What is the one single scariest incident that has ever happened to you?

Being assaulted and beaten unconscious.

Watching Mame by myself.

Finding out I spent a week trying to return a wallet to a serial killer.

R3 wtf?

Falling asleep driving on the freeway in the middle of the night, definitely after 2 AM but before sunrise, and the SUV i was driving barrel rolling off a hill. I was coming off a drunken party night but had gained enough composure to say I wanted to get myself home. The hill wasn't that steep, but it was enough to where I woke up upside down because my SUV had toppled on top of itself. I am so thankful and still spooked that I came out of it completely unscathed. I mean, it truly felt like I dozed off and the next thing was I woke up to a woman shouting from her car window (she had stopped off the side of the freeway) to see if I was awake, conscious. I am so thankful that when she called for help, the cop who arrived felt pity for me and allowed me to wait for a tow truck and he drove me home, which was only 15 minutes away. I will always feel pathetic about it and it haunts me that I put myself and others in that danger.

My now ex trying to strangle me

Yes, more R3.

Discovering Datalounge.

I found a wallet one evening on the way home from a bar in the late 80s. There wasn't money in it, but there was ID with a local address, and I knew the neighborhood it was in. I got the number from 411, left a couple of messages. No return call. Tried, once, to drop it off, but no one answered. I finally dropped it in the mail.

A few months later, he was caught, and I caught it on the news. Scary motherfucker. I always wondered if he used his wallet as a lure for ex-Boy Scouts like me. It wasn't Dahmer or anyone you'd have heard of, unless you were local.

R3=R9. Apologies, the adrenaline got flowing!

Yikes R1, what happened?

1. Nearly falling off my bike into a busy road and barely catching myself, somehow, at the last second.

2. TWA Flight 800 that blew up not long after takeoff (1996) - I was on the same flight a couple weeks later. It makes me feel sick to think, what if the folks who scheduled my flight had made it for two weeks before?

Being an overweight 59 year old with an AIDS diagnosis stuck in a global pandemic while a walking turd is president of the U.S. and the Chinese are working overtime to keep him in office.

Hehehe! Just kidding, kids. I'm fine.

lol R13

My bag supposedly tested positive for cocaine while traveling through a major foreign airport. Hauled into secondary and abused and insulted by homophobic government thugs demanding to know where the drugs were until 1 hour later, someone announced it was a false positive. Fuck.

Driving one of the most dangerous roads in the world, the Kahekili Highway, known as the "death highway" of Maui. We were there on vacation and had to make our flight to attend a wedding in California. But the road to the airport was closed due to a fire, so we decided to take another route along the west coast.

People warned us it was dangerous, but we dismissed them thinking they were exaggerating. OMG, it still scares me to think of how close we came to going over the edge. We would be driving along the ridiculously narrow, one lane road with a vertical rock cliff on the right and a steep ravine on the left--- barely enough room, and then you would see a sign that read "road narrows ahead". WTF? Plus there were signs everywhere to beware of falling rocks. We were driving a convertible. It was 2 hours of sheer terror.

I can't remember a time when I ever actually felt fear. There were probably many times I should have, though. However, there was one incident a few years ago that was alarming, to say the least.

My partner and I were hiking down a forest trail, heading for a small lake. We had our black Lab with us. Just as the lake came into sight at the end of the trail, I put my foot directly on a wasp nest that was built into the ground. The reaction was immediate - a cloud of wasps arose in front of us. My partner yelled "RUN!" and back up the path we went, with the speed of Olympic sprinters, the dog following us. When we reached an area of tall grass and reeds, we dove head first into it, and flattened ourselves against the ground. The dog landed on top of me and practically knocked the wind out of me. After some time had passed, we got up. The dog had taken most of the hits, but a couple of wasps had gotten into my hiking boot and had done a job on my ankle. Thankfully nobody had an allergy to wasp stings.

9/11 - We lived a block from the WTC and saw the whole damn thing from my living room until the first tower fell, and then we evacuated. We were walking south to get away when the second tower fell.

Close second: seeing Bruce Vilanch naked.

Swimming alone, tired, off an uncrowded beach in a foreign country.

Caught in riptide.

Too far offshore for people to understand my call for help.

I knew I was going to die.

R19 how did you make it out safely?

When I was 20 and still closeted, I got home after a bareback liason with my boyfriend at the time and had a message on the answering machine from the Red Cross, telling me to call them back because they had found an issue with the blood I'd donated a few days before. I flipped out and was sure I'd tested positive for HIV; it turns out my liver enzymes were elevated from an antidepressant I was taking. I was in absolute hysterics and ended up coming out to my mom (an MSN) while asking her if I'd "survive the liver enzymes." She and I can laugh about it now, but I was young and horrendously terrified at the time.

R16 I understand, those types of roads are scarry as hell. Never drive the north coast 500 in Scotland. Same type of thing in the Applecross/Gairloch area. Narrow bad roads and people are driving campers there, imagine having to go in reverse downhill with two cars behind you to the nearest passing place where there's only room for two cars.

Being stalked by a sadistic sexual serial killer while I was in college. Second was looking up to see a guy in a ski mask while I was alone in the computer room. College campuses were dangerous places.

Having bandages removed from my eyes after emergency surgery - and needing to ask the nurse: are the bandages off yet?

As this post implies, sight returned, but it was a dreadful moment. Any time I'm tempted by self-pity I think back to it. Grateful every day for eyesight.

Near the end I was treading water - exhausted.

A (very) powerful swimmer appeared in the ocean behind me. He saw what was happening and literally pushed me (like a porpoise) out of the current and toward the shore.

Owe him my life.

Glad it ended safely for you R25

R23, yikes!

OP, you know what you did.

Coming across a brown bear and her cubs while hiking along the shoreline of the Washington State coast. We saw them before she saw us, and so we went running into the water up to our waists and made lots of noise to scare them off.

R29, that water must have been cold!

I guess a near-drowning (or so I thought at the time) when I was ten years old. We were in the water (ocean), which was calm. Suddenly, a huge, roiling wave swept over me and I was completely submerged, caught up in the wave. A calm did come over me and I remember thinking: "I'm only ten and this is how I'm dying."

Prologue: the rogue wave subsided / swept back out and I survived.

Car accidents are traumatizing and I still have PTSD from some. I have been in several. Only one was my fault. About six months ago I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. It took three tries to finally get a breath. I was terrified.

I once got between Tess Holliday and the snacks table at a photo shoot when her blood sugar was low.

I have always flown a lot due to my career. Usually around 200,000 to 300,000 miles per year for the last 30 years. I have been in several close calls while on airplanes.

I was on an American Airlines flight from DFW to MIA in the middle of the afternoon which should've been no big deal. But because of storms over Texas and Louisiana, the aircraft flew west over Lubbock, then down toward Houston before heading across the Gulf. They hadn't properly planned for the diversion so there wasn't enough fuel on board. As soon as the Florida coastline was in sight, the pilot announced we were making an unscheduled landing in Tampa because we wouldn't make it to Miami. It was the steepest, nose-down descent I've ever experienced. We landed on the east-west runway which isn't used for commercial flights because there was no time to line up on the other runways. Somewhere very close to the ground we were completely out of fuel and glided in. There was not even enough to taxi to the gate - we had to be towed from the runway to the gate.

I'm not scared of most stuff while flying - but this time I really did think I was going to end up sinking to the bottom of Tampa Bay. It took me a couple of weeks to get over it.

R34 you could have ended up in Croc infested swamps like that other poor plane.

[quote] They hadn't properly planned for the diversion so there wasn't enough fuel on board. As soon as the Florida coastline was in sight, the pilot announced we were making an unscheduled landing in Tampa because we wouldn't make it to Miami.

What the fuck kind of planning is that? I would have been pissed. I used to fly (not pilot) very small (~ 20 seats at most) airplanes for work. My coworkers had all kinds of excuses for why they could not fly, so, it fell to me most of the time (to fly). Our work counterparts in another department used the same types of charter planes and actually had a fiery crash. One person died of a heart attack. Another person ended up on disability (from the PTSD). I was pissed when that happened because that could have been me, while my wuss coworkers sat in the office.

I'm terrified of a plane crash, especially after reading what happens to your body. I don't want to go out like poor Patsy Cline or Carole Lombard..

I was flying from Amsterdam to Singapore and in the middle of the night, while everyone was sleeping, I noticed the flight attendants dashing around like mad, checking every cabinet, bathroom, and galley drawer, and walking up and down the aisles feeling the overhead bins. That's when I smelled the smoke. I popped my head up and was trying to understand what was going on and remain calm when the woman across the aisle asked, "Do you smell it too?" Fuuuucccckkk. I looked at my partner and he was fast asleep. I was terrified but thought it better to let him sleep in case the plane exploded. We were over water, too; maybe the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. There would have been no trace of us. After a few agonizing minutes the FAs were walking up and down the aisles spraying this citrus air deodorizer to mask whatever caused the smell of smoke (I think it was electrical). My partner eventually woke up and when I told him, he was like, "Is that so?" In 25 years I've never been able to convey the sheer terror of those four or five minutes.

When I was 20, I went for a physical as part of a requirement for an upcoming new job. The doctor told me they wanted to do some more blood tests. When I asked why, he was a bit hesitant and then he said they wanted to test for a blood disease. I asked, "What blood disease?" He said "Leukemia". I went home, fell on the living room floor and cried and cried and cried. They did a bone marrow test from my chestbone. Came back negative. I was fine. But I thought I was going to die at the age of 20.

This is my DL horror story that I tell on occasions like this. I used to get my hair cut at a barber on Santa Monica blvd. I was sitting in my barber's chair and he turned me and I was suddenly face to face with the guy in the next chair. He had the most terrifying look and his eyes seemed like he was staring right into my soul. It was hypnotizing and not in a good way. I averted my eyes but not before thinking that this guy was going to kill me. After I was finished, I paid and almost literally ran to my car for fear he'd follow me and knife me. I didn't go back for a while. When I did go back, everyone was talking about the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez who had been caught the previous night. He was a regular there and he was the guy who stared me down. The realization that I was that physically close to a mass murderer was equally scary as the incident itself. When I saw the photos in the newspapers and TV of him, it never came close to capturing his aura of evil.

Trying to overcome my own homophobia, repression, and inner turmoil. I had to go through 4 different therapists before I was able to accept myself as I was. I was breaking out in terrible rashes and having to go to a skin specialist on a regular basis. It wasn't an easy time. So glad I was finally able to move on.

R25 It sounds like you had a guardian angel or some form of divinity help you. Miracles still happen.

Watching Jodie Foster in Nell

Almost drowning and two car crash avoidances that would have killed me. One were a taxi driver took his eyes off the road and veered into my oncoming lane but swerved out at the last second.

-Being in a plane that almost went down during an attempted landing in Halifax on an extremely windy night. Very surreal experience - everybody was crying and puking, and I was just staring at the floor stuck in a stupor. They aborted the landing and flew back to Toronto.

-Driving through a snowstorm between Detroit and Toledo. Absolute white-out conditions - the only thing I could see were the lights of the 18-wheeler in front of me. I couldn't see enough to even pull off the highway. 30 minutes of white-knuckles.

One very dark night I was driving on a two-lane mountain road in SoCal and absolutely had to piss. I found a turnout, parked, stepped out of my car and had a lovely pee. Just as I was finishing, I heard the unmistakable rattle of a rattlesnake. I leapt into the car and turned on the headlights. There was a HUGE rattlesnake, all coiled and ready to strike, literally inches from where I'd been standing. Why it didn't bite me I'll never know. I've always been terrified of snakes, and even writing about this creeps me out.

It was my first jump and was standing on the strut on a single engine plane. When I jumped away from the strut to begin my fall I realized that I forgot which of two cords on my chest was the release for the main chute, in case the static line failed, and which went to the line to open the reserve chute. If I pulled the cord for the reserve chute first it would get tangled in the main chute. Was very relieved when the main chute opened successfully. Then all I had to do was to locate the drop zone.

Yes, I found the drop zone but drifted over to the airport parking lot instead for my landing. Guess I was anxious to go home.

I was also caught in a riptide and found myself being taken farther and father out from the shore. I was lucky because I started doing what I found out later you're supposed to do -- swim along the line to the shore until you are out of the riptide.

Had an angel on my shoulder that day but the fear was very real. FYI in case anyone ever finds themselves in that situation.

You deserved it OP, just for being a white devil.

Having a panic attack while high.

1) Worked 8 blocks away from WTC on 9/11, and lived in Battery Park City. Worst 2 months of my life until I moved.

2) 9pm Penn Station Friday night: I walk around and then down a staircase; I must have been looking at my phone, didn't see the heroin addict on the landing. Guy was huge -- I was no match for him. No one around. He politely asked for $ -- poor guy didn't know all he had to do was scowl at me and I would have given him my wallet. I ran down the stairs like a 5-year old girl.

So glad I'm out of NYC now, especially now that there's no bail, no undercover cops. Good luck with that.

Walking past a full length mirror. Nightmarish. Horrifying. And it won’t go away...

I got caught in a tornado last fall. I was at home and jumped in the bathtub with only a large pillow to cover me. I remember hearing the sirens wailing and the rain and wind outside getting louder and louder. Then it all stopped, even the sirens, and there was complete eerie silence. I started to get out of the tub, when suddenly it picked up again from zero to a hundred in what felt like seconds. I could feel the house shaking as if it was sitting right next to a train track (reflecting on it later I was reminded of the scene in Close Encounters when the boy is abducted). I could hear crashing outside at first, then inside...and I knew it had breached either the roof or outside walls. I just sunk further and further beneath the pillow, praying not to die.

R53 What was the condition of your house when it all subsided?

Rather weird because I wasn't scared at all, in college carrying a basket of laundry to the laundry room in the basement. I am white and walked past two black guys I had never seen before, all of a sudden I hear one of the black guys yelling, " I am going to cut you motherfucker" and he has a knife in his hand. The other guy has him grabbed from behind holding him back yelling "Get out of here, I can't hold him back forever" I just continued on to the laundry room and never saw them again. It really didn't dawn on me how serious it might have been until I got back up to my dorm room. I don't know whether they were serious or it was all just a sick joke to get a reaction out of me.

My doctor told me that I should get tested for AIDS (it became HIV only later) after he found my glands swollen in the neck and underarms. This was back in the mid-1980s but I ended up testing negative. At the time, I had every reason to believe that I would be dead by the end of the year.

Ive told this story before so I hope it doesnt bore you all . Way back in the cocaine cowboy days of Miami I had gotten into dealing through my cousins who were heavily into it. I was never anything but low level but I had a ton of fun playing dealer . One afternoon my cousin asked me if I wanted to go with him on a fishing trip with some friends of his ,wich usually meant partying your ass off and very little fishing. There were 8 of us including myself , and we left about 6 pm . We party for hours ,and I do mean party ,and about 2-3 am I pass out despite the mountains of coke we were doing (as well as booze,pot and pills) . I wake up the next morning and stagger out onto the deck and immediately notice theres only 5 of us instead of 8 . I guess my face gave it away and my cousin gave me a look and I shut my trap and immediately started acting like absolutely nothing was wrong with the fact we were hours out and 3 people are missing . I immediately start partying again and talk about an oscar winning performance . For the hours it took to get back to the dock I laughed and joked and partied ,the whole time absolutely terrified my cousin and I would end up in the same place as those 3 unfortunate fellows . As my cousin and I were leaving I started to ask him what the fuck happened out there and he told me "I dont ever want to talk about it " and we never did . That being said,I knew that I was out of the game as I had no real idea what I had been playing with,and my cousin also got out of it too. I will never forget those hours ,sitting there wondering if this was my last day on earth .

In 1981 I was 21, and for fun and to help make ends meet, I became a very very small scale pot dealer, because a neighbor couple I used to hang with didn't have a source. I would get the pot for say 25.00 mark it up to 30.00, and that was it. I took on a second customer, a young couple who were a bit . . . slow, in an Ozark Mountain / Deliverance sort of way. Very nice though, and she would stop by my apartment for the transaction when she needed more, about every other day.

One night she called from the parking lot of Scotty's, the convenience store/gas station that was right next store and asked me if I could meet her there rather than her coming up. She was with her husband in their car. I said sure, pot in pocket. So I go over to Scotty's, not a care in the world, but it's too well lit and too active, so I said let's meet a little further down on Loma, the low-lit side street it connected to. So they're tailing alongside me walking, and at about 50 or 75 yards I stopped, where there were no cars so they could pull over.

I lean in close on the passenger side, and she's right there with the window down. I'm seconds away from making the deal when suddenly out of frikkin' nowhere a cop car pulls up, right up close alongside their car, cop car passenger window down, with two curious cops in it, looking our way. I never felt my heart go from zero to 60 faster. This was back when pot laws in California were much more strict, and here I am, the most docile, non-rebellious and cooperative 21 year old there ever was, thinking I was a dealer. In junior high and high school, I never even got a tardy slip, ok? I said quickly, "I don't know about you guys but I'm getting out of here." I turned around and made a beeline for my car, a beat up VW bug, which, fortunately, was parked right around the bend from where I was.

I was shaking like all get out, but I managed to put the keys into the ignition and I drove to my friend' Diane's apartment in a panic, constantly checking my rearview to see if I was being followed. If you know Long Beach, CA, she lived right at what everyone there called—and still calls—Horny Corner. I spent the night on her couch and went back to my place the next day. That incident spooked me so bad, I never sold pot to anyone again.

These would-be drug dealer stories are interesting. Glad you guys stopped. One night, I was at work at the bar. One of the regular customers (drug dealer) was there. He often gave me freebies. It was the end of my shift and I planned to drive home, which was a decent-length drive. One of my coworkers, who was off-shift and who lived near me, asked whether I'd transport some drugs from drug dealer / regular customer and meet coworker near his house for a drop-off. (Drug dealer had fronted coworker, I guess.) Anyway, stupidly, I agreed. I didn't get pulled over; however, it was very late at night and I had been pulled over before on the same route. My life could have turned out much different if I had been busted for something I wasn't even going to use myself.

I got caught in a microburst a couple months after getting my drivers license for the first time. Trees were down all over the place blocking parts of the road I had just driven down minutes earlier.

I got caught in a riptide & almost drown. I would have if I wasn't rescued.

Around 10 years old. I got lost on the wrong side of town. I was chased by a group of boys in West Philly (got away - Whew)! I am still terrified of what those boys were planning to do to the lone white boy by the projects...No more Septa exploring after that! Center City/Gallery Mall was as far as I would go until college.

Got lost in the forest during a NY Botanical Gardens trip 8 years ago. It was getting dark and I had visions of starving to death before we were found... Luckily, my partner kept his cool and got us out! No forest for me! Terrible sense of direction if there are no signs or landmarks!

I was home alone with my parents out for the night. I was only 11 years old and I was petrified of our basement and the entrance was an old barndoor. All night I kept hearing noises in the house. Then the phone rang and I picked it up and a voice said "good evening" in a voice that implied Dracula. I hesitated and the voice said, "it's your grandpa, what's the matter"". Thank God I was potty trained.

I got lost in the woods when I was around 10, though still describe it as momentarily confused. I was at my Gran's cabin and was getting impatient about my uncle, his German Shepherd, my older sister and brother, who were due to show up from the city in a few hours. So I went for a walk on a trail I knew quite well, through deep woods, to small river about a half hour away. I wanted bragging rights for being the youngest to do alone, and also to be the first one of the season.

When I got there the banks were so badly flooded that the rapids had all but disappeared and a set of new trails had been cut. I took a wrong turn that led me past a small group of young adult neighbors from back at the lake, fishing and drinking beer. I should have asked the way back. I walked around in circles for about 2 hours and the weather had become overcast. Soon it was windy and cold. I knew I was going in circles because of the way I could hear the neighbors' voices go from louder to weaker, and back. Then I heard a scream. Then out of nowhere, Alix, my uncle's dog showed up and gave me a rather subdued "hello" (she didn't knock me down and soak my face) and started sniffing the air, then another scream, and the dog started baring her teeth and snarling.

I was all "nevermind them, get me home" and she mostly complied but did a lot that sniffing and snarling. We mounted a small rise and I looked behind and saw it. A bear, very close the spot where the neighbors had been. Okay Alix, I get it. Good girl!

We were back on the main trail about a minute later and back at the lake in in about 15 minutes. I heard noises on the trail behind me so I pretty much ran the whole way.

When we got back I was told how Alix was looking for me the minute they let her out of the car and after a bowl of water went off looking for me in the woods. I told them what happened and of course got in shit for it. Later that evening I took a boat ride by the neighbors' places and found out they were the ones making all that racket on the trail behind me. One of them said "try running with a number 2 in your pants"

r23, one of my friends in college — a straight, pretty female — was studying in a secluded part of the library behind bookshelves.

She looked up from her work and discovered a fat, old perv jerking his wiener while spying on her from behind a bookshelf.

I came across her in the lobby right after it happened and waited with her until the cops arrived to take her report.

I thought the Florida coastline had alligator-infested swamps.

Crocs are in Egypt.

I was the passenger in a car with a friend and her two teenage daughters. We were returning from a trip in Canada. Between Toronto and Hamilton, the rain was bad -- seriously, like nothing I had seen during tornadoes in Missouri or thunderstorms in Florida. The thunder hurt your eardrums from the noise and the pressure. Sometimes the lightning was the only way you could see where other cars and trucks were located. We actually pulled over a couple of times on the left shoulder at underspasses just to calm down. That stretch of highway has some wicked traffic jams anyway. Every once in a while I'd say, "Doing OK?"

It appears that we were traveling at the same rate of speed and in the same direction of the storm -- we could not outrun it. Between Hamilton and the US border I remember looking at the right shoulder and noticing it looked different. We were on a skyway and couldn't even tell. My friend and I can barely talk about it because it's still so damn scary.

r67, what's a skyway?

[quote] We were on a skyway ...

The Burlington Bay Skyway, no doubt

But what IS a skyway? I live in California and I don't think we have them here.

Home invasion.

R5 = not a black man.

R11 - R1 wore the wrong earrings with the green caftan.

It's a bridge r70

R16's description is super homosexual "2 hours of sheer torture"

Just watching the video at R16's link gives me anxiety.

Not that exciting, but a near miss with a deer on the highway.

R71 how about some details ?

R16 my ex-partner drive me along that road in north Maui years ago. It was a bit unnerving but not that much more than some mountain roads I’ve been on in Italy. For me it was 30 years ago, two months after I’d move to NYC for grad school. Was cramming for an exam in a bus from East Harlem to Washington Heights when I hear screams. Looked up and saw that one guy about 8 from me had pulled a gun on another in a dispute over 25 cents for a bus transfer resale. I was the only passenger who hadn’t thrown himself on the bus floor because I was so tuned out focusing on biostatistics. I promptly joine the others on the floor before the gunman went out the back door

R78 Two hand members came to my house to recover a 50 grand x ack debt that was not mine. I decided to appeal to the good humoured side by joking who let's anyone run up a 50 k drug debt. They were not amused at all. They grabbed an iron bar used to keep a door closed to use in my knees. I started screaming with abject fear and horror and thank fuck a more worldly friend turned up and talked them down. They gave me two days and told me not to tell the cops I told the cops and left the town. Footnote - got a text afew days later how they had the wrong house. No shit.

Flying back from Cairo with BA middle of the night, and I became of a strange droning engine sound. Most people were asleep but clearly a nervous flyer, directly behind me began to shriek and wail and scream. Having gotten out of that shit hole of a country with its nasty inhabitants, I though she might be going to launch a suicide attack.

The woman kept screaming and thrashing about as the crew tried to restrain her. I did suggest to the purser that he use the fire extinguisher he was carrying to knock the bitch the fuck out.

In my hometown there was a family known as "the eyeball people" because they ate people's eyeballs. Once, when I was skateboarding with my friend Jimmy, I skateboarded past their house. They were all sitting on the front porch and, unexpectedly, I fell off my skateboard. THEY ALL JUMPED OUT OF THEIR CHAIRS AND STARTED RUNNING TOWARDS WHERE I LAY!!! My friend Jimmy started screaming "Run!!! They're gonna eat your eyeballs!!!" I fled the scene like they were on fire.

My hometown was weird. One day every year the children in this one family would dress up in costumes like a witch or a devil and come to your house and demand you give them something or they would play a prank on you.

Fuck. Gang members, not hand R81

I figured gang members and thought it was the hand gang. (Assumed it was an Asian gang)

I told this story before, I think, my family lived in a small town north of Phoenix. Our house was on top of a rather large hill and our closest neighbor was 3/4 mile away and down the slope. So one night, my mom and I, and my three half-siblings, were sitting outside one summer night when a *bright* white light shined down on us. Brilliantly white, whiter than sunshine. No sound, no movement. We ran like hell into the house. I could never sleep well or alone after that. No idea what it was, but it scared the living shit out of me.

R85: Spaceship!

I’ve worked 2nd shift for 30 years. Living 30 miles from work there are not that many alternatives on what roads to travel on, but there a couple 5 mile alternates I could take and end up in the same place. I usually take the same one. One night I decided to take the other one. There is one turn onto another road that you have to take. It being dark and being tired I missed the turnoff. Within seconds I felt very disoriented and didn’t know where I was. It was so dark I couldn’t see any familiar landmarks so I had to pull over to calm down. It took a few more seconds to realize what I had done. It made me think this is was happens to elderly people when they start getting disoriented and start panicking. But for that few seconds I thought I was going crazy and it scared the crap out of me. Not the most exciting story but this happened 10 years ago and I can still feel the panic.

Bunny Bixler and I were in the semi-finals - the very semi-finals, mind you - of the ping-pong tournament at the club and this ghastly thing happened. We were both playing way over our heads and the score was 29-28. And we had this really terrific volley and I stepped back to get this really terrific shot. And I stepped on the ping-pong ball! I just squashed it to bits. And then Bunny and I ran to the closet of the game room to get another ping-pong ball and the closet was locked! Imagine? We had to call the whole thing off. Well, it was ghastly. Well, it was just ghastly.

R88 beat our other most homosexual posters by leaps and bounds.

R68 & R70, a skyway is a bridge that is really highly arched, usually quite long too, to accommodate large container ships. Their span usually goes over wide inlets. You see them on the Great Lakes especially. R69 is right, it was the Burlington. They can be nerve wracking to drive over, especially in high winds. But in that rain? Horrifying.

Tornado, I was working in an office in a small factory. Someone ran in to the office and said a tornado was headed this way to take cover, I looked out a back door and saw a tornado to the southwest of my building throwing cars around and tearing up a building. Now tornadoes normally travel from the southwest towards the northeast. I headed to the restroom the only windowless room along with several others and crouched under a sink. You could hear the tornado getting closer and louder. Then the lights went out, we just knew we were going to get a direct hit. Then the noise started to lessen and you could tell the tornado was moving away. We looked out the door and this tornado traveled directly eastward completely missing my building, no damage at all.

r18 did you see the planes hit the buildings?

I was with a coworker, walking to get some lunch about a year ago. I work in a larger city, so there are always characters hanging around downtown. Some of them harmless, some you definitely don’t want to cross. Anyway, this nutty guy came up to us and starting pushing these brochures on us. They were ads for a garden center or flower shop that was nearby. I ignored the guy and kept walking, but the dude seemed fixated on my coworker. He kept pushing these ads on him but my coworker was just too nice to say, “fuck off.” My coworker looked at me for help, but I was like, “dude, you’re on your own.” Finally he gets away from the guy, catches up to me and asks me why I wasn’t helping him get away from the crazy guy. I said, “Look. Only you can prevent florist flyers.”

Thank you, R74 and R90. Yeah, I've never seen anything quite like that around here. I can see how it would be terrifying to drive on in crappy weather.

Excellent, R83! You got me.

^^ Er, R93, that is. ^^

R93 - that was pretty shitty. Least pretend you can fight.

R93 must be my late dad with his awful but very funny jokes.

Hey Dad, just make that horribly stinky fart instead.

I fucked a Spaniard with a 2 inch cock.

Maybe your cock will grow, R99

When I was about 20, I intervened when my brother attempted to hit our mother during an argument they were having. He threw a roller blade at me and then fled to the basement of our parents' house. I followed him down the stairs because I suspected he was going for our father's gun cabinet. No sooner had I gotten past the last stair and turned the corner into the hall, when he tried to full-on murder me with an axe. He had even cut the lights so I wouldn't see what was coming. Somehow, while trying to feel my way around the basement, I managed to see a flash of metal; I reached up and caught the handle of the axe in mid-air as he swung it down over my head. I wrenched it from his hands and beat his ass with the handle.

He is a career criminal, a psychopath who later spent significant time in prison. I cut him out of my life and have not spoken to him for at least ten years.

R101, your story sounds familiar (in DL). Sorry that happened to you. I have a sibling who I won't get into a car with. In the past, this sibling started a fight (while driving, while I was the passenger), ran a red light on a busy road, eyes off the road (because looking at me). Claims he can no longer remember the incident. Very convenient memory.

A friend and I took his brother's sail bot out into Sydney Harbour.

It sprung a leak and flipped over. We were holding on to the keel, but our weight would flip the boat over and over again.

All the splashing was making a lot of noise -- and we both became ever afraid of sharks, which bred in the harbour. I sailed enough to have seen many of them.

Making maters worse, a thunderstorm was coming and there were no other light craft in the harbour anymore to see us.

We were stuck on that flipping boat for over 40 minutes. The entire time, we were sure we were going to be eaten by sharks at any minute.

When the Coast Guard finally rescued us, I asked why we hadn't been eaten by sharks. We were told, "They probably saw the white sail in the water and took you for a whale."

A friend and I took his brother's sail bot out into Sydney Harbour.

It sprung a leak and flipped over. We were holding on to the keel, but our weight would flip the boat over and over again.

All the splashing was making a lot of noise -- and we both became ever afraid of sharks, which bred in the harbour. I sailed enough to have seen many of them.

Making maters worse, a thunderstorm was coming and there were no other light craft in the harbour anymore to see us.

We were stuck on that flipping boat for over 40 minutes. The entire time, we were sure we were going to be eaten by sharks at any minute.

When the Coast Guard finally rescued us, I asked why we hadn't been eaten by sharks. We were told, "They probably saw the white sail in the water and took you for a whale."

R103 that must have been terrifying. One of my worst nightmares. And those sharks would probably have been Great Whites, being in Australia, right? Yikes.

Sorry for the double post. My mouse has developed a hair trigger.

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

JFCR107 ! That was a terrible read ! How in the world could you ever be "normal" again after experiencing that ???

Speaking of skyways, some poor kid was in a Jeep with friends and they were involved in a car wreck bad enough to eject him from the Jeep over the barrier. We call it a causeway. They rescued his dog, who survived the fall, but not him. He was about 22 and good looking, training to be a fireman.

I'm not sure how far down the water is but that causeway is very high. I've always had a fear of bridges.

R107, that’s a quote from the movie Jaws, spoken by the character Quint, in case you’re not kidding.

However, an incident like that really did happen during WWII after the quick sinking of a ship, the USS Indianapolis. There was no time to get rafts or do anything, so they went into the water and nobody was looking for them.

The survivors saw a lot of their friends eaten alive by sharks, who were then attracted by the blood in the water even more. The sharks were right under them and they were being bumped by the sharks underneath. Sometimes they would eat them, sometimes not. It took four days for them to be rescued. Only a few more than a hundred were rescued out of more than a thousand. The sharks got most of the rest.

How horrifying

I love you all, and I'm so glad you survived such harrowing experience s.

I’ve posted this before in similar threads like this one.

During the 84-85 school year I was in university for my first year, living away from home for the first time. I had a roommate. His name was Grant and he was studying journalism.

A couple of months into the school year he came home one night. He’d been in an argument or fight with someone in a bar. The following day the guy from the bar called our residence looking for him. Grant wasn’t here. I continued to get calls for Grant from the guy looking for revenge. Eventually, the guy decided I would be the one he planned to beat the shit out of. For the next several months I received threatening phone calls. I remember one time he threatened to show up where I lived. I even got a call on my birthday in February.

One day one of the guys I shared a bathroom with on my floor saw what a wreck I’d become. He told me, “You know, the calls are coming from down the hall”. I was stunned. A floormate was behind these calls?! Actually, Grant was the one behind them.

I moved out from rooming with Grant and took another room with another guy in a different wing of the floor.

I never understood why he did what he did. Some people are just mean I guess. He put me through hell though.

R113 What an unhinged weirdo. I hope you reported him!

I was finishing three weeks of business travel and personal site seeing in India. I returned to Mumbai from Delhi around 9 PM. At that time, domestic travel and international travel connections were on opposites sides of the airport and you needed to take a taxi to reach the opposite side. My return flight to the US was around 1 AM, so I had plenty to time to transfer sides. I gathered my luggage from the Delhi flight and stepped outside for a taxi. I went to the taxi line and a person with the car door open asked me where I was going. I informed him the other side of the airport and what was the cost. He said 400. I quizzed him if that was Rupees. I replied 400. I should have known better but he took my luggage, put it in the trunk and I got into the car. As we started to leave, the doors on the opposite side the car opened and two men hopped in the car and we were off. They immediately demanded $400 dollars. To which I told them I did not have as this was the end of my travels. I demanded that they stop and they said no and that they have my luggage in the trunk so I must pay.

We were now driving down the street in Mumbai, late in the evening and the traffic was congested (as usual). I aggressively held my fist up and in not to nice of language informed them of my intent to shove my fist down their throat. They were shocked but then laughed as which time I leaned half way out the window and started screaming. The traffic was so slow that soon the three wheel rickshaws were next to the car and looking at me. The men stopped the car and opened the trunk to grab my luggage (one piece thank god). As they removed it a second car came along side us and they attempted to throw it in that car. I grabbed the luggage from the man, yelled at rickshaw who had stopped to observe. I threw the luggage in the rickshaw and told him to GO GO GO! He was shocked but followed my instructions. I looked back as the men were standing in surprise as I disappeared from their view.

I will never forget the fear I had on arrival to the other side of the airport. I payed the rickshaw driver a generous amount and proceeded to check in.

I travel extensively (not right now), and have a rule of which I follow. Since then, I made a rule to always have a paid service pick me up at the airport provided I am not using public transportation.

So did I learn a lesson. Yes, but I violated my rule when visiting Rio. I followed my rule on arrival and had a car to take me to the hotel. During my time in Rio I had a personal guide and a couple of times had successfully used Uber. So upon leaving the hotel for the airport, I elected to use Uber. The gentleman arrived in new Nissan, and while he did not speak English nor I Portuguese , but we were off the airport. Things were going well until the scenery changed and it looked like were were not in a good area. Suddenly he turned around to start yelling and motioning for me to lay down in the seat. My fears of India raced through my head. After about 5 minutes he motioned for me to sit up. I thought....robbery to begin. But no, we kept going to the airport. When we arrived, I asked an airport valet person to ask what happened. I learned that Uber maps had directed him through some crime ridden areas. He felt that if they saw a white guy in the car, we would have been stopped and robbed. I thanked him profusely, gave him a large tip and checked in.

SOOOOO, I will never break my rule again.

Some of these are awful experiences

I can relate to the panic attacks while high. Those are terrifying. You feel like you can't breathe, that everyone's laughing at you, that no one will help you, and that every childhood fear could come true at any minute. You feel so small, like a 4 year old trapped in a nightmare or seeing a boogeyman in your closet. Still, when the high is good, it's great and worth it. I like to keep a few Xanax on hand when I get high just in case I need to come down quick. Those usually work.

I got a little too high from an edible in public once and that felt like the longest day of my life. I was seeing threats everywhere. It's bad enough when you get too high by yourself in the safety of your house, but in public is a whole different ballgame. You officially become Alice down the rabbit hole. Once I sobered up, I remember grabbing onto my friend and sobbing because I felt like I'd taken some insane quest like in a fantasy movie or something and come out alive.

R115 - it serves you right for going to shithole countries.

R113, do you have Grant’s current contact info? I think it’s time for payback.

Gift wrap paper cut

R119, I have found his page on Facebook. Ironically, he became a high school teacher. I’m also a teacher, but teach elementary. For years I thought of revenge, but it’s a long time ago and I’ve moved on. He’s not worth my time.

R 115. I visit them to find you in the baths. How are you doing?

[quote] Still, when the high is good, it's great and worth it.

R117, from what you described, the possible high doesn't sound worth it.

Oh, and Aaron died.

Had Lyme Disease and got dizzy and fell down on the sidewalk on 5th Avenue. Someone called an ambulance. My hear rate was 26 beats per minute.

^ heart

Being caught in a winter storm whiteout in the mountains of Northern California. Couldn’t see more than a foot, wipers kept getting weighed down with snow and barely moved. Couldn’t afford to stop because someone would have hit me from behind. Caravan of cars just blindly playing follow the leader at 5mph, desperately trying to keep the hazard lights of the car in front within sight. Spent 5 hours like this till the the Police finally diverted us into a tiny town and shut down the highway. We spent the night sitting up in a cramped town hall. Toilets over flowed within 30 minutes, no food, but it became quiet and peaceful once the power failed. Next morning it was sunny and bright and as though nothing had happened.

Being robbed at gunpoint while on my way to work. I work the night shift and was exiting a gas station/convenience store, having just used the ATM inside. A guy walks up to me and places a revolver against my throat and proceeded to empty my pockets. I was equally outraged and fearful.

driving downtown with a friend when we were teenagers, getting home involved driving through a run down industrial area with a few stores and shops. It was dark and pouring down rain. I stopped at the lone red light on the street and waited. All of a sudden this woman came up to my car and i quickly told my friend to make sure the back doors were locked. (no power windows) She pulled on the door handle and demanded a ride, started banging on the back window. I floored it thru the red light. No one was around anyway because it was the middle of the night. I could hear her cussing at me and screaming as i drove away. at the time, being a teenager it was pretty scary.

Getting caught in a sudden ice storm in April in Colorado. I had taken my car to get a radio installed when it hit and it had been a perfectly nice spring day until then. There were two routes to take home and I idiotically took the worse one. The good route was on a flat straight shot home driving west. The one I took was headed west but I had to drive over a bridge then the route went down a very steep hill that curved to the right.

I had a front wheel drive car at the time so it handled bad roads going uphill but sucked going downhill. I got to that bridge and was stopped at a light and knew it was going to be trouble. I was in the right hand lane and put my car in first gear and inched my way down, the needle on the speedometer never even MOVED off of zero. I had the front tires turned all the way to the right and the passenger side of the car kissed the guardrail all the way down, and the dropoff past the guardrail was about 80 feet down to a six lane highway.

The sun had gone down by that time so all I could see facing me were all the cars heading east that weren't even trying to climb the hill over the bridge and I could tell everyone was watching me and the car next to me make our way down. What scared me the most was possibly losing control and smashing head on into the cars at the bottom of the hill. Both our cars got down the hill off of the bridge and the roads still sucked but were manageable the rest of the way home. Of course it didn't occur to me until I got home that I could have gone the other route and been fine.

For years afterward I'd break out in a cold sweat whenever I drove over that bridge no matter what the weather was.

Drug overdose, sleeping with a serial killer, kayaking in a tropical storm, getting stuck in the English Tunnel, stuck in a hospital lockdown as a kid whilst a mad man was going crazy with a knife, knocked over by a crazy woman driving a car the wrong way up a one way street that then crashed into a bus.

nope, can't think of anything.

It was summer 1981 or 1982. we had just moved in to a new house in a new area. One night my mom, my older sister and i got in the station wagon to go to the grocery store to buy ice cream as a treat. I remember being in the car and my mom started freaking out. There was a car behind, following us home. It was a woman in a ski mask. Mom drove all the way home and pulled into the driveway. The car following pulled up in our driveway just sitting there with their headlights on. My dad was home so when we got inside the house we just watched the car sitting in the driveway. It finally backed out and left. My dad called the police and they came out to take a report. I remember it being scary but now i find it terrifying.

If the person was in a ski mask how could you tell it was a woman, especially at night?

Picture it: Sicily 1941. Vinnie the peg leg cam over to the house and everything turned ugly.

R131 Katya

My mom told us it was a woman. R133. I remember seeing their ski-masked face through the street lights. It could've been a man, i guess. but my mom was certain it was a woman.

I was cruising at 70mph in a 70mph interstate zone on my Suzuki Burgman 400. Just merrily riding along, minding my own business without a care in the world. I was sill relatively new to riding, so I had no business riding my machine on the interstate. Then, I saw a tractor trailer in my mirror approaching from behind me FAST! Then another pulled out in the passing lane behind me so all I saw were these two, and with it being a 70 mph zone, they HAD to be going 80-85 right? As they got closer, the one directly behind me also got over in the passing lane to reveal another behind IT. That's right - a fucking CONVOY of at least a dozen tractor trailers started whizzing by me with all the noise and clunking and SIZE and SPEED right on my left and behind me. I.PANICKED.MY.ASS.OFF!!!! "God, please help meeeeeeee!!" It lasted for about three or four minutes, and I was badly shaken. It's true what they say. NEVER seize up/stiffen up while riding at speed because that will likely be the cause of your demise. Hang loose. Relax. Fight the panic.

When my friends and I were teenagers (high school), we went to this place that was like an abandoned pavilion. Supposedly, we were supposed to party and have fun. One of the girls in the group had an older boyfriend who was in and out of jail and lived or squatted at this pavilion. This was the first time I met the boyfriend and he was kind of a jerk.

It was night time and the pavilion actually had working lights and the boyfriend decreed that the lights were to be turned off and then he began fucking our girl friend. When the lights came back on, our girl friend did not really seem happy or like she had enjoyed the experience. Later, she told us that it was always painful to fuck him, that he wanted to fuck her in the ass all the time. Yet, she bitched about why "they" always had to put her boyfriend in jail, blah blah blah.

OK, not the scariest incident, but creepy and depressing.

This doesn't compare to some of the responses in this thread but here's mine so far:

I was 21 at home during winter break from college in 2007. It was the second week of January and I was going back to school the next weekend. My parents live on a cul-de-sac at the end but there's no house at the very end, instead there's a path leading to another street with a church and other homes. I was sitting on the couch in the living room after 2 AM with the light off and I was studying for an upcoming test using a flashlight. For whatever reason I just had the inclination to look out the window (I was sitting to the side of it). At the corner of the driveway and the sidewalk, there was a man with a ski hat and all dark clothes. He had a flashlight in 1 hand. I don't know if he had anything in the other. He was staring at the house. Obviously he couldn't see me. After maybe 10 seconds, he started walking up the driveway! I began freaking out, froze up and I kept the light off. When he got next to my car which was in front of the garage, I decided to turn the light on and finally was able to muster some kind of yell (it might have been "hey!". I saw he looked in the car with his flashlight, obviously trying to find something to steal but there was nothing worth taking. Then he just vanished. By that time my parents had heard me and came out to the living room. We all looked and couldn't see him. So he must have known the area because rather than walking or running back down the driveway, he must have hurried down the side of the house and through some shrubs to go to the other street. I'm sure once I had turned the light on, he saw it reflecting off the lightly snow covered ground. The next morning we looked and saw footprints on the sidewalk but not on the driveway or the side of the house but those areas had gotten slightly iced over.

I'm glad he didn't end up stealing anything or breaking into the house but I was freaked out by it. I couldn't believe that by chance I happened to look up just as he was about to walk down the driveway. It does still bother me that I wasn't able to see him run away which means he knew the area and I wonder if he had been there before. Then it got me thinking, how many other people might have trespassed on my parents' property over the years they've lived there? They still live there and my cheap ass father still refuses to get a security system. It's an upper middle class area but once in a while crimes do happen. The only good thing was that moment gave me more of a voice for future incidents and I don't freeze up anymore.

In 1970, I was six, old enough to go to grade school. Because the school was only six blocks away, my mom decided I was old enough to walk home. On the way home one afternoon, a car containing two teenagers pulled up alongside me. "Get in the car," said the one in the passenger seat, flicking open a switchblade. I ran for my life. They pursued. The neighborhood had alleys used for garbage pickup between the two back-facing rows of houses; I ducked in and out of these, trying to avoid the boys. The passenger had jumped out of the car, and pursued me on foot, but he hadn't seen exactly where I had gone. I was hiding in the overgrowth that lined the alley. I kept having to change positions, as the car coasted slowly down the alleys, looking for me. After playing cat-and-mouse with them for what seemed like half an hour, I finally found the alley that backed my own street. I couldn't get the back gate open, and as they coasted into the alleyway, I struggled to climb the gate. I made it over the top, ripping my clothes in the process, just as they pulled abreast of the back gate. I ran screaming across the back yard, as they gunned the engine and pulled away.

My grandmother on my father's side was visiting. My mom's go-to reaction was disbelief; she whipped me for tearing my clothes, and for having lost my books and school supplies back on the street where the chase had begun. My grandmother believed me, and we went back to retrieve my books, and we found they had been run over and damaged. At my grandmother's urging, the police were sent for, but I was unable to sufficiently describe the car or the boys. They were never caught.

Went out to eat a few years ago and a block away from home it started to rain. Three blocks later and it was a bad storm. One more block after that, while sitting at a stop light, the lights started to sway, the street signs started to bend, and a tornado went right over all our cars. Nothing flipped over, it was a really small tornado, but as it traveled to a construction lot across the street it started to pick up strength and toss 2x4s around.

There was no way to turn off onto another road so we had to keep going northeast, where we saw the tornado hit power lines and blow them up. The road took us right to the restaurant so we pulled into the parking lot, thinking it was safe because it was due east and not northeast, but the second the car was in park we saw the tornado coming right at us again. We barely got inside in time. Our car was moved a little bit in its parking space but fortunately didn't flip. Dozens of trees were down on every street on our way home.

The local meteorologists insisted it wasn't really a tornado but just some straight-line winds, but I SAW that motherfucker. Hundreds of us did.

Quite the experience for such a little guy, R140. Tell me - do you remember whether or not you were overcome with fear/emotion or did you just spring into action, naturally, allowing instinct and calm response to guide you?

I don't know about "calm response," R142. I was pretty panicked. Too scared to remember the kinds of details that would have been useful. I also don't know which was more terrible in terms of impact - being chased, or not being believed by my mom. That pretty much typified my relationship with my parents.

It wasn't the only time I'd been forced to "spring into action."

Just before I entered grade school, my parents were both working, and needed someone to watch me. My grandmother on my mom's side wouldn't do; she ran a bar, and from time to time had given me a small glass of bourbon to knock me out while she entertained gentleman callers. My mom didn't know about that, and it was years before I told her. The straw that broke the camel's back came when she had a car wreck driving under the influence while I was riding with her. After a day or two staying with my cruel uncle and aunt (whom I once described here on DL as a "shriek owl"), it was decided that I would stay with the wife of one of my dad's coworkers; she, and her three kids - two boys and a girl.

Although they lived in the suburbs, they kept a menagerie of small farm animals in their backyard - dogs, kittens, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, and goats. The three hellspawn led me out into their backyard, and it was not long before I saw what they were all about; one of them lifted a flat stone to reveal a small, flattened black baby rabbit, which they'd crushed with the stone. It was horribly reminiscent of a pressed flower. Its exposed eye was missing, with blood having run out the the socket and dried on its face. "We're gonna do the same thing to you," one of them laughed, nastily. I ran back to the house to try to leave with my dad, but he had already gone.

The woman's idea of babysitting was to leave me with her brats, while she went across the street to chat with a neighbor. As soon as she had left the house, the oldest boy said to his two younger siblings, "Grab him!" The girl and the youngest boy seized my arms and held me in place, while the older one opened the top drawer of a bureau dresser, and brought out a long, evil looking knife; a 'Bowie' knife. He put it to my throat, and said, "I'm gonna count down from ten, and then I'm gonna cut your head off." The other two grinned wickedly, and tightened their grip. "What will your mom say?" I asked. "Mama won't care," he replied. "We kill animals all the time, and she doesn't do nuthin'... Ten. Nine. Eight." And so it went. I let him get as far as "three," and then I struggled and broke loose, and bolted out the front door.

"Oh, shit!" the eldest exclaimed, while the other two gave pursuit. As I ran out the front door, the woman across the street saw me and started shouting, "You come back here!" The eldest burst out of the house - evidently he had been hiding the knife - and all four of them chased me down the block. At the corner near a railroad crossing, there was an old-time country store. I ran in, and breathlessly asked the storekeeper, "Can you tell me the way to [city name]?" without realizing I was still in that same city, just in a different neighborhood (what can I say? I was only five). Unfortunately, the storekeeper grabbed me and held me until the woman and her brats had caught up. I tried telling her what her hellspawn had done, but she wasn't having any of it. The three of course maintained their innocence. It was a long afternoon in hell with them, while they subjected me to petty torments, until I was picked up and taken home. I sobbed and cried and fiercely tried to persuade my parents not to send me back there, but they didn't believe me. I threw up and ran a fever, and refused to eat. They called the woman to ask her what had happened; in her denials some detail evidently slipped out which my parents hadn't mentioned to her which told them that at least some of what I had said was the truth. So they did not send me back there. I wound up staying instead with the "shriek owl."

Holy shit, Poisoned Dragon! What the fuck kind of town did you grow up in?

City.

The kicker is that I don't really think it's unique. Anecdotally, I think a lot of people have stories like this of things that happened to them, and worse.

When I was four, my family went on vacation to Arizona. At Grand Canyon National Park, my dad took me by the hand and led me to the edge of a precipice which had no guard rails. He picked me up and played catch with me, tossing me high into the air over his head and catching me. Then, once he'd set me back down, he pushed me a couple of times towards the edge, grabbing me back, saying, "Saved ya!" In the family photo album, there's a pic of us standing at the edge, with me sobbing and holding onto his leg.

His way of teaching me to swim was to take me out to a lake (without my mom), put me on his back, and swam to the far side facing a steep bluff, where the tops of dead trees stuck out of the water. He then left me there, and struck out swimming back to the main beach. I tried to grab one of the blackened tree tops, but it just broke off under the water and sank. So did I. He had to swim back, grab me, and bring me back to shore, choking and spluttering. Although, over the years, I've had several swimming lessons, I've never learned how to swim.

Fear of water, fear of heights. I've never been able to overcome them.

If all of those stories are true, your parents are awful people,R145. I’m sorry all of that happened to you. I hope they’ve atoned or you’re no longer involved with them.

R145 Your family is insane. Good for you for getting through it.

[quote]If all of those stories are true...

At this distance, I no longer feel most of the emotions which were for so long association with those incidents. My recollection of them is almost clinical, matter-of-fact. It was half a century ago.

[quote]I hope they’ve atoned or you’re no longer involved with them.

I don't think any atonement is possible. What would that mean, except more misery? I leave atonement to the Christians.

My mom has been dead these past twenty-two years, and I don't miss her. And I have not spoken to my dad since 1990 (there's a colorful story about that, too) - no idea if he's alive or dead. I've made my peace with all that's happened. I have no regrets.

^^ associated, not association.

PoisonedDragon - you should contact Lifetime right away and sell the movie rights to your story.

PoisonedDragon - the behavior of your parents, the neighborhood kids, etc....is not something that is non-unique as you say. It sounds like you grew up in that town the movie “The Crazies” was set in or something. Glad you got out alive!

Got lost in the Everglades.

[quote] The kicker is that I don't really think it's unique. Anecdotally, I think a lot of people have stories like this of things that happened to them, and worse.

R145, your experiences *are* unique, in a bad way, IMO. My family wasn't the best, but the Grand Canyon & "swimming lessons" stories are just sickening.

Your parents stuck you with assorted bad babysitters. One gives you alcohol, another group tortures you, the owl woman ...

I would not blame you at all if you disowned every member of your family.

[quote] His way of teaching me to swim was to take me out to a lake (without my mom), put me on his back, and swam to the far side facing a steep bluff, where the tops of dead trees stuck out of the water. He then left me there, and struck out swimming back to the main beach.

My dad did that when I was a kid, but it was at a beach and he just picked me up, walked as far out as possible, threw me into the water where it was deep enough that I couldn't touch the ground and then left me there.

[quote] I got a little too high from an edible in public once and that felt like the longest day of my life. I was seeing threats everywhere.

Lightweight.

I'm a marijuana lightweight as well. I have had some really bad trips on marijuana. The risk is not worth it to me. I'm also an alcohol lightweight, probably. However, cocaine is another story. I can go blow for blow with almost anyone and still act normal (in my opinion).

[quote]the owl woman ...

Oh, my aunt. :D

My mom's younger brother married her; both of them by themselves were neurotic, but together they became greater than the sum of their parts. Both of them were childless for many years (they finally had their first and only child when I was seventeen or so), but they had definite ideas about the way children ought to be raised, and they didn't mind sharing with my parents. In their view, my mom permitted me to be far too outspoken; when I first encountered the adage, "children should be seen and not heard," it was from their lips. They thought my parents far too permissive, and that they let me get away with murder. Of course, I'd heard stories about my uncle's own childhood from both he and my mom, and those would have made a 'Lifetime' movie as well. It was his opinion that I needed the same kind of treatment, and more so - after all, he'd been subjected to all sorts of beatings and other torments, and what a fine person he'd turned out to be. (He'd enlisted in the Marines to escape the rule of his stepfather, and whatever remained of his sanity had long since broken.) In his view, there was no child who could not be improved by frequent and thorough ass-beatings. But neither of them whipped me while they had me. Their tortures were of a different sort.

When I landed in their hands to be babysat, my aunt's thing was micromanaging my clothing. She insisted that the ends of my socks be turned under my toes, and stuffed that way into the shoes, which she saw to it were very tightly tied. I broke out in a cold sweat; it was unendurable. When going to the restroom, I sought relief by removing my shoes, unfolding the socks, and putting the shoes back on, but the bitch had anticipated that I would try something like that. In the hallway, she made me remove my shoes. She again folded the socks under my toes, stuffed my feet back into the shoes, re-laced so that they were tighter than ever, and tied them again into a knot, so that I couldn't untie them.

She was the ultimate frau in the DL sense of the word. T'was she who made the cherry pecan 'pizza' that I've mentioned here on the DL on another thread some months back. Sights and smells are powerful memory triggers: I recall unhappily riding with her in her car, doing her petty daily errands, on a day pouring down cold rain. The car was full of peculiar smells, of perfumes, air fresheners, and the scent of new car leather. There were plastic seat covers; it was impossible to get comfortable sitting in the car. There were pouches hanging from the window handles, reeking of vinyl, intended to receive used Kleenex from the perfumed box that sat between the seats. I heard sweet Baby James on the radio, singing 'Fire and Rain,' which was new then; they played the shit out of it. "Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground."

Off-topic, I know. I'm sorry. I'll stop now.

r3 Baumeister?

R158 I usually read your posts but this one is too long and yes, you are off topic. But I still love you, Dragon.

R155, my dad tried that shit too, and my mom also threw a fit, which I suppose is what prompted the 'alone with my dad' trip to the lake.

Can you swim now?

In high school some friends and I used to go to a gay bar. This was back in the early 80's and we clearly looked underage but they would let you in and serve you drinks as long as you kept your shit together and didn't get obnoxiously drunk. Anyway one night we were there and my friend grabbed my hand and said don't look but there is a really scary guy staring at you and he looks evil. Of course I had to look and I saw this beautiful boy with long blonde hair and his eyes were red. You hear people say it but it was the only time in my life that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was terrified. We escaped through a side door and I never went back or spoke of it again until a few years ago when my friend said, "Do you remember that vampire guy who wanted you dead?"

Contact lenses, R162.

Poisoned Dragon, I'm so glad you're here to tell the tales of your youth. You have endured some real agony and I'm proud of you for making it out alive. They are not normal childhood experiences, and I'm sorry there were so many cruel people in your orbit.

^^ So kind. Thank you.

Being banned from DL for no reason I can think of.

R143, you write great fiction!

When I was a kid it was summer and a friend was sleeping over in my room. My room was on the first floor off the porch, and I woke up and saw a the shadow of a man bent over and looking in through the screen on the bottom half of the window. It scared the crap out of me. I yelled and he ran away. My friend woke up and we woke up my parents. I forget what happened then but the next day one of the neighbors was found dead, he had killed himself. It was assumed to be the same guy, he used to live in our house growing up and it was thought that's maybe that's why he was prowling around.

I went to a club alone when I was 18. I got very drunk and a couple of guys tried to fist me.

R168, if you had smiled and waved that man would be alive today!

I had to take a power dump in a single occupancy Wendy’s restroom while a drug fuled maniac pounded on the door and tried to get inside like his life depended on it. I was shitting and scared shitless!

The US has alligators and crocodiles.

I was held down by a large group of coloreds and they brutally took turns eating me out. It was horrible. I tried to scream but they covered my mouth and just ate me out harder!!

R173 we all know it’s you Mrs. Eisenhower

Driving the coastal road from Barcelona to Sitges, at night in a rental car. It's a two lane highway with many sharp curves and and at the time only a small guardrail to keep me from plunging off the cliff into the Mediterranean. Sheer terror.

[quote][R19] how did you make it out safely?

Marsha P. Johnson saved him R20.

[quote][R53] What was the condition of your house when it all subsided?

On top of some old witch.

Driving through a horrible thunderstorm that I was convinced was a tornado. There were downed trees in the middle of the highway and zero visibility. I have never been so scared in my life.

Scuba diving and smiling at some sea thingy and getting water in my mouth. I started to choke and took a deep breath by instinct, COMPLETELY forgetting about being under water (I know, I'm an idiot). The guide hit my surfacing button and I coughed up a lung. It was terrifying to take that inhale and have water in my lungs.

A NYE night a friend and I went to go buy some uh...things and keep the night going. I didn't want to do them in the house where we were (I wanted to grab and go) and he said No no no, it's fine. I was sitting on a bed waiting for him to finish up and I looked up and the guy who was dealing (or owned the house, I didn't want to find out) was staring at me, unblinking. He was huge with a shaved head, and was staring and staring. I sort of smiled and tried to make stupid small talk and nothing. Wouldn't say a word. I got up and got the hell out. I'm pretty sure if I had stayed, this guy would have murdered me, no question.

Most recent scare: returning from vacation, big big big turbulence in the Seatac area. We descended for landing, and the plane was being bounced around like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Our descent was through an incredibly thick storm cloud layer, it felt like we would impact the ground before it cleared. We were being shaken both horizontally and vertically. We finally cleared the cloud layer and were less than fifty feet from the ground, still being shaken wildly by the storm. Instead of landing, the pilots aborted the landing, we zoomed up nearly vertically, circled the area and we had to do it all over again. All the passengers were silent. When we landed successfully, nobody clapped but the entire plane burst out laughing to relieve the stress.

Having a grizzly bear sniff around my tent at night as I solo-camped in a remote lake camping site.

Tell us you weren't alone.

R181, I was! Stupid thing to do, but well, I was all of 22.

Scary as all shit r182. I told the story of the bear earlier in the thread, but I was in the wilds of Lanaudiere Quebec. It was a small black bear that was aggressive because he'd been fed by people. Believe me, I read up on Bears after my little incident. Grizzlies are not to be toyed with. And they bite the head.

In fact, in my situation, the neighbors who had been closest to the bear said he retreated when my dog (Alix, my uncle's dog) barked, from at least 300 ft away. When I finally saw him he was after their grille that had just roasted hot dogs. Eventually they caught the poor thing in a baited trap and released him deep in Mt Tremblant park. Those black bears are really more of a nuisance than dangerous, unless it's early spring and they're starved or it's a mother bear with cubs.

Again, grizzlies will eat you.

R183, yep, grizzlies are no joke. I did mostly everything right too -- I kept all food and odorous items away from my tent and strung up 100 feet away on a bear hang. I cooked and ate away from the campsite and had bear-spray on me. Still received a visit and it scared the hell out of me -- didn't sleep the rest of the night for sure!

I let old customer put his hand up my no-no and after he leave I look on nightstands and be NO MONEY!

So scarys!

Then I see $20. It fall on the floors.

Whew!

[quote]Eventually they caught the poor thing in a baited trap and released him deep in Mt Tremblant park.

I went skiing there once, which was, thank god, when the bears were hibernating.

Although we did get to the top of the mountain and started down and there was a heavy snowstorm. We couldn't see anything. Not the trails, not the trees, not each other. That was a little scary. And cold. But nothing like a bear.

Years ago, a friend and I were returning a rental car to the Newark airport and got lost in Newark NJ at 11:30 at night. This was before GPS and Smartphones. We drove around Newark for more than an hour and JFC it was like a Mad Max movie. At every red light, people came up to the car and fucked with us, saying all kinds of crazy shit. I've been in a number of rough neighborhoods before and since and have never been scared, but that night in Newark I was genuinely terrified that we were not going to make it out of there. We finally got to the airport safely. I have never been back to Newark since.

I was mugged by a guy who lured me i to his car from a cruising spot.

He pulled a shotgun on me and demanded all my money.

I was a 20-year-old student and he got $5.

On a villa holiday in Mallorca I slipped getting out of the swimming pool and fell backwards, hitting the back of my head hard. I lay there, dazed but uninjured. It was only after a few minutes that the shock hit me, and I was reduced to jelly. My partner had gone out to do some food shopping and came back to find me crying hysterically.

r187, I did some consulting in downtown Newark in the 80s. At least 3 different people who worked there told us to get to our car and get out of there before dark.

Seeing the identical make of car (very rare because old) of my stalker outside my apartment building when I was in hiding. It turned out to be somebody else’s car, but I melted right down.

Our driver Harlan left without as, so we were stranded at the airport (I still don't know what happened!) My sister and I actually had to take a taxi back into Manhattan! We didn't have enough cash to get two blocks and I insisted my sister not tell the driver that. But she's such a bleeding-heart, she did! The driver dumped us out in the middle of some gawdawful neighborhood with brown people and graffiti everywhere. We barely made it down into the subway station amongst all the cat-calls, and actually had to take a hot subway car back to the UES! A bag-lady who smelled terrible kept leaning into me so I sprayed her with my perfume.

R187

I was working in Newark and asked some locals why there were metal grills on the traffic lights:

“Cause if they weren’t there people will shoot them out. “

R16. The same for me.. that fucking road in Maui. I am fearless, but I literally was terrified.. there is a stretch where you’re driving on a very narrow road, without a guardrail, and a sheer drop off of like 1,000 feet. We were in a convertible... I had my check book,, and I told my now husband, if a car comes, I’m going to buy it, so that we don’t have to be the car that backs up..

Madeline Ashton was from Newark, for God’s sake!

Back around 2005 or so, driving from San Diego to L. A. on a Sunday morning. As I enter the freeway from the onramp, I totally lose control of my truck, skid into a 180, and stall out, facing oncoming traffic.

I quickly start the truck, and swerve fast back into the entry lane, heading north. Fortunately, there was enough space for me to accomplish this without mishap. I have no idea why I skidded; it felt like oil on the road.

I was very, very lucky.

r196 reminded me of a time I was freaked out. I was coming into stopped traffic on the interstate when a lady in her Acadia and on her phone passed me on the right flying. No brake lights until she was just a few clicks away from the stopped traffic. She finally slammed on her brakes and swerved, hurling the truck into the air. It careened deep into the stopped cars it looked like something from Die Hard.

I had stopped and out of the smoke came this poor old lady in her older Lexus slowly rolling right at me. I Managed to get out of her way. Poor thing was hysterical.

Bump

two young black men chased me late nite on the subways of boston, i escaped them...scared the life out of me.

R199 they chased you just out of the blue?

1. I once dated a schizophrenic man who refused to accept the diagnosis. One evening, we were in my bedroom, when I said something that triggered him. Next thing I know, he has me pinned to the bed, with a knife raised in the air above me. I was sure I was about to be murdered. His eyes were empty and I had never seen that look before; It was terrifying. I pleaded with him for my life. In those moments, though, all I could think of was, "So, this is how I die."

2. As a child, when out for anike ride, I had a car follow me for several blocks. I tried losing it by turning around and it did the same. I saw an adult and approached her and the cat sped away.

3. Hitchhiking when I was sixteen and being dropped off in the BC wilderness at night. Standing on the side of the road, with my thumb out, in near pitch black.

4. Ending up in the ER with pneumonia and watching my blood pressure levels go down. I was so afraid that I would die.

5. Watching my grandmother and my stepfather die.

Wow, excuse my typos. Must of gotten caught up in the memories!

How did you manage to escape the schizo?

Scary stuff, all of it

On this very night… 10 years ago… Along the same stretch of road… In a dense fog… Just like this… I saw the worst accident I ever seen… There was this sound… Like a garbage truck! Dropped off the Empire State Building! And when they finally pulled the driver’s body… From the twisted, burning wreck… It looked like… THIS!

I was teaching high school in upstate New York, and during a study hall period one young man asked for a pass to the bathroom. He looked agitated, so I assumed he really needed to go, and gave him the pass -even though we weren't supposed to send students during study hall (for some reason). He came back with a gun, and held us hostage for over an hour. He was really angry with another teacher, and brought the gun to shoot him, but lost his nerve and came back to my room. I tried to talk him down, but he was getting more and more agitated. Finally, he said he wanted to see the principal, so I was allowed to use the intercom to call for him. The secretary in the office wouldn't put me through. I explained that I had a "situation" in my room that needed him there immediately, so she put me on hold -then came back said he wanted to know what kind of situation. The student was threatening to shoot if I mentioned the gun, so I repeated that I had a very serious situation that required the principal immediately. She said she would tell him, and we sat there waiting. After about ten minutes there was a timid knock on the door. The student stood there, with his gun pointed at the door, and I just knew he was going to shoot the principal... The student called on a classmate to open the door, and there stood two sophomore girls who worked as office aides during that period. They saw the situation and one screamed while the other ran off. Oddly enough the screaming calmed the student down, as he realized he had come close to killing the wrong person. He gave me the gun, and I sent the rest of the class to the office while I stayed in the room with the gunman. The principal never came up. The vice principal came up with the boy's father. I was eventually called into the principal's office after school (had to teach the rest of the day, believe it or not), where he begged me not to press charges or make a big deal of the incident because no one got hurt and it would ruin the boy's future... This was 1985, before Columbine, of course. I ended up quitting the job and moving back to California. Don't know what (if anything) ever happened to the student. But whenever there's a school shooting I get the shakes.

Tires slashed is always personal - especially all four.

R205, wow, so sorry that happened to you.

To think how things like that were handled (or not) back then when it comes to a student having a gun in the classroom, nowadays it seems as though it's commonplace. I can't believe the principal acted like he did, and got away with it. Certainly couldn't get away with that in present time.

When I was 11 years old I went with my family on vacation to Windermere House on Lake Rosseau in Ontario. At the time I was really into fishing and begged my father to let me rent a rowboat with an outboard motor to go fishing by myself. My parents were very permissive with me because I was the responsible sort and I could be trusted. So off I went fishing.

I was having a grand old time. Fishing and just exploring the area. Finally when I was about ready to head back I looked around and figured out I had no clue where I was. The lake is very confusing and big and sprawling with lots of little islands and inlets. I had no map and there wasn’t much daylight left. I was in a panic and terrified trying to find my way back to the hotel. Every time I looked at the shore it looked the same to me. Finally about two hours later I found my way back and my parents were very scared that I had drowned or something. I explained to them what happened. For being so young that was one of the most terrifying things to happen to me.

I've had several that were bad from severe car accidents to a backwoods encounter with a KKK-type group, and I required some attention from pros for PTSD, doing OK now. PTSD can be severe when there's a perceived likelihood of loss of life.

Worst was being followed and harassed along a road in a remote area on a solo mountain bike trip by individuals in a pickup truck who were clearly trying to hit me. I took off cross country and was followed, but lost them at some railroad tracks. I hid out awhile, then went quite a distance from the area and started to make camp, only to spot them looking on a fire road nearby. Panic. Back to the railroad tracks which lead to a back way home, arriving about there about 3AM, very tired and freaked out.

Having my maternal discipline questioned.

Gun pointed at my head by a very young mugger

Emergency landing in crash positions

Coming out of my office building downtown after the first tower had collapsed, and everything looked apocalyptic.

A couple of months before 9/11, my now-husband, then partner and I were ready to board an early morning AA flight from Boston to SF. We were pulled out of line and our luggage and carryons were examined and wiped with pads to look for chemical explosive residue (found out later). We were placed in separate rooms and questioned. Our checked luggage was held and sent on a day later. At that time, we both had longish hair and we had beards. Profiling? After 9/11 a friend reminded me of what I'd told him we went through and I got really weirded out.

It was late nite on the subway, jus me and them in a car, they followed me off and thus began the chase of my life before i lost em. they were creepy young thungs. yup.

R23 & R65 it’s stories like this that people need to hear when they sneer about rape culture as if it’s something that isn’t an issue anymore. It’s a crushing reality that all born-females have to live with every day from birth. Women come to expect being leered at, taunted, sexually-confronted or objectified only to be relieved that it isn’t assault.

When I hear such anecdotes I realise how lucky I am. In College I was a friendless depressive with disassociative problems, meaning that when I was down, I would often fall into fugue states where I could and did end up mindlessly wandering around unfamiliar parts of my campus town in the dark, or knocked out asleep in one of the study rooms with no-one I could call for help if anything did happen. I would snap out of a wandering trance sometimes in the small hours not knowing how to get back to my dorm room. Fortunately I chose - unwittingly - one of the safest sleepiest suburban Universities in my country, and one with a high ratio of women compared to men and a preponderance of harmless ethically-minded stoners over jocks, so I never had any trouble and was generally left alone or gently helped. Had I attended a rough inner-city College instead, there’s no telling what might have happened.

More, please.

true, r215, men, and I am one, really, really do not know. Once a female friend sat me down and told me those facts of life, and I was truly shocked. How many of our friends had been abused or raped, or near raped. It's not an excuse, but I hope you get how truly ignorant men are about this stuff. really, truly ignorant.

R215 are you still a “ friendless depressive with disassociative problems”? I hope you gotten some help with that. I can relate.

I was in a single-engine plane flying back to Phoenix with my TV crew after doing a story about a strike at a copper mine not far from the Mexican border. The weather forecast called for afternoon thunderstorms. So about 45 minutes into the flight the pilot said gravely, "We have a problem." Then he pointed at a storm front lying ahead of us. It looked like a dark gray shower curtain parted in the middle and there were occasional bolts of lightning dancing in the air. The pilot pointed to the narrow space in the curtain of clouds and said we had to clear it or he would have to fly around the storm. "It's about a hundred miles to get around the thing down and back and I don't think I have enough fuel." I looked down and saw nothing but a mountain range of jagged peaks. I turned to my producer in the back seat and he was crossing himself and saying his Hail Mary's over and over. As we approached the storm front, the window separating the two banks of angry clouds began to close. The wind was fierce and the plane was rocking side to side and bobbing up and down simultaneously. Flashes of lightning lit up the cockpit. Then the storm closed in around us and I thought we were going to crash. The pilot said nothing, even as heavy rain lashed his windshield. The next fifteen minutes seemed like hours. But then the skies around us brightened and it appeared we had escaped the worst of the storm in the nick of time. I never flew in a single-engine plane again.

Trapped in a crevasse

Kansas City in the early 70's there was a mobster named Anthony Tiger Cardarella who ran a stolen records store named Tiger's Records on Independence avenue. One night my friend was in the store shopping for music and four guys with sawed off shotguns came in yelling "Get your fucking asses on the floor". My friend had this horrible feeling they were going to take her out of there with them and sure enough one of them kicked her in the leg and said "Get up, let's go". Hahahaha she pretended like she didn't hear him and the next thing she knew the lead guy yelled at the others "Let's go".

So the four guys left the store and she heard the old clerk say "There goes four dead men" and sure enough within a week they were all dead, executed. Apparently they were too dumb to realize it was a mob front.

Two or three years later Tiger was missing and they eventually found him in the trunk of his car at the airport.

Oops not the airport, that was some other KC mobster.

[quote]I can't remember a time when I ever actually felt fear.

My, my, haven’t we led a charmed life. Or are you just so very brave?

GTFOOH.

Sexually assaulted in college and I thought they are probably going to kill me to keep me quiet

I didn’t have the vocabulary or the maturity to deal with what had happened

I kept thinking just survive

R113 My sister had an unhinged roommate in college too. She went to the administration and falsely accused my sister of stuff, so when my sister tried to report her, she [my sister] looked crazy.

Before anyone says that my sister was the crazy one: she has tons of proof of her claims.

Love this thread. I won't post my most terrifying experience because you won't believe it anyway and I can't blame you. Another experience was the 2010 earthquake in Chile, 8,8 magnitude. I thought It was the end of the world because it was intense but also so long. Thankfully, don't live close to the ocean, because the Tsunami after was the worst part.

R226 oh come on, you should post it. Don't tease.

I'll believe you, R226!

My dad shot at us one night. We were at my grandmother’s when he came in drunk and enraged,

We fled so fast that I didn’t fasten the car door, and fell out as we rounded the curve in my grandmother’s long driveway. “He’s killed his child!” my grandmother screamed. I shouted that I was okay, and got back in the car, bullets flying.

My mother drove about.75 yards, stopped the car, and ran through the woods to my uncle’s house.

Yes, she left me behind.

I was seven and my mother and father were fighting as usual. My mom had just hung up the phone on him and she was crying hysterically.

I asked her why. She said my dad told her he was going to break in the house while we were all sleeping, slit my brother and my throat and shoot her 'down there.'

Oh R229 ,growing up with an abusive,alcoholic ex marine father , I believe your story 1000% . Im almost 60 and my dads bullshit STILL affects my life . Hopefully the old bastard of yours is rotting in hell. Mine is,and good fucking riddance.

^He died when I was 17. You might understand the sense of relief once I realized he was dead and would never threaten my mother again.

Hello everyone, it’s me, R171. Eat me!

R229 and R230 make me sad. Poor little kids

R234, there’s a lot of stories like that. My parents were breaking up and my dad didn’t want to give my mom anything in the divorce, so he hired a couple to stalk my mom and us kids. She got a call at home saying I would be kidnapped from school that day. They jumped the gun and called her thinking it was already done.

What the would-be kidnappers didn’t know is my mom had been to the principal’s office the week before and had a long conversation with him. He would recognize her and he knew she was a pain in the ass, so he wouldn’t have handed me over to some stranger claiming to be sent from her. The woman that came was blonde, my mom was brunette.

My mom called the school and had me sit in the principal’s office until she came. She threw one bag in the car and we ran away. She ended up getting almost nothing in the divorce and she was poor for the rest of her life. There was a lot of stuff running up to that day, a guy pretending to break into my sister’s bedroom in the middle of the night that my dad hired to scare her. We were all sleeping in one room because mom was so scared. The guy was some friend of my dad’s who didn’t know what he was doing.

When we ran away, the couple followed us in a car for a couple of hours. We drove out to a desert area and a big sandstorm came up. A lot of cars pulled over, but mom kept driving, trying to get away from them. When the sand cleared, they were gone. We stopped at a relative’s house for a few minutes to borrow money. Later, we found out the couple went there too not long after we left. We lived in hiding for months. I lost a semester of school.

I found out the next school year that I may have blocked out about six months of memories from that year. I can’t remember that whole last semester of school and I never remembered it. I didn’t realize that until I went back to the same school the next year and kids asked me about things that were just gone out of my memory. They never came back. I just went along and pretended I remembered, but I never did.

Why did these events happen? I don’t know. I don’t think I ever heard the whole story from either one of them. My guess is it was a lot worse than what I know. The only reason I’m telling this is everyone that knows the truth is probably dead by now.

Did you have any relationship with your father after these events, r235?

R235, I was forced against my will by the judge to stay in the same house with my dad all weekend long every weekend, both days, after the divorce. I was terrified to stay in that house and I thought it was haunted. It may have been. Before we lived there, an elderly couple lived there and the wife had a serious illness, I think MS. She was dying when they sold the house. And it was me and my dad alone there after that, on the weekends.

I could never sleep in the house and I would go home exhausted on Sundays. My dad acted very paranoid and weird. There was a bowl of amphetamines in his bedroom. He searched my belongings every time I left the house for anything of value and would refuse to let me take anything of value, even gifts from his parents. I was trying to sneak out my sister’s and my clothes so we would have something to wear. My sister had to quit college and work. My sister had almost no clothes. He threw my mom’s belongings away and a lot of my sister’s.

My mom and sis rented an apartment and he refused to allow them in the house to get their things, so I was the only one that could get anything. He changed the locks. There was a court order that he had to let them in to pack their things up, but he ignored it. My mom didn’t have any more money to fight him, so she gave up. We lived in an apartment with no furniture but beds and aluminum patio chairs for three years. But we were glad to get away.

It ruined our relationship of course, but I don’t think he really liked kids in general and not me in particular. I told him that once, and he accused my mother of “turning me against him.” As if he had nothing to do with it.

He remarried and never helped me, he helped his wife’s kids from her first marriage a lot though. They were my age. It was hard to be very poor and see these kids get everything. His wife was a bitch.

When he got old and sick, his bitch wife became abusive and he divorced her. So after all that, when he died I got what was left of his money. During the divorce, she accused me of “turning him against her.” She beat him and tried to poison him, but thought that didn’t matter. She said “they were happy, but I ruined everything because I was so greedy.”

Sorry, that answer was for R236. I’m R235.

I’m sorry you had such a difficult childhood. Your father sounds horrible.

Sorry, to clarify, his wife thought I was the greedy one, not herself. She accused me of being greedy and breaking up their marriage so I could inherit. After getting caught red handed trying to poison him because he took too long to die. And admitting it. She was never charged.

Holy shit r237. I admire your ability to function at all. That sounds horrible.

Being on a flight that lost an engine on takeoff. It was crappy Arrow Air, which a few months later went out of business after another one of their planes crashed in Gander and killed over a hundred servicemen coming home from deployment. So, I consider myself lucky to have survived. But after some of the harrowing childhood experiences described above, it doesn’t really sound so scary!

I've been shot at by a guy who wanted to rob me but when I ran away that made him angry so he yelled: "Stop runnin' you white motherfucker!" Then he shot at me with a 9 mm. I knew the sound instantly as I've had a couple of of 9 mm's. Luckily for me he missed and he didn't pursue me - probably figured it wasn't worth it. This all happened in 1998 at 1 am when I stupidly was walking back home from a bar in a bad neighborhood. It was only one block so I thought I'd be okay. I never did that again. The next day I went to the spot in the middle of the street where the thug had been standing when he shot at me and there laying on the street was an empty 9 mm shell. I told the police that night what happened but they did absolutely nothing. Wouldn't even go search the neighborhood for him (the guy was on foot). I told them I can identify him. They basically gave me the brushoff.

In 1970 when I was 22 I was severely pistol whipped and threatened to be killed in a secluded woods in a city park by a middle aged white man. As I lay on the ground while he was pistol whipping my face and kicking me in the head and ribs my only thought was: He will get away with this and no one will ever know what really happened. Strangely enough, I wasn't scared. I felt an eerie calmness, like it was all unreal. But for a few minutes I thought I may be killed. Eventually he let me go. I was bleeding profusely from my nose and face all down the front of my shirt and in intense pain. My eye socket and one side of my nose were crushed in from the blows of the gun and I got a scar on a cheek. My face was permanently disfigured. He got away with it. I had no proof, there were no witnesses and some people didn't even want to believe me. It took me many months to recover physically and years and years to stop being fearful and deeply depressed over that incident. I fantasized for years about how I would kill that man if I ever got the chance. He was a typical old red neck hillbilly conservative. Where I live they are all over the place. He just seemed to have it in for me, for no reason.

Where do you live, R243? It sounds rather dangerous.

R131 sounds like someone who needs to stay home more, eat health food and maybe avoid sex indefinitely.

Some of you sound like you need to marry a sistah. That shit would NEVER happen if you were her man, gay and all.

R244 Actually, I live in a large Midwestern city of 900,000 and the crime rate here is no higher than any other American city of it's size. I feel I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time in both instances. Normally I always feel safe in this city but like with any big, urban area, you know there are parts of town you should avoid.

R192 is both the whitest and gayest Datalounger of all time. Harlem, brown people, and a bag lady but Super-White Gay has his perfume on hand to defend himself. Classic!!!!

R6 - you left someone so masculine? Shocked!

R155 sounds like he came from a family of degenerate sadists or Germans. WTF? Shoelace aunt would have eaten that shoe if she tried that shit with me and the other shoe would have ended up her ass.

Terrifying r243. I am so sorry that happened to you. I hope that hillbilly redneck meets a violent and bloody end.

What's wrong with the police where some of you live?

R248 - R192 sounds like a sister who has her priorities in order.

Never leaves the house unarmed for an olfactory nightmare. The 2nd Amendment has a WHOLE different meaning in his purse. Scented, chamomile infused wipes are probably his ammo in case he meets "the right one" at the Barney's cosmetic counter.

RIP Barney’s cosmetic counter.

R229 / R232, your story is heartbreaking. I'm sorry your Mom left you behind like that.

This thread has taken a turn. It's clear that family members (ordinary people in our lives) can cause our most "scary incidents."

I have a violent older sister who needs to rage every so often. Her outlet used to be me. Only time I put my hands on her was in self-defense.

In the end, I'm more disappointed in my other family members than in her. Sister is who she is and refuses to get help. The others in my / our family refuse to acknowledge what has gone on for decades.

Walked out of a store, made a phone call while standing in front of it, decided to walk ahead while talking, turned a corner and not more than 3 minutes later there was a massive shoot out in broad daylight. I heard it, looked back (I didn't see anything) and started walking faster, hoping they didn't turn the corner and pass me by.

I caught the police at the place on the news picking up shells. Later they found out that there was a hit on someone who owed someone else money. Nothing like that ever happened in that area before. They did catch the boys playing mobster loan sharks thanks to cameras and the fact that it was during the day because they were idiots.

R256 happy you didn’t get hurt. I’d freak out if I ever only saw someone with a fire arm. It might be more common in the US. It’s so incredibly dangerous.

Back when I worked at the University of Chicago, I decided to take the green line out to Oak Park to meet up with friends . It was 5 p.m. in October so at dusk. I got on the train at its terminus at 63rd Street and began reading a book. About a minute later a kid pointed a gun at me and demanded my money and phone. I was so flustered it took me a few minutes to get everything together. that delay probably saved my life because we pulled into the next station and he got off without taking my money or phone. I actually did everything wrong including getting on the last car of the train and being distracted by reading. But my nerves saved me. Turns out it was part of a gang initiation and several people were shot that night who were passengers just like me.

Being robbed in Lausanne.

I was in a strange city for work so I visited a gay club and met 2 hot guys who bought me several drinks. I got drunk AF. Then I remember going to their house and I stayed the night. They tried to fist me during some point during the night. I had enough presence of mind to protest. Then I remember waking up naked.

Got caught in a microburst just a couple months after I got my first drivers license. It rained non stop for 3 days before it happened, the ground was saturated, so there were trees down all over the place. I tried to do a u-turn on the road to head back home, only to see two huge trees came down right behind me. I ended up giving a few people lawn jobs to get around the base of the trees. Live power lines were down as well.

R260 woke up, and his butt was bleeding.

Scary bump

I was turned out at the club

All these terrifying personal experiences--yet no one has reported being frightened by the unbelievable sizemeat that came popping out of some guy's trou.

I lived in a haunted house for about a year. It was a rental, lived with my boyfriend and another friend. We had real phenomena, visual & aural. Sometimes experienced by two of us at the same time. There was general unease in the house because of it, to the point where my bf and I started looking for a new place.

Our bedroom & bathroom had the most phenomena, including hearing the drawers and cabinets in the bathroom opening & closing, heating someone pacing in the bathroom, seeing a figure in our bedroom, water dripping onto the bedroom floor (we would see & hear the water on the wood floor, but the ceiling above was completely dry) . One night we were laying in bed with the lamp on & could hear cabinets & drawers shutting loudly in the bathroom. My boyfriend had enough, jumped into the bathroom and started yelling "Stop! Just leave us the fuck alone!" He came back into the bedroom & I said "just shut the bathroom door, I can't take this tonight." He shut the bathroom door, sat on the bed & said "we need to call the landlord tomorrow." Suddenly right in front of us, there was loud knocking on the closed bathroom door. We looked at each other, grabbed our mattress and moved it out to the sitting room where we slept until we found a new place to live.

I don't understand staying somewhere, shouting at ghosts night after night, week after week, month after month. And paying rent on top of that. I'd get the fuck out of there ASAP.

R267 it wasn't *every* night. Also, I had moved into this house a month before 9/11. This was in Orlando, where the economy severely tanked. At one point only one of the three of us had a job, and we were almost evicted. So we hung onto this place because at the time we were flat broke. Once my mom's estate was settled the following summer & I had the money we got the fuck out of there.

We were in our backyard in Hampton Bays when TWA 800 exploded...at first we thought we heard thunder as the first explosion was a low rumble. A few seconds later we hard the second explosion as the pale blew up completely. Since the coast guard station was in HB we had to watch them pull out pieces of the 747 and drive it through our little town for months

^^ plane^^

Some lunatic in a white Pontiac Grand Am tried running me off the road on I-10 between San Diego, CA and Yuma AZ.. I’d flown into Phoenix To visit my grandmother and rented a Firebird convertible. After visiting grandma drive I drove to SD for the weekend. On the way back . I was driving in the left lane and had the cruise control set and I had driven past him. He then accelerated and tried cutting me off. I pulled into the right lane a slowed down to try and put some distance between us. Up ahead I saw him pull onto the shoulder. As Soon as I approached he pulled back onto the highway and was swerving at me to try and force me off the road. I saw an edit up ahead and got off at the last minute figuring he would get past the exit. I took the off ramp as fast as I could with the tires squealing something fierce. As I passed under the highway I saw him backing up on the shoulder to get into the off ramp. At the exit was an Indian casino so I pulled into the parking lot. I figured I’d be safe there due to all the security. I called the CHP, from a pay phone (this was 96 or so) but they said there wasn’t much they could do without a plate #. I played blackjack for a few hours and then resumed my drive to Phoenix.

I've told this before.

Asleep one night, my bed facing french windows, I was awakened by 3 loud bangs on the doors at about 4am. I looked over to see the figure of a man standing, silhouetted by the moonlight. I could feel the hairs raising on my neck, my stomach going cold, when , after maybe 20 seconds, suddenly the figure moved away. I jumped out of bed, switched on all the lights as I ran up the corridor grabbed a hockey stick as I headed for the front door. Opening the door I realized the outside light was not on, so I reached back for the switch, whereupon the outside light bulb exploded. I grabbed a torch and walked out around the house. Nothing to see. I looked in on the dogs who should have barked, but they were huddled almost cowering in the back of their kennel. I was quite shaken by what had happened and went back inside trying to make sense of it.

I left my light on and tried to sleep. At breakfast I told my parents what had happened.

Two months later I was in hospital being treated for leukemia. Six months later I was in remission, then Dad got cancer and died a couple of months later.

After the funeral my mother and I were talking and she referred to the banging on my bedroom doors. She said when she heard that she was worried , because in the family, 3 knocks on the door was a portent of death in the house. It had happened several times in her family. Then you got sick shortly after , she said, and I thought for sure you were going to die. Except that it was not you that death came for, but your Dad.

Seeing the figure at the window was terrifying. My mom's story initially freaked me out, but if it has happened before, I guess I should go with the flow.

It was 1970 and I and 3 friends from school drove from Atlanta over to Athens to attend a seminar at UGA. We left Athens right at sundown and about halfway home we hit something small in the roadway that Tommy (the driver) was unable to see in the dark. It blew out the left front tire and we careened off the road, down an embankment into trees. The car hit a big pine tree. I was sitting in the back and my friend Joel (who was Tommy's first cousin) was on the other side. I never blacked out but by the time I regained my faculties people had pulled over and started running down the embankment. I knew I had to get out of that car and the only way was to get up through the right rear window that was up above me. I tried to get Joel to get out but he wasn't doing anything, and our friend David sitting the right front seat was also trying to get out. It was all very dark inside the vehicle and it was hard to see what Joel was doing, or not doing. After I got out of the window there were people there who helped me down. I didn't even realize that my left leg was broken badly. I asked David about Joel and Tommy and he started crying and said "I think Tommy is dead". That's when I lost it. By then the ambulance was there and we both were put on stretchers and taken up to the ambulance and driven away. I asked one of the EMTs about Joel & Tommy and he said "somebody will talk to you at the hospital". That didn't give me a good feeling.

While we were being seen to in the emergency room a cop came in and asked me what had happened. I told him we had hit something and a tire blew out. Then another cop came in and right in front of me he asked the doctor about "the other 2". The doctor just blurted out "they're dead". I just laid my head back and tried my best not to break down.

I was able to go home the next day, as was my friend David. Joel's & Tommy's parents came to see me the next day. That was harder to endure than the accident. Their funerals were held the following day but I was unable to go because they had put 3 pins in my leg and the doctor didn't want me moving around for several days.

I guess the only thing since then that has upset me more was the day I saw my mother's body in a casket the day before her funeral.

Almost being killed by a former spouse. And then calling the cops, who didn't show up.

I was in the crowd at a firework display when I was a teenager, and some of the fireworks flew directly towards my family. I ran off with my dad and sister, but when we got away and turned around my mum and little brother weren't there. I had this horrible feeling one of them had been harmed, but it turned out they were okay. One of the fireworks had landed right by my brother's foot - he was extremely lucky to get away without a scratch.

I had one tire slashed on my Range Rover in Boston in 2007. IT SUCKED. I had to get a tow truck on Beacon Street in Boston while they were filming a very small scene for " Bride Wars" starring Goldie Hawn's daughter. It was a cluster fuck.

One tire. Don't blame 'em.

It's a 4 way tie. When they told me I had cancer, when I was in a horrendous car accident, When I was on a commercial prop plane halfway to Pittsburgh and looked out the window and the propeller wasn't rotating, when I was trapped in a fire and had to be rescued.

I was a lot younger and was driving. Suddenly, someone behind me was honking at me for reasons unknown. I held up my middle finger. Next thing I know, this crazy honking person overtook me and started driving crazy. Crazy person slammed on his brakes, I almost rear-ended this nut. I slowed way down and made sure there was a huge space in between us.

Not the most scary thing, but one of the reasons I avoid opportunities for road rage interactions. R271's story reminded me of this.

I was on vacation in Europe a couple of years ago in the summer, taking a boat trip on the Danube. We stopped in Vienna, it must have been 90 degrees then. I remember I had a cold coming so I drank a couple of cups of tea, coffee and took a Sudafed. That morning, we took off to explore Vienna. It was hot, I felt awful like a cold was coming so I took another Sudafed. I hardly drank any water because I didn't want to look for a bathroom on our excursion. At the end of our little trip, we stopped by a cafe and I ordered coffee. I didn't realize the coffee I bought was 10 times stronger than American coffee.

That evening, we were going to attend a concert in Vienna. When I got on the bus, my heart started racing. I took my pulse and it was 200 beat a minute. I felt dizzy and short of breath. I complained to the hostess and she asked me if I wanted to be taken to the ER or back to the boat. I said to the boat and they immediately called for an MD to examine me. My heart kept beating very fast, I felt I was going to pass out. When I finally got to the boat, I took a couple of Ativans that my doctor prescribed for stress and drinking lots of water. By the time the MD came on board, my heartbeat had gone down to 140. She examined me and said my heart sounded regular but the rapid heart rate was probably due to the Sudafed, caffeine and dehydration. She prescribed something for me which my sister went and got for me. Anyway, my symptoms went away that night after I drank lots of water and with the help of Ativan but I really thought I was going to die of a heart attack.

That sounds like a nightmare r271 and all too possible. There are so many crazies.

Pittsburgh, R277?? That IS scary!

R272 I know this will sound weird, but the part about your dogs leads me to believe that you saw a Sasquatch standing at the door. That’s how animals always react to their presence. They exist.

[quote]Some lunatic in a white Pontiac Grand Am tried running me off the road on I-10 between San Diego, CA and Yuma AZ.. I’d flown into Phoenix To visit my grandmother and rented a Firebird convertible. After visiting grandma drive I drove to SD for the weekend. On the way back . I was driving in the left lane and had the cruise control set and I had driven past him. He then accelerated and tried cutting me off. I pulled into the right lane a slowed down to try and put some distance between us. Up ahead I saw him pull onto the shoulder. As Soon as I approached he pulled back onto the highway and was swerving at me to try and force me off the road. I saw an edit up ahead and got off at the last minute figuring he would get past the exit. I took the off ramp as fast as I could with the tires squealing something fierce. As I passed under the highway I saw him backing up on the shoulder to get into the off ramp. At the exit was an Indian casino so I pulled into the parking lot. I figured I’d be safe there due to all the security. I called the CHP, from a pay phone (this was 96 or so) but they said there wasn’t much they could do without a plate #. I played blackjack for a few hours and then resumed my drive to Phoenix.

Maybe when you passed him the first time, the driver had seen someone hiding in your backseat and was trying to warn you.

Bump. These are great stories

Well, during my wedding to Prince Michael of Moldavia...

Years ago as I was leaving a gay club a man followed and then chased me with a gun. I got away but I don't know who he was or why he was chasing me.

I was a teenager and had a pretty serious breakdown after date rape. Not being able to tell anyone.

[quote]I can't remember a time when I ever actually felt fear.

Oh, honey. You are definitely damaged.

In my youth, one night I was very drunk and stoned and sitting in a restaurant. I decided to go to the bathroom. As soon as i got inside I fell against the wall and slid to the floor dazed. A little boy walked and screamed at the top of his lungs and ran out.

Car jacked at gun point. For weeks after I keep rubbing the spot on my side where he stuck the gun in my ribs.

His head burst.

Years ago, I was sitting in a video booth watching some gay porn. A couple of minutes into my viewing, a hard cock came through the gloryhole. I looked, but did not touch. All of a sudden, the door was busted open and a flashlight shone in my face. It was the police conducting a raid. The same thing happened to the guy with the exposed cock. Well, he wasn't having anything to do with the cops, so he started fighting. The cop who was at my door ran over to help the other one and I took the opportunity to run as fast as I could out the door. Fortunately, my car was parked just around the corner, so I got in, gunned the engine and took the freeway entrance south. I was never as frightened as I was at that moment.

R2 that sounds ghastly, just ghastly.

I'm a bit of a fraidy cat person, maybe too careful. But it's kept me away from some scary things. Though I did cruise a bit and/or go to bars in an era where I probably could have had someone hurt me. I was a kid in the 70s when I wonder how I survived!

The scariest thing was probably the very first time I ever went to a mall restroom by myself in HS (to check it out for cruising) I didn't do anything and yet the mall security guard pulled me aside and then took me to the police station for odd behavior. If they wanted to stop me it backfired, I got a lesson in what TO do that day. My parents were confused and so was I, I told them what was essentially the truth - when I was using the restroom, people were acting strangely and I was trying to see what was happening.

Around the same time I had a friend and a family member both experience bad car accidents. That was very chilling and sad. But something I observed indirectly.

When I was 12, my father and I found my mom in bed, she'd attempted suicide. That was traumatic but maybe not scary in the exact way people in this thread mean. (Thankfully she was fine and got the help she needed.)

I know it's been said but 9/11 was truly scary, and the only thing that's made me feel similar, in smaller increments, is what's happened since November 2016.

I got caught in a rip current and couldn't free myself.

I got in my dorm elevator on the 12th floor with a few other people and a couple of floors down, the lights went off and it dropped free-fall for about one floor. It then caught itself and continued on as usual. But everyone screamed and thought we were going to die.

R297's story reminds me of my best friend's story - they were in a 12 story dorm building and at like 1 am the fire alarm goes off. They are laughing, joking....there's a window in the stairwell and he peaks his head out "fire! fire! hahahahaha!"

They get down to like the fourth floor and realize there was a real fire and they had to get the fuck out five minutes ago....they all ran like hell.

Scary to have to actually face.

A few years later when we were roommatess, there were a ton of firetrucks and we looked at looked up the block and could not see a thing. We were kinda killing time, hooting at the hot firemen, and then heard from a neighbor that several people had died in a house fire - a fire we could not even see. So fire is clearly not anything to mess around with. Also, don't be the airheaded twinks we were at the time and take shit seriously.

I've lived a very sheltered, charmed life and haven't had to deal with much in the way of external threats, at least not to date.

My scariest moments have been the result of mental illness. I've had a number of dark nights of the soul in which I've felt trapped in my life, unable to move forward and yet unable to stay where I am. The best I can describe it is I'm climbing a mountain when I get the urge to look down. I am so terrified at my position that I become paralyzed and can't move. I can't hold that position indefinitely, however, and thus the only way out seems to be to fall (suicide). But I know that's wrong, I don't want to hurt anyone, and I feel a crushing grief because I don't really want to die, I just want to reach some solid ground where I can stop and rest a while.

Intellectually, I know the trapped feeling is just that, a feeling, but when I spiral down, and the depression/distorted thinking takes over, it feels like the absolute truth. What's even worse, when I get to that point, reaching out for help becomes virtually impossible. I am convinced that there is no help for me and that I would harm others in even asking.

This is where being impulsive could have ended me many times over. But I am a human glacier, so by the time I've moved anywhere in the direction of making and acting on a plan, the episode has waned, I've spotted a handhold, and I'm on my way again, resigned, if not happy, to continue the climb.

I thought 99 said Spaniel and I was shocked.

I watched HILLBILLY ELEGY.

When I was about 8 years old, I was sort of "kidnapped" by a group of teenagers. They surrounded me as I was walking home from the park; two guys and three girls, and they wouldn't let me go. They pulled me off my route home, taking me further and further away, telling me they were going to kill me while sporadically taking shots at me with their fists in my back and upper arm, yanking, pulling my hair, pinching me hard, scratching me etc, as we walked. I was sobbing, begging them not to hurt or kill me, which seemed to excite them even more, and they'd hit me harder and talk about how they were going make sure I died slowly so I felt every bit of pain, then chop me into pieces and deliver what was left of me to my parents.

After about 2 hours, they finally stopped on some railroad tracks several miles from my home. As they lit cigarettes and talked about how they were going to kill me, I took off, I don't think I've ever ran so fast in my life. The guys chased me for a bit, but then I scurried under and in between some thick brush and into someone's backyard where there happened to a man BBQing. The guys took off, and I ran into this stranger's arms and wouldn't let go until he took me inside to call my parents. I never saw those teens again as they were not from my town, and I honestly could barely remember what they looked like when I had to describe them to the police. I think the trauma was so fierce, my brain erased it, plus the fact that I was looking at the ground most of the time because when I looked at them, they hit me harder.

R260, For a lot of DLers, that's a typical Saturday night.

Growing up, a homophobic teen in my neighborhood bullied the fuck of me. He was a real psycho too, in and out of juvenile hall, once stabbed his family's dog to death, and a bunch of things I'm forgetting.

When I was 14, I was going for a run and he tried to run me over. Then he got out of his truck and started to chase me on foot. He had a look in his eyes that I'll never forget and I knew if he caught me, he might kill me. I ran into the woods and stayed there for hours.

BUMP

I have several - one from when I was about 16 and in Venice for a wedding. I was with a cousin and two male friends and we were all in our tuxedos - the reception was over and one of my friends suggested we check out the casino. I'm not particularly attractive, but my cousin was very good looking and our friends were gorgeous and we all felt we were hot shit, so off we went.

We thought we might be turned away, but instead they let us in. We ordered drinks and the bartender told us that His Highness would be treating us to our first round and the rest of the night. We thought he was joking, but he indicated a man who I assume was a member of the House of Saud (or some other Middle Eastern country) watching us from a short distance away. The friend who suggested we go to the Casino froze and told us not to accept the drinks and to leave as quickly as possible. When we were outside the casino he hinted that this person was notorious for targeting very young men for sex and that his wealth and position made him untouchable as far as the police were concerned; he seemed to think we'd wind up in the canal minus our tuxedos and a few assorted body parts.

Creepy enough, but when later that night someone tried to break into the hotel room my cousin and I were sharing we were both so freaked out I don't think it occurred to us to even try to call for help via the phone. Was it an emissary from Prince Pedo? Or just a late-arriving drunk fiddling with the wrong door? I suspect the latter but back then we were both scared enough to shit peach pits and then paranoid for the rest of our time in Venice that some weird rapist horror would be visited upon us.

It probably sounds funnier than it was.

R302 That’s disgusting. I’m sorry, baby. Not even one of the girls stopped it, huh? People are sick.

R307 Thank you. The girls were the ones who were pinching, scratching me, and pulling my hair. They were sick individuals, and I wouldn't be surprised if some or all of them are in prison.

These threads are so creepy.

Got into an argument with my ex when I was drunk and got arrested.

[quote]Having all four of my car tires slashed in a parking lot and never finding out who or why.

You were just too fat and popped them all.

The time I got food poisoning and blew shit all over the airplane lavatory. We were taxi-ing and had to turn around.

R302 has the scariest story. If you didn’t run away, I’m sure they would have killed u

The trump presidency scared the shit out of me. If the coup was successful or he was re-elected I’m not sure where we all would be right now.

Road rage incident. A car ran a red arrow light and it was my turn to go, so I honked my horn at him. He did an illegal 180 and started chasing me swerving at me and yelling out his passenger window, so I shifted down quickly and did my own illegal U turn, but he did the same. So I called 911 and they intercepted him. Scared the living shit out of me. This happened when I was undiagnosed bipolar and I did a lot of bad things in a manic state. There were more incidents just as scary.

My 12Yo self in the back seat of my folk’s 2-door Olds Cutlass. (Dating myself.)

Dad was driving but realized he’d had too much vino, he pulled over to let Mother drive, but instead put the car in neutral and the car rolled back.

My parents had both exited,..Mother was nowhere to be seen, my Dad was grabbing the bottom of the door, trying to get back in the car.

My slightly younger brother smelled disaster and jumped out the passenger side of the car, leaving me alone in the v ack seat.

I soon felt a bump, and assumed the car ran over the Mother.

Dad was still hanging onto the door as I hopped into the front seat and hit the brakes. His back was scraped to hell.

Thank God, the bump was a parking block, and not Mother.

Everyone survived, but I never trusted or fully respected my father again.

[quote] Everyone survived, but I never trusted or fully respected my father again.

Oh man, r315. Did your father realise this?

R313 most of us would be dead from covid by now. He showed the world he doesn't give a shit about America.

Bump for October!

Walking home alone one night I saw a Republican

Getting mugged with a gun to my head in Rio

R319. Going on a date with a Republican is scarier I assure you! Never again.

I was hanging out in the woods by myself behind my house when I was about 11. These were thick forests and I was pretty far in. Suddently an incredibly creepy dude showed up out of noweher and started being all friendly and asking about my name , how old I was, what school I went to etc....there was literally no one around anywhere. I just remember him smiling this creepy smile...blegh. Anyway I answered a few questons but the moment he started coming towards me I flew out of the woods like a bat out of hell. Thankfully the guy didn't come after me but I feel if he had met a more naive, gullible kid god knows what he would have done. Who the fuck comes up to kids they don't know in the middle of some desserted woods to "be friendly"? No one..

I saw person with brown skin in our neighborhood. It was terrifying.

In my mid-20s for several nights in a row I woke up in the middle of the night not being able to breathe, I would try to work my lungs but they seemed stuck and after about 30 seconds I got my breath again. I didn't have any cold or illness, just out of the blue. Never happened again.

That was The Croup R324

Full disclosure. I’m a woman. I studied in France junior year in college . Walking by myself (so young and stupid) past a heavily wooded area returning to my dorm.

Distracted by man with hands in his pockets (ptsd this image forever ). He said bonjour and man #2 grabs me pulling me into forest. I fell down quickly to be as close to the road as possible.

He was laying on top of me disgusting . I thought to myself this is the last time I will see trees, the last time I will feel wind, I’ll never see my parents again

I wore a Saint Christopher . I pleaded, “Voyez vous le Saint Christophe ? Je suis catholique . Je suis vierge.” It’s fucking lucky I was unable to understand his response at the time .

He said “tu n’en sorts pas,” which means you’re not getting out of it that way.

I was so lucky that the man ran away because a car passed by. This is so mild compared to all the horrible assaults on men and women

[quote]My partner and I were hiking down a forest trail, heading for a small lake. We had our black Lab with us. Just as the lake came into sight at the end of the trail, I put my foot directly on a wasp nest that was built into the ground. The reaction was immediate - a cloud of wasps arose in front of us. My partner yelled "RUN!" and back up the path we went, with the speed of Olympic sprinters, the dog following us. When we reached an area of tall grass and reeds, we dove head first into it, and flattened ourselves against the ground. The dog landed on top of me and practically knocked the wind out of me. After some time had passed, we got up. The dog had taken most of the hits, but a couple of wasps had gotten into my hiking boot and had done a job on my ankle. Thankfully nobody had an allergy to wasp stings.

About a week ago, I got stung twice on the hand by a wasp that had gotten into my house. It hurt like hell, but I didn't have a reaction and the pain went away after a couple of hours. Then, the night before last, I awoke from a sound sleep because my hand was itching like crazy. The itching is still pretty bad, and now my hand is slightly swollen. Not scary, but definitely odd ...

Some of your experience are above and beyond the norm. Mine I'm a confident driver as in on highways I see speed limits as a suggestion. I've never been pulled over for speeding. That amazes me as I'm pedal to the metal type. That said the most awful drive ever was on I-95 through Richmond, VA. It was dark and pouring buckets of rain. Couldn't see the lines in the highway or anything. Just the tail lights of the car in front of me. Got us through but it took me a bit to come to my senses.

[quote] I thought to myself this is the last time I will see trees, the last time I will feel wind, I’ll never see my parents again

It's amazing the thoughts that go through your head in a few seconds.

When I was in college in Cincinnati, I stupidly stayed and watched the late show at a downtown cinema. I had to walk over to the library to wait for the bus and it was dark and there was no one anywhere. Suddenly I saw four young black men walking towards me but across the street. One of them pointed at me and they started to cross the street. The bus arrived about one minute before they reached me. Racist or not, I don't think it would have been a good outcome for me if that bus hadn't arrived when it did.

Bump

R330, you’re an idiot. They were probably pointing at the bus. Did they get on?

People like you are so fucking stupid.

Mental breakdown from homophobic violence aged 12.

Drug overdose age 30.

Just under the peak of a mountain, my 4-wheel drive started slipping on just-under-the-surface ice . . . toward a cliff with an immense drop . . . and I couldn't get traction. I finally had opened the door and was about to jump out to keep from going over the edge with the vehicle when . . . it stopped slipping. Eventually I jammed some rocks under the tires, got back into the driver's seat, managed to get traction, and gingerly backed away from the edge . . .

Bump

R 333: How horrible. My heart goes out to you. I watched my gay son suffer like this. We all love you and support you /- not just gays but moms and dads of gays who’ve seen the pain . Don’t give up on yourself . You have value . Your post may have touched a young gayling with similar struggles .

You never know whose life you may have saved by revealing your own pain

Child of the 90s in LA. Northridge quake, mudslides and Rodney King Riots were the top three.

I entered a movie theater for the wrong film, and before I knew it something hideous with a Nob in it appeared.

I barely made it out without vomiting up the aisle the empty theater.

A Sunday morning, my lover and I driving to church passing through the Mission in SF: A hooker at a stoplight approached us and gave us the two-fer one sign. We sped away.

Earthquake in October '89, and being on the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge which, unbeknownst to us all heading EB at 5:04pm, had collapsed ahead of us. Fortunately I was behind a number of cars that had stopped because of the bridge collapse, so it was a big traffic jam. Fortunate TWICE, because if I had not stopped for gas, I would have been on the Cypress Freeway in the East Bay which completely pancaked and killed 50+ commuters. In fact, my family watching the live news freaked out because that was the way home. 5:04pm was the usual time I travelled the Cypress, getting off work at 4:45pm.

[R339] that's supposed to be a joke, right?

Around age 7, I almost choked to death on a piece of duck meat/fat. I couldn’t make a noise, it’s not like in the movies where the choking person gasps. I was on the verge of passing out & knew I had to take matters into my own hands (literally) or I would die. Being so young & having small hands (thank god), I shoved my hand to the back of my throat & grabbed it & pulled it out, subsequently letting out the biggest burp of all time.

It was the worst weekend ever, my grandma almost drowned but I swam up in my inner tube & saved her. I call it our near death vacation (Final Destination here we come!)

My coworker & I were walking to my car on our way to lunch. We worked across the street from the main jail. As we’re crossing the street, a man attaches himself to my side & walks in tandem, he’s about 2 inches away from me. I speed up, he speeds up. In one hand he has a plastic bag (of his belongings) & in the other hand…a jar of Vaseline. He has this insane look on his face & he keeps raising the hand with the Vaseline towards me.

As we get to the parking lot my coworker & I split ways, I Jam to my car & open the door for her; she gets & we slam & lock the doors, as the guy is about one car away. I back up & almost hit him, but drive away. As we leave, we see him looking in the windows of empty cars.

Normally there’s tons of people out, but we’d left a bit early & we were the only 3 people around.

Oh yeah and the other thing - me being a confident driver. I've actually gotten 1981 Ford Escort airborne. Since then I've always had an appreciation for cars with short wheelbases. They're really lively to drive.

A pure narcissist dude I dated for seven weeks freaked out when I broke it off and went nearly full Fatal Attraction - showing at my house multiple times after I told him not to, broke off my storm door handle, threw all the furniture off my porch, blew up my phone, called friends of mine, threatened to show up at my work and other places, threatened to "destroy" me. I got an emergency order of protection.

I had been blessed in that I had avoided that sort of relationship drama my entire life, though I had been front row to plenty of friends and family - mainly women and gay men, but also lesbians and even a few straight guys -- who had one through something similar. With distance from it, maybe I shouldn't have been so scared, but at the time, it just unnerved me. Especially since I had good reasons for ending it and it had only been seven weeks. We had a few good times, but it's not like we had built a life together. Fuck.

Getting choked to the point of almost losing consciousness and then intentionally thrown out of a moving vehicle onto a side street during a domestic altercation.

I was unexpectedly slapped in the face on live TV after aiming a very dated G.I. Jane joke at a closet lesbian with bad hair.

[quote]A pure narcissist dude I dated for seven weeks,,,,,blew up my phone...

Do you mean that literally, r344, or do you mean that he called you a lot? O assume the latter, but it's an odd way to phrase it. Awful either way. How did you finally get rid of him?

I went to bed early on election night. Woke up the next morning and saw Trump was elected president.

R347, I didn't mean literally. I meant that he was constantly calling and texting. I got rid of him over time. The court order helped -- he didn't seem willing to challenge institutions, as boastful as he was. Though he made a few attempts to contact me after the order was entered. I think he just got tired and found someone or something else for his "supply." When I say narcissist, I don't mean it in the pop culture big-ego, arrogant sense. I mean it more in the clinical sense. When the court order expired, he still tried to contact me, and I thought about getting another emergency order - but he had stopped coming to my house. If he would have started showing up at my house or anywhere else again, I would have sought a plenary order. Then over weeks, contact petered out. Again, I think he moved on to someone or something else.

Thanks for your answer, r349. I had a somewhat similar situation when I broke off a relationship of some years. I moved out in a bit of a hurry, as violence was involved. I rented a place nearby, since it was what I could get on short notice. I had packed up my things, but was waiting to move them until I could do so with witnesses.

I got a call late a night or 2 after. He told me to look into his backyard. He had piled up all of my belongings and literally blew them up while I was on the phone with him.

In the 1980s (81 ithink), me and a friend decided we needed to go do laundry in the middle of the night, in January, in a suburb of Chicago. The laundry mat was on a very rough side of town we lived in. We went there because we had no tokens for the laundry room of our apt complex, and the exchange machine was down. We get to the Landry matt , who h had an older man who lived in the back, who ran the place. He was nice, but a little creepy, and he was always there. The LM, had 2 entrances directly across from each other. Needless to say Cbicago, gets very cold in January, so we thought that nobody would be there, and we'd be safe. Halfway through washing and drying, 2 gangs of ( men, kid's?) Come through each of the doors and start arguing . Me and my friend were becoming more and more afraid that we might caught in gunfire. They were throwing insults and threats and we were right in the .Middle . Suddenly one of people in one of these gangs, says, " Shut you Fuckin mouth you Kentucky Fried Chicken eating Bitch!). Its unbelievable to us now when we talk about it, but me and my Friend , started fucking laughing. It just was absurd and funny t the time. Some of them were also laughing. It was crazy. Then the guy who lived there finally woke up out his drunken stupor and tried to run them off. They left the LM, but started fighting again outside until the Cops showed up. It was quite a night, and we really were lucky not to have gotten hurt.

I’ve been held up at gunpoint, bashed into rocks by waves basking my head, driven on terrifying cliffs - even been misdiagnosed with cancer. But still the most terrifying experience of my life was HIV tests in my late teens and early 20s (late 80s). Fear of dying - and being outed - at 20 was sheer terror. Having to stew for weeks convinced that I was positive left deep scars. Even life and death situations since then haven’t been as scary.

On vacation in Mexico, I got pulled under the water by a current and hit my head on a rock. I couldn’t resurface as the current kept pulling me under .

I was sure I was going to die. I haven’t been in the water at a beach since

I was there, too, R352. Glad we made it this far.

R46, it just wasn't that into you. Sorry! But it's funny. I sort of did the same thing at a rest stop in the middle of the night. Took a walk among some shrubbery. The two friends I was with told me the shrubs were full of rattlesnakes.

It's funny there are two words I know In Russian. The first in latinized text is Pektopah or restaurant. It's funny I'm at a group of I.T. people. The question was asked who know was Pektopah means. I knew. I also know one other Russian term Nekulturny it means un cultured. Makes Russians green with anger when aimed at them.

"My wedding. It was a spectacle. JUST KIDDING!" -

that afternoon that I was on NY’s Penn Station during a false alarm when everyone thought there was an active shooter. I am not kidding, I had PTSD after this for weeks.