When I was 13 I helped the local burnout mow lawns. He was late 20’s and hung out with us teenagers from the same block. Got us weed, bought us beer. The 16yo guys I looked up to were friends (?) with him, he’d hang in the backyard fort of the lead 16yo, and he basically ran the local lawn mowing cartel of all us kids. I wanted money and it was easy and fun, hangin’ with the boys. We shoveled walks in the winter.

One snowstorm morning he wasn’t at the fort where we’d meet so I volunteered to run across the street to his house. Knock. Knock loud. Try the door, he didn’t mind if we came in his basement entrance to his parent’s house. It’s dark, light on in the bathroom. 13yo me saw his first dead body that day; full bathtub with slit wrists and neck.

E: oh, reason for suicide seemed to be that he had a DUI wreck a couple months prior where a young girl (like 7 or 8) didn’t die but wouldn’t ever be the same… like couldn’t walk or brain damage or something. He couldn’t handle what he did, I guess.

I was very close to either dying or having permanent brain damage due to a stun grenade in a protest in my country. While being a completely unarmed, non-violent and basically running away/hiding protestor.

I was with a friend and a bunch of people outside our campus. Everything was peaceful and then, out of nowhere things got bad, with stun grenades and tear gas everywhere. We were used to it, but that time the tear gas was so bad that the neutralizer we brought was doing nothing. We took cover with a wall (bad idea, but we were panicking badly), and I wasn’t able to breath, so I wanted us to run away from there. I told my friend to let’s just run certain way, and I was so full of adrenaline and ready to run, but he stopped me. 1 second later, a stun grenade fell from the sky just 1 m away of us, in the direction I wanted us to run; no doubt it would have hit me in the head.

After that I just took his hand and we ran away, not able to see nor breath. Me holding his hand was a huge saver for both of us, as we could, more or less, guide each other. We ran some 20-30 m and just fell to the ground, but in a somewhat safe place. We crawled some 10 m more and just rest there. It took us some solid 15 minutes to catch our breath. Never said a word to my family about the whole incident.

Fun times.

Probably not as interesting, but I was woken up as a kid (teen?) by my mom screaming and running into my room/in my bed. Woke up to see my dad standing in the doorway with a steak knife. She had asked him to go to rehab. That was it. We’re good though 🤙🏾

Since I most likely won’t out live my wife, and she doesn’t want to live without me, we have agreed on a murder/suicide when we are getting up there

After taking a car door to the head during heavy winds, I experienced immediate and recurring night terrors/sleep paralysis for two years. They started out pretty extreme, with me waking up on my stomach with some kind of creature pinning me to the bed. I’d struggle enough to lift my head a few inches, only to find my pillow was filled with distorted, open-mouthed faces stretching out at me from the material.

As time went in the hallucinations gradually waned in extremity, though never becoming anything comfortable. I would open my eyes to see a phosphorescent grid encompassing my walls, or millions of flies on my bedroom ceiling. Once my cat was staring up at them too, and I believed what was happening was real, only to wake up a moment later facing a different direction, and my cat fast asleep at my feet.

Eventually it’s as though my soul became heavy or something. I slept on the top floor of a two-story home, with a very old colonial-era basement below it. I would constantly find myself one or two floors directly beneath my bed, all but glued to the ground and trying with all my might to crawl out of the damp, dark cellar toward the stairs, but too sluggish and/or paralyzed to do it. I felt terrified down there in the darkness. Eventually the adrenaline would wake me up safely in my bed.

Throughout the entire ordeal I would somewhat frequently open my eyes to see some sort of ghostly or transparent entity looming over my bed, leaning over or staring down at me. The last night I ever experienced an episode, I woke up to see that very entity, but I realized suddenly that the entity was me. It was me standing there, looking down at myself. I became angry. I felt like these episodes had ruined my life, and made sleeping something I no longer looked forward to. The rage came to a head. I activated every nerve in my body to try to break free of the paralysis. I gritted my teeth as I succeeded, groaning the words “FFFFRUUUUCKK YYRRROOOOUU!!!” as I bolted up from my bed and lunged through my own ghost. Then I never saw it again. In fact, I never had another night terror since. It’s been years now. A decade at least.

My dad threatened to kidnap me and an… Uncle, i think, held me at gun point when i was a baby. I had a surprisingly violent childhood, don’t remember any of it tho. Not many other 'scary ’ or unsettling facts i can think of I’m afraid, if those even count.

I (aurally) witnessed a kindergartener get run over by her school bus. I was on a different bus and our bus drivers were talking over the radio, then there was this ungodly wailing from the other bus. The other bus driver just kept screaming “I killed her, I killed her”.

Turns out the little girl barely missed the bus, ran alongside it to catch up, tripped, and fell under the wheels of the bus.

Once we got to high school, students on the killing bus were offered counseling. I, not being on the killing bus, didn’t talk to anyone about it until I went to therapy decades later.

Yellow school buses freak me out still, for that and abuse reasons.