22 People Explain The Scariest Situation They Have Ever Found Themselves Stuck In

1. My father planned out my whole family’s murder

“Overhearing my dad and his friend planning out the murder of my mother, sister and me. I had just turned 17, back in 1986. He was going to burn the house down while we slept that night – he worked midnights. I wasn’t supposed to be home. When I heard him going through the house getting whatever items he wanted to save from the fire (& talking about the plan), I hid in the crawl space between our family room and hall closet. He left to take a load to hide at his friends house. I ran to call someone, anyone (small town of 500 & only 1 sheriff who was his friend) but he had cut the phone lines. Thankfully my mom and sister came home before he got back from his friends house. My sister and I had to plead with our mom to leave but she did. He abused her for 25 years. Now she’s almost 80 and takes tap & jazz lessons, yoga classes, goes on all kinds of trips with her fellow seniors. She’s awesome.” — getaduck11

2. A man kidnapped me at gunpoint and raped me

“When I was 5 1/2 months pregnant and was taken from work at gun point and raped repeatedly for 3 hours. He kept pointing the gun at me and saying he was going to kill me. He has 5 class x felonies now. Trial starts in a month.” — applejellyclouds

3. Two inmates attacked me inside of the laundry room

“I was working as a Correctional Officer. I was standing in the doorway of the laundry room to watch two inmates put their clothes in the washing machines. These were both inmates that I had good rapport with, so I wasn’t really paying attention too closely.

One of them pulled out a little piece of copper wire that he’d taken from his television cable. The inmates used that to put down the coin slot and trip the lever so they didn’t have to pay for laundry. Obviously this wasn’t legal, and I was offended that they’d do it in front of me. I thought we had mutual respect.

The mistake that I made was trying to handle it personally and alone. I had taken care of many problems throughout the prison that way, as I don’t really believe in paperwork unless absolutely necessary, as it can add time to sentences and further ruin their lives.

I stepped into the laundry room to walk over to the inmates and take the wire. I was relaxed about it and was in the middle of saying, ‘Look, I don’t want to write you up, just give me that wire and do your laundry.’

The door shut behind me, and one of the inmates stepped between me and the door. When I looked over at him, the inmate still in front of me grabbed me by the shirt.

The problem here is that the laundry room was a small room with concrete walls, no windows or cameras, and a door that is locked from the outside. I was pretty sure I was going to get beat to death in there.

Looking back, it is a good lesson in violence. I’ve been in martial arts since 2006. I have done a ton of different styles, mostly Judo, Hapkido, and Taekwondo. I can do some of those fancy Jean Claude Van Damme flying spin kicks and whatnot, but in that moment, none of that fancy stuff came to mind.

I pretty much just turned my shoulders perpendicular to the inmate grabbing me, trapped his hand on my shirt (and ripped my top button off at the same time, may it rest in piece behind that dryer) and used my other arm to hit his elbow. I was trying to break it, but I didn’t hit it right. It still got me enough control to break the grips on my shirt and shove him face first into the dryer.

The next mistake I made was stepping around to face the other inmate, which put one guy on the floor in front of me, then the other guy, and then the door. In my good fortune, the other inmate started to step over his pal to attack me, as it was too late to back down at that point.

As soon as his foot neared the ground again from his step, I hooked my heel around it and pulled it to me. Now he was in a super wide stance and way off balance. He was also between me and the wall. The cool thing about Judo is that breaking your opponent’s balance renders them almost entirely useless a striking platform. He had nowhere to draw power from, so when he tried to push me backwards from his position, he almost pushed himself over. I shoved him as hard as I could right into the wall, which does not feel great.

With his wind gone, and him collapsing on top of the other guy who was now trying to stand up, I was free to haul ass out of there. I pressed my radio distress button and started yelling for help. The whole thing lasted probably 10 seconds but it felt like forever.

As soon as the other officers got up there, the inmates ran out of there yelling about how I beat them up for no reason and that I’d been spouting racial slurs at them all day and whatnot. I had to be investigated for that, but was found to be clear of it.

If you’ve ever tried to write a report while you’re adrenaline dumping, you know exactly how my paper looked; like Michael J Fox got a hold of my pen.

That was the last time I actually feared for my life. It certainly put things into perspective for me.” — Judoka229

4. We found girls handcuffed and gagged in an abandoned building

“Back in the early 90s my friends and I were planning on sneaking out of the house and going into an abandoned house at the end of the street. I got caught sneaking out so we didn’t go. The next morning we snuck into it anyway. There was 2 girls handcuffed and gagged in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Absolutely spooked us the fuck out. We saved their lives by sneaking into that house but the part that fucked me up for a long time is that they were brought there the night before.” — BLACKMACH1NE

5. I worked at a bank during a robbery

“When I was a bank teller and was robbed, definitely! It was 8am, branch had just opened, I was in the back drinking chocolate milk and my boss was the only other person. Apparently the robber came in, locked the door behind him, grabbed my boss and made him kneel on the ground. Then he came to the back to get me. He had a big black gun and put it to my head, grabbed my arm and pulled me out to where my boss was and told me to get on the ground. Long story short, he was in there for about ten minutes cleaning us out and waving his gun around at us. At the end of it he made us get into the vault and locked us in there. Cops had to come and get us out. That was about 7 years ago, to this day I still get panic attacks when people approach me on my left side, because that’s he side he came at me on.” — Internetmomo

6. My babysitter was murdered during a drive-by

“A drive-by where my former babysitter was shot and killed. I knew who did it, but there wasn’t any proof. He was finally convinced in 2012, my babysitter was shot in 2002.” — TerraNikata

7. My father forced me to dig my own grave at gunpoint

“When my dad made me dig multiple graves in our backyard at gunpoint. He said I was digging multiple ones so I wouldn’t know which one was going to be the one I would end up in. I hit him with a shovel after 2 days of digging and knocked him out, dragged him into his bed, put a bunch of empty beers and his tray of coke minus 2 rails in his room and let him think it never happened.” — Grimcupcake

8. Our store was robbed and a knife was held to my coworker’s throat

“Working third shift at a grocery store when I was 19, the store got held up by two guys. One held a gun on the registers and the other held a knife to one lady’s throat and made her pull the money out of the safe (which was open for till exchange at the time.) The nice older lady at my register actually had a cell phone (late 90’s) and she had her back to the guy with the gun and pulled it out and dialed 9-1-1… maintaining a straight face while she was doing that was really difficult… but I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” — Merulanata

9. I was stuck inside of a tomb after falling inside

“I was exploring (alone) in a large ancient cemetery outside of a small town in Israel. These were Canaanite tombs that were thousands of years old. Many in this region have been left unexcavated, so the area I was looked like a huge low hill full of little dimples marking where these tombs were. So, I was wandering around these shaft tombs, which were dug deep into the ground and then branched out with different spots carved out of the rock for family members to be lain… some of the tombs were open to the air, and quite deep. I got a little too close to the edge and fell in. I fell/slid maybe 10-15 feet and was stuck down there. It was a vertical drop and the sides were loose stone and rubble. It was the middle of the day in Israel in the summer. I had no water and my cell service was kaput since I was below ground. That was terrifying, but the WORST was knowing that I hadn’t told anybody where I was going or when I would be returning. It was going to be a very very long time before anybody even noticed I hadn’t been back for a while, let alone come looking for me. I remember just standing there, looking up out of this hole in the ground with the blazing sun above, the dust floating gently around me in the hazy heat, and realizing how muffled and silent it was. It was an awful feeling, stuck in an ancient grave… like I was experienced the same silence that had existed there forever and I was now a part of it or some sort of deep thought like that. Anyway, I tried to scramble out, but the sides were too eroded and kept crumbling when attempted to hoist myself out. I was really scared I might bring down a whole wall of this tomb and become the most recent burial in a few thousand years. I panicked a bit and just squatted in the dirt and cried for a bit. I was stuck for…maybe 15 minutes at the most before some sort of calm came over me. I went back to the walls, and levering my way up by holding onto some roots and bracing myself on more stable bits of stone, I scrambled the fuck out of there. The feeling of getting out of a grave was so relieving and personal. I wasn’t just stuck in a hole, it was a place meant only for the dead- a place I briefly became a part of. I rarely share that story because I was such an incredible fool. Please don’t ever do what I did ever. I am lucky I didn’t just dehydrate, pass out and die or collapse a wall and suffocate. Oy vey.” — Mr_Xorn

10. A man broke into our house while I was all alone

“I was about 11 years old and off school sick with the flu. My mum worked in the little shop literally 5 minutes away from our house so she left me alone that morning to do her shift and I was just chilling on the couch watching television. I heard the front door open and assumed it was my mum home early. It was a random man who was heavily intoxicated, he went straight to the coffee table and lifted up my bottle of cough medicine and downed the entire lot. I ran and hid in the bathroom and cried, there was no mobile phones back then or anything. After a while I had to run out in my pajamas, really really sick and run along to my mum’s work. The police turned up and found the guy asleep on our couch.” — CrayRaysVaycay

11. The house across the street caught on fire

“When I was 11, the house across the street from me caught fire. It was a fast moving electrical fire. The boy who lived there was 14 and he had a 9 year old sister. All of our parents worked full time, so we were latchkey kids (this was the early 1990s). Anyway, the boy came hauling ass down the street screaming for any adult to come out and help, because his house was on fire and he thought his little sister was in there. I was the only one who heard him, so I grabbed his hand and ran into my house and called 911. He wanted to run into the burning house to find his sister and I knew he would die if he did. I was a scrawny, spindly little girl – 5’6″ and maybe 75 lbs, and he played defense on the football team at 5’8″ and probably 150-170. He was panicking and sobbing and thrashing around, but somehow I found the strength to physically hold him back until my little sister could run down the street to find an actual adult. I guess it was adrenaline or something. All I knew was that the only thing standing between that kid and a horrible death was me.

The good news is that his sister wasn’t in the house after all. She’d gone to a friend’s house without telling him. But for about fifteen minutes, we were sure she was in there burning, and I had to stop him from burning with her.

I’ve been in other scary situations since then, but because of how young we were, that one stands out.” — Redshirt2386

12. Someone tried to carjack us at gunpoint

“Foiled car jacking attempt. Whole family was in the car. They pointed the gun at my dad ordered him to get out of the car, which he did and just froze looking at him. I followed my dad because I loved him, wasn’t thinking clearly, I vividly remember my mom commanding me to get back in the car. Time slowed down. We were both just standing there looking at him. He was a few feet away, gun still pointed at him. Then he backed away and got in a get away car that I guess was part of his crew. I was grateful that day. Very very grateful.” — JEREMIAH33RN

13. I was drugged and raped as a teenager

“I was probably drugged and close to getting raped when I was 18-something. I went alone to a concert in a small club, and was approached by two sleazy guys. It was a crowded gig and I intended on keeping to myself and taking a cab home immediately after the show, so I just ignored them. I also just assumed they were your typical annoying drunken guys trying to hit on everything with a pulse, and as they let me be after I told them off, I didn’t think much of it.

I had a beer, concert started, and when I happened to get dragged up on stage, I was stupid enough to leave my glass unattended; It stood right beneath the stage and I was sure no one could do anything funny with it without me knowing. Well, that was until the gig ended. I took the last few sips from the glass and in a blink, I felt like I’d just downed a bottle of vodka. I stumbled away from the stage, told the bartender I felt ill and needed air, NOW, and he pointed me towards the close-by emergency exit. I went outside, sat down and tried figuring out how in the name of everything holy I just got wasted on half a beer.

That’s when the sleazy guys came after, one closed the door and stood by it, and all of a sudden, one of them had his hands under my clothes and started kissing me and dragging me into the bushes. I was so dizzy I couldn’t get him off me or even stand up, so all I could do was cry my eyes out. And that’s when the band happened to walk out the exact same emergency exit. I don’t remember much more after that, but I was told that the singer, already known for his temper, gave chase after the guys (unfortunately without catching them – if he had gotten his hands on them, I’d like to believe they would have needed nose surgery after) while the others carried me inside, got me water and helped me.

Someone called an ambulance, but they refused to come as they didn’t see a drunk teenager as an emergency. Instead, an acquaintance let me sleep in his hotel bed while he stayed on the sofa and kept an eye on me. I was driven to the hospital the next morning and they ran tests on my blood, which came out clean, so they concluded that I hadn’t been drugged and probably just had too much to drink. They also recommended I shouldn’t file a police report since they wouldn’t have anything to work with anyway, which I was dumb enough to just accept. Either way, hence the “probably drugged”; I guess the tests doesn’t lie, but I still have a hard time seeing how I could get close to blacking out by a few sips of beer. I’ve always wondered if they would have found something if I had been taken to the hospital immediately after the whole ordeal.

But I’ll never know now and I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. Teenage me still learnt my lesson when I realized that bad stuff not only happens to people you read about in the news. I didn’t suffer any trauma or anything and it hasn’t affected me in any other way, but I’ll never be able to forget how absolutely terrified I was during those moments, and how quickly my whole life could have changed, all because of the smallest, naive mistake.” — GloriousFlower

14. A cockroach laid its eggs inside of my ear

“When I was ten I woke up around midnight to severe pain and crawling sounds in my left ear. I yelled for my father but he wasn’t around. He had gone out to a bar with a friend after I went to sleep. I spent a long time screaming in pain and trying to look into my ear on the mirror and pouring water into it. Turns out a cockroach had laid an egg in my ear and they were hatching that night. The empty egg came out about a week later. I had roach legs come out of my ear for years while cleaning it with qtips.” — Jynku

15. A man broke into our house while I was home alone

“I was a wee lad of 14 years old in the attic (where our PC was located) playing RuneScape and ‘making homework.’ Later in the night, around 10pm I heard some noises downstairs and saw a light turned on. I figured my parents had returned from visiting family.

A man that looked a lot like my uncle started coming up the stairs slowly, but he wasn’t my uncle. We made eye contact for a solid 5 seconds just in complete shock – he bolted back downstairs. I grabbed the nearest thing I could use as a weapon which were some scissors I had near me, I was screwed basically.

I can’t remember how much time had passed but I didn’t have a mobile phone with me at the time – I was absolutely petrified this entire time. And then I saw my aunt log on to Runescape (my aunt, dad and cousin all played as well at the time). I told her what happened, she called the cops and within 10 minutes everyone was home.

There were multiple knives left on the stairs and they got in through our garden, I had to describe the man I saw to the cops.

Definitely scariest moment of my life, I thought I was going to die right there and then.” — Growlibi 

16. I watched a man attempt to murder a woman

“There was a bar fight.

Huge guy, out of prison that morning, racist, unpleasant and very fucking drunk. He’d been in the pub all day.

In walks a woman, apparently they had beef.

He grabs a glass and tries to smash it in her face, misses and glasses some random woman. Now he’s extra angry. Grabs his intended target by the throat, slams her into a chair, starts punching her in the face repeatedly.

The staff call the police, but this guy is trying to kill the woman. So I get in there and break it up. He swings at me, she bites me, I’m now in the middle of 2 people trying to kill each other.

Scary shit.” — generic_brand_cola

17. I was smuggled over the border in a cargo hold

“I was in Brazil and traveling by bus into Argentina. Arriving at the border I realized that I didn’t have the proper documents to get across. So I bribed the bus driver to hide me in the cargo hold and smuggle me over the border.

That was a scary few minutes. Definitely brown pants time.” — mysevenyearitch

18. I was hit with several bullets from a machine gun

“Was in Iraq on my last deployment and was conducting a foot patrol. As I pass a side ‘street’ the tailgate of a truck drops and there are 2 insurgents laying there with a machine gun who immediately open fire. The whole world slows down and seems to do one of those freaking matrix things where you can see the bullets as I scream for everyone to take cover and run for cover myself. I felt my body jerk and yank around and almost fall off my feet several times until getting behind a building for cover. I just knew I was dead and could not feel the wounds because of the massive damage. Checking over my body a canteen had been blown apart, a round had passed though a magazine pouch destroying 3 magazines of ammo, I had 2 impacts that ripped up the cover of my helmet without punching through and one round had passed through my uniform, across my chest, tearing at the inside of my body armor without touching me. 13 points of impact in all and not an scratch on me. We later joked that death must have been on vacation.”

19. I was viciously attacked by a wild animal

“When I was hiking in the Tetons I got ran down by a grizzly bear.

A friend and I were hiking in early September in a wooded area; off the trail we could hear a bear grunting. We were aware and pulled our our bear mace and kept hiking. Not being able to see where the bear was in the woods we continued on the trail. The grunting stopped, but before I knew it I was thrown on the ground. A great weight was just crushing me and started throwing me around like a rag doll. It began to tear into my hiking pack. I stayed on my stomach as best I could and tried to cover my vitals. Next thing I know is that my eyes and nose start burning, my friend started to spray his bear mace to get the bear off me. I’m still not sure how I did it, but I managed to unbuckle from my pack, get out of it, and crawl away from the bear. The bear continued to tear into my pack, before my friends bear spray finally got to it. It turned and ran off. We left the area quickly and waited till the bear spray wore off and hiked out. We got to a rangers station, where I was taken to a hospital to be treated. My friend and a ranger went back to the attack site to recover what was left of my things.

Luckily I escaped with minor injuries and minor scarring (a few broken bones and deep gouges). My stuff sadly didn’t make it out alright, favorite coat and pack ruined… But that is definitely the scariest situation I’ve ever been in.” — crimsoneagle1

20. My husband dropped dead inside of our kitchen

“When my husband died suddenly in our kitchen. He’d been having panic attacks, and this event began with another of those… Only he couldn’t calm down. His heart was beating so hard, and so quickly that I could feel it. His face paled to a sickly color, mouth going white with a rim of blue purple at the edges. He gasped, and said, ‘Help me. Please help.’

It all happened so quickly. I still thought it was just a severe panic attack, and we were waiting for the ambulance. He stopped breathing. Shit got real. My blood felt like ice, as I shook him, and I shouted for help getting Harry out of his chair, to lie him down flat for CPR.

I did chest compressions frantically, and puffed air into him. The air just kept coming back out. It made groaning noises as it did so. I knew my attempts were not working. The ambulance arrived, and I was shooed away, as they worked.

My husband’s heart was restarted 2 times, but he officially expired at 5:02 am. Scariest, guiltiest, most horrible thing I have ever experienced or seen. Ever. Bar none.” — BeezusTheRed 

21. My eye swelled to the size of a pingpong ball

“When I woke up gasping for air and my right eye had swollen to the size of a pingpong ball. I washed up with cold water hoping it would reduce the swelling, but the pressure in the eye just continued to build up. That was the first time I went to see a doctor immediately instead of letting my immune system do its job.” — -LifeOnHardMode-

22. My father fell asleep at the wheel with all his kids in the car

“When I was 13 I was spending the Summer with my dad and his girlfriend. I have two brothers, age 11 and 10, that were also there. My dad got into an argument one night while drunk(nothing at of the ordinary), and he decided he was going to drive us about 30 miles back to our mom’s house. He loads us all up in his 85′ Camaro and gets ready to take off when his best friend, Jesse, jumps in the passenger seat. Jesse was a small guy, and he knew that if he tried to talk my dad out of drunk driving the only result would be my dad trying to beat him up, so he just got in the car to try to mitigate any potential damage.

We made it onto the interstate and about 10 miles down the road before my dad started nodding off. We were coming up on an exit, and there was a divider for the exit and the interstate. My dad finally passed out right then, and we were heading straight for the divider going about 75 miles per hour. Jesse, at the last moment, turned the steering wheel and was able to get his leg in to the break to stop us on the side of the highway. He pushed my dad over to the passenger side and drove us home with my direction.

Even at 13 I was fully aware of my own mortality at the moment, and I was sure that I was going to die. Jesse, may he Rest in Peace, saved me and my two brothers that night, and I can never thank him enough.” — Eluviete