These stories will make you thankful to be alive!
All posts have been edited for clarity.
“I Had Three Choices”
“I was at the end of a two-hour journey about ten minutes from home, in a pretty rural area and I was probably complacent because I took the road every day. I took a bend at forty miles per hour, which I had done many times before, probably faster which looking back was really reckless. The legal limit was sixty miles per hour so I wasn’t breaking any speeding rules.
I didn’t see until it was too late that a car had spun out on the other side of the corner and another car had pulled up to help. I slammed on the breaks but I wasn’t going to stop in time before hitting the cars. I was hurtling straight towards the other cars and people who were standing in the road from the other crash. It was like time slowed down and I was at a crossroads.
In my mind, I had three choices. Continue on my path and hit the other cars and people, veer to the right and go into a field but there was oncoming traffic and there was a chance I would hit them, or veer to the left and fly into a wooded area. I chose the last option, and at the moment I knew the chances of me surviving or not being seriously injured after a forty-mile-per-hour head-on collision with a tree were pretty slim.
I just felt a complete peace come over me, turned the wheel, and woke up slumped over the steering wheel to some poor man shouting, ‘Oh my word, I think she’s dead.’
It turned out I passed out from shock or something before the impact so when I hit the tree I was completely floppy and this contributed to me having no serious injuries.
The front of my car was completely disintegrated, after coming to I tried to put my clutch down to take the car out of gear out of habit and my foot hit the tree trunk. The tree was absolutely fine.
I drove past that tree every day for years after and you could see the chunk my car took out of it.”
Trip To The Mountains
“My wife was pregnant and we went away for the weekend to a house we rented in the mountains. On the second day, she went to bed early and I stayed up drawing. At three o’clock in the morning, she came downstairs and said she was in a world of pain and was worried about the baby. It was two months before her due date.
We headed out and there was no cell reception. By the time we can call her doctor, we realized with the amount of time needed to get to a hospital that had the right level NICU we might as well head back to our hospital. Two hours later we were there and due to restrictions, I couldn’t come in.
It was freezing outside and they wouldn’t let me be anywhere in the hospital where I could lay down so I talked my way into some room in the lobby and tried to sleep while sitting. I got kicked out of there and just bummed around waiting for an update. Around noon, they said they would be keeping her for observation but I still needed to return the rental.
I drove back two hours and it started snowing pretty hard. It was a semi-rural area and if they did plow the snow they hadn’t gotten there yet. I was being careful and fighting off sleep. The roads were super winding and high in the mountains. At some point, the car started drifting across the double lines.
I did my best to even out but it completely got away from me. I slide through the opposite lane and continued to the shoulder. I saw the ledge and realized if the car didn’t stop I would plummet to my death. I had a brief moment where I thought about my daughter and the kid in my wife’s belly I hadn’t met yet. It felt like a stab in my heart and I went off the road completely.
Fortunately, there was enough snow in the space between the ledge to trap my car. I passed out in the crash but luckily a couple was a minute or two behind me and their honking snapped me out of it. They pulled me out of the car and went to get help because there was no service on the mountain. A couple of other people stopped including a guy who had a big pickup. We dug the car out some and rigged the rope so he was able to pull me out.
I had to be physically removed from both of these guys because I was hugging them so tightly. I was able to make it back to the hospital without anyone knowing. I told them after the kid was born. I sent my guardian angels pictures and hundred-dollar gift cards as if that’s adequate.”
Blue Hatchback
“When I was eighteen, I was driving through an intersection with the right of way going around forty miles per hour. A man in a blue hatchback decided to run the red light turning left. He was so close to me that I could see the whites of his eyes, and in a split second I thought, ‘I’m about to T-Bone this guy, driver side door, and he is going to die.’
Instinctively, I yanked on the wheel and swerved to the right, and instantly went over the curb and off the road, onto someone’s lawn. I slammed the brakes but because I was on grass the tires locked and the car kept the momentum. I went through their wooden fence and garden, and straight into the brick wall on the side of their house.
As soon as I went off the road, I one hundred percent thought I was going to die. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, but it did for the people close to me did. It could have only been a second or two but time seemed to slow down and my brain was racing. I thought about how my girlfriend would react, what my parents would say, what my friends would think, etc.
When the car hit the wall it punched a few bricks out of place and the entire front end of the vehicle caved in. The windows shattered, the tires exploded, the doors bent into an L shape and the car started to fill with smoke, however, the radio was still playing Vicarious by Tool. I was concussed by the airbag, broke my nose, jaw, two fingers, had whiplash, and my left knee was dislocated.
I was in shock and couldn’t believe what just happened was real, and so I just sat there freaking out. A group of parents from a birthday party across the street saw what happened and ran to the car and pulled me from it as they thought it was about to catch fire. The man in the hatchback drove away. If it wasn’t for the testimony of those parents who told the police they witnessed the man run the intersection and that I didn’t do anything wrong, I would have been completely liable for all of the property damage and additionally, insurance would not have replaced the vehicle as it would have been deemed at-fault.
I am glad nobody else got hurt.”
Ex-Boyfriend
“Two years ago I was sleeping in my then girlfriend’s bed with her and her two kids. Around three or four o’clock in the morning, I heard someone walking around in the room and opened my eyes to see her ex-boyfriend, who she had left months ago but wouldn’t leave her alone and ‘let her’ leave him, walking to turn the light on. As he turned the light on, I saw him grab a weapon from behind his back.
At this point, I was thinking that he was going to just turn and shoot me and I was worried about the kids getting hit. I went to roll onto my back to get up and as I rolled I got hit in the throat by his fist. I couldn’t swallow for a few seconds and thought to myself I needed to calm down and try to breathe before I panic. Once I realize my windpipe wasn’t crushed I sat up in the bed and told the kids to go hide in the closest.
At this point, he was screaming at me and I was barely awake. I got hit in the side of the head with the weapon but tried my best to move with it and sit back up. The screaming continued, girlfriend was screaming at him to leave and he hit me on the other side of the head. Once I sat back up again he pointed the weapon in my face while screaming. He finally decided that it wasn’t worth it or something and left through the door he broke in from, shot off his clip into a field across the street, and him and his friend drive off.
The cops were called and they got him not even an hour later, he is now in prison for twelve more years and I walked away with just a bad headache the next morning. I thought I was dead the moment I saw the weapon and luckily no one was seriously hurt.
The worse part of it all was the kids having to go through it and how many people told me they would have simply beaten him up. The dude had at least a hundred pounds on me and a weapon.”
Friend’s House
“About thirty years ago, when I was around six years old, I went to a friend’s house. My mom and I moved a lot since we were always renting, so I wasn’t great friends with this kid and my mom didn’t know their parents all too well.
Anyway, I was upstairs in the kid’s parent’s room. It was just him and me in there, sitting on the floor. He asked if I want to see something cool, obviously, I did. He pulled a box out from under his parent’s bed. It was a really nice, shiny wooden box. It was hefty. He had to put some strength into pulling it out. I couldn’t wait to see what was inside. He opened the clasps, lifted the lid, and pulled out a weapon.
I was initially curious and probably a little excited to see something I had only seen on television. He then pointed it directly at me. I freaked out immediately, tried to gain traction as I pushed my feet out from under me. I just fell back and kept pushing myself away from him, and the weapon, with my heels, my legs were jelly.
I quickly ended up in the hallway, at the top of the stairs, and just let myself fall back down the stairs. I rolled to the bottom, jumped up, looked directly at his startled mother, who was standing in the kitchen, none the wiser, and I bolted out the front door. As soon as I got home I told my mom. I remember her going over to their house, without me, immediately after. I never played with the kid again.
Driver’s License
“My friend and I just spent a few days at a beach shack. My friend just got her driver’s license. She was super excited so she wanted to drive us home but it was one of her first times driving alone. Being seventeen we didn’t really see an issue. I rang my dad beforehand and told him I was getting a lift.
He said, ‘I don’t think you should do that. I can come to pick you up. I can drive some of the girls home too. I think you guys should wait until she’s had more experience.’
Of course, being seventeen, thinking I knew everything, I said it was fine and I was hopping in her car.
We were on our way home, playing music and chatting, there were five, seventeen-year-olds in the car. I was sitting behind the driver’s seat. My friend pulled out onto a two one expressway, from a country road.
We noticed she turned the wrong way and told her to make a u-turn. She pulled to the side and decides to go for it through two lanes. She didn’t check her mirrors properly and a large truck was coming up behind us. My friend got frightened and put her foot on the break in the middle of both lanes. We were all screaming at her to keep driving but she was frozen.
I remember, it was like slow motion. I looked at every single one of my friends, we all kind of shared a moment of fear, like, ‘This is it, I guess.’
The exchanged looks haunt me. We could hear the truck horn blaring at us. I looked out my window to the truck driving toward us, I locked eyes with the truck driver. Luckily the truck stopped about five meters away from us.
She pulled away and was really upset. The car was silent the entire way back.
It was honestly the scariest moment. I am from a really small town and I think losing five people at once would really rock it. Seeing my friends’ faces at the moment was actually horrific. I did have a moment of, ‘Okay, here comes the truck,’ it was oddly peaceful.
After that day I had a real understanding that I am mortal and can go at any minute. Oh, and to trust my dad.”
“So I’m Dead”
“I was coming home from a party at two o’clock in the morning in 2016 and made a conscious choice to drive through town rather than take the big highway that skirts the city limits. It would add like ten minutes to the trip but it was the first time I had been back in ages.
The decision literally almost killed me. Not even five minutes after, the three-lane ‘highway’ passed in front of a mall, and there was a signal light there. Well, some hammered idiot decided to turn right into the mall from the far left lane, and I was in the middle lane. I had absolutely no time to stop so I slammed into the side of his car at sixty-five miles per hour. I remembered yelling and trying to keep control of the wheels to get the car off the road onto the grass before I blacked out for a few minutes.
The airbag and the seatbelt combined had fractured my sternum which took the air out of my lungs and made me faint. But it didn’t feel like I woke up more so like my vision came back into focus and I was aware. But those few moments I was still kind of conscious and in immense pain. It was the worst I had ever felt in my life. I hurt from the skin on the soles of my feet to my scalp. Every single inch was in pain and I was like, ‘So I’m dead, this is my body telling me I’m dead.’
So when I came to, the heat hit me because the engine was as hot as standing in a fire. I was convinced my car was about to go up in flames, so I tried to get out but the door was wedged shut from the crash and I started to panic. I put my back against the passenger seat and kicked the door over and over until it opened and climbed out.
Every single police officer, EMT, and even the tow truck guy, took one look at my car and told me ‘You shouldn’t have walked away from that crash at all. The fact that all you have is a fracture and some lacerations is a literal miracle.’
So yeah, that’s how I almost died and thought for sure I was dead but got lucky.”
“Apparently, I Looked Grey”
“At work, I fell ill and they sent me home because apparently, I looked grey. That night my head felt like it was going to explode to the point I started slamming my head against the wall to relieve it. My husband was absolutely terrified and wanted to call an ambulance but I refused thinking it was a bad headache.
Fast forward to things getting worse and to being taken to the hospital and them saying it was probably a migraine. I had migraines and this was no migraine. A quick-witted nurse saw how confused I was and took my temperature and did a urine test. I couldn’t remember my birthday, our son’s birthday, or even how to sign my name. As she was taking my temperature, she said, ‘Whoa whoa, have you taken your temp before? Your temp is one hundred and for!’
Suddenly all these alarms went off and I couldn’t move. My body felt like I was locked up in a giant cramp. I was having a fever-induced seizure but was conscious for the first bit. I saw just a storm of doctors, nurses, and equipment rushing into the assessment room. I thought my husband is going to get a call that I’m gone or a vegetable, my son won’t have his mother, and this kid in me won’t know life. Then nothingness.
Lucky for me, they just covered me in ice to bring down my temperature that stopped the seizure. They took me to ICU and sent me for an MRI and all I remembered was them telling me they may have to put me in a coma and whether or not I wanted my life to take priority over the life of the baby. They didn’t know if it was bacterial or viral for a day or two so no one could visit me in the ICU room. While sitting in the ICU room in total isolation, I had a lot to think about and really had to come to terms that I may not make it out of this and my baby may not either. You have to make your peace, stop fearing death, and get to work.
I wrote letters to loved ones thanks to a very brave and kind nurse’s help. I’m happy to report it ended up being viral meningitis. I fought hard and both myself and now my perfectly healthy three-year-old son are doing great. I still have the letters in my safe and hope I never need them handed out. It was a long road to recovery but I’ve never taken my health or life for granted again.”
Canals
“I almost died two years ago. It was the middle of February in the United Kingdom and I had a late-night date next to the canals with my significant other. We had a favorite place that didn’t have any street lights next to the path that led to a small foresty patch. We went out there so often we didn’t really need any lights anyway.
As we were on a lock, canal locks are spots where they raise the sides of the canal, make the water very deep to help barges through, I was lighting a smoke and accidentally fell in the seven-meter deep lock full of icy water. I immediately sank as my muscles and lungs reacted to the icy water by tensing up. I couldn’t move any muscles, I just heard the air bubbles passing by my ears. My eyes were open, it was pitch black, and it took me a few seconds to even realize what happened.
As I was sinking I thought, ‘Well this is a stupid way to die.’
It felt like someone has put dozens of belts around my body and kept tightening them. I thought of my mom, I really didn’t want to make her sad. I thought of my dog. I had zero air in my lungs. It’s not like when you’re watching a movie and try to keep your breath for as long as a character does whilst drowning. You have no air at all to hold on to. I was just trying to keep myself calm and not inhale water. It felt very long, I had so many images in my head but no narrative really. At the very last second, I’m guessing due to adrenaline I felt very warm and strong, got control of my limbs back.
I started kicking with my feet and pushing upwards with my arms. I didn’t get to the top when I inhaled water. But I was close enough to the top that my significant other could reach down for me and pull me. He couldn’t see anything either. He pulled me out and once I was back, I had a massive fit of laughter with uncontrollable shaking.
He was super worried and wanted to rush us back home but I said I just wanted to sit for a little and laugh. There was nothing funny. I was just happy to not die I guess.”
Rafting Trip
“My parents would always try to find opportunities to get my sister and me to be more active. My mom even went through a phase where she was convinced that my city-dwelling family could become outdoorsy and adventurous.
During the phase, she decided we would go tubing in a river in West Virginia. Basically, you sit in a tube like in a water park but you are in a river and have to paddle with your hands. We were given detailed instructions about what to do and what not to do, including the direction we were supposed to go in. We were supposed to follow a white sign that was very large and impossible to miss.
Another thing about my mother I? should include is that she loves ‘shortcuts.’ Even if she’s unfamiliar with an area, she’s always convinced that she knows a better, faster way to go somewhere. So, she didn’t follow the sign. The rest of my family follows her because we’re not just going to leave her by herself.
Right after we deviated from the path, we got caught in a fast rip current. My mom screamed at all of us to abandon the tubes and get on rocks, so we all did. As I? stood on my rock, watching the tubes and one of my shoes floating down the river, I? wondered how long it would take for us to die and then how long it would take for someone to find our bodies.
It turned out despite how dramatic I? was as a child, when you register for an activity like this with a reputable company and don’t come back they do come looking for you. So, we were found and rescued, but nobody has let my mom live it down to this day.”