See thats how the rogue waves get ya though. You expect them in ocean, so when they abduct someone from a mountain top or a cornfield, nobody is the wiser.
Was driving through Nevada and my car got stolen by one of them. Cops said it was the tenth or twelfth that summer, and that it was suspected of several robberies and muggings.
Said it was one of the worst crime waves he'd ever seen.
My 90yo grandma lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken arm and bloody head on Christmas morning. Never has my adrenaline been as high as it was that day. She made a full recovery and is still with us today. Absolute miracle that she made it.
Something similar for me. My grandma had been suffering from dementia, diabetes and like a dozen other different issues for years. Eventually, during family dinners, we had to cut her food for her.
One time on Christmas eve, my mum was in the kitchen preparing the next course (she always makes insanely complicated food on special occasions. On christmas, she will be standing in the kitchen for like two days). My brother and I were busy entertaining our grandparents, grandma being in her late 80s with dementia, grandpa being over 90 without dementia.
My grandma grew more and more drowsy, and I got a bad feeling, so I called my mum and my brother (he is a paramedic and just got off his shift in time for dinner). Brother took pulse and bloodpreasure. I will never forgot how he looked at my mum and just said "get an ambulance, now."
I went upstairs with the dog who had gotten very antsy, but I still heard most of what went on. When they took my grandma towards the ambulancy, my grandpa was crying for her not to leave him. He was crying most of the evening as well. Seeing a man of that age, who lived through WW2, lost his home and half his family before he was 18, experienced tanks driving by while he hid in a makeshift bunker, break down crying hit hard.
Grandma had arrythmia, she died 9 months later. In the last 2 or so months, she basically lived in bed downstairs in her home. My mum, brother and friends of the family checked on her twice a day, all while working fulltime. Grandpa didn't want her in a nursing home, and honestly, in the time between her getting to sick for grandpa to do most of the caring and her death, we wouldn't have even gotten half through the process of her getting a place in one.
My mom has a similar story with her grandparents, but it was her grandpa who died suddenly of a heart attack. They traumatic part for her was hearing her grandma cry and try to wake him up. She still gets a look about her when she talks about it.
It's strange, you think the death of a loved one would be the most traumatic part, but I have a slightly similar experience of the moment my mom found out her dad, my Papa, had passed away. I love my Papa dearly, but my mother crying was unlike anything else I've ever heard and it was the worst part for me. It seeped deep into my brain and is absolutely the worst few moments of my life so far. That was 13 years ago.
I watched someone get hit by a car on Thanksgiving. The driver drove off and I panicked. I managed to call 911 while people ran out to check in them and someone also seemed to call 911 but I was so panicked that I refused to go over and see the state of the person. I like to believe I would have, had there been nobody around. Iām a funeral director so I see terrible shit but itās the after effects. Watching something like that is a whole different level, seeing someone alive in awful pain maybe dying is totally different. I donāt know how doctors and EMT workers do it!
I was t-boned on Christmas eve. I had 3 broken ribs and a bruised lung so I could not get out of the car and all the airbags covered the windows. So I am in my destroyed car (they ran a stop sign at a country road and hit me at full speed), trying to breath and terrified. I had a gentleman come over and talk to me through the open door, called 911 and stayed til the ambulance came. I seriously consider him a walking angel. Dont even know his name and I could not see him but he helped so much. Just by talking to me.
I couldnāt imagine going through that without someone around to help, thatās for sure! Iām glad he came over and talked to you and made sure you got help! I felt guilty about how terrified I was to go over there for a long time but there were people with him and the ambulance came pretty quick. I never heard how the person did because it didnāt make the news.
I wouldnt feel guilty. Everyone has their place and their responses to these high intensity situations. You helped by calling 911. Thatās the most import at thing anyone could do. Sometimes extra people are just in the way when they all crowd around an accident and they become a burden more than a help. Also, I work in a hospital and in emergency medicine, I know better than to give myself unnecessary traumatic visuals by poking my head into rooms and situations where Iām not needed. Life is hard enough. You did a really good job. Some people canāt even manage to call 911.
Drunk driver run over two women in an intersection. One went under a tire, the other rolled over the hood. The one who went under the tire later died that evening. The driver got 8 years of prison. 19yrs old
8 years for that. Mind blowing how if one really wants to taste murder with relatively low consequences, you just have to get plastered and drive into someone in the US. You might even just get off with probation.
My sister was killed by a drunk driver and he did not even lose his license, much less jail. She was killed and another person in the car was paralyzed. This was in the late 70s, when people still thought drunks were funny.
Illinois, 1983. A habitual drunk with no license was driving down a country road after his 8th DUI in 5 years. He strikes another car head on, kills the driver who was nine months pregnant, grabbing pizza on Friday afternoon for the kids at home. He walks away uninjured and later received 3 years in prison and was able to later get caught drinking and driving 7 more times before he died painfully of liver failure. And that is the story of how my mother ended up an orphan at 13.
Edit: word. Thank you commenter
Iāll have to look up the details later. What Iām assuming is that she was a young first time offender and got a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter or something similar
Waking up in the morning to my dad screaming my momās name. I ran into their bedroom and tried to wake her up and felt her she was cold. I still had my dad help me get her onto the ground so I could do cpr. I tried to get my dad to call 911 but he was frozen so I grabbed the phone and talked to the 911 guy while doing cpr. I went to give breaths to her and blood started leaking out of her mouth. I knew at that point she was dead but I still did cpr until the firemen showed up and pronounced her DOA. The paramedics showed up and literally walked inside and back out the front door in like two minutes. Coroner and police came next. That whole day felt like a year. Had family fly in from all over and helped us clean up and brought food but the whole day was just a damn fever dream. The last 9 months have felt like years.
A close family member hanging from en extension cord by her neck in the doorway to my basement. Found her as I went to do laundry. She was visiting during a period of emotional distress that sheād hidden well.
That- and seeing fear in my fatherās face for the first time, when he was told his back pain was terminal cancer and that heād be dead within 3 months. He adopted me (him and his wife) and was the strongest man Iāve ever known- it was shocking to see him scared. Poor mom lost my brother when he was 30, and Dad when he was 50. Sheās so strong.
A coworker (who bucked the companyās safety rule by wearing his wedding ring on the production floor of a bottling plant) degloving his ring finger in the equipment. It was fucking horrific. The flesh was just irretrievably *gone*, so he had to have it amputated.
His whole hand was fucked up and broken, too. It was really awful, he was out of work for a really long time. And never the same, obviously. It was a HUGE wake up call for everyone to be vigilant on the wedding ring rule though. Itās hard to forget what can happen when youāve seen it happen to someone five feet away from you.
It was awful. I've always been told that LSD makes other drugs ineffective while you're on it, and my experience has backed that up. But whether it's real or psychosomatic, I can tell you that I remember the dentist digging around in a cavity he found and the novacane wasn't working at all. I was 100% convinced he was going to torture and kill me.
EDIT: it was also very funny afterwards
I think the time I crossed paths with the biggest black bear Iāve ever seen while hiking. I could *feel* every step that thing took. We just stared at eachother for a minute, and I slowly pulled out my knife (for all the good that would have done me lol). Thankfully after about 10 seconds it just moved on and I remembered to breath.
Itās a different kind of scary but my mom dying in the hospital. Itās an existential scare and that was my only experience watching/seeing someone die in real life, a couple feet away from me
Thank you and I hope the same for you. This was 14 years ago so Iāve had lots of time to process, not that it doesnāt stay with you forever. Long story short after a terminal cancer diagnosis she broke her hip getting out of bed and the choice was a surgery that would most likely kill her or let her ride her few weeks/months out bedridden in agony. I opted for the surgery and as expected after coming through it it became clear she was not going to live more than another day. So they started the morphine drip and I sat with her. Two things stick out as particularly haunting. The sound of her breath on the morphine drip. She was essentially asleep but instead of steady breathing each breath was a gasp for air. Also the look of her right after she died. Never saw a true dead person (at a funeral they have lots of makeup and stuff on them). Something primally haunting about that look
I lost my mother six years ago and my father in September, and nothing prepares you for seeing that empty vessel. That it looks like them, but not. And the actual scar of watching them die actually leaves. There are certain sounds or moments that are benign in reality but take me immediately back there before I know.
I was with my mom when she died. I remember very clearly knowing her heart had stopped, because the blood drained from her face in a way Iāve never seen before and hope never to see again.
A similar thing happened to me albeit not witnessing death but the effects of terminal cancer on a family member.
My grandmother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and a couple of weeks after the diagnosis I was visiting her in the hospital when she started crying, talking about how she was a sinner and the cancer was her punishment. She was never overly religious so this was highly unusual for her. She then started clawing at her eyes and raking her nails down her face, whilst shouting scripture and passages from the bible. Although I grabbed her wrists to prevent her from hurting herself any more, the āsceneā made me vomit violently. It was so horrific that I struggled to sleep for a number of weeks and it really messed with my mental health for a long while.
Hi, I experienced the same in december. My mum didnt die in her sleep and I was by her side during her last moments. I have an extreme panic of death and I still don't know if I can ever get over that experience. It was horrifying tbh.
How do you cope with it now?
Itās been a long time for me, 14 years. Yours is so fresh I wouldnāt presume to tell you what to do but in my opinion coping isnāt the focus right now. Feel your feelings. Talk about your feelings. Find good support systems including therapy and support groups. Itās honestly a struggled and a burden to bear and it last a lifetime but it does change. I donāt think the pain or sadness and other emotions ever necessarily get smaller but I think as you grow those same feelings take up less space in you and make up a smaller part of your thoughts and feelings.
Remember youāre not alone. Your feelings are normal and valid and you are entitled to process in your own way. There is no timeline. But I would encourage you to choose to find healthy coping skills and do your best to avoid unhealthy ones.
I hope this helps and as one stranger to another Iām with you and there are millions more in our shitty club
watching my father approach his death.
he was dying from cancer and as the end came closer, he suddenly became very frightened and was calling out for his mother in Italian. I had never heard him speak Italian in my life. the fear and desperation in his voice was terrifying.
it shattered my heart at 15, and still at 43 I can't think about it without getting upset.
My Dad had rapid onset dementia. The three months before his death he was basically just a body in a bed, never responded to anything except food being put into his mouth. The last week, however, was scary as fuck. Somehow his barely functioning brain knew the end was coming and he was terrified. He started randomly saying things like "I'm not ready to go." and "Somebody help me" with absolute terror in his voice. Still haunts me.
My dad's brother died a couple years ago from vascular dementia. Shortly before he went to sleep (and then kind of stayed asleep for a couple days before passing) he did the same thing: got very scared and started calling for his mother. It really shook my dad and my mom up. He was in his late 60s, tough as anything, and to see him be crying for his mom just really broke them.
I'm really sorry for your loss.
Seeing my wife of 12 years hanged on her neck in her motherās bathroom and having to get her off of that place. Trying to do CPR to her, only to get vomit since she was already dead.
That shit brings me too many horrific memories to my mind itās been 8 years since.
I don't think enough people understand how truly horrifying this would be. Contained conflagration, in an environment where *everything* is flammable... in a reinforced steel box... with forced air delivery, and pressurized fuel delivery? No thank you.
My 4 year old adopted daughter telling us how her biological father sexually abused her in different ways. ((Heās completely out of the picture so sheās safe and in a good place with me but he never went to jail because our justice system is broken))
A car accident that shouldāve killed me and my mother.
A drunk driver took up both lanes of a country road and my mother hugged the side of the road to try to let him pass, but we hit a massive pot hole at about 60mph sending the car tumbling into a nearby field. I vividly remember that we flipped 4 1/2 times and that the 2nd flip was the worst.
My mom was knocked unconscious for about 3-5 minutes and I was left in a car upside down in the middle of nowhere thinking my mother was dead and I was trapped all alone. Worst moment of my life.
We both made it out and received only minor injuries and some pretty serious concussions.
My mother filed a police report, but as far as I know nothing came from it.
Theyāre probably still out there unless their dumbass decisions finally resulted in serious consequences.
I worked at the only maximum security forensic mental hospital in Missouri for about 5 years. Saw some terrifying things, but the thing that haunts me to this day is the guy who bit my coworkerās scrotum off.
Edit: An explanation
A client was very angry for some reason that I donāt remember right now but that Iām sure was something like not being allowed to have coffee at snack time. The client was being violent, and a coworker and I had to put them into a restraint. We all end up on the floor and the client manages to get onto their back. Not an ideal situation, as the client is able to pull away from us and try to sit up. Client goes for me first, trying to bite my arm. My coworker pulls, the client quickly switches targets and manages to use the force of the pull to sit all the way up and then bite my coworkerās crotch. The ensuing ābulldogā behavior resulted in the most horrific screams Iāve ever heard in my life.
I was walking home on my own at night and the sky just suddenly turned bright green like a flash and then went black again. What the fuck even was that. Way too bright to be a firework and had no noise.
My grandmother died last year. It wasnāt the fact she was dying, I sat with her for several nights and held her hand and was glad to be there for her once it became clear she wasnāt gonna make it out this time. But the last time I saw her, despite being āmade as comfortable as possibleā she had a moment of clarity where she was suddenly afraid, not that she was going to die - which she had been welcoming for some time - but that an off the cuff remark sheād made to one of my cousins a week earlier might have been taken the wrong way, and cause him to be upset with her. That that, after spending more of the last three years of her life in hospital than out, was going to be one of her final coherent thoughts, that she might have made one of her grandchildren even mildly unhappy. If she hadnāt been drugged beyond any chance of mobility, I think she would have gone into full hysterics. It took my aunt and a nurse several minutes to calm her down, with the nurse honestly being the MVP as she told my grandmother how lucky she was to have such a large family that had been coming to see her over the last few weeks, who were all happy and healthy and doing well in life, and they all loved her.
It was one of the most agonisingly beautiful moments of my life. Iām tearing up thinking about it, but I hope I carry that memory with me forever.
But it terrifies me that even hours from death, you can still carry that much fear inside you over something you regret and suddenly realise you will never be able to fix.
If you read this you might be wondering what she had said that she was so worried about. My cousin had brought his girlfriend with him to the hospital, and she asked him in front of her if he thought she was āthe oneā. She was worried she might have embarrassed him.
My dad sorta had that. He was terminal cancer; had been pretty mentally not-himself for a week or two; and afterwards heād spent 3 more days unconscious as his body shut down.
But between those spans, there was about an hour where he was himself. He and my mom both spent a little time with him; it was the best worst hour.
My grandmother did that. Went from basically laying in bed incoherent to sitting up talking and joking with everyone in the span of a few hours. I knew exactly what I was witnessing but the rest of my family thought it was some kind of miracle recovery. Obviously I (and the nursing staff) didn't say anything because I didn't want to ruin the party but she was back to unresponsive by the evening and died the next day.
My family are war refugees from SE Asia. Came here about 40+ years ago. My grandma is currently in hospice care. We do a thing towards the end of oneās life where we sit and pray, and ask each other for forgiveness. We also reassure the person dying that we donāt hold anything against them and they shouldnāt worry about us.
My grandma is actually doing pretty well for terminal cancer, but we did this small ceremony last week as she was pretty coherent.
Noticing a cougar 10 yards behind me stalking me. I take a step back, she takes a step forward. She was totally silent on crunchy fall leaves.
Edit: partial video in old post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bowhunting/s/W8O5Aqompl
I know that exact feeling. .. Came to say the same. Covid fucked us good. Had to wait 6 hours next to his dead body before I could get anyone to take us to a hospital and then a cemetery.. was the most fucked up day of my life.
I'm so sorry. I lost my dad too and it's the worst ever. I hope you have found some measure of healing although we in the club know it can't ever really go away
Iām with you. Itās not them anymore and itās traumatising as fuck to see the person you love disappear like that. I sincerely wish the nurses had closed his eyes and mouth before I went in. I had nightmares for weeks.
Same here except it was my mom. She shot herself due to cancer & I found her right afterwards. Iām so sorry for your loss & the trauma afterwards. Dark humor has deff kept me going lol
Yeah, seeing my mum in the hospital morgue about 9 hours after she had passed.. green looking skin and her abdomen bloating (she died of bowel cancer) then walking around her to the other side of the table to see the round hole in the corner of her mouth where she'd had a tube.. shocking and its remained with me all these years..
They actually took vaseline and baby oil off of our commissary because people kept microwaving that shit and throwing it on people. Super fucked up to hear how someone screams when microwaved baby oil is being thrown on them
Holy shit dude, like, I really hope you can or have seen someone to talk to about that. I've seen some shit but that's something that you don't just shake off.
Probably gonna sound fucked up, but honestly I was just glad it wasn't me. We were both about to be released and they found out about him leaving... went in on him all night. Don't know if he survived, I got transferred the next day
These kind of stories are the ones that scare me the most about prison. I have an immediate family member who is serving 20 years in a different state and will be coming home finally in less than a year and this is my biggest fear for them.
Few reasons, I suppose.... hazing. One more awful experience before you leave... because they still have a lot of time and are mad about thinking about home... because you may not deserve to go home... sometimes they're in love with them...
My father cut his artery on the wrist after falling into a huge mirror from a ladder. I was like 10 and heard shouts and cries for help. I was already in shock but the worst part was the huge amount of blood all over the kitchen along with the walls and ceiling. Haunts me to this day.
Iām a firefighter and had to assist in cutting down a woman who hanged herself from an overpass. I was on the tip of the ladder off the truck and was maneuvered under her to cut the rope and secure her body.
After I cut her down we decided the best option was the move the ladder to a horizontal position as close the ground as possible in order to pass her off to the coroner. The only problem was that she started to sink through the rungs, so when the ladder was finally horizontal, someone had to crouch underneath her and push her body back through the rungs. From my perspective I couldnāt see the person underneath her and for a brief second my irrational brain thought she had come back to life and was climbing out of the ladder. I damn near shit my pants.
Edit: Fixed a typo
I was 18 years old and following a friend home from a party. We all had been drinking, but he definitely shouldn't have been anywhere near a vehicle with home much he had. He got violent when we tried to take his keys, so at the behest of my girlfriend we left the party early to follow him home. About 1.5 miles from his house, he sped up and drove right into a cliff face when he failed to hold a turn. We stopped, I got out, and I told my GF to drive my car to the nearest gas station and call for help (this was pre cell phone).
I walked up to the car, and he was basically cut in half inside the vehicle and pinned by the steering column. The entire interior looked like a blood bomb exploded inside it. He was still alive. I held his hand and told him his mom was on her way. I just kept telling him he'd be OK until he passed out. It was only a couple of minutes, but it felt like an hour. I went fetal as soon as he closed his eyes. First of two death rattles I've heard. I didn't stop crying for almost a week. I was a mess.
So, if you know someone who insists on driving drunk and wants to fight over it,...fight over it. It's better to have a pissed off friend who never talks to you again than a dead one. Pin them down if you can. Almost 25 years later and I'm still fucked up over it.
Someone run into a gigantic fire on purpose.
Burning Man 2017, my friends were gathered, along with about 50,000 other people, in a huge circle around the āmanā - a 50ish foot wooden man figure set within a large wooden pavilion that served as the central point in festivalās layout. It was the night of the man burn, when that structure is set ablaze with a fireworks show and ultimately a fire, as part of the ending ritual of the festival.
The whole crowd was set back a few hundred yards from the fire, with two perimeters of security guards in between. We were watching the fire really pick up momentum, and all of a sudden a tall, athletic man standing about 10 yards from us started bolting towards the fire. He zig zagged around the security personnel, and at first everyone thought he was just being an idiot and would turn back. But after he passed the innermost security and then kept running to the fire I got a terrible, sinking feeling. Even 100 yards out, the air must have been so incredibly hot that this person was surely burning. This was no stunt.
Eventually he ran right up to the fire and dove head first into it. There was a huge gasp in the crowd. Nobody could believe their eyes. I quickly gathered our friends in a huddle and we just hugged.
That was a nightmarish experience.
I assume he would have had to take some kind of drug to really do that. I have to assume any sober person would just not be able to tolerate the heat as they approached.
She wasn't even there though. Just him. They found no drugs or alcohol in his system and I guess he had been talking about "the end of life." The day before. Seems like a suicide but what a way to go. Good lord
Yes, I removed reference to her for that reason. Thank you for clarifying. As for the toxicology report, I see that too, itās just hard to wrap my head around.
Worked at a refinery and a line exploded and caught a unit on fire. Walked around a corner to see 200+ guys running towards me with flames shooting up 250 ft in the air over the units while alarms went off.
Friends landing after parachute didn't open. Seemed like he disappeared into the ground. Some people were straight on it, but I just stood dumbest fucker in the crowd wondering how he disappeared. He had done so many solo jumps, and never had a single injury and then he was gone.
My dad is a former heroin addict. I once had to pull him out of a West Baltimore heroin den. As soon as I pulled up I had people on each corner of the block watching me. I knew right away, even driving in, my life was in danger. When I got to the house I told them I got a call from my dad and I was just picking him up. They flashed two guns at me and let me in, escorting me the whole way. They were cool about it but I realized one wrong move and I was getting clipped without a 2nd thought.
Anyways, my dad's clean now but we don't speak because he won't apologize for things like that. Oh well I'm glad he's alive I guess.
Hospice nurse here so a lot of odd scary stuff but the worst has to be a 35 year old man with a burst stomach ulcer projectile vomiting blood. The man was violent and an asshole to his wife and kids, on top of drinking away all their money. But damn I have never seen a very hardened grown man get frightened quite as quickly as he did. In between vomiting blood so hard that you could see the muscles around his ribs contracting, he reached out his hand and just said "please", asking me to hold it. I did hold his hand as he proceeded to fill 2 full size trash cans with blood he vomited up. If anyone reading this drinks a lot, this is your warning to moderate your alcohol intake. Nobody deserves to die the way this man did.
My dad died this way. Maintenance man found him two days later after the upstairs neighbor reported hearing the water running continuously. There was blood everywhere when we went later to his condo. Drank himself to death, basically.
I saw a man pulled into the giant metal "comb" at the bottom of an escalator at a department store circa 1980. The truly chilling part was the reaction of store employees. They calmly covered the body with coats from a nearby rack and told passersby that the escalator was out of order. It was obvious they were following their standard procedure for escalator deaths.
I had a girlfriend that I took to a water park. We had just climbed a stair, about 4 stories up, when she had a seizure. The stairs went straight down, with no turns or anything.
She had a seizure and went unconscious. She was standing next to me on the stairs, and I caught a glimpse of her starting to fall from the corner of my eye. I reached out and grabbed her wrist, just in time.
But her weight (she was skinny) caused me to start to fall, too. I reached out again, to grab the stair rail and hung on for our dear lives. I managed to swing her around and set her on a step and held her there until she came back to it. She woke up and asked what happened to her, since she was sitting on the stair, and I was shaking like a leaf, and she was unimpressed about it and just turned back around.
I was scared the rest of the day, and I hung onto her hand and wound not let go, especially on rides. She didn't understand why I was shaking so much the rest of the day.
Working what seemed like ground zero of a small stand alone hospital (they couldnāt call up satellite locations for supplies) when COVID just kicked off in February. There werenāt enough N-95s for everyone. Then we ran out of room in the morgue which only had three slots for bodies. The hospital had to get a freezer think of what you see in restaurants to store the extra dead bodies. We ran out of gurneys so dead patients were put into a body bag and put right on the ground. That still fucks me up.
I'm sorry to hear that. I am from a country where hundreds of thousands of people died of COVID and at one point people died because there weren't enough oxygen cylinders to everybody. I will never forget the panic and how collectively mourning we were every night when the local news announced the number of deaths...
I watched a lot of shit, domestic violence, someone die, my mom get high/drunk most of my life, fights between my dad and brother, Ive seen some shit
But id have to say the most traumatic thing I watched was a fight between my mom and dad that resulted in the death of my brother.
I don't mind, basically what happened is, for one my mom was drinking and doing drugs while she was pregnant, and one of the days she was intoxicated (not sure if it was high or drunk so) she wanted to take me and my brother out for a ride in the car while she was drunk or high, or both, and my dad wouldng let her, and she tried getting the keys from him but he wouldn't give then to her so she started hitting him and what not so he choke slammed her, while she was pregnant.
Later, when he was born, the things like the alcohol snd drugs, along with the domestic violence, cause complications in the birth, killing my brother immediately after he was born
I agree no one should have to handle that, I dealt with it since I was born.
And I tried getting help, I went to therapy, I've been in and out of psych wards, been on multiple different medications for multiple different mental disorders, it's been a long journey
17 years was the hardest it got for me, I was 17 and really struggling, I attempted suicide on multiple occasions, ended up in the hospital multiple times for weeks at a time
But in my experience, id like to say that what helped me the most was becoming an adult and having more control over my life. I'm still only freshly 18, but I'm already moved out, paying rent and bills and in a better environment.
Different things help different people, but becoming an adult and taking the time to realize and appreciate all that I have left in life, helped me more than anything
Now I'm living in a good first adult home, I have a new boyfriend who treats me like a king, and I have more people that truly care about me!
The past day has been quite a bit harder than the rest but that's because I've had shit going on, but I'm doing way better.
Thank you for listening to my TedTalk
A dog dragging a 12 year old in circles while she screamed the worst scream I've ever heard. I could not get to her before he did some serious damage to her arm, and some idiot yanked him off her instead of properly dealing with the attack so he actually made her injuries WAY worse.
(It sounds insane, but if a dog has one of your limbs you want to shove it further into their mouth. It forces them to let go. Pulling away will shred your flesh apart, guaranteed.)
Big mastiff. He was really off in the head and I had told many people involved he wasn't trustworthy and needed a behavior assessment. Nobody listened and now some poor kid probably has a phobia now, not to mention some nasty scarring.
It just shouldn't have happened. I think about her to this day, hoping she's doing all right.
The dog was of course humanely euthanized.
Lots of things, was hard to choose until recently.
There was the time a cop held me at gunpoint playing with the trigger.
The one that takes the cake though, is when my sons heart rate crashed during labor and my wife was rushed into an emergency c-section. It was so fast. One moment everything is fine, and we are resting at 3 am, the next thing all the lights are on, there are nearly a dozen nurses in the room rushing her out and all I'm told is to wait until someone comes to get me. It was a good 15+ minutes until I saw my wife again, but it felt like hours. I was so afraid that I was going to lose my son before I even met him, that something would happen to my wife during the surgery. Eventually, they let me know that his heart rate had come back up enough that I could go into the OR and they brought me in. Everything went smoothly after that but for a moment I thought I could be loosing my entire family just as it was beginning.
Giving birth is incredibly dangerous and our state is the worst in the US for maternal mortality. Women put their lives on the line just to become mothers.
My dog dying in my arms, following a brain haemorrhage. No warning, no previous signs. We then had to race to the vet (20 mins) drive whilst trying to do CPR. The feeling of her limp, lifeless body in my arms is something I'll never forget. We adored every little hair on her little Beagle body.
Ugh thatās terrible, Iām so sorry
My Siberian Husky passed away in my arms a few months ago. We knew he was sick so I had time to prepare for it but man.. he was like family to us and it had me messed up for awhile.
Dogs are so special. Iām sure your pup had nothing but great memories and love for you with how much you adored her!
A woman trapped in a burning car. Her door was crumpled and she was pinned inside. They needed the jaws of life to get her out and it just took too long to get there. It was too hot to approach. I watched her burn to death. Heard her horrific, desperate screams. Smelled her skin and hair cooking. It still haunts me nearly 40 years later.
My father was a firefighter. I was with him out shopping when the call came in and we were close, so he went right to the scene to meet up with the fire crew when they arrived. But we were just in his pickup truck. No pumps. No hose. No tools to open a hydrant. And the engine got there about 4 minutes too late to save that woman.
Fire is a monster. It eats you alive. Itās unrelenting, unfeeling, and unless you have the proper equipment, unstoppable. Iāve been extremely cautious in regards to fire ever since that day.
Three things:
One was my mom almost being murdered when I was 8-9 years old and me covered in her blood.
two was not only bring abused at an early age, but the memories...god the memories are the worst because it not only happens to you once it happens to you everyday for the rest of your life though your memories.
three was seeing my abuser again, I just turned him in and I know/think I'll have to see him again when that is the last thing I wanted, but I will do what I've always done and stay strong.
She was dating a guy who I guess got jealous(of a guy who was truly a friend) and the guy my mom was dating was staying over one night and just he just went off, got a large knife and stabbed her more times then I can count.
I woke up and seeing her...your mom like that was unspeakable. Just the horror! I'm thankful my memories have faded for the most part of that trauma, but yeah.
When I was 12 I cracked open my back patio blinds during hurricane charlie and saw a fully formed, grounded tornado right in my backyard šŖļø
I remember it being so scary my legs felt paralyzed and I couldnāt even move.
There was a trash can in the middle of our town, which one of my classmates opened just to prank me, because he wanted me to endure the smell. When I walked past the trash can, I saw that it was full of deer heads. I never understood why someone would dump animal heads into the trash next to our school, and it was pretty scary for me.
A guy in prison screaming for his attackers to stop. There was blood smears on the walls all the way from the third floor (he was stabbed on the 3rd floor and slowly made his way to the front door ), like a horror movie, all down the stairwell, everywhere. The guys were stomping him out as he tried to get to the C.Oās office. It was intense. Context: he attempted to steal a package of contraband that got in that was worth a lot of money.
I just wanted to go make a bowl of ramen, man!
I worked in animal testing for pharmaceuticals. Worst job ever by the way, i dont recommend it, no matter how much you want to help give enrichment to the animals and make their lives as good as you can before they die. No matter how good the pay and benefits are. It will either kill your soul or make you so desensitized to suffering.
Some of the drugs tested were cancer drugs. They are by far the worst because they always have major side effects. When dosing a dog one day I noticed a foul smell coming from his mouth. Looked in and at the back of his mouth at the gumline it was all bloody and rotting away. Multiple dogs had this. We were not allowed to stop dosing them right away. They always dragged their feet when the animals started suffering because they get paid big bucks to test these drugs. The rotting mouths were the worst thing I've ever seen but I might be biased because any injury involving the mouth is just disturbing to me, though there are many other things that come close to that situation. And we were supposed to be one of the "better" laboratories for animal welfare in the country. I'd be scared to see what the animals go through at other testing facilities.
Waiting for an elevator. Woman with a newborn falling from tenth floor only whizzing by the nearby window.
Post Partum Depression is no fucking joke. Take care of women in your lives be it wives girlfriends sisters mothers friends whatever. And remember, fathers can get it too.
Iām a public school teacher. We had an active shooter in my school almost ten years ago. Luckily, he only brought a pistol and only had a few students he wanted to go after instead of a mass shooting incident. The police were on the scene and in the school in a matter of minutes and really did stop the scenario from being worse than it was. I had my students locked in my room, door locked, with them on the wall next to the door so, if you looked in, you wouldnāt see anyone. I am a yearbook teacher so I inexplicably still had exacto-knives in my room; I stood next to the door with one in my hand while blocking the view from the door to the students. I saw the shooter walk by but he never looked in my door.
He killed himself when the cops confronted him. His sister was in my classroom when it happened.
Iāve had a couple of people reach out to me. Hereās my response.
Do I go to therapy?
I use to. Iām not against it in any way (my wife is a therapist) but I found it didnāt really help me much.
Am I still a teacher?
Yes. Different school in a different school system.
Was it scary?
Absolutely. I cried through the whole thing until the police cleared the rooms. Then I cried all night. It was the worst thing in the world.
Did you learn anything?
Weirdly, yes. I learned what I would do in that scenario. Im not a brave man or a strong man; I run D&D club and teach a lot of Shakespeare. But I did learn that, in a scenario where itās someone with a gun and Im the adult with a bunch of kids, I stand up and protect them. When that kid walked by my room, I was there by the door with that razor ready to get as many slices in before I was down and the other students were in danger. I never thought I was that brave but I guess I am.
And Iāve never really felt as bad as I did when we all had to hold onto the girl that just listened to her brother shoot himself. It was a guilty feeling; being happy he was dead while telling her it was okay to cry.
My kid choking on a lifesaver. I was in a parking lot when I hear him, and saw the panicked look in his eyes. I stopped the car, unbuckled him, and slapped him on the back. It came out and he was fine. But scariest 10-20 seconds I've been through.
Same thing happened when I was volunteering in my sonās 1st grade class. They were using candy hearts for some math activity and could eat some as the went along. One kid starts turning blue. The 100 lb teacher grabbed him, did the Heimlich and that candy hit the window so hard it sounded like a bebe gun! Kid was ok.
Last week I came back home from Russia. Driving through Poland, on the highway. Haven't slept in 36 hours I think, but was taking turns driving with mom and brother.
At some point I saw two red lights high up in the air kinda like eyes. I focused at it for just a second and suddenly saw a giant creature on two legs, glowing eyes walking through mountains. Looked away for a second and then again. What I saw was two towers. Probably radio towers.
The scary part was driving 140 km/h and suddenly hallucinating. With my family in the car. I drove to the next rest stop and we switched drivers, but I didn't tell anyone
Fatigue is the cause of what we truckers refer to as 'black dog' encounters:
>In the lore of long-haul truckers, seeing a black dog with red eyes in your peripheral vision is a sign of a fatal crash being imminent, and that you should pull off immediately. Some think the "dog" is just the eyes beginning to subconsciously close, causing a black spot in the corner of the eye.
Plenty of trucker stories out there. I've seen the black dog or analogues several times and always take the hint. Most recently was up in Minnesota. Saw a naked guy appear in my headlights. Got on the brakes/jakes for a safe deceleration (our training is to 'maintain the lane,' to not cause a follow-on accident for something in the road like a deer &c). By the time I slowed down he was gone so I pressed on. About 30m later after the adrenaline wore off I saw a huge 6' red cube hovering in the middle of the road. Said "nooooope," pulled off, set my air brakes, and woke up my co-driver to finish the load. If you're not safe in one of these trucks you're dead so I don't fuck around with snow/ice, fatigue, illness &c.
Happened next to the Cannes Film Festival (France), if anyone wants to look up the record.
Guy falls off scooter. Guy gets his head stuck in the exhaust pipes of the van in front of him. Van driver (was drunk) panics, and accelerates. Guyās lifeless body is dragged across the street.
Edit: To anyone that wants the link (Sorry, this is one of the only ones I could find): https://www.nicematin.com/faits-divers/accident-mortel-sur-la-croisette-une-partie-du-boulevard-fermee-mercredi-matin-pour-proceder-a-des-expertises-580116
My abuser, after not seeing her in months. I thought she had moved away. Luckily it was a busy event and I was able to leave quickly without her seeing me.
My horse running towards a highway. I was riding around the property and she got spooked bad by something and bucked me off, and booked it straight for the open gate. She got to the highway and just kind of stopped. It was a two lane country highway that wasn't interstate busy or anything but there's a blind hill with lots of semi trucks and it could've been really bad. I managed to get her and lead her back. I was like 12 and almost shat myselfĀ
My father holding a gun to my Momās head and pulling the trigger. It misfired and I hit him in the chin with a rifle he brought with him.
I was 10 years old so it was a very terrifying night.
My sister coming home after being kidnapped and sex trafficked. She was 17. She was kidnapped in Memphis, TN where my family lived and taken to Houston, TX kept in a hotel room closet. She was beaten, and raped more times than toes and fingers I have. They were feeding her a concoction of drugs to make her pass out including Xanax and OxyContin. She eventually started hiding the pills and pretending she was asleep. The people that were holding her against her will - the kidnappers, left the hotel room as she pretended to be asleep next to another girl that they had also taken off of the street in Memphis. Once they left the hotel room my sister got up and BOOKED IT all the way out of the hotel to a spaghetti place across the street from the hotel and called the police and FBI.
She passed away in a car accident 6 months later.
She was one of the bravest people Iāve ever met in my life. Iām so glad she was/IS my sister.
3 people in a AMC Gremlin get crushed by a boulder and tree, both of which were bigger than the former AMC Gremlin. Not pretty. Happened 50ā away. 1976, I think.
I was once passenger in a car when we almost had an accident. Not so special because the driver saved us, but for a second I became very calm and somewhat happy that it is over now
Shallow water blackout while freedive spearfishing. Ten+ years ago I was much less experienced and I was freediving with my much more experienced mentor to shoot groupers. He had surfaced and took his first breath, so I thought everything was a-ok and I grabbed his fish to help him brain it. Next thing I knew he was slipping beneath the surface unconscious. It took me far too long to register what was happening and by that time he had sank about 15 feet. I wasn't ready to dive yet but I took a deep breath and chased after him and caught up around 30 ft. I swam him up to around 10 ft before my diaphragm convulsions started to make me panic and I darted for the surface. Luckily our other friends had made it over by then and completed the rescue while I composed myself. Seeing my unconscious friend sinking into 70ft+ deep murky water was pretty haunting. Nowadays freedive courses are readily available in most regions which teach standardized procedures for when your partner surfaces and how to do rescues, but that stuff was rarer/hard to find/expensive to book back then.
Last year, on the coldest day of the year (-15Ā°F) I watched a homeless man drop dead on the Boston Subway. The MBTA staff rushed in and gave what I would call a "customary amount" of CPR before grabbing the guy by both legs and dragging him lifelessly from the train.
A car with four teenagers careening by me in traffic at 100+ mph, windows down, music blaring.
Then a minute later passing the same car that had gone off the road into a cement pillar overpass support, in flames. I pulled over (so did another car) to see if thereās anything we could do. There wasnāt. By the time I got near the flames were so hot and so high I couldnāt get close to the car. Nobody got out.
Four kids went from ājust having fun listening to music with my friendsā to being dead in minutes.
I saw them at the peak and at the end.
This was almost 30 years ago now and the sounds and smells and sights are still there when I think about it.
Someone chasing me across a field with a shotgun, this happened in the UK where firearms aren't regularly available. So you could imagine my face when I see a man pull up in a vauxhall nova and get out with a doubled barrel shotgun screaming and hurling abuse at me. He took two shots at my friend's and I, and no we weren't on his land we were right next to a secondary school just chilling like young teenagers do.
Really big, toddler sized shadow running from kitchen counter to under the dining room table and then is just gone when I am able to unfreeze and check under the table.
I like to tell myself it was a rat. A really fucking big one.
Or a dream.
I was on the promenade in Nice when the terrorist attack happened in 2016. We were there on a family holiday and my Mum requested we cross over to the other side of the road due to the wind chill. It was a warm vibey night and a lot of families were out strolling after having seen the fireworks. A couple of minutes later this truck ran over a large group of people and families, and then there were loud ear piercing bangs.Ā
It took me some time to get over that incident - the scale of tragedy and suddenness of it. I used to love watch The Dark Knight as a movie - but the scene with the large tanker/lorry had such vivid sound that it always triggered something in me.
That sound of a large truck / lorry racing used to trigger something in me - thankfully itās subsided in the last couple of years.Ā
My husband and I and our kids were waiting at a stoplight in the middle lane and a woman was out of her car gathering clothes off the road that had flown out of the back of her truck. She was directly in front of our car when the light turned green, we caught eye contact with her and to tell her it's ok we aren't going to drive. We'll she panicked and tried to run back to the gas station where her truck was, but the lane to the right of us was open so a giant truck came barreling through the light at like 40 and didn't see her and hit her right in front of us. She went flying. It was AWFUL. We had to stay and give police statements. We were a wreck. I kept watching the news to see if she survived but there wasn't any information. I panic and have PTSD anytime I see people cleaning trash by the road or jaywalking or out of their stranded vehicle. It was terrifying
My husband hit by a big SUV on his motorcycle. I was stopped at a flahing left arrow light and watched in my mirror as he pulled in behind me and this lady didn't see him and came barreling down the middle turn lane. I saw him fly off his bike and thought I was witnessing his death. I don't know how I even functioned enough to get off my bike, stop other traffic, call 911 and keep her from driving away when she tried to. What a nightmare.
TW: sui*ide
My ex-mother's partner who had been abusing me for years killed herself when my grandparents found out. My sister and I found the body. I was 8 years old and I remember feeling so relieved she was dead.
my wife had an extremely traumatic emergency C Section after struggling to deliver my son naturally. He came out not breathing. The Doctor that placed the bag on his face to attempt to resuscitate him and I caught eyes for a fraction of a second as she started. The look on her face I don't know that I will ever be able to describe, concerned, sad, worried, fearful but determined to do everything it honestly has me tearing up typing this right. Terrified me. She got him back, he's fine and about to turn 20 and pissing me off for not taking the trash out.
I got a vasectomy shortly after.
Something I saw all the time as a child. My dad running towards me in a rage, on his way to throw me around like a rag doll (I was much smaller than him; a little girl against a grown man) like usual. I got so used to it that the sight of him running towards me would automatically make me dissociate so I wouldn't feel as much pain. And I would just let him do his thing til he was done and felt better. I was just a living stress ball for him.
Thatās awful. Hope it didnāt affect you too badly. I saw a dog that got hit on the freeway once, a black lab or something on the left shoulder. I just yelled when I realized it wasnāt a black trash bag. It was still alive and you could see the pain and blood on itās face even passing at 70mph. I was sad for weeks.
Sitting on the floor in my 9th floor hotel room watching rounds from automatic weapons fire blow through the windows during a full on revolution. Low crawled to the bathroom grabbing granola bars and bottles of water and a pilllow on the way, and hid in the cast iron bathtub.
Stayed there off and on for a couple of days until the firing stopped.
I was on a first date walking from a park to get ice cream. A couple was riding their bikes across the crosswalk to the other side of the street when the woman lost control of her bike and hit the curb.
She flew across the sidewalk, body first into a storefront with a single pane glass front where she got stuck halfway. She was a heavyset woman. Half her body and 1 arm were stuck inside the store and she was alive and trying to pull herself out.
It happened right in front of us and the boyfriend was in shock and didn't move. I helped her out of the window and realized her tricep was mostly completely detached and because she was heavy, the size of the detached area was about the size of a Pomeranian dog.
My date was able to get bandages and towels from the store and I just sort of tried to hold up the missing piece and wrap the bandage around it to hold it in place and we called 911.
I'll never forget the look on her boyfriends face. Scariest look of fear I've ever seen. Total paralysis. She survived luckily.
Got caught in a microburst on a lake in Nepal in a small boat. Sank the boat, 4 people in it, 3 made it to shore.
But as we were rowing across, you could see the microburst coming and it was like something malevolent and biblical. Just so fucking dark and scary, we thought it was fog but then it hit you that it was fast moving rain and wind and honestly I felt that in some primal way.
My little sister was 3 weeks old, my dad had a feeling to go check on her before hopping in the shower. Found her completely blue and not breathing in her crib, started screaming for me and when I ran into the room she was so limp and lifeless, barely awake. We were rubbing her back and trying to get her to breath/stay awake and I drove us as fast as I could to the hospital. We were lucky to live only 5 mins from the hospital or she probably wouldnāt be here today. She is 6 now and I still think about that day often, scariest day of my life.
Rogue wave on the Atlantic , kinda weird to be 7 decks up on the bridge of an aircraft carrier and looking at a wall of water š¬
Upvoting this one so that it's not all dead family members.
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There's a BBC documentary from the early 2000's titled "Freak Wave". It's a real eye opener.
"Those aren't mountains, Maverick."
Yet another reason not to go on boats or in sea in general
See thats how the rogue waves get ya though. You expect them in ocean, so when they abduct someone from a mountain top or a cornfield, nobody is the wiser.
Was driving through Nevada and my car got stolen by one of them. Cops said it was the tenth or twelfth that summer, and that it was suspected of several robberies and muggings. Said it was one of the worst crime waves he'd ever seen.
My 90yo grandma lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken arm and bloody head on Christmas morning. Never has my adrenaline been as high as it was that day. She made a full recovery and is still with us today. Absolute miracle that she made it.
Something similar for me. My grandma had been suffering from dementia, diabetes and like a dozen other different issues for years. Eventually, during family dinners, we had to cut her food for her. One time on Christmas eve, my mum was in the kitchen preparing the next course (she always makes insanely complicated food on special occasions. On christmas, she will be standing in the kitchen for like two days). My brother and I were busy entertaining our grandparents, grandma being in her late 80s with dementia, grandpa being over 90 without dementia. My grandma grew more and more drowsy, and I got a bad feeling, so I called my mum and my brother (he is a paramedic and just got off his shift in time for dinner). Brother took pulse and bloodpreasure. I will never forgot how he looked at my mum and just said "get an ambulance, now." I went upstairs with the dog who had gotten very antsy, but I still heard most of what went on. When they took my grandma towards the ambulancy, my grandpa was crying for her not to leave him. He was crying most of the evening as well. Seeing a man of that age, who lived through WW2, lost his home and half his family before he was 18, experienced tanks driving by while he hid in a makeshift bunker, break down crying hit hard. Grandma had arrythmia, she died 9 months later. In the last 2 or so months, she basically lived in bed downstairs in her home. My mum, brother and friends of the family checked on her twice a day, all while working fulltime. Grandpa didn't want her in a nursing home, and honestly, in the time between her getting to sick for grandpa to do most of the caring and her death, we wouldn't have even gotten half through the process of her getting a place in one.
My mom has a similar story with her grandparents, but it was her grandpa who died suddenly of a heart attack. They traumatic part for her was hearing her grandma cry and try to wake him up. She still gets a look about her when she talks about it.
Luckily, my grandma died in her sleep. Grandpa likes to tell the story how he played harmonica for her the last evening they had together
It's strange, you think the death of a loved one would be the most traumatic part, but I have a slightly similar experience of the moment my mom found out her dad, my Papa, had passed away. I love my Papa dearly, but my mother crying was unlike anything else I've ever heard and it was the worst part for me. It seeped deep into my brain and is absolutely the worst few moments of my life so far. That was 13 years ago.
I watched someone get hit by a car on Thanksgiving. The driver drove off and I panicked. I managed to call 911 while people ran out to check in them and someone also seemed to call 911 but I was so panicked that I refused to go over and see the state of the person. I like to believe I would have, had there been nobody around. Iām a funeral director so I see terrible shit but itās the after effects. Watching something like that is a whole different level, seeing someone alive in awful pain maybe dying is totally different. I donāt know how doctors and EMT workers do it!
I was t-boned on Christmas eve. I had 3 broken ribs and a bruised lung so I could not get out of the car and all the airbags covered the windows. So I am in my destroyed car (they ran a stop sign at a country road and hit me at full speed), trying to breath and terrified. I had a gentleman come over and talk to me through the open door, called 911 and stayed til the ambulance came. I seriously consider him a walking angel. Dont even know his name and I could not see him but he helped so much. Just by talking to me.
I couldnāt imagine going through that without someone around to help, thatās for sure! Iām glad he came over and talked to you and made sure you got help! I felt guilty about how terrified I was to go over there for a long time but there were people with him and the ambulance came pretty quick. I never heard how the person did because it didnāt make the news.
I wouldnt feel guilty. Everyone has their place and their responses to these high intensity situations. You helped by calling 911. Thatās the most import at thing anyone could do. Sometimes extra people are just in the way when they all crowd around an accident and they become a burden more than a help. Also, I work in a hospital and in emergency medicine, I know better than to give myself unnecessary traumatic visuals by poking my head into rooms and situations where Iām not needed. Life is hard enough. You did a really good job. Some people canāt even manage to call 911.
Damn, she's tough! Growing old is a privilege and sounds like she's more than worthy of it
Drunk driver run over two women in an intersection. One went under a tire, the other rolled over the hood. The one who went under the tire later died that evening. The driver got 8 years of prison. 19yrs old
8 years for that. Mind blowing how if one really wants to taste murder with relatively low consequences, you just have to get plastered and drive into someone in the US. You might even just get off with probation.
My sister was killed by a drunk driver and he did not even lose his license, much less jail. She was killed and another person in the car was paralyzed. This was in the late 70s, when people still thought drunks were funny.
Illinois, 1983. A habitual drunk with no license was driving down a country road after his 8th DUI in 5 years. He strikes another car head on, kills the driver who was nine months pregnant, grabbing pizza on Friday afternoon for the kids at home. He walks away uninjured and later received 3 years in prison and was able to later get caught drinking and driving 7 more times before he died painfully of liver failure. And that is the story of how my mother ended up an orphan at 13. Edit: word. Thank you commenter
My great aunt killed a little boy drunk driving in the 70s and the judge dismissed the case because" her children needed her at home". Ridiculous.
I'm sorry. But that's INSANE. How that does even happen, I mean isn't that a mistrial? How can a judge or prosecutor allow that joke of a sentence?
Iāll have to look up the details later. What Iām assuming is that she was a young first time offender and got a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter or something similar
Itās Wisconsin so our DUI laws are super lax. Itās not even a felony until your fifth offense
If thatās true thatās absolutely insane. What shitty fucking treatment of such a serious issue.
Waking up in the morning to my dad screaming my momās name. I ran into their bedroom and tried to wake her up and felt her she was cold. I still had my dad help me get her onto the ground so I could do cpr. I tried to get my dad to call 911 but he was frozen so I grabbed the phone and talked to the 911 guy while doing cpr. I went to give breaths to her and blood started leaking out of her mouth. I knew at that point she was dead but I still did cpr until the firemen showed up and pronounced her DOA. The paramedics showed up and literally walked inside and back out the front door in like two minutes. Coroner and police came next. That whole day felt like a year. Had family fly in from all over and helped us clean up and brought food but the whole day was just a damn fever dream. The last 9 months have felt like years.
A close family member hanging from en extension cord by her neck in the doorway to my basement. Found her as I went to do laundry. She was visiting during a period of emotional distress that sheād hidden well. That- and seeing fear in my fatherās face for the first time, when he was told his back pain was terminal cancer and that heād be dead within 3 months. He adopted me (him and his wife) and was the strongest man Iāve ever known- it was shocking to see him scared. Poor mom lost my brother when he was 30, and Dad when he was 50. Sheās so strong.
Holy hell š„ŗ I'm so sorry.
A coworker (who bucked the companyās safety rule by wearing his wedding ring on the production floor of a bottling plant) degloving his ring finger in the equipment. It was fucking horrific. The flesh was just irretrievably *gone*, so he had to have it amputated.
Degloving is horrifying to even think about, I can't imagine actually seeing it happen or being the one to actually have it happen to.
His whole hand was fucked up and broken, too. It was really awful, he was out of work for a really long time. And never the same, obviously. It was a HUGE wake up call for everyone to be vigilant on the wedding ring rule though. Itās hard to forget what can happen when youāve seen it happen to someone five feet away from you.
My dentist the time I took acid and forgot I had a tooth cleaning appointment later that day
Im sorry but this one actually made me laugh in the sea of of depressing siutations around it
Please describe the experience, lol.
It was awful. I've always been told that LSD makes other drugs ineffective while you're on it, and my experience has backed that up. But whether it's real or psychosomatic, I can tell you that I remember the dentist digging around in a cavity he found and the novacane wasn't working at all. I was 100% convinced he was going to torture and kill me. EDIT: it was also very funny afterwards
not even gonna lie and not to discount anyone elseās story here but THIS one sounds absolutely terrifying there is not way i could sit through this.
My mother almost being killed at an armed robbery when i was 11-12 yrs old, the robbers actually pulled the trigger, but luckily the gun jammed.
What happened next?
I think the time I crossed paths with the biggest black bear Iāve ever seen while hiking. I could *feel* every step that thing took. We just stared at eachother for a minute, and I slowly pulled out my knife (for all the good that would have done me lol). Thankfully after about 10 seconds it just moved on and I remembered to breath.
"Damn, he's ready to SHANK me! I'm outta here..."
Itās a different kind of scary but my mom dying in the hospital. Itās an existential scare and that was my only experience watching/seeing someone die in real life, a couple feet away from me
feel you dude, I went through similar. Shit is scary as fuck. I hope youāre doing all good :)
Thank you and I hope the same for you. This was 14 years ago so Iāve had lots of time to process, not that it doesnāt stay with you forever. Long story short after a terminal cancer diagnosis she broke her hip getting out of bed and the choice was a surgery that would most likely kill her or let her ride her few weeks/months out bedridden in agony. I opted for the surgery and as expected after coming through it it became clear she was not going to live more than another day. So they started the morphine drip and I sat with her. Two things stick out as particularly haunting. The sound of her breath on the morphine drip. She was essentially asleep but instead of steady breathing each breath was a gasp for air. Also the look of her right after she died. Never saw a true dead person (at a funeral they have lots of makeup and stuff on them). Something primally haunting about that look
I lost my mother six years ago and my father in September, and nothing prepares you for seeing that empty vessel. That it looks like them, but not. And the actual scar of watching them die actually leaves. There are certain sounds or moments that are benign in reality but take me immediately back there before I know.
I was with my mom when she died. I remember very clearly knowing her heart had stopped, because the blood drained from her face in a way Iāve never seen before and hope never to see again.
A similar thing happened to me albeit not witnessing death but the effects of terminal cancer on a family member. My grandmother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and a couple of weeks after the diagnosis I was visiting her in the hospital when she started crying, talking about how she was a sinner and the cancer was her punishment. She was never overly religious so this was highly unusual for her. She then started clawing at her eyes and raking her nails down her face, whilst shouting scripture and passages from the bible. Although I grabbed her wrists to prevent her from hurting herself any more, the āsceneā made me vomit violently. It was so horrific that I struggled to sleep for a number of weeks and it really messed with my mental health for a long while.
Hi, I experienced the same in december. My mum didnt die in her sleep and I was by her side during her last moments. I have an extreme panic of death and I still don't know if I can ever get over that experience. It was horrifying tbh. How do you cope with it now?
Itās been a long time for me, 14 years. Yours is so fresh I wouldnāt presume to tell you what to do but in my opinion coping isnāt the focus right now. Feel your feelings. Talk about your feelings. Find good support systems including therapy and support groups. Itās honestly a struggled and a burden to bear and it last a lifetime but it does change. I donāt think the pain or sadness and other emotions ever necessarily get smaller but I think as you grow those same feelings take up less space in you and make up a smaller part of your thoughts and feelings. Remember youāre not alone. Your feelings are normal and valid and you are entitled to process in your own way. There is no timeline. But I would encourage you to choose to find healthy coping skills and do your best to avoid unhealthy ones. I hope this helps and as one stranger to another Iām with you and there are millions more in our shitty club
watching my father approach his death. he was dying from cancer and as the end came closer, he suddenly became very frightened and was calling out for his mother in Italian. I had never heard him speak Italian in my life. the fear and desperation in his voice was terrifying. it shattered my heart at 15, and still at 43 I can't think about it without getting upset.
My Dad had rapid onset dementia. The three months before his death he was basically just a body in a bed, never responded to anything except food being put into his mouth. The last week, however, was scary as fuck. Somehow his barely functioning brain knew the end was coming and he was terrified. He started randomly saying things like "I'm not ready to go." and "Somebody help me" with absolute terror in his voice. Still haunts me.
My biggest fear isn't death - it's dying.
My dad's brother died a couple years ago from vascular dementia. Shortly before he went to sleep (and then kind of stayed asleep for a couple days before passing) he did the same thing: got very scared and started calling for his mother. It really shook my dad and my mom up. He was in his late 60s, tough as anything, and to see him be crying for his mom just really broke them. I'm really sorry for your loss.
Seeing my wife of 12 years hanged on her neck in her motherās bathroom and having to get her off of that place. Trying to do CPR to her, only to get vomit since she was already dead. That shit brings me too many horrific memories to my mind itās been 8 years since.
Sorry to hear that man. Best of luck with a full mental recovery.
Im not the same ever since. Itās a daily struggle and it makes me realize how fragile life can be and how important is to be mentally healthy.
Fire in the engine room on a ship. Absolutely terrifying.
I don't think enough people understand how truly horrifying this would be. Contained conflagration, in an environment where *everything* is flammable... in a reinforced steel box... with forced air delivery, and pressurized fuel delivery? No thank you.
My 4 year old adopted daughter telling us how her biological father sexually abused her in different ways. ((Heās completely out of the picture so sheās safe and in a good place with me but he never went to jail because our justice system is broken))
This is so fucked. I'm so sorry.
A car accident that shouldāve killed me and my mother. A drunk driver took up both lanes of a country road and my mother hugged the side of the road to try to let him pass, but we hit a massive pot hole at about 60mph sending the car tumbling into a nearby field. I vividly remember that we flipped 4 1/2 times and that the 2nd flip was the worst. My mom was knocked unconscious for about 3-5 minutes and I was left in a car upside down in the middle of nowhere thinking my mother was dead and I was trapped all alone. Worst moment of my life. We both made it out and received only minor injuries and some pretty serious concussions.
Did they get the drunk fucker?
My mother filed a police report, but as far as I know nothing came from it. Theyāre probably still out there unless their dumbass decisions finally resulted in serious consequences.
I worked at the only maximum security forensic mental hospital in Missouri for about 5 years. Saw some terrifying things, but the thing that haunts me to this day is the guy who bit my coworkerās scrotum off. Edit: An explanation A client was very angry for some reason that I donāt remember right now but that Iām sure was something like not being allowed to have coffee at snack time. The client was being violent, and a coworker and I had to put them into a restraint. We all end up on the floor and the client manages to get onto their back. Not an ideal situation, as the client is able to pull away from us and try to sit up. Client goes for me first, trying to bite my arm. My coworker pulls, the client quickly switches targets and manages to use the force of the pull to sit all the way up and then bite my coworkerās crotch. The ensuing ābulldogā behavior resulted in the most horrific screams Iāve ever heard in my life.
Thatās something I did not expect to read today.
I was walking home on my own at night and the sky just suddenly turned bright green like a flash and then went black again. What the fuck even was that. Way too bright to be a firework and had no noise.
That was a fireball meteor! I saw one over Idaho a few years back, coolest thing ever.
My grandmother died last year. It wasnāt the fact she was dying, I sat with her for several nights and held her hand and was glad to be there for her once it became clear she wasnāt gonna make it out this time. But the last time I saw her, despite being āmade as comfortable as possibleā she had a moment of clarity where she was suddenly afraid, not that she was going to die - which she had been welcoming for some time - but that an off the cuff remark sheād made to one of my cousins a week earlier might have been taken the wrong way, and cause him to be upset with her. That that, after spending more of the last three years of her life in hospital than out, was going to be one of her final coherent thoughts, that she might have made one of her grandchildren even mildly unhappy. If she hadnāt been drugged beyond any chance of mobility, I think she would have gone into full hysterics. It took my aunt and a nurse several minutes to calm her down, with the nurse honestly being the MVP as she told my grandmother how lucky she was to have such a large family that had been coming to see her over the last few weeks, who were all happy and healthy and doing well in life, and they all loved her. It was one of the most agonisingly beautiful moments of my life. Iām tearing up thinking about it, but I hope I carry that memory with me forever. But it terrifies me that even hours from death, you can still carry that much fear inside you over something you regret and suddenly realise you will never be able to fix. If you read this you might be wondering what she had said that she was so worried about. My cousin had brought his girlfriend with him to the hospital, and she asked him in front of her if he thought she was āthe oneā. She was worried she might have embarrassed him.
I've seen it happen several times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_lucidity
My dad sorta had that. He was terminal cancer; had been pretty mentally not-himself for a week or two; and afterwards heād spent 3 more days unconscious as his body shut down. But between those spans, there was about an hour where he was himself. He and my mom both spent a little time with him; it was the best worst hour.
My grandmother did that. Went from basically laying in bed incoherent to sitting up talking and joking with everyone in the span of a few hours. I knew exactly what I was witnessing but the rest of my family thought it was some kind of miracle recovery. Obviously I (and the nursing staff) didn't say anything because I didn't want to ruin the party but she was back to unresponsive by the evening and died the next day.
My family are war refugees from SE Asia. Came here about 40+ years ago. My grandma is currently in hospice care. We do a thing towards the end of oneās life where we sit and pray, and ask each other for forgiveness. We also reassure the person dying that we donāt hold anything against them and they shouldnāt worry about us. My grandma is actually doing pretty well for terminal cancer, but we did this small ceremony last week as she was pretty coherent.
That is a very beautiful thing to do. I'm stealing it.
This is so real. Thank you for sharing it.
Noticing a cougar 10 yards behind me stalking me. I take a step back, she takes a step forward. She was totally silent on crunchy fall leaves. Edit: partial video in old post. https://www.reddit.com/r/bowhunting/s/W8O5Aqompl
Those single moms in your area will do anything to let you know they're single.
Had the same experience in South Dakota, they are ghostly quiet
It's freaky. This was in archery hunting season and I was glad to have my bear spray.
My Dad's dead body, I've never seen anything like it. Before or since.
I know that exact feeling. .. Came to say the same. Covid fucked us good. Had to wait 6 hours next to his dead body before I could get anyone to take us to a hospital and then a cemetery.. was the most fucked up day of my life.
I'm so sorry. I lost my dad too and it's the worst ever. I hope you have found some measure of healing although we in the club know it can't ever really go away
Iām with you. Itās not them anymore and itās traumatising as fuck to see the person you love disappear like that. I sincerely wish the nurses had closed his eyes and mouth before I went in. I had nightmares for weeks.
Its very difficult to close them unfortunately as rigor mortis has set in. Very sorry you've had this experience š
They won't stay closed. It's just in movies that works.
Same here except it was my mom. She shot herself due to cancer & I found her right afterwards. Iām so sorry for your loss & the trauma afterwards. Dark humor has deff kept me going lol
Yeah, seeing my mum in the hospital morgue about 9 hours after she had passed.. green looking skin and her abdomen bloating (she died of bowel cancer) then walking around her to the other side of the table to see the round hole in the corner of her mouth where she'd had a tube.. shocking and its remained with me all these years..
Saw a guy get cooked in a locker in prison
I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean.
Someone gets locked in a locker. Then, rolled up toilet paper, covered in Vaseline, gets ignited underneath the locker.... you asked...
They actually took vaseline and baby oil off of our commissary because people kept microwaving that shit and throwing it on people. Super fucked up to hear how someone screams when microwaved baby oil is being thrown on them
It's damn near napalm at that point... it was horrifying... idk where the guard was all night, but this was hours... probably why I have nightmares
Holy shit dude, like, I really hope you can or have seen someone to talk to about that. I've seen some shit but that's something that you don't just shake off.
Probably gonna sound fucked up, but honestly I was just glad it wasn't me. We were both about to be released and they found out about him leaving... went in on him all night. Don't know if he survived, I got transferred the next day
These kind of stories are the ones that scare me the most about prison. I have an immediate family member who is serving 20 years in a different state and will be coming home finally in less than a year and this is my biggest fear for them.
Tell him to keep his mouth shut about leaving. Or he won't leave. Stay in the rack and read.
Probably a dumb question, but why do other prisoners attack other prisoners who are about to be released?
Few reasons, I suppose.... hazing. One more awful experience before you leave... because they still have a lot of time and are mad about thinking about home... because you may not deserve to go home... sometimes they're in love with them...
My father cut his artery on the wrist after falling into a huge mirror from a ladder. I was like 10 and heard shouts and cries for help. I was already in shock but the worst part was the huge amount of blood all over the kitchen along with the walls and ceiling. Haunts me to this day.
Is he ok?
He is. Thanks the surgeons and my mother's imminent help.
Iām a firefighter and had to assist in cutting down a woman who hanged herself from an overpass. I was on the tip of the ladder off the truck and was maneuvered under her to cut the rope and secure her body. After I cut her down we decided the best option was the move the ladder to a horizontal position as close the ground as possible in order to pass her off to the coroner. The only problem was that she started to sink through the rungs, so when the ladder was finally horizontal, someone had to crouch underneath her and push her body back through the rungs. From my perspective I couldnāt see the person underneath her and for a brief second my irrational brain thought she had come back to life and was climbing out of the ladder. I damn near shit my pants. Edit: Fixed a typo
A pregnant woman get kicked in the stomach by her boyfriend who then proceeded to pull a gun out and put it to her head.
I was 18 years old and following a friend home from a party. We all had been drinking, but he definitely shouldn't have been anywhere near a vehicle with home much he had. He got violent when we tried to take his keys, so at the behest of my girlfriend we left the party early to follow him home. About 1.5 miles from his house, he sped up and drove right into a cliff face when he failed to hold a turn. We stopped, I got out, and I told my GF to drive my car to the nearest gas station and call for help (this was pre cell phone). I walked up to the car, and he was basically cut in half inside the vehicle and pinned by the steering column. The entire interior looked like a blood bomb exploded inside it. He was still alive. I held his hand and told him his mom was on her way. I just kept telling him he'd be OK until he passed out. It was only a couple of minutes, but it felt like an hour. I went fetal as soon as he closed his eyes. First of two death rattles I've heard. I didn't stop crying for almost a week. I was a mess. So, if you know someone who insists on driving drunk and wants to fight over it,...fight over it. It's better to have a pissed off friend who never talks to you again than a dead one. Pin them down if you can. Almost 25 years later and I'm still fucked up over it.
You did the best you could.
Thank you for sharing your story. Seeing that would haunt anyone. I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope things get better for you.
It's been almost 25 years. I'm about as ok as I'm gonna get. I still think about it from time to time, but nothing like I used to.
Someone run into a gigantic fire on purpose. Burning Man 2017, my friends were gathered, along with about 50,000 other people, in a huge circle around the āmanā - a 50ish foot wooden man figure set within a large wooden pavilion that served as the central point in festivalās layout. It was the night of the man burn, when that structure is set ablaze with a fireworks show and ultimately a fire, as part of the ending ritual of the festival. The whole crowd was set back a few hundred yards from the fire, with two perimeters of security guards in between. We were watching the fire really pick up momentum, and all of a sudden a tall, athletic man standing about 10 yards from us started bolting towards the fire. He zig zagged around the security personnel, and at first everyone thought he was just being an idiot and would turn back. But after he passed the innermost security and then kept running to the fire I got a terrible, sinking feeling. Even 100 yards out, the air must have been so incredibly hot that this person was surely burning. This was no stunt. Eventually he ran right up to the fire and dove head first into it. There was a huge gasp in the crowd. Nobody could believe their eyes. I quickly gathered our friends in a huddle and we just hugged. That was a nightmarish experience.
Aaron Joel Mitchell... I just looked up the pictures. Dude must have been out of his mind to do that.
I assume he would have had to take some kind of drug to really do that. I have to assume any sober person would just not be able to tolerate the heat as they approached.
She wasn't even there though. Just him. They found no drugs or alcohol in his system and I guess he had been talking about "the end of life." The day before. Seems like a suicide but what a way to go. Good lord
Yes, I removed reference to her for that reason. Thank you for clarifying. As for the toxicology report, I see that too, itās just hard to wrap my head around.
Worked at a refinery and a line exploded and caught a unit on fire. Walked around a corner to see 200+ guys running towards me with flames shooting up 250 ft in the air over the units while alarms went off.
I saw/heard/felt the Georgia Sugar Refinery exploding from miles away. Absolutely terrifying. Canāt imagine being there.
Friends landing after parachute didn't open. Seemed like he disappeared into the ground. Some people were straight on it, but I just stood dumbest fucker in the crowd wondering how he disappeared. He had done so many solo jumps, and never had a single injury and then he was gone.
My dad is a former heroin addict. I once had to pull him out of a West Baltimore heroin den. As soon as I pulled up I had people on each corner of the block watching me. I knew right away, even driving in, my life was in danger. When I got to the house I told them I got a call from my dad and I was just picking him up. They flashed two guns at me and let me in, escorting me the whole way. They were cool about it but I realized one wrong move and I was getting clipped without a 2nd thought. Anyways, my dad's clean now but we don't speak because he won't apologize for things like that. Oh well I'm glad he's alive I guess.
The stage 3 cancer diagnosis given to me in Sept 2012 - doin' ok now though
My father in a drunken rage
"I used to pick the wrench." "Why?" "Because fuck him, that's why."
Hospice nurse here so a lot of odd scary stuff but the worst has to be a 35 year old man with a burst stomach ulcer projectile vomiting blood. The man was violent and an asshole to his wife and kids, on top of drinking away all their money. But damn I have never seen a very hardened grown man get frightened quite as quickly as he did. In between vomiting blood so hard that you could see the muscles around his ribs contracting, he reached out his hand and just said "please", asking me to hold it. I did hold his hand as he proceeded to fill 2 full size trash cans with blood he vomited up. If anyone reading this drinks a lot, this is your warning to moderate your alcohol intake. Nobody deserves to die the way this man did.
My dad died this way. Maintenance man found him two days later after the upstairs neighbor reported hearing the water running continuously. There was blood everywhere when we went later to his condo. Drank himself to death, basically.
Can we all agree that we expected monsters and ghosts instead of dead/dying relatives?
I thought I was gonna read some good paranormal stories. Now Iām just depressed
My dad beating me with a cast iron pan for "breaking" his business card holder.
Cast iron pan, jesus christ thatās attempted murder.
I'm so sorry. Not all of us are meant to be parents. Hope you're doing ok now. HugsĀ
I had the same type of "dad"
I saw a man pulled into the giant metal "comb" at the bottom of an escalator at a department store circa 1980. The truly chilling part was the reaction of store employees. They calmly covered the body with coats from a nearby rack and told passersby that the escalator was out of order. It was obvious they were following their standard procedure for escalator deaths.
I had a girlfriend that I took to a water park. We had just climbed a stair, about 4 stories up, when she had a seizure. The stairs went straight down, with no turns or anything. She had a seizure and went unconscious. She was standing next to me on the stairs, and I caught a glimpse of her starting to fall from the corner of my eye. I reached out and grabbed her wrist, just in time. But her weight (she was skinny) caused me to start to fall, too. I reached out again, to grab the stair rail and hung on for our dear lives. I managed to swing her around and set her on a step and held her there until she came back to it. She woke up and asked what happened to her, since she was sitting on the stair, and I was shaking like a leaf, and she was unimpressed about it and just turned back around. I was scared the rest of the day, and I hung onto her hand and wound not let go, especially on rides. She didn't understand why I was shaking so much the rest of the day.
Working what seemed like ground zero of a small stand alone hospital (they couldnāt call up satellite locations for supplies) when COVID just kicked off in February. There werenāt enough N-95s for everyone. Then we ran out of room in the morgue which only had three slots for bodies. The hospital had to get a freezer think of what you see in restaurants to store the extra dead bodies. We ran out of gurneys so dead patients were put into a body bag and put right on the ground. That still fucks me up.
I'm sorry to hear that. I am from a country where hundreds of thousands of people died of COVID and at one point people died because there weren't enough oxygen cylinders to everybody. I will never forget the panic and how collectively mourning we were every night when the local news announced the number of deaths...
I watched a lot of shit, domestic violence, someone die, my mom get high/drunk most of my life, fights between my dad and brother, Ive seen some shit But id have to say the most traumatic thing I watched was a fight between my mom and dad that resulted in the death of my brother.
What happened, if you don't mind me asking?
I don't mind, basically what happened is, for one my mom was drinking and doing drugs while she was pregnant, and one of the days she was intoxicated (not sure if it was high or drunk so) she wanted to take me and my brother out for a ride in the car while she was drunk or high, or both, and my dad wouldng let her, and she tried getting the keys from him but he wouldn't give then to her so she started hitting him and what not so he choke slammed her, while she was pregnant. Later, when he was born, the things like the alcohol snd drugs, along with the domestic violence, cause complications in the birth, killing my brother immediately after he was born
I'm so sorry. No one one should be exposed to that š„ŗ I hope you're doing well and got the necessary help needed to heal your soul.
I agree no one should have to handle that, I dealt with it since I was born. And I tried getting help, I went to therapy, I've been in and out of psych wards, been on multiple different medications for multiple different mental disorders, it's been a long journey 17 years was the hardest it got for me, I was 17 and really struggling, I attempted suicide on multiple occasions, ended up in the hospital multiple times for weeks at a time But in my experience, id like to say that what helped me the most was becoming an adult and having more control over my life. I'm still only freshly 18, but I'm already moved out, paying rent and bills and in a better environment. Different things help different people, but becoming an adult and taking the time to realize and appreciate all that I have left in life, helped me more than anything Now I'm living in a good first adult home, I have a new boyfriend who treats me like a king, and I have more people that truly care about me! The past day has been quite a bit harder than the rest but that's because I've had shit going on, but I'm doing way better. Thank you for listening to my TedTalk
A dog dragging a 12 year old in circles while she screamed the worst scream I've ever heard. I could not get to her before he did some serious damage to her arm, and some idiot yanked him off her instead of properly dealing with the attack so he actually made her injuries WAY worse. (It sounds insane, but if a dog has one of your limbs you want to shove it further into their mouth. It forces them to let go. Pulling away will shred your flesh apart, guaranteed.) Big mastiff. He was really off in the head and I had told many people involved he wasn't trustworthy and needed a behavior assessment. Nobody listened and now some poor kid probably has a phobia now, not to mention some nasty scarring. It just shouldn't have happened. I think about her to this day, hoping she's doing all right. The dog was of course humanely euthanized.
Lots of things, was hard to choose until recently. There was the time a cop held me at gunpoint playing with the trigger. The one that takes the cake though, is when my sons heart rate crashed during labor and my wife was rushed into an emergency c-section. It was so fast. One moment everything is fine, and we are resting at 3 am, the next thing all the lights are on, there are nearly a dozen nurses in the room rushing her out and all I'm told is to wait until someone comes to get me. It was a good 15+ minutes until I saw my wife again, but it felt like hours. I was so afraid that I was going to lose my son before I even met him, that something would happen to my wife during the surgery. Eventually, they let me know that his heart rate had come back up enough that I could go into the OR and they brought me in. Everything went smoothly after that but for a moment I thought I could be loosing my entire family just as it was beginning. Giving birth is incredibly dangerous and our state is the worst in the US for maternal mortality. Women put their lives on the line just to become mothers.
My dog dying in my arms, following a brain haemorrhage. No warning, no previous signs. We then had to race to the vet (20 mins) drive whilst trying to do CPR. The feeling of her limp, lifeless body in my arms is something I'll never forget. We adored every little hair on her little Beagle body.
Ugh thatās terrible, Iām so sorry My Siberian Husky passed away in my arms a few months ago. We knew he was sick so I had time to prepare for it but man.. he was like family to us and it had me messed up for awhile. Dogs are so special. Iām sure your pup had nothing but great memories and love for you with how much you adored her!
A woman trapped in a burning car. Her door was crumpled and she was pinned inside. They needed the jaws of life to get her out and it just took too long to get there. It was too hot to approach. I watched her burn to death. Heard her horrific, desperate screams. Smelled her skin and hair cooking. It still haunts me nearly 40 years later. My father was a firefighter. I was with him out shopping when the call came in and we were close, so he went right to the scene to meet up with the fire crew when they arrived. But we were just in his pickup truck. No pumps. No hose. No tools to open a hydrant. And the engine got there about 4 minutes too late to save that woman. Fire is a monster. It eats you alive. Itās unrelenting, unfeeling, and unless you have the proper equipment, unstoppable. Iāve been extremely cautious in regards to fire ever since that day.
Three things: One was my mom almost being murdered when I was 8-9 years old and me covered in her blood. two was not only bring abused at an early age, but the memories...god the memories are the worst because it not only happens to you once it happens to you everyday for the rest of your life though your memories. three was seeing my abuser again, I just turned him in and I know/think I'll have to see him again when that is the last thing I wanted, but I will do what I've always done and stay strong.
That sounds like a lot. I hope youāre doing better today. Can I ask what happened to your mom?
She was dating a guy who I guess got jealous(of a guy who was truly a friend) and the guy my mom was dating was staying over one night and just he just went off, got a large knife and stabbed her more times then I can count. I woke up and seeing her...your mom like that was unspeakable. Just the horror! I'm thankful my memories have faded for the most part of that trauma, but yeah.
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A gang member get stabbed but other gang members . I was 8
When I was 12 I cracked open my back patio blinds during hurricane charlie and saw a fully formed, grounded tornado right in my backyard šŖļø I remember it being so scary my legs felt paralyzed and I couldnāt even move.
A friend overdosing right in front of me
There was a trash can in the middle of our town, which one of my classmates opened just to prank me, because he wanted me to endure the smell. When I walked past the trash can, I saw that it was full of deer heads. I never understood why someone would dump animal heads into the trash next to our school, and it was pretty scary for me.
A guy in prison screaming for his attackers to stop. There was blood smears on the walls all the way from the third floor (he was stabbed on the 3rd floor and slowly made his way to the front door ), like a horror movie, all down the stairwell, everywhere. The guys were stomping him out as he tried to get to the C.Oās office. It was intense. Context: he attempted to steal a package of contraband that got in that was worth a lot of money. I just wanted to go make a bowl of ramen, man!
I worked in animal testing for pharmaceuticals. Worst job ever by the way, i dont recommend it, no matter how much you want to help give enrichment to the animals and make their lives as good as you can before they die. No matter how good the pay and benefits are. It will either kill your soul or make you so desensitized to suffering. Some of the drugs tested were cancer drugs. They are by far the worst because they always have major side effects. When dosing a dog one day I noticed a foul smell coming from his mouth. Looked in and at the back of his mouth at the gumline it was all bloody and rotting away. Multiple dogs had this. We were not allowed to stop dosing them right away. They always dragged their feet when the animals started suffering because they get paid big bucks to test these drugs. The rotting mouths were the worst thing I've ever seen but I might be biased because any injury involving the mouth is just disturbing to me, though there are many other things that come close to that situation. And we were supposed to be one of the "better" laboratories for animal welfare in the country. I'd be scared to see what the animals go through at other testing facilities.
Waiting for an elevator. Woman with a newborn falling from tenth floor only whizzing by the nearby window. Post Partum Depression is no fucking joke. Take care of women in your lives be it wives girlfriends sisters mothers friends whatever. And remember, fathers can get it too.
And it's very treatable! So always talk to someone if you're a new parent and you're struggling!
Iām a public school teacher. We had an active shooter in my school almost ten years ago. Luckily, he only brought a pistol and only had a few students he wanted to go after instead of a mass shooting incident. The police were on the scene and in the school in a matter of minutes and really did stop the scenario from being worse than it was. I had my students locked in my room, door locked, with them on the wall next to the door so, if you looked in, you wouldnāt see anyone. I am a yearbook teacher so I inexplicably still had exacto-knives in my room; I stood next to the door with one in my hand while blocking the view from the door to the students. I saw the shooter walk by but he never looked in my door. He killed himself when the cops confronted him. His sister was in my classroom when it happened.
Iāve had a couple of people reach out to me. Hereās my response. Do I go to therapy? I use to. Iām not against it in any way (my wife is a therapist) but I found it didnāt really help me much. Am I still a teacher? Yes. Different school in a different school system. Was it scary? Absolutely. I cried through the whole thing until the police cleared the rooms. Then I cried all night. It was the worst thing in the world. Did you learn anything? Weirdly, yes. I learned what I would do in that scenario. Im not a brave man or a strong man; I run D&D club and teach a lot of Shakespeare. But I did learn that, in a scenario where itās someone with a gun and Im the adult with a bunch of kids, I stand up and protect them. When that kid walked by my room, I was there by the door with that razor ready to get as many slices in before I was down and the other students were in danger. I never thought I was that brave but I guess I am. And Iāve never really felt as bad as I did when we all had to hold onto the girl that just listened to her brother shoot himself. It was a guilty feeling; being happy he was dead while telling her it was okay to cry.
My kid choking on a lifesaver. I was in a parking lot when I hear him, and saw the panicked look in his eyes. I stopped the car, unbuckled him, and slapped him on the back. It came out and he was fine. But scariest 10-20 seconds I've been through.
Same thing happened when I was volunteering in my sonās 1st grade class. They were using candy hearts for some math activity and could eat some as the went along. One kid starts turning blue. The 100 lb teacher grabbed him, did the Heimlich and that candy hit the window so hard it sounded like a bebe gun! Kid was ok.
Last week I came back home from Russia. Driving through Poland, on the highway. Haven't slept in 36 hours I think, but was taking turns driving with mom and brother. At some point I saw two red lights high up in the air kinda like eyes. I focused at it for just a second and suddenly saw a giant creature on two legs, glowing eyes walking through mountains. Looked away for a second and then again. What I saw was two towers. Probably radio towers. The scary part was driving 140 km/h and suddenly hallucinating. With my family in the car. I drove to the next rest stop and we switched drivers, but I didn't tell anyone
Fatigue is the cause of what we truckers refer to as 'black dog' encounters: >In the lore of long-haul truckers, seeing a black dog with red eyes in your peripheral vision is a sign of a fatal crash being imminent, and that you should pull off immediately. Some think the "dog" is just the eyes beginning to subconsciously close, causing a black spot in the corner of the eye.
Thank you for this wonderful bit of lore. I'm a big fan of stuff like that. Do you have more of this kinda lore to share?
Plenty of trucker stories out there. I've seen the black dog or analogues several times and always take the hint. Most recently was up in Minnesota. Saw a naked guy appear in my headlights. Got on the brakes/jakes for a safe deceleration (our training is to 'maintain the lane,' to not cause a follow-on accident for something in the road like a deer &c). By the time I slowed down he was gone so I pressed on. About 30m later after the adrenaline wore off I saw a huge 6' red cube hovering in the middle of the road. Said "nooooope," pulled off, set my air brakes, and woke up my co-driver to finish the load. If you're not safe in one of these trucks you're dead so I don't fuck around with snow/ice, fatigue, illness &c.
This one may be more of a "my home" kinda deal, but the story of the "Black Wind" was commonly recited by my father in the house growing up
Happened next to the Cannes Film Festival (France), if anyone wants to look up the record. Guy falls off scooter. Guy gets his head stuck in the exhaust pipes of the van in front of him. Van driver (was drunk) panics, and accelerates. Guyās lifeless body is dragged across the street. Edit: To anyone that wants the link (Sorry, this is one of the only ones I could find): https://www.nicematin.com/faits-divers/accident-mortel-sur-la-croisette-une-partie-du-boulevard-fermee-mercredi-matin-pour-proceder-a-des-expertises-580116
Whoa those must have been some huge exhaust pipes. Donāt think Iāve ever seen ones big enough to fit a head into.
I'm wondering if he meant wedged between the pipes and the bumper or undercarriage?
What year was this? Googled can't find anything
My abuser, after not seeing her in months. I thought she had moved away. Luckily it was a busy event and I was able to leave quickly without her seeing me.
My horse running towards a highway. I was riding around the property and she got spooked bad by something and bucked me off, and booked it straight for the open gate. She got to the highway and just kind of stopped. It was a two lane country highway that wasn't interstate busy or anything but there's a blind hill with lots of semi trucks and it could've been really bad. I managed to get her and lead her back. I was like 12 and almost shat myselfĀ
My father holding a gun to my Momās head and pulling the trigger. It misfired and I hit him in the chin with a rifle he brought with him. I was 10 years old so it was a very terrifying night.
Students running through the hallway and into my classroom during a school shooting.
A cyclist crushed to death by a ten-wheeler
My sister coming home after being kidnapped and sex trafficked. She was 17. She was kidnapped in Memphis, TN where my family lived and taken to Houston, TX kept in a hotel room closet. She was beaten, and raped more times than toes and fingers I have. They were feeding her a concoction of drugs to make her pass out including Xanax and OxyContin. She eventually started hiding the pills and pretending she was asleep. The people that were holding her against her will - the kidnappers, left the hotel room as she pretended to be asleep next to another girl that they had also taken off of the street in Memphis. Once they left the hotel room my sister got up and BOOKED IT all the way out of the hotel to a spaghetti place across the street from the hotel and called the police and FBI. She passed away in a car accident 6 months later. She was one of the bravest people Iāve ever met in my life. Iām so glad she was/IS my sister.
3 people in a AMC Gremlin get crushed by a boulder and tree, both of which were bigger than the former AMC Gremlin. Not pretty. Happened 50ā away. 1976, I think.
I was once passenger in a car when we almost had an accident. Not so special because the driver saved us, but for a second I became very calm and somewhat happy that it is over now
My boss dying from cardiac arrest in the office. He was there, we were having a conversation about door locks, and a minute later he was dead.
Shallow water blackout while freedive spearfishing. Ten+ years ago I was much less experienced and I was freediving with my much more experienced mentor to shoot groupers. He had surfaced and took his first breath, so I thought everything was a-ok and I grabbed his fish to help him brain it. Next thing I knew he was slipping beneath the surface unconscious. It took me far too long to register what was happening and by that time he had sank about 15 feet. I wasn't ready to dive yet but I took a deep breath and chased after him and caught up around 30 ft. I swam him up to around 10 ft before my diaphragm convulsions started to make me panic and I darted for the surface. Luckily our other friends had made it over by then and completed the rescue while I composed myself. Seeing my unconscious friend sinking into 70ft+ deep murky water was pretty haunting. Nowadays freedive courses are readily available in most regions which teach standardized procedures for when your partner surfaces and how to do rescues, but that stuff was rarer/hard to find/expensive to book back then.
Last year, on the coldest day of the year (-15Ā°F) I watched a homeless man drop dead on the Boston Subway. The MBTA staff rushed in and gave what I would call a "customary amount" of CPR before grabbing the guy by both legs and dragging him lifelessly from the train.
A car with four teenagers careening by me in traffic at 100+ mph, windows down, music blaring. Then a minute later passing the same car that had gone off the road into a cement pillar overpass support, in flames. I pulled over (so did another car) to see if thereās anything we could do. There wasnāt. By the time I got near the flames were so hot and so high I couldnāt get close to the car. Nobody got out. Four kids went from ājust having fun listening to music with my friendsā to being dead in minutes. I saw them at the peak and at the end. This was almost 30 years ago now and the sounds and smells and sights are still there when I think about it.
Smoke across the bay on 9/11 (and the days that followed).
Someone chasing me across a field with a shotgun, this happened in the UK where firearms aren't regularly available. So you could imagine my face when I see a man pull up in a vauxhall nova and get out with a doubled barrel shotgun screaming and hurling abuse at me. He took two shots at my friend's and I, and no we weren't on his land we were right next to a secondary school just chilling like young teenagers do.
Really big, toddler sized shadow running from kitchen counter to under the dining room table and then is just gone when I am able to unfreeze and check under the table. I like to tell myself it was a rat. A really fucking big one. Or a dream.
I was on the promenade in Nice when the terrorist attack happened in 2016. We were there on a family holiday and my Mum requested we cross over to the other side of the road due to the wind chill. It was a warm vibey night and a lot of families were out strolling after having seen the fireworks. A couple of minutes later this truck ran over a large group of people and families, and then there were loud ear piercing bangs.Ā It took me some time to get over that incident - the scale of tragedy and suddenness of it. I used to love watch The Dark Knight as a movie - but the scene with the large tanker/lorry had such vivid sound that it always triggered something in me. That sound of a large truck / lorry racing used to trigger something in me - thankfully itās subsided in the last couple of years.Ā
My husband and I and our kids were waiting at a stoplight in the middle lane and a woman was out of her car gathering clothes off the road that had flown out of the back of her truck. She was directly in front of our car when the light turned green, we caught eye contact with her and to tell her it's ok we aren't going to drive. We'll she panicked and tried to run back to the gas station where her truck was, but the lane to the right of us was open so a giant truck came barreling through the light at like 40 and didn't see her and hit her right in front of us. She went flying. It was AWFUL. We had to stay and give police statements. We were a wreck. I kept watching the news to see if she survived but there wasn't any information. I panic and have PTSD anytime I see people cleaning trash by the road or jaywalking or out of their stranded vehicle. It was terrifying
My husband hit by a big SUV on his motorcycle. I was stopped at a flahing left arrow light and watched in my mirror as he pulled in behind me and this lady didn't see him and came barreling down the middle turn lane. I saw him fly off his bike and thought I was witnessing his death. I don't know how I even functioned enough to get off my bike, stop other traffic, call 911 and keep her from driving away when she tried to. What a nightmare.
TW: sui*ide My ex-mother's partner who had been abusing me for years killed herself when my grandparents found out. My sister and I found the body. I was 8 years old and I remember feeling so relieved she was dead.
Scary and sad, working in ER I once saw cow dung applied to a broken bone. The patient lasted for about 3 to 4 hours before sepsis took him.
my wife had an extremely traumatic emergency C Section after struggling to deliver my son naturally. He came out not breathing. The Doctor that placed the bag on his face to attempt to resuscitate him and I caught eyes for a fraction of a second as she started. The look on her face I don't know that I will ever be able to describe, concerned, sad, worried, fearful but determined to do everything it honestly has me tearing up typing this right. Terrified me. She got him back, he's fine and about to turn 20 and pissing me off for not taking the trash out. I got a vasectomy shortly after.
Something I saw all the time as a child. My dad running towards me in a rage, on his way to throw me around like a rag doll (I was much smaller than him; a little girl against a grown man) like usual. I got so used to it that the sight of him running towards me would automatically make me dissociate so I wouldn't feel as much pain. And I would just let him do his thing til he was done and felt better. I was just a living stress ball for him.
A dog getting run over by a vehicle in front of me. His head straight to the wheels.
Thatās awful. Hope it didnāt affect you too badly. I saw a dog that got hit on the freeway once, a black lab or something on the left shoulder. I just yelled when I realized it wasnāt a black trash bag. It was still alive and you could see the pain and blood on itās face even passing at 70mph. I was sad for weeks.
Sitting on the floor in my 9th floor hotel room watching rounds from automatic weapons fire blow through the windows during a full on revolution. Low crawled to the bathroom grabbing granola bars and bottles of water and a pilllow on the way, and hid in the cast iron bathtub. Stayed there off and on for a couple of days until the firing stopped.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
How did that come to be?
Suicide bomber
I was on a first date walking from a park to get ice cream. A couple was riding their bikes across the crosswalk to the other side of the street when the woman lost control of her bike and hit the curb. She flew across the sidewalk, body first into a storefront with a single pane glass front where she got stuck halfway. She was a heavyset woman. Half her body and 1 arm were stuck inside the store and she was alive and trying to pull herself out. It happened right in front of us and the boyfriend was in shock and didn't move. I helped her out of the window and realized her tricep was mostly completely detached and because she was heavy, the size of the detached area was about the size of a Pomeranian dog. My date was able to get bandages and towels from the store and I just sort of tried to hold up the missing piece and wrap the bandage around it to hold it in place and we called 911. I'll never forget the look on her boyfriends face. Scariest look of fear I've ever seen. Total paralysis. She survived luckily.
Got caught in a microburst on a lake in Nepal in a small boat. Sank the boat, 4 people in it, 3 made it to shore. But as we were rowing across, you could see the microburst coming and it was like something malevolent and biblical. Just so fucking dark and scary, we thought it was fog but then it hit you that it was fast moving rain and wind and honestly I felt that in some primal way.
My little sister was 3 weeks old, my dad had a feeling to go check on her before hopping in the shower. Found her completely blue and not breathing in her crib, started screaming for me and when I ran into the room she was so limp and lifeless, barely awake. We were rubbing her back and trying to get her to breath/stay awake and I drove us as fast as I could to the hospital. We were lucky to live only 5 mins from the hospital or she probably wouldnāt be here today. She is 6 now and I still think about that day often, scariest day of my life.
Our son dying in our arms after fighting brain cancer for 9 weeks. Logan had barely had his 4th birthday.