Life can be scary, no doubt about it.
And sometimes, just when you think everything is okay, something can come out of nowhere and frighten the hell out of you.
Let’s hear from AskReddit users about the scariest things that ever happened to them.
Start now!
1. The West Bank.
“I was 10 years old living in the West Bank in occupied Palestine.
I walking home from the store with a gallon of milk. IDF forces rolled into town on their army jeep and started firing their weapons. I happened to be the only person in the road at that time in that part of town. It’s not like there were others. Just 10 year old me. T
hey started firing their weapons near and at me and one of the bullets struck the gallon in my hand while I was running and obviously I freaked out and dropped what was remaining of it. I myself did not get struck directly.
Later I found out the bullets they were firing were rubber. But still, like a said i was alone on the road and did not agitate them but still got shot at
That same day a kid I knew from school lost his eye because the same army jeep rolled up to different parts of town and just started randomly spraying people with rubber bullets.
Definitely the scariest thing to ever happen to me.”
2. Hold on!
“Survived an EF 4 tornado.
Had to hunker under a bridge in the middle of a corn field, holding on to the rebar.
Couldn’t hear myself think as the winds and debris was whipping around.”
3. Falling.
“I fell 40 feet on a job and landed on concrete, between all the stubbed up rebar.
Really broke my body up.
That was March of ’88. I worked another 30 years.”
4. Close one.
“In the late ’80s, my husband, pre-teen son, and I were traveling in rural Minnesota in our Chevy Suburban. It was a foggy day and hubby was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, and son was in the back seat.
I was doing needlepoint and had an odd, uneasy feeling. I looked up and, through the fog, saw a flashing red light. Train crossing?
I yelled, “Stop!” and hubby slammed on the brakes. We slid to a stop as a locomotive barreled across the intersection just yards in front of us.
I remember watching my husband’s shaking hand reach out and shift the truck into reverse, and he backed us up a few yards.
From the rear seat, our son’s voice said, “Wow, was that…?”
We sat for long minutes as the train cars raced by, realizing what almost happened. It wasn’t until hours later that we were able to talk about it, and it still gives my heart a stutter when I think about it.”
5. Fatigue.
“I’m a truck driver.
Early on in my career before I knew my limits and warning signs of fatigue, I fell asleep while driving one night, woke up on the wrong side of the road at 100kph just in time to see oncoming headlights and swerve back into my lane, the time between me waking up and getting back to my side of the road would have been no longer than four seconds, a semi went by in the opposite direction with another truck behind him.
To this day I wonder if it wasn’t the big man upstairs tapping me on the shoulder and saying: ‘wake up, it’s not your time yet’, or maybe ‘it’s not his time yet’ because if I hadn’t woken up when I did, I have no doubt that head-on collision would have k**led me, and both of those other truck drivers coming the other way.”
6. Being watched.
“We didn’t know we were being watched for months
The robbers hid under the big exterior staircase leading up to our house a few weeks before Christmas. They probably noticed (or they knew) that my dad was on his occasional travel and won’t be home for weeks. My older brother was also out of town.
It was just me, my mom, and my cousins
Some neighbours were driving home that time and passed by our property around 8 PM. They immediately called us saying there were shadowy figures holding something shiny going under our staircase.
I guess those creepy “shadows” knew that two of us would go down that staircase around 8:30-9:00 to take out the trash. My mom radioed security but they only found a newly sharpened big butcher’s knife with no handle. We don’t own anything like that.
Needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep that night.
Heck… They were already too familiar with our schedule and knew the perfect time to attack.
We moved out years ago. But this incident still haunts me.”
7. Way up there.
“5th time I went tandem skydiving, my left leg strap wasn’t fastened. It’s the instructor’s job to check my gear and obviously he missed something.
I had to “stand on” his feet the whole way down so I didn’t slip out the bottom of my harness.”
8. Whoa!
“I called spree k**ler Andrew Cunanan an a**hole mid-k**ling spree and I know he at least considered ki**ing me.
I’m walking my dog and light at intersection is changing so I start and guy rolls through red light and and almost hits me and my dog. I yell “A**HOLE” and it slams on the breaks and turns into a parking lot ahead of me.
I could see the car has Illinois plates (I’m just outside Philadelphia). Driver says “careful who you call an a**hole. I’ve k**led people” very calmly. I just keep walking.
Next day it’s in the news he m**dered somebody that night across the river from me and it turns out he used a stolen credit card at the gas station that’s THE NEXT LIGHT DOWN from where he almost hit me.”
9. Horrific.
“I had taken my kid to the doctor for a backache.
While there, they gave him the flu mist vaccine. He had taken it for years. On the way home, I heard a noise in the backseat. I looked in the rear view mirror and my son was having a full blown tonic clonic seizure with blood pouring out of his mouth.
He then collapsed. I thought he had d**d. To this day, I have no idea how I was able to stop the car safely and call 911.”
10. Insane.
“I was shot in the back of my head when I was 17.
I was driving, my friend was in the passenger seat and the car came up on the side of us and started shooting. My car stalled, I was bleeding everywhere and yelled to my friend to take me to the hospital. He looked like he seen a ghost and said he didn’t know how to drive a stick.
While holding the back of my head, I put the car in 1st, started it and drove my self to the hospital. He either used budget bullets or my head is extremely hard, but it didn’t penetrate my skull, just got lodged between my scalp and my skull.
Scary s**t, I was crying thinking I was gonna d**.”
11. At war.
“I was a g**ner in a Humvee in Baghdad, Iraq. Out on mission but mostly finished for the day.
We always handed out candy and water to the civilians on our way back to camp. This time I was rear security (3rd truck in a 3 truck convoy). I had a very strange feeling to stand up (this isn’t the norm as we were ordered to stay seated in our gunners strap to make smaller targets) so I did.
As soon as I stood I was encompassed by a blinding white light and a concussion of force. I woke up as soon as I hit the ground of the truck floor. Shrapnel from the blast had he me in the right arm and completely shattered it. Turned out to be a s**cide bomber with an SUV full of explosives had rammed into our first truck.
The scariest part for me were the sounds of it all as I was laying on the Humvee floor. The screeching of the wheels, the panic in everyone’s voices and then the absolute dead quiet for a few seconds once every truck stopped and folks got their minds right.
After that pure chaos with g**fire and the like. It took only around 10 minutes for the medevac to get to us but it was the longest 10 minutes of my life. I also remember being freezing cold in 110+ degree weather. Shock is an interesting thing.
Had I not been standing that shrapnel would have been headed straight for my head/neck area. Crazy when I think back on it.
For everyone wondering we lost no troops that day. The only d**th was the bomber. And my right arm has a gnarly scar but has most of its movement and strength back. So all good!”
12. What happened that night?
“My mom was in the hospital fifty miles away. I was 19. We were pretty sure this was it. I was home alone. My parents’ house is big. It’s off the beaten path on a small lagoon. My dad had been staying up at the hospital.
That night, I went to bed about 1am. I was playing on my laptop. My room was in a separate wing of the house. It can be sealed off with a single locking door. The door was shut but not locked. I have always been scared of the dark, so I had the lights in my wing on. So was the closet light. As I was messing around on Gamefaqs, I saw the lights in my wing turn off. All of them. The band of light under the door, went black. I hopped up in bed and stared at it.
My bedroom door was unlocked and I was debating getting up to lock it, when the shut door slammed. As in, it sounded like someone straight up kicked the bottom of the door with all their strength. I remember squeaking in shock.
It took me about six seconds to be up on both feet with a blade about four paces back and just right of the door. I remember thinking if the door swung open, I could be on whoever it was almost instantly. I was also silently cursing that there was no light under the door anymore. No way to see the shadow of whoever was out there.
Nothing happened. I was fighting off the fear of the situation and stupidly decided that going on offense was all that was left. I didn’t have a phone in my room, and my Nokia was in another wing of the house charging. I threw the door open with my knife low and my left hand in a guarded position.
There was no one there. I tossed the hallway light switch on. There was no one in my wing. There was no one in the house. The burglar alarm was still on. Confused, I turned on the main house lights and sealed the wing off, locking the door between the main house and my area. I went back to my room and just sat there with my laptop open. My bedroom door now had a slight bow in it.
A couple hours passed with me warily laying in bed. Around 3 am, the lights under the door went dark. That left me terrified. My knife seemed pretty insignificant and my previous dumb courage had ran out.
I scooted my bed (no easy task) against my bedroom door, grateful the door opened inward. It all felt so wrong. Like something was angry with me. I retreated to my closet and waited for the sun to come up.
When the skylight in my room got bright, my courage returned and I moved the bed and exited my room. The wing door had been unlocked, which required a key from the other side. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs in the main house and realized my dad was home.
I felt a little foolish as obviously he had been responsible for turning the lights off the second time. I led my greeting with “oh, so it was you who turned all the lights off.” He looked at me and replied, “What? I got home about ten minutes ago.”
I have zero clue what happened that night but it never happened before that night or after. Whatever it was, it seemed to like the dark and wasn’t a fan of doors. And it seemed to be in my wing of the house… My parents built the house and nothing untoward had ever taken place there.
My bedroom door at my parents house still has a bow in it to this day (this was almost twenty years ago). My mom is still alive, and for that, I’m extremely grateful.”
Do you have any stories like these?
If so, share them with us in the comments.
We’d love to hear from you!
