People Are Sharing The Most Horrifying Things They Had To See With Their Own Eyes, And It's Shocking

Note: This post contains mentions of violence, death, gore, suicide, and attempted sexual assault.

When people witness atrocities, sharing their stories can be helpful in relieving their mind of the tension that comes with holding in all that trauma — as I learned when I wrote about the most terrifying things people have witnessed with their own eyes. Many of you shared your own stories in response, and while it's uncomfortable, it's crucial we sometimes burst the bubble we live in.

Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com

So here are some of the heartbreaking responses:

1."When I was 14 years old, my friends and I were at my dad's house in a very seedy area and decided to go out and find some weed. We were young rebellious teens with no parental guidance. We found a man who said he could get some for us from his friends. He took us to an abandoned house to wait for his friends. While we were waiting, the guy started acting very strange. He began aggressively sweeping the carpet with a random broom that was there. My friends and I got creeped out. We ran out of the house back to my dad's apartment. It was only a few blocks away. The guy chased us all the way to my dad's apartment but there was an automatic lock on the door when you get inside, so we were safe."

2."When I was about 10 years old, my dad and I went camping. We had two tents set up: One for us to sleep in, and the other for our gear (plastic bowls, clothes, etc). All of our food was inside his pick-up truck. I woke up the first night to something hitting my head from outside the tent. My dad also woke up and told me to be calm and quiet. Then, he pulled out a huge knife. In my daze I thought he was going to stab me. He said if anything happens, run to the truck, get in and don’t come out for anything. I was terrified. The tent kept moving and after what felt like hours the sun started to rise and he looked out and told me to get in the truck."

3."When I was in elementary school, the bus route had a stop that was at the top of a hill. We were near a major highway and often had tractor-trailers coming through our small town. One day when I was in second grade and on the way home from school, we were stopped at this stop at the top of the hill to let a girl off. As she was crossing the street, a trailer came flying up the hill. They clearly didn't see the bus or the girl. I was sitting in a window seat and watched the trailer hit this girl."

"By some miracle, she lived. She ended up with a neck and back injury. But watching that happen caused some major trauma issues for me."

—roseg4502a6850

4."I survived an attempted home invasion a few years ago. It was 2 a.m. and I was home and awake. The guy had showed up the previous night and tapped on my bedroom window with a single fingernail for over an hour, then gave up. Or so I thought. He came back the next night when my lights were on and it was clear I was home, and started cutting my window screen open. I grabbed the machete under my mattress and called the cops. My super chased him out of the breezeway and up the street. When my super took me outside for a cigarette and explained what happened, the guy was walking up the other side of the street like nothing was wrong. He got into a car parked across from my building and made a point to drive past me at a crawl speed, and make eye contact."

5."I found my mom dead in her bed. I remember my dad calling the emergency services, saying, 'Please somebody come, I think my wife is dead.' The operator told him to start CPR, and suddenly I felt detached. It was as if it wasn't Mom, but a complete stranger. I instructed Dad what he needed to do, and I started chest compressions."

"It was obviously too late to do anything, but I remember feeling icy-cool and in charge. She died of cardiac arrest. I still have flashbacks to that moment."

—theydontexistbubbles

6."My dog ran out into the road in front of my house. I tried to run and get her. I swear I could feel in my stomach what was about to happen next. A speeding car hit her and didn't stop. She let out a series of horrific screams that I didn't know it was possible for dogs to make."

"I reached her and tried to pick her up, but she was so terrified she bit me. My children unfortunately witnessed this too — it was traumatic for all of us. I truly believe God saved her (my belief, I understand it's not everyone's) because I was sure she would not survive. Eventually, after a lot of pain and care, she recovered wonderfully. Her only injury now is she can't stretch out one leg fully."

—hannahrichardson1984

7."I was driving on the highway when a large SUV in front of me lost control, hit a concrete barrier, and caught on fire. I ran over with another driver to help the driver out. We were shouting, asking the driver if there was anyone else inside, but he was either drunk or high and incoherent. He just stared at us, mumbling. We ran back and used a fire extinguisher somebody had, but the fire was so bad by then it didn't do much. All of a sudden at the same time, the other man and I saw the outline of a car seat through the smoke and flames."

8."Back in 2018 I was 21 years old and in the ER for nursing school clinical. The nurse I was with told me we were getting a trauma patient and they were actively doing CPR on the way. The patient ended up being a woman my age who overdosed on an unknown substance. It was my first time ever being in a code blue or doing real CPR. I will never forget standing over this girl's limp body, the feeling of her broken ribs under my hands with each compression, the blood being sucked out of her lungs, her pale blue skin, and the sound of her family's cries when they entered the room after the doctors called it."

9."I saw a motorcycle accident. My husband and I were riders at the time. I was getting gas and it happened at an intersection — the car didn't even stop. The motorcycle exploded into pieces and the rider was bleeding everywhere. I was so shaken that I just sat down on the gas pump. I called my husband sobbing. I don't even remember driving home, only that he had to give me a Xanax when I got there because I couldn't stop shaking and crying."

—mollykin1015

10."I saw a car accident during Easter weekend. There was an older couple in the minivan. They weren't wearing their seat belts and the car rolled. They went right through the windshield. I had to hold the lady's skull closed because her face was ripped off. The man was halfway through the windshield. An EMT and a few off-duty firefighters pulled over to help my sister and me stabilize the van as it was on a steep decline. When the fire truck got there, they couldn't get the guy out right away, and all their exile blood was running down my arms. I know they were on the way to see family because casserole, flowers, and presents were strewn about."

"I don't know if they died in the ambulance. I never wanted to check."

—nicklesandpickles4200

11."The Waukesha Christmas parade this past November is the worst thing I ever witnessed. An SUV drove through the parade, killing six people — five Dancing Grannies and one 7-year-old boy — and injuring over 40 people. The SUV came within a few feet of where my husband and I were sitting with our young kids."

12."I was deployed to care homes with COVID-19 outbreaks. Seeing dead bodies being rolled out daily is the worst thing I've ever seen."

—6thspicegirl

13."When I was in my first year of high school, I walked home along the railroad tracks as a shortcut. Many kids did this, but I always walked a good distance from the tracks because trains went by often. There was this kid a pretty good distance ahead of me that I could see walking on the tracks. I heard a train coming and watched to make sure the person got off the tracks. They just stayed there. They stopped walking, so I started to yell and tell them to move, but I don't think they could even hear me because the train was so loud. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, I saw the train hit this person."

14."While driving down a four-lane major road in my city, the two cars in the lane in front of us and the lane next to us suddenly came to an immediate stop. Both drivers flung their doors open and started running into the oncoming traffic lanes. There was a toddler crossing in the middle of the street. The first person who reached the toddler just grabbed them up and sprinted to the sidewalk before any oncoming traffic reached them. The toddler had wandered out of a salon that had the door open and made it all the way to the street."

"It was so horrifying, but I'm very grateful for those two people's immediate reactions. They saved that baby's life and saved other drivers from trauma."

—fungicake74

15."I held the hand of a dying man. He was hit on a pedestrian crossing. He had a compound leg fracture and road rash on his head. I had flashbacks for weeks, especially when I saw older men wearing cargo shorts."

"Six years later and I don't think I'm over it."

—donnellaw2

16."I was in the comment section of 'Everything I Wanted' by Billie Eilish, and one person in the replies of a popular comment said that they didn't want to live anymore. They just wanted to die. I talked to them for a while, and they said they probably wouldn't be alive the next day. After about 10 more minutes, I said goodbye, gave them the suicide prevention hotline, because sadly, that's all I could do, and promised I'd check up on them. When I woke up in the morning, I asked if they were still there. No answer. I've been checking for months. They haven't answered me since."

17."I was at the DC Pride parade in 2019 when there was a mass shooter panic that broke out. It turned out to be a false alarm — a man with a BB gun got into an argument with another person and people had mistaken the sounds of metal fences hitting the street as gunshots. But being in the midst of the panic was terrifying. People who were marching just scattered everywhere, hiding or running into random apartment buildings and hotels."

"Some fled into a wooded area (rainbow makes for terrible camouflage, I should mention). I hid behind a bus until things died down. It was awful thinking of where to go, what to do, and where my friends were (we had split up before the panic) in those few minutes. And some people got injured in the panic. I saw people who had fallen down and had bloody faces."

—damianthomas15

18."My dad watched a guy get pulled down into the wood pulper when he worked at a paper mill. There was nothing anyone could do. It's been 40 years, and Dad still has nightmares about it to this day."

19."I've been an ER vet tech for 12 years and didn’t think anything could shake me anymore. This past Christmas, I found out I was so wrong. We had what used to be a 150-lb. mastiff come in dead-on-arrival after being hit by a car. On fucking Christmas. I won’t describe what I saw, I don’t want others to live with that image. But I did not know a body could look like that. I will remember that dog’s name, his owner’s screams, and the sight of what was left of him, for the rest of my life."

20."I once saw a guy biking going head first over the handlebars. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. He ended up with a pretty big gash on his head, scratches over half of his body, and I’m pretty sure one of his fingers was broken. He was absolutely adamant we didn't call the ambulance since he didn't have insurance, go figure, and just asked us to get him to his friend."

—eklimen

21."I know what someone looks like the moment they realize they are going to die. It was either 1994 or 1995, I was around 19 years old. I had just gotten off work and piled into an old Toyota truck with three other friends. It only sat three people, so I was sitting on one of the guy's laps. It was raining that night. Not hard, but steady. As we came around a bend in the road, there was a car, sideways, right in the middle of the road. It was hydroplaning towards us. Right before our car hit theirs, our headlights shone through their windshield. I was able to see the passenger of that car perfectly, and the look on their face. The passenger died on impact. The driver was in trauma ICU for over a month."

22."When I was 9, my grandma and I were on the third floor of a seven-story shopping mall, looking into the atrium and at the elevators going up and down. We saw a few people on the ground look up, and someone screamed. Before we knew it was happening, a lady that had leapt from the seventh floor landed directly below us. I'll never forget that 'thud' sound. My grandma quickly pulled me away from the railing, but I had seen the impact."

"To this day I can't go near any railings that overlook a space more than one story off the ground."

—colleend9

23."I witnessed a man who was homeless get hit by a car. His bags flew into the air. He dropped to the ground and his face was discolored. I left after giving a statement, and I’m not sure what happened to him."

—poppins85

24."My mother has a story from when she was a girl. She was playing in her yard one day when she heard screams coming from next door. She couldn't see over the stone wall dividing the yards, so she ran upstairs to her house's balcony to see what was happening. The neighbor's son had hanged himself from a tree. The screams were coming from his parents who were desperately trying to get him down."

"All these decades later and I still see how shaken she is from it."

—damianthomas15

25."It was during college in the '90s, when I lived in a townhouse dorm with three other girls. One night, one of the girls brought home a bunch of her friends, all guys, all drunk. They were incredibly wasted and raising hell. I was in my room trying to watch TV, and suddenly realized a couple of these guys were heading up the stairs. My other roommates were locked in their rooms, but my room wasn’t. I heard the drunks screaming and trying to force doors open, and I jumped up JUST IN TIME to lock my door as these bastards reached my room and ripped at the doorknob, trying to get in. They were disgusting, yelling all sorts of filthy shit. I screamed at them to go to hell and called the cops. They laughed and kicked my door but the deadbolt held."

26."My boyfriend and I were driving home from a bar, and decided to stop by Domino’s Pizza. We ordered online and he went in to pick it up while I waited in the car. When he came back, he dryly announced, 'They just got robbed a minute ago, and were still hiding in the back when I came in.' We hadn’t seen anyone while pulling in, so we must’ve missed those guys by minutes. I still get chills thinking what kind of situation my partner could’ve potentially walked in."

27."When I was about 13 years old, my mom and I were driving through Montgomery when a Civic came wildly careening from the southbound side into our northbound side. There was one car between us and them. Somehow, Mom missed hitting them. Four cars spun, crashed and ended up on the embankment on our side. Mom immediately pulled over, called 911, and told me to stay with my younger brothers. I got out anyway — my mom has a problem with blood, I’m not the least bit squeamish, and I knew she would be going to each car to see if she could help. She wouldn’t let me closer, but I heard her trying to talk to a little boy whose dad was slumped on the steering wheel unconscious. She wasn’t strong enough to pull him out, so she concentrated on talking to the little boy. She'd already checked another car where they miraculously seemed to have minor injuries. She backed away quickly from the third car — the cause of the accident — I thought, because the EMTs were finally there."

28."When I was in university in the States, I heard shots outside my dorm window. I laid on the ground for at least 20 minutes and didn't move. I crawled over, grabbed my remote, turned on the TV to a local TV station, and found out that there had been a school shooting. The shooter was dead. I looked out my third-floor window and could see the bodies."

"I still have PTSD that comes up whenever there is another school shooting."

—thisismyrealname

29."I volunteered down at ground zero in the hours, days, weeks after 9/11. I volunteered to help pass out food, water, and coffee from a station the Red Cross brought in for those who were working there. I’ll never forget the the acrid smell in the air, the dust, rubble, and the smoke. The worst thing was the look on the rescue crew's faces. They started off so hopeful they would find survivors. I saw them slowly lose hope, day by day."

30."I was at a cycling road race. The pack was hauling down a hill when one of the cyclists clips broke on his shoe causing his foot to fly off the pedal. He and his bike went down. He slammed head first into a large cement planter in the middle of the road. I've always hoped his death was instantaneous."

—lianatashap

31."I visited London with my parents when I was young and was walking down the steps, out of the train station to the street. My mum lingered, looking at something across the street. My dad shouted over to hurry up. As we stopped, I saw a woman in a green car looking like she was struggling to turn her car around in the street. She suddenly revved the engine and drove straight into the steps. One woman broke both her ankles; they were bent out of place. The worst victim was a young girl. She had the whole side of her calf skin ripped off — it was on the license plate of the car. Luckily, my mum was a nurse and helped the people caught in the accident. I had to hide round a corner and not look while my parents helped out. But I remember the skin."

32."I lived in a crappy two-bedroom apartment with my mom, husband and daughter, in a semi-seedy neighborhood. We were all watching the Summer Olympics in the front room, when we heard a couple cars speeding past our apartment. A couple minutes later, we heard gunshots. The cars came back, and next thing I know, I'm on the floor with my husband, baby, mom. We were all trying to cover the baby as gunshots went off. Then, there was a loud crash."

"A guy got killed 100 feet away from our front step in his car, and the apartment across the street had bullet holes sprayed across the front. I think at one point there were close to 50 or 60 cops outside. I was so scared."

—steinbeck32

33."My girlfriend and I were driving through the mountains on a windy segment and on the other side of the road I noticed what looked like smoke. I thought that was odd and said, "Ooooh smo-- holy shit!" After we rounded the corner, we saw the source of the 'smoke' — it was actually dust from a very mangled small sports car. It was in a gravel pullout, with a perfectly round hole in the shattered windshield. Seconds before we saw it, the car had lost control, hit the gravel, slid up the side of the mountain, and rolled back down again. I couldn't get signal on my phone so we pulled over for a moment and discussed if we should go to the scene or drive till we got signal and call 911. We drove to call 911, and as soon as that was done we drove back to check on the driver."

"There were other people who had stopped so we turned back around and continued to our destination. We found out later the driver had been airlifted out. I have no idea if he survived."

—ecocrafty

34."I was my mom’s medical power of attorney and after three bouts of pneumonia as a complication of a double-lung transplant three years earlier, a bed sore a few days later put her into organ failure. I had to make the decision to take her off the ventilator. Watching her try to breath was difficult. They shut off the alarms so you don’t hear the chaos happening. I leaned over and told her it was ok, she could let go. I said it about three times."

35."I was walking home along a major boulevard once when a girl tried to dash across five lanes in a marked crosswalk. This car came out of nowhere and hit her doing at least 40 mph — didn't even hit the brakes. She somersaulted over the entire car and landed head first. After calling 911, all I could do was kneel next her and try to keep her conscious as she just tried to breathe and stared blankly into space."

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.