Reality is always more horrifying than fiction.
You might think near death experiences in movies, and TV series are scary. However, the following people will probably disagree with you. As they have had some frightening near-death experiences that will scare the hell out of you. From being held at gunpoint to 9/11, these people have dealt with some horrible sceneries and lived to tell the tale.
These are the stories that no one ever forgets so scroll on below and take a look.
#1 9/11.
Being knee-deep in rubble in a burning room and 1000′ of shin deep water from the entrance of the Pentagon when they told us that another plane was going to hit. I had a fairly fatalistic viewpoint and figured that there was no way to make it to safety, so why not put this particular fire out before something I couldn’t control happened.
#2 Drowning scare.
When I was 13 my parents and I took our annual trip to Mexico. Sixth time staying in the same city, same hotel on the beach. I’m 26 now so this story could be a little hazy.
I went out for a swim in the ocean while my parents were lying by the pool. Was hanging around in the water when I realized I was being pulled a bit further from the shore than I’d like. I tried to get closer but it was just not happening. Then, the undercurrent became overwhelmingly strong and I instantly got pulled under water. That first time took me by surprise and I got a mouthful of sea water and my eyes were just burning like hell.
I was able to get up for air but I was exhausting myself and I knew this just wasn’t sustainable for long. It was pretty tough to yell for any kind of help with the water pouring in. After a few minutes of just trying to breathe I went under and hit my head on the floor of the ocean. I can very clearly remember my body just turning 360 degrees in a ball, underwater, with sand brushing past me. I had my eyes closed but I could just see it all and feel all the things around me and I kind of thought that was the end of me.
The next time I surfaced, I caught glimpse of a sea-doo and a few seconds later it was right on top of me. I was rescued by someone on the beach. I still have no idea who. He brought me to the shore, where my parents were totally frantic.
After a lot of throwing up and some sugar water, I’m still here, but that was easily the most frightened, scared, terrified I’ve ever been in my life.
#3 Seizure.
Probably the single scariest moment I can remember was in 2001 when I witnessed my mom having a seizure. This was her first of several prescription drug-related (sudden withdrawal from anxiety drugs) seizures that she’s had since then.
I didn’t even know what a seizure was at the time, nor had I ever seen one happen. Just heard a scream from the other room, ran in to see her shaking violently. I called 911, screaming into the phone. I thought my mom was dying right in front of me.
Shaking stopped, she came to, didn’t know who she was for about 15 minutes, and came around the rest on the way to the hospital. Scared the crap out of me.
#4 A bad feeling.
I went out to eat with some friends. I carpooled with one because we lived pretty close. He drove me home and we wound up just talking in the car outside my house. Suddenly, we both looked at each other and then behind us. We were both scared, out of nowhere. I said ‘Drive. Just go.’
‘Where?’
‘ANYWHERE.’
He floored it. I looked behind us again: nothing at all. We both thought for sure we were going to die.
#5 Bicycle ride.
I was going down a very, very steep hill in the Texas Hill country on a bicycle doing about 60 mph when the bike suddenly gets the high-speed shimmies. Steep cliff on the right and sheer rock face on the left and me knowing I’m going to crash and get the worlds worst road rash.
Somehow I manage to get to the bottom of the hill but am shaking so bad I couldn’t ride until I stopped and calmed down. To this day I don’t go very fast down long steep hills with out riding the brakes to control the speed of my descent.
#6 Kidnapped in Pakistan.
Sitting locked in a basement in Bahawalpur, Pakistan as militants were coming to kidnap me.
I arrived in Bahawalpur and all the hotels were either full or closed, so an extremely nice family took me in. The next day in the evening as we were all sitting having dinner, a man rushed in and started speaking very quickly in Urdu.
I was rushed into the basement and told they would have to lock me in as ‘bad men’ were coming for me. I stayed down there for ages until they let me out. The police were there and it was explained to me that a group found out I was in town and decided to have a go at kidnapping me.
Perhaps they were just criminals, I don’t really know, the police said they were militants but who the hell knows what to believe in Pakistan.
#7 The unlucky horse.
I would have to go with the time I had my horse nearly run into the railroad tracks. I was certain he was going to get his foot caught up, break a leg, fall, throw me, and that I would have to put my horse down, or that we would be hit by a train.
This horse is also responsible for my mom’s scariest moment. He fell on me one day (long story leads up to this). She wasn’t watching when it happened, heard me screaming, and turns around to see this horse on top of me thrashing around.
This horse should never have been sold to us.
#8 Close call on a motorcycle.
I was on my motorcycle in the rain because a friend was borrowing my car and I had to get somewhere. Someone two lanes to my left started merging over into my lane. They didn’t signal, didn’t even look, they just cranked their wheel as hard as they could to get from their lane, all the way over to mine, so they could make their turn before the light.
There was a car behind me, so I couldn’t slow down quickly or he’d run me over. So I had to accelerate to avoid this madman turning into me. But the light was very close.
I accelerated in time to avoid him, but then when slowing down quickly to avoid hitting the van 30 feet in front of me, my back wheel slipped and I lost control.
This was the moment I was the most afraid. I knew I was going to die. I was going very fast and there’s no way I could stop in time. The car to his left was too close so I couldn’t squeeze between them. This is it, hopefully I won’t feel anything until I wake up at the hospital.
Well, my out-of-control bike regained control, just in time for me to pass the van on the right between him and the sidewalk. There was barely enough clearance between that van in front of me and the sidewalk to his right for my bike to squeeze through. My bike ended up stopping in the intersection.
(The light was red, I wasn’t supposed to be in the intersection, but I didn’t care, I was alive). If that van had been just an inch more to the right, I wouldn’t have made it. To this day I still think about how lucky I was to have made it out of that without a scratch. I’ve had another close call on the bike since then, but it’s not nearly as terrifying.
#9 Freakshow snow storm.
I was in my jeep on a logging road in the mountains. I got caught in a freak snow storm on one of the switch backs. At a turn in the road the jeep started sliding towards the cliff. I knew I had a few seconds, but couldn’t bail out because the road was too tight and I’d be jumping out the door and down the cliff.
I knew that the best way to break a skid was to accelerate. Putting my foot to the gas pedal with a cliff directly in front of me went against every impulse in my body. I hit the gas, the tires caught and I made the turn. Close call.
#10 Carjacked.
A 6’5″ 230 pound guy escaped from police custody by hiding a handcuff key under his tongue, escaping his shackles, kicking out the police van door and then knocking out the woman transporting him.
He took her gun, car-jacked my friend and I, and shot my friend point blank in the face with a .357, killing him instantly by severing his carotid artery. The shots missed me and I ran.
He’s now on death row.
#11 Bottom of the pool.
When we found my one-year-old baby sister on the bottom of our swimming pool. Apparently she overheard us talking about going for a swim and somehow went in while we were changing clothes. None of us still know how she got to the pool or how she could’ve gotten past us.
My dad drove like a madman to the hospital.
She’s 13 now.
#12 Grizzly bear.
Short and sweet:
I was camping out in the Rockies with some friends during midsummer. Late one night, the fire’s out and the last two of us were sitting around by moonlight chatting, talking about going fishing (it was late enough that it was almost early). I got up to relieve myself, got 20 feet from camp and saw a bear.
Not one of those cutesy little black bears either. A huge grizzly bear. The thing was about the size of my car. Clearly it decided I would not taste good and passed his opportunity to eat my face.
I have been in fights, been stabbed, been in car accidents and even had a gun pulled on me, but for sheer awe-inspired terror, the grizzly bear is the scariest thing I’ve ever encountered.
#13 Lightning strike.
A few weeks ago, a friend and I were watching basketball at his apartment in downtown SF. His living room has floor-to-ceiling windows that comprise two of the four walls in the room (corner apt) overlooking the city. The TV was in the corner of the room, so we were essentially facing the windows.
All of a sudden, the whole room flashes white. My friend was in the middle of celebrating his team taking the lead when, mid-sentence, he stops and looks at me with a ‘what was that?’
At that moment, my heart started pounding – we’re being attacked, I thought. It instantly reminded me of MW2, where a flash of light is the indication that you’ve just been nuked. I was holding my breath at this point, just hoping the flash of light was an isolated incident. But something told me it wasn’t. I was waiting for the explosion. Surely, in a few moments I will be rubble.
Right then, I heard the loudest explosion I’ve ever heard. Due to being convinced it was some kind of attack, the explosion made me literally jump out of my seat. My heart was dancing outside of my chest. I was confused – how am I still alive?
After I calmed down, I looked at my friend who was seemingly composed throughout the ordeal. He kinda just looked at me and said ‘That lightning must have struck pretty close.’
#14 Near death experience.
March 15th 2008 – I was trying to leave a party gone awry. A senior named Korey Smith smashed a New Castle bottle over my head, for no reason, as I was trying to get into my car. He was holding a golf club, and I asked him if he was going to hit me with it. He responded: ‘Nah, with this…’ and blindsided me with the bottle.
I was in shock from the breaking bottle, and could only hear ringing in my ears. I stared at the guy and his friends and watched as their faces turned to horror, they began to run away. It took me a few moments to recognize the strange sensation of warm water being poured down my chest.
I asked my friend Sean if I was bleeding, I touched my neck and saw blood squirt a good 7 feet , I then began to panic. Pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911, I started to tell them what was happening to me, but I began to panic – and gave the phone to Sean.
I stumbled into the back yard of a house holding the party, and slammed on the sliding glass door. And opened it, and begged the first person I saw for a towel. The girl screamed, and dropped an entire stack of plates and silverware – and the host of the party came rushing to me from behind her.
He asked me what I needed as he stared at me wide-eyed. I told him I needed a towel, then I turned around and sat on the floor as a good 20 people stood around me in total shock. Some friends came to my side and began to help me, I took the towel and used it as a tourniquet it around my neck – and then laid down and waited for the ambulance.
The next 10 minutes were the hardest moments of my life – I woke up a day later in the hospital. I had lost 2 liters of blood (2000cc’s), and it took me an entire week to regain my strength and blood.
The last thing I remember was accepting my own death, and feeling horrible for the fact that my parents and family would never see me alive again.
I find myself blessed everyday I am here.
#15 Helping niece.
The night I had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on my niece. She was almost four at the time, and was chewing on some hard candy. I was in a different part of the house when I heard my father and my younger brother screaming for help.
Think the whole episode was maybe barely longer than a minute and she was perfectly fine afterwards, but I cried for like an hour and wouldn’t let her out of my site the rest of the weekend. I guess I’m still waiting for something scarier than not being able to help someone smaller than myself.
P.S. If you have the opportunity, get certified for this and CPR, you never know when you might need it.
#16 Searing pain.
Being splashed in the eyes with gasoline when I was 10. Being temporarily blinded, and thinking I would never see again. It was a panic, having your world blacked out, your eyes searing from the pain, and nobody was around. After six hours of saline flushing, I went home from the hospital with, luckily, no permanent damage.
#17 Robbed.
I was robbed at gunpoint by three youths in West Philly.
They flashed a gun at me after they stopped me walking home. They took my phone and my iPod, but I really didn’t have anything else.
I really wasn’t scared by the whole process until they told me to turn around, facing away from them, and walk. Immediately, because I couldn’t see the threat, I felt that overwhelming panic and feeling that they were just going to shoot me dead in the street right there.
Worst part of the whole thing was I was literally 1/4 of a block away from my apartment when this all happened.
Easily the scariest moment I’ve had.
#18 Armed Bank robbery.
I’ve worked in several banks and been in two armed robberies. For my first one, I had just started working in that branch and was the only male in the office. A car pulled up in front of the door and two guys jumped out with ski masks and guns in their hands.
It was my fourth day there, but being the only dude in the office, they assumed I was the manager and put the gun in my face first. I immediately said, ‘I just started here, I don’t have any cash’ and they moved to the teller next to me.
While they cleaned out the teller’s drawer, I could see the robbers were just kids (late teens, early 20s). I started sizing up one of them when the other one noticed. The robber I was sizing up came and put the gun up to my head, and I thought that was it for me.
They took us into the vault room along with the one elderly customer we had in the office, and had us all lay down on the ground while they opened the cash vault with a supervisor. She (the supervisor) started saying that we need two keys, and the other key was on someone out to lunch, which was a lie. I’ll never forgive her for risking all of our lives to save the bank a few bucks.
Anyways, they ended up leaving with a small amount of cash. They jumped back into the car and took off around the back of the building. They got out, jumped a wall into a residential neighborhood and jumped into a waiting getaway car. It took the police over a half-hour to get to us, due to a jurisdiction mix up with the local authorities. I guess it is better that way, so we didn’t have a hostage situation.
So, I went back to work the next day and went on like nothing happened. I ended up quitting that job and went on to another bank, where I was involved in my second robbery.
After the second one, it all really hit me. I became a bit racist (both robberies involved black people), and found myself trying to start fights with bigger black dudes when I would go out, so I could release some of my pent up anger. It never happened, definitely for my own good. I started seeing a shrink and now I feel better about the whole thing.