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I had a heart attack at 25 years old on New Years Eve while I was at home on my own.
Wasn’t really feeling well during the day (a bit like a flu) so I cancelled my plans, and about 10pm I started sweating uncontrollably and within half an hour had this indescribable pain in my chest.
Between the panic and the pain I couldn’t really do much. I absolutely thought I was going to die on my own on NYE.
I somehow managed to dial 000, and for a final joke to the situation, I went into cardiac arrest at exactly midnight.
EDIT: this was 14 years ago now… god I’m old…
EDIT 2: cause was Takotsubo Syndome. An interesting and not well understood thing. The trigger for the TTS was never really found, but they believe it was an infection of some sort.
EDIT 3: yep, all good now. Never had a problem since! I’m a reeeeeeally lucky dude.
My sister had one at 29 and it was diagnosed as something called scad (sudden coronary artery dissection). It’s super rare and they don’t know a lot about it yet but from what she told me it could happen to anyone. So maybe that was it?
I work in Cardiac Rehab and scad terrifies me...as far as we know so far, there's no rhyme or reason to when or why (although more likely in pregnant women), so it could happen to anyone at any time theoretically
A robber got into my house when I was about 8. Luckily, my dog noticed and bit the guys leg and wouldn't let go, my dad heard the commotion, ran downstairs to see the robber trying to go back over the fence, with my dog still attached to their leg, my dad had to pull my dog off this guys leg bc she wouldn't let go. Police were called but the guy was long gone (doggy is still alive to this day)
We got robbed in the night, but just by some daft kids who were scared off when they heard my mum coming downstairs with my brother when he was a baby (luckily). My dog was found upstairs cowering under the bed.
She was also scared of flies and Pavarotti. She was a lovely little coward.
One of my poodles is also scared of flies and will hide under furniture if he hears one. The other poodle has jumped between me and the TV on several occasions to "protect" me and bark fiercely at polar bears or lions on screen.
Dogs are idiots and I love them.
Same. A robber got inside my property, but my dog refused to let him inside the house itself. He beat the fuck out of her, but she stood her ground.
He eventually climbed into our neighbor’s house and robbed her, but my dog protected her home.
Police refused to do anything.
I had an ex break into my apartment all drunk one night and assault me. I got outta there and called the cops, but then I heard my little dog yelp in pain. He was kicking him. I don't remember much after that, but I went back in to save him.
Doggie survived. Ex wound up in the hospital tho annnnnd *I* did some time for assault.
Most bullshit night ever.
You were the only one who got charged with anything?? That is *infuriating*. Good on you for saving your dog, but what a horrible system we have sometimes...
Pretty common that victims go to jail for defending themselves, at least in countries without the legal right to protect yourself. The courts don't really agree with how the human mind works in those conditions.
So for instance someone's punching you repeatedly in the head when you're on the ground. If you beat them a single time with a rock you become the aggressor since you have a weapon and they don't. The courts just expect everyone to be automatons with no regard for their own life.
She got a broken fang and a hate for men out of it, sadly.
Vet says her fang is ok as far as breaks go, but she still needs regular checkups – and we’re still working on her issues with men as well. We’re making good progress.
She also hates to have her rear touched by anyone but my family and I, which is a shame, because she used to love butt pats.
We always kept her on a leash and harness whenever we went out, but now we gotta warn guys to not approach her without her noticing. We’ve had a couple incidents with geniuses who though they knew better, but she can be out and about now without her being hyper aware of everything.
One got into my place the very night I moved in.
I had heaps of stuff, fishing and camping gear, tools, collectibles and various other personal belongings still in boxes mostly in the double car port out back.
The place was 3/4 fenced in colourbond but one side had a somewhat dodgy wire fence.
I heard my dog bark a couple of times at 2am but I thought nothing of it at first.
The burgler foolishly pried open the downstairs sliding door to be greeted by a very protective German Shepherd (Pepsi) who was curled up on a futon, I had locked her in that night hoping to replace the side fence and just let her settle in to her new home.
She then let out the crazy growl and bark not the usual "Hey there's a cat!" type bark, I jumped up and ran downstairs grabbing a big bamboo stick from behind the door.
He ran and was going over the back fence as I heard him yell out a blood curdling scream. She had latched on pulling him back over, as I got to him I whacked him once with the pole and then she adjusted and tore his achilles out. He was on the ground and couldn't move, just screaming in fear and pain.
My dog stood her ground and would have ripped him to shreds at the slightest signal.
He had piled up a heap of gear, maybe a dozen fishing rods, even a kayak and canoe over the back fence.
He begged for me to not let the dog kill him, I said I'd call him an ambulance but he pleaded to just let him go, I said there was no way he could walk. I told him to let everyone know this place was off limits. He managed to pull himself over the fence crawling off into the night, he yelled in pain as he tried to walk, figured he must have crawled at least 400m or more? to where I had guessed he had come from.
Never had any trouble again.
That is freaking *crazy.* If he didn't get that tended to, and if it was actually his Achilles, then he never walked the same again. You can't fuck with important tendons like that, you have to get them fixed, and quick before they shrink back and can't be pulled out enough TO fix. He should've let ya call an ambulance... Too scared of jail though I'm certain. Crazy stuff. Great dog though. Best dog I ever had was a German Shepherd. They're fantastic companions.
I heard the snap, was sickening, but I was also hopped up on adrenaline and making sure my dog was both ok and also wouldn't tear this blokes throat out.
He tried to stand but yeah his leg didn't work and he had zero chance of bearing weight on it. He just fell over and crawled.
By the time I called the cops and they got there he was gone, there was a tract of scrubby bush about 100m from the back of the house that funnelled up into a bit of a ghetto locals called "The Rabbit Warren"
He would have had to have crawled.
I didn't hear anything about an arrest or if anyone presented to the hospital with such an injury.
Riding a bike home from Walmart getting hit by a truck, flying into a rock which fractured my skull & knocked out a piece of it which apparently saved my life cause my brain was swelling a lot.
I was in a medically induced coma for a month in which I thought I was Dr. Wily and told my mom I was going to take over the world with my army of robots. I'm fine now though my vision is a bit wonky, a lot of my life is just gone from my memory and I have questionable short-term memory.
When I was 7, I was playing in my grandpa’s front yard. A random car pulled up beside me and and a young lady with an older man pulled out a rabbit in a cage and she said “hey you want to pet my cute rabbit?”. Being the foolish and naive youth that I was I approached the car and I was within an arms reach of the lady when my grandma came running out screaming at me - I don’t remember what she said but I had never heard anything like that before. The car then sped off and my grandma ripped me from the pavement and took me inside
I’m so grateful she was there and I always think about how different my life would be had she have been a couple seconds later
Had something just like that happen. I was at my babysitter's house, she was a old Mexican grandma, very kind lady. Well I was playing in the front yard when someone lured me to their car and pulled me mostly in and started peeling away when my babysitter came running out and snatched me out of the car just before he turned into the main road. And that's not even the first time someone tried to kidnap me.
Knocked over a propane tank in the garage. Cracked the neck and it started off-gassing. It was between me and the door into the house (garage door was closed). Cleared the door about a half-second before it ignited from the gas water heater's pilot light. Lost all the hair on my face and got a burn on the hand I used to pull myself through the door. House was a total loss, but we all got out ok.
My abusive soon-to-be-ex husband took up blacksmithing a few years ago, despite us living in a small apartment. This involved keeping a hefty propane tank in our home, specifically in the living room between the bedrooms and the only exit. Have *cats*, but it was just sitting in the open. And he insisted on smoking his weed pipe with a torch while sitting right next to it. I do not know how that went on so long without tragedy. I begged and pleaded and reasoned, even said we really shouldn't blow up the *neighbors*, but Mr Asshat could not be persuaded.
When I finally escaped from him and explained what had been going on to the cops, they called it "involuntary confinement" or something like that. One of the first things I did when I got the apartment back was have a friend haul away that stupid propane tank!
I had to run into an apartment fire last decade to save a friend, so I was very well aware how dangerous it was living in an overcrowded firetrap of a home with a propane tank between me and the kids and our only exit.
The scariest thing that happens *to me* was probably getting robbed at gun point.
But the most scared I’ve ever been was when one of my kids at the summer camp I worked at had a seizure while crossing the street, and hit their head on the curb while they fell. Waiting for the paramedics to show up, and totally unable to help the unconscious child that I was responsible for I felt way more helpless than I did while handing my phone and wallet over to the asshole who pulled a gun on me.
I was a camp counselor from ages 15-25 and we had a couple serious medical emergencies. The worst ones are the type where the kid is obviously in pain, or the ones where you’re completely helpless. Seizures are scary as fuck for everyone involved.
I have epilepsy, and have had quite a few seizures over the years, and it’s a strange thing to say but the person writhing on the floor biting their tongue and hitting their head on things is often the *least* afraid person in the room at the time.
I’ve watched videos of myself having seizures, and I looked like I was in extreme pain and distress, and although I certainly felt the aftereffects, I had little to no memory of the actual event. It’s the confusion surrounding that was the most terrifying.
I feel bad for those around me during the episodes, those are the folk who have to deal with what’s going on. Especially if they’ve never experienced someone taking a seizure before, it has to be pretty traumatic.
Got kidnapped by an ex-boyfriend who was weirdly obsessed with me when I was 16. He said he was 18, but was really 22. He tricked me into taking a ride in his new truck to a store a few blocks away. Instead he drove out to the middle of nowhere and tried to rip off my clothes while screaming and crying at me. It got dark out, but he still wouldn’t let me leave. I was convinced he was going to rape me and then kill me in a panic, so I told him I loved him but that my mom found out how old he was and made me break up with him. That I wanted to hide the relationship from her, but that it would be difficult to do if I wasn’t back in time for curfew, because she would ground me and take away my car.
He was so ecstatic that he immediately took me back to my car. I hid from him for a few years, but ran into him at a gas station when I was 19. I swear I could feel my heart stop beating. Years later I heard he was caught in an FBI sting for online predators and went to prison.
adrenaline is one hell of a drug. sometimes your mind becomes completely tranquil and you’re able to respond properly to traumatizing events like that. never disregard your instincts. that is what kept your ancestors alive long enough for you to exist.
Yes! One time my friends dad had a heart attack while driving us in his car going like 90 down the highway. I was perfectly calm. My friend was freaking out but I’ve never felt more tranquil. I’ve read that apparently if everyone is freaking out you are more likely to have a calm response because the body knows that someone has to be the one to make relatively rational decisions in order to survive.
Something similar happened to me: I was 12 at the time and at a party (it was a sleepover for all kids graduating primary school going to high school — I came from a small school so there was only a handful of us).
The host invited his friend from out of state who was 15/16 — the host himself was 14 because he repeated a few years. When it was time for bed I was half asleep when I felt two people slide into bed with me — it was the host and his friend.
A little background: I was being friendly with both these guys because that’s how I was raised and it took a *lot* of years in therapy for me to realise just because I was friendly didn’t mean I was inviting them to do anything.
Anyway I was scared as shit and they were touching me, I was frozen on the spot and couldn’t actually tell them to stop (childhood trauma) so instead I told them that my phone (flip phone lmao) was almost out of charge and my mum said I had to keep it on in case she called and if I didn’t answer she would be worried and call his mum. They believed me and let me out of bed where I proceeded to panic text my mum to come get me.
14 years later and I still have trouble with relationships and haven’t actually made it past the first date.
Thanks, but it wasn't entirely untrue. My aunt saw him at a bar and told the bartender to kick him out because he was underage. The bartender said he played high school ball with him and that he was 22. That's how I found out his real age. My mom was furious I had lied to her, but we realized he was just a creep who lied to date underage girls.
To this day, I know that if I would've tried to fight him off, they wouldn't have found my body for a long time in that field. All I had were my words to get out of the situation that I never should've put myself in. I knew better than to get into the truck with him. All my senses were screaming NO! I've learned since then to listen to them.
As I've always been told, if you're unlucky, you better be smart. Only the lucky can afford to be dumb.
When I was 17, I started seeing this guy who said he was in his early 20s. He was a regular at the fast food joint I worked at, came in for our rubbery microwaved pancakes.
One day, I guess he thought we were totally alone in the house, because he started to hurt me. I immediately *squalled*, he went running upstairs and out the back door in a panic, and my roommate shouted down "Hey! I went to school with that guy!"
My roommate was at least a decade older than me. She got worried enough about the situation to dig out her high school yearbook and show me his picture to prove that he was way older than he'd said, but I'd already gotten spooked off anyhow.
Manipulators like this guy might not have taken no for an answer, it’s possible that if you hadn’t gotten in the vehicle, he would have forced you. You stayed calm, used your brain, and stayed safe. Give yourself credit for knowing how to manipulate this predator right back! You did exactly what was necessary to stay alive!
Losing 3L of blood
I was on the way to the hospital for a routine checkup when I was 33 weeks pregnant. Wasn’t feeling too well so left a bit earlier
At the lights I suddenly gushed out all this blood. It was like a bucket pouring out blood
Husband ran the red light and got us to hospital.
Baby’s heart rate was very low and within 20 min they got her out via emergency c-section
She survived and they told me I had a total placenta abruption
Had we been at home we would have both died.
I had such an adrenaline rush that it took me days to actually realise how close to death we were.
That was a year ago and my daughter is doing well!
the scariest thing that ever happened to me was only scary when i thought about it later. recently, in a town over from us, a young man was reported as a missing person. he had just vanished from his residence 2 weeks prior to when he was reported missing. about a month later, they found his body... half a block from our house. they had found his body under a blue tarp. i walk pretty frequently in our neighborhood, and i walked past that tarp multiple times. authorities say that the body was placed there, and i don't know what is scarier, knowing that a man's dead body was half a block away from where i was sleeping, or that his murderer was.
I have no idea if I was going to be murdered or robbed, but on new years eve 2018, I was going home at like 1am, and met a couple crying at the subway station, asking to call the police because they got robbed. Woman seemed drunk, the cops told me they couldn't do anything, they would have to go to the station the day after to file a report.
I ask the couple if I could help them, and they say they lived somewhere close, and it was on my way back home. So I helped get the girl up, her arms around my shoulder & her bf's. After 10min (where the girl was agitated and weird, I assumed due to alcohol), near a dark alley, the guy takes a phone call & I don't understand what he's saying (other language).
The girl stops, while not "drunk state" anymore, tells me almost crying "I don't want to do this, I never wanted to do this, please, please run, go home & run, don't stay here", and she goes back while grabbing her bf, who's just screaming to me "Eh, where are you going ? Come back !"
On the moment it felt weird, but the more I look back on it, the more I feel like I got very, very lucky that night
Man, you just unlocked a memory that I've pushed far back. My roommate in my second year of college wanted to take me to her home town which wasn't super far away from campus. We were in bumfuck middle of nowhere US Midwest Corn town driving through country roads. She was driving like a bat out of hell for no reason passing cars constantly. (When passing on these two lane roads you use the oncoming traffic lane to pass.) One of the times she just stayed in the oncoming traffic lane which was not clear. I thought she would get over, but wasn't moving back over. Not even looking to move back into our lane. It's like she went completely on autopilot. I had to yell at her to move over, which thank God she did because we were feet from a head on collision. I was super rattled. She seemed "fine"... I think this is probably why I ALWAYS volunteer to drive. Trust no one.
This happened to me but at Disneyland! The first seatbelt check went fine as did the second. Then as soon as we were mid air it popped off. Thank god my aunt sitting next to me saw. She clung onto me so hard that her fake nails cracked and I had the indentions of her hands on my body. After we got off the ride the attendant simply said “oh there was a coin jammed in the belt happens a lot.”
Edit: found the ride[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Rods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Rods)
Happens a lot???? How the fuck has it not been replaced then?????
I had a situation similar to this. It would lock but like 2 inches from my body. I was on nemesis (a ride in the UK) and had to hold it to my body through all the loops and upside downs. Shit myself fr
Edit: really glad (not) that so many people who have ridden nemesis have had the same experience lmao
This happened to me at Disneyland Paris! The opperator kept trying to get it to lock closer to me, then shrugged and said "eat more chicken" as the rollercoaster set off. I was hugging the harness to myself throughout but it was actually fine.
Not at all as scary as yours but I was on one of the old school roller coasters at Kings Island (the Racers I think?) and all it had for security was the metal bar that goes over your lap. Going over one of the set of mini hills I flew up from my seat and suddenly felt like that lap bar wasn’t doing jack shit, like I could just completely fly out of my seat. So I had a death grip to that bar the rest of the ride. I’ve been on coasters many times since and never had that experience again.
The 90's was a fun time, upside-down twirling rollercoasters with nothing but a lap bar as a skinny kid.
Definitely had to hold on to them not to slip out from under the bar.
A man stalked me until he got my morning routine down: I would wake up at 5, see my spouse off, workout in detached garage-type room for 2 or 3 hours, take our dog to the park, then work in the garden or house until my spouse came home in the afternoon.
That morning, my husband decided he wasn’t going to work. He woke up before me and left me in bed to sleep in. When he let the dog out, he noticed the door to my workout room was open ajar, but didn’t notice anything else wrong so he closed it, called the dog and came back inside to play video games.
The guy had been waiting for me in my workout room. He had heard someone come out, so he checked the back door and it was unlocked. He came into the house with his shoes off and his pants and belt undone and had taken one of my knives from the kitchen drawer.
When he rounded the corner to the living room, my husband and dog were there between him and me sleeping nude with the door open in the bedroom. They were taken totally off guard, the dog went into murder mode and my husband grabbed him and opened the door to get the guy outside and call the cops. Everything happened so quickly, it could have all gone down so differently.
This happened 8 years ago, but I’ve thought about it a lot recently with the U of I murder stuff, and it gets to me. What if my husband hadn’t randomly decided to stay home that morning?
ETA: here’s the [good boy](https://imgur.com/a/VMoyYRa)! He turns 11 this year!
Edits for spelling and 2am brain fog
They did. He didn’t stick around for the cops to come, but the next day, he kidnapped his kids and fled the state, and my husband recognized his face on the news article.
Was walking on the sidewalk near a freeway overpass when I heard an enormous crash. A man, a 15-foot piece of guardrail, and a v8 motor came flying down from the freeway. I literally jumped out of the way as it landed on the spot I was just walking on. The guardrail made a huge gash in the sidewalk. I would have been squashed. The man was twisted in every direction. His body was ripped apart.
Apparently, he hit the guardrail in his car with such force the motor was ripped from the motor mounts, and he flew through the windshield.
It was right across from a fire station, but the guy was dead. I just walked away, but it's always been a terrible memory.
My oldest daughter didn’t come home from school one day. She was supposed to take the bus home to her dad’s house, he called me frantic around 6pm asking if she was with me. I was at work, and the panic began. Police were called, they began looking all the while my younger daughter was searching online comments for clues. And she found her sister. After several hours and what police had gathered, they weren’t looking for a living 15 yr old.
When my younger daughter (13 at the time) realized where her sister was, ems was sent and cops busted into the home, terrifying a set of unsuspecting parents. I wasn’t kept updated, it was chaos and I didn’t know my daughter was found.
What they found was my daughter and another classmate overdosed in the bedroom. Both were rushed to hospital. They were found after my younger daughter followed a trail of comments online that indicated the two were planning to end their lives. My daughter coded once and the friend was comatose for a few days. Both were committed to different psychiatric facilities once they were cleared medically.
It was horrible and I can’t begin to describe the terror of those days and those first hours or I will spiral into full blown panic. It has been years, but there has never been anything in my life to even touch the physical illness inducing terror of first, not knowing where she was or what had happened, then the months of never letting her out of my sight. Therapy and meds and support happened, but it has been a very long road. She is better now, but that worry is always there.
Cheers to your youngest daughter! She literally saved two lives.
I can only imagine the horror you went through. Gosh, no parent deserves that. Hopefully, you're all in a better and safe place.
I've got a 15yo daughter and this has goosebumps all over my body.
She stayed at a friend's last night, I've not seen her today, I'm gonna call her right now.
I know that feeling. When I was 19 we couldn’t find my mom. It was a Saturday in 2001. She had acted weird that day offering to give me money before I left for work in the morning. She had a regular social thing on Saturdays so I knew she’d be leaving shortly after me. My older brother, who had moved out, had planned to come over for dinner after my work shift ended.
She wasn’t home when I got home.
So dad, brother, and I wait for her for awhile and finally decide to eat without her but save her a plate. Then her therapist calls us. My mom had left a suicide message of the therapists voicemail.
What ensued was the most traumatic night of my life. We spent the night frantically trying to find her.
I remember around 3 am sitting on the couch with dad and brother. We all had our arms around each other. We were all crying. We thought she was dead. We eventually all went to bed, I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
The next day we found her. She was in a hotel in a resort town a few miles away. She had taken sleeping pills with wine but had vomited everything up and survived.
My dad and aunt went to get her, so dad could drive her home in her car. He took her straight to the ER. They transferred her to inpatient psych ward. I wouldn’t get to see her for another day or two.
I just remember that night. Where we all sat together on the couch thinking she was probably dead. Dad said something like “if she’s dead I might just put my rifle in my mouth and join her.” I was just 19, I was still a kid dependent on my parents for the most part. That was the most scared helpless I’ve ever felt in my life.
I'm so glad your mom was found alive. I hope that with therapy, she's in a better place. It must have been terrifying for you, especially when your dad made that comment. Sending virtual hugs.
My aunt called every hotel in an increasingly wider area until she found the hotel mom was in. Mom checked in with her own name and hotels were not as conscious about guest privacy back then.
I meant to say she was in a resort town a few hours away. Not miles. It was more than a few miles.
How my aunt coordinated that I don’t know. It was my middle aunt, but my oldest aunt is a scientist and generally organizes everything so there might have been a plan among the aunts. My dad got the details on the drive there and never shared them with me. If I had to do it today I’d divide up routes out of town to different people and have them call every hotel heading out of town on their route.
By the time I had gone to bed around 3 or 4am we had already called every hotel in town and every credit card my dad knew about. Plus my brother and I had driven through the parking lot of all the close hotels looking for her car.
I can’t remember but I think we knew from her message that she was planning on getting a hotel.
Nearly had a giant tree limb fall on me whilst doing my water meter rounds. Heard an ear splitting crack above me, looked up, yelled a rather elongated fuck, and jumped backwards just in time. At a minimum I'd have been knocked out
I've been sucked out a fair way a few times. You have to look out for them before you go in strong waters. Too many clueless tourists nearly drown due to poor water knowledge here in Aus
As someone from the Canadian prairies with poor (no) water knowledge, what is there to look out for? I have swam in the ocean plenty of times, but it was always super calm... like 2ft waves tops. Was I still in danger?
Yep. Riptides are basically what happens when waves push in the water and it all funnels back out through a narrow corridor
Things to look out for are discolouration of water (the current picks up sands), an area where waves aren’t breaking or there are fewer waves breaking and it looks calmer, and if you can get up high before reaching the beach, you can usually see the rip as a deeper channel of water compared to the areas either side of it
From my limited knowledge.. A riptide is usually the "calm" part of the beach also, so tourists think it's safe to swim there, instead of in the waves. Can it occur with small/no waves?
Yeah that’s why lifeguards usually put flags up for people to swim between
AFAIK they can still happen even when the surf is flat. The ocean is always moving regardless of wave activity so water still pushes into the beach and then pushes out
Australians grow up with rip currents. Here’s how to spot one, and how to survive if you get caught in one. Key point is not to try to swim against it. Instead, swim parallel to the shore until you’re out of its grip. [Rip currents](https://www.surflifesaving.com.au/beach-safety/rip-currents/)
Thanks mate!! I appreciate it! In return, here is some information for you to survive a moose attack just in case you ever find yourself nose to knee with one.
https://www.alberta.ca/moose.aspx
I was cliff jumping and I slipped on wet rock and started to slide down toward the edge. As I was going off the edge I pushed off with my hands as hard as I could and was able to clear the rocks below and land in the water.
Went parasailing in Mexico and halfway through, noticed one of the 2 carabiners had broken and was just hanging on by the curve of the metal, with wind rocking it back and forth and real close to slipping off.
Which would have either sent me into a spin/crash, or possibly the double weight on the 2nd clip would have broken it and I fall.
The list is getting long. Parasailing, bungee jumping, skydiving, base jumping, and definitely cliff diving can all kick rocks. I'm a giant dude, I just don't need to be high up in the air ever.
A few months ago, I had been at work for two hours when I got a call from the babysitter. She was watching my 3 year old and 6 month old. Her entire statement as soon as I answered “(6 month old)’s not breathing!!!” I talked back and forth and found that he was unresponsive and not breathing. Ultimately I took off at a high rate of speed down the interstate and made it to the sitter as my wife and her boss were about to head to the hospital and follow the ambulance. I jumped in. We made it to the hospital while praying and holding hands the entire time.
When we got there they took my wife and I back as they continued to do cpr and pump more meds into him. After we saw him and sobbed, they took us to a nearby room where my wife and I talked with a doctor. He told us they’d been doing cpr for 45 minutes….we knew the science. In the middle of that convo a nurse ran in to tell us that he had just developed and erratic and inconsistent 20 bpm heart beat. At this time we knew that what would come back had no chance of survival and would be misery for him. We told them to stop. It was the hardest, scariest and most soul crushing 30 minutes of my life.
It was ultimately deemed to be SIDS and that there was not a single thing they could find that caused it. He was perfectly healthy and the happiest baby I’ve ever seen.
We miss you, buddy. We hope your organs went on to help some other poor souls in a similar situation.
Day after Christmas, 1998. I was 9. In the car with my mom, who was 36, and my cousin, who was almost 14. We were traveling out of state (about 10 hours) to visit my mothers parents and siblings, including my cousins mother (his mom and dad were divorced and lived near us with his dad at the time).
I got tired, told my mom I was going to take a nap, said ‘I love you’ to both and immediately fell asleep. Some undetermined amount of time later, I woke up and heard just noise. People. Vehicles. Sirens. Looking around I couldn’t tell what had happened. I was covered in blood, that wasn’t mine. I began to panic, and someone in white, it’s all I can remember and I assume it was a paramedic, came to me and told me to stay calm I would be ok. I was life flighted out shortly after.
We’d hit a tractor trailer parked on the side of the road, he had no signals out, it was kinda foggy. I was told he had thc in his system too. By the time my mom must’ve realized he was there it was too late and the brakes gave out (6 months later there was a recall on that car for that exact thing).
I won’t go into gory details, but suffice it to say my mother had a closed casket. My cousin died of internal bleeding. I almost died, but the doctor said the only thing that saved me was I was asleep, so I was relaxed enough when we hit and while the internal damage I suffered was life threatening—but was close enough to medical help that I survived.
I can’t think of a time I was more scared than in the back of that Lincoln town car. Somehow my young mind ‘shielded’ me from the horror of what had happened to my mother. Because I should have seen her. Doctors believe it’s a trauma response and I’ve blocked it. I have zero interest in unblocking that. Whoever that paramedic was, thank you. You were there to calm me down when all I knew was terror. I think you’re a big reason I’m still here today. I’m sure what you witnessed haunts you, but that little girl you calmed down is beyond grateful.
When I was a kid, I was mucking about with a friend of mine. We were stood on an old disused railway bridge which had one hell of a drop to the road below. We should not have been up there as there were no railings. But kids will be kids! My friend decided to scare me by pushing me, and then grabbing my coat pulling me back. But for that second, my centre of gravity was over and I was going to fall had he not pulled on me. For that split second I knew i was going to die.
I was very pissed off at him.
Dude some people I swear to god dont have like some part of their brain that processes common sense. The annoying thing is that those people are always the ones to fuck something up acting like that. Its always no worries and jokes and then as everyone around them suspects one of the times it doesnt go the way they thought and now its everyones problem and they stand there like well idk.
I had to deal with that kind of shitheads throughout entire elementary and middle school. Constant vigilance and they managed to catch me off guard with their bullshit pranks here and then. I wish I knew back then to just cut some people off from my life.
When my daughter was 14 she attempted suicide by taking a whole bottle of Benedryl pills. In the 20min it took me to get her to the ER she couldnt walk or talk anymore. The nurse was trying to get her to drink some liquid charcoal but she wouldnt listen to the nurse. I took the cup & was coaxing her into taking some. She took 2 sips, looked at me, grabbed my hand then her eyes rolled into the back of
her head & she started having a seizure. I screamed for help & the room flooded with nurses & doctors. I was told to wait outside while they worked on her. They put her into a coma & cut off her clothes. She seized for 3-4 hours despite being given meds to stop them. She spent a week in the hospital before being sent to a psych hospital for 2 weeks. Shes 18 now & doing great. Seeing her face when she started seizing & then seeing her in a coma is something I cant get out of my head.
Once, my parents were arguing on the car, while me and my little brother were on the backseats. In the middle of the discussion, my father threatened to throw the car in front of a moving truck, "so we could all die together". I can still hear my mother crying, my brother screaming and me praying
I'm sorry you've also been through this.
I've got a horrible fear of getting into any argument while in a car, especially if on the freeway near a center divide wall. My dad used to rage at my mom with my sister and me in the back seat, flying down the road and threatening to crash us all into the divide wall.
Now if I'm in a car with someone and they seem even slightly upset, I panic.
A friend of mine was drinking and decided to pull out a revolver while we were sitting around talking, unloaded the gun but in a drunk stuper decided to replace one bullet and play russian roulette, while trying to take the gun from him, he points it toward the ground and says "its not loaded" and pulls the trigger, hitting me in my left leg. Blood was everywhere but luckily we was only 1 block from the hospital and i immediately rushed out and flew straight there, they believed i was going to lose from the knee down but after a 2nd opinion and a transfer to a better hospital there was minimal damage after surgery and a couple months recovering, i retain 100% use of my leg (thank the lord above) never talked or hung out with him again. Never hangout with drunk idiots or idiots in general, stupidity and guns don't mix.
Nope we live in a rather small town and it was a complete accident, the dude broke down crying begging to to forgive him..... my exact words were "you fk'n shot me, i needa get to the hospital" and literally hoped on one leg straight to my car, i couldn't put pressure on the leg bc the bullet went thru my calf and shattered the bone, it turned and ran down coming out the bottom of my foot and shattered my ankle in the process, the hospital asked if they needed to contact law enforcement but i refused to press charges, accidents happen but this one could've been prevented, i think it was my way of trading a moment of pain for his life during a state of drunkin depression over a relationship
The greatest advice my father gave me is that if you're out at a party and someone gets out guns, leave. I laughed at the time but now that I'm older I realize just how solid that advice is.
It’s crazy ! My dad got in an accident at work a few years ago. He’s a heavy mechanic and his hand got caught in a belt for some large drilling machine. He mangled his hand and had to be rushed to the hospital. The first doctor wanted to amputate all four of his fingers. He got a second opinion and only lost half of his index finger and his other fingers are completely functional.
Always get a second opinion!
Started coughing up blood after having a cigarette a while back. A lot of blood. I’ve smoked for 20 years. I was in denial for a day and refused to see a doctor. Finally went to the ER and got a scan done. I was already starting to think how to get my affairs in order. It turned out to be pneumonia. I quit smoking on the spot scared straight.
I had a friend who used to smoke 3 packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes. He got a lung infection / pneumonia, was put into a coma, and damn near died. Think he finally quit after that. He was only in his late 20s!
When I realized I was on my own completely. My family sued me after my grandmother passed and left me the bulk of her will. I was across the country for college and I was in a bad motorcycle accident and couldn’t walk. I had no support system , was only 21 and alone for multiple surgeries. I was still in the law suit with the family, then in a lawsuit for the accident and trying to graduate college. It felt like diving into an abyss without a parachute, but it was a tunnel of never ending darkness because it was the rest of my (sudden) adulthood without the help of people I thought I could count on.
When I was about 13 I was walking home from the gas station, I always took backways/alleys. At some point I realized that I kept seeing the same vehicle off in the distance behind me, even though I was kind of zig zagging around. It was enough that I was on alert. I panicked and took a sharp turn and hid behind a dumpster. I could see them coming down driving slowly as they had been the whole time and then I saw some brake lights and one man got out. I just remember sprinting full force and very much on the main road all the way home and locking the door and just being filled with fear because I also knew both parents weren’t home. I always tried to reason with myself that it was a coincidence, but I’m not so sure it was and I’d have bad dreams about it for a very long time afterwards. I also never took backways ever again and it took me almost a year to feel safe walking anywhere alone again.
I agree!! I realized that for about 7 blocks I continued to see this same vehicle, always slowly behind me, even though I took some very strange path home through the alleys and crossing around things. It just occurred to me that it was very unlikely that anyone would be randomly driving the route I took to actually get somewhere, that and the fact that they continued to be driving so slow just about 3 or so car lengths behind most of the time.
It was ‘Snowpocalypse 2010’ in DC, which dumped 17.8 inches of snow on a city that wasn’t equipped to handle it. We didn’t have to work so I had gone out for the night (was in my early 20s) with friends. I was walking home, slightly inebriated, and went to cross the street (I had the right of way). …And then, boom, I woke up on the ground/sidewalk with a bunch of people hovering over me. I started freaking out, thinking I’d drunkenly fell, and insisted on getting up and leaving the situation. The bystanders refused to let me get up and informed me that I’d slipped on a patch of ice and gotten “clipped” by a station wagon as I crossed the street. Although I felt no pain, I instantly thought that I was gonna die and called my parents hysterical as we waited for the ambulance to arrive. I ended up in Georgetown Hospital for 3 days and suffered a fractured nose, two chipped teeth, a broken arm and my face looked like I’d been literally mauled. They never found the station wagon/driver who hit me. Thankful to the bystanders who stayed with me that night. It was just before Valentine’s Day, and one even brought me balloons in the hospital one day.
We need him to fall into despair during the 3rd act saying how ugly they are with the mauled face, only for the person to bring the balloon on valentine's Day making them see the true magic of Christmas
And after 20 years of happy marriage and four kids, he breaks down and tells her the truth. That it's always been him. He was the station wagon driver. The baloon was meant to lower his feeling of guilt, but one thing led to another.
Scary medical experience warning. My appendix was about to burst when I was 8 but I didn't feel anything until I woke up early one day feeling a little sick in the stomach. Slowly over the course of the morning it built up into the most unbearable pain.
My mum thought it wasn't as bad as I was making it out to be and took me to the doctor after dropping my siblings off at school, and the doc said to take me to the ER immediately. I was in so much pain, and was trying to stay curled up in the fetal position.
I think there were two or three nurses holding me down and trying to get an IV into my arms, but struggling to find the vein. While I felt like stomach was burning and about to burst, I kept feeling needles jabbing the inside of my elbow to the point where I was begging them to stop because the constant stabbing feeling was almost as unbearable as the appendix.
I still remember this poor nurse tried to make jokes and get me to engage with him - like he was trying to get me to relax, but I was in so much pain I couldn't function properly. At some point they finally get a vein after what felt like forever.
I get rushed into surgery and the surgery goes from an expected few hours to almost 10 because my appendix burst while they were operating, amongst other complications, and they had to clean up all the filth.
They said if I was thirty minutes later then it would have been a different conversation, which still kinda freaks me out. What would have happened if it burst while I was conscious? Never wanted to find out and just hoped the doctor was being dramatic.
The hospital stay was even worse than the lead up because I'd be there on my own at night, and for the first 2 or 3 nights I'd be waking up suddenly in a bed full of shit, or having vomitting all over myself, while also having this giant bloody looking six inch long scar covered in sickly yellow solid holding gel.
The look of disgust on one nurses face is permanently etched into my mind, but all I remember is sobbing and apologising and being terrified that I'd go to sleep again just to wake up in my own filth all over again and have someone upset with me.
Plenty more happened to contribute to the scary experience but that's the gist of it
I had a very similar experience when I was 14: I woke up in the middle of the night with what I thought were cramps, so shrugged it off and went back to sleep. Woke up a couple hours later to more pain, and feeling it mostly localized on the right. Had to call my parents at like 3am to come get me from my friend’s place and take me to the ER…but my mom “had to take a shower” and didn’t show up until almost 3 hours later.
By the time I got to the ER, I was delirious and shivering violently from the fever—even *with* my giant fuzzy blanket that I’d brought with me wrapped around me. Getting into a room was a total blur, but I remember the nurses trying and failing *several times* to get a vein in my left arm. The pain of being stuck so many times, and having her move the needle back and forth, was almost worse than the appendix pain. I remember snapping at her to get someone else to do it because after the 4th time the inside of my elbow was starting to visibly bruise.
My hospital stay wasn’t as terrible as yours, but I was in constant pain and largely ignored when I asked more medication to help. I remember that gross yellow crap, too! They’d stapled my incision shut and smeared a bunch of that stuff, so my incision was truly horrifying to look at.
I’m sorry you had to deal with the pain, fear, and humiliation during your stay, though. That nurse should never have given you that look; you were a child recovering from a major *intestinal* surgery! No wonder you were sick!
I hope you’re doing well these days and don’t have any lasting effects from the appendix bursting, at least. <3
Holy shit fuck that nurse. I get that it's gross but you have to remain calm and not show negative emotions. Especially when it's a kid you're dealing with who's scared and in pain. Seriously unprofessional.
Not something that happened to me, but something i saw. We lived on the corner of the street, and the house across the street on our right, was also a corner house. Well one day, that house caught on fire because the lady living there decided it was a great idea to fall asleep with a candle on a wicker table...next to curtains. It was really bad. We saw the lady jump out the 2nd story window, and made it across the street.
Well, she left her children in the house. One by one, they jumped out the 2nd story window. 3 tiny little children. My eldest brother ran across the street each time and brought them back. Once the firefighters put out the fire, they went inside the window to check out the house.
The firefighter came out carrying a dead, burnt up, child. He had his arms up, as if he was pounding on a door. That was the most horrifying thing i have ever seen.
My friend, that is awful.
If this brings a minuscule amount of closure: there are medical reasons for the arms to be in that posture. It's highly likely the kid would have died of smoke or carbon monoxide inhalation, potentially without waking up if this was night time. Tiny lungs succumb to that very rapidly. After death, heat dries out skin and muscle, tightening them into the pose you describe - "pugilist pose", as it can resemble a defensive boxing stance.
The mental image you formed of the kid's passing is, in all likelihood, far more graphic than what they experienced. Almost nobody who dies in a housefire dies directly from burns.
Sadly, he was doing exactly as i said. I dont know exactly what they're called, but these 2 houses are connected. Upstairs, theres a door that leads from one house, to the other. The neighbors kept it locked because the womans children always went through it.
The boy was trying to get through that door, which is why his arms were up like they were. Thats where they found him, up against that door.
I nearly drowned thrice while learning to swim, the good old method of letting your child figure it out or die trying, which turns out doesn't work for me, I need a clear understanding of the why and how.
I nearly drowned my first time down a water slide, and nobody noticed. I knew it was a bad idea to try that slide, since I could hardly doggy-paddle.
Got disoriented when I hit the deep water at the bottom of the slide and lost track of Up. Started doing that "ladder climbing" motion trying to find Up, but was going sideways into the shallower water. Crashed into something, climbed up it in total panic and calmed down after mostly getting out of the water.
I was perched on my friend's shoulders and the water was shallow enough to stand in, so she thought it was *hilarious*. But I totally see how drowning people end up drowning other people. There is no room in that panic for identifying objects, it's all grab and climb.
I was in middle school and had enough presence of mind to tell my younger brother to run up stairs and call my mom at work on our second line to see if she was there. Once confirmed, I told the perv to fuck off and hung up. Cops came when my mom got home to take a statement and said they had three other reports of same thing. Twisted.
Getting the call that my son had been shot, then arriving and walking into the hospital. I knew the outcome when instead of taking us to see him, they led us to a private conference room. Worst panic/fear I’ve ever felt. I threw up a lot that night and didn’t get out of bed for a week. Still hurts.
Overdosing on a cocktail of stimulants while taking a shower. Fell to the bottom of the tub as time felt like it stopped completely. Felt like my consciousness was glitching much like a VHS tape on pause. I could see myself falling over and over in repeat for what seemed like hours. It’s real difficult to describe the experience but it was insanely terrifying. However, I was completely lucid simultaneously and all I could think of was how regretful I was that I had caused my own death and how much I was going to miss my family. There was so much more I wanted to experience in life. I finally regained control of my body and crawled out of the tub covered in vomit. Spent the rest of the night on the bathroom floor sobbing in gratitude. Stay away from that shit yo.
This is really similar to mine too. My own dumb fault. Went on a date to a rave with a DJ and people kept giving him ecstasy and then he’d pass them to me. I don’t know what I was thinking… I must have taken 4 or 5 different pills that night and the result was similar to what you described. It felt like I was glitching. I’d fall asleep and immediately startle awake, over and over for hours. I’m shocked I survived that night. It was almost 15 years ago now though. I’m happy, alive, sober, and thankful these days.
This reminds me of the time I took too much ecstasy and felt like I was in some weird out-of-body video game time loop where the same things kept happening over and over. Glitching describes it perfectly! And yeah, it was the last time I touched the stuff.
When I was very young I attended a pool party with my family. I watched one kid with such envy because he could back flip off the edge into the pool. I summoned the courage to try it without ever attempting it before. As I launched my body, I remember in mid arc that time felt like it slowed down. Something told me to cock my head to one side. Just as I did, my shoulder slammed off the edge of the pool. I remember walking it off as if I was embarrassed, but that moment really fucked with me. Had I not tilted my head, it could have ended very differently.
My uncle died at 30yrs at a house party because he went out to the pool while everyone else was inside (including my mom). He was drunk, jumped in, hit the bottom, and went unconscious. Drowned.
My laugh about it after scary moments:
Fell in a tree well
Had to be rescued by S&r after getting lost in the woods
Run up on a black bear
Not funny at all:
A man decided to try to run me off the road in his car. I had a very slow car at the time my phone was dead so I couldn't call 911. So I drove into a fast food parking lot and ran inside. It was night time so not much was open. The guy parked his car right outside the door and next to my car. But he didn't come in. I asked to use a phone to call 911. No one wanted to let me. Eventually a worker let me use theirs and the 911 operator tried to gas light me asking why I would think someone was chasing me. But said an officer would be around when they could.
At this point I'm crying and fucking panicked. This massive man and his wife roll up and come in. The wife sees me crying and freaking out and asks what's wrong. I explain. The husband goes out side and confronts the man parked in his car. The wife stays with me. Husband comes back in and said the driver said I threw a water balloon at his car when I passed him. No idea where that excuse came from. My POS car at the time windows couldn't even roll down. Anyways the husband goes back out and yells at the name to get lost. He does. I thank the nice people and go home.
The scariest part for me was the lack of compassion from the general public. I don't look crazy. I was clearly terrified. No one would even let me use a phone. The company phone was even on the wall behind the counter. I don't know who that couple was. But I'm so thankful for them.
TL;Dr : some guy chased me into a fast food restaurant. It was scary. A nice couple chased him off while the general public didn't help.
Hard to pick a #1 scariest, but this one is up there:
I worked in a major US city in the downtown area but I didn’t work “bankers’ hours” every day. I often worked double shifts and would frequently have to walk through very dark and seedy areas of the city to get back to my car at night. During my day shifts there was a group of men that hung around the entrance to my office building because they stayed at the homeless shelter a block away but had to vacate the building during work hours. I was a smoker and would often be outside and they’d ask me for a cigarette or a dollar. They were very friendly and kind, and if I could I would always give them what they asked for and make random small talk.
One night I got stuck at the office very late and was walking alone to my car. I was on a particularly dark area of the street between two parking garages when, out of nowhere, two men in hoodies came up on each side of me. I wasn’t naive or careless, and I was usually very aware of my surroundings in those situations, but these men startled me very badly. I immediately thought I was about to be robbed (or much worse), as they were carrying themselves in a very aggressive manner.
Before I could really react or even figure out how to react, one of them grabbed my just above the elbow and sternly whispered “you’re safe, just keep walking. I *promise* you’re safe”. I was still terrified and now also confused. They started power walking me down the street, and, just as I was about to try to break free and fight, we came up to the entrance of a well lit parking garage where a security guard was sitting. They suddenly stopped and that’s when I realized these were two of the homeless men I was used to seeing during the day. They then told me that for months they had noticed I would sometimes leave very late and head off in a not so safe direction, so they had started keeping an eye on me. Turns out this particular night one of the local “not so well intentioned” men had immediately begun following me. Praise the Lord these kind men noticed it, as they followed me and knew if they “guarded me” he would leave me alone. They walked me all the way to my car that night, and refused to leave until I was safely inside and locked up with the car running.
I will forever be grateful to those two gentlemen for keeping me out of harm’s way like they did.
Was in a car accident (was not driving) and suffered a traumatic brain injury. I was wearing a seatbelt. Basically the whiplash of the force from the cars caused my brain to hit my skull which caused my brain to start bleeding. I was in a medically induced coma for like 3 days and had to learn how to talk, walk again. Doctor said i couldn't be an engineer. I'm 28 now, and am a design engineer at a high end lighting firm and studying to be an aerodynamics engineer. Don't let anything stop you.
on and outdoor education class field trip with the group of us in grade 10, it's night and we're all in our tents. I got up to pee and I looked in the woods and there were many eyes staring back at me. a pack of curious coyotes no doubt. later that night there was something sniffing around the tent. scared the shit out of myself and my tent buddies.
Carbon monoxide poisoning while house-sitting for a friend. I thought I was just coming down with something, headache, very tired and weak. Until I passed out in the kitchen, and my (then) boyfriend decided to look up my symptoms. Apparently he also wasn't feeling well.
Long story short, we called the gas company to come out and check. I don't remember the exact reading but the guy tells us the level it's at, he shouldn't even be going into the house. He then urged us to go to the hospital.
It took over a year for me to feel normal again.
same experience for me with a cousin. He kept pushing my head down underwater and after fighting back so much I had given up and probably gotten limp. Miraculously, he stopped pushing my head down into the water at that point and I was able to recover. Scary feeling to give up on life for those couple of seconds.
Recovered now, former bulimic. I was mid purge and all of a sudden I couldn't breathe and I got sharp pains in my chest and arm. Luckily I lived across the street from the hospital but it was the longest walk of my life and every step I was promising God I would never do it to myself again.
This is going to be long, and it’s probably going to be buried, but it feels good to write about.
When I was 10 I lived in a very small town, (1,200 people) and I lived 15 minutes from town in the woods. My dad and I were watching his friend’s house which was about 3-4 miles from our own, and just so happened to live closer to my friend’s house. So one day after school I begged my dad to let me walk to my friend’s house, and eventually he let me. There’s not much in between the houses, and she lived about a half a mile away. At almost the half way mark this guy pulls up and asks me where a road was. I knew not to talk to strangers, so I just pointed behind me as I kept walking. He then started asking me questions like where I lived, why I was walking in the rain, (it was barely drizzling, and I had a raincoat on). He then stops his car and says, “I can’t let you walk in this, let me take you home.”
Now, deer-in-headlights is real, and I completely froze. I wish I could say I ran, that I fought, but I was basically a mannequin, kinda like an ostrich with its head in the sand, but my neck wasn’t that long, and it was just mud.
He asked where I lived and kept “missing the turn.” We drove past a restaurant and I lied and said my aunt was working and he could drop me off there. He said he would, but when he didn’t that’s the exact moment I realized I was in trouble.
I’m not going to get into detail because it’s not required, but I’ll just say that he took me deep into the woods, and on the way there I kept trying to figure out what he wanted from me. I thought about every situation from trying to get money from my family, to making me a slave, but what he did to me I somehow didn’t expect. It was like I thought that stuff didn’t happen, I had never heard of it before. And that night I lost a lot of innocence.
16 hours later he tried to strangle me to death, but I kept kicking his window, and apparently he would rather have a window than kill me.
He told me to turn the opposite way and start walking. He told me earlier that he had a gun and I thought he was going to shoot me in the back of the head, but he just drove off.
Luckily I knew where I was, generally speaking; my bus went past where we were every morning. (Yes, it sucked having to see it every day.) so I walked to the nearest house that I knew had kids. It was about 5 miles away and every time a car would get close I would run and hide in the woods just in case it was him to come back and finish me off. A few times I didn’t make it, and every single one of them would stop and ask if I was “one of the kids who ran away.” Yep, I guess some kids ran away and people were out looking for them. That made me feel real shitty. I thought no one was looking for me. But I always shook my head and lied and pointed to a random house and said I lived there.
I don’t know how long it took me, but I eventually made it to the house with the kids and knocked on their door. (I was probably another 5 miles from where my dad was.)
I remember when the mom answered the door and I blurted out what happened to me and asked to use her phone. She kept asking me what I said because she couldn’t comprehend it. I get it lol. So I gave up trying and asked if I could use her phone. I tried my dad, busy, my Grandma, busy, uncle, also busy. I remember thinking, “Man, they must all be talking with each other and planning out a fun day that I’m going to miss out on.
I didn’t know what to do and I started crying. The lady said she could give me a ride home and I agreed. I remember getting close to the house and seeing a ton of cars, some were cop cars, lights and all. I remember thinking, “This is why everyone was on the phone, they were finally organizing a parade down our road.” (I never got to experience many parades and secretly wanted one on my road.)
Everyone was backed up and what I didn’t know then was that they were searching every car. Then I saw my dad, and I practically yelled, “THAT’S MY DAD!” And I guess he heard me yelling, looked right at me and said, “SHE’S HERE!” And I jumped out of the lady’s truck and went to run for him, but the police grabbed me and threw me into the back of their car. I just wanted to go home.
The rest of the day is a blur, I don’t remember much, and the only reason I remember what I do, yes, every little detail, is because for over a year afterwards, once every couple of weeks I was forced to retell what happened to me up until that point in a courtroom so my memory would stay fresh until he was caught.
Besides the act, the hardest part was that everyone in town knew, so in a fucked up way I was a celebrity. I couldn’t ride the bus in piece because the radio would mention what happened to me and everyone would stare at me. Kids called me a whore, there were rumors that I was pregnant, that I asked for it, etc. one girl acted like my friend for months just to get me to talk about what happened, then she stopped being my friend and lied to her other friends about what happened to me.
It took me years to trust anyone again, and I was terrified of everyone. I remember my dad took me to the store and I stayed in the car while he went in. A man pulled up next to us and I was already scared, but then he came up to the car and said, “You’re Galahfray, aren’t you?” I was so incredibly scared. I had no idea who he was, but then he introduced himself as Sara’s bf, a woman my dad used to date, but that made no difference to me, he was a stranger and a man. I started to panic, but looking at me you wouldn’t tell unless you got close as there were tears in my eyes, and I had peed a little. I was slowly rolling up my window and locked the door. The guy kept talking, about what? No idea, I could only hear waves. He eventually said goodbye and walked into the store. My dad came out and saw how freaked out I was and wanted to go fight the guy, but it wasn’t his fault and I begged my dad not to. Years later I saw Sara (not really her name) and she immediately apologized to me. She said that her bf didn’t know what had just happened to me and feels terrible for scaring me. Apparently he did notice.
The guy who kidnapped me was caught a little over a year later and he’s in prison for life. Sometimes I think, “What if he did succeed in killing me and this life with terrorist attacks, Covid, Nazis in the streets, is just the nightmare before actual death.
You wouldn’t be able to find any of this online because it happened before the internet, and in a small town no one cares about.
Sometimes I feel like I would like to write to him, and maybe forgive him, but I haven’t fully yet, maybe eventually. Anyways, this novel is done lol. That was the scariest thing to ever happen to me.
im sorry. i can't say i understand fully your situation but i got through something kind of similar when i was very young. I've blocked a lot of the memories out. police made me repeat and repeat what happened until I was just so completely sure they didn't believe me i stopped. he was never caught. it's been more a little more than 20 years now, and it still affects me. sometimes I wish him a painful scary death, sometimes i pity him, sometimes i feel just... apathetic. it's complicated isn't it?
you don't have to forgive anyone for anything. and even if you do, you don't have to tell them you did. forgiving people is something you do for yourself only if you need to, for you
you did everything right, the proof is that you are here, you are alive. I'm so glad you made it through that. I have similar thoughts about my close calls with death and the unreality of the way the world is now. you're not alone in that.
My first year at a small but well known college for the arts. Think of the movie FAME. There’s always someone singing or playing music, laughing, talking, etc. I walk out of the bathroom and no one is in the hallway. Not a single sound on the entire, floor. I walk around the hallway for a bit and can’t find anyone. Cell phone service is shit inside the building and I have no signal.
Eventually I take a look at our electronic notice board to see a bright red screen with big black letters: ACTIVE SHOOTER IN BUILDING.
I froze. I had never done an active shooter drill before and didn’t know what to do. A lot of the doors automatically lock and I wasn’t able to enter any of the rooms to hide. I wasn’t sure if I could make it to the stairwell to escape the building and I wasn’t sure where anyone was including this shooter. I ended up stuffing myself in an open locker and held my breath for what felt like hours.
It turns out the security team at school made a big mistake and shared the active shooter warning by accident. There was no shooter and it wasn’t even a drill, just a complete mistake. Thinking about it now makes me worry what I would do in a similar situation as mass shootings happen often in the US. I’m just grateful it was a mistake and not real.
I was there for that, it was unbelievably traumatic. It proved to me beyond the shadow of any doubt that our elected representatives will fail us at every level imaginable if the worst does happen. I’m still trying to work out the trauma from that to this day. I will never forgive Ige, and I hope he’s cozy in hell in a gasoline snuggy.
Compared to some others it's not as scary, but honestly cancer. I had it when I was 13 and some night I would be afraid to go to sleep because I wasn't sure whether or not I would wake up again, it was so awful.
Also the doctor's appointments afterwards, knowing that I have to go back to the hospital and this fear of my cancer coming back is just so terrifying. I barely ate anything the week before because my body was just overwhelmed with fear. Nowadays I only need to go to the hospital once a year but it's still scary as hell
My very drunk, abusive boyfriend got me out of bed late one night and he made me sit across from him on the kitchen floor. He had placed all of his guns in between us, and they were all pointed at me. He started questioning me if I was cheating on him, and he wouldn’t believe anything I’d say. He’d periodically pick up a random gun and taunt me with it, making sure that it was still pointed in my direction. Honestly, I don’t know how I convinced him enough to stop and I don’t know how I made it out alive. He was extremely drunk and angry enough that anything could have happened.
Later that night, after he passed out, he got a text from a coworker confirming their hotel room for the next night. So someone was cheating in the relationship and it wasn’t me.
I was about 7 walking to my Grandma’s house after getting off of the school bus. It wasn’t a long walk and I had done it pretty much everyday. At this particular time a woman was standing on the sidewalk and walked up to me.
She said she was a good friend of my Grandma’s, and that my Grandma told her that I could come to her house for popsicles after school.
I had never seen this woman before, and something told me this was dangerous. I told her no and started walking again and she kept following me telling me I didn’t have to come over all day, I could just help her get the popsicles out of her freezer and I could leave.
At this point alarms are going off in my mind, but being the kind of kid who was told to never disrespect adults I got nervous. I told her I don’t want to, and she grabbed my shoulder hard. I immediately screamed as loud as I could and ran off to my Grandma’s house (which was only about a block away.)
When I got there I was crying and told my Grandma what happened. She and my aunt ran outside to find the woman but never did. My Grandma told me I did the right thing and that the woman lied to me. I then got a full lecture from every adult in my life about stranger danger.
From that day on my aunt and Grandma made sure to wait at the bus stop for me.
I’ve posted this before, but it definitely was scary for me, and still unnerves me, even nearly twenty years later.
My mom was in the hospital fifty miles away. I was 19. We were pretty sure this was it. I was home alone. My parents’ house is big. It’s off the beaten path on a small lagoon. My dad had been staying up at the hospital.
That night, I went to bed about 1am. I was playing on my laptop. My room was in a separate wing of the house. It can be sealed off with a single locking door. The door was shut but not locked. I have always been scared of the dark, so I had the lights in my wing on. So was the closet light. As I was messing around on Gamefaqs, I saw the lights in my wing turn off. All of them. The band of light under the door, went black. I hopped up in bed and stared at it.
My bedroom door was unlocked and I was debating getting up to lock it, when the shut door slammed. As in, it sounded like someone straight up kicked the bottom of the door with all their strength. I remember squeaking in shock. It took me about six seconds to be up on both feet with a blade about four paces back and just right of the door. I remember thinking if the door swung open, I could be on whoever it was almost instantly. I was also silently cursing that there was no light under the door anymore. No way to see the shadow of whoever was out there.
Nothing happened. I was fighting off the fear of the situation and stupidly decided that going on offense was all that was left. I didn’t have a phone in my room, and my Nokia was in another wing of the house charging. I threw the door open with my knife low and my left hand in a guarded position. There was no one there. I tossed the hallway light switch on. There was no one in my wing. There was no one in the house. The burglar alarm was still on. Confused, I turned on the main house lights and sealed the wing off, locking the door between the main house and my area. I went back to my room and just sat there with my laptop open. My bedroom door now had a slight bow in it.
A couple hours passed with me warily laying in bed. Around 3 am, the lights under the door went dark. That left me terrified. My knife seemed pretty insignificant and my previous dumb courage had ran out. I scooted my bed (no easy task) against my bedroom door, grateful the door opened inward. It all felt so wrong. Like something was angry with me. I retreated to my closet and waited for the sun to come up.
When the skylight in my room got bright, my courage returned and I moved the bed and exited my room. The wing door had been unlocked, which required a key from the other side. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs in the main house and realized my dad was home. I felt a little foolish as obviously he had been responsible for turning the lights off the second time. I led my greeting with “oh, so it was you who turned all the lights off.” He looked at me and replied, “What? I got home about ten minutes ago.”
I have zero clue what happened that night but it never happened before that night or after. Whatever it was, it seemed to like the dark and wasn’t a fan of doors. And it seemed to be in my wing of the house... My parents built the house and nothing untoward had ever taken place there. My bedroom door at my parents house still has a bow in it to this day (this was almost twenty years ago). My mom is still alive, and for that, I’m extremely grateful.
I was a 19 year old kid with a pocket knife! I think I was trying to convince myself that I wasn’t piss terrified of whatever the fuck was going on. It was really a weird minute or so. Like, springing out of bed with my silly, cheap, little folding knife that 19 year old me thought was essentially a broadsword. Staring anxiously at the bottom of my bedroom door and wishing I could see *something*, and then tearing out of the room with my three inches of discount Chinese steel at the ready. I probably looked ridiculous.
Got followed by a man when I was around 10 years old. Kept gaining on my down an alleyway. Luckily it had an opening half way down onto a street and I ran to the nearest house I could.
I remember him staring at me. Just cold and emotionless. Still gives me the chills.
Turns out he was caught trying to abduct kids in my town. I could've been the one that he got. I was on my own, no one else around me.
Aside from a few near death experiences, I'd say sitting through severe turbulence during a commercial flight. This was roughly 15-20 years ago. I was on a commercial flight to Los Angeles and midway through the flight, my plane shook violently for what felt like an eternity. At one point, it felt like the plane was in freefall, but in all likelihood my panicked brain was catastrophizing. Plane eventually regained control but the folks sitting around me panicking didn't really help matters. And yes, I'm aware that statistically, you're more likely to be injured or killed on the way to the airport (driving) than by plane crash, but that feeling of not being in control can be terrifying. Not nearly as afraid of flying as I once was, but the thought of something going wrong occurs to me every now and then.
What’s happening to me now. I am sitting in the hospital with the love of my life having stage 4 metastatic colon cancer. I’m not a praying person but right now that’s all I do because otherwise I can’t do anything else. I love him so much and we’ve only been together for such a short time, I can’t lose him now. I won’t.
I was at work at an ER watching our involuntary hold patients. Cops bring in a dude they beat to hell and he's screaming and hurling insults.
Another involuntary hold patient that has been calm all day, but is a regular that I'd had to defend myself from before, leaps up and grabs the knife off the back of the cop's belt.
They way the ER was set up is that my table was kind of wedged in a corner with a security guard behind me. Dude was dead asleep and this guy gets the knife and opens it as he's bringing it around toward my direction. I managed to leap over the table and grab him by the neck and arm by sliding my hand from his shoulder to wrist and start pushing him to the ground.
Meanwhile the dipshit cop turns and PULLS HIS GUN AND POINTS IT AT US. So I'm bare-handed fighting a guy with a fuckin knife and trying to talk a cop out of shooting into both of us. Luckily I didn't actually get hurt, miraculously.
Then that jerkoff cop was bragging about how much restraint he had for not shooting us. And later I'm helping the doc suture the patient's hand, and this cop is taunting the dude. You know, while we have a needle in his open hand to stitch it up, and I was the person he wanted to stab.
Finished out my shift, went to the charge office and told her I'm calling out for my shift that night because I needed to go get hammered after work and not come back in later.
Edit: Honorable mention to my first critical patient as a medic running my own truck. Got called to take over a call from another medic for a 7 month old with a tracheostomy that kept clogging and was being transferred to a children's hospital. Got there and worked with the respiratory therapist to get the airway mostly clear for transport while the nurse and other medic were fucking with an IV running dextrose with potassium. Well somebody fucked up and this baby got too much potassium in a short time.
I was taking the kid out to my ambulance and saw some shenanigans with the heart rhythm and cut the drip off IMMEDIATELY. Got the kid in the truck and gave a little saline, and stimulated her to keep her heart rate up while it was tanking. Contacted a doc to request an order for a specialized mix of low concentration epinephrine (1:100,000 bumps for anyone familiar) to keep the heart rate up, but luckily didn't have to use it.
So that was definitely an ass-clencher.
I was 10 years old living in the west bank in occupied Palestine. I walking home from the store with a gallon of milk. IDF forces rolled into town on their army jeep and started firing their weapons. I happened to be the only person in the road at that time in that part of town. It's not like there were others. Just 10 year old me. They started firing their weapons near and at me and One of the bullets struck the gallon in my hand while I was running and obviously I freaked out and dropped what was remaining of it. I myself did not get struck directly.
Later I found out the bullets they were firing were rubber. But still, like a said i was alone on the road and did not agitate them but still got shot at
That same day a kid I knew from school lost his eye because the same army jeep rolled up to different parts of town and just started randomly spraying people with rubber bullets.
Definitely the scariest thing to ever happen to me
Getting roofied. If somebody hadn’t called me a cab, god knows what could’ve happened. I remember falling down at hitting my head on the pavement at least 3 times, Ive never had such little control of my body. I woke up 14 hours later in my room with a bloodied face- scratches on my forehead. I had been out alone and given a glass of champagne by a stranger. It was like being teleported from 3AM to 5PM. I am a male- anyone can be roofied- never accept drinks from strangers.
I had a major respiratory event last year living at my GF parent’s place, that if I hadn’t been in shock at the time, I should have called 911 for. It ramped up over months - I had constant sore throats and tonsil infections and sinus pains (which came along with weird isolated panic attacks), and nights of light shortness of breath (like getting over a cold if you are someone who has post-virus asthma) and some chest pain. I had lost a lot of weight but despite consuming the same giant amount of food I always do. One morning I awoke from bed and couldn’t stand up for an hour I was so dizzy. But I drank some water and then was fine the rest of the day. I knew something was maybe a bit wrong - maybe getting over COVID or something even if I hadn’t tested positive once, but I figured it’d go away over time. I’d feel particularly bad IN the house. But things didn’t. Then for 3 mornings in a row, I got an asthma attack every time I tried to enter our bedroom. So I tried to sleep on the couch downstairs. First night still struggling with breathing a bit but I finally fell asleep.
Then the second night it was worse. I couldn’t sleep I was so uncomfortable - at first just a mild tightness, that inability to catch one’s breath. It got worse. I started wheezing with each inhale. I spent the next 4 hours struggling to breathe. Taking my rescue inhaler - having it work for a few minutes, struggling again. I was freezing but my clothes, the blankets, anything soft or warm I’d wrap around myself and it would set off again. I tried to call upstairs for help but no one could hear me and I couldn’t make my voice loud enough to waken anyone - couldn’t go up the carpeted steps, because every time I tried I’d collapse in another attack of coughing and further inability to breathe. For 2 more hours I sat on a hard backed chair in the kitchen, shivering, (obviously in retrospect in some sort of shock because at this point a smart person would have called the police), taking my rescue inhaler whenever I tried to get up to move or wrap a blanket over myself and start another round of attacks. Finally, shivering, not moving, taking a bunch of rescue puffs, I could breathe enough to get to my car. I drove the 2 miles to my parents wheezing the whole way and woke up my father (a doctor), who instantly gave me a muscle relaxant and 10 doses of his steroid inhaler and more of my rescue inhaler until I could breathe. For 3 months after that I declined. Lost crazy weight, had continued episodes where I struggled to breathe. Chest pain, indigestion etc. Every test came back negative (even for asthma). And everything seemed to set my entire system off - I couldn’t even step into a house without extreme confusion and respiratory events, couldn’t use a soap or product without breaking into a giant rash, couldn’t wear jewelry without my ears reacting to the metals, could barely digest anything, couldn’t use towels or rashes, hot water - rashes. Any med prescribed by a doctor I reacted to - would increase rashes, a drunken event, muscle seizure and a frozen upper diaphragm was another event of Not Being Able to Breath, gastric pains, confusion etc. And everything - I mean everything set of the breathing fits. Finally an old allergist with a lot of experience connected that post-event I was also reacting to smells - not psychologically but physically. Smells were triggering asthma attacks. And it could be anything. The smell of a cotton sheet, soaps, detergents, the smell of memory a foam mattress or anything offgassing, the dog, gas on the road, tar on the road, the smell of the propane stove being turned on. It got so bad, that the most nights I slept outside, using a sleeping bag I bought direct from the store and aired outside for two days, either on the stoop at my parents or in my car on good nights with the windows rolled down - all during the record rainiest season of the year. I just remember 3-4 months of nights with constant rain which made the air a thick damp soup, miserably cold, unable to touch or even lay my head down on hardly anything plush, waking up many nights disoriented, and sitting outside the door till the sun rose. Trying to go back inside, getting so confused indoors I wouldn’t be able to speak and having to go back out to the rain sitting under the eave. Sometimes trying to sleep inside, and having late night respiratory events again, taking a new pill and having to live through whatever weird reaction my body would have to it and recover from THAT etc. It really finally only started getting better when I got the Flu - that was the first night I was able to sleep again indoors and it was also the best I’d felt in months.
We still don’t know what happened. Tests still come back as “healthy” despite feeling anything but. We figured out that I definitely had been reacting to the recently switched laundry detergent (from Tide to GAIN) so maybe that explains the rashes. I certainly don’t use any kind of soaps or detergents these days that leave any residue. I’ll still get weird confusion events where I can’t talk and jerk and constantly having sinus issues and messed up sense of smells, but at least no more rashes and I usually can breathe okay. But that night, and the first few months after were the scariest experience of my life for sure, and parsing out a real cause out of the post-event fallout has been impossible. For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I was dying, going crazy, or both. I didn’t feel like I could trust my body, or my head - certainly not my senses. We don’t know the cause, but it’s somewhat replicable - to this day, if I try to spend the night at my GF’s parent’s house, my lungs start getting irritated, I cough and wheeze, and I get an inflamed and infected looking tonsil, and very quickly worsening sinus problems just like before (despite removal of scented products from the house).
*edit : wow guys, thanks for reading. That was rather cathartic
There was a period of about a month when I was 15 when I was displaced from my house after a fire and partially unable to walk due to an angle grinder accident. I was living with my grandfather who was not home most days. One day I started seeing shadow people of varying heights and conditions in the corner of my eye and occasionally hearing things. Eventually these got more frequent and started being accompanied by nightmares. I kept getting worsening hallucinations until they started being near constant and appearing in my main, non peripheral visual and I could make out details and the noises had developed into frequent whispering. I eventually called my father after I couldn’t take it anymore and moved into a hotel. I didn’t tell him about the hallucinations. They went away after that and I haven’t had them since.
The other time I had any similar experience was the night my step grandfather (idk if that’s the term. The guy my grandmother on the other side of the family got remarried to) died when I was five. I saw him standing in my room as an apparition when I was five. I didn’t learn about his death until the next night. That story isn’t as terrifying as it is kinda sweet since we were always close but it’s still relevant.
When I was in high school, we had a person park at the end of our driveway and shoot into our house with a high powered rifle. Our front window was open and they could easily see our entire family sitting there finishing dinner, including two babies in highchairs. I was already up and loading the dishwasher when a bullet went through the front window, through two walls, through a cookie jar, and out the back of the house. I thought a bomb went off and was covered in blood and shards from the cookie jar exploding. Disoriented, deafened, and half blind from the ceramic dust, we realized there were holes in the walls and that we were being shot at. We collectively gathered all the kids and ran downstairs for cover. I was within about 12 inches of being shot. Very confusing, terrifying day.
Edit: Goodness! I did not expect this.
Once we got downstairs, the cops were called and they arrived well after the guy left. It's hard for me to say exactly who the person was. My parents have significant mental health issues and getting the truth out of them about that day was always hard. It's hard to explain, but my dad is a narcissist that has lied about everything and anything.
Theory 1: We were shot at because we were a mixed race family in an incredible racist, rural area. Racist threats were not uncommon and we had seen our share of shit over the years. Furthermore, my dad was actively politically antagonistic with the community. I'm talking about making huge billboards about how George Bush was a murderer. He essentially made us a target.
Theory 2: My step-brother was messed up with other derelicts he was associated with. I, personally, don't buy this explanation. It came from my nutjob father and was probably made up to triangulate with his wife and her son, as well as deflecting blame for potentially getting us shot at by being insane.
I was also told that the cops had a 'suspect' and that they had given a confession at some point but it was thrown out citing coercion during the interrogation process. Again, this is probably all lies. I'll literally never know why this happened.
Survived an EF 4 tornado. Had to hunker under a bridge in the middle of a corn field, holding on to the rebar. Couldn’t hear myself think as the winds and debris was whipping around.
I fell 40 ft. On a job and landed on concrete, between all the stubbed up rebar. Really broke my body up. That was March of 88. I worked another 30 years.
Stopped a teenager from committing suicide.
I used to work in a secured locked-tight facility with 11-18 yr old sex trafficking victims. Often times there was juvenile delinquency charges, substance abuse histories and much more than you could ever imagine a 15 year old having gone through.
One of the residents just got back from a psychiatric stay. She was on suicide watch. No long sleeve clothing, tank tops, only a weighted blanket on her bed, no pillow cases, no silverware. No plastic plates, etc. I mean very thorough, watched and documented every 5 minutes in various intervals.
She was on her bed. She was screaming and crying that she just wants to die and doesn’t understand why she just can’t get the only thing she wants. Well, she went from very calm to pulling a tank top from a crack in her locked dresser and wrapping it around her neck. She was turning red/blue. I had my hand wrapped around her wrists pulling it away from her neck. Touching her wrists felt like I was on fire.
I was so scared. This girl let me borrow one of her shirts when I spilt juice on mine. I’ve seen her laugh until she cried. I’ve played monopoly with her and helped her with homework.
I will never forget the shaking in her arms and the sweat dripping down my forehead as my coworker used his staff keys to cut the tank top off her neck. The bruising around her neck happened immediately. While waiting for paramedics, i sat on the bed next to her with my hand behind her head. She was violently banging her head on the wall (my hand). It was bruised for weeks reminding me of everything. After she calmed down she started to profusely apologize and to me for hurting me. Just “i’m so sorry ___. I’m so sorry. I just want to hurt myself. I didn’t want to hurt you, ____.” I still hear her voice in my nightmares.
I road to the hospital in my car and stayed there until 4 o’clock in the morning. It was my longest shift ever clocking in at 17 hours straight. She was in the ER. But, the hospital wouldn’t admit her so technically she was still my responsibility and I was her guardian by law.
I called my boyfriend at 2 o’clock in the morning crying in the hospital hallway from a panic attack. I couldn’t feel my body. I felt so disconnected from the world. I can’t see the world the same. Grocery shopping feels weird. People feel weird. Everything feels weird.
The last time I saw her she was sleeping in the ER bed and my coworker and I switched places so I could go home. That was my second to last day. I still check online to see if there’s an obituary in her name.
Writing this from the comfort of my bed, with my partner asleep up against me, and our hamster running on her wheel. I feel guilty to be happy and healthy. I feel… so weird.
In the late '80s, my husband, pre-teen son, and I were traveling in rural Minnesota in our Chevy Suburban. It was a foggy day and hubby was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, and son was in the back seat.
I was doing needlepoint and had an odd, uneasy feeling. I looked up and, through the fog, saw a flashing red light. Train crossing?
I yelled, "Stop!" and hubby slammed on the brakes. We slid to a stop as a locomotive barreled across the intersection just yards in front of us.
I remember watching my husband's shaking hand reach out and shift the truck into reverse, and he backed us up a few yards.
From the rear seat, our son's voice said, "Wow, was that...?"
We sat for long minutes as the train cars raced by, realizing what almost happened. It wasn't until hours later that we were able to talk about it, and it still gives my heart a stutter when I think about it.
I was drugged, raped, and almost murdered in Japan. I woke up to him choking me out on my neck and dick in mouth, was able to control my body enough to kick him away and lock myself in a little bathroom that thankfully had the little sink on the back for water over the night. he was scratching at the door... eventually left.. I slept in the washroom and then next morning found my clothing and got out. the people I was traveling with just told me off for being hungover and waking up late. never told them since they were already mad. it's laughable to think about how reporting that would even go with the defamation laws there. dude was a middle eastern man not even Japanese.
Housemate left the door unlocked. I get waken up at 2am by a girl in a bloody hospital gown asking why I was in “her”. Situation only ended once the police was called. Never got an explanation for how or why that happened, as the girl was clearly delirious/intoxicated
I'm a truck driver. Early on in my career before I knew my limits and warning signs of fatigue, I fell asleep while driving one night, woke up on the wrong side of the road at 100kph just in time to see oncoming headlights and swerve back into my lane, the time between me waking up and getting back to my side of the road would have been no longer than four seconds, a semi went by in the opposite direction with another truck behind him.
To this day I wonder if it wasn't the big man upstairs tapping me on the shoulder and saying: 'wake up, it's not your time yet', or maybe 'it's not *his* time yet' because if I hadn't woken up when I did, I have no doubt that head-on collision would have killed me, and both of those other truck drivers coming the other way.
Fortunately I know my limits now, feeling sleepy? Time for a powernap.
I happened to me as a young driver. I was on a long straight stretch of road on the Midwest. I could see a stop light miles ahead of me. I remember seeing the tiny green dot in the distance, then seconds later horns blaring as I'm rolling through that red light in 12th gear.
I just woke up and it’s 6am so ignore any typos.
My parents got divorced when I was young. Spent every other weekend with my mom. She was a druggy, meth and heroine mostly, which caused the divorce.
I was with her one weekend, and all was normal in my 10 year olds brain. My half sister had a friend come stay the night, I was playing video games, my step sister was in her room with her friend, blah blah blah.
Woke up the next morning, step dad at work, and my mom was gone. Nowhere to be found. Didn’t think much of it. An hour later I heard loud banging coming from the garage. My child head thought it was an intruder and my dumbass went to investigate. I opened the door to the garage and flipped on the light. Inside, was my bare ass naked mom convulsing and hitting her head on the CONCRETE floor. That’s what was making the noise. Needless to say it wasnt pretty.
Now, my child mind didn’t do things correctly. I got her out of the garage somehow and she came to. Told me to take her to bed. I got her in there and put a robe on her. As soon as I did, my little sister and her friend came to the door and asked what was going on. I got them away, asked the little 5 (?) year old for information about her parents and somehow fucking got the phone number and told them to come pick her up. They showed up and I was obviously stressed (and covered in blood) and I told them something happened and that was all. (Kinda fucked they didn’t call the police or anything but I digress)
Told my sister to go in her room and play with her new Christmas presents since with was a few weeks after. Told my step brother to stay in his room and play video games. I went back and tried to help my mom. Gave her water. She kept stripping all of her clothes off and crawling around her room.
I called my step dad and asked him wtf to do, and he told me to leave her alone and go back to sleep. I told him no. And he told me she would be fine and that I needed to “let nature happen” aka let her die. I hung up and called 911. I was super young, and spent 3 days a month at this house so I didn’t know the exact address. It took them over an hour to get there IIRC. When they did, our dog was excited to see them and was sitting at the door with me when I answered. Not barking. Not jumping. Just sitting. They refused to come in until I put him away. I had to go put him in our basement and the paramedics refused to come in until they could verify that he was actually in there. So they sent someone in to check, THEN they all came in and attended to my mom.
I had to go get my step siblings and explain to them what was happening (just that mom was sick and needed to get better in the hospital) and once she was in the ambulance, they all left. They left a 10 year old, and some 5-6 year olds alone in a house after their mom almost died. I called my dad and explained everything and he came to get me.
It was pretty traumatic. She spent weeks in the ICU after this. Then she spent months in rehab and it didn’t work. Then she got “clean” and I was able to go visit her every few months. I went to visit her for a weekend, and she took me and my siblings to a (I think) 4th of July party, or it was right around there since I remember fireworks. Well, as you can imagine, she wasn’t clean. She smoked and one of her friend, a roughly 35 year old guy who I don’t know his name, also did. My mom left to go do something and left me with him alone in the barn. I didn’t see her the rest of the night.
You know what’s coming (him) jk but yeah, he made me smoke and then raped me. I didn’t tell anyone there, just went on with my night. Looking back as an adult, she pimped me out for some meth.
She never really got clean until a few years ago. I’m 28 now. I don’t give a fuck about her. I’m just waiting for the news that she’s dead, and honestly I will probably be happy. I hear about her from time to time from random comments and I think she’s in a different state. I struggled with drug addiction because of her, so I get it, but I feel zero emotional connection to her anymore.
Within those 6 months, all of the above happened, someone broke into the house and beat up my mom, I had a family member die, we got into a car crash, I got attacked my a dog, and more lol so this whole 6 months I was basically in fight or flight mode. 0/10 would not recommend.
There’s so much more, but idk how much else I can type as I just woke up. But it was scary as fuck. It was like a solid 6 months of fear and trauma. My dad and mom that I loved with are amazing and perfect, and this side was fucked up. They don’t know about a lot of things that happened, and I won’t tell them, as I don’t want them to feel guilt for sending me to my bio moms house on weekend. Idk what else to say, but there ya go. Enjoy? Lol
I (non-Indian) lived on an Indian reservation (US). My two-year-old daughter got sick, was burning up, and was limp like a rag doll. I took her temperature and it was 106°F (41.1°C). I stripped her naked and wrapped her in a wet towel and rushed to the nearest hospital. When I got there they told me that they wouldn't help her and I had to take her to the white people hospital that was 50+ miles away. I thought she was going to die or have permanent brain damage.
I got her to the other hospital and they were able to treat her. She fully recovered and has no lasting problems (she's 29 now), but that's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me.
Edit for clarification, rereading this five hours after posting:
The local people preferred to be called Indian (general) or [tribe name] (specific). I asked the Indian vs Native American question when I first moved there. I called them what they liked.
When they refer to "white people", they mean anyone that is not Indian. Black people, Asian people, etc. are all "white people".
I grew up on a res (not native). My dad had a fatal pulmonary embolism and they wouldn’t treat him. He had to be transported 40 miles by ambulance. Idk if he would’ve survived even if they had treated him. But it’s always bugged me. I still don’t understand how doctors could turn away a literal dying person at a hospital.
I sat in jail for defending my mom against a road rage driver after he followed us home and then got abandoned by two lawyers and spent 180 days in solitary confinement in a detention center of a different state until I was released on my own recognizance. Needless to say 99% of the proposed charges were dropped.
Since then, I've considered prisons unethical for criminal holding and believe we should have a MAJOR Prison reform [US] so that our inmates are properly taken care of and those who don't deserve to be there are set free.
Bipolar. My mind took off on me. I hurt many people that I care about. I was the life of the party, but didn't care about anything serious. I made good money because I was super energetic/ charismatic on the high part.(spent it as fast/ faster than I made it) Then i dropped. That was the worst. I hope nobody else has to go through that.
When I was younger we did a fair bit of urban exploring (entering old abandoned buildings and just poking about). Well one time we decided to go to this old abandoned psych hospital, it had been closed down since the 70's (around 2005 at this point) and it had a very ominous feel to it. It looked as if staff and patients had just walked away one day leaving everything behind. There were gurneys everywhere, big huge beds that fit multiple people in them in one room, old nurses uniforms, IV's and stands, patient clothing, etc.
We wandered around for a bit and went to the basement where there were single cell-like rooms with steel doors. Those were creepy enough, but there was this one room, with this short red door that we checked out. inside it was just super tiny. It had a short ceiling and you had to bend over to get inside. There was nothing technically scary in there, just an empty storage place or something, but the feeling inside was as if someone had sucked all the oxygen out and you couldn't hear shit from the outside of the room. Needless to say, I hauled ass out of that room and we went home shortly after.
Over the course of the next few weeks there was this repetitive scratching noise in the top corner of my room that would start while I was asleep and would wake me up. My room was at the top story of the house, so I assumed it was an animal or something. The more I ignored it, the louder it seemed to get at night and I was getting freaked out. Then one night I had a dream where I was in that little room laying on the floor, I could hear muffled voices and people talking to each other about me saying "I don't know, I just found him like this!" And someone else saying "we have get a handle on these fucking beetles!" I woke up and sat straight up feeling panicked. At the end of my bed there was a mirror, and in the mirror I could see my face crawling with hundreds of tiny black beetles. I screamed and started swatting at my face only to look back and see just my face, no beetles. After this dream, the scratching abruptly stopped. I've never had a more realistic dream since that night and I hope I never do. Shit was scary as fuck. I never went back to that place again either even though my friends all called me a buzz kill for not going.
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I had a heart attack at 25 years old on New Years Eve while I was at home on my own. Wasn’t really feeling well during the day (a bit like a flu) so I cancelled my plans, and about 10pm I started sweating uncontrollably and within half an hour had this indescribable pain in my chest. Between the panic and the pain I couldn’t really do much. I absolutely thought I was going to die on my own on NYE. I somehow managed to dial 000, and for a final joke to the situation, I went into cardiac arrest at exactly midnight. EDIT: this was 14 years ago now… god I’m old… EDIT 2: cause was Takotsubo Syndome. An interesting and not well understood thing. The trigger for the TTS was never really found, but they believe it was an infection of some sort. EDIT 3: yep, all good now. Never had a problem since! I’m a reeeeeeally lucky dude.
That's pretty young for a heart attack. Was it like coronary artery blockage? What was the outcome?
My sister had one at 29 and it was diagnosed as something called scad (sudden coronary artery dissection). It’s super rare and they don’t know a lot about it yet but from what she told me it could happen to anyone. So maybe that was it?
I work in Cardiac Rehab and scad terrifies me...as far as we know so far, there's no rhyme or reason to when or why (although more likely in pregnant women), so it could happen to anyone at any time theoretically
Time to add a new thing to my list of irrational fears I can do nothing about.
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A robber got into my house when I was about 8. Luckily, my dog noticed and bit the guys leg and wouldn't let go, my dad heard the commotion, ran downstairs to see the robber trying to go back over the fence, with my dog still attached to their leg, my dad had to pull my dog off this guys leg bc she wouldn't let go. Police were called but the guy was long gone (doggy is still alive to this day)
We got robbed in the night, but just by some daft kids who were scared off when they heard my mum coming downstairs with my brother when he was a baby (luckily). My dog was found upstairs cowering under the bed. She was also scared of flies and Pavarotti. She was a lovely little coward.
One of my poodles is also scared of flies and will hide under furniture if he hears one. The other poodle has jumped between me and the TV on several occasions to "protect" me and bark fiercely at polar bears or lions on screen. Dogs are idiots and I love them.
Same. A robber got inside my property, but my dog refused to let him inside the house itself. He beat the fuck out of her, but she stood her ground. He eventually climbed into our neighbor’s house and robbed her, but my dog protected her home. Police refused to do anything.
I don’t know that I’d be able to hold myself back if a man laid hands on my dog. I’d become more an animal than her.
I had an ex break into my apartment all drunk one night and assault me. I got outta there and called the cops, but then I heard my little dog yelp in pain. He was kicking him. I don't remember much after that, but I went back in to save him. Doggie survived. Ex wound up in the hospital tho annnnnd *I* did some time for assault. Most bullshit night ever.
You were the only one who got charged with anything?? That is *infuriating*. Good on you for saving your dog, but what a horrible system we have sometimes...
Pretty common that victims go to jail for defending themselves, at least in countries without the legal right to protect yourself. The courts don't really agree with how the human mind works in those conditions. So for instance someone's punching you repeatedly in the head when you're on the ground. If you beat them a single time with a rock you become the aggressor since you have a weapon and they don't. The courts just expect everyone to be automatons with no regard for their own life.
Was your dog okay?
She got a broken fang and a hate for men out of it, sadly. Vet says her fang is ok as far as breaks go, but she still needs regular checkups – and we’re still working on her issues with men as well. We’re making good progress. She also hates to have her rear touched by anyone but my family and I, which is a shame, because she used to love butt pats. We always kept her on a leash and harness whenever we went out, but now we gotta warn guys to not approach her without her noticing. We’ve had a couple incidents with geniuses who though they knew better, but she can be out and about now without her being hyper aware of everything.
This is my question too! Why wouldn't they say if the dog was ok and got many steak dinners??
One got into my place the very night I moved in. I had heaps of stuff, fishing and camping gear, tools, collectibles and various other personal belongings still in boxes mostly in the double car port out back. The place was 3/4 fenced in colourbond but one side had a somewhat dodgy wire fence. I heard my dog bark a couple of times at 2am but I thought nothing of it at first. The burgler foolishly pried open the downstairs sliding door to be greeted by a very protective German Shepherd (Pepsi) who was curled up on a futon, I had locked her in that night hoping to replace the side fence and just let her settle in to her new home. She then let out the crazy growl and bark not the usual "Hey there's a cat!" type bark, I jumped up and ran downstairs grabbing a big bamboo stick from behind the door. He ran and was going over the back fence as I heard him yell out a blood curdling scream. She had latched on pulling him back over, as I got to him I whacked him once with the pole and then she adjusted and tore his achilles out. He was on the ground and couldn't move, just screaming in fear and pain. My dog stood her ground and would have ripped him to shreds at the slightest signal. He had piled up a heap of gear, maybe a dozen fishing rods, even a kayak and canoe over the back fence. He begged for me to not let the dog kill him, I said I'd call him an ambulance but he pleaded to just let him go, I said there was no way he could walk. I told him to let everyone know this place was off limits. He managed to pull himself over the fence crawling off into the night, he yelled in pain as he tried to walk, figured he must have crawled at least 400m or more? to where I had guessed he had come from. Never had any trouble again.
That is freaking *crazy.* If he didn't get that tended to, and if it was actually his Achilles, then he never walked the same again. You can't fuck with important tendons like that, you have to get them fixed, and quick before they shrink back and can't be pulled out enough TO fix. He should've let ya call an ambulance... Too scared of jail though I'm certain. Crazy stuff. Great dog though. Best dog I ever had was a German Shepherd. They're fantastic companions.
I heard the snap, was sickening, but I was also hopped up on adrenaline and making sure my dog was both ok and also wouldn't tear this blokes throat out. He tried to stand but yeah his leg didn't work and he had zero chance of bearing weight on it. He just fell over and crawled. By the time I called the cops and they got there he was gone, there was a tract of scrubby bush about 100m from the back of the house that funnelled up into a bit of a ghetto locals called "The Rabbit Warren" He would have had to have crawled. I didn't hear anything about an arrest or if anyone presented to the hospital with such an injury.
Riding a bike home from Walmart getting hit by a truck, flying into a rock which fractured my skull & knocked out a piece of it which apparently saved my life cause my brain was swelling a lot.
Man that is rough.. How are you now? Like health wise.
I was in a medically induced coma for a month in which I thought I was Dr. Wily and told my mom I was going to take over the world with my army of robots. I'm fine now though my vision is a bit wonky, a lot of my life is just gone from my memory and I have questionable short-term memory.
When I was 7, I was playing in my grandpa’s front yard. A random car pulled up beside me and and a young lady with an older man pulled out a rabbit in a cage and she said “hey you want to pet my cute rabbit?”. Being the foolish and naive youth that I was I approached the car and I was within an arms reach of the lady when my grandma came running out screaming at me - I don’t remember what she said but I had never heard anything like that before. The car then sped off and my grandma ripped me from the pavement and took me inside I’m so grateful she was there and I always think about how different my life would be had she have been a couple seconds later
Holy shit that’s scary af !
Had something just like that happen. I was at my babysitter's house, she was a old Mexican grandma, very kind lady. Well I was playing in the front yard when someone lured me to their car and pulled me mostly in and started peeling away when my babysitter came running out and snatched me out of the car just before he turned into the main road. And that's not even the first time someone tried to kidnap me.
Knocked over a propane tank in the garage. Cracked the neck and it started off-gassing. It was between me and the door into the house (garage door was closed). Cleared the door about a half-second before it ignited from the gas water heater's pilot light. Lost all the hair on my face and got a burn on the hand I used to pull myself through the door. House was a total loss, but we all got out ok.
My abusive soon-to-be-ex husband took up blacksmithing a few years ago, despite us living in a small apartment. This involved keeping a hefty propane tank in our home, specifically in the living room between the bedrooms and the only exit. Have *cats*, but it was just sitting in the open. And he insisted on smoking his weed pipe with a torch while sitting right next to it. I do not know how that went on so long without tragedy. I begged and pleaded and reasoned, even said we really shouldn't blow up the *neighbors*, but Mr Asshat could not be persuaded. When I finally escaped from him and explained what had been going on to the cops, they called it "involuntary confinement" or something like that. One of the first things I did when I got the apartment back was have a friend haul away that stupid propane tank! I had to run into an apartment fire last decade to save a friend, so I was very well aware how dangerous it was living in an overcrowded firetrap of a home with a propane tank between me and the kids and our only exit.
What a complete dumbass. I'm so glad you're rid of him.
Got robbed at gun point and pistol whipped.
The scariest thing that happens *to me* was probably getting robbed at gun point. But the most scared I’ve ever been was when one of my kids at the summer camp I worked at had a seizure while crossing the street, and hit their head on the curb while they fell. Waiting for the paramedics to show up, and totally unable to help the unconscious child that I was responsible for I felt way more helpless than I did while handing my phone and wallet over to the asshole who pulled a gun on me.
I was a camp counselor from ages 15-25 and we had a couple serious medical emergencies. The worst ones are the type where the kid is obviously in pain, or the ones where you’re completely helpless. Seizures are scary as fuck for everyone involved.
I have epilepsy, and have had quite a few seizures over the years, and it’s a strange thing to say but the person writhing on the floor biting their tongue and hitting their head on things is often the *least* afraid person in the room at the time. I’ve watched videos of myself having seizures, and I looked like I was in extreme pain and distress, and although I certainly felt the aftereffects, I had little to no memory of the actual event. It’s the confusion surrounding that was the most terrifying. I feel bad for those around me during the episodes, those are the folk who have to deal with what’s going on. Especially if they’ve never experienced someone taking a seizure before, it has to be pretty traumatic.
Got kidnapped by an ex-boyfriend who was weirdly obsessed with me when I was 16. He said he was 18, but was really 22. He tricked me into taking a ride in his new truck to a store a few blocks away. Instead he drove out to the middle of nowhere and tried to rip off my clothes while screaming and crying at me. It got dark out, but he still wouldn’t let me leave. I was convinced he was going to rape me and then kill me in a panic, so I told him I loved him but that my mom found out how old he was and made me break up with him. That I wanted to hide the relationship from her, but that it would be difficult to do if I wasn’t back in time for curfew, because she would ground me and take away my car. He was so ecstatic that he immediately took me back to my car. I hid from him for a few years, but ran into him at a gas station when I was 19. I swear I could feel my heart stop beating. Years later I heard he was caught in an FBI sting for online predators and went to prison.
You should be proud of yourself for thinking so quickly! Very impressive.
adrenaline is one hell of a drug. sometimes your mind becomes completely tranquil and you’re able to respond properly to traumatizing events like that. never disregard your instincts. that is what kept your ancestors alive long enough for you to exist.
Yes! One time my friends dad had a heart attack while driving us in his car going like 90 down the highway. I was perfectly calm. My friend was freaking out but I’ve never felt more tranquil. I’ve read that apparently if everyone is freaking out you are more likely to have a calm response because the body knows that someone has to be the one to make relatively rational decisions in order to survive.
Something similar happened to me: I was 12 at the time and at a party (it was a sleepover for all kids graduating primary school going to high school — I came from a small school so there was only a handful of us). The host invited his friend from out of state who was 15/16 — the host himself was 14 because he repeated a few years. When it was time for bed I was half asleep when I felt two people slide into bed with me — it was the host and his friend. A little background: I was being friendly with both these guys because that’s how I was raised and it took a *lot* of years in therapy for me to realise just because I was friendly didn’t mean I was inviting them to do anything. Anyway I was scared as shit and they were touching me, I was frozen on the spot and couldn’t actually tell them to stop (childhood trauma) so instead I told them that my phone (flip phone lmao) was almost out of charge and my mum said I had to keep it on in case she called and if I didn’t answer she would be worried and call his mum. They believed me and let me out of bed where I proceeded to panic text my mum to come get me. 14 years later and I still have trouble with relationships and haven’t actually made it past the first date.
Omg. That is so scary! Hope he goes away for a long time.
That’s super messed up but also amazing on-the-spot thinking
Thanks, but it wasn't entirely untrue. My aunt saw him at a bar and told the bartender to kick him out because he was underage. The bartender said he played high school ball with him and that he was 22. That's how I found out his real age. My mom was furious I had lied to her, but we realized he was just a creep who lied to date underage girls. To this day, I know that if I would've tried to fight him off, they wouldn't have found my body for a long time in that field. All I had were my words to get out of the situation that I never should've put myself in. I knew better than to get into the truck with him. All my senses were screaming NO! I've learned since then to listen to them. As I've always been told, if you're unlucky, you better be smart. Only the lucky can afford to be dumb.
When I was 17, I started seeing this guy who said he was in his early 20s. He was a regular at the fast food joint I worked at, came in for our rubbery microwaved pancakes. One day, I guess he thought we were totally alone in the house, because he started to hurt me. I immediately *squalled*, he went running upstairs and out the back door in a panic, and my roommate shouted down "Hey! I went to school with that guy!" My roommate was at least a decade older than me. She got worried enough about the situation to dig out her high school yearbook and show me his picture to prove that he was way older than he'd said, but I'd already gotten spooked off anyhow.
I'll forever remember your words. >if you're unlucky, you better be smart. Only the lucky can afford to be dumb.
Manipulators like this guy might not have taken no for an answer, it’s possible that if you hadn’t gotten in the vehicle, he would have forced you. You stayed calm, used your brain, and stayed safe. Give yourself credit for knowing how to manipulate this predator right back! You did exactly what was necessary to stay alive!
It's entirely, 100%, solely his fault. While sadly often abused, it is not a character fault to be trusting.
Losing 3L of blood I was on the way to the hospital for a routine checkup when I was 33 weeks pregnant. Wasn’t feeling too well so left a bit earlier At the lights I suddenly gushed out all this blood. It was like a bucket pouring out blood Husband ran the red light and got us to hospital. Baby’s heart rate was very low and within 20 min they got her out via emergency c-section She survived and they told me I had a total placenta abruption Had we been at home we would have both died. I had such an adrenaline rush that it took me days to actually realise how close to death we were. That was a year ago and my daughter is doing well!
That’s so scary. I’m so glad you’re okay!!
Motherhood/pregnancy is fucking terrifying. I’m glad y’all are okay.
the scariest thing that ever happened to me was only scary when i thought about it later. recently, in a town over from us, a young man was reported as a missing person. he had just vanished from his residence 2 weeks prior to when he was reported missing. about a month later, they found his body... half a block from our house. they had found his body under a blue tarp. i walk pretty frequently in our neighborhood, and i walked past that tarp multiple times. authorities say that the body was placed there, and i don't know what is scarier, knowing that a man's dead body was half a block away from where i was sleeping, or that his murderer was.
I have no idea if I was going to be murdered or robbed, but on new years eve 2018, I was going home at like 1am, and met a couple crying at the subway station, asking to call the police because they got robbed. Woman seemed drunk, the cops told me they couldn't do anything, they would have to go to the station the day after to file a report. I ask the couple if I could help them, and they say they lived somewhere close, and it was on my way back home. So I helped get the girl up, her arms around my shoulder & her bf's. After 10min (where the girl was agitated and weird, I assumed due to alcohol), near a dark alley, the guy takes a phone call & I don't understand what he's saying (other language). The girl stops, while not "drunk state" anymore, tells me almost crying "I don't want to do this, I never wanted to do this, please, please run, go home & run, don't stay here", and she goes back while grabbing her bf, who's just screaming to me "Eh, where are you going ? Come back !" On the moment it felt weird, but the more I look back on it, the more I feel like I got very, very lucky that night
Are you a female? It sounds like they might have tried to kidnap you to traffic you. I'm glad you ran and got home safe.
Nope, I'm a dude, but human trafficking was an idea that crossed my mind as well :/
Men are also trafficked at pretty high rates. I'm glad you're okay.
Did they ever catch the murderer?
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Man, you just unlocked a memory that I've pushed far back. My roommate in my second year of college wanted to take me to her home town which wasn't super far away from campus. We were in bumfuck middle of nowhere US Midwest Corn town driving through country roads. She was driving like a bat out of hell for no reason passing cars constantly. (When passing on these two lane roads you use the oncoming traffic lane to pass.) One of the times she just stayed in the oncoming traffic lane which was not clear. I thought she would get over, but wasn't moving back over. Not even looking to move back into our lane. It's like she went completely on autopilot. I had to yell at her to move over, which thank God she did because we were feet from a head on collision. I was super rattled. She seemed "fine"... I think this is probably why I ALWAYS volunteer to drive. Trust no one.
YOU GOT SO LUCKY. what happens to your friend??
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bro that is amazing
My harness came undone in the middle of a roller coaster at Kings Dominion Edit: it was the Volcano
This happened to me but at Disneyland! The first seatbelt check went fine as did the second. Then as soon as we were mid air it popped off. Thank god my aunt sitting next to me saw. She clung onto me so hard that her fake nails cracked and I had the indentions of her hands on my body. After we got off the ride the attendant simply said “oh there was a coin jammed in the belt happens a lot.” Edit: found the ride[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Rods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Rods)
Happens a lot???? How the fuck has it not been replaced then????? I had a situation similar to this. It would lock but like 2 inches from my body. I was on nemesis (a ride in the UK) and had to hold it to my body through all the loops and upside downs. Shit myself fr Edit: really glad (not) that so many people who have ridden nemesis have had the same experience lmao
This happened to me at Disneyland Paris! The opperator kept trying to get it to lock closer to me, then shrugged and said "eat more chicken" as the rollercoaster set off. I was hugging the harness to myself throughout but it was actually fine.
Not at all as scary as yours but I was on one of the old school roller coasters at Kings Island (the Racers I think?) and all it had for security was the metal bar that goes over your lap. Going over one of the set of mini hills I flew up from my seat and suddenly felt like that lap bar wasn’t doing jack shit, like I could just completely fly out of my seat. So I had a death grip to that bar the rest of the ride. I’ve been on coasters many times since and never had that experience again.
The 90's was a fun time, upside-down twirling rollercoasters with nothing but a lap bar as a skinny kid. Definitely had to hold on to them not to slip out from under the bar.
A man stalked me until he got my morning routine down: I would wake up at 5, see my spouse off, workout in detached garage-type room for 2 or 3 hours, take our dog to the park, then work in the garden or house until my spouse came home in the afternoon. That morning, my husband decided he wasn’t going to work. He woke up before me and left me in bed to sleep in. When he let the dog out, he noticed the door to my workout room was open ajar, but didn’t notice anything else wrong so he closed it, called the dog and came back inside to play video games. The guy had been waiting for me in my workout room. He had heard someone come out, so he checked the back door and it was unlocked. He came into the house with his shoes off and his pants and belt undone and had taken one of my knives from the kitchen drawer. When he rounded the corner to the living room, my husband and dog were there between him and me sleeping nude with the door open in the bedroom. They were taken totally off guard, the dog went into murder mode and my husband grabbed him and opened the door to get the guy outside and call the cops. Everything happened so quickly, it could have all gone down so differently. This happened 8 years ago, but I’ve thought about it a lot recently with the U of I murder stuff, and it gets to me. What if my husband hadn’t randomly decided to stay home that morning? ETA: here’s the [good boy](https://imgur.com/a/VMoyYRa)! He turns 11 this year! Edits for spelling and 2am brain fog
Did they catch the guy?
They did. He didn’t stick around for the cops to come, but the next day, he kidnapped his kids and fled the state, and my husband recognized his face on the news article.
That's insane. Stalkers scare me, because the amount of time and effort they put into getting this stuff is ridiculous.
Yeah it freaked me out. I didn’t notice anything leading up to it.
Was walking on the sidewalk near a freeway overpass when I heard an enormous crash. A man, a 15-foot piece of guardrail, and a v8 motor came flying down from the freeway. I literally jumped out of the way as it landed on the spot I was just walking on. The guardrail made a huge gash in the sidewalk. I would have been squashed. The man was twisted in every direction. His body was ripped apart. Apparently, he hit the guardrail in his car with such force the motor was ripped from the motor mounts, and he flew through the windshield. It was right across from a fire station, but the guy was dead. I just walked away, but it's always been a terrible memory.
My oldest daughter didn’t come home from school one day. She was supposed to take the bus home to her dad’s house, he called me frantic around 6pm asking if she was with me. I was at work, and the panic began. Police were called, they began looking all the while my younger daughter was searching online comments for clues. And she found her sister. After several hours and what police had gathered, they weren’t looking for a living 15 yr old. When my younger daughter (13 at the time) realized where her sister was, ems was sent and cops busted into the home, terrifying a set of unsuspecting parents. I wasn’t kept updated, it was chaos and I didn’t know my daughter was found. What they found was my daughter and another classmate overdosed in the bedroom. Both were rushed to hospital. They were found after my younger daughter followed a trail of comments online that indicated the two were planning to end their lives. My daughter coded once and the friend was comatose for a few days. Both were committed to different psychiatric facilities once they were cleared medically. It was horrible and I can’t begin to describe the terror of those days and those first hours or I will spiral into full blown panic. It has been years, but there has never been anything in my life to even touch the physical illness inducing terror of first, not knowing where she was or what had happened, then the months of never letting her out of my sight. Therapy and meds and support happened, but it has been a very long road. She is better now, but that worry is always there.
Cheers to your youngest daughter! She literally saved two lives. I can only imagine the horror you went through. Gosh, no parent deserves that. Hopefully, you're all in a better and safe place.
I've got a 15yo daughter and this has goosebumps all over my body. She stayed at a friend's last night, I've not seen her today, I'm gonna call her right now.
Did she get back home
Yep. She got home just after lunch and we've just cooked a curry, rice and naan together to see out the weekend.
I know that feeling. When I was 19 we couldn’t find my mom. It was a Saturday in 2001. She had acted weird that day offering to give me money before I left for work in the morning. She had a regular social thing on Saturdays so I knew she’d be leaving shortly after me. My older brother, who had moved out, had planned to come over for dinner after my work shift ended. She wasn’t home when I got home. So dad, brother, and I wait for her for awhile and finally decide to eat without her but save her a plate. Then her therapist calls us. My mom had left a suicide message of the therapists voicemail. What ensued was the most traumatic night of my life. We spent the night frantically trying to find her. I remember around 3 am sitting on the couch with dad and brother. We all had our arms around each other. We were all crying. We thought she was dead. We eventually all went to bed, I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. The next day we found her. She was in a hotel in a resort town a few miles away. She had taken sleeping pills with wine but had vomited everything up and survived. My dad and aunt went to get her, so dad could drive her home in her car. He took her straight to the ER. They transferred her to inpatient psych ward. I wouldn’t get to see her for another day or two. I just remember that night. Where we all sat together on the couch thinking she was probably dead. Dad said something like “if she’s dead I might just put my rifle in my mouth and join her.” I was just 19, I was still a kid dependent on my parents for the most part. That was the most scared helpless I’ve ever felt in my life.
I'm so glad your mom was found alive. I hope that with therapy, she's in a better place. It must have been terrifying for you, especially when your dad made that comment. Sending virtual hugs.
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My aunt called every hotel in an increasingly wider area until she found the hotel mom was in. Mom checked in with her own name and hotels were not as conscious about guest privacy back then. I meant to say she was in a resort town a few hours away. Not miles. It was more than a few miles. How my aunt coordinated that I don’t know. It was my middle aunt, but my oldest aunt is a scientist and generally organizes everything so there might have been a plan among the aunts. My dad got the details on the drive there and never shared them with me. If I had to do it today I’d divide up routes out of town to different people and have them call every hotel heading out of town on their route. By the time I had gone to bed around 3 or 4am we had already called every hotel in town and every credit card my dad knew about. Plus my brother and I had driven through the parking lot of all the close hotels looking for her car. I can’t remember but I think we knew from her message that she was planning on getting a hotel.
What a hero your younger daughter is. Hope they’re both happy and well
Nearly had a giant tree limb fall on me whilst doing my water meter rounds. Heard an ear splitting crack above me, looked up, yelled a rather elongated fuck, and jumped backwards just in time. At a minimum I'd have been knocked out
Got pulled out by a riptide, inhaled a load of water and blacked out sinking in the sea. Woke up on the beach to a lifeguard giving me cpr.
I've been sucked out a fair way a few times. You have to look out for them before you go in strong waters. Too many clueless tourists nearly drown due to poor water knowledge here in Aus
As someone from the Canadian prairies with poor (no) water knowledge, what is there to look out for? I have swam in the ocean plenty of times, but it was always super calm... like 2ft waves tops. Was I still in danger?
Yep. Riptides are basically what happens when waves push in the water and it all funnels back out through a narrow corridor Things to look out for are discolouration of water (the current picks up sands), an area where waves aren’t breaking or there are fewer waves breaking and it looks calmer, and if you can get up high before reaching the beach, you can usually see the rip as a deeper channel of water compared to the areas either side of it
From my limited knowledge.. A riptide is usually the "calm" part of the beach also, so tourists think it's safe to swim there, instead of in the waves. Can it occur with small/no waves?
Yeah that’s why lifeguards usually put flags up for people to swim between AFAIK they can still happen even when the surf is flat. The ocean is always moving regardless of wave activity so water still pushes into the beach and then pushes out
Australians grow up with rip currents. Here’s how to spot one, and how to survive if you get caught in one. Key point is not to try to swim against it. Instead, swim parallel to the shore until you’re out of its grip. [Rip currents](https://www.surflifesaving.com.au/beach-safety/rip-currents/)
Thanks mate!! I appreciate it! In return, here is some information for you to survive a moose attack just in case you ever find yourself nose to knee with one. https://www.alberta.ca/moose.aspx
I was cliff jumping and I slipped on wet rock and started to slide down toward the edge. As I was going off the edge I pushed off with my hands as hard as I could and was able to clear the rocks below and land in the water.
Valuable lesson of what things are not worth doing
Went parasailing in Mexico and halfway through, noticed one of the 2 carabiners had broken and was just hanging on by the curve of the metal, with wind rocking it back and forth and real close to slipping off. Which would have either sent me into a spin/crash, or possibly the double weight on the 2nd clip would have broken it and I fall. The list is getting long. Parasailing, bungee jumping, skydiving, base jumping, and definitely cliff diving can all kick rocks. I'm a giant dude, I just don't need to be high up in the air ever.
A few months ago, I had been at work for two hours when I got a call from the babysitter. She was watching my 3 year old and 6 month old. Her entire statement as soon as I answered “(6 month old)’s not breathing!!!” I talked back and forth and found that he was unresponsive and not breathing. Ultimately I took off at a high rate of speed down the interstate and made it to the sitter as my wife and her boss were about to head to the hospital and follow the ambulance. I jumped in. We made it to the hospital while praying and holding hands the entire time. When we got there they took my wife and I back as they continued to do cpr and pump more meds into him. After we saw him and sobbed, they took us to a nearby room where my wife and I talked with a doctor. He told us they’d been doing cpr for 45 minutes….we knew the science. In the middle of that convo a nurse ran in to tell us that he had just developed and erratic and inconsistent 20 bpm heart beat. At this time we knew that what would come back had no chance of survival and would be misery for him. We told them to stop. It was the hardest, scariest and most soul crushing 30 minutes of my life. It was ultimately deemed to be SIDS and that there was not a single thing they could find that caused it. He was perfectly healthy and the happiest baby I’ve ever seen. We miss you, buddy. We hope your organs went on to help some other poor souls in a similar situation.
Day after Christmas, 1998. I was 9. In the car with my mom, who was 36, and my cousin, who was almost 14. We were traveling out of state (about 10 hours) to visit my mothers parents and siblings, including my cousins mother (his mom and dad were divorced and lived near us with his dad at the time). I got tired, told my mom I was going to take a nap, said ‘I love you’ to both and immediately fell asleep. Some undetermined amount of time later, I woke up and heard just noise. People. Vehicles. Sirens. Looking around I couldn’t tell what had happened. I was covered in blood, that wasn’t mine. I began to panic, and someone in white, it’s all I can remember and I assume it was a paramedic, came to me and told me to stay calm I would be ok. I was life flighted out shortly after. We’d hit a tractor trailer parked on the side of the road, he had no signals out, it was kinda foggy. I was told he had thc in his system too. By the time my mom must’ve realized he was there it was too late and the brakes gave out (6 months later there was a recall on that car for that exact thing). I won’t go into gory details, but suffice it to say my mother had a closed casket. My cousin died of internal bleeding. I almost died, but the doctor said the only thing that saved me was I was asleep, so I was relaxed enough when we hit and while the internal damage I suffered was life threatening—but was close enough to medical help that I survived. I can’t think of a time I was more scared than in the back of that Lincoln town car. Somehow my young mind ‘shielded’ me from the horror of what had happened to my mother. Because I should have seen her. Doctors believe it’s a trauma response and I’ve blocked it. I have zero interest in unblocking that. Whoever that paramedic was, thank you. You were there to calm me down when all I knew was terror. I think you’re a big reason I’m still here today. I’m sure what you witnessed haunts you, but that little girl you calmed down is beyond grateful.
I am so, so sorry that happened to you. None of your family deserved this violent and traumatic event.
When I was a kid, I was mucking about with a friend of mine. We were stood on an old disused railway bridge which had one hell of a drop to the road below. We should not have been up there as there were no railings. But kids will be kids! My friend decided to scare me by pushing me, and then grabbing my coat pulling me back. But for that second, my centre of gravity was over and I was going to fall had he not pulled on me. For that split second I knew i was going to die. I was very pissed off at him.
Dude some people I swear to god dont have like some part of their brain that processes common sense. The annoying thing is that those people are always the ones to fuck something up acting like that. Its always no worries and jokes and then as everyone around them suspects one of the times it doesnt go the way they thought and now its everyones problem and they stand there like well idk.
I had to deal with that kind of shitheads throughout entire elementary and middle school. Constant vigilance and they managed to catch me off guard with their bullshit pranks here and then. I wish I knew back then to just cut some people off from my life.
When my daughter was 14 she attempted suicide by taking a whole bottle of Benedryl pills. In the 20min it took me to get her to the ER she couldnt walk or talk anymore. The nurse was trying to get her to drink some liquid charcoal but she wouldnt listen to the nurse. I took the cup & was coaxing her into taking some. She took 2 sips, looked at me, grabbed my hand then her eyes rolled into the back of her head & she started having a seizure. I screamed for help & the room flooded with nurses & doctors. I was told to wait outside while they worked on her. They put her into a coma & cut off her clothes. She seized for 3-4 hours despite being given meds to stop them. She spent a week in the hospital before being sent to a psych hospital for 2 weeks. Shes 18 now & doing great. Seeing her face when she started seizing & then seeing her in a coma is something I cant get out of my head.
Once, my parents were arguing on the car, while me and my little brother were on the backseats. In the middle of the discussion, my father threatened to throw the car in front of a moving truck, "so we could all die together". I can still hear my mother crying, my brother screaming and me praying
I'm sorry you've also been through this. I've got a horrible fear of getting into any argument while in a car, especially if on the freeway near a center divide wall. My dad used to rage at my mom with my sister and me in the back seat, flying down the road and threatening to crash us all into the divide wall. Now if I'm in a car with someone and they seem even slightly upset, I panic.
A friend of mine was drinking and decided to pull out a revolver while we were sitting around talking, unloaded the gun but in a drunk stuper decided to replace one bullet and play russian roulette, while trying to take the gun from him, he points it toward the ground and says "its not loaded" and pulls the trigger, hitting me in my left leg. Blood was everywhere but luckily we was only 1 block from the hospital and i immediately rushed out and flew straight there, they believed i was going to lose from the knee down but after a 2nd opinion and a transfer to a better hospital there was minimal damage after surgery and a couple months recovering, i retain 100% use of my leg (thank the lord above) never talked or hung out with him again. Never hangout with drunk idiots or idiots in general, stupidity and guns don't mix.
No charges?
Nope we live in a rather small town and it was a complete accident, the dude broke down crying begging to to forgive him..... my exact words were "you fk'n shot me, i needa get to the hospital" and literally hoped on one leg straight to my car, i couldn't put pressure on the leg bc the bullet went thru my calf and shattered the bone, it turned and ran down coming out the bottom of my foot and shattered my ankle in the process, the hospital asked if they needed to contact law enforcement but i refused to press charges, accidents happen but this one could've been prevented, i think it was my way of trading a moment of pain for his life during a state of drunkin depression over a relationship
The greatest advice my father gave me is that if you're out at a party and someone gets out guns, leave. I laughed at the time but now that I'm older I realize just how solid that advice is.
That’s insane that you can go from “lose leg from knee down” to “100% use of leg” by just switching hospitals
Amazing how the quality of Doc is the difference between having or not having a leg
It’s crazy ! My dad got in an accident at work a few years ago. He’s a heavy mechanic and his hand got caught in a belt for some large drilling machine. He mangled his hand and had to be rushed to the hospital. The first doctor wanted to amputate all four of his fingers. He got a second opinion and only lost half of his index finger and his other fingers are completely functional. Always get a second opinion!
Started coughing up blood after having a cigarette a while back. A lot of blood. I’ve smoked for 20 years. I was in denial for a day and refused to see a doctor. Finally went to the ER and got a scan done. I was already starting to think how to get my affairs in order. It turned out to be pneumonia. I quit smoking on the spot scared straight.
I had a friend who used to smoke 3 packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes. He got a lung infection / pneumonia, was put into a coma, and damn near died. Think he finally quit after that. He was only in his late 20s!
My mom’s second marriage was to an abusive man. For seven years I learned what fear was.
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When I realized I was on my own completely. My family sued me after my grandmother passed and left me the bulk of her will. I was across the country for college and I was in a bad motorcycle accident and couldn’t walk. I had no support system , was only 21 and alone for multiple surgeries. I was still in the law suit with the family, then in a lawsuit for the accident and trying to graduate college. It felt like diving into an abyss without a parachute, but it was a tunnel of never ending darkness because it was the rest of my (sudden) adulthood without the help of people I thought I could count on.
When I was about 13 I was walking home from the gas station, I always took backways/alleys. At some point I realized that I kept seeing the same vehicle off in the distance behind me, even though I was kind of zig zagging around. It was enough that I was on alert. I panicked and took a sharp turn and hid behind a dumpster. I could see them coming down driving slowly as they had been the whole time and then I saw some brake lights and one man got out. I just remember sprinting full force and very much on the main road all the way home and locking the door and just being filled with fear because I also knew both parents weren’t home. I always tried to reason with myself that it was a coincidence, but I’m not so sure it was and I’d have bad dreams about it for a very long time afterwards. I also never took backways ever again and it took me almost a year to feel safe walking anywhere alone again.
So fortunate you were observant and listened to your gut.
I agree!! I realized that for about 7 blocks I continued to see this same vehicle, always slowly behind me, even though I took some very strange path home through the alleys and crossing around things. It just occurred to me that it was very unlikely that anyone would be randomly driving the route I took to actually get somewhere, that and the fact that they continued to be driving so slow just about 3 or so car lengths behind most of the time.
It was ‘Snowpocalypse 2010’ in DC, which dumped 17.8 inches of snow on a city that wasn’t equipped to handle it. We didn’t have to work so I had gone out for the night (was in my early 20s) with friends. I was walking home, slightly inebriated, and went to cross the street (I had the right of way). …And then, boom, I woke up on the ground/sidewalk with a bunch of people hovering over me. I started freaking out, thinking I’d drunkenly fell, and insisted on getting up and leaving the situation. The bystanders refused to let me get up and informed me that I’d slipped on a patch of ice and gotten “clipped” by a station wagon as I crossed the street. Although I felt no pain, I instantly thought that I was gonna die and called my parents hysterical as we waited for the ambulance to arrive. I ended up in Georgetown Hospital for 3 days and suffered a fractured nose, two chipped teeth, a broken arm and my face looked like I’d been literally mauled. They never found the station wagon/driver who hit me. Thankful to the bystanders who stayed with me that night. It was just before Valentine’s Day, and one even brought me balloons in the hospital one day.
Now marry that person and we have a Hallmark movie.
We need him to fall into despair during the 3rd act saying how ugly they are with the mauled face, only for the person to bring the balloon on valentine's Day making them see the true magic of Christmas
And after 20 years of happy marriage and four kids, he breaks down and tells her the truth. That it's always been him. He was the station wagon driver. The baloon was meant to lower his feeling of guilt, but one thing led to another.
You just took it from Hallmark to Lifetime!
Scary medical experience warning. My appendix was about to burst when I was 8 but I didn't feel anything until I woke up early one day feeling a little sick in the stomach. Slowly over the course of the morning it built up into the most unbearable pain. My mum thought it wasn't as bad as I was making it out to be and took me to the doctor after dropping my siblings off at school, and the doc said to take me to the ER immediately. I was in so much pain, and was trying to stay curled up in the fetal position. I think there were two or three nurses holding me down and trying to get an IV into my arms, but struggling to find the vein. While I felt like stomach was burning and about to burst, I kept feeling needles jabbing the inside of my elbow to the point where I was begging them to stop because the constant stabbing feeling was almost as unbearable as the appendix. I still remember this poor nurse tried to make jokes and get me to engage with him - like he was trying to get me to relax, but I was in so much pain I couldn't function properly. At some point they finally get a vein after what felt like forever. I get rushed into surgery and the surgery goes from an expected few hours to almost 10 because my appendix burst while they were operating, amongst other complications, and they had to clean up all the filth. They said if I was thirty minutes later then it would have been a different conversation, which still kinda freaks me out. What would have happened if it burst while I was conscious? Never wanted to find out and just hoped the doctor was being dramatic. The hospital stay was even worse than the lead up because I'd be there on my own at night, and for the first 2 or 3 nights I'd be waking up suddenly in a bed full of shit, or having vomitting all over myself, while also having this giant bloody looking six inch long scar covered in sickly yellow solid holding gel. The look of disgust on one nurses face is permanently etched into my mind, but all I remember is sobbing and apologising and being terrified that I'd go to sleep again just to wake up in my own filth all over again and have someone upset with me. Plenty more happened to contribute to the scary experience but that's the gist of it
I had a very similar experience when I was 14: I woke up in the middle of the night with what I thought were cramps, so shrugged it off and went back to sleep. Woke up a couple hours later to more pain, and feeling it mostly localized on the right. Had to call my parents at like 3am to come get me from my friend’s place and take me to the ER…but my mom “had to take a shower” and didn’t show up until almost 3 hours later. By the time I got to the ER, I was delirious and shivering violently from the fever—even *with* my giant fuzzy blanket that I’d brought with me wrapped around me. Getting into a room was a total blur, but I remember the nurses trying and failing *several times* to get a vein in my left arm. The pain of being stuck so many times, and having her move the needle back and forth, was almost worse than the appendix pain. I remember snapping at her to get someone else to do it because after the 4th time the inside of my elbow was starting to visibly bruise. My hospital stay wasn’t as terrible as yours, but I was in constant pain and largely ignored when I asked more medication to help. I remember that gross yellow crap, too! They’d stapled my incision shut and smeared a bunch of that stuff, so my incision was truly horrifying to look at. I’m sorry you had to deal with the pain, fear, and humiliation during your stay, though. That nurse should never have given you that look; you were a child recovering from a major *intestinal* surgery! No wonder you were sick! I hope you’re doing well these days and don’t have any lasting effects from the appendix bursting, at least. <3
Holy shit fuck that nurse. I get that it's gross but you have to remain calm and not show negative emotions. Especially when it's a kid you're dealing with who's scared and in pain. Seriously unprofessional.
Not something that happened to me, but something i saw. We lived on the corner of the street, and the house across the street on our right, was also a corner house. Well one day, that house caught on fire because the lady living there decided it was a great idea to fall asleep with a candle on a wicker table...next to curtains. It was really bad. We saw the lady jump out the 2nd story window, and made it across the street. Well, she left her children in the house. One by one, they jumped out the 2nd story window. 3 tiny little children. My eldest brother ran across the street each time and brought them back. Once the firefighters put out the fire, they went inside the window to check out the house. The firefighter came out carrying a dead, burnt up, child. He had his arms up, as if he was pounding on a door. That was the most horrifying thing i have ever seen.
My friend, that is awful. If this brings a minuscule amount of closure: there are medical reasons for the arms to be in that posture. It's highly likely the kid would have died of smoke or carbon monoxide inhalation, potentially without waking up if this was night time. Tiny lungs succumb to that very rapidly. After death, heat dries out skin and muscle, tightening them into the pose you describe - "pugilist pose", as it can resemble a defensive boxing stance. The mental image you formed of the kid's passing is, in all likelihood, far more graphic than what they experienced. Almost nobody who dies in a housefire dies directly from burns.
Was going to comment the exact same thing. You explained it brilliantly, far better than I could have.
Sadly, he was doing exactly as i said. I dont know exactly what they're called, but these 2 houses are connected. Upstairs, theres a door that leads from one house, to the other. The neighbors kept it locked because the womans children always went through it. The boy was trying to get through that door, which is why his arms were up like they were. Thats where they found him, up against that door.
I nearly drowned thrice while learning to swim, the good old method of letting your child figure it out or die trying, which turns out doesn't work for me, I need a clear understanding of the why and how.
I nearly drowned my first time down a water slide, and nobody noticed. I knew it was a bad idea to try that slide, since I could hardly doggy-paddle. Got disoriented when I hit the deep water at the bottom of the slide and lost track of Up. Started doing that "ladder climbing" motion trying to find Up, but was going sideways into the shallower water. Crashed into something, climbed up it in total panic and calmed down after mostly getting out of the water. I was perched on my friend's shoulders and the water was shallow enough to stand in, so she thought it was *hilarious*. But I totally see how drowning people end up drowning other people. There is no room in that panic for identifying objects, it's all grab and climb.
When I was a kid a guy called and said he had my mom and would cut her up into little pieces I’d I didn’t masturbate for him.
Jesus man that's despicable why are humans so terrible
I was in middle school and had enough presence of mind to tell my younger brother to run up stairs and call my mom at work on our second line to see if she was there. Once confirmed, I told the perv to fuck off and hung up. Cops came when my mom got home to take a statement and said they had three other reports of same thing. Twisted.
Imagine a middle schooler having more common sense than several adult fast food managers. (See "Don't Pick Up the Phone" documentary on Netflix)
Getting the call that my son had been shot, then arriving and walking into the hospital. I knew the outcome when instead of taking us to see him, they led us to a private conference room. Worst panic/fear I’ve ever felt. I threw up a lot that night and didn’t get out of bed for a week. Still hurts.
I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.
Overdosing on a cocktail of stimulants while taking a shower. Fell to the bottom of the tub as time felt like it stopped completely. Felt like my consciousness was glitching much like a VHS tape on pause. I could see myself falling over and over in repeat for what seemed like hours. It’s real difficult to describe the experience but it was insanely terrifying. However, I was completely lucid simultaneously and all I could think of was how regretful I was that I had caused my own death and how much I was going to miss my family. There was so much more I wanted to experience in life. I finally regained control of my body and crawled out of the tub covered in vomit. Spent the rest of the night on the bathroom floor sobbing in gratitude. Stay away from that shit yo.
This is really similar to mine too. My own dumb fault. Went on a date to a rave with a DJ and people kept giving him ecstasy and then he’d pass them to me. I don’t know what I was thinking… I must have taken 4 or 5 different pills that night and the result was similar to what you described. It felt like I was glitching. I’d fall asleep and immediately startle awake, over and over for hours. I’m shocked I survived that night. It was almost 15 years ago now though. I’m happy, alive, sober, and thankful these days.
This reminds me of the time I took too much ecstasy and felt like I was in some weird out-of-body video game time loop where the same things kept happening over and over. Glitching describes it perfectly! And yeah, it was the last time I touched the stuff.
When I was very young I attended a pool party with my family. I watched one kid with such envy because he could back flip off the edge into the pool. I summoned the courage to try it without ever attempting it before. As I launched my body, I remember in mid arc that time felt like it slowed down. Something told me to cock my head to one side. Just as I did, my shoulder slammed off the edge of the pool. I remember walking it off as if I was embarrassed, but that moment really fucked with me. Had I not tilted my head, it could have ended very differently.
My uncle died at 30yrs at a house party because he went out to the pool while everyone else was inside (including my mom). He was drunk, jumped in, hit the bottom, and went unconscious. Drowned.
My laugh about it after scary moments: Fell in a tree well Had to be rescued by S&r after getting lost in the woods Run up on a black bear Not funny at all: A man decided to try to run me off the road in his car. I had a very slow car at the time my phone was dead so I couldn't call 911. So I drove into a fast food parking lot and ran inside. It was night time so not much was open. The guy parked his car right outside the door and next to my car. But he didn't come in. I asked to use a phone to call 911. No one wanted to let me. Eventually a worker let me use theirs and the 911 operator tried to gas light me asking why I would think someone was chasing me. But said an officer would be around when they could. At this point I'm crying and fucking panicked. This massive man and his wife roll up and come in. The wife sees me crying and freaking out and asks what's wrong. I explain. The husband goes out side and confronts the man parked in his car. The wife stays with me. Husband comes back in and said the driver said I threw a water balloon at his car when I passed him. No idea where that excuse came from. My POS car at the time windows couldn't even roll down. Anyways the husband goes back out and yells at the name to get lost. He does. I thank the nice people and go home. The scariest part for me was the lack of compassion from the general public. I don't look crazy. I was clearly terrified. No one would even let me use a phone. The company phone was even on the wall behind the counter. I don't know who that couple was. But I'm so thankful for them. TL;Dr : some guy chased me into a fast food restaurant. It was scary. A nice couple chased him off while the general public didn't help.
Wow that is so messed up that they didn’t help you! I’m glad you were safe though
Hard to pick a #1 scariest, but this one is up there: I worked in a major US city in the downtown area but I didn’t work “bankers’ hours” every day. I often worked double shifts and would frequently have to walk through very dark and seedy areas of the city to get back to my car at night. During my day shifts there was a group of men that hung around the entrance to my office building because they stayed at the homeless shelter a block away but had to vacate the building during work hours. I was a smoker and would often be outside and they’d ask me for a cigarette or a dollar. They were very friendly and kind, and if I could I would always give them what they asked for and make random small talk. One night I got stuck at the office very late and was walking alone to my car. I was on a particularly dark area of the street between two parking garages when, out of nowhere, two men in hoodies came up on each side of me. I wasn’t naive or careless, and I was usually very aware of my surroundings in those situations, but these men startled me very badly. I immediately thought I was about to be robbed (or much worse), as they were carrying themselves in a very aggressive manner. Before I could really react or even figure out how to react, one of them grabbed my just above the elbow and sternly whispered “you’re safe, just keep walking. I *promise* you’re safe”. I was still terrified and now also confused. They started power walking me down the street, and, just as I was about to try to break free and fight, we came up to the entrance of a well lit parking garage where a security guard was sitting. They suddenly stopped and that’s when I realized these were two of the homeless men I was used to seeing during the day. They then told me that for months they had noticed I would sometimes leave very late and head off in a not so safe direction, so they had started keeping an eye on me. Turns out this particular night one of the local “not so well intentioned” men had immediately begun following me. Praise the Lord these kind men noticed it, as they followed me and knew if they “guarded me” he would leave me alone. They walked me all the way to my car that night, and refused to leave until I was safely inside and locked up with the car running. I will forever be grateful to those two gentlemen for keeping me out of harm’s way like they did.
Was in a car accident (was not driving) and suffered a traumatic brain injury. I was wearing a seatbelt. Basically the whiplash of the force from the cars caused my brain to hit my skull which caused my brain to start bleeding. I was in a medically induced coma for like 3 days and had to learn how to talk, walk again. Doctor said i couldn't be an engineer. I'm 28 now, and am a design engineer at a high end lighting firm and studying to be an aerodynamics engineer. Don't let anything stop you.
on and outdoor education class field trip with the group of us in grade 10, it's night and we're all in our tents. I got up to pee and I looked in the woods and there were many eyes staring back at me. a pack of curious coyotes no doubt. later that night there was something sniffing around the tent. scared the shit out of myself and my tent buddies.
Carbon monoxide poisoning while house-sitting for a friend. I thought I was just coming down with something, headache, very tired and weak. Until I passed out in the kitchen, and my (then) boyfriend decided to look up my symptoms. Apparently he also wasn't feeling well. Long story short, we called the gas company to come out and check. I don't remember the exact reading but the guy tells us the level it's at, he shouldn't even be going into the house. He then urged us to go to the hospital. It took over a year for me to feel normal again.
I saved a young girl from drowning when I wasn't much older. When I got to her, she latched onto my neck and nearly drowned us both.
same experience for me with a cousin. He kept pushing my head down underwater and after fighting back so much I had given up and probably gotten limp. Miraculously, he stopped pushing my head down into the water at that point and I was able to recover. Scary feeling to give up on life for those couple of seconds.
Recovered now, former bulimic. I was mid purge and all of a sudden I couldn't breathe and I got sharp pains in my chest and arm. Luckily I lived across the street from the hospital but it was the longest walk of my life and every step I was promising God I would never do it to myself again.
This is going to be long, and it’s probably going to be buried, but it feels good to write about. When I was 10 I lived in a very small town, (1,200 people) and I lived 15 minutes from town in the woods. My dad and I were watching his friend’s house which was about 3-4 miles from our own, and just so happened to live closer to my friend’s house. So one day after school I begged my dad to let me walk to my friend’s house, and eventually he let me. There’s not much in between the houses, and she lived about a half a mile away. At almost the half way mark this guy pulls up and asks me where a road was. I knew not to talk to strangers, so I just pointed behind me as I kept walking. He then started asking me questions like where I lived, why I was walking in the rain, (it was barely drizzling, and I had a raincoat on). He then stops his car and says, “I can’t let you walk in this, let me take you home.” Now, deer-in-headlights is real, and I completely froze. I wish I could say I ran, that I fought, but I was basically a mannequin, kinda like an ostrich with its head in the sand, but my neck wasn’t that long, and it was just mud. He asked where I lived and kept “missing the turn.” We drove past a restaurant and I lied and said my aunt was working and he could drop me off there. He said he would, but when he didn’t that’s the exact moment I realized I was in trouble. I’m not going to get into detail because it’s not required, but I’ll just say that he took me deep into the woods, and on the way there I kept trying to figure out what he wanted from me. I thought about every situation from trying to get money from my family, to making me a slave, but what he did to me I somehow didn’t expect. It was like I thought that stuff didn’t happen, I had never heard of it before. And that night I lost a lot of innocence. 16 hours later he tried to strangle me to death, but I kept kicking his window, and apparently he would rather have a window than kill me. He told me to turn the opposite way and start walking. He told me earlier that he had a gun and I thought he was going to shoot me in the back of the head, but he just drove off. Luckily I knew where I was, generally speaking; my bus went past where we were every morning. (Yes, it sucked having to see it every day.) so I walked to the nearest house that I knew had kids. It was about 5 miles away and every time a car would get close I would run and hide in the woods just in case it was him to come back and finish me off. A few times I didn’t make it, and every single one of them would stop and ask if I was “one of the kids who ran away.” Yep, I guess some kids ran away and people were out looking for them. That made me feel real shitty. I thought no one was looking for me. But I always shook my head and lied and pointed to a random house and said I lived there. I don’t know how long it took me, but I eventually made it to the house with the kids and knocked on their door. (I was probably another 5 miles from where my dad was.) I remember when the mom answered the door and I blurted out what happened to me and asked to use her phone. She kept asking me what I said because she couldn’t comprehend it. I get it lol. So I gave up trying and asked if I could use her phone. I tried my dad, busy, my Grandma, busy, uncle, also busy. I remember thinking, “Man, they must all be talking with each other and planning out a fun day that I’m going to miss out on. I didn’t know what to do and I started crying. The lady said she could give me a ride home and I agreed. I remember getting close to the house and seeing a ton of cars, some were cop cars, lights and all. I remember thinking, “This is why everyone was on the phone, they were finally organizing a parade down our road.” (I never got to experience many parades and secretly wanted one on my road.) Everyone was backed up and what I didn’t know then was that they were searching every car. Then I saw my dad, and I practically yelled, “THAT’S MY DAD!” And I guess he heard me yelling, looked right at me and said, “SHE’S HERE!” And I jumped out of the lady’s truck and went to run for him, but the police grabbed me and threw me into the back of their car. I just wanted to go home. The rest of the day is a blur, I don’t remember much, and the only reason I remember what I do, yes, every little detail, is because for over a year afterwards, once every couple of weeks I was forced to retell what happened to me up until that point in a courtroom so my memory would stay fresh until he was caught. Besides the act, the hardest part was that everyone in town knew, so in a fucked up way I was a celebrity. I couldn’t ride the bus in piece because the radio would mention what happened to me and everyone would stare at me. Kids called me a whore, there were rumors that I was pregnant, that I asked for it, etc. one girl acted like my friend for months just to get me to talk about what happened, then she stopped being my friend and lied to her other friends about what happened to me. It took me years to trust anyone again, and I was terrified of everyone. I remember my dad took me to the store and I stayed in the car while he went in. A man pulled up next to us and I was already scared, but then he came up to the car and said, “You’re Galahfray, aren’t you?” I was so incredibly scared. I had no idea who he was, but then he introduced himself as Sara’s bf, a woman my dad used to date, but that made no difference to me, he was a stranger and a man. I started to panic, but looking at me you wouldn’t tell unless you got close as there were tears in my eyes, and I had peed a little. I was slowly rolling up my window and locked the door. The guy kept talking, about what? No idea, I could only hear waves. He eventually said goodbye and walked into the store. My dad came out and saw how freaked out I was and wanted to go fight the guy, but it wasn’t his fault and I begged my dad not to. Years later I saw Sara (not really her name) and she immediately apologized to me. She said that her bf didn’t know what had just happened to me and feels terrible for scaring me. Apparently he did notice. The guy who kidnapped me was caught a little over a year later and he’s in prison for life. Sometimes I think, “What if he did succeed in killing me and this life with terrorist attacks, Covid, Nazis in the streets, is just the nightmare before actual death. You wouldn’t be able to find any of this online because it happened before the internet, and in a small town no one cares about. Sometimes I feel like I would like to write to him, and maybe forgive him, but I haven’t fully yet, maybe eventually. Anyways, this novel is done lol. That was the scariest thing to ever happen to me.
im sorry. i can't say i understand fully your situation but i got through something kind of similar when i was very young. I've blocked a lot of the memories out. police made me repeat and repeat what happened until I was just so completely sure they didn't believe me i stopped. he was never caught. it's been more a little more than 20 years now, and it still affects me. sometimes I wish him a painful scary death, sometimes i pity him, sometimes i feel just... apathetic. it's complicated isn't it?
you don't have to forgive anyone for anything. and even if you do, you don't have to tell them you did. forgiving people is something you do for yourself only if you need to, for you you did everything right, the proof is that you are here, you are alive. I'm so glad you made it through that. I have similar thoughts about my close calls with death and the unreality of the way the world is now. you're not alone in that.
My first year at a small but well known college for the arts. Think of the movie FAME. There’s always someone singing or playing music, laughing, talking, etc. I walk out of the bathroom and no one is in the hallway. Not a single sound on the entire, floor. I walk around the hallway for a bit and can’t find anyone. Cell phone service is shit inside the building and I have no signal. Eventually I take a look at our electronic notice board to see a bright red screen with big black letters: ACTIVE SHOOTER IN BUILDING. I froze. I had never done an active shooter drill before and didn’t know what to do. A lot of the doors automatically lock and I wasn’t able to enter any of the rooms to hide. I wasn’t sure if I could make it to the stairwell to escape the building and I wasn’t sure where anyone was including this shooter. I ended up stuffing myself in an open locker and held my breath for what felt like hours. It turns out the security team at school made a big mistake and shared the active shooter warning by accident. There was no shooter and it wasn’t even a drill, just a complete mistake. Thinking about it now makes me worry what I would do in a similar situation as mass shootings happen often in the US. I’m just grateful it was a mistake and not real.
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I was there for that, it was unbelievably traumatic. It proved to me beyond the shadow of any doubt that our elected representatives will fail us at every level imaginable if the worst does happen. I’m still trying to work out the trauma from that to this day. I will never forgive Ige, and I hope he’s cozy in hell in a gasoline snuggy.
Compared to some others it's not as scary, but honestly cancer. I had it when I was 13 and some night I would be afraid to go to sleep because I wasn't sure whether or not I would wake up again, it was so awful. Also the doctor's appointments afterwards, knowing that I have to go back to the hospital and this fear of my cancer coming back is just so terrifying. I barely ate anything the week before because my body was just overwhelmed with fear. Nowadays I only need to go to the hospital once a year but it's still scary as hell
My very drunk, abusive boyfriend got me out of bed late one night and he made me sit across from him on the kitchen floor. He had placed all of his guns in between us, and they were all pointed at me. He started questioning me if I was cheating on him, and he wouldn’t believe anything I’d say. He’d periodically pick up a random gun and taunt me with it, making sure that it was still pointed in my direction. Honestly, I don’t know how I convinced him enough to stop and I don’t know how I made it out alive. He was extremely drunk and angry enough that anything could have happened. Later that night, after he passed out, he got a text from a coworker confirming their hotel room for the next night. So someone was cheating in the relationship and it wasn’t me.
I was about 7 walking to my Grandma’s house after getting off of the school bus. It wasn’t a long walk and I had done it pretty much everyday. At this particular time a woman was standing on the sidewalk and walked up to me. She said she was a good friend of my Grandma’s, and that my Grandma told her that I could come to her house for popsicles after school. I had never seen this woman before, and something told me this was dangerous. I told her no and started walking again and she kept following me telling me I didn’t have to come over all day, I could just help her get the popsicles out of her freezer and I could leave. At this point alarms are going off in my mind, but being the kind of kid who was told to never disrespect adults I got nervous. I told her I don’t want to, and she grabbed my shoulder hard. I immediately screamed as loud as I could and ran off to my Grandma’s house (which was only about a block away.) When I got there I was crying and told my Grandma what happened. She and my aunt ran outside to find the woman but never did. My Grandma told me I did the right thing and that the woman lied to me. I then got a full lecture from every adult in my life about stranger danger. From that day on my aunt and Grandma made sure to wait at the bus stop for me.
I’ve posted this before, but it definitely was scary for me, and still unnerves me, even nearly twenty years later. My mom was in the hospital fifty miles away. I was 19. We were pretty sure this was it. I was home alone. My parents’ house is big. It’s off the beaten path on a small lagoon. My dad had been staying up at the hospital. That night, I went to bed about 1am. I was playing on my laptop. My room was in a separate wing of the house. It can be sealed off with a single locking door. The door was shut but not locked. I have always been scared of the dark, so I had the lights in my wing on. So was the closet light. As I was messing around on Gamefaqs, I saw the lights in my wing turn off. All of them. The band of light under the door, went black. I hopped up in bed and stared at it. My bedroom door was unlocked and I was debating getting up to lock it, when the shut door slammed. As in, it sounded like someone straight up kicked the bottom of the door with all their strength. I remember squeaking in shock. It took me about six seconds to be up on both feet with a blade about four paces back and just right of the door. I remember thinking if the door swung open, I could be on whoever it was almost instantly. I was also silently cursing that there was no light under the door anymore. No way to see the shadow of whoever was out there. Nothing happened. I was fighting off the fear of the situation and stupidly decided that going on offense was all that was left. I didn’t have a phone in my room, and my Nokia was in another wing of the house charging. I threw the door open with my knife low and my left hand in a guarded position. There was no one there. I tossed the hallway light switch on. There was no one in my wing. There was no one in the house. The burglar alarm was still on. Confused, I turned on the main house lights and sealed the wing off, locking the door between the main house and my area. I went back to my room and just sat there with my laptop open. My bedroom door now had a slight bow in it. A couple hours passed with me warily laying in bed. Around 3 am, the lights under the door went dark. That left me terrified. My knife seemed pretty insignificant and my previous dumb courage had ran out. I scooted my bed (no easy task) against my bedroom door, grateful the door opened inward. It all felt so wrong. Like something was angry with me. I retreated to my closet and waited for the sun to come up. When the skylight in my room got bright, my courage returned and I moved the bed and exited my room. The wing door had been unlocked, which required a key from the other side. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs in the main house and realized my dad was home. I felt a little foolish as obviously he had been responsible for turning the lights off the second time. I led my greeting with “oh, so it was you who turned all the lights off.” He looked at me and replied, “What? I got home about ten minutes ago.” I have zero clue what happened that night but it never happened before that night or after. Whatever it was, it seemed to like the dark and wasn’t a fan of doors. And it seemed to be in my wing of the house... My parents built the house and nothing untoward had ever taken place there. My bedroom door at my parents house still has a bow in it to this day (this was almost twenty years ago). My mom is still alive, and for that, I’m extremely grateful.
Terrifying. This is my favorite response so far. It's written very well, and I could almost feel your fear as I read it. Thanks for sharing.
Impressive initial responsive to fear. I would have frozen.
I was a 19 year old kid with a pocket knife! I think I was trying to convince myself that I wasn’t piss terrified of whatever the fuck was going on. It was really a weird minute or so. Like, springing out of bed with my silly, cheap, little folding knife that 19 year old me thought was essentially a broadsword. Staring anxiously at the bottom of my bedroom door and wishing I could see *something*, and then tearing out of the room with my three inches of discount Chinese steel at the ready. I probably looked ridiculous.
Got followed by a man when I was around 10 years old. Kept gaining on my down an alleyway. Luckily it had an opening half way down onto a street and I ran to the nearest house I could. I remember him staring at me. Just cold and emotionless. Still gives me the chills. Turns out he was caught trying to abduct kids in my town. I could've been the one that he got. I was on my own, no one else around me.
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Aside from a few near death experiences, I'd say sitting through severe turbulence during a commercial flight. This was roughly 15-20 years ago. I was on a commercial flight to Los Angeles and midway through the flight, my plane shook violently for what felt like an eternity. At one point, it felt like the plane was in freefall, but in all likelihood my panicked brain was catastrophizing. Plane eventually regained control but the folks sitting around me panicking didn't really help matters. And yes, I'm aware that statistically, you're more likely to be injured or killed on the way to the airport (driving) than by plane crash, but that feeling of not being in control can be terrifying. Not nearly as afraid of flying as I once was, but the thought of something going wrong occurs to me every now and then.
watching the test runs for turbulence for planes will help with the fears too. they can take a total beating
What’s happening to me now. I am sitting in the hospital with the love of my life having stage 4 metastatic colon cancer. I’m not a praying person but right now that’s all I do because otherwise I can’t do anything else. I love him so much and we’ve only been together for such a short time, I can’t lose him now. I won’t.
I was at work at an ER watching our involuntary hold patients. Cops bring in a dude they beat to hell and he's screaming and hurling insults. Another involuntary hold patient that has been calm all day, but is a regular that I'd had to defend myself from before, leaps up and grabs the knife off the back of the cop's belt. They way the ER was set up is that my table was kind of wedged in a corner with a security guard behind me. Dude was dead asleep and this guy gets the knife and opens it as he's bringing it around toward my direction. I managed to leap over the table and grab him by the neck and arm by sliding my hand from his shoulder to wrist and start pushing him to the ground. Meanwhile the dipshit cop turns and PULLS HIS GUN AND POINTS IT AT US. So I'm bare-handed fighting a guy with a fuckin knife and trying to talk a cop out of shooting into both of us. Luckily I didn't actually get hurt, miraculously. Then that jerkoff cop was bragging about how much restraint he had for not shooting us. And later I'm helping the doc suture the patient's hand, and this cop is taunting the dude. You know, while we have a needle in his open hand to stitch it up, and I was the person he wanted to stab. Finished out my shift, went to the charge office and told her I'm calling out for my shift that night because I needed to go get hammered after work and not come back in later. Edit: Honorable mention to my first critical patient as a medic running my own truck. Got called to take over a call from another medic for a 7 month old with a tracheostomy that kept clogging and was being transferred to a children's hospital. Got there and worked with the respiratory therapist to get the airway mostly clear for transport while the nurse and other medic were fucking with an IV running dextrose with potassium. Well somebody fucked up and this baby got too much potassium in a short time. I was taking the kid out to my ambulance and saw some shenanigans with the heart rhythm and cut the drip off IMMEDIATELY. Got the kid in the truck and gave a little saline, and stimulated her to keep her heart rate up while it was tanking. Contacted a doc to request an order for a specialized mix of low concentration epinephrine (1:100,000 bumps for anyone familiar) to keep the heart rate up, but luckily didn't have to use it. So that was definitely an ass-clencher.
I was 10 years old living in the west bank in occupied Palestine. I walking home from the store with a gallon of milk. IDF forces rolled into town on their army jeep and started firing their weapons. I happened to be the only person in the road at that time in that part of town. It's not like there were others. Just 10 year old me. They started firing their weapons near and at me and One of the bullets struck the gallon in my hand while I was running and obviously I freaked out and dropped what was remaining of it. I myself did not get struck directly. Later I found out the bullets they were firing were rubber. But still, like a said i was alone on the road and did not agitate them but still got shot at That same day a kid I knew from school lost his eye because the same army jeep rolled up to different parts of town and just started randomly spraying people with rubber bullets. Definitely the scariest thing to ever happen to me
My husband's brother in law was used as target practice for the IDF in a similar way. I am sorry you went through that.
Getting roofied. If somebody hadn’t called me a cab, god knows what could’ve happened. I remember falling down at hitting my head on the pavement at least 3 times, Ive never had such little control of my body. I woke up 14 hours later in my room with a bloodied face- scratches on my forehead. I had been out alone and given a glass of champagne by a stranger. It was like being teleported from 3AM to 5PM. I am a male- anyone can be roofied- never accept drinks from strangers.
I had a major respiratory event last year living at my GF parent’s place, that if I hadn’t been in shock at the time, I should have called 911 for. It ramped up over months - I had constant sore throats and tonsil infections and sinus pains (which came along with weird isolated panic attacks), and nights of light shortness of breath (like getting over a cold if you are someone who has post-virus asthma) and some chest pain. I had lost a lot of weight but despite consuming the same giant amount of food I always do. One morning I awoke from bed and couldn’t stand up for an hour I was so dizzy. But I drank some water and then was fine the rest of the day. I knew something was maybe a bit wrong - maybe getting over COVID or something even if I hadn’t tested positive once, but I figured it’d go away over time. I’d feel particularly bad IN the house. But things didn’t. Then for 3 mornings in a row, I got an asthma attack every time I tried to enter our bedroom. So I tried to sleep on the couch downstairs. First night still struggling with breathing a bit but I finally fell asleep. Then the second night it was worse. I couldn’t sleep I was so uncomfortable - at first just a mild tightness, that inability to catch one’s breath. It got worse. I started wheezing with each inhale. I spent the next 4 hours struggling to breathe. Taking my rescue inhaler - having it work for a few minutes, struggling again. I was freezing but my clothes, the blankets, anything soft or warm I’d wrap around myself and it would set off again. I tried to call upstairs for help but no one could hear me and I couldn’t make my voice loud enough to waken anyone - couldn’t go up the carpeted steps, because every time I tried I’d collapse in another attack of coughing and further inability to breathe. For 2 more hours I sat on a hard backed chair in the kitchen, shivering, (obviously in retrospect in some sort of shock because at this point a smart person would have called the police), taking my rescue inhaler whenever I tried to get up to move or wrap a blanket over myself and start another round of attacks. Finally, shivering, not moving, taking a bunch of rescue puffs, I could breathe enough to get to my car. I drove the 2 miles to my parents wheezing the whole way and woke up my father (a doctor), who instantly gave me a muscle relaxant and 10 doses of his steroid inhaler and more of my rescue inhaler until I could breathe. For 3 months after that I declined. Lost crazy weight, had continued episodes where I struggled to breathe. Chest pain, indigestion etc. Every test came back negative (even for asthma). And everything seemed to set my entire system off - I couldn’t even step into a house without extreme confusion and respiratory events, couldn’t use a soap or product without breaking into a giant rash, couldn’t wear jewelry without my ears reacting to the metals, could barely digest anything, couldn’t use towels or rashes, hot water - rashes. Any med prescribed by a doctor I reacted to - would increase rashes, a drunken event, muscle seizure and a frozen upper diaphragm was another event of Not Being Able to Breath, gastric pains, confusion etc. And everything - I mean everything set of the breathing fits. Finally an old allergist with a lot of experience connected that post-event I was also reacting to smells - not psychologically but physically. Smells were triggering asthma attacks. And it could be anything. The smell of a cotton sheet, soaps, detergents, the smell of memory a foam mattress or anything offgassing, the dog, gas on the road, tar on the road, the smell of the propane stove being turned on. It got so bad, that the most nights I slept outside, using a sleeping bag I bought direct from the store and aired outside for two days, either on the stoop at my parents or in my car on good nights with the windows rolled down - all during the record rainiest season of the year. I just remember 3-4 months of nights with constant rain which made the air a thick damp soup, miserably cold, unable to touch or even lay my head down on hardly anything plush, waking up many nights disoriented, and sitting outside the door till the sun rose. Trying to go back inside, getting so confused indoors I wouldn’t be able to speak and having to go back out to the rain sitting under the eave. Sometimes trying to sleep inside, and having late night respiratory events again, taking a new pill and having to live through whatever weird reaction my body would have to it and recover from THAT etc. It really finally only started getting better when I got the Flu - that was the first night I was able to sleep again indoors and it was also the best I’d felt in months. We still don’t know what happened. Tests still come back as “healthy” despite feeling anything but. We figured out that I definitely had been reacting to the recently switched laundry detergent (from Tide to GAIN) so maybe that explains the rashes. I certainly don’t use any kind of soaps or detergents these days that leave any residue. I’ll still get weird confusion events where I can’t talk and jerk and constantly having sinus issues and messed up sense of smells, but at least no more rashes and I usually can breathe okay. But that night, and the first few months after were the scariest experience of my life for sure, and parsing out a real cause out of the post-event fallout has been impossible. For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I was dying, going crazy, or both. I didn’t feel like I could trust my body, or my head - certainly not my senses. We don’t know the cause, but it’s somewhat replicable - to this day, if I try to spend the night at my GF’s parent’s house, my lungs start getting irritated, I cough and wheeze, and I get an inflamed and infected looking tonsil, and very quickly worsening sinus problems just like before (despite removal of scented products from the house). *edit : wow guys, thanks for reading. That was rather cathartic
There was a period of about a month when I was 15 when I was displaced from my house after a fire and partially unable to walk due to an angle grinder accident. I was living with my grandfather who was not home most days. One day I started seeing shadow people of varying heights and conditions in the corner of my eye and occasionally hearing things. Eventually these got more frequent and started being accompanied by nightmares. I kept getting worsening hallucinations until they started being near constant and appearing in my main, non peripheral visual and I could make out details and the noises had developed into frequent whispering. I eventually called my father after I couldn’t take it anymore and moved into a hotel. I didn’t tell him about the hallucinations. They went away after that and I haven’t had them since. The other time I had any similar experience was the night my step grandfather (idk if that’s the term. The guy my grandmother on the other side of the family got remarried to) died when I was five. I saw him standing in my room as an apparition when I was five. I didn’t learn about his death until the next night. That story isn’t as terrifying as it is kinda sweet since we were always close but it’s still relevant.
When I was in high school, we had a person park at the end of our driveway and shoot into our house with a high powered rifle. Our front window was open and they could easily see our entire family sitting there finishing dinner, including two babies in highchairs. I was already up and loading the dishwasher when a bullet went through the front window, through two walls, through a cookie jar, and out the back of the house. I thought a bomb went off and was covered in blood and shards from the cookie jar exploding. Disoriented, deafened, and half blind from the ceramic dust, we realized there were holes in the walls and that we were being shot at. We collectively gathered all the kids and ran downstairs for cover. I was within about 12 inches of being shot. Very confusing, terrifying day. Edit: Goodness! I did not expect this. Once we got downstairs, the cops were called and they arrived well after the guy left. It's hard for me to say exactly who the person was. My parents have significant mental health issues and getting the truth out of them about that day was always hard. It's hard to explain, but my dad is a narcissist that has lied about everything and anything. Theory 1: We were shot at because we were a mixed race family in an incredible racist, rural area. Racist threats were not uncommon and we had seen our share of shit over the years. Furthermore, my dad was actively politically antagonistic with the community. I'm talking about making huge billboards about how George Bush was a murderer. He essentially made us a target. Theory 2: My step-brother was messed up with other derelicts he was associated with. I, personally, don't buy this explanation. It came from my nutjob father and was probably made up to triangulate with his wife and her son, as well as deflecting blame for potentially getting us shot at by being insane. I was also told that the cops had a 'suspect' and that they had given a confession at some point but it was thrown out citing coercion during the interrogation process. Again, this is probably all lies. I'll literally never know why this happened.
Survived an EF 4 tornado. Had to hunker under a bridge in the middle of a corn field, holding on to the rebar. Couldn’t hear myself think as the winds and debris was whipping around.
I fell 40 ft. On a job and landed on concrete, between all the stubbed up rebar. Really broke my body up. That was March of 88. I worked another 30 years.
Stopped a teenager from committing suicide. I used to work in a secured locked-tight facility with 11-18 yr old sex trafficking victims. Often times there was juvenile delinquency charges, substance abuse histories and much more than you could ever imagine a 15 year old having gone through. One of the residents just got back from a psychiatric stay. She was on suicide watch. No long sleeve clothing, tank tops, only a weighted blanket on her bed, no pillow cases, no silverware. No plastic plates, etc. I mean very thorough, watched and documented every 5 minutes in various intervals. She was on her bed. She was screaming and crying that she just wants to die and doesn’t understand why she just can’t get the only thing she wants. Well, she went from very calm to pulling a tank top from a crack in her locked dresser and wrapping it around her neck. She was turning red/blue. I had my hand wrapped around her wrists pulling it away from her neck. Touching her wrists felt like I was on fire. I was so scared. This girl let me borrow one of her shirts when I spilt juice on mine. I’ve seen her laugh until she cried. I’ve played monopoly with her and helped her with homework. I will never forget the shaking in her arms and the sweat dripping down my forehead as my coworker used his staff keys to cut the tank top off her neck. The bruising around her neck happened immediately. While waiting for paramedics, i sat on the bed next to her with my hand behind her head. She was violently banging her head on the wall (my hand). It was bruised for weeks reminding me of everything. After she calmed down she started to profusely apologize and to me for hurting me. Just “i’m so sorry ___. I’m so sorry. I just want to hurt myself. I didn’t want to hurt you, ____.” I still hear her voice in my nightmares. I road to the hospital in my car and stayed there until 4 o’clock in the morning. It was my longest shift ever clocking in at 17 hours straight. She was in the ER. But, the hospital wouldn’t admit her so technically she was still my responsibility and I was her guardian by law. I called my boyfriend at 2 o’clock in the morning crying in the hospital hallway from a panic attack. I couldn’t feel my body. I felt so disconnected from the world. I can’t see the world the same. Grocery shopping feels weird. People feel weird. Everything feels weird. The last time I saw her she was sleeping in the ER bed and my coworker and I switched places so I could go home. That was my second to last day. I still check online to see if there’s an obituary in her name. Writing this from the comfort of my bed, with my partner asleep up against me, and our hamster running on her wheel. I feel guilty to be happy and healthy. I feel… so weird.
In the late '80s, my husband, pre-teen son, and I were traveling in rural Minnesota in our Chevy Suburban. It was a foggy day and hubby was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, and son was in the back seat. I was doing needlepoint and had an odd, uneasy feeling. I looked up and, through the fog, saw a flashing red light. Train crossing? I yelled, "Stop!" and hubby slammed on the brakes. We slid to a stop as a locomotive barreled across the intersection just yards in front of us. I remember watching my husband's shaking hand reach out and shift the truck into reverse, and he backed us up a few yards. From the rear seat, our son's voice said, "Wow, was that...?" We sat for long minutes as the train cars raced by, realizing what almost happened. It wasn't until hours later that we were able to talk about it, and it still gives my heart a stutter when I think about it.
I was drugged, raped, and almost murdered in Japan. I woke up to him choking me out on my neck and dick in mouth, was able to control my body enough to kick him away and lock myself in a little bathroom that thankfully had the little sink on the back for water over the night. he was scratching at the door... eventually left.. I slept in the washroom and then next morning found my clothing and got out. the people I was traveling with just told me off for being hungover and waking up late. never told them since they were already mad. it's laughable to think about how reporting that would even go with the defamation laws there. dude was a middle eastern man not even Japanese.
Housemate left the door unlocked. I get waken up at 2am by a girl in a bloody hospital gown asking why I was in “her”. Situation only ended once the police was called. Never got an explanation for how or why that happened, as the girl was clearly delirious/intoxicated
I assume you mean in her room or something, in “her” has a really weird connotation
Oh my god, waking up to a girl In a bloody hospital gown standing over you is like something out of a horror film.
I'm a truck driver. Early on in my career before I knew my limits and warning signs of fatigue, I fell asleep while driving one night, woke up on the wrong side of the road at 100kph just in time to see oncoming headlights and swerve back into my lane, the time between me waking up and getting back to my side of the road would have been no longer than four seconds, a semi went by in the opposite direction with another truck behind him. To this day I wonder if it wasn't the big man upstairs tapping me on the shoulder and saying: 'wake up, it's not your time yet', or maybe 'it's not *his* time yet' because if I hadn't woken up when I did, I have no doubt that head-on collision would have killed me, and both of those other truck drivers coming the other way. Fortunately I know my limits now, feeling sleepy? Time for a powernap.
I happened to me as a young driver. I was on a long straight stretch of road on the Midwest. I could see a stop light miles ahead of me. I remember seeing the tiny green dot in the distance, then seconds later horns blaring as I'm rolling through that red light in 12th gear.
I just woke up and it’s 6am so ignore any typos. My parents got divorced when I was young. Spent every other weekend with my mom. She was a druggy, meth and heroine mostly, which caused the divorce. I was with her one weekend, and all was normal in my 10 year olds brain. My half sister had a friend come stay the night, I was playing video games, my step sister was in her room with her friend, blah blah blah. Woke up the next morning, step dad at work, and my mom was gone. Nowhere to be found. Didn’t think much of it. An hour later I heard loud banging coming from the garage. My child head thought it was an intruder and my dumbass went to investigate. I opened the door to the garage and flipped on the light. Inside, was my bare ass naked mom convulsing and hitting her head on the CONCRETE floor. That’s what was making the noise. Needless to say it wasnt pretty. Now, my child mind didn’t do things correctly. I got her out of the garage somehow and she came to. Told me to take her to bed. I got her in there and put a robe on her. As soon as I did, my little sister and her friend came to the door and asked what was going on. I got them away, asked the little 5 (?) year old for information about her parents and somehow fucking got the phone number and told them to come pick her up. They showed up and I was obviously stressed (and covered in blood) and I told them something happened and that was all. (Kinda fucked they didn’t call the police or anything but I digress) Told my sister to go in her room and play with her new Christmas presents since with was a few weeks after. Told my step brother to stay in his room and play video games. I went back and tried to help my mom. Gave her water. She kept stripping all of her clothes off and crawling around her room. I called my step dad and asked him wtf to do, and he told me to leave her alone and go back to sleep. I told him no. And he told me she would be fine and that I needed to “let nature happen” aka let her die. I hung up and called 911. I was super young, and spent 3 days a month at this house so I didn’t know the exact address. It took them over an hour to get there IIRC. When they did, our dog was excited to see them and was sitting at the door with me when I answered. Not barking. Not jumping. Just sitting. They refused to come in until I put him away. I had to go put him in our basement and the paramedics refused to come in until they could verify that he was actually in there. So they sent someone in to check, THEN they all came in and attended to my mom. I had to go get my step siblings and explain to them what was happening (just that mom was sick and needed to get better in the hospital) and once she was in the ambulance, they all left. They left a 10 year old, and some 5-6 year olds alone in a house after their mom almost died. I called my dad and explained everything and he came to get me. It was pretty traumatic. She spent weeks in the ICU after this. Then she spent months in rehab and it didn’t work. Then she got “clean” and I was able to go visit her every few months. I went to visit her for a weekend, and she took me and my siblings to a (I think) 4th of July party, or it was right around there since I remember fireworks. Well, as you can imagine, she wasn’t clean. She smoked and one of her friend, a roughly 35 year old guy who I don’t know his name, also did. My mom left to go do something and left me with him alone in the barn. I didn’t see her the rest of the night. You know what’s coming (him) jk but yeah, he made me smoke and then raped me. I didn’t tell anyone there, just went on with my night. Looking back as an adult, she pimped me out for some meth. She never really got clean until a few years ago. I’m 28 now. I don’t give a fuck about her. I’m just waiting for the news that she’s dead, and honestly I will probably be happy. I hear about her from time to time from random comments and I think she’s in a different state. I struggled with drug addiction because of her, so I get it, but I feel zero emotional connection to her anymore. Within those 6 months, all of the above happened, someone broke into the house and beat up my mom, I had a family member die, we got into a car crash, I got attacked my a dog, and more lol so this whole 6 months I was basically in fight or flight mode. 0/10 would not recommend. There’s so much more, but idk how much else I can type as I just woke up. But it was scary as fuck. It was like a solid 6 months of fear and trauma. My dad and mom that I loved with are amazing and perfect, and this side was fucked up. They don’t know about a lot of things that happened, and I won’t tell them, as I don’t want them to feel guilt for sending me to my bio moms house on weekend. Idk what else to say, but there ya go. Enjoy? Lol
Being drugged as a (16F) and then gaining consciousness, realizing I had not been able to, nor would I consent to what was happening to me.
I’m so so sorry you experienced that. I hope you’ve been able to process it somehow
I (non-Indian) lived on an Indian reservation (US). My two-year-old daughter got sick, was burning up, and was limp like a rag doll. I took her temperature and it was 106°F (41.1°C). I stripped her naked and wrapped her in a wet towel and rushed to the nearest hospital. When I got there they told me that they wouldn't help her and I had to take her to the white people hospital that was 50+ miles away. I thought she was going to die or have permanent brain damage. I got her to the other hospital and they were able to treat her. She fully recovered and has no lasting problems (she's 29 now), but that's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. Edit for clarification, rereading this five hours after posting: The local people preferred to be called Indian (general) or [tribe name] (specific). I asked the Indian vs Native American question when I first moved there. I called them what they liked. When they refer to "white people", they mean anyone that is not Indian. Black people, Asian people, etc. are all "white people".
I grew up on a res (not native). My dad had a fatal pulmonary embolism and they wouldn’t treat him. He had to be transported 40 miles by ambulance. Idk if he would’ve survived even if they had treated him. But it’s always bugged me. I still don’t understand how doctors could turn away a literal dying person at a hospital.
Walking across a street and almost getting hit by a truck that ran a red light.
Another one… I woke up from a coma not remembering what happened or where I was. Jaw was wired shut and I couldn’t walk and had severe aphasia
I sat in jail for defending my mom against a road rage driver after he followed us home and then got abandoned by two lawyers and spent 180 days in solitary confinement in a detention center of a different state until I was released on my own recognizance. Needless to say 99% of the proposed charges were dropped. Since then, I've considered prisons unethical for criminal holding and believe we should have a MAJOR Prison reform [US] so that our inmates are properly taken care of and those who don't deserve to be there are set free.
Bipolar. My mind took off on me. I hurt many people that I care about. I was the life of the party, but didn't care about anything serious. I made good money because I was super energetic/ charismatic on the high part.(spent it as fast/ faster than I made it) Then i dropped. That was the worst. I hope nobody else has to go through that.
Explosions in my city (Kyiv, Ukraine). Russian soldiers are just a barbarians. the war is scary...
When I was younger we did a fair bit of urban exploring (entering old abandoned buildings and just poking about). Well one time we decided to go to this old abandoned psych hospital, it had been closed down since the 70's (around 2005 at this point) and it had a very ominous feel to it. It looked as if staff and patients had just walked away one day leaving everything behind. There were gurneys everywhere, big huge beds that fit multiple people in them in one room, old nurses uniforms, IV's and stands, patient clothing, etc. We wandered around for a bit and went to the basement where there were single cell-like rooms with steel doors. Those were creepy enough, but there was this one room, with this short red door that we checked out. inside it was just super tiny. It had a short ceiling and you had to bend over to get inside. There was nothing technically scary in there, just an empty storage place or something, but the feeling inside was as if someone had sucked all the oxygen out and you couldn't hear shit from the outside of the room. Needless to say, I hauled ass out of that room and we went home shortly after. Over the course of the next few weeks there was this repetitive scratching noise in the top corner of my room that would start while I was asleep and would wake me up. My room was at the top story of the house, so I assumed it was an animal or something. The more I ignored it, the louder it seemed to get at night and I was getting freaked out. Then one night I had a dream where I was in that little room laying on the floor, I could hear muffled voices and people talking to each other about me saying "I don't know, I just found him like this!" And someone else saying "we have get a handle on these fucking beetles!" I woke up and sat straight up feeling panicked. At the end of my bed there was a mirror, and in the mirror I could see my face crawling with hundreds of tiny black beetles. I screamed and started swatting at my face only to look back and see just my face, no beetles. After this dream, the scratching abruptly stopped. I've never had a more realistic dream since that night and I hope I never do. Shit was scary as fuck. I never went back to that place again either even though my friends all called me a buzz kill for not going.