There is something strange going on lately and I don’t know what is causing it. It’s the fifth or sixth time now (within a month, maybe month and a half) that I have a weird encounter with a totally unknown person who will start behaving in a really odd way the moment they lay eyes upon me.

It all started one Sunday morning, when I was out trying to find a suitable crossroads to dispose of some offerings and other stuff that needed proper disposal.

I had walked a few blocks from my apartment (mainly because it’s a busy area and I was walking until I could find a spot with no pedestrians for a moment or two so that I wouldn’t draw attention to myself). I wasn’t really in the best of moods, and I looked like a mess: unwashed hair and wearing the most unattractive clothes I probably have in my wardrobe just because they were the first thing I grabbed when I reached inside for clothes.

As I was passing in front of a spot that had stood out to me earlier as an ideal place to bury a few things that would require burying after an upcoming ritual, a middle-aged man came out of a building to throw the trash. Everything normal up to this point.

The moment he laid eyes on me though, his facial expression immediately changed. There was this glow in his eyes and he started following me (trash bag still in his hands), smiling widely and saying “Oh my God, who are you? You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen! You can’t be real! Please talk to me!” I didn’t know what to do so I said “Thank you!” (cause –above all- I am polite!) and walked away. He kept following me for a block and then he turned and walked back home. It was really creepy, but I didn’t really think about it that much because it was the middle of a way, with tens of people around us, and this was just a guy who had come out to throw the trash, so –since he didn’t actually follow me all the way home- I didn’t really worry.

The thing is, this was not the last occasion when this happened, and it’s with a different person every time.

I didn’t really connect all these events until yesterday, when a random Russian middle-aged guy suddenly started behaving in the exact say way: we crossed paths in a busy area close to where I live and he looked normal up until the point he laid eyes on me.

When he looked at me, there was this glow in his eyes, he started smiling (and it was a weird, creepy smile; not the psycho killer type of creepy smile, more like the mad and childish Cheshire Cat type of smile) and started telling me that I am the most beautiful person he has ever seen, that he has seen me many times and that he needs to be close to me so that he can just look at me, all the while walking next to me (he was walking towards the opposite direction until we crossed paths) and desperately trying to maintain eye contact.

His face had this dazed, zombified expression you see in movies where a teenage girl casts her first love spell, turning the captain of the football team into practically a zombie, madly in love with her. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t have the looks that would naturally inspire that kind of reaction.

If I was such a knockout I’d have gotten used to people having that kind of reaction, but I’m like the girl-next-door type of pretty, or better yet, the-girl-next-door-who-could-lose-a-few-pounds type of pretty).

It was really creepy.

And it reminded me of at least three or four occasions within the last month when a car pulled up next to me so that the driver could tell me pretty much the same thing, and then drive slowly next to me for a few moments, staring at me, before driving away.

All instances happened in crowded places, all of them with different people. And the problem is that I can’t trace this back to a specific ritual that may have caused it. I know it started happening during the planetary challenge and I’m somehow inclined to think it was either Venus or Sol that would have caused it.

It does sound like the Venus kind of side-effect, but it’s interesting that it always happens during the day and especially at times when it’s particularly warm and sunny. I don’t know at this point if I need to do something about it (and what that something might be); if it’s an innocent side-effect or if it will put me in danger at some point.