Doctors Share The Most Miraculous Recovery They Have Ever Witnessed

Working as a medical professional is often a very rewarding career; you get to help people stay healthy and save lives on a regular basis.
Some of those lives saved can seem like miracles, as people recover from seemingly terminal illnesses or injuries.
Reddit user u/marybroadmore asked:
"Doctors of Reddit, what is the most mind blowing recovery you’ve ever witnessed?"
*Content Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of injury to humans and animals.*
10. Feelin' Fine
Resident here.
When I was a medical student on a cardiology rotation, we had a very nice 40 yr old lady that was being treated for a heart attack (kinda young, but ok). This type of heart attack, deemed an NSTEMI, is the type where she did not have to be urgently rushed to the cath lab. So she had hers the morning after she was admitted, seemingly fine before going down. While in the cath lab, she spontaneously went into cardiac arrest. They got her back after 2 shocks, multiple rounds of CPR, and a round of epi. Usually, if someone is coding for awhile, it doesn't look good for them. But she came back and was intubated, so it's more of a "watch and wait" deal after.
Well, overnight, she self extubated herself. When I rounded on her in the morning, she was awake and said she felt fine. Her only complaint was that she felt like she got burned on her chest, and that was irritating her a bit. Uhhh yea, that was the 200 J of electricity going through you a few hours ago. She then went on asking when she was going to be discharged because she needed to go home and take care of her two dogs.
The fact that she went into cardiac arrest in house and in a shockable rhythm definitely helped her chances of a good outcome. But it's still one of my cooler stories.. bc contrary to what people see in the TV shows, people don't just wake up, eager to take on the day, after cardiac arrest.
9. A True 180
Have seen a lot of remarkable recoveries back to baseline from people unconscious and intubated in ICU. Especially in young people who have high physiological reserve to bounce back from catastrophic events e.g. thyroid storm, aneurysms, ketoacidosis.
I'd say the most surprising recovery was in a drug & alcohol patient. Man in his twenties with a very difficult upbringing, dropped out of high school at 15 and was just hooked on meth and alcohol since. Very expensive habit so he'd commit crimes to fund the drugs, get out of prison and back to us for rehabilitation, commit another crime. A horrible cycle.
He wasn't motivated to recover because he didn't have much of a life to return to. Serious health problems from drug use, nobody would hire him due to his criminal record, parents in prison. Also seemed mildly intellectually impaired, possibly from chronic drug use. He only had his girlfriend.
Then his girlfriend died of a drug overdose. I thought he'd follow after because he was hanging on just for her. But he did a total 180. Booked himself into detox, attended all his appointments, got his high school equivalency. Stayed clean for years and got hired as a security guard. On discharge, he was with a new partner and they had a baby on the way. During his last appointment he'd dropped into the dollar store and had a bag with a stuffed elephant and pink blanket inside.
8. Changed Her Mind
Not a doctor but a nurse who worked in long term care.
I had a patient who was apparently actively dying. She had stopped eating for 3-4 days and was on comfort measures only. This meant she was receiving morphine every hour and the rest of her medications were discontinued, and she was only being fed and given water as tolerated.
Out of nowhere one day she just sat up and said "I'm hungry," and like that she was back to normal. She lived for around another year or so after that.
7. One In A Million
Paramedic fireman here. Had a guy (65ish years old) who dropped dead while on a treadmill. Leads showed asystole, which means dead as hell, zero electrical activity in his heart. 1 round of CPR with 1 round of ALS meds, goes into a shockable rhythm, defibrillate ("shock") 1 time, guy gets a normal heart rhythm back with a pulse. Loaded em up, had a 5 minute transport. By the time we got to the hospital, this man was making jokes with us and would have walked in if we let him.
This is not how cardiac arrests go. You usually die. And if you live, your quality of life after is usually greatly reduced if not negligible. This was absolutely incredible.
6. Don't Try This One At Home
As a resident I admitted a patient for a COPD exacerbation. Pretty routine. What wasn't was her history. She had been discharged from the hospital 4 years before with hospice. She had biopsy proven small cell lung cancer that had metastasized to other organs. Essentially zero survival and she had gone home to receive medicine to make her comfortable. She hadn't taken any cancer treatment.
Four years later when I admitted her there was no trace of cancer. The only suggestion from the pulmonologist was her crack cocaine habit must have been lethal to the cancer. Or her body just found a way to fight it off. Basically we don't know how and her odds of doing it should be about zero.
5. Still Here
Sorry i am not a doctor, but my brother had been given hours to live 3 times during his battle with cancer. I flew to see him and say goodbye all 3 times and another 20 odd times to give morale support over the two years he fought. One night in the hospital the doctors told us to say goodbye as he had only hours to live. We all fell asleep holding his hand and at 6am i opened my eyes and listened to see if i could hear breathing. It was quite dark and all i heard was my brother's voice saying "holy sh*t i am still here!!" He lived for another year.
4. A Chain Reaction
Not a doctor, but a relative. My grandma ended up in bed for a about a year when she was in her mid 70's. She had been declining for a fair while, and just kept getting more and more medication to take care of her different illnesses and discomfort. I went up there three months before this and I was sure I wouldn't see her again, she was almost comatose just lying in her bed barely being responsive.
At one point my 7 year old second cousin randomly overhears my mom telling my aunt that grandma started on yet another type of medication (far into double digits). 7 year old start crying because apparently she thinks that medicine is making grandma more sick and "everytime she gets more pills, she gets more tired".
My mom and aunt comfort this poor kid, telling her that it is not the medicine that is making her sick and whatever you tell a 7 year old to calm them down.
My mom is a nurse (or was back then, she is retired now), she worked with her best friend at a smaller private hospital in Denmark and a week later in the lunch room she is telling her friend the story about my cousin. The in house anaesthetists picks up on the convo, asks about what type of medication grandma is on, mom starts mentioning the ones she remembers. Which really gets this guys attention; basically my mom names a chain reaction; like medicine A has lack of energy as a side effect and another side effect, which is then treated with B that causes lack of energy and another side effect that is then treated with C etc. So basically if grandma didn't get A, she wouldn't need B, C, D or E and that is just the 5 medicines that my mom remembered of the top of her head.
Mom gets a list of all the medicines together for her colleague, apparently him and his doctor misses went over them as an after dinner activity and the next morning he had a three page letter written up that my mom could give grandma's doctor arguing why 25 out of 28 medications where at best unnecessary if not harmful.
Mum got the next day off, drove 450 km to see grandma's doctor, showed up with out an appointment, pulled a Karen, got to see him, showed him the letter and half an hour later left with a new medicine schedule to step grandma out of 25 different medicines and half the dose of the three remainings.
Two days later my grandma got out of bed for no apparent reason for the first time in six months, two months later she was walking the dog and baking again. 15 years later grandma is still alive, she is missing a leg now and 4 years ago she moved into a retirement home with my grandpa. I haven't seen her for 3 years, but she is doing good. She ended up getting compensated by the stated, can't remember the figures but it was the maximum amount (Mind you, not that high in Denmark).
3. Back Up On 4 Legs
Someone brought their cat in that had been missing for a week. It had pulled itself in through the cat flap that morning dragging both back legs, matted, thin, and covered in oil. Very high likelihood that it had been run over.
His right hind was obviously broken with the knee completely in the wrong place, couldn't immediately tell what was wrong with the other leg just by palpating. The owner didn't have the money to x-ray, much less do surgery and the cat was less than 1 year old, so I offered to have them sign it into my care so I would become financially responsible for the cat.
Took some x-rays, hoping for one shattered leg and one relatively normal one, as an amputation was looking pretty likely at this point. The other femur was still intact, but had come entirely out of it's hip joint, which pretty much skunked amputation as an option. I'm a passable soft tissue surgeon, but I am not an orthopedic surgeon by any means. So I contacted a friend and asked him if he wanted a crack at the leg. He managed to wire to together for a bit before the wires failed, but cats heal remarkably well, particularly young cats, and he managed to get a pretty functional limb out of the ordeal after several weeks of cage rest and popping the other hip back in.
He currently lives on a farm and catches rats, climbs trees, and gets on the barn roof just as well as the rest of the cats.
2. Stayin' Alive
Cardiac care nurse here, got called to the ER to assist with a cardiac arrest of this patient in his 50's. He had a delay of 10 minutes (no oxygen to his brains for 10 minutes), the EMT already tried reviving him for 45 minutes on a flatline. After 15 minutes the doctor said, last check before we declare this patient deceased and when we did he actually had a pulse and a decent rhythm on the monitor. Mind you, we use an automatic CPR machine so we don't have to do manual compressions so we had to turn off the machine to check. He got wheeled to the ICU, ended up on the corony care 2 days later (pretty confused I might add) and a week later he walked out of the hospital when the doctors discharged him without any brain damage or visual physical damage.
Edit: they give him a pacemaker before his discharge.
1.
When I was in trauma surgery in upstate by, got a notification about a man who was shot 3 times in the head. He comes in, literally one eye hanging out of the socket, blood everywhere, and he's slumped forward. Apparently he was shot in the temple, exited out his right eye socket, in the nose exited from the roof of the mouth, and In the cheek one with exit from the side of the head. At this point I'm thinking they just brought him in so we can pronounce him in the ER because he looked dead. I go to examine him and tilt his head back, and he's says "yoooo be gentle!!!!" I jump back and scream like a little boy, as did everyone in the room. Literally the bullets missed his brain in every single shot.
Accomplishments prove we tried to do something and did something.
A little flex every now and again doesn't hurt.
I did this.
I tried this.
It proves we lived.
Just don't be arrogant about your success, but sometimes you want to show off just a little.
Redditor vjts87 wanted to hear about what everyone feels they deserve to brag about, so they asked:
"What’s the weirdest flex you have?"
I brag about nothing.
Except that I can sing word for word every Whitney song.
The Win
"I work the overnight shift and still get eight hours of uninterrupted quality sleep every day."
ITookAPooInTheICU
CHARGE
"I have dextrocardia. As in, my heart is on the right-hand side of my chest. My heart defects all fall under an even rarer condition called CHARGE Syndrome (CHARGE is an acronym for different health complications). CHARGE is so rare that I was like the third-known case of its kind on the whole island when I was born. I'm a popular 'you'll never see this again in your career' examination subject with student doctors and that."
Digimortis
“Love Shack”
"I’ve been booed by 10,000 people at once. I know athletes and celebrities have been booed by more people, but I’m neither. I was randomly picked out of the crowd at an NBA game to attempt a 3-point shot, to win everyone a free pizza. I bricked it."
Shonuff8
"At least you had a task that only lasted like maybe 10 seconds."
"I was at a radio concert in a venue that size with 6 big acts on the bill. In between acts, they had fans do karaoke. A mother-daughter team got tasked with 'Love Shack' and sh*t the bed hard. One of the DJs told the crowd to give them a round of applause and they got hit by a massive wave of boos."
patrickwithtraffic
Gross
"I got picked up in a white van as a child by a stranger to get a lift to somewhere 5 mins away, I was in the back off the van for half an hour, then they opened the door at the place I was trying to go. To this day I'm not sure but I think he changed his mind. The guy seemed nice enough at the time but, it was just such a strange experience to think back on, I was about 12ish I think at the time too so definitely old enough to have known better."
WhatAmI111WhatAmI111
Genius
"I can always pick the exact right size container to put leftovers in."
Money_Pomegranate_51
Knowing how to portion leftovers is a MIRACLE gift.
The Gift
"I can get rid of hiccups on demand. Like without fail if I have hiccups I can just think about it and they go."
DoIReallyNeedAnAcc
Trauma
"A tree fell on me in 2021 and broke all my ribs, my spine, and popped both my lungs. I dragged myself out and survived long enough slowly drowning in my own blood (and internally bleeding out) to be found and get airlifted to a trauma ward. So I got almost as much metal grafted to my bones as wolverine though I don't flex much because I got so much metal making me rather stiff and rigid."
Setantaoceillaigh
Kevin! Come back!
"I had to take an IQ test when I was being evaluated for ADHD and apparently I am in the 99th percentile in spatial reasoning. I can’t do math or talk good but I can pack the hell out of a suitcase!"
yekirati
"This is actually an amazing skill to have! One of my old cooks was the same way. Quiet kid, very bright but not cut out for the restaurant industry. He loved being on prep for EXACTLY this reason. The fridge was never as organized, cleaned, labeled, dated, rotated and stocked properly unless it was he or I or one other person. I miss you Kevin! Come back!"
subtxtcan40
"I survived 9 heart attacks, before I turned 40. Have 4 stints following 3 angiograms and 1 open heart surgery with vein transfer... that failed... been in heart failure status for a year. But honestly I am healthier than I was a year ago. A year ago couldn't walk half a mile. Now can walk 3 miles without issue. Even survived covid this year after 2 years of isolating."
BadGenesWoman
Savior
"I have donated over 15 gallons of blood!"
DonkeymanPicklebutt
"As someone whose life has been saved due to a blood donation: THANK YOU! I love you and hope others will take after your example."
Friendly_Chemical
Life is always full of flex. Embrace it.
Do you have anything to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Figuring out the mind of a woman is a fascinating topic.
How do women tick?
They are smarter than men, for sure.
But is it innate... or do they learn their special ways?
Redditor hennessyandjack wanted to know how to crack the mystery that is... woman, so they asked:
"Men of Reddit, what is something you’ll never understand about women?"
I know very little about women, so I am ready to learn.
Save the limbs
"How are their feet always so cold?"
dammitdan57
"PLEEEEAASSEE help us find a solution to this!!!! I’m sooo over having icicles for toes!!!"
Effective-Basil-1512
Next Monday
"When I was in High school, for a week just about every single girl at that school wore a head scarf. They were everywhere. Not a single bare head to be seen. The following Monday they were gone like it never happened. I still can not wrap my head around it, 20 years later."
ALL_CAPS_VOICE
Relax
"Shower temperature. Wtf is up with this Mordor water, why must you feel pain to feel cleansed?"
darthgandalf
"That’s because we’re cold all the time. It’s not painful, it’s relaxing."
dreamofwires
"Hot water relieves all of our problems and stress. Idk lol but it’s so niiiice to shower with hot water! warm water just doesn’t do it anymore. it almost feels like really good sleep but you’re standing and fully awake cx."
ppoopscoopp
First Sips
"Why my wife always leaves a small amount of tea or coffee in her mug. Just drink the whole thing!"
dubdrummerz
"Ohhh, I actually do this, so I will tell you why I do it, doesn't mean she has the same reasons for it. Nothing hits you better than that first sip of coffee or tea when it is at the right temperature."
"I don't drink it fast, so sometimes it gets cold or it's not the right temperature anymore before getting to finish the whole mug. I am trying to put less in the mug, but I don't know, it feels different, and I can't explain it. I like the feeling of the whole mug warming my fingers, especially during winter."
SnitchSandyStorm
Magic
"How they can magically make things appear in front of them that I’ve spent 15 minutes looking for."
Ecstatic_Conflict621
Finding things are a gift.
Inches
"Bra sizes."
LankySquash4
"The number is how many inches around the ribs are and the letter is how many inches the breast protrudes from the chest. So a 34DD (or E) would be 34 inch ribs and 5 inches of breast protrusion."
oo0Lucidity0oo
Listen
"I have a wife and two daughters who will bring up issues and problems they encounter. I still have not quite learned that they do not want a discussion about how to solve these problems."
Callmeoneofakind
"I've heard a podcaster (psychologist) say that 'sometimes listening IS the solution,' because what the person may looking for is really just a bond with another person to calm their negative feelings."
Sipyloidea
Talk to Me
"How you can talk to your mom on the phone for multiple hours every week. My dad calls me when he needs me to order something on Amazon for him and that's about it."
the_bollo
"It’s something that completely depends on what kind of bond you and your parents made while growing up.
For example, while super loving, my parents never seemed to really care about the mundane things of my life so here I am 33 and I almost never talk to them on the phone because we never grew that kind of interaction together."
2M4D
"Hand bags like why are they so expensive."
Ok-Ihatetiktoc
"Men's clothing have pants that HAVE POCKETS Unlike the sh*tty women pants that I used to wear you can only fit a tic-tac in there And so bc we don't have pockets we're expected to carry around bags. But I will not. (Joking)."
the_lazybones_uwu_
"Handbags are our cars. If you have a character who wants to show off, men usually take cars, women use handbags. But not all women care about handbags that much. For me, it’s about quality. Expensive brands are a waste of money. Most of them don’t even have good quality."
Blondisgift
Yum
"How they always smell SO GOOD ALL OF THE TIME. Like, how!?!?"s
alty_headz
Well, we've learned quite a lot here! Do you have any burning questions for the fairer sex? Let us know in the comments below.
Every day, people are faced with small choices like what clothes to wear or what to make for breakfast.
They make their day-to-day decisions without thinking too hard, and the result isn't something that can drastically alter their lives.
But there are some decisions that can take a devastating turn that wind up being self-sabotaging.
Maybe they should've considered their decision more carefully.
Curious to hear from those who've witnessed people take a major misstep, Redditor hairyhedge asked:
"What Was The Worst Way You Saw Someone Ruin Their Life?"
It took an instant of carelessness to cause permanent consequences.
Fatal Swing
"A fellow barfly I knew was an MMA fighter. Had won some regional matches as an amatuer, his gym was promoting him, he was in talks with a MMA promotion."
"A guy mouths off to him. He replies. The guy takes a swing. He punches him and the guy hits his head on the pavement. Dies. 5 years for manslaughter."
– BakedTatter
Unprotected
"A friend of mine decided to not use protection with a girl he’d just met… for a whole weekend… without asking if she was using any contraception at all. I often feel really bad for this poor baby dragged into this world out of sheer stupidity."
– Onelinersandblues
Misjudgment
"Drunk buddy climbed into bed with his Mother in Law because she thought she was into him…she wasn’t. Ended…poorly."
– Chance-Rush-9983
You always have a choice between a good and bad decision. These people chose the latter.
That's A Turnoff
"A girl I crushed on super hard in high school started doing meth, and began sleeping with her dealer, who was a Juggalo with a rapidly diminishing amount of teeth."
– littlebitsofspider
The Price Of Addiction
"I watched a mate lose 2 houses and $500,000 to cocaine in one year."
– ThunderClap_Fween
Breaking Trust
"19 yr old cousin. Started hanging with gangs, introduced to Meth and gained a gambling habit also, faked pregnancy and stole from family and made it look like others were involved which irreparable trust was broken between innocent parties that some have never recovered from."
– Superunkown781
Point Of No Return
"One of my friends turned to alcohol and all but gave up on life after his mom passed. It eventually caught up with him and he passed away at the age of 32. The sad part is that there were signs that he wanted to get better and wanted to get life together again. It was just too little too late and he went about it the wrong way."
– wert989
Remembered
"My brother. Heroin addiction. He was always an odd kid, but a very talented guitar player, and one of the most thoughtful, caring, funny, and unique people I've ever known. He passed away four years ago from a fentanyl overdose. I miss him everyday, but he brought so much joy to the lives of those around him that the memory of him isn't a sad one. I laugh way more than I cry when I think about him."
– Wepoozelator
Poor management of finances led to impoverished lives.
Sure Path To Bankruptcy
"A guy I used to work with got himself into crazy levels of debt."
"A local guy won the lottery. Nothing major, but still life changing. Something like $30,000. We were all on our lunch break, talking about what we would do if we won that much. I would pay off these credit cards, or I would trade in my car for a newer model. This guy says that it wouldn’t make a difference. At 23 he was already over $200,000 in debt between credit cards and personal loans."
"He would just get another loan to pay something off, and keep borrowing. A few months later he was complaining about how he was now an additional $50,000 in debt on top of it. This guy was only making around $40,000 a year."
"He got the bright idea to file bankruptcy. Lost his car, his house, his job. Last I knew he was staying at friends houses couch surfing, working for a pittance just trying to survive."
– flyingsusquatch
Bad Investment
"Sell their condo that was rented out, and invest all the profit in crypto in December 2021."
– Saugeen-Uwo
Popular Scheme
"I had a coworker that was supposed to move in england to work at his sister's bar. He gave it up for a pyramid scheme and tried to get me in."
– Aiizimor
Depending on the situation, we're not often given second chances in life.
So whenever something in your gut informs you not to do something–and you know what those actions are–you might want to pay attention.
Because once you cross the threshold of no return, there's no going back.
While we have not all witnessed something that will forever keep us up at night, we've all seen or heard something that was terrifying.
And it seems the scarier it was, the harder it becomes to forget.
Redditor AncientTranslator405 asked:
"What's the scariest sound you've ever heard?"
Unidentified Animals
"A fox in the middle of the night. It sounds like a legitimate screaming ghost. I was in bed and chilled from the sound until I learned what it was."
- Due_Difference8575
Feeling Territorial
"My dog ran out the front door one night and didn't see the opossum on the porch until she turned around to come back in."
"That growl scream thing they do is horrifying, especially when it's a large opossum standing between you and your dog."
- mel2mdl
An Accident's Aftermath
"Two years ago, I witnessed a near-fatal accident. A truck t-boned a small sedan with kids in it."
"I'll never forget that sound of the crunch, the mom crying hysterically because she thought her kids were dead, and the sight of it all."
"The worst part is I knew the kids. They were students of mine. Everyone survived but not without permanent injuries."
- amahler03
Living with Dementia
"One thing my grandmother did when she was near the end of her dementia was to call out, 'Mama, Mama' in a long and drawn out 'Maaaaaaammaaaa.'"
"She passed in 2007, and now my mom lives with us and is also suffering from dementia. I was awakened one night by the same long drawn out 'Maaaaaammaaaaa...'"
- pastelpizza
Sad Goodbyes
"My grandmother passed last month. She was 96 and the absolute best."
"She was suffering from vascular dementia. Luckily she was peaceful with it and not violent or agitated. She remembered everyone but kept thinking people who died 50+ years earlier were still alive."
"The day before she passed, she sat up all of a sudden after being asleep basically for the entire previous week."
"She looked at me, a tear rolled down her face, and she said, 'Take care.'"
"I told her I loved her. She then said, 'I love you' back."
"I am so glad I was able to be there for that and to be there for her at the end."
- Gravath
Lost Partners
"I woke up in the middle of the night with my elderly neighbor crying and asking for help because she had just found her husband's body in their house."
"It made me horrifically sad, and when I finally went back to bed, I couldn't let go of my wife, fearing the day this might happen to one of us."
- TheAwesomePenguin106
Bad News
"I was at work and a mom got a call that her 19-year-old had just died in an accident."
"That sort of misery is a sound I hope to never hear again."
- Independent-Face-959
Missing Child
"When I worked in retail more than a decade ago, a woman came into the store crying for something in another language."
"Her cries were blood-curdling and it was her daughter's name."
"She lost her child somehow in the parking lot and hoped she wandered into the store (she didn't)."
"I can still hear her cries echoing in my head."
"Thankfully, they found the little girl wandering between parked cars. Happy ending."
- itsmarvin
Waiting for the Inevitable
"Sudden screeching car tires behind you."
"A few years ago, we were sitting at a stop sign and got rear-ended by a girl texting on her phone (going 60 miles per hour) and it was the scariest three seconds of my life. My two-year-old son was in the back seat too."
"We had been at the lake and had bags piled up, so we couldn’t really see out the back window, and all of a sudden, there was the sound of LOUD screeching tires erupting behind us."
"I just knew I was about to die while I waited a couple of seconds for it to hit us. Thank god it wasn’t a semi-truck or something."
- masterpate
A Mechanical Error
"A CNC machine I was operating made a horrifying screeching noise as it dropped a 10-inch saw blade and fired it at me. Nearly lost my leg that day, it missed the main artery in my leg by two millimeters."
"I still get PTSD dreams where I hear it screech, bang, and it whistling toward/through me."
- natha134
Storm of the Century
"My husband and I were awakened by a thunderstorm so loud and physical that we thought it was an earthquake, and a strong one. It was extremely loud and shook the house and everything in it, and the rumble that woke us up lasted for probably 10 seconds."
"It was such a violent shake, I was thinking, 'This will be the earthquake that kills us.' I swore that the ground was going to open. It took several seconds to realize what it was."
"I only have experienced thunder like that a few other times in my life, and I grew up in a high-altitude part of the Pacific Northwest."
"Where I live now, we have a fault line, and they always go on about 'the big one' and how devastating it will be. So in my disorientation, I thought it was the beginning of the big one that had woken us."
- SapphireHaze
Someone Approaching
"I was standing in the middle of Death Valley at midnight several months ago, with no light or anything else around me, as I was taking pictures of the Milky Way."
"I suddenly heard footsteps approaching. I grabbed my camera and turned to run."
"It ended up being another photographer who had been sleeping near me and then woke up and came to talk with me. It took a good two hours for my heart to calm down."
- jscheel
Breaking In
"Someone breaking into my home is genuinely my worst nightmare. It doesn't help when you have a cat that likes to do zoomies in the middle of the night, either."
- PlayerAlert
A Child in Need
"Hearing my seven-year-old scream/wailing from their room at 2:00 AM. That eerie sound of fear and despair and hopelessness calling for someone to stop whatever is going on. Hearing it come closer and closer before you can even get out of the covers to check on them."
"Fortunately, it turned out their hand had fallen asleep and they thought it was a dead hand stuck in the pajamas. They stopped screaming as we were yelling 'What?! What?!'"
"'Oh. It's just my hand.'"
"Still the scariest sound I have ever heard. I have nightmares about it sometimes..."
- mel2mdl
Houseguests
"When I was 13, I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep."
"I went to grab a drink of water from the bottle next to my bed, and my elbow bumped the wall next to it by accident."
"Almost immediately, a singular bump ‘responded’ from the other side of the wall."
"I froze, stared at the wall, and then knocked twice in the same spot."
"Two knocks responded a moment later."
"The other side of the wall was our lounge room. There was no one in there, and I know because I didn’t get another wink of sleep until the sun rose."
"Still freaks me out, and I occasionally knock the walls of my bedroom now, hoping I don’t hear anything knock back."
- Anxiety_bunni
While almost all of these sounds are explainable, if tragic or terrifying, they undoubtedly would keep someone thinking about them for a long time.