Every now and then, life hits us with the unexpected. Sometimes, we are met with happy surprises—a new job, a run-in with an old friend, maybe even a huge lotto win. But other times, a sudden situation can leave us totally speechless (and aware of just how dangerous our world is). Here are some of the most chilling close calls:
1. What’s On The Other Side?
When I was younger, I used to skip school. I would hide in the garage till my parents left and then go back in the house. One day, I was in there waiting for them to leave and I thought they had already, when I heard their footsteps approaching the garage door. This had never ever happened before as they always just got in their cars and ran.
I crept to the door to listen closer, but then I heard a sound that made my heart stop. They started messing with the lock. I ran out the back, the other side of the garage, out into the garden and into the bushes. I was so scared. When about half an hour later, I dared to look back, I couldn't see anyone. I went inside and made a terrifying discovery.
The place was trashed. My parents had actually left at the normal time. We had been burglarized and I had stood maybe six inches from the burglar on the other side of the door and made a run for it, because I thought it was one of my parents.
2. Morning Ride
I was traveling in the Philippines in Northern Luzon. That's the part always hit hard by typhoons. It was just the beginning of the rainy season. I was in Banaue and was planning to go up north to Sagada the next day, which was a Saturday. The Lonely Planet writes about this route as "The scariest road in the world," and for good reason.
It's solid mountain on one side, and deep deep deep on the other. There was a Jeepney scheduled in the morning and one in the afternoon. A Jeepney is what they call a car ride on these trips. Everyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person and that if there is a later option, I'm definitely taking that one.
But on a whim the night before, I decided to leave earlier and take the 8:00 am Jeep. Super out of character for me and I'm still not sure why I did it. A few days later, on another bus, I chatted with this nice lady and she asked me what places in the Philippines I had been to so far. Then she said something that made my stomach drop: “OMG, have you heard about the Jeepney accident on Saturday afternoon on the road from Banaue to Sagada??”
So, apparently, the Jeepney I had planned to take came upon a mountain slide, lost control, and went crashing down the side of the mountain. Ten people lost their lives, and no one survived.
3. Swindled By The Sweetheart
I married my high school sweetheart when I was 23 and she was 21. We had been together for roughly five years at that time and were madly in love. We were married in April and she announced in mid to late May that she was pregnant. She had taken a test with her friend after feeling sick. I was so happy and excited that I didn't take the time to ask to see the test...she had just thrown it away!
Fast forward a bit, and she wouldn't let me attend doctor's visits and I gave her the benefit of the doubt for privacy and such—but then, I started to suspect something was off. She wasn't getting bigger at even the six-month mark. I was suspicious and confronted her about it and she went off on me with the standard barrage of, "How could you?!" and, "Don't you trust me?!" As a rebuttal, she pointed out some weight gain.
I was skeptical but loving and supportive of my wife. She had a rough life growing up and I felt as if I needed to be more patient and understanding. I reminded her that I will help her find help if she's not really pregnant; that I would love and support her and we would work through it. She said it wasn't necessary. My wife started gaining more weight, especially in the belly, so I kept moving forward as if she was pregnant.
We had a name picked out, a full wardrobe of the first three clothing sizes, a fully decked-out bedroom, etc. My family was suspicious but still supportive. Around month eight, it was painfully obvious she was not pregnant. I had already found her ultrasounds on Google, the weight gain stopped because she had a pancreas issue that she couldn't even eat enough to gain much weight so she had to be making herself sick to gain, and our relationship was deteriorating fast.
I was remarkably patient. The due date came and went and I asked what the doctor was saying. She would reply, "Oh, it's ok, the baby can sometimes be up to two weeks past due!" I had my date. I gave it two weeks and then laid down the cold hard truth. I told her: “Go to the hospital with me to see what's up with the baby/pregnancy or I'm gone right now.”
She went. I was not allowed to go back with her as she requested the doctors not share with me. The wife had told the doctors that she was there for an issue related to her pancreas issues. She never mentioned the possible pregnancy. I was permitted to "visit" her in her room and I looked her in the eye and told her it was over. I took the bullet from that issue. But, I avoided being gaslit and manipulated for the rest of my life.
4. Trigger Warning
When I was 14 years old, my cousin and I found my uncle's arms stash in his closet. As a joke, my cousin grabbed a pistol and pointed it at my head with his finger on the trigger. I quickly told him to stop and that it was not funny. He glared at me and told me it wasn’t loaded, while he pointed it at the floor and pulled the trigger.
Turns out it was loaded, and the shot blew a big hole in the floor. I think about this incident a lot. I brought it up once to my cousin and he started to cry. That experience cut us both deep.
5. The Difference Between Tragedy And Comedy Is Timing
I had some chest pains one night and woke up my wife to tell her. She got a little scared that it might be a heart attack and we agreed that I should go to the ER. The nurses were pretty sure it was a false alarm, but would run an EKG as is common practice. In my head, I was hoping that the chest pain would come back, not to prove a heart attack, but so that we can find out what the chest pain was.
The EKG was done by one veteran nurse and a new nurse. I was watching over their shoulders—and I didn’t like what I saw. Something was flashing on the screen that made both nurses look at each other with disbelief. They ran it again and one nurse went out to the station for help. The other stayed with me and very nicely told my wife and daughter to go back out to the waiting room.
A few seconds later five or six more people came into the room slowly and calmly and began preparing me for something. It turns out that I was having my second heart attack that night in the ER. The doctors and nurses found an obstruction in my heart and were preparing me to have it cleared and a stent placed. When I got out of surgery, the doctor who placed the stent told me, “You probably picked the best time and place to have a heart attack, right here in the ER.”
6. A Change Of Plans
A few years ago, I went on a trip to Cuba and Mexico. At the last minute, I decided to stay longer in Havana despite the mess that Hurricane Irma had left behind. The few days without electricity were actually oddly amazing. We were supposed to be flying to Mexico City. I later heard that our intended Mexico City Airbnb building had collapsed during an earthquake.
There was no logical reason behind our decision about staying. I just proposed it and my partner agreed. Crazy!
7. Swimming With The Fishes
When I was 16, I had a good friend whose father was a wealthy businessman of some kind. This is in Chicago, and I guess his dad started screwing around with the wrong guy’s woman. My friend told me it had something to do with the wife of a scary guy. I never knew for sure, but do know that I saw firsthand his dad get threatened, at a tennis court of all places, by two well-dressed clearly-Italian men who drove up in a black Cadillac.
I was sitting right there with his friend as they talked to him, and it was exactly as I imagined it would be in the movies. My friend said there was a contract on his dad. He actually said it like it was cool, and at the time, I guess I thought it was too. I was invited to go with them on a fishing trip in Lake Michigan that week. It was supposed to be my friend, his dad, his dad’s friend, and I.
Two days before the fishing trip, something happened with a member of my family and we had to go to Cincinnati for a few days. When I returned, I got absolutely devastating news. I learned my friend’s body was found floating in Lake Michigan. He was wearing a life vest. His father, his father’s friend, and the boat were never found. Officers questioned me about what I knew and who I’d seen talking to his dad.
I think I was lucky that I said I couldn’t describe what they looked like and didn’t get wildly specific. Either way, the coolest kid I knew, Chris, was dead. And they never found his dad, the dad’s friend, or the boat. It was a nice boat on a calm day on Lake Michigan. And something bad happened. I always felt I dodged getting caught up in something I wouldn’t have escaped from.
8. All Downhill From Here
When I was about 13 years old, I got into a bad skiing accident. I accidentally went down a double black diamond course, i.e. the hardest one, and got out of control. There was a small shed about halfway down, right in front of a cliff face that became super steep. I made the snap decision to slam into the shed instead of continuing down the mountain.
I was going probably 50 MPH, so I probably wouldn't have survived if I had kept going down with no control. When I was about a hundred feet away from the shed, I passed out from fear. I woke up with a broken arm and a lacerated liver. I was in the hospital for two weeks. But at least I survived in the end. I’m so glad I made the right decision in the moment.
9. You Are Not The Father
Back in college, my ex-girlfriend cheated and got pregnant. She blamed it on me, involved her family and all. I was willing to file a case in court with medico-legal as needed. My ex-girlfriend got too pressured as I was talking to her dad about medical tests, etc. Out of nowhere, she admitted that I wasn't the father and that it was some classmate she had a fling with.
10. Drinking To Your Health
One time, I was drinking and felt something stick in the back of my throat. I almost forced it down because it was really far back and awkward to cough up, but I decided to spit it out anyways. Turns out it was a shard of glass from the bottle I was drinking out of. It still creeps me out to think about even all these years later, because I really was just going to swallow it.
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11. Stopped For Speeding
Back in 2004, when I was only 20 years old, I was on a road trip with my friend and her dog from California to Washington. I was on the I-5 north at around one in the morning, using my cruise control to keep my speed right at the speed limit. I’d gotten speeding tickets in that part of Northern California before. I was familiar with this drive because my boyfriend was in LA and I lived in Seattle, so I made that trip a few times a year for a few years.
All that is to say, I had learned my lesson and used cruise control to keep myself from speeding. Never going more than five over the posted speed limit. So, it’s pitch black in the early morning. My friend has her seat reclined all the way, taking a nap on the passenger side, her dog on her chest. I see what I assume to be lights from a cruiser come up behind me.
The car slowly pulls alongside me, and matches my speed exactly. I kept my eyes straight ahead…but I had a terrible feeling. I knew this person was staring at me. I wasn’t panicking though, not like I had in the past when I’d encountered an officer on I-5, because I knew I wasn’t really speeding. I kept glancing at the speedometer to assure myself I was good. I may have even slowed down a notch or two, just to be certain.
After what felt like an eternity of this cruiser just keeping pace with me, he finally slows down, swerves in behind me, and puts his lights on. As I’m slowing down and pulling off to the shoulder, I nudge my friend awake and tell her I’m getting pulled over. She asks if I was speeding since she knew my history. I assured her I was not and had been using cruise control.
I was really starting to shake by this point. Officers make most people nervous—but something just didn’t feel right about this stop. I knew there was no reason for him to pull me over. It was pitch black, in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t seen a gas station or rest area for miles. The guy strolls up to the passenger side of my car as my friend is using the lever to get her seat upright again.
When he finally gets to the passenger side window, he looks visibly surprised that I have a passenger. He begins to fumble over his words, claiming that I was going 15 over the speed limit. He was so flustered he forgot to ask for my license. I actually asked him if he needed it. He trots back to his car and my friend and I look at each other like, what in the world?
Her dog, by the way, was going absolutely crazy during this entire interaction. I never saw that dog act like that before or after this happened. Now remember: I’d gotten a few tickets on that same stretch of road, within that same year or two. I was very familiar with this process and knew how long it should take and what to expect. In my previous experience, most officers go back to their cruisers for a good six to eight minutes.
This guy came back after about two minutes. He kind of tossed my license and registration into my friend’s lap, like he was annoyed, and yelled at me to slow down and told me he’d just give me a verbal warning for now. I thanked him, despite how creepy it was, and while I was putting my license back in my wallet and registration back in my glove compartment, he fired up his cruiser and floored it back onto the highway.
This is also not normal. Any time I’d been pulled over, they would always tell me to pull out ahead of them, so they could make sure I merged carefully back onto the freeway. My friend and I were freaked. She was more freaked out than me. I think I was trying to explain it away, give him the benefit of the doubt, at first. But the longer I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became.
I couldn’t shake that nasty feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Fast forward many years later—and I learned the terrifying truth. There was this officer that had just been incarcerated. He’d been patrolling the I-5 N in Northern California during that same time period I’d been on road trips, stopping unsuspecting young single female motorists, and taking advantage of them in his cruiser.
His M.O. was to pull up alongside their cars, scan them to make sure they were single females, and pull them over in desolate areas at early morning hours. He ended up murdering one of these girls when she put up too much of a fight. I can’t remember his name and I don’t know what he looked like since it was too dark to see his face well. But, my blood turned cold when I heard that. I definitely dodged a huge nuclear life-changing, possibly life-ending, event thanks to my tired friend and her protective little dog.
12. Right Of Way
I was riding my bike to school as normal when I was about twelve, and I stopped at a crossing. All the cars stopped, but I felt that something was off and waited a little longer. As soon as I started to cross, there was a flash of green as a Range Rover sped past me, barely a hair from the front wheel of my bike. If I had started to cross sooner, then I would have been hit head on and most likely not have survived as the car was going too fast.
I was so shaky afterwards that I turned round and headed home, explaining to my mum what had happened. Since I was still shaking, she believed me and made me a hot chocolate.
13. Closer To Home
My father-in-law was working on the construction of a power plant and was scheduled to work Sunday. He was a union pipefitter. On Saturday, he got a call from another company asking him to run a job much closer to his house. I think it was a five-minute commute vs 50 minutes, so he accepted and didn't go to the power plant job Sunday.
That day, there was an explosion at the plant, and people in the crew he was working with wound up dying in the explosion.
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14. Carbon Copy
My spouse and I came back home to our apartment late after traveling. We were both exhausted but made the somewhat weird decision on the way back to stop at the grocery store and get steaks to make for dinner. There was an alarm going off in the house, but we couldn't find it and decided to just eat. That should have been warning sign/bad decision #1.
In the time that it took us to cook and eat the steaks, we both started to feel very odd. We would see a kaleidoscope every time we closed our eyes. By this point, we were both realizing that it was carbon monoxide, but instead of leaving the house we opened all the windows and laid down on the couch to go to sleep. Bad decision #2.
I'll never forget that chilling feeling. I was lying there, all snuggled up, and thinking, "This isn't such a bad way to go, really." That thought shot me out of it and I immediately got up and forced my partner out of the house. And by "immediately," I mean I got up and forced them up. And then we both sort of weirdly puttered around for another half hour because carbon monoxide makes you forget how to behave.
I packed a bag for us that was like, half of our clothes. Because I couldn't think straight. We sat in the car together and realized we had to call a cab because he couldn't read any of the road names in our own neighborhood. We both had a horrible headache, nausea, dizziness, and chest pain for the next two days. The moral of the story is to get a carbon monoxide detector for every room in your house. Especially bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens.
Carbon monoxide is really scary and silent. It can end your life while you sleep.
15. Just A Little Sore
I was 24 years old and had a pesky sore on my tongue that was really bothering me. My boyfriend's dad was a dentist, so when I was over at his house one night, I asked him to take a look. He recommended I go see an oral surgeon the next day for him to check it out. The next day, I decided I was feeling better. So, I tried to cancel my appointment. But, my boyfriend’s dad insisted I go—thank heavens he did.
I went, and the oral surgeon pretty much diagnosed it as cancer on the spot. It was aggressive and by the time of my surgery to remove it, it had already spread to multiple lymph nodes. They ended up removing over half my tongue followed by chemotherapy and radiation. Given how aggressive it was, I often think that if I had put off the doctor's visit any longer I probably wouldn’t have survived. I’m coming up on my 10 year anniversary in January.
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16. Rounding The Turn
Former professional motorcycle instructor here. I was riding a motorcycle at night on Highway 17 in Northern California—an infamously dangerous and twisty mountain pass with low-visibility around most corners. Each direction of the highway has two lanes. For no particular reason, I decided to change lanes rather abruptly.
Around the next corner, there was a washing machine in my original lane that was only visible after it would have been too late to avoid. At highway speeds, a collision like that would have sent me to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. I’m extremely lucky to be alive. Thinking back on that incident still very much messes with my head.
17. A Total Cheat
I was briefly engaged to a man who has since cheated on his gorgeous, intelligent, sweet wife hundreds of times. They are separated, but have two children and will likely reconcile. I broke our engagement when he said that he thought it was perfectly fine for a man to cheat on his wife if they'd been married for a while and "he'd gotten bored." Oddly enough, he didn't believe a woman was entitled to do the same.
I feel so badly for his poor wife now. He began cheating on her two years into their marriage when she was pregnant with their first child.
18. Waffling
A few years back, my ex-boyfriend and I were coming home from work. I had to stop at a gas station to fill up in order to make it home. It was super late and my boyfriend goes: “It’s like 2:00 AM. I’m hungry. There’s a Waffle House down the street. Wanna go? I don’t wanna cook when we get home.” I didn’t want to cook either, so I agreed.
I sent my parents a text saying: “Hey, we’re getting food,” and gave them the address, which is something I don’t normally do considering they lived across the country. But for some reason, I felt the need to let them know where we were. We pulled up to the Waffle House and I immediately didn’t feel comfortable. I told my boyfriend I didn’t like the vibes and he agreed that he didn’t want waffles anymore, so we just went home.
Next morning, I wake up to both our phones ringing. At least 30 missed calls. Texts from my cousins. Missed FaceTime calls from friends. I called my mother back and could barely make out her words because she’s hysterically crying. She finally yelled, “MY BABY IS ALIVE!” to my dad. Confused as heck and half asleep, I asked her what was going on.
She told me to turn on the TV. I turn on the news and see a live image of the Waffle House we were going to stop at, with the headline “Nashville Waffle House Shooting.” I haven’t stopped at a Waffle House since.
19. Best Not To Buy
My wife and I were prepared to buy a nice riverfront property in 2019, but the owners, who were her dad and uncle, were dragging their feet. We had our down payment, we were approved for the mortgage, and we had even been living there paying rent. Then, the river rose 30ft (10m) and we had to evacuate. The water kept rising. The house was destroyed before we bought it. So, we didn't buy it.
20. Rattled
I grew up in the country on several acres of woods and creeks. I loved any and all animals. I was obsessed with them, actually. I would bring all manner of critters home and put them in an aquarium to observe before releasing them back where I found them the next day. One day, I found a water snake near the creek, so of course I brought it home and put it in the aquarium.
That night, I had a dream. I was reading our local newspaper and the headline said a young girl had passed after a venomous snake had escaped an enclosure and bitten her. Except it was my name printed in the paper along with that day’s date! I jolted awake in a cold sweat and immediately took the entire aquarium outside and put it by the tree line before flipping the lid open and booking it back inside.
The next day at school, during Library, I looked up a book about snakes. There was a picture of the exact snake I had brought home. Turns out it was not the harmless water snake I had thought, but a water moccasin, also known as a cottonmouth. A cottonmouth is a snake that could have very easily taken the life of a young child.
So yeah, looking back I realize how utterly stupid I had been and how easily it could have gone terribly wrong. Or maybe nothing would have happened and I’m just making a big deal of a scary dream. I don’t know, but I like to think something was watching out for me that night.
21. Red Flags All Around
I interviewed at a company in New Hampshire that made jams, baking mixes, lollipops, and more for a technical job. The president, the owner’s daughter, spent most of the interview dumping on their current consultant and making fun of, of all things, his degrees. That initially turned me off. Then, speaking with the owner, he makes it a point to take a call and tell the person on the other end, “I’ll pay you when I pay you!” Did they have cash flow issues?
His question about my education was, “What can your fancy degrees do for me?” Then, it got even worse. When I met the VP of Marketing, she asked me how many recalls I’ve done. “Uh, none, that’s not what I do.” “Wait, what interview is this?” I declined their offer. Fast forward maybe five years, I’m talking to a guy about doing some consulting work for him, and we get into the subject of this company.
He had interviewed there as well. He also got the vibe and declined. Then he revealed what he later found out about this total joke of a company. As it turns out, they were planning on selling the company and were beefing it up for appearances. It also turns out, after the sale, that they had spent the previous months sending current clients to their next endeavor.
They almost got in serious trouble for their financial and business shenanigans. I would not have been happy to get caught in that mess.
22. The Final Quarter
I had a weird feeling like something was seriously wrong with me when I stood up and almost passed out at a big football game. We left the stadium and went to the ER. Turns out my appendix was ruptured and I needed surgery as soon as possible. I had been having stomach pain prior to this, but brushed it off as digestion problems. Good thing I went!
For the record, it was the Cotton Bowl in Texas that we had been watching. My wife got me tickets for Christmas as the college we went to was playing that year. We are from Michigan, so we had quite the drive to get to Texas. My appendix ruptured in the third quarter and I ended up finishing watching the game in the hospital.
We stayed a few extra days but I had to get back to college, so my wife drove 17 hours straight. And we had to get out of the car every 45 minutes or so in order for me to walk around and avert blood clotting. She was my fiancé at the time and this trip really made us stronger together. I knew right then and there that we would have a happy marriage.
23. The Icy Walk To Work
I am walking to work in the winter, when halfway through a step forward under a skybridge, an icicle a foot taller than me and probably two feet around at the base crashes down right in front of my nose. If my bus had been a half second earlier, if I had walked even a tiny bit faster...I would have been impaled right down the middle. I was frozen in place for a minute, quietly surveying my experience.
There was another pedestrian nearby who witnessed it and the wide-eyed, ashen look on his face as he stared at me confirmed just how narrowly fortunate I was that day.
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24. Second Opinion
My mom saved my life when I was only 15 years old. I had put on a lot of water weight and she was worried about it. Finally, I was in so much pain that she realized something was seriously wrong, so she took me to the hospital. At first, the ER was like “Oh yeah, it’s just thyroid. Take this and follow up with your doctor.” Mom waited a few hours but felt uncomfortable.
So she drove me to another ER who told her that if she hadn’t gotten me in when she did, I would have been gone by the time my follow up came with the previous doctor. My kidneys had failed. Thankfully, I’m better now.
25. Tables Have Turned
My manager was trying to have me fired for underperformance, and I was so depressed at the time that I believed I was an awful employee. The place I worked had a whole song and dance routine just to get someone a verbal warning, let alone fired, so she tried to get me to take a severance payment so that I'd leave and save her the trouble.
I had to take sick leave shortly after that conversation, and while I was gone, she initiated the formal process to have me fired. I was able to drag things out for a couple of months, and during that time, I discovered she'd falsified documents to make me look like a lost cause. Well, I got my revenge. I presented a dossier to HR demonstrating how her statements were probably misleading, and documenting every time she failed to follow proper procedures, which turned everything around.
I got moved to a better job on a better team, and spent a solid year rubbing it in her face how well I was doing, and ensuring it got back to her whenever I got praise from the department head. It was pretty annoying that she didn't get fired, but there would have been too much blowback on management if she had. Still, I went from the verge of unemployment to unequivocal success.
26. Unwelcome Visitors
I’m not sure I would definitely have lost my life, but my gut kept me from being physically taken advantage of by a man. Unfortunately, my friend didn’t listen to me and suffered for it. I grew up in a small town that contracted a construction project to a company in Norway. At the local bar one night was a group of Norwegian men who were staying at a local hotel.
My friend and I met them that night for the first time. We hung out with them for a few hours and they showered us with drinks all night. At closing time, they invited us to continue the party at their hotel. I pulled my friend aside and told her we shouldn’t go. We didn’t really know them and we were also outnumbered. She said it would be fun and “no big deal.”
My gut told me no. I just didn’t feel comfortable, and so I refused. She called me a “buzz kill” and went anyway. The next day she called screaming at me. She spent the night being taken advantage of by these creeps and, in her devastation, she blamed me for not going with her. I tried to comfort her. I begged her to let me call the authorities.
She refused and said she never wanted to see me again. This was a couple of decades ago. I didn’t know what to do. One of my biggest regrets is not calling the authorities or banging down her door and trying to offer comfort. What I don’t regret is not going with her. She can be mad at me, but I couldn’t have saved her.
We would have both ended up in trouble. I moved away shortly after and I’ve never seen her again. I wonder if there is anything I should do now. I just don’t know what that would be. She was completely set on blaming me, but I tried to tell her it wasn’t safe. I really did! I felt crazy guilty, but the decades have helped me come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault.
27. Limbs In The Vehicle
A few years ago, I was in a small fender bender. Someone merged into my lane, with me in it, and smashed my driver-side door and their passenger door together. I had pulled my arm in from having it hanging out the window about 15 seconds before that happened. I would have most likely had my arm ripped off.
27. Are You Shore About That?
While fishing on a large lake in Canada, we were a little more than halfway across when the wind really started picking up and a storm started rolling in. I had the choice to turn back or head to an island with a bay. I decided to head for the bay and just as we reached the calmer water, we looked behind us and the storm had gotten worse.
We were in an aluminum boat. So if we had chosen to try and head back, three of us would have drowned. No doubt in my mind about that. We were already taking on water and were completely drenched when we beached on the island. Once the storm abated, we made the journey back and it still took four hours in high wind for a normally half-hour boat trip.
Warming up in the truck was the best feeling in the world after that.
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28. Faking The Flu
I quit a job after my boss yelled at everybody for faking being sick when one guy came in with the flu and passed it around the office. He claimed that people don't get sick by being near each other. One guy got the flu so bad he was hospitalized for two weeks. I quit with no back up in October 2019. By February 2020, his company went out of business.
29. Animal Instinct
I was 22 years old, backpacking through the country for six months and camping wherever I could. One day, I was fishing by the lake with my camp already set down for the night, save for starting the fire. I kept hearing rustling some thirty meters behind me in the tree line. So I stared for a while, hoping to see a deer or something.
Next thing I know, I'm staring down a puma right in the eyes. I started to get up, ready to take a sprint. But right as I was standing up, I remembered that I had been warned against this. So instead, I grabbed some rocks from the ground and started throwing them and shouting. I also started throwing my arms up in the air to scare it until it left me alone.
That night, I stayed up late next to the fire and then tried to sleep but couldn’t because I was scared as heck. That was my only encounter with wildlife on the whole trip, save for birds and stuff.
30. The Chronic Liar
I was dating this coworker who lied all the time. I told her from the beginning that I didn’t want to start anything if she wasn't serious and if there was someone else. She assured me no, and that she had deep feelings for me. One day out of the blue, a random girl stopped by our workplace and asked around for the girl I was dating.
In a building filled with hundreds of people, I happened to be the only one at the front, and asked what’s going on. As it turns out, this random person was pretty much there to start a fight. The girl I was dating was sending photos to this girl’s boyfriend. Whoops. If I had not been at the front, I would’ve never found out. One angry text later, I never heard from her again.
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31. Duck And Cover
In 2019, the Gilroy Garlic Festival had an attempted mass shooting. A kid came walking through the trees and fence with an ak47 on his hip and clearly intended to do some major harm. He entered the park roughly twenty feet away from the booth where I was working. The guy was so close to us when he first entered that we didn't see he was armed at first.
We heard the click of him shoving the drum mag in and cocking it. Me and four other friends were in this booth. I heard the click sound at the exact same time that my buddy noticed the weapon. In what to this day remains the quickest reaction of my life, we looked at each other and immediately tackled our other friends out of their chairs.
And my buddy, the glorious genius, within two seconds realized there was no way for us to get up and out without being in a line of fire. So he grabs the girls and tells them to crawl on their stomachs to the woods, ten or so feet away from us. The instant he told them that, me, him, and our buddy all kind of understood together that it was one of those “make a move or don’t survive” situations.
So the second the girls started crawling, we took the pop up tent that was above us and tipped it over so that it gave us slight cover to run away, which we immediately did as fast as we could. My body took no shots, but I absolutely felt them flying past us. I even heard them hitting stuff around me. My boy who got the girls to crawl away took a ricochet to the butt, and my other buddy broke his ankle running away.
Those thirty seconds weren't the quickest thinking we all had ever done in our life. Later speaking on it, we realized that none of us mentioned flipping the tent or running. We hadn't discussed anything. We just knew in our guts what to do.
32. A Saving Grace
I was driving home from visiting my brother in Vermont when a snowstorm started. I didn't have much experience driving in serious snow and I completely lost control. The car careened off the road and I was heading for a giant boulder extremely quickly. I felt time slow down and I reflected on my life for a moment and then said goodbye to my body.
Suddenly, I was jolted out of it by an abrupt impact, but I could see that the boulder was still quite a few feet away. When I got out of the car, I saw that I had hit a little skinny tree that I could have easily grabbed with one hand. However, it had a giant root system that lifted the car off the ground and stopped me. The car was totaled, but I was completely fine because of that little tree. There is no way I would have survived the other impact.
33. A Fish Out Of Water
When I was 18 years old, I left for some missions group thing for my gap year. This took place on an island in Central America. Earlier that night, everyone had been swimming off the dock, but I didn't want to because of all the jellyfish. As this was a group of guys fresh out of high school, this decision earned me the title of "huge chicken."
Later that night, I go back down to the docks, just thinking about stuff. Because I want to be alone, obviously I creeped out of the house without telling anyone. I see the water and think: "While no one is around to judge me, I should get over my fear, quit being a coward, and jump in the water." But for some reason, I hesitated. I decided to shine my flashlight on the spot I wanted to jump to. Thank god I made that decision.
There was this weird, clear, worm looking thing that I had never seen before. It's not exactly swimming, it's like twitching erratically and gently moving with the water. I'm wondering what the heck it is, when I look around more and see a box jelly with a missing tentacle, and the tentacles look exactly like the "worm."
The box jellies there weren't like the kinds in Australia where you get hit and you're dead, but these were apparently bad enough to send you into shock with the pain. And if I had been in the water, with no one else around to find me, there's a very good chance I would've drowned if I just jumped in without checking. Never let name-calling convince you to do something stupid!
33. Gas Tank Goners
Yesterday, I was helping my fiancée’s dad cut some tree limbs from his yard. He was on a lift trying to cut some limbs that were dangling dangerously high over a steel propane tank. The tank itself had $1500 worth of propane. The keyword is “had.” He cut off a limb and it hit the tank with the largest bang I've ever heard. Propane came pouring out the top like smoke from a mortar. He struggled to get the lift down enough to jump out and run for his life.
We would later find out that the limb hit the gas valve and it fell straight down into the tank. If it had sparked once, it wouldn't have mattered how far we ran. We would have been goners. Him, me, and my fiancée who was showering inside, unaware. Now he has no gas, is out $1,500, and almost died. There's no way we should be alive. The gas is still leaking out even after 24 hours.
34. House Of Horrors
Me and two friends were on substances and pretty intoxicated. It was common for us to walk home from downtown while under the influence. While walking home, we walked past a house about two blocks away from the house we all rented together. There were about six guys hanging out on the stoops of this house. They wanted to talk, and my judgment-impaired friends were all too happy to stop and talk with these guys.
After a few minutes of talking, they invited us in for a few extra drinks. I had a bad feeling about them, so I didn't want to go inside. But my two friends wanted to go on and shoot the breeze for a while. I convinced my friends that we should go home and get my substances to smoke. After getting home, being intoxicated, they mostly forgot and were easily convinced to not venture back out just to smoke with these random guys.
We found out that two days later, two guys got invited into that same house and were robbed, violated, and fatally beaten by those same six guys. There is not a doubt in my mind that this was exactly what awaited us inside that house. They saw three intoxicated guys and figured we were "easy pickins."
But being guys in a relatively safe city, we just didn't have the fear we should have had about walking into a random house, especially so close to home.
35. Nail In The Coffin
We came up shy of our financial goal for a wedding and decided to save again for another year. We were gonna go on an adventure and elope. I’m so lucky we didn’t. Our relationship fell apart in the following year. Both of us put nails in the coffin. I was the only one to acknowledge mine. She could do no wrong, and I was being gas lit pretty bad.
When we split, my depression evaporated. I was able to go off my medication and realize just how deep she had her claws in me. I thank god every day we didn’t get married or my mental health would have been horrendous.
36. Living Or Dye-ing
I went to my urologist with epididymitis. He found the smallest amount of detectable blood in my urine. On a whim, he sent me to have an IVP. In this procedure, they put dye in your blood and a radiologist has a look at it. He saw a mass on my left kidney. Twenty minutes later, I knew I had cancer when I saw the blood supply to the mass.
That was on Thursday. Tests Friday. Monday, he took out my kidney with a grapefruit size stage three tumor. There was no margin. Many years later, my wife told me the doctor had warned her that I had a 50/50 chance of living six months. That was all the way back in 1992. Lucky me, I guess.
37. The Mistake Missed
When I was a kid, about six years old, I somehow threw a piece of metal in the sky and watched it fall in my face. It opened a large and bloody cut right under my right eye. When my mom saw me rubbing my closed eye with a sea of blood, she almost had a heart attack. But no, I was fine. I got some stitches and it was really scary, but all good.
The cut didn't even leave a scar. If my dumb self was hit just a bit higher, I would have lose an eye.
38. An Explosive Story
I'm not sure we definitely would have lost our lives, but it wouldn't have been pretty. We had a fire going in the backyard at a friend's house. My friend's dad decided to burn some junk from the garage. Mostly old boxes and papers and stuff. So we're helping feed that stuff into the fire and I grab the next small box to throw in, but I can tell there's something in this one.
There had been stuff in most of them, but it was always just pamphlets and little bits of packaging, so we had stopped really checking and were just throwing them in. Well, I'm standing there with the box over the fire about to drop it when I decide to check this one. I looked inside, and couldn't believe what I found. It was full of live mortar shell fireworks. My friend's dad decided we had burned enough garage junk at that point.
39. Dangerous Debonair Dude
When we were younger, a guy we knew a little, who was extremely charming and debonair, asked my best friend on a date. Everybody liked him and urged her to say yes—but she this chilling feeling about him. So, she turned him down. Fast forward 20 years later, he's all over the news because he's been incarcerated as serial murderer who would approach women, charm them, take them on dates, and take their lives.
He started doing this to women right about the time he asked her out. If she'd gone out with him, she would have been one of his first three victims. The detectives even interviewed her as they tried to piece together the early years of his killing spree.
40. You Think I’m Funny?
I was in the hospital due to a freak instance of my heart and organs randomly failing, but with nothing more than mild flu symptoms. One night, I'm up playing Breath of the Wild, waiting for my midnight shots and tests, when the nurse comes in. She suddenly freaks out and calls a code blue on me. She tells me she thinks I'm having a stroke.
It felt like half the hospital crowded into my room and were doing a bunch of stroke tests on me. I passed them all with no symptoms, but she insisted I was having one. She could only describe it as I wasn't as funny as normal. The doctors ended up siding with her to be safe and giving me medicine and doing tests. Turns out I actually did have a stroke.
They hadn't detected some clots that formed when my heart failed, but somehow me not being funny at midnight was enough for this nurse to figure out how much danger I was in. Fortunately, it was a very minor stroke that really only caused me to feel like my fingers were a centimeter off when typing for a few weeks. But it would have been a lot worse had the clots gone completely undetected.
41. The Physics Fling
Back when I was a physics major, I was in quite a romance with a fellow physics major starting when I was a teenager. He was always talking about marriage and the like. I was rather infatuated, so I didn't mind the marriage talk, but was definitely a bit unenthusiastic when he kept talking about how we'd be having our first kids by the time we were in grad school and stuff when I was about 20 years old.
Oh, and I was dealing with harassment from a professor at the time, and when I told him he said, "That sucks, but it's going to happen to women in physics." Anyway, when we broke up, it was because he chose another girl who was an artist. I actually got to hear his reasons why. It turns out he really liked that, "She doesn't know what I'm talking about when I get back at the end of the day," and had the chutzpah to add in, "And she's even a good cook!"
20-year-old me was really devastated because I really liked this guy, and shouldn't have hung back. Now that I'm in my 30s and a professional astronomer, while he kept to the schedule we'd discussed and has three kids, last I checked. I'm just relieved it didn't happen. You don't know everything about yourself at that age, and holy Batman we were just so incompatible and he was kind of really rude with traditional attitudes.
I'm not sure I would have had the rich life and career I have had if we stuck together, that's for sure.
42. Not So Fast
Early on in my struggles with drinking, I didn't know that withdrawals were a thing, or that they could be life threatening. At one point, I was drinking two fifths of very hard drinks a day. Considering that my life was falling apart, I decided one day to not drink. Big mistake. At first, I thought I was just having a bad hangover. My heart was racing even though I wasn't moving around.
I was shaking, hallucinating, going numb all over, and began wondering if I should go to the hospital. By the time I got there, my heart was beating about 170 per minute while at rest. The doctors acted very quickly and I just remember being surrounded by people, them stripping me, them shoving an IV in my neck, and them yelling, "He's gonna seize!"
After the first seizure, I was so messed up that they kept hitting me with an ativan over and over again, because it wasn't working fast enough. Later on, in the ICU, the docs told me I shouldn't be alive and that they gave me enough ativan to put down an elephant. When I think about what would have happened had I not gone to the hospital, it makes me sad that I wasn't more educated on the dangers of quitting drinking cold turkey.
43. Just Far Enough
We were in Italy on a school field trip. We decided to play "schweinehaufen,” pig pile...dogpile? Anyways, one person is declared the pig and everyone has to jump on them. We played this on a beach at night. Just sand, no danger, right? Well, during the last round, we got up and realized we formed this pile next to a metal pole sticking out of the ground.
It was maybe ten centimeters away and could have easily impaled the first three or four people if we were just a bit closer. We didn't play that game again.
44. Saved You A Spot
One time, some friends invited me to play games at another friend’s house in the 'burbs, but we both lived near downtown. I normally jumped at the chance to go hang out, but this time I was just...off. I thought about going and then texted and changed the plans, even though I wasn't planning anything else, just to be at home. They then texted me at close to midnight to show their backseat touching the back of their front seat.
They were rear ended on the highway going 75, and the guy was going fast enough to smash the entire back of the car in. Luckily I wasn't in it.
45. The Summer Sociopath
I went to summer camp between my junior and senior years of high school, and became friends with a group of guys. For reference, I’m a girl. I dated one of the guys in the group. It was both of our second relationships ever, and so we were a little handsy with each other, but I flat-out refused to go all the way with him, because I sure as heck wasn't losing my virginity to a summer fling I'd only known for a couple of weeks.
He was a little pushy about it, but ultimately backed down after I repeatedly refused. We broke up when summer camp was over and remained friends, though he lived in another state. After the breakup, not only did he start to emotionally harming me, threatening his own life if I stopped talking to him, saying he'd never had anyone understand him except for me, that sort of thing...but I found out from one of the other guys in the group that he'd made jokes about attacking me in my sleep. I blocked him on all social media and haven't talked to him since.
46. An Impactful Meeting
I got hit by a car while riding a motorcycle. An old lady in Palm Beach who could barely see ran a light and hit me. It was August in South Florida yet, for some reason, that day I had put on a leather jacket and full face helmet. The helmet and leathers were destroyed, but I walked away unharmed. Definitely had the feeling that a power greater than myself had made that decision for me.
47. Company Cutting Costs
I worked for a company years ago which had a rather autocratic head. They randomly appointed a new manager to oversee our team one day. He was swiftly promoted and the two of us would butt heads every other day to the point where I was made to look like a complete troublemaker. Meanwhile, I just pointed out inefficiencies and possible regulatory abnormalities in their processes.
His promotion, I would later learn, was due to his appointment having been aimed at restructuring the company to get rid of “troublemakers” from the get-go. He was appointed to stir and eliminate. Myself and a few senior staff at the company were served with retrenchment notices. I was livid and wanted to take matters further, but the other “retrenches” told me to be patient.
The staff who weren't retrenched refused to speak out or have our backs...they were pretty smug and feigned sympathy. For a moment I wanted to concede, give into their demands and beg to save my job and income, but luckily I didn't. The CEO who retrenched the other seniors had bargained on majority shareholding as he'd assumed the other directors would sell their shares to him on exit.
He had less than 50% at the time, and their shares would have secured his majority shareholding. He'd dangled a pretty juicy carrot in front of them. Instead, they collectively, and legally, came up with a devious plan. They sold/handed their shares to an opposition company and did so pretty stealthily. They did this months after I'd already left, so I wasn't there when the pawpaw hit the proverbial fan.
The retrenchment plan aimed at ousting us few to make a point and eliminate non-conforming staff backfired. I ended up with a pretty nifty settlement and given the nature of my exit I could immediately contact their direct opposition for a position. The staff who remained ended up under the employ of an international corporate entity. Many of my coworkers had to accept demotions, pay cuts and/or were prompted to relocate. I would not have been in the same space in my career today had I groveled and stayed on.
48. Cornered
I served in Afghanistan in 2009. I was a driver and I always used to cut corners aggressively while driving from place to place. One day, my gut just told me to take it easy on a turn, so I did. Unlike usual, I made the turn slowly and wide. Then, the very next vehicle behind me cut the corner, hit an IED, and exploded instantly. It was horrifying.
49. New Year, New You
We were troubled teens in the mid-1990s. Me and the missus met a bunch of my mates who had done something illicit on New Year’s Eve the morning after. Two of them were regaling me with tales about how great it was. They looked totally horrible. They had pale green faces, while the third was throwing up in a waste bin at the bus station where we ran into each other.
I just took in the whole situation and internally went, "Nope, I’m not doing that." It turned out I was right, because that New Year's Eve was the start of a biblical flood of misery and death for those that didn't turn down the stuff.
50. I Saw The Light
One time, while working at a grocery store at night, I had cart duty and had to collect all the carts from the parking lot and bring them into the store. It was dark out and I had my headphones in. I was looking at the ground and pushing a chain of carts, when suddenly it got darker. I stopped for a split second to wonder how it could get darker when it was already night, and BAM!
One of the huge 30 + feet high parking lot lights smashed onto the ground right in front of me. Hit the carts and missed me by only about two feet. I swear, I nearly had a heart attack I was so scared. The metal had rusted out and it snapped at the base. If I hadn't stopped to wonder how it got darker, I definitely would not be here today to tell you all the story. That was the scariest moment of my life.
51. Goodbye, Cruel World
It was Saturday, January 13th, 2018 I was on a beach in Hawaii doing yoga. My phone pinged with an incredibly terrifying message. It said: "INCOMING BALLISTIC MISSILE. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." I called my daughter and got her voice mail. I told her goodbye. I thought about my friends and family facing this missile and I watched people around me running and panicking.
I fully prepared to die. It was 38 minutes and 13 seconds before the false alarm message was sent. It changed the way I look at the end of my life. I thought that I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. I no longer have any fear of what’s after life.
52. The Party’s Over
In high school, at a graduation party, I had a really bad feeling about the guy me and my friends had gotten a ride there with. I'll call him H. I didn't know him well, but I saw him drinking and wasn't sure how much. He was supposed to be our ride home when the party was over. My one friend said she trusted him and that I should not worry.
Well, I couldn't tell myself not to worry like she could. I said again to her that I didn't think it was safe to drive home with him. She insisted it was fine. Meanwhile, I had made a new friend that night. The first time I saw him, I felt like I should talk to him. Turns out he drove there alone and was intentionally staying sober to drive himself home safely.
By 5:00 in the morning, everyone was talking about grabbing an after party coffee and some snacks. People were piling into cars. I told my friend one last time that I wouldn't drive with H. I got in the car with my new friend, knowing he was 100% sober. We pulled out onto the country road, as it snaked through the trees. H came speeding out and passed us way too quickly.
As we drove around the next corner, we went through a cloud of dust and debris. When I realized what it was, my stomach dropped. H's car was wrapped around a telephone pole. Two of the four passengers were deceased, including the kid who got in the seat I would have been in. My friend was alive but has permanent injuries to this day. I appreciate everyone listening to my story. Please don't drink and drive, and please help your friends realize how much damage it can cause.
53. What A Way To Go
My brother followed through with a knife and hit my neck. We were installing a piece of drywall vertically. We were staggering the boards, so he was standing on a stool or something as there was already a half piece below. So this board was a few feet off the ground. I was standing to his left and he was on my right with his right hand trying to carve a hole into the board for a plug.
He is working the blade down to his left where I am standing. My head is at his waist, as I am not standing on anything. All of a sudden, the knife slips and the follow-through hits me hard in the neck. At this point, I am like, “This is it.” What a tragic way to go. Getting hit by your brother in a freak drywall accident. I immediately start feeling for my neck, think Richard Zednik.
It is completely dry. I look up and the knife has no blade. I look further and I find the blade lodged in the piece of drywall. I walked away with an intact and sore neck.
54. Taking A Brake
I was driving at the speed limit of 70 MPH on a highway that I drove on daily to get home from work. This particular day, there was an event downtown that had the traffic completely stopped for miles. There was an S bend in the road though, so you couldn't tell until you were nearly on top of it. I tried to brake, but nothing happened.
My brain broke and I kept slamming on the brake pedal, but nothing was happening, and I was in the left lane of a four lane highway with very little time to spare before I nearly hit the wall of cars in front of me. Left shoulder of the road was barely wide enough for a bike, and cars were coming up the on-ramp on the right side.
I noticed a small gap in between the cars on the on-ramp, but it was in front of me. So I actually sped up to sneak through that gap and onto the grass beside the highway. At one point, I was going over 85 MPH, knowing I had no brakes, in order to get through that gap. I barely made it, and eventually slowed to a stop on the grass.
I called my friends to come help. And when they showed up 45 minutes later, I was still clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles and staring straight ahead. It's a miracle that I walked away without a scratch.
55. The English Major
I once spelled the word "Mom" incorrectly on a Mother's Day card I was going to send to my mother. At the time, my parents were paying for me to major in English at a very expensive college. For those interested, I spelled it "Mome." I barely caught it.
56. One Last Stop
In 1976, I was on vacation with my parents in Colorado and we drove through Big Thompson Canyon. My mom, brother and I all wanted to stay at one of the little hotels within the canyon, but my dad said no, and we continued on our way home to Illinois. After we got home, we saw on the news that the canyon had flooded, taking the lives of over 100 people. Had we stayed there, we would have probably lost our lives too.
57. Distracted By The Drinks
I lived in Neiva, Colombia in the 90s. When we were getting ready to meet some friends, I think it was to watch a game or something...and by preparing, I mean drinking our butts off. We were supposed to go and meet with some friends in a building a couple of blocks away. But, at that point, I was too intoxicated to drive, and just decided to stay in the bar where we were drinking.
I remember my girlfriend making a fuss about it when we heard an explosion. It turns out that the Guerrilla attacked the building we were going to and kidnapped lots of people, including the occupants of the apartment where we were going to visit.
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58. Sleeping On It
A few years ago, I had a cold that just was not getting better over the course of a week. I was exhausted all the time, even taking time off of work because the incessant coughing made me puke a couple of times. Overall, I just kept feeling worse than I had in years. One night in the midst of this, I realized that I was having pain in my chest while breathing.
Generally, that’s a “seek medical help immediately” thing, but it was already getting late and I would have had to drive myself to the hospital. I’m the only one with a driver’s license in my house. I decided to wait until the next morning. I didn’t want to make a huge fuss or have people worry about me, and I thought going to the ER for “just a cold” would waste hospital resources and my own money.
But as I laid in bed trying to sleep, I suddenly started getting extremely anxious about my condition. It shouldn’t hurt that much just to breathe. I told my partner I was going to the hospital just to be safe, and we both hopped in the car. Turns out I had double pneumonia. I was only in the hospital a couple of days after that, but it would have been life threatening if it went untreated.
I don’t wanna think about what would’ve happened if I had just went to bed that night and not gotten it checked out. Basically, the lesson I got from the experience was that hospital bills and possibly bothering people are better than risking your life. I’ve been far more adamant with myself and others about seeking care after this experience.
59. Lucky To Be Ghosted
In 10th grade of high school I was in love with a man who was at least 21 years old. He ended up ghosting me and dating my best friend. I was devastated, to say the least. Well, fast forward a few months, my beautiful ex-best friend with green eyes and a pretty body suddenly started dressing in oversized men's clothing, she stopped participating in sports, and stopped going to events.
She looked tired and sad all of the time. It turns out this man was a manipulative, controlling, crazy person. He was extremely controlling of her and forbade her from talking or interacting with anyone at school, unless absolutely necessary. He got her a cell phone and made her call him in between each class, so he could be sure that she wasn't talking with friends.
He knocked her up our senior year and, soon after graduation, he moved her to a new town where she didn't know anyone, basically to isolate her and further control her. I look back at that and think that could easily have been me. I was a sucker in high school and boy crazy. I know I would have fallen for his trap.
60. Belting One Out
Back when I was about 18, I had been in this phase where I hadn't worn a seat belt for a couple of years because it would give me really bad anxiety and make me sick and have to use the restroom. It had probably been about three years since I had worn one, but this day, I was going to drive to visit a friend at his college and I decided you know what, time to break this mental roadblock.
So I put the seat belt on. About fifteen minutes into my drive, I hit a busy road that I always hit on my way to work, as it takes me to the interstate. I'm in the right lane in a Mitsubishi Galant, and there was a Ford Explorer in the left lane. We're both going 60 because that's the speed limit, and this little Honda darts in front of the SUV to turn on to the road.
The Explorer tries to not hit it and swerves into my lane, which causes me to swerve as a knee-jerk reaction. Except I swerve into the grass over a bumpy patch and flip my car three times. It was bad. I saw blood running down my arm and glass embedded in it. Everything hurt. My brain hurt. The whole works. Witnesses told the authorities what happened, as did the SUV driver, and I concurred with them.
I took one look at my car and shuddered involuntarily. It looked like an empty can that someone had tried to crush sideways. An ambulance came by. I declined and just had my parents take me to the ER. Yeah, another person not wanting to get hit with a huge ambulance bill. They spent two hours digging glass out of my arm from it going through the windshield and making a perfect hole.
This surprised me because I thought windshields were supposed to pop out or something. No stitches were needed. I was just badly bruised and sore. My parents were annoyed at me for totaling the car because they had just taken off the gap on it only a couple days prior. Needless to say, I think I would have been thrown from the car and instantly a goner had it not been for the seatbelt.
61. The Cool Youth Minister
My dad worked at a church when I was elementary-aged. The youth minister was fun, had all kinds of cool stuff in his office, and my brother and I liked spending time with him and playing with his nerf guns and whatever else he had for students. We established a tradition where, on a monthly basis, he would take us to a restaurant for breakfast.
My brother and I thought it was awesome that he paid us any attention, since we were younger than the students he worked with for his job. But, he still took time for us. He had a parish which we’d visited, multiple car issues in which we occasionally would have to walk somewhere, and plenty of opportunities where we weren’t in public.
He took another job a couple years into this at a different church—that’s when we found out the chilling truth about him. He was incarcerated shortly after for molestation. People came forward from both before and after he was at our church, but none that I’m aware of from when he was there. So my brother and I were groomed by an experienced creep and we were clueless at the time. Nothing happened to either of us, we have no idea why because the opportunity was there.
62. Gone With The Wind
There was a derecho here a while back. A derecho is kind of like a land hurricane. Extremely high winds from the upper atmosphere. It really didn't seem that bad at first. My ex even decided to take the dog out to play in the rain. But I just got this weird feeling and ended up insisting that they both come in and that we all go to the basement.
I can’t explain where that feeling came from or why I was so adamant about it. Who knows if we'd have lost our lives that night otherwise. All I know is that about ten minutes later, the wind really picked up and a good portion of our roof collapsed. That was followed shortly by nearly every tree within 300 yards of our house falling over. It took over four months to get the house fixed.
It's funny because my dog was always scared of the basement before then, enough so that I had to carry him down during that storm. But after that one experience, the basement became his safe place that he'd go anytime there was a storm or if I was out of the house. So it was a night that changed our lives on multiple levels.
No pun intended.
63. Took A Real Turn
I really liked my professor advisor in college, and in my senior year, I took a graduate course he offered. It was on nuclear fusion history and technology, and he was an expert in the field, and it was a really interesting and challenging elective. As a senior in a graduate class, it was really interesting having a class with just two or three other students.
All of them were graduate students, and at least two worked with the professor at the side company he had founded. As the year progressed and as I tried to figure out where I was going after I graduated, the professor offered me a spot in his graduate program and a job at his company. I had recently married at the time, and my wife had already graduated from college.
The place she worked, the lead tech support for a start-up ISP, offered her a full-time business analyst job which was her dream job at the time. After much consternation, we went a different path and moved away. We had no idea just how much everything could’ve blown up in our faces. Within the next couple years, the start-up my wife worked for went out of business less than a year later and my professor was incarcerated while returning from an overseas seminar, for sharing classified nuclear information.
In addition, he ended up serving time in prison and his company was closed and one of his employees, a graduate student, also pled guilty and served time. I believe he was one of the other students in the class. One of his employees was identified as a foreign national and was both incarcerated and deported. I believe he was another student in the class. Often in life, you make decisions with the best information you have, and you'll never really know if you made the right one. In this case, I know beyond a doubt that my wife and I made the right decision.
64. Strangers On A Train
I was running down escalators to catch a train during winter, and happened to slip on some ice on the platform. I slid quite fast on my bum, and I ended up getting stuck in between a train and the platform. I couldn't get myself out because of the awkward position I was in. So I called for help. The platform was full of people who just stared at me and did nothing.
I was eventually pulled out by an intoxicated person, just before the train started moving. I had a pulled hamstring, as well as several cuts and bruises in my arms and hands. I still get quite angry thinking about the bystanders not doing anything to help.
65. No Rooms Available
About 15 years ago, my girlfriend and I were young and she was eight months pregnant. We rented a nice apartment that was currently being built, and it was a few weeks away from being ready for us to move in. So, we decided to stay at a hotel until then. There was a really nice small bed and breakfast that we had heard about and wanted to stay there, so we called them to make sure there was a vacancy.
There was, so we made the drive up. But, when we got there, apparently there wasn't a vacancy according to the owner and the woman who we spoke to on the phone had made a mistake. About a week or so later, the entire place burned down and several guests had died in the fire. I tried to find more detailed information on it, but never could.
All I know is it was some sort of electrical fire, it started in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, and six people perished that night. It's terrifying to even think about.
66. Exclusive Club
I was standing in line outside of the club Mohawk during SXSW 2014 to see Tyler the Creator. At the last minute, I decided I'd rather go back to Stubb’s and catch Damon Albarn's set. As I headed back up the street, an intoxicated driver trying to escape the authorities smashed the barrier. The crash missed me by just inches, and took the lives of all four people I was standing next to.
67. Blown Up In Baghdad
While I was under bombardment in Baghdad in 2004, a Chinese-made Katyusha rocket landed a few feet away and blew me up. I stood up, dusted myself off, and discovered I was completely unhurt. As I was marveling at this, I watched another rocket come in. I knew from its parabola that my luck was up. I stood rooted to the spot, horrified, as it came down nose first closer to me than the first one.
I've never been so certain that my life was over. It failed to explode.
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68. Sounds Pretty Fishy
My mother made me meatloaf and I was super hungry. She insisted that she could reheat it for me, and that she would also make me some side dishes and brew some tea. It really sounded like a great situation! But, for some inexplicable reason, the whole mood felt weird to me. So I declined and said that I wasn’t in a meatloaf mood.
Her response was: “Oh well, perhaps that’s for the best. I did use a lot of Worcestershire sauce when I made this, so I don’t know if you’d like it.” Worcestershire sauce is made with anchovies. And I’m deathly allergic to fish.
69. The Beautiful Boston Hero
Before I moved here, I got stuck in Boston overnight in the heavy rain with nowhere to stay. My phone was dead, so I couldn't call anyone or use the maps app. As anyone who's ever been to Boston can attest, the whole city basically shuts down after two in the morning. Unfamiliar with public transport, I got on the last train that I hoped would take me to my friend outside of the city, but at the last second I realized the train was going in the opposite direction.
I ended up asking this girl where I was, which she then responded to with, "Do you not have anywhere to go tonight? Come with me!" So, I followed her in a daze, not really sure what was happening. She was absolutely gorgeous, so I was sure I was about to get mugged. She took me to her house, blew up an air mattress and let me use her spare phone charger.
The next morning, I thanked her profusely and offered money, but she just smiled and waved it off. We said our goodbyes and I left. I still don't know her name.
70. Moving On Over
I was driving on the highway one morning, and the fog was super dense. I had the headlights on and was probably going about 50 to 60 MPH. There was a red Honda behind me that wasn't quite riding my tail, but was maybe a little closer than I would have preferred him to be given the weather. Suddenly, my hands are moving on their own and abruptly jerking the steering wheel into the lane to my left.
No brakes. No mirror or blind spot check. I remember thinking to myself, "Why the heck did I do that?" As I look back over to my right, I’m just in time to see the Honda that was previously directly behind me slam at full speed into a three-car pileup that I didn't even realize was in front of me. I missed it by maybe half a second.
I still don't know what it was that kicked my reflexes off, but I'd probably be either gone or disabled for life if they hadn't.
71. Stay At Home Mom
I used to be engaged and made a lot more money than my then-fiancée. She had a son and we planned on having children together, so I was supportive when she talked to me about quitting her job as a New York City teacher to be a stay at home mom. It made a lot of sense. She ended up quitting her job at the end of the year.
But, a couple of weeks into summer, she offhandedly mentions how she wants to look into hiring a full time babysitter for her son. I asked if she was going back to work in the fall, but she said no. She just wanted someone to watch her son from roughly when I left for work until I came home. I pointed out the whole point of leaving her job to be a stay at home mom was to do that very thing.
I already paid people to clean the home, do the landscaping, and vacuum the pool while I did most of the cooking. It's not like I expected a whole lot. We ended up fighting a lot about this over the next couple of weeks until we broke off the engagement and broke up altogether. She's still friendly with my friends’ wives/girlfriends and I've since learned she married a guy who basically works 24/7 to keep her in a life of luxury.
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72. Going With Your Gut
Wanna hear a crazy story where my life was literally saved by a gut decision? I once had a change in my bowel movements, so I went to the doctor, got screened for colon polyps, and had a huge one removed. It would have eventually turned into cancer. Scopes aren't fun, but they save lives. Always get things checked out if they don’t feel right.
73. One In A Million
When I was 15 years old, I was suffering from dizzy spells and constant tiredness. They figured I had some kind of anemia. I had a blood test done on me and they found an abnormally high white blood cell count. This usually meant one of two terrible things. I either had Leukemia or Sickle Cell Anemia. Well, it turns out I had a one-in-a-million third option.
Genetically, I have much denser bones than a normal person. The doctor was suspicious of this when it took such an abnormally long time to get a bone marrow sample. Usually, it's done in five minutes, but it took him nearly twenty minutes to jam the needle into my sternum. Denser bones accounted for higher white blood cell count. I was, and remain to do date over thirty years later, perfectly healthy.
74. What’s Up Doc?
I'm not used to going to the doctor or hospital when I feel sick. Four years ago, I had a very, very bad stomach ache. No matter what position I was sitting in, it hurt like heck. I would throw up like a gulp of water. I couldn't sleep all night. I thought it was probably food poisoning or something, and kept recalling what I ate.
I called my brother early in the morning to ask him what he thinks. Does he know if there's any tea or medicine that can calm my pain? He's no doctor and knows nothing about medical stuff, yet he's my big brother, so I always assume he knows it all. He insisted that I go to the ER immediately. He said that such pain isn't normal and shouldn't last that long.
I listened to him. Turns out it was appendicitis. I had the surgery and all went well. But had I waited more, things might've turned out really bad. Moral of the story: something wrong? See a doctor!
75. Skipped A Ride
In university, me and my two best friends were drinking, playing Mario Kart, and just completely fooling around. We were hungry and wanted food. I said, “Let's just make a tombstone pizza because we've been drinking and most delivery services were closed at 1:30AM.” One said that he's fine to drive. I said no, I thought it was a terribly bad idea.
He got the other guy to go with him on the drive. McDonald's usually doesn't take two hours to get there, so eventually I went for a scooter ride since the McDonald’s was less than two miles away. I notice there's a taped off spot on the bridge right before McDonald’s with a crane, officers and an ambulance. My friends curbed the car and drove it off the bridge and into the shallow creek top first and died on impact. I dodged that nuke…but ate the bullet of survivors' guilt for nearly five years.
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76. Worse Than You Thought
I was having breathing problems, gaining weight, and having trouble sleeping, accompanied by difficulty waking up once I did get to sleep. One night, late, while watching TV on the couch, I got up and walked across the apartment to go out on the balcony and smoke. I saw stars after doing that. I booked an appointment with a family doctor who suggested that I might have anemia because of my pale color.
He ordered blood tests. Turns out both my kidneys had completely failed and probably had been in that condition for weeks or months. Doctors said if I'd waited just a few more weeks I probably would have slipped into a coma and never woken up. I was sent to the ER, placed into ICU, received a catheter in my upper chest, and started emergency dialysis the same day the results came back.
77. Going Into It Blind
When I was 11, I started losing vision in my left eye, and eventually went completely blind in about two to three weeks. After lots of testing, we found that I had a brain tumor in my left optic nerve that would likely spread quickly. They gave me a year and a half to live in the best-case scenario with treatment. They got the eye surgically removed, started me on radiation and chemo, and luckily I responded well to it.
The cancer's long gone, I am now a cyclops, and happy to be disease-free.
78. A Christmas Miracle
My family and I were on holiday in Thailand over the Christmas period years ago and were staying in a hotel close to the beach in Phuket. I was only seven and my two brothers were even younger. We had been bugging my parents to go jet-skiing for days on end, much to my parents’ annoyance. On Boxing Day, they finally relented.
After breakfast, we went down to the beach to have a look around for somewhere to find a rental. But before any of that could happen, my dad, who is a surfer with many years’ experience, saw the tide receding in a way that was completely unnatural. He recognized the coming tsunami. We thought he was full of it, but he was serious.
So we raced back to the hotel where we considered running for the hills, but on the consultation of another couple that also recognized the impending disaster, we decided to sit tight in our building. The building was relatively short and stout, so we figured it was probably safe to be in during the storm. Plus, we were on the top floor.
Sure enough, the tsunami came and bulldozed Phuket. It destroyed the lobby of our building, but we were safe in our room upstairs. I have no doubt that none of us would be alive today if my dad hadn't known the early signs of a tsunami. We were also on Phi Phi Island a couple days before that, and if we had been there on Boxing Day instead we might well have lost our lives too.
Just an all around crazy experience that I'm lucky to have made it out of.
79. Staying Home Safe
I had just moved to Colorado by myself and for whatever reason, my mom was encouraging me to get out of the apartment and go see the new Batman movie. That was the night of the theater shooting, and not only did it happen at that theater, but it was also the showing I was considering going to. I stayed up late playing League of Legends instead, and woke up to a LOT of texts and missed calls.
It was probably not ideal for my family's blood pressure that I slept in pretty late that day too.
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80. Surfin’ USA
I was surfing while exhausted. My board strap came un-velcroed and my board floated away. So I’m swimming to shore, but at one point hit that tired state where the current is stronger than I am swimming and I realize I am not moving towards the shore anymore. I panic, which doesn't help my swimming any. It was not my proudest moment.
Suddenly, I remember the surf instructor saying there is a reef far out from shore, but whatever you do don't stand on it unless you want really bad coral cuts. I was so panicked that I thought, what the heck, maybe the reef is there. So, I kind of just stood up in the middle of the water. My foot hit something (the reef, I assume) and I was able to stand there with my head barely above wave height and rest.
Once I got my strength back, I swam back to shore and have not gone surfing since.
81. Stayed In The Frying Pan And Out Of The Fire
We went to Thailand in 2003 for Christmas. I spent a number of years there in the early 90s as a kid and loved it so much that we were going to do it again the next year. We wanted to spend Christmas watching the sun come up on a beach at Phuket again. We had the tickets and everything, but because of some new fallout from an Enron-adjacent scandal, my dad wasn't allowed to leave the country.
He wasn't even implicated, but was in the c-suite of a credit card company, and all such people were under a travel advisory. Anyway, the very hotel we were going to stay at got 100% wrecked by the tsunami, so I guess we got lucky.
82. To Be, Or Clot To Be?
I sprained my ankle in the beginning of November and was diagnosed with a serious illness at the end of the same month. Those two things, along with taking an oral contraceptive, led to massive blood clots forming in my leg. The clots then broke off and traveled to my lungs. Before I knew what was going on inside my body, I was experiencing major pain in my leg.
I told my parents about it, but they both insisted it was just my sprained ankle that was causing the pain. My gut told me something more was wrong though—and it would end up being completely right. I ended up going to the ER. It was there that the blood clots were found, and I was treated in the hospital for three days. I’m so thankful that I listened to my gut, because the consequences of the blood clots in my leg and lungs could have been much, much worse.
83. Broke And Lucky
I was moving abroad to do a postgrad degree. My flight was going to leave out of the Newark airport early in the morning on 9/11. A family friend who worked in the Towers kept prodding me to move my flight to the afternoon and come visit him in the office so he could show me around. My parents were pressuring me to go as well since it was a good networking opportunity.
I was on the fence, but decided not to since I was a poor student and didn't want to pay the cab fare from my hotel in New Jersey to lower Manhattan. Our friend made it out, thankfully, and I'm guessing I would have made it out as well, but there’s no way I would want that experience burned in my memory.
84. Dog Days
I almost fatally choked on a hot dog. I had a few ways I could've responded. 1) Freak out and make it worse; 2) Try swallowing really really hard, only to fail; or 3) Stay calm and preserve enough oxygen to think. Thankfully, I kept calm as my husband was about to pull me out of the car to give me the heimlich. I took in as deep a breath as I could, and managed to cough it out.
That's the story I tell to people about the importance of chewing your food. Especially hot dogs.
85. Need The Nuggets
My friend managed to avoid the Pulse shooting where they were having their birthday party because they had gotten an intense craving for McNuggets. So, he and his group went to McDonald's down the road. They left roughly 15 to 20 minutes before everything went down.
86. Timing The Market
In 2016, my wife and I were in Berlin to explore and visit the Christmas markets. The plan for that evening was to go out to eat and then get the train back to stop into the markets at Breitscheidplatz. It was close to our hotel, so this had been the plan for the entire trip, as it was our last night there. We had finished our meal and were headed to the train station.
Just as we were about to board the train, my wife decided that she didn't want to go to the markets at Breitscheidplatz anymore and instead would prefer to double back to a smaller one we had passed on the walk from the restaurant to the station. I, being a stubborn jerk, didn't want to change the plans. But she got her way and we headed back, staying at the smaller market for about thirty minutes.
After finally riding the train back, we got off and walked towards our hotel. After a minute or so, there appeared a seemingly never ending stream of emergency vehicles. Not knowing what was going on, but obviously realizing it was something serious, we sped up and locked ourselves in the hotel room. We had the English language news channel on and, after about an hour, reports started to come through about a terrorist attack.
A man had driven a truck into a crowd at the Breitscheidplatz market. Obviously, I'll never know if we would have been in the exact spot at that exact moment, but we definitely would have been there at the same time, and I am never allowed to complain about my wife changing her mind ever again.
87. Taking The Scenic Route
I almost wound up in the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis years ago. My uncle, cousin, and I were on our way to a Twins game. We were originally planning to take the route that crossed the bridge, but at the last minute, we decided to take a more "scenic" route. After it happened, we were talking and we figured it probably would have been within a couple minutes of the time the bridge collapsed that we would have been on the bridge.
88. Two For The Price Of One
A mentally unstable kid tried to take his own life by crashing into my car head on. At the very last second, I veered right and jumped the curb to get out of the way. He was still able to adjust and smack me pretty good, but nothing like a head on collision.
89. Uncle Sam Gets The Cold Shoulder
Uncle Sam wanted to draft me when they wanted us off to Vietnam. At the last minute, during the physical, I pointed to the surgical scar on my shoulder and said to the doctor, "I don't really trust this shoulder. Any problem?" The next thing you know, they take x-rays. After a bit of a wait, the colonel in charge of the place said to me, "I'm sorry son, but I'm going to have to disqualify you." Thankfully, home I went, a free man.
90. From Bad To Worse
The time where I almost lost my life was when I became unconscious in the middle of the highway as a result of a motorcycle accident and was then run over by a car. I still scratch my head when thinking about it. To this day, I have no idea how I was able to make it out of that situation alive. I feel lucky and privileged to be here.
91. Accidental Exposure
I accidentally found out that my ex of three years, before we were about to move in together and with whom I talked about marriage regularly, had a very creepy obsession. He was constantly soliciting photos/cybering with random girls online. He had an entire hard drive worth of creepy photos of random miscellaneous girls from the internet he had been accumulating for years since before our relationship and during.
I was absolutely mortified that this guy never ever mentioned anything about this during our entire relationship. He said to me, when I asked him if he ever planned to tell me, “I planned to tell you after we got married, I knew it was a problem and was committed to seeking help once we got to that point.” So many layers of messed up there I’m so relieved I didn’t ever end up married to him.
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92. A Medical Miracle
I had cancer. Bad cancer. The "completely incurable and you should get your affairs in order right away" kind of cancer. I have no explanation, yet I am still here and still kicking thirteen years later. I say this after many rounds of intense chemo, radiation, and Rituximab. All I can say is thank you, Stanford Medical Center. And screw you, cancer.
93. Red Flag, Red Bumper
This happened before cell phones existed. I had a long commute home and, on a rare occasion, my husband drove into the city to meet me. I started for home about 15 minutes before he did. On the stretch of Highway 101 that I needed to be on for a pretty long stretch, there was a big rig in front of me that seemed to be driving erratically.
I got this weird feeling and just moved over to the next lane and accelerated past him. When I looked back, I saw something so disturbing, it’s unforgettable. In the rearview mirror, I could see the big rig run over the car in front of him and flip to its side, crushing the cars in the next lane where I had just been. My husband was behind the accident and as the officers were letting cars pass in single file, he saw one of the crushed cars had a red bumper.
He got home a couple of hours after me and said he'd never been so happy to see my red car in the driveway. He'd been holding his breath as he turned down our street because he really expected me to be under the big rig.
94. Like Taking Candy From A Baby
When I was three years old, I was sucking on one of those long sticks of hard candy. It was the length of a ruler and as thin as a ruler. Anyway, it ended up sliding down my throat and I started to choke pretty badly. Luckily, my stepdad had a nurse’s book handy. The book said to pour warm water down my throat and put my head down.
It slid right out and I lived to tell the tale.
95. The Chatty Bouncer
Back in the 90s, several of us went to a bar we knew had a dance floor. We'd been at a pub previously and were half intoxicated upon arrival. The bouncer checked most of our IDs as usual, but then tried to chat up my one friend. The whole time, he wouldn't return her ID. She wasn't interested and a line was building up.
He gave up and returned her ID. The rest of that evening was normal and we forgot about it. A few weeks later, we saw on the news that the bouncer had been taken in for murder. He'd memorized his victim's address from her ID and again been totally obvious about being interested in her. He probably would've become a serial murderer if he hadn't been dumb enough to get caught his first time around. It still freaked us all out—especially that one friend.
96. The Highwaymen
I was out late one night. My car had broken down in the middle of an interchange that was so deserted there was no one there for miles. I did what any other person would do and called a tow truck. When I finally got through, it was almost 1:00 am. I decided to go to the bathroom down in some bushes when suddenly I heard some bikes approaching the car.
I wanted to head out immediately to stop them for help, when my legs froze up and I thought twice. Then, from behind the bush where I was, I basically saw them try to ransack the car. Apparently, they were all armed. Thank goodness I remained still and out of sight, because these guys meant business. They fired multiple shots into the windscreen and door of my car. That's the moment I started to panic.
It was an old Toyota, so there was nothing in there. They busted all four wheels with bullets before getting back on their bikes and zooming off. I believe they were all under the influence, which was why they didn't bother to check around. Or maybe they thought I just deserted the area. Long story short, I walked a bit further into an open field and sat on the thick branches of a tree from where I could see approaching objects.
The tow truck didn't get there until past 4:00 in the morning, and I can tell y'all that that was definitely the longest night of my life. I’m just thankful that I eventually made it home in one piece.
97. The Broken Belly Button
I once broke my belly button overeating at a company lunch. I went from an innie to an outie. Basically, I had a hernia. I put off going to the doctor for a few weeks before going to see a specialist. The hernia doctor agreed that it's a hernia. He said that he could schedule me for whenever, but if I wanted to wait a bit, there shouldn't be any problems, there was no hurry.
I decided to get it out of the way because they had a cancelation. So, I scheduled it for a week later. I wake up from surgery and the doctor says there was a complication. They didn't get the hernia because when they were going in, they made a disturbing discovery. They noticed my appendix was about to explode, so they took that out instead. I asked about when they could fix the hernia, and he said the appendix looked funny and was going to send it to the lab and get back to me.
The lab was really backed up, so several weeks later, I got a call from the doctor. I really thought it was over—but I was so wrong. It was a really rare appendix cancer, something that happens to around 1,000 Americans a year. Not only that, but of the two kinds of appendix cancer based on lab work, I had the worst of the two, the kind that spreads everywhere really fast and cuts your lifespan down considerably even with treatment.
The first kind grows slow and stays put, but every once in a while, it will go into overdrive, differentiates, pokes out of the abdominal wall, and spits cancer slime everywhere that turns whatever it touches into more cancer. They cut it off, for it turning from the good kind into the bad kind is just a one-centimeter tumor, mine about one and a half centimeters.
Under the microscope, it had differentiated and they saw the cells that spit cancer slime had formed. There's really only one treatment referred to as the mother of all surgeries which is its own ball of tactical nukes. I stew over that for a few weeks until they can get more tests scheduled. I go in for a barrage of scans, pokings, and proddings, and the scans are all clean.
There were no signs of the cancer spreading, for the most part. That was when I learned just how lucky I was. It had just turned from the slow-growing kind that stays put, into the fast-moving kind when they caught it. The tumor hadn't had a chance to spit cancer slime outside the wall holding my appendix. If I had waited just a week for the hernia surgery, literally every day that I waited would have exponentially increased the odds of it spreading the mucin.
They think they got it all when they took the appendix out. There are a few things they want to keep an eye on that they're reasonably sure is just scaring from the surgery, but they gave me an 80% chance of being cancer-free. I have more scans in December to make sure.
98. He Made You An Offer You Can Refuse
It was the mid-1990s. I had traveled to northern New Jersey with a friend from college. It was his hometown. We had plans to visit New York City and see a former roommate who had graduated the year before. I’ll call that person Friend 2. Well, apparently Friend 2 had been quietly dabbling in the business of low-level organized mobsters since his last years in college.
We had some knowledge of this but were not involved. He invited us to an associate’s house with plans to go out afterward. We declined. Not our scene. In fact, both of us had applied to law school. I planned to pursue a career in federal law enforcement thereafter. We both wanted to distance ourselves from that nonsense and steer clear of any association with it.
We tried the following day to reach Friend 2 for a low-key lunch before heading back out of town. No answer. Well, local authorities found his body two days later, along with two other bodies, at the very house to which he had invited us. Everything went down at the meeting/social gathering that he had invited us to. So it could have been us too if we had accepted the invitation.
I knew those guys were bad news.
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