What's the most scared you've ever been?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I really love storms, usually can’t get enough of them. I drove almost through a tornado one time too which was exhilarating. I was delivering pizzas one summer when a HUGE storm came through. Not a tornado per se, but just shy of one. The wind was testing the suspension of my rusted out shitbox, the rain was coming down in buckets, it was hailing the size of marbles, and the lightning and thunder looked and sounded nothing short of biblical proportions.

Like I said, I usually LOVE a good storm, but I kinda thought I might die when the next gust came through. It seemed like buildings were just barely holding themselves down. I sprinted the few feet back into the pizza shop, and found the entire staff cowering between the massive oven and the innermost cinder block wall. You could see genuine fear in all of their eyes. Oddly, my first thought was relief that I wasn’t just being a little girl about it, and that there was a consensus that this was a storm not to be trifled with. It passed soon after, and there were downed trees and branches and light posts galore after. I really thought I might be picked up and tossed around with a pile of shrapnel from buildings torn off their foundations.

22

But did you get the pizza there in time?

23

Probably when I shattered my ankle when I was a little kid. If I suffered the same injury today, the pain would still be enormous, but I could rationalize it. This is temporary. Get to a hospital. They’ll mend the bone and give you drugs. This is temporary. But when you’re real little, you have no point of reference or life experience for this sort of thing. You can’t understand it. It’s like drugged kid “David After Dentist” when he asks, “Is this going to be forever?” When you’re a kid, the now could be eternal for all you know. That was scary.

24

No, dude. I’ve broken my left ankle once as a child and once as an adult. It hurt just as much as I remembered. :stuck_out_tongue:

25

That wasn’t my point. I conceded that. When you’re a kid you can’t understand that kind of pain, and that itself is what was scary about it.

26

Your host is a fucking hero. What a way to think on your feet and do the only thing that would have worked, under such pressure. Not only did he save himself, and his guests, he also saved the people in the other houses who he gave time to get away. And he saved the boys with the AK-47’s from doing even more damage they would later live to regret. If you ever see him again, tell him I said so.

My scare is that time my canoe tipped and I couldn’t get out of the thingy that strapped me down and prevent water from coming in. I sat there, tipped under water upside down, and realise that no-one could get to me in time to get me out. Then instinct took over and I started to scramble madly and somehow got out. When I emerged and heaved a deep breath I saw no-one of my classmates canoeing along with me had even noticed something was wrong.

27

Many years ago, I was staying with relations on their farm - in the guest room in what used to be a cow shed, there was a massive thunderstorm in the middle of the night that woke me up. I lay in bed watching the place light up with the lightening flashes (which is awesome when you’re in the middle of nowhere with no street lights or anything), and counting between the flashes and the thunder, until it got to the point where there was no gap between the flash and the thunder there was just this NOISE and LIGHT. I was lovin’ it.

When it was all done and dusted I fell back asleep and when I got up next morning I was eager to talk about the thunderstorm, only to discover that my family (Aunt and cousins) had spent the night huddled around their Sacred Heart light crying and praying, having thought it was Judgement Day. They were scared out of their minds that God had wreaked his vengeance during the night all day long while they tended to their hens and the few cows they had. The fact that we were -literally- in the middle of nowhere; no TV, sporadic radio, no traffic on the ‘road’; it did sort of look like there’d been an apocalypse during the night. The air seemed to be a funny grey colour and what with that, the silence, and my cousins all red-eyed and terrified, my imagination started to run riot, and I now know what they mean when they say “the cold hand of fear clutched at my heart” or “the blood turned to ice in my veins”. It didn’t help that Uncle wasn’t in the least bit bothered by the shenanigans (having slept through the storm) and kept making noises and scaring the crap out of us!

40 years later I look back and laugh at it, but I can still remember that creeping fear that we were the only people left on Earth…

28

There wasn’t much thinking on his feet, that was the typical way he answered the door.

29

When my son was about ten, I went to pick him up from after school care. And he wasn’t there. He had signed in but no one remembered him leaving. I ran around the school screaming for them to call 911. I have never ever been so frightened in all my life. He was returned after about an hour by another parent who thought it would be just fine to take him out for ice cream when she picked up her son. Recalling that hour puts a huge knot in my stomach to this day.

30

My most scared moment is similar to this - losing my 2-year old son at the mall play area - I literally looked at my phone for 10 seconds, then looked up and couldn’t see him… it was packed, I was frantic, started hyperventilating and in shock - sweaty, screaming his name… 5 minutes went by (felt like an hour) and I had to flag down a security guard and give my son’s description to him - the most frightening HORROR I have ever experienced in my life. My husband ended up finding him in a nearby bookstore, playing with a train set all alone. To this day, I still have panic attacks when I can’t find him, even briefly. Death would not compare to the horror of a missing child.

31

My scariest moment was when I lived in NYC. I was taking the subway, by myself-- I was maybe 25-- and I don’t remember the time of day, but it was a sparsely-populated car.

Anyone who has lived in NYC knows that there’s this breed of subway rider who, even when the train car is empty, will stand in a way that blocks people walking on. It’s annoying as hell.

Anyway, I rushed into the car just before the doors closed and pushed past this guy that was standing RIGHT in front of the doorway. He was a tall, thin black man wearing unsavory, baggy clothing. Typical Bernie Goetz profile, which I generally ignored, being a well-raised, open-minded liberal arts graduate.

“Hey!” he called out to me, “You’re supposed to say ‘excuse me’”. Annoyed, I returned something like, “Dude, if you don’t want to get shoved, don’t stand in front of the doors.” He repeated, even louder, “NO, you should say ‘excuse me’!” and I stupidly said something back like, “YOU shouldn’t stand in front of the doors!” But he didn’t let it drop.

Suddenly, this guy flew off the handle. He followed me down the train car, getting in my face, yelling at me. The few other people on the car shot wide-eyed, wary looks in our direction. I thought, “this man is going to attack me”. All of my liberal-arts bullshit went out the window and I pictured him pulling out a knife or a gun. My heart dropped into my stomach. The train was moving and I knew I couldn’t get away.

At this point, I raised my hands and weakly said something like, “OK, ok, sheesh, I’m sorry, I was in a hurry. EXCUSE ME.” He eventually backed off, but paced around the car muttering to himself until the next stop, when he thankfully got off. I felt shaky until I got off the train and into my home.

Holy shit. Lesson learned. Don’t antagonize people on the subway. Just fucking say excuse me.

32

Well, I was just having a peaceful walk through the woods doing some bird watching, when some maniac popped out of the trees, carrying a chain saw!

33

I have two- one was while I was in the Navy, on a submarine, in a (surfaced) collision at sea. Our rudder was wedged inside a hole in a much larger freighter. If that freighter had sunk, it would have took us down with it (and we weren’t lined up to submerge- that takes a bit of prep time).

The other was years before, during spring break, on South Padre Island. My best friend and I were having drunk tests of manliness on the beach- and the latest test was going out to the third sand bar. The sea was rough, my friend barely made it back, and I got caught in a riptide between the 2nd and 3rd sandbar. I actually yelled “Help!”, but I somehow found the energy to swim sideways until I was out of the riptide- more than a mile down the beach from where I started. I was gone for an hour- my friends were already talking about who would be the one to tell my parents I had drowned.

My lungs burned for a week, and I had dreams about drowning for months afterwards.

34

I’m really torn as to the extent I should talk about this right now because I am currently having issues related to it. There’s a thin line between catharsis and rumination.

When I was about fourteen my Mom threatened to shoot me with my Dad’s shotgun. Until that moment I had been more pissed off at her than scared (I was getting to that age), but when she started screaming that she was going to go into the bedroom and get the shotgun the anger just drained out of me. I’ve never been more scared in my life. I had already been crying and I started hyperventilating and it was awful because I knew that if I showed too much reaction she would just get madder and go for the gun. There’s a certain point where you get so afraid you can’t control your reaction to the fear. I just kept seeing it happen over and over again and I was trying to be as still as unresponsive as possible, hoping she would wear herself out and finally walk away (which she did, after another 20 minutes or so of yelling.)

My Mom had a history of totally losing her shit and doing destructive things that she later regretted. I think that’s important to understand why I was so scared at the time. For example, she once lost her temper after a phone conversation with her husband and destroyed our sofa with a butcher knife. When she realized what she had done, she panicked, went out and bought a new couch, and carried on as if nothing had happened (to this day she still doesn’t know that I know what happened.) So not only was she impulsively violent, she was also deeply in denial about it. Not a great combination.

With the relative objectivity of adulthood I still look back on that moment and I honestly can’t tell you whether she would have shot me or not. Maybe I overreacted, maybe I didn’t, but the thing is with Mom you could never tell what she would do next.

I don’t want people to judge my Mom based on the worst things she ever did. She was (and to some extent still is) mentally ill, but there were good times too. In some ways she was excellent.

A close second on the fear-o-meter was almost having a tornado drop onto my head while I was at an amusement park, but I didn’t take that one so personally.

35

I’d have a hard time not kicking that person’s ass.

36

as a child i was abused badly and blocked most of it from my memory. It caused me to have terrible nightmares and problems at night. The most scared I’ve ever felt was as a child knowing that something was going to come hurt me in the night.

37

[quote=“drastic_quench, post:23, topic:638431”]

Probably when I shattered my ankle when I was a little kid. If I suffered the same injury today, the pain would still be enormous, but I could rationalize it. This is temporary. Get to a hospital. They’ll mend the bone and give you drugs. This is temporary.

Hey, me too. Fell down a hill on a school camping trip and just as I was getting up (I’d hit my head also, so a little out of it), I just saw my foot lying off to the side. Absolutely freaked me out, was screaming my head off even though the pain wasn’t wrenching (unlike you). I’d never had a serious injury before – and relatively speaking – turned out to be not all that serious, either.

38

Jungle. Angry mother elephant, close, stepped out…then her baby. Then the bull.
Trumpeting; ears flapping.
My partner said, in the weirdest voice: “oh…there’s a baby…”
It sounded the way you’d say something when there is no more hope.
For some reason I am more terrified of being killed by an animal than I am by other means.

I thought I was not afraid to die, but in this case I was utterly paralyzed with fear.

39

Damn right I did. This was on the way back to the store. :wink:

40

It saddens me to hear this and know that stuff like this goes on :frowning: