When I was 17 I served in the Canadian Navy, we were carrying out work-ups off Cape Flattery in W601. Lots of drills and exercises, alarms, not much sleep and rough seas. Woken up by a shipmate one tier over screaming in his sleep…horrific screams, in the darkness and confused state I had no idea what was going on and thought for sure we were gonna die. It was his nightmare but scared the shit out of a few of us
Wife was late getting home. This was pre-cell phones, at least for us. One hour, two, three hours.
I was really starting to get worried
Two cop cars pull up our driveway.
Tunnel vision, knees buckled. I thought “this is how you find out your wife died”
They where looking for ‘somebody’ else. Wouldn’t give a name. I don’t believe the story of why they came to my house at all. I think it was a random drug bust type of thing. I live well out in the woods and my house is passive solar. Perfect for growing MJ (I don’t, not worth the bother). One was a DARE unit, with a drug dog.
Wife was fine, we just miscommunicated about when she would be home.
Still pisses me off. The cops story just did not add up at all.
My broken-bones-as-a-kid experience couldn’t have been more different. When I was five, I broke my leg BADLY on the playground at school. Nasty spiral fracture.
I remember noticing that all the normally calm and composed adults (the playground monitor who carried me inside, the EMT-certified teacher and the former football coach principal) all seemed to be very concered and somewhat freaking out, but I didn’t so much as shed a tear. I remember the secretary telling me it was OK to cry on the way to the hospital (rural area, was quicker for them to take me than to wait on an ambulance to make both legs of the trip), but I told her I didn’t need to.
I guess I was in shock, but it really didn’t hurt and I had no desire to cry or freak out at all…it wasn’t until hours later, when I was sitting on the couch at home with a cast from my toe to my hip, that I started to feel the pain and cried. It still hurts at times almost 30 years later.
It was an earthquake. It hit in the middle of the night when I was asleep, and I stumbled toward the door frame, having heard it was the strongest part of the house. I was in the bottom floor of a 5 story building, and as the world shook around me, I fully realized the utter futility of what I was doing. If that building collapsed, the door frame wouldn’t help me in the least. If the building stayed up, I was fine. It was the utter helplessness that scared me so deeply.
Definitely the day that my daughter was playing outside (she was a little older, maybe 7), we don’t watch her every second. One of her friends came to call on her, I said where she was supposed to be, and off she went. A few minutes later, her friend came back without her. I called out and she said my daughter wasn’t there.
Huh.
I went around to a few friend’s houses, and there was no sign of her. Scarier to me was the fact that no one was playing outside, the street was a ghost town.
Hubby walked down the street with the friend to another house to check, and she wasn’t there either. The image of him on his way back without her struck a nerve of terror since I genuinely had no idea where she was. I had the phone in hand to call the police when she popped out of a neighbour’s house - they had a toddler that she liked to visit, unbeknownst to us.
I walked into the kitchen (she followed me, apologizing) and lost it. I didn’t yell at her, I simply burst into tears and held (my now bewildered) seven-year old. The icy-cold feeling of suddenly realizing you don’t know where your child is was by far the most terrified I have ever been in my life.
Hmm…hard to choose:
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Being in a plane where an engine caught on fire. They had to turn off all the engines. Plane was going down…was sure I was going to die. They got engines running again and we went from nose dive to safe landing.
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Standing alone on a cliff in Crete. Looking over Mediterranean Sea. Quite nice. Then stepped away, walked about 30 feet to another point and, at that exact spot where I had just been standing, the entire part of the cliff suddenly fell 100’s of yards down into the rocks by the sea below. Had I been standing there just two minutes longer…
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Walking back to my apartment late at night in Berlin, two guys with guns put them on each side of my head. They were drunk. I was able to intentionally speak bad German enough to let them know I was American…they thought that was cool…we went into a bar, had a beer and I left them there with another round I had bought and scurried home. They were both recently out of prison, had just bought the guns and were looking for trouble…but quick thinking on my part, and another beer for them, distracted them from their fun for the night.
For a short time, I lived with an Aunt and Uncle. I came in a little late one night and as i walking down the hall to my bedroom, the uncle jumped out of their bedroom with a .38 revolver. He yelled Don’t move you SOB and i didn’t. I could hear my aunt talking to him with a quiet patient voice telling it was okay and he eventually turned and went back to bed. He was a dead shot with any kind of gun; we were separated by about ten feet. If he had fired, he would not have missed.
I shed a tear reading this. As someone who struggles with consistent thoughts of suicide this really puts things in perspective. I’m so sorry to hear this and thank you for sharing.
So could he not see it was you?
One time I woke up in the middle of the night, and heard knocking on my window. I know it was my window because my bed was right next to it it was with ought a dout on my window… But my room was on the second floor… I was so scared. It wasn’t an apartment or anything with a way to reach that window from the outside, it was just a house. It wasn’t rocks it was a distinct knock with that knock knock pattern. I was younger, so I didn’t even bother to look I just ran downstairs as fast as I could and fell asleep again watching tv in the living room
And another time when my mom came to my room in the middle of the night and woke me up and told me to stop playing my drums. Lol she woke me up how could I be playing my drums. After she left, I heard my snare drum hit like 5 times really loud. When I turned on the light nobody was there
This was only a couple of years ago.
I was at my parents’ house and I was looking for the combination for their safe in the junk drawer (that’s where they keep it). I got it out and walked up the stairs and opened the safe to get out their wills. That’s when it hit me that they were dead. Really dead. They weren’t coming back. I screamed and wailed and cried in a voice that I barely recognized as my own.
And then I woke up. It was a dream.
It was so realistic. I could feel the texture of the items I moved in the drawer to get to the combination. I could feel the carpet under my feet on the stairs. The cold metal of the safe door.
It was six am but it didn’t matter. I phoned my parents and talked to each of them to assure myself that they were okay. I then cried myself back to sleep.
It still hits me once in a while.
Yup, swallowed mucilaginous steak tips, stuck in my throat, blocked all air exchange. I knew I couldn’t breathe, thought I’d taken my last breath, husband tried to clear it, couldn’t. Anoxia really is blissful, but I passed out in despair at leaving him so suddenly. Smooth muscle relaxed when I lost consciousness for a minute, and I started breathing again hearing people around me saying “she’s pinking up!” Yeah, death isn’t so bad, but it leaves the survivors in quite a pickle. Glad I came back.
Being swept towards Satan’s Gut in Cataract Canyon.
This is a video of what that means.
Skip to 1:30 for the ugliness.
Probably being woken up by explosions so loud they were more felt than heard. Its a weird feeling to know that your unconscious mind flung you out of bed onto the floor before bothering to wake you up.
In my twenties, I occasionally babysat my boss’s toddler. We lived in a shore community, and the toddler loved to go to the beach to walk around for hours. Well, in the winter, the shore is very deserted. One day, we had left the stroller at the edge of the beach and were walking around the sand. I noticed that a car had pulled up right next to the stroller and a man was walking towards us. He stopped us to chat about the weather, what a cute baby, etc., then walked back to his car. And sat there.
We were on the beach for a good hour and this man simply sat in the car. Eventually we started to make our way back to the stroller, and as we got closer, the man got out of the car. I turned cold and thought, “this man is going to hurt us”. There was no one else for miles. I grabbed the baby and headed back to the shoreline, then walked along the beach a few blocks, hiding behind dunes and deserted summer hotels, trying to work our way home without this man seeing us. Eventually we got home and I went back later for the stroller.
Thirty years later, I still wonder if that was just a lonely old man who missed his grandbaby and wanted to talk, but I think I did the right thing by running the other way.
I’m just baffled anyone can survive that.
I was leading a scuba dive at 100ft along the side of the Cayman Wall.
One of the divers I was guiding lost control of buoyancy and was dropping down, down, down… this section dropped off at a near vertical - like dropping off a cliff rather than down a steep hillside. Absolutely nothing beneath for several hundred feet.
I turned and forcibly swam down to catch her… and my depth gauge read 186ft. At that depth and with the gas mixture I was breathing I was in danger of oxygen toxicity and blackout by the time I caught her. And then I had to bring her back up, sharing my gas part of the way.
Iggy, you’re a hero.
Apparently I’ve lived a safe life. I’ve had misadventures… but didn’t know to be scared… or too young to know to be scared.
I have had moments of adrenaline overload. Me, best friend and my little sister in the front seat of the car (mid - 70’s Ford) on the way to the mall. Approaching the railroad track that crosses the 4 lane road from the factory on the right to the tracks on the left that parallel the road. I can hear a train but think nothing of it. The front of the car crosses the tracks and a huge light shines into the car from my right. Holy shit! I’ve lived in that city all my life, been up and down that road a million times. I have never seen a train enter or leave that factory.
I’m shaking so bad all I want to do is stop and gather myself. Traffic won’t let me over into the right lane to pull in somewhere and for once every traffic light is green for me. I don’t get a chance to stop till I turn in at the mall 2 miles down the road.
Cross country trip in 2008. Somewhere in northern California we are coming down a mountain with a serious grade to it. I’m driving an automatic instead of a stick and not a lot of experience with mountain grade driving. (I’m a flatlander.) I don’t know how many miles of down hill there were but when I finally found a place to pull over smoke was rolling out from under the car. I didn’t know I could drop an automatic into second till much later.
A month before the start of the cross country trip, I’m taking the Hubby to the base for something. Sitting at a full stop in the left turn lane in morning rush hour traffic. Speed limit on the road is 35 mph. Morning rush hour it’s bumper to bumper for the most part. Well there seems t have been a gap in traffic so that some idiot has manage to get up a bit of speed. Police determined he hit me about 50 mph.
I heard the squeal of brakes and tires and look in the rearview to see a car fast approaching. Not my first rearend collision so I stand on my brake and brace for impact. And impact. Totalled the guy’s car that hit me. Trailer hitch and spare tire and me on the brake, it almost looked like he’d hit a telephone pole… and he was still on the phone. And still on the phone when the police got there.
The car in front of me sustained a cracked bumper. And the insurance company of the guy that hit me paid about $3600. to get my Jeep back on the road. I was impress with his insurance company, car back in time for trip and didn’t quibble over a needed repair that was missed first time around.
Was clipped by an 18 wheeler moments after the friend with me tells me her biggest fear is getting hit by an 18 wheeler.
When I was 15 I got caught in an under-tow. My sisters saw me waving at them but didn’t not realize I was in trouble. Finally remembered to go with the flow for a bit and try again to swim to shore. I know longer swim in the ocean.
After the first time I was rearended, a girl further up the line of cars in the chain reaction who had minor damage to her car gave me a ride home. (I was the first car hit, the trunk of my little Nissan looked to be in my backseat.) Road construction on 264 allowed for huge puddles of water at concrete barriers. As we were exiting into Norfolk another car hit the water just right so that it hit the windshield of the car I was in, preseat belt law, I nearly wound up in the backseat I jumped to bad.
After my best friend totaled her brand new car and we were picked up from the hospital. Little Sister is driving my car on the backroads to Mom’s to pick up some things so she can stay with me for a few days. (Backroads because she doesn’t have her license yet.) We’ve just crossed over the interstate when a car coming off the interstate fails to stop at the top of the ramp and t-bones the car behind us. I screamed and Little Sister pulls into a parking lot and orders me to stay in the car as she runs to help. Of course I don’t. A few minutes later a car coming from the direction we were headed plows into the two wrecked cars and just missed the guy from the gas station trying to warn him off. I screamed again and Little Sister comes running.
Somehow the two guys involved with the first crash were for the most part uninjured and not in their cars when the third hit.
And by the time we got to Mom’s I was going into shock. But I was in capable hands.