50 Terrifyingly Traumatic Things That People Have Witnessed In Their Life

Seriously. If you’re already in a depressed state of mind, don’t read this. Some of these are not for the faint of heart. From AskReddit.

1. laksalover

One day when I was 13 and walking home from school, around the corner I saw smoke in the sky, and I thought – hey someone’s house is on fire (I couldn’t see what the smoke was from at this point yet because there was a building in the way). Then when I actually got past the corner, I saw a lot of people from my school who had gathered at the footpath and there was some obvious commotion.

When I finally got into a spot where I could see from the people, I saw this lady in her front yard on fire. I am talking about her whole body from head to toe engulfed in flames and she was just standing there screaming. Her husband was standing next to her ‘trying’ to hose her down. By trying I mean the water coming out of his garden hose was about as much as my pee stream. I remember thinking “WTF turn the water up, and make her roll on the grass”.

Eventually she fell to the ground and just lay there burning. After a while I ran hope because I was so shocked and terrified. The thing that stuck with me the most was that her son of about 5 was standing next to her watching her this entire time. I am talking about like 5 metres away. For a long time afterwards when I would walk past that house on my way to and from school, there was a black patch of grass where she fell and burned.

I later found out her husband was cheating on her and mistreating her at home, and she bought some petrol and poured it over herself and struck a match. It made sense why he didn’t really try to save her or seem devastated. He just stood there like he was watering a plant, so calm and so little water. She suffered third degree burns to 90% of her body and died.

About a week after the incident, there was a funeral, but that black patch of grass remained for almost 2 months.

2. DarwinsFinches

My mom was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, a form of cancer when I was in 6th grade. She was always very healthy and never smoked or drank, so we were caught off guard by the news. She had multiple surgeries and treatments and eventually she got a lot better and actually returned to work and everything seemed golden. But then it came back when I was in 8th grade and it was a lot worse. It got to the point where my mom was bedridden and couldn’t use her tongue, so she couldn’t speak. We ended up giving her a bell to ring if we weren’t near her if she needed anything since she no longer was able to speak clearly.

One day I came home after school and it was just my mom and I. I was with her for awhile just speaking to her and comforting her because she was in a lot of pain most of the time. I decided to hop on the computer that was downstairs when my mom got tired.

I was chatting on AIM when I heard the bell ringing frantically and I knew something was wrong. I ran upstairs to the bedroom and she wasn’t in bed, but I saw this trail of blood leading to the bathroom. I ran over and she was propped up against the sink with blood pouring out of her mouth. When I mean this, imagine turning on a faucet full blast, that kind of force. I panicked and fumbled for the phone to dial 911.

When I was on the phone with the operator, she collapsed from the lack of blood pressure in front of me and died. I remember coming home from the hospital at almost midnight with my brother and father cleaning the bathroom with a mop and bucket, mopping up all the blood. I couldn’t walk into the bathroom after that for a long time.

To this day I don’t know physiologically what happened that made my mother hemorrhage all her blood, but I always hope that she didn’t feel any pain and felt comfort in the fact that I was there with her and that she didn’t have to die alone.

3. MsAnthr0py

When I was around 14, I was hanging out with two of my cousins who were brothers. They got into a fight. I don’t really remember about what. But my younger cousin says to his older brother, “I fucking hate you. Don’t touch me” and runs off. I remember thinking I should probably chase him but I didn’t.

Well days go by no one sees him. His mom starts frantically looking for him. Well days turn to a month. Rumors start to fly. People see him random places. Mostly people thought he just ran away. One day, I’m walking home from school and I see a fire truck and police all over an arroyo next to my house.

I go in to get a closer look. Turns out after that fight, my little cousin hung himself by his own belt and he had been hanging in the arroyo by my house for over a month, The birds had pecked out his eyes and random animals had eaten part of his face. It was the most horrifying thing to see and to know he had been there the whole fucking time. If only I had followed him….

4. triforce721

Route Tampa, near Baghdad, Iraq.

An IED exploded as a bus of Iranian pilgrims passed by. The bus was composed mainly of women and children, with a few men interspersed.

As my convoy passed, a man was walking away from the blast area, holding his dead son (maybe four or five years old). Worst thing I have ever seen.

5. Hobofett

On the way to my first day of school, I had to cross some train tracks. When i got there I saw my dad who worked for the train company testing the crossing gate. I stopped and got out to chat with my dad for a bit. While I was stopped, a train made its way down the tracks. At the same time, a native couple who were intoxicated tried to run across the tracks and beat the train. The husband made it across. The wife, however, tripped and fell down. When she got to her knees, she looked up and the train came and exploded her. And when I say exploded, I truly mean it. Pieces went everywhere. I still remember her split-second scream and the chaos that ensued.

6. sciencenerd86

The first day of 5th grade, I was riding the school bus home (short of field trips, my first ever school bus ride). You know how buses have to open the doors and look out at train tracks? Well, when they opened the doors, the kid in the first seat jumped out and started running.

These tracks were very old and didn’t have the arm that came down. This kid ran directly in front of an oncoming train. The 40-some of us on the bus literally watched our new classmate die in the most horrible and gruesome way to die. It took years for me to be able to ride a school bus again. That wasn’t the first time there had been an accident at those tracks, and after that incident, the city thought it best to close the road that crossed through the tracks.

7. abittooshort

About six years ago while walking home from work, I heard a loud screeching and a large BANG, that could only have come from a car crash. I ran to where it came from, and saw that an SUV had t-boned a small hatchback. The crash was big, but not huge, but the hatchback was quite old and pretty busted up.

Being a first-aider, I ran over to see if I could help anyone, expecting nothing more than whip-lash, sprained limbs and shock.

Nope!

Every single fucking person in the hatchback was dead! Every last fucking one of them! Apparently none of them were wearing seat belts and as a result, a crash that should have been a trip to the hospital ended up killing two men, one woman and a fucking 6 year old girl! I just stood there, staring at these bloodied corpses sprawled across each other, contorted and mangled, for what felt like years.

But that fucking 6 year old! I mean, fuck! She looked so damn shocked as she lay there motionless. Why wouldn’t you belt up your kid, man? She didn’t need to go like that!

8. anonoman925

3 stories:

  1. When I was younger (5 or 6) my mom and I used to visit my grandmother at the local hospital – my grandma was a nurse. One trip we happened upon was a man being rushed through the doors into the ER. He had tried to commit suicide. He put a shotgun under his chin, but only blew of his chin, lips, and the skin to his forehead. As they were wheeling him through, he looked right at me.
  2. I used to walk home from school (I was in the 3rd grade). Walking home there was a house fire being extinguished. They ended up dragging out the bodies of a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. I ended up seeing the charred corpse of the 2-year-old as they zipped him up. To this day I can identify the smell of a house fire and it brings this back.
  3. I think I was around 4 or so. We were driving past an accident where a semi had rear-ended/crawled up on a volkswagen beetle. I was able to see the emergency workers trying to extract the female driver – screaming about her kids in the back seat.

9. BakedPotatoTattoo

When I was 8, my mother had come to pick me up early from school to take me to the doctor. We were heading down a rural back road that had a notoriously dangerous sharp curve, and as we approached the curve we saw a Jeep Grand Wagoneer badly damaged, having (probably) just wrecked moments before we came on the scene. My mother asked me to stay in the car while she went and checked it out; of course being a curious kid I got out anyway to go look.

What I saw I’ll never forget; there were two people in the car, a small boy in the back seat area around my age and the driver, a male; we found out later the driver was the boy’s father. The father was dead and the boy was laying in the back-seat area kinda whimpering and quietly sobbing. My mother was kind of frozen in shock, but when the boy started saying he was “cold” she snapped back into reality and told me to go get my blanket from the car (I carried a security blanket with me everywhere till then, I was a bit old for it I know).

I brought my mother the blanket and my favorite action figure; a Michelangelo TMNT figure I absolutely loved to let the boy “play” with while we got help (of course, I learned later in life that him complaining of being cold was likely from shock). He kinda laid there clutching the toy and telling us his name while my mother tried to talk to him and watch the road for oncoming traffic to signal for help. (late eighties, cell phones were not prevalent).

I’m not sure how long it took until someone came along and went for help but we sat there for what seemed like an eternity talking to this little boy. EMT’s showed and took the boy to the hospital and one of the EMTs asked me if he could could keep the toy and he’d try to get it back to me. I told him yes he could keep it.

I never did see the toy again and I assumed that the kid kept it; I was OK with it because it upset me that the boy was kinda smiling with it in his had; I wanted him to keep it. My mom told me years later when I was older, the kid died later that day of internal injuries. She bought me a new Michelangelo toy eventually but I’d never play with it, only the other three. God, I’m 30 now and just typing this out makes me cry. Poor kid.

10. Currant

When I was about 5 or 6, my baby sitter and I walked to the grocery store to get ice cream. we walked into the store with a mother, her toddler son, and her daughter about my age.

As we were leaving the store, I witnessed a mother abandon her daughter. The memory of the girl running after her mom’s car as her mom drove fast to the exit is burned in my memory.

What always bothered me was I said, “What is wrong, why is the mom driving away?” And I looked to my baby sitter, who must have been in her early 20s, say, “Don’t look.”

I remember there were shoppers loading their cars and just looked on and didn’t do anything to help the girl. I think about it every now and then when I see a missing person’s report or at the time look at the milk cartons for missing kids… and wish I was old enough to help the girl all those years back. I felt so helpless being a kid and mad at the world for not stopping the mother and always wondered what happened to that blonde girl.

11. DocRobertson

When I was in high school I went to a party in a “bad” part of town. At one point, the house owner had found out that his girlfriend had cheated on him and the guy was at the party. A group of guys grabbed him and held him down on a table where the boyfriend smashed the guy’s genitals with a hammer. All in all I was out that front door in seconds.

12. nvth1s

I was camping and hiking in the woods in Idaho just north of McCall.

I had been hearing this guy bombing around the hills on a dirt bike, we had crossed paths a couple of times, while we were starting to go down this big hill he comes from behind us and we step to the side, but this time he is riding double with this pretty young woman, with no helmet on either of them. Then at the bottom of the hill the guy loses control dumps it bad, we go running down to see if someone needs help. The girl is sitting next to the guy screaming and crying and when we get around the corner he is bleeding everywhere. She is holding his grey matter and brain trying to put it back in.

We knew he was probably gone on impact. We called in emergency services but they knew that there was nothing they could do, the girl riding on the back was flown out on lifeflight for a broken ankle and dislocated shoulder. This has freaked me out ever since, I never ride my ATV or Bike without a helmet, this guy had seemed like he knew what he was doing I had seen him tearing it up all day, but all it takes is one mistake.

13. Tysonb_

My buddy and I were driving down State in Salt Lake City around 2:00AM. There are many bars close to downtown, as we were passing one, we saw this little blonde girl hop on a motorcycle (with no helmet) cruise out of the parking lot and start hauling ass down the street.

We were about 20 feet behind her when she was going under an overpass (I-80) she must not have seen the red light right after the bridge but she T-boned a silver jeep that was coming off the freeway.

The girl on the motorcycle must have been going about 45MPH. She was sent flying over the Jeep and into oncoming traffic on the other side of the road. With me being right behind her, I slammed on my brakes and hopped out of my car to see if I could help.

I had dispatch on the line while I was running up to her. Her leg was contorted behind her head with her head bleeding horribly. She died at the scene… I sold my Harley the next day.

14. iaccidentlytheworld

I witnessed the aftermath of an accidental 18 story fall.

Turned the street corner, and thud! The sound sticks with me just as much as the visual of seeing a person literally folded in half. His face was purple. His friends were screaming from the balcony. Apparently he was drunk and tried to hop between two balconies.

15. syringa

Found a woman in an apartment complex where I used to work who had been pinned under her dining table for two days after having a stroke. She had pulled it down on top of her during the episode.

The whole time the maintenance crew were pulling it off and we were waiting for the ambulance, she was saying, “Oh dear, I hate to be a bother… Really, Im fine, no, no…” In a very high pitched and airy voice. I immediately took my lunch and cried in my car.

16. Yo_CSPANraps

I was on my way to pick up my buddy one day from work. Everything’s going alright , I’m pulling up to the corner where his work is on, the lights turning red so I start to slow down.

However, some dude going the opposite direction decides to test it and speeds up. I don’t know if he didn’t see her or maybe he was drunk or something, but he proceeds to destroy this little girl (couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8) who was riding her bike across the street with her family. It. Was. Awful. Girl flew about 10 feet, blood splattered on the ground, the family screaming, everyone crying. I couldn’t take it.

The worst part was I called my buddy afterwards to tell him I was there, but he said he had something left to do and it would be a few minutes. So I had to pull into this dairy store parking lot right in front of where it happened and watch the situation unfold. Listening to the family crying, seeing the paramedics come. I eventually couldn’t take it anymore and called my friend and told him to get his ass out now or else I was leaving. I never found out what happened to the girl, never bothered to read the local newspapers, I just hope she was alright.

17. habadacas

I watched my mother die of complications from pneumonia shortly after having a gastric bypass.

It started with me at a family friends down the street mowing the lawn. I saw an ambulance scream past, somehow i immediately knew it was headed to my house.

I left the lawn mower running in the middle of the yard and sprinted home. I arrived in time to see 3 paramedics giving my mom CPR. I saw my moms body convulse, and then it was over. its been over 25 years since that dreadful day. I still sometimes get the occasional nightmare of this horrific experience.

18. KsigCowboy

When I was 12, I was standing on the curb waiting for a car to pass to cross the street. A man was crossing from the other side and the car never saw him. He was hit by a Nissan Maxima, went underneath the car and came out the backside not five feet from where I was standing. The sound of him trying to breathe as his lungs filled with blood is something I will never forget.

19. salemblack

When I was very young I saw a UPS like truck crash. It was on this little road next to a lake. There was a wall on the other side of the road and he hit it. He came out of the tuck and hit the wall. Us and a few other cars were stuck due to the crash, we had no way to turn around. The man had lost a great portion of the left side of his head but was still alive and conscious.

A cop showed up first on the scene. The ambulance was not there and was going to take awhile since this was out in the middle of nowhere. The driver was screaming and begging the cop to shoot him, to just end it. This went on for a few minutes. The cop was freaking out and crying and the driver was screaming. My mom was trying to cover my face and ears but I heard and saw enough to still see it. I remember the sound of both of their voices. The echo of the wall and the quiet of the lake made it so much worse.

The cop did it. He shot him. He just fell down on his knees and cried and screamed. It didn’t break. It was combined into one unending howl. The whole incident was short but felt like forever. I remember every bit of it. The colors and sounds. I really wish I couldn’t.

20. Cthulhuhoop

I used to stay with my grandparents over summers while my parents were at work. My grandpa was chief of the local volunteer fire department, so I’d get to go watch the fires if no one was at home to stay with me. I was 7 or 8 the last time I went.

The house was a little brick shoebox in a fairly decent neighborhood, but currently had flames shooting out all of its windows. It was set back from the road, so I was able to sit on the bumper of the firetruck and watch everyone hook the hoses up. Before they get the hoses going, a guy(the home owner) walks from the side of the house, puts a revolver under his chin and – POW.

I don’t know what happened after that, I was scooped up and thrown back in the truck. I asked about this when I was older, apparently the guy was a single and depressed taxidermist, and had set the fire himself after turning his pets loose.

21. A-punk

I used to have a slight indentation in the side of my head. According to my Dad who I overheard talking to his friends it was from the tremendous force of his penis while I was in utero.

I realize this is impossible but it’s not great imagery as a kid. Also I think my Dad may be an idiot.

22. asqj

Must have been about 12 and spending my summer holidays doing odd jobs like filing, in my Dad’s law firm. Across the road was a block of apartments which were pretty run down and rough looking.

All of a sudden one of my Dad’s colleague’s came through saying there was a woman on a ledge and we rushed to the window to see what was going on.

There was a cop inside trying to talk her out of jumping and it seemed she might have been convinced with a bit more time but somehow she lost her balance and fell 7 or 8 storeys onto concrete, dying instantly.

Quite confusing and traumatic for young me. Haven’t thought about this for a long time till now…

23. AthosPorthosAramis

Most traumatic would be a government sponsored massacre in Venezuela. There was a peaceful protest on April 11 of 02′ (If memory serves correctly) and the government along with paramilitary forces started shooting at the protesters. My parents were at those protests, I couldn’t get into contact with them, while on live television from my aunts house I was seeing people getting shot to death. I was ~9. Definitely not as traumatic as yours but I found it terrifying.

24. contemplator

I was driving to church with my mom. It was a Wednesday evening bible study. I was around 12. We were driving down the freeway and I noticed a car on the shoulder up ahead with hazards blinking and the hood up.

Dusk was approaching, so it was that time of day where everything seems to be in shades of blue and grey. All of a sudden cars up ahead were jamming on the brakes and swerving. I saw a dark figure fly into the air and come down just in time to be smacked by another car.

Still not sure what was happening, we slowly approached the commotion. My mom was driving slowly and trying to figure out what happened. The first thing I saw was a shoe out in the left lane and then I saw a human head laying against the concrete barrier. Then my attention was drawn to the right side of the road where a headless old man in a suit was laying contorted and still pumping blood out of his neck stump. My vantage point put me less than 5 feet from where he lay. A very shocked and upset old lady was sitting in the car that had it’s hazards on. I assume the old man stepped out onto the freeway without looking.

It felt like it took forever to drive past that mans body. I can still see it in my mind as clear as the day it happened. 25 years ago.

For years after that, when I would see anyone jaywalking, I would say to whoever I was with. “That’s a good way to lose your head.”

Check out more scary Thought Catalog posts here.

25. vlmodcon

I worked in a major inner city ED for about 10 years. I saw so much stuff that after a while it just all faded into this gray mass of human frailty, human suffering and occasionally human evil. So, I won’t even talk about most things, as I became fairly immune to them. But one man came in by ambulance whose wife had caught him with another woman.

Apparently he was asleep when she found him. She took a .25 calibre browning pistol, placed it directly against his head and fired all 10 rounds into his skull, moving from spot to spot to assure that all angles were covered. A .25 round will penetrate the skull but then will not exit. But it will bounce around inside the skull.

After this was over, this poor guy still had enough lower brain functions for his heart to beat and other basic autonomic body activities to continue. When we got him we intubated him (placed a breathing tube in his trachea) and put him on a ventilator. He had enough reflex response left to “buck” against the machine…basically coughing strongly and fighting it. When he did this his intracranial (inside his skull) pressure would increase and little fountains of brain, gray matter would squirt out of the 10 holes in his head. He finally died of a massive infection. Seeing those fountains of gray matter pretty much got to me.

26. coldsandovercoats

I watched someone fall out of a pickup truck and another truck ran them over.

My dad and I were driving to my grandma’s house one summer evening, and some guys were in the back of pickup trucks, bantering back and forth, tossing a ball back and forth. They were behind us on this four-lane county road. I was watching them out of the back window. One of the pickups decided to speed up (they had previously been directly next to each other), presumably in a race. One of the guys wasn’t braced for the sudden speed up and lost his balance and fell out of the truck. The other truck didn’t even have time to stop, and they ran straight over him. My dad rushed to help but the guy was already gone. Basically, his chest/neck was run over with both the tires. He was… deflated, I guess would be the best way to put it. We stayed with the guys until the EMTs came.

27. MadLintElf

Waiting outside of my friends house, he lived on the third floor of an apartment complex.

We were sitting around a tree, he was fighting with his mother (as usual). We could hear what they were saying, and finally my friend screamed out I am gay, deal with it.

His mother freaked out, started screaming that your not my son. There is no way I will allow this in my house you can’t be gay.

My friend jumped right out the window, dead on impact. Wish he would’ve told us, we might of been able to support him more.

28. [deleted]

When I was 15, my mom and I got into an argument. She pulled out a kitchen knife and started chasing me around the house, screaming, “I’m going to kill you.” I ran out the door and ran for another mile to my friend’s house, where I called the police.

My dad coincidentally shows up first (he was at work) and told me not to tell the police what my mom did, or she might go to jail for a long time, and I won’t have a mom. So I say nothing happened. Fast forward a few months, my mom and I get into another argument and my dad, sick of all the arguments, kicks down my bedroom door and, while my little brother is holding my feet down, he sits on me and proceed to strangle me with our dog chain.

I manage to break free, hit him in the face a few times, and run out. Slept under a bridge than night. Next morning went to a fire station, got put into foster care.

Lots of other shit in between, but I would say that is the most fucked up thing I’ve experienced so far.

29. throwaway8238493

I killed someone.

I think about ending my own life every day.

It was manslaughter. I hit and killed a little girl going about 50mph on a highway in a place I didn’t know very well. She had run onto the road chasing a ball that she and her brother had been playing with, her mom was outside but she was busy talking to one of her friends and wasn’t paying attention to her kids.

I remember a lot of screaming…I started crying. I was hyperventilating and sobbing and shaking and just absolutely hysterical. The police arrived and an ambulance but the girl was already dead. Before they got there, I remember the mother just screaming and it was the worst kind of thing I’ve ever heard. I had gotten out of the car immediately after it happened (I wasn’t really hurt, some bumps and bruises and some lingering problems) but I had so much adrenaline that I didn’t even notice them until later, I just remember the mom running over and checking her daughter, then screaming at me and shoving me until her friend pulled her off. The little girl was pronounced dead at the scene.

Of course it was an accident, I would never mean to hit ANYONE let alone a child, and it was classified as involuntary manslaughter. I never got any jail time. I was going within the speed limit, I wasn’t intoxicated in any way. The police officers that showed up were actually really nice considering the circumstances.

Some time has passed but I still think about it. I found out the girl was four. I don’t drive anymore because of it, I haven’t been behind the wheel in years and I hardly ever get into cars anyway. I’m too fucking scared.

I hate myself for it, I’m constantly depressed, I wish it would have been me instead of her. I wish that every day.

30. throwawayCG

I was 19 and in the Coast Guard, working at the small boat station out of St. Petersburg, Florida. We got a call about a floater. We’ve had calls about these before but they are usually palm fronds or something else that can be mistaken for a body floating, we always hope it’s a false alarm. We get in the our small boat cutter and get out to the vicinity. On our way out to recover the floater, we get a call that another has been spotted. We pull in the first and are on our way to the second when we get a call that yet ANOTHER fucking body has been found. My 19 year old brain is overwhelmed, I’m trying to process everything and trying not to let my mind just lose the fuck out of itself as it wants to.

It was a middle aged woman and her two teenage daughters. They were bound, duct taped, and tied down by cinder blocks. I will never escape from the expressions on their faces. They died alive, the horror expressed on their faces, the torture. It seemed apparent that they had been sexually assaulted from their lack of pants/panties. This is why I have a throwaway for this, I never speak of this, I want to forget it and I don’t want to relive it through questions here on my regular account. Those faces will forever haunt me. As I learned of their fate which took years later (they didn’t catch the fucker until 3 years after), it hurt my soul.

I remember pulling them out, sobbing, throwing up and just a complete fucking mess. We all were traumatized by it. I balled up in the cabin down below and was unable to process it. How the fuck could another human do this to others?

It was just a mom on vacation with her 2 daughters for a few days before her husband/ their dad was to join them from Ohio. They were dead before he got to leave and join them.

Not long ago someone was giving me shit on here on my regular account about serving in the military and that I was in a “bullshit” service that didn’t actually count. I didn’t say it because I don’t talk of it but I wanted to say, “You go pull out people who have been raped and tortured out of the water and tell me I didn’t serve my country.”

31. Enginerda

I was at home playing with my brother and we hear these screams outside. So we head for the balcony to try to figure out what is going on. We see two big, burly men fist fighting and since we were on the second floor of this building, we could get a really close view of them. It’s shocking to start with, blood everywhere, but then this thing happens and I don’t think I will ever forget it. one of the guys’ eye comes out of its socket and now blood is everywhere and he is screaming. We duck and I guess someone called the police because we didn’t see them after.

32. Vermillion_Hells

Once my dog escaped my convertible in a grocery shopping center. He was leashed in but pulled out of his collar. He thought he was in trouble so he ran into a 3×3 lane highway. I ran out into the road stopping cars trying to stop my dog from being hit. Some A-hole saw me, accelerated towards me then swerved at the last minute striking my dog. Right in front of me. All I could do was scream in terror. A primal scream I’ve never had before or since.

Then he backed up peeled out because I was about 2 steps from yanking him out of the car.

My dog got up and ran off into the field. We trudged through the field into the evening. I called everyone I knew to come help me. We dodged rattle snakes, security guards. The security guard told me I was looking for a dead dog and that I should go home. I gave up around 4 in the morning to go home totally defeated.

Then my girlfriend called. She had found him sitting in a parking lot opposite where we were looking. Somehow, he had gone through a drainage ditch and popped up on the other side of the road. He was just sitting there for who knows how long watching us search. He had a bad scrape above his eye but otherwise normal. Vet looked him over and said “Well, he’s a tough pooch”.

33. erthwormal

When I was about 12 years old I was home alone on a Friday night playing computer games. I notice a spider crawling on my desk so in a most natural fashion I took off my shoe and gave it a good ole’ thwacking. When I lifted the shoe up approximately 50 baby spiders scurried out in all direction from their mommy’s corpse. I have no idea why it happened like that but I was horrified and cannot even think about spiders without my skin crawling.

34. QueenofNerds

This happened when I was about 13 or 14. There was a huge snow storm where I lived and we were driving home from my grams in it. There is this little highway that goes under I-80 in my town and there are always a lot of tractor trailers getting off I-80 and traveling on this road going to McDonalds or the truck stop.

We got to a point where the snow was coming down so bad that we slowed down to about 20 mph. All of a sudden there are brake lights in front of us and my dad slams on the brakes. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he realized what was happening and ordered us all out of the car. I was confused. There was a tractor trailer that had jackknifed and more and more cars kept crashing, not being able to see what was ahead of them. Our car ended up smashed and the total was something like 120 cars/trucks in the wreck. The part that was terrifying to me? I could hear the screams and cries of people stuck in all the wreckage, underneath cars. I just stood there frozen. My dad actually saved 4 people that night including an infant. Never forget that night.

35. uneasyrider

Was traveling home on the interstate in my dad’s RV. As we approached an exit, we saw in the distance 2 cars who had just wrecked. One of them recovered and pulled off the exit ramp. The other vehicle ran into the guard rail in the middle of the interstate and rolled back out into the middle of the road.

My dad slows down his RV and we start pulling off the side of the road. Soon we were about to pass the car in the middle of the road. The guy gets out of his car (his drivers side door was facing into oncoming traffic). He stands there outside of his car for a second, and looks directly at us pulling off the side of the road. We were probably 15 feet away from him. We could see the whites of his eyes.

My dad looks in his side mirror and says ‘oh shit’. A Chevy Tahoe comes barreling past us, never hits his brakes… and slams into the car at probably 80mph. He slammed directly into the drivers side of the car, crushing the man between his grill and his car.

It all happened in a split second not even a stones throw away from us. After the Tahoe hits, 2 more cars crash into the pileup as well. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it except sit there an watch the carnage.

I’ve seen bad wreck, and the aftermath of bad wrecks. But there was something about this one that made it so terrible. The guy looked right at us just 2 seconds before his life ended. I had nightmares replaying the wreck for probably 3 weeks.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the whites of his staring at us… being the last thing he ever saw.

My dad stopped and helped out (he’s a retired firefighter). He went and took 1 look at the guy who got hit. He was a mangled mess. The guy driving the Tahoe was texting, and never saw the guy in the middle of the interstate. He lived, but messed up his neck pretty bad. The 2 other cars who wrecked survived.

Watch where you’re going, people. If you’re wrecked in the middle of the interstate, get the fuck off the road.

36. rn2b

This is a lot like mine! My oldest son was about 6 months old and it was a gorgeous, crazy-for-the-season warm February day. My mom and I decided to go for a nice long walk with my son in his stroller, my Yorkie and Chihuahua and her Lab and Golden retriever on leashes.

About halfway through the walk, three largish dogs come running out from a yard. I thought they were going to have a nice little doggie greeting/sniff fest until one of the dogs grabbed my Yorkie and started shaking him. Of course, all hell breaks loose as all the leashes are dropped and I take up a post in front of my son in his stroller. My mom managed to grab my dog out of the other dog’s mouth only to have him wrangled away from her again by the dog, who commences another round of Yorkie-shaking.

I figured the best bet is to run up to the door to get the owners of these animals to leave us the fuck alone. I pounded on the door while trying to keep an eye out for these dogs. By this point, my mom had my Yorkie safely in her grasp again, thanks to her boss of a Golden who made it clear that he was the big dog in this fight but the other dogs had taken off after my poor, little terrified Chihuahua. The owners were obviously not home so my mom screams at me to get the heck out of there just as my little Chi comes running around the corner towards me with three huge dogs on her tail. Again, boss Golden takes a stand between me, my son and my Chi and asserts his position as big dog. They realized this wasn’t a fight they wanted and turned back to their kennels.

After the adrenaline wore off, my Yorkie started bleeding pretty profusely and ended up having multiple surgeries and blood transfusions. I called Animal Control as soon as possible and filed a report and also found out it wasn’t the first time the dog in question had attacked another dog. The owners filed a claim with their homeowner’s insurance to cover the thousands of dollars in vet bills.

As much as I love my dogs, the most terrifying part was that it all happened with my baby boy feet away.

37. AngryEnt

I saw my dad’s nutsack one time. I do not even wish that upon my enemies.

38. okay_jpg

I had to spend 3 days in a hospital for attempted suicide (thats another story…). Across from me was a very old woman. I had to be “on watch” so I always had a doctor/watcher with me in the room, 24/7. One night he fell asleep, and I woke up to the old woman moaning and crying from behind her curtains. I heard the doctor shush her, and go back to sleeping in his chair.

I pressed my call button so that someone would come to assist her. Then she started begging “please.. oh god please help me….. help me….. please” (It was like, 3AM) I got up from my bed, pulled back her curtains and pressed the emergency call by her bed. She was on her side crying. She grabbed my hand and begged me to help her… I told her someone was coming to help…

After someone finally arrived, the shoved me away from her bed and told me to go away… we were in the same room only separated from a curtain, so I heard everything. I went back to my bed, the doctor who fell asleep FINALLY got up to help. After some struggling and running around, it was evident that she wasn’t doing well. A few things disturbed me about this. Like hearing the doctor say “Should we suction her?” and the doctor who fell asleep previously saying “Nahhhh…”

I fell asleep afterwards again. I woke up early in the morning to hear her family crying by her bedside. Again, I went back to sleep. When I awoke it was time for me to be discharged from the hospital, I pulled her curtains open, and saw the most disturbing thing I’ve ever witnessed. Her body, on the bed, wrapped in a white body bag. I slept beside her dead body all night.

39. MrConfucius

4 years ago, I was at a friend’s house and we were hanging out and whatnot. He got up to go take a night shower before we passed out. I’m playing video games, I don’t notice how late he’s gone. It was about 2 hours. I began to knock on the door and he wouldn’t answer, so we got his brother to unlock it (it had one of those little hole openers). He had slit his wrists in the bathtub. Guy was 15.

40. adidaz3223

I was 14. Fishing on bridge off of Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami at night. Heard a crash and explosion. Turned around to see a huge fireball at the foot of the Causeway. Ran over to help. Couldn’t get closer than half a block due to heat from flames. 300ZX speeding down bridge lost control, spun into oncoming traffic. Hit the side of a Ford F-250 with its rear. The car exploded on impact.

The truck was pulling a 25′ boat which flew off the trailer and went over both cars. I could clearly see the bodies burning in the car… then the passenger door opened and she starts crawling out while completely on fire. Crawls a few paces and dies. I couldn’t look away as her body was burning and their friends from another car were crying and yelling. Yes, I’m traumatized for life. Had to go home after that. Very quiet ride back home with my dad.

41. dabroboy

When I was a kid, out of the window of my Brooklyn elementary school, I witnessed 9/11. As I was causally staring out the window, a building just… collapsed. It was surreal, I couldn’t process it, and I was the first in my class to see it happen. When the teacher walked over to the window, she started crying hysterically: she lost three family members that day, her husband and two brothers who both worked in the tower. If I remember correctly, they were on the floor that got directly hit. There was no chance that they could have survived. I don’t know what’s worse, seeing my teacher burst out in tears, seeing a building go up in flames, or having to stay indoors or the next two weeks, as my father (Indian Hindu born in Thailand) received countless death threats as people mistook him for a Muslim. The icing on the cake was when I found out that my teacher committed suicide because of this event within the next month. Sorry for ruining your day reddit, and I honestly hope nobody sees this.

42. SomeRandomRedditer

One day when I was pregnant I came home from work early feeling unwell. When I got home, the carpet in my dining room was black and vibrating. It was covered, every inch, with thousands of flying ants. I have never seen anything like it. The floor was undulating like the tides of the ocean. I ran to my bedroom, closed the door and stuffed towels under the jam. I stayed there until my husband came home six hours later. By then there were only a few random bugs left and to this day I have no idea where they all went (or how they got there in the first place).

43. Raptormoses75

WHY THE FUCK AM I STILL READING THIS!

44. jorjin

I sat by the bed of my mother while she looked straight in my eyes and begged me to stop the pain. About 4 to 5 awful days later she passed while I held her hand, at during she made suffocating noises. Three years later I still have nightmares, I can’t erase this shit from my memory.

45. Armadillo19

Was once riding on the T in Boston and the guy sitting directly in front of me took a massive shit in his pants and then was forcibly removed by transit cops dressed in hazmat suits as he tried to reach into his pants and fling his shit at people.

When the transit cop first got on the train she looked at the guy and groaned, “Aw hell no nigga, I just threw your ass off last week for this shit!” Repeat offender I guess.

46. Justsomebadmemories

I do have two, though they involve no death or gore. I’m sure they’re not nearly as traumatic as all of these, but they do bother me once in a while to this day.

First, when I was seven. I have a twin sister, and she and I were always perfect little school kids, always getting top grades and such. One night my twin sister simply refused to do her homework. Just for that one night. My mother threw a fit and stormed all over the place, calling that poor little girl a piece of shit (She was fucking seven) and all sorts of atrocities that you should never, ever hear at such a young age. From your own mother. When we went to sleep that night, as my mother was leaving the room I said a quiet ‘I love you’ to try and appease her. She stopped, told me she loved me too, then stormed back to my sister’s bed, started tearing off the sheets and throwing them around the room, literally screaming how much she hated her. All the while my poor sister was in fetal position, sobbing, shaking, whimpering uncontrollably. I lay on the other bed, absolutely petrified. It was scary and so heartbreaking to see that happen to my sister. I crawled in to her bed as soon as my mother left and slept with her that night.

Secondly, just a few months ago, my mother caught me crying in my room. Due to some complications that happened a few months prior (won’t bother explaining), my mother was very touchy about me mentioning a certain friend, even though it was all a misunderstanding. My mother was just stressing me out like mad, because I had to be so careful and was fighting with her all the time, that sort of thing. So when she caught me crying, and I explained that I was just tired of having to be on my toes all the time, she told me to come talk to her in her room. I just explained that I wished she didn’t hate my friend so much, and that I was stressed. I don’t remember how, but somehow it descended into her having to work all the time, deal with our asshole father, feed the family, etc. She repeated the food fact many times and started saying things like she was going to hang herself, she wanted to die, all that. Right to my face. Saying it was my fault. I’m fifteen and having your mother tell you that she wants to hang herself because of you is no fun.

47. Digipy

Transformers 3. I don’t want to talk about it.

48. Br3330

I once saw a garden snake… a real big one, so big i pissed my pants.

49. IshotAbeLincoln

I was 15, I saw my mom’s boob. She was wearing a loose shirt and picked something up off the floor. I couldn’t jerk off for weeks. Every time I tried I just saw my mom’s tit.

50. Sleazise

Why am I reading this before going to sleep?

I think…it’s time…for something…cheerful.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsglk-kDSCU&w=584&h=390]

I’m going to lie down for a while now. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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