We are all living out the human journey together, through the good, the bad, and the scary.
Unfortunately, the scary can sometimes be a pretty big part of the whole thing. The world is a strange place. It can easily pit us against each other, and we can make the experience scary for each other. And these brave people have survived such situations.
u/BootsmaBoy asked:
What is the scariest encounter with another human you have ever experienced?
Here were some of those stories.
Adults Are Honestly The Worst
GiphyMy cousin who was like 14 was babysitting us (9 year old me, 4 year old brother), her dad called coming down from I wanna say crack? Heroin? Idk something real bad, he called and screamed at her to tell him where her piggy bank was, she told him to f*ck off and hung up.
He called back, she didn't pick up, and he left a voice message which played as he was leaving it saying basically he was gonna come down there and f*cking murder all of us, with a knife
He was full of sh*t but we were terrified. Can you imagine the pure fear a 9 year old feels when a grown man who sounds crazy says he's going to murder her with a knife? So we prepared. We blocked out the windows, locked everything, put heavy furniture in front of the doors. My brother was asleep in his room, my cousin told me just leave him, but I couldnt stand the thought of him being alone in there so I covert style belly crawled, heart beating out of my chest, across the kitchen, through the living room to his room, scooped him up, and brought him back to my moms room, which we then barricaded ourselves into.
I got no sleep that night and my mom and my aunt came back the next morning like "What the f*ck did you kids do?!" But I was honestly just happy to be alive and that my mom was home again.
The worst part of the whole thing is when she got home her dad had sold all of her belongings. I mean everything, her bed, her dresser, tv, it was all gone. It was just an empty room.
He's clean now but I still hate his f*cking guts. F*ck you uncle donald.
I Could Die Today
When I was 15, I regularly was at home by myself since both of my parents worked full time and my brother had moved away to college. Well one day during the summer i was just relaxing at home, when all of a sudden someone knocks on the front door. I get up and check the peephole, and see two guys just standing in the driveway just off the porch. One of them wearing a suit, the other wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, but facing away from the house like he's playing lookout. I decide to ignore them, cause they'll go away, right?
Wrong.
They continue knocking, knocking, knocking but getting progressively louder and more aggressive. Finally, I decide to call the sheriff's department and ask for a non emergency check since they're trespassing. My dumbass decides to yell through the door that I had called, and before I can even realize how dumb it is, the guy starts kicking the front door. I freak the fuck out, run back toward the center of the house and realize that there's a third guy trying to kick in the back door as well. At this point I call 911 and start screaming about these three guys trying to break into my house.
Notoriously, it took the sheriff's deputies longer to get there than anyone would imagine, and they see the guys walking down the road later. Stopped them to question, but no arrest.
MYOB
I was driving through a somewhat rough neighborhood at night (late after a movie) and while sitting at a light we saw this guy in a beat up car take a bump of coke next to us. We make eye contact. As the light turns green he merged behind us and then proceeds to follow us around flashing his lights and honking his horn for several blocks. We pull up to another red light he pulls up next to us yelling at us to roll down the window.
Turns out he just wanted to let us know we had a tail light out and then drove away.
This Is What We Call Stranger Danger
When I was 13, I just got dropped off from the school bus, so I had a bit of ways to walk home. As I get close to the corner of my street, some guy in a dark blue car rolls up and asked where I was headed.
Told him I was going home. The guy the excruciatingly slowed his car down to match my walk and asked if I wanted a ride home. I told him no thanks I'm almost home. Then he continued to ask where I live and if I still wanted a ride home.
Luckily I had a phone at this age, and pulled out my Nokia phone (idk why I remember this) and pretend to call my mom (she wouldn't have picked up the phone and I was almost home).
The guy saw what I was doing and sped off like crazy.
From the age of 13, I started carrying pepper spray.
Bad Practices
GiphyLate 80s, was running errands in town with my mum and two sisters. Back then it wasn't uncommon to leave your kids in the car while you ran inside the store.
We are sitting in the car waiting, and then I see an older guy walking towards our car. I just get a really bad feeling and start yelling at my sisters to lock the doors, while I lock the two on my side.
He comes over and spends the next couple of minutes trying to open all the doors on the car while we are cowering in our seats. Eventually he gave up and left.
We were all 8 and under in age at the time. I just knew that if he got in the car he would take one of us.
Prophetic Dreams
In our mid twenties, my husband and I lived in a townhome without a yard in a pretty nice area of town. We knew we were purchasing a house soon, so we went ahead and got our first puppy! I'm a morning person, whilst my husband is not, so I would usually get up around 5am and take the puppy out to the little patch of grass across the street from out townhome (still inside the entire complex, mind you). Did this for several months, no big deal.
Well one morning while out waiting on the puppy, an old Ford van, all beat up with no windows, slowly drives by and goes back behind another building. A few minutes later as I'm getting ready to cross the street and go back inside, the van comes back up the road to where I was getting ready to cross, stops in the middle of the road and turns off its lights. I waved them on in front of me and at that point, both doors of the van started to open. All I remember was seeing someone start to get out before both the dog and I felt the undeniable urge to run across the street and inside as fast as possible. Once inside, the van sped off and disappeared.
The creepiest part of this whole thing was when I went upstairs to wake my husband, only to find out he was in the middle of a dream where I'd been kidnapped.....
To this day, I refuse to run outside or go on walks alone, even on our quiet country roads. And big old vans still creep me out.
Why Do People Be Like This
I was about 14/15. School had just ended so the bus home was packed with other school kids too. We were a couple stops away from where everyone got on when this guy with a huge jacket, hood up and mask on (we were in the middle of a heatwave so super odd) got on the bus, stormed upstairs past me and my friends and threw down this huge bag he was carrying. He screamed "THIS IS A BOMB" and ran off the bus.
It took everyone a few seconds to process what just happened, but after those few seconds I experienced the most crazy panic I've ever seen. Everyone bolted downstairs and tried to get out, but the doors were closed. I remember this huge black dude just punched the glass out of the door like it was nothing and people were just dragging themselves through it. When I got to the door I hit the emergency release to make it easier to jump off.
Once we were out we sprinted at least 500m down the road and crouched for the explosion. Except there was no explosion. It was just a hoax. Turns out that the guy that did it was someone from my school that had previously been expelled.
Close Call (TW: Blood)
Me and my boyfriend came back at like 2 am from a night out. We were both quite drunk and stumbled into the hallway to the elevator when we see drops of something on the floor. It definitely was blood. Fresh and wet. The elevator button and door were covered in bloody hand prints aswell.
My boyfriend called the elevator, pushing me aside not knowing what would be in it. Luckily nothing except for a puddle of blood.
The elevator came from the 5th floor. So we went investigating. The trail of blood ended at a door with huge hand smears of blood on the door.
It took all our courage to ring (not the nicest place to live, robbery??) But I am so glad we did. An elderly man opened the door. He looked like straight out of a horror movie. Covered in blood from head to toe. His grey sweater was red. His hair was wet. His shoes were filled with blood.
We immediately sobered up. I called an ambulance which arrived in 2 minutes. My bf went inside the flat helping the man sit down. There was so much blood I have never seen that in my life.
We didn't know what happened to him until we met him yesterday properly for the first time. Recognized my bfs glasses. He was drunk, wanted to ride his bike home, crashed somehow and got a huge cut on his head. He takes heart medicine which thins his blood that's why he lost so much.
If we wouldn't have rung the doorbell he would have bled to death.
He actually gifted us money and a super expensive bottle of champagne for something completely self explanatory
Campus Fear
Was walking through campus after a night class, around 9 or 9:30pm. It's a BIG campus (UCF) and pretty empty at this point. The shuttle I took was at the other end of campus so it was a pretty long walk. At one point I'm walking through a swampy area with a raised boardwalk. There are two girls a ways ahead of me walking together, I see them reach the end of the boardwalk and go into the next building.
As I reach the end of the boardwalk, this guy kinda hops up out of nowhere/the surrounding woods. Takes my hand and starts telling me how beautiful I am, what's my name, what year am I at uni, what am I doing tonight, where do I live? I ask him why he wants to know and he says "I'm taking a survey". I'm literally in such shock that it takes me a second to realize he's even touching me/has my hand. Everything he was asking me sounded really unauthentic and like it was scripted, like he was in a rush to get everything out. He also had this really weird, unsettling vibe that he was giving off that instantly freaked me out, but it was DARK outside, and I was ALL ALONE at this point.
Thankfully, a minute or two later a guy walks out through the building , and I use that moment to break my hand away from the weirdo and tell him "I have to go". I've never walked so fast to my shuttle and looking over my shoulder the whole time. I couldn't stop shaking the whole ride home. Something about that guy was OFF and I was sure if that man hadn't have come out when he did that something bad would've happened to me. Exactly what, I don't want to think about. Keep in mind there had been a group of 2 girls walking ahead of me and he hadn't approached them. He was looking for a girl by herself.
The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, Right?
GiphyMy first apartment was part of a complex that was U shaped with a large grassy area in the middle. The neighborhood kids would run around and play in the grass a lot. One day I was sitting on my stoop talking on the phone when one of the kids fell over, grabbed his foot and started crying. He was maybe 5 or 6. He had stepped on a bottle cap and sliced open his foot. I took him inside, had him sit on the edge of the tub, washed his cut and put some neosporin on it and a bandaid and sent him on his way.
A few hours later there is a knock on my my door. When I answered, a massive skinhead with a tattoo of a pentagram on his neck was standing there with his chest out. The boy was peeking around one of his giant thighs pointing at me. He stuck his finger in my chest and yelled, "Did you take my boy in your f*ckin house? That's my son. Did you give him a f*ckin bath?"
"Look at his foot!" I shrieked. "He cut his foot. I washed the cut."
He inspected the kids foot then asked me.what exactly happened. I stumbled through the story. Then he just said, "Alright then." He shook my hand with a vice grip and I never saw him or his son again.
It's Always People In Vans
This happened when I was about 9 or 10. It was around 8:30 on a Tuesday or Thursday. My parents and I were watching TV when there was a knock at the door. My dad got up and answered it, to see a man standing there, with a white van behind him. He looked like he was in his early 30s. My dad went outside to talk to him as I hid behind the TV stand and waited for him to leave. It was hard for me to hear what they were saying but I could hear my dad say, "No thanks" and "We're good". When my dad got back inside, I saw the van leave and asked my dad what had happened. The had guy asked him if he could come inside to do a security system estimate, because he was a door to door salesman. My dad said he could see a bunch of other guys inside the van staring at them. When they left, my mom called the neighbor to ask her what was going on, apparently they had asked almost everyone on our street the same question. My neighbor called the police and started to follow the van. The guys caught on, and when my neighbor turned around to go home they started following her, she eventually lost them but the whole ordeal was still scary nonetheless.
note - I know about my neighbor following them/being followed because my mom was on the phone with her the whole time
Thank Goodness He Wasn't The Joker After All
I used to work as a cashier in a middle eastern restaurant and we'd get a lot of interesting people coming in.
One day while the manager and cooks are busy, a pretty "normal" looking guy comes in and asks for water. No biggie. Then he starts asking questions about what ethnicity the owner's are and if I'm related to them and while those questions aren't inherently threatening, he spoke the same way The Joker does. Like he's about to do something bad to you and you can't escape it because he's already set up a trap.
He leaves. He returns less than a minute later with a black duffel bag and another guy who looked homeless blocking the doorway.
I legitimately thought he was about to pull out a gun and try to rob the place or shoot me. Instead, he tells me to tell the owner exactly what he's been asking me and he leaves. Nothing bad really happened but I was terrified that he'd come back and I eventually left the place because of it.
A Hitch-yikes-er
GiphyI got a lift with a semi driver into the Rockies via the old 99. Once we got into the long stretches after Squamish he started talking about how his wife got a restraining order against him because of an ongoing murder investigation. It's okay though because he was acquitted of the last murder accusation. I was having serious flashbacks to Wolf Creek with this guy before he started with the small talk.
Neighbors Are No Help
I got chased down by the neighborhood delinquent teen with a gun when I was walking home from the bus stop with friends. I was 10, my friends were 10/11 years old too. We ran to a house for help, a middle aged woman answered and refused to let us in or help us. She said it could be a prank, we told her it wasn't but she was convinced we were trying to get in her house and rob her. We ran farther to my friends house, her mom happened to be off work early and was home. She called the police. I got to ride in a cop car and watch two cops take down this 17 year old piece of sh*t into the pavement.
I had a friend who seemed a really nice guy. He was my boss/friend's partner and was very supportive as her partner and of the people who worked for her. But as her friend, she started to tell me some of his less fine moments, such as his hitting her, and when they went "on a break" as a result he cheated on her. She told me that when he drank he turned into a completely different person, and she'd told him he should completely stop drinking.
They'd been together a long time but as they got serious thinking about marriage and babies she realised she couldnt deal wtih his lying, cheating and drinking. She realised she couldn't marry him, and dumped him. We went out with some other friends for a drink, to a pub we never usually went for safety. He got drunk somewhere and phoned to say he was coming to "get" us.
In his culture, she was practically considered his. They'd been together long enough to be considered husband and wife despite never marrying. So he and the other men in the city viewed her as his property pretty much. She couldn't just dump him and find a new man, that would be cheating and only men can get away with cheating. So men who knew them and saw which pub she'd gone to, told him where we were.
He turned up with a machete and attacked her date, luckily he hit first with his hand before drawing the machete, but he still did a lot of damage with just that one hit to the ear. Her date and the rest of our friends managed to escape, I've never seen anyone run so fast. He attacked her new car when he couldn't get her new man. When we tried to talk to him he threatened me with the machete.
So my friend pepper sprayed him which incapacitated him (and got me too ouch). When the police arrived my friend got in trouble for using pepper spray. No charges were brought against her ex.
There Is No Justifiable Amount Of Nope
At a party when I was in my late teens. Friend of a friend is there and he's kind of strange. Whatever. No big. I know lots of strange people. We ended up alone in a room next to each other on a couch. He says "you look nice tonight" and I notice he has a knife in his hand. I immediately freeze in terror. At that very moment my friend comes in, and i use the distraction to get up and get out of the room immediately and leave the party.
I have no idea what would have happened if my friend hadn't come into the room.
When I next talked to my friend he "explained" that the guy was on heart medication. Ah okay. Yeah. That explains it. Except. You know. Not at all. I stopped associating with that friend.
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.