“Party time”

“My great aunt woke up in the middle of the night, she heard her dog making these low growls. She was single at the time and living alone in her ranch style home. She walked out to her living room to check things out. She didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, so she decided to make sure her door and front windows were locked. Door was locked, first window she checked was locked. When she lifted the mini blind on the second window, it was wide open and a guy in a ski mask was standing there. She said he laughed this evil laugh and said “party time” then he started to climb in. She screamed that she had a gun, her dog started barking his head off. The would be rapist decided to bolt. My aunt did get a gun after that and learned how to use it.” — belai437

No running

“During college, I lived in an apartment with a community pool. There were a bunch of us having beers at the pool one night over summer term, and one of my friends ran to jump in the pool but changed his mind at the last second. His feet slipped out from under him on the wet concrete and he went down. He broke his neck in the edge of the pool…never walked again and had extremely limited upper body function. I watched someone’s life be ruined and it was terrifying. Listen to the lifeguard and walk.” — Might_be_useful

Secret tunnel

“I had a guy tell me a story a couple decades ago about how he was hiking in an area in South America and wandered away from other hikers in the area. The ground was wet and without warning it gave away and he got sucked into a fast moving underground river- pitch black, completely submerged, and at the mercy of the current as it buffeted him against the sides of the tunnel. After some time the current subsided and he realized he was in a larger pocket, still pitch black and submerged. He said that even as he struggled to hold his breath, he didn’t panic and realized that the water had to keep moving somewhere, so he moved around until he found another tunnel that sucked him in. At one point he began to see light so he punched upwards, broke through the ground and pulled himself out, soaking wet, gasping for air, and a bit of a distance from the other dry hikers, who were somewhat bewildered when they saw him straggling up to them.” — wex52

Child abuse

“I grew up with a very mentally ill and abusive father. The summer I was 16 and my younger brother was 13, my father shot my brother with a shot gun at almost point blank range in our basement. Thankfully, it missed his heart by two inches and he is still alive today. I came home that evening to find my stepmother cleaning the blood off the tile floor like there was nothing to see. It was the most terrifying and surreal thing I’ve ever experienced. One would believe attempted murder would be enough to terminate custody rights, but alas the police chalked it up to accidental and my brother and I were too frightened of our father to say otherwise. At 18 and 15, respectively, my brother and I packed up and left the state never to speak to our father again. To this day, little bits of shrapnel still surface in my brother’s chest.” — lookylouboo

Too nice

“One of my best friends growing up had an aunt that was the sweetest, most generous woman you could possibly know. She started dating a man that fell in love with her because of how sweet and kind she was. After month or so of being together, he accused her of being too nice to other people, so he bludgeoned her until she was unconscious and cut her heart out of her chest while she was still alive. He thought that it was the worst example of sheer disrespect that she would exhibit kindness towards other people when she was in a committed relationship. He believed he owned all of the good she had to give, and by being nice to people that weren’t him, she may as well have been cheating with the whole town.

He killed her for being the person he knew her to be when they started dating. The fact people like him exist is terrifying to me.” — CCWThrowaway360

Germanwings Flight 9525

“The copilot locked himself in the cockpit and set the airplane for a slow descent into the French Alps.

For 10 minutes, the crew desperately tried to get back into the cockpit, but in this post 9/11 world, the door was design to withstand assault did not fail.

This is was a daytime flight. Passengers knew what was happening. They could see the mountains getting closer out the windows. This wasn’t a quick, “what’s that… omg… out”… this was a long, drawn out realization of what was coming and the end was inevitable.

Chilling.” — program_alarm

My neighbor the murderer

“I lived next to a murderer. Faye Swetlik was 6 years old when she was kidnapped out of her front yard. It was all over the news. I had news crews, cops, even the FBI all over my townhouse complex. My fiancée and I met with the FBI 3 times. They searched our home and everything. I remember clear as day, my fiancée FaceTimed me as the cops were digging through the trash cans directly in front of my townhouse. They pulled out her boot and a bloody knife. Then they found her body, dumped maybe 300 feet from my house. He had watched them find the murder weapon. Dumbass put it in a trash bag along with his other mail. He went to his back porch and opened his own throat. It’s crazy. I had conversations with the guy. I never knew he was a psycho. This all happened a year ago.” — SCRhyperior

I think about her every day

“A woman who went to my regular pub was out with her friend during the day and in the evening she missed a bus home and ended up in another pub. She was tipsy and ended up going home with a man who lived with another male. They both had an obsession with serial killers and murdered her, and after they killed her they chopped her body up. They spent the next week putting her body in plastic bags and hiding them in bushes etc. They were caught pretty quickly and thankfully are in prison for life. The day she went missing I saw her in the pub with her friend, and stood in the smoking area with her laughing about a pigeon who was chilling too. I have a video where she is in it, and she makes a joke – just hours before her death. I think about her nearly everyday, it’s something that is sort of traumatising and she did not deserve such a cruel ending to her life.” — craftingfirerunes

Brain aneurysms

“A good friend died of a brain aneurysm. One of the hardest working and smartest people I’ve known. She got a vet degree, got married and had a kid and three months later her husband found her unconscious on the floor when he got home. She never woke up.

As a father of two I think about that a lot.” — mdconnors

Bullet dodged

“When I was 7 I was raking rocks in my aunts front yard and a beat up pickup truck pulled up. The man got out, fiddled with something under the hood and then closed it. He asked me “hey kid do you know how to pop a clutch”? Spending my childhood on a farm, I did indeed know how. “Yes” I responded – “give me a hand real quick” he said. So I started walking towards his truck, at the last second my mom called out to me from the garage and I turned around to see what she wanted. I heard the door slam, the truck start, and he drove away. That memory never really came up until one day, about 30 years later I jump up after laying down to go to bed when out of nowhere it came back and it hit me: This guy was trying to kidnap me. What the fuck???? What bullet did I dodge?? I mean you ever have a memory come back and you get scared? I mean scared over the memory? I was shaking for at least a half hour over it. It’s still freaks me out thinking about it.” — BubbleBassV2

Life moves fast

“A woman I worked with a few years ago told me how her life had changed drastically she went from having a decent job to becoming an alcoholic and working as a cleaner. She had planned to move to Spain with her husband and young daughter and had a great job lined up out there. The plan was her husband and daughter would fly over first and she would fly over a week or two later due to finishing her old job a little later than planned. Her husband rang her on the day he arrived and said the house was lovely and the furniture had arrived by ferry ect. That was the last time she ever heard from him. Her husband and daughter was found dead by authorities a few days after she rang explaining she was concerned for their welfare as she had had no contact with them and she was extremely worried. It was carbon monoxide posioning. It is so scary to think how fast your life can change.” — Chlooeeeee

Abusive ex

“My mother’s friend left her abusive husband. My mother met her while working at a women’s shelter. They were really close, and my mother fought so hard to get her somewhere safe. They did everything right. She helped her file divorce papers. And then one morning my mom can’t get her on the phone, but they’d had plans to meet for lunch. And she checks the newspaper. And she calls in sick to work. Which she never did. And she sat my down in tears and told me what happened.

Her friend was home, with her son, when her ex broke in. He killed her and left the baby there, in his mother’s blood. And then he hung himself outside of Raley’s. Last I heard their almost two year old went to live with his uncle. I can’t imagine how terrifying it was for the baby to cry to himself, in his mother’s blood, for the almost two days until he was found.” — NiktoriaNo

Camper

“Best friend’s parents were out of town one weekend and she had the house to herself. Went about her business having dinner, watching tv then decided to go to bed. She was lying in her bed with her back to her closet when she heard the door open. She somehow pretended to be asleep – the man who was hiding in the closet walked around her bed to the side she was laying/facing, gently stroked her hair and face then left. She immediately called her boyfriend to ask him to come over then called her parents and then the police. Long story short this man had been getting into their home via a doggy door (they didn’t have a dog and didn’t bother to secure it) and he’d been living in a tent in the foresty area behind their home for months to creep on her. They found a ton of surveillance footage of her sleeping and pieces of her clothes and stuff.” — halfyellowhalfwhite

The corpse sat up

“My dad worked in a morgue in during college in the 60’s. One time on the night shift he was training a recent hire who was wheeling a body down the hallway. The body was under a sheet but all of a sudden started to sit up. The guy immediately freaked out, ran out the doors and quit.

Apparently a dead body can have muscle contractions in the abs causing it to start sitting up” — PJammas41

“On the third day he fell silent”

“Everything to do with Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi

He was a shoemaker who lived in Morocco in the late 19th and early 20th century. He and his accomplice, a 70 year old woman called Annah, used to drug and kill young women who came to the shop. Eventually one of the victims’ parents traced her movements to the shop, and after the remains of 36 mutilated corpses were discovered nearby Mesfewi and Annah were questioned – and tortured.

Annah didn’t survive, but Mesfewi confessed to murdering them, usually for a tiny amount of money. His initial sentence was crucifixion – a very unusual punishment even then. However there were many protests from powerful foreign embassies, and Morocco couldn’t do much against them. Instead he was sentenced to beheading, a more common punishment. However the mood in Marrakech was that this was far too lenient, so they settled on immurement – being walled up alive.

A special cell was constructed in the wall of the bazaar, about 2 X 2 X 6 feet. Chains were attached to one wall to ensure he would be kept standing. Mesfewi wasn’t told of his fate until the morning of his execution – when he was led, screaming, in chains and slowly bricked up inside. Once the last course had been laid the crowd would fall silent until he started screaming, when they would cheer.

He screamed nearly constantly for two days. On the third day he fell silent.” — mordenty

James Bulgar

“He was just 2 years old and with his mom running errands. She let go of his hand to pay the cashier, and he wandered away. Two ten year old boys spotted him, lured him toward them, took him by the hands and led him away. They took him to a remote location, pushing and kicking at him the whole time. Some people questioned the two kids with the crying toddler, but they lied saying he was their brother and nobody intervened further. They took him to a secluded spot and tortured him. I don’t want to recount the torture details, it’s just too gruesome. They left his body on some railroad tracks hoping that being run over by a train would make it look like an accident. He was found days later, his body severed in half by a train.

The boys were caught and became the youngest convicted murderers in British history. Security footage from the day they took James shows them watching children, picking out a target. And they were just kids themselves. They were released at 18. One of them is back in jail for possessing child abuse photos on his computer.

The most terrifying thing about this for me is that my own son is only 2 now, and James’s murderers were just children, too. It was premeditated and intentional and entirely random. Just a momentary lapse in attention and he became a target of two murderous children. Children. To think that children younger than my step son are capable of such a thing… ugh. Everything about this case is just horrifying.” — sai_gunslinger

Stone cold

“I grew up in a funeral home. I helped out in the office. When I was about 15, we got a call from a man whose wife and infant baby had been murdered in cold blood.

There were very few clues. It made headlines. Cops set up surveillance at the viewing. It was heartbreaking, as the mother was holding the baby in her arms.

I was asked to take the flower cards and periodically get the husband and ask if he recognized the names. I then photocopied them and put them back. I did it because I was a “kid,” people knew me, and I was unobtrusive.

I talked to the husband quite a bit. He seemed devastated and shaken.

The cops told me they had an eyewitness to someone leaving the house the day of the murder.

The witness was a three year old girl. She recognized the man leaving. It was the husbands best friend.

Turns out that the friend and the husband had made a pact to kill each other’s families and run off with their secretaries. The little girl identified the friend, and I guess one of them cracked.

They both went to jail on multiple counts, all on the testimony of a three year old.

I still cannot believe to this day that that man stood right beside me, multiple times, and I had NO CLUE.

I don’t think I ever looked at life the same way after that.” — RareBeautyEtsy