I’ve told this before but.

Once while camping alone with my dog, we had a long event less day of hiking, fell asleep soundly for a while until around 4am.

My dog laid on top of me, and lowly growled waking me up. I calmed her down thinking she just had a bad dream or something, but then something rustled near our tent.

I peaked out of the side window of the tent and, in the faint full moon light I saw a black blob, not the size of a bear but more like a hog. I have never been near one but I have heard horror stories about hogs

Only thing I could do was lay down and keep my dog calm so she wouldn’t bark, I’ve heard if you startle a hog it’s more likely to charge than run away. We must have laid there for half an hour or so when I finally felt sure enough the hog had moved along.

I spent about 3 minutes quietly unzipping the door one tooth at a time, once it was fully open I picked up my dog and booked it to the truck, tossed her into the passenger side, ran to the driver’s side and slammed myself in.

Turned on the truck and headlights and there they were. About 4-5 hogs at the edge of the brush staring back at me, the sudden light made them all book out out of there. We slept in the truck until sun up, struck the camp site and went home.

When I confronted my now ex-wife about my suspicions of her cheating. The fears were justified.

I was once on the 17th floor of a building on fire (5 alarms and multiple deaths), and the fire happened to start directly across the hall from me. I thought I was going to die, but that fear was nothing compared to the thought of the person I love doing that to me.

Took too many mushrooms one night and I have tripped a couple hundred times. But these were particularly strong bois and I started to believe I was having a heart attack, it was only a panic attack, but I seriously thought I was dying from a heart attack. I was begging my wife who had taken two times as many as I had to call 911. She did her best to stay calm and remind me that I was just tripping on mushrooms and I told her I knew that I was tripping on mushrooms but something was wrong with my heart because I was freaking out and I could tell my heart was beating too fast. At one point she even stuck a Fitbit on my wrist and told me to look at my heart rate, and when I looked at it of course I couldn’t read it because everything was just pixelated and swirling fractals. But somehow she was able to read it and said your heart rate is only 118 which I was able to confirm the next day from the data on my phone. I was crying and holding my chest and I kept throwing myself in a cold shower trying to calm myself down but time was all fucked up and moments were happening out of order and all I could think about was how my daughter was going to wake up in the morning without her father. I kept running through the house completely naked and freezing wet. Trying desperately to grasp onto something to send me back to reality. But everywhere I went it didn’t matter because I knew I was dying from a heart attack and my wife who I couldn’t believe at the time refuse to call 911 and save me. In retrospect, I’m so glad she did not lol. I haven’t taken mushroom since. I’m too scared. They are not to be fucked with if you’re not in the right state of mind. I really appreciate that trip though, it really made me appreciate life a whole lot more when I woke up the next day. I’ve never been more scared my entire life and I’m pretty sure I know exactly what it’s going to be like when I actually do die. It was somewhat peaceful but it was taking too long in the moment and especially because time was not flowing correctly and everything was happening out of order It made me really panic. It just seemed like it was taking way too long. I suppose when I actually die time won’t do that because presumably I won’t be tripping when it happens lol.

Holding my limp child in my arms. She was fine, but it was the worst 30 seconds of my life.

I was out for a drive with 4 other friends packed into a tiny car, decades ago when we were all early twenties. I was driving, and we were just cruising the streets, turning this way and that, high spirits and chatting and laughing away. We came down off a hill joining one suburb to another, and turned off into a side street. It was a dead end street, in a pretty dark and deserted industrial area. We knew the street well, as it was short, but you wouldn’t go down it if you didn’t need to, as it only led to factories and such. It was late, perhaps a little after midnight. As we got about 50 metres or so in (maybe halfway), we all instantly stopped talking simultaneously, and every one of us, including myself, froze in what I can only describe as pure terror. I hit the brakes, and stopped in the middle of the road for a second, before slamming the car in reverse and stamping on the accelerator full tit in reverse, without even turning around, I couldn’t even turn my head. To this day it’s hard to describe why, in the normal light of day. My current wife (then just a friend) was in the car too, and she hates it if I even bring it up. All I can say is we sensed such a darkness, a dense evil beyond comprehension, right outside the car. A sense of an abysmal vanta-black presence in front and to the left of the car. Nothing visible to the naked eye, but with perfect post-event unified description by all 5 people in the car. None of us spoke for a good 20 minutes afterwards, and the night of fun was over. It was horrifying, and I will never go into that street again. A vague sense of some atrocious tortuous event that occurred there in the past maybe, don’t know? And we were all very stable regular young people, no alcohol or drugs etc involved. I know spooky stuff probably wasn’t on the menu, but that’s sure it for me

Two times, but both are similar incidents:

The first was when my oldest was nearly 1. He was running a fever and we called the doctor to see what to do. The doctor suggested a lukewarm bath to bring his temperature down. This seemed to help and my wife went to get a towel. As she came back, my son looked up at her, but it was like he was looking through her. Then, his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.

I grabbed my son and shouted his name. There was no response and he was turning blue. My wife called 911 and her parents as I put him on the bed. The only thing that came to mind was “stop him from swallowing his tongue.” (This isn’t a thing I later found out, but I was panicking.) The emergency crews came as he started breathing again.

At the hospital, they said it was a febrile seizure and it can happen with infants/young kids. It’s harmless most times, but very scary.

The second incident was with my younger son. He started running a fever and the doctor recommended a lukewarm bath. I think you can see where this is going and so did I at the time. I told my wife to get the towel beforehand. She also called her parents and they came over before we put him in the bath.

Sure enough, our younger son was fine until he stopped responding. Only he didn’t turn blue. He turned grey. And he didn’t start breathing again on his own. We called 911 and my mother-in-law did rescue breaths on him.

I was running from the front door, looking for the ambulance, to the bedroom - watching my mother-in-law trying to help my lifeless son breathe. My father-in-law told me that I didn’t need to run back and forth. He said he’d look for the ambulance. I told him that I couldn’t just watch my son lifeless like that. I needed to DO something. Even if it was completely useless, I needed to be doing something.

My younger son finally started breathing on his own and was fine. He went on to have many more febrile seizures until he (FINALLY) grew out of them. (He also had a tendency to fall and hit his head thanks to a hip issue. I swear that half of my grey hairs are thanks to him!)

I got the tiniest glimpse of what losing a child might feel like and it was scarier than I could handle. Even writing this out is raising my anxiety. I never want to feel that way ever again.

Getting beat up by a group of Nazis. When they started kicking my head I thought I was going to die.

Ran out of gas in the wee hours, was walking to a house with lights on to call for help, got noticed and chased by a pack of stray dogs, ran back to my car, fumbled and dropped keys, barely got in and shut the door before the car rocked with the force of several snarling bodies hitting it.

24 February 2022.

I’ve not gone through anything too wild, but here’s a few…

1. When my parents were getting a divorce, my mom moved us out into an apartment. My dad came by, enraged. There was a bit of an argument and he pulled her outside the front door and pressed her up against it. Since the door opened outward and he was pushing her into the door with his full body weight, I wasn’t able to open the door. I started screaming at him because I was afraid he was going to kill her and I couldn’t get to her. I was trapped inside not sure if I was about to watch my mom die. Thankfully he didn’t and he eventually let her go, but I had no idea in that moment what he was capable of. She has been divorced from him for I think almost 10 years now which is good!

2. Some other time there was a lot of turbulence on a plane ride and I’m a bit of a wuss lol.

I’ve been in an enclosure with a 15 foot King Cobra. Not that

Having a green tree viper on my head. Not that

Face down with a rabid monkey in Malaysia. Not that

Having a large scorpion crawl up my arm. Not that

Ending up riding on top of a shoplifters car hanging on for dear life while they tore round the carpark trying to shake me off. Not that

End over end rollover at over 100 kmh in my first car. Not that

Nearly drowning in a fast flowing river when I got dragged under. Close, but no cigar

Leaving my alcoholic ex. This was the scariest moment of my life

Probably when a meth head tried to break into my ground floor apartment… doesn’t really hold a candle to some of the terrifying shit in this thread

I witnessed a college kid, while shadowing an engineer, nearly lean on the exposed bus of a 1200A electrical panelboard while it was getting IR scanned. He and the engineer had a little aside about safety after that.

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I have long covid and during the initial stages I had some really bad tachycardia (unknown to me yet) that caused breathing issues. It hadn’t been too bad until one day I was lying in bed unable to sleep, and suddenly I feel like every breath is getting me less and less air, even though I’m breathing normally.

I woke up my mom at ~4:30 AM (home because of long covid) and said I feel like I can’t breathe. She asks if it’s bad enough to go to the ER, and I say it might be. I decided to wait 15 minutes, my heartrate was going crazy and I must just be panicked, and that’s why my heart rate is high and why it’s hard to breathe.

Over those 15 minutes my heart rate climbs higher and I’m getting dizzy and hyperventilating and still breathless, and say I need to go now, I think I’m at the edge of where I could actually die.

We drive to a hospital and my heart rate slows down a little bit, and I figure I’m not gonna die in the next hour so I end up waiting, struggling to breathe, until 6AM when my primary care opens his office. They do some tests and say everything looks normal, but later a heart monitor would show my heartrate sometimes get to ~120, even while I’m lying in bed trying to sleep. I eventually learned that is what causes the breathlessness.

I’ve had that happen a couple times since, less frequently it seems, but when it does happen I’m always afraid that this is the time my heart finally gives out. Fortunately it’s very rare and I’ve been able to do some cardio to hopefully help it be even more rare.