50 Public Transport HORRORS…

1. Forbidden Readings

When I first arrived in New York City, I got on the subway with my friends and a tough-looking guy with 3 teardrop tattoos, usually indicating you have been in jail or are a gang member. We sit beside him. A look of indescribable anger filled his eyes for a minute. He looks left and right as though he is looking for witnesses.
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2. Ruffling Feathers

He was waiting for his train at the train station. As he waited, he ate a bag of chips. He noticed that pigeons were eyeing his chips enviously. Consequently, he threw out a chip. Pigeons immediately flew down and grabbed it. He then threw another chip. After seeing that nothing bad happened to the first couple of pigeons, several more flew down and fought for the chip.
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3. Meeting His Eyes

As a small woman traveling alone as a tourist in LA, I was alone. A homeless man got on the bus and stared me down. I was terrified. I decided not to fight him. I knew what to do. I stared at him. We have a staring contest and start laughing at the same time. Across the aisle from him, my friend silently passes out gum.
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4. Crying For Attention

I was riding a city bus to the university I attended. A woman sat with her son on her lap. The son would cry every now and then, and she would comfort him. Until he yelped more than cried, I thought little of it. It was then that I realized the chilling truth. She would dig her nails into his arm until he cried, then comfort him.
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5. Self Dental Care!

On my first ride on the max train in Portland, a guy got on the train with a bottle of Listerine in the middle of the day. Afterward, he tries to shake hands with the guy, but you could tell he was just so uncomfortable. He shook hands with the guy, and just as he did, the guy sneezed. But that wasn't the worst part. His tooth shot out of his mouth, straight into the guy's face! He looked absolutely disgusted, got up immediately, and went out the next stop.
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6. A Ditch In The Bushes

While I was in Holland, me and a few of my military buddies took a bus to Eindhoven. With all the stops, the trip took about an hour and a half. I really needed a wee half way and the driver agreed to pull over and wait. I didn't notice this massive, steep drop off in my path. Falling into it, I cut my leg and arm a bit, and I get muddy and grassy. So I get up, do my business, climb out, and jog back to the bus. As I walk back to the bus, I'm covered in blood, mud, grass, and pee.
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7. No Food Here!

Atlanta's airport is at the end of one rail line. There was a dejected homeless woman who walked up and down the car repeatedly asking for two dollars to buy food. About two stops away, she walks by another homeless man, who was in some way impaired He looks at her and shouts, “There aren't any two-dollar sandwiches at the airport!”
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8. Moisturizing In Public

When I was in the Army stationed out in Hawaii, I took the bus back to base. I sat next to an old man with wild hair at one of the stops. He reached into a paper bag and pulled out a container of cottage cheese. He opened the lid and stared inside. A head that looked like an octopus was removed. He rubbed his bare forearm against the gray, mottled, and slimy substance. Everyone on the bus stared at him in surprise and disgust.Afterward, he never said a word.
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9. A Brand-New Eyepatch

After a night out, I took a night bus home at 2 AM. Several guys and one girl boarded the bus and sat right at the back. I was sitting with my friends when one girl started spitting at people sitting closest to her. The next thing you know they're all lit up and screaming at the bus driver to let them open the windows. Before I know it, one of the girls has whacked my eye, and I started crying in pain. I had a puffy, swollen eye for weeks.
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10. Something Smells…

I was riding the F train on the NYC Subway going from 42nd Street to Queens. Getting off at Queensbridge, this old Asian woman is just sitting there with a plastic bag. I couldn't see what was inside, but I could just tell the way she was holding it was fishy. The bag starts to flop and the man next to her screams! In broken English, the woman says, "No worries, just my feeesh." She had a live fish in a plastic bag. An actual fish...
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11. A Little Too Much

After a night of drinking, I was on the Red Line. A group of girls sat a few seats. They looked pretty rough. One of the girls jumps up, runs out of the door, and starts vomiting. And so it began. Another starts puking on the floor. He runs out to the trash can. Yet another girl starts puking, so now 3 of the 4 women in this party are hurling into a trash can simultaneously, and their seemingly sober friend looks as if she wants to disappear into thin air.
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12. A Grisly Sight

I was sitting in the window seat of BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, when this homeless man approached me and sat next to me. When I thought he was going to tell me the classic "Woe is me, money will help" story, he simply removed some wrappings from his leg to reveal a wound that was rotting to the bone. I couldn't believe it was real and he was still walking. I gave him $5 and wished him well. There was nothing else I could do.
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13. A Holiday Train Car

I expected the train to be crowded, but it wasn't too bad. As the train slowed to a stop at Secaucus station, a mysterious humming sound began to be heard. When I heard thousands of screaming college students. After bracing myself for impact, I moved into one of the corners and prayed to God. After what felt like 20 minutes of waiting the doors opened. With the herd of youth came the stench of early morning shame. A fight broke out, 2 people vomited, and 1 girl sobbed uncontrollably.
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14. Heading To The Back

Once I was riding the subway in New York City. There was a man in front of me. His beard was quite nice, so I thought that he was homeless. When he started squirming in his seat. I couldn't figure out what was bothering him. After a few minutes, he glanced around him. He had just relieved himself in his pants. Everyone near me was gagging because of the smell. When the subway reached my stop, I burst out the doors.
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15. When A Fight Breaks Out

Once, about 40 teenagers got on the train I was riding. A girl maced a boy in the face. Everyone on the train was someone's cousin, and they began fighting and punching each other senselessly. Meanwhile, passengers were choking everywhere, and tears were streaming down their faces. It was chaos. I didn't even know where to look! It was definitely the most eventful train journey I've had to date anyway!
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16. Is This A Curse?

In Dallas, we rode the DART rail to the State Fair of Texas. A high-ranking lunatic kept staring at my one-year-old son and repeating in a low, creepy voice, "He will not take you, but he will take the child.". But he won't take you; he'll take the child. Needless to say, I grabbed my son and got off at the next stop. I was so creeped out, I ran home and locked my door behind me.
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17. Watching Our Backs

Istanbul was my home for a month. As a result, I concluded that some women lean back-to-back to avoid harassment. However, my first encounter as a woman was very strange. There were only two other women there. Both of them leaned their backs on my back without saying anything. Truth be told, I was quite scared.
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18. Crispy…

In San Francisco, I was riding the 43 bus home from high school as I do every day. I was tiredand drifting in and out of sleep. We were sitting next to a pretty normal-looking guy in his mid-thirties. I didn't think anything of him, until halfway through the ride, the guy starts muttering to himself and pulls out a lighter. The flame was not brief. As he held the flame to his palm, he didn't even feel it, his skin began to blister and char.
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19. I Want Off NOW!

I was sitting at the back of the bus, right next to the emergency door. The bus was halfway between two stops when this guy stormed down from the top deck and demanded the driver stop. Because he couldn't stop until the next one, the driver refused. He slams against the driver's window loudly and storms up to the back of the bus right where I'm sitting, opens the emergency door, and jumps off the bus into the middle of the road while the bus is still moving.
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20. That’s Some Sweet Hair!

A young woman in business attire sat across from me, during my commute. I was listening to my iPod.  At a stop, a large group of people board. About half of the car is filled. Another woman in street clothes stood in the midst of the crowd. She sees the businesswoman and shouts “GIRRRRL, YOU GOT THAT RIHANNA BOB GOIN’ ON, LIKE ELLA, ELLA, EH, EH, EH!”A few people laughed, but the woman she was speaking to just didn't see the funny side. At all.
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21. Losing Your Guts

I noticed my train hadn't started moving again after I left my downtown university. I glanced out the window to my left after looking up from my textbook. I was less than 5 feet from a teenager leaning against a concrete wall on the platform. He held his stomach, trying to prevent his innards from exploding. As emergency services treated the man in front of the rest of the train, my train was stopped for over an hour.
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22. Are We There Yet?

On the bus, I saw some DDLG role play. The two were in their mid-30s, heavyset, dressed like they were in middle school, and the lady even had a pacifier. With her baby voice, she kept asking her "daddy" if they were at the park yet. Even worse, she would give her pacifier to her partner, who would slobber on it and put it back in her mouth for her. It was a strange sound. I shiver just thinking about it.
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23. Sudden Celebrity

I got on the bus. A man in a potato sack stood across from us. His eyes had those crazy looks but it seemed like he kept looking at me. As people got up and off the bus, he got closer and closer, until the woman next to me got up and he sat directly next to me. I shook his hand and said, "You too." He then told me that I was Jesus in my past life, which he knew because he was an archangel. He comforted me by stating that he used to do drugs, but now he is sober, since I looked a little scared.
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24. Play A Song!

My husband gets to the back of the bus, he notices a little bubble of empty seats surrounding a man who looked like he might be homeless and crazy. They start chatting. Minutes later he asks: “Wanna see my trombone?” Husband replies with “Sure!” The guy opens up the case and inside is a banana. So without missing a beat, he asked him if he knew any good songs...which made the guy look at him funny and stop talking. Yeah, I'm married to a guy who freaked out a man who plays a banana.
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25. In Broad Daylight

I saw the most messed up thing on the way home from work. An obese lady was sitting at the front of the bus taking up several seats with her size, waving a GIANT black "toy," then going at herself with it, in broad daylight, with a lot of kids around. I think that's my most disturbing story so far. It was just beyond weird, she should actually be in prison.
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26. Brought To You By…

If you don't see the crazy guy on the bus, you must be him. I hadn't seen crazy in a while, so I grew curious. One day, I saw this guy crossing the street holding an old transistor radio and singing as he came to the bus stop. Okay, I'm not the crazy one today. Sure enough, he sits next to me on the bus. He's singing as he rides the bus. Then silence returns. Finally, he begins singing again. It continued for the entire trip.
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27. A Smoky Bus

I was riding a bus through a slightly dodgy area in Edinburgh. There are only a few people on the upstairs deck. He's probably in his 30s, a total douche in a tracksuit. He wanders off into the darkness. I smell something strange. As she turns around, so do I. Crack pipe guy lights his pipe and makes eye contact with old lady first, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, hen. Then he proceeds to smoke crack for the rest of the trip.
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28. A Dangerous Carrot

Fashionably dressed man came out of the metro in Paris wearing high heels, stockings, and a flowy skirt. After hiking up that skirt, he grabbed a carrot from his bag and proceeded to commit a brutal act of self-violation. I drew my girlfriend's attention to this act of public self-love, but she wasn't as impressed as I was. I couldn't believe my eyes to be honest.
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29. An Impromptu Match

While switching lines on the subway, I passed through a group of 30-year-olds that made a lot of noise. All of them pointed at me and said, "YOU!". YOU ARE GOING TO BE THE REFEREE!” and I’m like, “Oh, okay,” so they approach me and give me a whistle and an orange and red card. I was notified after ten minutes of the "match" that it was a double bachelor party. They thanked me for refereeing it and cheered my name. It was also the most random experience I've ever had.
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30. Earning Points

I experienced this in ninth grade. While waiting for the train, I overheard two kids saying one of them should fight me and push me on the tracks for gang points. Back then, I was a skinny black kid with braids, pretty small. This older man appeared beside me out of nowhere. I JUMPED out of my skin!! The two kids never did anything, but looking back, people in the ghetto do the dumbest things for status.
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31. Friends On The Train

As I live in Berlin, I see a lot of strange things on public transportation. There was an elderly man, maybe in his 60s, who had a child sitting on his lap. In the opposite pair of seats, there were some dolls, which I thought was cute, if there was a little kid with him. He wasn't holding a child on his lap, but a huge life-sized baby doll. He was surrounded by dolls...
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32. Lesser Of Two Evils

A sleeping man suddenly awoke and began touching himself furiously when I was on the 6 train heading into 23rd street station in NYC. While he was doing it, he was making some hilarious faces.Everyone switched to the next car. This turned out to be even worse. In that car, a man in a wheelchair had explosive diarrhoea that covered the floor and soaked his clothes.
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33. The Trickle Of Rain

I was on a night train going from Saint Petersburg to Moscow two years ago. I was sitting next to two Russian men. We could tell from their ramblings and conversation that they were father and son-in-law. They had a bunch of large, two-liter soda bottles. The train personnel asked us to wear long sleeved shirts and trousers in case the men "lost control.” Around midnight, however, one of my traveling companions awoke because he heard a noise like water trickling.
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34. A Cocktail Of Oh No…

One time I was on the Metra to Chicago and there was this girl. I see her pull a phone out and dial it. I guess she was calling her doctor’s office or something, because she was asking all these medical questions about her painkiller prescription and about her recent surgery. The girl hangs up and begins rocking in her seat back and forth. I listened in to her conversation, I said: “I am sorry to eavesdrop, but did you say you took 800 mgs of Tramadol?” She nods. I sit her down and get her some water from the Dunkin Donuts. Then I called 9-1-1.

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35. Missing an Eye

I was riding a quiet bus in LA when a very old woman got on the bus- she was probably in her 80s I'd say. She wore a skin tight sequinned dress, had crazy white hair, and was carrying groceries. There is still dried blood on her eye socket (it was making me feel slightly sick) and as she stands next to me (there were open seats), she keeps picking at her eye, and wiping her hand on the grocery bags that were banging into me.

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36. That Poor Rabbit

I was riding the last bus home from my friend's house.. I was so tired but was trying to stay awake as I know there can be some dodgy people on public transport. A man gets on the bus holding an animal-carrying cage, sits next to me, and pulls out a large, fuzzy rabbit from the cage. He puts the rabbit DOWN THE FRONT OF HIS SWEATPANTS and smiles creepily at me until I get off. I RAN home.

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37. He Likes Shoes

If you ride the Red Line in Chicago, there is a guy who will ask to look at your shoes. Do not let him. Everyone who had ridden it before will know of his guy, he's on there pretty much every single time I have been on. It creeps me out so much. Why does he want to see my shoes? He started licking them. Like actually licking them.

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38. Was He a Strangler?

I was alone at a bus stop in London one night at about 11 pm when a man in a hoodie and carrying a backpack walked up to the stop. He removed his backpack, took a pair of gloves, a rope, and put them all in one and then began to wrap it up. I was so scared that I stepped off the pavement to run across the street. Luckily, my bus came at that moment, so I jumped aboard and sat down. While the bus was pulling away I looked out the window at the scary man and he was staring at me intensely.

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39. The Apologist

The very first time I rode the bus I was sitting in the back and this crazy old man sat next to me. He was intoxicated and said, "Hey man, I'm sorry, man." I said "For what?" I was so baffled why was he apologising to me? "I killed your people man..back in 'nam. With these hands, man... these FREAKING HANDS." I'm Asian and I was pretty freaked out. He kept saying he was sorry and then when he got to his stop, he said, "TELL YOUR PEOPLE I'M SORRY."

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40. Getting Too Close on the Plane

As I was flying home during the holidays last year, the person next to me kept falling asleep and leaning on my shoulder. I asked the flight attendant if I could move to an empty seat because he had done it 5 or 6 times in an hour after I asked him to stop. He turns his head and says, "I wasn't falling asleep." So, he was just trying to get close to me.

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41. Creepy Guy on the Bus

There was a guy sitting behind me who I thought was weird. A few minutes later I feel something brush my side. Look down. He reached around my seat to touch me. He sat back and muttered an apology. I brushed it off as something odd, continued staring out the window. Minutes later, it happened again.  I turn around and say loudly, "Keep your hands to yourself." Then I get up and move rows. The creeper then had his hand on my knee. I shout, "KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS TO YOURSELF!" "I ain't doing anything! It was an accident! He shouted back.

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42. She Sat on His Knee

I'm a little big-boned, and usually sit off the seat on the NYC bus. One day, during rush hour, a woman sits on my knee at the 42nd Street stop. I really didn't know what to do or where to look. Looking back I should have just kicked her off. I didn't say anything for two blocks, tried to summon the courage to say something for two more blocks, then she got up and left. No one said a word to us or even looked at us.

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43. Left on the Bus

From Ottumwa, Indiana to Iowa City, my bus trip lasted 11 hours. I rode the bus in the back the entire time. At one point, I woke up from a nap and discovered no one was on the bus.  The bus parked in a gas station parking lot, but the gas station was closed. Imagine an old-fashioned gas station at a crossroads in Iowa. I spent around 15 minutes wondering, "What the heck?" Eventually a car showed up, and the new driver jumped on board and apologized for oversleeping.

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44. He Was Selling Meat

Late at night, as I waited for the bus, a guy in a trenchcoat approached me and whispered, "Psst... want some meat?" Initially, I thought he was going to flash me, but before I could react, he opened his trench coat to reveal... meat, all kinds of meat. I didn't even know what to say. I mumbled something about being a vegetarian.

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45. The Syringe on the Bus

As one of my friends was getting on the tram, a guy pushed her out of the way and sat where she was going to sit. He winced as he sat and stood up with a dirty syringe sticking out of his hip. He passed out just as he was about to get off the tram. The whole tram gasped and sat still in their seats. I got my phone out and dialled 911. I went over to the man and sat with him until a paramedic arrived. He survived but it was scary to see!

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46. A Trunk Threat

I got on the train and stood in the middle standing section, so that I wouldn't disturb the characters. A guy gets on at the next stop and stands across from me. I ignored him, even though he kept looking at me. As I looked up to check the next stop, he said, "You can fit in my trunk." I immediately got off the train with the next large group and called my boyfriend for pickup.

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47. Almost Mugged

When I was first living in a city, I was waiting for a bus late at night when two homeless-looking fellows approached me in the bus shelter. They asked if I had any change. I told them I didn't (which was true). One of the guys pulled out a knife and said, "That's cool, we can hit up an ATM". "So this is how I die," I thought as I figured they would be upset if I didn't get anything out of it (I had $2.80 in my account). As it happened, a group of other people walked into the bus shelter at that moment, and the guy quickly put the knife away.

 
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48. A Creepy Confession

I used to ride the bus to work every day. I'm a friendly and outgoing person, so I chatted with passengers on the bus every day. One guy was there most days, so we talked a lot. He always had something wrong with him. In a conversation one day, the guy mentioned that he had made some mistakes in the past, but that God had forgiven him. He then tells me, in all seriousness, "I bombed a couple of abortion clinics." I calmly replied... something.

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49. With a Chainsaw

We were on a bus in the countryside of Hungary, travelling to the town where my grandfather is from. In the last city before ours, a very drunk, not too well-off man got on with a shopping bag. When he sits down on the very last seat, we see a shopping bag containing an old chainsaw, with no covering around it. Then he gets out his phone and begins to shout in Hungarian to a person on the other end..

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50. Blood on the Bench

A while back, I was living in Sydney, Australia, taking the train, and a lovely gentleman  from Eastern Europe struck up a conversation with me. Halfway through, I completely stopped talking and stared up at his head at what looked like dried blood streaks, and a dried bloody handprint that was thick enough at one point to drip down the wall. We later discovered that it was blood all over one of the walls of the train car, and the poor guy had rubbed his head all over it, and I was too shocked to say anything at the time.
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