Welcome to this edition of "This Really Happened..." an re-accounting of weird stories that really happened.

A phone call from Satan. One time I recieved a phone call at 9:45 in the morning from a number that just said "666". Out of curiousity, I answered it. On the other end of the line was a high picthed Demon voice claming to be the Devil. I went along with the charade, when he asked me if I was ready to hand over my soul. I said no and that I never agreed to that. They claimed to have a signed contract and said I had to meet them some place to give them my soul. They knew where I lived, and told me to meet them by the Trader Joes. I jokingly said Yea and hung up the phone. I still have no idea what that was about or who did it.

I witnessed the kidnapping of a woman. One time I was in Pinole with my boyfriend at the time, leaving the local Home Town Buffet. We headed to the dollar store and were going to continue to walk around the strip. We were cutting across the parking lot when we started to notice as gold van swerving through the parking lot. Out of the passenger side emerged a screaming woman being pulled into the car by her hair. A lot of people started to look, as all you could hear was swerving and screaming "Let me go!" A good semaratin jumped out at her and tried to pull her from the car. She through out her purse and the man called 911 on his cell. A police officer showed up and they interviewed us. It was crazy!

One time we could smell something weird burning in the furness. We ended up having to call a PG & E guy to come out and take a look. He opened it up and inside he found a purse tied to the end of a phone cord.The purse was burning, and none of this made any sense. We opened up the purse and found a mirror inside, but no money. It was just totally random.

911 failed me badly one day. I was walking along San Francisco's Piers when I could clearly hear a person getting smacked behind me. We turned around to see a man smacking is wife hard repeatedly and his son started screaming "Stop!", everyone walking along the Pier froze. It was scary blatant domestic abuse. The women dropped to the ground and me and a few others called 911. I kepy getting a busy signal, which I didn't know was possible. I couldn't ge ahold of them. I don't know if someone saw it and called, but the police wizzed up a few minutes after. I was relieved.

One time a bleeding guy came into the store. I used to work at this store in Berkeley that got a lot of, shall we say 'interesting characters'. Lots of homeless, shady people. Lots of regular looking people with fake money and travelers checks. It could be a Zoo sometimes. One time I was the only cashier on the bottum floor with all the books, it was the end of the day right before Memorial weekend. A guy came down, bleeding from holes in his face. They looked like intentional pencil stabbings, as they were perfectly aligned (forehead, upper lip, chin, and both cheeks in the same area). I really wanted to say "Are you ok sir?" but he seemed perfectly fine other then that. He was also very polite and wished me a happy Memorial weekend. His face was dripping blood and gathering on his chin, and he acted like it was perfectly fine. OH Berkeley! There was also a homeless man who went around the store giving away lemons saying they "cure everything." And he put a whole one in his mouth and started chewing. This job was pretty entertaining. Along with colorful people I saw a lot of protests. I left the job before too long, after they gave me a 5 cent raise!

I kind of met Mark Hamill. One time I was at Wonder Con with my boyfriend. I was in geek heaven, paying close attention to where I could find Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill signing autographs. We found the line, long already, with a sign posted informing me that it costs money. $100 total for both. That just wasn't in my budget. So we decided to go get some water and plan what celeb to see next. This cute Asian girl my age came up to me and complimented me on my Chewbacca backpack. From there we started to talk about our love of Star Wars. She started jumping up and down saying "Mark Hamill is here! Have you seen him?" I kinda told my sad little broke story, and she wouldn't take it. She took me by the hand, my boyfriend following closely to the front as far as we could go in the line to the booth. She started to scream "Mark Hamill!" like Beatle Mania was back. He laughed and motioned for us to come up to the booth. We obeyed, I stayed back a little because frankly, I was in shock. This was so unexpected. He signed something she had and she still screamed and jumped. I'd never seen anything quite like it. I just stood there, stunned. She ran away at top speed, and Mark Hamill turned to the line and said "I must have put a Jedi mind trick on her" and everyone laughed. I wondered how many times he used that joke.

As a child, I used to write to Cults. When I was a kid I was convinced I was an alien. I was a strange kid, reading books on serial killers and UFOs from a pretty young age. But at one point I used to write to cult leaders. Which I totally forgot I did. So these were basically the cults of the late 90's. One I wrote to Scott Mandelker; who believes he is an alien from Pleiades. More info on the book can be found here. So I write him, probably 12 year old me, saying "I think I am one of you". He wrote me back, and said I was "Too young to be one of them" and suggested I meditate. (.....)

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