These 29 Near-Death Experiences Are So Terrifying, They Could Be Straight Out Of A Horror Movie
A while ago, Reddit user u/throwaway_district9 asked, "What has been your most bone-chilling, hair-raising, "Let's get the hell out of here" experience?" and the answers were truly terrifying. Here are 29 stories near-death experiences they shared, along with some from the BuzzFeed Community.
1."A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about eight years ago, and when we got to about the third floor, I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell. Basically, it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling. Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout 'YO!' Time to go. I've never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other's bikes."
"I've seen urban explorers find these. I won't say 'a lot' but enough that I get two impressions: 1) people set this more than you'd think, 2) these places are really very abandoned because you never hear about someone getting booby trapped in the face."
2."I was in the lobby of World Trade Center 1 on Sept 11 when the plane hit. Although I didn't know a plane had hit; what I experienced was a sound like a building bending and metal tearing. Then all of the doors in the lobby blew open and burning hot air blew in my face and it sounds like hell was coming down those stairs. Turns out I was right."
"I jumped behind the lobby desk and covered my head. The explosion poured into the lobby and I could feel myself start to burn. But it eventually burned out and I was mostly ok. Then I ran out."
3."This isn't my story, but my aunt's. She worked on the 79th floor of the South tower in the World Trade Center. And on September 11, at about 8:50 in the morning, she got a call from my cousin's school saying that he was sick and she needed to come pick him up. Since people were convinced that the plane crashing into the North Tower was a mistake, they let her leave. When she got to the school, someone told her that another plane had crashed into the South Tower. On floors 77–85. She very narrowly escaped being one of the thousands of victims of the 9/11 attacks, and all because my cousin projectile vomited on his classmate."
4."I was in an upstairs lab in med school, just a friend and I practicing surgical skills. There was a main enclosed staircase down to the lobby/classrooms and a weird outdoor stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. It wasn't a fire escape, but the old main entrance to the lab classroom. When I put my hand on the door handle to the main stairs, I was FILLED with a weird sense of 'Get out! Not that way!' Just absolute fear; I felt trapped and anxious. For the first time in 3 years, I said 'Let's take the outdoor stairs...' My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit."
"The next day we found out that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, one of our classmates was pulling a gun on the admin and students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He'd been kicked out of the program for his grades and snapped. My friend still talks about it and tells people to always trust my instincts."
5."In my twenties, I was roofied, assaulted, and left for dead in a muddy ditch (next to my car) in a SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD. I awakened face up, thank God. I never knew who did it. ... I've always wondered if they thought I'd roll over while passed out from being drugged and drown."
6."July 27, 2002; Sknyliv air show disaster. I turned five years old the day before. It’s one of my most vivid memories from childhood; how the pilot landed 10 meters away from me and my dad. He was on his knees, his parachute dangling in the wind and I remember him repeating 'what have I done?' over and over. I didn’t understand much of what happened. My dad only said, 'close your eyes, we have to go.' My dad told me years after that we would have gone farther into the crowd but I refused to go because my shoelace was untied. Him kneeling to tie my shoes is the only thing that saved us. It wasn’t bone-chilling at the time but when I imagine what my dad witnessed that day I get goosebumps."
7."I’m a criminal defense investigator. I had a murder case involving two brothers. The one accused of the murders, and his brother, [who] had schizophrenia and lived in a potato shack in the middle of the desert. I needed to talk to him several times throughout the course of the investigation, and since he didn’t have a phone or electricity, I had to drive several hours out to his house and yell his name from the fence line until he came out of the shack. This investigation lasted for several years, and over time I developed a rapport with the brother with schizophrenia, and I kind of got to like him."
"He eventually gets a girlfriend; she’s a woman taking meth who has mistaken his schizophrenia for meth-induced psychosis. I talked to her a few times in jail when she was sober, and she was surprisingly charming and insightful.
The last time I go to see him, it’s a dark winter night and his girlfriend is there; she’s lurking in the shadows and staring daggers at me the entire time I’m talking to him. I cut off his conversation about the speakers in his fillings and walk back to my truck to leave.
A minute later, he comes running out and tells me that he wants to show me something in his shack. He’s never invited me inside before, and I’m not thrilled by the prospect. The whole thing feels off to me, so I tell him I have to get going, and start the truck.
The look of relief on his face when I declined to go inside convinced me that his girlfriend was waiting behind the door with a hammer or something. A few months later I learned that she shot him in his sleep and stashed his body in an old refrigerator. She has since plead guilty to his murder."
8."[I was] exploring an abandoned high rise, out of the blue my friend grabbed me by my collar from behind, I was about to step into an elevator shaft. After swearing at him 'what the fuck' he said' look' and I saw the drop of like 20 floors to a concrete bottom with broken metal rods sticking out. We went home. He saved my life 100%."
9."I was on a youth leadership camping retreat in 2013. Four of us were going to sleep in a tent one of them brought, but one of the staff members told us to use her extra tent because it was more sturdy, so we kept the original tent set up and put our bags in it. In the middle of night two of the trip, there was a very bad storm that happened so suddenly that we didn’t have time to get to the campground shelter, so we had to ride out the storm in tents. It turned out that multiple tornadoes touched down in the area and when we went to survey the damage in the morning, we saw a large branch that fell directly on the tent we were supposed to be in, causing it to completely collapse."
"To this day I don’t know what’s scarier: riding out tornados in tents without enough phone battery to get any alerts or realizing we would have been crushed had we stayed in the original tent."
10."I was up at my cabin when I was maybe 11–12 and we were going to get the boat into the lake for the summer. I’m the oldest of three and my mom and I are the same height and weight (she’s small). My dad is twice the size of both of us so they asked me to come with to help. I was stepping over the trailer in between my grandpa’s truck and the trailer with the boat when my foot got stuck in a deep mud puddle. The mud was thick and cakey so I bent down to get my foot free. My grandpa starts reversing but he’s not looking at his backup cam because he’s towing the boat and he can’t see anything besides that, so he’s looking over his shoulder but I’m in his blind spot. I get my foot free but when I see the truck come towards me I freeze in fear."
"My mom sees me and runs to my grandpa to get him to stop. He finally stops a millimeter from my face. My mom starts bawling and I’m sent into the passenger seat while my mom and dad get the boat into the water. I’ve never been asked to help again."
11."Back in college I used to drive up the Oregon coast on weekends, then just crash in my car when I got tired. I woke from a nap in the driver's seat and something just didn't feel quite right. It was just dusk and the light was fading pretty fast. I yawned and stretched and as I did so I turned my head to the side and just caught a face ducking down below my rear passenger window. I went to hit the lock button just to make sure and in my panic I accidentally unlocked the doors briefly and then locked them again. I stared at the window for a few minutes, knowing that someone was crouching just out of sight."
"Eventually, I started the car and thought I heard a scuffing sound. Whoever it was didn't reappear, but that was enough for me. As I noped out of there and pulled out back onto Highway 101, I glanced back and a bald figure in a red t-shirt with something wrapped around his face booked it into the woods on the side of the road. That was the end of that weekend trip. I drove the two hours back to my dorm room, white-knuckled hands locked on the steering wheel. I had to pull over a few miles down the road though to deal with the adrenaline shakes."
12."A few years ago I lived in a controlled environment with my Muslim parents. A year prior, I met my boyfriend and made plans to move out with him (without my parents' knowledge otherwise I would've ended up dead). My parents booked tickets overseas to force me into a marriage with an older guy in his fifties. I told them I didn't consent but they didn't care. They told me I wouldn't be coming back. I had under a week to get out. I was 18 at the time and I was petrified. Anyways, I packed up and moved everything to his apartment while they were at work. I realized once we got to his, I accidentally left my passport and other paperwork that I needed for work. I had to go back and had a time frame of 30 minutes before they came home."
"I went in the house as quietly as I could. Got to my bedroom, when I heard the front door open. My mother had finished work early. She didn't know I was in the house and I was shaking in panic. My brother had also realized I was home and locked my bedroom door as he knew I was up to something. My boyfriend was watching the house from the corner of the street. He called me to tell me to get out ASAP as there was a van waiting outside with my dad inside...my dad did not own a van. I barricaded the door so they weren't able to get into my room. I had to jump from the window into my neighbor's house and jump another fence to get onto the side street and ran for the hills with my boyfriend. I thought my boyfriend and I were going to die. All I had running through my mind was to get the fuck out lol. I have never been so scared in my entire life. I found out shortly after that they knew I was planning to escape with my boyfriend. So they planned on getting me kidnapped, raped, and killed. I wouldn't be here if I didn't get out while I could."
13."When The Dark Knight Rises movie was in theaters, my sister wanted to go see the movie with her boyfriend. They lived in Colorado at the time. As they went to find a theater, they decided to go to the one in Aurora. For some odd reason, my sister got this feeling like they should go to another theater. When they came home and turned on the news the next day, turns out that exact theater had just been shot up and the gunman had killed multiple people."
14."During a hurricane one or two years ago, it was calming down outside so I wanted to see if I could spot any damage. It was dark out and late at night but I went out anyway. I stepped out and my front yard was flooded. I looked around and felt super uneasy. I wanted to stay outside but something told me to go back in. I went in, turned the corner and looked out my sliding door near my front yard/front door and my whole front yard lit up — the sound of electricity was so loud. I scooped my dog up away from the sliding door and stepped back just watching it light up. My heart was beating so fast. I told my dad and the day after he saw some crew near the creek. He asked them about it and apparently there was some sort of underground electrical thing near the creek thats a couple feet to the left of my house, and it indeed exploded. I would have died no doubt. Seconds away. It was so scary."
15."Once in college while a wild thunderstorm was coming down, my friends and I were looking out our third story window teasing our RA about being out in the rain. He reaches the door (it was almost directly under our window) and gets inside the building. As the door is closing, lighting strikes the metal grates in front of the door. It was so loud and bright, my ears rang and my eyes saw spots for a long while. The RA saw it strike from inside the building and admitted he peed himself a bit because of how close he was to getting hit. I've seen lighting strikes before, but never that close. I'm good never seeing that close again."
16."This happened during my undergrad school. Me and a couple of my other friends visited this friend's home. There was a hill near his home, and we decided to hike up it to watch the sunset. To reach this hill you have to pass a railway line, and that particular day there was a goods train which had been parked there for some reason. So we had to crawl in between the bogies to cross the track. As usual we were late when we left home, so the sunset was almost done and it was getting darker. And we had to climb the joint coupling in between the bogies and cross it."
"I for one was over excited to see a goods train and wanted to get inside one of the bogies, which was open from the top. So I climbed up the bogie and then raised my hands standing on the edge of it as if I achieved something. And then I felt something weird on my forearms — like I was touching some spider web. I was actually in the field of a high tension electric line. If I had raised my hand even a centimeter more, I would have been pulled into the field completely and would have been instantly burnt alive. Still gives me chills thinking about it."
17."Ice fishing on a far north lake — not a big lake, but known for good fishing. We fished awhile, got nothing, then, a large loud crrrrraccckkkk and the ice split from one side of the lake to the other. One side of the now two different giant slabs of ice began to sink an inch or so under the other half. Water started running out onto the top of the ice — 'get to shore, gently, ASAP' I yelled to my buddy, By the time we got to shore, the one slab of ice was beginning to break up, the other close behind. The ice practically self-destructed."
18."[I was] fighting a house fire, and realizing that I had very hot feet. Through concrete-soled boots? My officer and I immediately noped the fuck out. Hot feet mean you’re standing above a fire. As fire burns upwards, it’s weakening the floor beneath you. So we were about to plummet into a basement fire."
19."I was helping check cows on my family’s ranch. I got out there in my car just a little before dusk; the cows were all kinda scattered so I decided to just walk in so I wouldn’t stir them up too much and could get a better look (I was checking for any baby calves). I’m well into the field. Like, a solid five-minute walk from my car at least. Looking around at all the cows, checking the ones that were looking kinda close on calving. I see some of the cows furthest away from me kinda stir so I look and see something dark and large-cat-shaped crouched low to the ground slowly stalking some of the cows."
"Now, I live in West Texas so jaguars aren’t really a thing but there had been rumors for YEARS about this jaguar that stalked up and down the creek that went right by our ranch. It probably was just a dark-colored mountain lion, but either way, it was definitely not something I wanted to mess with, in the dark, a ways from a vehicle, with no gun.
I am not ashamed to say I left the cows to defend themselves and ran as fast as I could through the field back to my car. I did check the next day and all cows were safe and accounted for."
20."When I was 18, I went with my dad on his motorcycle for a ride on some country roads. All of the sudden I felt very nauseous. I remember tapping my dad on his shoulder to tell him I didn't feel well, and next thing I know I'm laying in the middle of the road and my dad's lifting the visor on my helmet, asking if I'm okay. I guess I passed out and almost flew off the back of the motorcycle, but thankfully my dad was strong enough to grab my jacket by my chest with one hand and keep his other hand on the throttle to slow it down enough that we more or less toppled over. Can't imagine I'd still be alive if I actually flew off his motorcycle going over 80 km/hour."
21."My mom's best friend owns a farm about a half hour from where I grew up. We went there nearly every weekend to help with upkeep and caring for our horses. All day you could just feel a storm brewing — the wind, humidity, the outside had a greenish tint, and the clouds rolling in as the sun was setting. Right after supper it started raining hard. A lot of wind and lighting too. I was looking out the window, across the yard, and thought I saw something above the barn on the far side of the yard. I was petrified. It looked like rotation in the clouds...and it started lowering down."
"I pointed it out to my Dad. He said it was rain bouncing off the roof of the barn. We both looked out for a moment and clearly saw it suck back up into the clouds. I got goosebumps. We looked at each other for a second in disbelief, then he shrugged, and went back into the living room. I sheltered in the bathroom.
The next day, we saw in the news that an F-4 tornado ripped through a small town (Spencer, SD) about 24 miles from where we were. I got chills when I saw the news reports."
22."Last summer while I was doing the dishes, my hips must have bumped the gas knob on the stove and it got switched to ignite so gas was leaking. The next morning I could smell that something was off but since my sense of smell isn't always the greatest, I just figured it was some food I threw away the night before so I lit not one but two candles one of which was in the kitchen next to the stove. I later ran some errands and when I came back I immediately felt sick. It felt like a massive migraine had just come on literally within seconds. It wasn't until after I went to go bring my purchases in did I notice the knob switched on."
23."2019 summer — I was house-sitting for my dad while he was away for work. The house is in the middle of nowhere and barely even on google maps. I had had a few drinks with friends and been dropped off by a friend that lived close by. He dropped me at the side of the house because it was easier for him to turn around there, so I walked up the stairs and entered with my key through the side door that led to the kitchen. The kitchen overlooked the front garden but the front door was nestled into a small porch and wasn’t visible to me. I saw a movement in the front garden while I was making tea in the kitchen and immediately turned off the lights. There was a man trying to look into the kitchen windows from the garden."
"He ended up walking around to the wall-to-ceiling glass doors around the back of the house, cupping his hands to the glass and trying to look in. ... He couldn’t see me in the dark but I was hiding behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining/lounge area (open floor plan). I had stupidly not locked one of the glass doors closer to the front door and he started entering the house, in the pitch black, not realising I was maybe 10 feet away from him. I had already called the friend who had dropped me off as I knew he was still nearby (cops would have taken at least 30 minutes to get to me), knowing his parents (ex-military) kept a gun in a safe in the truck. I remember just wanting to RUN, get out of the house ASAP. But if I ran, I'd be alone in the middle of nowhere with a deranged man chasing after me.
As the guy walked further into the house, I stepped out and pulled a knife on him (again, I was NOT sober. It was a very stupid thing to do). He tried to incoherently make conversation, but I got him out of the door just as my friend pulled up with his gun. The dude bolted to his car that was parked in an area concealed by trees on the property.
Turns out he was the gardener. He had been keeping tabs on me, knew I was house-sitting alone for my dad while he was out of town, was VERY high on meth (he admitted to me while I had the knife out), and had been waiting on the front porch for me to come home. Except I had used the side door that night, something I NEVER usually did.
If I hadn’t used the side door that night, I have no idea what would have happened. i also have no idea what would have happened if my friend hadn’t come back when I called him, because the guy was starting to get aggressive and trying to come towards me right when my friend got there with his gun out."
24."When I was 27, my girlfriend lived in a crappy part of Hollywood, FL near US1. She had a kid pretty young, but the dad ended up going to jail for assault. The place she could afford was run down AF, with all sorts of low-lifes living in the units around her. She hated the place. She couldn't move in with me because I was just renting a room where I lived. I went to visit her after my shift ended at 9 p.m. Picked up some food and planned to cook for her. We were there for about an hour just sitting on the couch watching her kid play with a box. Then the banging started on the door."
"She looks terrified, thinking it's her ex. I'm kind of freaked out also because I heard all these stories about him. Some guy is cursing, hitting something against the door hard. We don't even want to peek through the window or peephole, thinking he's got a gun. We call the police, but the operator is having a tough time hearing.
Then we hear some other woman screaming and cursing. He had the wrong door. We hear them start fighting. Smashing, more screaming. Sounds like she's spitting and we hear punches. We're not sure if it's her or him but it's loud.
911 operator says police are on their way. The kid starts screaming because he's scared. The man outside starts banging on the door again. He thinks his kid is with us and shouts he's going to kill us for taking his kid. My girlfriend just breaks down at this point and starts crying.
Maybe 10 minutes later the police arrive. They arrest both of them then took our statements. She moved out a couple days later and we ended up renting another crappy apartment but in a much better area."
25."My friend and I thought we were cool and lived in a town of 13,000 people in the midwest. I was 13 and partying, drinking, smoking weed. Decided I wanted to be 'like Mike' and move weight (ed. note: 'move weight' is slang for dealing cocaine). The absolute first time we tried to do a big buy, we rode our bikes out of town to where my buddy had talked to our dealer and said we wanted a bigger buy. Literally biking on a gravel road out in bum-fuck North Dakota. We get to this shop (for reference, especially in the midwest, people purchase land and build a big storage shed aka shop and literally sometimes it's just a shop with a yard light out in the middle of nowhere). We got to the shop at like five. I told my dad I was going to the fair which led us to leaving early for the 'pickup' which was out on the edge of town."
"We were there and waited for hours, and it's pitch black besides the yard light — no stars, cloudy night. Well, my buddy suggested we put our bikes on the side of the building so we walked them over, and as we got around the edge of the building we noticed headlights coming from the north.
To this day I don't know why my buddy told me to lie down. He said lie down and I didn't question it. Three seconds later we hear people talking and crunching through the prairie. These guys have to be less than 20 feet away. I remember I could hear one breathing. At this point, I'm confused as fuck as to why I'm lying on the ground and two dudes parked in a weird spot. It didn't hit me until they didn't go into the yard light. From where we were these guys were posted to the east side of the yard light and we were on the east side of the shop.
Then another car is coming from the west and turns into the yard directly into the light. It's our dealer; he got out of the car. Kind of posts up on the tailgate and checks his phone. Hops off the car and goes...'you guys here?' Two other dude come walking out into the yardlight with weapons in their hands. I'd be a liar if I told you I knew exactly what they had but we could see them holding objects long in their hands. That's when it hit me...up until then I thought maybe because we were doing a nefarious deal that they were being cautious. Nope; they wanted to take our money. When he said 'you guys here?' I grabbed my friend and kind of tugged him to say yes, but he grabbed my arm so hard his nails made me bleed. Something was screaming to him to stay hidden and my alarm was not working. But for that 45 minutes we lay dead still and waited until they left. I was worried that because we didn't show that our dealer was gonna come find us. But that weekend he got arrested for beating a 13 year-old-so badly he had to go to Mayo Clinic to get his face reconstructed.
Found out from some old cronies he's in prison for life because he was connected to the cartel and they skinned some guy alive in Bismarck.
... That night I found out I didn't have what it took to be a real drug dealer, so I kind of just stopped. I'm sure they would've killed us. Or worse."
26."The whole time my mom was teaching me to drive, she preached that if you’re going through an intersection and realize you’re not going to make it, don’t stop — hit the gas. About a month after I got my license I was driving with a friend and pull left onto a busy highway. I misjudged it and the next thing I know, I look over and see a tractor trailer’s lights right over my shoulder. Somehow my body remembered what my mom always taught me and my foot punched the gas. The truck hit inches behind my door. It ripped the back door off the hinges and completely obliterated my back seat. My friend and I walked away with a few bumps and bruises. Had I not hit the gas, we’d without a doubt be dead."
27."Once went urban exploring in a storm drain on a nice summer's day. We only intended to explore the first couple of hundred feet but kept going. After a while we could hear lots of water echoing in the distance and I noticed the water level was a little higher with a bit more flow. My mate tried to convince me it was just a diverted river. I wasn't having it though and made us head back pronto. Stupid us didn't count on a freak rain storm and managed to get out just as it got torrential. At a few points, we weren't sure if we were gonna make it. Absolutely terrifying."
28."In seventh grade, my Girl Scout troop was on a weekend trip at a local camp, and we decided to go do some archery. Now at these camps, the targets were several feet across and set up on a big wooden wall that bolted to the concrete. Four total, two on either side of this little doorway in the middle. It was me, four other girls, my mom, and another girl's mom. I take my turn, and I'm a pretty bad shot. Somehow I miss the target and send the arrow through the doorway and into a bush at the base of a tree. Go to retrieve, and I yank it out by the fletch because I'm not about to put my hands where I can't see them at this place. Good thing, too...because there was a big copperhead snake stuck to the other end."
29.And finally..."[I was] walking my dog (Aussie shepherd) and suddenly he's in full-blown defend-his-owner stance, barking and growling. It's pitch black out and I live on a wooded street in the boonies. A 500-pound bear was six meters from us. He got up, looked me in the eye, and then casually walked away."
What's your near-death experience? Let us know in the comments.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
