We’ve all got stories like these – the kind of story that when you bring it up, you’re friends groan and say, “Not this again!” But the thing is, it totally happened. And being told that something that actually happened to you is a lie is REALLY FRUSTRATING. Plus, then you start to get a reputation as a liar! The whole experience just sucks. As I’m sure these 17 AskReddit users know, with their stories of incredible things that everyone actually thought were flat out lies:
1. Summertime Rescue
This happened when I was a kid. I lived on a naval base, and the pool there was basically occupied by kids during the long, hot summer, with the adults hanging around at the pool’s edge. I was nuts about going underwater, so used to swim down at the bottom – something most people never did.
Anyway, I was swimming along the bottom when suddenly my heart stopped. I had come across the prone body of this kid called Gareth. I knew his brother, and, thinking he was doing some early 90s version of planking, sunk down and lay next to him on the pool floor. I totally expected him to hit me – but he didn’t. He just lay there. So I poked him. Still lay there. Shook him. Still lay there.
At this point I realized what was going on, and grabbed him and hauled him out of the water, yelling for help. The pool was full of people, but for some reason most of them hadn’t seen the kid. The lifeguard on duty had dived in, and grabbed him from me as I hauled him out.
So there I am, a 10-year-old, watching as a lifeguard takes this kid and puts him on the side of the pool, giving him full CPR. The kid splutters to life, off he goes to the hospital, and the whole pool is shocked.
So we’re all sitting there, and I’m sat next to this kid called Aaron. And I start telling him what happened, and he insists no, he was the one who got help. He saw the kid, got the lifeguard. And I’m thinking ‘this is crap’. Then the adults start lecturing us on how Aaron had been so brave and heroic.
What had happened, of course, is that we’d both acted. But Aaron got a bike as a reward and grateful thanks from parents. I got called a liar at school. It’s one of those weird memories where everything about it is miserable, but I’m still glad I did it.
2. “Why does nobody listen to me?”
A while ago, I had the most excruciating pain in my abdomen that I have ever felt in my life. Can’t even come up with words to describe it. Went to three separate doctors who told me I had a virus and I was exaggerating/had a low pain tolerance. My entire family said the same.
Flash forward to two weeks later and I finally found out the terrifying cause.
I had to have emergency surgery cause turns out I had an autoimmune disease that was attacking my large intestine. It was so last minute my intestine had already broken and practically disintegrated. What followed was septic shock, a coma, and two resuscitations.
Flash forward three weeks later the doctors are telling me they’re moving me out of the ICU and I’m begging them not to because I still don’t feel any better. Again; you’re exaggerating, you’re being negative, your mindset influences your physical state… until I begged them to do another CT scan and they did.
Turns out I had huge abscesses that the antibiotics weren’t getting to. Two more operations and three more weeks in the ICU. Why does nobody listen to me?
3. Hangman
I guessed “Megalomaniacal” straight up playing hangman once; no letters on the board. Everyone was convinced I’d watched the person look it up in the dictionary.
4. Missing Cat
Came home one day and the cat was missing. Wife was in tears. Searched for hours. No cat. I look in filing cabinet. There cat is. Just sleeping. I pick cat up and show to wife. Wife accuses me of locking the cat in the filing cabinet as some sort of bizarre prank. I am innocent. Nobody believes me. We’re divorced now.
5. Wild Boar
My parents live in a more rural neighborhood in my hometown. I was late to school one day because a giant boar was blocking the road. It was massive and could have seriously damaged my car.
We typically get snakes, bunnies, raccoons, etc. in the neighborhood but no one had seen a boar before. So naturally my teacher didn’t believe me and neither did my parents. I didn’t get in trouble but I was definitely made fun of as if I claimed I saw Big Foot or something.
Then my dad was late because of the boar. My mom and other family thought we were joking around and still didn’t believe us. Finally a year later my mom saw the stupid boar. To her credit, she called and apologized.
6. Little Klepto
Someone stole a bunch of stuff from my classmates in the fifth grade and said I did it – even though my own things even went missing.
I told everyone it wasn’t me but no one believed me. One day we were in art class and my teacher pulled me aside and told me she knew I did it and to just come clean. I cried and cried because I never stole anything. This lasted the whole year, I lost all my friends.
At the end of the year a girl finally admitted she did it. Not a single person apologized to me about it, not even my teacher. I’m now 26 years old and this still bothers me.
7. A Re-eely Freaky Vacay
When I was 11 my family brought me to Crete, Greece. They just laid on the boring beach sunbathing all day with the other tourists, while I ran around exploring until I came by some huge rocks.
I decided to try to swim there, and discovered a beautiful reef with a lot of different fish. As I swam around, a huge moray eel swims up to me staring me in straight into my eyes.
I’ve never been so afraid in my entire life. It eventually swam and hid behind some rocks, allowing me to swim back to safety. My family didn’t believe me.
8. Tell the truth…
My ex and I were around 16, just gotten together but already had sex. Nobody thought we would do anything more than kissing.
So we were at her place and she had just gotten a key to lock her room (intended for when she had to study and her three siblings were annoying little buggers). So we locked the door while everyone else was busy and did our thing.
Afterwards someone asked what we were doing because they heard strange noises and with the straightest face my ex said “We had sex.” They seriously didn’t believe us.
9. Adopted
Nobody in my history class believed I was adopted. We had to do this genetics background project and trace our ancestry. And honestly… that’s a terrible idea.
We were to put the countries our ancestors came from then trace our family trees back, as we were going to relate various parts of history to our family trees. Only thing on my project was “Germany, Italy, Lithuania.” No family tree.
If you saw my adopted parents, you’d say I look like a cross between the two. I was, however, adopted as a baby in a closed adoption. All we know of my family is that my dad was a German citizen visiting the US and hooked up with my mom who was a second-generation Italian American who had Lithuanian in her blood.
The teacher made a big deal of the fact my project wasn’t done and tried to embarrass me in front of the class. Other students had seen a picture of my family and agreed I was lying.
Mom was pretty mad when I told her I failed the assignment and called the teacher to inform them that I do in fact have zero knowledge of my genetic background beyond what I wrote. Teacher apologized in class the next day.
10. “The phantom carnival”
Back when I was in college, met up with some friends to do homework assignment at the tech building at around 9am. My dorm was on the west side, theirs on the east. On the grass park on the west side of the tech building there were a bunch of booths put up, like a mini-carnival. Cotton candy, hot dogs, etc. I never saw any announcements for it, but hey, kinda cool.
Met up with friends, and at about 2 we started getting hungry. I said “hey lets get a hot dog at the little fair thing.” They had no idea what I was talking about, so we walked out to…. Nothing, it was gone, every last trace of the booths I had seen had vanished.
A decade later and they still give me a hard time about the “phantom carnival.”
11. “How do we know you aren’t lying now?”
When I was 13 I was walking up the stairs at school and my best friend’s girlfriend was in front of me. At the center landing of the stairs she turned around and slapped me.
I went on to class and the principal came to the classroom and said he needed to talk to me.
It ends up he was in the stairwell too and saw what happened. She told him I grabbed her butt (I didn’t; this was the third time she slapped me for no reason).
I was brought to his office along with the girl and the guidance counselor. They told me what she accused me of and I denied it since I didn’t do it. I said she had slapped me multiple times for no reason.
The counselor asked me if I have ever lied before to which I said yes. She then said something along the lines of “if you’ve lied before then how do we know you aren’t lying now?” I was then suspended and the girl got in no trouble.
12. Bald Eagle Paddle Battle
A bald eagle really did swoop down on me while I was fishing and I really did fight it off with a canoe paddle.
13. Choke Save
About two years ago my wife and I were chilling at home, getting high and playing games. We had cut up a mango to eat but it wasn’t very ripe so the flesh was still quite firm. All of the sudden I hear a gagging choking noise coming from my wife. I turn around and sure enough she was choking on a piece of mango, grasping her throat with her eyes wide open in shock.
At first I started patting her on the back but it wasn’t helping. So I pulled her out of her chair and did the Heimlich maneuver just as I was taught it. I was surprised when the chunk of mango popped out on the first try. She took a moment to catch her breath but after that we were both laughing about just what happened.
I got her a drink and then we went back to playing games and we didn’t talk about that for the rest of the night. The next day I brought it up and she had no recollection of it, she thought I was making it up. If I still bring it up she’ll tell people that I made it up.
14. Fish Allergy
People refuse to believe that I’m full on allergic to fish. If I eat it my throat closes, and I dry heave and writhe around on the ground until I fall asleep or it passes. As you can imagine, this is a pretty fatal thing for people not to buy into.
This has happened to me about a half dozen times in my life, often when I’m alone and eat something without checking the ingredients, and the other couple times I excused myself because I didn’t want to ruin people’s meals.
Anyways, everyone thinks I just don’t like fish and say I’m allergic for no reason. Last year, a couple of my buddies and I were drunk and they snuck some fish into my food, thinking I wouldn’t notice and that in half an hour’s time, when I hadn’t had a reaction, they could out me as a fraud.
My throat promptly closed. Brunch was ruined, and they had to rush me to get medical help as well as cover the bill.
15. Goats can be mean…
Got chased by a herd of goats on the way to School one time, not an appropriate excuse for missing most of math class apparently.
16. Stalker
That my ex-GF, who dumped me, was stalking me. I saw her everywhere; outside my house, my job, my weekend hangout, at stores, restaurants, everywhere. I “randomly” crossed paths with her almost every day. There is NO WAY this could have happened randomly, not a chance. You do not happen across the same person at random nearly every day for a few months, where ever you go.
It really creeped me out. No one else believed me.
17. OMG GROSS
I had a tooth just grow in the roof of my mouth, told my parents and dentist for years but they just thought I was a dumb little kid. 3+ years later, they finally checked and were like “oh there’s a tooth in your hard palate” and removed it. Why do they never listen?
Want more? Check out the articles below:
- 17 Horror Stories Starring An ER Near You
- 23 Stories That Will Make You Re-Think Trusting in Modern Medicine
- 18 People Tell Their Craziest Ex Stories.. and Hold Nothing Back
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