Back when I was in college, I was passenger when my companion fell asleep at the wheel and rear-ended a parked car at ~ 35 mph. I don’t consciously recall the moments just before the collision but I get kind of screamy any time the person driving seems like maybe there’s something they aren’t properly noticing.
I’ve gotten better about it over the decades but I’m still an annoying backseat driver. I still sometimes see a person opening a door of a parked car or a driver coming to an intersection acting like they aren’t going to stop for it and go “aaaaaagh!”.
About three times over the past 25 years, I’ve had a nightmare and let out a blood-curdling scream, as described by others in the house (I only fully woke up at the tail end of my own screaming).
Just two days ago, my ten-year-old child let out a full half-minute of terrified, full-Hollywood screaming, when a loose dog wandering in our neighborhood chased him through our yard and down the sidewalk. A neighbor captured the incident on his security cam (I was at work), and needless to say it perturbed me deeply. My kid has a fear of dogs already, but this just made it worse.
I scream all the time. I yelp-scream when I am startled or suddenly hurt (this happens a lot when working around a barn) or I trip or … shit, anything. I screamed when I came into the barn to milk and found a mountain lion had killed all my goats. I screamed for minutes then (and cried for hours). I scream from grief, frustration, anger … and fear I guess but I don’t get scared very often.
I’m a screamer, what can I say. Good thing I live so far out in the country usually nobody hears it.
When i get angry and loud about something, say when i hit my head on an open cabinet door and exclaim ‘G0@#$&M IT!’ my wife will come onto the room and ask “what are you screaming about?” And I’ll say “I don’t scream, I yell”.
I screamed in the seconds before our plane crashed. Bit a hole in my tongue as a result of that scream, too. While I had more serious injuries, that tongue laceration was the most painful.
Scream? No. Well, maybe as a kid when playing monsters or something, tho it’s so long ago, I can’t say for sure. But in fright - never.
Yelled really loud? Yep - as a warning, in anger, trying to get someone’s attention.
I’m pretty sure if I went down to our basement and saw a bloody murder scene, I wouldn’t scream, even if I knew the victim(s). Here’s hoping I never have to find out about that one.
I love this story, @JaneDoe42 ! My mother can tell you a similar one. My brother and I just call it “the funniest thing we ever saw”.
Until this thread, I didn’t know there were people who don’t scream. I screamed when my ex-husband tried to kill me (and it worked, somebody came and saved me).
I’m sure I’ve screamed in fright many times.
Once I was alone in a house in the country in the middle of the night. Suddenly I heard a bizarre droning sound I could not identify. It was just alien. It grew closer. Louder. Louder! It was all around me! I covered my ears and screamed in terror.
Then the cat walked into the room carrying a live cicada.
I have shouted in surprise many, many times. My voice is a little too low to make a “Eek!” sound, but it probably qualifies as a scream nevertheless.
For instance, one time I was walking through a park in Shenzhen while looking at a book. I lifted my head up and noticed an enormous spider inches from my face. I don’t recall exactly what the sound was I made, but it was certainly more primal than a simple “Egad!” or “Oh my stars and garters!” https://www.hiking-hong-kong.com/nephila-pilipes-spider/
This is my wife, as I discovered when one got into the kitchen about a year and a half ago. She opened the cabinet under the sink to throw something away, the mouse ran past her foot, and she let out a sustained shriek.
She had a very sheepish expression as she retreated upstairs, leaving me to deal with the rodent. And she has asked me at least twice a week, ever since, and most weeks more often, whether I’ve seen any sign of mice having returned.
The only detail I left out, because I thought it wasn’t relevant, is that he was a US Navy man based on a ship in port (San Diego). I wondered if he somehow imagined that would give him anonymity or an easy escape or god knows what. Never heard any more about it but I’d suspect mental illness if only because of the extreme stupidity of having made himself so easy to identify and apprehend.
I assumed the motive would have been rape, unless he was deranged enough to attempt murder for the contents of a woman’s purse.
Men plan attacks on estate Agents because it’s an easy way to be alone with an unsuspecting woman indoors. In the UK the Suzy Lamplugh Trust was founded following her disappearance after going to show a house.
I was racing in the desert and rode my motorcycle off a small cliff. I screamed, totally involunterely, and it was about 10 octaves higher than any sound I ever made, before or since.
So, yeah, when I get the shit scared out of me, I scream like a little girl.
That bike was never the same after that, by the way.
Oh, I should add that I’ve heard lots of people scream. I’ve delivered a lot of babies and done a lot of procedures involving needles and scalpels. And attended to a ton of really nasty injuries. At least screaming means they’re still breathing.
I have never heard a human scream, but last spring, a freshly un-hibernated bear took down a fawn in my neighbor’s yard. The poor little fawn got caught in a fence corner and couldn’t jump to safety. On a pre-dawn 5:AM on a Sunday morning I heard what I thought was a human scream, but daylight proved it otherwise.
Tripler
The local police were called, who deferred it to Game & Fish. Poor little fawn. . .
