People Are Sharing The Scariest Moments Of Their Lives And These 47 Might Give You The Chills

There was this one time my Junior year in high school. I was going to a forensics meet, which mean that I had to leave my house around 5 AM. I had to carry all my stuff out to my car, which is parked at the end of our long driveway. As I was loading everything in the backseat, I heard a twig snap behind me. I spun around, and standing directly under the glare of a streetlight was a man. It was dark, and the light silhouetted him. All I could make out was a long coat, long crazed hair, and a large bag. He began to walk towards me. I dropped my things and bolted for my house. My mom was still in the kitchen and asked me what was wrong, and I told her that there was a guy out there. She peeks out the window and says, "Jesus Christ, Emily. It's the newspaper guy.".

My cousin trapped under the ice I was standing on.

He survived, but imagine looking down at your feet and seeing through the ice the face of your cousin screaming silently.

He's absolutely fine now (You'd be amazed how easy it is to break ice with your fist when the adrenaline kicks in) but the image will always haunt me.

Once I had to get up really early in the morning to go on a trip for my job. It was about 3:30 in the morning and I had forgotten to go and get gas for my car the night before. I stopped at a gas station about a mile away from my house because it was well-lit and it was in a nicer area.

Anyways, I was pumping gas and then I got the weirdest feeling that I needed to move. I moved behind my car and then away from it and then I noticed this huge guy hiding in front of my car. He was sneaking towards me when I got the urge to get away from my car.

I was completely alone and I'm just a small girl. I almost always have mace or something with me if I am by myself. This time I had a knife and pulled it out and started screaming for him to get the hell away from me. Then he started moving closer around my car to me. I screamed even louder and an attendant came out who called the cops.

Definitely one of the scariest moments of my life.

An absolutely enormous elephant seal popped up about three meters in front of me, looked at me, let out a huge grunt growl and swam under me. My whole body just left me and I felt real true terror. I was alone in the ocean on dusk. I have seen some stuff but that, that was the scariest monster bus sized mother of fright to this day.

When I was eight I was on a day trip with my cousin, uncle, grandfather, parents and siblings. We were having ice creak in a reserve/park area.

The previous day it rained quite heavily so the creek was nearly overflowing. My cousin, siblings and I decided to race "stick boats" under one of the low bridges. The water was only about five centimetres from the top of the bridge and was actually higher than the arcs allowing the water through. As a result, the water was being forcibly sucked under the bridge.

In an effort to get an edge on me and my siblings, my cousin (who for the record was older and bigger than me) lent out over the water and fell in. Somehow, I managed to catch him as he hit the water and so I managed to keep him above the water even though his legs were being sucked under the bridge by the current. I had my arms under his arms and was lying down on the bridge on my stomach. The force of him pulling on me stopped me from moving and because I was on my stomach the pressure stopped me from talking as I was struggling to breathe.

This was the scariest moment I have ever experienced. I had my cousin's life in my hands, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't hop to lift him, he was too heavy for me even without the extra force of the current. I couldn't call for help because I could hardly breathe. The look in his eyes when he tilted his head back... he was pleading for help that I couldn't give him.

After what seemed like an eternity one of my siblings called to our parents and after seeing what was happening, my uncle went man-mode, jumped into the creek (the water was up to his midsection) and pulled my cousin to safety. I'm sure the whole ordeal took no longer than a minute, but if felt so much longer. After that my cousin and I became quite close, even after he became reclusive and depressed, he was always willing to talk to me.

TL;DR: I had my cousins life in my hands and I couldn't save him on my own. The pleading in his eyes for help I couldn't give him is the scariest thing I've seen.

When i was a youth there was an explosion at a chemical plant down the street from my old house. it wasnt a massive environment ruining explosion but it was still kind of a big scene. i remember being on my porch playing my game boy and looking up to see two men on fire, their skin practically melting off their bodies, running down the street and shrieking like banshees. one of them collapsed and passed on the spot and the other one kept running for god knows how long

i had nightmares for weeks.

Working on a large sail boat, up in the grand banks about 2billion mles from anything. It's storming, I am trying to tie down the last sail so we can just motor through it because the guests don't want to be sailing in this type of weather. I was tired, wet, cold, and stupid. Didn't clip myself in, slipped and fell right out the boat. Luckily I had my waterproof radio and signaled the captain, snapped every glowstick I had on my lifejacket and waited.... for like an hour for them to find me. Scariest thing I've ever seen? My boat gliding off into the distance with me floating in the Atlantic.... ughhh.

I was once jumping some cliffs into a river with friends. A random girl comes up to join in. Not to say that we were "experienced cliff jumpers" because that doesn't exist, but we did it at the same place a lot, and sort of knew what could be done and what couldn't. It was definitely a sketchy jump. There was no run in, and you had a fairly narrow window to jump into. Anyways, we were fine, having fun, and this girl goes. She does it right, just jumps in, and thats that. Then she comes back up all excited. She says, "I'm going to try to run into it." She back ups and before we can say anything just takes off. As predicted, the run in which was rocky and had tree roots, and required a step down of about a foot and a half, proved impossible. She caught her foot and tumbled right over the edge. Straight down about 20 ft onto rock. Thank Christ her top half landed in the water, but her legs were completely mangled. My friend and I jumped in and puller her out, sister called the paramedics. They came sauntering out all calm and cool, and when they saw the the girl their faces went white, and immediately called back up. Not long after that an emergency helicopter arrived. The scariest moment was looking over the edge that initial time not knowing what was going to be laying 20 ft below.

TL;DR girl falls off cliff while trying to jump into river.

I went snorkeling one time and I was all by myself far from the boat when all of a sudden I caught a fast moving dark object in the corner of my eye. I look over to see a shark. I begin to back away slowly when I see two other sharks swimming right behind the first one. I looked for the boat and saw it was too far too swim to without the sharks catching me. The three sharks started to circle me and occasionally brushing into me. Then the weirdest thing happened all three of them just swam away. Never been more freaked out.

I was about 11 year old walking to my school. A car stopped and the driver told me to get inside, he was probably 30-40. I didn't listen, so he came out of his car and went for me. I ran like crazy and never looked back until i was on a busy streets. He was gone. I remembered to be pretty calm about this and never told anyone about it. Now, when i think of it... if i didn't run... i don't know what would have happened..

Not what I've seen but heard

Early one morning about 7 years ago. I and everyone else in my house was woken by the sounds of someone screaming. Much more agonized than anything you'd expect, the voice sounded ragged as if it had been screaming for days. We lived in the sticks so naturally we assumed it was a bear attack. Upon calling the police we found out that they had been receiving calls about the same sounds almost 9 k away from our house. So an animal attack in our area was unlikely

It wasn't until later that we found out the screams were coming from a gas station attendant who was being dragged underneath a stolen car up and down the main highway by two jerks who ran him over simply for trying to get them to pay for their gas. That main drag was a ways a way from us. People aren't meant to make sounds like that one.

I once worked at a liquor store on Van Ness in San Francisco. I caught a man slipping hundreds of dollars worth of tequila into his pants/coat. I stopped him at the door and when I confronted him, the dirty disheveled homeless man reaches into a pocket, retrieves a hypodermic needle and points it right at my face and says, "its got the hivy, you want it"?

Needless to say several bottles of tequila are not worth a lifetime with HIV. It may not sound horrifying, but being less than 5 feet away from a possibly psychotic man waving around a poisoned shiv to me, was utterly terrifying.

First off I'm terrified of the dark, it's almost a petrifying type of fear, but to add to that suffer from sleep paralysis very often. One night I woke up and I was in stuck in the state of paralysis. I usually try to stay calm to keep from having a really bad hallucination, but that night It was just out of my control. I woke up and couldn't move anything but my eyes, I heard a horrifying shriek that sounded something like a mix of a pig squealing, a lions roar, a woman screaming and it was as loud as a train going past my head. I looked around my pitch black room and in the corner of the room I could see the outline of a figure, it almost seemed to be darker than the rest of the room but it had burning yellow eyes. It started to walk towards my bed and right at it got about halfway, it jumped towards me and right then I snapped out of it and could move. When I sat up, the sun was out and it was about 10:00 in the morning. I couldn't sleep for days.

I grew up in the ghetto... In our old house, my bedroom was directly across the hallway from our bathroom. One night when I was maybe 8 years old, I woke up and saw this light - someone was shining a flashlight into our bathroom window, trying to look around. I jumped up and tried to run into my parents room and as soon as I stood up the light went out. I freaked and laid back down and kept watching the window. A few mins later, the light came back on - I'm not sure what they were looking for, but it kept moving around the frame of the bathroom window and shining downward, toward the tub. Again, I got up and tried to walk to my parents room and again, the light cut off.

I tried to yell for my parents and couldn't even get a sound out. A minute later, the light shows up behind me - at my window behind my bed. I bolted, running into my parents room and waking up my dad. He and my mom just kind of mumbled something and wouldn't listen to me and kept telling me to go back to sleep. I was up at that point, I kept yelling, poking them - anything, trying to get them up, but they refused. So I laid down in their bed between them and sat up the rest of that night. The next morning, my dad woke up and opened the front door, then went to open our screen door and couldn't. Someone had pushed these two big planters we had on our porch up against the screen door. So he goes around to the back door and it wouldn't open either - whoever it was had jammed something in the door jamb, wedging it closed. At that point, my whole family freaked -my dad had to climb out a window to finally get out. To this day I'm still confused as to what was going on, but more importantly, why they didn't want us trying to get outside.

When young, me and my older brother were playing around some fire embers in my next door neighbours garden, my brother found an old canister smelt it and said "Petrol, Shall I pour it on?", to which the 7 year old me replied "yes!".

The next thing I remember is fire, lots of fire. I looked at my brother and he was engulfed in flames and went running across the garden in a fireball, into the neighbours kitchen.

I was a very small child and ran to get my parents, I climbed over the fence between our and my neighbours house which was a six foot fence, it was the first time ever I had managed to climb over it, from that day on I was a great climber!

The guy next door "mike" basically slapped the fire repeatedly until it went out suffering pretty bad burns to his hand and arm.

My brother, he's fine. yeah he got bad burns, luckily only down one side of his body but this was a long time ago and the scars have faded, but they're still there as a reminder to his own 4 kids not to play with fire.

Mike or Jo, I know you split up a long time ago but if either of you happen to be on reddit and see this, you saved my brothers life. Thank you.

I was involved in a very hard landing in a CH-46 helicopter (two rotor helicopter with a ramp in the back). We were heading back to base, none of us were strapped in. The helicopter was so full that me and a few others were laying/sitting down in the middle aisle. The helicopter lost hydraulics in the rear rotor. The second scariest thing I saw was watching the earth and horizon spin out the rear door as we were going down. The scariest thing was when the pilot stopped the spin. The helicopter tilted back from lack of lift in the rear and me and the rest of the non strapped in clowns on the floor began to slide towards the rear door. Not fun at all. To the pilot's credit, he got us on the ground in own piece with no more than a few bruises and some dirty underwear. picture of CH-46

A few years ago when i was about 16 my dad was away in England on holiday (we live in New Zealand) and whenever this happened my parents would always do the whole "you're the man of the house, time to step up and help out more and help look after your brothers and sister and mum" type speech. Around this time my sister was 17 or 18 and one of her "friends" was quite disturbed and had basically fallen madly in love with her despite her on and off again relationship with one of his closest friends for the 3 years prior to that. We had a few problems with him in the past with him stalking her and turning up unannounced in the night and showing up when she was hanging with guys she liked and stuff.

Anyway, I have trouble sleeping so I was lying awake one night at about 2 or 3 in the morning when I thought I heard someone walking down the driveway. I was immediately worried and suspicious that it may be this stalker. Anyway I didn't hear anything for a little while so I assumed it must be someone walking through our property to get to the park beyond our backyard then suddenly I heard some light banging coming from the back deck. I was always quite a big guy and I know how to handle myself if I need to, but I still didn't want to have to confront anyone unless I absolutely had to. This guy who it might have been was pretty freaky too, so I just left it thinking "once they realise the doors and windows are all locked they'll go away, whoever it is.". I may have been staying in my room but I was very alert by this point, sitting on the edge of my bed holding my pocket knife, silently trying to figure out what was going on, then out of nowhere I hear the upstairs window right outside my bedroom door slide open. Immediately I jumped up and went out into the hallway with the knife in my shaking hand and I saw a head drop down right outside the window as I did. I went over to the window and closed it and locked it and locked the balcony door and then turned around to see him staring through the window at me with his arms stretched out wide. I went down and told my mum and held her as we called the police and reported it. He ended up accidentally knocking over the ladder trying to get down and got stuck on my roof until the cops arrived. I know Reddit isn't always a fan of the popo, but it was the biggest relief having 3 big burly men and the worlds largest German Shepherd turn up and help get it under control. He resisted arrest on my balcony and through my house, he injured the police dog so badly it needed stitches and surgery on it's face and to be retired early and threatened the police saying "I have a surprise for you in my pocket" while they arrested him. I still don't know what he had in his pocket, if anything. Since then I've been far more paranoid for my family's safety, luckily my sister slept through most of it until he began resisting arrest on the balcony right by her room, but she's far less trusting than she used to be and it changed the dynamic of my whole family to be a bit more paranoid and protective.

It was horrible having to hold her and tell her he can't hurt her when I wasn't even sure that would be true. He got bit on his ankle by the dog in our driveway as he was being taken to the police car, and I felt no sympathy hearing him screaming from the other end of the property. For me it wasn't what happened that scared me, but the thought of what would have happened if I hadn't been awake and paying attention. If I hadn't been awake at 2-3am that night then any one of a hundred unimaginably horrible scenarios could have played out, and that knowledge has kept me awake so many hours since that I don't remember a time I was averaging more than 4 hours sleep a night for any given week.

Sorry for the long post, I don't talk about it much and haven't vented in a while. Plus I need to take advantage of the anonymity available in this sweet internet realm.

**TLDR:** Sister's stalker broke into my house, bled all through my house, wrecked my sister's trust in guys the rest of her life and gave me the opposite of narcolepsy ever since.

A woman who had been living with anorexia for 20 years. She looked like a leather suitcase with blank eyes. She was only 30 years old but I swear to god she looked like a 70 year old that had been deceased for a few days. Her husband looked worse. Super defeated.

I did some work in Khayelitsha in South Africa with an educational charity. For those who don't know Khayelitsha is a township. Essentially a shanty town that's a remnant from the days of Apartheid. Horrible levels of poverty and as a result crime. Leaving the makeshift schoolroom one day with a colleague to head back to my cousins house I saw a man run past us covered in blood. With several guys chasing him. My colleague told me to get in the car fast so we jumped in. Before we could drive off another car pulled up quickly nearly hitting the running man and a load of blokesjumped out. They were holding machetes, axes and clubs and just started laying into this guy, I'm not ashamed to say I just vomited into the footwell of the car at the site of someone being hacked to pieces.

When I asked my colleague what the hell he just told me they were the local gang. Seeing how scared I was he just said "Don't worry man they only do that to the men that touch the babies." Man that place was messed up. Kinda made me more determined to do something positive there though.

Nothing will compare to the fear of seeing an F5 tornado heading my direction a few years ago. At the time I thought it would have been a good idea to head home during stormy weather because the building I worked at wasn't strong enough to withstand much. What I didn't know was that my home was a half mile away from the future path of a monster tornado that ended up taking the lives of quite a few people. By the time I got home and inside the house I only had time to grab one cat and throw him inside the interior bathroom when I heard a turbine noise. Sort of like a jet engine but no Doppler effect. When I looked out the window I saw what I thought was a huge tornado about 150 yards away, but what turned out to be the debris and dust cloud of about a half mile behind it. YouTube videos don't do justice to the sense of scale of this thing. You're not used to seeing things this big and it almost felt like it had a menacing intent to it, as if you were suddenly caught out in the middle of a field with a T-Rex. For some reason in the south we don't have basements, so if a tornado is strong enough your home is no protection. It bypassed us but I felt for a while like I was a goner. I even sent some last words via a text message to my wife, but she never got it because the major power lines had been cut. I was sitting alone in a small dark bathroom trying to say my goodbyes but even those weren't getting through. For a couple years and still sometimes I felt like I had PTSD every time a storm would come through. That was fear to the core.