The scariest thing that's ever happened to you

[Egoiste]

Well, Halloween 'n all. I thought this might make for an appropriate topic. So what was, hands down, the most frightening thing that's ever happened to you? If you can't pick between more than one event feel free to list them all. Does it still chill you to think about it, does the possibility that it - or something like it - could happen again trouble you, or have you placed it behind you? If it were to happen again (or something like it) would it still frighten you, as badly as it did then, or perhaps more, or would you be able to handle it now?

[PennySludt]

Well, I'm gonna go with supernatural type stuff, cuz the other stuff is different.

I think one of the scariest things that happened was actually a series of things. We used to have a parrot, and several times, she would stick out her wings, lift her crest and start screaming at something that seemed to be right in front of her. Only there was nothing there. She did that several times. In that same house, I used to wake up several times to someone (a man in a plaid shirt) standing over my bed, and I'd have the distinct impression that I was intruding on their space and they were angry. That happened several times, each time I would wake up apologizing for being in their space and telling them I wasn't going to do anything to it, and they would be gone.

Needless to say, I was pretty glad to get out of that house. There was another house we lived in where a woman would stand and stare at me at the other end of the upstairs hall. She wasn't upset or mean or anything. Just there. But it still scared me. Since then, we've lived in either new houses, or houses that have been greatly renovated, and I haven't seen anymore of those. But when I go back to those other houses, they're still there. I hate going there.

[Egoiste]

Well, I'm gonna go with supernatural type stuff, cuz the other stuff is different.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's why I haven't posted anything myself yet.

I think one of the scariest things that happened was actually a series of things. We used to have a parrot, and several times, she would stick out her wings, lift her crest and start screaming at something that seemed to be right in front of her. Only there was nothing there. She did that several times. In that same house, I used to wake up several times to someone (a man in a plaid shirt) standing over my bed, and I'd have the distinct impression that I was intruding on their space and they were angry. That happened several times, each time I would wake up apologizing for being in their space and telling them I wasn't going to do anything to it, and they would be gone.

These days I'm a fairly skeptical person, but I remember when I was more open to stuff like this, and this sounds scary as hell.

Needless to say, I was pretty glad to get out of that house.

I'm not surprised.

I suffer from sleep-paralysis and have since I was very young and it was a long, long time before I even knew what it was. So I've had some experiences rather like this. Waking up, and thinking I can see someone, while being unable to move. Or waking up, and being unable to even open your eyes, but you just know someone is there. Of course knowing it's sleep paralysis these days doesn't necessarily make it less scary. I seldom get actual hallucinations anymore, but they can be highly unpleasant when they do occur.

[RedRose]

Scary but cool: something like this in my country. Mega real and though you just expect something to happen, very very scary.

Scary and not cool at all: I was vacationing at family and the local casino had some kind of private event. My cousin attended and I tagged along. Some guy started talking to us inside. We had a hard time finding a common language, finally settling on Spanish which I am crap at. He kept staring at me and I was getting really weird vibes from him, like "outwardly calm and old fashioned but don't piss him off". He claimed he was in town to represent some kind of organization I had never heard of. My cousin who is better at that language quickly found an excuse to go away and I was stuck with the weirdo. I tried to get rid of him, moving around and changing tables but he wouldn't leave me alone. I said I had to leave so he asked for my number. I claimed that I was getting a new one so he ended up giving me his and then went after my cousin to try to get my number and tell him that he wanted to see me again. Cousin gave a fake number. In the car I asked him who that guy was since he had discussed with him. I was really mad at him for running away. He tried to keep it vague, telling me he didn't want to anger him and when I googled the name of the organization... 
It is basically a terrorist org in a country I'm not familiar with, they have a wiki page listing all their crimes and my cousin who is very well traveled had heard of them enough to be openly scared of anyone representing them. Thanks dude.
After that for weeks I was afraid he would track me down, demand to marry me and bring me to his country lol - or that the police who is very on edge in France about all this was going to accuse me of helping terrorists... Creepy that he thought I could be into that and actually touched me (grabbed my hand and I didn't dare refuse). I told my cousin's mom about his class act as a petty revenge though.

[Egoiste]

Scary but cool: something like this in my country. Mega real and though you just expect something to happen, very very scary.

Looks like fun.

Scary and not cool at all: I was vacationing at family and the local casino had some kind of private event. My cousin attended and I tagged along. Some guy started talking to us inside. We had a hard time finding a common language, finally settling on Spanish which I am crap at. He kept staring at me and I was getting really weird vibes from him, like "outwardly calm and old fashioned but don't piss him off". He claimed he was in town to represent some kind of organization I had never heard of. My cousin who is better at that language quickly found an excuse to go away and I was stuck with the weirdo. I tried to get rid of him, moving around and changing tables but he wouldn't leave me alone. I said I had to leave so he asked for my number. I claimed that I was getting a new one so he ended up giving me his and then went after my cousin to try to get my number and tell him that he wanted to see me again. Cousin gave a fake number. In the car I asked him who that guy was since he had discussed with him. I was really mad at him for running away. He tried to keep it vague, telling me he didn't want to anger him and when I googled the name of the organization... 
It is basically a terrorist org in a country I'm not familiar with, they have a wiki page listing all their crimes and my cousin who is very well traveled had heard of them enough to be openly scared of anyone representing them. Thanks dude.
After that for weeks I was afraid he would track me down, demand to marry me and bring me to his country lol - or that the police who is very on edge in France about all this was going to accuse me of helping terrorists... Creepy that he thought I could be into that and actually touched me (grabbed my hand and I didn't dare refuse). I told my cousin's mom about his class act as a petty revenge though.

Not so much fun! Damn, can't believe your cousin ran off like that! I mean, if it were me I'd do the same thing, but in fairness I don't really like my cousins. So it may not be a fair comparison. Seriously though that guy sounds scary. I'm not surprised you found it so unsettling.

[Lrrr]

I was ten and very curious about anything mechanical.  We owned a snowmobile, and my father stored it each April or May and got it out of storage each October or November.  It was stored at a farm implement store run out of an 1860s sawmill building.  The building had been remodeled to accommodate various needs over the years, including the addition of a large freight elevator to move equipment from the top floor at ground level to the lower floor below.

The elevator itself was a simple cage made of angle iron along each edge of a cube with planks laid in for a floor.  A heavy steel gate about a meter high was installed across the front of the elevator shaft on the top floor - presumably to prevent someone from falling down to the lower floor when the elevator was down there.  Today, such a contraption would be immediately condemned for lack of safety features, but back then ... well, let's just say people weren't into safety like they are now.  If this sounds too complicated to envision, then imagine a common, modern elevator, remove the doors, and install a meter tall heavy metal gate across the entrance.

Now imagine you got on the elevator at the first floor, closed the gate, and pulled the hanging rope.  The elevator cage would descend to the lower floor - no big deal, right?  But if you had watched carefully, you'd have seen the piece of heavy angle iron across the top-front edge of the elevator cage come slowly down until it passed the top of that steel gate, clearing it by about a quarter inch.

The incident I'll relate happened in the late 1960s when it was pretty common for old, retired men to hang around a place like the farm implement store.  On this particular day, there were two of them sitting on a bench across the room from the elevator and my two younger brothers and I took seats on a second bench along the same wall.  We all watched as our snowmobile was rolled inside the building and then onto the freight elevator.  Being curious, I walked to the elevator and leaned my head over the gate to watch it descend as the employee pulled the rope.

See it coming?  Totally focused on how the elevator worked, I had no idea what was about to happen.  A moment later, the older of my two brothers suddenly shouted a word.  To this day, neither of us knows what it was, but his voice was filled with enough terror and he'd shouted so loudly that I simultaneously turned my head to the left and withdrew it from the shaft to see what had scared him so.  As I did, the top of the gate scraped my right ear and the overhead angle iron scraped my left ear.  I'm not talking about brushing by, I'm talking about cuts and abrasions that required a few stitches.

My youngest brother, still sitting on the bench, immediately threw up on the floor as the older brother ran over and pulled me away from the elevator.  One of us was bleeding profusely from both sides of his head, one of us was still terrified and screaming at the top of his lungs, and the third was making an epic mess on the old wooden floor, yet none of the employees responded.  And then all three of us heard it.  The two old men started laughing hysterically.  Apparently the near decapitation of some little kid right in front of them was the highlight of their later years.

We still talk about it all this time later and my youngest brother can very clearly remember being violently ill.  As for me, well it scared the shit out of me - and if I remember correctly, literally.  But the sound of those two old farts hooting about it is still the most vivid recollection of the incident each of us has.

Any discussion of decapitation, including this one, still gives me the shaking willies.

[Egoiste]

Oh my God, as soon as you'd finished describing how that elevator worked I started to get this feeling what you were about to relate. Kept reading, and yep. Hell just reading that was a little bit unsettling. I can only imagine what it must have been like to actually experience.

[Mathim]

3 days before my birthday last year, I was biking along minding my own business when a van drifted into the bike lane and rammed me off the road. As I was airborne, I thought I was going to die. As I landed and rolled, I thought the damage I sustained would render me paralyzed (which to be would be almost as bad and probably eventually lead me to commit suicide). Both instances were utterly horrifying but luckily I didn't die (obviously), I can still walk and experience the function of my favorite body part, and I'm going to sue the bejeezus out of that dipshit driver.