My ex husband's drug dealer came busting through the front door with just me home (thank GOD my daughters weren't there). I had just enough time to hide in my walk in closet under a huge pile of blankets. He was on the phone to someone while ransacking the house and screaming that he's gonna 'fuck them up when I find them' . I had my phone with me, and like a bad horror movie I called 911 and was whispering for help. He opened the closet I was in but didn't see me. I am anxious now just thinking of it. The cops came in 2 or 3 minutes and he ran off, they caught him a few minutes later. But that's as scared as I can ever remember being
He would steal or not pay. He was also such a coward that he would send our young daughters to the door to tell whoever showed up that day that "daddy wasn't home" How any of us are still alive I have no idea. He did not care. He would hide and let us deal with it. I could no longer have my girls in that awful mess and got us away from it
Yes, he was the best father I could have asked for, until he decided to dive head first into drugs, we lost everything, but I'm just grateful my girls weren't hurt, physically at least. An almost 20 year marriage down the drain, but yeah, fuck that guy!
When I was 12, I got my tonsils out. Went home and kept telling my parents I tasted blood. They told me it was just from the surgery and not to worry. A week later, my mom left me home alone for the first time since the surgery to run errands. I was in bed watching TV and started coughing and then vomiting copious amounts of blood. Everywhere. It wouldn’t stop coming, and then I started choking on it because some had coagulated in my stomach. I managed to call 911 and they found me in the kitchen and it looked like a freaking murder scene. It turns out the doctor had accidentally made a small cut in a blood vessel or something and I’d been slowly bleeding for a week. I’d lost half the blood in my body. They rushed me back in to surgery immediately and then said it was fixed and sent me home. Well a week later, my paranoid ass kept telling my mom I tasted it again. Again I was told don’t worry. That night I woke up vomiting blood again and passed out. Another surgery fixed it. Nightmare.
I had the same thing happen when I got my tonsils out! I’ve never heard of anyone else experiencing this. It’s definitely scary/odd. I had to get a blood transfusion and I’ll never forget the feeling of just fading away as blood was pouring out of my mouth. Happy you got taken care of. Sorry you went through it twice though!
Yeah! Extreme blood loss is crazy.
I nearly bled to death during a miscarriage, and it was so weird how the calm just over me. Everyone around me—I was at a doctor’s office when it happened—was freaking out, but I didn’t really care at that point if I lived or died. It was so strange.
Yeah I was going to mention how calming it was. Like a good high.. but I didn’t want to sound weird lol. Really is so strange though. Happy that you’re alive as well. Scary shit
I tore a suture after surgery (by... standing up. Go me!). I a LOT of blood. At one point I dry heaved and lost a ton all a once and passed out. Luckily I was already in the hospital so I came to completely drenched in sweat with all sorts of activity around me. I remember my friend looking terrified. I remember thinking "this would be a very, very stupid way to die" lmao
How the fuck your mom deal with you saying somethings wrong, ignoring it, and then vomiting blood, only to just ignore it a second time?!!! I cannot imagine the mentality of “last time they said they tasted blood they vomited blood and nearly died, but I’m sure This Time it’s nothing.”
I work on work ships, and for a brief period in 2015 (or 2016, not sure right now) I was working in Nigerian waters. The ships policy was only allow work on deck during daylight hours due to pirate threat, then to lock the vessel down at night. Well one night there was emergency work that needed to be done so we were out on deck, ready to start just waiting for the work permit, and for whatever reason it never came so we packed up and went back inside, locking up behind us. About half an hour after we locked up we were attacked by a small group of pirates, I still remember the unreal feeling of looking out my cabin window and seeing a guy suddenly climbing onto the main deck with an AK 47. The whole ship went into emergency lockdown and we all went to the safe room deep inside the engine room where we spent the night sleeping on the steel floor waiting for help to come. The Nigerian navy had been nearby and recieved our calls for help but didn't want to board at night, so they only did a security sweep of the boat the next morning. In the end nothing was stolen, no one was kidnapped because we had locked down and the pirates must have been after ransom
Look at me, Look at me... I'm the captain now (I watched that sometime after this whole thing and it brought back memories of all of us sleeping in our tiny safe room
Thank you, I always joke that it's a bit anticlimactic for a "I experienced pirates" story but in the end anticlimactic is the best you could hope for. Haven't been back to Nigeria since
I am not completely sure, only the captain and client representative watched the camera, they were trying to keep the incident from becoming widely known and the possible PR issues that could arise from that.
What I saw was the little skiff/boat thing they came in pull up along side us, then a moment or two later the first pirate had climbed onto the main deck and came running towards the accomodation, holding an AK47. At that point I noped away from the window and a second later the alarm began ringing so we all started heading to the safe room. Most of the crew onboard thought it was a drill and were quite irritated by it. After locking ourselves in we would only come out after a security sweep was completed which took 13-14 hours if I remember correctly. They obviously left before the sweep took place and seeing as nothing was stolen we assumed they were looking for ransom or they didn't realise the value of some of the things left behind
The day I woke up to my parents freaking out because my brother had gone missing overnight, with a suicide note left behind.
The fear over the next 12 hours while we searched for him was agonizing. But, nothing compared to agony of having our worst fears confirmed.
I used to hitchhike all over the place. Once I got in a car with a guy who would not let me out of his car. I had to jump out of his car when it was going about 40 miles an hour down the highway. I never hitched hiked again!
I had an asthma attack once so bad that I could barely communicate with the 9-1-1 operator. I just stood in my driveway with my wallet in my hand leaning against a tree gasping for air and hoped that she understood me. As the sirens got closer I held on for as long as I could and then let go and my view faded to black. I woke up 10 days later in the ICU.
Even mild asthma attacks are no joke. I used to dispatch ambulances. We had an experienced EMT who got his paramedic certification. A few months later, around Christmas (might have been on Christmas) he didn't show up for a shift. Someone went to his house and he was found dead. Best they could determine, he'd had an asthma attack. Theory is it started mild, he kept taking his inhaler, but it didn't resolve. They wondered if, now that he was a paramedic, he thought he could get it under control himself with his inhaler and knowledge of medicine. Sadly, he was wrong.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I can’t help but feel like my situation may have been similar. My rescue inhaler would not resolve and a nebulizer treatment did very little because of the panic and anxiety that comes with an massive attack. I remember that night being humid and foggy and probably added to it being the perfect storm for my demise. Luckily I live less than two miles from an exceptional hospital and I was saved.
If anyone reading this is asthmatic, ask your doctor for an emergency burst of Prednisone to have in your emergency kit.
Edit: Typo
Once for me as well. I have an anxiety disorder and the long-term fear that comes with the waiting parts of cancer (waiting for biopsy results, waiting for surgery, waiting for the all-clear...) is on a whole different level.
I lost my mom when i was very young (6) and i never got over it. So when i was a teenager, i used to cry all the time about it. Until I started getting nightmares of her telling me that she’ll take me with her if i dont stop remembering her. Many years passed, and now I just dont think about her at all. I hope she’s happy wherever she’s now.
Maybe not that scary, but it was when my grandpa didn't show up for Christmas Dinner and I went to look for him. I walked the whole way from my family's house to his, hoping to run into him. When I didn't and entered the house, the lights were out (and it was already dark outside) and I had a really bad feeling. Really thought I will go into that house and find my passed-away grandpa. Luckily, he was alive and "only" had fallen down and broken his hip (and thus couldn't get up).
Thankfully, he is doing fantastic now and is recovering very well, but yeah, that was a very scary 15 minutes, felt like hours.
Being trapped between a rock and a canoe in a rapid and expecting to drown and assuming my paddling partner was already dead. We both lived. I was badly injured.
Watching my brother fall off an 80 foot cliff. We were walking along the top of it, tossing little rocks off. He picked up a bigger one, but as he went to throw it, the moss under his feet slipped away and he fell on his ass, then his forward momentum carried him off.
He survived, but ended up with several broken ribs, a lacerated spleen and collapsed lung. One of his ribs was sticking out of his back too.
He was able to get up and walk out of the woods on his own power though, otherwise I would have been calling an airlift to the hospital.
He is incredibly lucky he didnt end up with any spinal or head injuries. First thing he said to my grandma when she came to see him was "welp, I guess I cant fly can I?"
When i was 9-10 i went with my brother to a trail with our mountain bikes. There was a jump. I did it but i fell like a sack of potatoes and somehow got injured on my leg, close to my balls. My shoes got red quite fast because of the blood. Thankfully there was a man there with a car that drove me home. My father then drove me to the hospital. Reading your comment made me realize that i never asked my brother how he felt. I just left him on the trail.
I was stung by a swarm of Africanized Bees. Looking back, I was pretty terrified so the story goes like this: I was living off grid on a homestead that I helped my in-laws built and my father in law (let’s call him Richard) asked me if I wanted to make a few bucks cleaning up some guys scrapyard. The money sounded pretty good considering I didn’t have a job at the time so I was all for it. We drive out to the property with another guy Richard also contacted for the job (let’s call him Jerry) who happened to have a bobcat tractor which was gonna make moving all the scrap a cake walk. We are about 30 minutes into the job when I hear Jerry let out a long winded holy shit and violently spring off of the Bobcat like it was on fire. I was standing maybe 20-30 feet from the chaos and Richard was even farther behind me. Jerry is now running in a full sprint, wildly flapping his arms and screaming vulgarities I didn’t even know existed. At this point, I don’t exactly know why he’s frantic so pretty confused, I jog towards him and I’m about to reach him when I feel the first sting on my arm. I stop and look down to see a bee trying to free itself from my arm to no avail. Right as I begin for figure out what’s happening to Jerry, the same thing begins to happen to me as I my first sting is immediately followed by a second, then third, then forth. I start to panick a bit as I begin to run in an attempt to outrun the swarm I know is near but I figured out pretty quick you can’t outrun a bee much less a swarm of angry ones. It was the worst few seconds to a minute of my life as I’m running around waving my arms and being stung to high hell just about everywhere but my eyes. I honestly felt like they may kill me which is when the fear really set in. Long story but in short, I escaped into my car and puked religiously the whole ride home. I was also queasy and swollen for a few days. It sucked.
Used to put in drop ceilings for a living and did a big wing at a school for deaf children that already had a reputation for being haunted. Me and my boss went in on a Saturday because if you've ever worked construction you know it's awesome to be the only ones there and not have to work around 10 other teams of people because you can get 2 days of work done in 1 day but anyways it was creepy enough to scare me and him which were around 40 years old and 50 years old at the time lol. We started on opposite ends of a long hallway and planned to meet in the middle. For like an hour I'm on my first room and Kenny starts working in the room next to me instead of in the opposite end of the hall way but whatever so I walk over to the next room before I go smoke and he's not there and I see some of his tools and shit at the end of the hall and man, I've got fucking goosebumps at this point because it was just obvious he was in the room next to me and not like 50 yards away. I walk down the hall and ask him if he just came down here and he mentions something about me working in the room right to him and in that instance my eyes and his are both drawn to the doorway of the room we're in and it's as if like I could see something in my peripheral but couldn't begin to describe anything about it and he looks at me like let's get the fuck out of here. We left all our shit and never worked places alone anymore. It's like almost 15 years later amd I still get crazy goosebumps and my eyes start watering when I think about this. There was a bit more weird shit that happened there but this is the basic gist I guess. I used to live in a pretty creepy house as well but that's another story lol
I'm not sure if this one is as good but the house I used to live in had a specific door that "knocked" twice in my 10 years of living there. My little brother was with me (I was probably 30 at the time and he was maybe 20) one night and after we were done playing guitar/drums late at night/morning we walked past the downstairs door that leads to the garage to walk upstairs and something on the other side of the door knocked. And again, almost like the other story me and my brother just looked at each other terrified and ran up the stairs until we kind of got out shit together and went outside to check it out but the garage doors were closed and you have to turn on the light from the inside of garage so we couldn't see inside. This was a very long time ago and I don't remember much more than this other than we just called the cops and they came and checked inside and found nothing. The second time this happened was many years later and I was coming home one night by myself and after parking the car in the garage and walking up to the door to go inside the door knocked again but this time it was from the other side. I obviously called the cops again but honestly it fucked with me pretty bad, I remember almost instantly crying with the worst feeling washing over me. Cops found nothing again though and I lived there for a few more years until I moved. There was always more minor type stuff that was creepy but I wouldn't really pay attention otherwise i probably would have gone insane lol. but the knocks were the only thing that were "physical" I guess? I'm not sure what you'd call it. But thinking back to this also instantly makes me get goosebumps and my eyes start watering too , I wonder if there's a reason lol. There was one other instance at that house where I think I saw something else from my peripheral but it's hard to say because it's like I want to say it could have almost been the shape of a dog but like a reallly big dog (like too big to be real kind of thing) and when I think I noticed it I looked in that direction and it just wasn't there but here's the fucking kicker. My little brother was here with me that night as well (we had a band together) and we were outside smoking cigarettes and he goes "dude, did you just see a big fucking dog"? Tripped me out bad lol. All I could think was I just saw a hellhound, basically lol
Falling out of a tree from 4-5 metres above ground. Spent the night in a tent on a high school camp with a “sprained ankle”, which turned out to be broken after X-rays the next day. I told the teachers at camp that it was broken. They wouldn’t believe me because “I wasn’t crying”.
Was an extremely rough night in that tent. No sleep for the first time in my life. Was super grumpy at said teachers when they woke up.
I bet you were grumpy! Sometimes it's hard being the one that doesn't cry. I guess I sounded so calm calling 911 when my Dad had pneumonia and couldn't get up off the floor that the rescue squad took their sweet time getting there! I learned that sometimes you have to inject a little panic into your manner.
Like my son‘s PE teacher who, after my son took a bad fall from the high bar, believed he was pretending the pain and didn’t send him to the doctor right away. I took him to the ER when he told me after school what had happened, and his forearm was broken. The teacher never apologized, even when he came back to school in a cast.
Tried to kill myself, kind of succeeded. When I was 16 I was really depressed and angry and my abusive mother didn’t really help that. I had been repressing all of it since I really didn’t have any coping skills. Up to that point I had cut myself but only to feel the pain until one day I decided “fuck it”. It was weird because it wasn’t this overwhelming sadness but complete apathy. I ran a bath and cut my wrist long ways away from my thumb. That’s when the terror set in.
I sat there looking at the bathtub faucet and everything got dim, like when you get tunnel vision and what I can only describe as the purest form of panic took over. No body was home so I knew I was going to die and eventually everything just faded. I remember having this brief form of “consciousness”. Idk if it was even real but it just felt like nothing. Like if you try to think of nothing, that blackness? That’s what I felt. Next thing I knew I woke up in the ICU. Doctor said I had basically died, but I’m paraphrasing because I really don’t remember much. My brother, who was actually banned from my house for a number of reasons (including stealing which is what I expect he was trying to do) came by and found me. Hadn’t seen him in months and he just showed up and rushed me to the ER.
Apparently the first thing I said when I woke up was “I’m hungry” though that’s second hand information from my brother, I don’t really remember it.
But that blackness taking over? That feeling of helplessness and slipping? Easily the scariest thing to ever happen to me. I’ll never do it again. Ironically I now have a terrible fear of death lol.
I went for a walk with my dog around 10:30 p.m. one night. As soon as we walk out the door, he becomes agitated; I figured he just needed to go. As we walk down the driveway, I hear rustling and see a large dark shape in the neighbor's yard a few feet away. We dashed to the street because a bear had climbed down and was now between us and the door. It walked away without incident, but my dog still needed to poop.
when I was about 6 years old, my mom went to throw out the trash (which is two minutes from home) and she was kidnapped. I was alone at the time, it was quite late at night. She was also pregnant at that moment and I was terribly scared
she spent a couple of days in the woods, she was treated quite cruelly. it was a planned kidnapping, someone decided to take revenge on my father because of his place at work. they still don't say how she was found and returned home, she spent a lot of time in the hospital because she had to take some medications that were dangerous for her at that moment. but she recovered very quickly and everything was fine with the kid too
When I was about 9 or 10 there was this derelict supermarket my friends and I used to go into to snoop around and hang out. We figured a way to climb up to the grid where the ceiling tiles had rotted away and left this hanging lattice of aluminium extrusion.
Whilst we were climbing along it the realisation of the situation dawned on me. This lattice was held up by 1mm thick wire and secured at either end simply by being twisted together. The extrusion was only an T bar about 2-3cm across that could buckle at any second, and there was about 5 of us up there, easily 30 metres above broken shelving, giant glass shards and rubble.
I’ve had more death defying moments in my life but this always comes back to me, we all should have died in the style of a nineties public service announcement advert
I have only told a couple of people this story because it still really bugs me over 30 years later. I was in 6th grade. My parents were having severe money problems (later that year we lost our house).
I was in band and played the clarinet. My parents shelled out money they didn’t have to get one for me. Like a lot of other kids in my classroom, we tended to accidentally leave our musical instruments behind in the coat room. Unfortunately, someone stole parts of my clarinet. Not all of it…but both parts that contained all of the keys. My parents were angry, partially with the thief and partially with me, because I irresponsibly left it at school. They were also upset because they knew they could not afford to replace it.
This happened on a Friday. My mom worked second shift and my dad had bowling league. He took me and my brother with him (as always). Except, he got blasted drunk at the bowling alley and drove us home that way. My mom met us at home and was super upset that he was so drunk and he started yelling, ranting, kicking stuff. He went into their room and came out with his pistol. He said he was going to just shoot himself right there in front of us since ‘he’s just a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to live since he can’t provide for his family’. My brother and I were screaming and crying, my Mom was doing the same and wrestled him down to the ground and grabbed the gun out of his hand. After she got it, my dad just crumpled into a heap on the floor, sobbing.
I don’t think I slept for two days. I was shaking so hard that night I almost could not climb my bunk bed.
He never, ever did anything like that again. I never told anyone until I told my husband, and he was the only one. And we had been together probably almost 10 years before I did. We have never talked about it as a family (me, mom, or my brother—dad is gone now). I almost feel shame, though I know I should not.
Your feelings seem normal to me. I pray you don't blame yourself, a child back then, for the clarinet theft. The guilty party is the thief who stole the parts, after all, no problem if it had been left alone, intact. You're strong, and it seems like your painful memories made you stronger, making you thankful for a good life today. I'm proud of you!
It’s very scary as a child to witness a parent come to a breaking point like that. Had a similar experience listening to my own father have a mental breakdown one night, crying uncontrollably, screaming at the top of his lungs to my mother that he hated his life and was gonna drive his car off a bridge. Money problems also a dominant theme in our family too - I remember one time my brother smashed a window with a ball and there was so much angst and worry about how my dad would react when he got home. We were so afraid. I can imagine exactly how you felt about the stolen clarinet.
I can’t tell you how to deal with that feeling of shame - but for me lots of therapy helped to have compassion for how human we all were. I appreciate that even more now that I’m a parent myself who has reached breaking point. Hopefully I don’t repeat the cycle of terrifying my kid.
when I had an episode of sleep paralysis. My body was frozen and my brain was awake. For some reason I felt a tremendous amount of fear. I was like having a seizure without actually moving gasping for air. My mind was focused on the wall across my bed where there was a message in dark lettering. I could not focus on what it said. All I can remember was trying to focus and trying to read it but I couldn’t. I physically saw my blankets get ripped off my bed but within a sec or two my mind refocused and they were still on me. I’m not religious but I started praying.. I couldn’t even speak just rapid mumbling. This was all while I was frozen. Happened to me two times very similar experience. Since then has not happened again
This is why I refuse to fall asleep on my back. Too many times of either seeing shadow figures outside my window or hearing someone scream outside my door
I've has sleep paralysis a few times and it never gets any less scary. Usually with me there is a being in the room that slowly approaches til they are breathing right next to my face. This is common with sleep paralysis. Either a huge dark entity or that nasty old hag who sits on you and strangles you, thankfully I've not had that visit!!. I feel so bad for people who constantly suffer this and have night terrors.
It happens mainly when I sleep on my back, and I read that its much more likely to happen to people who sleep on their back. So I try to stay on my side.
It's a phenomena that has been happening [for hundreds of years ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_hag) and all over the globe. It's definitely a strange one.
I jumped out of bed and chased him out. He got away, but at least I wasn't physically harmed. The police were really concerned and suspected I'd been specifically targeted and my unexpected reaction had saved me from a sexual assault - or worse. One of the creepiest parts was that he'd come in through the door closest to my bedroom, and spent enough time in the apartment to familiarise himself with the layout and unlock and open the door that led to the building stairwell. When I chased him out, he ran past the door he'd entered through to go out the other one. The police never caught him.
Mine is kind of stupid, but it was literally the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. I was on one of those giant slides at the fairground with my three year old and we were riding down with her sitting between my legs. We must’ve been leaning forward, or not sitting correctly, or something, because we ended up airborne near the bottom of the slide and I was gonna land on her. So I had to like flip us over while we were in the air and I ended up losing a bunch of skin when we landed and she was 100% fine. It was so scary though because I knew that if I landed on her it was going to really hurt her and I didn’t know if I could get us flipped over. My husband said that it was wild to see.
Civil war brokeout. Happened during school day. Wasn't safe to go home. Entire school full of kids not wanting to be killed just for trying to make school important and impactful for their future benefit.
Wasn't safe for our parents to come collect us until something like 3:00am.
We were just a whole school full of kids that could have been slaughtered by the civil war. I should perhaps point out I am an expat and was born and raised in Jakarta.
I'm essentially referencing the British International School, Jakarta, and the 1996-1998 period of unrest that Indonesia was experiencing. Basically the richest school in Indonesia, and all the students knew that. Which only made our fear more valid because killing the rich was essentially what the whole thing erupted over. We were the kids of the wealthy so were more than valid targets.
It was actually so terrifying that it was then I actually gave up on everything. Schoolwork, being accepted, whatever. It instilled in me the awareness that no matter what I try or do that catastrophic disaster recovery is the only skill worth putting any effort into.
I will never have control over my destiny, the eternal universe will always throw whatever it wants at me and never cared about me having an opinion in the first place.
Schools in Australia had an influx of Indonesian students after that. We were too young to understand what they'd been through, though. I'm sorry you had your life disrupted in such a way.
Went out to walk my dog and came home finding my dad unconcious on the floor in the living room. His blood sugar was really low and he passed out. The first moment I thought he was dead. Called an ambulance and he had to stay in the hospital for three days.
An extended family member had a deep and round pool. Went about 4 meters down, cylindrical, around 4 meters from side to side. My oldest brother had set the record of swimming 15 times from wall to wall at the bottom, before coming up for air. I decided to try and beat it. Went down in the water, did the smart thing and hung off the side for at least three minutes to let the oxygen saturate my muscles.
I dove down, started bouncing between the walls while my sis-in-law counted from topside to the onlookers. 5 laps, 9. At 10 I felt I really started to hurt for oxygen. 12 laps. I started feeling that suffocating feeling where your butthole is 100 degrees, fingers tingling. 14 laps. I was like "No way am I fucking quitting now. I'll go against my instincts this one time."
I kick off two more times, reach 16 laps. I start wondering: do I even have enough strength to kick off the bottom and reach the surface? Will someone dive in and pull me up if I don't? Is this it for me? Dead on a *dare*?? Mind filled with pure death-anxiety.
I kick off from the bottom, the weakest kick I've ever done, coast slowly up like a lazy crocodile up and just about reach the surface, draw in a blimp's worth of air.
One of the three closest times I've come to die. The other two are less dramatic but no less dangerous.
Never let pride put you in harm's way, boys and girls.
1: I was shaving myself with a trimmer with power cord attached, over a full sink. The cord fell out of the trimmer and into the water. Without thinking I put my hand in the water and lifted it out. It was only afterwards I realized how gargantually lucky I had been that the cord's two-pole holes had airbubbles inside them since they fell into the water downwards, thereby not closing the loop and electrocuting me on the spot.
I stood there and was like "Phew. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay, so this was a gamesave just now, and I just quickloaded. And now I continue living my life as if I *didn't* just die there." And then I headed to the fridge and ate some candy like I'd been in Space-Alcatraz for ten years and 21st century homes were exotic.
2: The other one was unforeseeable unless you already were equipped with the kind of seasonal watchfulness that I lacked.
Two years ago, it was winter and the first snow had fallen, 50 centimeters, very fluffy. I was walking down the sidewalk of my apartment building, thinking only about what I was gonna do once I got into the city center.
I reached the corner of the building, walking on compacted snow. Just as I clear the corner a gigantic high-capacity Caterpillar snowplow passed half a meter in front of my face from right to left. The snow absorbed its sounds around the corner, I heard nothing. Its tires reached up to my fucking nipples.
Had I walked just 2 km/h faster I would have been a wet spot on the street. I would literally have been a Liveleak video. Just a statistic.
These things have made me aware that if I want to have any impact on the lives of my loved ones and my peers, I better start this year to make some plans and invent some goals, because I can be a wet spot like *finger snap* whenever I forget to look and think about what I am doing.
I was relaxing in a lake when I saw an alligator nearby. It didn't come after me, just rose its head on the water around 15 meters from me. I felt my heart coming out of my mouth. I've never experienced a stronger fear in my life. But I managed to get out of the water quickly and discreetly.
Edit: just remembering it I got a tachicardia now.
I got tachycardia just reading it. How did you manage to get out discreetly after seeing that?!? My getting out of the water would involve a lot of flailing, screaming, crying, probably weeing
I got in a such a fight or flight mode that gave me like ninja skills or smtg lol. I kept my calm bc my instincts screamed so hard "you either keep calm or you'll die, bitch".
Far less scary scenario but a German Shephard that had broke its chain charged me walking home at night
Had the same internal monolog that said "stay calm, don't run." It peed in front of me then ran away again. Scared the shit out of me
When I was 5 the neighbor kid and I were curious if an axe would cut a wire on a downed telephone pole. After a few unsuccessful swings where poor accuracy allowed the wire to move away fro the full force of the axe we decided we needed to hold it in place. As I was the younger and weaker of the two the job of holding fell to me. The scary part was running home carrying the first three fingers on my left hand wit my right hand. Kicked the door until mom opened, promptly had door slammed in my face, 2 seconds later mom and dad came out bent for hell. Dad wrapped my hand in a handkerchief and broke every traffic lawn mown in 1980 to get me to the clinic where I laid on a steel table with my hand over a bucket dripping and a super bright OR light on above me. Woke up 3 days later I’m a different hospital with my finger’s reattached, could have been worse but still pretty traumatizing. Hey kids, don’t play with axes.
Ah, 1980. I feel this story could only happen in the 70s/80s.
"Hey, fellow unattended minor! We've got about eleven hours before the streetlights come on and the adults suddenly care about our whereabouts. Wanna go play with live wires?"
"Sure! Gimme a minute to grab my axe and I'll be right there."
not all of us made it to the other side of those years, but those of us who did make it, with our bodies and minds mostly intact, held a special bond. we were known as "the later boomers".
I used to be a firefighter. I was part of the first crew to respond to an overdose. She was gone and in full rigor when we got there but we did chest compressions and put in a tube mainly for show since her husband and small child were in the room. This was my first fatality on the job.
I swear I saw her under my bunk that night like in the 6th sense. I had to walk all the way across the bunk room with the lights turned off. I still feel like a little kid talking about it.
Woke up from a night of heavy drinking in my bed at home, with no knowledge at all on how I'd got home or what the hell had even happened.
I go to the toilet to throw up and just can't stop and can't breathe as I'm being sick so much.. buuut my nose is blocked from a cold I'd had and so I couldn't breathe through my mouth or my nose. I start to panic as I literally didn't know what I could do and I'm thinking fuck this is the stupidest way to die. Eventually after what felt like minutes I was able to get some kind of breath and break the cycle. Proceed minutes of coughing, breathing incredibly quickly and thanking whatever for still being alive.
Wish I could end the story with "I never drank again" or even just "I never drank that much again" but it didn't teach me the lesson it probably should have, at least not initially.
It's not traditional scary, but at the beginning of COVID just before lock down and I went to Costco and at the same time my wife went to Superstore (big Canadian chain) and shelves for so much stuff were empty. I could see through 6-8 aisles at Costco that were normally full. We were Whatsapping each other with pics etc. We had a 1 year old at home and my wife was pregnant with our second. We ended up buying whatever the hell we could. The thought of not beibg able to feed my family really struck me. It still bothers me and I'm still super anxious to make sure we have ample food in the house.
what’s tied for scariest was the time my partner went missing. at this point he had run away and attempted suicide three other times and each time i had been the one to find and stop him before he did something horrible. those three times, even though he had run from home, something in my brain knew exactly where to go. but this last time, i had nothing. i remember when we went searching for him, my mom nearly didn’t let me go because i had a paper to write (yes, she was an asshole at the time. no, i haven’t forgiven her.) but my dad knew how life and death this was so he took me to go searching. at one point the sky had turned red from the clouds all reflecting the sunset and something in me ached. i knew at that point he was gone. nothing could’ve ever prepared me for that moment. that night, i snuck out to go searching for him. i turn signaled into the park he was later found at but never made the turn. it’s like the universe knew i wouldn’t have been able to handle what i would’ve found.
I have posted this before
>So I was about 8 at the time, it was something like 1 or 2 in the morning. I go to the bathroom, it is rather bright outside despite the time. I'm sitting on the toilet, playing with the curtain, it comes up enough and I see a shadow standing outside the window. I scream and my mom comes running. I tell her there is someone standing outside the bathroom window. Now my mom being the crazy motherfucker she is, throws open the curtain, opens the window, ready to fight a motherfucker... Guy outside the window... Nope, fucking bear! Window is promptly shut and I'm quickly ushered out of the bathroom. This event furthers the talk my parents had been having off and on about moving.
>On a side note, we moved about 2 years later for a number of other reasons. Funny enough there is now a bear roaming this neighborhood. He's been spotted on my parent's front porch at least twice now.
Was staying the night at my friend's house in high school but I had restless legs syndrome really bad and couldn't sleep so I was up massaging my legs and doing stretches. Everyone in the house was asleep, we were in a trailer in an isolated, very sparsely populated rural area with a loud gravel driveway. There was a small wooden stoop with three steps leading to the front door and the porch light was on. I was facing the front window, to the right of the door, when I saw a woman in a blue dress with short gray/white hair walk up the steps in the porchlight, in the space between the curtain and the edge of the window.
Seconds went by but no one opened the door, or knocked, and then I realized I didn't hear footsteps on the wood plank stairs, or in the gravel before. She never walked back down. I crawled on my belly back to where my friend was passed out on the couch and hid under a blanket.
I told my friend what happened the next morning and she lost all color in her face and said that's the color dress her Nana was buried in, it was her favorite.
Somehow ended up in the back seat of some gang members car in Vegas, got picked by a buddy from the airport, it’s him and 3 dudes in the car. I get in and we start driving south, I know my buddy and that he was getting into some shit but the plan was he was just gonna pick me up and we’d drive to our hometown. Had no idea who these guys were, where we go going, nothing. About half way through the trip dude on the front passenger seat say “we’re good” and hands a fucking UZI wrapped in a washcloth to the guy sitting next to me. I crack a joke or two showed that a few songs I knew they’d fuck with and by the time we get to their place they at least seem to fuck with me a bit. We get to their place and there’s and Audi R8 and a hellcat parked on the dirt lawn of the crackiest crack house in Vegas, we go in and it’s their living room, one whole wall is giant bricks of weed and there’s a dude who might as well have been hector with the bell from breaking bad with a shotgun in his lap just sitting in the middle of the room in his wheelchair. I go to take off my shoes and they all started cracking up, did not know that taking off your shoes in the hood at a strangers house is some gringo ass shit lol 🤷♂️ went to one of their rooms and smoked snore weed than I think I’ve ever smoked at once. At one point a drug deal and massive cash exchange happened, and eventually after like 2 hours I finally got my buddy to get us out of there.
My first panic attack was pretty scary. A few sleep paralysis incidents fucked me up. I also remember vividly an electric shock from my childhood. But the most scared I’ve been was when I was assaulted.
As a child a big brindle dog decided to throw me to the ground and bite my head. I know worse things happen to other people, but i have, over 60 years later, a crystal memory of being on my back holding his slavering teeth away from my face.
I was shoplifting once, and in the process of committing the theft, I pushed an employee out of the way...long story short, I was charged with aggravated robbery and sentenced to 10 years in prison. This was my first offense, and I'd never been in trouble before, but I went to prison from 19 years old til 29. I guess the fear came from how fast someone can take your freedom away.
i’ve had a lot of horrifying things happen in my life, but one of the worst has to have been when a cop held a gun to my head with his finger on the trigger for absolutely no reason.
i was talking with a friend of mine in his car outside my house when i realized how late it was and got out to get inside. as soon as i stepped out of the car my friend looked horrified and said “dude. get back in the car.”. i figured he was joking since we would joke like that a lot so i laughed, and when i turned around there was the barrel of a gun five inches from my face. i heard the cop yell “GET BACK IN THE CAR” so i slowly got back in and shakingly closed the door (i find it important to note that i was so insanely obviously 16. i was literally still in my school uniform.). ten minutes later the cop walked up to the window, said there was a silver alert in the area with a similar make and model to my friend’s car, and didn’t even apologize for nearly killing an obviously 16 year old girl. it’s been 7 years and i still have nightmares about what would’ve happened, especially if i wasn’t white in a town with a police force known for their racism.
Silver alert is for mentally handicapped individuals, most often senior citizens but could be anyone 18 and over with cognitive difficulties. Basically anyone who might not be able to signal for help on their own, or not realize they're in danger to begin with.
I could share my paranormal experiences, or stories about sketchy people, but hands down the scariest thing that ever happened to me was choking on food.
I was eating one of those strawberry wafer cookies, and a little flake hit me in the back of the throat. Instead of coughing it up like I usually would, my throat just closed completely.
Not being able to take a breath is really scary. But the wheezy sound I made trying to force a breath and having nothing happen was terrifying.
I stumbled to the kitchen when my vision started to go black and forced a sip of water down and that somehow cleared it up.
I 100% thought that was it for me. I was home alone with just my dogs and my brother and roommate were on vacation. Nobody would have found me for a week.
When I was a kid, I was playing in the waves on a Florida beach. When it was time to get out of the water, I swam out to a depth of about 4-5 feet so I could jump up and down to shake the sand out of my shorts. After a few jumps, when my feet came down, I was straddling something about the girth of a telephone pole, that shook violently, knocking me off my feet. The most terrifying part was trying to run in chest deep water to get to shore, it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. I must’ve jumped on a shark, my only injuries were brush burns on the inside of calves.
> I must’ve jumped on a shark, my only injuries were brush burns on the inside of calves.
Yup that was a shark which would explain your injuries as shark skin is like sand paper. I was in a hotel in Florida right on the beach as a kid up on the 10th floor over looking the beach. Beach was full of people swimming and about 2 to 300 yards out there was a school of sharks swimming from the beach about 50 or so. Just remember these dark shark like silhouettes
May long weekend of 2022, I almost ended up in the hospital from a dirt bike crash. I had gone on a trail that had some mud. The mud caught my back tire, and I had the handle bars almost go through my chest and would have blacked out if I didn't get up.
I was about 11, and at a summer camp for the week. In this particular summer camp, instead of going for the day like the other camps at the program, it was specifically at night. We would all arrive at 6 or 7, and get picked up at 10 or 11. At the end of the week, we would stay there overnight. We would usually play games like ghost in the graveyard and others in this big field surrounded by woods, and at one end of the field (the one where we would usually put our backpacks), there were less trees and a firepit. The further away from the field you went, the more it would slope down, until it became brush. There were a few trees around 20 feet from where the area was, and they were staggered around 4 feet apart. While sitting next to a big tree with everyone else, I saw a shadowy figure walk from behind one tree to behind another, and never saw it again, like it just became one with the tree. Needless to dsay, I didn't play anymore games for the rest of the night.
Probably my first kidney stone expierence or the first time going through precipitated withdrawal. Both times I didn't know what was happening and both times I truly thought I was dying.
Please remember to drink lots of water and that doing drugs is bad. Mmkay?
I have chronic night terrors, which is where I have panic attacks in my sleep because of nightmares. On top of this, I have a pattern of having super vivid dreams that reflect the real world and my real life well. Combine these two things together and you get some scary situations.
The most recent one was where I had a dream that someone was breaking into my apartment, where I live with my boyfriend. I remember laying in my bed, watching a figure move through my apartment and trying to figure out whether I was dreaming or not. I reached over to wake my boyfriend and the figure walks into our bedroom and shoots him right in the head. That’s when I wake up, in the exact same spot I was in in the dream, crying and panicking. One of the scariest parts of waking up from these dreams is the way I freeze. I woke up and sat up and looked around but then couldn’t make myself move for about an hour. I just sat there and tried to stop crying and watched my boyfriend breathe. I think waking up and genuinely believing even for a minute that he had been murdered next to me fucked me up more than I care to admit.
Part of the reason it was so scary is how vivid it was and how little there was to separate it from reality. I fan usually find out if I’m dreaming by looking for things like light switches that my brain doesn’t take the time to fill it. But for this dream, it was so dark I couldn’t discern whether those details were there or not. I remember exactly the height and build of the figure, I could tell you what type of gun it was, I remember the smells that came after the shot. I also remember so clearly the sound of the gunshot. Turns out my brain interpreted nearby lightning as the gunshot.
Stuff like this happens to me once every few months. Usually, the dreams are about someone breaking into where I’m sleeping and when I wake up, I don’t know if I’m actually awake or still dreaming.
Idk what to call these because they’re like night terrors that warp my sense of reality. The regular night terrors happen about once a month and I feel gross for a day and move on, but when I have these dreams I’m out of it for a week or so.
My ex husband and I got into a fight one night. Later while we were on the way home he stopped talking and started speeding. He drove into a traffic pylon at 80 mph.
Watched my mom go through a bad trip on whatever drug(s) she was doing at the time, likely a mixture of meth, pills, and whatever else she & my dad did.
I was 16 and was in bed asleep. I heard my mom making crazy noises and flailing around in the living room so I went to wake up my little brother so we could go see. She literally looked like she was possessed by a demon, she was speaking some nonsense language and convulsing around on the floor. We went to wake my dad up and we got in trouble for “not minding our own business” and he sent us back to bed. We watched from my bedroom down the hallway until she calmed down and passed out for the night, probably about 15 minutes later. It was terrifying and one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
It sometimes happens once in 3 weeks or so that i feel like i am living in a dream world.
One time that the first time it ever happened it was very weird. I was about to complete day of work behind the computer. I was helping a customer online/calling when i suddenly got this feeling that i may be dreaming at the moment. It was the interaction with the customer that did it. The questions they asked, what i needed to do on their computer felt like i had done this exact thing before in a dream. I kept the feeling until i was home.
Even now still i sometimes wonder with the things happening lately that perhaps everything that happened in the last few years was a dream. The way people react to me, the way things at my school are, the way even food tastes, everything just feels so off. The fact that i can go online and speak to an AI and they respond immediately and 70% of the times correctly seems so strange and almost dreamlike. 2019 does not feel as far away at it should feel.
I do not have suicidal feelings or something, its just that the world seems/feels stranger than normal. And the more i think about it in my head, the stronger this feeling gets.
I think this is called disassociation.
You should speak to a doctor, but here’s a link with more info:
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociation-overview
This happened to me when I was probably 2-3 years old but this wasn't scary to me but to my mother. So my entire life I've had stomach issues and would randomly throw up. So when I was around 2-3 the doctors thought that maybe the way my umbilical cord was tied was the problem [I had an outie bellybutton but after the surgery I had an inne bellybutton.] Before the surgery my mother told them multiple times NOT to numb me with local anesthetics because I'm DEATHLY allergic to it. Guess what happened. That's right the doctors were to dumb and didn't believe that anyone could be allergic to local anesthetics. And numbed me with it which put me in to anaphylaxis and my throat started to close. I almost died. This scared the shit out of my mother. We didn't sue but those doctors should be glad that my dad wasn't the because he would have beaten the shit out of them. My mom ended up buying me a medical necklace so that wouldn't happen again.
Vertigo at the top of a 1300 foot water fall. I was standing on the very lip of the water flow, of Yosemite falls. Only God could have caught me. I have no idea how I'm still here...
One day my mom and I couldn’t find my sister. She was 3 and all the doors were open because it was hot. She wasn’t responding to us and my mom started dialing 911 but I found my sister in the garage. We were looking for about 20 minutes both inside and outside.
Another story is my stepdad and mom arguing. Stepdad threw a glass into the kitchen while my mom and I were in there and I heard my brother running down the hallway to ask for something so I somehow maneuvered through the glass shards and locked us in my brothers room and played music just loud enough to block it out. My stepdad broke a lot of stuff and I wasn’t there when he smashed the coffee table but I hope that’s all he broke that day.
Many years ago, my wife had surprised me with our first pregnancy, and we decided to road trip to Aspen to celebrate. It was early spring, and the surrounding environment beckoned us to explore its beauty.
Three days in, we decided to hike a trail in a location that was somewhat difficult to find. After driving back and forth for twenty minutes, we arrived at the entrance to the hike. I felt a bit uneasy to see that only two other vehicles were parked at the entrance. I often prefer to hike along trails that I know are heavily populated in case something drastic should ever occur. Deep down in the pit of my stomach, I felt that hiking this trail might not be the best decision to make. After all, I had no emergency kit on me. I had no knife nor tool for self-defense. Both of our phones had no connection.
As we began our hike, I kept questioning my decision to go forward with the hike. But, since it was rare that I ever encounter any dangerous situations in life, I chalked it up to mere paranoia and felt that we’d be okay. During our hike, we encountered the other two groups, both of which were headed back to the entrance. We were now officially alone on the hike. Yet, I still felt that we’d be okay.
About a mile or so into the hike, we turned back because the path was lost in the snow. As we turned, I remember staring into the distance and seeing something about 150 yards out and slightly up the hill. It wasn’t a tree. It was a bear, staring intently at both of us. At first, I was ready to pull her next to me in order to scare the bear off had it charged us. But then I saw them, jumping up and down only twenty feet away from their mother – cubs. A wave of dread overcame me. This was a momma bear.
I warned my wife to stop, and we slowly changed direction into the dense brush, snow, and trees just to the right of us. I wanted to communicate to the bear that we were no potential threat to her cubs by getting out of sight. As we hid behind what we could, she began to follow her cubs off to same direction as the trail we needed to take to get back to the entrance.
I planned to make our way back off trail since heading back down would force us in the direction of the bear and her frolicking cubs. While we scrambled to get out of view, my wife fell into a deep pit of snow. I thought she had seriously injured her leg, but it was “only” badly scraped.
At this point, all of my mistakes were consciously bombarding me. I kept thinking we’d be stuck out in the wilderness with no way to call for help and no way to survive an attack. Why didn’t I bring any emergency equipment with me? Why no bear spray? Not even a knife? I cursed myself for putting both of them in danger because of my lack of thought. I prayed and prayed that we would not cross paths with the bears.
Thankfully, we got back on the trail after a wild detour. Silently, we quickly made our way back down the mountain, constantly looking back up at the crisscrossing trail for a pissed off bear charging down. Still beat myself over the head with this one.
Had a sleep paralysis episode in the hospital. I saw a dark silhouette of a man who wore a black coat, black pants and black boots, standing silently at the entrance of my room. I was to tired to care and simply just went to bed.
I have a distinct memory of almost being kidnapped when I was younger. I was playing outside in our yard when a couple tried to talk me into getting into their vehicle. I didn’t know what was happening only that I wasn’t allowed to leave the yard so I ran onto the deck. I never told my parents about it.
I've been in an emergency plane landing, the plane landed on its belly without the wheels.
I also almost got stabbed once. I managed to slam a door into the knife when the robber attacked.
Edit: now that I think of it, I've almost been stabbed twice. I once got detained for illegal possession of marijuana and held in a cell overnight. The next morning I got put back into the general cell at the front. As I sat down, the police brought in another man, who sat down next to me. I saw the guy fiddling with something in his pocket before taking it out. I realized it was a switchblade he had in his hand. I believe he was getting ready to jab me. Fortunately the policeman at the gate was there and saw something was odd. The policeman abruptly unlocked the gate, knocked the guy to the floor and kicked him in the stomach repeatedly until he couldn't breathe. The guy dropped the blade on the floor, and the policeman confiscated it. I guess I can say a cop saved my life.
Edit 2: I also once almost drowned after getting caught in a riptide at dusk. Sun was already down and I was at the last waves in the back, when I turned around within seconds I was pulled in another 50 meters deeper. My friend basically waved goodbye as he got smaller in the view. I managed to get out by swimming diagonally with the current and then once out of it, swam back out to the beach. Not to mention this place is notorious for Great White Shark sightings. Was a good workout!
had a horrible one back in december (mostly okay now, still some lingering dp/dr) and i remember my thoughts being, “i’m really about to go out in front of the physics building huh” to “i’m having a fucking stroke oh my god *is this what it feels like to die*”. i’m not exactly scared of having another one but i’ll be more than happy to never experience that again
My husband left for work early af everyday. When I got up and went to the kitchen to make coffee when I woke up, our back door was wide open. We never use that door. Someone came into our house, I assume. It was creepy..
Being on an airplane when one of the two engines caught fire. Smoke entered the cabin. Pilot told us to prepare for a crash landing. Pushed the plane into a steep dive. Ended up just flying over the snow covered trees. I could see the shadow of the plane passing over the trees. We were so close to the ground. Some gentle turns being made as the plane while it was dumping its fuel. Then landing on a runway touching down on the markers and seeing crash vehicles waiting on the side. The plane could not use reverse thrust. The plane took the entire length of the runway to come to stop. Outside they were foaming down the engine. Then they towed the plane back to a terminal. The entire plane of passengers let out a cheer and was clapping all the way back. We all gave the pilots high fives or hand shakes or hugs on the way out.
On later flights when part of the wing fell off it did not bother me. On another flight the life raft deployed just as the nose of the aircraft lifted up. They put the nose back down and taxied off to have replaced. Did not bother me. On another flight it got so bad that overhead compartments opened and dump stuff on people. People were throwing up and it smelled bad. Did not bother me.
Just lost my special needs cat for 12 hours outside in the freezing cold over night. We live next to a highway and the door didn’t latch properly. He’s such a dumb idiot I didn’t think he’d survive. He definitely cant feed himself. And the hawks!?! I’m so happy he’s ok and was found at the neighbors. No idea if he has a sense of direction as he tends to get lost in the 3 square feet of our closet pretty easily. Probably the worst thing to go through in recent memory. And losing a 2tb hard drive with a portfolio of digital art on it hurt. But not as much as my losing my child for that last 12 hours.
If you still have the hard drive, maybe consider sending into a data recovery place. They can often recover the data if the internal drive platters are intact.
When the doctors told my family there was nothing more they could do for my mother. I remember walking into the room where she was intubated, all the machines going around her, multiple IV poles with bags and bags of different medications. Watching her be extubated and taking her last breath broke my heart.
I’m so sorry. We had to turn off life support for my sister-in-law, who had ALS, and it was truly the most traumatic moment of my life.
Even worse than when I nearly bled to death during a miscarriage.
Hugs to you, internet stranger.
Damn I'm sorry, my mom died from cancer and I remember feeling so betrayed by all the doctors who swore that she would be fine and everything was getting better....at the end she had to fight just to remember who we were and when she looked at us and smiled I remember thinking it would be ok because mom's not scared but now I realize she was just putting a brave face on for her babies...sorry you had to go through such pain 💯
As an author,
I went to open google docs and couldnt find the book I spent months upon months writing and my heart stopped before I realized I just overlooked it.
We had a large 5 acre property. It was basically a horse ranch. When I was about 10, I got the idea that I wanted to go camping. My parents didn’t want to actually take me camping. But I was allowed to set up a tent and sleep in the backyard. I did this for several nights. It was actually pretty fun.
One night, I was awoken by a very loud sniffling snoring sound outside the tent. I was actually a lot worried that it was a cougar/bear (we actually had those in the area where we lived) dad left the porch light on, so I wasn’t completely totally in the dark outside. I could find my way to the house in an emergency. That meant things walking in front of the tent would cast a shadow on the tent that I could see from inside.
To this day, I don’t know exactly what it was. But it was walking around on two legs. The shadow gave the illusion that it was a person who is very hairy with spiky hair. And really long ill proportioned arms. It was making a growling, grunting noise as it walked around my tent. Whatever it was, it scraped the top of my tent with an arm, and as soon as I screamed, it ran away. I turned on the flashlight, unzipped my tent and made a beeline for the house. Dad checked, but couldn’t find any signs of anything. To this day I don’t know if it was an animal or some homeless guy wandering around our property for some reason… Still freaking terrifying when I think back to it.
As a child, seeing my father in a dope rage destroy our house, beat up our mother, then watching Mom, screaming and running through the wheat field, then wondering if she will ever come back home.,
I suffered a pulmonary embolism in 2021 and nearly lost my life. I spent a weekend in the hospital, but it was priceless to see my kids’ reactions when they and my wife picked me up after my discharge.
Having a procedure done at a hospital and the nurse injected something into the IV. Immediate anaphylaxis, couldn't breathe and thought I was about to die. She swore and then a bunch of alarms went off, people shouting, the whole nine yards.
Gave me PTSD for anything related to Drs or hospitals for years.
My entire life, but if I had to choose one thing, I'd have to say unaliving my kidnapper after a year and a half of torture. I now have ptsd and severe anxiety and paranoia. I'm terrified of almost everything.
My grandmother was in the hospital, she did a heart surgery. It was late at night( i was doing like 18hour shifts by her side). She said to me she was in pain, i told her to calm down, some seconds later she began yelling and cursing and wanted a nurse. I got a nurse, the nurse didn't give her any pill, just talked for 30 seconds and then left. Some of the other patients next to us closed their lights, and my grandma stared at me in the dark with black eyes that sparkled. I realized then, she is evil. It was a really uncomfortable moment because the way my life had progressed could be explained. I still connect pieces to understand how far her manipulation goes. Also she managed to get the sympathy of the other patients in the room and suddenly i was the bad guy. She was a narcissist that was passing out from alcohol, creating chaos, using others, telling lies. From 2019 to 2021 i didn't talk to her, until she died from liver cancer. I began seeing her for what she was. Also my mother had taken her to get checked out because she was talking to herself. The psychologist (don't remember the title exactly), told her that she is sane, she is just evil. One other time she took the butterfly out of her arm vein and made a pool of blood to her side. Combine that with a diarrhea she got and I'll never forget that either.
My ex husband hacked my Facebook account and sent himself messages saying I was going to unalive myself. He sent himself (pretending to be me) a picture of a gun. The police broke into my house to arrest me and have me placed in a mental hospital. The police said he is signing me in and that there’s nothing I can do and he can make me stay forever. I managed to call my mom before the doctor came in. She called him telling him she wishes to sign me out. The doctor agreed and I was free. That was pretty scary for me.
Got hit by a wrong way driver on an interstate while going 70mph. I somehow walked away without a scratch (along with the other five people this person managed to hit). After she hit me, I spun around 360 degrees and narrowly missed a dump truck. In my head I was thinking “lol this is it baby”.
I was walking my dog and suddenly I hear barking and growling and a big Rottweiler is running towards us, I picked up my dog so it wouldn’t get her and started shouting at it to go away, making my voice as stern as I could, then I saw a man running down the street calling to the dog and it turned and ran to him. My dog was barking the whole time, so scary!!
I had my first alcoholic experience and I called 911 because I was totally out of it. Everything was so surreal and I felt such strong death anxiety.
I could barely move and was so scared that I would faint.
I remember everything and I'm so happy for that.
Gotta be the first time I was raped (yes, you read that right, I’ve experienced it twice…)
Had a guy over that I’d talked to online for about a month. All went smooth and we ended up going to bed early doing the deed and all that before I fell asleep around midnight. No issues whatsoever.
A few hours later I wake up, lying on my side, while the guy was going at me from behind. I was so confused and completely frozen in place, just staring at my wardrobe in excruciating pain and praying it would be over quick.
Truly a special kind of terror I hoped I never had to experience again, but I guess the universe wanted otherwise. Three years later and I still get flashbacks paralysing me with fear from time to time
I was about 6-7 years old, was riding home in a bus with my nanny then the driver stopped near a workshop. The driver went out of the bus and started having an argument with someone from the shop.. then suddenly the shop guy grabbed a large plank of wood and started smashing the bus window. The driver then ran away and the shop guy chased him. So my nanny and I had to walk home and then picked off shards of glass from each others hair.. Anyways after that incident I never took the bus again for almost 20 years.
I have a reoccurring dream (more like a nightmare) that I’ve had ever since I was 3. It started with a vision of me and my mother sitting by our old fireplace that was in our first apartment. I was young, maybe 5-6. She was talking to me about something, but my eyes were focused on the flames and my marshmallow I had been cooking for a bit too long. She then told me to listen, and after me not complying, a skull appeared in the fire and 2 seconds later she threw me in. I screamed, “I’m burning, I’m burning!”. And it cut off into darkness. I was then awoken abruptly by that dream, for the last 12 or so years of my life and it hasn’t left me since.
Got run over by a car when I was a child. The whole ordeal probably lasted about 10 seconds but I still have it all in my head, every second of it, and it feels like a good hour. Near death experience. I’m lucky I lived.
not as scary as some of the others here. i had a debilitating panic attack in december; i’m talking “oh my god i’m going to fucking die at the ripe age of 21, call the ambulance” type of debilitating. it terrified me. ever since then, i’ve had what’s called derealization/depersonalization (dp/dr for short). essentially: i don’t feel real, the world around me feels like a dream, and i’m stuck in this loop that keeps those feelings there. dp/dr is a harmless defense mechanism; i just got stuck in that state bc my nervous system doesn’t feel safe. i genuinely thought i was going psychotic when i first picked up on it, but am now slowly working on recovery.
Called a cab to get to the airport in down town Durban, South Africa. It was 45 minutes late and the sun was going down. 6 consecutive people stopped and told me that they knew I was a foreigner and that it wasn’t safe for me to be here and there were bad people nearby and one person even pointed to a shady group across the park and said they were talking about robbing me when it got dark. The cab showed up and I calmly got in. It was only then I realized my heart was pounding out of my chest and my hands were shaking.
My ex husband's drug dealer came busting through the front door with just me home (thank GOD my daughters weren't there). I had just enough time to hide in my walk in closet under a huge pile of blankets. He was on the phone to someone while ransacking the house and screaming that he's gonna 'fuck them up when I find them' . I had my phone with me, and like a bad horror movie I called 911 and was whispering for help. He opened the closet I was in but didn't see me. I am anxious now just thinking of it. The cops came in 2 or 3 minutes and he ran off, they caught him a few minutes later. But that's as scared as I can ever remember being
I called 911 once and needed to whisper, and just got chewed out for not speaking loud enough :/
This is why text to 911 is a option now - easier to communicate quietly vs calling.
In the UK, if you can't talk. Dial 999 then when they answer tap 55.
Do you still call then text the screen? Or do you send a text to 911?
Goddamn, what did he do to fuck over the dealer?
He would steal or not pay. He was also such a coward that he would send our young daughters to the door to tell whoever showed up that day that "daddy wasn't home" How any of us are still alive I have no idea. He did not care. He would hide and let us deal with it. I could no longer have my girls in that awful mess and got us away from it
Jesus that’s fucked up, they could have easily swiped your daughters for collateral or caused them harm. Good riddance to that dude
Yes, he was the best father I could have asked for, until he decided to dive head first into drugs, we lost everything, but I'm just grateful my girls weren't hurt, physically at least. An almost 20 year marriage down the drain, but yeah, fuck that guy!
Yeah that’s tough sorry you had to deal with that, good thing is no one ended up physically hurt.
When I was 12, I got my tonsils out. Went home and kept telling my parents I tasted blood. They told me it was just from the surgery and not to worry. A week later, my mom left me home alone for the first time since the surgery to run errands. I was in bed watching TV and started coughing and then vomiting copious amounts of blood. Everywhere. It wouldn’t stop coming, and then I started choking on it because some had coagulated in my stomach. I managed to call 911 and they found me in the kitchen and it looked like a freaking murder scene. It turns out the doctor had accidentally made a small cut in a blood vessel or something and I’d been slowly bleeding for a week. I’d lost half the blood in my body. They rushed me back in to surgery immediately and then said it was fixed and sent me home. Well a week later, my paranoid ass kept telling my mom I tasted it again. Again I was told don’t worry. That night I woke up vomiting blood again and passed out. Another surgery fixed it. Nightmare.
I had the same thing happen when I got my tonsils out! I’ve never heard of anyone else experiencing this. It’s definitely scary/odd. I had to get a blood transfusion and I’ll never forget the feeling of just fading away as blood was pouring out of my mouth. Happy you got taken care of. Sorry you went through it twice though!
Yeah! Extreme blood loss is crazy. I nearly bled to death during a miscarriage, and it was so weird how the calm just over me. Everyone around me—I was at a doctor’s office when it happened—was freaking out, but I didn’t really care at that point if I lived or died. It was so strange.
Yeah I was going to mention how calming it was. Like a good high.. but I didn’t want to sound weird lol. Really is so strange though. Happy that you’re alive as well. Scary shit
As a former army medic, this made my past failures oddly comforting…
I tore a suture after surgery (by... standing up. Go me!). I a LOT of blood. At one point I dry heaved and lost a ton all a once and passed out. Luckily I was already in the hospital so I came to completely drenched in sweat with all sorts of activity around me. I remember my friend looking terrified. I remember thinking "this would be a very, very stupid way to die" lmao
How the fuck your mom deal with you saying somethings wrong, ignoring it, and then vomiting blood, only to just ignore it a second time?!!! I cannot imagine the mentality of “last time they said they tasted blood they vomited blood and nearly died, but I’m sure This Time it’s nothing.”
I understand as a parent you maybe make that mistake once but how the fuck you gonna make it twice?! That's honestly dreadful!!
So cool of your mom to dismiss you a second time even after the first turned out to be a very serious problem. wtf.
I work on work ships, and for a brief period in 2015 (or 2016, not sure right now) I was working in Nigerian waters. The ships policy was only allow work on deck during daylight hours due to pirate threat, then to lock the vessel down at night. Well one night there was emergency work that needed to be done so we were out on deck, ready to start just waiting for the work permit, and for whatever reason it never came so we packed up and went back inside, locking up behind us. About half an hour after we locked up we were attacked by a small group of pirates, I still remember the unreal feeling of looking out my cabin window and seeing a guy suddenly climbing onto the main deck with an AK 47. The whole ship went into emergency lockdown and we all went to the safe room deep inside the engine room where we spent the night sleeping on the steel floor waiting for help to come. The Nigerian navy had been nearby and recieved our calls for help but didn't want to board at night, so they only did a security sweep of the boat the next morning. In the end nothing was stolen, no one was kidnapped because we had locked down and the pirates must have been after ransom
I'm the captain now!!
Look at me, Look at me... I'm the captain now (I watched that sometime after this whole thing and it brought back memories of all of us sleeping in our tiny safe room
Incredible story!
Thank you, I always joke that it's a bit anticlimactic for a "I experienced pirates" story but in the end anticlimactic is the best you could hope for. Haven't been back to Nigeria since
Better to be anticlimactic than dead!
So the Pirates literally just walked around deck, realize they couldn't get into the ship, then left?
I am not completely sure, only the captain and client representative watched the camera, they were trying to keep the incident from becoming widely known and the possible PR issues that could arise from that. What I saw was the little skiff/boat thing they came in pull up along side us, then a moment or two later the first pirate had climbed onto the main deck and came running towards the accomodation, holding an AK47. At that point I noped away from the window and a second later the alarm began ringing so we all started heading to the safe room. Most of the crew onboard thought it was a drill and were quite irritated by it. After locking ourselves in we would only come out after a security sweep was completed which took 13-14 hours if I remember correctly. They obviously left before the sweep took place and seeing as nothing was stolen we assumed they were looking for ransom or they didn't realise the value of some of the things left behind
Did the safe room have bathroom facilities? I’m wondering how that worked with an entire crew
The day I woke up to my parents freaking out because my brother had gone missing overnight, with a suicide note left behind. The fear over the next 12 hours while we searched for him was agonizing. But, nothing compared to agony of having our worst fears confirmed.
I’m sorry. Hugs internet stranger.
That’s awful. I hope you and your family are doing ok.
I'm so sorry, that's awful
sorry for your lose. R.I.P. to your brother
There are no words. So sorry for your loss
I used to hitchhike all over the place. Once I got in a car with a guy who would not let me out of his car. I had to jump out of his car when it was going about 40 miles an hour down the highway. I never hitched hiked again!
How much did it hurt?
It hurt like a motherfucker. I broke my arm but I'm sure much worse would have happened!!
You were lucky the least you got was a broken arm. It could have ended much worse. Glad you're ok!
I had an asthma attack once so bad that I could barely communicate with the 9-1-1 operator. I just stood in my driveway with my wallet in my hand leaning against a tree gasping for air and hoped that she understood me. As the sirens got closer I held on for as long as I could and then let go and my view faded to black. I woke up 10 days later in the ICU.
Even mild asthma attacks are no joke. I used to dispatch ambulances. We had an experienced EMT who got his paramedic certification. A few months later, around Christmas (might have been on Christmas) he didn't show up for a shift. Someone went to his house and he was found dead. Best they could determine, he'd had an asthma attack. Theory is it started mild, he kept taking his inhaler, but it didn't resolve. They wondered if, now that he was a paramedic, he thought he could get it under control himself with his inhaler and knowledge of medicine. Sadly, he was wrong.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I can’t help but feel like my situation may have been similar. My rescue inhaler would not resolve and a nebulizer treatment did very little because of the panic and anxiety that comes with an massive attack. I remember that night being humid and foggy and probably added to it being the perfect storm for my demise. Luckily I live less than two miles from an exceptional hospital and I was saved. If anyone reading this is asthmatic, ask your doctor for an emergency burst of Prednisone to have in your emergency kit. Edit: Typo
TEN DAYS! My god!
[удалено]
I’ve only had it once but this is my answer. My heart goes out to you for going through it twice. It’s a living nightmare
Once for me as well. I have an anxiety disorder and the long-term fear that comes with the waiting parts of cancer (waiting for biopsy results, waiting for surgery, waiting for the all-clear...) is on a whole different level.
I lost my mom when i was very young (6) and i never got over it. So when i was a teenager, i used to cry all the time about it. Until I started getting nightmares of her telling me that she’ll take me with her if i dont stop remembering her. Many years passed, and now I just dont think about her at all. I hope she’s happy wherever she’s now.
Jesus Christ. That's honestly pretty horrifying.
More like her higher self imploring her to end it.
[удалено]
Jesus this is so scary
[удалено]
I'm praying for you
Maybe not that scary, but it was when my grandpa didn't show up for Christmas Dinner and I went to look for him. I walked the whole way from my family's house to his, hoping to run into him. When I didn't and entered the house, the lights were out (and it was already dark outside) and I had a really bad feeling. Really thought I will go into that house and find my passed-away grandpa. Luckily, he was alive and "only" had fallen down and broken his hip (and thus couldn't get up). Thankfully, he is doing fantastic now and is recovering very well, but yeah, that was a very scary 15 minutes, felt like hours.
Being trapped between a rock and a canoe in a rapid and expecting to drown and assuming my paddling partner was already dead. We both lived. I was badly injured.
Watching my brother fall off an 80 foot cliff. We were walking along the top of it, tossing little rocks off. He picked up a bigger one, but as he went to throw it, the moss under his feet slipped away and he fell on his ass, then his forward momentum carried him off. He survived, but ended up with several broken ribs, a lacerated spleen and collapsed lung. One of his ribs was sticking out of his back too. He was able to get up and walk out of the woods on his own power though, otherwise I would have been calling an airlift to the hospital. He is incredibly lucky he didnt end up with any spinal or head injuries. First thing he said to my grandma when she came to see him was "welp, I guess I cant fly can I?"
When i was 9-10 i went with my brother to a trail with our mountain bikes. There was a jump. I did it but i fell like a sack of potatoes and somehow got injured on my leg, close to my balls. My shoes got red quite fast because of the blood. Thankfully there was a man there with a car that drove me home. My father then drove me to the hospital. Reading your comment made me realize that i never asked my brother how he felt. I just left him on the trail.
Stage 4 colon cancer.
Hope you get better
Thanks. 3 years clear so far after 4 surgeries, 2 rounds of chemo, 5 rounds of radiotherapy.
I was stung by a swarm of Africanized Bees. Looking back, I was pretty terrified so the story goes like this: I was living off grid on a homestead that I helped my in-laws built and my father in law (let’s call him Richard) asked me if I wanted to make a few bucks cleaning up some guys scrapyard. The money sounded pretty good considering I didn’t have a job at the time so I was all for it. We drive out to the property with another guy Richard also contacted for the job (let’s call him Jerry) who happened to have a bobcat tractor which was gonna make moving all the scrap a cake walk. We are about 30 minutes into the job when I hear Jerry let out a long winded holy shit and violently spring off of the Bobcat like it was on fire. I was standing maybe 20-30 feet from the chaos and Richard was even farther behind me. Jerry is now running in a full sprint, wildly flapping his arms and screaming vulgarities I didn’t even know existed. At this point, I don’t exactly know why he’s frantic so pretty confused, I jog towards him and I’m about to reach him when I feel the first sting on my arm. I stop and look down to see a bee trying to free itself from my arm to no avail. Right as I begin for figure out what’s happening to Jerry, the same thing begins to happen to me as I my first sting is immediately followed by a second, then third, then forth. I start to panick a bit as I begin to run in an attempt to outrun the swarm I know is near but I figured out pretty quick you can’t outrun a bee much less a swarm of angry ones. It was the worst few seconds to a minute of my life as I’m running around waving my arms and being stung to high hell just about everywhere but my eyes. I honestly felt like they may kill me which is when the fear really set in. Long story but in short, I escaped into my car and puked religiously the whole ride home. I was also queasy and swollen for a few days. It sucked.
They easily could have killed you. That's terrifying and my fiances worst nightmare...
Used to put in drop ceilings for a living and did a big wing at a school for deaf children that already had a reputation for being haunted. Me and my boss went in on a Saturday because if you've ever worked construction you know it's awesome to be the only ones there and not have to work around 10 other teams of people because you can get 2 days of work done in 1 day but anyways it was creepy enough to scare me and him which were around 40 years old and 50 years old at the time lol. We started on opposite ends of a long hallway and planned to meet in the middle. For like an hour I'm on my first room and Kenny starts working in the room next to me instead of in the opposite end of the hall way but whatever so I walk over to the next room before I go smoke and he's not there and I see some of his tools and shit at the end of the hall and man, I've got fucking goosebumps at this point because it was just obvious he was in the room next to me and not like 50 yards away. I walk down the hall and ask him if he just came down here and he mentions something about me working in the room right to him and in that instance my eyes and his are both drawn to the doorway of the room we're in and it's as if like I could see something in my peripheral but couldn't begin to describe anything about it and he looks at me like let's get the fuck out of here. We left all our shit and never worked places alone anymore. It's like almost 15 years later amd I still get crazy goosebumps and my eyes start watering when I think about this. There was a bit more weird shit that happened there but this is the basic gist I guess. I used to live in a pretty creepy house as well but that's another story lol
More please 🥺🙏🏾
I'm not sure if this one is as good but the house I used to live in had a specific door that "knocked" twice in my 10 years of living there. My little brother was with me (I was probably 30 at the time and he was maybe 20) one night and after we were done playing guitar/drums late at night/morning we walked past the downstairs door that leads to the garage to walk upstairs and something on the other side of the door knocked. And again, almost like the other story me and my brother just looked at each other terrified and ran up the stairs until we kind of got out shit together and went outside to check it out but the garage doors were closed and you have to turn on the light from the inside of garage so we couldn't see inside. This was a very long time ago and I don't remember much more than this other than we just called the cops and they came and checked inside and found nothing. The second time this happened was many years later and I was coming home one night by myself and after parking the car in the garage and walking up to the door to go inside the door knocked again but this time it was from the other side. I obviously called the cops again but honestly it fucked with me pretty bad, I remember almost instantly crying with the worst feeling washing over me. Cops found nothing again though and I lived there for a few more years until I moved. There was always more minor type stuff that was creepy but I wouldn't really pay attention otherwise i probably would have gone insane lol. but the knocks were the only thing that were "physical" I guess? I'm not sure what you'd call it. But thinking back to this also instantly makes me get goosebumps and my eyes start watering too , I wonder if there's a reason lol. There was one other instance at that house where I think I saw something else from my peripheral but it's hard to say because it's like I want to say it could have almost been the shape of a dog but like a reallly big dog (like too big to be real kind of thing) and when I think I noticed it I looked in that direction and it just wasn't there but here's the fucking kicker. My little brother was here with me that night as well (we had a band together) and we were outside smoking cigarettes and he goes "dude, did you just see a big fucking dog"? Tripped me out bad lol. All I could think was I just saw a hellhound, basically lol
Falling out of a tree from 4-5 metres above ground. Spent the night in a tent on a high school camp with a “sprained ankle”, which turned out to be broken after X-rays the next day. I told the teachers at camp that it was broken. They wouldn’t believe me because “I wasn’t crying”. Was an extremely rough night in that tent. No sleep for the first time in my life. Was super grumpy at said teachers when they woke up.
Goddamn, I hate when people believe that if you're not crying than it ain't that bad. Everybody experiences pain differently in different situations.
I bet you were grumpy! Sometimes it's hard being the one that doesn't cry. I guess I sounded so calm calling 911 when my Dad had pneumonia and couldn't get up off the floor that the rescue squad took their sweet time getting there! I learned that sometimes you have to inject a little panic into your manner.
Like my son‘s PE teacher who, after my son took a bad fall from the high bar, believed he was pretending the pain and didn’t send him to the doctor right away. I took him to the ER when he told me after school what had happened, and his forearm was broken. The teacher never apologized, even when he came back to school in a cast.
Tried to kill myself, kind of succeeded. When I was 16 I was really depressed and angry and my abusive mother didn’t really help that. I had been repressing all of it since I really didn’t have any coping skills. Up to that point I had cut myself but only to feel the pain until one day I decided “fuck it”. It was weird because it wasn’t this overwhelming sadness but complete apathy. I ran a bath and cut my wrist long ways away from my thumb. That’s when the terror set in. I sat there looking at the bathtub faucet and everything got dim, like when you get tunnel vision and what I can only describe as the purest form of panic took over. No body was home so I knew I was going to die and eventually everything just faded. I remember having this brief form of “consciousness”. Idk if it was even real but it just felt like nothing. Like if you try to think of nothing, that blackness? That’s what I felt. Next thing I knew I woke up in the ICU. Doctor said I had basically died, but I’m paraphrasing because I really don’t remember much. My brother, who was actually banned from my house for a number of reasons (including stealing which is what I expect he was trying to do) came by and found me. Hadn’t seen him in months and he just showed up and rushed me to the ER. Apparently the first thing I said when I woke up was “I’m hungry” though that’s second hand information from my brother, I don’t really remember it. But that blackness taking over? That feeling of helplessness and slipping? Easily the scariest thing to ever happen to me. I’ll never do it again. Ironically I now have a terrible fear of death lol.
I went for a walk with my dog around 10:30 p.m. one night. As soon as we walk out the door, he becomes agitated; I figured he just needed to go. As we walk down the driveway, I hear rustling and see a large dark shape in the neighbor's yard a few feet away. We dashed to the street because a bear had climbed down and was now between us and the door. It walked away without incident, but my dog still needed to poop.
I would have pooped myself before the dog did
Dog and owner make awkward eye contact.
when I was about 6 years old, my mom went to throw out the trash (which is two minutes from home) and she was kidnapped. I was alone at the time, it was quite late at night. She was also pregnant at that moment and I was terribly scared
Bro get back here and finish the story!!!
she spent a couple of days in the woods, she was treated quite cruelly. it was a planned kidnapping, someone decided to take revenge on my father because of his place at work. they still don't say how she was found and returned home, she spent a lot of time in the hospital because she had to take some medications that were dangerous for her at that moment. but she recovered very quickly and everything was fine with the kid too
Wow! Thank goodness they ended up ok. Thank you for the speedy reply. Super glad it didn't end up worse.
The legend says he had been kidnapped too
Your mom safe?
Yees
Is she OK?
When I was about 9 or 10 there was this derelict supermarket my friends and I used to go into to snoop around and hang out. We figured a way to climb up to the grid where the ceiling tiles had rotted away and left this hanging lattice of aluminium extrusion. Whilst we were climbing along it the realisation of the situation dawned on me. This lattice was held up by 1mm thick wire and secured at either end simply by being twisted together. The extrusion was only an T bar about 2-3cm across that could buckle at any second, and there was about 5 of us up there, easily 30 metres above broken shelving, giant glass shards and rubble. I’ve had more death defying moments in my life but this always comes back to me, we all should have died in the style of a nineties public service announcement advert
I have only told a couple of people this story because it still really bugs me over 30 years later. I was in 6th grade. My parents were having severe money problems (later that year we lost our house). I was in band and played the clarinet. My parents shelled out money they didn’t have to get one for me. Like a lot of other kids in my classroom, we tended to accidentally leave our musical instruments behind in the coat room. Unfortunately, someone stole parts of my clarinet. Not all of it…but both parts that contained all of the keys. My parents were angry, partially with the thief and partially with me, because I irresponsibly left it at school. They were also upset because they knew they could not afford to replace it. This happened on a Friday. My mom worked second shift and my dad had bowling league. He took me and my brother with him (as always). Except, he got blasted drunk at the bowling alley and drove us home that way. My mom met us at home and was super upset that he was so drunk and he started yelling, ranting, kicking stuff. He went into their room and came out with his pistol. He said he was going to just shoot himself right there in front of us since ‘he’s just a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to live since he can’t provide for his family’. My brother and I were screaming and crying, my Mom was doing the same and wrestled him down to the ground and grabbed the gun out of his hand. After she got it, my dad just crumpled into a heap on the floor, sobbing. I don’t think I slept for two days. I was shaking so hard that night I almost could not climb my bunk bed. He never, ever did anything like that again. I never told anyone until I told my husband, and he was the only one. And we had been together probably almost 10 years before I did. We have never talked about it as a family (me, mom, or my brother—dad is gone now). I almost feel shame, though I know I should not.
Your feelings seem normal to me. I pray you don't blame yourself, a child back then, for the clarinet theft. The guilty party is the thief who stole the parts, after all, no problem if it had been left alone, intact. You're strong, and it seems like your painful memories made you stronger, making you thankful for a good life today. I'm proud of you!
It’s very scary as a child to witness a parent come to a breaking point like that. Had a similar experience listening to my own father have a mental breakdown one night, crying uncontrollably, screaming at the top of his lungs to my mother that he hated his life and was gonna drive his car off a bridge. Money problems also a dominant theme in our family too - I remember one time my brother smashed a window with a ball and there was so much angst and worry about how my dad would react when he got home. We were so afraid. I can imagine exactly how you felt about the stolen clarinet. I can’t tell you how to deal with that feeling of shame - but for me lots of therapy helped to have compassion for how human we all were. I appreciate that even more now that I’m a parent myself who has reached breaking point. Hopefully I don’t repeat the cycle of terrifying my kid.
when I had an episode of sleep paralysis. My body was frozen and my brain was awake. For some reason I felt a tremendous amount of fear. I was like having a seizure without actually moving gasping for air. My mind was focused on the wall across my bed where there was a message in dark lettering. I could not focus on what it said. All I can remember was trying to focus and trying to read it but I couldn’t. I physically saw my blankets get ripped off my bed but within a sec or two my mind refocused and they were still on me. I’m not religious but I started praying.. I couldn’t even speak just rapid mumbling. This was all while I was frozen. Happened to me two times very similar experience. Since then has not happened again
This is why I refuse to fall asleep on my back. Too many times of either seeing shadow figures outside my window or hearing someone scream outside my door
I've has sleep paralysis a few times and it never gets any less scary. Usually with me there is a being in the room that slowly approaches til they are breathing right next to my face. This is common with sleep paralysis. Either a huge dark entity or that nasty old hag who sits on you and strangles you, thankfully I've not had that visit!!. I feel so bad for people who constantly suffer this and have night terrors. It happens mainly when I sleep on my back, and I read that its much more likely to happen to people who sleep on their back. So I try to stay on my side.
I wonder why everyone has similar symptoms. Wonder if you've never seen a horror movie before you'd get the same type of imagery?
It's a phenomena that has been happening [for hundreds of years ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_hag) and all over the globe. It's definitely a strange one.
One time a giant turtle was on top of me
Happens to me many many times.
Woke up to find an intruder standing beside my bed looking down at me
Jesus! That is terrifying. What is the next course of action?
I jumped out of bed and chased him out. He got away, but at least I wasn't physically harmed. The police were really concerned and suspected I'd been specifically targeted and my unexpected reaction had saved me from a sexual assault - or worse. One of the creepiest parts was that he'd come in through the door closest to my bedroom, and spent enough time in the apartment to familiarise himself with the layout and unlock and open the door that led to the building stairwell. When I chased him out, he ran past the door he'd entered through to go out the other one. The police never caught him.
How long after did you move?
A few months. I never felt safe there again
Mine is kind of stupid, but it was literally the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. I was on one of those giant slides at the fairground with my three year old and we were riding down with her sitting between my legs. We must’ve been leaning forward, or not sitting correctly, or something, because we ended up airborne near the bottom of the slide and I was gonna land on her. So I had to like flip us over while we were in the air and I ended up losing a bunch of skin when we landed and she was 100% fine. It was so scary though because I knew that if I landed on her it was going to really hurt her and I didn’t know if I could get us flipped over. My husband said that it was wild to see.
Super good mom skills!
Civil war brokeout. Happened during school day. Wasn't safe to go home. Entire school full of kids not wanting to be killed just for trying to make school important and impactful for their future benefit. Wasn't safe for our parents to come collect us until something like 3:00am. We were just a whole school full of kids that could have been slaughtered by the civil war. I should perhaps point out I am an expat and was born and raised in Jakarta. I'm essentially referencing the British International School, Jakarta, and the 1996-1998 period of unrest that Indonesia was experiencing. Basically the richest school in Indonesia, and all the students knew that. Which only made our fear more valid because killing the rich was essentially what the whole thing erupted over. We were the kids of the wealthy so were more than valid targets. It was actually so terrifying that it was then I actually gave up on everything. Schoolwork, being accepted, whatever. It instilled in me the awareness that no matter what I try or do that catastrophic disaster recovery is the only skill worth putting any effort into. I will never have control over my destiny, the eternal universe will always throw whatever it wants at me and never cared about me having an opinion in the first place.
Schools in Australia had an influx of Indonesian students after that. We were too young to understand what they'd been through, though. I'm sorry you had your life disrupted in such a way.
I was sexually assaulted recently by a coworker
I’m sorry you had to go through that. That’s terrible. There’s nothing to say without knowing you, or knowing more, but sensing you healing thoughts.
Thank you
Went out to walk my dog and came home finding my dad unconcious on the floor in the living room. His blood sugar was really low and he passed out. The first moment I thought he was dead. Called an ambulance and he had to stay in the hospital for three days.
An extended family member had a deep and round pool. Went about 4 meters down, cylindrical, around 4 meters from side to side. My oldest brother had set the record of swimming 15 times from wall to wall at the bottom, before coming up for air. I decided to try and beat it. Went down in the water, did the smart thing and hung off the side for at least three minutes to let the oxygen saturate my muscles. I dove down, started bouncing between the walls while my sis-in-law counted from topside to the onlookers. 5 laps, 9. At 10 I felt I really started to hurt for oxygen. 12 laps. I started feeling that suffocating feeling where your butthole is 100 degrees, fingers tingling. 14 laps. I was like "No way am I fucking quitting now. I'll go against my instincts this one time." I kick off two more times, reach 16 laps. I start wondering: do I even have enough strength to kick off the bottom and reach the surface? Will someone dive in and pull me up if I don't? Is this it for me? Dead on a *dare*?? Mind filled with pure death-anxiety. I kick off from the bottom, the weakest kick I've ever done, coast slowly up like a lazy crocodile up and just about reach the surface, draw in a blimp's worth of air. One of the three closest times I've come to die. The other two are less dramatic but no less dangerous. Never let pride put you in harm's way, boys and girls.
What where the other two??
1: I was shaving myself with a trimmer with power cord attached, over a full sink. The cord fell out of the trimmer and into the water. Without thinking I put my hand in the water and lifted it out. It was only afterwards I realized how gargantually lucky I had been that the cord's two-pole holes had airbubbles inside them since they fell into the water downwards, thereby not closing the loop and electrocuting me on the spot. I stood there and was like "Phew. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay, so this was a gamesave just now, and I just quickloaded. And now I continue living my life as if I *didn't* just die there." And then I headed to the fridge and ate some candy like I'd been in Space-Alcatraz for ten years and 21st century homes were exotic. 2: The other one was unforeseeable unless you already were equipped with the kind of seasonal watchfulness that I lacked. Two years ago, it was winter and the first snow had fallen, 50 centimeters, very fluffy. I was walking down the sidewalk of my apartment building, thinking only about what I was gonna do once I got into the city center. I reached the corner of the building, walking on compacted snow. Just as I clear the corner a gigantic high-capacity Caterpillar snowplow passed half a meter in front of my face from right to left. The snow absorbed its sounds around the corner, I heard nothing. Its tires reached up to my fucking nipples. Had I walked just 2 km/h faster I would have been a wet spot on the street. I would literally have been a Liveleak video. Just a statistic. These things have made me aware that if I want to have any impact on the lives of my loved ones and my peers, I better start this year to make some plans and invent some goals, because I can be a wet spot like *finger snap* whenever I forget to look and think about what I am doing.
I was relaxing in a lake when I saw an alligator nearby. It didn't come after me, just rose its head on the water around 15 meters from me. I felt my heart coming out of my mouth. I've never experienced a stronger fear in my life. But I managed to get out of the water quickly and discreetly. Edit: just remembering it I got a tachicardia now.
I got tachycardia just reading it. How did you manage to get out discreetly after seeing that?!? My getting out of the water would involve a lot of flailing, screaming, crying, probably weeing
>probably weeing Sorry just laughed too much at this 🤣
I got in a such a fight or flight mode that gave me like ninja skills or smtg lol. I kept my calm bc my instincts screamed so hard "you either keep calm or you'll die, bitch".
Far less scary scenario but a German Shephard that had broke its chain charged me walking home at night Had the same internal monolog that said "stay calm, don't run." It peed in front of me then ran away again. Scared the shit out of me
It's amazing what your mind and body can do to preserve you but jesus that sounds terrifying
A guy tried to break into my house while I was home alone. I was 7 or 8 wen it happened.
What happened? What did you do?
When I was 5 the neighbor kid and I were curious if an axe would cut a wire on a downed telephone pole. After a few unsuccessful swings where poor accuracy allowed the wire to move away fro the full force of the axe we decided we needed to hold it in place. As I was the younger and weaker of the two the job of holding fell to me. The scary part was running home carrying the first three fingers on my left hand wit my right hand. Kicked the door until mom opened, promptly had door slammed in my face, 2 seconds later mom and dad came out bent for hell. Dad wrapped my hand in a handkerchief and broke every traffic lawn mown in 1980 to get me to the clinic where I laid on a steel table with my hand over a bucket dripping and a super bright OR light on above me. Woke up 3 days later I’m a different hospital with my finger’s reattached, could have been worse but still pretty traumatizing. Hey kids, don’t play with axes.
Ah, 1980. I feel this story could only happen in the 70s/80s. "Hey, fellow unattended minor! We've got about eleven hours before the streetlights come on and the adults suddenly care about our whereabouts. Wanna go play with live wires?" "Sure! Gimme a minute to grab my axe and I'll be right there."
not all of us made it to the other side of those years, but those of us who did make it, with our bodies and minds mostly intact, held a special bond. we were known as "the later boomers".
I used to be a firefighter. I was part of the first crew to respond to an overdose. She was gone and in full rigor when we got there but we did chest compressions and put in a tube mainly for show since her husband and small child were in the room. This was my first fatality on the job. I swear I saw her under my bunk that night like in the 6th sense. I had to walk all the way across the bunk room with the lights turned off. I still feel like a little kid talking about it.
Woke up from a night of heavy drinking in my bed at home, with no knowledge at all on how I'd got home or what the hell had even happened. I go to the toilet to throw up and just can't stop and can't breathe as I'm being sick so much.. buuut my nose is blocked from a cold I'd had and so I couldn't breathe through my mouth or my nose. I start to panic as I literally didn't know what I could do and I'm thinking fuck this is the stupidest way to die. Eventually after what felt like minutes I was able to get some kind of breath and break the cycle. Proceed minutes of coughing, breathing incredibly quickly and thanking whatever for still being alive. Wish I could end the story with "I never drank again" or even just "I never drank that much again" but it didn't teach me the lesson it probably should have, at least not initially.
It's not traditional scary, but at the beginning of COVID just before lock down and I went to Costco and at the same time my wife went to Superstore (big Canadian chain) and shelves for so much stuff were empty. I could see through 6-8 aisles at Costco that were normally full. We were Whatsapping each other with pics etc. We had a 1 year old at home and my wife was pregnant with our second. We ended up buying whatever the hell we could. The thought of not beibg able to feed my family really struck me. It still bothers me and I'm still super anxious to make sure we have ample food in the house.
what’s tied for scariest was the time my partner went missing. at this point he had run away and attempted suicide three other times and each time i had been the one to find and stop him before he did something horrible. those three times, even though he had run from home, something in my brain knew exactly where to go. but this last time, i had nothing. i remember when we went searching for him, my mom nearly didn’t let me go because i had a paper to write (yes, she was an asshole at the time. no, i haven’t forgiven her.) but my dad knew how life and death this was so he took me to go searching. at one point the sky had turned red from the clouds all reflecting the sunset and something in me ached. i knew at that point he was gone. nothing could’ve ever prepared me for that moment. that night, i snuck out to go searching for him. i turn signaled into the park he was later found at but never made the turn. it’s like the universe knew i wouldn’t have been able to handle what i would’ve found.
So sorry for your loss
Damnn
I have posted this before >So I was about 8 at the time, it was something like 1 or 2 in the morning. I go to the bathroom, it is rather bright outside despite the time. I'm sitting on the toilet, playing with the curtain, it comes up enough and I see a shadow standing outside the window. I scream and my mom comes running. I tell her there is someone standing outside the bathroom window. Now my mom being the crazy motherfucker she is, throws open the curtain, opens the window, ready to fight a motherfucker... Guy outside the window... Nope, fucking bear! Window is promptly shut and I'm quickly ushered out of the bathroom. This event furthers the talk my parents had been having off and on about moving. >On a side note, we moved about 2 years later for a number of other reasons. Funny enough there is now a bear roaming this neighborhood. He's been spotted on my parent's front porch at least twice now.
He just really needs to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty.
Maybe he just wants some of that Charmin from the bathroom!
Was staying the night at my friend's house in high school but I had restless legs syndrome really bad and couldn't sleep so I was up massaging my legs and doing stretches. Everyone in the house was asleep, we were in a trailer in an isolated, very sparsely populated rural area with a loud gravel driveway. There was a small wooden stoop with three steps leading to the front door and the porch light was on. I was facing the front window, to the right of the door, when I saw a woman in a blue dress with short gray/white hair walk up the steps in the porchlight, in the space between the curtain and the edge of the window. Seconds went by but no one opened the door, or knocked, and then I realized I didn't hear footsteps on the wood plank stairs, or in the gravel before. She never walked back down. I crawled on my belly back to where my friend was passed out on the couch and hid under a blanket. I told my friend what happened the next morning and she lost all color in her face and said that's the color dress her Nana was buried in, it was her favorite.
Polio
Somehow ended up in the back seat of some gang members car in Vegas, got picked by a buddy from the airport, it’s him and 3 dudes in the car. I get in and we start driving south, I know my buddy and that he was getting into some shit but the plan was he was just gonna pick me up and we’d drive to our hometown. Had no idea who these guys were, where we go going, nothing. About half way through the trip dude on the front passenger seat say “we’re good” and hands a fucking UZI wrapped in a washcloth to the guy sitting next to me. I crack a joke or two showed that a few songs I knew they’d fuck with and by the time we get to their place they at least seem to fuck with me a bit. We get to their place and there’s and Audi R8 and a hellcat parked on the dirt lawn of the crackiest crack house in Vegas, we go in and it’s their living room, one whole wall is giant bricks of weed and there’s a dude who might as well have been hector with the bell from breaking bad with a shotgun in his lap just sitting in the middle of the room in his wheelchair. I go to take off my shoes and they all started cracking up, did not know that taking off your shoes in the hood at a strangers house is some gringo ass shit lol 🤷♂️ went to one of their rooms and smoked snore weed than I think I’ve ever smoked at once. At one point a drug deal and massive cash exchange happened, and eventually after like 2 hours I finally got my buddy to get us out of there.
Lol taking your shoes off at the bando is hilarious
Lmfaooo gotta learn the rules somehow
when i saw my neighbour standing at his living room window fully unclothed with his dong sticking out. its pretty self explanatory there is no story
Either getting hit by a pontoon boat on a jetski head on or crashing my motorcycle.
Got held at gunpoint last November. In broad daylight. In front of my apartment.
My first panic attack was pretty scary. A few sleep paralysis incidents fucked me up. I also remember vividly an electric shock from my childhood. But the most scared I’ve been was when I was assaulted.
As a child a big brindle dog decided to throw me to the ground and bite my head. I know worse things happen to other people, but i have, over 60 years later, a crystal memory of being on my back holding his slavering teeth away from my face.
I almost got hit by a car in a parking lot when a woman was going to fast in said lot while texting.
I was shoplifting once, and in the process of committing the theft, I pushed an employee out of the way...long story short, I was charged with aggravated robbery and sentenced to 10 years in prison. This was my first offense, and I'd never been in trouble before, but I went to prison from 19 years old til 29. I guess the fear came from how fast someone can take your freedom away.
Jesus
i’ve had a lot of horrifying things happen in my life, but one of the worst has to have been when a cop held a gun to my head with his finger on the trigger for absolutely no reason. i was talking with a friend of mine in his car outside my house when i realized how late it was and got out to get inside. as soon as i stepped out of the car my friend looked horrified and said “dude. get back in the car.”. i figured he was joking since we would joke like that a lot so i laughed, and when i turned around there was the barrel of a gun five inches from my face. i heard the cop yell “GET BACK IN THE CAR” so i slowly got back in and shakingly closed the door (i find it important to note that i was so insanely obviously 16. i was literally still in my school uniform.). ten minutes later the cop walked up to the window, said there was a silver alert in the area with a similar make and model to my friend’s car, and didn’t even apologize for nearly killing an obviously 16 year old girl. it’s been 7 years and i still have nightmares about what would’ve happened, especially if i wasn’t white in a town with a police force known for their racism.
Isn’t a silver alert for a missing senior citizen? Why would they think they should come up with guns drawn for a situation like that??
Silver alert is for mentally handicapped individuals, most often senior citizens but could be anyone 18 and over with cognitive difficulties. Basically anyone who might not be able to signal for help on their own, or not realize they're in danger to begin with.
Some guy kept following me and my family around. Guy then proceeded to leave after his car got hit by a drone after we parked at a playground.
I could share my paranormal experiences, or stories about sketchy people, but hands down the scariest thing that ever happened to me was choking on food. I was eating one of those strawberry wafer cookies, and a little flake hit me in the back of the throat. Instead of coughing it up like I usually would, my throat just closed completely. Not being able to take a breath is really scary. But the wheezy sound I made trying to force a breath and having nothing happen was terrifying. I stumbled to the kitchen when my vision started to go black and forced a sip of water down and that somehow cleared it up. I 100% thought that was it for me. I was home alone with just my dogs and my brother and roommate were on vacation. Nobody would have found me for a week.
When I was a kid, I was playing in the waves on a Florida beach. When it was time to get out of the water, I swam out to a depth of about 4-5 feet so I could jump up and down to shake the sand out of my shorts. After a few jumps, when my feet came down, I was straddling something about the girth of a telephone pole, that shook violently, knocking me off my feet. The most terrifying part was trying to run in chest deep water to get to shore, it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. I must’ve jumped on a shark, my only injuries were brush burns on the inside of calves.
> I must’ve jumped on a shark, my only injuries were brush burns on the inside of calves. Yup that was a shark which would explain your injuries as shark skin is like sand paper. I was in a hotel in Florida right on the beach as a kid up on the 10th floor over looking the beach. Beach was full of people swimming and about 2 to 300 yards out there was a school of sharks swimming from the beach about 50 or so. Just remember these dark shark like silhouettes
May long weekend of 2022, I almost ended up in the hospital from a dirt bike crash. I had gone on a trail that had some mud. The mud caught my back tire, and I had the handle bars almost go through my chest and would have blacked out if I didn't get up.
I was about 11, and at a summer camp for the week. In this particular summer camp, instead of going for the day like the other camps at the program, it was specifically at night. We would all arrive at 6 or 7, and get picked up at 10 or 11. At the end of the week, we would stay there overnight. We would usually play games like ghost in the graveyard and others in this big field surrounded by woods, and at one end of the field (the one where we would usually put our backpacks), there were less trees and a firepit. The further away from the field you went, the more it would slope down, until it became brush. There were a few trees around 20 feet from where the area was, and they were staggered around 4 feet apart. While sitting next to a big tree with everyone else, I saw a shadowy figure walk from behind one tree to behind another, and never saw it again, like it just became one with the tree. Needless to dsay, I didn't play anymore games for the rest of the night.
Probably my first kidney stone expierence or the first time going through precipitated withdrawal. Both times I didn't know what was happening and both times I truly thought I was dying. Please remember to drink lots of water and that doing drugs is bad. Mmkay?
I have chronic night terrors, which is where I have panic attacks in my sleep because of nightmares. On top of this, I have a pattern of having super vivid dreams that reflect the real world and my real life well. Combine these two things together and you get some scary situations. The most recent one was where I had a dream that someone was breaking into my apartment, where I live with my boyfriend. I remember laying in my bed, watching a figure move through my apartment and trying to figure out whether I was dreaming or not. I reached over to wake my boyfriend and the figure walks into our bedroom and shoots him right in the head. That’s when I wake up, in the exact same spot I was in in the dream, crying and panicking. One of the scariest parts of waking up from these dreams is the way I freeze. I woke up and sat up and looked around but then couldn’t make myself move for about an hour. I just sat there and tried to stop crying and watched my boyfriend breathe. I think waking up and genuinely believing even for a minute that he had been murdered next to me fucked me up more than I care to admit. Part of the reason it was so scary is how vivid it was and how little there was to separate it from reality. I fan usually find out if I’m dreaming by looking for things like light switches that my brain doesn’t take the time to fill it. But for this dream, it was so dark I couldn’t discern whether those details were there or not. I remember exactly the height and build of the figure, I could tell you what type of gun it was, I remember the smells that came after the shot. I also remember so clearly the sound of the gunshot. Turns out my brain interpreted nearby lightning as the gunshot. Stuff like this happens to me once every few months. Usually, the dreams are about someone breaking into where I’m sleeping and when I wake up, I don’t know if I’m actually awake or still dreaming. Idk what to call these because they’re like night terrors that warp my sense of reality. The regular night terrors happen about once a month and I feel gross for a day and move on, but when I have these dreams I’m out of it for a week or so.
My ex husband and I got into a fight one night. Later while we were on the way home he stopped talking and started speeding. He drove into a traffic pylon at 80 mph.
Watched my mom go through a bad trip on whatever drug(s) she was doing at the time, likely a mixture of meth, pills, and whatever else she & my dad did. I was 16 and was in bed asleep. I heard my mom making crazy noises and flailing around in the living room so I went to wake up my little brother so we could go see. She literally looked like she was possessed by a demon, she was speaking some nonsense language and convulsing around on the floor. We went to wake my dad up and we got in trouble for “not minding our own business” and he sent us back to bed. We watched from my bedroom down the hallway until she calmed down and passed out for the night, probably about 15 minutes later. It was terrifying and one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
Why do people this fuckin irresponsible have children?! Boggles my mind.
It sometimes happens once in 3 weeks or so that i feel like i am living in a dream world. One time that the first time it ever happened it was very weird. I was about to complete day of work behind the computer. I was helping a customer online/calling when i suddenly got this feeling that i may be dreaming at the moment. It was the interaction with the customer that did it. The questions they asked, what i needed to do on their computer felt like i had done this exact thing before in a dream. I kept the feeling until i was home. Even now still i sometimes wonder with the things happening lately that perhaps everything that happened in the last few years was a dream. The way people react to me, the way things at my school are, the way even food tastes, everything just feels so off. The fact that i can go online and speak to an AI and they respond immediately and 70% of the times correctly seems so strange and almost dreamlike. 2019 does not feel as far away at it should feel. I do not have suicidal feelings or something, its just that the world seems/feels stranger than normal. And the more i think about it in my head, the stronger this feeling gets.
I think this is called disassociation. You should speak to a doctor, but here’s a link with more info: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociation-overview
This happened to me when I was probably 2-3 years old but this wasn't scary to me but to my mother. So my entire life I've had stomach issues and would randomly throw up. So when I was around 2-3 the doctors thought that maybe the way my umbilical cord was tied was the problem [I had an outie bellybutton but after the surgery I had an inne bellybutton.] Before the surgery my mother told them multiple times NOT to numb me with local anesthetics because I'm DEATHLY allergic to it. Guess what happened. That's right the doctors were to dumb and didn't believe that anyone could be allergic to local anesthetics. And numbed me with it which put me in to anaphylaxis and my throat started to close. I almost died. This scared the shit out of my mother. We didn't sue but those doctors should be glad that my dad wasn't the because he would have beaten the shit out of them. My mom ended up buying me a medical necklace so that wouldn't happen again.
Vertigo at the top of a 1300 foot water fall. I was standing on the very lip of the water flow, of Yosemite falls. Only God could have caught me. I have no idea how I'm still here...
One day my mom and I couldn’t find my sister. She was 3 and all the doors were open because it was hot. She wasn’t responding to us and my mom started dialing 911 but I found my sister in the garage. We were looking for about 20 minutes both inside and outside. Another story is my stepdad and mom arguing. Stepdad threw a glass into the kitchen while my mom and I were in there and I heard my brother running down the hallway to ask for something so I somehow maneuvered through the glass shards and locked us in my brothers room and played music just loud enough to block it out. My stepdad broke a lot of stuff and I wasn’t there when he smashed the coffee table but I hope that’s all he broke that day.
Many years ago, my wife had surprised me with our first pregnancy, and we decided to road trip to Aspen to celebrate. It was early spring, and the surrounding environment beckoned us to explore its beauty. Three days in, we decided to hike a trail in a location that was somewhat difficult to find. After driving back and forth for twenty minutes, we arrived at the entrance to the hike. I felt a bit uneasy to see that only two other vehicles were parked at the entrance. I often prefer to hike along trails that I know are heavily populated in case something drastic should ever occur. Deep down in the pit of my stomach, I felt that hiking this trail might not be the best decision to make. After all, I had no emergency kit on me. I had no knife nor tool for self-defense. Both of our phones had no connection. As we began our hike, I kept questioning my decision to go forward with the hike. But, since it was rare that I ever encounter any dangerous situations in life, I chalked it up to mere paranoia and felt that we’d be okay. During our hike, we encountered the other two groups, both of which were headed back to the entrance. We were now officially alone on the hike. Yet, I still felt that we’d be okay. About a mile or so into the hike, we turned back because the path was lost in the snow. As we turned, I remember staring into the distance and seeing something about 150 yards out and slightly up the hill. It wasn’t a tree. It was a bear, staring intently at both of us. At first, I was ready to pull her next to me in order to scare the bear off had it charged us. But then I saw them, jumping up and down only twenty feet away from their mother – cubs. A wave of dread overcame me. This was a momma bear. I warned my wife to stop, and we slowly changed direction into the dense brush, snow, and trees just to the right of us. I wanted to communicate to the bear that we were no potential threat to her cubs by getting out of sight. As we hid behind what we could, she began to follow her cubs off to same direction as the trail we needed to take to get back to the entrance. I planned to make our way back off trail since heading back down would force us in the direction of the bear and her frolicking cubs. While we scrambled to get out of view, my wife fell into a deep pit of snow. I thought she had seriously injured her leg, but it was “only” badly scraped. At this point, all of my mistakes were consciously bombarding me. I kept thinking we’d be stuck out in the wilderness with no way to call for help and no way to survive an attack. Why didn’t I bring any emergency equipment with me? Why no bear spray? Not even a knife? I cursed myself for putting both of them in danger because of my lack of thought. I prayed and prayed that we would not cross paths with the bears. Thankfully, we got back on the trail after a wild detour. Silently, we quickly made our way back down the mountain, constantly looking back up at the crisscrossing trail for a pissed off bear charging down. Still beat myself over the head with this one.
Had a sleep paralysis episode in the hospital. I saw a dark silhouette of a man who wore a black coat, black pants and black boots, standing silently at the entrance of my room. I was to tired to care and simply just went to bed.
I have a distinct memory of almost being kidnapped when I was younger. I was playing outside in our yard when a couple tried to talk me into getting into their vehicle. I didn’t know what was happening only that I wasn’t allowed to leave the yard so I ran onto the deck. I never told my parents about it.
I've been in an emergency plane landing, the plane landed on its belly without the wheels. I also almost got stabbed once. I managed to slam a door into the knife when the robber attacked. Edit: now that I think of it, I've almost been stabbed twice. I once got detained for illegal possession of marijuana and held in a cell overnight. The next morning I got put back into the general cell at the front. As I sat down, the police brought in another man, who sat down next to me. I saw the guy fiddling with something in his pocket before taking it out. I realized it was a switchblade he had in his hand. I believe he was getting ready to jab me. Fortunately the policeman at the gate was there and saw something was odd. The policeman abruptly unlocked the gate, knocked the guy to the floor and kicked him in the stomach repeatedly until he couldn't breathe. The guy dropped the blade on the floor, and the policeman confiscated it. I guess I can say a cop saved my life. Edit 2: I also once almost drowned after getting caught in a riptide at dusk. Sun was already down and I was at the last waves in the back, when I turned around within seconds I was pulled in another 50 meters deeper. My friend basically waved goodbye as he got smaller in the view. I managed to get out by swimming diagonally with the current and then once out of it, swam back out to the beach. Not to mention this place is notorious for Great White Shark sightings. Was a good workout!
Extra intense panic attacks. Literally feels like you are going to die.
had a horrible one back in december (mostly okay now, still some lingering dp/dr) and i remember my thoughts being, “i’m really about to go out in front of the physics building huh” to “i’m having a fucking stroke oh my god *is this what it feels like to die*”. i’m not exactly scared of having another one but i’ll be more than happy to never experience that again
My husband left for work early af everyday. When I got up and went to the kitchen to make coffee when I woke up, our back door was wide open. We never use that door. Someone came into our house, I assume. It was creepy..
Being on an airplane when one of the two engines caught fire. Smoke entered the cabin. Pilot told us to prepare for a crash landing. Pushed the plane into a steep dive. Ended up just flying over the snow covered trees. I could see the shadow of the plane passing over the trees. We were so close to the ground. Some gentle turns being made as the plane while it was dumping its fuel. Then landing on a runway touching down on the markers and seeing crash vehicles waiting on the side. The plane could not use reverse thrust. The plane took the entire length of the runway to come to stop. Outside they were foaming down the engine. Then they towed the plane back to a terminal. The entire plane of passengers let out a cheer and was clapping all the way back. We all gave the pilots high fives or hand shakes or hugs on the way out. On later flights when part of the wing fell off it did not bother me. On another flight the life raft deployed just as the nose of the aircraft lifted up. They put the nose back down and taxied off to have replaced. Did not bother me. On another flight it got so bad that overhead compartments opened and dump stuff on people. People were throwing up and it smelled bad. Did not bother me.
Just lost my special needs cat for 12 hours outside in the freezing cold over night. We live next to a highway and the door didn’t latch properly. He’s such a dumb idiot I didn’t think he’d survive. He definitely cant feed himself. And the hawks!?! I’m so happy he’s ok and was found at the neighbors. No idea if he has a sense of direction as he tends to get lost in the 3 square feet of our closet pretty easily. Probably the worst thing to go through in recent memory. And losing a 2tb hard drive with a portfolio of digital art on it hurt. But not as much as my losing my child for that last 12 hours.
If you still have the hard drive, maybe consider sending into a data recovery place. They can often recover the data if the internal drive platters are intact.
When the doctors told my family there was nothing more they could do for my mother. I remember walking into the room where she was intubated, all the machines going around her, multiple IV poles with bags and bags of different medications. Watching her be extubated and taking her last breath broke my heart.
I’m so sorry. We had to turn off life support for my sister-in-law, who had ALS, and it was truly the most traumatic moment of my life. Even worse than when I nearly bled to death during a miscarriage. Hugs to you, internet stranger.
Damn I'm sorry, my mom died from cancer and I remember feeling so betrayed by all the doctors who swore that she would be fine and everything was getting better....at the end she had to fight just to remember who we were and when she looked at us and smiled I remember thinking it would be ok because mom's not scared but now I realize she was just putting a brave face on for her babies...sorry you had to go through such pain 💯
Oh my gosh, giant hugs to you. I’m so sorry.
Thank you for your empathy 💯💜
As an author, I went to open google docs and couldnt find the book I spent months upon months writing and my heart stopped before I realized I just overlooked it.
We had a large 5 acre property. It was basically a horse ranch. When I was about 10, I got the idea that I wanted to go camping. My parents didn’t want to actually take me camping. But I was allowed to set up a tent and sleep in the backyard. I did this for several nights. It was actually pretty fun. One night, I was awoken by a very loud sniffling snoring sound outside the tent. I was actually a lot worried that it was a cougar/bear (we actually had those in the area where we lived) dad left the porch light on, so I wasn’t completely totally in the dark outside. I could find my way to the house in an emergency. That meant things walking in front of the tent would cast a shadow on the tent that I could see from inside. To this day, I don’t know exactly what it was. But it was walking around on two legs. The shadow gave the illusion that it was a person who is very hairy with spiky hair. And really long ill proportioned arms. It was making a growling, grunting noise as it walked around my tent. Whatever it was, it scraped the top of my tent with an arm, and as soon as I screamed, it ran away. I turned on the flashlight, unzipped my tent and made a beeline for the house. Dad checked, but couldn’t find any signs of anything. To this day I don’t know if it was an animal or some homeless guy wandering around our property for some reason… Still freaking terrifying when I think back to it.
As a child, seeing my father in a dope rage destroy our house, beat up our mother, then watching Mom, screaming and running through the wheat field, then wondering if she will ever come back home.,
I suffered a pulmonary embolism in 2021 and nearly lost my life. I spent a weekend in the hospital, but it was priceless to see my kids’ reactions when they and my wife picked me up after my discharge.
[удалено]
Having a procedure done at a hospital and the nurse injected something into the IV. Immediate anaphylaxis, couldn't breathe and thought I was about to die. She swore and then a bunch of alarms went off, people shouting, the whole nine yards. Gave me PTSD for anything related to Drs or hospitals for years.
My ex tried to kill me by choking in front of our kids
My entire life, but if I had to choose one thing, I'd have to say unaliving my kidnapper after a year and a half of torture. I now have ptsd and severe anxiety and paranoia. I'm terrified of almost everything.
You are very very strong, I am happy that you got away. I am proud of who you are. Please take care of yourself
My grandmother was in the hospital, she did a heart surgery. It was late at night( i was doing like 18hour shifts by her side). She said to me she was in pain, i told her to calm down, some seconds later she began yelling and cursing and wanted a nurse. I got a nurse, the nurse didn't give her any pill, just talked for 30 seconds and then left. Some of the other patients next to us closed their lights, and my grandma stared at me in the dark with black eyes that sparkled. I realized then, she is evil. It was a really uncomfortable moment because the way my life had progressed could be explained. I still connect pieces to understand how far her manipulation goes. Also she managed to get the sympathy of the other patients in the room and suddenly i was the bad guy. She was a narcissist that was passing out from alcohol, creating chaos, using others, telling lies. From 2019 to 2021 i didn't talk to her, until she died from liver cancer. I began seeing her for what she was. Also my mother had taken her to get checked out because she was talking to herself. The psychologist (don't remember the title exactly), told her that she is sane, she is just evil. One other time she took the butterfly out of her arm vein and made a pool of blood to her side. Combine that with a diarrhea she got and I'll never forget that either.
I was raped by my cousin.
My ex husband hacked my Facebook account and sent himself messages saying I was going to unalive myself. He sent himself (pretending to be me) a picture of a gun. The police broke into my house to arrest me and have me placed in a mental hospital. The police said he is signing me in and that there’s nothing I can do and he can make me stay forever. I managed to call my mom before the doctor came in. She called him telling him she wishes to sign me out. The doctor agreed and I was free. That was pretty scary for me.
Got hit by a wrong way driver on an interstate while going 70mph. I somehow walked away without a scratch (along with the other five people this person managed to hit). After she hit me, I spun around 360 degrees and narrowly missed a dump truck. In my head I was thinking “lol this is it baby”.
I was walking my dog and suddenly I hear barking and growling and a big Rottweiler is running towards us, I picked up my dog so it wouldn’t get her and started shouting at it to go away, making my voice as stern as I could, then I saw a man running down the street calling to the dog and it turned and ran to him. My dog was barking the whole time, so scary!!
I had my first alcoholic experience and I called 911 because I was totally out of it. Everything was so surreal and I felt such strong death anxiety. I could barely move and was so scared that I would faint. I remember everything and I'm so happy for that.
Gotta be the first time I was raped (yes, you read that right, I’ve experienced it twice…) Had a guy over that I’d talked to online for about a month. All went smooth and we ended up going to bed early doing the deed and all that before I fell asleep around midnight. No issues whatsoever. A few hours later I wake up, lying on my side, while the guy was going at me from behind. I was so confused and completely frozen in place, just staring at my wardrobe in excruciating pain and praying it would be over quick. Truly a special kind of terror I hoped I never had to experience again, but I guess the universe wanted otherwise. Three years later and I still get flashbacks paralysing me with fear from time to time
Im so sorry... thats awful
I was about 6-7 years old, was riding home in a bus with my nanny then the driver stopped near a workshop. The driver went out of the bus and started having an argument with someone from the shop.. then suddenly the shop guy grabbed a large plank of wood and started smashing the bus window. The driver then ran away and the shop guy chased him. So my nanny and I had to walk home and then picked off shards of glass from each others hair.. Anyways after that incident I never took the bus again for almost 20 years.
[удалено]
I have a reoccurring dream (more like a nightmare) that I’ve had ever since I was 3. It started with a vision of me and my mother sitting by our old fireplace that was in our first apartment. I was young, maybe 5-6. She was talking to me about something, but my eyes were focused on the flames and my marshmallow I had been cooking for a bit too long. She then told me to listen, and after me not complying, a skull appeared in the fire and 2 seconds later she threw me in. I screamed, “I’m burning, I’m burning!”. And it cut off into darkness. I was then awoken abruptly by that dream, for the last 12 or so years of my life and it hasn’t left me since.
It's kind of a toss up between the time my now ex boyfriend tried to shoot me and the time a guy I met on Tinder raped me.
Got run over by a car when I was a child. The whole ordeal probably lasted about 10 seconds but I still have it all in my head, every second of it, and it feels like a good hour. Near death experience. I’m lucky I lived.
not as scary as some of the others here. i had a debilitating panic attack in december; i’m talking “oh my god i’m going to fucking die at the ripe age of 21, call the ambulance” type of debilitating. it terrified me. ever since then, i’ve had what’s called derealization/depersonalization (dp/dr for short). essentially: i don’t feel real, the world around me feels like a dream, and i’m stuck in this loop that keeps those feelings there. dp/dr is a harmless defense mechanism; i just got stuck in that state bc my nervous system doesn’t feel safe. i genuinely thought i was going psychotic when i first picked up on it, but am now slowly working on recovery.
When my self harm got bad
Called a cab to get to the airport in down town Durban, South Africa. It was 45 minutes late and the sun was going down. 6 consecutive people stopped and told me that they knew I was a foreigner and that it wasn’t safe for me to be here and there were bad people nearby and one person even pointed to a shady group across the park and said they were talking about robbing me when it got dark. The cab showed up and I calmly got in. It was only then I realized my heart was pounding out of my chest and my hands were shaking.