Ask Lemmy

8 way skydive. Two friends were getting married and they wanted to do a wedding jump for their ceremony.

Not a big deal, but the two getting married were very inexperienced jumpers with less than 100 jumps each. The rest of us were all highly experienced with hundreds if not thousands of jumps. At the time I was sitting a bit over 2000 jumps and was active on both 4-way and 8-way competition teams. (Not my videos, but fair representations of what I was doing at the time).

We planned a jump which would put the newlyweds at the base where they would not need to do a whole lot. Unfortunately the bride had the bright idea that she wanted to come in and dock on the formation, which she did not have the skill set for. I coached her on several jumps having her dock on me. She was terrible, but she did manage to dock on me the last two coach jumps. Part of my coaching was what to do if she goes low and finds herself under the formation and unable to get back up. People falling together fall slower than an individual.

Fast forward and we have a practice jump about a month before the wedding. The groom goes out with another experienced jumper in the base, the bride next then the rest of us diving out.

Well, the bride misses the formation, much like I figured she would. Except she doesn't follow her training and she just sits there under the formation. She was about 500 feet under the formation when she starts waving off, which is the signal she's about to deploy her main parachute. The formation breaks and tracks for their lives, which we literally were.

She deploys and it turned out that I was closest to her. I passed less than 20 feet away doing 120mph where she was slowing to less than 10mph. She later said I sounded like a jet airplane passing by. Had we hit, it would have been fatal.

I grounded her and gave her a good chewing out. We spent the next weekend doing more coaching and I told her if she wanted to do the jump she had to be in the base.

The wedding day came, but unfortunately the weather the day sucked and we didn't get to do the jump that day. We did it about a month later where the jump went pretty well and safely.

Raped at gunpoint.

The US reelecting Trump.

Parasailing - I was too small for the harness part and wasn’t secured correctly. I spent the whole time paralyzed after I realized what was wrong.

I grew up in a small coal town where we (kids) would get up to trouble after dark.

one night we decided to go explore the mines and entered through the railway.

we were looking around when a security guard spotted us and started to chase us and we booked it back towards the way we came.

we didn't know it at the time but they were bringing empty cars in to fill and the tail lights didn't work. add to that, the coal belts were running which are very loud and almost undistinguishable from a train moving over rails. basically the air was filled with loud sounds and we were running scared.

as we were running out the narrow exit between the fencing, the cars came out of nowhere. I was lucky enough to jump out of the way and only got some cuts on my elbows from sliding down the rocky embankment. one of my friends wasn't so lucky. he hit his head on the side of the steel car and got knocked back and the wheels rolled over both his legs basically crushing them off like a dull knife.

when the cars stopped I went back and saw the carnage of his severed legs, blood everywhere. even the smell...

he almost died that night, in hindsight it would have been better if he had. after that he was never the same. stuck in a wheel chair and had massive brain damage from the initial hit.

most my young life I thought about how easily that could have been me, and it just fucked me up.

I was once driving with my wife through a very foggy roadway, when a huge truck came from the other way with these powerful fog lights and totally blinded me for a couple of seconds. It was enough that I missed the sign that a curve was coming so I took it too fast, lost control of my pickup and ended up rolling two and a half times landing with the pickup sideways on my wife's side.

The moment I realised we were gonna flip was the most terrified I've ever been, mostly because I worried about my wife. Luckily a bus full of people was just passing by and they stopped and helped us get out and calm us down while the authorities came.

After that while talking to the cops I kept blaming myself, to the point that my wife got pissed and told the cops that I was still in shock and it was the truck's fault and that they should just dismiss my rambling, saving me in the end from paying any fines lol.

Not spooky per se, but it scared the shit out of me:

I was 16 or 17 at the time and worked for a DJ pushing road cases and setting up/striking equipment. One winter weekend, upon striking everything after a wedding, I stepped outside around 2am to find myself in the middle of a blizzard. I had borrowed my dad's F250 with AWD for the evening, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided it would be fine to drive the 20 or so miles home.

There was absolutely nobody on the road, not even plows/salt trucks. Like many teenagers, though, I thought I was invincible, so I drove way faster than was reasonable in those conditions. About halfway back, I'm on an overpass across a major highway and hit a patch of ice. Cue the fishtail, then panic as my life flashed before my eyes. I ended up spinning about 2.25 revolutions, and come to stop perpendicular to the road with a few inches between my front bumper and the outer barrier of the overpass. Too bad I wasn't wearing brown pants.

I managed to get the rest of the way home without incident, but I have never taken any chances driving in suspect conditions again- I figure I used up all my luck surviving that event.

So back in college a buddy and I subleased an apartment over the summer because our dorm was closed. The basic layout is that you walked in via the living room, with a hallway that headed toward the back. Off the hallway on one side was a galley kitchen with a narrow doorway (maybe an inch or two wider than my shoulders). A few steps forward on the other side was my roommate’s room, and my room was straight at the end of that hall.

One night I wake up hungry so head towards the kitchen. It’s pitch black, but for some reason my roommate slept with his door open so not being a dick I just walked down the hall in the dark (it was a straight shot and when I opened the fridge I knew the light would turn on so I’d be fine). I turn to walk into the kitchen and bumped into someone - you know that kind of soft/give when you walk into somebody. Assumed my roommate had gone into the kitchen for something and also wasn’t turning on the lights so said “Sorry dude” and flipped on the light switch right then (it was right next to my right hand - no delay between the bump and the light AT ALL). Except it wasn’t him (goddammit I’m getting goosebumps typing this right now).

There was no one there. Period. But there was also no way it was my roommate. Narrow doorway so he couldn’t get around without touching me, and the time between the bump and the light coming on was immediate. With the light now I turned around and could see my roommate through his door, sleeping in his bed peacefully.

There were other things that happened that summer to kind of indicate the place was haunted - things move around or go missing (but attributed that to forgetfulness or pranks), and sometimes pipes would be banging up until I’d ask the ghost to stop because I had class or whatnot in the morning (but there I figured I’d subconsciously gotten used to however long it took for it to stop on its own so it was coincidence).

But to this day I have NO viable explanation for who/what I bumped I to that night.

I once smacked my funny bone on a piece of lumber and lost all feeling and control of my right hand for a good 10 minutes or so and was freaking out that I lost the use of my dominant hand until it started having feeling again and I could move my fingers.

Large footprint on the bathroom floor mat that didn't match any of my shoes. I live alone. Still can't explain it.

20 years ago, almost to the hour, (only remember as it was a long Easter weekend), I’d sat up from the Thursday night and had worked my way through ~40 Shrek 2 ecstasy tablets over that timespan. It was later reported in the papers they were adulterated with methamphetamine. Which explains why we were hiding in a closet watching every fault on the wall turn into some sort of insect and scurry away.

But the real killer was the gravity bongs with cheap hash (there was literal bits of plastic bags in it as filler). On my 10th one or so I got kicked back out my body like I’d just been hadoukened by The Ancient One and was in some plane in space where I could see all my memories like wee tv screens. I was pulled back into the current timeline and was hovering just above my body for a second before being jolted back in.

I immediately had excruciating pain in my wrists and it felt like invisible inter-dimensional chains were being dragged through them. Not metaphorically. It felt mechanical. Deliberate. But the worst bit was the time loops. The same minute kept repeating for what felt like an eternity, I could see time rewinding and it’d repeat the same minute again and again and again until I realised I had free will and told my cousin to phone and ambulance before I jumped out the window to break the loop.

And that kids, is how I got persistent hallucinogenic perception disorder and about a decade of sleep paralysis (every night).

I'm conflicted to call this the most terrifying thing I've experienced, just the first thing that comes to mind. And spooky just tends to be lame-ass fake ghost stories, but ...

During a holiday break when I was in college, I was stalked by a bunch of guys who I'm pretty convinced were planning to harm me.

Campus was closed down for the holidays. I was stuck on campus. Aside from international students, almost nobody else was in the dorms. I decided to go for a walk and it turns out, so did one of my friends' exes and some buddies of his who also stayed behind for the break.

As I was out walking, that dude and several other guys crested a hill ahead of me and started demanding I come talk to them. No polite language, just threats, slurs, and foul language. He'd dated my friend briefly, but during that time, found out I am gay. This was in the before times when LGBT+ folks were not widely accepted and this was considered to be acceptable behavior by large numbers of people.

I turned around and split off heading towards the campus cafeteria. Figured they wouldn't follow me, but even if they did, I'd be heading towards safety. Well, they gave chase. Unbeknownst to me, the cafeteria was closed for the holidays. I was on my own. Too far away from my dorm to get to safety, and all the other buildings were locked up.

I ducked into the campus gardens and hid behind a bush. Those guys wandered around looking for me for quite a while, and then I stayed put for what felt like hours until I felt confident that they weren't still lurking.

Learned my lesson, though, I guess. And at least I didn't become a victim of violence.

I was doing backcountry snowboarding on a mountain I grew up near. It's not anywhere near an established ski resort so there's no mapped out sections or any safety measures. I was with a group and we were mostly sticking together, but I didn't want to wait for them to smoke a cigarette so I just went ahead.

The ride itself was a ton of fun and probably the craziest line I've ever hit. I bombed it out of the bottom because I could see there was a big flat section coming and I didn't want to walk through the snow to get out. I rode as long and far as I could, but eventually stopped as I didn't have enough speed. I was in the middle of a big clearing and didn't see really any other tracks, but it was late spring and where I was was pretty icy. So I unstrapped and stepped off of my board, picked it up, and started walking toward our meeting spot.

Apparently the clearing I was in was not so much just a nice meadow. Nope, it was a pond. I don't know how many steps I took before I just fell straight through the top layer. Now I don't know if the water had just backed up there from an ice floe and then maybe the dam melted and it all went away, but what I do know is that I landed with my armpits on my board and I was dangling.

Thankfully I was a strong little shit, so I pulled myself right up and was able to spread my weight out using my board and otherwise. But when I looked into the hole I had made, it was like fifteen feet straight down to a bunch of big rocks. Had I fallen in, I have no idea if anyone would have been able to find me.

I wasn't too scared then, but it hits me now and again how utterly close to death I was just then. Terrifying.

Going 80km/h on a scooter in Thailand driven by someone without a license and no helmet

I went up to the darkest part of my state to do some stargazing. Stayed until roughly 300ish in the morning. My dumb ass decided to drive down the mountain to the nearest town in the darkest fucking pitch black night I ever lived through. I legit could not see more than 2 feet in front of my car. Every little twinkle of light that wasn't my car's high beams was a deer or a bear. I thought every dip in the road was a void to hell considering how dark it was. I spent the whole ride hunched up to the steering wheel with eyes wide open looking at nothingness in front of me. Took me two hours to go 50 miles to get off this mountain to the nearest city. By the time I got there the sun was coming up and I had no clue until the mountains actually broke into the valley. I checked into a hotel and had the best 5 hours of sleep ever. I've been back there a couple times and I stay the whole night now.

I'll give my scariest, and then a spooky one

Turned onto a highway from a stop light and 2 idiots were apparently racing and blew through the stoplight. One came so close to slamming into me at probably 90mph+, I could have put my hand out the window and touched their car. They swerved to avoid me and ended up crossing 2 lanes, hitting a ditch, launched into the air, literally grazed a huge tree and ended up skidding 50 yards or so across a field. Kid somehow walked away with out a scratch. My smart watch thought I was having a heart attack.

The spooky one.

I used to ghost hunt. One place we were at, I was taking a break in a hallway and felt a hand grab my leg. It was so distinct, that I could feel it was someone's right hand, the palm, thumb and individual fingers wrap around one at a time. It felt like warm static. I immediately took my recorder out, placed it in the middle of the hallway and asked a few questions to see if I could get a response. I left the recorder going and we all left the floor. When playing back the recording, you can hear us close the door and seconds later, you can hear a person walking in high heels on concrete/tile come from one end of the hall, pass over the recorder, and walk down the other end. Funny thing was the hallway was covered in carpet. This wasn't even the spookiest story I had, but one that was backed up by evidence.

Thank you for asking. Every day that goes by these memories feel more and more like a dream or hallucinated memory, but I trust the kid that I was.

It’s a 3 part series all in the same house in Austin, Tx over 5 or 6 years.

Part 1 I moved to Austin, Tx in the 90s with my parents and brother. It was a little over a week in the house, I later learned a single family had lived there previously and had built the house, its bed time on a school night and we are all in dark and in our rooms. I hear a toy gun noise, it was very popular in the 80s and 90s a space blaster that made a variety of noises, go off behind a wall or closed door. My father yells, “Batmancer! Turn off your tv and go to bed!” I shoutply, “It is! That wasn’t my tv!” He says loudly “okay”. The next year a family friend comes to visit for a while. Assumably the same amount of days had passed since my friend’s arrival and my family’s first arrival the year before, I didn’t count the days either time, just something I noticed after this night. So we are in my room late at night hanging out, we were talking after playing games for a while. There was some quiet moments, then my friend says, “Did you hear that?” I asked what. He said “That weeooo weeeoooo weeeooo” he described the space blaster sound. I lit up with shock and excitement because I did not hear the sound that time! No one else in the house did either that night, only him.

Part 2 Many months go by, over a year. I am woke up one night in my bed by a feeling that there is a presence in my room. I felt intense fear and worry that someone was in my room. I have the blanket held up to my face, peaking over the edge of it at the dark room surrounding me. I pray to a god I don’t believe in. “Please god let the light turn on” over and over for under a minute, I don’t know how long I would’ve kept saying it but I stopped. Because the light turned on. I am a grown adult man crying writing this, not sobbing my wife hasn’t noticed and is watching The Rookie but still I am crying(I love that I can cry so freely these day). Anyways yea, that fucking light turned on. I have doubts that maybe in some adrenaline fueled fear I did it so fast and got back under the covers I didn’t record it to memory. I don’t know. So I run to my parents room and wake up my dad. I say, “(events) I don’t know if it’s a ghost or an alien or what.” He replys in a tired and uninterested tone, “Well Batmancer obviously it’s a nice ghost or alien because it turned the light on for you.” I return to my room with complicated feelings but mostly just shock and trying to feel better by convincing myself, that I guess my dad is right. I got back in bed and fell asleep eventually with the light still on.

The Final and Loudest Encounter. Years go by, I’m a young teenager alone at home. I’m making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen, there is an office room through an open double door threshold at one side of the kitchen. I hear, click, from the office. I lean back to glance into the room, nothing. I continue with sandwich, all that’s left is the smooth out the jelly. I hear it again. I place my butter knife on the counter and head into the office. I cross through the threshold, I am 6 feet away from a computer on a desk in the corner next to a window.

I notice the office chair, a spinny one on wheels you know the kind, is slowly spinning around. Slow enough that perhaps the window is open and there is a draft? I approach the window to investigate, nothing. The air conditioning? Nope. Is my brother actually home and there is a string tied to this? No strings. The chair had been spinning so slowly that it had not made a full rotation yet. At this time I’m standing behind the chair looking at the computer in hibernation mode, dark screen and yellow lights in the tower, the chair has not reached a point in rotation that it is about to face directly at the computer. At the right moment of chair aligned to desk, I place my hands on the back of the chair and stop it.

A woman’s scream erupts from the speakers of the computer, the kind of speakers that would let you know a phone call was coming, I am in shock and I think this is the most elaborate prank my brother has ever played. I was or am computer savvy, I wake up the computer and look to see if anything looks amiss like the computer running a program that fakes hibernation and screams when your friends get close. Nothing. I accept this may be real. I return to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife we had, sat in the corner, and closed my eyes. Ghosts are invisible so I was going to rely on my spirit senses to try to defend myself. I can’t remember how long I sat there, but I said, “if you’re gonna kill me then kill me already.” I believe over 5 minutes pass. I put the knife back and return to the computer room.

I think of all that has happened in the house. I place my hand on the wall and close my eyes. I say, “I don’t know what you were trying to tell me or why you’re here, but if you’re living here with me and family. I love you and I hope you’re okay.”

That was the last weird thing that happened that anyone noticed.

Epilogue: That was in the 90s as I said before, just this past year I have developed a new perspective on what and why it all meant, thanks to a random friend of a friend at party and sharing this story. Also I spoke with my mom about it again and apparently my brother shared his own story with her.

So I shared the story with her, and I said I don’t know why or what any of it meant and it took me many years to accept there are things I will never know in life. She said in a very plain and innocent tone, “Oh, it’s sounds like it was little girl playing games, then being curious about me one night, and then playing in the spinny chair and I startled her when I stopped it.” I cried then and I’m crying again. I will never know but that made the most sense out of everything I thought of over the years. After that I asked my wife if it was okay for me to invite her to our new place in case she was lonely wherever she was. My wife said it was okay. I did, I felt afraid but I did and I told her I hope she’s doing good. I had some trouble sleeping that night but still felt like it was a good thing to do. No sign of her yet. I still love you and hope you’re okay, whatever you are.

My brother told my mom, he saw a little girl like figure hanging around his room some nights but that she never did anything mean or confrontational nice or otherwise to even acknowledge my brother.

When I walked in on a 17 year old kid and two of his older friends stomping on a homeless guy in a cocaine fuelled rampage. I almost had to stab the kid because he didn't realize I already had my knife out... luckily one of his friends suddenly wasn't in the mood to beat the shit out of me and stopped him.

There was a 3-week period in highschool where I would hallucinate daily with figures zooming accross my peripheral vision and hearing people scream my name while home alone.

I was mainly scared that it went worse over time but then it suddenly started getting better and I am fine now.

I was hiking in Pennsylvania off the established trail and following a "bushwhacking" guides trail with a friend. We stopped to set up camp for the night as it was going to be dark soon and when we were heating up food I noticed a pair of eyes off in the near distance around some bushes. I kept an eye out while we ate and didn't notice it come closer but we started hearing more noises around us so we decided to grab our hatchets and just go lay down in our hammocks for the night hoping to keep out of sight.

Whatever it was came into our camp and was snooping around, I think there were a bunch of them because it sounded like more than one set of "footsteps." We heard a bunch of howling in the distance that night but I'm not sure if it was related to what was in our camp. I've never been more afraid in my life except maybe for the much less interesting time when I had a panic attack so severe I thought I was dying and actually passed out for a few seconds lol I've had plenty of severe panic attacks but that one was miles worse.

I can't remember exactly, but I had a fuckton of really awful nightmares. One of my less terrifying experiences look like: turning on a tap to wash the hundreds of cockroaches crawling on my face, only for more to come out of the tap, and some Kerrigan lookalike phasing through walls and absorbing anything organic.

I was being very brave, trying to be perfectly stoic, and not showing any signs of pain, as the drill went deeper and deeper into my tooth. Something was VERY wrong, and the pain just keept getting exponentially worse, and I didn't know if it would end at all, I just stayed quiet somehow until the operation was complete.

That experience was so horrible, I stopped being brave about almost anything after that. Every time I'd hear a drill nearby from someone doing home renovation nearby, I will grind my teeth and cringe. I had a syncope after being give an anesthetic, as the needle pushed me over the edge from the dread I was feeling (and again, hiding).

There's also drowning in your own blood from reflux, wondering if I fucked up the wound where my wisdom tooth was removed, and the bleeding would just not stop, and I was getting basically waterboarded every few seconds, because the blood made me nauseous.

Drinking vinegar, realizing I fucked up, then thinking I'm going to die from it.

I guess that's it.

EDIT: Cat hitting the gate, making me think someone was coming when I was uh...indisposed is one xD

I don't have spooky, but I've almost 'died' a few times (At least felt like I was dying):

• Getting very light-headed and my vision becoming bright, and almost passing out due to dehydration and hunger multiple times in my life (A few when I was young, at work, and I think a few times at home)
• Getting very dizzy, light-headed, and nauseous. Was my 1st time in an ambulance. Was fucked up on drugs they gave me that made my so exhausted, I couldn't sleep at all.
• More light-headedness due to drastic dietary changes
• A pain that fucked my stomach up so bad, I though I was giving birth (I imagined it hurt as bad as birth, but through the stomach). After 30 agonizing minutes of it, a weird pressure feeling came over it (like a relieving feeling), and it started going away.

I've not had a great time.

When I was harassed for being disabled, the man 🧍‍♂️ screamed about my disability SO loud the whole World could hear him. He did it several times, the worst part? People called that “Freedom of Speech.”

having kids.

Becoming lucid in a dream and not being able to wake up no matter how hard I tried.

I don't think I have them anymore. I literally just accept death and everything just feels the same.

That being said... I find modern society and human life to be terrifying. It feels like there's something wrong, and it's not natural... Like our freedom is an illusion.