Things That Almost Scared The Pee-widdle Out Of You

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a suit of armor. I inherited it. It’s a pretty odd thing to own but, hey, someone has to own 'em. It’s assembled into person-form on a wooden frame and it stands on a wooden base and it lives in a corner of my living room. His name is Rusty.

This past weekend, I decided to paint the living room. I carefully dragged Rusty on his base into the middle of the room so I wouldn’t get paint on him. Painted the living room, went to bed.

I got up in the middle of the night and padded out to the kitchen for a glass of water. There, in the dark, backlit by a streetlight and out of the corner of my eye, I saw A MAN STANDING IN MY LIVING ROOM!

I swear, I about crapped myself. I would have screamed like the little girl I am, but my vocal chords were frozen with terror and all I get out was gak! squeak! It took only a couple seconds for me to recognize the suit of armor, and only a couple of hours for my heart to re-start. I honestly can’t remember a worse moment of pure, visceral fright. Rusty is back in his corner, but he’s lucky he’s not in a pile on the curb. The only reason I didn’t bash his metal head in is that it would have required (a) a weapon and (b) presence of mind to do something other than die of fear. Neither of which I had, fortunately for him.

So: What has scared the shit out of YOU?

2

My friends and I were spending the weekend out in the country, and the first night we were there we turned out all the lights, lit some candles, and did tarot card readings, just for the hell of it. Some of the girls went to bed early, but most of us were up; we were all gathered on the floor in one room, which was empty except for a full-length mirror in one corner. I was sitting so my back was to the door and I was facing the corner with the mirror. So I’m doing a reading for one of my friends, who happens to be wearing pink shorts and a matching pink tanktop, when I glance up and see, standing in the mirror, surrounded by flickering shadows cast by the candlelight, a pale figure wearing exactly the same clothes. My breath froze in my throat, and I gave sort of a strangled gasp. One second later everyone else in the room screamed. Then yet another second later the screams were echoed by a single shriek, coming from said pale pink-clad figure. It wasn’t until then we realized that it was one of our friends who’d gone to bed earlier. By some weird coincidence she was wearing the same pjs as the friend sitting in front of me. I saw her first in the mirror; the other girls didn’t see her until they looked up to see why I’d gasped. And she’d screamed because she’d been startled by the rest of us idiots.

I used to think it’d be interesting to meet a ghost, if they do exist, but that experience taught me what a pansy I actually am. I mean, it was a ghost wearing girly pink pjs, and I still freaked the hell out.

3

Heh, my story is similar to yours, Jodi. A few years ago, I was living alone in the DC area (in a ground-floor apartment) and my brother came to stay with me for a while so he could visit his friends in the city. Every evening, he would go out with his friends and wouldn’t return until the early morning (after dawn), except the last night. The last night, I awoke around 2 am to the sounds of someone knocking into something in my room, and when I sat up, I saw a large man in a hooded sweatshirt standing at the foot of my bed and looking down at me.

Well. Let’s just say I’m lucky I have good bladder control and my brother’s lucky I don’t have a gun. I don’t actually remember what I did, but the muscles in my chest and arms hurt the next day, so I must have tensed up or moved so suddenly I pulled something. I know I cursed him out when he identified himself.

And the reason that was the last night my brother stayed with me was not because he scared me witless, but because he couldn’t understand why I was scared witless and thought I was over-reacting. Asshole.

4

This did. Beware reptile-o-phobes!. Unfortunately, there was no mistake. It was the genuine article.

The three guys from the local fire department who relocated it are my heroes forever.

5

Wasn’t me, but The Mother for this one. We were staying at Uncle’s apartment for the week. Uncle has a mummy that he picked up at a theatre that was going out of business. On this particular night, The Mother made her late-night bathroom jaunt, only to exit the bedroom to A MENACING FIGURE STANDING RIGHT OUTSIDE!! Being a Death-Bringer model mother, rather than jump or run, she punched it. Punch does not begin to describe the force. The sturdy prop mummy was quite literally beheaded. The Mother realized at this point, what she had punched, and went about her nightly routine. It was then known not to surprise The Mother.

6

My husband and I were taking a summer drive at dusk in the country, and we pulled over to admire the first stars starting to twinkle. We were near a dark, gloomy wood whose shade was deepening quickly. Suddenly from that wood came an unearthly screaming - it kind of sounded human and it kind of didn’t. It was very spectral and eerie, and it gave us goosebumps up our back. It went on and on, and we finally drove away because we were getting the heebie-jeebies.

I could never figure out just what it was we heard that night, until years later I saw a nature documentary about foxes. Night-vision films showed a pissed-off vixen screaming at an intruder near her den of kittens, and it was exactly the scream I was remembering. Phew! Problem solved.

7

I have a sliding glass door and on the inside a sliding screen door. The screen door is spring activated. You open it and it has a catch that keeps it open until you move the door a little and then the spring kicks in and the screen closes by itself. The catch is a little loose and so it sometimes gives way. I am almost never expecting it and so it usually gives me a little start.

But the one night it scared me bad was when I had first moved in. I had gotten up to urinate and (I’m guessing) I wasn’t fully awake, because when I came back I saw a fat lady in blue shorts bending over my sleeping area. I yelled something (not sure what) and she disappeared. And at just that time the screen door gave way and slammed shut on its own. :eek:

Scared the bejeebus out of me. I had a devil of a time getting back to sleep after that.

8

I’ve told this before, but here it is. My garage is a few steps down from the house, and usually you would go down a step or two before you turn on the light.

9

For a couple of years, we lived in the country. I liked to hike on the little mountain roads that no one much used. I’d even invested around $50.00 in a pair of hiking boots (this was more than 10 years ago; $50.00 was a fairly nice chunk of change). So I was hiking along this little dirt road, seldom used except by weekend off-roaders. I put my left foot down, and felt something shift under it. My first assumption was that I’d stepped on a loose-ish pile of gravel or something. Then I heard the ‘rattle’. Then it hit me-I had freakin’ stepped on a rattlesnake. :eek:

Lemme tell you something. Stepping on a rattlesnake is dangerous. Stepping on a rattlesnake and not having it bite you is a very aerobic activity, because it’s about guaranteed to get your heart beating hard for some length of time!

10

Mine happened just this week. I had Whatsit the Youngest in his little baby backpack carrier and was walking up the street, coffee in hand, to go pick up Whatsit Jr. from the bus stop. Suddenly I heard a loud barking, and two large dogs ran from behind a neighbor’s house, barking and growling and heading directly towards me.

Within the space of a second, I thought to myself, “Are they on a chain – no. Is there a fence – no.” I then, without thinking much at all, screamed bloody murder at the top of my lungs. It is the kind of scream that you want to scream in dreams where you open your mouth and no scream comes out. It was a scream to wake the dead.

Whatsit the Youngest of course thought this was hilarious. The dogs stopped short of me; I don’t know if this was because they are well-trained, or if there is an electric fence, or whether because their owner came wandering out from behind the house after hearing me scream. “Bad girl! Bad girl!” was his response. I apologized for screaming like that, because I was pretty embarrassed about it, and he apologized for his dogs, and I went on my merry way, my blood pressure having been raised about 40 points in the meantime.

11

A link to my previous thread about when our very overburdened bookshelf collapsed from the hallway into the bathroom in the wee hours, spilling about a million books and making the most godawful noise I’ve ever heard in my life.

Still haven’t topped that one (thank god).

12

All time classic thread by Scylla.

13

Two summers ago, I went to a water park with my son. It had one of those big concrete water slides with lots of switchbacks, built into the side of a mountain. I grabbed a tube and proceeded up the endless steps to the top. At the top was a little concrete slope where you could position yourself and one of the waterpark guys would give you a push into the cascade. My big mistake was sitting in the tube, rather than lying across it and hanging on with my arms.

The cascade splashed down into a fairly deep pool, then the slide continued on down the mountain. I got my push and down I went, with a lot faster descent and harder landing than I expected. When I hit the pool, the water splashed everywhere, and I took good bit of water up my nose. That was bad enough. (I know now why waterboarding is torture.) But as I was coughing and spluttering, my tube was careening wildly around the pool, and I was completely freaked out by the fact that I could not control it. It was too big for me to paddle or kick effectively, and I was in a dead panic that the current would sweep me (backwards, no doubt) on down the slide.

I finally managed to get out of the tube and put my feet on the bottom. The water in the pool was up to my neck. I was on the verge of tears, heart pounding, very shaken up. I gathered enough of my wits about me to tell the waterpark dude I could not go on down the slide. He pointed out a “path” (I use the term loosely) that paralleled the slide all the way down. I managed to heave myself out of neck-deep water, ever so gracefully, I’m sure, and pick my way barefoot down a steep, wet path, holding a big inner tube.

Ugh. I was really surprised by how much that scared me.

14

The only time I’ve ever screamed until I couldn’t physically breathe was in a dream, when I walked into my bedroom and saw a bloody severed head on the floor. Thanks, subconscious. :smack:

In real life? I remember being really floaty and spacing out–in shock–after I nearly crashed into a car with my bike at the bottom of a steep hill. I don’t even remember how I got up from the ground and climbed back onto the seat.

The worst moment was hearing our principal’s voice breaking over the intercom as she told us about the September 11th attacks. The entire school–the hallways and the classrooms–were dead silent and somebody downstairs was crying. I was just sitting there in science class, feeling nothing, thinking nothing, and looking down at my hands shaking. I’ve never trembled so hard in my life.

15

I wanna go!!

16

I work in a store. One day a couple years ago, I had to be at work ridiculously early so the floor cleaners could put down a coat of wax, or something. It was still dark out. Anyway, I unlocked the outer doors, stepped into the vestibule, got ready to open the inner doors, and there was a man moving around just on the other side of the doors! My eyes widened, my heart started pounding, and I was just turning to leave and call 911 when the lights went on(they’re automatic - tied into the alarm system somehow) and I got a good look at the “man”.

I had had the previous day off, and they had put out a giant dancing, singing, motion activated Santa Claus, right by the doors so people would see it as they entered. The volume was all the way down, and a good thing, because I don’t know what my reaction would have been if I happened upon a burgler who started singing “Jingle Bells”.

17

Yesterday at work I went into the “computer room” to change out the voice tapes and check the voice monitor status at shift change. I put down the tape boxes and turned around to open the cover of the cabinet - and someone walked out from behind it.

I am very glad I had recently gone to the bathroom - I think only 2 or 3 drops came out.

18

I was hospitalized earlier this year for what turned out to be a panic attack, but at the time the ER docs thought it was a heart problem exacerbated by excessive caffeine intake. My trials and tribulations related to that episode are many, and I won’t go into them in detail here, but I will tell you about the dream I had a month or two ago.

I was hanging out with my dad and an old (fictional) Navy buddy of his, at Navy-buddy’s house. We were doing something mundane like watching a documentary on architecture or something, when we all decided to go to IHOP. The IHOP of my dreams was gigantic, with four huge, raised platforms with lots of tables on them, and hallways forming a plus-sign between them. The entrance was on the left side of the plus-sign and the cash register was on the left. Well, I had been eating slowly or something and still had half a pancake or some such thing left when my father and his buddy got up to pay. They were standing in line, which was closer to the door than the cash register–I mean, the line was huge. They were clearly not coming back to the table any time soon, so I took my time and enjoyed my last pancake.

A waitress came up to me and asked if I was OK. I shrugged her off, but she stayed put and asked, “Are you sure you’re OK? You don’t need anything?” I was confused at why she wouldn’t believe me, but I just said “No thanks, I’m fine. Really.” Just then, a little boy ran up to the table, pointed at me and said “Hey mister, isn’t your heart beating a little fast?” Suddenly I noticed that, yes, it was pounding a little too hard, and now I could hear my heartbeat. It got faster and faster and faster and, recalling my hospitalization earlier this year (this was before my therapist and I figured out that it was a panic attack), I tried to tell the waitress to call 911, but I couldn’t get the words out–just like the real-life attack. She freaked out, but figured out what to do, and as she was running to the phone, my heartbeat reached a crescendo and I died.

And shot up in bed, with my real heart racing too! Well, at the time, I thought of a fast heartbeat not as a symptom of a minor scare, but a potential cause of my imminent death, so I freaked out, which only made my heart beat faster, ad nauseam. I finally realized that I needed to relax, so I drank some chamomile and spent the next several hours awake and trying to think about anything but heartbeats. Not an easy task.

19

This would be my father.

My sister had a standup of Han Solo that looked just like this . Her’s didn’t talk. Still he’s 6 feet tall and holding a gun. Over the course of time, the Han stand up migrated to the computer room, just across the hall from my dad’s room.

My dad had a habit of going up those stairs in the dark. So as he passes the computer room, all he sees is a tall shadow with a gun sticking out.

My sister and I, sitting downstairs hear, “Hey what are you… Oh…” Before we both dissolved into laughter.
-Lil

20

I attacked an artificial tree of some sort; my ex-wife bought it and left it in the living room. We came home from a night out; I opened the door and saw what I thought was a guy standing in the living room. I actually hit the damn thing before I realized what it was; in my own defense, the sucker was about six feet tall, it was dark, yada yada yada.