Paranormal or explainable.
When I was younger, maybe 8-10, I was at the beach with my family. I had always been a strong swimmer, we went to this beach fairly often, there were plenty of people around, and always had lifeguards on duty. It wasn’t stormy or bad weather at all.
I was swimming on my own when I got stuck in the undertow of the waves. I remember getting pulled back about 6 feet underwater before I was able to surface again. By that point, I was hit by the next wave, knocking me over and back into the undertow. This repeated for what felt like an hour but was probably only around 5 minutes, maybe 10. I was anxiously looking for lifeguards and trying to signal for help anytime I was on the surface, but no one ever noticed me.
My grandmother had taught me what to do if I ever got stuck in the waves, though, and instead of trying to fight the current I just started riding it and swimming parallel to the shore. I eventually got back to the beach and walked back to my family, and I remember it being so much longer to get back that seemed reasonable.
I was sure I was going to drown, getting sucked out and down under the ocean.
The time I was charged by a grizzly bear in western Alberta
TIL grizzly bears could be district attorneys.
No just wrong place wrong time
Brexit
Two days after breaking up, I found out that my ex had lied to me about everything about himself, and had gotten out of prison for beating his mother to death shortly before we met. I met him because he had been a canvasser with a friend of mine (also concerning, tbh), and he just fit right into her friend group, and nobody had any information about his life before that. Once we started comparing stories after we found out, it all clicked into place.
Even worse, he killed his mom after she tried to give him some tough love (it sounded like normal, healthy parenting from the reports) about drinking too much and I broke up with him for the same reason. I was certain he was going to kill me for a while there, but that’s no longer a worry because I live in another country and he can’t get a passport.
The realisation about the person you were with would be awful by itself let alone worrying about possibly being in immediate danger, holy shit. I’m glad you’re safe now
Working up a radio tower that is on top of a hill where 2 quarries are slowly cutting their way into.
Everything was fine until I hear a large bang and rumbling noises. Then the entire tower starts vibrating with the shockwave of explosion.
I was about 20M up the tower that day.
Also we now know why our millimetre wave radios will sometimes have jitters in the signal strength.
Was the millimeter wave stuff point to point?
Ballistic missile hit less than 50 meters from me.
I’ll venture a wild guess that you live in Ukraine?
Yep.
Hydroplaning on a motorcycle
Just ever so slightly losing grip on wet tarmac while taking a bend a little bit too fast and in your head you’re chanting “Lean, don’t break! Lean, don’t break!” to yourself…
Please tell me you’re not still riding one of those death machines.
Not currently. I’d have one again under the right circumstances.
I’ve personally known two people that have died in motorcycle accidents. These were dudes that were pretty safely oriented. Like wore all the gear all the time, rain or shine.
One of them took a spill and his bike pushed his femur through his hip and partly into his torso. He surprisingly lived through that accident. After he recovered he went back to riding as if nothing happened. He was fine for 7 years until he got involved in another accident and didn’t get lucky a second time.
If you have people that even remotely depend on you please just think carefully if it’s worth the risk. You’re actually about 4000% more likely to die on a motorcycle per mile traveled compared to a regular car. I’m not making that number up.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/810887.pdf
There’s a very good reason ER docs call them “donorcycles”
I learned to ride and loved it. After 2 years of getting a different perspective on how people drive in cars, I’ll never do it again. It’s insane what people think they can do while also operating a 1 ton hunk of metal flying down the highway at 70 mph. Cars should really not be the default form of transportation for most people.
I’ll die on the hill that driving would be so much safer if everyone had to pass in a manual transmission. That would eliminate so many people who have no business driving from doing so. There are too many people on the road who have no business driving a car.
Sadly, not true. Most people in South Africa still drive manual cars because they’re cheaper. The drivers aren’t any better. Anyone can learn to drive a manual, it just takes a little longer.
Personally, I suspect that automatic cars are safer because there is less the driver can do wrong in an emergency.
Heartbeat stopping in the night. Luckily, the heart has mechanisms to restart itself, and the last one finally kicked in. According to the doc, this only took five to ten seconds, but it felt longer than the complete last class on a Friday afternoon.
Roughly how old were you and were you awake when it happened or did you wake up because of it?
Somewhere in my mid-twenties. I probably woke up before when my circulation went down. This had happened a few times before, with one occasion where I measured 26BPM with the blood pressure meter.
Luckily, they found that the medication I had to take back then was the issue, and switched me to another one, which I take for 30+ years now without issues.
I grew up in St Catharines Ontario, home of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo the serial killing couple who abducted, raped and killed teenaged girls, including her 12 year old sister, for a while in the 90s. It was EVERYTHING in my world for a long while. I was extraordinarily fanatically careful about where I went from then on, never travelling anywhere alone, etc. Bernardo also raped a great many women at bus stops before escalating to murder.
And one night I hit my twenties and said fuck it and decided to walk home from the bar we were doing karaoke at, and isn’t there a man with a car idling at the top of the small hill I was climbing waiting for me for what seemed like hours. It was plain he intended to take me, and I think it was only the stark terror on my face that made it clear I’d be a very unwilling victim and fight back and that I was sober as a judge. He told me he was just going to offer me a ride, and I said no, saucer eyed, and he paused for a minute and then said “sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you” and drove off.
As a baby, my son went through a period of febrile seizures. Basically, if he got a fever, it could cause him to have seizures. Even after learning what was happening and that it was “harmless,” it was an absolutely chilling/gut-wrenching experience, but the first time was particularly nightmarish.
I had the exact same experience. My son became cyanotic since his breathing was so shallow, and then he passed out. For a second I thought he died there and then. Quickly came too. And the ambulance took a wrong turn. Rember running after it. Man, had I had that motivation when young and fit I would have beat Usain Bolt
Just awful. I remember sitting on the couch, friends were over, my ~1-year-old son was sick/feverish but still happily toddling about, came over to me, eyes rolled back, he collapsed backward and was convulsing. I picked him up and was cradling him, sort of yelling at/pleading with him/trying to comfort him? Just panicking basically. Friends called ambulance, I ran outside in barefeet holding him still completely limp. Ugh. There was absolutely no thinking, in that moment, that “this is totally fine and okay/harmless,” even though that was the general response of the various, multiple hospital people.
Went to wake up my daughter like every morning, bed is empty, covers thrown to the side. Check around the house, nothing.
Everybody else is asleep, house is silent. Check the back, the swings, the rear deck, nothing.
Check bedroom again.
She was rolled up tight in her blanket, against the wall, from head to toe, making it look like the bed was empty.
Weak Knees Moment
I remember doing similar as a kid on the regular, I’d wake up to the sound of my mom calling my name because she had go l checked on me in the middle of the night, only instead of in my own bed I’d be under my sister’s bed, behind the couch, on another sister’s dresser, etc. I had a lot of sleep issues as a kid.
A sudden, relatively small ice patch on a curvy mountain road with no road barrier and a car coming towards me. I swirled towards abyss, then a rock wall, then back to the abyss, and the other car somehow passed me too. Thankfully neither me nor the others were hurt.
Either when my first baby fell out of bed followed by a big clonk, or when I tried to get someone out of a car in flames.
My eldest is fine, that guy didn’t make it and I will never forget the smell.
What’s a clonk?
Also, kudos for at least trying to get the person out. Shame it ended the way it did, but you at least did what you could.
The sound of a baby or toddler’s head against a wooden surface that would make me shudder.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to do. We saw this car with big puffs of thick dark smoke coming out of it by the road, we stopped and I went for the extinguisher in my trunk, tried to operate it (I was clueless). But when I reached the other car, in seconds just burst into flames on the inside and saw the driver burning so I went to open the handle and it was like trying to lift a frying pan out of an open fire (got a nasty burn for a while).
I felt powerless, useless, I could see the scene by just closing my eyes for months, remembering the sound of it and definitely the worst part was the smell. I often wonder what I should have done differently that could have helped that person (breaking the glass with the extinguisher, carrying and using a window breaking tool, forgetting about the extinguisher at all and just bolting straight to the car to take him out of it…)
The scenario will repeat at nauseam in my head every time I drive and see a stopped car or look at an extinguisher or someone mentions a fire or an accident.
Note: this happened a long ago with an old car, maybe cars nowadays aren’t as flammable.
On a trip to Iceland, was hiking with my mom. I see a spot I want a photo in so I hand her my phone and trek out there. It was a small outcropping at the same height of the trail, overlooking some gulleys. Others had been out there because there was a worn path.
I’m standing out there for my photo, and some wind blows through. It picked me up off my feet. Like, I was weightless and severed from the ground for a few seconds.
I knew in that moment I was going to die. The wind would carry me over the edge and down to the gully below. Luckily, it didn’t last long enough to do that, and dropped me back on my feet, but I was so close to death, I could feel it.
People, the Icelandic wind is no joke. There was no uptick to warn me, no dirt or grass or whatever whipping around. It wasn’t A windy day. It was just no wind, then sudden wind strong enough able to pick up a 190lb woman clear off the earth.
I kept to the main trail after that.
Iceland has many crazy areas, and even where there signs (particularly on the beaches), people still venture onto the deadly rocks
Oh yeah, you have to not be stupid. I think the danger is that even when you’re not stupid, it’ll still getcha.
And yup, there were 4 people who walked right down to the waters edge after we were just warned that sneaker waves were not uncommon.
Blimey I had no idea that could happen sounds scary
Me either.
During Helene, I had a tree fall through my house while I was in bed, and it stopped about 6 inches from my face
That’s some Donnie Darko shit right there.
Right after we bought our house, a storm brought a tree through the roof. At the time we were in the living room staying away from windows, but a branch punched through the roof right over my wife’s side of the bed. More than 6 inches away, but still spawned some unnerving "what if?"s.
Holy shit. During Chido all we had were mild damages to doors and the like. But… it was already frightening as hell. I never thought wind could be so strong. People in the slums had it way worse. I only saw the aftermath. Some got chopped in half by their metal sheets carried by the wind, or their lost an arm or a hand…
