People are Sharing the Most Disturbing/Gruesome Thing They've Witnessed in Person

Well, last week the bus had to get evacuated because a woman was menstruating too heavily.... Last week while on the bus heading back towards my apartment, a bunch of us passengers started to smell something very pungent. Everyone starts looking everywhere to see what it could be. Then out of nowhere the teenager two seats in front of me yells "Oh my god, you sick fuck! She's having her period. Let me off the bus!" The woman sitting next to him was indeed having her period. Normally not a weird situation, and i couldnt figure out for the life of me how this kid could have known she was having her period. Then I saw.....

She was sitting there in a pair of those high-waisted shorts with a small puddle of what looked to be blood that pooled up in her seat. This is when it gets even crazier. As any normal person would do, the bus driver stops the bus and makes everyone get off the bus because 1.) the smell was horrible, and 2.) there was blood all over this seat. While getting off the bus literally almost everybody has to walk right past this girl who wouldn't get up. At this point, I start to think "wow maybe she just had a miscarriage or something," and actually start to feel bad for her. Then she drops this on everyone, "WHY IS EVERYBODY FREAKING OUT? ITS ONLY PERIOD BLOOD." One black woman then responds "Bitch you aint never heard of no tampon?" To that she replies "I DONT WEAR TAMPONS FOR ETHICAL REASONS!" 

On that note I had to leave. It fucked me up pretty badly. After rethinking about the situation, I could not being to imagine what her ethical reasons could have been or why not wear something different from a tampon if those ethical reasons are what got in your way.
Username: benji8513514

This is a long one and not for the animal lovers. I'm also not rereading this to fix any grammatical errors.

Preface; I'm a volunteer fireman and this was a fire at a dairy farm fire and I've never told anyone these details.

I watched a cow get burned alive, I watched another pop like a pimple, and I saw another (she was already dead) get skewered like a bail of hay.

This was a huge dairy farm, I think they had 1,000 cows and several very massive barns. By the time we got there, the flames were over 100 feet in the air and the smoke could be seen for miles.

My crews first objective was to push into an attached barn that wasn't on fire and keep the fire from reaching it (imagine a T intersection, the vertical line is what's burning,

me and my crew is at the intersection trying to save the horizontal line) and since the burning barn is already collapsing and engulfed in heavy fire,

we obviously can't go into that part of the barn. We can only stand at the intersection and hold the fire back.

As I'm looking around, 15 feet infront of me, laying on the concrete floor is a cow with part of the roofing beams on fire on her. Not only are the beams burning, but so is her skin.

She's trying so hard to get up but can't because of the weight on her and there was nothing we could do beside occasionally spray her with water. So I had to sit there and watch her be burned alive.

Hours later when the fire was under control, the farmers brought in loaders and excavators to tear down the burn barn so we could reach the hot spots and smoldering areas better -and to also get a jump start on cleaning up. As you could imagine, not all the cows got out. Some perished in the fire, some where trapped in the rubble.

Of those trapped, some were dead, some were put to death. I'm in one section of a burnt barn and an excavator is going from one end to the other tearing it down.

Turns out there were some dead cows in this barn. Turns out when you run over them with excavator tracks, cows act like balloons.

They get flattened, belly's expand, and boom.

Towards the end of the night, we stuck around to help the farm hands collect the surviving cows and get them into the barns left standing.

Throughout the entire night farmers were walking around with guns and others with syringes looking for cows that were alive but too badly injured to be left alive.

These unfortunate cows were shot - either with a gun or whatever was in those syringes. Either way, in a moments notice they were on the ground dead.

Luckily, I never saw this first hand - but I knew it was happening.

Since there were dozens and dozens of carcasses throughout the property, they had to move them into one central location.

And I just so happened to turn my head at just the right minute to watch a tractor, equiped with a bake spike, skewer a cow,

pick it up and bring it over to a pile of other dead cows, and drop it on top. The way their bodies moved made my knees buckle. It was like jello.

If you've read this far, I hope you're doing ok. It's been several months and it still has me fucked up.

Username: dexters_lab95

Working in EMS for the past few years I have seen quite a bit. Here's a few that stand out.

When I was in training we were called to the scene for a Male patient "struck by a pole".

One thing you have to realize about emergency dispatch is that they are not present on the scene, they are simply trying to gather all the information about the nature of the emergency so they know the proper resources to dispatch.

The callers can be frantic, non native English speakers, no longer at the scene etc etc. So sometimes things get miscommunicated or lost in translation.

Well that's exactly what happened on the call when we arrive on scene our Male patient "struck by a pole" is actually some poor bastard who got nailed by a falling steel I - beam. He had been working with a construction crew building a tall warehouse.

As the crane was lifting the beam to be riveted into place, it somehow came loose from its mount and smacked the guy in the back on the way down.

The guy was standing by a dumpster so when the beam landed it was propped up by the dumpster with him lying underneath it.

This beam was about 15 feet long and I have no idea how high it fell from but I doubt it would really matter cuz those things are fucking heavy, and when it hit him it fucked him up.

He was lying supine in a pool of his own blood.

Me and one of the medics I was with quickly checked for a pulse, which he said he felt, got him on a backboard and pulled him out because we didn't want to spend any time under that I beam.

Once in the ambulance we exposed him and you could see his chest was totally deformed on both sides. When we went to apply a c-collar I felt the crepitus in his cervical spine. Blood was coming from his airway. His whole head and face was bruised and one of his eyes was bulging from its socket. When we rolled him over to check his back that's when I/ we knew this guy was totally fucked.

When the I beam struck him it completely lacerated his whole back open and his ribs had punctured his lungs, you could see it all...his bones, his lungs, the blood leaking from his gaping back wound and the pink frothy sputum bubbling from the punctures in his lungs. There was no saving this guy.

We still went through the steps because he had a rhythm on our monitor. So we secured the airway, ventilated him and performed CPR enroute to the hospital.

But God damn every time I pushed that chest I could feel his rib bones moving and cracking and every time my partner would ventilate him you could hear the bubbling from his lungs and see more blood/ sputum bubble out from underneath him.

When we dropped him off at the ER we gathered replacement supplies and cleaned our cot and ambulance.

Right before we left I popped my head in his room to see what they were doing in there and the only thing I can put my eyes on is his gigantic nutsack.

I mean this thing was bigger than a 16inch softball, and I didn't remember noticing it while transporting.

My partner theorized that since his lungs had been penetrated, as we ventilated some of the air and or blood might have traveled through his abdominal cavity and ended up in his ballsack. Never did ask the ER Physician for an explanation on that, I guess I'll never know.

The other one was a guy who jumped in front of a high speed passenger train.

So when we were toned out for the person struck by a train I knew when we got there that there would be nothing left to save. Lo and behold we show up and is just a red and pink and yellow mess.

The biggest junk of this guy is what a think was part of his torso and maybe his groin?

Fuck if I know. There were no arms, legs, or head attached to it. It was just a shredded hunk of meat with skin and hair still attached at some point.

We walked the whole track from point of impact (where there was a massive blood splatter) all the way to the train so that we could pinpoint any large pieces of him for CSI before the sun went down.

Other than a shin and foot, there werent many large pieces of him.

Some muscle and ligament here, some bone there, little pieces ranging from a dime to a half dollar spread out over about a half mile.

When we got to the front of the train the windshield was totally covered with brain matter and blood. I ended up being the one who found his suicide note with an ID stapled to it.

I read just the first few sentences to confirm what it was but I didn't want to read any more, I dont need to carry that with me.

It said something about how he was a veteran and he couldn't deal with life any more. His ID said he was like 67 or something.

There was even a sentence about how he was sorry to the first responders and people he inconvenienced. Like I said I didn't wanna read any more.

We cleared up after that and got some ice cream. Later that night at like 4 in the fucking morning we worked a full arrest where a guy had overdosed on heroin in a motel and was spewing vomit and bile alllllllll over us as we worked him. Fun times.

Username: kuckxfarma

A drug cartel mass grave. This would have been in 2013 and still honestly has me at least a little bit fucked up.

I was helping with starting and training the Autodefensas movement.

Outside some small town about 3hrs south and something of Reynosa we had to get gas.

We did have full cans ourselves, but don't eat into your reserves if you don't need to.

We stopped at a gas station at like 1 in the afternoon and nobody was there. Siesta isn't too uncommon, as are extended lunch brakes in some smaller towns with a slower pace of living. However, we saw nobody.

After 15 minute the guy we had jump out to deal with the locals said there was literally nobody. He said he'd even called out through parts of the town, not even heard anything back.

That was scary. However, we still needed fuel. Treating this as an emergent situation, we were ordered to check it out. So we got our weapons ready and dismounted from our vans.

Oftentimes things get very quiet before they get very loud. We really had no idea what could have been happening.

We scouted through the town. This was some scary shit -- you mean to tell me it's 1 in the fucking afternoon in a Mexican town and no kids are playing soccer, nobody's hanging out on the porch, playing music, or whatever.

That's weird even in Narco territory. It was like being in a horror movie.

Now, sometimes people will clear out of a town if they think there's going to be a big gang fight; makes sense, they don't want to get shot in the crossfire, but this was different. Cars and bikes were still around.

There's a weird smell, but it being a rural community, I chalked it up to maybe a dead cow or manure or something. I was half expecting to see a zombie or something.

Death has a unique smell like rotting meat mixed with shit. Had this been anywhere but a rural town, I would have immediately known what it was on the air, but I just had to be an optimist.

Suddenly, I hear, "Guys, holy fucking shit! Get over here!" We're sweeping through, so me and my buddy ignore it at first.

Then I hear an officer's voice command, "Fall the fuck in!" We did. There was a pit with a backhoe and a huge pile of dirt next to it.

I'm guessing we found some epic drugs stash to destroy or arms stash to capture, or maybe even an epic pile of money to liberate.

Guys are just standing around it, staring in. Something's not right, but they aren't reacting like it's dangerous. I put my rifle on safe and let it hang from my sling, muzzle forwards.

I jog up to it and look down. There below us are the townsfolk. There are easily something teen to maybe even twenty odd bodies.

All fairly freshly killed, meaning within the last week I think. All men and boys, just piled in and shot.

You know the phrase "from 8 to 80"? Yeah, pretty much that. Dogs and flies were eating away at the corpses, and some open wounds and orifices were visibly crawling with maggots. It was horrible. I still sometimes see this in my sleep.

We all understood now why nobody was there.

We left. Nobody said a word.

Username: 762Rifleman

Two homeless guys fighting over a six pack. One hits the other guy twice, to no effect.

Other guy picks him up and drops him on his back, then grabs the six pack and walks off.

Guy who got dropped doesn't move, just lies on his back on the sidewalk.

I'm leaning over him looking to see if he's okay and a pool of blood creeps out from behind his head.

I call 911 and report what I'm seeing. Paramedics are very close by so they are there within a few minutes. But before they get there, he opens his eyes and starts to get up.

Another stranger and I are screaming at him not to move. I'm saying "you've got a head injury, don't move! Don't move!". He keeps trying to sit up and we scream at him even louder.

When the paramedics lifted him I swear to god the back of his head was misshapen and brains were visible.

Or at least that's what I thought at the time. Looking back, it may have just been his hair full of blood which I interpreted as brains.

After that, I was a bit shook but seemed fine. I walked on.

But then I started thinking about "what if his life is completely ruined?" and *BAM* the image of the brains flashes into my mind and suddenly I'm shaking with adrenaline and sobbing.

After fifteen seconds or so I'm fine again. Sitting in a beautiful park, watching people play frisbee. I can't stop thinking about the incident though, and keep noodling on it in my mind.

Then once again the image of the brains, the misshapen skull flashes in *BAM* on my mind's eye again. It feels like a slap in the face, and my muscles tighten again about it.

That memory-image-smack thing keeps repeating at random intervals.

Suddenly I realize what's happening: "holy shit this could be PTSD".

Luckily I've got a prescription for propranolol, prescribed for as-needed use for social anxiety, and I've been reading wikipedia about propranolol and PTSD treatment.

One item I read was something like "administration of propranolol within a few hours of a traumatic event can reduce severity of PTSD" so I head home. I'm riding the subway, packed full of people, trying not to think.

But my mind keeps going over the incident and the image keeps flashing back *BAM!* and each time my breath catches and I'm suddenly tense.

I get home, take 40mg (usual dose is one 20mg pill) and the experience is like this: It sort of feels like a helium balloon that was stuck in a tree is now free and can float up through the tree and away unhindered.

Next time the memory comes back, the *bam!* isn't as powerful.

I can still remember what I saw, and it's still horrible and disgusting, but it's not linked to a big adrenaline release each time the memory comes back.

I am *soooo* thankful that I had those pills and that I had the knowledge that they were useful in that situation.

I think seeing that guy's fucked up occipital lobe could have been a much more serious psychological thorn in my side if I hadn't dosed with the propranolol right then and there.

Told my psychiatrist about it and he was glad to hear I'd done it. But he also said to be careful with taking extra doses of the propranolol, because it lowers your blood pressure so if you take too much it can be dangerous.

*But* the studies with propranolol and PTSD have participants taking 40mg so I think I was fine to do so.

Username: intensely_human

One of those AskReddits where I have a pretty decent story to contribute.

I'm a professional session/touring drummer and early on in my touring career (summer of 2013), I did my first cross Canada tour with an indie-rock band.

It was our first show in Winnipeg, and the venue we were initially booked at had some problem or another and the show got moved to this seedy bar connected to a hotel called,

"The Windsor". We were warned many times by the local bands that it was a bit of a rough spot.

Played the show. Uneventful. It's about 1:00AM and we are eagerly trying to pack up our gear into the van

because we had a 40 minute drive or so to where we were staying and we had to make it to a gig in Sault Ste. Marie, (a 10ish hour drive) the next day.

As we're packing up, two guys come out of the hotel. One's a bit of a smaller dude and the other is absolutely enormous. Big, tall, ripped.

They're arguing. Big dude is saying stuff like, "F**K YOU F****T" while smaller guy is trying to diffuse the situation and saying, "Dude. I'm your friend. Calm down."

They're getting closer and closer to the van when suddenly, big guy grabs little dude, pushes him down onto the running board of our van and the side walk and starts brutally curb stomping him.

We were absolutely gobsmacked and then tried grabbing the big guy to bring him away from his victim, but he was so much bigger than us that he started swinging at us, and just swatted us off essentially.

He dragged the guy into the side walk and started drop kicking him in the back of the head repeatedly.

The band I was with and the local band circled the two, trying to find a way to diffuse the situation. We kept saying, "Dude. You won. Stop."

Big guy suddenly looks down at his shirt which is absolutely drenched in his "friend's" blood, and yells down at him,

"YOU RUINED MY SHIRT BRO" and proceeds to "Hulk out" and literally tears his shirt off his body and proceeds to run down the street.

We called the cops and then tried to keep the victim's skull together with the help of the other band.

Next thing you know, I'm in the back of a cop car waiting to be interviewed.

To make a long story short, we got like 2 hours sleep and somehow managed to make it to our gig the next day.

However, I'll never forget being in the back of the cop car and seeing a fire truck pull up, and out comes a fire-woman,

and I swear to GOD she had curlers still in her hair and looked like she just woke up, and I watch as she proceeds to hose down the blood and brains off the sidewalk. Scene out of a movie.

Anyway, that was my touring, "Winnipeg Incident".

Username: M4xOrZ

Okay, so buckle in, because this is a rough ride.

For context: Went to a religious high school, though I wasn’t raised in the same denomination, nor was I really religious myself.

Most of the students came from four local heavily religious grade schools, and had known each other and the teachers from school/church their whole lives.

It was a heavily strict environment where the school and teachers got away with a lot of BS because every family knew each other including the school board.

That includes teaching creationism alongside evolution, and then trying to disprove evolution, as well as teaching that climate change is a lie.

I went in a closeted gay atheist who only really got along with girls, and tried to take every opportunity I could to show that I didn’t share the same beliefs, but used every class project as a chance to prove why I believed what I did.

I wish I could say that I remained unchanged, but after two years, I caved, conformed, and genuinely assimilated.

Our sex ed was abstinence only, which was better than the girls got, because their sex ed involved being told they would go to hell for even thinking about premarital sex and any kind of masturbation was a one way ticket as well.

According to a friend, that was marginally better than in grade school where she and all the other fifth grade girls were told that any interest in sex made them “whore’s, but you won’t have to worry since you’re all too ugly to sleep with anyway.”

Theology classes were mandatory, and while they could never actually give any concrete logical reason against same sex relationships outside of scripture (which, actually is debatable about what type of sin it would’ve been counted as in Leviticus, both based upon the original language used, and the three types of laws set up at the time in the text), but they regularly told us that it’s better to kys than live as a gay person.

They tried to blame queerness on trauma which messed with me a lot, because I knew I was gay when I was really young, but I also had a lot of trauma in my life from an early age, and my best friends who knew started to believe I was traumatized before I was gay, which wasn’t the case.

The most horrible thing our school did that I vividly remember was during my senior year in a class called “Worldview Theology” in which we had to learn about seven different popular worldviews and religions, and then how to discredit everything but Christianity on multiple points.

It was a super effective class, since one of the earliest things one of our theology teachers did was spend 15 minutes explaining that “technically, indoctrination isn’t a bad thing” by saying that indoctrination is just another word for teaching, and somehow he made it convincing.

A few years later I found out the textbook and homework packets were written by a company funded by heavily religious right wing political groups,

and insanely wealthy ceos who back politicians behind everything from encroaching on Native American reservations for oil drilling and pipelines, to anti abortion bills. If you’ve ever done a deep dive into the people behind Prager U, it’s the same kind of peeps.

So, picture this: I (18m) and a bunch of other teens, sweating in a hot cramped classroom with religious posters, Jesus paintings, Christian comic strips, and crucifixes covering every wall, the windows at the back of the room open to let in the spring air.

We seniors were two months from graduating, and we’d just spent the last week learning about the “evils of modern feminism,” from “the flawed perspectives of Hinduism, Atheism, Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, Postmodernism, Islamic, and Socialist perspectives.”

Most of the guys in our class were beyond obnoxious and felt like most of their takes were important, and, while some female students spoke up, most did not.

The handful who did were my absolute idols. I adored them every time they spoke up because it was always something no one else was saying, whether it be a new perspective, or just a more humane one than the black and white dichotomy we were being taught.

But to be honest, at this point in the semester, most of us were already checking out, thinking mostly about finals or what college plans we had for the fall, and even our dudebro teacher was tired and was mostly showing us movies and youtube videos. But that day - that day was different.

We’d started the week talking about prolife and prochoice perspectives, and obviously, 99% of the room was prolife in every circumstance.

Only a few of us had any disagreements with that, and even then we were mostly ignored, or made to seem too naïve to actually understand the heaviness of the topic.

I’m proud to say I wasn’t in the 99% who were prolife with no exceptions, because personally, I’d experienced one of those awful circumstances, and couldn’t making anyone else experience further trauma from something like that.

We’d watched a bunch of prolife documentary and educational style movies throughout the week and today, we were on edge. Our teacher warned us all week that today we were watching an actual procedure being done. Listed and shown in graphic detail.

We were given the option to leave the room before THE SCENE came on, but you need to understand: in that environment, it wasn’t an option, it was the suggestion of an option - we’d been educated to be “god’s brave warriors and apologists” the entire point of the class was to make shying away from heavy topics like this a no-go.

So we all sat, hearts pounding, legs bouncing, breathing slowly and heavily, as we got further and further into the film.

We were all on edge, just waiting for our teacher to give us the warning, any kind of sign that IT was about to happen.

It was half an hour in and we’d followed the stories of two different women who’d regretted their choice, and were listening to a third as she described in depth, step by step, the procedure that she’d undergone.

We had 15 minutes left of class, and then he paused it. “If anyone wants to leave the room, now is the time to do it.” We all looked around, nervous, making eye contact with each other, waiting for someone to be the first brave person to go. But no one did.

Eventually he said “alright, then here we go.” The entire scene was a minute and thirty seconds. I clamped my eyes shut

and no matter how hard I pushed my palms against my ears I could still hear every detail alongside the sound of the tools being used.

I peaked my eyes open at one point to see if it was still on screen and instead caught a glimpse as the toughest girl in our class bolted to the hall and retched her guts out.

Two others went after her to check on her and after a few minutes she returned blaming it on having forgotten to eat that day. To be honest, I can’t blame her reaction.

It took two years to shake the beliefs that school had instilled in me, and if it wasn’t for a groupchat I’d had with some of my best friends from there,

we’d still be a bunch of closeted kids with a major need to please authority figures, and terrible mental health.

That school did leave me with one thing, though: I look back on all the things I’ve mentioned here and 100 other things I hadn’t, and realized that personally, I don’t believe religious schools should exist. Not as valid academic institutions outside of religious studies.

That school and the tightknit community around it made it possible for teachers and parents to abuse their power and abuse the children in their care, and for that, I can never forgive them.

Username: Entropy_head

I didn't witness it but I was there when it happened, my 6 year old sister and my 16 year old brother were sleeping when the AC right above their heads started making loud electricity noises,my brother woke up, grabbed my sister and ran outside the house,
he came back in and found the house full of smoke and the whole room was burning,he went upstairs and woke all of us up, which was me and my brother (we sleep in the same room), and my mom,
it was 4 am so my dad went to do the morning prayer,
I have an older brother that is 20 but he was in the army at the time,I'm surprised I didn't wake up by myself, but when he woke me up the whole house was in flames and the whole house was fully dark because of the smoke,
once I woke up and realized what's happening he told me to run outside,so I did and I somehow managed to go down the stairs in the dark, ran outside and stood with my sister,
my brother who was sleeping with me woke up and screamed because my brother him up from a good sleep,
he didn't realize that the house was burning, but he did when he got out of the room and saw the flames,both of my brother's woke up my mom and took her outside to safety, they took a phone with them to call the firefighters,
while all of that happened I was in outside in underwear, and my neighbors got out and asked me what happened,It was ok but what was not is that a woman got out and talked to me normally like I wasn't half naked and my private parts were out,
I didn't talk to her because of shock and because I was too embarrassed to talk,I had to stand there silent and trying to help for 2 hours, half naked, private parts all out and women all arou d the place scared and screaming,
all of a sudden I see my dad coming back running from the mosque, he made sure we're all okay and went in to try and at least get the fire to cease a little,my mom was calling the firefighters when my dad went in, all the time I was sitting on the ground because I didn't know what to do, talk with the neighbors who are all female or go in with my dad,but 5 minutes went by and the firefighters were here, they were lost so I ran to them and lead them to the house,
then I went in and called dad because firefighters were here to do the job,the firefighters first talked to my dad so they can know where the room is and all that,
the guy that talked to my dad was for some reason disrespectful, my dad nearly got into a fight with him because the guy was disrespecting my dad while the fire is spreading,so he just told the guy to shut up and go do his job,
so they took the fire out and started getting the smoke out of the house,then the guy's assistant came and apologized to my dad because that guy had personal problems and took out his anger on my dad,
and that was pretty much it, a month later we moved to a new house because that house wasn't liveable anymore,we stayed with grandma for a month and then moved to the new house,
thank god the house finished 2 weeks after our house was burned,my pc and gaming stuff was in the room that burned but thankfylly some stuff was saved, my speakers, headset, monitor, camera and quest 2 headset was thankfully saved,but my PC and my mouse and keyboard were burnt, not burnt but was affected by the hotness of the fire,
I even recorded a video but I don't think I can put it here,anyways the day was saved and no one was harmed,
but everytime I enter my room I can smell the burning smell and remember that day.

Username: ThisJafy

In 2011 I had just moved into my first apartment.
I was basically renting a room at this house my coworkers were renting.
I just finished moving all my stuff into my room, said goodbye to my mom, and was talking to one of my new roommates.
He was telling me where all the local places to eat/buy groceries were (super small town) when we heard a motorcycle (GSXR650) gunning it for a solid 10-15 seconds followed by a loud SMASH.
We both look at each other, eyes wide, and he says “did that guy just crash?” And we bolted out the door.
The road ran parallel to ours, one block over.
The guy on the motorcycle was going around and blind-ish curve, downhill, way way way above the speed limit, when a lady happened to be pulling out of the post office in her Jeep Liberty, and he smashed head on into the back of her car.
His helmet was broken and all over the place, he was wearing Jean shorts and a gray t-shirt, and was missing a shoe on his left foot.
That same left leg was torn completely open from above the knee down to the bottom of his calf. It just looked like a big chinch of steak hanging off his leg, totally exposed bone. Almost split open like a partial de-glove.
That’s when I noticed he was also bleeding from the ears.
He was trying to talk and communicate, but he could t speak actual words. It was just incoherent sounds coming out of his mouth. Like someone who never learned to speak. Just vowels.
And he had this look in his eye like he was looking through you instead of at you. All cylinders were firing, but it wasn’t attached to the flywheel.
My roommates father was an ER doctor, and he was EMS for a bit years prior so he quickly took control of the situation while we waited for the ambulance.
After that first 2-3 seconds of assessing the situation, we looked at each other, and in hindsight I have a feeling that Paul knew how this was going to end.
The look he gave me for that split second I can still see. The guy kept trying to get up and walk around like nothing happened, all while trying to form words but only making sound.
It was probably only 6-7 minutes until EMS got there, but in that time we watched his motor functions decline, and everything just get worse and worse. Even though he couldn’t talk, and he was very much not there in many ways, he seemed scared.
He knew clearly something was wrong. He just kept trying to get back up and keep going like everything was fine.
We weren’t near any hospital so they went to call the chopper, but it wouldn’t have been able to make it. So they loaded him in the ambulance and left.
He died a few minutes later. (2 days later 2 of the EMS dudes were in the restaurant I worked at and told my coworker (Paul’s girlfriend)
The lady in the jeep could not stop crying. It wasn’t her fault at all, he was driving over twice the speed limit, around a blind curve. She had her blinker on, there were witnesses.
But I can’t imagine the guilt. I feel bad for the guy that crashed too. He couldn’t have been much older than 30. Who knows if he had a wife or kids. He certainly had parents though, and that must have sucked for them.
But yeah, I’d say witnessing what was basically the last moments of that guys life was prob the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
2nd worst was the dead body on the side of the street in Miami.
Username: Ok-Discussion2246

In Vietnam, communists had decided to teach locals about the evils of cooperating with Americans. Village was wiped out, everything dead, EVERYTHING.
Village leader tied to pole, his stomach cut open, intestines pulled out and wrapped around his neck.
His penis cut off and in his mouth.A child spitted on a pole and placed over a cooking fire. Over cooked, just charred body left.
Somebody hung upside down by ankles. Man or woman I don't know. The person had been skinned.
I didn't want to take a closer look.1963, my mother suddenly screaming, holding head, vomitting, screaming, then falling to the floor. Dead. I was 13.
1973, shipboard fire. In an engine room. I was part of the emergency team to put out the fire.
I was also one of the ones recovering bodies.One of them was my friend. Cooked so thoroughly that he started to tear apart like a fried chicken, as we tried to move him around and get him into a body bag.2017 ... my wife suddenly in extreme pain, as in the kinds that makes you repeatedly vomit.
My dear darling wife was a tough old bird, it took a lot to make her so much as blink an eye.She screamed and screamed. I ran to the car with her in my arms.
Faster to take her to the hospital than to get an ambulance. More screaming and dry heaves in the car.I get her there and they rush her in but stop me from following.
I stood there a long time, an hour close enough.

Then this female doctor comes out, face grim, shaking her head, she had tears in her eyes, saying "I'm sorry, we tried everything, it took too long.

To all intents and purposes your wife is brain dead. What do you want me to do?"In my long life, I am 72, I have been slashed and stabbed with knives, shot once, assorted shrapnel wounds, a leg nearly blown off, fought shipboard fires, volunteered for things no one else wanted to do.My children think I am unflappable. My son, who'd arrived at the hospital by that time had to catch me.
Fortunately he is one of those ardent weightlifters, because I lost all power to my legs.I finally collected myself enough to stand and now faced the hard part.
I told the doctor to remove the life support. It was a promise I'd made to the love of my life, but God I did not want to do it.I could not fail her by changing my mind due to my weakness.
That's enough I think.
Username: Ok-Afternoon-3724

I empathize with those who shared their experiences.
I've created a throwaway because I'm on the friends list of many, as well as a local subreddit, and I like to keep my private life private.I share this to only to possibly steer people away from trouble.
Years ago, I was on and around hard drugs all the time. Mostly MDMA and heroine.The core group I was around consisted of eight girls and myself (a male).
Girls, you say? They weren't your normal females.A few of them had their masters degree, all were very well educated.
One of them was especially cynical - we'll call her Kathy.Kathy was fucking disgusting, and completely heartless.
Someone once did her wrong - we'll call her Jane.In fear that Jane would rat her out - costing her hundreds of thousands of dollars and jail time, Kathy decided to take action.
Kathy had lots of money and no conscious (to discredit her, it was all dirty).She also wasn't afraid to take a life.
After she did some research Jane, she lured her to a relatively empty part of the state where money was difficult to come by.Unfortunately, I didn't drive at the time as I was young and under the wing of this cynical heartless bitch.
I didn't know what was really going on at the time, but many coked-out 13 year olds really have no clue most of the time anyway.After drugging Jane and clubbing her in the back of the head (I watched from a crack in the door in the motel we were at), thus knocking her out, Kathy said we had to bring her to the hospital as she didn't mean to do what she did.She suggested that I should take a nap (I kept complaining I was tired), but I declined because I felt horrible to what happened to Jane.
I said that if I got tired I'd just fall asleep in the car.Kathy acting suspicious and overly paranoid (which was strange for her to show any emotion), I climbed in the backseat and closed my eyes, pretending to sleep.
Kathy ended up driving past the hospital, and an hour away from the nearest town to a junk yard.
I had no idea what was going on or where we were or what was going on.When I did end up opening my eyes from my false slumber, I saw a cash exchange between Kathy and a male, and the male driving off.
I was like, "okay, a drug deal or she's buying me a car!".
Kathy returned to the car as I was returning to my slumber since she was coming, to only drag Jane to an old, rusted '90 Olds.She put Jane in the passengers seat, and got in the drivers seat and drove it onto a ramp - or so it looked.
When I looked closer, it was an E-Z Crusher.
I had no idea what was going on, or what was taking so long.I thought it was all a prank on Jane.
Quite some time passed from driving the car onto the E-Z, or so it seemed, when Jane finally regained consciousness.
All I could hear was loud, ear-shattering inaudible screeching, the engine of the E-Z Crusher and crackling from the steel being crushed.I assume that Jane was handcuffed to the inside of the car which is why she was unable to escape, which doesn't surprise me, as Kathy loved restraining people and watching them suffer.
That terrifying scream and the sound of crushed steel is forever audible to me and something I wish I could forget.When there is a car accident scene in a movie, I go back to that day.
If I can anticipate or know one is coming, I often skip or excuse myself during that time.
Almost eight years have passed, been sober for four.I never got the full story of Jane or who she was - I asked some of the people I could consider 'friends' at the time and they didn't even know that it occurred.
Kathy is now in another country I presume, and has been for quite some time.I keep tabs with one other person from those days, and she is unaware of what ever happened to her.
As for Jane, I've looked on missing persons reports around the time that all this happened, and I can't seem to match a face.I figure nobody is going to read this, but I hope someone does and is steered away from trouble or violence that they may have allowed themselves to either be apart of or witness, and take action to not allow things like this to happen.
Username: horrifying_

My dad was a high-functioning alcoholic until he met this woman who had severe mental issues and what I'd call a different type of alcoholism -
my dad drank steadily everyday, but this woman would be sober for months, then go on a massive bender and drink and rampage for days until she got arrested,usually for something insane like kidnapping her children from foster care and taking them out of the country,
or driving a car through a wall into a neighbour's living room.She also liked setting fires and once left a message on my answerphone saying she was going to burn my children to death in their beds,
so I got a restraining order against her and moved house.One day he called and in a small voice said he needed me.
He wouldn't say why, just that he needed me to come down and help him.My youngest was about 3 years old at the time and the others were in school so I'd have to bring her with me.
The call was really suspicious and worrisome so I called a friend to meet me down there.I arrived at the door and rang the bell.
I heard a strange woman calling "I'm coming, please wait, I'm coming" and peeked through the letterbox to see who it was.What I can only describe as something from a David Lynch film was lurching down the hallway and there was something not quite right.
She looked like the top half of her body was displaced from the bottom half - like she was offset.She was tiny and haggard and slumped and filthy (like the woman who gets out of the bath in The Shining) but the weirdest thing was that the top of her body wasn't 'on' right -
I don't know how to describe this accurately but she was like something from Silent Hill.She eventually opened the door and immediately started pouring out this sickening obsequiousness
"Oh you're his daughter, you're so beautiful, your daddy tells me you're really clever, is this your child, let me take her to the shops to buy sweeties,
you're such a kind person to come and help your daddy out, so beautiful and kind and clever" etc.I was frozen in horror at how she looked, how she was behaving and the unspeakable stench coming from inside, until she offered to take my daughter -
I politely refused, scooped my daughter into my arms and walked in.There was blood smeared on the walls through the hallway.
There was dogshit and spoiled dogfood on the floor.There was vomit in the bathroom and kitchen.
There was a pair of knickers with a used sanitary towel in them on the living room floor.The spare bedroom, thankfully, looked clean and safe so I put my daughter in there and closed the door.
My dad was in the main bedroom, lying in the bed with his dogs lying beside him.He had a couple of stab wounds in his chest and arms and was wheezing.
Story goes; they had been on a bender and his GF had invited all the local winos in for a party.They got into a fight about it and she stabbed him and fled with some of the winos.
The only one who had stayed was nightmare woman.My dad thought he was dying and she did too, and she made him call me.
He told me not to call the ambulance and to stay there with him and keep him company while he died.Uh, no. My pal showed up and we restrained the dogs, got the cops and an ambulance, cleaned up the biohazards, and my dad lived to die another day.
Later I asked him about nightmare woman.
She was an alcoholic who'd been beaten down her whole life.Her own children had disowned her and she'd given up on life and thought she deserved to be beaten,
to the point that she had actually broken her pelvis and never got it fixed -
which explains the weird shape of her body and the lurching limp.My heart goes out to her, she had such a sad life and was so beaten and broken, yet kind and wanted to be liked.
She was murdered in a fire not long after - a guy she'd been living with locked her in a flat and set fire to it.
I hope she's resting in peace.Anyway, a withered old alcoholic lady with an off-set torso lurching down a shit-, vomit- and blood-stained hallway is the most horrific thing I've seen.
It was straight out of a nightmare. A living nightmare.I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had my daughter with me, because my instinct to protect her overrode my horror and panic.
Username: WorldWideWig

Saw some bad stuff while working at an animal shelter and weirdly, the worst was watching a kitten succumb to rabies.

All the roadkill cases and injured animals I could handle, but there was something so deeply horrifying about watching this tiny animal turn into something so... *wrong*.

We get a taped-up box with air holes, the lady says there's a sick kitten inside.

I take it to the back to get it in a kennel and gently slide the poor thing out. The box is covered in sticky spittle, and there's a big line of goopy, whitish drool from its mouth.

Its eyes are stuck open, the pupils as wide as they can get, but it's not reacting to anything.

I close the kennel door to go rush for our med person, and suddenly it's like the exorcist.

This tiny little kitten starts going like there's a bungee cord tied to its spine that's being used to yank it around the kennel.

It's just hurling itself every which direction without regard for its own safety or its surroundings, head lolling, crashing into walls.

It straight up looked like it was possessed or something, I've NEVER seen an animal move like that. But it was the sound that got me.

I can't even really describe it, it's like someone took the vocal cords out and started sawing at them with a violin bow in a tin can.

It was awful, just hideous, guttural, visceral wailing that sounded terrified, pained, and murderous all at once.

If you've ever heard a cat so mad it starts making that growly-screamy sound, imagine that on both inhale and exhale, but also underwater, amplified by about 5x, and put through a modulator. No noise that awful or that bone-chilling should ever come out of something so small.

I'm only a little ashamed to say that my fight or flight response kicked in upon witnessing this.

I, who had calmly secured and walked violently aggressive dogs nearly my size several times, who handled feral adult cats all day long (and sometimes lost fights with them) without so much as flutter of the heart, who stared down and bested a murderous rampaging goose in an enclosed space, *panicked*.

All the hairs on my arms and neck stood up, I felt like I was going to vomit, and my heart started pounding.

Jumped back automatically and crashed into the cleaning cart. I do feel a bit vindicated, tho, because every other cat in the room started hissing and growling as soon as they heard the poor thing start freaking out. I guess some things you just know by instinct.

There was nothing we could do, even with suspected rabies we had to just put it on quarantine because we were legally required to hold all strays for a business week.

So we couldn't even end its suffering, and no vet would take it because of the infection risk.

We ended up putting a towel behind the kennel door so

A) at least one edge of the strike zone would be padded,

B) its saliva wouldn't get out of the kennel,

and C) we wouldn't have to see it like that.

The last I saw of it, I pulled back the towel to peek in and see whether it was still alive. It was sitting in the back corner of the kennel, drool and blood in strands hanging down off its face, eyes staring straight ahead with pupils as big as midnight, swaying slowly back and forth. Most horror movie thing I've ever seen in my life, and honestly still the worst, even including the car strike cases both living and dead that I had the misfortune of being on call for.

The rabies kitten is still the one that haunts me most

Username: AlwaysWantsIceCream

I've got two big things that've been on my mind since they happened, I'll put them in chronological order.
First was online:
It was in a relatively small discord server that I had recently joined (and am still in).Someone joined, and after a few minutes of conversation with the members, they sent a video.
The video had a kid wearing a pretty awful Pennywise morph suit, so I figured it was just a meme...How fuckin Wrong I was.
I clicked (or rather, tapped, since I was on a laptop) on the video, expecting to get a quick nose exhale out of it, perhaps even a mild chuckle,
but instead I got what will likely be a conversation with my therapist in 20 years time.Turns out it was one of those Al Qaida-esc beheading videos.
I'm not sure if it's because I have a shit memory, or because I've buried it within me, but I don't remember the details that well,
just the victim, and some of the background.It was in what seemed to be a concrete building, desert visible in the background.
He was wearing khaki pants, nothing more.I don't remember what the beheader looked like, but he shouted something in a language I don't understand, and then sawed the man's head off with a machete.I don't remember if it was the body or the head that fell to the floor, but what I do remember is his entire chest becoming red, and the video ending.
The video itself isn't what hit me though, but how I reacted.I'm not sure if I was in some form of shock, but I watched the video, clicked off it, pinged a mod, and carried on with my night.
It only hit me a few seconds later that I had just watched a man die in front of me, and hadn't batted an eye.My numbness to it is what shocked me the most, and I'm still not sure what that means today,
I believe (I don't remember when exactly it happened) a year later.The second was in real life, recently at that.
I didn't see it, but I was told about it, and looking back, heard it happen.January 24, this year, at about 10:30-11 at night, I heard a thud upstairs (my room is in the basement) and thought nothing of it.
I was still up playing Minecraft, even though my mother had scolded me only an hour earlier.At about 11:30 my mother came in, figuring I was still up, with a phone in her hand, my father on the other end.
She was visibly upset, but I didn't think much of it, figuring some relative I didn't know had finally kicked the bucket.Fuck was I wrong.
That thud I heard was the sound that shattered my world.Loki, my best friend since we had brought him home about 8 years earlier, had fallen down the stairs, rupturing a tumor no one knew he had.
He had bled to death at the vet.
Cancer had been slowly killing my only true friend for months, and I was oblivious to it.He was a mutt, and we believed he was a mix of Pittbull, Boxer, and Ridgeback, meaning that he should have lived to about 15.
He died at 8.
He was supposed to be with me until college, but 2020 just had to get one last lick in post mortem.I didn't even get to say goodbye.
No funeral was held, he was cremated quietly, and all I have in memoriam of him is a paw print of ash.
Less than an hour is all it took to change my life.Sorry that I went on a rant there, I haven't really had a chance to talk about it, and whenever I've tried I just clam up and brush off any attempt I had made as 'nothing'.
Username: [deleted]

Worked in shipping at a well known company for a few years when I left university for the first time. Standard stuff, loading and unloading trucks.

I was a standout so I often helped stay late and had a good relationship with management so I had their ear and vice versa.

I was being groomed for management at the time so I also started getting to know more uppers like the trailer switchers and truck drivers.

One such guy, let's call him Jim, was the guy who checked the yard to make sure everything was as it should be.

He'd radio in from the yard every 5-10 minutes with updates.

Well one night, we stopped hearing from Jim.

It was the end of the night, most people in my station had already been scaled out as the night went on.

At this point it was just management, trainers, and the other standout loaders like myself who wanted to advance.

Like 25 people total spread out over several football fields of warehouse floor. We would close out and seal the trucks, then bring down the bay door.

At this time of the year, it was summer and we liked moving air, so we left the bay doors open by a foot or two to keep air flow possible.

As we waited for an update from Jim, my manager asked me to see if I could see Jim from the gaps in the bay doors.

Now normally, while working, you can only see a few feet out the door's gap because of the angle when standing.

As I crouched down to look outside, I see the whole yard. About 50 yards to the right, I see it.

A long, dark red streak. I see flesh, entrails, and finally, the rest of Jim's body strewn across the pavement.

I couldn't even get up to call my manager before I realized what I was seeing and started puking.

He heard me and came over, and almost followed suit. I heard him mutter a quick prayer before he got up and reported it and did what he was supposed to do.

I respected him a lot already, but that was something I respected even more at the time.

He was a lot different at work after that, we all were, honestly, those of us who saw it.

The company took quick measures to update policy, reflective vests and whatnot. There was an investigation. One of my friends dad's was police chief.

The company didn't cooperate, there was a long battle to figure out what really happened. It's assumed he got ran over and got dragged along, but I don't know how the driver wouldn't have realized something. We wondered why the company would've been uncooperative.

To protect a driver? Over a guy who was killed in a higher position? None of it made sense. I no longer work there, but this was just one of many stories I have from my years there.

Username: Gaddrik

Was a volunteer fire fighter for 4/5 years when I was 15 to 20.
Seen a handful of crazy accidents.Because we were very rural I had the opportunity to see and do things differently than even full time career fire fighters.
Including riding in the ambulance over an hour down an empty highway while I held a mans head together .When we arrived at the hospital and they opened the ambulance doors I could hear blood running out the door and hitting the ground.
I looked towards the sound intime to see the doctor look up from his feet and he said “all the doctors are on call they are on there way in but can you stay and help me?” .My hands were keeping this guys head together at this point so just kept holding on while they worked on him.
They covered me in lead blankets and every left the room while they x rayed it.It was just me and the injured guy and I was looking through the glass at the doctors and nurses almost reverse what you would see on tv .
The surgeon arrived and explained that as long as I’m ok to continue helping it would be best to leave me holding his head and that it will be very difficult to switch me out .He offered directions while we sewed the mans head back together .
I was 18. It was fucked up but not traumatizing .Actually it helped me decide that I wanted to be a full time fire fighter because I thought “not everyone can handle this but some people have to.
I guess I can be one of those people” then I hurt myself pretty bad and had to alter career choices (worked out for the better love me job)
Also a fatal snowmobile accident where the guys head hit a tree doing something over 100km.Bad communication made it seem like maybe someone in a cottage was not breathing so was underdressed and unprepared.
He was a few km out somewhere on the frozen lake .
I hopped on the back of a snowmobile driven by his friend.His friends were all panicking and not communicating properly what had happened .
I was driven out on a snowmobile behind a stranger freezing cold .The second I took the victims helmet off it had brains coming out his ears and was very visibly dead.
I had 4 adult men screaming at me to help him but I knew he was instantly dead.I started to do cpr to calm them down while they yelled at me and I waited for support ( I was first to arrived followed a few minutes by my colleagues)
they guy that drove me was just puking in his hands and knees .A senior fire fighter came and starting to organize the scene which now had a bunch of secondary victims due to the trauma they were witnessing.
So much blood came out of him that it attracted wolves.Took 4 hours for coroners office to arrive (who was 1 lady)
I had to put the guy in a body bag and zipped it close with my own hands .
Username: Ginga_Ninja006

I saw someone burn once. It was horrible.

I was at a friend's house when I was around 16.

We thought her mom was the coolest.

She had just gotten divorced from my friends dad and she went full wild child.

Staying out all night drinking, parting, she dyed her hair blue and took us to a Metallica concert. Looking back, its just sad and absolutely horrible parenting.

But, as 16 year olds we thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I was over one night and my friend and I were watching scary movies in her room.

Her mom and her boyfriend started arguing, my friend said it was normal and they always argued when they drank.

Her mom came into my friends room with her hair soaking wet and asked for a lighter.

She was a smoker so I didn't think anything of it. As she left, she turned to her daughter and said 'I love you, goodbye'.

It was weird, but my friend didn't think anything of it so we just continued watching the movie.

A few minutes later, mom's boyfriend comes running in telling us she is on fire in the backyard.

We ran out, and there she was.. in the back yard, on fire.

She had soaked herself in gasoline (hence the wet hair..) and lit herself on fire.

I could hear her crying. I couldn't move, I had no clue what to do.

Eventually my friend got the hose and put her mom out (DON'T EVER DO THIS! Smother the flames). I called the police.

The police came, and an ambulance.

I called my mom but when the ambulance left the police wouldn't leave us alone with moms boyfriend because he was acting fucking nuts.

The police likely didn't believe his story that she lit herself on fire and wouldn't leave children alone with him. Police actually being good humans.

They took us to the hospital, my friends mom had to be helicoptered to a bigger hospital and the police told my parents and my friends dad to meet us there.

The worst thing I ever saw was when we were waiting for our parents and the hospital let us see her before she had been cleaned and wrapped.

Once they clean a burn victim, they have to go in a clean room because they have no skin to prevent infection.

But she was just laying in a hospital bed.

She had no skin, just charred bits of what was once flesh. They put her in a medically induced coma so she wasn't conscious.

The smell in that room... I can't explain it.

It was something out of a horror movie. I was 16 and was not able to handle that. They should not have let us see her that way.

She had 3rd degree burns over 50% of her body, but somehow she survived. She has no ears or fingers and is in constant pain.

She also has a pretty bad addiction to pain meds, but honestly who can blame her.

Username: Byzantium42

I've told this one elsewhere, but it's still the most horrific to me, so here goes:

I spent alot of time in and around the ER as a kid because my mother was an ER nurse and it was a small, pastoral town where I could pretty much walk wherever I wanted to go; and I was a complete mama's boy, so being around her always made me kinda happy.

This cowboy comes limping in one morning.

Normally when they're limping it's because they were thrown and dragged, or pinched, and have a broken ankle. Tough sons of bitches.

This kid was younger than most, maybe just old enough to drink.

And when he pulls his boot off to show the admitting nurse, he's got a livid red rash radiating outward from the level of his ankle.

They got him a bed when they realized the center of the rash was starting to go septic, but they couldn't get him to a ward because they were full up.

This was in the morning before school. It isn't until 10-12 hours later that I'm coming by to walk Mom home that I see the guy is still in his bed.

Mom said it wasn't good when I asked about it.

The rash is halfway up his shin by now and weeping fluid. It's gone black in places.

The gossip among the hens is that he's go flesh-eating bacteria and the doctor has told him he's got to have a below-the-knee amputation if he wants to live.

I'm waiting for Mom, which usually took a while because she couldn't very well drop things and leave when a patient is bleeding out on her. And I'm sitting in one of the empty beds next door, and I can peek through the partition.

The doctor comes in, and the kid gives his answer: He'd rather die.

He's spent most of his life outdoors. And since a prosthetic won't let him live his life the way he wants to live it, he's okay with dying. The doctor stares at him for a bit, says okay, and walks out.

About twenty minutes later a nurse comes in, gives the cowboy an injection "to make him comfortable," and the cowboy is out like a light in under a minute.

The doctor comes back in with a couple guys who've been introduced to me in the past as surgeons.

The doc says that since the kid is unconscious and incapable of giving informed consent, in his medical opinion they must amputate the leg.

The surgeons look over the chart, examine the leg, and concur.

They then draw straws to see which one of them gets to cut off the leg!

The one who wins pumps his fist, jumps on tiptoes, does a little dance, then positively skips to go scrub up. I've never seen such sick joy before.

Pretty soon, a couple orderlies come to take the bed to the OR, and somehow watching that poor unconscious bastard being wheeled away like a side of meat, knowing the surgeon is gleefully awaiting with blades sharpened, was the most horrific thing I've ever seen.

It combined violation of free will, helplessness, and all the terrible things that potentially go on in hospitals in one grim little package.

Nightmares of that fucking butcher's shop wake me screaming sometimes. I never went back to visit Mom again. And she still wonders why.

Username: Throwaway2744

I thought I'd be somewhat immune. I've seen all the horrors the internet has to offer. But the powers that be sure do have an interesting sense of humor, don't they?

My dad was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.

While my family stood around and asked questions, I just stepped out of the room and broke down.

Save for a nurse that walked by and asked me if I was alright, no one knew I did it.

The next couple of years I watched the paralysis slowly spread from one arm to the other, down to his legs, up to his throat, and into his chest.

I watched a strong outdoorsman kind of guy become so weak that he couldn't even lift a finger, or turn his head, or even breathe for himself.

And to have all this thrust into my face. My mom and I were his caregivers, almost 24/7 for years.

I thought that maybe I had overcome horror. How naive I was.

And it gets better. I listened to my family, both immediate and extended, continue to pray and think that things will get better.

Every time he seemed to show some improvement, that was it, he was getting better.

For years the expensive medication that does nothing but is the only 'treatment' for Lou Gehrig's disease ravaged the savings my parents had worked so hard to save for themselves.

Something like a thousand dollars a month, for something that prolongs life a few months, but doesn't slow the disease.

So you get a couple of more months at the end of your life when you're 100% paralyzed.

Still further, the rabbit hole goes. He begged for death for months before he actually died.

His doctor made it very clear that he wouldn't help him die, or prescribe him anything that could be used to that effect. He begged for death, barely moving his lips.

And at the end, what was it that killed him? A nurse with a syringe full of morphine.

When my mom finally collapsed from exhaustion, we had to call hospice and arrange a visit for respite care.

In such a visit, he would stay at their facility for a few days while my mom and I recovered and got some rest.

His breathing was okay during the day, but at night he would fight sleep, thinking he would die.

And indeed, he was probably experiencing sleep apnea. That's why he wanted to die.

The phone call came on day 2 of respite care, and somehow I already knew what it was. As soon as the phone rang.

So there I was in the middle of this.

Completely bound from mercy by unrelenting law, too completely exhausted for true emotion, and completely surrounded by people who literally believed Jesus would heal him with a flick of a wrist and that it would be done.

When it was all over, I took a little vacation. I had some me time.

I checked into a hotel an hour away in someplace rural.

Just to center myself and grieve properly. I couldn't do it there, I had to be the pillar of strength.

That was the most horrific thing I've ever witnessed.

A terrible disease that plays out over years requiring 24/7 care. A system that blindly values life over everything else.

A family that believed so strongly in God, that no plans were made up until that phone call came. It was true horror on all levels.

Username: Hristix

Saw a house blow up and a woman jump out of her window on fire.

Backstory: I was in Junior High, in an acting class at the time.

We were practicing a small script we were going to do that day, and I, like always, found ways to be distracted.

I started staring out the window of the classroom and just kind of spaced out.

That changed quickly once the house that I was looking at when up in flames with a loud explosion. I was the only one in the classroom to see it.

I didn’t even know how to tell my teacher what happened, but everyone was terrified by the sound alone.

I told her that a house had just blown up, and she quickly got on the phone with the police.

The house was immediately up in flames. Moments after, the woman who was living there jumped out of her window. All of her clothes were on fire.

She was screaming at the top of her lungs and began stripping and rolling on the ground in an attempt to get it to stop.

Lucky for her, one of the gym classes was out doing the mile test around the school at the time, and our male gym teacher ran up and helped put her out.

The woman managed to recover, but suffered severe burns. I won’t ever forget that moment, or her screams.

Some of the students who were running the mile were directly across the street from the house and were hit by shrapnel and cut by glass. I unfortunately had to see the panic in some of their eyes in those very moments.

The house was a kind of strange anomaly for quite some time prior to this event.

There was speculation that the woman was mentally ill, as there was nearly unintelligible religious writing all over the outside of her house.

It’s very likely that she shouldn’t have been living alone. It also makes you wonder why she was allowed to live that close to a school.

There are a few possible reasons for the explosion. This is all speculation, as after the initial police report, things went very quiet:

Suicide attempt. She turned on her gas stove, eventually leading to the explosion in an attempt to kill herself. Once she was on fire, she realized that it was a mistake.

Negligence/forgetfulness. Still caused by something like the stove, but due to it being left on accidentally.

Meth lab explosion. Meth was booming (pun unintended) in our town at the time and still is. They could’ve had a lab set up somewhere in the home.

Regardless of the cause, it was a terrifying experience. I’ve been in a serious car wreck and seen my fair share of scarring things in my life, but this definitely tops them all.

Bonus story: we were on the interstate going through Georgia on our way to Florida.

I was looking out the window and glanced over at another road we were driving by. There wasn’t much traffic, even though the interstate was bopping.

I saw a car pulled over on the side of this road and saw a man dragging something out of the back seat. It was a large black bag and seemed to be close to the size of a human.

I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing and told myself that there was probably another explanation besides someone dropping a body there, but I don’t know.

I wish I would’ve had them in my line of sight for longer so I could truly know. It stuck with me, for some reason, even though it was about 5-6 seconds and could have been totally innocuous. When I told my parents after the fact, they told me “just forget about it.” I was 11 at the time. Needless to say, I didn’t.

Username: skyler_po72

As a first year student in Huddersfield I haunted a pub called The Zetland. One evening I went with a few friends. The pub was on a busy ring road, across from the poly.

As the five of us were walking up to go in, we could see a shortish, slim kid arguing with the bouncer on the door. He was threatening the bouncer with all sorts of crap, yelling and swearing at him, but the bouncer did the bouncer thing - just standing there and making sure this kid was not getting into the pub. We went in.

Got some pints in, then sat at a table in the middle of the room. I was facing the door.

Evidently, the shorty with the attitude problem had decided to get insistent, and tried to barge his way past the security and into the place.

The noise of him yelling further threats of death and destruction could be heard inside, and a small crowd were edging to the door to get better reception.

Another bouncer inside the pub heard and saw, headed over to the door, opened it and went outside.

Now faced with two security professionals, the nutter decided to go all in, and tried to rush them, which had predictable results. He just got politely but firmly blocked and pushed back. This happened a couple of times.

It was at this point that the door swung closed, and my view was blocked for a few seconds. We listened intently.

Suddenly the door was flung open, and the second bouncer came back in, signalling to the bar. Clearly an instruction to call the rozzers for a jam sandwich taxi to free overnight accommodation.

Things were escalating.

The kid was framed perfectly in the door, and I could see as he stepped backward from bouncer#1 with his arms open wide and his chest puffed out. The old 'come on then!' stance.

His step backwards was poorly executed. Only the tips of his toes touched any pavement.

The rest of his foot made contact with nothing but thin air, and he slipped and tumbled backwards into the ring road, arse first, and ending up lying face up in the road.

This is when the red mark one VW Golf appeared in my view and ran over his chest, making a loud 'pop' similar to what you might expect to hear from a bursting carrier bag.

The car came to a halt surprisingly quickly, trapping our erstwhile hero underneath after having dragged him a matter of a few yards.

Evidently, I wasn't the only person to get this front-seat experience, as half the pub collectively lost their shit,

and the other half swiftly made their way outside to get the VW off the top of the kid.

About eight of us lifted the car off our new friend, and I remember the woman at the wheel frozen with awful realisation of what she'd just been involved in.

I did feel sorry for her. She was going to need almost as much help as the budget gangsta that had just spent thirty seconds getting an MOT inspector's view of her remoulds.

Ambulances came, people were carted off to hospital. No idea what happened to anyone.

I'll never forget that 'pop' though.

Username: GunstarCowboy

I'm just straight copying this from my post a few months ago on a similar question:

Back in the late 90s, I managed a porn store.

The business was basically separated into the sales floor, with all the videos and toys and whatnot, and the "arcade", which was a bunch of booths with video screens in there.

The customers would put in dollars, and watch movies for a few minutes. A lot of other things went on back there, obviously.

There were signs posted prohibiting it, but that was just to satisfy the city ordinances.

One day, it had been a slow morning, and the only person in the store other than me was a homeless guy named Dap that I would let hang out inside when it was cold outside. This was in January in Kansas City, so it was pretty cold that day. My shift started at 8am, and I had already been there a few hours, just listening to music and chatting with Dap.

At around 12pm, a couple more customers came in. One was just wandering the sales floor, looking at videos. The other one went directly into the arcade.

A few minutes later, he comes out and looks a bit spooked. He comes up to me, and in very broken English says something like "Man back there, very bad, very bad."

I assumed this "man back there" tried to hook up with the Mexican guy, and the Mexican guy was upset about it.

So, I grab my flashlight (very little light back there) and figure I'm just going to go back and tell him to knock it off. Dap comes with me, saying he's got my back, in case the guy gets aggressive, which could definitely happen.

So, Dap and I start wandering back there, looking into each booth (there were 12 of them) for this man.

We get into the "back alley" which is where the glory holes were, and is where you go if you want to hook up. In the second to last booth on that row, we saw what "very bad, very bad" meant.

Before I describe it, I need to explain the setup of the booths. They were small, probably 4 to 5 feet square, with the door on the south end, the video monitor on the north end,

and on east and west, there's a hole cut into the wall for "watching" other people (but really, they're for sticking your dick in to get it sucked, obviously).

There's a metal stool with a round seat that swivels, and it's bolted to the concrete floor, right in the center of the little room.

This man had to have been there since before my shift started, because for hours the only person who had come in was Dap.

The sales counter was next to the only door to the business, which beeps when it's opened.

So I would have known if someone had come in. He was wedged into the corner of the booth, with his ass in the "northeast" corner, and he was on his back. His legs were bent back over his body, and wedged under the stool.

He was fully, unnaturally, folded in half. He had used the stool to leverage himself into a position where he could suck his own dick.

Dap says: "Ffffffffuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk...." To which I reply: "Holy shit. What the fuck?" Then Dap says "I don't think he's breathing man. You gotta give him CPR or something."

I tried talking to the guy first: "Sir! Sir? Can you hear me?"

Nothing. So I sort of nudged at him with my foot. Suddenly, I hear a wet plop, and it sounds like someone is dumping a thick liquid all over the floor. It reeks of alcohol and vomit.

The man is making a rasping, shuddery gasping sound, and there's a sickening gurgle in his throat. His breathing sounded fucking awful, but he was breathing, at least.

I turned to Dap and said "good enough for me," and we ran out of the arcade so I could call 911.

So, soon there is a fire engine, an ambulance, and a police car outside the store. The firemen had to actually cut part of the booth away, as well as the stool, just to get the guy out of there.

They told me that he was clearly dangerously drunk before he even attempted it,

but he had also managed to crack vertebrae in his attempt to suck himself off. He made it, but it definitely wasn't worth it.

Who knows how long he had been unable to breathe? I sincerely doubt he survived much longer than that. I knew it was bad when they were saying they'd never seen anything even remotely close to this in their line of work.

We joked about it, but it definitely gave me some fucked up nightmares for a while.

Username: Cubbance

Dodged a bomb blast (1000kg of explosive) by being 5 minutes away from the ground zero which killed 18 people and more than 100 people lost arms and legs.

This happened to me. This is from the days when I used to live back home (I used to live in Karachi, Pakistan but now moved to UK).

We used live very close to a CID (Police Investigation Department aka Pakistani FBI) building which we all were unaware of and always thought it was just an ordinary government building till on 11th, Nov 2010.

On that day I around evening time coming home from work I thought I better hit the gym (because they had a sauna and after being tired from all day work that sounded like a good idea) which was hardly 0.3 miles away so I decided to walk to the gym.

I change quickly and leave for the gym and start walking towards the gym.

This is almost I've hardly walked like 10 minutes and I'm 0.1 miles away roughly and all of a sudden for a nano second I feel that ground is shaking and the next thing I hear is a loudest bang I've ever heard followed by a pressure kick into my chest.

Now to let you guys know, my both the ear started bleeding because the bang was so loud and for the reference the kick in the chest was as bad as Big Show wearing military boots and kicking you in the chest straight
with full force.

Next thing? I'm on the ground covering my ears because they are in agony and covered in dirt trying to figure out what's happening.

As I am trying to figure out I can see all the cars alarms have gone off.

Anything made up of glass has been shattered in roughly 1-2 miles area. I'm still trying to figure out what has happened and I start smelling gun powder and as if someone is making a BBQ and is being burnt.

I will always remember that smell which was something unsettling. Next things rock and dust particle starts landing on me and the surrounding areas which had 1-1.5 inches long of pieces of human skin and flesh.

I am not believing that I have another human skin piece stuck to my arm. I brush up my clothes and arms getting up and covering my ear recovering from that pressure kick.

As I move closer to a spot in a street where I am hearing loads of people screaming and crying I see a few 3-5ft cracks between some walls of the building which have been destroyed by the shockwave of the bang.

I see the gap between a wall and move into the area where I see these scenes straight from a Hollywood movie where people are crying, cars on fire and dead bodies on the ground.

By this time I'm thinking its a bomb blast and that's what has happened. As I move closer I see a 10ft and 30ft wide crater which has been filled with the water and the building which was a CID building is no longer there.

There are hundreds of people lying on the ground crying for help as some of them don't even have legs or limbs or some don't have their complete bottom.

I am still in a state of shock looking around and I see a woman crying and hitting herself because she had her husband dead who's legs and torso was missing. I seen that later. I see several people without legs, brains out and no limbs.

One thing, which haunted me for sure was a 18-20yr old guy who was dead and lying on the floor towards his chest on the floor with his neck turned towards me.

I can still remember him looking straight into my eyes.

His feet were flipped the other way around. After the police arrived and media arrived I came back home after it got crowded.

After I came home after the dusk everyday, I would see that 18-20yr old boy standing and starring into my eyes. I would wake up screaming through out the night and see that guy standing at the door way just staring at me.

For two to three weeks I would see this guy regularly during midnight standing in my hallway staring through my soul. I still remember that guy's face and the shockwave and the sound of the blast.

Username: [deleted]

Hard to even start. I served as a combat medic. Plenty of fucked up shit there. Now work as a traffic officer (uk) and a lot of my calls are for accidents.

The fucked thing is, it’s harder to deal with death on the road than it is than with the guys who were wounded/killed around me during our tours.

I’ve seen children and or parents decapitated, people crying to help in a trapped vehicle, bodies in the middle of the road after multiple hits at 70mph. A lot of things I’ve managed to overcome.

Unusually, the worst thing is definitely when my neighbour was found unresponsive by her 7 year old nephew.

I heard his scream (he never made that sound in the 6 years I knew him so I knew it wasn’t good).

She had no pulse. I got to work and managed to get her heart beating but I will never forget her eyes. I saved her body, but not the person inside.

She was gone. I’d never experienced a person in a vegetative state like that before and it’s the one that keeps me awake at night.

I’ve looked at many dead bodies and seen there eyes, but this was another level for me.

Maybe because mentally, to me, she was alive but had death in her eyes. She died 4 hours later after all the work I and the paramedics put in.

I think about that poor child on a daily basis. He was living with his auntie through losing his mother and father to a fire and he just found his auntie gone, slumped over on a couch.

I’ll forever remember that woman’s face. It’s been 3 years and it haunts me harder than any of the lads I tried to convince were fine when they lost a limb or were bleeding heavily from a hit.

I tried to take some time away from either field but the ptsd is too much.

Being in that situation, dealing with it at the time, I’m calm, collected and take charge of the situation. I thrive in that environment.

When I’m home however, I’m almost an absent father to my 5&7 year olds. Voices, emotions and flashbacks that will never leave.

Irony is, I spend my time relaxing by playing shooters. Therapist thinks the gunshots etc soothe me. Who knows. My wife is the greatest help in the world.

She’s a nurse in a&e so she has an understanding of what I went through and go through.

But my god, she is my mountain on the top of my head keeping me grounded and stable. She just knows when I’m not doing well. And she goes above and beyond to make me comfortable.

She is my everything and if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. 4 times I’ve attempted to kill myself.

Then I think of her in those final moments and I can’t do it. She’s worked too hard with me to lose me like that.

Stay safe people. And I’m deeply sorry for those who have been here to comment on the hard times they’ve experienced.

I done/do it is a job, no civy should ever have to experience the hard hitting shit and I will extend an open invitation to talk about anything in a dm.

It’s easy to open up to a stranger. Feel free to lay some shit on me if you want. You can’t rant and rave if you need.

Username: GentleAnusTickler

I was in Tel Aviv for the Easter Week in 2006. Checking out the sites and whatnot. I was coming back from Carmel Market with my carrot drink (Three carrots, one orange. Best damn thing ever).

After a half hour I was getting hungry and being Passover as well I decided to go to eat somewhere where they didn't give a shit about the rules (And I was tired of all these crackers) so I ended up at a crowded Shawarma stand on recommendation from a hippie at Carmel Market playing the Hang.

Long story short, got there. A bomb ripped through the place. After what seemed like minutes I got up, tripped. It was like I was drunk.

Then I threw up. The weird thing was that I was more embarassed that the crowd saw me throw up than the chaos around me so I tried to act casual and play it off like nothing happened.

I even mentioned to a lady that that guy threw up. I pointed to one of the bodies on the ground, although at the time I just pointed to my side, while leaning against a wall. I thought I was placing blame on a living person.

I also thought I had carrot juice all over me. Then I realised that it was that deep purple colour blood gets when it pools. I think 8 died.

The most amazing thing was the extremely quick action by the Israelis. Besides the quick arrival of medical and military help, the citizens seemed like pros. Just moved in and started helping, meanwhile tourists were either dead, screaming/crying, or stumbling around like idiots (Me).

So I got the hell out of there and back to where I was working, Dahab. Dahab is in Sinai, which is essentially a Bedouin settlement. It's also really popular with religious folk because of the whole Mt. Sinai 10 commandments thing.

Nearby resorts like Sharm el Sheikh are infested with British tourists because they could fly there from London for under $80 (In 2006 when there were wicked discount lines) and basically trash the pace, talk loudly about how they don't have this or that but back home they do, and puke in the Red Sea while topless (Much like our Cancun).

The Bedouins also don't like westerners. They don't like Egyptians either I suppose. It's what happens when your home is overrun by idiots and the ruling gov't you don't recognize treats you like second class citizens. Lots of violence.

As a result, Sinai is filled with so many checkpoints and armed guards that it makes Israel look like a daycare.

Dahab is still touristy but very, very laid back. They call it the Jamaica of the Middle East. Soft drugs fall on your lap. Hash especially.

Perfect Sea, thatch huts, mostly chilled Europeans from Switzerland from what I could make out, and some fellow Canadians.

The big Hilton was out of town so those tourists never really came in.

So I am back, nursing my wounds and relaxing as my employer gave me an extra week off to recover.

I was at a makeshift computer cafe about to Sype my family when another bomb blew out the hotel next to me.

Then two others I guess. Luckily, I was on the far side of the building near the back wall so no debris hit me.

In a split second I decided to redeem myself from the shameful showing at Tel Aviv...and bolted to the sea.

In my defense there were multiple bombs and I wasn't sure if there would be more.

So I watched for a minute and ran back to the site at full speed only to see a much worse situation than days earlier.

Then I threw up. It was worse than a gore film. The squishy noises as you walked on blood soaked parts and items.

The smell. I pass out if I'm not laying down while giving blood. I believe close to 25 died and 100 or so were injured.

To cap it all off, the quickest way out for the place I needed to get to next was Tel Aviv via Jordan.

I ended up being interrogated in a back room for 3 hours and strip searched by admittedly hot guards.

I guess it doesn't help being Canadian, carrying multiple passports (Only to get into certain countries after Israel) and being whiter than white when you've traveled solo in less than friendly countries and were coincidentally in two suicide bombings.

Username: relationship_tom

This is nowhere nearly as bad as tons of the other stuff in this thread, but I figured I'd share anyway since it's something that constantly replays in my mind. There are four horrifying things, to me, in this story.

When I was 13, my mom had a brain aneurysm - right in front of us, right at the table. We were having stew for dinner that evening, and suddenly her face went blank, and she fell face first into it. It was like a cartoon.

My step dad jumped up to help her, called 911, and then just stayed with her. He was trying to walk her down the hall and she started complaining that the right side of her body refused to work, and that she couldn't move any part of it (it turned out that the aneurysm was in the left side of her brain.)

Then she started throwing up, so he carried her into the bathroom and she knelt next to the toilet, vomiting and crying (to this day, I have a large fear of vomiting.)

When the ambulance finally arrived, she said goodbye to our pet pig (we had a pig living in the kitchen - my mom was always more fond of animals than of me) and was taken away.

When she got back that evening, the doctor had basically given her Tylenol, told her it was a really bad migraine, and that she should go to sleep.

In the early morning, far before any of us were due to be awake, my dad woke me up. Apparently she had been found sitting cross-legged in the walk-in closet, waving a pair of jeans in front of her own face saying "Wow.. look at all of the pretty china.."

She couldn't hold her head up, and my dad asked me to hold it up for her since she was refusing to lay down, and was sitting in the kitchen by a window.

So I did. (He was preparing his truck to take her to the hospital.) While I was holding her head up, she tried to grab coffee grains to drink - I told her that it wasn't coffee, and she said I was wrong.

Then she tried to grab the butter to eat - I asked her if she wanted toast, and she said, "NO, SUBTOTAL, THIS IS WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW." and started to eat it. She was also "smoking" (cigarette, but not lit) the whole time.

This time, the hospital was like "oops" and she was immediately flown out for surgery. She apparently died for 3 full minutes while on the table, but came back. During some of the visits, some strange things happened:

- She couldn't remember that her parents had died, so she had to be re-told and it affected her just as much that time as the first time

- She couldn't remember my Step-Dad, but remembered my Dad

- She couldn't remember why her brother didn't speak to her (it's because she is generally a terrible person)

- She would watch hockey (my mom was very anti-sports)

- She would say strange things about shows she was watching - once, she watched a lion catch a zebra and said "looks like that lion has a nice snack" - very not mom-ish

- Her first words upon waking up in the hospital?" "SUBTOTAL, GET IN HERE - STOP BUGGING PEOPLE." (I was 3 hours away at that point.)

It took 6 months of ICU and physio for her to be able to come home. The whole time, my Step-Dad stayed with her as much as he could - he even shared an apartment with my mom's ex in order to be closer to the hospital she was at. That's commitment.

**TL;DR with BONUS CONTENT:**

- Mother had a brain aneurysm right in front of me - got to witness some interesting brain typos.

- Doctors sent my mother home claiming it was just a migraine

- Mother died on the table for 3 minutes - she, who was once a staunch Atheist, returned home as a Christian, claiming to have seen Heaven and her family waiting for her

- Possible the most horrifying portion of all of this to me - my mother, a terrible person at best, did not use this opportunity to better herself; she instead left my Step-Father and got with a man who taught her how to try and scam people

Username: [deleted]

In Guatemala on a mission trip back in my believing days.

My group made the 4 hour drive from the compound in the city to the village where we'd be staying and building chicken coops and such. A village of about 13 families.

We stayed for 3 nights to get an idea of what needed to be done and to experience the lifestyle a bit. Then we drove back for 2 nights to get proper supplies, stock up food and water, etc.

The morning that we are packed and set to go, we receive word that the majority of the villagers had attended a wedding a few villages away.

They had hitchhiked/used whatever bits of money they had/traded tortillas for a ride in a big open-back semi-type truck. And that truck went too fast on a curve and fell down a hill, with people flying out left and right.

We left ahead of schedule and made way to the hospital closest to the village.

As the head adults go in, I was put in charge (since I spoke the best Spanish of the people not going into the hospital) of going to the nearby pharmacies and buying as much ibuprofen, gauze, etc. as possible.

We scrambled around and found the supplies at various little stores.

When we (me, my younger brother, and 2 other guys from my church) get back to the bus, the villagers were being brought out of the hospital.

Out of about 30 that had been on the truck, 9 had died, including 2 kids.

We climbed into the back of our bus with the supplies, clothes, guitar, etc. and let the injured sit in the seats.

We made them sandwiches from the back of the bus since they hadn't eaten in 2 days and helped clean their bandages since the hospital was unable to keep them.

We got a doctor from another village and added him to our crew.

When we returned to the village, those who had stayed behind (mostly women) ran to help the injured, discovering quickly who hadn't made it back.

A number of wives fell to their knees with that gut-wrenching cry that only a new widow and mother of 6 can make.

With her children trying to hug her but unsure why mommy was crying.

Everyone had burns, some had broken bones, and others had severe injuries.

But the most horrifying thing I ever witnessed came a few days later when one of the women from the accident (who had lost her husband) gave birth.

It was a stillborn. And she held it in her arms, rocking back and forth, crying out for hours on end.

She was one of the few people in the village who spoke Spanish (the rest spoke only a tribal dialect) so I was able to understand what she was saying.

A grieving mother/widow is devastating to hear.

Username: nipplicious

I saw two brothers shot in the head at Golden Corral as I was leaving.

I was a paramedic at the time, and had a duty to act.

There wasn't 4 people, there was 6 in the SUV getaway car, and I identified each and every one of them and had to go to court.

The worst of this was my brother overdosed 5 months prior to this, and I thought I was over and done with it emotionally after using CPR to keep him alive til the medics came (that's another story for a different time)

and lo and behold just as fate would have it, I was there when those two boys were shot execution style, one in the back of the head dead instantly, and the other was shot in the neck once or twice.

Once I saw the suspects speed off I ran over to the truck the other one was still alive in, he was holding his throat, blood spurting out and painting the inside of his white pickup completely red.

I took my shirt off and called 911 while I tried to stop some bleeding, just to help.

Mind you, I was BARELY a paramedic at this point and I had no other choice but to act and try and help seeing as he was alive.

I'm on the phone, relaying the information, getting pointers from this lady who happened to be a paramedic for 25 years, and she's coaching me on what to do and I'm trying my damned best,

the guy is losing too much blood, his brother is dead, he's just looking at him with his brains splattered all over the pavement next to skull fragments and pieces of his scalp...

I'm starting to cry because I found out they were brothers then and there while his oldest brother is gasping, trying to drag himself to his baby brother while muttering "Mom, I'm sorry" over and over until he finally died.

A crowd started to gather, I'm crying profusely, and kids are getting their phones out and their parents are just watching and I freaked out yelling "GET THOSE KIDS OUT OF HERE, NOW!" and kept repeating it,

and I got seriously fucking pissed these people were yelling 'worldstar' and I snapped and looked at their parents and told them they needed to get their kids out of here.

Some older black fella lost his shit too and yelled at everyone to get in their cars and leave, and they did.

The ambulance finally arrived, I hung up the phone and cops started questioning me for two hours.

His brother was shot over a measly drug deal gone wrong, who wouldn't have been there that night if it weren't for his oldest brother wanting to hang out and catch up with him.

I knew this kid at Ed White Highschool BTW, I knew his mother, I knew his father. His older brother was a known drug dealer and he was caught slipping at Golden Corral by another drug dealer wanting to know who was selling on his turf.

His little brother did not know any of this. Why this is the worst thing I ever seen was because of the bloodshed and randomness of it,

I was celebrating with my girlfriend at the time of my son's announcement, and I just started to get over my brothers problems with drugs which tore my family in two and then this happens,
I saw a friend die, and his brother eventually died from wounds to his neck. First hand, blood on me, my shirt, hands, pants.

I quit being a paramedic and undertook therapy sessions to get my head on straight the next day because I developed PTSD over the course of the last few months and this happening reinforced it.

I refused any interviews, I donated my last paycheck to their mother for the funeral, whatever it was. I went to court and successfully identified those people, I also identified their getaway driver who was in the audience at the hearings, and was placed under witness protection.

Not a day goes by where I wonder about how fragile life is and how easily life can be taken.

Edit: Want to know the most fucked up shit, too?

As soon as this happened, the manager of that Golden Corral walks out with a bunch of his staff after everyone was told to leave, this guy lets out the biggest sigh and pretentiously says: "EVERYONE DO NOT SPEAK TO THE PRESS, NO INTERVIEWS, JUST CLEAN UP AND
FORGET IT"...

The next year they moved locations down the road

Username: [deleted]

May be too late, maybe not, oh well here it goes. Throw away because of legal reasons.

Now a few years back when I was a in my last year of high school, I had everything going for me.

School was going great, homecoming was coming up and I was looking forward to that since I was going to get a solo when playing on the field with the band.

Looking back, I can say that I was spoiled and a bit of a bitch, but that is in the past now.

Anyways, it is Saturday afternoon and my little brother was at a Jr. ROTC like thing over in the next town.

I had finished up my homework and was playing online games that both my father and I loved to play together in our spare time.

I had a head ache that morning so my mother and father went out to pick up my little brother from his ROTC thing and bring him back home, now normally I would do this but not today.

So they left around 3pm in the afternoon after we finished up some pizza and said they would be home later.

Now normally when my patients go out if there is something they need to do, like shopping or something, then they will do that when they are out to save money.

Granted, we were not in the best place with money and my mother and father were fighting a lot over it at the time but hey, we had a house and food and everyone was okay and safe that is all that we needed. Right? Right.

So when around 7pm starts to roll around I'm wondering where they are, called a few times but it just went to voice mail. Eh, that is alright, it happens from time to time.

So having a car and money I went out to go get something to eat thinking that they would not be home for a long time, must have driven down to the city to do some important.

So I get in my used car and start to drive into town. Now this stretch of highway was known for accidents, I myself has had a car accident my sophomore year on this road. (This is important.)

So the traffic was backed up for a while and I knew at once that there was another car accident.

After about 30 min I had made my way up to pass the accenct. Normally I would not give a passing glace so not to hold up traffic but...something told me to do so that day.

Looking over to my right was, well what was the amendments of my family tiny car.

It was so messed up that I had to make sure that it was a *my* family car and not just a look alike that someone else has owning.

The engine was pushed into the front seat where the front end of the car was so smashed in that it made the car half its own length.

I start to panic and pull over on the other side of the road and ran to one of the officers working the scene . And to this day I will never forgoet what I saw.

My mother, father, and little brother who where all alive and well just a few hours before where inside the car hanging onto life.

My father was driving that day and took the most damnge. From where I was just a few yards away he looked to be dead, the engen was IN his chest, not on or pushed up to no it was IN his chest.

My mother was in the seat next to him and was hitting him weakly yelling at him to stay awake and don't you dare leave me.

We live out in the boondocks so it took a while to get the right equment out to the cars to get my mother and father out of the car. Now thankfuly in the back seat was my little brother unharmed but scared and crying.

The man who hit them was fine, not a single cut or bruise on him. He was also high out of his mind on something and was screaming and yelling that it was all my partents falt. And he is going to sue them and this and that.

After proving to the people in charge that I was family I was alowed to accomeny my brother to the hospital since I was over 18 at the time and my mother was sent to a diffrent hospital due to her ingures and my father was life flighted to one about a hour away in another state becase of how bad his ingerus where.

And you now what the most distrubing thing is? Not the fact that I just watched my world shatter into a 1000 shards, or that i had no idea what was going to happen, or if my dad was even still alive at that point!

Now I had to ride in the ambulance with the man who hit my family with my little brother. Not only was this very against the law and very dangerous, but we had no say in it and I didn't know at the time that it was.

My brother way scared and I had to sit there silently watching this smug man look at me and my little brother spouting off about how he is going to sue us, that this was all our fault.

Just to sit there and look at your familys may be killer was un neaving and disturbing.

(Everyone is alive in the end, but my father is now in a wheelchair for life, with extreme brain damage. The man is in jail now. )

Username: throw12244

I'm an EMT. My first call was an unresponsive older male with labored breathing.

Me and the paramedic I'm with arrive on scene to two Firefighter-EMTs talking to the guy's female relative, we thought it was his sister, though I can't remember if we ever figured out for sure what she meant to him.

Anyways, guy's house was a wreck, cigarette ashes and empty beer cans everywhere, we walked through the shit up to our ankles.

It was like a weird snowfall of trash that we had to crunch and wade through.

Lying on the floor on his side was the guy, naked, covered in fleas and making infrequent, gurgled breaths. The smell was atrocious.

We flip him over and he's bloated, lips swollen to hell, his navel prolapsed with a giant bloody hematoma.

One eye swollen shut, the other half open and dried out. He was covered in a film of decaying.

Bacteria/fungus forming over his skin. He was 'breathing,' in that he sucked air through his swollen lips every few seconds.

From the looks of things he'd most likely fallen and hit his head, or collapsed from a medical issue while home alone.

We attached the cardiac monitor to see that he was in asystole, as in a flatline. He was dead and had been so for a while.

The four of us heaved the corpse onto the stretcher and the paramedic had me do chest compressions as if we were working a code.

In retrospect I assume he had me do it for the sake of the family member. When I pushed on his chest I felt his ribs crunch and form a small, bowl-like indentation.

CPR normally breaks the ribs but they tend not to bow like that, his chest cavity just collapsed.

We carted him to the hospital in the ambulance. We worked him like a code for the sake of it, at the discretion of the paramedic.

Other than him sucking and pushing air with his 'breathing' there were no signs of life what-so-ever.

The only rhythm he had was from me pushing on his chest.

We arrive to the hospital and he's declared as soon as we wheel him in.

We all just kinda stared at him sucking at air like a fish for a while before they took him over to the morgue, he was still slurping air through those bloated lips when they wheeled him away from the ER.

That one, dried out, dead eye staring at the florescent lights.

Dead bodies will expel air as they decay and fill with gaseous byproducts of decay.

You'll hear a corpse burp or sigh as these air bubbles come out of the body.

It was just weird watching this thing pull air in and push it out at a seemingly normal rate of respiration.

It's lips would suck into his mouth as air moved into the throat, then flap out as the air escaped again.

If you didn't know better you might think was in some weird state of almost-dead-but-not-quite, but everything aside from the odd air movements indicated he had been dead for a least a couple days...

So yeah, not the most tragic thing I've seen, or the most gruesome, but pretty weird. Never seen a body 'breathe' in and out like that before.

The one open eye lookin' at me didn't help either I guess.

Of all the lives I've seen end that dead guy's face still pops in my head from time to time, the uncanny nature of it sticks with me I suppose.

No heartrate, body is in decay, bloated and flea-ridden, but he 'breathes,' looking out with the one half-open eye...

The medically scientific part of me checks the boxes off the list and go "Dead with some weird air escape," but the little voice in the back of my head goes "It did look like there might've been something in that body, though..."

I prefer the gored corpses and wrinkled old cadavers, a lot less creepy than the bloated kinda-breathing things.

Username: jim_dude