Call it luck or the grace of God, these people share the times they narrowly avoided disaster.
Saved By A Hot Pocket
“Hubs, my sister, and I were hanging out around my parents’ house on a very boring 4th of July. We decided to wash my husband’s new car sitting in the driveway because it was hot out and an excuse to play in the hose.
We were literally walking out the front door, and I said ‘Eh, we should eat lunch before we get all wet and stuff’, and everyone agreed, so we turned around and went back inside.
I was warming up something in the microwave (a hot pocket I think), and all of a sudden I hear the loudest BANG I think I’ve ever heard, from the direction of the front door. Hubs and I look at each other wide-eyed and run outside.
I was greeted by the back-end of a Crown Vic, smoking something fierce, plowed into the tree in the middle of our yard. For a split-second I was just stunned, then screamed to my sister inside to call 911. I looked over to the driveway, at the car we had been planning to wash just five minutes ago.
Totaled. Completely totaled. Brand new 2011 G6, destroyed. Guy hit it so hard it did a complete 90-degree turn across the driveway. He actually hit it so hard, it ended up ricocheting and hitting the other cars in the driveway, mauling 2 other cars. Yard was messed up, Crown Vic was totaled, the tree was mangled.
We immediately assumed it was inebriated driving, being the 4th and all…I went over to the driver’s side and found a very old man, very bewildered, unable to comprehend what I was saying but conscious. I will never forget the look he gave me – confused, helpless, scared. I was on the line with the paramedics as they sent over the ambulances, and tried my best to follow their instructions. (My sister was only 14 at the time, so I handled the call)
Turns out dude was diabetic and had passed out behind the wheel due to low blood sugar, hit the gas pedal with his weight as he passed out, and was plowing down our residential street at about 65mph. He jumped the curb, drove down the sidewalk past another house, then slammed into my husband’s car, and subsequently, the tree.
If we had been anywhere near that yard/driveway, I have no doubt one or all of us would have been seriously injured or dead. It was sheer dumb luck and timing that saved us. Huge bullet dodged…or should I say, huge car dodged.”
Two Bullets Dodged In One Day
“A couple of years back I was at school and I texted my dealer asking if it was cool to swing by and pick up some weed. He texted that it was a good time for me to come through so I started the roughly 10-minute walk to his place. Now my dealer was okay using Venmo but preferred cash, and I decided to be nice and stopped at the ATM. There was a police car parked near his apartment building, but it was a college town so its not uncommon and no one was in it so I didn’t really think much of it at the time. I didn’t know this at the time but there was another cop as well at EMTs parked on the other side of the building that I couldn’t see. I walked up the stairs to his apartment and knocked on a door and a cop answers. I’m peeing myself at this point because I thought I was busted.
The cop invited me inside which made me poop a brick but was weird because in the room the five roommates were sitting on the couch talking to an officer while the EMT was checking out my dealer who was stabbed. The roommates were robbed of their wallets and some other valuables as well as the large jar of herb. One of the roommates told me they were robbed and that they would explain later and so i just left.
In the maybe 15 minutes since I checked with my dealer, three men broke in and robbed them with a deadly weapon, and the police showed up so I think I dodged two bullets”
She Saved Me From Something Horrible
“Years ago I lived in Vancouver and liked to go for long walks (a beautiful city to do so). I was heading to a friend’s first to drop something off and cut through a neighborhood with a lot of Southeast Asian immigrants (the ones I got to talk to were mostly from Vietnam). I was aware of a van behind me but it was mid-day and there were people out, so it was only a passing thought.
A lady was working in her garden and as I approached her house she started to look behind me. Then she came out onto the sidewalk and started talking to me in her native language. I understood none of it but her body language was agitated. She kept gesturing to me to come with her up to their walkway. As I looked behind me I see three men getting out of the van, which is now parked just behind me. By this point, the woman has a good grip on my arm and has dragged me almost to her porch. She kept talking to me and pointing to stuff in her garden and I just listened, nodded, and kept a good eye on the men and van. I don’t remember how long we were there but the men finally left. Both the woman and I let out huge sighs of relief. She then patted me on the arm, said something, and then went back to her gardening. I hoofed it to my friend’s house.
On the news, the next day was the story of a woman who was kidnapped and violated. The victim was grabbed on the next street over from the woman’s house, not long after my encounter with her, by five men in a van. The men were distinctive and the description of the men and van fit the ones I had seen.
That woman saved me from something horrible and I am forever thankful.”
A Great Way To Get Your Arm Lobbed Off
“Not me, but I had a field service engineer working on one of my big robotic liquid handlers. He decided to bypass the safety pin that prevents the heads from moving while the cover is open while he had a diagnostic program queued up on the computer. What he didn’t know was that the instant he reinserted the safety pin the machine would execute the queued instructions and start moving, and he had a hand inside it right in the danger zone.
I grabbed his shoulder and yanked his hand out an instant before it was crushed. He stopped ignoring me when I told him to stop bypassing safety lockouts to save a few minutes.”
A Concert He Wouldn’t Have Returned From
“I was living in Paris during the fall of 2015 for my semester study abroad in college, my apartment was right by Republique and every Friday night I had a standing reservation at Le Petit Cambodge, a local Cambodian restaurant that had the best wake up at 2 am dream worthy noodles. Cue November 11th, my best friend who was studying in Scotland calls me crying that they’ve been dumped and was hoping I could come for the weekend, I was a little reluctant because I had wanted to go to the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan that Friday but hadn’t gotten my tickets yet so said sure and booked a flight for that Friday afternoon, November 13th. When I landed and made it to their apartment after we went out to dinner I turned on my phone to hundreds of messages, turns out both Le Petit Cambodge and the Bataclan had been targeted by Isis and there were more terrorist hits going on in my neighborhood. The best thing my friends ex did was dump them, otherwise I’m would have been either at dinner or a concert and more than likely wouldn’t be here to write this.”
Almost Watched A Terrible Movie
“My GF and I were going to see Cats, the movie. Our Uber pulls up and straight away we notice something about the driver. To this day, we can’t articulate what it was, other than to say he just felt “off”. We got into he car, already hesitating and a touch anxious. He looks at us in the rearview mirror and makes a comment like ‘two lovely ladies in my car tonight’ or some weird stuff. A few minutes in, he makes another semi-innapropriate innuendo comment about “riding” with him. My friend notices the handle of a knife just poking out the side of his jacket. She says “hey can we stop at 7-11, we need to grab a Gatorade real quick.” So we go in and refuse to come back out. We’re considering whether to call the Police or not (it was so creepy, but what would we say? “Ah, some dude was creepy to us?) And while we’re hesitating, he winds down his window, brandishes this hunting knife at both of us, screams something about devil-women, and then just tears it out the parking lot.
To this day, my GF and I are so thankful that we got out of that Uber. Otherwise, we would have made it to the movies in time and we would have seen Cats.”
He Almost Got Flattened
“I stayed up all night before a daytrip to Hong Kong. You know that daze when you haven’t slept, you’re just kinda robotic and doing the human stuff, nearly zero awareness of anything?
Well, I went to cross a street and my friend behind me SNATCHED my shoulder and yanked me backwards just in time to feel the WHOOSH of a doubledecker bus breezing past us. I just looked at him like “oh, thanks man” and it took a whole extra minute for my brain to process I would be fucken ded had he not grabbed me.”
The Truth Was In The Apple Watch
“My ex-husband! He told me he wanted a divorce, but I didn’t. He agreed to work on our relationship and give it a few months. We set a date and went to work, and he acted like things were changing and he wasn’t going to leave. He started encouraging me to take out debt and spend money out of our savings, etc.
Turns out that he was lying to me and had every intention of leaving on the date we set and “crushing” me emotionally so I’d hate him forever, and was encouraging me to take out debt since it was all in my name and he’d get half the savings. I only found out his little scheme because he gave me his Apple Watch (that we’d just purchased) while he was working on something and I read his messages because I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right. For those of you that don’t know, if you delete a message on your phone, it doesn’t automatically delete it from your Apple Watch. I found a few hundred messages to his best friend and mom talking about how much better he could do than me, he had feelings for a coworker and knew she wanted him too (spoiler alert, she didn’t, she’s just a nice lady), he hated me and I was the worst decision he’d ever made, he never really had feelings for me anyway, etc. It was a bunch of savage, cruel stuff. Finding it rocked me to my core. I’d never imagined anyone could hate me like that, let alone someone I was married to!
This happened like two weeks after he’d initially sat me down to talk. We were in public and I cried after finding the messages. I went up to him, held up his watch, and quietly told him I knew his plans and to find a different ride home. His smile dropped and the color drained from his face so quick. I went straight home and by the time he arrived, I’d packed him a bag of essentials, left it on the doorstep, and called both his mom and best friend to let them know he’d be needing a place to stay. He was crying and we hashed it out on the steps, which wasn’t my proudest moment. I won’t lie though, to see him cry after what he had said about me was so satisfying.
The next day, I had the locks changed. By the end of the day after that, I had all of his stuff packed and waiting neatly in the living room for him to pick up. By the end of that month, I had filed for divorce and we were officially and legally done forever.
He’s a loser and I absolutely dodged a bullet. It’s been a long road to rebuilding my trust in people, though. I’m definitely better off having gone through the whole situation, and while looking back it was the best thing that could have happened, it absolutely sucked to go through.”
Getting Ghosted Saved Her The Trouble
“My high school sweetheart and fiance was my bullet.
He ghosted me out of nowhere, no explanation… just gone. So needless to say, no wedding. I sent the ring back to his mom cos I didn’t want it and was ticked off. I go on to live a great life, find a wonderful guy and we have been happily married for 21 years.
25 years later I find out that my old flame had been arrested for underage solicitation, harassing underage girls, possession of CP, and many charges of violating minors. Apparently, Mr. Big Man in his Community was arrested in a sting operation after this 12-year-old girl’s parents found a whole series of explicit texts and had found that he set up a ‘romantic’ hotel room get-together for them. Police pretended to be her and he was caught in the parking lot of the hotel. Even better, he was married to the same chick he was apparently seeing while we were together and had a couple of kids. All around the same age as his victims.
Yeah… before finding all this out, I regretted for a long time that we didn’t work. After finding out this had been going on for at least 20 years…I was rather glad I got ghosted!
Never been so glad to dodge a bullet.”
Lucky Grandpa
“My great grandfather was in the merchant navy in the war. He was in the engine room at the bottom of the ship and his friend came down to take over the shift early. Minutes later a torpedo struck and everyone at the bottom of the ship couldn’t escape and died. My great grandfather would’ve been one of them otherwise. Then, he was in the sea for a while and happened to be picked up by some Portuguese fisherman who saved him. Then, all part of the same tale, he escaped death again. He was meant to be on a flight back to the U.K. but got kicked off last minute to be replaced by VIPs. That plane got shot down and everyone died in it. Miss you great grandpa.”
Dating A Killer
“Well, about 15 years ago I dated a guy for less than a year. It was an awful, abusive relationship and I was happy to get out of it when I did.
About… 8-9 years ago, I saw him on the news. He strangled his girlfriend to death. He then dismembered her and lived with her body for a month or so before he was caught.
Not a SERIAL killer… but I dated a killer.
He was not a killer at the time.
We were young and met on a dating website. He went to my high school but graduated a few years before me. The first… month? Was ok.
Then he changed.
We had a huge fight one time because he said something silly. I don’t even remember what it was, but I playfully threw a pillow at him. He immediately flipped out, punched a hole in my door and told me he’d make it so I would never have anything to come back to.
Another time, he FINALLY got a job. Didn’t have one when I met him and I was paying for everything. After job searching for months, he got one. It’s his first few days at his new job, and all of a sudden he doesn’t want to go in. No reason, he just doesn’t feel like it. I tell him he better get to that job or he’s going to lose it. After a lot if arguing, he gets ready and we both get in the car so I can drive him to work. As I’m driving, it gets MORE heated and he starts strangling me while I’m at a red light. The red light was right next to a gas station and I pull in there while his hands are around my throat. I manage to get him off me and I get out of the car and scream, ‘What the heck?!’
‘I’m sorry. I blacked out. You just… ticked me off so much! I told you I didn’t want to go to work!’
The relationship lasted less than a year. He cheated on me with some girl, and for the first and only time in my life, I was GLAD someone was cheating on me. You can go live with her and be someone else’s problem now.
Then years later when I saw him on the news, I felt really bad for that thought.
He had handcuffed his then-girlfriend (who had just had his baby) to the bed and strangled her to death. He thought she had cheated on him. He then dismembered her body and lived with it for a month in their apartment. Eventually, the smell tipped some people off along with his GF not being seen by family in a bit.
The baby was ok though and was taken in by the girl’s family.
He went on the run, but was later caught and is currently in prison.”
Crazy, Crazy, Crazy
“About 10 years ago, I was in a relationship with someone, and she became pregnant. We were only a few months in, and I was terrified. But I did the right thing, stuck with her, did my best to help her through her pregnancy, turned my whole life upside down… sold my house to move to the other end of the city where her daughter went to school (she was divorced, had a kid with her ex-husband).
Everything was going great until she became pregnant. We were having a lot of fun and enjoyed each other’s company very much. The instant she became pregnant, it was like a switch had been flipped. She became a straight-up psycho. It wasn’t just hormones from pregnancy… this was a whole other level. She was psychologically and verbally abusive. She took being unreasonable and belligerent to a whole new level. I asked what she wanted for dinner one night, and she responded with ‘You should KNOW what I want for dinner! You’re supposed to just MAKE it!’ And it turned into an hours-long fight over how the heck I’m supposed to know what SHE wants for dinner. Apparently, I wasn’t in tune with her enough to know and that was an unforgivable error. This is one of the hundreds of little things she did to make me feel like a piece of trash. She NEVER missed a chance to take a shot at me. Miss my turn while driving somewhere, and have to turn around? I’m the most embarrassing boyfriend she’s ever had, and she can’t believe she even ALLOWS me to drive anymore. Stuff like that, all day, every day. It was demoralizing, and I was broken for years because of her abuse.
Anyway, we move into the new house, and within a month, she leaves me. So all this nonsense I did to turn my life upside down… I sold a house and bought a new one, which costs a lot of money in real estate fees/moving fees, and it was a more expensive home. Worse than that, I now had to deal with this freaking psycho for the next 18 years because she was carrying my baby.
On top of all this, she had been cheating on me and was with her ex-BF now. That’s who she was moving in with.
But I was going to be a dad, which was cool I guess. Wished it was under different circumstances, but not having to see her every day was going to be nice.
About a week before she gave birth, I ask if it’s okay if I’m there when the child is born. She says ‘I really need another guy to be there.’
‘I’m okay with that if he is.’
‘I gotta tell you something. There’s a chance it’s not your baby.’
And after fighting with her for 3 months to get the baby’s blood type, it was inconclusive whose baby it was. So we went to the DNA test. Which she fought against me about, finally caving after I laid out in text everything she had done to me, and now she was leaving this question of whether or not I have a child unanswered.
It wasn’t my baby. Bullet dodged. This was an enormous relief. Having to deal with her for 18 years while we co-raised a child would have been a nightmare. I had witnessed how she handled literally EVERY COMMUNICATION with her ex-husband (not the same guy she cheated on me with and moved in with). She was really awful to him. It didn’t matter what it was about, she always found a way to start a fight.”