Most of us have been scared in our lifetimes, but have you ever legitimately thought you were going to die?

If so, you might relate to these 10 people and their stories, but if not, well…buckle up, because sometimes life is a ride that takes turns you never wanted to make.

Seriously, these are very creepy. Be forewarned… they may keep you up at night.

10. It was a typical run to the store, until…

“We were on family vacation in these beautiful lake cabins at this really fun campground we went every summer. My mom, youngest brother (4 at the time) and I (5 at the time) went to the store to get food for the week while my dad and older siblings unpacked and docked the boat.

The store was a good 30-minute drive into town as the lake was far from everything and it had started to rain on the way there.

We arrived to the store and made a mad dash for the doors as it started to down pour.

We grabbed a cart and started our shopping. We were in the cereal aisle when it sounded like a train was approaching. My mom grabbed my brother and I and kind of jumped on top of us. We had no idea what was happening when all of a sudden cereal boxes were flying everywhere. I remember hearing glass windows break and madness of the lights going out and food flying everywhere and hitting us.

The entire cereal shelf fell backwards into the aisle behind us.

An F3 tornado had ripped right through the grocery store. It was a disaster; we were banged up and bruised, the store was a mess, people were injured, but luckily no one was seriously hurt or killed.

Ambulances came and we all had to get checked out. Our car somehow didn’t have a scratch on it. At this point, two hours had gone by, and we were cleared to leave and headed back to the lake.

We pulled in, and jumped out running toward the dock and my mom was crying, she had held it together but just lost it at this point and my dad and siblings were on the lake having had no idea what just happened.

My dad saw my mom just bawling, and me and my brother were too, and came running over as we are all trying to explain what had happened. We decided to stay at the lake since it was safe and had tornado shelters and it did not rain once the entire week we were there.

We had to go to a different town an hour away for provisions. My dad drove with my mom the next day to see the destruction and the whole little town was destroyed. It was so sad. They did rebuild by the next summer.

It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been in and I’ve been terrified of storms since.”

9. What almost was…and was not.

“My pre-school teacher, who also ended up somehow changing jobs and becoming my 11th grade English teacher, had a fascinating life. She told this story every single year to the new students in her class. When she was younger, she was driving through Arizona on a two-way road trip while her boyfriend at the time was following behind her on his motorcycle. For those who don’t live in Arizona, certain stretches of it can be quite isolated and deserted.

She said that they were on a long drive and eventually got separated by a few miles. A man who was behind her in a Volkswagen Beetle kept pulling up beside her into the other lane (no one was coming) and motioning at her to pull over. She somewhat ignored him the first few times, but he kept doing it and began getting more frantic each time. She said that she believed that he spotted something wrong with her car, so she saw a parking lot off the road for a deserted gas station and pulled over.

Once pulled over, she said that she instantly got an eerie feeling.

The man was suspicious and kept telling her that he saw something wrong with her headlight and insisted she get out of the car, so he could show her what he meant. Her boyfriend who was a few miles behind her, eventually caught up and spotted her car at the sketchy gas station. Right as she was out of the car, her boyfriend began to pull in. As he did that, this man got into his car and SPED off like his life depended on it.

They were later able to identify that the man was Ted Bundy.

8. I imagine not much is scarier than being betrayed by your own mind.

“I was just ending my shift at a major hospital in New York. I headed back to my apartment, entertained my daughter with random conversation for a while, had a meal, and was chilling out. Business as usual.

Later that night, my mother came by and took me back to the hospital where I worked. We were talking in the car, and nothing seemed out of sorts at all. She never mentioned where we were headed, and I had no idea of the destination until we actually arrived.

When we arrived at the hospital, I kept getting questioned about who I was (including who I really

was), where I grew up, who my daughter was, where I lived, and more. Battery after battery of third degree, coming out of absolutely nowhere. I had no clue what was going on or why anyone was interrogating me this way.

Fast forward to about three days later or so. I found myself sitting in a chair, calmly looking out at a lovely view from my apartment window.

Except this wasn’t my apartment.

In a quiet panic, I took stock of my surroundings and realized I was at the end of a hallway, and I’d been here before. It was the hospital where I worked, but it wasn’t in New York. It was Portland, and it was the psych floor. In an instant, I had no idea why I was there, what day or time it was, nor what had gone on since my last shift on the floors beneath.

It turns out that I was, indeed, working a regular shift several days prior.

The story is that I walked off the job with no warning nor explanation, went to my mother’s place, and was rambling on about what I needed to do in ‘the City’ the next day. She took me to the ER, where I reported living in NYC (complete with some bogus address and phone number) with my daughter (I was claiming that my little sister was my daughter). They admitted me, and I didn’t break back into generally-accepted reality for several days.

When I ‘came to,’ I had absolutely no idea what had happened, why I was locked up again, nor any memory whatsoever of what I’d said or done after that instant walking off of my shift.

Turns out it was Schizophrenia. It was my first major psychotic break. I’d been spiraling for several years without realizing it. Sitting in that chair by the window at the end of a hospital hallway, when literally one instant earlier I’d been casually going about my job, felt just as disorienting and jarring as you’d imagine.”

7. You’re only seeing half the story.

“I was working the evening shift at a gas station when a man came in all disoriented. I went to help him out and noticed that he had a gash on his head and didn’t know where he was. I couldn’t see any crashes around, so I assumed he had fallen or something.

Normally, we are supposed to stay inside the glass shielded register area whenever anyone is in the store. I, being a nice human being, went to help while calling the police and paramedics.

6. Good thing he didn’t have an AR-15.

“In the third grade, a guy came to our school and held our class hostage. He had already killed his wife and was there to kill his kid. The administrators convinced him the kid was not there and to take one of their cars and leave. After threatening to kill us multiple times, tying up the gym teacher, and dragging someone’s grandma around with a knife at her neck, he finally left about 30 minutes later.

The police caught him in Indiana on his way to kill his parents.

He was convinced the world was ending, and he was killing everyone he loved to spare them. The school did worse than nothing, they lied to parents and no assistance was given to either the kids or teachers involved. The gym teacher never came back, and every time she would see one of the kids at the store or wherever, she had a breakdown. Several of us have PTSD, undiagnosed, for decades. We just thought it was normal.

In the 70s, the Chicago Public School system was more concerned about their jobs and lawsuits, so they covered it up.”

5. When a crying baby is actually a good thing.

“When I was a baby, my dad played on a softball team. Typical social team, out for drinks and pizza after with the guys, family event-type-thing. My parents were good friends with two of the other couples, both of them had young kids as well.

On this occasion, the other two couples had left their kids at one of their houses, with a babysitter they were splitting. They invited my parents back to the house to have some more drinks that night, but I was being fussy and my mom nixed the idea (though they would have normally gone back to hang out).

Well, it turned out my fussiness on that day saved our lives. When the other parents got back to the house, they walked in on a home invasion. Two men had broken in, tied up the kids and the babysitter (and her boyfriend), and were waiting for the parents. They took the parents hostage as well, and made the dads drive with them to a bank and a grocery store where the one dad was manager and cleared out accounts and the safe.

They then came back to the house, and slaughtered both families, the babysitter, and her boyfriend.

Kids included.

They caught the two guys later on. My dad attended the trials, and said it was the first time he had ever had thoughts of supporting the death penalty. It still gives me chills to know how close we came to getting killed that day, too.”

4. The noises were coming from outside…

“My friend had this neighbor who was a retired mechanic. They lived on some properties with large front lawns and long driveways. His neighbor had a couple derelict cars parked up near his garage that he took parts from occasionally.

This neighbor of his started hearing noises while sitting in his living room, coming from his front yard. Every time he’d go to the window, there would be nothing there.

He assumed it was a raccoon or a coyote or whatever. He kept hearing the noise, so he’d go outside to look around but would find nothing. He’d put out traps and occasionally catch something, yet the noise persisted.

Soon, he started claiming that he was hearing voices coming from the front yard, like whispering. He’d go outside and look around the perimeter of his property but would find nothing. It was persistent, so he’d started calling the cops.

Every time the cops came and looked around and would find nothing. So they told him he needed to stop calling them for this, and perhaps get a security camera or whatever.

So this guy thought he was losing his mind. One summer evening he couldn’t sleep, so he went to the back patio to have a smoke. Suddenly, he heard voices coming from the front of his house. He put out his smoke and snuck around to the front and got there just in time to see the doors to his derelict conversion van silently shut.

He ran back to the backyard and went inside his home and called the police to tell them what he had seen. The police arrived and approached cold (i.e. without lights/sirens), and when they approached the van, the doors swung open and a bunch of people ran out in every direction.

Upon searching the van, the cops found syringes and paraphernalia and determined that people were shooting up in there.”

3. Old Jim probably wouldn’t have found any of this funny at all.

“I was responsible for opening a new office for a previous employer. The receptionist that we hired was this sweet little old lady who would always bring in cookies and brownies, like almost every day. She said her husband had a sweet tooth, and she didn’t know how to make just enough for the two of them so, since the kids all moved out, she always baked too many.

She would always tell us funny stories about what her husband said or did the night before. He sounded like a fun guy, and she was the absolute sweetest little old lady. Or so I thought…

A few months later, her husband was reported missing by her adult kids. They said that he hadn’t called them since Christmas and that their mom was very evasive when they would ask to talk to him on the phone.

After a little investigating, the police found the husband, hacked to pieces, in this sweet little old lady’s trunk.

It turns out on Christmas night, she slit his throat in his sleep, used a hacksaw to cut him up, rolled all the pieces up in a carpet, and tucked him into her trunk.

Here is the creepy part. We hired her in June. They found the body in August.

The whole time I knew her, his body was wrapped in a carpet in her trunk. She was bringing in cookies and telling us funny ‘Jim’ stories, all the while he was decaying in her trunk.”

2. I really don’t know how this is possible.

“I work at a maximum security prison, and we have several inmates who are severely mentally ill. The ones that self harm wear a bracelet to monitor heart rate. If there is a change, we rush to their room to stop whatever is happening. On top of this we also do visual inspections.

On one round, a coworker was doing cell checks and noticed this particular inmate had blood on their face but nothing came up on the monitors or anything.

So he called to the inmate to ask if they were okay, the inmate had their eyes closed and just kept repeating, ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ The inmate would not say where the blood was from.

We opened the cell to see what the situation was and it turns out the inmate had plucked out both of their eyes, and they were laying on the floor. The inmate’s HR monitor never alerted and the inmate never screamed. Paramedics said the inmates vitals were normal and the inmate was fully responsive.

One officer who responded had been on the job three days. They quit without notice the next day.”

1. Never follow the dog.

“When I was 9 years old, my brothers (10 and 11) and I were playing in our street while our mom watched from our porch. A man in his 30s was walking his dog past us. It was a really cute golden retriever and my 10-year-old brother was in love with it. The guy was friendly and said he was checking out his new house that was being built down our street. My mom overheard this exchange and politely asked us to come up to the porch.

The man followed behind us and introduced himself to my mom as our new neighbor. He said we were all welcome to join him while he checked out the progress, and this sent my brother into a pleading fit, so he could continue playing with the dog. My mom politely declined and said we had to go inside for dinner, which caused my brother to throw a massive tantrum.

Fast forward one week later and my mom shows us a newspaper article showing that guy had been arrested for a string of child assaults. His dog was the bait and he used the same lines on us as he did on them.”

I’m personally thrilled nothing like this has ever happened to me! I’m okay with having the normal, boring life of a stay-at-home mom, thank you very much!

Do you have a terrifying personal story? Share it with us in the comments!