(my bold) What relevance is her attractiveness to the scale of horribleness of this event? Would it have been easier to stomach if the young lawyer had been a little less gorgeous when she humiliated the old lady?
I’ve read this entire thread and nothing has sent a chill down my spine like this.
Until I read this.
Ooops, forgot to assign a numerical rating. 8. I had a hard time not dwelling on it for a while. I just felt so bad for the person I posted about and couldn’t stop wondering what I would do if I found myself in her position. Kill myself was the answer I came to more often than not. Still, almost 35 years later I think about her and had recently, which is why it was one of the first things that popped into my mind when I saw this thread.
The first thought that came to me was watching people choosing to jump from the towers on live television (not that they gave shit number 1) during the events of 9/11. They were facing certain death, and they knew it. Burn to death, asphyxiation, or death by immense physical trauma. And, to me, they showed enormous bravery and courage in choosing how they were going out. 10 out of 10.
When I was 5 I saw a relative ignite in a bbq accident. He later died. I didn’t remember it until I was in my 20’s. I guess I had repressed it. Probably a 5.
Horriblest thing I saw was my dad having seizure/heart attack in the backyard when I was 13. Foaming at the mouth, whole 9 yards. I was trying to pry his mouth open, he wound up having loose front teeth after that. As bad as that was, what made it worse was that he didn’t even attempt any of the life style changes that may have lessened the possibility of his wife and family witnessing a similar incident again. Didn’t care enough about himself nor his family. Yeah, I think that’s where a lot of my issues stem from. I can’t give a number rating, but it has followed me my entire life.
Also 9/11 for me. I didn’t see anyone jump or die (or even get injured), but I saw the building on fire, having just heard the plane crash into it. I shouldn’t have turned back to look…
I saw my friend’s mother about a week before she died of cancer. She was horribly debilitated and in pain. She could barely speak. Later, I realized my friend doesn’t remember that day at all.
On an entirely different scale, but still hideous: I saw a maggot-infested dead rat in my garage’s attic.
I witnessed a kid break his arm. I think I heard the snap but I definitely heard the crying. I’d rate it a 4.
I watched my neighbor commit suicide. Shot himself in the mouth with a .22. He was a fair distance off, and inside s car so I didn’t have a “good” view fortunately. Not quite as bad as the bicyclist that bit a rock wall in Boulder canyon, back when nobody wore helmets. Pretty sure he didn’t make it…nothing to be done that others weren’t doing already so dad decided to get his kid (me) out of there. I’d rate that an 8 or so. Need to save numbers for killing innocent kids, and mutilations.
Probably my earliest childhood memory was witnessing a girl’s throat being cut. For a longtime I thought I was remembering a scene from a horror movie, but later found out it was actual murder I had witnessed. I would give it 8 because of how long it lingered in my mind. A few scenes from the former Yugoslavia deserve a 10: seeing a small mass grave where work had been abandoned before the bodies had been completely covered, witnessing a paramilitary commander execute one of his own men who was on his knees begging for his life, and seeing a body that had been executed by planned (not accidental) impalement.
Iirc, I posted this months ago for another topic.
I was at a strip bar, my hometown, met two new friends at the bar. One rode a Harley, the other was a supervisor at a big 3 plant. We were buying each other drinks, and connecting people we knew.
3 am, bar closes. Harley leaves 1st, followed by other guy in a pickup truck, then me. We were in aue to cross a 4 lane divided hiway, onto a street with a sharp curve. Harley goes across, the rounds the curve. Truck starts across. Harley, for whatever reason, turned around, was re-entering the curve, coming at us head on.
Truck is entering curve slightly off center. Hits Harley head on. I see it happen.
So 3 people’s lives are changed forever. We watched Harley slowly die in agony. The truck had minor damage, he could have hit and run, and never get caught, except I witnessed it. Even though it was only 5 or 6 minutes, it seemed like a lifetime, while I watched Harley guy die, and truck guy know his future was in my hands.
Another car pulled up, then summoned 911.
Truck guy got a decade or so for DUI involuntary manslaughter. Harley guy was my moms best friends grandson.
I still have nightmares of that night. Never had a hard drink since, and rarely drink at all. And never drink and drive.
Dopers, don’t ever DUI / DWI.
Being a witness ( who was also drinking) is just as traumatic as being the incarcerated DUI driver, or even the DOA victim.
Had I been #2 in que to cross the highway, it would have been me. Had I been on my Harley, that, too, could have been me.
Now I live with knowing that I contributed to another persons DOA ( buying rounds) as well as to another persons 10 year incarceration for doing what I was doing (DWI).
The memories of a human dying in agony, as another human agonizes knowing he caused it, while yet another person knows their actions will change another person life, is horrific. And the memory never goes away. Ever.
Well, nothing quite on the scale of what Batsinma Belfry witnessed, and I’m glad of it.
I certainly don’t go looking for vehicle accidents, but given the number I’ve seen in the 40 years I’ver been driving, it’s amazing I can get up the nerve to get behind the wheel. I’ve twice seen people thrown off motorcycles, seen a person thrown from a crashing car, and witnessed the heads of two people going through the windshield in a hard rear-end vehicle crash; I’d call these 5s or 6s but should mention that in all but the last case the persons involved ended up (miraculously) relatively unscathed.
A large dog with a gigantic tumor hanging off its shoulder, that was a 7.
I saw a half a person laying beside the tracks of the commuter rail line I used to ride in Paris, that was about an 8.
I’ve seen some of the slums in places like Quito, Ecuador and Luanda, Angola. Those get a 9.
10 for me would have been watching both my parents deteriorate, over many months, and then pass away from cancers.
Have seen a guy die from a GSW up close and personal, there is nothing like watching the light fade from someone’s eyes and hear their last breath. 6
I have seen a few others, a guy burn to death in a car fire 5, my Uncle John’s Vietnam photo album 6, and others but the absolute worst…
I was working a Homeland Security meeting and one of the presenters was a trauma doc who had worked in Iraq and Afghanistan. The presentation was on IED injuries. The calm and clear manner in which he explained what a bomb made from a 155mm artillery round does to the human body. 10m/30ft away, even if alive don’t bother the insides are goo the ones farther away with ripped limbs, cranio-facial trauma, gaping chest wounds, genitals ripped off and random pieces of stuff rammed into bodies. This was accompanied by photos taken in surgery, shown on 9x12ft screens. We saw those who lived and those who died, most who lived probably wished they did not. He went into detail with each case, this went on for hours. I made it through but came home and cried my eyes out, have tears right now just writing this. 8 because I know that others have seen it IRL.
Capt
Most horrible thing I ever personally witnessed was a motorcycle accident in China. I’ll not forget how one man sort of quivered as he died in a hurry. I’d put that at a 7.
Most horrible thing I’ve ever seen at second hand is when I was assisting as junior counsel on a coroner’s inquest into the death of a man at a construction site - he was run over my a cement mixer, which squeezed his body like a tube of toothpaste in the middle. The accident happened because a driver drove past the warning signs and onto the site. The man turned away from what he was doing to direct the driver off the site … when what he was doing was helping to organize the mixer backing up. The driver of the mixer lost sight of him but kept on moving nonetheless.
The accident happened literally right in front of the intrusive driver, and the sight so traumatized her she ended up in a mental hospital.
I saw literally hundreds of pictures taken at the scene, and I’d rate that one a 9.
A good friend of mine witnessed a 10. He was the first physician on the scene at the Hyatt Regency Hotel disaster in Kansas City.
I feel very lucky that I have not personally witnessed anything above a 4 (my Uncle going insane and trying to kill my Dad.)
You know, I think mine was one of those. I saw the charred body of a man who’d been murdered and put in a bonfire. Objectively it was horrible, but I didn’t actually witness the man being murdered, so there wasn’t nearly as much heightened emotion. I also knew what I was getting into (it was for school, so I expected to encounter a dead body). I’d rate it roughly a 5.
For some of these, I think the suddenness is what makes it so horrible.
Yes, it was relevant. Sorry, it’s a long story, and I was posting in haste. But yes, it was relevant.
There was no blood, no gory details. But the utter negating of a human being was horrifying. I haven’t forgotten it. Maybe one of these days I’ll post the story.
Arriving at the scene of a car accident a few seconds after it was over.
A 4WD with five people who were all very close friends of mine (one is my oldest son’s god-mother) rolled multiple times going around a corner. I pulled two people out of the wreak, the other two got out by themselves, and then had to search for the driver.
She had been thrown from the car, flown about 15 yards and hit a tree, then slid down an embankment. She was still alive and breathing so all I could do was help the ambulance guys get her onto the stretcher and carry it back up to the road. She was still moaning and when we shifted her onto the stretcher I could see her legs shift in odd ways - apparently due to her pelvis being smashed into multiple peices.
She never regained conciousness and died a week later. The others got away with cuts and bruises (wear your seatbelts kids - the driver in this case wasn’t).
We were all on the way out to a school camp so I had a bus load of 15 year-old kids to deal with as well. The woman who died was one of their school teachers.
I’d give that an 8.
When I was about 10 years old a drunk driver slammed his car into the corner of our house at 2am. The impact compacted his car to about 1/2 its length and the only reason he survived was a neighbour a few doors up who was a nurse had just got home from her shift. She ran over and held his head up and kept his airways clear until the police/fire/ambulance guys arrived.
I had to stay in bed until he had been cut out of the car and taken away but I can still remember hearing him scream & moan the whole time.
Maybe a 6 (for age).
I was an volunteer EMT so a lot of grizzly accidents, the one that sticks out is a guy who killed himself with a shotgun.
I’m lucky I haven’t seen anything that horrible yet. I’ve been there when relatives have taken their last breath but I don’t consider that horrible just very sad.
A kid I went to High School with spent a year in an institution because of what he witnessed, he was in some sort of shock for a long time. He was in a car accident with his parents. Their car slammed into the back of a flat bed truck. I don’t remember what it was hauling, possibly sheet metal. But it decapitated both of his parents, he was in the back seat. He was around thirteen, when he came back to school he was a real quiet kid. Poor guy. I’d say that be ten if that happened to me.
I can’t/won’t rate anything in my past as it has to be colored with other things that make up my life.
I have yet to see the most horrible thing FOR ME & I do not look fwd to that day.
Anything bad happening that I saw was the worst at that time.
I believe that either all life is sacred or no life is sacred. We can’t have it both ways.