Paranormal or explainable.
8 way skydive. Two friends were getting married and they wanted to do a formation skydive as part of their wedding ceremony. They were going to get married, then 8 of us would get into the plane and do an 8 way formation dive. Land and eat cake.
The problem was they were both low time jumpers, with about 70 jumps each. The other 6 jumpers were all highly experienced, so we tried to make it work. The jump in question was a practice jump about a month before the wedding.
The bride fell out of the formation and went low. Meaning she was below everyone else and was continuing to get even lower. People in a formation will fall more slowly than an individual.
The formation of 7 other jumpers gets to about 5000ft and she is about 500ft below us and just sitting there. She is making no moves to track out and it is becoming a very dangerous situation. Then she starts waving off, which is what you’re supposed to do right before deploying your parachute. We all see it, break the formation turn and burn. The jumper to my right videoed the whole thing. By happenstance I was the closest to her. The video shows me in a full track when she and her deploying main parachute come into frame. I might have missed her by about 20ft. Later she told me I sounded like a jet airplane passing by.
Everyone needed a change of underwear after that jump. I grounded her except for coached jumps, which I took on myself. I did about 15 jumps with her over the next month with increasing number of people until it clicked with her on how formation skydiving actually works.
We did not get to do the jump the day of the wedding unfortunately. Just after the nuptials were completed and we were to head to the airplane an intense thunderstorm blew in grounding the planes. We still held the reception in the hanger though and it was a good time. We did the wedding jump a couple of weeks later and sent the video to all the wedding guests.
But yeah, it was pretty fucking scary.
On a trip to Iceland, was hiking with my mom. I see a spot I want a photo in so I hand her my phone and trek out there. It was a small outcropping at the same height of the trail, overlooking some gulleys. Others had been out there because there was a worn path.
I’m standing out there for my photo, and some wind blows through. It picked me up off my feet. Like, I was weightless and severed from the ground for a few seconds.
I knew in that moment I was going to die. The wind would carry me over the edge and down to the gully below. Luckily, it didn’t last long enough to do that, and dropped me back on my feet, but I was so close to death, I could feel it.
People, the Icelandic wind is no joke. There was no uptick to warn me, no dirt or grass or whatever whipping around. It wasn’t A windy day. It was just no wind, then sudden wind strong enough able to pick up a 190lb woman clear off the earth.
I kept to the main trail after that.
Blimey I had no idea that could happen sounds scary
Iceland has many crazy areas, and even where there signs (particularly on the beaches), people still venture onto the deadly rocks
During Helene, I had a tree fall through my house while I was in bed, and it stopped about 6 inches from my face
Holy shit. During Chido all we had were mild damages to doors and the like. But… it was already frightening as hell. I never thought wind could be so strong. People in the slums had it way worse. I only saw the aftermath. Some got chopped in half by their metal sheets carried by the wind, or their lost an arm or a hand…
That’s some Donnie Darko shit right there.
Working up a radio tower that is on top of a hill where 2 quarries are slowly cutting their way into.
Everything was fine until I hear a large bang and rumbling noises. Then the entire tower starts vibrating with the shockwave of explosion.
I was about 20M up the tower that day.
Also we now know why our millimetre wave radios will sometimes have jitters in the signal strength.
Was the millimeter wave stuff point to point?
The time I was charged by a grizzly bear in western Alberta
TIL grizzly bears could be district attorneys.
Either when my first baby fell out of bed followed by a big clonk, or when I tried to get someone out of a car in flames.
My eldest is fine, that guy didn’t make it and I will never forget the smell.
What’s a clonk?
Also, kudos for at least trying to get the person out. Shame it ended the way it did, but you at least did what you could.
Hydroplaning on a motorcycle
Just ever so slightly losing grip on wet tarmac while taking a bend a little bit too fast and in your head you’re chanting “Lean, don’t break! Lean, don’t break!” to yourself…
Please tell me you’re not still riding one of those death machines.
Not currently. I’d have one again under the right circumstances.
I’ve personally known two people that have died in motorcycle accidents. These were dudes that were pretty safely oriented. Like wore all the gear all the time, rain or shine.
One of them took a spill and his bike pushed his femur through his hip and partly into his torso. He surprisingly lived through that accident. After he recovered he went back to riding as if nothing happened. He was fine for 7 years until he got involved in another accident and didn’t get lucky a second time.
If you have people that even remotely depend on you please just think carefully if it’s worth the risk. You’re actually about 4000% more likely to die on a motorcycle per mile traveled compared to a regular car. I’m not making that number up.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/810887.pdf
There’s a very good reason ER docs call them “donorcycles”
I learned to ride and loved it. After 2 years of getting a different perspective on how people drive in cars, I’ll never do it again. It’s insane what people think they can do while also operating a 1 ton hunk of metal flying down the highway at 70 mph. Cars should really not be the default form of transportation for most people.
I’ll die on the hill that driving would be so much safer if everyone had to pass in a manual transmission. That would eliminate so many people who have no business driving from doing so. There are too many people on the road who have no business driving a car.
When a car ran over the person who walked right next to me.
For about three weeks I was having bad thoughts going round and round in my head all day long, and I was barely able to do my work.
Thats crazy. I’ve seen auto accidens but just in passing and heard pedestrian ones are in particular quite scary.
Damn. Of course, you were traumatized. You doing better now ?
Went to wake up my daughter like every morning, bed is empty, covers thrown to the side. Check around the house, nothing.
Everybody else is asleep, house is silent. Check the back, the swings, the rear deck, nothing.
Check bedroom again.
She was rolled up tight in her blanket, against the wall, from head to toe, making it look like the bed was empty.
Weak Knees Moment
I remember doing similar as a kid on the regular, I’d wake up to the sound of my mom calling my name because she had go l checked on me in the middle of the night, only instead of in my own bed I’d be under my sister’s bed, behind the couch, on another sister’s dresser, etc. I had a lot of sleep issues as a kid.
What’s weird is how everyone reacts differently. Someone talked about spinning out in a car; once, my girlfriend was driving, in the winter, and we tried to pass someone on the freeway, going near freeway speeds. The roads were icy, and we spun around multiple times, and ended up coming to a stop on the other side of the freeway facing oncoming traffic. Throughout the entire episode, I remember only thinking, “Ok, this is happening.” I wasn’t afraid, my heart rate was normal, I was completely calm. I think I may have put my hand on the dashboard, as if that’d do anything. I think, for me, it was the utter inability to do anything about the situation that made me calm. I’ve lost control on ice while I’ve been driving, and that’s nerve-wracking. But that one time was the worst, and yet I had no fear. It’s really strange, isn’t it?
So, my answer is being up on the town hall tower in Rothenburg, Germany.
I know I’m acrophobic, but not pathologically, but I figured I’d be a little scared and that would be it, and I wanted to do it. So we climb about 800 floors of stairs and crawl through this little submarine-like hatch onto a mayor walkway around the tower literally wide enough for one person, as long as they’re not too fat. The railing is a metal bar about waist-high, and I am not joking, you didn’t have enough room to turn around. So you shuffle around the entire spire - there’s just a column behind you - until you make the circuit and can climb back in the man-hole. It was not great; I was already anxious, except that after I got out, people just kept coming out of the hole. It was literally impossible to go back - you had to make the circuit, and there were people on both sides of you. You shuffled as fast as everyone else was, which was slow, because you’d stop when someone would finish and climb back in the hole.
I was about three people out of the hole, and thinking about the warning sign about the walkway being rated for only 4 people at a time, and how by my count there were at least a dozen, and I panicked. It was one of two or three times in my life when I felt like my brain had run off and was doing its own thing, and I had no control. I didn’t make a scene, but internally, I was completely terrified, and probably wouldn’t have been able to move if I hadn’t been part of a press of people on both sides inexorably shifting around the walkway. I don’t think that utter loss of any rational control can be adequately described unless you’ve experienced it.
The view was, apparently, beautiful, but I have no memory of it; all I remember is that it took 6 hours and all I could think of the entire time was getting back inside.
When I was younger, maybe 8-10, I was at the beach with my family. I had always been a strong swimmer, we went to this beach fairly often, there were plenty of people around, and always had lifeguards on duty. It wasn’t stormy or bad weather at all.
I was swimming on my own when I got stuck in the undertow of the waves. I remember getting pulled back about 6 feet underwater before I was able to surface again. By that point, I was hit by the next wave, knocking me over and back into the undertow. This repeated for what felt like an hour but was probably only around 5 minutes, maybe 10. I was anxiously looking for lifeguards and trying to signal for help anytime I was on the surface, but no one ever noticed me.
My grandmother had taught me what to do if I ever got stuck in the waves, though, and instead of trying to fight the current I just started riding it and swimming parallel to the shore. I eventually got back to the beach and walked back to my family, and I remember it being so much longer to get back that seemed reasonable.
I was sure I was going to drown, getting sucked out and down under the ocean.
Two days after breaking up, I found out that my ex had lied to me about everything about himself, and had gotten out of prison for beating his mother to death shortly before we met. I met him because he had been a canvasser with a friend of mine (also concerning, tbh), and he just fit right into her friend group, and nobody had any information about his life before that. Once we started comparing stories after we found out, it all clicked into place.
Even worse, he killed his mom after she tried to give him some tough love (it sounded like normal, healthy parenting from the reports) about drinking too much and I broke up with him for the same reason. I was certain he was going to kill me for a while there, but that’s no longer a worry because I live in another country and he can’t get a passport.
The realisation about the person you were with would be awful by itself let alone worrying about possibly being in immediate danger, holy shit. I’m glad you’re safe now
Ballistic missile hit less than 50 meters from me.
I’ll venture a wild guess that you live in Ukraine?
Yep.
My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.
I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.
The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time… flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.
That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water… at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we’d see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.
We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.
The experience was both scary and exhilarating.
Harrowing. But as someone unfamiliar with anything involving with anything naval, why the Hell did they have you do that? In conditions like that, why wouldn’t you just cruise submerged and avoid the waves entirely? And why do they have people up there “on watch?” I can’t imagine you can actually watch for that many things in such insane conditions. To my ear, it seems like they risked three lives and caused countless thousands of dollars to naval equipment for no damn good reason.
When I woke up blind from surgery. Years ago I had FFS. Mine involved significant reshaping of the brow bone among other things. And like any surgery, beforehand the surgeon makes sure you’re aware of the potential risks and complications. The rate of complications is low, but the risk isn’t zero. If you’re doing substantial work on your face, that can result in nerve damage, loss of feeling, loss of facial motor control, etc. The vast majority of people turn out just fine, but the risks are not zero and are always on your mind. Oh, and I did this in Buenos Aires cause I was a broke-ass 24 year-old not so long out of college. So add that to the fear of potential complications. I wasn’t just getting major surgery. I was getting discount major surgery.
So I go in for surgery. Put the gown on, lay on the hospital cart, the whole nine yards. They give me the gas and I quickly go off to nowhere. Several hours later, I slowly regained consciousness, the surgery complete. And to my horror, I saw…nothing. Absolute darkness. Nothing at all. Pitch blackness. I command my eyes to open, but still nothing. Absolute inky blackness. I’m still hopped up on pain killers, but I’m quickly jolted to heightened awareness. I was aware of the risk of potential loss of feeling, but this? Blinded? Complete blindness in both eyes? I was in complete panic. Absolute terror.
Thankfully however this state did not last too long. A nurse realized what was wrong and helped me out. My eyes or ocular nerves hadn’t somehow been damaged. My eyes were swollen shut. They were able to rinse out my eyes and help me to open them a bit, and it was clear that I would see just fine.
Ultimately, I didn’t have any nerve damage and made a complete recovery. But that moment remains one of the most terrifying I have ever experienced. Alone in foreign country, thousands of miles from home, and I woke blind.
I felt my blood pressure spiking from just reading this. I’m glad you were okay!
