No one wants to believe that horrible things can happen to the children we love – or children at all, for that matter.
We’ve all been children, though, and so we realized that innocence is always lost.
These 15 people have some pretty disturbing childhood memories, so please, brace yourself.
15. That is not okay.
Waking up to the cops shining a light in my face in my upstairs room, then proceeded to leave.
No explanation.
14. One of the lucky ones.
I have a hazy memory of drowning as a really little child and vividly remember my dad pulling me out of the water.
It’s one of my first memories ever.
13. Why are some teachers so awful?
Saw my gym teacher sexually assaulting my middle school crush in the gym office. I was scared and didn’t say anything. The gym teacher was caught eventually with another accident.
But I still think about her from time to time and it fills me with shame that I was such a coward.
12. I hope she got some help.
My mother used to lock me in the bathroom and beat the living shit out of me. I was 6 years old and I remember that my dad usually didn’t do anything about it but this one time he did. I was locked up with my mother, and my dad was banging on the door and yelling that she had to let me out. She was yelling and beating me with a hairbrush. This was the first time my dad stepped in.
After that night my mother came into “our” bedroom (i still slept with my mom and dad) and she started fucking me up with a coathanger and my dad jumped on me to protect me and then my mother proceeded to pull her own hair out and started to slap her face with the same hanger. Her nose was bleeding and tons of hair where on the ground. I did not know what is wrong with her and i still dont since she isnt in my life anymore (19 now) but thing like this would happen everyday and nobody believes me.
Recently told my grandpa about it tho, he believed me but didn’t know all of this shit happened and it hurt him that his son (my dad) never stepped up.
11. Dad’s spidey-sense.
When I was 13 I was at a neighborhood park, waiting for a friend who never showed up.
A man came out of his house across the street and stood on his porch and called out to me.
The porch was deep and a bit shadowy, and I hung back in the street aways but I saw that he was cute. He started talking, telling me he was new in town, from New York, and other random bits of info.
He told me he was 16 and that I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. I was a young 13, and very naive, but I just didn’t believe anyone who’d lived in New York and had all the worldly experiences he’d described wouldn’t have seen someone prettier. I also didn’t quite believe he was only 16; he hung back in the shadows by the door and he looked young, but not that young.
He kept asking me to come up on the porch and sit with him, and the more he’d talk and flatter me, the closer to the house I’d get. Something felt a little off, but I was also the child of an abusive mother and emotionally neglectful father, so I was starving for love and attention, and here was the handsome, worldly guy, telling me I was funny, special, pretty, etc.
I was fully on the sidewalk at this point, and we were talking and laughing so I decided I’d just quit being a baby and join him on the porch. I started to climb the stairs and I suddenly heard the distinctive sound of my dad’s car. I turned around to see he had come down the street opposite and stopped in front of the house. He took one look at me and the house, and told me to get in the car.
On the drive home he asked me what I was doing at that house, and I was silent. I couldn’t get any words out. It was like my head suddenly cleared and I understood how absolutely dangerous that situation could’ve been. He just looked at me and told me that he’d been sitting at home, when suddenly he just had a sense that he needed to go check on me. My dad had never done that before, and never did it after.
It wasn’t until later that it registered for me that when I’d been on the stairs and turned to see my dad’s car, I’d heard the door to the house shut. I’d glanced up briefly and the guy was nowhere to be seen. I’m fully convinced my dad saved my life that day, and that if I’d gone in that house, I wouldn’t have come out, or I wouldn’t have come out the same.
10. Stand By Me.
Poking a dead body lying in the gutter with a stick.
I was too young to understand what I was doing. I don’t remember feeling very scared, either. I never told my parents, but my older brothers have confirmed to me that it actually did happen.
Like an inner city Stand By Me
9. What sort of person would do that?
I was molested by a group of older kids when I was 4. They made me think it was just some fun game and they got so far into my head that I was convinced that the entire thing was my fault for years thinking it was entirely on me because I let it happen.
That has to be the most disturbing memory that happened to me. It still makes me as uncomfortable now as it did when it happened.
8. Mental illness is a scary thing.
My mother suddenly screaming in the middle of the night then dragging my sister and me from our beds into the bathroom and locking the door behind her, slamming her bible against the door and turning off the light then squeezing the two of us to her chest while telling us we all had to pray because a demon was outside, roaming around our apartment, looking to drag us into hell.
Hysteria, tears, frantic prayers, bone-deep terror… I was 10 or 11, I think. Still get shaky remembering it, wish I could erase it from my head.
7. Divorce isn’t always bad.
I remember me and my brother sitting on the couch crying as we watched our parents yelling at the top of their lungs and chasing each other around the apartment threatening to kill one another.
6. That is absolutely haunting.
Back when I was in high school, my assistant principal had to walk me to my car to grab something from it that I forgot. He seemed totally fine. We were chatting and he told me to have a good afternoon.
He shot and killed his wife and killed himself that same night. It bothers me that I didn’t pick up on something being wrong. I couldn’t have done or said anything, but it still occupies more head space than I care to admit many years later.
5. I’m glad, too.
Making out with a 28 year old man when I was 12.
At the time I was flattered that someone older would be interested in me in that way, but looking back on it now I’m DISGUSTED and glad it didn’t go any further than that.
4. I wish I hadn’t read any of that.
Worst is definitely when the babysitter forced my brother and I to rape each other (the oldest of the two of us was 8) while she filmed.
Second-worst is the crunch sound that happened when I gave a friend in 4th grade permanent brain-damage by going sideways on a wooden swing set.
He wound up graduating high-school almost a decade after the rest of us did.
3. I would never have stayed home alone again.
Was home alone once as a young kid, it was summer so I was outside in my hammock reading Percy Jackson. We didn’t have any close neighbors because we lived in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, I’m sitting there closed up in my hammock when I hear a car, thinking it was my parents getting home, I popped my head out of the hammock and went to greet them.
Turned out to be a white van with two middle aged guys in it. I (being the dumb kid I was) said “hello?” The guys were kinda shocked and I then asked them if they wanted to talk to my parents, and I motioned to the cars behind our house.!
Now from the road you can’t see but we have two other cars parked behind our house that were our families and they must have thought no one was home cause there were no cars in the front. Anyway I don’t remember exactly what they said but they made an excuse and jumped back in there car and zoomed away
Didn’t realize how terrified I was till after they left, never felt the same home alone ever again
2. No kid should have to see that.
Watching my father die and not being old enough to help or understand what was happening. Then the next day being interviewed by the coroner to find out exactly where the hands were on the clock when daddy fell down.
I was 3 and it is actually my earliest memory and only memory of my dad. He was severely diabetic and didn’t take his medication or watch his diet. I was on the couch watching sesame street and eating macaroni and cheese with hotdog slices in it, he walked in with his plate and fell down it was around 11AM my mom got home at 2:30.
1. What a good dog.
I was often left home alone in the summer when I was middle school aged. Lived in the country and my parents worked in town 30 minutes away. I was often left to do chores around the ranch and just do whatever afterwards. Usually lots and lots of video games.
Our dirt driveway truly did look like it might be part of the road leading back to 4 houses behind us. Easy mistake other than all the “PRIVATE DRIVEWAY NO TRESPASSING” signs on the open gate….. however people are dumb and did get lost often around there… so we had innocent visitors.
Like clockwork, 3 guys pull up in a Suburban right after my parents left for work. Slowly driving around. I go to greet them and ask if they are lost. I’m 12-13yo and these are some rough looking guys in their 30s. They say yes but cannot tell me where they are trying to go. Driver steps out and asks if I can show him on the map where they are (this was before cell phones). My spidey senses got all full alert mode. I quickly walked back to the front door and let our German Shephard out of the house. The guy was starting to follow me as I was walking to the door and asking what was wrong.
Good ol’ boy that was the nicest dog ever came running hackles up in a full-blown rage. And chased this guy back into his Suburban. They took off in a cloud of dust. I called my parents to tell them what had happened. Like you, I did not realize how terrified I was until after this happened…. I think I was pretty calm and collected in appearance.
2 days later my mother went into town to get groceries. The Suburban pulls right in again. This time my dad went out with a .45 to greet them. They had another lame excuse about being lost and left. Never to be seen again.
We found out weeks later that some of our neighbors vacation homes had been ransacked. Part of me wishes I hadn’t noticed them and they got eaten by our German Shephard upon trying to enter. Would have saved our neighbors a lot of trouble.
I’m so thankful none of these happened to me, but I’m so sorry they happened to anyone.
If you’ve got a similar story you’re willing to share, please drop it in the comments.
