In 1998 I lived in Seattle. One morning my boyfriend and I went to Safeway for some groceries. We entered the produce section to grab a tomato when this terrible smell hit us. It was the worst smell I have ever smelled. Like rotting flesh. My boyfriend loudly exclaimed "something stinks!!" As he said it I discovered where it was coming from. There was a tall woman wearing a long, sort of old fashioned, tattered dress that was covered in filth. She was smelling an onion that she held cupped in her hands. She looked straight at me. Her skin was greyish and filthy. Honestly, I didn't examine her as carefully as I ought to have because she struck terror into my heart. I turned and ran. I had never been so scared in all of my life. I am pretty convinced she wasn't human. I just can't figure out what she was.

Probably nothing a 3 bars of soap and a 4 hour shower couldn't fix. I can just imagine your thoughts at the time though ... you always think that it's worse than what it is. Probably some homeless lady eating onions like apples, that'd give you breath to kill there. Probably what it was though.


Gene

Probably a homeless person that need a bath.

Not trying to sound like a smart aleck, but... Sounds to me like an extremely filthy person who hadn't showered/bathed in a while. From what you said, you didn't note others running from the store in terror. She would definitely not have gone unnoticed by others were she a member of the living dead.

if this person was a zombie, why didn't she try to eat you? sounds more like a bag lady... IMO

Yes, I think a bag lady too. Probably so hungry, she goes into supermarkets and eats the fruit on display.

There was nobody else in the produce section. Her smell alone could have made people run in terror. I have lived in cities and seen and smelled dirty homeless people but this was seriously beyond compare. From what I know about voodoo, a person will drug someone so that they appear dead and they will be buried and when they come off of the drugs, the voodoo person will dig them up and have them work as their slave. I don't know if this is possible in a modern day city but it would almost make sense. I have long considered the idea that she was just some filthy homeless person but I have never been given a jolt like that from just any bum.

Guess you haven't met the right bums.

Well, weighing a homeless person, who hasn't bathed, has no clothes, and goes to the supermarket to find whatever food she can, on one hand, and weighing someone who has been drugged, buried, and dug up to be a zombie slave, on the other hand, then I'm going with the homeless woman...

hahahahahahaaa...yeah, I don't think safeway would have been safe if it was an actual zombie. Someone would have been screaming by then. Poor woman

That poor woman, you probably made her feel bad. But then again, it had to be pretty bad to make you run. But you know Seattle, I am around the area...there's a lot of homeless people.

ok iv come up with two possibilities

1. she was an apparition or
2. she smelled so bad that you started to have hallucinations, who needs voodoo if you can make people hallucinate with your smell

sounds like someone very grubby more towards homeless by the sounds of things. When people are scared their mind will convince them of many strange tales.
One example is my nan's brother. When he was little (they lived on a farm) he came screaming into the house utterly terrified that there was a beast outside something similar to a lion.
Of course skeptical they all went out to investigate this supposed beast but took some protection just to be careful incase it was something dangerous indeed. There under the tree was not a beast but an old cow taking a nap in the sun....

Maybe what you saw was indeed non human but I feel a urge that a zombie would not be hanging out in safe way sniffing an onion.

No offense,but if she was a homeless person(I think she was) You probably made her feel worse by saying she stinks and running from her...

hahaha, maybe it's why she was picking out onions!

hahahahahaaa, that poor cow

eeeew, now who's gonna touch it?

ooooh hahahahahaaha

-yeah, i gonna go with bum that hasn't showered in over a year bob.
-and let's see, is it homeless bum!!!!!
[ding ding ding ding ding ding ding]
-you were right. congrats you just won....a BRAND NEW CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgNOWAY!!!! [jumps up and down and hugs bob]

hahahahaha...
gotta say thow, the safeway story is the funniest that's came up

Sounds a bit like one of the black eyed kid stories I read. I think I remember of of the BEK stories featuring some woman with rotting flesh and tattered clothing. And the unexplainable feeling of terror caused is also in all the black eyed kid stories...

I can't say I was expecting anyone on this forum to say,"Wow, you saw a real zombie!". So she wasn't a flesh eating zombie, that was just a term I threw out there to help describe her overall image. she must have been completley detached from the way the general public thinks and relates to one another. Wherever she came from she surely hadn't seen the sun in a VERY long time. She couldn't have been around other people because her smell would have made anyone sick. I could never go back to that safeway just because i related it with the most unappetizing smell i have come across. one weird thing about her that really confused me is that her dirty tattered clothes were obviously once very elegant and pretty. she was filthy and stinky but she was no bum, she seemed rich. the way she was smelling the onion was like she had never seen one. I just cant concieve of where she came from, what she was doing in safeway, and where she was going from there.

by the way, i didn't say she stinks and neither did my boyfriend. He exclaimed that "something stinks" and that was before he saw her. He is not mean and neither am I.

That's good, because she is someone's mother, sister, daughter just like you and I. Poor woman.

I hate looking at homeless people and I always wonder why they are homeless. Where I am from it's so easy to go on social assistance and at least have a roof over your head and some food on the table. I wonder why people choose to go that way??? Maybe it's not as simple in thier minds and they're sick... who knows.



Gene

I would definitely not call a homeless person a bum, and I personally don't think they choose to go that way....There are so many circumstances as to why these people live as they do, and the layman will just classify them as derelicts...And Gene, you are absolutely right...She possiblly was someone's mother, sister, or daughter...These people are all human beings, not pieces of trash thrown into the streets...I once asked a homeless woman to come to our house for Thanksgiven dinner...She gave me an emphatic NO, and I dropped it...I felt that I did the right thing, but was not going to press it...I realized after, that I was invading her life...This is their life and this is how they survive...

the idea of a zombie is very hard to belive

Just because she was dirty and smelled bad it doesn't mean she was homeless.

And I hear people say that they "feel like a zombie" pretty frequently. When you are going on autopilot... Not exactly meaning that they have an appetite for flesh.

Are you sure it was not a Alien? Please dont make a UFO report if you see one, your obviously a terrible eyewitness

Gene.. You are totally right about the mother/sister/daughter statement.

Do you really believe that people choose to go that way or that these people are all sick? While it is true that the mentally ill can become homeless, they are actually the minority. Sometimes, circumstances happen beyond one's control and when they ask for assistance, they aren't given it. This is often the case with older people whose children are grown. You would be surprised at how many children grow up, move away and ignore their own parents, so that when their mothers are unable to pay the mortgage and are eating cat food or dog food for sustenance, they don't know and/or just don't care. You are less likely to get help if you have no under 18 dependents in your care. Even when you do have children under 18, it is often difficult to get placed in a home quickly enough, depending on the area. Also, getting help in some cities requires that you have lived there for so long before you can receive a housing voucher. So, say you moved to another city in a different state and a month later, you lost your home, you are just out of luck, because you haven't been in the city long enough. This would often leave the option of going to a shelter, but shelters have to turn people away also, due to overcrowding, or if the town in which you live is a smaller one, there may not even be a shelter. I've volunteered to help homeless people for a while. Their stories vary greatly, both in sadness and circumstances. The one thing I've seen with all of the cases like this is that none of them chose to live on the streets, and the vast majority exhausted pretty much every avenue prior to their current situations. I hope you don't think I was singling you out or attacking you. I just wanted to answer your question about why people "choose" to go that way. A lot of people are often misinformed (through no real fault of their own). Volunteering even just once a month at a shelter or soup kitchen would help alot of people understand, and would give a face to those who are less fortunate.

I am really disappointed by the lack of creativity in all of your replies. Are you all so into proving people wrong that you can't have fun with an idea? I have a bunch of people who didn't see what I saw trying to tell me that they know what I saw, and insinuating that I am stupid for interpreting it the way I did. No one has convinced me yet that she wasn't a walking corpse. Keep on rerunning the homeless person idea if you must, but I saw her and I highly doubt that.

Yes. Most of us require proof not fantasy. Sorry.

An alien in Safeway? hahaahahah

I have to say that I love the title of this thread "Zombie in safeway" I have a mental image that will keep me amused for hours.

Homeless people scare me too sometimes

Yeah, you're right .... zombies make up more of the population than homeless people, a true statement, just look:

Proof Here





If you want to post foolish things to entertain you during your day well I suggest you go somewhere else. I thought this board was for serious discussion and excuse me for not believing that you seen a zombie because you said you did. Where are my manners ... I should have just believed you, being a stranger with no credibility. People do have real experiences, but think logically about them as well. The lack of creativity is because for most of us science fiction stopped being fiction years ago. No1 is calling you stupid.

Just as no1 has convinced you that what you seen wasn't a walking corpse, I don't really see the proof in your posts that it was .... come on now ... start to actually think. You seem sad because no one will believe that you saw a dead woman buying onions in a grocery store .... wonder why.

Think logically and grow up. See I'm a nice guy but when you have to reply to something like that, it makes you an a$$ ... well

Maybe she was a demon. A demon who likes onions because she likes to cry. A sad lonely and smelly demon who is doomed to wander supermarkets for eternity because somehow in her previous life she killed someone in Safeway with an onion. She can't cry though, but she wants to. Because if she cries the curse will at last be lifted. She will be forgiven and join the land of the living who smell good once again.

Just my thoughts.

I have been amused since it started and still going hahahahaha

hmmm

jeeez, somebody lighten up.

blah...i deleted my post. Disregard. Thanks.

ctually, there really are some scary looking ones.

.

LOL, it's not our job to convince you of anything!!, it's really your job to convince us you were in a market with the living dead... 'and I highly doubt that'...

I doubt this is the kind of fun answer you were looking for but have you ever considered the fact that she was terminal? If you've ever seen or smelled anyone that was terminally ill some of them do resemble zombies. There are quite a few people that are terminally ill that don't just lie in bed and moan in pain. I've seen people that were close to death and the smell and look of them was horrible. Maybe some part of you realized what was happening to the woman and you freaked out.

Ok now seriously. Maybe it was your future self?

I hate to ruin anyone's fun fantasy life, but there ain't no such thing as zombies outside of Romero films.

As soon as others begin to smarten up . Sorry ... I get easily annoyed at some of the things here ... pointless arguements being one.






Cheers,

Gene

Wow, it just sounds like someone who is need of a good bath and a new change of clothes!! There are lots of people out there like that. She is probably starving and withering away to nothing. The rotting smell is probably coming from an open flesh wound that she has that is badly infected and needs to be cleaned.

bahahaha this just made me laugh

....how do you know what rotting flesh smeels like...?

When I was young, I used to work as a stockboy in a supermarket. There was one person that I was always able to tell when he was in the store, since I could smell him as soon as he walked through the doors.

There are people out there that smell and are in need of a bath. Not necessarily homeless, nor are they zombies. They are just people that haven't figured out the connection between water and soap yet.

Are you sure it wasn't Courtney Love? She's from Seattle right?