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Someone Lit My Car On Fire: 35 People Who Survived Crazy Moments
Near-death experiences can profoundly change a person. It makes them realize the fragility of life and how everything can end in a single moment.
For these people, it’s an event that will remain with them for the rest of their days. They have since shared their stories in a recent Reddit thread, telling the online community in detail how they lived to tell the tale.
Many of these anecdotes involve near-fatal highway encounters, attempted robberies, and f***k accidents during concerts, to name a few. If you’ve had some close calls yourself, feel free to share them below.
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
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#1
My ex husband strangling me while I was pregnant for not making him food (he was home all day) I worked 9 hours. It wasn't immediate but I got out.
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#2
I almost died getting a burrito.
In college , I went walking to a Mexican restaurant a few blocks down to buy burritos every now and then. They were very good, well portion and not too badly priced.
Anyway, I love listening to music. There is a hype playlist I listen to for walking and working out. We'll, one day I was listening to music on the way to said restaurant. I get there, buy my food and walk back. On the way back, I feel someone swip my backside as I crossed the tracks.
[angry] off, I turned around to see who the h**l it was, and it was a dam freight train that passed by. It was not going fast at all, just pacing through the neighborhood before picking up speed once out it was out of town.
I was on autopilot walking and listening to music so much that didn't hear the loud a*s horn or see the massive train coming. A part of the train just ever so grazed me from behind. I seriously thought it was someone swiping my back.
I rip my headphones out and I hear two things.
1. The loud a*s train horn
2. A bystander yelling at the top of his lungs "are you f*****g deaf?"
I stopped wearing heaphone for about 5 years after that.
#3
4 years ago I was in absolutely crazy pain with my hip/groin/leg, couldn't walk, put any weight on it. I tried showering and was screaming in pain, nearly passed out. My leg turned purple and was freezing cold, went to a&e and this useless doctor did an x-ray for a dislocated hip, then told me I was just cold and to go home. COVID measures were still in place, so husband couldn't stay with me. When he came to get me, the intake staff were really surprised I was being released as they'd seen my leg.
We get home around 2am, I wrapped my entire leg in heated blankets and tried to sleep. Woke up and my leg had ballooned to twice it's normal size. Rang 111 and they told me to go back to a&e..... This time before I even had a blood test they wrote "pcd?" On the intake form (phlegmasia cerulea dorlens - life threatening complication of dvt).
Had blood test, Dr pulled me aside and said my bloods were through the roof for blood clots. Go into this little room and a Dr shows me all these clots in my groin on an ultrasound machine, quite fascinating to see.
Got told I saved my own life by wrapping my leg in heated blankets as it dilated blood vessels enough for a tiny amount of blood to get through. Without heat, blood was cut off to my leg and I was hours away from losing my leg or dying. Basically was riddled with huge clumps of clots through my thigh, groin and abdomen. Anyway, super scary, but still here.
Also had a wild ride in the worst hospital ward I've ever been in. One woman was bipolar, not medicated properly and would throw s**t across the room, flip out. Another was a druggy, she'd fallen and whacked her head, but kept pulling all her wires and drips out and escaping. The other woman they'd overdosed on morphine so she was in a coma for a few days, she'd then been left on that ward because she needed oxygen 24/7 and they couldn't find a mobile oxygen tank.
I wrote a 5 page complaint to the hospital and that original doctor was no longer allowed to be in a&e. Probably should have sued, but I was so traumatised and happy to be alive I didn't. Had to learn to walk unaided again, but can now walk 3-4 miles a day. Sometimes still get pain, but just thankful they eventually took me seriously and I lived to tell the tail.
We got in touch with experts and people who have survived near-death experiences, and they were kind enough to offer valuable insights. One of them is Ross Hackerson, a psychologist with more than four decades of experience working with trauma survivors.
“I've observed that near-death experiencers often develop what I call "emotional radar"—an uncanny ability to detect inauthenticity in relationships,” he told Bored Panda.
#4
Someone lit my car on fire at 3am, and I woke up to my house already going up in flames. Almost died from smoke, fire, and the power lines falling down beside us as we ran out. We all made it out alive, thankfully.
#5
When I was 7 or so my mom and I were moving to another state and we were on the highway. I got tired and hopped in the back seat to sleep. A few minutes later my mom screamed and I opened my eyes to an 8x4 sheet of drywall coming through the windshield. It hit the driver's side pillar and rotated, driving the corner into the passenger seat. We were fine except my mom had some bruising on her arms and I had some glass in my eyes. There was a grapefruit sized hole completely through the passenger seat where my heart would've been.
Tie your s**t down.
#6
In 1998 I went to a Slayer concert at a relatively small venue. I love the band but I didn't appreciate how violent the crowd was going to be. There were groups punching on in the mosh pit as soon as it started and it was too packed in to move away. Tom Araya called out one guy (a big angry skinhead who seemed a foot taller than nearly everyone else) and threatened to stop the show if the fighting didn't stop. Midway through 'Raining Blood' I was knocked down in the middle of a mosh and could not get back to my feet. I had people falling on top of me and I could barely breathe. After what felt like the longest time, the same big angry skinhead picked me up from the ground, held me up and let out a primal roar in my face.
I survived the rest of the concert and came outside afterwards to see the street lined with police cars.
In hindsight it was one of the best concerts ever, but I feel like that angry skinhead saved my life.
I think I still have a guitar pick somewhere from that night..
Hackerson told the story of one of his clients, who coded during a heart attack. According to him, the man had seemingly developed the ability to gauge whether a person is being genuine.
“He could instantly sense when someone was being dishonest or superficial, which initially made social interactions exhausting.”
#7
Twin pregnancy and birth. During my pregnancy, I had so many things go wrong with my body. I had swelling so bad that my pores were leaking fluid. My blood pressure was at a constant 90/100. I slept sitting up for 3 months because I couldn't breathe laying down. I couldn't eat or drink much because I would just automatically throw it up. I was constantly puking up stomach acid. I made it to almost 38 weeks and had a c-section. That part went smoothly and both babies (a boy and girl) were born healthy! Shortly after, I had mass hemorrhaging and ended up in congestive heart failure where I spent almost 2 more weeks in the hospital.
It was the most wild 9 months I've ever been through, and the hardest thing I've ever had to go through emotionally and physically. The twins are 7 months now and are healthy and thriving. They're the happiest babies I've ever seen. Even though I almost lost my own life in the process, I would do it all again for them.
#8
My wife and I were in separate cars, heading to a military base to drop a car off for our son, who had been away for National Guard Drill. We were driving about 50mph when a driver coming from the opposing side of traffic cut a hard left turn barely missing my wife and hit me head on. Our cars were totalled, and if it weren't for modern safety devices, we both would have died or suffered life altering injuries.
#9
Outside the Baghdad International Airport, we were patrolling for rocket and mortar sites. We found a pretty secluded spot to hole up and overwatch a back road near a large property mound. We sit there for about an hour when the other truck reports seeing silhouette movement atop the mound. We decide they'll stay in place and our truck would move around to cut off an escape. Driver fires up the truck and starts to move out when Boom, the IED that was buried just a few feet away from us the whole time goes off. It sent fragments through my drivers head whom I was sitting directly behind, into my gunners legs whom I was sitting inches away from. It blasted my door off. Basically hit everyone and everything in the truck except me. Took me a looooong looooong time digesting that.
Hackerson also mentioned how NDE survivors tend to prioritize their relationships. As he stated, some of his clients abandon toxic people “with remarkable speed and clarity.”
For this example, Hackerson told us about a female client who had a near-death experience during childbirth. According to him, the woman divorced her emotionally abusive husband within six months, something she wasn’t able to do for 15 years prior.
#10
An attempt on my own life. Anyone thinking of or currently doing it, listen to me. Stop. All you’re doing is putting more scars on yourself inside and out and it’s just hurting you even more. You hurt yourself because it makes you feel better in the moment. But it will only get worse. Trust me. .
#11
The Plainfield Tornado, it was a rain-wrapped F5 that had no warning, the sirens only went off about 2 minutes after it had lifted. My family was driving right into its path, our station wagon getting pelted with hail when my dad noticed shingles tumbling out of the sky. He spun the car around and sped back in the direction we were coming from. We would've driven right into it.
#12
I got groomed online by a way older couple when I was underage. When I turned 18, they moved me across the country to be with them.
While there, I and another person, were subjected to genuine t*****e. Sleep deprived, locked and chained in a basement, r***d, beaten... It was really, really bad.
I live with the scars from that both physically and psychologically. I will forever. The other person who was with me has since ki**ed themselves. I dont blame them for taking that way out. .
Hackerson explained that a near-death experience causes a shift in the brain, where it begins to process every interaction “through the lens of ultimate significance.” Simple conversations become profound exchanges. However, small talk at the grocery store “feels almost painful.”
“Their nervous system now operates at a deeper frequency, making shallow experiences feel jarring rather than neutral,” he said.
#13
When I was 28, I spent 4 and a half days in the hospital for pneumonia that went septic. I had called off on Friday for a cough, it felt like a normal upper respiratory infection. Stayed about the same Saturday and Sunday, but it got significantly worse overnight. I went to UrgentCare Monday morning, they told me to get X-rays to check for pneumonia. Their X-ray technician is off on Mondays, so my roommate had to drive me to the nearest hospital with the referral.
Around 5:00 PM I get a call from the hospital, it's pneumonia. They send over the prescription for antibiotics. At this point I am *really* out of it. I was not aware of how sick I was. Around 7:30 PM, I sit up from the couch to take a swig of Gatorade. I start coughing on the third sip, next thing I know I'm sprawled on top of the coffee table with a small puddle of blood from a [darn] nose. Based on the size of the blood stain on the carpet, I was out cold for at least a minute.
I call my mom to take me to the ER, since my roommate was at work. They do the standard intake stuff, check my vitals, fever's about 102.5°F, and draw a vial of blood or two. Next thing I know, I'm getting hooked up for IV antibiotics and transferred from the ER to the main hospital ward because I was in early stage sepsis. It only took 3 and a half days to go from a moderate but normal-feeling cough to deadly serious infection.
Thankfully the antibiotics did the trick, but it was not an easy recovery. After I was released from the hospital, I was on short term disability for almost 3 months. I got sick the last week of January 2023, and I didn't have the stamina to work a full 40 hours workweek until mid to late April. I had a job that was 95% desk work at the time.
#14
Ran out of air 80ft underwater on a shipwreck in Vanuatu when I was 16 (took quite a long approach and the swim to the shipwreck was a workout so I burnt oxygen fast). Second time the ocean nearly ended me so now I stay out 😂.
#15
I was dispatched to a CPR in progress, arrived on scene and the PT was not in cardiac distress. They were however under the influence of h****n and the caller was elderly and had no idea what was going on. I arrived on scene and after a few minutes of this “person” yelling and treating medics like s**t, got up and walked away.
I was getting ready to leave the area and observed a random car I hadn’t seen before. Ran the plates and it was stolen. Different neighbor advised that the occupant of the car was the same subject of the medical call.
I recontacted the subject about a block and a half away and they wanted nothing to do with me. After 15 or so seconds of telling the subject to wait and briefly explaining they were legally being ordered to stop I told them to put their bags down. That’s when they started reaching into their duffle bag after being advised not to. The fight was on at that point and for the next minute or so, I held onto their right hand (in the duffle bag) while wrestling to the ground and eventually arresting.
A loaded 357 short barrel was found in the duffle bag after arrest.
My cover that shift was an officer who was afraid of conflict and actually drove the OPPOSITE direction after hearing the tones and that I was contacting the subject.
Made it out alive with few scrapes but boy am I glad I trusted my gut and relied on my training.
People who’ve had brushes with death may see their experience as either eye-opening or traumatic. According to psychiatrist and New Leaf Detox medical director Dr. Sanjai Thankachen, they generally tend to see life as valuable and will turn their focus on things that matter.
“This turning point will change a person in how he or she views life, and what the priorities are, moving forward,” he said.
#16
Motorcycle. Another motorcyclist turned into my lane and was on a collision course. I yanked the handlebars real hard right then back left and the rear wheel picked up and skipped to the right by about five feet. Onward we went.
Somehow it felt like nothing despite it being literally everything.
#17
Sepsis following a nick to my small bowel during a routine out-patient procedure that no one noticed. I was in a medically induced coma for a week and in the hospital/rehab for 3 months. My abdominal cavity was open for a month, and I have seen my own insides.
10/10, do not recommend. But it was the quickest and easiest way I've ever lost 50lbs.
#18
Either a 50mph head-on collision with a drunk driver, a Ford Focus driver running me over while on foot, or a school shooting.
Seen some s**t...
Of course, those who have lived through a close call would have a different perspective. Landscaper and author Jim “Bubba” Bay had his NDE in 2009, when he fell headfirst into a 14-foot gully. He broke 23 bones, including his skull and left scapula, and was in a coma for seven days.
Bay shared with us his in-body experience right where it happened on Hammertown Road in Pine Plains, New York, where he says he “met God.”
#19
I was in a car accident that I don't remember anything about. I remember parts of the morning leaving home, but my next memory is waking up in the back of an ambulance and hearing my son crying and feeling blood go down my face and legs. I couldn't see anything. I asked if my son was OK and said I could feel the blood coming from my leg and face, and then lost consciousness again.
Woke up again on a gurney into the ER, then again in the trauma room with my wife there. I was OK enough, not moving. My son was OK, bump on his head, but he was discharged and I stayed in the hospital for a few more days. Couple of lacerations on my forehead and legs, couple fractured vertebrae, but overall I made it out pretty OK considering. Car was totalled (I miss it to this day), never found out what happened. I still feel lucky I'm here though.
#20
150+ mph car crash as a passenger, flipped at least three times and landed upside down. Only injuries were airbag bruising and I burned my hand on the muffler trying to get the driver out.
Used up all my luck, though, I can't play roulette anymore.
#21
Got grabbed by a rip current at dusk. Went from “I’m fine” to “this is it” in 10 seconds, floated sideways and washed up two coves down shaking.
“One of the main ways is before I fell, I really didn’t have no intuition, and since I have a strong one,” Bay explained. "I get a nudge, and now I know to listen to the nudge and proceed on the feeling, whatever it is. I still make many mistakes, but I am just a human.”
Bay adds that he has since been more in touch with his spirituality and considers himself a “very blessed man.”
#22
Pancreatic pseudocyst that was 15cm. I knew I was in pain and pretty sure I had to stay in hospital, but I was worried about getting a parking ticket. I walked two km from a long term parking spot and collapsed at the hospital at my checkup.
#23
I almost got crushed by a landscaping truck pulling a trailer about a year ago. I was going down a 3 lane road on my Harley. He was waiting to pull out on the right. I was in the middle, and moved to the far left anticipating him coming into my lane because of the trailer. What I wasn’t anticipating was him cutting across two whole lanes into the lane I had switched into. I ended up between a median and his trailer with my front and rear brakes locked up, so I was basically sliding. I’ve been riding dirt bikes all my life so an unstable motorcycle isn’t anything I can’t handle. But having *inches* on either side of me to keep the bike straight and upright, or probably die was enough to scare the s**t out of me.
#24
Unknown guy came up behind me and held a knife at my throat, dragged me by my hair several blocks away, a car pulled up at a cross street so he stopped for a second. I slid out from under, hit the ground, he kicked me in the head and ran off. Although it’s unconfirmed, I think it was the same guy who killed a man while robbing a dry cleaner later. This ruined my freedom to walk around for many years. It was early evening in a safe area.
#25
Mass shooting at a festival. Left a couple hours before the shooter snuck in. The one time I went when it opened at like 8am and left at like 11am. Shooter came around 1pm.
#26
8 (9?) year old me, kayaking with my dad. We get pulled against a big rock by the current, kayak flips against the rock. The rock slants down towards the bottom, current pins me against the rock. Luckily my dad managed to yoink me out from there.
At 23 I survived a car crash I still have no idea how I walked away from. Was the passenger in a friend’s car. We pull up to an intersection. No traffic coming, this was at 5ish in the morning. We start driving, suddenly a van driving like a bat out of h**l comes from the right. My friend saw it coming just in time, managed to turn the car just enough where the van hit the front of the car and not fully on the side. It would’ve nailed me otherwise. Car was totalled. Van driver was going about a 100 on a 30 road. No way we could’ve anticipated.
Friend saved my life there, I’m sure of it. I’m 36 now, and I’m still skittish about things coming at me from the right fast(-ish), inside or outside a car.
#27
During my student teaching, a kid brought a gun to school. I had three kids behind me, a scared, angry kid with a gun in front of me and I was hoping like h**l that the kid who got out of the room found the principal ASAP because the kid with the gun was getting angrier and I wasn't confident of my chances of getting the gun away from him without someone getting seriously hurt.
I was 22, the kids were 6th graders, so roughly 11 years old. Fear is knowing an 11 year old holds your life and the lives of three others in their hands.
#28
Rolled over in a car crash back in the '80s and supposedly I was ejected from the vehicle. I was 3 and only remember just before the accident. Survived with a fractured skull. I was in the hospital for 6 weeks afterwards. I still have a plate in my head today because of it.
#29
November 2024 I was headed to work on a Friday, I was stopped at a red light about to get on a highway. That's the last thing I remember. My next memory is coming to in my driver's seat and some man has opened my passenger side door and is asking if im ok, im disoriented and groggy and Im trying to open my drivers door and try again and again to open it finally I get frustrated and remove my seat belt and hop over the center console to get out the passenger side. The man is telling me "not to move madame" that ive been in a major accident "dont move dont move" he keeps saying, as I get to the passenger side it occurs to me im not on the ground and the man helps me as I forcefully slide out of the car and I jump down the foot to the ground. I stand there and look back at the car to see part of my bumper is in the tree and I think to myself well thats odd. Im immediately met by a first responder who asks me the date and I give give wrong answer and im taken to the hospital. I didnt know at the time but I had epilepsy and what I experienced was a seizure at the wheel, completely blacked out and ultimately drove the car onto the highway and then it veered off the road, flipped into the ditch and landed upright in a tree within the wooded section at a highway intersection. The car was totaled, every window busted out, the drivers side airbag blew. I still can't believe i jumped out of that and walk away with not even a broken bone..
#31
In my friends motor swapped Honda crx he was driving on a winding road after a summer rain. He lost control and we spun out counter clockwise into the oncoming lane. I remember looking out the passenger side window on the back end of a full 360 and seeing the silver bulldogs face looking down on us and the word MACK glisten as the car corrected back clockwise. We missed becoming a meat stuffed pancake by less than 3 feet and maybe an eighth of a second. He sold the car that next week.
#32
My dad, cousin, and I got pulled out to see by a (unusually) strong rip tide current at a beach in N.C. We were in to about eye level with decent waves over our heads and had reached the 'don't try to swim against the current, it's too strong, wait it out' stage. Eventually we randomly fetched up on a sandbar and, as the tide was coming out, the area we were in started to get more shallow and we could wade back in. People had the beach had called the water rescue on sea doos, but they ended up being not needed.
#33
Pinned against the barricade in the front row, O’Hara arena November 1993, …Nirvana live. It’s an ice hockey arena so the ground was covered in wet plywood. I broke 4 ribs, my feet didn’t touch the ground for most of the show. It was awesome.
#34
Crashed my motorcycle into a truck while going 70 km/h. I have absolutely no recollection of the crash, I remember putting my hand on the door handle to leave the door and a few seconds later I woke up in the hospital while they were hammering down a titanium rod down my hip to my knee.
I had broken my femur, crushed my kneecap, got compression syndrome in my other calf which k****d a piece of it and tiny holes in my lungs and spleen (which the doctors said was from the force of suddenly stopping).
All in all it took 4 months to relearn how to walk and 4 years to get free of pain.
Although, the latter was due to a mistake that the doctors made.
#35
Slid on black ice. My friend and I were on a road trip, ignored weather warnings to "beat the storm". Going 70mph the car just started rotating. We just started screaming. Did two full spins, hit a van and binked off to the side of the road where there was gravel, miraculously not flipping over.
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