When life is boring, we wish it could be more like a movie. But hardly anyone ever wishes their life was more like a horror movie. We often want to put our horrible experiences behind us. Still, sometimes, sharing them with other people can help us get things off our chest and maybe bring awareness to things people wouldn’t normally pay attention to.
So when a person asked, “What is the scariest experience you have gone through?“, thousands of people rushed to share their stories and show support for people who were brave enough to tell theirs. If you feel inspired to share your own life-changing scary story, feel free to do so in the comments, dear Pandas!
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Work in a mental health unit. Only 2 staff on on nights. Other staff went to lay down for a few minutes as she was doing a double. Had my back turned for about 15 seconds and a very sick man newly diagnosed with schizophrenia came behind me and got me in a choke hold. One of the scariest positions to be in. Even in our self defense training our trainers pretty much said, if someone gets you from behind in a hold, do whatever the f**k you need to do to live. I’m a pretty small human so I really couldn’t move despite flailing like a MF. he had my arms between his legs so I couldn’t reach for my panic alarm. Whole time he was singing ‘tiny dancer’ into my ear. Thank whatever higher power is up there another patient had woken up for some Tylenol. I was seeing stars at this point, could feel my eyes bursting out of my head. I just remember thinking this is how I was going to die and thinking about who would take care of my dog and then everything went black. Woke up on a medical unit. I guess I’d pointed to a sign last second behind our nursing desk that instructs how to call a code white (violent patient) and the patient who woke up did it successfully and kicked the guy holding me in the face to get him off me before security came. Pretty f****d up. Still see the pt that saved me on the unit every once in a while. Always buy him some chocolate bars and coffee when he’s here.
When I was eleven years old, my neighbor was using a bulldozer to clear out some of the wooded area on his property. For context, we lived in a waaaay rural area; while the property lines were touching at the back end of the property, it would have taken twenty minutes to walk from our driveway to their driveway.
In this said wooded area, where our neighbors generally said we were allowed to play, I had constructed/cleared a little hiding place in a hollow in the ground surrounded by a big stump and some fallen trees.
The day of the bulldozing, I was watching from the edge of the wooded area when I suddenly had the STUPIDEST idea of my life: wouldn’t it be so much easier to watch from the hiding place? So I walked over and climbed in while my neighbor was facing another direction. I watched from a large peephole as he disappeared behind the big stump that was the largest portion of wall in my hiding place.
Wait… why didn’t he appear on the other side?
The stump started moving toward me at what seemed like light speed. To my horror, my feet were immediately caught underneath the clay clumped in the roots. I fell on my back, screaming. No one was going to hear me while the bulldozer was going, though. I screamed and tried to shake bushes around me to catch my neighbor’s attention, but he didn’t notice. The stump creeped further and further up my leg, sometimes stopping as the dozer repositioned, but always resuming its terrifying movement. It couldn’t have taken that long, but it felt like hours.
I knew I was going to die. I would die buried under earth and debris and no one would know what happened to me.
When the stump reached my waist, a miracle happened. It stopped moving! The bulldozer shut off, and suddenly I could hear my own screaming! So could everyone else, as my neighbor ran over, my sisters and mom sprinted down from our house, and for some reason my dog Cookie was licking my face.
Three hours, twenty volunteer firefighters, two jaws of life, and an ambulance later, I found out why I was alive. My scruffy little schnauzer Cookie, the hero that she was, had come to save me. I’m tearing up just typing this. I guess she heard me screaming or had already been close or something, but she jumped on top of the stump and stared down that bulldozer, barking at it like it was a mountain lion that was ready to eat me. Of course my neighbor didn’t want to hurt her, so he cut off the machine and finally heard me shrieking for help.
My injuries ended up not being too bad, considering. Leg broken in a couple places, several surgeries, in a wheelchair for a few months. Cookie and I made the front page in every city in the county, and two different feed companies awarded her a year’s supply of dog food. My sweet puppy is no longer with us, but she’ll always be the best dog I could ever have. I miss you girl, and thank you.
tl;dr My neighbor accidentally pushed a thousand-pound stump on top of me, and my dog saved my life.
It's happening right now. My wife is in the ICU with pneumonia on top of a year+ long battle with cancer. Sedated, on a ventilator and barely clinging to life, her heart could just give out at any time and that's it. I'm literally sitting in her room all night fully expecting to lose her sometime tonight or in the next couple days. Ive been through some scary moments in my life, but in a completely different way, this is by far the scariest night of my life.
My husband calling me to tell me his brother took his parents' lives and that I needed to get the dogs and myself out of the house immediately in case his brother was on his way to our house. I was incredibly fortunate that a neighbor let me hide the dogs in her garage and come in until my husband gave me the all clear to go home.
Giving birth to my son, they put him on my chest for about 5 seconds then snatched him up and an entire team of medical types crowded around him working in complete silence. He wasn't breathing. I got to see him for all of 3 seconds, and only heard a couple of weak cries before they rushed him to the NICU. Two hours later they came up to tell us he was on a ventilator and not doing great, they suspected a heart defect and were going to helicopter him to the closest children's hospital (about 90 miles away). We did not get to see him for five hours and it was a couple days before we could hold him. I gave birth at midnight, so all of this was happening in the late late hours.
A couple of relatively common issues had happened, both of which on their own need immediate attention but are not difficult to deal with, but the resolution of one caused serious problems because of the second. His heart is fine. He's a perfectly happy healthy preschooler now who is squirting bath water into the tub faucet and laughing hysterically.
My mom was in ICU for a month when I was 18. She'd come out of ICU and been moved to a regular room and she seemed to be getting better. I had a scholarship to college and she told me to go. I did and I didn't want to go. This was my one shot, you know? But I wanted to stay and be there for her, but she told me to go, so I did. Second day of classes I got a call at 5am. She'd arrested. She had no living will so they brought her back and she was on life support but had no brain activity. I had to sign the papers to turn off the machines. I was 18 and she was my only family. I'm 51 now and I'm tearing up as I write this. I k*lled my mother. Yes, yes, I know, brain dead. They did scans, the neurologist advised me, I've had counseling. But at the end of the day, I signed papers, they turned off machines, and my mother died. And then I was alone. Make a living will. Don't ever put your children or spouse through what I went through.
A morning within a few days of Christmas Eve my oldest (he was 4 at the time) sons flu like symptoms turned terrifying. We were relaxing watching TV as he was out of it and I was lucky my wife recognized the warning signs - his stomach was sucking in and extending with each breath. It kicked in he was struggling to breathe.
We called 911 and they said while we waited for responders to take him out into the cold air without a jacket, it might help his congestion somehow.
My wife’s on the phone and I’m standing in the driveway holding my little boy and he’s gasping now, his face is taking a tinge of blue, and all I can do it hold him and tell him it’s ok and it’s going to be alright and stay calm and nice big breaths buddy and I felt so powerless and small and all I could do was hold him and soothe him and wait and not lose my s**t for him.
The firefighters arrived first and rushed up our yard with oxygen. They cheered for him and told him what a brave boy he was and that everything was going to be alright. My wife went into the ambulance with him while they kept him on oxygen, and they drove off because we had our second son, a baby at the time.
I called my dad to come watch him and he was over in an instant, and drove to the hospital. The whole time there, not knowing what my boy was going through or if he was ok. I got there, he was doing great, some steroids did the trick and after a fun time hanging out with the docs we went home same night with some precautionary meds.
I collapsed in my wife’s arms taking a shower after he fell asleep, trying not to let my big ugly sobs wake him up.
I’ve never felt so powerless ever in my life, and it was the scariest s**t I’ve ever gone through, including other situations I thought I might die.
I grew up thinking my house was haunted.
Weird s**t would happen all of the time. I’d walk into rooms and lights would turn on. I’d go to the kitchen in the middle of the night and cupboards would be open. I’d hear footsteps upstairs when I was home alone. I’d feel the ghost sit down on the bed while I was trying to sleep… ya know, typical “haunting” stuff that would freak any kid out.
Then I had a stalker that started getting weird when I was in my late teens.
Turns out it was much, much worse than I could have imagined.
The stalker was actually a peeping Tom that had been watching me since I was (possibly as young as) 7. As it turns out, there was no ghost and the house wasn’t haunted. The psycho was breaking in when I was home alone and f*****g with me (as a little kid!). As I got older, he got more bold. He’d come in at night when my parents were home and even sit on my bed while I was trying to sleep.
Pretty sure he found where my mom stashed the extra key and just made a copy. Never caught the guy, cops said it was “just some high school boy making jokes.”
I’ve had lots of therapy.
When I was a teenager I had an irregular heart rhythm, and required a medication called adenosine.
Adenosine is usually given via infusion just once or twice, in hospital under careful monitoring, and the side effects include an 'impending sense of doom'. This side effect relates to your heart beat temporarily stopping. This fires signals to your brain, telling you it's time to panic. Or you've reached the end.
'Impending sense of doom' doesn't begin to describe it. I was told in advance, but nothing prepares you for it. I went from sitting on the hospital bed, just finished a sandwich and thinking about my year 11 exam, to suddenly being certain that I was going to die here. I've never felt so sure of anything - I couldn't move or speak, and my mind suddenly raced very fast, to the extent I couldn't keep up with my own thoughts. It was similar to what you hear about your life flashing before your eyes. My brain was drowning, and telling me to find more oxygen - even though I was breathing fine. I was suddenly sure this was a nightmare, that this hospital was fake and all the doctors and nurses were actors, and I was poisoned.
Then it was over in seconds. I haven't had a single heart problem since.
My ex husband pressed a loaded pistol to my forehead and screamed at me because he thought I had cheated on him. I hadn't, but my emotional state was in such a bad condition that all I could think was, just pull the damn trigger, I know I haven't cheated and at least if I'm dead I won't have to be this unhappy anymore. It was not the first nor the last time he hurt me, but I got out eventually after being thrown down stairs, across rooms, threatened with a knife, punched, choked, burned with cigarettes and manipulated to make me think it was my fault. Screw that a*****e.
So many of these terrifying moments involve guns. What if... you know... guns weren't available to buy literally in Walmart?
My son had his first seizure while I was driving. He was in the back seat and I heard a noise. I looked in the rearview mirror and he was convulsing with blood running out of his mouth. Then he collapsed, I thought he had died. To this day, I don't know how I was able to get off the freeway, call 911 and check his pulse. He was 7 years seizure free on Nov. 29, but that one day changed my life forever.
Please no negative comments about this. It’s irritating when I get asked did I think to catch the ball. I got hit in the left eye at a baseball game by a line drive. It was going at 100 mph. It was to late to think is that the ball coming at my face because it is small and at the speed hard to see. I was looking for it as soon as I heard it leave the bat. I didn’t realize how much of an impact it had on my face until I sat down. I was standing up after the 8 inning stretch when it hit me. I was going to walk it off like a black eye but as soon as I sat down I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t see out of my left eye. The rush around me from my boyfriend (now my husband) and from others around me was frightening. I ended up losing my eye. Adjusting wasn’t hard because of the support system around me.
My ex bf breaking into my house when I was asleep. Ambushed me in bed, r*ped me, beat me unconscious...woke up naked on the road, someone had luckily seen me and stopped, they were checking my pulse. His plan was to leave me there so someone else would k*ll me (accidentally.) Still in therapy dealing with PTSD.
I was visiting some family in Edmonton years and years ago and they use to have this big fair full of rides and attractions. I wish I could remember the name sorry. All the rides were your standard carnival rides, the gravitron, tilt-a-whirl, log flume, etc. I had gone to many of these traveling fairs in my time and had a good time so thought nothing of it. After going on a few rides and having fun I decided to go on that ride that is the boat the goes back and forth before going all the way around. So at the beginning everything seemed fine. However at a certain point when going back the safety bar that was suppose to hold me in place just fell forward. It had not locked in and the ride was underway. The ride started heading the other way and the safety bar fell back on to me again. I pulled it as hard towards myself hoping to lock it into place. Yet when we started heading back the bar just flopped completely open again. I was s******g myself. I literally thought I was going to fall out of this ride and die. All those carnival horror stories were true I was fearing. I just wrapped my arms around the bar and held myself with my hands. If worst happened I would dangle from the bar I thought. Fortunately after a rocky ride it came to an end and I was safe with maybe only leaving my seat a few inches. I immediately ran to one of the workers after I got off and told them. The ride was shut down for 30 minutes after and I was done having fun for the night. The only other time I've been that scared since was the few times I've had sleep paralysis .
When my daughter was about two, and was choking on something. I tilted her upside down and beat her back, nothing came up. She was making zero noise, fully suffocating. I was a complete mess, thought she was going to die in my arms. No sooner than I was out the door to jump in my van for the hospital she started whining and coughing. Best sound of my life. Took her to her pediatrician right away. They sent us to hospital for xray to see if object had been swallowed or possibly rearranged in her trachea. Got home and there was a bloody nickel on kitchen floor where incident occured. The whole thing probably lasted 20 seconds of her not breathing, but it felt like nightmare slow motion. This event actually pushed me to pursuing an EMT career. I completed EMT Basic, ended up deciding it wasn't the field for me. But the schooling was a great course of first aid I will carry forever, and I learned CPR and heimlech which I feel every single caregiver should learn.
Everyone should learn CPR. Saving a life is wonderful. My mother (then 65) performed chest compressions on my step-dad when he collapsed (and "died") if not for her efforts he wouldn't be here today. His heart went into a rhythm called ventricular fibrillation and he needed to be shocked out of out, but her compressions kept him going until first responders arrived.
I was put in jail by some corrupt cops saying that my kid wasn't my kid. He put me in there for welfare fraud, as I was getting food stamps for us both.
I had to spend MONTHS in jail as I couldn't afford bond and I refused to settle, demanding a jury trial as my kid is my kid.
This is all while I'm trying to get treatment for a major tumor, which set me back for months. After that, I couldn't afford both the tumor treatment and a place to live, so I was homeless after jail.
I'm still feeling the effects from that a decade later.
This is so wrong! They should have to help or owe you some type of compensation when you’re found innocent!!
I have walked in on my best friend's corpse after a s*icide.
Scary, just a few weeks ago I got robbed at gunpoint by three guys that came up behind me. It was 9PM and right in front of my house. Even when I complied and gave them my cash, they still punched and kicked me afterwards. My focus was on trying to make sure they didn't get my keys either to my house, where my wife and kids were at the time, or my truck that I was unloading. They did get my phone though and dumped it off a bridge. The police found it, but it was smashed to hell, but they did get prints off of it and there is a warrant out for one of the guys. Still scary that they know where I live.
Wow. I try to be alert, especially in parking lots, but unfortunately these events cannot be avoided.
My baby's crib caught fire in the middle of the night. Some people's literal worst nightmare.
Edit: My baby was in it and he was severely burnt and spent a month intubated and in a medically-induced coma. He is 5 now and is ok though!
The fire was a freak accident. His humidifier caught fire, smoldered for a little while and drained the oxygen in the room before the smoke alarm went off. When we opened the door to his room if flooded with oxygen creating a backdraft and launched a fireball at his crib.
I'd just finished a night shift, I'd only been asleep for a few hours band I got woken up by my mother frantically hammering on my front door. Open it to be told I needed to get to the hospital PDFQ as my wife had been taken in at 30 weeks pregnant, she'd had a placental abruption while out and about and was being rushed for an emergency C Section. The surgeon who operated told us after the fact that 5 minutes later and both her and my son would have been dead.
That whole day, man..... Best and worst day of my f*****g life.
I got caught in a rockslide and fell off a cliff while backpacking. Early Spring, things were starting to melt, we were hiking on a ridge and looking for a way down the side, maybe a 60 - 70 degree loose scree slope, to a stream about 500 feet below. I was in the lead, heading down at an angle, rocks kicked out from under my feet, and I fell backwards onto my butt. All of sudden, the entire slope around me began to move en mass, like an island of broken up rocks with me sitting in the middle. I rode it down the hill, bouncing off stuff and trying to stop myself and dig in but no luck, just picking up speed. At the bottom, the hill dropped off to a 40 ft cliff, and I was launched off with the slide. I landed in a pile of debris and loose stuff that previously came down, including a lot of loose snow, which mostly absorbed the energy. I was mostly OK, muddy, lots of scratches and bruises, a separated shoulder and broken tail bone, but I was able to walk out. My one memory is being in mid air, time standing still, and looking to my left at a stove-size boulder likewise suspended in the air, about 6 feet away. Any good size rock would have killed me.
Firefight while i was in the forces. At the time you just kind of shut off and run on instinct/training. But once it's all over, you look down and see you've pissed yourself, your mind runs through it again and again. That s**t stays with you for years. 15 years later and fireworks still f**k me up.
My uncle fought in Vietnam and doesn't talk about it much but this is almost word for word how he described being in a firefight. You can be engaged with the enemy for hours and not even think about what's happing. Your training immediately kicks in and instinct takes over, you're fighting for the guys to your left and your right. Its after the fight when everything is quiet and you're picking up the pieces of your friends and going through inventory that the fear kicks in. That war broke him, by all accounts he was your average 19 year old with a bright future before the war. He spiraled into a bad place for 30 years, no family, spotty employment, substance abuse issues, ect. before he got therapy and you can still see the cracks sometimes when he gets stressed. If you enjoy the freedoms your country affords you, thank a veteran (I know Vietnam is a bad example). They went through hell so you don't have to.
Collapsing to the ground because I couldn’t breathe due to covid pneumonia, not knowing if my time was up. I had taken every precaution and still ended up in a situation I thought was going to k*ll me. That was early on in the pandemic, when respirators were reported to be death sentences.
Two are tied:
Being shot when our neighbor’s gun “accidentally discharged” and the bullet came through the shared wall, severing an electrical line, barely missed my head, glanced off my chest, and landed on the other side of the room. The sheer thought of what could have been if I’d been laying an inch further left is terrifying.
Gas pedal getting stuck while driving home from my mom’s funeral. I somehow managed to get the car pulled over and turned off, but I was going 85 mph+ going uphill. If it had got stuck three miles earlier, I’d have plunged off a seaside cliff, taking my aunt, cousin, and 9 month old daughter with me.
Was doing some mineral exploration work up in Alaska this summer in a very remote mountain range. I was working at a drill site where a grizzly had been spotted at the rig earlier that day and I was naturally a little on edge. I was laying out some wires through very thick brush (couldn't see through it at all), and all of a sudden I hear a really large animal close by, and I smelled the typical wet dog bear smell. Before I had time to react the wire gets ripped out of my hands and dragged into the brush at probably 20mph. I'm freaking out trying to reach my gun and this massive bull caribou just pops his head out and looks me over, then walks away lol.
Got caught in a rip tide when i was 7, after being picked up and beaten with the earth multiple times from the waves i just gave up. My uncle Tom saw me struggling and ended up saving me and pulling me out.
"It is cancer. I'm sorry"
I was 34, and had just gotten married a few months earlier. Stage 2. Grade 3 triple negative, invasive ductal carcinoma.
I'm OK now, treatment was successful.
But three years on, my husband cheated on me, we're getting divorced and my only chance to ever have children (after the chemotherapy left me infertile) remains with the 12 embryos currently stored in a freezer somewhere.
So now I have to decide if I want to be tied to the man who ruined everything and betrayed me, by having his children... its my only option if I ever want to get pregnant.
My mother tried to stab me in the eye because I had schizophrenia and she thought I was “cursed,” but I got away without even a scratch. Three years after that they trained our dog to attack me and I was not permanently injured thankfully. And in 2009 they forced me to commit s*icide by swallowing acetone. I was ill but survived.
I was robbed at gun point in 2001. I was living outside of Detroit and worked at an Aco Hardware (yes, Aco, not Ace) as a lead cashier. I don’t know if they still do this because I don’t live in MI anymore, but they used to have these weekly fliers that always had a coupon for some ridiculous deal, like 10¢ for a box cutter or something else that was a loss leader. It was super common for people to come in JUST to get their coupon item and nothing else.
So it was a super busy Saturday, just after my lunch break, and I’d just got back on my till. We had lines out to BFE and so I got into the speed zone, just trying to get people cashed out without being rude. A dude walked up and put his coupon for a pack of lightbulbs for $1.50 (crazy what details stick in the mind) on the conveyor belt along with 2 singles. I smiled, asked how he was, rung him up and immediately got the register open as I saw his payment right there.
The next thing I knew is he’s opening his coat up and pulling a gun on me and hissing at me, “Give me all your money.”
I s**t you not, the first thought I had was, “Why does he have that toy gun and why is he pointing it at me?” I just stood there staring at him in confusion. This pissed him off and he cocked the pistol (it was a slide action one; again, what you remember when?) and shoved it closer to me and repeats, “I said give me your f*****g money!”
Then it hit me that it was a real gun and I think I just went into autopilot. I took all the money out of my till and just kind of shoved it toward him, and he gathered it up and booked it out the door.
I just stood there and my coworker across the way started calling my name until I finally looked at her with a completely calm face and said, “I think someone just robbed me.” Then my legs gave out and I just fell down and couldn’t stop shaking. It only hit me then how I could have just died.
Later, after the statement and the cops and everything, my coworkers and I surmised that it was a friend of someone who worked there, because they knew to hit my till (since I was head cashier) that had the most money in it.
Still sometimes see that guy with his gun in nightmares. As far as I know they never caught him. I don’t think hardware store robber was high on their list of priorities.
He should have been on their list of priorities, though. He seemed to be very calm and ready to shoot. I bet you anything he ended up killing somebody else somewhere during another robbery.
Coming out, yes this serious i came out to my family that yelled at me took my devices for a year threw bibles at me etc. Its not always sunshine and rainbows being bisexual but its who I am.
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I saw my dad's heart stop in December 2023. He went into v-fib multiple times the night before, I took a red-eye from Virginia up to Michigan, and got there just in time for his heart to give way a couple more times. They kept shocking him back, which he responded well to each time, but each new occurrence took a lot out of him. I had just been talking to him and was sitting by his bedside. He was resting a bit when he looked up, then his eyes got really wide. I called for him but it was clear that he was not there anymore. The entire ICU rushed in and started chest compressions/shocks again. They got him back. In all, his heart went into v-fib 7 times in 48 hours. Multiple heart caths later and he's on hospice but alive. I've said goodbye to him since, but I'll be back up in Michigan in May. I hope I can see my daddy again.
Waking up after a simple gallbladder removal surgery unable to even sit up without help, and before you can ask anything being told its 2 months after the surgery
Why were you unconscious for 2 months after surgery? By that time you would mostly be healed from your surgery and could move with minimal pain. I had my gallbladder out too bit that's a crazy story.
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I saw my dad's heart stop in December 2023. He went into v-fib multiple times the night before, I took a red-eye from Virginia up to Michigan, and got there just in time for his heart to give way a couple more times. They kept shocking him back, which he responded well to each time, but each new occurrence took a lot out of him. I had just been talking to him and was sitting by his bedside. He was resting a bit when he looked up, then his eyes got really wide. I called for him but it was clear that he was not there anymore. The entire ICU rushed in and started chest compressions/shocks again. They got him back. In all, his heart went into v-fib 7 times in 48 hours. Multiple heart caths later and he's on hospice but alive. I've said goodbye to him since, but I'll be back up in Michigan in May. I hope I can see my daddy again.
Waking up after a simple gallbladder removal surgery unable to even sit up without help, and before you can ask anything being told its 2 months after the surgery
Why were you unconscious for 2 months after surgery? By that time you would mostly be healed from your surgery and could move with minimal pain. I had my gallbladder out too bit that's a crazy story.
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