Unless you're really lucky, you've had that moment just like the rest of us: that absolute panic when you realize, well...you're fucked.
Luckily, if you're reading this, that means you survived the experience and now have a pretty awesome near-death story. Well, if you've ever wanted to read anyone else's, you're also in luck. Recently, Reddit user u/throwaway_district9 asked, "What has been your most bone-chilling, hair-raising, 'Let's get the hell out of here' experience?" and I truly can't believe that some of these people lived to tell the tale.
Here are 19 truly terrifying near-death experiences that people escaped just in time.
Note: This post contains mentions of sexual assault and violence.
1. "I was walking from a local shopping mall to the train station so I could go home. The shortcut went through a huge, long tunnel and was out of sight from the road, and it wasn't used unless you knew the area. When I got to the tunnel, I looked up and saw one guy standing right at the other end of the tunnel, in the middle, just looking in my direction. Like he was waiting."
"Every hair on my body stood on end. I felt as if I needed to vomit, and before I knew what I was doing, my feet turned me around and started walking FAST away. He started walking after me and said, 'Don't worry, it's not like I'm going to RAPE you!' I RAN and walked right along the edge of a highway in plain view of cars in case he ran after me. I couldn't stop shaking for an hour."
2. "I live in a rural area; one night my dog started going wild at the sliding glass door in my back room. There had been a raccoon or a fox picking off our chickens recently, so I thoughtlessly opened it to let him chase it off. He raced toward a tree and was maniacally barking up it on his hind legs. I grabbed a flashlight. I searched the tree, and at first I saw absolutely nothing. Finally, I turned the light straight up, and 5 feet away was the biggest black bear I'd ever seen clutching the limb over my head. It must have weighed 600 pounds. I stood there staring for a few moments. That growl shook me. I felt it inside me. We went inside after that."
3. "A lot of years ago, I was working at the Cincinnati airport as a ramp agent for (now-defunct) Comair Airlines. I was working a departing plane, by myself, so I was hustling around to get the baggage door closed and signaling the pilot on engine startup procedures, and I still had to unplug the power cart and marshal the plane out."
"The power cart was a diesel generator, parked behind the starboard wing, the cable plugged into a jack on the plane’s belly. The pilot signaled me to disengage it, so I acknowledged him and ran from my position in front of the nose, out toward the wingtip, and back in, following the trailing edge of the wing. The exhaust from the turboprop engine is several hundred degrees, so you have to duck under the jet blast to reach the jack. I shut off the power cart, reached the jack, unplugged it and threw the cable clear, latched the door, and then started running back toward the nose to get the plane rolling. Hurry, hurry, hurry…
"I’d only run a few steps when my left leg just…didn’t drop. It extended, for such a distance and time, that I literally looked down at it, thinking, What the hell…? My foot finally planted, knee locked, and I felt the impact in my teeth. My stride was interrupted, and I’d literally been turned 90 degrees, now running directly away from the plane.
"That’s when I realized my next step would have taken me through the propeller. That is the closest I’ve ever come to fainting. I have no idea what caused that change in stride, but I am certainly glad of it."
4. "We were tearing down an old outbuilding/office on my in-laws' farm. We wanted to save as much of the lumber as we could to reuse in a chicken coop. So we pulled a large piece of plywood off one of the walls, and the insulation was crawling with hundreds of snakes. Said snakes immediately started exiting the wall toward us in a writhing horde."
"I have never in my life noped like I noped at that moment. I pretty much teleported into the back of my father-in-law's pickup. One minute I was standing in the way of hundreds of agitated snakes; the next I was considering if I could fit through the little rear window of a Ford F-150."
5. "You know how you win a fight with a tiger? You don't. That's some seriously scary shit. I had an experience hiking in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I was day-hiking alone, no radio, no firearms, no bear spray, no flares...probably 10 miles from the nearest human, when part of the cliff face in front of me moved. Initially I lunged back because I thought it might be a falling rock. But rocks don't have eyes."
"My focus shifted and I suddenly registered what I was looking at (like one of those 'Magic Eye' pictures). There above me, staring directly into my now-terrified heart, was a mountain lion. Exactly the same color as the rocks, and easily within striking distance. It just stared at me as I backed up a few hundred steps until it was almost out of sight. Then the really scary thing happened: I saw it jump down. It was just lazily wandering around, but in my general direction...and then I couldn't see it anymore. It was the longest 4 miles I've ever hiked, just to get back to my car. I swear it was just following me and laughing to itself.
"I can still see the eyes. I will never be able to forget those eyes."
6. "Once, in college, all of my friends had boyfriends and I wanted to be included, so I got a Tinder. Long story short, I matched with this guy named Ozil, and he asked if I wanted to smoke grass with him, and said he'd pick me up from my dorm. I said okay, and he came. We went toward apartments I’d never been to off campus. Everything was fine until he offered me loose yogurt in a bowl (which, thankfully, I declined because I was vegan at the time). He insisted but eventually let up. Then I knew it was time to get out of there when he showed me his camera and asked if he could take photos of me, to which I also said no and then said, 'Okay, it’s time for me to leave.' So I walked back to campus and he wouldn’t leave me alone — kept messaging me and then found my friends. Three days later, our campus got emails saying that this man had kidnapped and raped three women."
7. "I once went urban exploring in a storm drain on a nice summer's day. We only intended to explore the first couple of hundred feet but kept going. After a while, we could hear lots of water echoing in the distance, and I noticed the water level was a little higher, with a bit more flow. My mate tried to convince me it was just a diverted river. I wasn't having it, though, and made us head back pronto. Stupid us didn't count on a freak rainstorm and managed to get out just as it got torrential. At a few points, we weren't sure if we were gonna make it. Absolutely terrifying."
Also, as a warning to people exploring storm drains or anything underground:
"You're lucky you didn't run into any settled gas, either. The safety programs surrounding any work belowground involve constant testing for gas and lifelines for hauling people or, worst case, recovering a body from the space. It's quite common for deadly gases to seep from the ground or settle and be trapped in low-lying areas. Never go below ground level in a confined, nonventilated space."
8. "I once had a roller coaster at Cedar Point in Ohio all but blow up directly over mine and my girlfriend's heads while we were walking under it. The lift chain snapped somewhere near the top of the hill, stranding the cart about 90% up the hill. We heard what sounded a bit like the chain cranking up the hill, but much, MUCH louder and with less of a ratcheting sound. Eventually, I looked up and noticed in the little window at the center of the track that the chain was moving the wrong way. I looked over to see the chain piling up at the bottom of the hill just 12 feet over our heads, with nothing between it and us to protect us."
"I grabbed my girlfriend's arm and yelled, 'RUN!' and we both took off. Our friends behind us had already taken cover (they had a better view of the pile of chain building up) and were frantically gesturing for us to get under the track with them. When the chain reached its end, it flung up really high and sent grease and grime everywhere before flopping over the edge right where we were standing (albeit not nearly far enough over the track to reach our height)."
9. "I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains, on a trail I knew pretty well. I was leading a group of kids, maybe 20 or so middle school–aged children from the camp where I worked. I turned a corner and saw a jawbone of a deer. Pretty cool; showed it to the kids. It didn't have any flesh on it, so I assumed it was pretty old. A hundred feet farther down the trail, I found another bone. Femur, maybe (I specialized in insect populations, not deer anatomy). This one looked a little fresher. Another ways down, another bone. I was getting a little nervous at this point, so I explained that we should probably turn around and head back. My students all groaned that they wanted to see more dead stuff, but I shepherded them down the train and back to camp. Two days later, we got a call at the camp that someone had been attacked in the area by a mountain lion."
"Apparently a mountain lion had set itself up in the caves on the cliffside, and it had gotten pissed when someone got too close. I'm glad we left the area, even if my students would have loved to see more dead stuff."
10. "Back when my son was only about a year old, my husband worked second shift, so I was alone every evening. We lived in townhouses at the time and had a neighbor who was a war vet who my husband was friendly with. He was a little off, in the sense that there was very obvious PTSD and other traumas, but all around a nice dude. Anyway, one evening this guy knocked on the door. I opened it thinking he was probably looking for my husband, and I was just gonna let him know that he was working. Dude was super drunk, wouldn’t stop talking, and kinda made his way into the house."
"He also brought his huge-ass German shepherd with him. I was trying to be friendly, but I had the worst feeling in my stomach. I felt insanely vulnerable and as if something just wasn’t right with this situation. I kept trying to tell him in the nicest way to leave, but he wouldn’t.
"I texted my husband, 'Hey, neighbor guy's here and won’t leave, he’s trashed, I feel really uncomfortable.' My husband texted his buddies that lived a few apartments down, and they came over immediately. They got the dude out of the house, and not even 20 minutes later, I heard noises outside, and this guy was trying to rip the license plate off my car. My husband's friends heard it or saw it — I’m not really sure — but they came over and were more aggressive about him going home and leaving me alone. And he did, so I thought.
"A few hours later, my husband got home and saw this guy hanging out, crouched behind some cars. He went up to him to ask him exactly what the fuck he was doing. I don’t know the exact details because I stayed hiding in the house, but this guy had ropes and some other weapon on him, with full intentions of raping me that night.
"It makes me sick to think that if my husband's friends hadn't came over as fast as they did to help me, my poor son would have watched something horrible happen to me. Or even to think what he would have done to my child."
11. "I was watching my sister run the Boston Marathon in 2013. There are a few spots where you can get a good view of the course, so you travel around to try to catch your runner in a few places. We saw her run by one place, and then took the public transport to the finish line to cheer her on. I was on the crowded tram car and just got this sinking feeling in my gut — as if the universe was saying, 'Something bad is going to happen.' I vividly remember thinking that this would be the type of place that would be a perfect target for a terrorist attack (it was so crowded). We got off at our stop and were headed to the finish line — we had to decide which side of the street to cheer for her from."
"My brother was like, 'Let’s go here,' and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the wrong choice, so I made us cross the street and go to the other side. As we were getting toward the finish line, I heard a huge boom. That feeling saved us — we would have been exactly where the bombs went off (we were across the street when it happened)."
12. "I'm a trucker, so I have to find creative ways to park sometimes. I was on some random back road in the middle of nowhere Texas and had found what I call a make-a-spot area. I was all by myself except for my dog, so we parked for a 30-minute break. I get my dog out to use the bathroom, and she started acting all wild...growling and snarling and shit. Off in the field next to my truck, there was a red light about 6 to 8 feet in the air, and it was slowly moving around."
"It was dead silent except for my dog until the light got closer. My dog started to go nuts, so I decided, screw this, and went back to the truck.
"About the time I hit the drive tires on my tractor, there was some really large crashing in the brush, so of course my dog became even more difficult to control, and my adrenaline was like, run!
"I opened the passenger door, tossed my dog into the truck, climbed in right then and there, and slammed the door shut, just in time for something to crash into my truck.
"I have no idea what it was; I just know the whole thing rocked side to side. I drove away, without my seatbelt, door locked, for about 30 miles to a tiny town with a tiny gas station to finish my 30-minute break.
"A few days later, I was walking up to my truck and realized that the entire side of the sleeper of the truck was bent inward a little. You could only see it when the sun hit the side just right, but the bend was there."
13. "When I was 16 or 17, I was texting with a friend's older brother (19 or 20) who was a local paramedic. He was sweet on me. Love-bombing sweet. At that age, I didn’t know better and just loved the idea that an older guy was so sweet on me. I’d only met him in person once at a ball game. One day, he randomly showed up at the little countryside café where I worked. He insisted that I take his letterman jacket even though it was in the heat of summer. It was weird, but he was insistent, so I took it. We kept texting, and things got weird and possessive. I got scared and basically ghosted him. I never told him where I lived, but not even a few days later, I was home alone (way out in the middle of nowhere) with my younger stepsister and I heard banging on the door. It was him."
"He was yelling for me to come out right away. Beating the door. It was an old, run-down single wide trailer, so nothing was really 'home invader proofed.' He started kicking the door hard. The whole trailer was shaking. He was throwing stuff at the windows and screaming. I got my mom's shotgun, hid my stepsister in the closet, and called the police. It felt like forever. He didn’t stop until I heard tires on the gravel pull up. A cop came inside and said he claimed that I'd stolen his letterman jacket and class ring and he was just there to get his stuff back. The ring was in the jacket pocket, but I didn’t know. I gave it to the cop, and I don’t know what happened to him, but needless to say, there was no future contact. I still don’t know how he learned where I lived."
14. "My best friend and I were heading down a mountain from scouting bighorn sheep a little before opening day for hunting season. It was already pretty close to a 20-kilometer day of hiking through the mountains. We were roughly a couple of kilometers from the truck, hiking along the bank of a dried riverbed, when his dog stopped dead in his tracks. We thought he'd heard a squirrel or something — like, normal — so we kept walking. In an absolute flash, a bear (must have been a black bear) got up about 25 feet from us and BOLTED off into the bush so fast that he was probably over 100 feet away before I would even have been able to get the bear spray out of the holster on my belt."
"I just wanna say this: If you and a bear startle each other and he decides to attack, you are 100% fucked. I have never seen something so big move so fast in my life."
—EZkg
15. "My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue (SAR) team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and built a pretty nice fire. We were sitting there at about 2 a.m., hoping this dude would wander into camp. I had heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprise — we're in the middle of the woods; I'm used to animals stalking around outside my camp. I knew there were two animals, one on each side of us. It was at about that point that we heard a bird chirp. It came from around the place I figured one of the animals were. Then another, from the opposite side. I immediately realized that we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We very quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It's got a camper shell and is outfitted for truck camping."
"Cougars chirp like birds to communicate. There's a bunch of videos of it on YouTube, but basically it's super creepy when they're stalking your camp at 2 in the morning."
In case you don't believe they actually sound like birds...watch this clip:
View this video on YouTube
16. Same person: "There was another time when my son was throwing rocks into a bush off a forest service road. He was throwing small pebbles — big enough to hear them, not big enough to cause falling dirt. He threw one, and we heard a bunch of dirt and gravel suddenly slide down the hill. I jumped across the road and grabbed my son and started throwing fist-sized rocks into the bush. My wife looked back in time to see me peg a cat in the side, and saw it bolt. The day before, they had a cougar in the same area drag off an 11-year-old kid and manage to escape. We didn't get told about that until we called fish and game about it. That cat 100% wanted my kid."
Finally, let's end with a few accounts where we don't know if the people were actually in danger, but they sure are creepy stories:
17. "I was camping alone in 2015 in northern Arizona with my dog on a three-day hike. I woke up in my tent to my dog growling and making sounds I'd never heard a dog make before, and then I heard footsteps all around me. My dog was completely focused on the opening of the tent, with every hair on her body pointed straight up. I pulled out my gun and sat there holding my breath, listening to every sound as if it was a novel, for hours."
"I heard footsteps, whispers, and the wind in the trees, which made me even more frightened, thinking if the wind got too loud, I wouldn't hear them unzipping my tent. I white-knuckled the handle of my gun until the sun popped up, and the footsteps stopped and my girl calmed down. After about two hours of silence, I jumped outside, gun drawn, and facing every direction. Once I was semi-confident, I packed up as fast as I could, still holding my gun and popping up every few minutes. I shoved as much as possible into my backpack, knowing that without properly packing, I would have to leave behind some things — I left my collapsible chair and some collapsible pots and cups. My dog and I ran back the way we came until we reached a small town, where I called my mom, absolutely terrified, begging her to drive up and drive me to my car. I have some theories, like a cult, because they are a very real thing in Arizona, and especially around where I was camping. Fully owe my life to my dog Kira and her vicious snarls and growls that I'm assuming made them think twice. Miss you, Kira (2004–2018)."
18. "About 12 years ago, my friends and I stumbled upon a World War II bunker that was opened with a blow torch. These bunkers were welded shut, but somehow someone had melted the welds and got in. These bunkers are common along the Pacific Coast in the San Francisco Bay Area. This one was in Milagra Ridge near the Nike Missile Site. My friends and I decided to go into one of these bunkers after sundown. When we got in, there was a ladder that led deeper into the bunker. We decided to go deeper. Once we got into the lower chamber, I used my phone flashlight, and we found something creepy AF. There were ceremonial satanic runes and symbols painted on the walls and on the ground."
"In the middle of one rune, there were dead animals. As soon as my flashlight revealed the dead animals, one of my homies booked it out of that place. Someone was definitely holding some rituals or trying to summon demons. Or something along those lines. It was creepy AF, and we all got out of there hella fast.
"A week later, the rangers shut the opening by welding it back together."
19. "I was driving in a rural area in New England. It was late...so late that it was actually early. And there was fog — dense, dense fog. Like, Silent Hill levels of fog. And like an idiot who dies in the opening scene of a horror movie, I was driving on back roads. First my headlight just up and went out — I couldn't use high beams because of fog. I was in the middle of nowhere. I hadn't seen a house or town in a long time. The car started making noise and the check engine light came on. So I pulled over — surrounded by field and fog and dark. Creepy as hell. I gamely looked at the engine — I can fix electronics, not engines. I tightened all the things I knew. The car now wouldn't start."
"So I was in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the road. Because of the natural rules of how things work, my cellphone had no service as well. It was like one big cliché. But I was not stupid enough to go wandering the roads right then, so I reclined my seat and decided to take a nap for a couple of hours until the sun came up.
"I woke up. The sun was coming up, the fog was going away...and I was on the main street of a tiny town, parked in front of what looked like the Bates Motel house. Houses everywhere. It was the creepiest feeling. There was not a light on in any house all night? There was a service station 50 yards up the road. I walked up to it and talked to the guy (who looked perfectly normal). He walked over to look at the car, asked me to try to start it...and it did. Fucking thing turned over right away...and BOTH headlights were working.
"I drove on — never got the name of the little village, and I couldn't find it on a map. I always felt as if I was in this big setup for a horror movie that just didn't pan out."
What's your near-death or freaky experience? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.