What has been your scariest experience in life so far?

42 comments

  1. Heart disease runs in my family.

    I’m only 31 and have healthy habits, but it’s still something that is in the back of my mind. Earlier this year during a routine checkup my doctor heard something in my aorta that caused her a lot of concern.

    I was wedding planning at the time and had a lot going on, so it took a long while to finally get a doppler done to check out what she was hearing.

    The time in between that appointment and actually getting the doppler was hell. Any little chest discomfort sent me into a panic attack thinking I could be on the verge of some cardiac event.

    Finally got my doppler. Everything clear. EKG is good. Blood pressure is fine. No issues, and no heart disease. So we don’t know what she thought she heard, but my heart is good.

    That doctor ended up retiring in December. Good thing because her faulty hearing made me think I was dying.

  3. I have flown a lot, with a lotta flying over mountains which seems to be the worst flights. Was flying over the Rockies once and that plane was getting tossed around like a rock polisher. I looked to the flight attendants for a little hope, like maybe they’d be “ho hum”; one was white as a sheet and the other one was crying.

  4. Seeing my dad slowly loss it. All my life he’s always been the smartest person I know and in the last yr he’s been forgetting the most simple things and it hurts especially his dad went downhill around the same age

  5. My mother was in hospice with terminal cancer.

    My siblings and I would spend all day there with her, and go home to rest at night.

    One morning, a nurse called and told us we should get there as quickly as possible. My mother had told her she could feel she was dying.

    We went and sat by her bedside. She was lucid for a few moments here and there and we were able to exchange some last words of affection, and for that I am forever grateful. Hours later, she passed.

    It has shaken me to my core to know that dying has a distinct feeling, and that you know what it is when it’s happening to you.

  6. Being locked in the back seat of a car while two guys pepper sprayed me and tried to rob me

  7. As a young lad I worked in a coal mine. I was a roof bolter and you’re never supposed to work under open (unsecured) roof in the mine. I was new and hungover and was reaching out from my machine to adjust something, putting myself, stupidly, under open roof. I heard a dripping sound and my partner yelled, I pulled back just in time, there was easily a ton of rock and coal where I was just standing. It was a pretty close brush with death.

    Also less specific, any time my young kids have been hospitalized or one time almost hit by a car, it’s a different type of fear but it’s all consuming, if your mind dare ask “what if?” In those scenarios. It’s dark and urgently terrifying.

  9. My ex and I weren’t doing too well, so I decided that I was going to move back in with my parents for a bit. She didn’t like that news, but didn’t seem too terribly distraught since her mom was living there (I couldn’t afford to continue to support both of them at 25).

    Woke up in the middle of the night to my ex standing at my bedside crying, and holding my pistol. She wasn’t pointing it at me, but she also didn’t know shit about guns. I always kept it loaded with one in the chamber.

    Fucking. Eggshells.

  10. The most scared I’ve ever been is when my brother called the cops on me as I was a very troubled kid, and they were searching my room and everything, and they didn’t find stuff that would’ve gotten me into serious fucking trouble, like life altering trouble. Whenever I think back to that moment, like now, my heart starts racing and I kinda have this ptsd moment, but holy fuck, at the time I can’t even describe the feeling. And it was so prolonged as well, and I just wanted it to end. I’ve had other scary moments, but they were all real short in comparison.

  11. Nothing too crazy, being lost in a foreign country that didn’t speak English with no cell service

  12. Probably waking up and realizing i was completely out of alcohol and the stores were closed.

    It was mostly just from anxiety, but I could not stop shaking. Couldn’t hold my phone. Could hardly move. As the night went on it got worse, my head was going to explode. Anything i drank or ate came right back. Dry heaving out of the apartment window.

    Sent a desperate voicemail to a friend saying if I don’t respond by 9am to come check on me.

    5 years sober

  14. tl;dr: Had a really scary accident

    During my early 20s I spent some time living and studying in South Korea. I was dating my ex-wife at the time who comes from there. However, for cultural reasons it wasn’t possible for us to live together. In fact, she had to keep me a secret toward her parents although we had been in a committed, serious relationship for 3 years by that point.

    So, because we couldn’t live together, I was renting a cute little studio apartment where I was living by myself. Originally, I was going to live on campus but the housing absolutely sucked and they had totally crazy rules. I wasn’t allowed to take any female to my room and they made absolutely sure of that (there was literally a guard posted at the dormitory entrance). Not being able to live with my GF and not being able to have her stay overnight was already bad enough but at least I wanted to have some privacy with her during the day. So I asked her to help me find an off-campus place to live. By myself I probably wouldn’t have managed to find anything but as a local, she had access to lots of places I didn’t have access to.

    Anyway, one morning I got up after a bad night with a headache and little sleep. Now, it’s important to explain the layout of my studio. It had a very high ceiling with one main floor and balcony-like second floor. The second floor was only a few square meters, so that’s where I had my “bedroom”. There was a handrail and you could see down into the lower floor. The two floors were connected by an extremely steep, wooden staircase without any sort of handrail or rope etc.. I really loved my studio but that staircase was a fucking safety hazard.

    So, I got out of bed, feeling groggy and tired. I also suffer from a severe visual disability (I’m legally blind), which made the walk downstairs even more dangerous. I stepped on the stairs but didn’t catch the first step quite right. I lost my balance and panicked. My hands were trying to catch a guardrail but of course there was none.

    I felt like I was going to fall down the stairs face-forward but this scared the shit out of me because right at the bottom of the stairs, I had placed a large, man-sized cactus when I first moved in. Genius idea, I know.

    So, in order to avoid that cactus, I gave myself a push to the right, thereby falling off the stairs sideways (where the handrail would normally be). Obviously, all of this happened extremely fast, within a second or two at most.

    I fell down roughly 9 feet head-first into the kitchenette area. I distinctly remember thinking: “Oh shit, this is gonna hurt really bad.” A split second later I felt a really strong blow to my chin and another split second later an even stronger blow to my temple. Then… nothing.

    When I gained consciousness again, I was lying on the downstairs floor. I got up into a kneeling position and noticed there was a puddle of blood on the floor. This really confused me. Who’s blood was this? I began to frantically touch myself everywhere and finally noticed my chin was still dripping blood. So… apparently, it was mine. But how did I get injured? And how bad was the injury? Were there other injuries I couldn’t see/feel?

    I began to look around and that’s where things got really scary. I was in some sort of… apartment? I couldn’t remember having ever seen this place before. Had I been abducted? I could see a door and wondered if it was locked (did someone lock me in here?) I wanted to get up and walk there but it hurt too much. Also, if I had really been kidnapped, where had I been before? I tried to remember places and people but my brain was completely blank. So, I decided to start at more basic things. Where did I grow up? What country was I in? Who were my parents? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then the scariest question of all: who am I? What’s my name? I couldn’t remember it for the life of me. I tried to think of common male names. Peter? No. Paul? Simon??? No. It all sounded wrong. But then what the fuck was my name? What was I doing here? What was my job? How old was I? It was literally like in the Jason Bourne movie. My brain was like a hard-drive that’s been completely wiped clean. Not knowing even these basic things gave me a huge amount of panic. I became convinced that someone had kidnapped me but how could I possibly escape if I didn’t even remember my name? What sort of sick things had they been doing with me?? Meanwhile, my chin was still bleeding heavily. I managed to get up and look out the window but that didn’t help, either. What I saw looked completely unfamiliar.

    Then, out of nowhere, this one word popped into my mind. Like a bright neon sign in a dark night. It was a name. Yumi. I didn’t quite understand who this person was but I could sense that somehow she was very important to me. It was someone I was very close to. Someone who’d be able to help me. I saw a phone lying on the desk. I thought to myself: “Omg I’m so lucky, the kidnappers must’ve left this here, I must find Yumi before they come back!!!” Of course in reality it was my own phone. I looked through the contacts and there she was. It was my GF/now ex-wife. Fortunately, she picked up. I must’ve sounded very out of it because she immediately realized something must’ve happened. She ask me to wait and hung up. I panicked because I thought she wouldn’t help me but then she called back saying an ambulance is on the way.

    They put me on a stretcher and drove me to the hospital. My GF came as fast as she could. They put me through a whole series of tests. I had a pretty bad concussion but no serious/permanent brain injuries. My chin had to be stitched up and I had to go to the dentist because I had lost two teeth. I also had some pretty bad bruises but no internal injuries. They fixed me up great and thanks to socialized healthcare, I didn’t pay a dime haha.

    While scrubbing off the dried blood from my apartment floor a few days later, I suddenly realized I had been INSANELY lucky. Basically, during my fall I had first crushed onto the kitchen counter with my chin. Hence the wound and lost teeth. Fortunately, my tongue hadn’t been between my teeth, otherwise I would’ve probably bitten it right off. From the kitchen counter, I then fell head-first onto the stone floor, hitting it first with my temple.

    Had I fallen down just a little differently, I would’ve missed the kitchen counter and instead would’ve impacted the stone floor with my head directly. Considering I fell down around 9 feet, I most likely would’ve sustained very serious and permanent brain damage. And no one would’ve found me because my GF wasn’t planning to visit me for another 3 days.

  16. I did CAR T for Lymphoma in 2020. I got severe side effects and had to be intubated for 6 days. Woke up and couldn’t walk due to muscle loss during my 6 day nap. It worked though.

  17. I was stabbed once , and for few moments I didn’t realize it, but when I touched my wound and saw blood , I got chills. I Panicked and thought I was gonna fucking die. I literally started to reflect on my life really quick. luckily I had plenty of belly fat that time and I was stabbed on my Fat pads so, I went to hospital myself . I will never forget that moment.

  18. 1) Being shot at by a 107mm RPG.

    2) An CRAM round hitting an RPG and being showered in shrapnel.

    3) My plane losing engine power over a populated area.

    Guess I like life a bit spicy lol

  19. School shooting during my junior year of college.

    In retrospect I was safe, the shooter didn’t wound or murder anyone in my building. However, the memory remains where I and the others in my class were huddled on the floor, listening to one of the tougher guys start bawling when he learned that a friend was shot, the constant ringing, buzzing and silent answering of phone calls and of course the heavy thought that kept coming back to me “is THIS it?”

    Fortunately the pos wounded only four or five and “only” murdered one young 19 year old boy, stealing from him any chance of a life. He would have been around 27 or 28 now.

    I learned and saw a lot that day, I can only imagine what it would be like to have lived through a bigger shooting.

  20. Head on collision in a car both going 60 mph. Broke my sternum on the steering wheel. Near death experience visions And all that.

    Woke up and my girlfriend was flown away in a helicopter with bad internal injuries. Didn’t know if she survived

  22. Circa Dec 2000, on a plane from Singapore to LAX. Disheveled guy from Kasmir region, no ID, and drunk, has finally woken up and is raising hell. Touching the girl in front of him, trying to light up a cigarette, opening windows in a dark plane, locking himself in the bathroom, and demanding to know how many minutes before we land.

    Context – this is before 9/11 happened, so this isn’t some overly paranoid observation – this is a drunk nut job, no social skills, from one of the most dangerous places in the world (at this time), and it’s Ramadan. No idea how he go on the plane.

    The situation – my brother and I are returning from vacation in Bali. We’ve consumed the acid and ecstasy we brought to avoid customs in LA, my brother has been making out with a stewardess all flight. When shit starts getting real about 15 minutes from LAX, the flight attendants (all very small stature folks from Singapore) ask my brother and I to sit on both sides of this guy, no seatbelts, and TAKE HIM OUT if he tried anything. Needless to say, it was a tense situation. When we landed, the entire plane stayed in their seats while air marshalls came in and took the guy off. For reference, my brother is 6’3″ and head to toe tattooed. We looked the part.

    The other time was my first time on a trad lead rock climbing. My belayer lost contact with me and didn’t know I was at the anchors, and I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t coming up (I had pulled up all the rope, he was on belay, but he thought I was still climbing and had reached the end of the rope). Learned my lesson about climbing with people I didn’t know.

  23. Took the wrong exit on the freeway and my phone was dead so I couldn’t use the gps

  24. Those few moments when I was riding my bike and saw a car u-turning in to my way and I already know the crash can’t be prevented.

  25. Have a random car try to crash into me, tail me, follow my every lane change and turn, and chase me down a busy highway trying to pull their car up next to me. In the process, I accidentally cut off a cop, they pulled me over, and that car took off. Cop thought we were racing. I was just scared as hell not wanting them to get near me and my friends in the car.

  26. P pop Waking up doing a 100+ km/h down median of a highway because i fell asleep while driving at 3am in the morning. Thankfully recovered it and both i and passenger survived.

  27. When my second kid was born and my wife kept bleeding. There was so much blood so fast and for so long that the doctor plopped a trash can at the end of the hospital bed to catch the waterfall of blood.

  28. My older brother pouring cold water from a bucket on my face to wake me up at night and hit me because he was angry at me for reasons I forgot

    According to the therapist, this is indeed a traumatic event. And it kinda affected my life so far

  29. I worked as a campus police dispatcher for quite a while, which is mild compared to larger city dispatch. 98% of the time, our 911 calls were a wrong number, or a non emergency call. One night I received a 911 call and the woman on the other end said, “helllllllllllp meeeeeeee”, then I heard the phone drop. Never in my life have I understood the meaning of getting chills down my spine. This was the one and only time I felt that feeling. It turns out the woman was new to the military and took the safety warnings about alcohol consumption a little too seriously, so she thought she had alcohol poisoning but in reality was just drunk. The End.

  30. Both were self induced but for very different reasons.

    Firstly, serious mountain climbing with a guide and learning the definition of a “no fall zone” at 11,000 ft elevation. The only thing holding me from a panic attack was the knowledge that anxiety would only make the situation harder.

    Secondly, having a panic attack after eating an edible in Amsterdam. Hours of unending panic attack with my heart pounding super fast and shaking from adrenaline.

  31. I had a very near death experience. I have been told by multiple doctors that not only am I lucky to be alive, if I hadn’t been at a trauma center (luck of the draw, I was living rurally and it was the closest ER) I would be dead.

    I don’t remember most of it. I remember crying from the pain and at some point, screaming. Then it goes blank until I woke up 5 days later on a morphine and antibiotic drip.

    Don’t get sepsis.

  33. Having a mental breakdown 4 years ago and nearly took my own life. I left my mental health unchecked for such a very long time and I was only going off of 2 hours of sleep per night back then for about three years when I was working and it totally destroyed me on top of my other mental problems. To this very day tho, I’m still dealing with it by going to therapy but as for ever working again? Probably not. But anyways, yeah. Seriously people…if you ever get in that position, I please urge you to get some serious help. Mental health is a very important matter these days.

  34. Waking up with my throat closed over. Couldn’t breathe for 1-2 minutes but it felt a lot longer. Thought I was going to die. Got super relaxed and calm. Somehow started breathing again.

    Happened one more time a year later. Resolved quicker. But still scared the shit out of me.

    Keeps drifting back to my mind.

  35. Had Covid for 9 days, 6 of which I don’t remember. Doctors told my wife to get my affairs in order. Really strange and terrifying that I was so close to death but I had no idea.

    My middle child was born with a rare blood disorder that is typically fatal. He survived and has been 100% cured.

    I think it would be one of those two.

  36. 30 people running at me with knives, guns, bottles and bats. That was one of the scariest at least.

  38. I was in Zante, Laganas Road at 1:00. Suddenly started a fight, black against white boys, they started breaking their beer bottles on the fences of the restaurant where I was eating, then they started fighting each others, blood everywhere, their eyes were like the ones of wild animals. A waiter exited from the restaurant to dismiss the fight but he was stabbed by one of the black guy, so I and a friend of mine picked him immediately inside, closed the doors and we evacuated all the people that were eating near the street and waited for the police to come. During the nights I passed here, there were all the time policeman and cars but that night no one came here to help. In the end nobody died but many of them went to the hospital… It did not panicked but I’ve never seen such violence on a road.

    Sorry for the English and for calling guys black and white but the reason why the fight started was for racial slurs so It’s easier for the understanding

  41. I worked in a retail store that was held up at gun point. The robbers tied my arms and legs before removing the cash from the cash register.

  42. My 21st birthday. I woke up around 3am not knowing where I was, had 23 marks on my arm, and the worst chest pain ever. I genuinely I was gonna die.

    My friends helped me get home and I lay there hearing my heart beat through my head. Looking back, that was probably the closest I came to death.

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