The world is a dangerous place. We've all found ourselves in situations that halt us in our tracks and make us hyper-aware of our own mortality. Some circumstances are so heart-stopping that they leave us completely unsure if we will live to see another day. Read on for some of the most terrifying things people have seen firsthand that they certainly won’t soon forget.
1. In The Heat Of The Night
My room faced the street. I had the window opened because it was super hot out that night. At around 2 am, I was laying in bed when I briefly heard what sounded like loud breathing coming from outside. Then, suddenly, my dog threw herself against the window, barking and growling like crazy. I grabbed the bat I kept under my bed, woke up my dad, and we checked outside. What we found was disturbing—there was a set of shoe prints in the dirt in front of my window.
We just went back inside and locked everything. I haven’t unlocked that window since.
2. I Wasn’t Dreaming
I was walking to class and got hit by a car. I'm not sure what happened in the moments leading up to it, but when I woke up in the middle of the road, I was shocked—I was cradling my head and totally covered in blood. I distinctly remember lifting my head, looking at my blood-soaked arm, and thinking, 'I'll deal with that later.” I put my arm back under my head and went back to sleep. Luckily, it turned out okay.
3. He Was Lurking In The Darkness
It was dark outside and I was biking home from a friend's house. I passed by a guy sitting in his car, doing nothing. A couple of seconds later, as I turned into my street, I felt that something was off. Then I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that same car came around the corner behind me, with screeching tires. I managed to get onto our driveway before anything happened and the guy honked as he drove past me.
I never saw him or that car again. To this day I'm convinced he was trying to run me over.
4. Who’s Afraid Of The Dark?
When I was very young, I used to stay at my dad's house one weekend every month. One night, I was trying to sleep on the floor in his living room, in front of his giant big-screen TV, while he was asleep in his bedroom at the other end of the house. I was always terrified of the dark. I was one of those kids who would turn off the light and run as fast as I could to get to my bed.
My dad wouldn't let me sleep with the light on in the living room, and he barely let me sleep with the TV on. I always had horrible insomnia, so I would just try and watch whatever weird cartoons were on at 4 am. I was watching TV and his little Jack Russell terrier was curled up next to me, so I was petting him. He had a doggie door, about 15 feet away, in the dining room that led outside.
It was one of the magnetized ones that would click whenever it was opened and closed. I would hear it click and think nothing of it because he went in and out all the time. However, I heard it click when I was petting him and he was right next to me. At that moment, I got chills up my spine. I just stared at the TV and clutched the dog. A few minutes later, I finally worked up the courage to turn and look at the doggie door.
What I saw looked like a monster. There was a tiny gremlin head poking through the doggie door looking around. Then it slowly lowered its eyes and locked eyes with me. The only light was from the TV. It felt like we were staring at each other for ages. It then slowly lowered its head back out of the doggie door. I couldn't see any kind of shadow or silhouette move outside.
I assumed it was just standing outside the door, so I didn't take my eyes off of it until the sun came up outside and I could see there was nothing there. I finally gave in to the exhaustion and went to sleep. The only thing I could think of was that it was a bat—my dad had a bat in his house the following week that he caught and let out. But in the dark, it just looked exactly like a gremlin with a demon face and it was terrifying.
5. One Step Closer To The End
When I was about eight years old, my family and I lived on the third floor of an apartment building. I was walking out to the balcony just behind my dad. I had one foot out of the sliding glass door and before I could put my second foot down, the scariest thing happened unexpectedly—the balcony collapsed with my dad on it. There was broken wood everywhere. I thought he was gone. Luckily, he lived, although his legs got messed up. It was the closest I had ever come to meeting my doom.
6. After The Fallout
I had a grenade come flying through the passenger side window of my humvee. You'd think that'd be frightening enough, but the most terrifying thing about the situation was actually the aftermath of that grenade. It changed my life forever. I lost a hand, broke both legs, and was missing part of my foot, however, I didn’t lose consciousness. After seeing my hand missing and my feet and legs pretty much mangled, I definitely struggled to stay "with it." I remember how I had a dreamy peaceful feeling, and THAT scared me!
7. Delivery Of Doom
I was delivering pizza in a small town. Some kids thought that it would be funny to give a false address. We do security callbacks to try and prevent prank calls, but there was nothing in their behavior that suggested that it was anything other than some teenagers ordering pizza. I knocked on the door to the farmhouse and when it opened, I froze in fear. I was promptly greeted by the business end of a revolver. They screamed at me to get off their property or they'd blast me.
I thought that I was actually going to meet my end delivering a pizza.
8. Delayed Reaction
When I was 17, I lived at my mom's house in a middle-class neighborhood, so, for the most part, it wasn't necessarily a bad area. One night, I was taking out the garbage and the sun had just gone down. I walked the first garbage bin out when I noticed two men arguing across the street. I walked back and got the second bin.
When I turned around, one of the men made a shocking move—he lifted a piece and shot the other in the head point-blank. The man with the blaster stared directly at me, then turned and fled. I was surprisingly calm about it until I was on the phone with the authorities. Then I suddenly started freaking out and panicking. I don’t think they ever caught the guy.
9. Joint Efforts
My friend and I were drinking and we both got super tipsy. While he was in the bathroom taking a leak, I heard a deadening thud that stunned me. Turns out, he collapsed from an aneurysm. His wife ran to my house to get help. I found him with his pants down on the bathroom floor and I screamed at her that she needed to call for help NOW!
I dragged him out of the bathroom, shoved some ice down his pants, and I began CPR. First responders came. He wouldn't wake up but he still had a pulse. I was hopeful. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any brain activity while I was giving him CPR. His wife kept him on life support and prayed, but they finally took him off.
10. We Couldn’t See What Was Ahead
A few years ago, I was driving at about 8 or 9 pm when all of a sudden, traffic was at a complete stop. I thought to myself that was odd for that time of night, but it turned out there was a bad motorcycle accident. I saw the decapitated head of a man in the middle of the road. His eyes were facing the car to the left of me and the lady in that car was freaking out! The woman’s body was split into two by the guardrail. After that, I never wanted to get on a motorcycle—ever.
11. I Want To Ditch This Memory
I was driving on a slick road and my car hydroplaned. The sight in front of me was horrifying. I saw that I was headed straight toward a huge tow truck-type vehicle. I have no idea how I wasn't destroyed. It was like time stopped while I slid, and my car just ever-so-softly skidded perfectly backward into a ditch. The tow truck ended up in the ditch as well about five hundred yards down.
12. A Mother’s Worst Fear
I went to see a movie at the mall with my two teenage sons. We had arrived separately and parked our cars in different sections of the lot. When the movie was done, I was leaving the mall and driving up a ramp. In my periphery, I saw a sight that made my stomach drop—my son's car had its front end smashed in and there was smoke coming from the front. I quickly made a U-turn.
As I drove towards them, I could see my older son, who was driving, standing outside of the passenger door with my younger son, who was 14 at the time. Luckily, the passenger airbag had deployed, so my younger boy had only a nasty scrape on his face. Thankfully they were both okay. I hope I never feel fear like that again, ever.
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13. She Couldn’t Bear To Lose
When I was about eight years old, I was taking my dog for a walk with my dad. We had just started to head back to the house and about halfway there, we came across a terrifying sight that made us stop in our tracks—a bear appeared in the middle of the street. The bear was standing on its hind legs standing about 12 feet tall, looking very angry. Upon noticing the cub on the side of the road, my dad immediately put me behind his back.
He knew this bear wasn't messing around if it believed its cub was in danger. The next thing I knew, my dog charged at the bear full speed and tackled it down the hill off the side of the road. My dad and I both thought that that was the end of our dog until about a minute later we saw her strolling up the hill without a scratch. She wrestled the bear all the way down the hill and won, most likely saving our lives.
14. Don’t Shut The Light!
When I was 15, my two little sisters and I stayed over at a relative's house. They took the guest bed and I made a pallet on the floor. Our aunt reminded us several times to keep the bathroom light on before going to bed, but I didn't listen. I got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, turned the light off, and got back in bed.
As soon as I laid down, I realized that I had turned the light off and tried to get up to turn it back on—but I couldn't. I could sense a dark presence hovering over me. It felt as if someone was pushing on my chest holding me down. I tried to scream but felt something over my mouth and couldn't get anything out. I struggled like this for what seemed like hours. Eventually, morning came and the feeling went away. I have never been so afraid in my life.
15. This Made An Impact On Me
I was about 10 years old. I was being driven to the doctor's office for a check-up when we stopped at a light. There was a guy crossing the street to my left who looked down the road and started running across the crosswalk. The next few seconds sent a chill down my spine—a car drove through the light and slammed into him. He was launched straight into the air and landed on the ground with a loud thud.
When I looked at him, he wasn’t moving. He was just lying there inert on the road. Luckily, we were just down the road from a hospital and there was an office right across the street. The woman who hit him was in absolute hysterics. What stuck with me the most was the sound of the car hitting the guy and the "Oomph!" he made upon impact.
16. Nightmare Vs. Reality
Once I found a young woman, who was high, rummaging through tools in my dad's garage. The face she gave me when she realized a larger male had confronted her in a confined space was one of pure terror. She looked like she was ready to claw my eyes out. When she turned to run out of the garage, my dad, who was an officer, caught her by the arm and held her down until the authorities arrived.
Watching her fight, beg, and plead that we wouldn’t harm or kidnap her was pretty heartbreaking. She struggled so fiercely that we decided we should handcuff her to keep her from hurting herself or us. In her mind, we were her worst nightmare. We found out the disturbing truth later—she was on the run and being chased by law enforcement after she had committed a heinous crime.
17. When Life Is Disrupted By Routine
When I was around 15 years old, I lived with my dad who was a Vietnam veteran. We lived on a pretty busy street where car crashes were fairly common. When you heard a screech or crunch, you would get the cordless phone, some towels, walk outside to make sure everyone was okay, and call for help. Most of the time the people were shaken up, but okay.
We would help direct traffic and keep everyone calm until the authorities arrived. One day, we heard a screech, then a thud, not a crunch. That meant that someone, not something, got hit. We looked outside and there was a woman on the road about 20 feet from the crosswalk. That was bad enough, but at the other end of the crosswalk was an even worse sight—a tipped-over baby carriage with an infant on the pavement.
My dad and I went through the routine. I grabbed the phone and the towels. I never knew what the towels were for, but my dad told me that day, in the most direct military way I've ever heard him speak, it was to cover any bodies. We ran outside. The infant was crying. I never felt so relieved to hear a baby cry. An older woman picked up the baby from the gutter.
My dad got on her about moving injured people, but she saw the accident go down. The woman was crossing the street, pushing the baby carriage, saw the car coming, pushed the stroller toward the curb, and took the full force of the car. The stroller rolled to the curb and tipped the baby onto the asphalt. We didn't know if the baby was 100% okay to be picked up, but we had another person to look after.
The woman was alive but beaten up pretty badly. She was missing teeth and bleeding from her mouth. Her knees and shins were scraped up so bad we could see bones. Her arm looked broken. She was aware and crying. My dad told her to not move and told all the bystanders not to move her. The whole time I was on the phone with emergency services relaying information that he was telling me.
Then, her boyfriend showed up and his demeanor was gutwrenching. He was a fully tattooed gang member, crying like a baby, shoving people aside to get to his girlfriend. My dad stopped him, but told him, “Hold her left hand.” The guy dropped to his knees and held her hand until an ambulance arrived. Luckily, we didn't need to use the towels that day. The woman had a broken arm and shoulder, but she, and the baby, were going to be fine.
Later on, in life, I moved to an apartment right on Sunset Blvd in the junction, and once again car crashes became normal. I would go through the motions that my dad taught me. However, one morning, a large pickup T-boned a sedan with four people making a left turn. Unfortunately, I had to use my towels that day.
18. These Little Piggies Just Wanted To Go Home
I saw a trailer load of pigs traveling down a road when the tailgate opened. Cue total disaster. Those poor piggies just started tumbling out the back of this trailer breaking their legs, and skidding along the road. They didn't scream. The silence made it all that much more disturbing. They just sat there, legs splayed, road rash oozing blood, and they just sat like they were in shock.
19. A Shocking Fall
When I was young, I lived in Ohio. Some of the hills in the area were ridiculously steep and the buildings were tall to accommodate this. There was a man on a ladder who had to have been up about four stories when he fell off. But that's not the worst part—there was a flash from when he hit a wire. The ladder shot out and landed on the street. I wasn’t sure whether the fall got him, or if being electrocuted did.
I was only 10 years old, so I didn’t really understand what I had just seen, but my sister, who was driving, was crying her eyes out.
20. A Summer Tragedy
My friends and I used to play by this creek. My cousins' house backed up to woods and the creek was about a mile deep behind their home. We played there pretty much every day during the summer. We used to swing from one side to the other with a swing we made. One day, we were swinging and one of our buddies slipped, which wasn’t uncommon.
You would usually just fall into the creek, get wet, go home, and change. This time was different. Our friend fell backward and ended up hitting his head perfectly on these large rocks that were by the edge of the creek. The impact was so bad and he was bleeding profusely. My brother jumped in to make sure he didn't drown.
I ran back to my aunt's house with one of my cousins and a friend. My brother, another cousin, and another friend stayed behind. We got help but it was too late by that point. I could hear his parents' screams from my aunt's backyard when they got there. It was awful. It has made me realize that life is short and accidents can happen anywhere. The whole experience changed me as a person.
21. Escaped
When I was 18, I worked at a gas station. One night, at the end of my shift, my replacement didn't show up. I called my sister to see if she would hang out with me until I could get a hold of someone. At about 4 am, an ambulance slowed down right in front of the station. As it came to a stop at the light, the back doors opened up and a guy jumped out. One of the paramedics hopped out of the back and chased after him.
The guy ran right up to the station, looking terrified. He turned to the left to run again and we were immediately taken aback by what we saw—his head was missing a big chunk in the back, and he was covered in blood. The medic continued to pursue him through the parking lot next door. We called for help and explained the situation. Dispatch responded, "Yeah right." About twenty minutes later, the authorities arrived to take our statement.
I don’t know if they ever caught up with him.
22. A Harrowing Holiday
One year, during the holidays, I was skiing down a hill when I saw a ghastly tragedy occur—a five-year-old girl fall about 30 feet from the chairlift. I was about 15 feet away from where she landed. She was face down on her stomach. I called the ski patrol immediately. They probably came in about five minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I had no medical training other than very basic "Do not move the injured person."
Since her face was directly in the snow, I took my jacket off and I held her neck and head still. I had a nearby person slide my jacket under her face. I tried to distract her by asking her what she got from Santa, and I sang her favorite Christmas song. I kept holding her neck still until the ski patrol took over and sent her in the ambulance. Later, I found out that, although she had some bad bruising, she walked out of the ER that day.
23. Just Pooling Around
I once tossed my little brother into the pool and I instantly winced with regret and fear—his head came within an inch of the concrete edge. I knew as soon as he left my grip that I put too much force into it. Time seemed to slow down as he drifted through the air. With the angle he was falling, the speed he was thrown, and the height he reached at the peak of his trajectory, I knew that if his head hit the edge, brain damage would be the best-case scenario. Luckily, that didn’t happen. After that, I had to sit down and take a breath.
24. Shopping Scare
When I was about four or five years old, I was at the grocery store with my mother. Everything was fine, until all of a sudden, it wasn't. She passed out and hit her head on the tile floor. There was an instant pancake-sized puddle of blood around her head. She was in a coma for a couple of weeks, but she recovered. She was only left with minor short-term memory loss issues.
25. Off The Deep End
I had just turned 22 and was living in Austin at the time. My friends and I decided to go out to the lake for my birthday weekend. Naturally, we went to a club a few days before and got some dancers and cocktail waitresses to come with us. When the weekend came around, we were having a good time. One of the girls had a little too much to drink and realized she had lost her phone.
She started freaking out saying that we had to take her back to the bar where we had lunch earlier or she was gonna jump off the boat. We told her not to worry about it, that we would get back and find her phone, and if not, we would chip in and get her a new one. She wasn’t listening and started trying to jump off the boat. We were able to restrain her and thought we were in the clear.
But then, five minutes later, her behavior escalated and it was too late—she just jumped off the front of the boat and took one of the guys on the boat with her. My best friend and I knew it was going to be bad—then we saw the water change color behind us to red. We both sobered up fast. He jumped in and swam out to her, while I threw out the life ring to pull them to us as fast as possible. We then pulled her into the boat.
She had chunks of flesh that were chewed up by the propeller, exposing the bones on her back. The other girls all began to freak out. The guy that she took over the front of the boat with her was miraculously untouched. The worst part of it, for me, was that I knew we needed to apply pressure to her massive wounds. So, as we made our way to the nearest place for paramedics to reach us, I sat on the back of the boat and kept solid pressure applied on her back.
What made this so hard was her screaming. I still remember her begging me to let her go, saying that I was hurting her. But, I knew we had to slow the bleeding. I honestly don't know how long I had to hold her back together but it seemed like forever. I was able to keep pressure applied the whole time. I honestly thought that she wouldn't make it, but, remarkably, she pulled through. I haven't been on a boat since.
26. I Was Not Amoosed
I was going for a run through some rural roads around my house. I turned a corner and immediately ran into a moose, with her calf behind her. Moose are extremely large and not scared of humans. They will stomp you to oblivion just because they feel like it, let alone when they are actually protecting their young.
In this case, I was less than 10 feet away from it. In the end, I got extremely lucky—It just stood its ground and glared at me, never breaking eye contact. So, I was able to back away slowly, cut my run short, and go home. If I took one step closer there was a very real chance it could have attacked and I probably wouldn't be here today.
27. Wolf Bait
When I was 16, I took a small 14-foot boat out fishing before dark and lost track of time. A huge storm kicked up that brought on four-foot-tall waves and hail. It threw the boat into some rocks and dumped me into a shallow cove, on a relatively large peninsula, connected by wilderness to the mainland. It was dark and I had no way of contacting anyone.
I knew I needed to act quickly if I wanted to survive, so I flipped the boat, made a shelter, and hunkered down for the night. I woke up sometime during the night to a chilling sound—howling...loud howling. I turned my flashlight on and scanned the treeline. I spotted a wolf snarling at me about 20 feet away. I scrambled under the boat and spent the night using my fishing pole to dissuade him from digging under the side. I've never experienced anything as terrifying as a wolf trying to get me.
28. Sole Survivor
It was Christmas Day and we had pulled up beside an Army Captain who was covered in blood. He was shaking and asking if we would help him because everyone in his humvee was gone, except for him. When he told us what happened, we turned white—They were working with the Iraqi Army and hit an IED while doing a movement. We explained to him that we specifically came out there to help him and he just wouldn't stop thanking us. It was obvious he was in complete and utter shock. He was the only survivor in that truck.
29. Too Soon To Live, Too Soon To Die
The most terrifying thing I experienced was my wife giving birth to our daughter when she was only 19 weeks pregnant. Technically, it was a miscarriage. My wife's cervix wasn't strong enough and the baby breached. She went through all the stages of labor for about seven hours after that. My daughter was born weighing only 12 ounces. I held her, counted her toes and fingers, and saw her heart beating from her chest. But the worst wasn't over—I then saw her heart stop. It was the worst day of my life.
30. A Grizzly Encounter
When I was 13 years old, I was grouse hunting. Suddenly, a grizzly bear charged at me. I was armed and I would have been fine, but there was one big problem—I only had one shot left in my rifle. I was so scared, I wasn’t able to bring my arm up—I just peed myself and started sobbing. After the bear knocked over a small tree about 25 feet from me, she left. I ran back to the truck where my dad was eating lunch. Only then did I feel safe.
31. In The Eye Of The Storm
I was in South Carolina when Hurricane Hugo hit. It was absolute insanity. I watched a waffle house sign breathe in and out and then explode. The wind bent the steel beam holding it in half. The street lights started spinning on the wire, broke off, and flew away. The wind even blew off the roof of the hotel I was staying in. We were evacuated to the first floor before the eye passed. There was a circle of clouds with lightning, but the center was completely clear. I could see every star in the sky directly above me. The backside of the storm hit after that, which is a whole other story.
32. It Was Lights Out For This Pup
I was in the fourth grade when we lived out in the country. I was walking from the neighbor’s across the road to our house, I was about five or six feet from the road. Another neighbor’s dog got loose and ran towards me. When he got to the middle of the road, a car came flying by and hit him. The poor thing was still alive. What came next was the worst part. We got his owner, who was an older guy. He picked it up and took it home. I figured he was going to take it to the vet, but after about five minutes, we heard a blast.
33. He Got Him In The Throat
When I was little, we had a dog named Moose. He was very obedient and large for his breed. He would accompany my dad into the woods. One day, my dad got out of his truck in the middle of nowhere with Moose. After walking for about a minute, they stumbled across a large black bear who was angry. Moose then did the totally unexpected—he jumped right at it and bit its throat. The bear recoiled. My dad ran back to the truck to retrieve his rifle, but the bear was gone and Moose was just standing there wagging his tail.
34. Shark Tales
I was snorkeling in Croatia, collecting seashells and the like. I went on a deep dive to get some nice ones from the bottom of the sea. I was swimming back to the surface when suddenly, I saw a shadow the size of an SUV pass over me. I looked up and immediately became flooded with fear—it was a shark. I was terrified but was running out of air, so I had to swim up towards it or I was going to drown.
I resurfaced in record time and tried to climb onto my tiny inflatable mattress. I was too scared to get on, so I hung onto it frozen, with my mask submerged, so that I could see the thing approaching. All I could think of was, "Why didn’t anyone tell me that there are Great Whites in the Adriatic?” The shark swam towards me.
I thought it was the end for me, but it passed me by, uninterested. It was so close, I was able to count the scars on its belly. It was easily twice as long as me. I waited for about 20 minutes then swam back to shore EXTREMELY SLOWLY so as to not attract its attention.
35. Remembering 9/11
I was in my office on the 35th floor of a building when I saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center, which was about half a mile away. The first one happened behind me and I guess I didn't hear it. Then, someone called me and I looked outside the window to see smoke and papers flying everywhere. I still thought it was some small plane accident.
I couldn't see the hole because it was on the other side of the building. I was wondering if it was caught on video and picturing what the crash would look like in my head when the second one hit right in front of me, on the side facing me. It slid in like a coin into a slot. Then, in a sudden moment, my life flashed before my eyes—a ball of flame shot out in all directions, and after that, my window shook.
It looked just like I was picturing the first one in my head. My mental gears turned for a full 10 seconds wondering how my eyes just showed me what I was picturing. It wasn't until someone ran into my office asking what happened, and I heard myself tell them, that I actually realized it. I walked down 35 flights, then walked miles to my home in Brooklyn. I watched the second tower fall on TV. I went home and immersed myself in my daughter's world, where what I saw didn't happen.
36. A Case Of Mistaken Identity
I was a nanny for a wealthy family. I was doing some homework while the 18-month-old was napping. I had the monitor on and everything. I went to the bathroom, then returned to a shocking scene—a woman, who I knew wasn't his mother, was in his room bending down over his bed. I grabbed a blade from the kitchen and my phone and ran upstairs. Turns out, it was the cleaning lady. I had forgotten she was in the house.
37. He Took A Bad Hit
I was walking down the road with my brother at around 2 am and we were taking turns taking hits off of a pipe. I hadn't taken a hit yet, but my brother took a big one and collapsed. He started shaking violently and yelling. Then, he just stopped. I was 13 and didn't know what to do. So, I threw him over my shoulder and ran home. I woke up my parents and had them take him to the hospital. The doctors revealed the disturbing truth—he had inhaled spice.
The doctor said that he might not have made it if it wasn’t for me. Every time I think about that story, it scares the bejeezus out of me.
38. No Time To Smell The Roses
My mother owned a flower shop in a not-so-good neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago. I say "not-so-good" because the actual neighborhood had honest business owners trying to make a living, but the surrounding neighborhood was infested with gangs and addicts. When I was eleven or twelve, my sister, who was younger than I was, would check on the shop with my mom.
My mom had her best friend work there. My sister and I regularly hung out in the back to keep out of sight to not bother the flow of business. However, this time, my mom was adamant about us staying in the front because, both my mom and her friend, had to take care of something just for "a second.” That second turned into the longest second of my life.
It was a summer afternoon. My sister and I were waiting on my mother. The shop had one of those really heavy wooden doors that would squeak when you opened it. I remember hearing the door squeak open but instead of two customers coming in, I saw two tweaked-out addicts staring right into my eyes. The lack of conscientiousness in their eyes made me angry.
About 10 to 15 seconds later, there was a piece pointed at my mom’s head. I lost it. I immediately grabbed my sister's hand and ran for the door to get help. I was scared of leaving my mother in that situation, but it was the right thing to do. I ran next door to our neighbor’s office, who was a dentist. I started to bark orders, then quickly started to sob.
I don't remember much afterward. However, I do remember the dentist running from his office chair after these guys. We later found out the guys were in fact addicts. The authorities found them a few blocks down in the lobby of a building. My mother sold the shop later that year. To this day, I constantly scan my surroundings and look for a way out.
39. A Horse’s Trail
My friend's dad had two horse trailers. One was nice and large, while the other was a single-horse trailer; somewhat old, and it had a wooden floor. My friend figured he would use that one to take his horse out to our place. At some point, while he was driving, the freakiest mishap occurred—the trailer floor gave out in such a way as to drop all four of the horse's legs through the floor and onto the concrete.
There's no telling how many miles went by where that horse's legs were just scraped away by the road. He stopped when someone flagged him down to let him know that there was something wrong with his trailer. The horse was missing everything from about the knee down. There was blood everywhere, along with chunks, and horse poop. It looked like the horse had fought quite a bit to get out. It was awful...we had to put the animal down.
40. When It’s Life Or Death
When I was 19, I woke up in horrendous pain at 2 am. My boyfriend at the time drove me to the hospital that was about 15 minutes away. I had a sharp pain in my left side that felt as though I was being pierced with a butcher blade. My boyfriend started to panic because I thought I was having a heart attack. He wasn’t paying attention to the speed limit. An officer was sitting at a well-known speed trap about a mile from the hospital.
My boyfriend panicked, even more, when the officer was behind us. He decided to try and make it to the hospital and explain later. The hospital was on a hill, and the area was set up to where if you made a right, you would head to the hospital, but if you made a left, you were on the highway. We were at the bottom of the hill and there were now three cruisers behind us. One of them clipped the back of the car, so we stopped.
I was looking at my boyfriend who was in shock and heard my door open. I turned around and it was one of the officers. He had the barrel of his piece pointed to my forehead. I was holding my side in agony and grasping at my chest and throat trying to get a satisfying breath. I started begging for my life, crying. I kept repeating that something was wrong with me and I needed help. I thought they would clue in, but they never did.
The officers just kept yelling at me. I figured I was going to either go by my body failing or a slug to the head. I truly felt like I had no way out—it was the scariest moment of my life. My boyfriend tried telling them what was going on, but they slammed him against the car and took him in on seven charges. An officer grabbed me by the arm.
He dragged me up the giant hill when my main complaint was trouble breathing. He even left bruises on me. Turns out, I had a pulmonary embolism, which can be fatal. In court, the officer said I didn't look sick to him. The judge deemed it a life or death situation and dismissed all charges, except one.
41. An Unforgettable First Day
I worked as a patient advocate at a hospital for about nine months. We made sure people were satisfied with how they were treated by the staff, took both compliments and complaints, etc. One of my jobs was to sweep through the emergency room and check on everyone. We were also required to respond to all codes because we were the ones that tended to the family members when stuff went down.
We were essentially grief counselors. I will never forget one of my first nights on duty. A man in his late 40s or early 50s was rushed in. He had cancer for a while but was suffering from some kind of shut down and was very frantic. He was flailing around on the stretcher and making loud groaning sounds. His eyes were wide open and he looked very panicked.
They were darting around the room and he looked right at me. I saw his fear. It was absolutely terrifying. The ER nurses and code crew were trying to calm him down but he just kept making noises and flailing. Then he was quiet. He suddenly went unconscious and evacuated his bowels simultaneously. At that point, the team was using the paddles on him.
The sounds of all the machines and the staff intermittently saying "CLEAR," was difficult to witness. At that point, his daughter rushed through the curtains and I realized it was my job to console her. I somehow got her to follow me to the quiet room but obviously, she was inconsolable. I couldn't shake that eerie feeling for days.
42. An Unknown Danger In The House
My parents took me in, as foster parents, when I was four. They adopted me a couple of years later. They continued to take in foster kids throughout my childhood—around 70 kids in total over the years. Having new kids in the house over the years had its positives and negatives. The experience that terrified me the most happened when I was 13.
We had a foster kid move in, named Jack, who was 17. He would wake me up every morning by punching me and laughing. I'm talking full-on body punches. However, it wasn’t anything that my parents would notice, because he was too smart for that. He told me that if I ratted him out, he would end me. After a few months, he ran away. I was incredibly relieved.
A few weeks after he left, I was taking out the trash when it was dark outside. I went behind the garage to dump the garbage and saw my dad's motorcycle parked behind it. I was confused because it had snowed that day. It didn’t make sense that he would ride his bike in the snow, then leave it outside. So, I went into the house and asked him about it.
We found out the freezer in the garage had been emptied. He called the authorities. It turned out Jack had moved six blocks away with his friends, but soon he was long gone. A few months later, I was watching the late news with my mom. A story came up that sent chills up my spine—it was about a group of guys breaking into an old man's house, in a town an hour away.
They tied him up and robbed him. As they were leaving, one of them said, “Go on, I will be right there.” The other guys went outside and he came out a few minutes later. Little did they know that the guy who stayed behind beat the tied-up old man to oblivion. The guy’s picture came up. It was Jack. He was taken in for murder. I'm not sure what part of this whole mess scared me the most, but knowing that he might have actually harmed me if I ratted him out has stuck with me.
43. His Life Almost Came To A Grinding Halt
It was summer break. I was 16 years old and I didn’t have a license yet. I broke my dad's bench-mounted grinding wheel in half. I put the two halves together so I wouldn’t get in trouble for breaking it. The next day, my 12-year-old little brother and I were home alone doing our own things. All of a sudden, I heard my brother's bloodcurdling scream.
I ran towards the sound. He walked in from the garage with his shirt off, holding his belly with blood pouring down his shorts and legs. I got the van and started to drive him to the emergency room but my dad pulled up just before I got my brother in the van. I thought it was the end of him. He had turned the grinding wheel on and part of it flew off and cut him. He got 30 stitches, and I got a lifetime of guilt.
44. Coyote Ugly
My friend and I were about 15 years old. We were walking through the woods on the mountain behind my family's summer camp in New Hampshire. The woods were pretty thick in that area. We weren't on a trail or anything, just putzing around in the brush as teenagers do. However, I had a ridiculously good sense of direction and could always get home from the area, so we weren't concerned.
It started to get a bit dusky, so we started to head home, which I had estimated to be about a half-hour walk down a steep slope. Walking down a super steep incline like that was quite the workout on our calves. At that point, we were about a 10-minute walk back from camp, so we stopped on a big rock for a second to rest. As we sat down, I heard movement to our left.
I heard leaves rustling and sticks cracking. We sat very quietly and thought it was just a harmless deer or something, but we were so, so wrong. Instead, out from behind us, this huge upended tree root structure came the biggest COYOTE I had ever seen in my life. It was absolutely gigantic—larger than a great dane. We were completely terrified thinking we were about to be eaten by a pack of coyotes.
It took a few steps, not toward us, but just straight ahead, to our right. It was looking at us and sniffing its nose up. We were just frozen in place in fear and uncertainty, not at all sure of what to do. Suddenly, the animal stood up on its hind legs. I can not possibly convey how wrong that sight was—it was unnatural. It immediately turned my blood to ice.
It stood there for a few seconds just looking at us. It took a few moments before our bodies could unfreeze enough to run as fast as humanly possible down this incredibly steep leaf-covered mountainside to our camp. We made it home in record time. There was no further sign of that thing. I have not gone back into those woods since.
45. Baby Fever
When my son was three years old, I got a call from his daycare. They told me he had a fever of 105. They had sent him to the pediatrician's office. I went flying out the door and met them there. When I got to the doctor’s office, my baby was on one of those exam tables. I thought he was no longer alive...until I saw his eyes move.
The doctor was examining him and as I walked into the room, I heard him say, "Well, it's not meningitis." My knees buckled. They gave him a broad-spectrum antibiotic and Tylenol and kept him there until his fever started to come down. They wanted to send him to the hospital but couldn't because he was too young to stay alone.
I was also eight months pregnant. My husband was out of town on a fishing trip. The doctors had decided that the risk to my pregnancy was too great for me to be at a hospital 24/7. So, they took cultures, and I took my son home, with strict instructions to call an ambulance if his fever hit 105 again. I gave him Tylenol every four hours, day and night.
In between, I gave him wet cloth baths to keep his temperature down. I also prayed a lot. My poor baby never moved. He just lay there and kept breathing. I called my husband to come home and help me, but he refused. I was afraid to go to sleep because I thought I would wake up and find my son no longer alive. Every morning, I took him back to the doctor’s office at 10 am to get another broad-spectrum antibiotic to keep his fever down for another 24 hours.
Then, the rest of the day was Tylenol, cool baths, and monitoring him. I didn't do anything else. The laundry piled up, I didn't answer the door or the phone, and I slept on the floor next to his bed. On the fifth day, the cultures had grown enough that they could identify the infection. The results were surprising, but also a relief—he had staph in his lungs. After that, they could tailor the medications specifically for that, and his fever finally came down.
46. Like A Scene From A Zombie Movie
Three years ago, a friend and I were driving back from downtown, just chatting away. He was driving and I was in the passenger's seat. I noticed a large entity laying in the street near the local drive-in theater. From a distance, it looked like an animal of some sort. We thought it was roadkill. As we got closer, the thing got bigger. As my friend drove by it, we noticed it was a person.
As we were slowing down to make a U-turn, the man lying on the ground got up and stumbled toward us. When my friend turned his car around, to go help the guy, we heard a loud thud. I looked to my right, outside the passenger window, and I gasped—there was blood smeared all over the window and mirror, on my side of the vehicle.
My friend immediately stopped the car and the man was banging on my window, begging for help. He was a large man and had half of his jaw missing. It looked like something straight out of The Walking Dead. He had been shot in the face and chest, and it was clear that only adrenaline was keeping him alive. My friend was terrified and sat frozen.
However, my adrenaline had kicked in as well. I wanted to save this man’s life, so I immediately got out of the car to assist him. My friend thought I was nuts because I didn't know this man, yet I was jumping out of the car in a dangerous area to help him. My friend called for help as I tried to calm the man down, to keep him from injuring himself further.
I kept asking him to tell me what happened, but all he could say was, "Help me please, I'm dying." I grabbed his hand and led the way as he stumbled to the curb with me. I sat with him as he laid himself back onto the ground and tried to assure him that everything would be alright. I looked behind me toward the drive-in theater.
I noticed a pickup truck crashed into a telephone pole with the driver's side window blown out. We were on the border of the dangerous side of town, so I knew instantly what had happened. The authorities showed up and started questioning us, while the paramedics took the man to the hospital. We were questioned for four hours. It turned out someone had shot the guy through his window as he was driving.
It was determined that this was not a random act of violence, and the guy was someone’s target. They never discovered a motive for the occurrence. The poor guy passed on the next day from his injuries. The worst part was that they never found his killer. I'll never forget the way his face looked or the sound of his voice as he desperately tried to make out his cries for help with his jaw missing.
47. A Fight For Life
I worked as a security officer in a rather large psychiatric ward. One day, I was leaving dispatch and happened to catch on the old black and white monitor a man sitting in the middle of the main floor. Something struck me as wrong. I suddenly saw a black puddle beginning to form under him. I ran up to the unit, and there sat a man in a puddle of blood.
I called for backup, but he stood up and ran at me. I fought this guy for about five minutes, and both of us were covered in red. His eyes had no life—they were like a shark’s. It turned out that he had sat on the floor and ripped out the stitches he had put in after an attempt at taking his life.
48. A Christmas Derailed
It was Christmas time and I was at the mall. I saw a lady with her partner who was pushing a shopping cart and it had a small child in it. The next thing I knew, the woman broke away from them and took off running towards me. What she did next made my blood run cold—she launched herself over the third-floor rail that I was standing by. It was inside the mall and saw her head hit the tiles right next to all the kids waiting in line to get a photo with Santa.
49. Nightcrawler
I was home alone with my sister who had strep throat. My mom spent a lot of time with her boyfriend after work, and I had no classes that day, so we weren't expecting anyone home until around midnight. Around 9:30 pm, there was a knock at our door. There was a guy outside saying he had pizzas for us. However, I hadn't ordered any pizzas, and I told him that.
The man seemed to leave, so I thought nothing of it. About five minutes later, my sister informed me that she saw someone walking around the side of our house from the upstairs window. We had cameras set up all around our house, but they weren’t set up on the side of our house because we had giant bushes in that area.
I went out to our backyard and found nothing. Then, two minutes later, I looked through the screen door and my stomach dropped—our shed door was open, and there was a trail of blood leading to it. Naturally, I freaked out. I called the authorities and locked all the doors. When officers arrived and searched my backyard, they found the guy crouching in the back of my shed with a giant Bowie blade. He'd been involved in several armed robberies and had punctured a guy in a fight several years back.
50. He Wasn’t Playing Around
When I was younger, I kicked a ball over the fence at my dad's friend’s house. Naturally, I poked my head over the fence to see how far it had gone. I saw a man a decent distance away in the backyard. I called out and asked if he could pass my ball back over but he didn’t respond. So, I asked my sister if I was seeing it right.
She looked over and thought it was a scarecrow. I went to tell my dad and his friend and they looked at it. They called out but still nothing. When they jumped the fence to check it out, they immediately froze with fear—it turned out I was calling out to a man who was no longer alive to pass my ball back over. The authorities came out. The whole thing was really creepy.
Sources: Reddit, .
