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People Explain How They've Seen Someone Ruin Their Entire Life In A Single Day

Man leaning forward into prison bars
Photo by Pablo Padilla on Unsplash

We're human, and we can acknowledge that we all make mistakes.

But there's a limit to how much grace any person can be shown for their slip-ups.

In fact, there are some mistakes that a person could make in a single day that could ruin the rest of their lives.


Redditor TunaSaladWithBeans asked:

"How did somebody you know ruin their life in one day?"

Second Chances Included

"Not a barn burner but still pretty bad considering the 'adult' involved. TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read): So-called adult failed to adult after numerous warnings and went off a metaphorical cliff."

"The clown was a senior married reserve Naval officer who also had a job at a nuclear power facility that required a Top Secret Clearance. He got deployed as a reservist to do classified work in Europe. Nothing James Bond but still not something the US wanted people to know about. It was plenty cushy too: living in a luxury hotel with lots of paid time off base to check out the sights."

"But the clown decided to hook up with a German woman and have an affair. The military doesn't care about that so long as you're above board with them about it so you can't be blackmailed. They don't even tell the spouse. This is spelled out once you get a security clearance."

"He didn't tell the military; they found out another way. But the unit went easy on him. His commander told him either tell his wife or stop seeing this German woman. If he did that, there'd be no consequences; if he didn't, there'd be h**l to pay."

"This warning was repeated to this clown on multiple occasions. The clown said he'd stop. Then he went off to Germany on vacation to, you guessed it, hook up this German woman."

"The commander took it personally that the clown ignored his warnings, disobeyed orders, and lied to him. Go figure. The commander fired him from the cushy job and revoked his security clearance, which ruined the clown's reserve military career."

"Because he needed a security clearance at his civilian job, he lost that too. And of course, his wife found out and divorced him."

"I suppose the clown recovered from this and is doing OK. But I imagine it's just as possible he's living in a van down by the river."

- Eric_da_MAJ

A Life-Changing Drive

"A dude I met was 18 and had been drinking. He was driving down a rural road when he lost control of his car, and flipped it. "He killed his passenger, who was his best friend."

"He was charged with a felony DUI and manslaughter. He was really messed up by this and knowing that he killed his friend haunted him."

"He was also an avid hunter and had to give that up because he was banned from owning firearms as a felon."

"He was in his thirties when I met him and he was pretty messed up."

- teaching-man

Over Before It Began

​"Had a friend in college. We were both training to be Pilots. His dad owned an insurance company and gave him the company's credit card to pay for all his flight hours with."

"He got about two years in when he finished his first license. ($30k-50k) Got a DUI halfway through his second license."

"Pilot career down the drain. On top of that, his father's company will be paying for it."

- taylorman8181

Keep Checking In with Friends

"A childhood friend who relapsed from drug addiction. He ingested fentanyl and died all alone in a filthy basement."

"He had been looking healthier, we reconnected, and he was planning his life going forward sober. That hurt a lot, that hope being taken away in a few minutes."

"F**k opiates, fentanyl, and those who deal it. Too many lives are lost every day."

- TheBklynGuy

Hot Off the Press

"My boss had his dream job as a sports editor of the local paper, a nice family, and a young daughter. He called one day to say he wasn’t coming to work."

"Turns out he was busted trying to meet up with a girl he met online for sex, and the girl was actually a cop."

- esmerelda_b

Celebratory Loss

"My friend's wife was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors said she had about a 10% chance of surviving."

"She scheduled her surgery for a month out, and without telling him, took out several credit cards in just her name. She ranked up $100,000 in debt in that month flying around the world and doing everything on her bucket list."

"She had the surgery and chemo after and... lived. She was fine. That debt completely f**ked up their lives for about 10 years."

"The husband, my friend, knew she was traveling. He saw the roughly $10,000 added to their joint credit card. He did not know she had taken out credit and was hiding an additional $90,000 in debt."

"And his wife honestly thought she would die, and then the credit cards would close the accounts and the family would owe nothing. Which is not exactly how it works. So luckily that did not happen."

"It f**ked up a lot of things. He lost his DoD security clearance because of it (people with a lot of debt, can be bought). And he took a less-paying job as a federal contractor, where I met him. But he honestly does not regret it, and is happy to have his wife and kids all alive."

- Bug1oss

Serious Matters

"I knew a guy my freshman year of college. Easily the most socially awkward person I've ever met. Not necessarily a bad guy but a really weird one."

"He was expelled for making a bomb threat. No idea what happened to him after that but I can't imagine anything good."

- cfbethel

Mob Mentality

"Brother of a friend went out drinking with some scumbag 'friends' people had warned him to stay away from. Late into the night, there was an argument with one of them. My friend's brother ended up being part of a group that beat this poor guy to death. He won’t see the outside of a prison for a good 20 years now."

- MargotChanning

Tragically Anticlimactic

"Guy I went to high school with was diagnosed with testicular cancer when we were about 25. For months, maybe years, I would see updated posts about the progress he was making with treatment."

"Then one day he posted on Facebook that he was cancer free. The next day he was dead."

"To celebrate, he'd gone out that night and got absolutely wasted and fell down a flight of concrete steps outside his flat in the early hours of the morning. By the time he was found in the morning, he was gone."

- vicki5150

Just Heartbreaking

"A friend of my parents was a good family man who loved his family. One day he was playing with his toddler and was playfully tossing her on the bed. She would get back up giggling and he would toss her again."

"In one of the tosses, he threw her a bit too far and she hit a bedpost. She lived but became bedbound, unable to even talk."

"He went to jail for child abuse. He lost his wife, his job, and his little girl would never be the same."

- IIVIIORTAL_K

Losing Roulette

"An old coworker went to Vegas, felt really good about his odds due to the liquor, and ended up betting his entire life savings on roulette and lost. He ended up losing his house, his wife, and kids, and from what I've seen he lives in a tiny apartment and works a min wage job."

- Dire-Dog

New Work-From-Home Fear Unlocked

"He ate dinner alone, choked, and died."

- waterloograd

Holy Debt, Batman

"Some kid in our senior year of high school pulled the fire alarm every day. He was getting away with it for a while."

"The school had town officials and the chief of the fire department and the police come in and talk about the dangers."

"The town would send trucks and be without them if there was another emergency. None of that worked."

"When they offered a reward the kid’s friends ratted him out. His family had to pay for all those calls, he was expelled from school and didn’t graduate."

- JediMasterPopCulture

Prescriptions Needed

"A week ago, my little sister slipped on the ice getting out of her car and hit her head. She didn’t think much of it when she had a pounding headache later, figuring she just whacked herself good."

"Her friend told her to just sit down and take it easy until she started slurring her words roughly 10 hours after the fall."

"They called an ambulance for her, but she was going into cardiac arrest. Turns out she’d stopped taking her blood thinners she was supposed to be on for clotting issues. The headache wasn’t the fall, it was the clot in her leg cutting off blood to the brain."

"At the age of 26, she never recovered and leaves behind a four-year-old and two-year-old."

- KearneyZzzyzwicz

Hero Status

"A day horribly altered my life. I was a teacher and coach. For a field trip, the principal 'could not afford two busses,' so I had to walk about ten girls to the field trip location, and back to school, while the one bus was filled with the rest of the junior high students and faculty."

"It would be about a mile each way. I chose the girls of my team because they would listen to me outdoors, unlike lots of middle school kids."

"While crossing the street in the crosswalk, with the walk signal in our favor. All the kids went first, and like girls, they were clumped together and chatting while walking."

"I noticed a woman made a left turn into our crosswalk and never saw us as she tried to accelerate to beat an oncoming car. I knew she was going to run right through the girls."

"I pushed the kids forward, very forcefully. Most of the girls fell onto the pavement in front of other vehicles waiting at their red light. (They were badly scraped up, like road rash from me pushing them. But no hospitals or doctors were needed for their scrapes.)"

"I don't remember the impact. I remember seeing a Pontiac symbol between the headlights. I came to, and I was in a whole different lane, facing where I had just come from. I could not get up. They say my body went up the car, and off the driver's side, tearing the side mirror off the car and breaking her windshield."

"Horror and sobbing from my student-athletes. The girls raised me onto a backboard when the ambulance came, which must have been traumatic."

"Now, 20 years later, I am still an ambulatory wheelchair user. I can't teach or coach. I can't work at a desk. I have chronic pain. Yes, my life can be really sucky, but I would not change what I did that day."

"When I get low emotionally from all my limitations, I remember those girls. I watched them go to college, get married, grow into mothers, and hold impressive jobs in their fields. And when they show a photo on Facebook of their happy moment, it recharges me to know they are safe, healthy, and happy. And it reaffirms my decision to save them from harm."

- CannaBeeKatie

Most of the subReddit shared stories of drug and alcohol use or negligent driving. But some of the stories were far more tragic than gross, and there were even some heartwarming stories thrown in.

But the conversation is an important reminder to be mindful of our actions since they truly could change our lives in a moment.

The Weirdest Things People Have Learned About Themselves From DNA Testing

Reddit user OmarBessa asked: 'Redditors who have gotten genetic tests, what's the weirdest thing you learnt from your DNA?'

lab test with pipette and test tubes
Louis Reed on Unsplash

At the end of the last century DNA laboratory companies began to offer direct-to-consumer home DNA test kits.

According to The Center for Genetics and Society, as of November 2023 more than 26 million people have taken an at-home ancestry DNA test.

These tests have helped people find and reunite with long lost family members. However not all revelations were well met.

Unknown ancestry was discovered.

Infidelity and secrets and lies were also exposed by these tests which led to strife in some families.

Keep reading...Show less

Content Warning: Discussions of Addiction

We've all heard of strange, inedible things that people have made a habit of eating, like paper or glue. Unfortunately, there are instances where eating these things works more like an addiction than a dietary choice.

There are a lot of other things that people might become addicted to, too, that have nothing to do with food, but which also are not the usual culprits for addiction.

If someone that we know is addicted to something unusual and isn't hiding it the same way that someone addicted to drugs might, it can be a really strange experience to witness.

Curious about others' experiences, Redditor JARClol asked:

"What is the weirdest thing you are or saw someone addicted to?"

Packing Peanuts

"I used to know a girl who was addicted to eating those little polystyrene chips that are used for packaging."

"She always had a bag of them with her. The noise she made when she was munching on them used to set my teeth on edge."

- -Some__Random-

"Don't tell her about the biodegradable ones (which actually taste nutty)."

- Hardwarestore_Senpai

A Hairy Situation

"A roommate in college was addicted to hair. She collected hair and made hair people. She would use the community vacuum cleaner, take out the hair, wash it, and make hair people."

"She would also go to salons asking for the cut hair 'for her family’s garden' and then proceed to make hair people."

"She had hundreds of them with names and stories about them."

"I kept my hairbrush locked up after it was cleaned out the first time."

- bzsbal

Pen and Ink

"Eating markers, like the tube of it. Inside the casing. I told his mother and her reply was, 'Oh, he's doing it again,' like... Again? Toxic ink? Again? I don't mean licking it. I mean chewing. Black ink in saliva and swallowing the ink-soaked sponge."

- Jazzlike_Grab_7228

"I knew a dude in high school who ate the ink from pens. Every class, gnawing on a pen, eventually breaking it open then sucking on it like a straw. He regularly would be drooling ink. I left that school sophomore year, and I wonder whatever happened to Abe."

- throwawaydbagain

"Abe? Was his last name LINKoln?"

- GetaGoodLookCostanza

The Strawberry Milk Fan

"I used to work with a girl who would just chug liters of strawberry milk. Every time I went to the toilet after her it stank of milk. She was eventually diagnosed with Type-Two Diabetes and gave up the milk… briefly."

- lifesyndromes

"Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm Type-Two, and strawberry milk usually has more sugar in it than chocolate milk. The smaller-sized cartons you get at lunch usually have 22 to 40 grams of sugar in them and a s**tton of sodium (no, I'm not joking), so a liter would have hundreds of grams in it."

"I got it after 23 years of poor choices and family medical history. She got it by decimating her pancreas and s**tting a machine gun."

"And you said briefly, meaning she's probably worse off. Like, I still have sugar, but I try and have less of it. I f**k up a lot because it's hard, but f**k, if she went back to drinking liters of it, I wouldn't be surprised if she's had some other issues."

- JediBoJediPrime29

Just a Taste

"My best friend used to eat fabric softener in high school. She wouldn't have huge mouthfuls or gulps; she would take just enough to coat her tongue."

"She would keep bottles of it hidden around her room so she could have a taste whenever the mood struck her. I love her to death, but she’s a strange one, lol (laughing out loud)."

- officiallyedgy

Weren't We All?

"I used to be addicted to Candy Crush back in the day. After running out of five lives, I couldn't wait for them to be available so I would forward my clock just to be able to play. My phone was set to the year 2030ish by the time I stopped playing."

- moolucifer

"Wow. You time traveled. That's a loophole though, isn't it? You never had to pay for fake things."

- Hardwarestore_Senpai

Just After a Few Beers

"Not so much addicted but I had a friend in college that would huff the fluid in his zippo lighter when he was really drunk."

"Treavor wasn’t allowed to have his lighter after a few beers."

- shavemejesus

Albuterol Tremors

​"I had a good friend in high school who had asthma who’d take hits off his inhaler, all day long. We’d be talking and he’d just casually whip it out whenever and take a hit. Ended up going to bed a couple of years after we graduated and never woke up."

- Magormgo

"I'm sorry. He probably f**ked his heart up. I hate taking my inhaler. It makes my heart race and makes me shake and feel like s**t."

- Weeniebuttcorgo

"Growing up, I used to take two Albuterol vials in my slow, old 90s nebulizer during asthma episodes. That thing was a TANK."

"I got a brand-spankin' new travel nebulizer in college and remember that first time I used two vials with it. I thought I was having a heart attack. That thing is POWERFUL and I wasn't expecting it. Two vials were far too strong and had me shaking for over an hour."

"I still have it to this day, and when I take it once a year or so for a flare-up, even one vial still makes me shake a bit."

- HorseGirl667

The Truth Behind the Problem

"I visited Nairobi for work around 2000 and the street kids all walked around with a small bottle of glue stuck to their upper lip so they were basically sniffing glue continually. It was extremely sad."

- Pretty-Balance-Sheet

"Probably something similar here in the Philippines. Homeless street kids sniff a plastic bag with a bit of contact cement in it to get rid of/to numb the hunger sensation. Not an addiction but a survival tactic… in my opinion."

- cssndrsrno

"Same in Zambian. Not stuck to their lip but carried and sniffed when needed. It was apparently to numb the body from feeling the cold in winter. Painfully sad."

- iron-clad-underwear

Never Underestimate Soda

"My first-ever girlfriend was genuinely addicted to Coca-Cola (self-admitted). She would have a glass as soon as she woke up and drink it all day."

"The one or two times I was there when her family had run out of it, she was irritable, anxious, and so grumpy until she was able to get down to the store to buy more."

"Strangely, it wasn't even the caffeine or sugar she was addicted to, because having a coffee or a different type of soda wasn't enough to ease her withdrawal symptoms."

- SheAlwaysHasMyHeart

"I had a friend who slept with a cooler of Diet Pepsi next to the bed. He had a large Slurpee cup that was always full, no matter where he was."

"We did a five-day offshore fishing trip. He ran out late on day four."

"As we pulled the boat into the dock, he literally ran and jumped onto the dock and raced to the soda machine at the far end."

- LongJumping_Local910

That's One Way to Use It

"My Spanish teacher was addicted to Vix VapoRub! Not to use it traditionally, though."

"She was eating it."

"Apparently, she knows that it's not a secret, because she ate it using a tongue depressor right in front of us, during the first week of school. I guess she figured we couldn't poke fun at her if she owned it."

"She literally demonstrated! She said her grandfather taught her and she likes the consistency/overwhelming scent."

"I can't imagine it's good for her."

- meg6ust6ala6titons

Live to Game

"Rocket League. I'm not even joking. The guy was in his 20s and playing up to eight hours a day."

"He used to be super social and became a hermit pretty much for seven years. He would pretend to be sick at work so he could play three days straight."

"He lost his whole social life. He spent New Year's every one of those years sitting in a dark room with windows covered, playing that game."

"I tried to get him to stop but never worked."

- IMNO-LEGEND

Ice Chewing

"I used to be addicted to chewing on ice, or maybe obsessed. I would bring a cup full of crushed ice with me everywhere. When I went to the beach, I would just bring a bag of ice from the gas station and sit and eat it."

"I stopped for ages and then became temporarily obsessed again during one of my pregnancies. I was checked for vitamin deficiencies both times but nothing came up."

- mistyoceania

The Use of Chapstick

"I'm addicted to chapstick. I can't go more than three hours without applying it."

"I think my lips are relying on the chapstick now because they get dry so quickly. And it feels like nails on a chalkboard when they do, I can't focus on anything else besides my lips being dry until I get some chapstick, lol (laughing out loud)."

- ComprehensivePie8809

"Here’s a pro tip someone told me: before you put chapstick on wet your lips so there’s actual moisture to lock in."

"I also find Vaseline is way cheaper and way more effective. I use it once in the morning and once before bed and I’ve gotten chapped lips like five times in the last seven years."

- sadkrampus

An Interesting Choice!

"Judge Judy. And it was me. My boyfriend introduced me to the show in my mid-thirties and I binged it on YouTube, listening to it whilst working in our warehouse/driving/cleaning/anything."

"Six years later, if I have a task that I really need to get into productive mode for, I put her on and my brain shifts gears."

"At one point, it felt weird to work without her voice in the background yelling at people. She’s like my white noise. She’s my default soundtrack."

- Fuzeillear

These accounts were honestly fascinating, and in some causes haunting, to read.

It just goes to show that, first of all, we all like different things, and second of all, you never know what is going to qualify as "too much of a good thing" for one person compared to someone else.

Female mariner
Mark König/Unsplash

Those who work in different fields all have their respective anecdotes that are sure to keep listeners engaged.

But certain jobs that keep employees away from land are sure to have the most intriguing stories to share.

Seafarers shared their unique experiences bordering on hair-raising phenomena when Redditor tylo144 asked:

"For those who have careers that keep them out at sea for long periods of time, what is the creepiest thing you’ve seen out in the water?"

Mariners shared their wildest stories from their time out at sea.

Fierce Gale

"Not so much what I saw but what I experienced. I was once underway in the Gulf of Alaska during a November gale. Waves were up to 35 feet with some rollers hitting 45. An uncommon occurrence on the diesel electric ship I was on was a cyclo-converter tripping. When this happened the ship would temporarily completely lose power and propulsion until some electricians could reset everything. This happened during that gale. I simply can’t explain how strange it is for the boat you’re on to all of a sudden go so quiet, that you can clearly hear waves slapping the ship and metal bending and flexing. Knowing you’re completely at the mercy of the sea. Knowing that if the ship lost its bearing and went beam to there was a real possibility of capsizing. It’s easy to forget when you’re at sea that the only thing keeping you alive is a bunch of steel welded together. At that moment I was fully aware and it humbled me. Thankfully we trained frequently for this and had everything fired back up relatively quickly."

"Another time I recall was when the ship took a rogue wave. They are absolutely real and I believe they account for a massive number of shipwrecks. It was late at night and I was on the bridge. We were passing through a storm and we’re taking the waves off the bow with no visibility. As the ship moves there’s normally a pretty standard pattern. You ride up a wave for a bit and then you fall down the wave for a bit. Well we started riding up a wave and got to the point where we should have been starting or ride down…but we just kept climbing and climbing. And then it happened. We started our ride down the back of this massive wave. All of us braced ourselves and tried to find something to hold on to but we all fell to the deck any way. Anything that wasn’t secured for sea fell down all around us. Manuals, tables, computers, printers, you name it. Our captain who was sleeping called up to the bridge asking if we hit something. It woke the entire crew up. Rogue waves are real, and they’re terrifying. I can’t imagine being in a smaller boat or taking one of them broadside."

– red_pimp69

Series Of Bizarre Events

"I was in the US Navy for about 10 years, and have 10s of thousands of miles at sea in an aircraft carrier. Countless nights on the flight deck in the middle of the night and middle of the ocean..."

"Creepiest: A HUGE patch of the ocean glowing. Like nuclear waste in the Simpsons glowing. I've seen bioluminescent algae of a few kinds and this was nothing like it. I've never seen anything like it before or since."

"Weirdest thing: hundreds of mile out to sea from land and there was a MASSIVE fire on the water. It was like the top of a gas refinery, but on the water with nothing under it but water. Flame going a few stories into the air."

"Funniest: 2 flying fish collide mid-air. I was smoking when we were in the Persian Gulf and saw the fish fly from a pretty far distance towards each other. I remember thinking 'there's no f'kin way they're going to hit' them SPLAT SPLASH! I was in tears laughing but no one saw it. Everyone just thought I was a weirdo, but I got to see a miracle of nature lol"

– BBQQA

Lone Yacht

"Some 20 years ago..."

"On the MV Explorer (since sunk) down near the Antarctic circle, sailing around the 'bergs and occasionally making landfall..."

"We rounded into a small bay area, and there, amongst the ice and coast was an unmarked sailing yacht. Which is odd as generally yachts have some identifying markings on them."

"To add to it, they didn't respond to any radio contact, and whilst I wasn't privy to the conversation (and it was a long time ago), some crew went across via Zodiac and were refused boarding."

"So basically a yacht, not a particularly large one, that was unmarked was hanging around in the inhospitable waters of the Antarctic and didn't want any help or contact."

"Proper weird."

– ThanklessTask

These Redditors have fearlessly plunged into darkness.

Dark Dive

"I used to be an oilfield diver in the Gulf of Mexico. I'd say about 80% of the dives I logged were at night. Mostly 500 ft and under DSV's."

"It's very eerie feeling sitting on the downline doing in water decompression in the middle of night. I'd always ask topside to turn off my headlight."

"Like a worm on a hook. Just bobbing in the darkness."

– Comrade_Fuzzybottoms

A Dark Calm

"Not even nearly as extreme as your story but it evoked a memory, I did a scuba diving open water course and then did the advanced course which included a night dive in a freshwater lake."

"I was only 5m underwater, pitch black darkness with two other guys, we were on a platform and we could either face the dam wall or the open water, and I turned to the open water while the other guys were behind me, I turned off my light (we did have little lights on our backs)"

"Just the deepest, calmest dark I’ve ever felt and seen. Not a single source of light anywhere, just immense darkness. Still remember that feeling and it was like 15 years ago"

– circleinsidecircle

Things get more interesting.

Water Glow

"The bioluminescent animals (or whatever they are) in the water is pretty amazing. Our toilet would fill up with seawater and if you took a piss in it in the middle of the night it would agitate the water and it would glow sometimes."

– Tub-a-guts

"Ominous Red Snow Angel"

"Always love the bio-luminescence flickering around the hull at night. They're almost like a cushion of little stars guiding you safely along. On those really dark, moonless nights, I'd almost beg for them to arrive."

"I sailed 70ft yacht around the world a few years back. Southern Ocean, Cape Horn, Good Hope, Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, two equatorial crossings; the full deal. Plenty of terrifying moments, boring moments, funny moments and beautiful moments."

"A creepy moment that is burned into my memory involved a near catastrophe halfway between NZ and Cape Horn. We ended up hitting really bad weather and absolutely huge seas - 50ft swells with massive troughs in between. We were running with the swells for days as they grew, skidding down them like a bloated surfboard, always worrying that the next wave would break behind us and roll us over."

"At night it's pitch black down there in bad weather - the sky and sea just form a huge black mass. The most terrifying thing is the sound of an invisible wave breaking behind you. At night, you run red light to preserve night vision, so there's basically just an eerie red glow emanating from below deck."

"At about two in the morning, I was at the helm when a monster wave broke directly over the back of us without a seconds warning. Time slowed down like it does in those moments, and the last thing I saw was my own silhouette in the wall of water, lit up like an ominous red snow angel - and then nothing but cold blackness as the boat sunk into the sea."

"Fortunately, she popped straight back up like a cork after a few eternal seconds - almost like a submarine surfacing - and we were still in one piece. Still cant forget that glowing red apparition of myself though. The memory of it has woken me up in a cold sweat more than once."

– Le_Rat_Mort

Coming Up For Air

"Somewhere in the Atlantic, nice cold as f**k night, decided to step out and look at stars. About ten minutes on and a boats mast pops up, sits there a few minutes and then back under. No alarms, nothing. Just some sub boys getting a bit of late night o2 in the middle of nowhere next to some friends."

– MyMomsSecondSon

When I worked on cruise ships, I was always captivated by the green flash on the horizon.

The optical phenomenon occurs just as the sun goes down or before sunrise, with the tip of the sun barely visible.

It emits a flash of green light that I found absolutely thrilling to witness every time.

It's not necessarily creepy, but still a wonder for sure.

No matter how long ago we saw it, there are some scenes or images from movies that still send shivers down our spine or keep us awake at night to this very day.

Pennywise appearing in the sewer in It, Janet Leigh surprised in the shower in Psycho, Freddy Kreuger's tongue popping out of the telephone in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Of course, some of the scariest, most disturbing, or most emotionally traumatizing scenes from films might have been featured in films outside of the horror genre.

Even more shockingly, some of these films were primarily marketed towards children!

Redditor alina_love was curious to hear which non-horror films the Reddit community saw as children still send shivers down their spines today, leading them to ask:

"What's a non horror movie that traumatized you as a kid?"

It Was Tim Burton, After All...

"'Pee Wee's big adventure'."

"Large Marge scared the crap out of little me."

"I was even scared of the fortune teller."- BlueStarrSilver·

With A Title Like "Temple Of Doom"...

"'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'."

"The scene where the guy gets his heart ripped out traumatized me for years."- Pbhf

That Funeral Scene Though...

"'My Girl'."

"Fear of death, fear of losing a friend, fear of bees, fear of puberty."- heidismiles

macaulay culkin kiss GIFGiphy

Jurassic Park's Got Nothing On This...

"'The Land Before Time'."

"Watching Little Foot’s mother die was awful."- HourglassSass

He'll Always Regret Not Bringing Her To The Museum...

"'Bridge to Terabithia'."- jumpstart-the-end

"Everything goes so well and it falls apart SO FAST and your left absolutely traumatized."- VortexDestroyer99

The Reason People Hold On To Their Appliances For As Long As They Do...

"The Brave Little Toaster'."- Catgurl

"The junkyard scene alone was responsible for so many nightmares."- ManChildMusician

brave little toaster animation GIF by Coolidge Corner TheatreGiphy

And Let's Not Forget The Coachman's Smile...

"Disney’s version of 'Pinocchio'."

"The scene where kids are turned into donkeys and kept on the island and then resold was f*cking weird."

"You felt bad for that bully kid after he looked sad and nobody understood what he said because he was a donkey."- earnestlikehemingway

Few Things More Sad And Scary Than Deforestation

"'Ferngully: The Last Rainforest'."

"That evil tree scared me so bad."- slutsdotnet

Anything But "Truly Scrumptious"...

"The 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' Childcatcher guy!"

"I'm still scared of him!"- Jet_Maypen

child GIFGiphy

Offing Children One By One...In A Children's Movie!

"'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' boat scene."

"Honorable mention of claustrophobia when Augustus gets stuck in the chocolate tube."

"UGH!"- looseseal-bluth

At Least We Know He Had A "Sole"...

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

"That poor shoe….."- dalalice5555

At Least The Song Is Catchy...

"Neverending Story."

"Not even Artax, which was awful, but the Rockbiter and his good strong hands."- marxychick1

Neverending Story 80S GIFGiphy

Dorothy Gettying Electro Shock Therapy Says it All...

"Return to Oz."- Jeff_Steelflexx

"Horrifying! What about the animated wig heads?"- weensfordayz

The Reigning King Of Childhood Trauma

"Old Yeller."- IceTech59

"I remember watching this on TV during, I think, Wonderful World of Disney (Sunday nights were Disney night on TV)."

"Cried and cried and cried."

"I've never been able to watch it again and I've never shown it to my kids!"- crowwitch

Not All Friendships Are Tenable... A Terrifying Thought

"'The Fox and the Hound'."

"Still makes me incredibly sad, lol."- mental_reincarnation

best friends friendship GIFGiphy

Sometimes, writers and filmmakers simply overestimate what might go over a child's head.

Or, for that matter, they might underestimate their emotional capacity.

Regardless, ask any of Fairuza Balk's fans which is scarier, Return to Oz or The Craft, and their answer will be immediate...

(... and it won't be The Craft...)