One time when I was like 15 I was up late at night watching scary movies. I got up to get something to drink and saw a person standing outside the large window in the living room. It felt like my soul was leaving my body and then I noticed it was my own fat ass reflection.

That was legit pretty dam scary for maybe 2 seconds were I thought I was gonna die.

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Exploring an easy cave with a friend. Nothing tricky at all, just one way through, standing room all the way, about 1m wide, ankle deep water flowing through the whole way (walking against the flow).

As we went, the water very slowly became harder to press forwards against. The change was so gradual we were second-guessing it the entire time until it got really strong. We figured it was better to walk against it than with it - at this point it was rushing against our legs, and the thought of slipping and being swept through, bouncing off of the walls, was not great. It felt much easier to keep our footing facing the flow, and also it seemed like we were much closer to the end than the beginning (the cave had an exit at both ends, it was basically a small fork of a river that cut through a hill).

So we pressed on, until we got to a point that should have been a small scramble up a few bits of rock - except now there was a massive flow of water hitting us at chest level as we tried to climb it. We were both completely unable to push against it and get up. We were also now convinced that the cave was filling up with water so we had to get out - which now meant turning around and doing the whole length again but with the water hitting the back of our legs the whole way.

Oh and the water was freezing, coming off of some snowy mountains. So for about an hour, we held onto the sides of the cave and slowly tried to move steadily through, while by this point I had almost no feeling in my frozen feet to help with keeping my footing. It was like guesswork every step.

By the time we got out, the water had risen by almost a metre I’d say. Not much but the extra force was insane, and the feeling of a cave filling up with water behind you was not easily ignored. Anyway, turns out there was heavy rainfall way up river from us, always check the forecast and think beyond where you are when dealing with rivers and caves!

When I was in 3rd grade, I had a classmate that had really bad parents. Drugs, beating him and their dog up and so on. We only found out about this later though.

One day after school, me and my best buddy met him on our way home, walking towards us with a glass bottle in his hand. When he was almost next to us, he smashed the bottle, grabbed a shard and stabbed my buddy. 3 stabs into his forehead, 5 in his chest, before running away.

Thankfully he wasn’t very strong and we were only around 30 meters from our neighbors house, so my friend survived and doesn’t have any permanent damage beside the scars.

Even now it’s still unreal to me, how an 8 year old boy can play with you in school and 30 minutes later stab you with glass shards.

In case anyone is wondering, the last thing I know about that boy is that his parents beat their dog to death, got jail time for beating him and the youth welfare office took him away.

And yes, simply writing about it still sends me on an emotional roller-coaster, even though it’s been almost 21 years since then.

Posing as a buyer to recover my ex-gf’s stolen laptop from when our flat was burgled. The sellers were a family and one of them was a clear drug addict, and they kept a huge dog in a cage in the middle of their apartment.

Fortunately they were stupid and I got all the evidence needed, and the police did raid them and recover our stuff (and many other peoples’ from other burglaries, and also tens of thousands of pounds worth of drugs).

But that feeling of being scared they’d recognise me somehow once i was inside their flat, and looking at the laptop trying to get the serial number, etc. and hiding my shaking hands - all with a huge dog in a cage a few feet away - was crazy.

Scariest moment for myself was many years ago hiding curled into a tiny ball behind my sofa while my (then) boyfriend stood just inches from me muttering “kill the removed, kill the removed”. Still not sure how he didn’t see me as I wasn’t really hidden from view at all, the sofa was in the middle of a large room and I was just huddling under a towel that was hanging over the back. I think it’s just possible that fear can make you invisible (I know rationally that’s not the case, I think it’s more of a comforting pseudo-belief). I’ve felt greater fear since then, but that was for someone else’s life, not mine.

My oldest being born blueish-purple. It was a harrowing few minutes.

After a weekend of basically no sleep, I straight up passed out at the wheel and ran a red light. Somebody honked their horn and the shock of that woke me up. That person will never know but I honestly believe they saved my life.

Edit: Sorry I’m not from lemmy.world, but still wanted to answer, hope you don’t mind.

When I was in China, my older brother was mad at me about something and was chasing me throughout the apartment so I got scared and I ran away from home to find my mother at her workplace. I sneaked on a bus (bus drivers didn’t really care, probably though I was the kid of whoever was in front of me) and went to my mother’s workplace. When I got there, I couldn’t find her, so after just waited for like half an hour before catching another bus back home. When I got off the bus I saw bunch of cops looking for me at a plaza near my home and my mom saw me and so the missing person search was concluded. My grandmother who was at home had called my mom and told her I ran out of the house so thats why the cops were there and it’s why she left early from work. So after that my mom took me to a restaurant to calm me down and I had some dumplings there. But my mom still said if I were not found, she wouldn’t blame my brother, which just made me feel so worthless. That’s probably one of the major events that cause me to be depressed af today.

All the shit that caused my PTSD.

Aside from that, the one time I complained about a nurse and later she took me to a room under false pretences for “treatment” only to pull out a large kitchen knife and try to convince me to use it on myself. I’m not that kind of nuts though fortunately.

The hospital “investigated” and found nothing wrong of cause.

What we thought at the time was a terrorist attack but turned out later to be an unfortunate accident involving a truck carrying something explosive, missed me and my family by literal seconds (as in it happened where we were just sitting and if we hadn’t moved, would have hit us directly). The driver sadly didn’t make it, but somehow no one else was killed or too badly hurt. But the noise, not just the explosion, but the kind of screaming you hear right after, and the people covered in blood and in shock, those things never leave you.

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One time we arrived at a train station drunk, and decided to cross the train tracks, instead of walking through the underpass tunnel. Just when I was jumping to the tracks, my friend stopped me and a train that I hadn’t noticed passed the station full speed.

We crossed the tracks anyway. Between the tracks there’s a fence and I cut my pants from the crotch when I climbed over it. Later my mom noticed the cut and said: “I hope you haven’t been crossing railway tracks”. “Of course not”, I replied. To this day I wonder how the fuck she knew!! We didn’t even live close to any railway tracks.

Crazy ex told me she was pregnant. Thankfully, She lied.