55 People Recall The Most Traumatizing Moments They’ve Ever Lived Through

I was in FLAX (an art store in SF) getting supplies, and this guy was following me around the store. I decided it was time to split, and he followed me to the check out line, and all the way to my car. I was 21 at the time and there were no cell phones back then (amazingly), so I was on my own.

So this guy starts talking about the machines in his head and how the government is following him. Crazy stuff like that. But here's the thing: I come from a crazy family. I know crazy. He wasn't crazy.

My best idea for defense was to use all those FBI techniques I have gleaned from watching too many cop shows, and be crazier than he was.

I started stepping closer to him, and never broke eye contact. I raised my voice when I spoke and was really excited when we "had something in common." I said I wanted to get to know him better, and where did he live? I could visit him! He said some homeless shelter and the address, and I got really excited and said I knew exactly where that was. I could visit him on Thursday!

He ended up backing up throughout the conversation, and at one point asked, "why are you talking to me." I looked away, wistfully, and said, "not many people talk to me. You know??"

This is all a totally true story. I've never done it again (thank goodness), but he left scared. I went home safely. Victory for me.

When I was about 12, I had a lot of issues with night terrors, and rarely slept a whole night through. One night, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I sat down, half asleep an thinking of nothing but emptying my bladder and going back to bed when I see movement out of the corner of my eye. There was a man standing by the other door to the bathroom staring at me, not moving. He was wearing a tattered grey jump suit and had a crutch, little to no hair. I don't remember how I got down into the basement where my parents slept but suddenly there I was, hysterical. My dad finally went up and looked in the bathroom and kitchen. Saw nothing but allowed me to sleep on the couch down there anyway. I didn't fall back asleep. About an hour or so later, I heard the sliding door to the bathroom from my sisters room and limping foot steps. The next morning my dad searched around and noticed that the fridge and pantry had been raided. Never caught the guy.

I once found myself in a cave, along with eight or nine other people. It was the middle of the Pennsylvania wilderness, and the only entrance was a small hole in the ground. To enter, you had to sit down, grab a tree root, and drop about seven feet down a steep wall to the floor. We all dropped in, and spent at least half an hour exploring this cave. My friend Dan taps me on the shoulder and whispers, "Dude, look at the ceiling." The ceiling was just high enough above our heads to hide the thousands of spiders crawling around on it. We tried to keep quiet about it, because we didn't want anyone to flip out, but there was no stopping it. Just seconds later the whole group noticed them. Everyone got silent, and you could actually hear the spiders crawling on the surface of the stone. It was an extra nerve wracking situation... because the only way to exit the cave... was to basically jump up and pull yourself out of a hole surrounded by spiders. Two of the girls with us were terrified, and refused to climb out. They just couldn't muster the courage to put their faces next to a giant spider nests. They came around though, and everyone got out safe. I had the honor of being the last one to exit. Alone in a dark cave filled with spiders, and nobody around to give me a boost. Fortunately, Dan was brave enough to reach down in and give me a hand.

When we first discovered that cave, we were all like, "I can't believe we've never heard of this place." Now I know why. A few months later, I found out the cave is off limits in the fall... because of the rattle snakes.

During finals week at college I left the library pretty close to midnight and decided to carry my laptop to my car which was a block and a half away down a side street. I was completely alone and my phone was dead, but it was pretty well lit so I figured I'd be okay. As I was walking, a pickup truck driving the opposite way slowed down and did a k-turn behind me and started following me. I immediately stopped, let it pass and stood by a lamp post until it made a turn (down the street where my car was). I went back to the library and asked public safety to walk me to my car. As we got closer, the truck that had been following me was idle in the space directly behind my car and sped off down the street as soon as he saw me and the cop.

I almost didn't go back and get public safety because I felt I was being too paranoid. Note: Never be "too paranoid.".

Okay, I got contacts around the time I turned 21, and I had a real phobia of putting things in my eyes. If you live in the U.S., you know that they won't let you leave the opthalmologist with your first pair of contacts unless you can put them in at least one time. It took me having to come back 3 days in a row, before I could get it right. That's how disturbed I was about it, but I was determined to have contacts.

Anyways, I was real careful about rubbing my eyes with them in, because I had this paranoid fear that I would grind them into my eyes. I know. I know. Like I said, I had a real phobia. So, I go to take a bath, and I'm real careful about getting soap in my eyes.

Finally, I wash my hair and close my eyes as I douse water on my head. I rub my eyes and open them, and…I realize I'm blind. I can see absolutely nothing. I was in a state of sheer terror. I got incredibly still, and all the possibilities were going through my head. How was I going to get out of the bath tub without help? Was this permanent? How was I going to live my life blind?

Then the lights came back on. In the 5 seconds when I had closed my eyes, the power had gone off, and since the bathroom had no window, I'd been in pitch darkness.

tl;dr; I briefly thought I had gone blind, but it was just a power outage.

So many many years ago I worked the night shift at a 7/11 in a neighborhood right next to a bad neighborhood. Until about 2 in the morning we had a security guard, but he didn't even carry a gun. From 2 until 5 you were on your own. After I was hired I found out this particular 7/11 had been robbed a few times and when family members I knew found out I was working there they tried to convince me to quit. Well as I worked nights I slept during the day and one evening I woke up from this very intense dream were I was shot, it was so intense I woke up sweating with this feeling that I was punched in the chest.

I decided to quit that day.

Well about a week later I go in to collect my paycheck and there's a new guy working the late shift. Seemed alright, I spoke to him for a moment and I left.

I found out that the next night he was shot in the chest while working and died in the hospital.

I used to be a mountaineer, and I was on an expedition on Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas.

We were at camp three (around 6000m in altitude) and set to push for the summit in the morning.

I’d been feeling a bit nauseated and sluggish that day, but nothing too alarming. But I woke up in the middle of night and something was horribly wrong. My head felt it was split open, I couldn’t stop vomiting / dry heaving, and I was talking gibberish. The world was upside down to me, I felt overheated even though it was approaching -50C with the windchill.

I don’t remember much of that night, but I had a bit of clarity once my teammate injected me with a steroid used to combat altitude sickness. I was told I was developing high attitude cerebral edema and I would die if I didn’t descend. The problem was that a massive blizzard had come in. Even without the storm, helicopters could not get me.

By morning, the storm had lessened a bit and a guide from another team heard what had happened. He agreed to help me get down the mountain. But within an hour, the storm was raging again. I lost in the snow for a while and my body was depleted of energy. I slumped down into a snowdrift, realizing I was going to die. I wasn’t scared then, but felt a calm peacefulness.

Thank god something eventually kicked in, some sort of survival instinct and the sheer terror of the situation hit me hard. Thank god my guide followed my tracks, gave me more medicine, and over the next seven hours, made our way down.

The fear hit me really badly that night in base camp. That realization that I should be dead is harder to describe.

I got severe sun (high altitude is weird) and windburns on my face - lost chunks of my cheeks for a while. I now have signs of having a TBI from my brain swelling.

I still love the mountains, but I hike instead of mountaineer. My life is too precious now.

I was stalked by a mountain lion in the Santa Cruz mountains. I've had lots of experience with dangerous wildlife, been charged by many bears, but have never felt like I was dinner until then. It was disconcerting to say the least.

Not me but a friend of mine (female, about 22 at the time) worked for Google Maps as some sort of surveyor or photographer. Google sends her and another female coworker to some remote location in Mexico for a few days for business. The hotel they were staying at was apparently nice enough, but literally outside the walls of the hotel was a really rough ghetto with people living in boxes lining the streets. Anyway, the first day of the trip she and her coworker are taking a taxi to the location they have to survey and at a red light, some crazy guy opens the door, tries to pull my friend out and then starts stabbing her in the chest with a knife. The cab driver pulled away but not before she'd been stabbed 6 times. She survived but has pretty bad scars and has become a much different and quieter person since.

If it makes any difference, I will preface this by saying that I'm female. That fact may or may not make the following creepier...

I used to live next to an eye hospital. One day, walking home, I was stopped by an old man who clearly had trouble seeing. He asked me to help him across the road to the hospital. I agreed, and he grabbed hold of my hand very tightly. At this point I noticed his fingers were stained brown from tobacco, covered in scabs, and his fingernails were very long and dirty. I started to think that my good deed for the day would be a bit regrettable...

When we got to the other side of the road he still had my hand grasped so tightly I couldn't politely pull away. "Do you want to see my eye?" he said. One of his eyes was squeezed shut. With his free hand he pulled the lids apart and I realised to my horror that he had no eyeball just an empty socket. I started babbling (still trying to be polite) about how that was very interesting, but I had to go.

Then he uttered the immortal words: "Do you want to put your finger in there?" He was pulling really hard on my hand trying to force my fingers into his empty eye socket.

At this point I gave up on politeness and struggled my hand free (it was difficult, he was really strong) and just ran for it. I could hear him laughing as I ran off.

TL;DR Stranger tried to force me to put my fingers in his empty eye socket.

Okay, a couple of things you need to know first... When I was ~2 years old my parents and I lived in a house that my grandparents owned. Although only two, I apparently could speak quite well in full sentences. My parents' bedroom was connected to mine through the closet, meaning you could walk into their closet, go through a door in back and end up in the back of my closet.

My mom started having these terrible nightmares. In her dream, she would wake up surrounded by fire. She'd rush through the closet to my room, scoop me up and dive out the window. Suddenly it would flash forward and her and my dad would be sitting in a waiting room at a hospital. A doctor would come in, looking somber and say, "I'm sorry, but..." She'd wake up at that point, sweating profusely and her heart racing.

One night, she woke up to me screaming. She ran into my room and pulled me into her arms, calming me down and asking me what was wrong. My response was, "Mommy, Mommy, my room was on fire. I was on fire." Of course this freaked her out. (I'm willing to admit that me having some sort of similar nightmare may have been caused by me overhearing a conversation about my mom's nightmares, but that's not the freaky part.)

Not too long after this we moved out, though not because of the nightmares my mom was having. We lived in southern Illinois at the time, and my parents were having a hard time making enough money to support us living there, so we moved up to northern Illinois. My grandparents sold that house once we moved.

About six months after we moved out my mom was talking to my grandma on the phone. My grandma started telling my mom about how the house we used to live in had caught on fire. No one was home at the time, but the bedroom that had been mine had been completely destroyed. The fire had started because of an electrical short in the closet I spoke of before.

This story always gives me chills when I tell it.

I used to live near a large open stormwater drain with no fencing around it. Three drunk guys drove their car straight into it. I went out and found the driver trying to get his friends foot out of the windshield. On the field on other side of the drain I saw the third passenger who was covered in blood. I asked if they were ok and my neighbour called the ambulance/police.

The blood covered friend passed out and was twitching so I ran to the car, grabbed a towel from the back seat and ran to help him. I found a large, deep cut on the back of his neck/head. I rolled him to his back and used the weight of his head to put pressure on the wound. I was talking to him, trying to keep him awake and he went into shock, twitching and unresponsive.
This was the moment I thought an man died in my hands. I was able to wake him and the ambulance took over from there. That was the most harrowing moment of my life.

That moment you know your going to be in a near/possibly fatal car crash and there is no longer anything you can do to avoid it. So you close your eyes and await impact. And so much happens in that moment, it's like time stands still. Then it stops, and you survived, and your cognizant and you look around to assess the situation. Look down at your mangled self... it's been almost 25 years. I've blocked a lot of it but I can still see all that blood on my hands.

An alpha male gorilla charged me in Rwanda. The guide had told us if that happened, not to run, but instead to bow down to show we aren't trying to challenge him. I started to do this, but the guy standing next to me freaked out, banshee screaming, arms flailing, and knocked me into a bush. Gorilla charged and stopped a hand's reach from me. Truly thought I was going to be torn limb from limb.

I work the night shift at a hotel. Last night a young man walked in here. I didn't notice it immediately but he was chewing on a razor blade. He had slit his wrists and the razor had done significant damage to his mouth. He merely wanted to use the phone to call his girlfriend.

When I picked up the phone he said "why you gotta call the law on me?" and then promptly left.

I'm glad this is my last week.

When I saw someone try and jump off a bridge, only to be talked down as i was driving past and then change their mind and jump at exactly the moment I passed. One moment they were there and then I looked in the side mirror, they fell and were just gone.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

My wife and I were backpacking in a semi remote area with our dog. We made camp and swam in a nearby river for a while before making dinner. As we’re eating, our dog starts barking and I look up to see a guy walking down the hillside toward our camp.

As he comes closer I see that he’s visibly tweaking. He’s not wearing a shirt and around his neck he’s wearing a double coil of thick chain attached with a combination master lock. At his waist he has a Japanese style katana, but the hilt/handle has been replaced with a large elk antler.

I walk over to see what he wants and my usually friendly dog is going crazy barking and growling at him. He won’t make eye contact with me and keeps stealing glances at my wife. We’re in the middle of nowhere and he tells me he’s looking for a place to set up camp and he has some friends coming up. He mentions something about a “goat” but he’s mumbling so I don’t really catch it.

I say uhhh ok and he starts looking around where we’re camped and says “this looks like a pretty sweet spot”. He turns around and starts walking around the area. He then pulls out the katana and starts hacking branches off trees. This isn’t some prop katana. It’s hacking off 3” branches in one fell swoop.

My hair is standing on end and my gut tells me not to stick around to see how this movie ends. He tells us he’s going to mark the main trail so his buddies know where to come down and find him. As soon as he leaves we immediately pack up our s**t and hike out 8 miles in the dark.

On the way out we have our headlamps on, walking down a single track trail. We come around a corner and a guy in a white tank top sees us, turns around and bolts down the trail back the way he came from-in the direction we’re walking. I’m extra weirded out now.

We round a curve and he’s standing there breathing heavy. My headlamp catches his face and he’s smiling. I pause and tell him we’re just hiking out. He smiles again, looks at our dog and says “nice puppy”. We sidle past him and pass a large cooler that he was obviously dragging up the trail. No idea what was in it, but it definitely had been used to store bloody meat at some point as the outside was covered in old dry blood.


No idea what would have happened but I imagined them camped next to us in the middle of nowhere, asking us to “party” with them. My dad always told me to trust my gut and I’m glad I did.

TLDR: possibly avoided a Deliverance scenario in the middle of tweaker backcountry.

My first job was working at a gas station. One night when business lulled after rush hour, a car drove up and the man inside it asked me for directions to a restaurant. I started giving him directions and he asked me to come closer because he couldn't hear very well over the noise from the street. I thought it was reasonable, so I took a couple steps closer to his car.

As I was explaining how to get to the restaurant from the gas station the man interrupted me and said "You have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen. I'd like to put them in a jar on my desk so I can look at them all day." The guy I was working with quickly yanked me away from the man's car and told the creep that he needed to leave or the cops would be called.

I haven't retold this story ever. I used to work as a security guard. One night I got a real technical post at a local railyard. I don't want to give away which state I'm, but I can just say it was fairly large and next to a large city.

It was my first night, and this old timer is showing me the ropes. There's a lot to do. I have to watch a gate as truckers go in and out with brand new cars loaded up on their trailers. I had to do a patrol through a large gated outdoor area that enclosed 5 sets of tracks that unloaded these new cars.

It was a 12 hour night shift. 7pm to 7 am. Thankfully, I wasn't alone or I would have been seriously disturbed. There were drivers (who were d***s) and rail workers putting trains together. I forget exactly what time, but in the early AM I get a call from one of them in the security gate office. I'm told that someone, probably a b*m, had strolled into the gated area.

Now this area is the size of several football fields, filled with brand new cars with gas in the tank. This is a serious problem, and the whole reason I was there in the first place. To protect the probably tens of millions of dollars worth of cars.

As I show up in a little golf cart, I speak with one of the rail workers who gave me a very vague description. A man wearing blue jeans. I was then tasked with finding the man in this huge place with about 80 million places to hide. It was clear he was probably a b*m, and that the cars would offer a wonderful place to sleep for the night.

So there I was, going through a huge field of cars. I shined my flashlight into the tinted windows of at least a hundred cars. I was expecting to walk up on a b*m, sleeping in a car or listening to the radio. Or worse yet, maybe someone there to steal a car. They all had keys in the ignition and gas in the tank for moving.

I looked for almost an hour, and nothing. At last I went to the actual trains. They are huge, like the size of houses. Each one was easily taller than my house and half as wide. You don't realize how big trains are until you get there.

I found myself shouting at the trains, and walking around them looking for that same b*m. I was thorough, but I found nothing at all. Scared, miffed, and while having pissed off truckers honk their horns at me hundreds of meters away, I went back to the guard cabin.

I had an argument with a trucker who was pissed at me for keeping him at the gate, and then a phone call from the railway guys asking if I had found the guy. I told them I looked for a long while, and couldn't find him. I supposed he may have jumped a fence to get away from me. I had looked *everywhere*.

Another hour passes, and at 3 or 4 am (I forget exactly) I get a call. They found the man on the rail tracks. Right where I had been looking. I later learned that he was probably hiding *on* the tracks, where I wasn't likely to stick my head. Then when I said I couldn't find him, the rail workers moved the train again.

He was found in parts. The largest piece was a hand.

My husband and I were driving home from a city two hours away, and since it is a drive that I have done many times in my life, I sat back and read a book.

Not even an hour into the drive, I felt the gravity of the car veering and I looked up from my book to see why my husband was pulling over. Unfortunately, my husband was NOT pulling the car over. When I looked up, my eyes saw a vehicle crossing the median and veering into our lane--each of us doing 70, head-on. Luckily, my husband doesn't use cruise control and he keeps a cool head, so his quick thinking put our car into the ditch, narrowly missing the man coming at us.

When the other guy ditched and while we were all talking to the police, the man said he had a blackout and didn't remember what happened. Much to our fright, however, the cop just told the man to get to a hospital, and let the guy drive HIMSELF away. Very scary day (and I don't really read much in the car anymore.).