I’m the kind of person who likes to be very aware of my surroundings , even during daylight. After all, you can never feel 100% safe. Do you hear what I’m saying? Even when you’re in crowded places, strange things can happen.
I recently stumbled upon a Reddit thread that asked, “[Serious] what is the most terrifying thing to happen to you in a well-lit and populated place?” and the answers surprised even me. Let’s read some of the most terrifying ones.
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Note: Some of these contain graphic details.
This Work Accident
“I was working a construction job a while back and I was told to wait on the ground floor for someone. I bent down to retie my boots and a pallet full of mixing cement comes crashing down where I was just standing. I clearly remember the foreman saying I would have been ‘stone cold dead’ if my shoes were tied. Broad daylight, nobody reported the accident (OSHA was different back then). If anyone has seen the movie Grand Canyon, you’ll know how I felt.”
Wow! That’s quite the story, huh? I’m glad this man is alright.
This Work Mishap
“My first day at a new job in a museum about 8 years ago, I was told to wait outside the building for my supervisor because the building was still under construction. Suddenly I hear a guy yell ‘Heads up!’ and a loud scraping sound. Some worker had dropped a hose that was stretched up onto the roof, and it was coiling up on the ground right next to me. I jump back just as a heavy brass nozzle falls and breaks on the concrete where I was standing. I ended up sprayed with water, but otherwise unharmed.”
That was a lucky break, no?
This Creepy Mall Incident
“I was 10 or maybe 12 years old. My mom took me to the mall so she could go to Target. There was a baseball card/comic book store right next to Target and while she shopped I got to go look at the collectibles. While I was looking at the cards in the case, a guy came in. He looked around for a minute, then approached me and asked if I liked baseball cards. I said that I did and he said he had a Babe Ruth card in his van and asked if I would like to see it.
“We were right at the counter and the clerk was right there, but I got a real creepy vibe from this guy. I said no and left the store to go back to Target and find my mom. I looked behind me as I walked into Target and, sure enough, he was following me. I was starting to get a little scared, so I turned into the women’s underwear aisle, thinking he wouldn’t follow me. He kept after me until I finally found my mom. I never told her about it because I didn’t want to scare her. At the time I thought maybe he wanted to steal my $10 but now I’m pretty sure he wanted more than $10.”
Yikes!
This Scary Attack
“An addict wanted money from me downtown, but I literally had nothing but my clothes on me. So I said sorry man, all out. Dude lumbers towards me slowly, pushes me over, and stabs me in the thigh with a Swiss Army knife. I booked it to the hospital for stitches. Didn’t hurt until I actually looked at it. Adrenaline didn’t stop pumping for a very long time.”
“Edit: Lot of people asking ‘why didn’t you run if he was lumbering towards you?’ A: I was 13, he was a full-grown adult, I had a bad haircut, he pulled a knife on me, I froze in fear.”
That must’ve been so scary!
This Odd Incident
“Many years ago, I was just about to walk into the restaurant where I was the assistant manager when I was approached by this huge guy who was all smiles and generally gave across this body language of being friendly, is a ‘sorry but I need to ask you something’ kinda way. Next thing I knew, he was screaming at me about some friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Turns out my friend had stolen some weed off this dodgy guy, and my name had come up for some reason. Right there in the middle of a busy road in a busy city, he pulled out a Stanley Knife and told me he was going to cut my throat with it if I didn’t give him his £350 right there. I still don’t remember exactly what I said to him but he left, told me he was going to kill me if he ever saw me again and I went into work.”
Holy, moly!
This Terrifying Flight
“I guess this qualifies… thunderstorm downdraft on a fully laden plane. Your seatbelt is done up, but there’s fresh air between your butt & the seat as the plane drops.”
Oh, no! I don’t like the sound of that. And now I need to know what happened.
This Similar Situation
“This happened to me once a couple of years ago. It was turbulent so most had their seatbelts on, but man, we plummeted for a good five or six seconds. It was total freefall, laptops and drinks were held to the roof, scary as hell. It was long enough that I had time to think ‘holy [expletive], are we going down?’. Then it leveled off, all the crap on the ceiling came down, and I had to help a lady that had face-planted in the aisle next to my row. Absolutely terrifying.”
And now I can never fly again!
This Awful Story
“When I was twelve years old I was beaten up in a crowded bus station at rush hour by a boy several years older than me for absolutely no reason whatsoever. It was a completely unprovoked attack and I was trapped against a one-way door. The adults standing around waiting for their buses to go home from work did absolutely nothing to help me or to stop me from being attacked.”
I don’t understand how people can just stand by and watch something like this, huh?
This Horrifying Story
“Fistula rupture of a patient in my hospital. Blood everywhere. Blood on the floor, ceiling, workers, and everywhere else you can imagine. Splurging everywhere. Doctors and nurses worked on her for 45 minutes, but nothing they could do to save her. It looked like someone had been slashed open with a sword in the room, and the worst part is that her 3 kids were there to see it.”
Oh my god! I can’t even imagine that.
This Terrifying Work Mistake
“It was well lit and populated as it was my workplace, I was a pourer in a foundry at the time. Due to a mistake in the metal, it had to be put back into the furnace instead of being poured, a job that is done by using a crane to take the ladle (big bucket full of molten metal) back to the furnace. The ladle is then manually rolled over and the metal poured back into the furnace.
I was the lucky guy to roll it in, and whilst rolling it the crane driver made a mistake and moved the ladle out of position. This resulted in a wave of 1600C (~3000f) metal flying toward me like water off a spoon in the sink. Due to the light coming from the molten metal I couldn’t guage the depth of the wave at the time, but looked down to see nothing but orange light surrounding me from the waist up. This lasted a moment at most, but in that moment every possible injury that could come from that crossed my mind.”
“No injury came of that, like a spoon in the sink the wave was very thin and my gear was good enough. But I was genuinely terrified then.”
Was this guy lucky or what?
This NYPD Takedown
“In the second grade, around 7-8 years old, babysitter picked me up from a church (I went to a catholic elementary school and was practicing to make my communion that Sunday, I think this was a Tuesday or Thursday), and we were walking down the sidewalk when I saw a man breakdancing on the street (Circa 1992 in Queens, New York at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church/School) and thought cool… but at the same moment, my babysitter was pushing me against a metal fence alongside the sidewalk.
“I didn’t hear anything but what I was witnessing was an NYPD (police officer) being shot multiple times by two criminals who had stolen a woman’s purse several blocks away (how stereotypical). One criminal was on one side, the officer in the middle, and the other criminal on the other side, so who knows who shot who, but the officer was shot many times (over 5), one criminal was shot in the head and died on the spot, the other criminal got away but was caught nearby. [expletive] hectic, I believe my mother saved the newspaper the next day, and I remember watching the news that night. Astoria circa 1991-1992. If anyone could find more info, it would be like tying up some loose ends in my life as it’s been something I’ve thought about many many many times before.”
That must’ve been something to witness, huh?
This Scary Jogging Incident
“A couple of years ago I was jogging in the centre of my town as usual, when I realized I was being followed by some guy I had never seen. He kept trying to talk to me, and at some point, he grabbed me from behind and went full molester on me. I shook free and then started screaming, knocking on the hood of a car passing by. He ran away, never to be found. I couldn’t jog for over a year.”
That would scare me off of jogging too.
This Daylight Mugging
“Walking back from lunch to my office. I work in a urban area but it usually is safe to walk. From the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone following me. Didn’t think too much about it but picked up my pace a little. I had to stop at the crosswalk and the person behind me catches up and I feel something on my back and he tells me to make a left turn. I turn into the next street and he asks me for all the money in my wallet. I gave it to him and he bolted past me. It had to be no later than 1:00 PM and I got mugged right in broad daylight.”
Oh my goodness! That must’ve been pretty scary.
This Blatant Attack
“I’m a 20-something lady. I was heading home from the gym (tired) and dressed elegantly (on my way from work) along a large, well-lit street. About a block from my house, a man first tried to catch my attention and then to grab me and pull towards the bushes on one side of the sidewalk, having already partly removed his pants.”
“I screamed bloody murder and ran home. After calling the police and describing the attacker, they asked what I was wearing. I was going to get mad, but it turned out he matched the description of a local pedophile suspect that preys on young girls from the nearby school. I was wearing a rather girly navy blue skirt with a white shirt that day. He was never arrested.”
I can’t believe he’s still out there.
This Near-Drowning
“Almost drowned as a 6-year-old in a populated adult pool. I was floundering for what felt like a minute, quickly losing breath and swallowing water. No one around me heard my gargled cries. No one helped. Thank god my mother pulled me out before it was too late. And that’s how I developed my fear of water.”
That would scare me from swimming too.
This Sudden Seizure
“When I was in 5th grade, I had a seizure in the middle of class. When I woke up on the floor, kids were running around me and laughing, and the teacher was yelling at me to get back in my desk and stop trying to get attention. Everything hurt and I was completely out of it for the rest of the day, and I didn’t understand anything about what happened, or just how big of a [expletive] the teacher was, until a couple of years later.”
I can’t believe the teacher didn’t realize this.
This Scary Situation
“Was taking my kids for a walk in the park near our apartment once when a guy and a woman came out of the tree line suddenly and the guy said to give him my wallet and anything else in my pockets. He had some weird screwdriver/knife thing and I pushed my daughter, my eldest child, behind me. I was going to do the same for my son but the woman grabbed his other arm for some reason and my heart felt like it was going to explode for some reason, I suddenly forgot about self-preservation and jumped forwards and broke the woman’s nose. I felt a sharp pain under my ribs and looked to see that the man had just shanked me, but at this point, two other guys who had been jogging were running up and shouting.”
“The police that patrolled the park showed up not long after that. I was sitting and trying not to bleed to death, the man had ran off and his screwdriver was still in me. The woman was on the ground crying and shouting because I had also knocked the top front of her teeth lose / out.
“The two joggers were originally asking the woman if I was the assaulter but the situation cleared up soon. I got taken to the hospital and questioned about the incident, there was a while when it looked like I was going to be charged with battery for the woman since it turns out she actually had a decently well-off family, was just an addict. They tried to sue me but it was thrown out and she was sentenced for attempted kidnapping. I had a tube in my chest for two weeks after my surgery to remove the shank, but it all cleared up after that. Just glad my kids are safe. **EDIT**: I am male. Sorry for not clarifying. The mother of my children passed away several years ago.”
OMG, that’s quite terrifying, no?
This Scary Story
“I was walking down the street with my mom, broad daylight, when a man grabbed me in his arms as he walked by, then tried taking off. My mom ripped me back from him and ran to a police station that was thankfully close. But yah (sp), busy street, bright daylight, holding hand with my mom, and a police station nearby, and this guy still tried to kidnap a kid.”
OMG!
Wow, those were some stories, huh?
I bet these folks feel so grateful to be safe and sound. Who knows what could have happened if things had gone sideways? Have you ever been in a terrifying situation yourself? Or did you witness something bad happening to somebody else? I can’t even imagine what that must’ve felt like, alright. These scenarios just prove that you can never be totally at ease. Am I right?
