Scariest situations you had as a kid? (possibly TW/TMI)

[guava]

Basically what it says in the title. This is my first post in this section of AVEN, and hopefully I didn't mess anything up/put this in the wrong place.

 

I'd have to say the scariest thing that's ever happened to me is when this kid in my old neighborhood trapped me and my friend in her room, locked the door, and forced us to play with her (this was when I was about 5-6). Said kid also chased down and tried to run over one of my friends with a bicycle once, and both her and her sister threatened to beat me up more than once. Even their mom was scary, and I think she may have been abusive towards them. That being said, at the time, I didn't really know what to do, and I was just grateful when I could escape from/avoid them.

[Gloomy]

When I was 12 a big wildfire happened in the county I live in. Me, my sister, my dad, and his girlfriend at the time were driving to my sister's little league practice and the big fire was right next to the highway. A bunch of people, us included, turned around right there and drove the wrong direction on the highway to escape. Some people still drove down that highway but my dad didn't want to risk it. 

 

That's the scariest thing that happened where I was in potentially real danger anyway. My anxiety made me scared about a bunch of random things as a kid. Like when my parents left me and my sister in the car while they went to the store or something I would get really worried if they took more than a few minutes. When I was 9 I was convinced I was going to die from some disease for some reason. Also my dad had a temper and got mad and yelled a lot, so that would be scary to me too.

[cavalier080854]

1965, I was 11 and had just made my first friend in morning break first day in Secondary Modern. Lunch time came and the bullies came and beat the two of us up (something we both had suffered for 8 years in different schools). We had each developed a different strategy for this. His was to be knocked down and stay down ( stops immediate hitting, but is repeated endlessly). Mine was to get up and still keep swinging again and again ( the beatings stop after a short time because you are more trouble than you are worth, you can and will connect). Next time we were given an ultimatum one or the other will get beaten, or both of us ! I immediately took up the challenge and my friend had to watch the beatings, till the English House System kicked in once they found out what was going on. End of beatings and a life long friendship began.

[ryan_]

This happened a few months ago, but I think it still counts (as I was and still am 13).

 

I had just come back from vacation and arrived home around 8pm. Around 2am I woke up, feeling super nauseated. I tried to wake my mom up by knocking on her wall bc our rooms are right next to each other, but to no avail. Then, I walked to the bathroom and tried to wake my dad up. He woke up and tried to soothe me bc at that point I was freaking out bc I hate throwing up. 15 minutes later I felt a little better, so I go back to my room (with a trash can, just in case). Pretty much the second I sat down, I began to puke. 

 

I'm not going to go into too much detail about that particular bit, but lemme tell you I've had a taste aversion to both rice and strawberry&banana smoothies ever since. 

 

Anyway, after vomiting a few times, I felt a terrible pain around my ribs and found it hurt to inhale. It felt like my rib cage was on fire and constricting my lungs, so I just kinda screamed. I was still throwing up as well. My dad called 911 and the ambulance arrived 20 minutes later, although it felt like 3 hours. It was not fun to be unable to breathe and have random guys rolling you out in a freaking stretcher. 

 

I'm also not going to go into detail about the two ambulance rides, nor the 15 hours at the hospital, but those few minutes, when I couldn't breathe, were the scariest minutes of my life.

[Yep, me]

I was, be warned😣,

Spoiler

Sexually abused by another kid😭. I hope they never do that to anyone else, ever.

 

[CuriousLolita]

When I was around 6 I got lost in a mall. My cousin that was supposed to be watching me didn't care and it took them hours to realize I was missing. What makes this situation terrifying is that I can't remember what happened during a specific time frame while I was lost. Even the day that it happened I couldn't remember. I just remember feeling very wrong that day and like there was something seriously off. Sometimes when I think about it I panic like crazy and can't breathe properly and just feel extremely scared.

 

That's actually one of two very specific incidents where I've never been able to remember what happened. I just seemingly erased it from my mind. It might not be as scary as a direct experience but it's always been scary to me that there's a chunk of time that I've never been able to remember where something clearly happened. 

[Digs_Dead_People]

I was paralyzed from the chin down two weeks before I was four.  I nearly died and it's left a lasting impression on me.  Sleep paralysis a horrendous experience because it's so much like what happened to me as a child.  Later on in life I would deal with recurrences of paralysis or loss of sensation and those were always worrying because I had the fear of a larger recurrence happening.   

[RK800]

1.

When I was about 7 my step mom wanted to throw a party, and she asked me and my cousins/step sister (she was both, I have three relatives who are both) who was about my age to clean this big, gray table that was outside. We were given bleach and a hose, and about 15 minutes later  we were soaked because we really didn't know how the hose worked or how to stop the flow but the table was cleaned. We knocked on the door to the house to let my step mom know we were finished but when she saw we were wet she got super angry. She proceed to lock us out of the house and didn't let us back in for...I dunno, an hour or so? We were really cold, and I was terrified.

 

2.

When I was about 8 I had to share a room with my older step sister/cousin, she was around 13 at the time. We slept on the same bed because there was only one in the room. One night I was upset because it was pitch black and there was and angry cat that my step mom had left in the the room with us, I was afraid it would scratch me. I got up to leave ( I was going to see if I could share a room with someone else in the house) but my step sister/cousin grabbed me a held me down and wouldn't let me leave. I struggled but she wouldn't let go. She just sort of laid on top of me and I eventually passed out.

I woke up around 5 a.m. the next day with scratches all over my legs.

 

[paperwishes]

This ends silly, but once when I was about 15 I think, I came home and I couldn't find my mom. I don't remember the exact unfolding of events anymore, but basically I thought she might have gone to the store but I waited for a while and she didn't return. I thought maybe she went to the neighbours' but I looked outside in their backyard where they hung out and called them and no one was there or answered. My friend lived a couple houses away and her parents said they saw my mom leave hours ago. I just remember being so freaked out and crying thinking something happened to her and my life was over.

 

Then she fricken walks in the back door. She was at the neighbours but they were inside. I don't know WHY THEY DIDN'T ANSWER THE PHONE.

 

TL;DR: I thought my mom died/went missing for a couple hours but she was at the neighbours'.

 

PS: Anyone with abuse stories I am giving all the hugs ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

[Was here]

I had the swine flu when i was 8 (i think it was the swine flu?) and I got so skinny and couldn't stay home from school, so i had to go to school being so skinny you could see my bones and feeling too tired to even move. Luckily my mom bought some stuff for me to drink when I couldn't eat anything and it made me feel a lot better. my mom said i could've died from it or would've had to been hospitalized.

[quietcrayon]

My first seizure. Little kids are prone to seizures, but I wasn't that little at the time, I was 13.

 

I woke up and the first thing I thought was damn, I have the worst migraine I've ever had in my life. Rest of the day I spent feeling nauseous, to the point where I threw up. Had a brief period where I felt okay, but that changed soon, when I apparently began acting a bit odd. And I was so dizzy, and nauseous that it almost felt like everything was spinning. My parents told me to go lie down in bed while they got a thermometer.

 

Then next thing I remember was people grabbing me from my bed (the paramedics). They were taking me to the hospital, I kept vomiting and just was so confused. I was actually in so much pain and had no f----ing idea what was happening. I don't remember all of it, most of it was filled in by my family. I consider it one of my scariest childhood memories mostly because, after being filled on what seizures are/can do, it scarred me as a child, not to mention, because of that, and depression, I spent a lot of time in the hospital that year. Which kind of screwed up my school life.

 

[SorryNotSorry]

Just being a kid was scary enough for me.

[Grumpy Alien]

I was kidnapped by technicality. My father only had visitation rights and took me out of state without permission. I was too young to quite understand but old enough to be scared.

[arekathevampyre]

having a chunk of my hair pulled out by someone I hate so much (and really don't want to be blood related with that person - yeah a brother) and never knowing if it ever grew back (somewhere near back of head) and seriously f*** it as it was one of my earliest memories .

 

He was just holding my hair in his hand when my parents saw and didn't do anything to stop it in the first place/try to savage the situation (call the cops or something) and I can't never understand why they had to let it happen . I really don't remember if they said anything to him after that incident . Then again , it is difficut for a leopard to change its spots . 

 

Another would be when I was slightly younger , he took a box cutter that I owned and point it towards me . 

 

Parents always arguing and death threats (plus disappearing acts etc) 

 

verbal abuse , physical fights , emotional abuse , are just some aspects of it . 

 

This is why I really hate my life dear people . Made me feel worthless ...

I am pretty disgusted at the thoughts of these .

 

Time to go for a time out before I get triggered . 

[OrangesAndLemons]

Watching my twin sister burn to death and then continue living my life in an abusive household, alone.

Being in a room full of people and being completely alone (I'm intensely extroverted and people-orientated)

Knowing I will likely die sooner rather than later.  One cannot run from death forever, and I've dodged it too many times to count.

Knowing that secrets I hold will permanently bar me from enlisting in the Navy.

 

Edit: I'm 17 in a month and still view myself as a kid.  Can I add, not understanding why I didn't want to have sex with my boyfriend and not understanding why it was so distressing each time he "had his way with me", so to speak.  We aren't dating now.

 

Take your pick.

[arekathevampyre]

hugs to those who shared about abuse . 

[Zsareph]

I was almost kidnapped walking home with a friend when I was 14. I dread to think what would have happened if we hadn't started running before they got out the car.

 

About a year ago I had my first asthma attack. I was in the middle of the countryside and we had to drive miles to find an A&E that was open on Sunday because despite having 8 doses of a relative's inhaler (I know you're not supposed to take other people's medication but I physically couldn't breathe at all otherwise) I was still really struggling to breathe and if I tried the inhaler again I'd be risking an overdose. It was sheer chance that one of us had an inhaler, if they hadn't I have no idea what we'd have done. It's possible I could have died now that I think about it. I remember at the time being genuinely scared that I would die.

 

Pretty much every any experience I've had with mental illness, both my friends and my own.

 

I don't know how to spoiler but tw for description of abuse: 

 

As a kid and to this day I live with what I now know to be a verbally abusive father, so there are more instances with him than I can count. The most recent and probably worst in recent memory was last month (I'm 19 but I still see myself as a kid so shh) where he started yelling and screaming at me drunk in the middle of a crowded bar on holiday. I hid in the bathroom and came back once I'd stopped sobbing and shaking, hoping he'd calmed down, but he just kept going, shouting directly into my ear and complaining about my crying like I was trying to manipulate him or something, so I had to run back in. I tried ringing my mum, her husband, and my friend, thinking I'd have to find a way to get a plane home the next morning and start moving out because I just couldn't stand the thought of being alone with him for another week before we got back, but my phone wouldn't work and I just felt so trapped and alone. A random Scottish family ended up intervening and keeping in contact with us for the rest of the holiday in case he snapped again. It was also pretty scary finding out that my friend had a distinct memory of him hitting me in front of her that I had apparently completely blocked out, makes me wonder what else I'm forgetting.

 

[Yatogami]

I'm not sure about "Scary" in the sense of fear. Since I was pretty cautious as a kid, and never did anything stupid. The only things I really feared, was my family (Or myself). 

 

I once got in a fight with my mom, as in fist fighting. I ended up breaking a pencil inside of my hand, as I was holding one when it started. I tried to disengage the fight she had started. Unfortunately, my mom was high strung and out of her mind on meth. You don't win a fight against someone like that, and I knew I had to run. I was barefooted though, but I didn't care and ran outside and down the street. My mom, being like the hulk due to the meth, chased after me, and that is probably pretty terrifying to most people. I outran her though. 

 

My dad once insulated me under the floor (He knows I'm afraid of spiders, and likes to tease me) of a ancient 3 story building (I helped him renovate and remodel when I was younger). The only way to escape, was to crawl through the underside of the house through all the spiders, debris, and god knows what else into the dirt cellar to climb up the ladder to the utility room. Lets just say, I am glad it was dark, because I almost lost my mind. 

 

One time, I wasn't the one cooking dinner and one of my brothers was helping my mom do it instead. For whatever reason, in the middle of adding pepper to the fried eggs. My brother just fell on his back and began to seizure. Everyone kinda got into a panic because it has never happened before, and eventually it passed as we were all freaking out trying to figure out what to do. They took him to the ER, but there was nothing wrong with him apparently. (This brother, being mentally slow and having something wrong with his bones too) We were all kinda worried, but it never happened again. Pretty scary tho. 

 

One time, when I was learning how to swim better at the lake (I was like 12 or something). I kept setting goals to reach with distance. But there was this one time, I swam in an area I didn't frequent, and it turned out far deeper than the others. I swam to the extent of my strength, expecting to be able to touch ground like normal. Unfortunately, it was 5-8 feet too short to do that. Already exhausted, I could not get enough breath to float to rest, and I began sinking. I felt a sudden frantic feeling of "Like hell I'm going to drown", but I just ended up inhaling some water with my declaration of defiance. I instead held my breath, and swam as hard as I could to barely reach the shore, with my lungs burning and I was coughing and almost vomited a few times due to the pain in both my lungs and stomach. So yeah, I almost died and no one was there to save me. 

[XYZ96]

while I was still a kid around 9 or 10ish I fell on my back and had the wind knocked out of me, I didn't know what happened, but I couldn't produce sound, so I thought I'd never be able to talk again... 

around the same age I had a friend who'd pour water in a wasps nest, and the last time she did it a huge wasp came out and chased us... 

 

the scariest thing ever to happen to me I think I was 15/16ish in a plane and it dropped for a few seconds... 

[YamiCake]

I guess it would be when I was 4 or so... 

I went to a haunted house with my mom which was run by a bunch of high school kids, it was in the middle of a field so the walls were basically black curtains, but it got dark in there. As I was walking through it one kid decided it would be hilarious to grab my ankle and drag me under the curtain towards him, and he was wearing a clown costume. I just remember screaming and crying and scrambling away as fast I could.
To this day I still hate clowns and I freak if someone grabs my ankle.

[Yatogami]

Another time I was spooked (I had to wrack my brain for stuff, because a lot of things don't scare me) There was this one time I was walking home from school. This was back when I lived in Idaho. I thought I would take the trail home like I usually do. The trail is only about a few acres long through the woods, and it was frequented by many. On a specifically overcast day (This memory is pretty vivid), I was just about to enter the treeline, moping about and looking at the ground like I usually do, with no real concern for my surroundings. I stopped just before a puddle, because something moving had caught my eye. I looked up, and I was about 4 feet from an adolescent moose. Him, on the other side of the puddle, also froze and stared at me. Both of us were terrified and frozen in fear. Now I say this thing was adolescent, but it was in no way "small", I was about 6 foot tall at the time, and this thing towered over me. My head probably only reached its shoulder. Not to mention it was massive, thick, and its feet where the size of dinner plates. Now mind you, at the time I was very familiar with the kind of nature I was co-existing with. Moose were among the most "Dangerous" things to encounter normally. Back when I had frequented a church deep in the mountains where there was no place to go if you were injured for nearly 150 miles. I was well informed not to play around, and go inside if I saw big animals. I was now staring one in the face, and possibly facing the imminent death of trampling. I had seen what one did to a goose before, and it was not pretty. After a few minutes that felt like an eternity. The moose acted first. It jumped up, and backed off. The moment it turned around, and began to trot away. I booked it like a bat out of hell to the nearest street and went the long way home. Then, THEN Mr. moose appeared again about 6 months later in the same fucking area. This time, I was on my way to school in the autumn and it was foggy as fuck. Imagine Silent hill in the daytime, and you just see this moose pop onto the street in front of you trotting through the mist, and you practically shit yourself out of reaction because you think it was attacking. 

 

I'd say that is pretty damn scary. 

[StormySky]

Freaked out my parents but not me.

I think I was 6 when I thought green glitter was pixie dust, so I put some on my head and tried to think happy thoughts before jumping out the window. 

Parents screamed at me and prevented me from jumping.

[Araminta]

On 22/08/2017 at 2:50 AM, XYZ96 said:

while I was still a kid around 9 or 10ish I fell on my back and had the wind knocked out of me, I didn't know what happened, but I couldn't produce sound, so I thought I'd never be able to talk again... 

1

The same thing happened to me around the same age! I fell on my back while I was ice skating. I could barely breathe and I really thought I was going to die.

[StormySky]

I was with a YMCA camp group snowmobiling in the mountains and was in an inner tube attached to the back of the snowmobile. 2 other kids and I were yelling to go faster. The inner tube hit a sharp branch at high velocity, exploded, and I was knocked out against a pole for who knows how long. I woke up to a terrible headache and rib pain. The other 2 kids got heavy bruising and bloody noses. Ski patrol came by to see what the chaos was and to help with first aid. The ski patrol dog was super cute.

 

It was fun until impact😜

[Knight of Cydonia]

Hmm 3 things come to mind:

 

1. I almost got hit by lightning - about 10m away from the bolt. Loudest thing I've ever heard in my life, and I felt heat on my face. 

 

2. A bat flew into our home. I shared my bedroom with my brother when we were little, and was on the top bunk of a bunkbed. The bat came right into the bedroom and being on top I was right next to it as it flew around the ceiling. We both had to get rabies shots after just in case which was really not fun.

 

3. Scariest thing though would probably be stepping on a stingray. I was in shallow snorkelling water in Mexico and saw a nice big plot of sand I could stand on (as opposed to all the coral and rock in the area). Turned out a stingray had buried under the sand and as soon as I stepped down it started wriggling under my foot. Thankfully I noticed right away and lifted my foot and it just swam away, but I was totally freaking out and convinced I just missed getting stung.

 

 

[RoseGoesToYale]

I can think of a few scary moments, but here are the two that stick out.

 

I used to spend a lot of time at my best friend's house (it was like my second home). One time I was over while her dad was out, and we had the place to ourselves. Then at one point while we were in the living room we heard a noise from outside, and we saw this shadow of some "thing" through the window curtains. We grabbed hold of each other and asked each other what the heck it was. We thought burglars were trying to break in and considered calling the police. Good thing we didn't and called her dad instead, because it turns out it was just the pest control guy. But boy, were we terrified.

 

The other time I was in bed at my own house and couldn't fall asleep most nights, so I just lay there thinking. I would hear all kinds of noises outside (feral cats, our hermit neighbor, transformers exploding in the distance, etc). But one night I heard the rustle of leaves outside, and it was way louder than a cat. I saw flashes of light through the blinds. Someone with a flashlight was prowling around outside my window, and they stopped there shining the light in at the blinds for about 10 minutes. I didn't run to wake my parents since my logic then was "what if there's more than one, they're armed, and surrounding the place?" So I just lay there frozen until whoever it was went away. Probably just a peeping tom who didn't get what they wanted.

[AssassinBabs]

As a teen I was constantly scared to be home. My parents divorced when I was 13, and my mom got a new man when I was 14. And married when I was 15, he became my stepdad, but he doesn't diserve that title. 

 

All the verbal fighting between them at night, made me real anxious to go to bed. Not knowing if they would fight again, I listened at the stairs eventhough it was past midnight.  I needed to hear what the argument was about, to prepare myself if he would rant of on me the next day. Every night I had to sleep with music, otherwise the lightest voiceraise or falling object made me shiffer in my bed. If there wasn't an argument I thought I heard one. 

 

Trigger abuse

I can remember a fighting so bad that I locked myself in the bathroom, wanting to harm myself (but found myself to scared to do so, ghehe pretty cute if look back at it. Since I harm myself for over 3 years now) but anyhow I heard screaming from down stairs. My mom yelling, not just argumenting but screaming from  pain, followed with the words that he needed to get away from her. I knew my mom was ironing, so I ran towards the bathroom door, finding it locked.. totally paniced I tried to unlocking it and ran down the stairs. There I learned he shoved the ironing board against her, so no real harm was done. But it freaked me out!

 

An other frighting moment when my mom's husband was very very angry at me, and went trowing with a tablechair. The massive wooden chair went just besides my ear, and luckaly I wasn't hit by it. 

 

My first reverences of my trauma  was pretty intense. I slept on a camp with people from my police academy group (precourse for the policy academy) and the instructors staighed a fight when we were upstairs trying to sleep. I diddn't know what happend to me, I lost connection with everything. I must have been screaming and crying pretty loud. I guess someone off my group must have went downstairs to get one of the instructors. The next thing I can remember was that one of the instructors was kneeling next to my bed, trying to sooth meby calling my name and saying who she was. She must have said it a dozen times before I calmed down. At that moment the reverences was the scariest thing, but if I think back now the fact that I was "out" and can't remember what happened (what I did, what others did..) scares me pretty much. 

 

[Member4445]

I nearly drowned saving my brother.

 

My father had taken myself (age 11), my brother (age 9) and 2 of my school friends to the beach. I'm a fairly strong swimmer and love the water. Always have done, I used to terrify my parents and lifeguards by staying underwater for ridiculous amounts of time. I used to sit at the bottom of pools and watch people swimming around, it was really relaxing, a few times lifeguards dived in to get me thinking I was stuck. I ended up with my dad in the pool with me at all times and learning signals for if I got in trouble down there. My family have all been water lovers. Myself and my brother have been the only 2 in our family not to have served on ships or as divers. Waters in my blood and deep in my ancestry line.

 

Anyway, we all got caught in the ripe tide, where our feet were touching the seabed the was nothing. I swam to the rocks adjacent to us, turned around and my dad was saving my friends. My little brother was struggling to stay above the water - he wasn't a good swimmer. I knew my dad couldn't save my friends and then go back for my brother. My dad looked at me and started screaming at me to stay where I was. 

 

Obviously, Ciri being Ciri and having a complete disregard for authority, I got back in and started swimming to my brother. By the time I reached him, I was exhausted. He was panicking which is the worst thing you can do in the water when you need to survive. So I slapped him round the face which got his attention long enough to get him to hold on to me tightly. Trouble is, he pushed me under.

 

As soon as my head went down that I was it. I struggled to get above water and was convinced that I was going to die. That was it, I could stay under for a long time in a pool but only when I was prepared. I hadn't trained myself to cope with salt water and rip tides. Anyway, everything went white and I was passing out. Then I felt myself hit the familiar bottom of the floor. I don't know how I did it, but I must have kicked off from the sea bed, with enough force to push myself back to the surface. 

 

My little brother was panicking so I just grabbed his swim shorts and arm and pulled him along with me. 

 

We made it safely to the rocks with my dad and friends. I noticed that I was the only person without a scratch on me. Everybody else had deep scratches up their legs.

 

That was the only time my father initiated a hug with me. And I'll never forget his words:

 

"I'm so proud of you for disobeying me. When you went under, I thought I was going to lose you both."

 

He was in an impossible position that day, we discussed. Sacrifice one child to save two others in his care, then he had to see the one potentially sacrifice herself trying to save the first.

 

I made out that I knew I could make it to my brother and back to shore that day, but actually I wasn't certain I'd even make it to him. My relationship with water has completely changed. I still like sitting at the bottom of pools but I never go underwater in the sea anymore. Not without proper equipment and accompanied by my father. Ive see the beauty water, it was the only way I felt alive and then I witnessed the total dystruction it can bring aswell. In less than 10 mins, I went from feeling alive to nearly having the water take my life away. Something that had made my family the people we are today, given us our wealth, is our entire family history, nearly caused complete devastation. 

 

Bravery isn't the absense of fear, it's pushing forward with the knowledge you might not succeed despite that fear.