Luck can seem like such an ephemeral thing until something happens that leaves such a lasting impression that you perhaps stay up at night, wondering what could have happened. Near death experiences are, perhaps, the pinnacle of this feeling.
Someone asked “People who escaped death by complete luck. What happened?” and netizens who have gone through close calls shared their stories. So get comfortable as you read through, prepare yourself for a few shivers, upvote your favorite examples and be sure to comment your thoughts and similar stories below.
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I lived in the attic of apartment of an old Victorian house. I kept hearing noises in the walls until one night I woke up to a room full of bats. Needless to say I didn’t want to live in an apartment infested with bats - so some friends of mine said I could live in their extra room. I moved really quickly because, bats. Ugh. Anyway, 2 days later the entire old Victorian house went up in flames and burned to the ground. I thought, whew, got outta there just in time. But that wasn’t the end of it. A few days after that some detectives showed up on campus where I had class and asked to speak with me. They started asking me all these questions about whether or not I knew this guy who lived in the basement of the old house. I explained that I may have said ’hi’ in passing a few times, but that was it. Well, it turns out that the guy was obsessed with me - moved into the basement of the building because I lived there - and he freaked out and SET THE FIRE when I left because he didn’t know where I went. I had NO IDEA. They found a bunch of pictures of me and all kinds of creepy s**t in his belongings. Luckily no one was hurt in the fire and he went to prison for arson (which carries a stiffer penalty than stalking- smh).
I love bats now. Bats are my friends. Thank you, bats.
Cancer Stage 4 Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.
Doctors told my parents I had a 1% chance of survival over the next 6 months and basically to prepare for my funeral.
Well little ol me probably sold my soul to the devil because I beat the s**t here 30+years later and went from a blonde haired kid to a red haired adult (hence the sold soul)
On an island called Cat Cay in the Bahamas, there is an area called the Flats, where the tide rolls out extremely fast for a mile. You can walk on the sand and find incredible things (sand dollars, crabs, shells). The water moves out so fast, fish are lying on the sand still alive.
The tide comes back in just as fast. Like a tsunami of water. I was 8, out there with my mom. She forgot that day was daylight savings time and misjudged. Thought we had another hour. The water came in and we started running. But before we knew it, we were up to our necks and the suction out to sea was so strong, it ripped off both our water shoes and her shirt. She carried me on her back, one step at a time, staying completely calm. The water was up to her ears.
When we got to shore, we both lied on the beach completed exhausted. She could barely walk.
Moms are incredible.
Three times come to mind for me.
First - drunk driver going 100mph+ hit my vehicle. They were coming down the wrong side of the highway that late evening. I swerved and woke up in the floor of my truck.
Second - working in a restaurant, glasses straight out of the dishwasher. Grabbed two out of the rack for a table, and one sheared at the base, fell and hit my wrist. 3 tourniquets at different spots on my arm later, they were able to stop the bleeding. I was wearing a watch with a metal band, and that stopped the glass from cutting further.
Third - found out I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Dr said another 2-3 months without treatment, and I’d have been dead. Finished chemo last month and in remission.
Anyone know a good gift for their guardian angel? Mine has been working overtime…
The light turned green at the intersection. I started to move forward, but the driver in the lane next to me honked and hit his brakes. I hit my brakes too and looked around. Just then, a car blew through the red light going 45+ miles an hour. Had I continued through the intersection, my little hatchback might have been T-boned on the driver's side by a much larger vehicle. Thank goodness that other driver saw the car about to run through the light and honked his horn or I might have been flattened.
I'd been to a concert in London many years ago and was driving south down to Sussex on the A24. Gone midnight, probably bit too fast, suddenly thought, what if an animal was to run out of the woods. Raised my right foot and slowed down a bit, a bloody great Deer bounded across the road just in front of me. Half asleep mates in car, what was that? Nothing go back to sleep.
I attended a meeting in the south tower of the World Trade Center on Monday, September 10, 2001. That meeting had originally been scheduled for the following day.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been this long ago. Seems like yesterday.
My frat bro’s mom was in the Chi Omega house at FSU in 1979. Ted Bundy broke into the house while they were sleeping and killed the two girls in the room across the hall from hers and seriously beat up two other women. She had to testify at his trial. What saved her? She locked her door.
Jesus christ. When I was little, I used to live in the same neighborhood as Israel Keyes before he was caught. He never targeted families with children, so thank goodness for me & my brother.
Was 16 in Bermuda, riding my moped into town when I came up to a bus stopped at a red light. I came to a stop, and then, as is tradition, I scooted around the bus to be at the front of the traffic. No more than 10 seconds later a second bus plowed into the back of first bus at 30-40 mph. I would have been pancaked, no question.
Apparently the second bus driver had had a medical event, and lost consciousness. I just sat on the side of the road for 30 minutes and looked at the trees, contemplating my mortality.
One time i went on a blind date with a guy and everything went great. We wanted to go to his apartment but suddenly my mother called me that my dad is in the hospital so i left my date there and rushed to the hospital. After that i didnt hear from the guy but few weeks later the police knocked on my door and i needed to go to the station because they wanted to ask some questions about my date. Turned out he already r*ped 4 girls and one of them died after they met.
Back in the year of 2000, 7 year old me and friends were outside exploring. That days location happened to be a power station. Older 9y boy lost his life on top of a machine, electricity burned a hole through him. I lost both my hands trying to climb up and help him. Amputated below my elbows.
Power entered both arms, excited in armpit one side, neck other side. Power never went through my chest or I'd be dead aswell.
I'll try to make a long story short. My ex-wife and her boyfriend she had behind my back tried to hire someone to kill me so that she could have my life insurance and there wouldn't be a custody battle over our daughter like there would be if she just left me. Luckily for me, the guy they hired to do the job was an undercover deputy working a completely unrelated case against the d**g selling gang her boyfriend belonged to.
Yeah. . .finding out about all this was a nice surprise. I had absolutely no clue.
The boyfriend got 10 years because the gun he gave the deputy to kill me with was stolen, and he had other stuff related to the gang on him. She got 5 years for conspiracy and was released after 3.
Only three years is ridiculous for trying to kill someone.
Being born at 26 weeks. Doctors gave me a 10% chance of survival and somehow I beat the 90% odds against me.
Same, I was born around 24/25 weeks, in 1985, weighed 2.2 lbs/1 kg. If I did somehow survive, I was likely to have severe cognitive and physical disabilities. Glad I was able to prove them all wrong. 🙏
My only example...
We went to party at Paul Smith college, my friend's favorite cousin was a student there. Bonfire, booze, and someone had the bright idea to bring out a snowmobile.
I was gonna ride on it but had to go to the bathroom. I guess I took too long because he asked a different girl to ride with him. She did.
They were both killed like 2 minutes later.
It was traumatizing.
It blew my mind for a long time. Had I just held my pee in, I'm the one currently in a coffin instead of Kristine.
I was at the Boston Marathon, watching my sister run the race. I’m from the west coast and there’s this incredible hot chocolate place that they only have on the east coast (Max Brenner - so good). I told my husband and brother in law that I wanted to go there and then we could watch her finish the race since it was next to the finish line. We were a block away when my BIL checked her location and we realized we would miss her if we didn’t watch right then. We cheered her on and then 45 seconds later the bomb went off right next to Max Brenner. Basically my sister’s race time saved us from being at the center of the attack.
My best friend's father had thankfully not finished the race yet and was about 300 yards away when the bombs went off. We're all so grateful he was slow that day!
When i was dumb kid of ten years old a guy in a s****y car asked me to hop in and help him find his lost puppy. My dumb a*s was about to get in when my little bro happened to ride by on a bike and started screaming. He probably saved my life.
That’s the exact thing my parents said kidappers would say to me to try to get me in their car
I was at an indoor shooting range testing a potato cannon (don't ask). I was leaning against the stall wall with my hand behind my head while my buddy took a shot with it. Suddenly, I felt a pinch/burn sensation on my wrist. I took a look at my arm to see blood streaming from a half inch deep hole on my wrist. The idiot in the stall next to me wasn't sure if his handgun was empty, so he did the most logical thing. He pointed it at the stall wall and pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed my wrist, about 3 inches from my head. That's the only time I've ever seen an RSO tackle someone.
What does RSO mean here? I googled it but is it Registered Sex Offender, Road Safety Officer... what? ETA: nevermind, it's probably Range (as in shooting range) Safety Officer. It makes sense these places would have security, but I've never seen one irl so I didn't know the term.
Sudden Cardiac Death at work. Co-worker gave me CPR, paramedics got my heart beating again. 5% survival rate.
I ate a lot more ice cream once I was healthy, again.
I was in the passenger seat of my dad's small sports car (low to the ground) when a crowbar came off a work truck in front of us and flew into the windshield of our car. Somehow it stopped a few inches away from my face and I luckily happened to be looking down, which meant all the glass that would have ended up on my face was all in my hair instead. I always think about how lucky I was, I can't explain why that crowbar stopped half in and half out of the car. Crazy to think that if it didn't stop it would have hit me square in the forehead.
Was swimming at an Australian beach, stupidly not between the flags, got smacked by a rogue wave and was stuck in a riptide, I was knocked out cold and pretty much drowned, still to this day I don't know how I got to shore, when I woke I was up on the wet sand of the beach and had 5 jellyfish around me.
I grew up in a rural town in Southern Ontario and took the school bus every day. One afternoon, I got off the bus at my driveway and as I always did, I walked across the road to our mailbox to get the mail. As my school bus drove away, it was partially blocking my view of the opposite lane. As I stepped to the yellow line in the middle of the road, I suddenly stopped as if someone grabbed my backpack to yank me back. Just as I stopped another school bus came flying past me, missing me by only a few inches. I was stunned and couldn't believe it. These buses would drive super fast on those back roads too, had to have been at least 90kmh. Nearly knocked me on my a*s.
I have no idea what stopped me. Intuition? Paranormal? Part of me thinks I died then and there and this is one of many alternate timelines I've skipped through.
Street light collapsed on me (my neck) and onto the face of the girl in front of me on a 5th grade field trip. I was surprisingly fine, while the girl in front of me got helicoptered out. She made a full recovery though!
Wow, definitely sounds like a freak accident. Glad all turned out well in the end, considering.
Had a boundary wall of a balcony fall from almost 8 ft right after I walked by under it…. It was a very windy day and I was just enjoying the weather outdoors. Because of the wind a door just banged open in front of me, so I just walked towards it to shut it close and as soon as I walked there the wall just fell right where I was standing. Would have been crushed and died right there just missed by a couple of seconds. But that incident gave me a new perspective about life. Cherish life folks as u never know when ur time comes.
I was once helping a friend load her horse in to the horse trailer. He really didn't want to cooperate and kept backing out as soon as he got in. So we decided to try and close the back door/ramp immediately when he stepped all the way in. (Usually we put up a bar behind the horse before the door is shut but he wasn't letting us do that) He finally went all the way in and we pushed the ramp up so it could be latched. But before I could get the latch fastened he freaked out and threw himself backwards against the ramp and came flying out of the trailer. I somehow moved just in time, but I came within about half a second of being crushed under a 40 pound steel ramp and a thousand pound horse. It most likely would have killed me. This was over 20 years ago and I still get chills thinking about how close it was.
I was out backpacking with friends on the Washington coast. We didn't get a permit on our way out. A park ranger stopped by our camp and when he saw we didn't have permits he sat with us for a bit while he wrote one for us. We asked him about his job and he was telling us how he had been cleaning up dead marine mammals off the beach all day. That there was the worst case of red tide blooming that he had ever seen. We currently had a pot of mussels cooking on our fire.
If we had gotten a permit, he probabltly wouldn't have stopped to talk with us.
If he had come by an hour later, we would have all already eaten the poisoned shellfish.
If he had come by the next morning, he might have just found a pile of bodies.
The guy who set fire to my house used lighter fluid on a wet mattress he found behind the house. It's because he used the wet mattress that the fire spread slow enough for us to wake up, see the smoke, and call the fire department. Fire department told us that, had the mattress been dry, we'd be dead because he put it up against the side of the house with the gas line. So not just burnt to death, confetti'd. I guess I'm thankful for the stupidity of cr*ck heads.
Crack. It's called crack. It's freebase cocaine, made from cocaine hydrochloride and baking soda.
Did not inherit the genetic mutation that caused both of my siblings to have a cardiac arrest at 30… it was a 50/50 chance.
One day I was walking through the streets of my city when I decided to change my usual route to surprise my friend for her birthday. As I was on a side street with little traffic, she heard the sound of an explosion coming from behind a nearby building. Frightened, I turned around and saw a car that had just lost control due to engine failure and was crashing right where I had been standing seconds before. Thanks to that sudden decision to change path, I escaped death by pure luck.
This is why I ALWAYS listen to my intuition and also don't mind if things "hold me up". I've had many, "Man, if I had been 30 seconds earlier...." scary moments.
Was driving home from a party with a friend in the car. Had a cop car on random patrol following me down to a main intersection.
Avoiding any sort of risk of getting a ticket, I was being extra cautious when waiting for the light to change.
My side had only just changed to green and since I was slower than normal moving off the line, it stopped me getting plowed by the semi that blew through the other part of the intersection on a red at full speed.
I was just stopped there in stunned silence. Even the cops took a minute or two to reflect on what had happened before they peeled off and lit that truck up.
I ended up coming back along the road where the cops had finally managed to pull that driver over. 5km away from where the incident happened.
I saw a short video once of an intersection with three lanes each way. The dash cam of the car right behind the first car in one lane showed all three front vehicles moving ahead right away when the light turned green. All three were absolutely disintegrated by a semi that came flashing through the intersection, just gone. I used to pride myself on having quick reflexes that among other things made me first to get moving across an intersection. That video made me seriously reconsider that.
Worked at my local mall while in college. I’ve always prided myself on never being late. I was going in early to go to my bank which was at the main entrance. Series of ridiculous events began to happen and I found myself running late, which really frustrated me-again, rarely, if ever happened. I drove quickly to find police cars, flying past me. As I approached the mall, I saw the cops swarming the main entrance, where I was headed. A woman had entered the main entrance with a rifle began shooting as she entered, continued as she walked through the mall. She killed 3, wounded 7, some critically. No doubt I would have been in the line of fire had I not been late. She spent decades in jail and was recently released.
Tornado passed over my car on the freeway in Texas.
It used to be the thing that you hid under an overpass if a tornado came through. They don't recommend it now as you could get sucked out and up into the tornado. But, we did that once when I was little. Very scary.
While going 100+mph on a motorcycle, I went in-between 2 deer bounding across the street. I fortunately didn't have any time to react or I would've surely hit the second one. Instead I just eased off the throttle to a stop, and took a few minutes to breathe and think about how bad that all could've gone.
Note: this post originally had 101 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I was with a friend in Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea on June 29, 1995. My friend suddenly looked at his watch and said we should hurry and leave because he needed to pick up his wife at a certain time. Moments after we walked out, the building collapsed killing 502 people and injuring 937. We got hit by dust and small pieces of debris but were not injured.
I'm still alive, because I'm overweight. In a suicide-attempt I took a large overdose of my medication. If I weighted 10lbs less, I would have been in a coma or even dead.
So sorry to hear about this. Glad that you’re still here! Hope you sought help afterwards. Something I’ve heard about similar situations is that people who are saved from suïcide attempts are around because the world wasn’t ready to lose them! (Please this is not saying the opposite is true. It’s just a reminder of how important you are even on days when you can’t see it yourself.)
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Back in the 90s me and some friends decided to go for a drive on the roads around our town. It was still a clear night but you could see a storm coming in the distance. We badly misjudged the speed with which the storm was approaching and suddenly we were under a deluge, hail and all. You couldn't see beyond the hood of the car. As we entered a roundabout we decided to pull over on the side of the road to let the worst of the storm pass instead of keeping on driving, hazards on. 2 seconds after we stopped, a stolen semi without its lights on took the roundabout the wrong way and passed centimeters from where we were stopped. We literally saw it when it was already passing us at at least 70 km/h. If we would've kept on driving, the compact car we were in would've been one more bug smashed on that truck's hood.
I was with a friend in Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea on June 29, 1995. My friend suddenly looked at his watch and said we should hurry and leave because he needed to pick up his wife at a certain time. Moments after we walked out, the building collapsed killing 502 people and injuring 937. We got hit by dust and small pieces of debris but were not injured.
I'm still alive, because I'm overweight. In a suicide-attempt I took a large overdose of my medication. If I weighted 10lbs less, I would have been in a coma or even dead.
So sorry to hear about this. Glad that you’re still here! Hope you sought help afterwards. Something I’ve heard about similar situations is that people who are saved from suïcide attempts are around because the world wasn’t ready to lose them! (Please this is not saying the opposite is true. It’s just a reminder of how important you are even on days when you can’t see it yourself.)
Load More Replies... Back in the 90s me and some friends decided to go for a drive on the roads around our town. It was still a clear night but you could see a storm coming in the distance. We badly misjudged the speed with which the storm was approaching and suddenly we were under a deluge, hail and all. You couldn't see beyond the hood of the car. As we entered a roundabout we decided to pull over on the side of the road to let the worst of the storm pass instead of keeping on driving, hazards on. 2 seconds after we stopped, a stolen semi without its lights on took the roundabout the wrong way and passed centimeters from where we were stopped. We literally saw it when it was already passing us at at least 70 km/h. If we would've kept on driving, the compact car we were in would've been one more bug smashed on that truck's hood.
