The most frightening moment I’ve ever had happened when I was about sixteen and was staying home alone while my parents were out of town. It was late at night, and I was in bed, trying to sleep through a terrific thunderstorm. Suddenly, the burglar alarm went off. I raced over to the panel to check to see which door had been opened, and horror washed through me. Four zones were flashing, indicating that at least four people were in my house!
I slipped grandparents’ bedroom and fished beneath the bed for the shotgun my grandfather keeps there. I loaded it with shaking hands, but then thought that the shotgun only has two rounds . . . I put down the shotgun and went over to his gun cabinet, grabbing an SKS and a bannana clip. I even locked the bayonet in place. I was loaded for bear, I tell you!
I locked the bedroom door behind me and cautiously slipped down the stairs. At the bottom, I let out a little shriek: there was a human figure before me! My finger went to the trigger, but luckily, my grandfather had trained me well with weapons. I stopped to be certain of my target before firing. It saved my grandmother’s mirror.
I swept the whole house, locking every door behind me (so the criminals would be trapped in a smaller area), expecting the police to show up at any minute. I didn’t find any intruders, so I went over to the downstairs alarm panel and turned off the blaring siren. My heart was hammering almost as loud as the horn’s wail. Where were the police? It had been at least ten minutes and I knew from a couple of false alarms that they always arrived within five.
I called the alarm company to see if they’d been dispatched and discovered that they hadn’t even recieved an alarm call at our residence. He told me to check the circuit box. The mystery was then solved: the violence of the storm had torn away some of our shingles and had let water in. It was dripping down onto the circuit box and caused a short. While I was talking to the guy, the alarm went off a few more times. Frustrated and suffering from the after-affects of a bad scare, I impatiently reached in and ripped out the board, silencing the alarm.
I went back to bed, putting the SKS beside the shotgun under my bed. I figured I’d take my chances with no alarm if someone tried to break in.
Nothing will scare the shit out of you like a lost kid, that’s for sure.
This one happened to a friend of mine. Glad it didn’t happen to me, or I think I would have lost it.
“Mr and Mrs. Smith” were taking a carload of kids from her local church to an amusement park a few hours’ drive away in one of the huge church vans. At one point, they all stopped at a roadside rest. It took more time than Mrs. Smith had intended, and she was a bit irritable trying to herd them all back into the van.
As they drove away, the kids were teasing her: “Ooops! You left Michael behind! Oh, no! Bill’s not in here!” She decided to ignore them. A few minutes later, one of them spoke up. “Uhh Mrs. Smith? Rusty’s not here.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said, rolling her eyes. Rusty is her own son, and he was about six at the time.
“No,* really*. He’s not here.”
“Good! I never liked him anyway!” Mr. and Mrs. Smith exchanged a chuckle.
“Seriously! He’s not in here!”
Mrs. Smith thought the joke had gone on long enough. “Rusty! Where are you?”
“He’s not in here! Honestly!”
Mrs. Smith was getting mad. She stopped the van, got out and went to look, figuring she’d find him on the floor under someone’s jacket, giggling his ass off. She made everyone get out and searched the van, panic dawning as she realized this was no joke. Her son really was missing.
She herded everyone back into the van and burned rubber as she swung the van around, breaking every conceievable traffic law on the way back to the rest stop. When they got there, they all fanned out to search for him, but no one had seen a little boy with bright red hair. She broke down in hysterics, certain he’d been kidnapped. Mr. Smith tried to calm her, got everyone back into the van and decided to head to the nearest State Trooper station.
When they arrived, they were told that the Troopers had Rusty. A kind stranger had seen him, running in the median. Poor kid was trying to run to catch up with the van! She had coaxed him into his car and drove him to the Trooper station.
Later, Mrs. Smith told me that she regretted the first words that came out of her mouth, but she was so panicked that she wasn’t thinking clearly: “I TOLD you never to get into a car with a stranger!”
On a side note, she told me she could never stomach the movie “Home Alone” and not just because it’s a crappy movie. Brought back too many bad memories.
