I’m going to warn you now that the stories you’re about to read are in no way easy to digest. People see horrible things every day – things they wished later that they hadn’t witnessed, and things they’ll never, ever be able to erase from their minds.
So, consider that your head’s up – because if they can’t forget it, you might not be able to either.
14. I literally don’t want to imagine.
When I was in high-school the drama teacher was walking around on the catwalk high above the auditorium and she got her hair stuck in an exhaust fan. At that time he hair was almost to her knees.
Her scalp was ripped off and I saw her in the hallway with towels and blood everywhere. She was in shock and shivering on the ground.
The school went into lock down and we were escorted to a different area so we didn’t have to see the aftermath.
Unfortunately I saw it before that happened. She was in the hospital for nearly a year recovering.
13. It must have felt like time stood still.
Watched a guy climb our tower crane on my job site and jump off, landed right in front of me.
12. Not the teacher!
When I was a senior in high school I was a TA for the VisCom class [Visual Communication.] They had students do the morning announcements, make student films etc.
Well I was helping to grade mid terms so I headed to the class right before lunch ended. No one was in the class and there was blood EVERYWHERE.
Turns out my teacher had tripped and hit his head on one of the concrete blocks used to hold up the sets. He was in the hospital for a month, and eventually came back to school with a huge nasty scar. He had cracked his skull but another student was there and able to call 911.
11. My heart.
I didn’t see the accident. But while living in Jamaica I saw a man carrying a mangled body just walking in the country. I later learned they were brothers, and worked construction together.
One brother fell from a great height, and the other brother was just carrying his body, walking towards the hospital even though the brother had died on impact.
He was just in a terrible sad mania.
10. He had to have been in a bad place.
Back when I worked at Walmart I walked into the bathroom one day before my shift and seen this guy hunched over the sink with the nozzle on a can of compressed air up his nose spraying up in his nose with blood spewing out all over the place.
Left me in shock for a second before I just left and closed the door and went and told my manager.
9. Baffling.
Got called to the E.R. to help work a code. It was a man who had a bloody nose that simply would not stop bleeding. By the time they got him to the e.r. he had lost so much blood he was in arrest.
Doing CPR on a dude who died from a bloody nose is something I’ll never forget. So. Much. Blood.
8. The look on his face.
On a school bus when I was about 5 or 6. Bus had a head on collision with a guy who was rushing his pregnant wife to hospital. I was knocked out (I don’t remember exactly what happened, heard screeching & then woke up in the bus isle with other students on top of me).
When I got up and we were getting off the bus after a minute or 2 I saw the other car in front. Wife looked she had died on impact (no seatbelt) guy was holding his what appear to be collapsed chest and trying to wake up his wife.
He was screaming (or looked like he was trying to), she was unresponsive. I didn’t really know what to do and all the other kids were crying, so I just vomited and waited. Eventually the cops came and we were all driven to school after being checked out by ambulance.
It was on the local news. I don’t think any of them survived, but it must’ve happened in 1994-1996 I think.
There was no counselling or anything like that, this was out back Australia. My memory of the event is a bit fragmented now, but still remember the look on his face.
7. Not a job for me.
I used to do tissue donation, I lead a team that surgically recovered the tissues. I saw a lot of fucked up stuff.
Dead kids, suicides, homicides, once saw an entire family. Mom, Dad, all three daughters dead.
Had a guy who burned alive in his mustang while upside down. Only his legs and lower torso were burned, down to the bone. The car was upside down and burst into flames really quickly.
Had another guy who was in a standoff with the police, he decided to use a 12 gauge to clear his mind. That was pretty nasty.
6. Pay attention, drivers.
Saw a car hit a man as he was riding his bike, in the bike lane. The man literally flipped in the air and made a scream that to this day I can’t really describe. But he got hit from the back (which obviously caught him off guard) flipped and then landed in a ditch.
The driver of the car stopped immediately and came out to his aid. Only explanation that makes sense is that she (the driver) was distracted because the man was rightfully in the bike lane and she should have seen him from quarter of a mile away
5. It was not fine.
Car accident omw home from work. I stopped to call 911 and got out to check on people. The guy I had checked on was holding his intestines in his lap.
I don’t have a clue how I was able to stay composed for his sake telling him everything was fine. It was just a scratch yada yada.
4. Chills.
A surveillance camera video from a local school shooting. It takes a while before the actual shooting begins, so I kept watching thinking it was going to be a prank style video or something.
Suddenly, one of the kids pulls out a gun and shoots a few of his classmates and his teacher point blank. Several run out, some hide under their desks; perpetrator proceeds to reload and shoot himself in the head.
3. A very bad day.
Not something I saw, but I did see the aftermath. 5 years ago, my father died by suicide. Thankfully it was a clean shot, but he shot himself in the head with a pistol- and my older sister is the one who found his body. I’ll never forget arriving home from college with my friend I used to carpool with, totally unaware, until I turned into my neighborhood and saw 3 police cars and my family crying outside. I instantly knew something was wrong.
My boyfriend (he lived with us) at the time came up crying and said “I’m so sorry _____, but he’s gone. Your dad is dead”. And I instantly felt shock- almost passed out. But seeing my older sisters face- I could tell she had been traumatized. She never went into a ton of detail, but mentioned seeing there was brain matter on the floor- and blood seeped through the chair he had been sitting in. She couldn’t sleep for months.
I remember me and my mom both missed seeing the body, as police had gotten there first and canvased the area (since obviously suicide gets investigated in case of homicide in the early stage) one of the chaplains went inside the house with me to grab some belongings, since we obviously couldn’t stay at the house during investigation, and we all felt too sick to anyway.
I for some reason (human instinct? Idk) kept trying to peak over the curtain they had laid up to hide his body, but I could not see it- and the chaplain told me it is better I didn’t see it. My mom also had a similar thing happen- she was hysterical and kept saying she “wanted to see her husband”. But obviously they wouldn’t let us- and I’m glad for that based off of my sisters reaction and trauma she dealt with later.
The only traumatizing thing I saw was after they had cleaned the scene and tore up the carpet, was the big reddish brown stain from the pool of blood under where dad has shot himself. That and finding small chunks of brain matter/blood spatter on the wall adjacent to him about a month later. A family friend was kind enough to get on a ladder and clean it up/paint the wall for us before selling the house. Obviously none of us could bear to live there anymore.
Oddly enough, my mom, sister, and I were able to feel (better? I guess?) about the situation by making jokes. When we found his matter on the wall, my sister made the joke “wow it was so nice of him to leave a bit of himself behind” and we all just laughed and cried at the same time.
I still miss my dad to this day- but I know he is mentally free from the burdens he was going through. Man got curb stomped at 19, suffered a TBI, and slowly mentally deteriorated from 19 until he passed at 54. By the time he killed himself, he had very bad schizo-affective disorder and none of us could help him- we tried suggesting therapy and everything but he too deeply believed that people were out to get him and that everyone around him just didn’t trust him.
He left a note behind that we found a few months later (we think he deliberately put it in a hard to find spot since the cops would’ve taken it in as evidence if they had found it I think) that said he loved us and that he was “sorry he was such a burden”. I’m glad we kind of got to hear from him after life, but that still chokes me up. I loved that man and wish he could’ve found relief while still on this earth and grown old.
Every time a life event happens now, I always think how I wish he could’ve seen it. Sorry for the long post. If anyone reads this- thank you for making it this far.
2. My heart dropped.
When I was about 9, my friend Jason called to say he was coming over. This was the 80’s, so no cell phones.
So, after he was taking way too long to get there, I called. His grandma said he’d just left a little bit ago. So, I waited, he still didn’t show. We lived in a dangerous part of town in section 8 and so I started to get nervous again. He was only a block away, why would it take so long?
I called gram again and she was like “well, maybe he saw a friend on the way, check outside.” So, I did. I went outside and his dead body was by the entrance to my building. His coat and shoes were gone.
It seems someone murdered a little boy for his stuff. I had the pleasure of discovering him and testifying at the guy’s grand jury later.
1. You should run too.
Walked out of a bar and was Walking down the street and Everyone was running, I had no idea why. Stopped at a corner and there was a girl laying in my left side that I didn’t see at first bleeding everywhere because she got shot.
I always recommend that you run if other people are running. Maybe its a fire, maybe its a earthquake, maybe its someone getting shot. It doesn’t matter but if other people are running you just know gotta get outta there.
The world can be an awfully cruel place, y’all. Most of the time to people who really don’t deserve it.
If you want to add your story to the pile, our comments are open.
