What do you think is the absolute scariest thing that’s ever happened to you in your whole life?
I’m talking about the incident that made you feel actually fearful and you maybe even thought that your life could be in danger…
While you think about that, read over these tales that will creep you out.
Let’s take a look at some scary, true stories from AskReddit users.
1. Close call.
“I (F) was traveling in Egypt with two male friends, all of us 17/18 at the time (1989). We were walking down the street in Alexandria and two men got out of a black car, grabbed me and threw me inside.
My friends jumped onto the car and held on while it tried to drive away, then other people started crowding around it and shouting, so they opened the door and shoved me back out and just drove away.”
2. Neck problems.
“I woke up feeling sticky and gross. I thought to myself “gross, did I drool all over myself while sleeping?”
So I go to the bathroom to wash up and look in the mirror. I’m covered from my lower lip to upper chest in blood! I head out of the bathroom toward the kitchen and tell my mother to call a doctor, she nearly faints upon seeing me but I tell her i’m ok and ima wash up.
I clean myself up and after washing most of it away I see the wound dead center on my neck where a pimple was. It is doing the thing you see in movies where blood squirts out with each heartbeat. A bandaid does the trick for now and they cauterize my neck as a longer solution.
What I had thought was a pimple was in fact a blood vessel that decided to make a Y branch except the new branch was straight out my neck. A simple surgery fixed it but d*mn was that scary.”
3. Drive carefully.
“Dozing off for a split second while driving which led to a panicked overreaction to my tires moving into the gravel on the shoulder of the roadway.
My overreaction jerked the SUV back onto the roadway so fast that it turned a 40+ degree angle and then flipped 4.5 times, rolling down the interstate about a quarter of a mile. I was conscious through it all, including the 2 “bounces” of my head against the asphalt.
Vehicle came to rest in the ditch and I climbed out in a panic over what just happened.”
4. Being followed.
“I went to my job (a grocery store) to pick up my check and this guy walked in behind me. I went and grabbed something to buy and he was behind me again in the line with nothing in his hand.
He finally picked up a thing of gum and when I walked out the store, he put the gum back and followed me out. Once I got to my door of my car I quickly got inside and locked the door to find him right behind me and acting like the car next to mine was his.
When I guess he realized I wasn’t in his reach, he went back inside the store. It might not seem so scary to most, but I had a full blown panic attack in my car that day.”
5. Predator.
“Me and my sister were oblivious to potential child predators.
Long story short, we went with some dudes backyard to see his vegetables he was growing. He wanted to teach us golfing and he placed his hands on my sisters hips and spoke in a soothing voice telling her it’s okay, let me guide you.
I felt uncomfortable and took my sister by the hand and said we gotta go. It could’ve been worse. We were 8 and 12yrs old.”
6. Very scary.
“I was the victim of an attempted kidnapping when
I was 11-years-old.I went to dinner at my friend’s house a few houses down and across the street. After dinner I walked back home. I was looking at my house waiting to cross because a car was coming. It was a white van that came to a stop right in front of me.
A guy rolled the window down andtold me to “come here.” I shook my head no. Someone opened the rear sliding door and began getting out.
Remember all those videos you watch as a kid telling you what to do in these situations? I forgot all of it in that moment and froze. I was paralyzed with fear for a moment until my flight response finally kicked in.
I yelled no at the top of my lungs and started running back to my friend’s house. Thankfully her dad was out working in the front yard. The van did a u turn and the tires screeched as they peeled out of there. My friend’s dad called the cops and walked me back home where the cops came to get a report.
The very next day there was a news report that a young girl was kidnapped from a nearby community by a vehicle matching the description of the one that tried to take me. They were eventually stopped trying to get into Mexico with the kid (this happened in southern Arizona).”
7. Frightening.
“737 I was on encountered a coincidence of air currents and jet wash from a plane ahead of us on approach. We were fairly close to the ground and the plane turned f*cking SIDEWAYS. One wing pointed at the ground, the other at the sky.
Happily the pilot recovered and we were fine. But for a moment I had calmly accepted that this was how I was going to die.”
8. Walking the dog at night.
“I used to walk my dog pretty late (like 2 in the morning) because of my work schedule. I would take her to the dog park at the end of our walk to run around and burn off energy before bed. After COVID lockdowns happened, the lights that used to illuminate the park got shut off, so I had to rely on just a flashlight to see.
So one night, I take her to the park as usual, close the fate, unclip her leash, and… She stands stock still, staring at something in the distance. I thought it was weird, so I shine my flashlight in that direction. Next to the dog park is a huge empty field that leads to some woods, so I expected a deer or something.
Nope. There’s some person walking across the field, right toward the park. When I shone my light at them, the person started running toward me. I freaked out, picked up my dog, and sprinted all the way home.
I don’t know what the f*ck that was all about, but I’m a very weak, tiny girl, so I didn’t want to risk anything. My BF walks the dog at night now.”
9. OH MY GOD.
“I had been backpacking across Canada. After walking for 21 hours and not being able to find a place to camp for the night I just kept walking.
I had been walking on the right side of the road and kind of dozed off while walking and a truck passed me on my RIGHT side. While walking I had inadvertently walked out to the middle of the highway.”
10. At the fishing spot.
“There’s a popular fishing spot by me in a local river that sometimes can have pretty fast water. The weekend before an elderly man was wearing his waders, fell in the water, sunk because of his full waders, and was washed down river, unable to get up because of the fast water.
My boyfriend and I decided the next weekend we would fish downriver from that spot. We knew the water was high and were going to be extra careful in light of the recent event. Well, I had just lost 25lbs and hadn’t been in fast water since then.
My boyfriend got out in the river and held his had out to me to help me cross. I get to him and I find that the rocks are just flowing out from under my wading boots. I knew what was happening, and I was terrified because I was in waders and there was a large and very deep pool just downstream from me.
I was leaning against him and told him I can’t get my feet under me. From there it escalated to him bear hugging me and trying to push me to the bottom so I could walk out. He’s nearly the same size as me so I figured we were both going to be swept away.
I kept fighting him because I thought it was him picking me up, not the water. Eventually he was able to throw me to the edge of the river bank where I went under. I was then able to kneel up and be stable, while my waders were completely flooded.
We got out of the water and decided to never fish at that spot again.”
11. This is terrible.
“When I was 12 I often snuck out at night from our mobile home that I shared with my 5 siblings, mom, and abusive step dad. I would walk half a mile to a nearby elementary school and swing on the swing set for an hour or so, and then sneak back home.
One night on my way to the school a stranger grabbed me from behind, dragged me off the road into the wooded area, and r*ped me. Most of the fear was me afraid I was going to die, the pain was unimaginable, he would smash his fist into the side of my head every time I screamed and I was starting to black out, and I remember crying, so scared that I would never see my baby siblings again.
Then I woke up at the break of dawn, alone in the underbrush. Got dressed after finding my clothes, snuck back into our home, took a shower, and got dressed in some baggy clothes, and went into my siblings room to watch them sleep for a little bit.
I didn’t end up telling anyone about this until after I had broken down about it in therapy a couple years ago. Took me until last summer to finally tell my mom, who now has trouble speaking and looking at me because of the intense guilt she feels (both at letting me be abused by her then-husband and the r*pe). I still have nightmares that I’m being beaten to death, surrounded by pain.
I was r*ped again at 24 but it just didn’t come close to the first one, if that makes sense. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying, though obviously still awful. Almost 30 now, hoping nothing like that ever happens again.”
12. Hell no.
“A group of guys approached me and my friend late at night at a fast food place, insisting we give them a ride to the nearby college and insisting they weren’t going to try anything.
Mind you, these grown men approached two obviously teenage girls at probably ten at night, and was adamant that we give them a ride. They proceeded to call us cold hearted b*tches when we ( more like I, as my friend just sat there) told them absolutely not. The college wasn’t really that far away, maybe a ten minute walk, and it was the middle of summer.
Friend disappeared once she ordered her food and I went to go get my fountain drink. The bigger of the dudes got up in my face once again and began hammering me for gas money. Again, told him no over and over. I was almost in tears. He proceeded to cuss me out some more before him and his group of guys left.
I don’t know if they had any ill intentions but as two petite teenage girls late at night, the dudes definitely gave me a weird vibe. Especially when they insisted they weren’t going to try anything.
My friend told me she felt bad in case they actually needed help but I told her I’d rather be seen as a cold hearted b*tch, then end up missing or dead.”
13. Creeper.
“When my husband and I lived at our old apartment, I would have the window cracked open during the summer because of how hot it was.
Well one morning I woke up to my husband next to me covering me in the blankets. I was nude and didn’t want blankets because of the heat.
I heard a voice of a man I didn’t recognize say “Sorry. Sorry.” I was startled but without my glasses I couldn’t see very well. I was terrified seeing the blurry figure of a man halfway in through our window. Like he would have made it all the way in if he turned towards us.
My husband told him to shut up and get the f*ck out or he’d get his gun. (We don’t have one.) He left saying go back to sleep. Husband called the cops. It wasn’t the first or last time we were bothered by that same man.
For background: That man was abusive. His Daughter ran from home and he thought I was her because he never got a good look at my face. He tried calling the cops on my husband a few times for kidnapping.
He would pound on our door and threaten my husband with knives saying that his daughter needed to come home. He kept trying to get to me when my husband left for work.
I still have issues over it. I work from home and even though we moved I’m still scared of loud knocking and sounds by the windows.”
14. Attack dog.
“I was badly bitten by a dog when I was 10. I lost a lot of blood.
But I was under my grandmother supervision, and that poor lady panic at the slightest bit of something being maybe not okay. I mean I saw her panic for a bee looking like it might enter the house. Or Because she had heard someone brake hard down the street.
So when she saw me with half of my upper lip falling-off, and blood everywhere, she screamed and screamed, and screamed, and panicked.
So, I panicked even more as well, not really because she panicked, I already knew that my grandmother reactions weren’t really telling of the situation’s gravity, but because I thought I was f*cked because there was no one to help and care for me, now.
This was the scariest part of it all actually. I mean the bite, and the blood were scary. But thinking that I was on my own with a severe injury, with no idea of what to do, and unable to communicate was downright frightening.
However, our screams alerted my neighbor who was a very calm man, and kept his head and took care of me, until EMT came in. (I’ve been told that he did have a panic attack afterward, the poor man).”
Alright, now we want to hear from you.
In the comments, tell us about the scariest thing YOU’VE ever seen in your life.
We can’t wait to hear your hair-raising tales!
