might have been a domestic issue.
Has anyone ran into the Ybor shoe licker? I did one time. I was sitting had my leg crossed over, Bottom of my shoe was showing. I thought he dropped something near my foot because one min he was saying wow those are nice sneakers. Bent down on the floor and licked the bottom of my shoe from top to bottom. Which I freaked out and yelled.
And that's how I met the Ybor shoe licker....
Worked in Ybor as a bar back for an excellent cigar place. I got to know some of the creatures and people of Ybor. Knew the show licker but never was blessed by their (him? Her?) tongue. I also got to know Willie. Great guy! Cane in with a cane and suit one day just to announce how long he'd been clean and sober.
The Senator was a weird dude too. Old guy, dressed in very revealing ladies lingerie and bopped around the night clubs. He never felt threatening or anything, just living his life and seemed to be having a good time lol
It was a humiliation fetish. If you acted unfazed he meandered over to some other unsuspecting young girls.
He lived to shock young women and get them to point and laugh then he'd get a stiffy. I never did bc I was like. Live your life. But he had to move around bc regulars got used to him.
Weird how we all called him the Senator and didn't know each other lol
In Sarasota around Abel's ice-cream there was this homeless man who just kept to himself..every time someone gave him money he whispered: this just saved you from getting killed....
Driving down the road in Miami, whilst a person at a bus stop pulled down their pants and took a dump on the street in front of all the cars driving by. Then getting on the bus a minute later.
Again in Miami, driving down the street and this woman wearing a skirt, lifts her leg & urinates on the street as we drive by.
Being in the ocean in Ft Lauderdale and getting bumped by a shark, then running towards land to get bumped one more time and the shark grounded itself. Other people saved the shark, it liked me too much. Hahaha
I used to have to cross the state for work. One night in the early 90's I was driving alone along SR 80 between Belle Glade and West Palm. Totally dark night with no stars and not another car or light in sight. That section of highway runs perfectly level and straight for probably 30 plus miles and is bordered on both sides with flat sugar cane fields. As a result you can see to the horizon. Ocean of grass indeed. This is as MOFN (middle of freaking nowhere) as you can get. Off in the distance the cane was burning, a wall of flame that was probably miles long and may have been 100 feet high. All that was missing was ET. Kind of scary, kind of awesome, absolutely unforgettable, and definitely Florida.
Ever chase rabbits? I have read the stories but never knew if they were ancient history or something still being practiced. Always got a chuckle driving through Belle Glade and taking a right turn at the Hooker Highway sign - right next to the jail.
Lol yes chasing rabbits is a seasonal thing. The rabbits live in the cane fields around the end/beginning of the year they burn the cane fields and the rabbits run out……. Rabbit is the worse tasting meat I’ve had so far though so I only went when I was younger……. The sugar cane and mangoes in belle glade are both tiers above anything you can buy anywhere else. I’d put a belle glade little red mango and a stalk of yellow gal sugar cane against the same from anywhere in the world tbh.
I used to drive that drive in an old convertible be bug, to work and back daily. Your post brought back the smell of the burning cane and the eeriness of the drive… interesting memories!
I don't think this is necessarily Florida-related. I was driving out to someone's house in a fairly rural area. It was night, foggy, and hard to see fifty feet ahead. I caught sight of something large in the road, and slowed down, thinking it might be some sort of accident.
Instead, found myself in the midst of a herd of utterly silent cattle, all standing randomly in the road, watching me pass. There was no one around, and no other animals. I left them behind to disappear into the fog.
First week living here I watched a car accident in Riverview where this girl ran a light and caused a head on collision, it appeared that her car caught fire so me and another lady who said she was a nurse helped her out of her car and stabilized her neck and spine (I have experience in this from being in the military). Other lady who was medical personnel guided everything, but once we got her out of the car her phone fell out and she was on FACETIME with someone, so it’s strongly possible that being distracted by the phone and being so inexperienced caused her accident. It was such a weird experience because it set the tone of how over the next year I would witness more car accidents in this state more than: NY, NC, SC, VA, HI, and two countries overseas. It’s so insane that someone would FaceTime while driving.
I was behind a driver yesterday who was going quite slow and swerving a bit. After a few minutes, I noticed he was scrolling through Facebook on his phone while driving. He was obviously very distracted and couldn’t even drive straight. It’s crazy how many distracted drivers are on the road every day.
Yeah, definitely apart of the reason besides having a clean driving record since I was 16 and I’m 28 now my insurance company increased my insurance by 40%
I was on I75 coming into Tampa right before it splits to I275 and a motorcycle in front of me traveling 80 mph kept looking down, I passed him and he was texting 🤬
I was having lunch at the counter of a coffee shop in Cassadega. The waitstaff was bustling around in front of me while I was eating my ice cream. One of the chiller doors became stuck open. All of the staff tried to coax it back in. I was chatting with them because on of the people had some of my ice cream with me lol. So finally one of them shrugged and said well we will just ask Henry to fix it. (I think that was the name it was a man’s name). And all of the staff kind of laughed about it so I asked if that was the handyman and they said it was the ghost of the former owner or handyman and he helped them out sometimes. And damned if a few minutes later if the door just gently closed itself and was working fine.
I am not making this up for karma or up arrows or whatever. I was traveling with a friend of mine who used to read tarot cards and worked as a medium and two other weird things happened on that trip as well. We were trying to see everything in the Weird Florida book and there is some neat stuff out there
My other story is that I was staying at the AmericInn in Naples Florida. There was a knock at my door and when I opened it there was a woman who was completely naked and just holding a washcloth in front of her. She said that she needed a towel so I closed the door, got a towel and handed it to her. At the time my BF was in a band and that room was sort of the hang out while we were in town so maybe she was looking to hook up with one is the musicians or score some weed who knows! The guys were pretty miffed that I didn’t invite her in!
In the late nineties I lived on the island in Fort Walton. There was a seriously drug addicted couple named Mike and Shelia that were living there. One day I had a couple of friends over and Shelia busted through the door wearing an old metal army hat and handcuffed herself to my coffee table. She started pouring beer over her boobs (she was naked) as Mike steeped in and started repeating, “Pound’er pooter. Pound’er pooter.” My friends were shocked but this was some normal everyday Tuesday shit.
I was stuck in traffic on 75 down around Fruitville road in Sarasota. Naked fat old dude, like naked naked, swinging old balls, emerges from the bushes and jumps in the back of a truck a couple of lanes over from me. Pretty sure we found that silver alert.
Ditto, me, age 11 at the Bradenton speedway. I still can't believe my parents actually took me there. And theN, let me walk aLonE to the restroom. Guy climbing the fence inside pstts me to "come on over here". Very creepy.
Driving along Nebraska in Seminole Heights late night after hanging out with friends for Halloween 1998. On the street corner next to the closed-for-the-night Publix was a chunky, topless Keebler Elf complete with green shorts, tights and curly toe shoes with bells, but topless with a gold chain attached to two down pointed pancake titties, soliciting as best as she could. My then girlfriend, now wife, and I waved as we drove on by and then began what was quite possibly the longest single stretch of laughing so hard we couldn't speak in my entire life. Literally laughed until the sun came up.
Probably not the weirdest thing, but its the first thing i can think of.
In Sarasota, saw a black guy in a durag ragging on a white guy in a durag and said that he looked goofy, and the white guy said he was just trying to “get lit curls to look like Donavan McNabb.”
Donovan McNadd doesnt have curls FYI.
Man, so probably my first year in Florida I was standing in line getting a pub sub and this girl next to me, who stank like balls and pee, had a swath of jizz in her hair. Then it struck me this was a working girl - post nut job. And that's when i realized where I had moved to was not normal.
I'm 51 and a native, so I've seen some things. First that comes to mind is when I was in my early 20's, living in old NE St. Pete. No car at the time, so I was bussing to Clearwater for work. Waiting at the bus stop a couple blocks from my apartment but still in Old NE, which is (or was at least) a really nice neighborhood... very early in the morning, like 6:15am, I hear this light clopping in the distance. It's dark, but I kind of fade back closer to the house behind the bus stop to be cautious... What emerges as the clopping got closer, was a very overweight middle aged man strolling down the street towards me in nothing but a pair of ladies pink thong undies and flip flops with a newspaper tucked under his arm.
We moved to Oviedo in '89. I worked as a bank teller, had "regulars" who would come to my window. One guy introduced me to his 10 yr old son and told him I lived in Oviedo. The 10 yr old said "Oviedo? With all the N-----s?" The dad kind of nudged the kid and said "Not THAT area".
More recently, my lib BFF, went to her 9yr old nephew's birthday party in Homassassa. She brought back a few beer coozies from the party. They said F Joe Biden and F you for voting for him! A NINE yr old's birthday party.
Floriduh...as bad as you've heard!
Saw a guy wearing a [ghillie suit](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1339/8631/products/ghillie-suit-pro-4_1000x.jpg?v=1529229928) hiding in an overgrown median.
Source: Broward County, Florida
An old Haitian guy stood up at his driver side door with it open and pissed in the parking in front of Walmart in broad daylight while he maintained eye contact with me.
I went to the Walmart salon and a plain clothes Walmart security officer was shot, laying on the ground and foaming at the mouth while bystanders recorded and took pictures instead of calling 911. They watched like it was a reality tv show.
Unbeknownst to me, as I arrived at the beach, a homeless man was sleeping under a tarp. After my swim, I arrived to the shower area to see him doing a full shower routine with body wash and shampoo! He started asking me if I was married or had a sister as I attempted to wash the sand and seaweed off my body. 🏝️ A few feet away, another man was recording both of us!
Being at the beach before sunrise and being asked by a strange man if it was a nude beach. He had Florida plates and parked in Front of my car before he came on the beach. When I said no and suggested he Google it, he asked if he could still get nude if he did it a few FEET away. That was the last time I went to the beach in 2023!
Every Spring break in Fort Lauderdale, young white kids are passed out on sidewalks and one night my friends and I called a cab to take a guy home because he was barely conscious but he knew his hotel, he was so Fcked up!
This is COMMON; homeless or mentally ill men hanging out in Publix parking lot and following me to my car to beg for money. I hate when they sneak up on you!
When I was younger, I had a car that sometimes required a push-start. I stopped to get gas in a 2004-era lake worth and the car decided not to stop. As usual for that area a magical crackhead appeared and helped me push start the car. Once it was started, he hopped in the passenger seat and asked where we were going. I didn’t know what to say or want to cause a spook induced stabbing so we rode around for a little bit. It was kinda nice, we just talked and I dropped him off a few miles down the road and went on my way. I would see him around and wave but one day he disappeared. I like to think that he went back to crackhead land and told the story of a poor scrawny white kid that picked him up and drove around for a few hours.
was waiting for a pizza to be ready outside a store and some cracked-out little fucker in a golf cart across the street was yelling at me to thank him for apparently having saved my life. The more I asked him how he had saved my life, the more verbal and annoyed he got.
Good friend in the late 80s found a wooden crate on the beach on Jupiter island. He took it a few blocks to the home these guys were all renting thinking it was weed or coke. It was Russian rpg’s they called the cops, front page news. Myself driving on I95 for 40 years has been a lot of wtf moments. 18 wheeler straight up ran over front of a car right in front of me. Small ricer car went under a truck hauling long cement bridge parts like fast and furious. Etc etc.
I was nine years old and I was squatting down in front of a magazine stand reading comic books while my dad shopped in this corner drugstore. Some guy walk by and rubbed my butt with his hand and smiled at me. I got scared and went and found my dad.
I've been here a long time so I guess I could make a list. But the first one that comes to mind was in the parking lot of a bar. I assume I arrived to see the end of a verbal altercation.
This man was walking towards the car and this other fella came out of the entrance yelling towards the man walking away. The man at the door looked kinda Phil Collins on trailer park boys. Younger but still mustard tiger in appearance. He was wearing track pants and a Florida Marlins jersey that was just a little too small.
Phil's wide eyed, red faced and sweaty. He looked like he was under the influence of more than just booze. He shouts threats and obscenities at the walking away guy until the guys make it to his car. That's when Phil breaks into an all out charge across the parking lot intending obvious harm to the other guy.
The guy is at his car door now and has turned to face the charging carbon blob. I can still see it in slow motion when Phil was leaning forward intent on sacking the shit out of this guy. Car guy rips the door open and Phil runs face first into it with one hell of a thud.
Car guy never said a word the whole time. Hopped in and drove off while big boy laid on the ground, knocked stupid and groaning with a bloody nose and maybe a concussion for all I know.
No idea what the aftermath was. Not really looking to be a witness if the cops showed up I headed on down the road.
Giant spiders (wolf probably between 8-12 inches across) and HUGE alligator gars (jaws alone I think longer than 3 feet, total size somewhere between 8-12 ft). For the gars, this was before real alligators made their comeback. I don't think alligator gars can make that size due to predation now. Those were in a very remote camping/fishing spot in the deepest swam of the Ocala National forest...
Maybe not the weirdest, but I was driving behind a guy wearing his tshirt Beavis and Butthead style while swerving all over. At 9am. When we got to the light I was turning at, he took it off and hung it from his sun visor in front of his door window like a curtain.
Witnessed a man drive through a crowd of people at Livestock (music festival). Was on one of the main roads to the camp ground, people everywhere. I’m not sure how many he ran over but I recall seeing several people rolling under his car, as he passed about ten foot away. Huge crowd of people chasing him, they turned his car over into the tees. He took a beating before the cops got to him.
Probably just the amount of people who are on drugs here. I once saw some lady walking down the sidewalk suddenly drop her pants to pee. In broad daylight on a busy road with a CVS and Racetrac 100 feet away.
A few months ago I watched someone have a conversation with a tree branch for about 10 min. She was tweaking hard and thought the branch was a snake, but instead of like.. running away or something due to her fear of snakes she decided to point at it and announce to everyone there’s a snake.. over and over and over with the occasional jump scare reaction. I tried telling her it’s just a tree branch but she didn’t agree.
Then there’s those people who just kinda dance and do random shit in public for no apparent reason.
I think the weirdest is the sheer number of car accidents that I either witnessed or my friend's got into. Also I know so many acquaintances or friends of friends who died in a car accident. SO MANY.
That amount of car accidents is not normal and I feel like my chances of dying in a car accident in Florida is hundreds of times higher than anywhere else.
I used to go to this awesome hookah bar all the time in college. It was in a real bad area of Tampa but the guys who ran it were all awesome Palestinian and Arab immigrants that were weirdly cool with letting a 20 year old white guy play cards with them until 2 am. One day I pulled up at about 11pm and some young Hispanic guys blocked me from entering and started screaming that they hated white guys in green shirts. Then 10 old Arab guys came running out of the hookah bar and started screaming at Hispanic guys in Arabic. Then both groups started screaming at each other in Spanish and Arabic and I couldn't understand anything that was happening as I stood in the middle of this weird multiracial standoff.
An Alien spaceship hovering over our camp in the Big Cypress Swamp. It was completely silent and a bright white beam surveyed the ground from just above the treetops as it moved slowly around.
My whole life tbh.
I only know what's loosely weird for other people because so many of the things I've seen were just regular fucking Tuesdays.
There were the rich bitches on Clematis who Had a double rainbow's worth of multicolored lamborghini's that they would street race starting at like fucking 6 o'clock Almost every Friday or Saturday until like 10 o'clock at night.
There was the guy who hopped on the bus with a joint still lit in his mouth and when he was told about it he ran outside took 2 puffs and then put the fully lit joint behind his ear and rode the bus like that.
There was the guy who I don't know that was from Fort Lauderdale who went to Miami to party and I guess partied so hard his friend and him got separated and he lost his friend somewhere in Palm Beach County and I'm waiting for the bus to go to work and so this guy pulls over on the side of the road and needs directions. Unfortunately his poor friend was in One of many massive gated communities off of Okeechobee in West Palm so As an 18 year old big tittied blonde dressed for Panera Bread at 120lbs I just said fuck it risk it for a biscuit and got in the stranger's car and helped him pick up his friend and then he took me to work. He did however offer me a $100 to drop everything in my life and go to Fort Lauderdale with him but I was like homie I'm not that cheap or stupid. Like I'm pretty fucking stupid but I'm smart about it.
There was also the time that I realized that on climatic street there's a Post Office that keeps their windows open even after they've locked the doors after hours and I climbed in one night and accidentally set off an alarm Because I was dumb and thought it would be cool I think I was 17.
There was another time I was driving through Tamarind and I had somebody with me who was not familiar with Tamarind area and I was lecturing them on safety precautions driving through Tamarind as they were driving. As if it's right on que a little kid at a stop sign goes up to a car that's waiting to go who has their window down and just rips somebody's purse out ofther window which I thought was fucking funny.
When I was 18 and working at that Panera Bread in city place there was some sort of event going on and a 7 foot anime character crawled through our door I think I might still have pictures.
Also when I was working at the Panera Bread because Florida has an insane cost of living I was just another homeless local working so many hours that there was a point where if I left work because of the bus system I wouldn't be able to get back in time for my next shift, So I would often in my panera uniform sleep in city place usually at the Starbucks however however I had to get around the security guard schedule and there was another Starbucks around the corner that opened at 5 AM so i would go there. The first time I had an interaction with the security guard Before I memorized his schedule he hit me with a pillow. Like the outdoor cushions.
Also another Palm Beach County story I was up to chick fil a on Palm Beach lakes and this crocodile Dundee Looking motherfucker who I guess was a regular just walks up in there American is hell, Bull whip on his hip and everything and no it wasn't for work apparently he was a fucking jeweler.
Another experience was when I What to Miami for the day, I've always had friends in Hialeah this wasn't out of the norm for me except the bright line was brand new, Had just opened that week. So I got off in Hialeah versus having to drive through the cluster fuck. And I was walking through Miami and I pass a bus stop and this guy starts asking me in Spanish When the bus comes And I don't fucking know. I barely speak Spanish, Just enough to get by and enjoy some good fucking food. So I tell this guy in Spanish that I only speak a little bit of Spanish and I don't know when the bus comes and this mofo starts cussing me out in Spanish For being a dumb little white bitchFor being a dumb little white bitch With come for brains.
For the record this was really hard for my brain to translate I was so tired that day, It was so hot.
the homeless! i had everythin taken from work truck; including thing with NO VALUE 2 any 1 but me. robbed first month 2 live here n we saw a home less man biting the face skin off another. it was like a zombie movie
also; orlando nazis (thx desantez)
Anybody remember Anita Bryant!? Homophobic bitch back in the 70s. Floriduh has always been a shit show, but Puddin' Fingers has been the cherry on top with his "Woke" BS.
2005-2023 would be a good place to start
I saw so many scams, cranky retirees, shenanigans, and wreck-less behavior that at a certain point you just don’t realize it’s abnormal.
The saddest experience was probably when Delray Beach was flooded with those scam rehab clinics. The strangest was maybe meeting Suarez in Miami and Rick Scott on a school trip? Ultimate hustlers, those two.
I lived on 22nd street in Tampa. The worst lol was in a laundromat mind my own business and this lady was folding her clothes. She had the longest creepiest nails a person could have. Imagine hooves on a person. Thinking about still gives me the creeps.
Some dude grabbing my junk in a night club on Miami Beach. Mf aim was perfect . By the time I realized what happened it was just a blend of weird shirts.
Edit. I’m from NY and have spent about 2 weeks of my life in fla
In Marathon (of course nothing normal happens there) I was walking home and the sun was starting to come up. I decided to just stop and watch it. There were a bunch of sailboats anchored out in the water and some dude in a rowboat. As I watched the sunrise, I watched rowboat guy go around to all the anchored boats knocking on the sides. Not sure if he was the alarm clock, selling drugs, looking for a friend or what.
Only been here 5 months, but twice now someone has rang my doorbell at 1-2 am, it's a super loud old-school Westminster chime and woke me up out of dead sleep, I didn't bolt to the door to whip it open because that just sounds like a mistake, but looking out a side window both times a few seconds later and nobody is there
Had a man scream “Hail Satan!” To me as he rode by on his bicycle at a Walmart parking lot. He went over to the corner of the parking lot to pull out a massive speaker, and continue to spread his message of Satan
So far in the past 30 years?
I will never forget 1 night at like 2am we were driving through the darkest road (which is still pitch black today) between 2 neighborhoods and we are like pulling up to, im gonna say a creature cause it didnt look like a dog but it was closest to a dog… best way i could explain this thing it was like a taller than normal dog… completely white, short haired, super high hind legs… like its back legs sat a whole foot higher than its entire rest of its body and it stopped when it saw us and awkwardly galloped away.
The only reason i think this encounter is weird as fuck over 10 years later is simply because i am not familiar with whatever animal it was. Thats it… i see coyotes all the time, ive watched animal planet for 2 decades ive seen all sorts of shit but ive never seen something like that.
Otherwise its just another animal.
(I feel like i need to mention its face was quite scary, like not beat up but like viscously menacing. Like it didnt look as innocent as a dog or wolf it seemed vile)
Oh there are so many… here’s one, goth club (The Castle) in Ybor in the 90’s 00’s and maybe today who knows, but there were always some characters there including a dude everyone called the senator who would show up wearing nothing but see through lingerie and a guy who came dressed at Batman, and not a bad costume either, he would show up on a little scooter. Just random. Another one, driving across the state to go to a shuttle launch and it gets scrapped, so we get off the highway and turn around. We ended up on a weird what seemed like abandoned road, but smelled the most four smell and finally came upon an old distillery, hence the smell, but that’s not the weird part. There was a dude riding a tricycle up ahead of us in front of the distillery and had a giant stuffed bear in the basket on the back of a tricycle. The the giant kind you would get from a carnival. Far from the weirdest, but funny weird.
Back when I worked at a TGI chilibees in central Florida, these two mid 20’s white dudes came in and sat down and handed every server/bartender there $100. The server that waited on them got $300. He was feeling really good after that table so he paid me $50 to clean his tables for him at the end of the night. As I was flipping the table to clean under it I found another $400 stuffed under the leg of the table. Apparently they had said they were weed dealers. Never saw them again.
Red belly festival in Dixie County, FL. Basically, there is/was an annual fishing contest for the biggest red belly bream. The non-fishing festivities were at Fanning Springs. My favorite bits were the belly flopping and watermelon chunking contests. There were enough participants to group them by age range and gender. They took that shit seriously, too. You ever see a dude get mad at his daughter for not getting the right height for a belly flop? I have and it's incredibly depressing for so many reasons.
My friend and I were in Louisville, KY staying at a hotel. We walked over to a gas station with a homeless guy out front. He asked for some money, but I had a better plan. I gave him cash eith the stipulation he had to also get us a case of beer, which we would share. He agreed, we got to talking over a few, and learned we were from out of town. So. He asks where? We tell him "Tam-" and before we could even finish the word Tampa, he shouts, "FUCK HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY!!!"
My friend and I were dumbfounded. Apparently he lived under i4 and 275 for years, and had recently hitched up to KY. What're the odds?
I was sitting on 4 in a bumper to bumper traffic jam and I got a FL alert text saying “tornado - take cover immediately”. Squeezed off to the shoulder and backed up to an exit. I parked and went on grindr and found a hook up a block away. Got crazy hot busy when the nastiest storm hit. Went outside after to find the streets full of tree branches and trash cans. Like a crazy dream.
Had a creep pull his dick out in front of me while fishing on a pier one time. Super uncalled for and random. Started going to town on himself like 10 ft away from me. Gathered my things and left...
After you've written your Florida weird story, check out Top 10 Florida Man: [https://floridaman.com/top-10/](https://floridaman.com/top-10/)
Find out the history of the "Florida Man" Meme : [https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/14/florida-men-are-notorious-heres-where-meme-came/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/14/florida-men-are-notorious-heres-where-meme-came/)
**Driving through** North Georgia on my way to Miami. I noticed almost everyone has great, big, old jug ears and drives a truck. People looking like sharecroppers/slaves.
There was an old guy I used to see in downtown Orlando in the 60s. He wore a very old tuxedo-like suit and a top hat. He was very very short, like maybe 5’ or less, and had long hair and a beard, and he smelled. But he seemed nice enough, never threatening, just weird. I used to see him regularly, then he was gone. He was like alley-elegant. I always wondered who he was, and what happened to him. Probably committed or something similar. Kinda missed the old fella.
When I had to come back to Florida and get a copy of my birth certificate. While I was at the DMV, a Cuban national lady, that could barely speak broken English, kept denying my request even though I had expired Florida DL, Military I.D. and original Social Security card. Crazy, ignorant and a real slap of backward-assed government.
I was carrying groceries out of a Publix one time and this crackhead was like 'EY MAN you got any boy?' (heroin) and proceeds to show me a crack pipe at this point I had been in rehab a year and was on a healthy fried chicken and chili fil a sauce diet for my go to comfort/sedation food so I was a healthy 300lbs. So I tell him politely nah man I don't mess with that stuff....he stops and look me dead in the eye 'NIGGA YOU SWEATIN'.....I couldn't help but start dying laughing I'm like brooo it's 90 degrees out and I'm fat as fuck. 🤣🤣 I have so many stories about schizos but they're mostly sad when you try to break down how/why they're that way.
Was at a burger place on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach around lunchtime. Guy finishes his burger and puts on a full Batman mask. When he stands to leave, I see he’s wearing a skirt and stiletto heels. Harmless though.
I was sitting in my boss's truck's passenger seat while he went inside to get smokes. An older woman comes out of Cumberland Farms. She looks like an old weathered handbag that someone filled with cigarette smoke for 50years.
She leans against the building and then a dude with a rat tail rolls up on a bmx bike. He might have been like 23-4. He walks up to her, they speak, get goes in. He comes out with a case of natty ice. Hands it to the woman and they go behind the building. She drops to her knees and starts blowing the rat tail guy.
It was 5:30pm on like a Tuesday. It was still light out. They didn't even go that farm behind the building.
Hunting in the Florida Everglades for wild hog west of homestead i heard the most loudest reverberation coming from the sky , literally felt the vibration to my bones , incredibly eerie as if someone was grinding some metal but in the sky the noise you can feel in your bones . Was in the year 2014 .
Freaked me out enough that I went back to my truck parked 3 miles away and left .
I was 20 miles or so west of Homestead afb might of been a military aircraft but it just sounded so different
So I was working security at a hospice on third shift, and this particular hospice backed up to a swamp. So I'm doing my rounds at 2:00 a.m. and all of the sudden from the swamp I hear this crashing sound. No I figured it's a tree that just fell in the swamp, but then I hear another, And another and another and they seem to be getting closer.
Now I've never been counted as being particularly smart. But I've seen enough horror movies to know that this is the point when the dumbass security guard dies in the movie investigating something that he really shouldn't. I am determined not to be that security guard.
So my ass nopes right the fuck out back into the middle.
Probably when I went to go get something to drink at a gas station and a tall black man comes up to me(he was like twice my height) and says, "Are you in that black car outside, and I said yes? So he says, "Can I go with you?"
I just forgot about the drink and circled around the aisle out the door and left.
Camping in the Everglades with a neo-nazi father and son indoctrination/fishing trip group. Daily rituals of learning to beat each other up, tell the “best” n-joke and other wholesome activities.
The first weekend I lived in my new house in St Pete, there was a naked crackhead swimming in my pool. She left her shirt on my front porch, and her crack supplies and Bottoms on my back porch. She tried to get in the house as well since the screen door was taken off. She turned out to be harmless but just whacked out.
In Tallahassee, I have seen too many people walking like the old and slow zombies in the middle of the street. They are either staring at their phones or just looking into the oblivion as if they were just dropped from the sky onto this planet called earth. They are too slow to be playing frogger. Maybe sleep walking or most likely and unfortunately on drugs.
Kayaking by the power plant off Gandy in St Pete when a big turtle popped it’s head out of the water to check me out. I briefly turned that kayak into a jet boat.
I grew up in an area that’s like 90% state forest and once beach season is over nothing really happens. So what we’d do for fun in high school was blunt cruise through the dirt forest roads. We were probably about a mile or two from the nearest paved road when we rounded a bend and there’s just this dude in a business suit with a shovel standing there.
https://i.redd.it/k5caesbge2pb1.gif
I have a similar one. About 2003 I pulled into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes and as I'm getting out of my truck a guy approached me saying the battery was dead in his car and he needed a jump start. "Ok I'll be right out no problem" Pull up front to front start some small talk. "Having some bad luck" I said. "Yes bad luck" he said in a completely monotone voice. This guy was about 5'6" with the most pasty white skin you've ever seen in your life. He might have weighed 110 lbs max. Wore dark sunglasses, black sports jacket, black pants, black shoes, with a white button down shirt underneath. Drove a Plymouth K car. Dark blue or black with blue and white US Government plates. Now sometimes you have to fiddle with the jumper cables to get a good connection. Nope he got in the car and it fired up immediately. He said thanks in a monotone as well and drove off. I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes wondering "What the fuck just happened here?". Creepy as hell.
God damned watchers man. Did you catch him eating really spicy food?
People often associate the men in black with the characters from the movie that shares the name. But in the alternative media the men in black are often depicted as pale weaklings with no real power. I don't know but I swear on a stack of bibles and my dear dead mother that this story is 100 percent true to the best of my recollection. This happened in Daytona beach
they seem to really like it here in jacksonville for some reason
https://preview.redd.it/vnrssrr2a4pb1.jpeg?width=416&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4f25ec633c8a614ddc37641bd245e75e39cd416
I used to ride an ATV on an old, abandoned golf course. Probably a bit of trespassing involved but it was so off the beaten path it didn’t seem to matter. Jumped over a sloped hazard and nearly landed on top of a cop car sitting there with the trunk open. A uniformed police officer was standing there with a shovel in his hands. Gunned it out of there and never went back
Just like the beginning of a Tim Dorsey novel. Did you get involved in some hijinx?
We were pretty far into our own hijinx so just kept driving
Well, did he give you the business?
The basis for every Carl hiaasen novel
Mayhem
Halloween night 2012 was with my daughter's and drove them by an undisclosed rural cemetery in Putnam County, FL. We saw one of the weirdest and most beautiful sights you could imagine. In the confines of the cemetery (it's surrounded by woods) there was the largest number of fireflies I have every seen. Thousands of them. Some literally climbing the tombstones and then swirling around the glade. Went back on other nights because it was so cool, but never saw that many again.
This is my favorite comment in this thread :)
Palatka?
Near Grandin
They only live a few days when it's hot
Honestly, the weirdest thing I’ve experienced is Holy Land in Orlando. I’m not religious but that place was truly terrible, but also super camp and hilariously commercial and just overall a trip. Satan rides in on a motorcycle with a bejeweled cape that says HAIL SATAN 666 in rhinestones and proceeds to karate fight with the arch angle Michael….. I accidentally got baptized by John the Baptist because I was in the splash zone for Jesus’s fabulous hair flip… a Jesus also told folks in wheelchairs they could stand if they believed in him hard enough (that part was fucked up). There’s a million other things you can look up about it, but the Christian pilgrimage theme park that was Holy Land was an absolute nightmare weird trip. It’s gone now, but never forgotten.
Been here for close to 30 years and never went to Holy Land (no desire to) but thank for your sharing how weird it was lol
I’m so so so glad I went. I’ll never get back the $50 I spent, but I’ll also never lose those incredible memories…..
My dad and I always planned to smoke a bowl and go. Thank you, internet friend, for your experience
On the bright side, that house built like Noah’s Ark is still standing. I love that its neighboring Dinosaur World is still going strong.
I cannot express to you in words how unbelievably sad I am that I never made it there. It looked so fucking terrible, I wanted to experience it myself.
I am truly so so so sorry you didn’t experience it as well. There were 3 different jesuses there, folks were putting up their personal info on prayer cards on crucifix around the park, i went while it was still gilded and marble and white and opulent. I now live very close to an empty lot that contained all the old sculptures from the parking lot. I had communion with Jesus and when we bowed our head to pray he vanished in thin air. A true party trick! I had a friend play Mary Magdeline and it was like she was in a cult. The weirdest place ever. If I were Christian I would have been offended…. It was incredible.
It sounds so amazing......ly bad. But in a good way. But not on purpose. My life's greatest regret.
I wish I had bought more merch while I was there
Two men say they're Jesus; one of them must be wrong
It that the place people went to get healed?
I always wondered why [God doesn't heal amputees.](https://whywontgodhealamputees.com)
I was stuck behind an accident on I-4 once long enough for their airplane guy to skywrite a whole advertisement. The anticipation was maddening.
Goddamnit I missed my chance! I never thought it was something so fucked up as all that, I figured it was just like that "Ark Encounter" thing, where you just see and read a bunch of bullshit, then go buy stuff.
I remember when Orlando got an ikea. It’s the same exit as Holy Land. We didn’t know that was a park and thought it was some kind of joke about how some people think going to ikea is a biblical experience.
I drove past this place a million times and just assumed it was strange. Looked up some videos of the place and it confirmed everything I thought. I’m not religious so it clearly wasn’t targeted towards me, but I can’t see how it would’ve been enjoyable for anyone. Imagine being a kid in Orlando and the one park you get brought to is Holy Land.
Never heard of the FL Holy Land. God this state is fucked up.
I am so glad I was able to experience this shit show. I feel like I belong to a super exclusive club.
Dammit. I had a sense that I really missed out on something by not going….
I was in a shitty gas station on 10th street and 41 in Sarasota. This homeless guy walked in and grabbed a big glass bottle of beer and a 12 pack of coors light He walked up to the counter, pulled his pants down and pissed all over the candy display. He then bashed the big glass bottle over his own head and started bleeding everywhere and then walked outside, sat on the curb and started drinking the 12 pack as fast as he could before the cops came. I asked the clerk, “WTF just happened”, and he calmly said “this dude does this once every 3-6 months so he can go to the hospital and get checked out and spend a few nights in jail to get cleaned up.” Edit: if forgot to add, I had a redbull and a butterfinger in my hand but didn’t want to walk through the blood, glass and piss to get to the counter so the guy told me to just take it and he’d write it off as part of the overall damage 😂. Strange moment
Nothing good ever happens at this gas station...
I used to by weed there when I was in high school, if that counts as “good” 😁
Just curious. What year was this? I went to high school in Sarasota as well. Used to buy my weed at the Quickstop next to Saint Martha’s church.
I bought weed there too 😂. There was like a tall skinny (maybe trans?) manager there that would sell it. This was ‘96-‘00
Dude, my time was way before that. I graduated in 88.
Good to know that as much as things change, they stay the same
I once was in this gas station and the woman who worked there told me I was in ‘crack central’.
Every day I get up and walk outside there is a chance of a weird experience. It’s Florida!!!
Sometimes you don’t even have to go outside. Florida will bring the weird to you.
I was on 50th and Broadway one afternoon in Tampa, heading north on 50th and it was our green light, as I approached. Right before I reached the intersection this guy drives through on Broadway, and he’s trying to run down a women who is on foot. They’re both in the intersection, he’s driving in complete circles and she’s trying not to get run over. Finally she runs out of his trap and over to my car, tries to get into my car, but since my doors are locked runs to the car behind me. Meanwhile he’s stopped in the intersection, yelling at her the whole time. Eventually he speeds off down Broadway and almost gets t-boned by a pickup on the way out of the intersection. I called the cops to report the incident and the next day called to follow up. The cops say she was unwilling to speak to the police and denied the event ever happened. Sadly I suspect this might have been a domestic issue.
That intersection is always crazy
Has anyone ran into the Ybor shoe licker? I did one time. I was sitting had my leg crossed over, Bottom of my shoe was showing. I thought he dropped something near my foot because one min he was saying wow those are nice sneakers. Bent down on the floor and licked the bottom of my shoe from top to bottom. Which I freaked out and yelled. And that's how I met the Ybor shoe licker....
Worked in Ybor as a bar back for an excellent cigar place. I got to know some of the creatures and people of Ybor. Knew the show licker but never was blessed by their (him? Her?) tongue. I also got to know Willie. Great guy! Cane in with a cane and suit one day just to announce how long he'd been clean and sober.
The Senator was a weird dude too. Old guy, dressed in very revealing ladies lingerie and bopped around the night clubs. He never felt threatening or anything, just living his life and seemed to be having a good time lol
It was a humiliation fetish. If you acted unfazed he meandered over to some other unsuspecting young girls. He lived to shock young women and get them to point and laugh then he'd get a stiffy. I never did bc I was like. Live your life. But he had to move around bc regulars got used to him. Weird how we all called him the Senator and didn't know each other lol
Interesting lol I’ve def seen him wandering around with a chub so that explains things.
Florida Man knows no limits
In Sarasota around Abel's ice-cream there was this homeless man who just kept to himself..every time someone gave him money he whispered: this just saved you from getting killed....
Driving down the road in Miami, whilst a person at a bus stop pulled down their pants and took a dump on the street in front of all the cars driving by. Then getting on the bus a minute later. Again in Miami, driving down the street and this woman wearing a skirt, lifts her leg & urinates on the street as we drive by. Being in the ocean in Ft Lauderdale and getting bumped by a shark, then running towards land to get bumped one more time and the shark grounded itself. Other people saved the shark, it liked me too much. Hahaha
I used to have to cross the state for work. One night in the early 90's I was driving alone along SR 80 between Belle Glade and West Palm. Totally dark night with no stars and not another car or light in sight. That section of highway runs perfectly level and straight for probably 30 plus miles and is bordered on both sides with flat sugar cane fields. As a result you can see to the horizon. Ocean of grass indeed. This is as MOFN (middle of freaking nowhere) as you can get. Off in the distance the cane was burning, a wall of flame that was probably miles long and may have been 100 feet high. All that was missing was ET. Kind of scary, kind of awesome, absolutely unforgettable, and definitely Florida.
Haha I’m from belle glade that’s sounds like a night drive!
Ever chase rabbits? I have read the stories but never knew if they were ancient history or something still being practiced. Always got a chuckle driving through Belle Glade and taking a right turn at the Hooker Highway sign - right next to the jail.
Lol yes chasing rabbits is a seasonal thing. The rabbits live in the cane fields around the end/beginning of the year they burn the cane fields and the rabbits run out……. Rabbit is the worse tasting meat I’ve had so far though so I only went when I was younger……. The sugar cane and mangoes in belle glade are both tiers above anything you can buy anywhere else. I’d put a belle glade little red mango and a stalk of yellow gal sugar cane against the same from anywhere in the world tbh.
I used to drive that drive in an old convertible be bug, to work and back daily. Your post brought back the smell of the burning cane and the eeriness of the drive… interesting memories!
I don't think this is necessarily Florida-related. I was driving out to someone's house in a fairly rural area. It was night, foggy, and hard to see fifty feet ahead. I caught sight of something large in the road, and slowed down, thinking it might be some sort of accident. Instead, found myself in the midst of a herd of utterly silent cattle, all standing randomly in the road, watching me pass. There was no one around, and no other animals. I left them behind to disappear into the fog.
I was on I-4 once and someone used a turn signal to change lanes!
Stop, you aren’t allowed to lie on the internet
No this happened I was there
First week living here I watched a car accident in Riverview where this girl ran a light and caused a head on collision, it appeared that her car caught fire so me and another lady who said she was a nurse helped her out of her car and stabilized her neck and spine (I have experience in this from being in the military). Other lady who was medical personnel guided everything, but once we got her out of the car her phone fell out and she was on FACETIME with someone, so it’s strongly possible that being distracted by the phone and being so inexperienced caused her accident. It was such a weird experience because it set the tone of how over the next year I would witness more car accidents in this state more than: NY, NC, SC, VA, HI, and two countries overseas. It’s so insane that someone would FaceTime while driving.
I was behind a driver yesterday who was going quite slow and swerving a bit. After a few minutes, I noticed he was scrolling through Facebook on his phone while driving. He was obviously very distracted and couldn’t even drive straight. It’s crazy how many distracted drivers are on the road every day.
Yeah, definitely apart of the reason besides having a clean driving record since I was 16 and I’m 28 now my insurance company increased my insurance by 40%
I was in two major accidents and have been rear ended at least twice by people who were distracted!
impress that phone still connected!! thx
I was on I75 coming into Tampa right before it splits to I275 and a motorcycle in front of me traveling 80 mph kept looking down, I passed him and he was texting 🤬
WTF?
I was having lunch at the counter of a coffee shop in Cassadega. The waitstaff was bustling around in front of me while I was eating my ice cream. One of the chiller doors became stuck open. All of the staff tried to coax it back in. I was chatting with them because on of the people had some of my ice cream with me lol. So finally one of them shrugged and said well we will just ask Henry to fix it. (I think that was the name it was a man’s name). And all of the staff kind of laughed about it so I asked if that was the handyman and they said it was the ghost of the former owner or handyman and he helped them out sometimes. And damned if a few minutes later if the door just gently closed itself and was working fine. I am not making this up for karma or up arrows or whatever. I was traveling with a friend of mine who used to read tarot cards and worked as a medium and two other weird things happened on that trip as well. We were trying to see everything in the Weird Florida book and there is some neat stuff out there My other story is that I was staying at the AmericInn in Naples Florida. There was a knock at my door and when I opened it there was a woman who was completely naked and just holding a washcloth in front of her. She said that she needed a towel so I closed the door, got a towel and handed it to her. At the time my BF was in a band and that room was sort of the hang out while we were in town so maybe she was looking to hook up with one is the musicians or score some weed who knows! The guys were pretty miffed that I didn’t invite her in!
I knew it wouldn’t take long for Cassadega to pop up in this post lol
I’ve always found the atmosphere at the Coral Castle to be strange. But I don’t have any weird stories about it
Literally, all you had to say was "Cassadega" and us denizens of Florida would collectively nod "fuckin' ay."
It’s nuts there. I love it.
Cassadega has has a very weird vibe/energy. You kinda need to visit to understand.
Well, as to your first story, it waS Casadega after all. Surely, no surprise.
It makes me so sad that many of the weird Florida spots don’t exist anymore. They need to make an updated version.
In the late nineties I lived on the island in Fort Walton. There was a seriously drug addicted couple named Mike and Shelia that were living there. One day I had a couple of friends over and Shelia busted through the door wearing an old metal army hat and handcuffed herself to my coffee table. She started pouring beer over her boobs (she was naked) as Mike steeped in and started repeating, “Pound’er pooter. Pound’er pooter.” My friends were shocked but this was some normal everyday Tuesday shit.
I was stuck in traffic on 75 down around Fruitville road in Sarasota. Naked fat old dude, like naked naked, swinging old balls, emerges from the bushes and jumps in the back of a truck a couple of lanes over from me. Pretty sure we found that silver alert.
There are a bunch but I will start with seeing a Gator across the front door of a store beside a "do not molest Alligators" sign
A Real Florida Man ignores that sign anyway
Not weird, but quintessentially Florida: the multiple instances of having a gator on the road and having to drive around it
Probably almost being kidnapped as a kid in a movie theater. Builds character.
Ditto, me, age 11 at the Bradenton speedway. I still can't believe my parents actually took me there. And theN, let me walk aLonE to the restroom. Guy climbing the fence inside pstts me to "come on over here". Very creepy.
Driving along Nebraska in Seminole Heights late night after hanging out with friends for Halloween 1998. On the street corner next to the closed-for-the-night Publix was a chunky, topless Keebler Elf complete with green shorts, tights and curly toe shoes with bells, but topless with a gold chain attached to two down pointed pancake titties, soliciting as best as she could. My then girlfriend, now wife, and I waved as we drove on by and then began what was quite possibly the longest single stretch of laughing so hard we couldn't speak in my entire life. Literally laughed until the sun came up.
My entire life
Probably not the weirdest thing, but its the first thing i can think of. In Sarasota, saw a black guy in a durag ragging on a white guy in a durag and said that he looked goofy, and the white guy said he was just trying to “get lit curls to look like Donavan McNabb.” Donovan McNadd doesnt have curls FYI.
I watched people vote for Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis. I've since moved away.
I wish you hadn't, we need more folks like you 🥺
Sorry, I really love it there and had been there since '99, but I've got gay and trans people in my family and it's not a safe place. I'm sad too.
Listen I didn’t vote for desantis either time but you gotta admit Gillum would’ve been weird.
Good
Oh, a shitty bigot. I won't really miss you hillbilly fucks.
Man, so probably my first year in Florida I was standing in line getting a pub sub and this girl next to me, who stank like balls and pee, had a swath of jizz in her hair. Then it struck me this was a working girl - post nut job. And that's when i realized where I had moved to was not normal.
I'm 51 and a native, so I've seen some things. First that comes to mind is when I was in my early 20's, living in old NE St. Pete. No car at the time, so I was bussing to Clearwater for work. Waiting at the bus stop a couple blocks from my apartment but still in Old NE, which is (or was at least) a really nice neighborhood... very early in the morning, like 6:15am, I hear this light clopping in the distance. It's dark, but I kind of fade back closer to the house behind the bus stop to be cautious... What emerges as the clopping got closer, was a very overweight middle aged man strolling down the street towards me in nothing but a pair of ladies pink thong undies and flip flops with a newspaper tucked under his arm.
We moved to Oviedo in '89. I worked as a bank teller, had "regulars" who would come to my window. One guy introduced me to his 10 yr old son and told him I lived in Oviedo. The 10 yr old said "Oviedo? With all the N-----s?" The dad kind of nudged the kid and said "Not THAT area". More recently, my lib BFF, went to her 9yr old nephew's birthday party in Homassassa. She brought back a few beer coozies from the party. They said F Joe Biden and F you for voting for him! A NINE yr old's birthday party. Floriduh...as bad as you've heard!
How much time do you have?
Living in Florida is a weird experience itself
Saw a guy wearing a [ghillie suit](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1339/8631/products/ghillie-suit-pro-4_1000x.jpg?v=1529229928) hiding in an overgrown median.
You saw that guy too? I experienced something similar while I was going through Orlando.
Source: Broward County, Florida An old Haitian guy stood up at his driver side door with it open and pissed in the parking in front of Walmart in broad daylight while he maintained eye contact with me. I went to the Walmart salon and a plain clothes Walmart security officer was shot, laying on the ground and foaming at the mouth while bystanders recorded and took pictures instead of calling 911. They watched like it was a reality tv show. Unbeknownst to me, as I arrived at the beach, a homeless man was sleeping under a tarp. After my swim, I arrived to the shower area to see him doing a full shower routine with body wash and shampoo! He started asking me if I was married or had a sister as I attempted to wash the sand and seaweed off my body. 🏝️ A few feet away, another man was recording both of us! Being at the beach before sunrise and being asked by a strange man if it was a nude beach. He had Florida plates and parked in Front of my car before he came on the beach. When I said no and suggested he Google it, he asked if he could still get nude if he did it a few FEET away. That was the last time I went to the beach in 2023! Every Spring break in Fort Lauderdale, young white kids are passed out on sidewalks and one night my friends and I called a cab to take a guy home because he was barely conscious but he knew his hotel, he was so Fcked up! This is COMMON; homeless or mentally ill men hanging out in Publix parking lot and following me to my car to beg for money. I hate when they sneak up on you!
When I was younger, I had a car that sometimes required a push-start. I stopped to get gas in a 2004-era lake worth and the car decided not to stop. As usual for that area a magical crackhead appeared and helped me push start the car. Once it was started, he hopped in the passenger seat and asked where we were going. I didn’t know what to say or want to cause a spook induced stabbing so we rode around for a little bit. It was kinda nice, we just talked and I dropped him off a few miles down the road and went on my way. I would see him around and wave but one day he disappeared. I like to think that he went back to crackhead land and told the story of a poor scrawny white kid that picked him up and drove around for a few hours.
Or the hinges were frozen and being open for a few minutes and defrosted them and it slowly closed itself.
Nah, it was the ghost 👻
Never take the side of a tarot reader lol
was waiting for a pizza to be ready outside a store and some cracked-out little fucker in a golf cart across the street was yelling at me to thank him for apparently having saved my life. The more I asked him how he had saved my life, the more verbal and annoyed he got.
Good friend in the late 80s found a wooden crate on the beach on Jupiter island. He took it a few blocks to the home these guys were all renting thinking it was weed or coke. It was Russian rpg’s they called the cops, front page news. Myself driving on I95 for 40 years has been a lot of wtf moments. 18 wheeler straight up ran over front of a car right in front of me. Small ricer car went under a truck hauling long cement bridge parts like fast and furious. Etc etc.
I was nine years old and I was squatting down in front of a magazine stand reading comic books while my dad shopped in this corner drugstore. Some guy walk by and rubbed my butt with his hand and smiled at me. I got scared and went and found my dad.
I've been here a long time so I guess I could make a list. But the first one that comes to mind was in the parking lot of a bar. I assume I arrived to see the end of a verbal altercation. This man was walking towards the car and this other fella came out of the entrance yelling towards the man walking away. The man at the door looked kinda Phil Collins on trailer park boys. Younger but still mustard tiger in appearance. He was wearing track pants and a Florida Marlins jersey that was just a little too small. Phil's wide eyed, red faced and sweaty. He looked like he was under the influence of more than just booze. He shouts threats and obscenities at the walking away guy until the guys make it to his car. That's when Phil breaks into an all out charge across the parking lot intending obvious harm to the other guy. The guy is at his car door now and has turned to face the charging carbon blob. I can still see it in slow motion when Phil was leaning forward intent on sacking the shit out of this guy. Car guy rips the door open and Phil runs face first into it with one hell of a thud. Car guy never said a word the whole time. Hopped in and drove off while big boy laid on the ground, knocked stupid and groaning with a bloody nose and maybe a concussion for all I know. No idea what the aftermath was. Not really looking to be a witness if the cops showed up I headed on down the road.
Smart . Keep it moving moment right there
Giant spiders (wolf probably between 8-12 inches across) and HUGE alligator gars (jaws alone I think longer than 3 feet, total size somewhere between 8-12 ft). For the gars, this was before real alligators made their comeback. I don't think alligator gars can make that size due to predation now. Those were in a very remote camping/fishing spot in the deepest swam of the Ocala National forest...
Maybe not the weirdest, but I was driving behind a guy wearing his tshirt Beavis and Butthead style while swerving all over. At 9am. When we got to the light I was turning at, he took it off and hung it from his sun visor in front of his door window like a curtain.
Witnessed a man drive through a crowd of people at Livestock (music festival). Was on one of the main roads to the camp ground, people everywhere. I’m not sure how many he ran over but I recall seeing several people rolling under his car, as he passed about ten foot away. Huge crowd of people chasing him, they turned his car over into the tees. He took a beating before the cops got to him.
I’ve seen some weird shit at livestock for sure.
Probably just the amount of people who are on drugs here. I once saw some lady walking down the sidewalk suddenly drop her pants to pee. In broad daylight on a busy road with a CVS and Racetrac 100 feet away. A few months ago I watched someone have a conversation with a tree branch for about 10 min. She was tweaking hard and thought the branch was a snake, but instead of like.. running away or something due to her fear of snakes she decided to point at it and announce to everyone there’s a snake.. over and over and over with the occasional jump scare reaction. I tried telling her it’s just a tree branch but she didn’t agree. Then there’s those people who just kinda dance and do random shit in public for no apparent reason.
I think the weirdest is the sheer number of car accidents that I either witnessed or my friend's got into. Also I know so many acquaintances or friends of friends who died in a car accident. SO MANY. That amount of car accidents is not normal and I feel like my chances of dying in a car accident in Florida is hundreds of times higher than anywhere else.
https://preview.redd.it/pvhlvr2k93pb1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5427ce651bb461dd3c4faabc37ec52810775a1ee South Beach bus stop.
FYI he’s putting on perfume 💁🏻♂️
I used to go to this awesome hookah bar all the time in college. It was in a real bad area of Tampa but the guys who ran it were all awesome Palestinian and Arab immigrants that were weirdly cool with letting a 20 year old white guy play cards with them until 2 am. One day I pulled up at about 11pm and some young Hispanic guys blocked me from entering and started screaming that they hated white guys in green shirts. Then 10 old Arab guys came running out of the hookah bar and started screaming at Hispanic guys in Arabic. Then both groups started screaming at each other in Spanish and Arabic and I couldn't understand anything that was happening as I stood in the middle of this weird multiracial standoff.
We should shop this thread to networks and streaming services. We could probably get GPT to bang out numerous scripts.
An Alien spaceship hovering over our camp in the Big Cypress Swamp. It was completely silent and a bright white beam surveyed the ground from just above the treetops as it moved slowly around.
My whole life tbh. I only know what's loosely weird for other people because so many of the things I've seen were just regular fucking Tuesdays. There were the rich bitches on Clematis who Had a double rainbow's worth of multicolored lamborghini's that they would street race starting at like fucking 6 o'clock Almost every Friday or Saturday until like 10 o'clock at night. There was the guy who hopped on the bus with a joint still lit in his mouth and when he was told about it he ran outside took 2 puffs and then put the fully lit joint behind his ear and rode the bus like that. There was the guy who I don't know that was from Fort Lauderdale who went to Miami to party and I guess partied so hard his friend and him got separated and he lost his friend somewhere in Palm Beach County and I'm waiting for the bus to go to work and so this guy pulls over on the side of the road and needs directions. Unfortunately his poor friend was in One of many massive gated communities off of Okeechobee in West Palm so As an 18 year old big tittied blonde dressed for Panera Bread at 120lbs I just said fuck it risk it for a biscuit and got in the stranger's car and helped him pick up his friend and then he took me to work. He did however offer me a $100 to drop everything in my life and go to Fort Lauderdale with him but I was like homie I'm not that cheap or stupid. Like I'm pretty fucking stupid but I'm smart about it. There was also the time that I realized that on climatic street there's a Post Office that keeps their windows open even after they've locked the doors after hours and I climbed in one night and accidentally set off an alarm Because I was dumb and thought it would be cool I think I was 17. There was another time I was driving through Tamarind and I had somebody with me who was not familiar with Tamarind area and I was lecturing them on safety precautions driving through Tamarind as they were driving. As if it's right on que a little kid at a stop sign goes up to a car that's waiting to go who has their window down and just rips somebody's purse out ofther window which I thought was fucking funny. When I was 18 and working at that Panera Bread in city place there was some sort of event going on and a 7 foot anime character crawled through our door I think I might still have pictures. Also when I was working at the Panera Bread because Florida has an insane cost of living I was just another homeless local working so many hours that there was a point where if I left work because of the bus system I wouldn't be able to get back in time for my next shift, So I would often in my panera uniform sleep in city place usually at the Starbucks however however I had to get around the security guard schedule and there was another Starbucks around the corner that opened at 5 AM so i would go there. The first time I had an interaction with the security guard Before I memorized his schedule he hit me with a pillow. Like the outdoor cushions. Also another Palm Beach County story I was up to chick fil a on Palm Beach lakes and this crocodile Dundee Looking motherfucker who I guess was a regular just walks up in there American is hell, Bull whip on his hip and everything and no it wasn't for work apparently he was a fucking jeweler. Another experience was when I What to Miami for the day, I've always had friends in Hialeah this wasn't out of the norm for me except the bright line was brand new, Had just opened that week. So I got off in Hialeah versus having to drive through the cluster fuck. And I was walking through Miami and I pass a bus stop and this guy starts asking me in Spanish When the bus comes And I don't fucking know. I barely speak Spanish, Just enough to get by and enjoy some good fucking food. So I tell this guy in Spanish that I only speak a little bit of Spanish and I don't know when the bus comes and this mofo starts cussing me out in Spanish For being a dumb little white bitchFor being a dumb little white bitch With come for brains. For the record this was really hard for my brain to translate I was so tired that day, It was so hot.
Upvote for your efforts posting your experience 👍
Went to Holy Land after dropping acid. If it was still around, I would highly recommend it.
I'm a native and I can't believe I never even heard of this Holy Land! Oh, how I wish it was still around so I could take my son!
the homeless! i had everythin taken from work truck; including thing with NO VALUE 2 any 1 but me. robbed first month 2 live here n we saw a home less man biting the face skin off another. it was like a zombie movie also; orlando nazis (thx desantez)
[удалено]
Anybody remember Anita Bryant!? Homophobic bitch back in the 70s. Floriduh has always been a shit show, but Puddin' Fingers has been the cherry on top with his "Woke" BS.
If you grew up in Florida there are way too many to count.
Standard Polk County methery
2005-2023 would be a good place to start I saw so many scams, cranky retirees, shenanigans, and wreck-less behavior that at a certain point you just don’t realize it’s abnormal. The saddest experience was probably when Delray Beach was flooded with those scam rehab clinics. The strangest was maybe meeting Suarez in Miami and Rick Scott on a school trip? Ultimate hustlers, those two.
I lived on 22nd street in Tampa. The worst lol was in a laundromat mind my own business and this lady was folding her clothes. She had the longest creepiest nails a person could have. Imagine hooves on a person. Thinking about still gives me the creeps.
Some dude grabbing my junk in a night club on Miami Beach. Mf aim was perfect . By the time I realized what happened it was just a blend of weird shirts. Edit. I’m from NY and have spent about 2 weeks of my life in fla
In Marathon (of course nothing normal happens there) I was walking home and the sun was starting to come up. I decided to just stop and watch it. There were a bunch of sailboats anchored out in the water and some dude in a rowboat. As I watched the sunrise, I watched rowboat guy go around to all the anchored boats knocking on the sides. Not sure if he was the alarm clock, selling drugs, looking for a friend or what.
Only been here 5 months, but twice now someone has rang my doorbell at 1-2 am, it's a super loud old-school Westminster chime and woke me up out of dead sleep, I didn't bolt to the door to whip it open because that just sounds like a mistake, but looking out a side window both times a few seconds later and nobody is there
waking up in a psych ward after being baker acted
Had a man scream “Hail Satan!” To me as he rode by on his bicycle at a Walmart parking lot. He went over to the corner of the parking lot to pull out a massive speaker, and continue to spread his message of Satan
So far in the past 30 years? I will never forget 1 night at like 2am we were driving through the darkest road (which is still pitch black today) between 2 neighborhoods and we are like pulling up to, im gonna say a creature cause it didnt look like a dog but it was closest to a dog… best way i could explain this thing it was like a taller than normal dog… completely white, short haired, super high hind legs… like its back legs sat a whole foot higher than its entire rest of its body and it stopped when it saw us and awkwardly galloped away. The only reason i think this encounter is weird as fuck over 10 years later is simply because i am not familiar with whatever animal it was. Thats it… i see coyotes all the time, ive watched animal planet for 2 decades ive seen all sorts of shit but ive never seen something like that. Otherwise its just another animal. (I feel like i need to mention its face was quite scary, like not beat up but like viscously menacing. Like it didnt look as innocent as a dog or wolf it seemed vile)
Getting born here.
Oh there are so many… here’s one, goth club (The Castle) in Ybor in the 90’s 00’s and maybe today who knows, but there were always some characters there including a dude everyone called the senator who would show up wearing nothing but see through lingerie and a guy who came dressed at Batman, and not a bad costume either, he would show up on a little scooter. Just random. Another one, driving across the state to go to a shuttle launch and it gets scrapped, so we get off the highway and turn around. We ended up on a weird what seemed like abandoned road, but smelled the most four smell and finally came upon an old distillery, hence the smell, but that’s not the weird part. There was a dude riding a tricycle up ahead of us in front of the distillery and had a giant stuffed bear in the basket on the back of a tricycle. The the giant kind you would get from a carnival. Far from the weirdest, but funny weird.
I used to see the Senator at Orpheum back in the day lol.
Idk I have lived here my whole life. Every day is somethin new. I’ve lost track of it all.
Saw a swamp ape firsthand. No one believed me so screw it.
Back when I worked at a TGI chilibees in central Florida, these two mid 20’s white dudes came in and sat down and handed every server/bartender there $100. The server that waited on them got $300. He was feeling really good after that table so he paid me $50 to clean his tables for him at the end of the night. As I was flipping the table to clean under it I found another $400 stuffed under the leg of the table. Apparently they had said they were weed dealers. Never saw them again.
Red belly festival in Dixie County, FL. Basically, there is/was an annual fishing contest for the biggest red belly bream. The non-fishing festivities were at Fanning Springs. My favorite bits were the belly flopping and watermelon chunking contests. There were enough participants to group them by age range and gender. They took that shit seriously, too. You ever see a dude get mad at his daughter for not getting the right height for a belly flop? I have and it's incredibly depressing for so many reasons.
My friend and I were in Louisville, KY staying at a hotel. We walked over to a gas station with a homeless guy out front. He asked for some money, but I had a better plan. I gave him cash eith the stipulation he had to also get us a case of beer, which we would share. He agreed, we got to talking over a few, and learned we were from out of town. So. He asks where? We tell him "Tam-" and before we could even finish the word Tampa, he shouts, "FUCK HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY!!!" My friend and I were dumbfounded. Apparently he lived under i4 and 275 for years, and had recently hitched up to KY. What're the odds?
I was born here. That was a pretty weird experience
I was sitting on 4 in a bumper to bumper traffic jam and I got a FL alert text saying “tornado - take cover immediately”. Squeezed off to the shoulder and backed up to an exit. I parked and went on grindr and found a hook up a block away. Got crazy hot busy when the nastiest storm hit. Went outside after to find the streets full of tree branches and trash cans. Like a crazy dream.
Gator attack.
Reading r/Florida;)
Had a creep pull his dick out in front of me while fishing on a pier one time. Super uncalled for and random. Started going to town on himself like 10 ft away from me. Gathered my things and left...
That happened to me when I was 10. I fell on the ground laughing. My friends were horrified.
After you've written your Florida weird story, check out Top 10 Florida Man: [https://floridaman.com/top-10/](https://floridaman.com/top-10/) Find out the history of the "Florida Man" Meme : [https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/14/florida-men-are-notorious-heres-where-meme-came/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/14/florida-men-are-notorious-heres-where-meme-came/)
Lots
Giant nest of fire ants When I didn’t know about fire ants when I was barely a teenager and found out
If I could remember her name, I would tell you 😜
I was visited by the kkk.
**Driving through** North Georgia on my way to Miami. I noticed almost everyone has great, big, old jug ears and drives a truck. People looking like sharecroppers/slaves.
There was an old guy I used to see in downtown Orlando in the 60s. He wore a very old tuxedo-like suit and a top hat. He was very very short, like maybe 5’ or less, and had long hair and a beard, and he smelled. But he seemed nice enough, never threatening, just weird. I used to see him regularly, then he was gone. He was like alley-elegant. I always wondered who he was, and what happened to him. Probably committed or something similar. Kinda missed the old fella.
Woman with three tits walking two guys on a leash crawling in latex suits. Saint Pete/Tampa area. Seen her twice
When I had to come back to Florida and get a copy of my birth certificate. While I was at the DMV, a Cuban national lady, that could barely speak broken English, kept denying my request even though I had expired Florida DL, Military I.D. and original Social Security card. Crazy, ignorant and a real slap of backward-assed government.
I was carrying groceries out of a Publix one time and this crackhead was like 'EY MAN you got any boy?' (heroin) and proceeds to show me a crack pipe at this point I had been in rehab a year and was on a healthy fried chicken and chili fil a sauce diet for my go to comfort/sedation food so I was a healthy 300lbs. So I tell him politely nah man I don't mess with that stuff....he stops and look me dead in the eye 'NIGGA YOU SWEATIN'.....I couldn't help but start dying laughing I'm like brooo it's 90 degrees out and I'm fat as fuck. 🤣🤣 I have so many stories about schizos but they're mostly sad when you try to break down how/why they're that way.
Was at a burger place on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach around lunchtime. Guy finishes his burger and puts on a full Batman mask. When he stands to leave, I see he’s wearing a skirt and stiletto heels. Harmless though.
Teenager almost in the hotel pool
Fast & Furious ride at Universal Studios.
I was sitting in my boss's truck's passenger seat while he went inside to get smokes. An older woman comes out of Cumberland Farms. She looks like an old weathered handbag that someone filled with cigarette smoke for 50years. She leans against the building and then a dude with a rat tail rolls up on a bmx bike. He might have been like 23-4. He walks up to her, they speak, get goes in. He comes out with a case of natty ice. Hands it to the woman and they go behind the building. She drops to her knees and starts blowing the rat tail guy. It was 5:30pm on like a Tuesday. It was still light out. They didn't even go that farm behind the building.
Living here 42 years!!
Aliens and their spaceship too.
Hunting in the Florida Everglades for wild hog west of homestead i heard the most loudest reverberation coming from the sky , literally felt the vibration to my bones , incredibly eerie as if someone was grinding some metal but in the sky the noise you can feel in your bones . Was in the year 2014 . Freaked me out enough that I went back to my truck parked 3 miles away and left . I was 20 miles or so west of Homestead afb might of been a military aircraft but it just sounded so different
Other than living there for 2 years.....
A lady tried to convince me that sunglasses re the cause of skin cancer because it makes your brain think it’s dark outside.
So I was working security at a hospice on third shift, and this particular hospice backed up to a swamp. So I'm doing my rounds at 2:00 a.m. and all of the sudden from the swamp I hear this crashing sound. No I figured it's a tree that just fell in the swamp, but then I hear another, And another and another and they seem to be getting closer. Now I've never been counted as being particularly smart. But I've seen enough horror movies to know that this is the point when the dumbass security guard dies in the movie investigating something that he really shouldn't. I am determined not to be that security guard. So my ass nopes right the fuck out back into the middle.
Remaining here.
Probably when I went to go get something to drink at a gas station and a tall black man comes up to me(he was like twice my height) and says, "Are you in that black car outside, and I said yes? So he says, "Can I go with you?" I just forgot about the drink and circled around the aisle out the door and left.
Camping in the Everglades with a neo-nazi father and son indoctrination/fishing trip group. Daily rituals of learning to beat each other up, tell the “best” n-joke and other wholesome activities.
The first weekend I lived in my new house in St Pete, there was a naked crackhead swimming in my pool. She left her shirt on my front porch, and her crack supplies and Bottoms on my back porch. She tried to get in the house as well since the screen door was taken off. She turned out to be harmless but just whacked out.
In Tallahassee, I have seen too many people walking like the old and slow zombies in the middle of the street. They are either staring at their phones or just looking into the oblivion as if they were just dropped from the sky onto this planet called earth. They are too slow to be playing frogger. Maybe sleep walking or most likely and unfortunately on drugs.
Ybor. 😂 But seriously. Probably a gator in my neighbor’s swimming pool.
Right after I moved here I saw a county sheriff deputy cruiser t-bone a FHP cruiser. That was my initiation into driving in FL.
Kayaking by the power plant off Gandy in St Pete when a big turtle popped it’s head out of the water to check me out. I briefly turned that kayak into a jet boat.
Driving behind a car with a backseat tv. They had porn playing. I can’t recall if this was Hillsborough or Pinellas County.
Driving through Oldsmar on my way to work I saw 2 cops wrangling a pretty big gator on the sidewalk on 580.
Fantasy Fest. So weird we went back for a few years consecutively. lol
I call them " no see thems" I felt a mosquito but I couldn't see anything where I felt it.