Paranormal or explainable.
During Helene, I had a tree fall through my house while I was in bed, and it stopped about 6 inches from my face
Holy shit. During Chido all we had were mild damages to doors and the like. But… it was already frightening as hell. I never thought wind could be so strong. People in the slums had it way worse. I only saw the aftermath. Some got chopped in half by their metal sheets carried by the wind, or their lost an arm or a hand…
That’s some Donnie Darko shit right there.
The cops had a shoot out with my neighbor in the apartment next to mine. I wasn’t positive it was gunfire, and I walked into my living room to get a better assessment. I was about a foot away from whizzing bullets, but I still wasn’t 100% sure lol. I decided to not risk it and take cover on the floor of my bathroom, until about 20 minutes later when the cops busted my door down and kicked me out of my apartment for 2 days. When I came back, I had 17 bullet holes in my wall (all from the cops) and my fridge and cabinets were all shot to hell. I definitely almost died that day
That’s insane! Did anyone pay for your damages?
Within a few days, someone had let themselves into the apartment and patched the holes and replaced the fridge.
It was a really strange situation. The cops kicked in our door, pointed guns at us, and screamed at us to get out of the apartment. My girlfriend had the foresight to grab her purse on the way out, but I didn’t have my wallet or shoes.
They escorted us out of the complex, and I realized they weren’t going to let us back in after a short while. I asked a cop for some info, and he told me we weren’t allowed back in, and he couldn’t give a timeline, but to watch the news if I wanted an update. I asked him where I should watch the news, and he told me to get out of his face lmao
We made arrangements to hang out at a friend’s place for a few hours, and when we checked back on the complex, they had blocked off the whole street. We couldn’t approach anyone without them getting super aggressive and telling us we couldn’t be there.
We stayed the night at a different friend’s place, and tried to go home again around noon the next day. Our door was wide open, our cat was missing, our shit was tossed around, and there were a couple of evidence markers strewn about. After a bit, someone told us that they were still collecting evidence and cleaning up, and that we had to leave for a few hours.
That was the only sort of official conversation we ended up having with anyone about the whole ordeal. We were never contacted by the cops or the apartment management about it directly, but a week later we found out everyone in the complex got 4 days taken off their rent for that month. Cool, I guess.
Was your cat okay?
Yeah, thanks for asking. We found him deeply burrowed in a box of Christmas decorations in the back of our closet. He was traumatized, but he was safe
Either when my first baby fell out of bed followed by a big clonk, or when I tried to get someone out of a car in flames.
My eldest is fine, that guy didn’t make it and I will never forget the smell.
What’s a clonk?
Also, kudos for at least trying to get the person out. Shame it ended the way it did, but you at least did what you could.
Ballistic missile hit less than 50 meters from me.
I’ll venture a wild guess that you live in Ukraine?
Yep.
When I was younger, maybe 8-10, I was at the beach with my family. I had always been a strong swimmer, we went to this beach fairly often, there were plenty of people around, and always had lifeguards on duty. It wasn’t stormy or bad weather at all.
I was swimming on my own when I got stuck in the undertow of the waves. I remember getting pulled back about 6 feet underwater before I was able to surface again. By that point, I was hit by the next wave, knocking me over and back into the undertow. This repeated for what felt like an hour but was probably only around 5 minutes, maybe 10. I was anxiously looking for lifeguards and trying to signal for help anytime I was on the surface, but no one ever noticed me.
My grandmother had taught me what to do if I ever got stuck in the waves, though, and instead of trying to fight the current I just started riding it and swimming parallel to the shore. I eventually got back to the beach and walked back to my family, and I remember it being so much longer to get back that seemed reasonable.
I was sure I was going to drown, getting sucked out and down under the ocean.
Paragliding, I was literally on the last step from the clif, the next step would be off the cliff. Right as I took that last solid step, I got a collapse (meaning my wing folded, this basically turns it from a parachute to a shopping bag in the sense of keeping you from falling to the ground)
Luckly I noticed, took a few steps back and started going “what the fuck was that???” Sat down for 15 minutes while figuring out what I did wrong. After the 15 minutes I took off again, this time safely.
I’m pretty good at handling scary and dangerous situations so even though I was a literal step away from probably death, definitely life long disability, I can’t really say that I was extremely scared.
Went to wake up my daughter like every morning, bed is empty, covers thrown to the side. Check around the house, nothing.
Everybody else is asleep, house is silent. Check the back, the swings, the rear deck, nothing.
Check bedroom again.
She was rolled up tight in her blanket, against the wall, from head to toe, making it look like the bed was empty.
Weak Knees Moment
I remember doing similar as a kid on the regular, I’d wake up to the sound of my mom calling my name because she had go l checked on me in the middle of the night, only instead of in my own bed I’d be under my sister’s bed, behind the couch, on another sister’s dresser, etc. I had a lot of sleep issues as a kid.
My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.
I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.
The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time… flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.
That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water… at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we’d see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.
We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.
The experience was both scary and exhilarating.
Harrowing. But as someone unfamiliar with anything involving with anything naval, why the Hell did they have you do that? In conditions like that, why wouldn’t you just cruise submerged and avoid the waves entirely? And why do they have people up there “on watch?” I can’t imagine you can actually watch for that many things in such insane conditions. To my ear, it seems like they risked three lives and caused countless thousands of dollars to naval equipment for no damn good reason.
Working up a radio tower that is on top of a hill where 2 quarries are slowly cutting their way into.
Everything was fine until I hear a large bang and rumbling noises. Then the entire tower starts vibrating with the shockwave of explosion.
I was about 20M up the tower that day.
Also we now know why our millimetre wave radios will sometimes have jitters in the signal strength.
Was the millimeter wave stuff point to point?
On a trip to Iceland, was hiking with my mom. I see a spot I want a photo in so I hand her my phone and trek out there. It was a small outcropping at the same height of the trail, overlooking some gulleys. Others had been out there because there was a worn path.
I’m standing out there for my photo, and some wind blows through. It picked me up off my feet. Like, I was weightless and severed from the ground for a few seconds.
I knew in that moment I was going to die. The wind would carry me over the edge and down to the gully below. Luckily, it didn’t last long enough to do that, and dropped me back on my feet, but I was so close to death, I could feel it.
People, the Icelandic wind is no joke. There was no uptick to warn me, no dirt or grass or whatever whipping around. It wasn’t A windy day. It was just no wind, then sudden wind strong enough able to pick up a 190lb woman clear off the earth.
I kept to the main trail after that.
Iceland has many crazy areas, and even where there signs (particularly on the beaches), people still venture onto the deadly rocks
Blimey I had no idea that could happen sounds scary
Hydroplaning on a motorcycle
Please tell me you’re not still riding one of those death machines.
Not currently. I’d have one again under the right circumstances.
I’ve personally known two people that have died in motorcycle accidents. These were dudes that were pretty safely oriented. Like wore all the gear all the time, rain or shine.
One of them took a spill and his bike pushed his femur through his hip and partly into his torso. He surprisingly lived through that accident. After he recovered he went back to riding as if nothing happened. He was fine for 7 years until he got involved in another accident and didn’t get lucky a second time.
If you have people that even remotely depend on you please just think carefully if it’s worth the risk. You’re actually about 4000% more likely to die on a motorcycle per mile traveled compared to a regular car. I’m not making that number up.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/810887.pdf
There’s a very good reason ER docs call them “donorcycles”
I learned to ride and loved it. After 2 years of getting a different perspective on how people drive in cars, I’ll never do it again. It’s insane what people think they can do while also operating a 1 ton hunk of metal flying down the highway at 70 mph. Cars should really not be the default form of transportation for most people.
I’ll die on the hill that driving would be so much safer if everyone had to pass in a manual transmission. That would eliminate so many people who have no business driving from doing so. There are too many people on the road who have no business driving a car.
Just ever so slightly losing grip on wet tarmac while taking a bend a little bit too fast and in your head you’re chanting “Lean, don’t break! Lean, don’t break!” to yourself…
Heartbeat stopping in the night. Luckily, the heart has mechanisms to restart itself, and the last one finally kicked in. According to the doc, this only took five to ten seconds, but it felt longer than the complete last class on a Friday afternoon.
Roughly how old were you and were you awake when it happened or did you wake up because of it?
Somewhere in my mid-twenties. I probably woke up before when my circulation went down. This had happened a few times before, with one occasion where I measured 26BPM with the blood pressure meter.
Luckily, they found that the medication I had to take back then was the issue, and switched me to another one, which I take for 30+ years now without issues.
Waking up to Trump’s day-one anti trans EO calling me an “anti American Ideology” and waging war on trans people. My partner and I made the decision then and there to escape.
Close second is choking on a piece of baked potato while home alone as a kid
Not affecting me, came back from a trip to find my friend nearly comatose on my couch. She had been watching the apartment. Her blood sugar was over 1000.
What’s weird is how everyone reacts differently. Someone talked about spinning out in a car; once, my girlfriend was driving, in the winter, and we tried to pass someone on the freeway, going near freeway speeds. The roads were icy, and we spun around multiple times, and ended up coming to a stop on the other side of the freeway facing oncoming traffic. Throughout the entire episode, I remember only thinking, “Ok, this is happening.” I wasn’t afraid, my heart rate was normal, I was completely calm. I think I may have put my hand on the dashboard, as if that’d do anything. I think, for me, it was the utter inability to do anything about the situation that made me calm. I’ve lost control on ice while I’ve been driving, and that’s nerve-wracking. But that one time was the worst, and yet I had no fear. It’s really strange, isn’t it?
So, my answer is being up on the town hall tower in Rothenburg, Germany.
I know I’m acrophobic, but not pathologically, but I figured I’d be a little scared and that would be it, and I wanted to do it. So we climb about 800 floors of stairs and crawl through this little submarine-like hatch onto a mayor walkway around the tower literally wide enough for one person, as long as they’re not too fat. The railing is a metal bar about waist-high, and I am not joking, you didn’t have enough room to turn around. So you shuffle around the entire spire - there’s just a column behind you - until you make the circuit and can climb back in the man-hole. It was not great; I was already anxious, except that after I got out, people just kept coming out of the hole. It was literally impossible to go back - you had to make the circuit, and there were people on both sides of you. You shuffled as fast as everyone else was, which was slow, because you’d stop when someone would finish and climb back in the hole.
I was about three people out of the hole, and thinking about the warning sign about the walkway being rated for only 4 people at a time, and how by my count there were at least a dozen, and I panicked. It was one of two or three times in my life when I felt like my brain had run off and was doing its own thing, and I had no control. I didn’t make a scene, but internally, I was completely terrified, and probably wouldn’t have been able to move if I hadn’t been part of a press of people on both sides inexorably shifting around the walkway. I don’t think that utter loss of any rational control can be adequately described unless you’ve experienced it.
The view was, apparently, beautiful, but I have no memory of it; all I remember is that it took 6 hours and all I could think of the entire time was getting back inside.
Got launched off the side of a boat near Tokyo in January. Wasn’t very buoyant due to heavy winter clothing and the cold water was… something else. Felt like I was sinking down forever. When I did resurface, it took a long time for them to rig up a ladder for me to climb aboard the adjacent ship.
