I don’t consider myself to be a paranoid person, but the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of danger out in the world.
But hopefully, you haven’t had to deal with any frightening experiences like the ones you’re about to read from folks on AskReddit.
Take a look…and watch your back out there…
1. Shark!
“I was diving in the Florida Keys on a very popular reef, was in about 30ft of water just kind of exploring. I came around this one corner of the reef and about 10ft from me was the biggest bull shark I have ever seen, and it was just coming towards me.
This thing was at least 9-10ft long. I’ve never pulled my dive knife out faster from my ankle. Thankfully it just went on it’s way and swam right past me. I did run my hand along it as it swam by which was awesome.”
2. Terrifying.
“I saw someone slip and fall from the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. I’m a first responder and have seen bad things but I have control for the most part in those situations.
Watching someone tumbling to their d**th and knowing nothing can be done was hard. Certainly didn’t help my fear of heights either.”
3. Car accident.
“I saw a head-on collision between two SUV’s on a remote section of road near Jasper. Approximately 100 km from the closet hospital. I was first on the scene, pulled bodies from burning vehicles after breaking windows, my shirt caught on fire pulling people out.
I attempted CPR with two other people on 4 of the six people, until they past away in our arms. Their bodies were broken, or CPR was not possible due to severe facial injuries and pneumothorax. One man kept reaching up to me asking me if he was going to d**, and telling me he couldn’t breathe, but his lungs were obviously perforated, I breathed for him until he passed away.
I told him he was loved and was with people who cared for him. The vehicles caught on fire, causing a forest all around us and had to be put out with a helicopter hours later. During the hour that it took for EMS to get to the scene a bear walked through the scene, and we had to constantly scare it away, probably due to the smell of blood.
I watched 2 people burn to d**th because I could not reach them through the fire, I promise I tried to save them. I was covered in blood, body fluids, bone chips, and a tooth stuck in my knee. There was a baby laying face down on the road and it was placed on what I thought was the mom while doing CPR.
In the end, the baby and mother were the only ones of all 8 who lived. So many peoples lives were destroyed that day. I still have ptsd from the experience. I often feel like I failed at saving people, but their bodies were so severely damaged. Smells, sounds, textures, were all so vivid that I get flashbacks, I’m emotional writing this.
Since then, I have had many horrifying dreams, but the dreams that stand out most are dreams of meeting the people who passed. In the dreams they tell me positive words of encouragement and appreciation, even laughs and jokes about life. It’s weird. Please drive safe, love each other.”
4. Crash.
“I saw one of my best friends wreck his motorcycle right in front of me while we ere out riding.
A guy in a Jeep Liberty pulled out to make a left hand turn right in front of us. I was riding tandem behind my pal so I had plenty of time and space to see things unfold and avoid a collision. My buddy, who didn’t wear any gear, crashed in to the side of the car slamming his head against the hood.
This was several years ago. My buddy lived through the ordeal and I had PTSD in a bad way. But it was terrifying watching someone I’ve known for over 20 years crash like that.”
5. One and done.
“I was a skydiving instructor for a couple years.
There was a really cocky kid that went through our program, who was pretty bad at listening, barely tested into the solo jump phase, etc. I didn’t have the authority to kick him out, and regardless, I wasn’t close enough to the situation to know whether or not they were wrong in letting him jump.
His first jump, he had a poor free fall (not uncommon), but not terrible canopy work.
I saw his second jump, where he didn’t follow radio directions under canopy, and turned without looking, such that his parachute wrapped around another student, obstructing that student’s vision and mobility.
At this point, with the first kid hanging by a collapsed canopy wrapped around the second kid (~1000ft off the ground), they are trained to ride it down since neither is moving at a dangerous speed towards the ground. But of course, dingus doesn’t want to follow direction (or the advice given to him over the radio). He cuts away his first parachute, going back into free fall, to allow his reserve to deploy.
Watching from the tower that day, I thought I would witness this kid bounce off the ground. Fortunately, we had some of the best riggers in the country working for us, and the reserve deployed immediately. No sooner had it fully deployed, that kid touched down.
He couldn’t have cut it any closer! Suffice it to say, this kid didn’t get to jump again.”
6. September 11.
“I was 10 and my family and I were on vacation in NYC, exploring Wall Street, when the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The chaos I saw that day still haunts me to this day.”
7. Frightening.
“A wildfire. People don’t understand the noise, heat and speed of a modern wildfire.
I have been managing wildfire risk for a long time and nothing compares to first hand witness of literal hellscape on earth.
Watching one grow miles over minutes with resources surrounding on all sides making no attempt to manage gives a feeling of helplessness that lingers in the soul. Stay safe everyone.”
8. Walking home at night.
“I was walking home at night from work. I saw a man dragging a barely clothed young woman across a sidewalk. She was crying and visibly terrified. I called the police and the whole calvary came. More than a dozen cop cars came and surrounded the area. They got the man.
About a year later, I called the officer who took my statement. I wanted to know if the victim was okay. It broke my heart when I was told it was her partner, and she didn’t press charges, and went back to him. I think about her sometimes. I hope wherever she is, she’s okay now, that she found the strength to leave.
I work in the legal system now. I see a lot of domestic crimes. So many, we have one courtroom devoted to it, in probably the busiest courthouse in my nation. And as many as I see, I know a lot of cases are like hers.
They go unreported. But some never even are seen. I hope when dozens of people can running to save her, she realized people care and want to help her. I hope she remembered that and left that monster.”
9. It was bad…
“Back in the mid 70’s I worked for a company called TriForm Corp in Gurnee, Illinois. I worked in the machine shop on day shift. I usually went in early so I could have a smoke and a cup of coffee before I started my shift. I worked on a turret lathe mostly.
There was a woman who ran that turret lathe on third shift, so I always took over from her. I didn’t know her all that well, just knew that she was pretty and had long silky hair. One morning I heard a scream and then people scrambling, lots of shouting. I ran over to the source of the noise.
It was that girl. Her long hair had gotten tangled on the piece of bar stock she had been working with. It grabbed her hair and ripped her scalp off, peeling in from the back of her head the tip of her nose. When I got there it was still spinning around. I’ll never forget that wet slapping sound it made.
I hit the emergency stop. Somebody had grabbed towels and stuff and wrapped her head and was trying to keep her calm but she was hysterical. It was bad. Real bad.”
10. Out of the sky.
“Plane crashed about 200 feet from me. All I saw was burning rubble and a lot of fire. I was over with fire extinguishers pretty quick but saw no bodies, they were under the wreckage.
Seeing a plane drop out of the sky and explode on impact with the ground was still pretty scary. Somehow I’m not afraid of flying.”
11. Oh my God.
“Went to check on a coworker who hadn’t come to work.
Found her d**d with a vacuum cleaner’s electrical cord tied around her neck. She had been st**bed over 40 times. Blood had soaked through the floor and puddled on the kitchen floor downstairs.
The police said it was the worst crime scene they had seen in 40 years.”
12. Deliverance.
“While in college, I took my girlfriend climbing in a wildlife management area. Afterwards, at her request, we camped there.
I had climbed there often but never camped overnight. About midnight the place came alive with rednecks on ATVs shooting guns at god knows what. I tell my girlfriend that we should leave and she thinks that I am overreacting. After about an hour or so, people were driving right past our tent (and we were camped back in the middle of nowhere – the place is over 10,000 acres), so I told her we were leaving.
About 2 AM I get out of the tent and there are two grown men, both probably in their forties, standing against a tree staring at me. They don’t have a car or ATV anywhere nearby, they had walked up on us very quietly. I was immediately freaked out. The fat one looks right at me and says, “we were just wondering what your girlfriend’s name is.”
At this point, I’m about to s**t my pants and I did something really dumb. Being from Alabama, I had a small pistol in my pocket (.22 Revolver) and I pulled it out and aimed it at these two rednecks. They immediately start acting like normal f**king people, apologizing their a** off, and acting like I am overreacting.
I tell these two guys to start walking down the dirt road away from our campsite. That’s when one of them reaches down and I realize that there are two rifles leaned against the tree behind them. I tell them to leave the guns and that I will drop them off at the DNR station at the main gate. We argue for a few seconds and I had to cock my pistol to convince them to leave. So these a**holes finally start walking off and I have their flashlights and guns. I can see them in the moonlight walking down the road and I am sure that one or both still have pistols on them.
So I yell for my girlfriend to get in my truck (parked about 100’ from the tent) and she is hysterical and refuses to leave the tent. So we then argue because I don’t want to take my eyes off of these two rednecks who have walked about 400’ down the road and are now just standing there staring back toward us. I finally run over to the tent, get her, and we jump in my truck. We leave everything at the campsite other than the guns and her sleeping bag which she has wrapped around her.
We got the f**k out of there and my girlfriend cried hysterically the whole time. I lived over an hour away but she demanded that I drive her to her parents’ house about two hours away. She wasn’t mad at me per se but she didn’t want to talk to me or touch me. Eventually we got a cell phone signal and she called her parents – they spoke the last hour of the drive.
When I finally got her home, it was real awkward and that was obviously the end of our relationship. The next day I drove back to the DNR station to leave the guns but I then realized that it was closed until hunting season. I didn’t want to leave them unattended so I left a note on the door and took them to the Sheriff’s office.
The Sheriff’s office had significantly fewer questions than I expected. I told them what happened, they ran the serial numbers on the guns (neither had been used in a crime), and they copied my license. I never heard from them again.”
Now we want to hear from you.
Tell us about the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.
Please do it in the comments. Thanks!
