Never heard a real scream. Even when our neighbor lady discovered the body of a dead 4-year old girl who’d fallen to her death from a nearby apartment, all she gave was a very quiet-sounding “Ahhhhh!!!” sound.
A shot rang out. A woman screamed. A door slammed.
And I needed to pee.
Well, I once tried to scream but I was so frightened only a strangled gurgle came out.
I did one time have hysterics, after seeing my dog hit by a car, don’t know if that counts.
I’ve never screamed. Maybe I’ve made a little “yip” sound. But my daughter screams. The first time i remember it was when her brother’s finger got slammed on a car door. (He was fine, the fit and finish of that car was pretty loose. He didn’t scream or cry. I don’t think he was really hurt at all.)
So no and yes.
In frustration as a mental purge, yes. But never out of fright. It’s tough to startle me because I avoid being in situations where I have a blind spot, and I don’t scare. I’m not a super hero or anything, I just don’t have a lot of concern for my physical person. Instead, I tend to “bunny out” when confronted with an overly demanding and unexpected situation. Think Rain Man without the drama, exterior shutdown while my brains go into overdrive trying to understand the situation and determine how to deal with it. In the rare event I do react to someone jumping out from behind a tree at me or something, I will reliably take a step back and make myself look bigger.
To the OP, no and no.
I see that cats appear in several anecdotes upthread. I read a supposedly true story about someone whose cat had disappeared the way cats do. The owner went to bed and turned out the light, and, at some point in the dark night, the cat returned and jumped onto the bed. The owner awoke, realizing it was the cat, which was now purring very loudly on the owners stomach. The owner tried to go back to sleep, but the cat was purring so unusually loud that the owner switched on the light and saw that the cat had been in a fight, one of its eyes had been clawed out and it was dangling by a thread.
I bet the owner screamed.
Sweet dreams.
I don’t generally remember ordinary dreams, and I’m not prone to nightmares, but every couple of years, a doozy will rip me wide awake.
And screaming.
And FUBAR mentally/emotionally for most of that day.
Years later, I still remember those “dreams.”
A full-throated scream of terror? Not so far. A startled yelp? Yes, a couple of times. Surprise possums.
Wife screamed when her dog almost drowned. Explained here.
The only time I’ve ever really screamed out loud is at movies. In real life situations I tend to get the throat paralysis others have described. When I’m relaxed watching a movie I think a good scream at a scary scene is a good release – like a good belly laugh at a comedy. I also will scream on roller coasters. One time I was at Magic Mountain (when that’s what it still was) with a youth group I helped to lead. I was going on that ride that was essentially a 10-story (?) drop with two of the kids. I would probably have screamed, but one of the kids screamed…before we even dropped. The other kid and I started laughing so hard, we laughed all the way down and for several minutes afterward.
We do still mock my one sister. We were watching an extremely cheesy Mexican vampire movie. One of the characters was playing the piano (basically just loud chords) saying it was music that would “draw vampires.” He was in a room with a wide doorway to the hall. They kept cutting between the guy on the piano and the empty doorway until…a vampire was standing in the doorway!!! Like we totally expected. But my sister screamed and the rest of us teased her mercilessly.
We were taught to scream in self defense class, and practiced it. I’ve used it a time or two. I’ve also worked on inpatient psych units. Screaming isn’t uncommon on the unit where people having the most severe problems are housed. I’ve also heard injury-related screaming.
I screamed once. Totally involentary and about 4 octaves higher than I ever thought I could possibly make a sound at.
Was racing desert and rode off a small cliff (well, very steep embankment of a dry wash) at high speed and impacted on the opposite side. I suddenly found myself making this noise, which was remarkably like that of a little girl, inside my helmet.
When I got up, and determined I wasn’t royally fucked-up, I quickly looked around to see if anybody heard that.
Seems I scream alot.
Sometimes I don’t even notice. But I alarm everyone around me.
I was shopping and swung my cart around to go the other way and bumped into the hip of an older gentleman. Who lets out a blood curdling scream. His wife rushes over and people are staring at me like I’m Jack the ripper. He looks at his wife’s “what the fuck” face and says, “Well, he hit me”.
And then there is cousin Greg. Actually my step son’s cousin who we tried to use in construction work. The first time he screamed was when I asked him to turn on a hose and the old leaky thing sprayed cold water up his pant leg. Screamed like a 12 year old girl and brought out the home owners who laughed their asses off.
The second time we were under an old porch replacing the main floor joists. As the last nail was cut the beam sagged a few inches and whacked him on the head a bit. He screamed again. The neighbors were walking in their driveway and this caused them to stare and see what was going on in that dark recess. I can imagine Dave Chappelle using this scene and exclaiming, “What are they doing to that poor White boy”?
The last time I heard cousin scream was more legitimate. He was steadying a long board as another worker sliced off a strip using a circular saw. I offhandedly watched as the saw grew closer to cousin’s hand, which he had wrapped around the board right where the cut was going. Off course you shift your grip when needed. Right? Not cousin. Of course the other guy would stop before hitting a hand, right? Nope.
Cousin screams bloody murder and grabs his hand. I just knew he had lost a finger. Neighbors gathered and the owner’s wife ran up yelling, “I’m a nurse”. She drags cousin to the porch to sit down, bloody rag and all. She runs into the house and returns with some Bactine and a medium bandage to dress the tiny nick on his fingertip.