35 Small Town "Incidents" That The Locals Still Talk About Years Later

The thing I was most aware of was that a teacher was sleeping with one of the high school students, then he (the student) got her pregnant and she kept it. She was fired, don’t know what she does now, and the dude who knocked her up is the local drug dealer now. I was in the same year as the kid that resulted from that, he was a nice guy. Felt bad for him cause everyone was always trying to figure out who the kid was, since everyone knew he’d be at the school that year but didn’t know who it was. If you ask me, kind of f****d up to stay in the same town and make your kid go to the same high school that happened in.

Teacher swinger-sex ring got exposed. Everyone in the school and their parents found out pretty quick. Middle School Vice Principal ended up divorcing his wife due to later swinging incident.

An airplane crashed into the towns only water tower. Just happened to be a crop duster fully loaded with herbicides. Very sureal sight to see because it took more than a month to find a crane large enough to remove the plane from the water tank on top of the tower. You drive by, and all you see is the tail of the airplane ✈️ sticking out the top of the tower.

The Farmington Mine Disaster
I live in a small town in West Virginia and before I was born this happened. So one day the coal miners went into the Mines as per usual but something was off. It smelled like gas the coal miners found out to late that there was a gas leak. As they were using their pickaxe's sparks started flying and the gas was lit aflame. 78 of 99 people died that day people that were fathers, sons, grandparents, uncles, and cousins. All of this happened because the mine had low safety protocols or protection for their employees. Hollywood caught wind of this story and even made a movie about it thr movie is called miner 9 and is based off of the farmington mine disaster the incident even pushed the government to change the coal Mines to make them more safe.

A little girl had a seizure (or hit her head. Nobody knows for sure) in the YMCA swimming pool, went unconscious, and drowned during a youth swim team practice. My sister and her friends were also on the team. They saw her at the bottom of the pool and thought she was just messing around. Lifeguards and instructors weren’t even paying attention.

We had this guy who was a survivalist type before it became a thing. He was able to purchase the bubonic plague vials by pretending to be a research scientist, and proceeded to infect a bunch of rats with plague. He wanted to study what medicine works best against plague rats. Luckily the FBI caught up to him, and plague man was stopped before any plague rats escaped!

The fun part is if he did this today, he'de probably be considered a hero to some. I actually met him a few times before he got arrested. I thought he was a priest of somesort because he was always in all black, and had a huge beard.

Our high school principal cheated on her husband with another married staff member and that guys wife sent him flowers with a card that said “Happy Valentine’s Day, Adulterer”. The kids that worked as assistants in the front office saw it and told everyone

In 2016, a girl who was in my high school class died suddenly in her sleep. No rhyme or reason why. She just died. Rocked the entire town and especially me and my classmates since she was in our class. Still don’t know why she died six years later

It started with the kids from down the road playing my neighbor's haystack.

My neighbor was, unfortunately, bats**t crazy. So he put bear traps in his haystack.

The kids found the bear traps, luckily without getting caught in one, and ran home to tell their dad.

Dad comes over with a baseball bat, proceeds to beat the c**p out of the bear traps.

Few days later, my neighbor spots the kids' dad driving by in his pickup truck, so jumps into his own truck and follows him. They wound up in the nearby wildlife preserve, shooting at each other's trucks with hunting rifles. Luckily they didn't hit each other, just the trucks.

That finally caught official attention and they ended up in front of a judge. They both got scolded, neighbor for owning old-style illegal bear traps and kids' dad for damaging property.

When I was in high school (early 2000s), one of the elementary school lunch ladies - who also ran a babysitting business - had a child die in their care. While this was eventually ruled as a tragic case of SIDS, it opened up a decade-old investigation into a previous death of another child in her care. This turned into a murder investigation and she was convicted and sentenced to twenty years for pushing the kid down the stairs. The victim was the brother of a student a grade below me. The lunch lady's daughter was in the same grade. They were friends until all this blew up.

The town has about 2500 people in it and everyone knows everyone else's business. A lot of my classmates were babysat by this woman at one point or another. And, again, we all knew her because she served us meals in elementary school and her kids were in our classes. It was a wild time. There was an A&E documentary about it too. She's finished her prison sentence now but I'm not sure if she moved back to town or not. I haven't lived there in years and barely keep up with hometown gossip.

After homecoming a car full of students were driving home and got a flat tire. They were just over a hill and not all the way out of the road. The two girls were inside the vehicle but the two boys were standing at the back blocking the tail lights. Another student driving home rear ended them and both boys lost both legs. On a happy note both went on to play in the Paralympics at least.

“The incident”

A girl from my hometown was texting and driving. As she was in the Highway, she swerved into the side of the road and killed a cyclist. This was one of those “known” small town girls (3 sport athlete, famous last name, etc etc. if your from a small town you know what I mean).

Long story short, she basically got off with little repercussions because of her popularity. I know her punishments were losing her phone and license until she was 19, 200 hours community service, and I think she served a day or two in jail on his death anniversary.

It literally tore half the town apart. One side was like “she’s so innocent, has a promising future, etc etc” while the other side wanted her in jail for years. While her punishments were absolutely not severe enough, I know for a fact her social punishments were far worse. People would make a “skrrrt” noise around her in the halls of our high school, people would chant stuff at her while she played sports, and I’d say about half of her friends completely abandoned her.

Overall, a really s****y situation for all parties involved.

One old guy thought he could drive one of those huge dump trucks and ended up dropping the damn thing down the stone stairs and seats from the towns community basketball court, nobody got hurt but the truck ended upside down. People from the neighbouring towns even came to take pictures. The old guy was my grandpa. He also survived.

Why he though he could drive the thing ? He used to be an engineer. An agricultural engineer...

Our small town is not known for much, tucked away in the UP of Michigan. But, there was (is?) an ultra top secret military facility up there.

One night we were at a campground situated on a lake next to the only highway to or from that facility, and there must have been some kind of emergency down that way because the town's entire contingent of cops and fire trucks came by lights ablaze and sirens blaring. We're NOT used to seeing that kind of response, so everyone took note.

Not 15 minutes later, that event repeated itself. None of us can think of an explanation and it's become local legend that the facility is f*****g with spacetime or something.

Had a mayor that became mayor after someone crashed into one of the busiest intersection’s traffic light. Never fixed it and blew the entire towns money on a Porsche (that he totaled by hitting a pole) and other stuff. He resigned and was basically chased outta town

EDIT: Have a few more stories, but the next mayor destroyed the last mayor’s work (fixed the light) and brought a bunch of growth to the town, but sadly died of cancer a while back.