64. Only a bit of illegal substances

A guy I met when traveling told me on his last trip he forgot he had a few grams of illegal substance in his backpack. He traveled for a few months in Asia without realizing and managed to get past a lot of airport security.

Photo by Rick Proctor on Unsplash

63. A great use of taxpayer dollars

When I was a kid I got stopped leaving Thailand. I thought it was because of all the sea shells in my bag, mum had warned me not to bring any home. They stopped me, looked through my bag and pulled out my copy of Order of the Phoenix, "This is a really good book, have you read the rest of them?" I just started to cry. When I got back to Sydney I tossed all the shells.

A few years ago I got stopped because my shirt said 'No kangaroos in Austria'. Boarder patrol guy stopped me and gave me a lecture on Australian wildlife, called me a dumb tourist and then he looked at my passport and realized I was in fact, Australian. He asked me if I thought I was clever or if I really was that stupid. I asked him if he could read or if he really was that stupid. Had another look at my shirt and let me go without another word. And Boarder Patrol was filming that day, I was hoping it would get put on the show but it didn't.

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62. Well, liquids are dangerous!

They scanned my bag and pulled me to the side to go through it. She opened it up and took my sun block and let me go. She left the 6” combat knife that I forgot was in there.

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61. The last Samurai

About a week before 9/11/2001, I was going through airport security alongside a 14-year-old kid and his mother, who were returning from some kind of martial arts tournament. The kid was carrying a freaking samurai sword.

The security guy was all like, "I'm pretty sure you have to check that." and the mom flat out told him they are not going to check it because it's too expensive, and that the lady at the ticket counter said it should be okay because it's a practice sword and not even sharpened.

The security guy just isn't sure and so the kid draws the sword from the sheath and lets the man feel the edge. Meanwhile the mom reiterates that the ticket lady said it would be okay.

Security guy shrugs, kid re-sheaths his sword, and that thing rode in the overhead bin across the aisle from me (they were on my plane).

Two weeks later they would have been detained without a second thought.

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60. Moe, Larry, and Curly

In the early 90's, my family and I are trying to get back to the USA from Paris. At the airport they scanned all our luggage as part of the routine (even back then). During the process the officials got pretty excited/upset/surprised (we didn't speak much French and they spoke little English) but a number of them crowded around the monitor for one suitcase.

They finally brought me over to the screen and pointed to an image on the x-ray. At the bottom of my wife's suitcase it appeared to be an outline of a pistol. As it turned out, it was my wife's curling iron with power cord rolled up just right; but I couldn't make them understand what I was trying to tell them, so I just pretended to curl my hair like I've seen my wife do with the thing.

They started laughing and were so relieved it was nothing so we were on our way quickly after that. Back when flying was actually fun.

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59. Rock on

One time I was in the security line with my parents and little sister and we got stopped because they found something in her bag. The person at the scanner opens my little sister’s backpack and pulls out a freaking rock the size of a grapefruit. He just looks at us and goes, “What’s this?” And my little sister goes, “That’s my pet rock!” He put it back in the bag and told us we were good. She took her pet rock on the plane, but my parents were totally mortified.

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58. We like to spoon

Saw a bag filled to the brim with all different types of spoons. Pulled it aside, asked the passenger what the deal was.. he looked me straight in the face and says he uses them to spank his wife in bed. They’re their "love spoons."

When I say "saw" I meant while I was analyzing the image on the x ray machine. I was not simply targeting the passenger by sight.

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57. At least you're washing

I'm a TSA Ofiicer. "Ma'am I just gotta look in your bag real quick." "Oh, it's just my butt plug, it has electronics inside!" "Um, it's just your soap, it's too big to go."

I cannot make this up. The thing I tell new people is you can never be ready for what might happen every day.

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56. Gaston from Beauty and the Beast vs. the TSA

I’m TSA.

I once met an elderly woman with a sword cane. She had no idea it was a sword - her son was a service member and had sent it to her from the Philippines without mentioning what it was.

A couple headed up to Alaska with a sink, complete with plumbing attached, in a large duffle bag.

Hunter returning from Canada with some unlicensed kills. Unprepped and still bleeding severed musk-ox heads wrapped in plastic. Whole baggage system for half the airport had to be shut down and cleaned, along with a couple of our machines.

One lady who spent the time her bag was in the x-ray screaming that x-rays weren't real, and there was a dwarf in the machine going through her bag to steal things.

In cargo, an automatic grenade launcher built out of clear polycarbonate, so the arms dealer transporting it could show off its inner workings. Would have been fine, if it hadn't been undeclared and accompanied by a small box of grenades.

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55. Hands off my weiner

Bought a wiener dog corkscrew for my fiancé at a gift shop the same day as my flight. Threw it in my backpack and totally forgot to put it in my checked luggage. Noticed security grabbing my bag off the belt, they pulled out the corkscrew and I gasped and said “MY WEINER DOG!!!”

I must have looked genuinely concerned about that corkscrew because two TSA guys decided it didn’t seem like much of a threat and let me keep it. Shoutout to those TSA guys for letting me bring my silly gift home!

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54. Pennies from heaven

I was traveling with a buddy from Canada to France. We were big into one card game that required pennies. So my friend, the character that he is, brought a glove full of around 1,000 pennies, and without thinking, tossed it in his carry on. Every security stop we went through, he had to dump out his glove of pennies, and then put them all back into the glove. The first security check we went through, he and I were both staring at the screen, wondering what the heck they thought was in his bag. The way it was placed, it looked like an awkward metal dinosaur.

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53. Pack rat

I flew with an antique 12 inch cast-iron skillet with a lid and two antique oil lamps with iron brackets a mercury glass reflector in my carry-on. They were family heirlooms that I very carefully and skillfully wrapped in my sweaters and a long velvet skirt and lined everything with socks and bras (yes, my packing skills are to be envied). I had to explain to the TSA that I was not planning to use the skillet as a weapon and that the reflector was not the casing for a bomb while my bras were laying all over the table. Me yelling "be careful with that - it's super fragile" probably didn't help with my not-a-bomb plea.

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52. Separation anxiety

Flying out from spending time with my girlfriend in another state. I'm anxious and especially nervous while going through security, topped with being sad that I won't be seeing my girlfriend for another long period of time, I'm feeling a little weepy.

My bag rolls through the scanner and I see the woman's face get all concerned and she calls over another agent to look at the screen. I'm thinking like, "oh good, what now?"

She asks me, "Do you have a milkshake mixer in your luggage?"

I'm just taking it all in for a minute before it dawns on me. I have no idea what a milkshake mixer looks like, but I know I don't have one. My Hitachi magic wand is in there.

At this point, I'm feeling overwhelmed by everything and now I'm pretty embarrassed and there's more attention on me than I care for.

So, I promptly burst into tears, sobbing, and trying to explain. Fortunately, they were discreet and just let me go.

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51. Explosive performance

Did you know that there's a sports drink that comes in a bottle that's shaped exactly like an M2 grenade?

I didn't, until I was working an x-ray machine in a military airport and some idiot decided it would be a good idea to put a bottle in his checked bag.

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50. Death and taxidermy

It was me. I found a taxidermy chicken on a trip, and had to buy it. Then I had to get her home. Well, she wouldn't fit in my suitcase, so I had to carry her in my arms.

It was a really busy travel day, and that chicken amused EVERYONE. Absolutely every person in line suddenly wasn't grumpy anymore. TSA all laughed, especially when she had to go through the x-ray; passengers who were irritated at lines started smiling.

I loved it.

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49. Dollar dollar bills

In college many years ago I had a part-time job demonstrating a dollar counting machine (they were relatively new then). Once had to fly somewhere to give a demo, and took my duffle bag full of $1 bills. The guy searching that bag called for his boss to come over. The boss was experienced enough to figure out that real dealers don’t traffic in low-value currency and he kept me from being arrested, but I was pretty close to missing my flight and spending a night in the cells.

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48. Quit your carping

I had a whole dead carp in my backpack. I was visiting my grandparents in Czech Republic right before returning to spend Christmas with my parents in France. Carp is our traditional Christmas dinner in Czech Republic, but it's pretty hard to get in France, since French people don't eat them. So I figured that hey, I might as well buy one and take it with me. The lady who checked my bag was not impressed but she let me go through with my carp. I guess there are no rules against taking an entire dead fish with you on a plane.

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47. Hitching a free ride

I work airport security.

Once I found a live spider. Passenger didn't know he was there and he wasn't huge, but he opened his bag, it crawled out, and I screamed. 

Human ashes. 

Homemade adult toys. (The woman gave me her business card.) 

A live cat. 

Antlers with rotting flesh still on them. 

But my favourite was a magician’s bag. Alerted for explosives. He kept pulling bits out of pockets and showing me bits of his act.

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46. Don't toy with me

My father travels a lot, and was going through airport security one day in Europe when he noticed his bag was taking longer than usual to go through the x-ray. The security guys called over another guy, and then another. They're all looking at the bag, gesturing and pointing.

A guy finally came over to my father and asked "are you a mountain climber? We can't figure out what is in your bag and climbing equipment is our best guess, you have some sort of metal hook in there."

My father was absolutely not a mountain climber, and happily opened his bag for them. He had bought a metal crane truck as a toy for my brother, and it looked strange on the machine. They all started cracking up, and asked if they could use the photo of the bag as training.

It must have been a slow night.

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45. Grandma Escobar

Not me, but my grandma. This would've been around 50 years ago; my mom and my grandma were returning from a trip to Peru.

Now, before I tell this story, let me tell you about my grandma. She worked as an English teacher in South America for years, but she's also worked as an interviewer and written books on the life stories of immigrants. She's the kind of person who will spend a taxi ride learning the life story of the driver and then tell it to everyone she knows.

Needless to say, both my mom and my grandma had souvenirs from their time in Peru. My mom is holding her stuffed llama and about to go through security. The security people at the airport look through my grandma's bag and find several bags full of crushed leaves, nearly packed, and ask my grandma what they were. My grandma proceeds to tell them the name of the plant, where it originated from, and what its medicinal value is... For every single bag.

Security doesn't have time for this and waves my grandma through with at least one bag full of coca tea. Then they go over every seam on the llama to make sure it's not being used to smuggle anything.

44. Those things are creepy

My brother and his friend “borrowed” a lawn gnome from my mom’s evil roommate. They both heard the TSA guy say, “Is that a gnome?” as it went through the scanner. No one said anything though.

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43. A head trip

I worked at an airport as a line tech. A former baggage screener (pre-TSA) told me of the time he open a bag and found a human skull. The passenger was an MD and had all the appropriate paperwork to transport the skull, but it was still surreal.

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42. Boom Goes The Dynamite

I accidentally brought a 12-pack in my carry-on. I forgot I had put those in my bag (about 3 months before I had gone to a house party with these in them). When I landed and unpacked, I was like, "Oh, nice!"

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A ham sandwich. The sniffer dog was going crazy, but he got dragged away because I'm apparently really very not-suspicious looking. Found the sandwich at the hostel. Was a little dry, but still tasty.

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I've seriously flown with a huge screwdriver in my carryon before, was pretty surprised when I unpacked at home.

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Took three different planes to the Yucatan from USA, and on the way back I took two planes. The last security check point before home found nail clippers, lighter, bottle opener, and a razor knife. I was in a rush to leave, and grabbed an extra bag I used for school (I took art classes and worked as a bartender at the time). I was terrified they might find something even worse since I did not really check.

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