What's the scariest thing that ever happened to you?

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benhamean said:
Slayer concert at the Orpheum (South of Heaven tour).
I was sitting in the balcony- when Slayer started the crowd started jumping up and down and the balcony was moving several inches. Staff came running out with flashlights screaming for everyone to sit down.

It really felt like it could collapse for a few seconds, and I figured God would have a good chuckle at a hall full of crushed Slayer fans.
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That sounds really scary. Holy crap!

Imagine being at that Sugarland concert in Indiana a few years back. High winds took the whole stage down. Terrible tragedy.
 
I would say that listening to Great White would be a shitty enough experience for most.
 
benhamean said:
I would say that listening to Great White would be a shitty enough experience for most.
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On I dunno. Don't get me wrong I was never a big hair band guy (though I did appreciate them more once grunge came along), but this performance of a Led Zep song has stuck with me that it wasn't bad.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uAerqUwADe8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Big/Sky/Fly said:
Wasn't that Great White concert in Rhode Island...where the fireworks went off and 100 or so people died? That would be a shitty experience.
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It was The Station in Warwick, RI. It was an absolutely horrendous tragedy. The owners of the club as well as the band's manager were charged with 200 counts of manslaughter for the gross negligence. The band manager was sentenced to 10 years in a plea bargain. One of the club owners got 15 years while the other got a suspended sentence.
 
Man, there are some good posts in this thread. What a topic.

I suppose there are different levels of fear. If you happen to find yourself falling though space in the dark, then you will pretty much peg the fear meter within a split second. You can't get much more afraid than that. You don't know where the bottom is or whether it is a trampoline or metal spikes. The unknown. It's the same thing with anything that happens unexpectedly when you are beyond getting help.

I think that the worst of all of it is fear that grows over time as in the case of worrying about a loved one or about impending death. It seems lots of folks have also had to deal with that. That kind of fear works you over for a while until you don't know if you have anything left. You dwell on it.

Anyhow, one that I recall very well was when I spent a night on a deserted island off the coast of Maine. It was a fun night but the next morning we woke up to small craft warnings, high wind and seas, and we had a 26' sailboat.

After some intense debate the decision was made to sail back through it and we had several miles to cover to get back to port. It was quite terrifying. At times we'd be in the trough of some big waves and you literally felt like you were being swallowed up......surrounded by black, angry mountains. I don't know how big they were but at times it felt like they were 20 feet tall.

For the first time I felt a potent fear of drowning. How awful that would be. During this time there was absolutely nobody else in sight. No help. Everybody else was smarter than we were.

At one point the Captain told me I had to go up to the bow and attach the jib to the jib cleat to get the nose of the boat out of the water and change sails. And I looked forward to see a large wave roll wash right over the deck where that cleat was. "Fvck THAT!!!" I screamed. "If you don't, we are going to fvcking sink" he insisted. I did it. It sucked. I kept waiting for a wave to get me.

It took us hours to get to the harbor and safety and during that time I had plenty of time to think about my life because I thought we were going down about 30 times. In other words, my life flashed in front of my eyes for about 4 solid hours.

That'll get your attention.
 
bideau said:
It was The Station in Warwick, RI. It was an absolutely horrendous tragedy. The owners of the club as well as the band's manager were charged with 200 counts of manslaughter for the gross negligence. The band manager was sentenced to 10 years in a plea bargain. One of the club owners got 15 years while the other got a suspended sentence.
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Pure stupidity by them. What made it worse they had someone blocking a exit so only the band members could leave.
 
hawg73 said:
man, there are some good posts in this thread. What a topic.

I suppose there are different levels of fear. If you happen to find yourself falling though space in the dark, then you will pretty much peg the fear meter within a split second. You can't get much more afraid than that. You don't know where the bottom is or whether it is a trampoline or metal spikes. The unknown. It's the same thing with anything that happens unexpectedly when you are beyond getting help.

I think that the worst of all of it is fear that grows over time as in the case of worrying about a loved one or about impending death. It seems lots of folks have also had to deal with that. That kind of fear works you over for a while until you don't know if you have anything left. You dwell on it.

Anyhow, one that i recall very well was when i spent a night on a deserted island off the coast of maine. It was a fun night but the next morning we woke up to small craft warnings, high wind and seas, and we had a 26' sailboat.

After some intense debate the decision was made to sail back through it and we had several miles to cover to get back to port. It was quite terrifying. At times we'd be in the trough of some big waves and you literally felt like you were being swallowed up......surrounded by black, angry mountains. I don't know how big they were but at times it felt like they were 20 feet tall.

For the first time i felt a potent fear of drowning. How awful that would be. During this time there was absolutely nobody else in sight. No help. Everybody else was smarter than we were.

At one point the captain told me i had to go up to the bow and attach the jib to the jib cleat to get the nose of the boat out of the water and change sails. And i looked forward to see a large wave roll wash right over the deck where that cleat was. "fvck that!!!" i screamed. "if you don't, we are going to fvcking sink" he insisted. I did it. It sucked. I kept waiting for a wave to get me.

It took us hours to get to the harbor and safety and during that time i had plenty of time to think about my life because i thought we were going down about 30 times. In other words, my life flashed in front of my eyes for about 4 solid hours.

That'll get your attention.
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yeah never a fan of the idea of drowning, i figure that and fire are the two most painful ways to go. That would have been a day i hit land and got good and ripped - nice job stepping up and facing fear.

I once heading out in 7-8' following seas and returned right away. Was not worth the risk to pull the traps that day. I do not mess with the ocean.

---------- Post added at 11:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:22 AM ----------
king of kings said:
pure stupidity by them. What made it worse they had someone blocking a exit so only the band members could leave.
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i would have taken that man out and walked out that door
 
bideau said:
It was The Station in Warwick, RI. It was an absolutely horrendous tragedy. The owners of the club as well as the band's manager were charged with 200 counts of manslaughter for the gross negligence. The band manager was sentenced to 10 years in a plea bargain. One of the club owners got 15 years while the other got a suspended sentence.
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And the Fire inspector who didn't do his job skated..
 
Hawg73 said:
Man, there are some good posts in this thread. What a topic.

I suppose there are different levels of fear. If you happen to find yourself falling though space in the dark, then you will pretty much peg the fear meter within a split second. You can't get much more afraid than that. You don't know where the bottom is or whether it is a trampoline or metal spikes. The unknown. It's the same thing with anything that happens unexpectedly when you are beyond getting help.

I think that the worst of all of it is fear that grows over time as in the case of worrying about a loved one or about impending death. It seems lots of folks have also had to deal with that. That kind of fear works you over for a while until you don't know if you have anything left. You dwell on it.

Anyhow, one that I recall very well was when I spent a night on a deserted island off the coast of Maine. It was a fun night but the next morning we woke up to small craft warnings, high wind and seas, and we had a 26' sailboat.

After some intense debate the decision was made to sail back through it and we had several miles to cover to get back to port. It was quite terrifying. At times we'd be in the trough of some big waves and you literally felt like you were being swallowed up......surrounded by black, angry mountains. I don't know how big they were but at times it felt like they were 20 feet tall.

For the first time I felt a potent fear of drowning. How awful that would be. During this time there was absolutely nobody else in sight. No help. Everybody else was smarter than we were.

At one point the Captain told me I had to go up to the bow and attach the jib to the jib cleat to get the nose of the boat out of the water and change sails. And I looked forward to see a large wave roll wash right over the deck where that cleat was. "Fvck THAT!!!" I screamed. "If you don't, we are going to fvcking sink" he insisted. I did it. It sucked. I kept waiting for a wave to get me.

It took us hours to get to the harbor and safety and during that time I had plenty of time to think about my life because I thought we were going down about 30 times. In other words, my life flashed in front of my eyes for about 4 solid hours.

That'll get your attention.
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Closest I came to drowning actually didn't bother me that much.

I was in college and we were tubing through Tarrifville gorge on the Farmington river in Simsbury CT.

Just to let you know, they've held Olympic trials for kayaking on this stretch of river.

I had done quite a bit of tubing and thought I knew what I was doing.

My girlfriend was with us and she was not that experienced.

So I had her go in front of me so I could watch her, giver her instructions on what to do, and float down to her should anything happen.

Well, I wasn't paying enough attention to where I was going and I realized I was headed right for a 2 foot drop into a hole.

For those of you who haven't played in white water, a hole is a spot in the river where the flow from all directions, at the surface is into the hole, and the water exits underwater.

So I was trying to paddle off to the side to avoid the hole and didn't succeed. When I went in, I was pitched forward out of the tube.

I had done with this tube what I normally do. I had tied about a 3 foot length of parachute cord around the tube and tied that to my belt. The idea is that if you get tossed from your tube, you don't lose it.

Well, the problem I had was that I was down near the bottom of the hole and the tube was floating in the middle of it. The cord was keeping me from exiting out the bottom and the water pressure was keeping me from getting to the surface.

I can recall swimming as hard as I could towards the surface and not making any headway.

It was weird. I was pretty calm and simply thought "OK, well this ain't working, I'm not getting out of this, I'm going to die"

I distinctly recall simply accepting it and mentally shrugging my shoulders.

I could catch glimpses through the foam of water and I could see a kayaker a few feet away with a look on his face that spoke volumes.

I knew he was thinking:

"Stupid f*cking idiot, doesn't know a damn thing about white water and now I'm going to have to risk my life to try and save his sorry ass."​

I got pissed.

I was thinking:

"No, I'm not an idiot, I was simply paying attention to Mary and didn't notice the hole until it was too late!"​

The next thing I knew, my head was above water.

I didn't hesitate, I went back under water and popped up inside the tube and grabbed the sides with both hands. I was not, going to get sucked back down again.

My next thought was, "OK, how the frack am I going to get out of this hole?"

Well, the outlet of the hole grabbed my leg and the next thing I know, I'm going down the rapids holding onto a tube with my legs dangling below it.

I was just waiting for my legs to smash into one of the rocks in the river.

I was pretty philosophical about it.

"One or two broken legs instead of drowning? Fair exchange."​

It took about five minutes to get past that set of rapids to the slack water before the broken damn.

My legs never touched a thing.

I was most certainly NOT going over the damn like this, so I swam as hard as I could over to the shore.

I didn't mention this in this thread before, because I was never really frightened.

Acceptance, anger, relief, yes.

Fear? No.
 
When I was in HS, I was a pitcher for the baseball team. A batter hit a line drive comebacker that hit me square in my adams apple. Down I went and my throat swelled up so bad they had to intubate me to breathe. Could not talk for a month. Wasn't sure I'd be able to again. That was the end of my pitching career but I kept playing, OF, 1B.
good thing it was before aluminum bats, it occurred to me one time.

that was scary but I think more for my parents, who were watching. And I remember how bad the kid that hit the ball felt, and I felt bad for him.
 
Not sure if I ever told this story here or not but this one is probably the closest I came to dying.

I was dall sheep hunting with 2 friends and we were probably 70 miles from the nearest road, camped near an old riverbed at the bottom of a saddle.

Before we knew what happened I was standing less than 5 feet from a sow grizzly and 2 cubs with no weapon, a bloody backpack in between us and I think that was the only thing that saved us.

We managed to escape without any weapons (except for my Oldtimer pocket knife) and watched her and her cubs devour my buddies ram, game bags and all in less than 2 minutes. We later discovered that she had eaten the nose off the cape of his ram so that was a total loss. We eventually were able to retrieve our rifles, fired off a bunch of warning shots at her which had no affect on her.

I guess she finally decided that she had had enough and from 20 feet away she charged us, which was a fatal mistake on her part and we had to kill her. After that experience I never go anywhere without a gun when I'm in the backcountry.
 
There was a time I was camping in the woods. I walk down to the river. To help unload a person canoe. I hear this cranking noise. The moment I start carrying up a cooler of beer . A tree huge tree branch falls. Misses me by 6 inches .
 
Scariest thing that ever happened to me was when a freezer fell on me.

I was sitting in my car at a stop sign waiting for the traffic to clear when a garbage truck with a big, old meat freezer strapped on the back turned the corner.

It fell off and smashed the crap out of the rear end of my car. Had it fallen a second or two earlier, I would have been toast.

To this day, I still panic whenever I come close to anybody hauling a load of anything.
 
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