Terrifying Life Experiences Go Viral, Answers Are Nightmare Fuel

Scary stories are going viral online, and it might be enough to keep you awake at night.

As OutKick readers know, I'm a big fan of scrolling through Reddit. You simply never know what you're going to find on the popular website.

It can be uplifting and inspiring or downright horrifying. It's the latter group that leads us here today.

A viral Reddit thread of scary life experiences is going viral. (Credit: Getty Images)

Terrifying life experiences go viral.

A Reddit thread about scary life experiences is blowing up, and the stories are absolutely terrifying. We've read some scary stuff over the years, but this thread is next level.

Take a look at some of the stories below, and let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com:

• Just 22 hours ago, when our manufactured home in northeast Arkansas was hit by a tornado. The house doesn't have a basement, and we don’t have a storm shelter, so we were all huddled in the hallway. As the tornado hit, we could feel the house literally coming up from the ground underneath us.
• When I was 10 I was on a ride called "The Whip" at a carnival and the belt popped loose and I fell out of the car. I was hanging on to the edge and the guy running the ride was not paying attention. Everyone was screaming and yelling, but I was too scared to say anything. Finally, the guy shut the ride down and I clanged around a bit and got some bumps and bruises but I was glad to be alive. My mom had to be held back from attacking the ride operator.
• When my daughter got stung by a man-of-war. She was going into shock from the pain and screaming "I don't want to die". Worst few hours of my life and I'm sure hers too.
• Crashing upside down into flood waters and being swept under a bridge. Driver side door not able to open. Wife side door was our escape route. Scary time. Hard flowing water. She didn’t know how to swim, but we made it out to call her parents to come and get us. The house beside the flood waters were very helpful in getting us help.
• As a kid, I woke in the middle of a bad storm and looked out the window. I saw a glowing alien peeking back at me from behind a tree in the back of the yard. I ran to my parents room to wake them up. I was almost hyperventilating. When they both said they’d go look I didn’t want them to even leave me because I thought they’d die. My dad went to check it out and took a long time to come back which made me almost inconsolable. My mom was now scared of how scared I was. Eventually he came back laughing. I had horrible eye-sight so what I really saw through the blurry, torrential rain was a human man. Glowing? Nope he was a lineman in a yellow hi-vis suit, working on the power pole and lines that were down from the storm. The way his partner was shining a bright light to see what they were doing, coupled with the way he was standing by a tree and working, made it look like something peeking out from hiding. I had also just watched Scooby Doo Cyberchase. Just Google that and imagine a yellow version of that villain was what I thought was out there.
• I was in the very deep back country of the Olympic National Park. I slipped on a log I was using to cross a very fast and cold river. I almost went in, I'm not really sure how I did not. I badly dislocated my finger. We still had 3 days of trekking to get back to the car. There's a very very low chance that my trekking partner would have been able to rescue me and their chance of finding help would have been very unlikely as well.
• The night I woke up to a tornado roaring outside and the mobile home bouncing on its pillars. It was the only time I've panicked. Nothing bad happened, How the trailer survived without damage is unknown. It was years before I could stay inside when I heard any wind without having to go outside and check the sky, even on cloudless days.
• A small tornado went through behind my house during a summer thunderstorm. Completely ripped up huge trees, you could see the path it made through behind our house. From my kitchen, I watched a huge tree fall onto our main power line. Didn’t fall on our house, but it was scary to watch, with the electricity sparking off the down line. Scared the sh*t out of me. I was (still am) fearful of storms because of it.
• Swimming under the shrimp boat cutting a rope off the prop and getting rammed and bumpedby large things I couldn't see...
• Someone in a large truck tried to run me off the road into a telephone pole, then tried to drive right next to me. I thought he was going to shoot me if he didn't run me off the road. Defensive driving saved my life.
• Sleep paralysis
• Opening the front door at 7:30am to a police officer looking for my best friend’s next of kin.
• Commercial Airliners turning into kamikaze weapons on 9/11/01 in NYC. Everyone thought a follow up attack would happen at any moment for years and years.
• That day, once we realized the Pentagon was hit I thought through other likely targets. My parents both worked at a lesser-known, but equally critical federal building in a different state. Had there been 5, or 6 planes and the planners did their homework well my parents would have been gone, too. I called my mom at her office and begged her to go home—they were already evacuating.
• Caught in landslide in Pakistan, crawled on my knees above a raging river in rain and slippery clay mud to escape…heart still thumps when In think about it.
• Being chased by a bear
• Truck broke down 10 miles from home at 10 PM in January. I had to walk in blowing snow at -12 Celsius and for the last half of the trip I was being paced by a cougar. I could hear it chuffing and yowling maybe 50 or 60 meters into the brush. The flashlight didn't do any good; it just lit up the flying snow. Staying with the vehicle wasn't an option because there were animals that needed care back at home. Very rural location before cell phones were common. There was only one other house between me and home and nobody was there. No electricity or telephones that far out.
• Waking up in the middle of the night by tornado sirens and running to a dark basement as debris hit the side of our house during a tornado outbreak. Seeing the downed tree next to the house was pretty terrifying as well. It just barely missed the house and would have probably destroyed it
• When a dude almost landed on me while falling from a cliff up above me at Kaaterskill Falls (he survived after being airlifted out)

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Knock on wood, I've never really been in anything where I was truly terrified. I've experienced some wild stuff over the years, but nothing that comes close to being on that list.

There is an event my friends refer to as the Mississippi Miracle, but due to the jobs the other people involve hold, that's a story I still have to save for another time. It will probably be that way for years. That's okay. Someday I'll share it. That day is just not today.

What I also noticed from the stories is that many involve nature. It's a brutal reminder of how unforgiving the elements can be, especially if you're not anywhere near help.

Nature can be very dangerous and unforgiving. (Credit: Getty Images)

Do you have a scary life experience? I want to hear about it at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.