15 People Reveal the Most Horrifying and Traumatic Experiences They’ve Lived Through

1.

On deployment with the Navy a nineteen-year-old lookout spotted a dead body in the ocean. So the crew did the decent thing and brought on board, double bagged it, put it in a freezer, and handed it over to the local authorities at our next port visit. Not to go too far into the gory details, there weren't enough teeth left to identify it by dental records.

Somebody had to clean the wire stretcher that had brought it in. And despite the common acronym for Navy (Never Again Volunteer Yourself) I knew another teenager would be assigned that chore unless somebody more mature took it on. So I volunteered. The Corpsmen provided PPE and iodine and I gave it a good scrubbing.

Sailors being what they are, two rumors ran around the crew that week: "Don't eat the peas" because the body had purportedly been stored next to the frozen peas (it wasn't, according to both the Corpsmen and the CSes) and "There's still skin on that stretcher." This was also untrue. Yet having been the fool who had volunteered for that work I got ordered to clean the stretcher a second time.

Every crude joke imaginable made the rounds too. "What's his name? Bob." etc. Much to the distress of the lookout who had spotted the body and reported it. Took her aside to say a few kind words to the effect of there's a family that will be able get closure because of her; she did a good deed. -doublestitch

2.

Pet and house sitting. 2 dogs, 2 cats. These friends of mine lived in the middle of nowhere. It is night-time and literally all of them look at the f**king corner and look like they are tracking something that is moving. They all get super aggressive. Hissing and rage barking. They all stopped at around the same time. I wanted to get in my car and go home. Not okay. -Frostitute_85

3.

I’m in a medical program currently. We have cadaver labs. There have been several instances where the company that provides the cadavers didn’t warn us about certain bodies having things. The one that I can recall is a guy that donated his eyes for organ donation. They did not sew his eyelids shut. When we opened the bag the first day it was horrifying. We expected to see eyelids and instead there were just bare orbits. Quite the shock. -zachafp

4.

Was doing WWII archaeological mapping of fighting bunkers/body recovery in the Pacific. We were in one cave that was used as a holdout mapping the area and documenting for the local govt. My flashlight caught all this glinting shiny stuff in the cave floor and I was like "oh damn, that's pretty...what's going on here?" I walked closer and in the dark under my flashlight I realized it was a f•ckload of human teeth that got blown apart and mashed into the mud of the cave floor.

Looked down and I was standing on more teeth and other parts. It's strange how fast something that looks so pretty can turn sad and creepy. I sat for a sec to look around and it got a lot worse the more I looked. Plenty more to the story but that's the general idea. That was a wild project and the things I saw during that one will stay with me for a long time.

It's haunting but in a sad way, not scary. Just knowing that civilians were in that cave as well when everything blew up with the soldiers that came in and used it as well. The civilians couldn't leave and the soldiers weren't going to give up alive. Part of the doctrine of that particular fighting force in the Pacific theater at the time.

So many shoes, high heels, picture frames, family heirlooms that folks had taken as they ran for safety. Parts of people were absolutely everywhere in that damn cave. Crazy ass day at work for sure. -TX-PineyWoods

5.

When I was 11 my dad (captain of the local sheriffs department) received a car crash over the radio as we were on the way to school. A sports car had spun out on the ice and become wedged under the trailer of a semi. The man drive the car was decapitated. -Altril2010

6.

I was playing the game FEAR in my room at night with the lights out when I turn around and see what looks like the girl from the game standing there watching me play. It turned out to be someone visiting my roommates who for some reason let themselves into my room and watched me play for who knows how long before I noticed. -BattdPlayer

7.

Sleep paralysis, multiple times. It started when I lived alone and I would hallucinate a stranger approaching the door to my apartment and fiddling with the lock until the door opened. Then a shadowy figure would come in and sit on my bed.

The sounds and sensations were so vivid but I could never get a clear visual. It also happened in the hospital where I imagined a bunch of doctors surrounding me and talking about my like I wasn’t conscious. And I’ve seen my partner next to me in bed take on a demonic expression and whisper threatening things to me. -turanga_leland

8.

Waking up to a strange man standing over me watching me sleep. I froze and stayed still til he left. I thought it was sleep paralysis until I found a boxcutter he left on my kitchen table. Turned out to be a maintenance man for my apartment who got fired. -Sorry_Composer_8043

9.

Waking up in the middle of the night and hearing what sounded like a wounded animal wailing, inside the house, just downstairs. I creeped along the landing and stood there for a bit, baffled, and then I realised it was human, a person making the kind of guttural noise that can only mean absolute grief and horror.

After a few moments straining my ears I then realised it was my mum. “My sister is dead” was my immediate thought. And I just stood there, frozen, not wanting to go downstairs and find out what had happened. I didn’t want to make it real. If I just stayed on that landing in the dark I could just stay in the reality where whatever was making my mum sound like an animal hadn’t happened yet. But eventually I had to go down, so I did. The wailing was coming from the kitchen, and as I got down to the hallway I was hit by the cold night air. The front door was wide open. No-one there. No car pulled up. The kitchen was dark, but I could tell my mum was in there. I was so confused and scared.

As I walked in I saw a tall figure - definitely not my dad (who was away on a trip at the time) and my mum. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that she was looking on with a thousand yard stare, her face wet. I then recognised the figure as our longtime family friend who lived on the other side of town. My confusion deepened. I asked why he was here, with a terse tone that surprised myself, like I was angry he had brought something into our house, something horrible. He then blankly stated that his daughter was dead. My longterm childhood friend.

He had received the news just 20 minutes prior that his 22-year-old, perfectly healthy daughter, had dropped dead in her flat due to unknown reasons. He was home alone at the time and his first thought was to come to us. He had told the police woman who had told him to drop him off round the corner so that the appearance of a police car wouldn’t alarm us. In hindsight it means a lot that he would seek support from us at such a horrific time, but wow that night will be a core memory for me for all the worst reasons.

For a couple months after that I would freak out whenever I heard a wailing noise, wether organic or mechanical, it would just immediately take me back to that spot on the landing. -Usidore_

10.

I was about 14 and my parents had gone out to dinner with some adult friends. I happily stayed home on my own. I'm watching tv with the cats and I hear a noise from the garage which shares a wall with our living room. Both cats stand up, and start staring at the wall, peering with all their might and not moving a muscle. I hear it again. Then a bunch more noises- clanks and clunks, there is definitely something in our garage.

I'm scared- the only thing separating us from the garage monster/hatchet murderer is a flimsy internal door in the utility room with an average lock. We are out in the country- police will take some time to get to us. I can't call my parents- this is ancient pre cell phone times. I grab the fireplace poker- nice heavy iron one, and the phone (with its mile of cord trailing after me) and head upstairs to a more defensible position.

I call my uncle who lives about 10 minutes away and tell him whats going on- he says he is on the way- I ask him, should I call the police? (I was a kid and wasn't sure about calling.) He says hell yes! I call the police and they say they're on the way, a wonderful lady is on the line with me now, but I'm more scared than ever because there is more clanking and clattering from the garage and now a wierd tapping/scratching on the utility room door... Now the cats are puffing up and growling at the door- I've never seen them act that way before. My heart is in my throat. The lady on the phone tells me to go into the house as far as I can- put as many doors between me and whatever is in the garage as I can.

I'm now cowering in the master bathroom, behind my parents' bedroom door, the bathroom door, and in the shower cubicle. But that phone cord I mentioned- it leads straight to where I'm hiding. I wait, scared to death, while the lady keeps me informed about what is going on. I hear shouting outside, male voices. The lady tells me the police officers are outside and that they've found a man at the side of the garage... In retrospect now, I'm just thankful that the police didn't kill my uncle who turned up with a shotgun and was prowling around outside the garage trying to peer in the windows to see who or what was inside.

I've never been so scared in my life or so grateful. Thank you amazing 911 lady who stayed with me, thank you police officers who came to my rescue. Thank you Uncle who was ready to protect me. Who or what was in the garage? A possum!! We all had a good laugh. We don't know how he got trapped in there, but he was stuck in our closed garage and having a good nose through the recycling boxes - hence all the clanking and clattering. I made my parents buy us a fancy new cordless phone. -BlueDaisyCat

11.

Mother died of cancer in early 2013 while in hospice care. She had passed into a comatose state in the middle of texting one of her friends (we discovered the unsent message on her phone). We never finished the message and thus never sent it either. Fast forward a few weeks, past the funeral and into the stages of handling her will and talks with her lawyer. At this time one of my brothers held onto her phone (will stuff).

One day, it received a message - from our deceased mother. I don't quite recall the message contents, but we received a few more messages from her over the next almost two weeks. I recall them being reminders or something. It was unnervingly interesting to say the least. We'd initially set up alert reminders for her to take her pain medication - she was on some 4mg opiate pain meds and 800mg of paracetamol as a safetynet while at home and conscious, but the reminders were disabled.

So we contacted the telecomms provider mum used and had to explain (twice) to the poor support person what the issue was. They had to take a few moments to bring their supervisor in on the call because of the strangeness of the call.They looked through her phone history, couldn't find anything regarding any calls or texts from that mobile number, yet we had the messages which were sent in as evidence.They said it would be looked into and, sure enough, about a week later they called back and said they found the issue: Mum had set up some sort of business-reminder-clause-thing which was sent in her name to her phone that she managed to uncover and stop. -Wuffies

12.

When I was 5, I went to the beach with my grandparents. There was a dead orca that had washed up, and a bunch of marine biologists were there trying to figure out why it died, and had dissected it right there on the shore.

It had a full quarter of its body removed from head to tail, and I could see all the insides. There was a pool of blood inside it that I could have swam in at the time. The thought of that horrified me and gave me ptsd for many years after. It manifested in the strangest way, I couldn't sleep without putting a blanket over my sheets, and sleeping on top of that. Id imagine the sheet as the inside of that whale, and plunging myself into that pool of blood. One day, I simply got over it I guess. -Youpunyhumans

13.

Staying in an old hotel somewhere in Spain, Catalonian mountains, alone half asleep, I felt someone tickling my ankles, heard female giggling. Being half asleep I moaned about it and told them to quit it. I woke up in the morning and realised I was alone in a locked room and who..what... -DonaldTrumpTinyHands

14.

I was housesitting/petsitting at a house in the mountains west of Denver. It was early evening. I was outside throwing the ball for the 2 golden retrievers when out of the blackness came a scream that sounded like a woman. I froze. The dogs immediately started growling and snarling into the darkness that surrounded the house.

I heard the scream again, and again- and the 3rd or 4th time I realized that the scream sounded nearly identical every time, which almost made it more terrifying. I rushed the dogs inside and made sure all the doors and windows were locked. I nearly called 911, but the scream was so consistent in pitch and duration that I went to the internet to figure out if it could be an animal.

Turns out, the roar of a mountain lion can often sound like a woman is being bludgeoned. This is definitely up there for most frightening experiences in my life. -27Jarvis

15.

I used to work a graveyard shift in retail. Basically, it was a clothing retailer and when the mall was closed. I would come in and clean the store up, fold the clothes, fasten security tags. Etc. I didn’t have a car, so my day was me waking up at midnight, walk two hours and get in an hour early to start my shift. Well, the road I took has no gas stations, businesses, or any sort of public place until halfway point at a park.

And, I suddenly have the problem of my stomach isn’t agreeing with what I ate before I left, so I remember the park has a public restroom. Now, this restroom was basically a Basin with a drain for the urinal, a low pressure sink, and a stall. The public restrooms had no door. Was just open going in, and a grate making an opening for whatever light coming in. And no lights inside what so ever.

So I use my phone flashlight, go to the stall. Lock it, and do my business after turning out the light. A couple minutes pass of me looking at my phone. And I hear loud, heavy boot steps coming into the bathroom. Now, I know people make the joke of “Bet you’re glad you were on the toilet haha!” No, I learned fear makes your butt clench faster than a cigar cutter. I hold my breath as I hear these boots walk up to the stall and try the door.

Thankfully, me locking it showed. I was about to say occupied when this being grunts and growls, and starts rattling that door. I stood up, getting my pants up quickly getting ready for a brawl. And I yell “I AM ARMED! IF YOU DON’T STOP I WILL OPEN FIRE!!” Now, The scary part was. I was bluffing. I had nothing, No knife, no gun. Just two fist and a load of adrenaline. The next thing I hear is these footsteps tear out like a bat out of hell. I wait a couple moments.

Tighten my belt, and make like a bat myself, my hands up ready for what there may be. Thankfully, No one was there. I never sprinted so fast to that job, and I never, stopped at that park again. -RagsTheRecounter