That reminds me of a post on a board years and years ago where someone said they’d been woken from a deep sleep by something knocking on their bedroom window, back of the house, second floor. Other posters replied with the usual “it was a bird” or “it was a tree”. OP didn’t think it was either as it had sounded like someone banging on the window with their fist.
A few months later they reported that it had happened again, and again they’d basically crapped themselves, when they heard a voice saying “get down here and open the fucking door!”. They crawled out of bed, over to the window and peeked out. There was a house directly behind theirs and one of the teenage sons was standing at the backdoor trying to get his brother to let him in, having apparently forgotten to take a key with him when he went out.
Sound travels funny when it’s dark, sounds seem to be louder and closer than they are in daytime.
For reasons I don’t remember, I was home alone. (usually had hubby-at-the-time and two teens at home.) I have a pleasant evening and retire to bed to read a bit before sleep. I close the book, turn the light off and roll over to go to sleep. Then, I hear a sneeze from the bathroom in the master bedroom. The bathroom off my bedroom, with no other outlet.
I freeze for a moment then slide off the bed on the opposite side from the door to the bathroom. I crawl on the floor to the closet and get the .45 auto off the closet shelf. I know a round is chambered, so move quietly toward the bathroom door, which is ajar just an inch or so. I kick the door with my right foot, slap the light switch with my left hand and draw down…
on my cat. She blinks at me and is totally unimpressed by my gunhandling skills. Unfortunately, I had so much adrenaline pumping I couldn’t sleep for hours.
Probably not all that clearly; the only light was a night light in the bathroom. For all i know, maybe he did see me and went back to bed as a result. He never mentioned it nor did I.
Reminds me of a story where I wasn’t so much scared as puzzled and bewildered. I woke in the middle of the night to hear this sound coming from my bathtub in the nearby bathroom-it sounded to me like an animal was trapped in the slippery tub and was trying vainly to get out, its claws scratching futilely on the sides of the tub. I had a loaded 38 revolver and got it out, wondering WTF kind of animal could have gotten into my house-but then I looked at my black lab, who instead of barking at whatever it was, was instead acting sheepishly and perhaps even guiltily. I was still a bit freaked out tho.
I slowly edged my way towards the bathroom, reached in to turn on the lights, took a quick peek or two in, only then noticing…
…that one of the sliding glass stalls had completely shattered into a million pieces, and the scratching sound I was hearing was from bits of glass dribbling out of the frame and sliding into the tub. My dog, who loved to sleep on the cold surface in the tub, must have hit one of those shatter points on the glass with a toenail when he clambered out of it. I turned around to look at him and he still had that guilty look on his face-gave him some moral support and went back to bed.
Holding my moaning, lethargic 18-month old son in the doctor’s office, and watching the thermometer in his ear hit 106.5 degrees. I must have blacked out for a second because the commotion of getting him shipped off to the hospital was such a blur I don’t even remember it. But I remember that fear, that OMG what in the world is wrong with him and the complete panicky out of control feeling that I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
The good news is that it was just hand foot and mouth disease. A few days of utter hell and he was good as new. He also appears to be my only child that spikes frighteningly high fevers that take years off of his parents’ lives.
Some holes are keepers and some holes are flushers. As you can see from the vid, that one was a flusher at that water level.
It’s sort of neat being churned about in a hole, for you have no idea of where you are or of which way is up. Although you get rag-dolled violently, it does not hurt at all. The only disturbing thing about it is not knowing when, or if, you will be flushed out.
The scary part is when you are past the point of no return above the hole, and know that you are about to be swallowed. Your adrenaline spikes, you get a sick feeling in your gut (particularly if you are going off a high dam or waterfall), and your mind screams at you in fear. Once you drop into it, the fear washes away as you deal with the problem at hand by keeping your mouth shut, by tucking into a ball (to hopefully get flushed out along the bottom rather than keep recirculating up top), and then once you have flushed out, by forcing yourself to only try to breathe in when your face is above the water in the wave train.
If it is a large keeper, you’re fucked. If it is a less forceful keeper, you keep trying to find bottom and crawl out, or you keep moving your arms in hope of being snagged by a companion’s throw-rope. Eventually you start to see spots and then pass out, but fear is not part of it – just immense frustration.
When I was 6 years old, I was at the grocery store with my mom, sitting on the underside of the cart while she pushed it up the bread aisle. Two masked men ran into the store and yelled, “Hit the deck!” Being 6, I had no idea what that meant or what this was all about, and I burst into tears. My mom crouched down at my side to comfort me, and one of the masked robbers pointed his gun directly at her. That, I understood.
He must have decided she wasn’t a threat, because he went about robbing the store, and then ran out again with his friend.
The only thing that tops that is when my oldest son was in the NICU, and we showed up one morning at the hospital (after a short night spent sleeping at home) only to be told that we couldn’t go in, because they were doing an emergency procedure to relieve pressure on his heart. Then they changed their minds and told us we could go in for “no longer than one minute” to say goodbye if we wanted.
That was a different sort of fear, though. (He’s age 10 and fine now.)
What’s the most scared I’ve ever been? I was woken by the loud BEEP BEEP BEEP of a dumpster truck, only to find myself in a box that I could not kick open. I figured that I was about to be collected, so I repeatedly kicked with all my might, and screamed bloody murder.
After about a minute I realized that I was sleeping in my ski-box trailer (very solid 3/4 inch ply), and the dumpster truck was going about its usual business which certainly did not involve collecting me or my trailer.
It’s interesting how the mind works when one is disoriented. Shoot first (or in my case, kick and scream) and ask questions later.
It makes me chuckle when I realize that of all times that I have been very close to death, the one that terrified me the most was a false alarm when I was woken from sleeping snug as a bug in a rug.
