# Tell me about a time when you were bone-chillingly, teeth-chatteringly scared.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [August 18, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806 "2009-08-18T02:30:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 8
### Author:  [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806/141 "2012-10-15T20:42:34Z")
I was pretty apprehensive during a bad hitch hiking experience in my late teens. The guy who picked me up essentially told me we were going to his place for sex and I had no voice in the matter. He refused to pull over and let me out or even slow down to let me jump out. He pawed at me repeatedly with his free hand as he drove. I tried reasoning with him and being persuasive, but he didn’t want to hear it. Even though I didn’t want to play it that way, I eventually had to display a weapon and the absolute willingness to use it. He let me out then, but I was a different color than everybody else, in a strange city, and illegally armed. He looked like he had some money and I was afraid that he’d run straight to the popo and claim I’d tried to rob him or something. I eventually got where I was going, but that was a very long, tense night.
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### Author:  [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2012, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806/142 "2012-10-15T21:00:21Z")
I’m one of the most unfortunate people when it comes to dreams. I’ve had more bone-chilling nightmares than I can even begin to recount. Luckily, through years of having a nightmare almost every night, my brain has started to cope with them.
Sometimes in my nightmares nowadays, I slip into lucidity, where I realize it’s a dream, or at least, that I have more control over my own actions. I also often sometimes realize that I’m dreaming, and I start screaming and making a lot of noise, in an effort to wake myself up.
This happened a few days ago and my boyfriend, while mildly shaking me and saying, “You’re having a bad dream,” I responded with a very calm, “I know.”
And then I was awake. It was funny because even though I said, “I know”, I was still just awake at that point, snapping out of my bad dream, but my brain had been aware of the fact that it was dreaming for a while, and that to me, in retrospect, is very creepy.
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### Author:  [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2012, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806/143 "2012-10-16T13:34:48Z")
> [@Woeg](#):
>
> …
> I kid you not, I have never, EVER been so damned terrified in my life - not just from the “holy shit what the hell is behind me” fear, but from the fear of seeing my child in that state of panic. Then, just as suddenly as it started, he was fine, and coherent, and couldn’t remember a thing. That was the first of numerous night terrors he had as a young child (they eventually went away), and it was by far one of the scariest things I have ever witnessed.
Night terrors are pretty damned awful, for sure. We never had anything like what you described, with Dweezil, but for months, he’d be up screaming, utterly unreachable, more nights than not. We were travelling once, right around his 3rd birthday, when he had a bout. He was screaming and hitting at us, and when we tried to dump him in the middle of the bed (we were sharing a king-sized bed with him) he would scramble back to the edge to try to hit us some more. We finally dragged him out to the car to drive him around. As we passed through the hotel lobby, I said to the desk clerk “if you’ve been getting complaints about a murder in progress on the 4th floor, this is what’s going on”.
He passed out within minutes of us forcing him into the car seat and starting the car.
As far as fear: I’ve posted this here before. When I was about 11, I’d gotten up early in the morning (summer weekday), then went back to bed mid-morning. Woke up about 11 AM - completely paralyzed. I COULD. NOT. MOVE.
After a week or so, or maybe it was a few seconds, I finally managed to make a small noise - and then I was fine.
I stumbled out into the kitchen, sat down, and burst into hysterical sobs, which doubtless scared my mother badly (this was not typical behavior for me). I was 100% certain I had nearly died. The next night, I was up nearly the entire night, too terrified to try to sleep. I think I finally passed out early in the morning. My mother actually called the doctor for some pills for me - probably a tranquilizer of some sort - which I took in the evening for a couple of days.
Now, in hindsight, this was “just” a brief bout of sleep paralysis, lots of people have a few in their lifetimes especially at adolescence, no big deal, etc. - but at the time, it was frightening enough to qualify under the thread title. I can’t recall ever feeling anything like that frightened - not when I saw a large car barrelling at us head-on (not enough time to feel that scared), not when they were threatening me with an emergency c-section and didn’t believe that my epidural wasn’t working…
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### Author:  [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2012, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806/144 "2012-10-16T14:25:55Z")
> [@highrollinwooded](#):
>
> Good Lord, man…wth do you live??? Come to the U.P., where none of that stuff ever happens!!
If he does, then that kind of stuff _will_ start happening in the UP. Keep him far away from you!!
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806/145 "2012-10-16T14:33:36Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> If he does, then that kind of stuff _will_ start happening in the UP. Keep him far away from you!!
Kind of like [Angela Lansbury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder,_She_Wrote). Nobody ever asks why people start getting murdered wherever she shows up.
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### Author:  [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2012, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-a-time-when-you-were-bone-chillingly-teeth-chatteringly-scared/506806/146 "2012-10-18T02:05:30Z")
My daughter just forwarded this webcomic to me, just in time for Halloween.
> **[2011 미스테리 단편 - \[ENG ver.\] Bongcheon-Dong Ghost - HORANG (봉천동귀신 영문판)](https://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail?titleId=350217&no=31)**
>
> \[ENG ver.\] Bongcheon-Dong Ghost - HORANG (봉천동귀신 영문판)
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