One Saturday morning when my son was 2, I was cleaning house while he was playing in his room. I went to check on him, and he was gone! He wasn’t anywhere in the house or the backyard. I didn’t think to check the frontyard at first because we kept the front door locked and rarely opened it. But as I passed the frontdoor, I saw that it was opened. I ran outside, he wasn’t in our yard or either neighbor’s yards. It was freezing outside, and he didn’t have a coat or shoes. I went all over the neighborhood. Finally I went home and called the police, and the dispatcher described him to me!!! A neighbor 2 streets over, had seen him playing in the ditch and called the police. They took him to the police station and waited for me to call.
I’m not really sure this qualifies, but I’ll tell it anyway.
One Saturday morning I was out riding bikes with a couple of friends. There was a driveway where the sidewalk had sunk away, so it was a ramp that allowed us to get very briefly airborne. Hot stuff when you’re 10.
My pass got me up in the air and then my front wheel came down in the rut between the lawn and the sidewalk, and stopped cold. I went over the front and came down hard on the right side of the handlebar.
It hurt like hell! Total body pain! I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know it, but I’d ruptured my liver to smithereens. There was collateral damage (collapsed lung, bent spine), but the liver was the main event.
I shakily rode my bike the half block to my home, where my little brother insisted that my Mom get up. She put me in the car and took me to our pediatrician’s office (yes, he held Saturday office hours). He didn’t even examine me - he walked in the exam room and saw me from several feet away and picked up the phone and called Texas Children’s ER while simultaneously telling my Mom to take me there now. It still hurt very badly then.
I remember that she hit a curb on the way. Somehow my father appeared at my side as they wheeled me into Emergency. By this point I was no longer aware of any pain, and I remember calmly watching as the young ER doctor mangled my right arm while unsuccessfully attempting to initiate a transfusion (I’ve still got a good sized scar from that) and an ER nurse recruited a passing surgeon from the hallway (thanks again, Benjy Brooks).
A couple of orderlies were holding my Mom back. She was crying. She told me she loved me, and she gave me her goodbye.
Although I found out later that no one involved expected that I’d survive, the reason I’m not sure this qualifies is that, while it’s scared me to look back on, much as with the experience Trunk related, I don’t remember actually being scared at the time. Once the pain settled down it was more like watching a story unfold.
Needless to say, I did get over it.
A couple of times that share a common element (a center of gravity in the wrong place) I did feel the fear:
While working as a reactor operator in a chemical plant, one process required that we change out a tank of ethylene oxide from time to time. This involved wrestling the empty off the scale, hooking up the new one, and then wrestling that 800 pound mother up on to a scale that looked like the one in your doctor’s office, only about four times as big. We did this as a one man operation, and it required tilting and rolling the thing to get it up on the scale.
The bad thing about ethylene oxide is that it is quite flammable, and when it burns it burns rapidly and releases its own oxygen. So, an ethylene oxide fire is very difficult to put out. Our fire fighting training told us the only sane response to an ethylene oxide fire was to beat feet.
So of course, one night I’m changing out an EO tank when it starts to get away from me. 800 pounds is leaning on me, gettin’ frisky, and all I can think of is that we’ve got an open gas flame slurry drier 10 feet away (yes, dumbass arrangement). At least ten minutes were spent knowing that if I caved the hose fittings would surely be torn away, and could I make it to the other side of the sandbags before our own little local Hiroshima ensued? Also, there were guys in the (not sand bag protected) wharehouse next door, and there was no way to warn them (too much plant noise for yelling to help). I had to win that fight.
When I finally got that tank up on the scale, I just crumpled to the ground.
Another time, I foolishly agreed to help a friend move a baby grand piano into his apartment. While it was fun to drive around town for a bit with him sitting and playing it in the bed of my pickup truck, real effort was required when we came to the point of installing it in the garage apartment.
Don’t let the appellation “baby” fool you. That was one big, heavy piano. We had a crew of several who’d volunteered to get the thing up the external stairway, and I wound up on the outside. We struggled mightily and finally got almost to the top of the stairs when I became aware that the crew was losing their grip. I felt the center of gravity shift off the stairs to held in space, and it pushed my feet off the stairs.
I was hanging on to a baby grand piano that several people were losing their grip on. I recognized that baby and I were on the verge of a ~12’ freefall to the ground, and I was going to get there first. Boy, talk about cheerleadin’!
So, I lived through that one, too.
As a kid (about 11 or 12) I had a very hard fall from several feet up, and landed on my chest and face without being able to break the fall at all with my arms or legs. I lost my breath, and tried to inhale, and nothing happened. My chest muscles were paralyzed, and I absolutely could not breathe. I started to suffocate.
I don’t really know for how long it lasted-- certainly less than two minutes, and probably less than one. I still clearly remember deciding that this is what death felt like, and that I would be dead very shortly. I started to lose consciousness, I felt myself relaxing and fading out. And somewhere in there I started breathing again.
I’ve been assaulted and slashed with a knife, and in a couple of very scary car accidents, and none of them even came close to shaking me up like that fall.
My scariest moment as well. I’m not sure which one of us was more frightened (not that it was a contest). It was also the time in my life in which I felt the most utterly helpless and useless. **Rhiannon ** pretty much summed up the events; I try not to think too much about those 5 minutes.
My sister **kiffa ** and I got caught in a riptide off of Huntington Beach in California. **kiffa ** did synchronized swimming in high school so she was a strong swimmer and I could keep up. But a guy that was a little farther out than we were panicked and that scared me. Fortunately, another guy near Mr. FreakedOut calmed him down and we all began swimming parallel to the beach. It took forever to get out of the riptide and even longer to get to shore. We were exhausted and it really showed me how even an experienced swimmer can drown if they don’t realize they’re in a riptide.
I think the biggest surge of adrenaline came when a few years ago when trying to catch some birds. We were setting up some mist nets at a gas company in the Meadowlands. We were pounding rebar into some stubborn ground to hold up 8-foot conduit that bears the mist nets. I can’t get the rebar in deep enough - something is blocking its path. I’m complaining to my colleague who is having the same trouble about 6 meters away when the wind shifts. sniff sniff Just as our brains registered that familiar odor of mercaptan, I spy the blazingly obvious yellow plastic pipe indicating to anyone with more sense than us that a gas pipe was below. Visions of brachy and colleague splattered from one end of the Meadowlands to the other raced through my mind as my adrenal glands dumped their entire load. After a few seconds had passed and we weren’t blown to smithereens, we raced to the office and sheepishly told them what we had done. The gas guys just laughed and said we were over one of the gas mains, a 36-inch pipe with an inch and a half thinckness. We could have pounded all day on that pipe and not do any damage. The smell had come from the mixing shed, which was just on the other side of the road. We were in no danger whatsoever (but I still made them come out and check). Sheesh.
When I delivered my first son. I knew he was dead but when the time came to push him out into the world, it was absolutely terrifying because it was the time when the loss was going to become real and we were going to have to cope. I was scared he would be ugly or deformed.
He was absolutely perfect and beautiful.
I’ve had several bad moments, and a couple of them were life-threatening (which is why I no longer do boats…ever). But the scariest was sitting in a bunker with mortar rounds raining down on us, the earth shaking with each deafening blast, debris flying, heart going like a triphammer, clinging to another guy and screaming at the top of our lungs waiting for the one that was going to be a direct hit.
But that’s just me.
I’ve mentioned this incident before, so I’ll be brief.
Scariest moment was when I woke up at 3am to find a stranger in my bedroom.
In childhood:
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Huddled with my wailing little brother in the V-berth of my parents’ boat at 2 in the morning as they struggled above deck, trying to keep us from being pounded to smithereens by a tornado that had touched down where we were moored in a yacht club cruise.
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In a provincial park, wading out into a river, losing my balance, and going over a waterfall. I got a bit banged up, but nothing serious (no bones broken). For a while, I kept the watch I had been wearing, which had gotten scratched up.
In adulthood:
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Two incidents where I was nearly gay-bashed. Once, I had met someone and was going to their place. I started to get weirder and weirder vibes from him, and when he started to behave threateningly I rang the bell, dashed off the bus, and ran a few hundred metres to the metro… which was closed. Having to take two night buses through a scary neighbourhood didn’t help my mood. I’ve previously described another incident that involved a bunch of kids chanting “kill the faggot” at me in the metro.
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Being chased down Sainte-Catherine street by the cops during a peaceful anti-police brutality demonstration. They had cut off the street by Saint-Laurent, so my boyfriend and I had to run up Clark, which was also cut off. We only escaped by deking into a parking lot and hiding until they were gone.
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During the Quebec City protests, I was in a resto-bar with some friends having dinner. The bar and restaurant were separated by a small open entranceway. The cops fired a tear-gas canister into the street (far away from the protests at the bottom of the mountain). I ran out of the bar toward the restaurant where my friends were – only to find the door was being held shut. I pounded on it and screamed, my eyes streaming, and was finally let in.
Long story short:
My boyfriend and I got caught on the top of a 14,000+ foot mountain last summer (Mt. Bierstadt) when a thunderstorm came up and we nearly got hit by lightning. It was forming all around us: ozone smell, electric shocks when we touched stuff, all the hair on my body standing on end, crackling/buzzing in my ear. The worst part was the top of that particular mountain is totally exposed; there’s nowhere to go to shelter. We had to just scramble down, staying as close to the ground as we could while still on our rubber soles. I thought I was going to die.
Probably one of the most vividly scary moments in my life was in 1996. Sitting at home at 10:00 at night, watching tv when there’s a knock at the door. This was odd for 2 reasons: 1) no one ever knocked (unfortunately) and 2) no one ever showed up that late at night. I got up and went to the door, and there was my mother, who lived across the state (a 2 hour drive). Confused, surprised, I open the door, and she asks me into the kitchen. She proceeds to tell me that she had been playing bingo at the casino (which was on my side of the state) when she’d gotten a page. Her downstairs tenant had called her about my brother.
Her exact words were: “[Brother] is taking drugs and tried to commit suicide.”
Never, ever in my life have I ever felt anything approaching what I felt that night. I walked a few steps from the kitchen to the living room, where I dropped to my knees, wailing. My husband of course rushed in; I repeated what my mother told me, and he helped us both get calmed down enough for the 2 of us to make the long trip back to the other side of the state.
We got there, rushed in to see my brother, and got the full story. Someone had given my brother a hit of acid, which he held onto for a “rainy day.” Seeing as mom was out of the house, he was all by himself, etc., he decided that it was the perfect time to do a little experimentation. Well I don’t know much about acid, since I’ve never done it myself, but I have been told that tripping alone is never a good idea - especially your first go-round. He of course had a rough trip, and thought that the only way he could get out of it was to kill himself. Apparently he maintained enough presence of mind to decide that this wasn’t really a good choice, and instead called 911. Ambulance showed up - which was what alerted the tenant - and whisked him off to the hospital. He was fine, of course, had not actually attempted suicide - merely contemplated it - but… It was scary.
I was also the one who had to call his father - whose number was unlisted. Information called him and gave him the number of the payphone that I was calling from (apparently, hospital payphones do allow incoming calls) and he called me back, and I made every effort to deliver the events as calmly and un-hysteria-invokingly as possible. I succeeded.
And so my brother scared himself silly and AFAIK, hasn’t touched any illicit substance again. Funny thing is, my brother and I had not been close at that point - our friendship has only developed over the past year or so - but I was never so terrified for another living being until then.
I felt it against my body. I grabbed it, got totally freaked out and started shaking it around, until I realized it wasn’t moving quite as freely as a severed arm should. It was still anchored to something. Turns out it was still anchored to my body and wasn’t severed at all – it had just fallen completely asleep.
Ya know, that last one actually made me laugh. I hate it when that happens.
Scariest moment of my life? For a few years, it was every time I had to walk out my front door. I got over it, finally, and I don’t think I’ve been genuinely scared by anything since.
Having a cruel “joke” played on me that my family had been in a car accident when I was in Jr High.
Please elaborate or link. That’s one of my biggest fears.
two:
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19, driving to move into an apartment at college in a huge, overloaded van with my best friend. We’re on the interstate in morning rush hour traffic, and it’s pouring rain. We were only doing 45 or so, but suddenly crested a hill and hit standing water, hydroplaning. We did a complete 720-degree rotation, slamming into the guard rail twice, and ending up facing the same way we had been going , resting in the emergency lane, with only a slight bumper dent in damage. I couldn’t believe how smooth it was, the hydroplaning - just lifting so slightly and gliding with no resistance before the slam. This was in heavy traffic, and we should have been killed and the vehicle should have been totalled, but we were fine.
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A few years later, at my stepmother’s funeral, I scored a joint from my sister’s friend because I was upset and really needed to just chill out. I went outside and smoked the whole thing quickly. Bad idea. Instead of chilling me out, it caused a huge anxiety attack, making my pulse pound faster than ever (it was so fast I almost couldn’t tell the beats apart- I really thought I was going to have a heart attack), causing me to go into a mania state, and generally freak out. I thought I was dying, thought I was going to die, couldn’t form or hold on to a single thought, and generally lost my fucking mind. And this lasted four hours.
This happened about 10 years ago, when I was about 9. My mum had forgotten to lock the front door before she went to bed.
Well that night I woke up, looked at my clock and saw that it was 3am. I turned over to go back to sleep. This is when a saw a guy crouched down by the side of my bed. I was so suprised that I didn’t even scream. The guy and I just stared at each other for a while, then he got up and ran off.
I was so shocked I just sat that for about 10 seconds. Then I went to my parents room to tell them. My dad had obviously heard something as he was stood by the door in a kung-fu position.
They convinced me that it must of been a dream, and I went back to bed. (I later found out that they HAD heard something, but convinced themselves we were all wrong as they didn’t want to believe it.)
A few days later my parents noticed a spare key was missing. No one thought anything of it. But it turns out stranger guy had taken it.
A few months later he makes a return visit. This time to my parents room. My mum walk up screaming, which woke up the rest of the house who started screaming. I didn’t have a clue what was going on. From my room all I could hear was screaming.
My dad jumped out of bed (and I should point out at this point that he sleeps naked) chases the guy out of the house and down the street, but eventually lost him.
The guy was never caught. And nothing from the house was stolen apart from the key the first time. To get the key he had to pass the t.v, computer, my mums purse and a number of other expensive items.
We changed all the locks and had an alarm fitted. And right until we moved, we had things like pot plants in the garden being knocked over at night, police turning up saying someone had been seen going into our garage etc.
A couple spring to mind, one scary, one disturbing:
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Normal day, normal time I walk up to my car to go out somewhere, walk up to the driver’s door and BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! with someting big flapping in my face. It was a big pheasant with a body almost the size of a soccer ball doing it’s vertical take-off thing that was under my car. If you’ve ever heard a phesaant taking off straight up you know how loud these damn things are and to have one inches from your face was quite scary.
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Driving along a twisty road late at night through some woods at about 70mph I came up to a corner and thought to myself ‘Is there any point in turning the wheel?’, moments later I snapped out of it and thought ‘Yes you retard, you have to get round hte bend’. That messed me up for a few days.
When my son wandered away at a picnic. It was one of those “I turned my head for a second” things. There was a stream sort of nearby and of course, the worst ran through my head. Anyone who’s been through this knows the instant panic that runs through your body. It took a good 5 to 10 minutes to find him.
It was then I decided to tie his shoelaces together.