Hey Reddit, so this happened to me some years ago when I was in middle school, but I still think about it today, because it’s really weird.
So I (16F now, then I think 12) was waiting at my bus stop in the morning and my bus was late. I saw an older man looking to be around 60-70 year old walking his dogs, which were two corgis. This is important for later. He was walking down the sidewalk I was at, and one of the dogs stopped by me and started sniffing my leg, probably since I had a piece of gum in my pocket. We make small talk, talking about the cold ass weather and his dogs, and he let me pet them too. He was very nice, and after a couple minutes he went on his way, saying bye and to have a good day at school(not weird that he said that because I had my backpack on). I noticed that he turned to walk down where my coldesac where I lived, and then my bus arrived.
I got on and when we drove by, passing my coldesac, the man had disappeared. I didnt think much of it of course, as I was a 12 year old with a short attention span and severe ADHD(now diagnosed but then not), so I went along with my day and totally forgot about it. Then I went home after school and my mom asked me how my day was. I told her about school, and then remembered the old man and told her about him and his dogs. My mom then said something along the lines of “thats weird, I didn‘t see anyone walking their dogs down here“. I was a little weirded out. I asked her if she was sure, and she said yeah. For background, she sometimes works from home, and her home office has big windows that show the coldesac, so it was really weird that she didn‘t see him. What was also weird was that I had never seen him before that day. Ive hung out outside with my younger brother and his neighborhood friends, and all of my neighbors have big dogs, usually golden retrievers or yellow labs, never any small dogs.
The next day my bus was late again, and again I saw the man walking down the same sidewalk with his two corgis. He saw me and said hi again, asking how my day was going, saying that the dogs missed me and stuff. I talked to him too, and then decided to ask him something. I asked, “I saw you walking down that coldesac over there. Do you usually walk your dogs down that way, or do you like to try a new path every time?”. He replied, “yeah, I always walk the two fellas down and around there. They never wanna go anywhere else haha!”.
I felt confused and a little scared now. Now I was 12 and a little stupid, so I said, “huh, that’s weird, I’ve never seen you down there when I play with my friends on the weekends“. I didn’t wanna say that I lived there of course, just in case he was dangerous. I was stupid, but not that stupid lol. His friendly smile then suddenly dropped, and he became very serious. It scared me. He then talked in a much lower voice, saying “Bye Aria(not my real name, but he did use my real name when saying this), have a good day”, and then left down the same way towards the coldesac. I had never told him my name.
I was spooked and just went on the bus that just arrived then like 5 seconds after, and texted my mom asking her to look outside and see if she sees him, because I didnt get a chance to look since I was a little scared to. She looked outside, but she didn’t see anyone at all. After that day, I haven’t seen him ever again, except for one time a couple days after that day where I thought I saw him walking outside during the night, but when I looked again he looked to be much taller, like eerily tall, but it was the same exact dogs from before. After that, I’ve seen him again. I’m no schizophrenic, I didn’t have a gas leak in my house at the time, and there was no carbon monoxide poisoning in my house at all either. It was just a very creepy experience, and sometimes I still wonder if I’ll ever see him again, but then again, I‘m a bit glad to have not.