“I Was Horrified”: 81 Disturbing Things People Witnessed And Will Never Be Able To Unsee

I was probably 6 and at a Chuck E. Cheese type place, and a ride attendant let a little girl on who was slightly too short. I was next in line for the next ride. It was a “sizzler” ride, so the two seat cars would spin independently while the arm it was on is attached to a center thing that spins the whole thing an additional direction. She slipped out. She had beaded braided hair, which got caught in the center thing. It very quickly crushed her head and split it open. She was screaming and screaming and the blood was unimaginable, and I saw her brains. She died. I witnessed the whole thing as the next kid in line. The person who let her on the ride was probably an 18 year old and she was screaming and screaming. There was blood smeared around in circles around the entire perimeter of the ride. It got on me, too.

I won’t go to carnivals or get on any sort of machine operated ride. I’m 38 now and still dream about it, despite doing EMDR for years.

Worked Security at a Child protection service office for a short while. I accidentally read some of the case reports.

Anyone who believes all life is sacred needs to get their eyes checked.

The parents in those reports deserve to be burned alive at what they did to kids.

Someone jumped in front of the train I was driving. I drove for years with plenty of “near misses”… sadly they happen a lot at various hotspots on the rail network, for example kids screwing around at notorious crossings, people standing on the edges of platforms totally oblivious as they stare at phones, while you’re blasting through at 90mph, etc

I hit the young guy in a place I would’ve never expected anyone to jump. Trundling along, I see a head pop up over the parapet of a footbridge just ahead. Thought he was going to throw something or give me the finger (people do) and then he swan dives headfirst onto the track in front of me. I hit the emergency brake but had no chance of stopping

The sound of it I will never forget, or the mental snapshot of the guy in his last seconds alive.

Didn’t think I would ever go back and do that job again. Still think about it every day. Made me appreciate police, firefighters and paramedics all the more: the people that attended the scene were a cut above. They have to see/do things like this everyday

Weirdly the total lack of context as to what happened was the hardest to deal with. You never find anything out about the person, why they did it. Two human lines meet, one ends, the other is changed forever.

I watched a young teen couple burn to death in their truck. I was close enough to speak to them but the fire burned me. It was horrible. They screamed, their cries were heartbreaking.

A couple bad things that stick in my mind.

A middle aged autistic guy had open heart surgery. Very kind soul. Would have a lot of visitors which were his caregivers from his facility.

Surgery went fine but he was constipated. Nothing was done besides a lot of laxatives/cathartics.

Eventually vomited up [feces]. It got into his lungs. We’re doing compressions on his recently opened chest while respiratory tried bagging him. But everytime we compressed [feces] just shot out of his mouth and we couldn’t get his airway clear.

A lady with cancer that was skin and bones and had her teenage daughter taking care of her. She came in with some bloody spit up but nothing extreme. I was talking to her and she said she didn’t feel well, opened her mouth, and bright red blood jetted out. Continuously. I’ll never forget her daughter’s screams.

The start of Covid. A mom in her 30s in our ICU bipap dependent. She had 3 kids 10 and under. I held the iPad so they could tell her goodbye.

All of the above [passed away]. I cleaned up their bodies and bagged them. I tried to comfort family/friends.

Made a part of me numb.

I asked for the nurses stethoscope. It was too small for me and it hurt my ears terribly, though I couldn’t really feel it. I held my son while they disconnected him. And I held him and I listened to his heartbeat get quieter and quieter. It faded away until I just couldn’t hear it any longer. It wasn’t a hard stop, it was a fade.

He was covered in bruises. Hydropic. Neonatal Hemochromatosis. It was a hard three days, but those last moments were the worst of moments. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy.

A fellow soldier dying in my arms from multiple gsw in Afghanistan. I was the medic, couldn't save him 😞. I think about him and the others we lost all the time, daily. I wish I could have done more.

A legless homeless man in a wheelchair begging somebody for a hot bowl of soup on a bitter winter day and then he dropped it right as I was passing by and started crying. Before I could replace it one of the ladies working in a nearby dry cleaner ran into the store and bought another hot cup of soup. I gave the guy my gloves because he didn't have any .$7 emergency gloves I bought from a street vendor made the guy happy and he was so thankful.

I was working at the interior detail part of a car wash chain in like 2008. A young mother pulled up with an infant and a toddler like maybe 2. Toddler was sitting in passenger seat, no child seat to be found. Mother got out of the car, grabbed the baby, and turned back to the car seemingly having expected the small child to crawl over the center console and out of the car through the open drivers door on his own. But he was still standing and smiling on the front passenger seat.

Mother turned and said “Lets GO!” And the toddler shrunk back into the seat and said “Mommy please don’t hit me.”

A child that small responded to his mothers raised voice by pleading not to be beaten…I was 18 and I almost cried on the spot, I was horrified.

Told the manager I wanted to call for help, but he told me not to get involved. I’m not sure it would have mattered. He’s about 20 now if he’s alive. I hope he’s ok. I think about him a lot.

I hope the world isn’t as dark for him as it looked to me in that moment.

I was job shadowing in the ER in high school. I was part of a health career program that allowed high school seniors to do so.. On the first day a man was brought in via ambulance, he had shot himself in the face with a shotgun. His face looked like someone put his head through a meat grinder. The sound of him breathing was like a weird slurping/bubbling/snoring sound that will forever be burned into my brain.. At one point he started reaching around with his hands, obviously blind and couldn’t speak. Idk if he could hear. It was crazy thinking he was at all conscious.

I watched for 5 minutes or so until the nurse I was shadowing looked up and told me to leave, so idk what came of it.. I assume he passed away. I talked to my instructor and finished my site rotations at a nursing home after that.. and to think first responders see similar things all the time..

It scared me so much I ended up going to college for something else.. However, 10 years later I know it’s my calling and I am back in school again for nursing.

I was a funeral director for many years. The funeral home I worked for had a contract with the medical examiner’s office. We would take bodies with suspicious/crime-related deaths to the ME’s office (which was several counties away).
I got called to a home of a couple in their 60s. Their 30 year old son blew his head into two almost identical halves (which were sitting on both his shoulders) with a .45. His brain bounced off the wall behind him and landed all over the room (with the largest part landing on his dresser). The cops, my partner, and I are figuring out the best way to proceed while his parents are upstairs wailing.
My parents call me on my flip phone (this was 20 years ago), it was my 31st birthday. They start singing “Happy Birthday” to me, while I’m staring at this scene. The singing, the wailing, the blood, the head, the brain matter, the love, the despair... all too much.

Firefighter here. I have tons but what always comes to mind is my disbelief at people’s total disregard for others. Worked a multi-vehicle accident in a high foot traffic area in front of a mall. It was clear that one of the occupants was in trauma arrest. Another firefighter and I were trying to remove the victim from the vehicle to begin CPR. As I was pulling their body from the car, I was mindful of the area I was at and tried to be as fast as possible so bystanders wouldn’t have to be subjected to a traumatic sight. However when I looked up, I saw at least 50 people all with their phones out, some even smiling and laughing, recording this person’s lifeless body being pulled out of a car in awe. I lost a lot of respect for humanity.
Recently after that, worked a fatal pedestrian struck. Same deal, everyone out filming this person’s lifeless body in the street. What blew my mind is one father had his kids with him, maybe 6 and 8 years old, and he was just letting his kids watch this deceased person lying in the street as folks gather around to get their next tiktok.

I was driving home late at night and a guy was trying to flag people down and everyone kept driving by. I pulled over and cracked my window and he came running over screaming about his girlfriend. He didn't have a phone. Yelling at me to call 911. I was so afraid being alone as a woman at night I just said okay and rolled the window back up and called 911 I didn't have any info because the guy just ran back into the dark but I called anyway. A couple minutes later I heard screaming. So I went to go investigate and what I saw was INSANE. They had been driving down the ditch on a side by side and hit a guard rail type thing, and it went through the side by side and through this woman's torso. Like fully impaled. I immediately called 911 again and updated them on what I saw and within like 5 minutes there was a fire truck and an ambulance and multiple RCMP trucks. In those 5 minutes I didn't know what to do so I just tried to calm her down, rubbed her back, told her help is coming. The whole time she was just screaming. One of the officers told me I had to stay so I just sat in my car and plugged my ears. My hands were covered in blood but I didn't notice so when the officer came to take my statement my face was covered in blood from holding my ears. She died later that night.

Working in the ER as a respiratory therapist, 3 month old brought in, mom fell asleep while breastfeeding and smothered the child. Spent ~an hour in vain trying to resuscitate.

Back was also shot from being cramped over the bed bagging them for an hour straight.

Heard a boom. Like a dumpster fell off a truck. Turns out it was a bus bombing. I went over to see if I could help. Carried a case of spring water I handed out to victims and first responders. I saw a hand 200 yards away on the sidewalk.

The aftermath of a city destroyed by an EF-5 tornado. Cars found miles away or not found at all, houses and businesses flattened, and no trees remained. Standing on what was a street I lived on for years and not knowing what direction I’m looking at because it was all gone. The worst was the bodies. Bodies were swept into the tornado and found elsewhere. A couple of people remain unaccounted for. People that survived were walking around like zombies in disbelief and some with significant injury. No idea who is alive or dead and no real way to find out. A friend that survived had a massive piece of glass embedded in her forehead. One of two hospitals was completely destroyed. Everything was just gone. No idea how to find shelter or water. The story of several people’s deaths came out after and they were heartbreaking. I still have nightmares of the bodies. Even more disturbing is that it brought out the worst in some people who tried to scavenge from others’ mostly destroyed properties- trying to take any copper and anything that might be worth any money.

I work in emergency veterinary medicine, so I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. A happy pit bull with a hatchet in his head and his tail wagging, dogs hit by lawnmowers, all sorts of things. But the thing that still haunts me is watching a grown man choke and punch a child that was maybe 6 in a gas station parking lot. Oh my god. It was absolutely horrible. I got out to stop him and the man drove off so I followed him while I called the cops. They got behind him and pulled him over and told me I could leave. I hope they took the kid away but I’ll never know. I still think about it from time to time because the kid looked so defeated and empty. It was truly haunting. He never fought back or even held up his arms, he just cried, and I know it’s because that guy has done that before who knows how many times.

House fire of neighbors when I was 5. The dad jumped out of the second story window while on fire, the mom didn’t but you could hear her screaming. I’m 55 now.

A guy who jumped off a small tower outside our local cathedral, back when I worked as an EMT.

He was high on... something, and was convinced he could fly. Instead of flying he literally face planted on the concrete slabs at the bottom.

When we got to him, he was still alive and breathing, and as it was a cold, foggy night in the middle of winter here in Britain, the oddest thing was that you could see his breath. Which isn't odd in itself apart from the fact it was red.

We couldn't even find anywhere to put in an OP airway, his face-or what was left of it- was so messed up.

And the *noise*, the noise I won't forget until my dying day. I don't know how to describe it, but it was awful.

One month before her wedding about 18 years ago, my sister was ejected from a vehicle as her fiance was driving. Hit by someone running a red light. I got a phone call from mom, she was frantic. "Xxxx has been in an accident we don't know how bad meet us at the hospital" I ran out of work and got there as fast as I could safely. We were asking where is she ,what room etc. we beat the ambulance there. Then we saw a gurney being rushed down the halls, I looked over and it was my sister. Her face cracked open as if you were to drop a watermelon on concrete. She had spinal fluid coming out of her ears. I told myself that can't be my sister. It was. She survived miraculously. 2 months in ICU they put her face back together. When she was getting discharged, all the Drs and surgeons called her ICU the miracle girl. Said we should be planning a funeral not a coming home event. I'll never forget her moans and sounds as she was whisked by us on that gurney. She got married months later as sheneeded lots of physical therapy.

The only reason she's alive, is where the accident happened there was an off duty paramedic whose yard she landed in. She went a good 20 to 25 feet out the window
He grabbed his kit and began work on her IMMEDIATELY. He came to her party that was thrown as a fundraiser, he came to shake my hand and introduce himself, I grabbed him and sobbed while giving him a huge hug. I'll never forget him.