Narrowly Avoided Drowning

"At about 10 years old, I fell through ice on a pond."

"When I came back up, I smacked into ice...instead of the hole I fell through."

"The water was too murky to see any light from the hole, and I thought that I was witnessing the end of my short life."

"I was lucky to find the opening again, but as I tried to get back up, the ice kept breaking and I'd go under again."

"The whole event probably lasted 30 seconds...but to me, it was a lifetime."

"It's been 35 years, and I'm still nervous on a frozen body of water...even if cars and trucks are driving on it."- jekern

"Drowning."

"I was jumping off some high rocks into a river."

"It’s was a place in the town I grew up in that everyone knew."

"One day I somehow got turned around in the water after hitting and swam down, when I realized and turned around I was too deep to make it up."

"About 8 feet down I inhaled water."

"It burned and was cold at the same time."

"I could feel the pain in my ears as I tried to exhale the water."

"I don’t remember surfacing, my friends pulling me to shore or coughing up all the water."- WhatWouldTNGPicardDo

Chainsaw Accident

"I survived a chainsaw accident to the throat, 16th March 2022."

"Trachia, thyroid and epiglotis (hope I spelled those right) were each in two parts."

"The operating doc came by two days afterwards, with huge eyes, and told me about the puzzle pieces he had to put back together."

"I’m basically fully recovered except for my voice that sounds a bit hoarse because of nerve damage."

"It is slowly recovering and I am going for speech therapy."

"At the beginning though I did sound a bit like Lemmy Kilmister and thought about reviving Motörhead."- TokoloshNr1

Family In Danger

"Getting a phone call at work to tell me that my wife’s routine surgery had gone wrong due to an anaesthetists mistake and she was now in a coma in the ICU."

"I dropped everything and ran."

"What greeted me when I walked in was the stuff of nightmares."

"Tubes everywhere, machines beeping."

"My wife was in ICU for 23 days before they took her off life support and she died in my arms."

"Life has never been the same since."- M1r9f7i9sh

"Watching my 3yr old son whither away due to Leukemia to the point he was so weak he couldn't walk, sit up, talk, and we would have to hold his head in place so that he could watch 'Paw Patrol'."

"He's now almost 4 and back to walking again, and seems to be winning this long hard battle."- -Alter-Reality-

Held At Gunpoint

"One night I was working in a rural old wooden gas station."

"A masked man kicked the door open and robbed me with a shotgun."

"He was more scared than I was, which made me more scared than he was."

"I got him out of there with the money and all the cigarettes."

"The next day the newspaper published my name and address."- eightfingeredtypist

Infectious Disease

"Tick-borne encephalitis."

"I didn't even know a tick had bitten me and went from headache to shivers and extreme fever until I wasn't able to walk without my wife supporting me."

"Even reading made my head spin like crazy and I didn't know what the reason was."- DifferenceDependent6

Near Abduction

"I was 13 years old and my dad had just picked me up from high school but had my grandma in the car too so I sat in the back seat."

"We were driving back home and my grandma wanted to quickly run into a shop so we parked up outside the shop."

"My Gran was having trouble getting up the steps out front of the shop so my dad jumped out to help her, at that exact moment I noticed my dads gold chain he lost a couple of weeks ago under the seat in front of me so ducked down and reached under to get it, as I'm trying to reach under the seat someone got in the car."

"I looked up and they kinda looked like my dad from behind so I said "Dad?"

"They turned around and I immediately saw it wasn't my dad, they clearly didn't realize anyone else was in the car and were a little startled but quickly replied 'sit back and shut up, I'll let you out in a minute'."

"The key was still in the ignition and they started the car and peeled off."

"I have never really felt fear like it, all the worst kinds of thoughts rushed through my head and I was convinced they had stolen the car because I was in it but they drove down a couple of streets and pulled over and just said 'OK, get out'."

"I ran back to the shop and halfway ran straight into the arms of my dad who had been running after the car."

"I could literally feel the relief that he was feeling through that hug."- PeyJ

Unknown Illness

"I was in a hospital for months because of something else, couldn't get up and had already lost a ton of weight which made me severely underweight."

"Then caught some kind of virus (the doctors couldn't figure out what it was) and got weaker every day, I couldn't eat or drink and vomited all the time, at some point what I spat out was entirely black, probably dried blood."

"I can hardly remember that time of my life, but looking in the mirror and seeing my bloodshot eyes where all the veins popped and my chin and neck with burns from the acidity in stomach fluid and my skinny arms and ribs was horrifying."

"I think I was around 14 at the time and was sure I'd die."

"It went on for days and then just stopped."

"We thought it was that hospital virus that happens sometimes but apparently it wasn't, still don't know what happened and how I survived."- fluorishingStripe

Near-Fatal Car Accident

"Back in the early 2000s I lived in northern Minnesota."

"I was born and raised in Louisiana, so direct opposite side of the US where the only ice on the roads was when someone dumped out a cooler into the street."

"At the time I was dating a Canadian girl and went to spend Christmas with her and her family."

"Drove across the border, went to Ontario, had a good time."

"I came back across the border a few days after Christmas, sometime late afternoon."

"It was a 5-ish hour drive from her house to mine."

"Being the middle of winter, the sun went down very early so it was dark by the time I got to the first town in Minnesota."

"I drove down highway 61 which runs along Lake Superior, and is dotted with blink-and-miss towns."

"No one travels that highway that late unless they live there or are a trucker usually driving from Duluth to Thunder Bay."

"The roads were clear, no snow, no ice that I could see, so I cruised along at my usual 60 MPH."

"I hit a curve that had a patch of black ice and sailed off the road."

"One side of the road was an almost 90-degree drop straight into Lake Superior, the other was into a forest."

"I sailed into the forest, barrel rolled a few times, and landed on my wheels in a ravine."

"I credit my seatbelt for saving my life, so I'm now a hard a** about that when anyone gets into my car."

"So there were a few problems."

"First, cell phones weren't nearly as ubiquitous as they are now, and by extension cell towers weren't covering as much area."

"I had a cheap prepaid cell phone but no signal."

"Second, I was in a ravine so I was hard to see on a road that was hardly traveled anyway."

"Third, it was the middle of winter and I think in the single digits, somewhere between 0 and 10 F."

"I had a blanket I kept in my car in case sh*t hit the fan like that, but that won't do good for long since I had to stand on side of the road to be seen, and hope no one else skidded on the ice and squashed me."

"I for certain thought I was going to freeze to death."

"A local guy named John, who lived in the town of Schroeder, found me."

"He brought me to the hospital, I think up in Grand Marais, and even let me stay with him for a few days until someone could come get me."

"He had a long distance calling card (remember those?) that I used to call my roommates and girlfriend to let them know I was alive."

"I spent the first day sleeping from the painkillers."

"Nothing broken but everything hurt."

"The second day one of my closest friends said she would come up from Duluth the following day to get me."

"I slept a lot that day too and I found out John had this massive collection of musical instruments and played blues."

"That's what we bonded over, that and him literally saving my life."

"I found out recently he passed away a few years ago, though I'm not sure where his grave is but I've been trying to find out just so I can pay my respects."- SuperflyX13

Risky Surgery

"My son's brain surgery."

"He has epilepsy and had a small portion removed in 2020 to alleviate his seizures and give him a better quality of life."

"He spent a week with wires in his brain tracking his seizures as he had them in real time."

"They slowly stopped his anti-seizure meds to induce them, he had 26 in one night as he slept."

"Once it was enough data they removed a portion of his brain near his speech and memory center."

"This was the location of his misfires."

"The general consensus was that he had a good chance of losing his speech and memory."

"His personality could disappear."

"After his surgery as he was being taken back to his room he raised his arm to touch his face, the physician told him not to and my son said 'I'm not, I just want to touch it'."

"He spoke before he was fully out of anesthesia."

"Three days later he was home, three days after that he was being transported back for emergency surgery because of a nasty infection UNDER his skull."

"The surgeon later said he was maybe 12 hours from dying if he hadn't been seen."

"He had no symptoms other than a gross drip."

"No pain, no fever, nothing."

"Another brain surgery and six weeks with a drain tube and monitor on him at home with nurse visits weekly."

"He is now seizure-free and on a much lower dose of meds than he was previously."

"1500 daily down to 100mg."

"I spent a month in the children's center helplessly watching my son slip in and out of consciousness and have hundreds of seizures."

"The possibility of him waking up with no memories and no way to speak was horrifying to me as his father."

"So the scariest moment in my life was almost losing my 16 year old child 3 times in one month."- MardawgNC

Perhaps one reason people enjoy being scared at scary movies is they know that what they're watching isn't real, and the fear and adrenaline will eventually wear off.

Reality is far more terrifying than fiction.