Yahoo Lifestyle "He Was Stalking Me For Months": 18 Harrowing Stories Of People Escaping Death That Will Send Shivers Down Your Spine
Note: This post contains mentions of murder and violence. Please proceed with caution.
Recently, redditor iam_egg2009 asked the r/AskReddit community to share how they were nearly killed and how they managed to survive. Here are the jaw-dropping and terrifying stories people have shared of nearly becoming murder victims.
1."Got shot in the abdomen during a house invasion. I was bleeding out, and the only thing that kept me alive was focusing on my breath and my buddy smacking me across the face and telling me, 'Nobody dies from a shot to the stomach.' Obviously, lying to me, but it helped keep me focused, and I guess the doctors, too, when I made it to the hospital."
2."I worked as a bouncer and had a few drunk people who got violent. I got very good at dodging thrown bottles. One day, I get the usual call to come and give someone the walk of shame. Well, I grab his shoulder and start walking him out, and before I realize something's happened, he stabbed me in the thigh and was about to go for my throat before he got glassed by a patron. After a few stitches and a funny walk for a few weeks, I was fine, but that guy always got free drinks. His only problem with glassing the dude was, 'Well, now I've got no beer. That's a bit sad.'"
3."Not sure if I was nearly murdered, but someone threatened me with a knife, probably trying to rob me. However, at that point, I was on the phone with my dad because my mom had an accident, and I completely ignored the guy. I think he just let me go because he realized how stressed I was."
4."My ex-wife tried to hit me with a car three times. I would be walking on the street, and she would come roaring out of parking lots. It was evident she would pull into the parking spaces and stay hidden for a long time before coming at me. She hit me twice. The first time, I went to the hospital, and the second time, it was minor."
5."A father killed his wife, then came to the school looking to kill his son. The staff convinced him his son was not there once he threatened to kill everyone in my class. He was caught in Indiana on his way to kill his parents. He had schizophrenia, could not afford his medicine anymore, and had an episode where he thought the world was ending, so he was going to kill his family so they would not suffer. Him holding a knife at someone's grandmother's throat while yelling, 'I'll kill them all; they are already dead,' was extremely terrifying to a class of 7-year-olds."
6."I was coming home from my restaurant job at like 2 a.m. I stopped at a sketchy Walgreens to grab some snacks and was getting into my car when a dude ran up behind me, yelling, 'My friend! My friend! Please, you must help me!' Startled, I turned and saw a large man in front of me. He started frantically explaining that he had just arrived from Haiti and desperately needed a ride to his friend's house to reunite with his family. The giant earthquake in Haiti had just happened. Normally, I try to help everyone I can, but this dude gave me weird vibes."
"I politely declined, and he got aggressive, and I ended up just hopping into my car and driving quickly away. The next morning, I saw on the news that he had convinced two young girls to give him a ride.
He pulled out a knife and forced them to drive about a hundred miles away. He then made them park on a side road somewhere and stabbed them. One died, and the other ran away and got help. He got shot by the police trying to get away."
7."When I was a kid, my little brother had a mild obsession with knives, to the point where he collected them under his pillow. Once, for reasons I've forgotten since, he got mad at me and stabbed me in the back, literally, with a seam ripper. Had he used any of the knives under his pillow, I'd be dead now."
8."When I was 23, I was robbed at gunpoint by a guy who was about my age, maybe a bit younger. I disassociated immediately after the encounter, so my memories of the event are sort of in the third person and weird, but I remember he asked me if I had any valuables that he hadn't already taken while he was pointing the gun in my face. I told him he could check my pockets. He briefly got this look of shame on his face and let me go. I guess pointing a gun is impersonal, but reaching into a woman's front and butt pockets felt wrongly intimate and crossed a boundary for him. FWIW, the only 'valuables' he got were $14, an almost three-year-old Android phone, and a third-generation Kindle."
9."I was 16. My friends and I were out in the woods with a .22 rifle, some cans, and zombie targets. I finished my lil' magazine and handed the rifle to a buddy. I went out to set up the cans and targets back up, and a shot whizzed past my left ear within two inches. I walked up to him, grabbed the rifle, and punched him straight in the face. He was ostracized from the group not long after that."
10."I got stabbed in the chest a few years ago during a fight with some bike thieves. I didn't notice then, so I escaped the fight and rode the bike away. Then I checked myself and discovered lots of blood. I went to a nearby shop, sat down inside, put my finger in the hole, and called the ambulance. I had a punctured lung and blood in the pleural cavity, but I was otherwise OK. The lad that did it went to prison."
11."I was kidnapped, beaten, and had a gun held to my head while in the vehicle. I just agreed with everything he said, apologized for who knows what, and promised to do whatever he said and not call the police. He let me out of the car at my workplace, and I immediately went in and called the police. I felt dumb for years afterward, but now I realize that whatever I did to survive was the correct thing to do at the time."
12."When I was 7 years old, I was locked in a dog kennel I barely fit into by my mom's boyfriend's kids. They took the kennel out to the above-ground pool and held it on the edge, joking like they were going to drop it. They ended up doing just that, and I was under in seconds. The plate at the bottom of the kennel made it hard for them to pull it back out, so they had to turn it on its side and then pull it out. They didn't bother setting me down, though; they just dropped me. I remember the feeling of my hands crammed through the holes in the kennel with grass between them. I heard some arguing and what I assumed was fighting. The old brother came to my rescue and let me out. I slept in his room for the rest of the summer until I went home to my dad's."
13."When I was an early teenager, I went to a friend's house whose older sister was having a party. It had alcohol, but very limited. Her parents were home, and we mostly played video games and cards. But more people than expected showed up, including some people who had already graduated. This one guy was a former high school jock loser who started making fun of me/hitting on me. The parents asked him to leave, and he did, making a bit of a fuss but eventually walking out."
"I was all upset and crying and wanted to go home, but home was a mile-ish walk through some woods and dark roads, so her parents told me they would drive me home in a bit when the party was over.
I was still upset and very dumb, so after a bit, I snuck out and walked home.
A few hundred yards from my house, someone hit me with something (I was told it was a baseball bat) and stabbed me in the stomach several times. I do not remember any of this, nor do I remember someone finding me bleeding in a ditch and taking me to a hospital.
If I had been there for much more time, I probably would have bled out and died in a ditch."
14."I had sex with a girl I met at work. She apparently had a boyfriend who found out about her infidelity. He was stalking me for months that followed. One night, I looked outside my window and saw the guy standing in the shadows beside my house. I didn't leave out of fear for quite some time. The guy was later executed for several unrelated murders he committed. I would have been one of them had I not seen him hiding that night."
15."A cartel tried to kidnap me and my parents in Mexico. I was expecting a decision from a top law school program and was hellbent on coming back home. Three trucks blocked us in, but the one on the driver's side didn't pull up far enough to block us in all the way. Masked men got out of the vehicles and surrounded us with assault rifles, banging on the glass and trying to shatter it. I began yelling at the masked men, telling them, 'You're going to regret this.' My parents were frozen, and I started yelling at my mom to put the car into drive, pop the curb, and not look back. She did, and we got away, luckily. In America, we are taught to comply, but my instincts told me otherwise in Mexico, and I'm so glad I listened to them. I got into the program and realized the little powerless girl in my childhood became a fearless, fast-thinking badass."
16."When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, my friends and I were playing ding dong ditch (knocking on doors and running away). We knocked on this door two or three times, and the guy was mad. The older guys convinced me to knock on the door one more time and even made a deal that I wouldn't have to knock on a door again for weeks. So I took it. I ran up to the door, and before I even finished knocking, the door swung open at light speed. The guy who owned the house grabbed me, picked me up like how you'd pick up a baby (I guess I was still pretty small), took me inside, closed the door, and had a knife in his hand."
"The knife was pretty close to me, but I think after a few seconds, he kind of realized it was a bit much and that I was a kid and not some older teenager, so he tried hiding it behind him. He told me never to come near his house again and asked if I understood.
Being really scared, I just nodded and didn't even speak. He put me down, opened the door, and I ran. I never told my parents because I was scared I'd get in trouble for knocking on the door in the first place, but that was pretty scary."
17."When I was about five years old, my family was having dinner at a family friend's house. They had a kid my age, so we went to his room to play after dinner. I don't remember what happened, but my dad said that he realized that after a while of playing, we suddenly weren't making any noise. And anyone who has kids knows that kids going from making a ton of noise to no noise is a bad sign. So he went upstairs to check on us, thinking we had broken something. When he opened the door to the room, he saw me lying on the ground and the kid choking me by pressing his foot against my windpipe while smiling. My dad shoved him off of me, obviously, since I'm typing this, and as far as I'm aware, I didn't have any brain damage from losing oxygen."
18."I was letting a guy who had fallen on hard times stay with me for a bit. He was difficult to live with, but I was understanding. He also carried more than his weight on household chores, but he crossed a few too many lines, mostly through absent-mindedness or misunderstanding. He finally crossed one willfully and knowingly that really pissed me off. Later that day, I told him he had 24 hours to get out of my house. He flew off his chain, as I expected he might have. Lots of yelling, threats, crying, and even hitting me occasionally. I recorded it all and reacted as little as possible. Finally, he charged into my bedroom with a knife."
"I didn't think that when I decided I was going to kick him out, he'd escalate to that level, but I knew it was a possibility and was ready for it. So I had my handgun on me. Luckily, he had trouble opening it, and I think he hesitated after charging at me. That gave me enough time to draw, and when he realized that, he ran to the other side of the house.
I went out to the porch and called the cops, and he told them a wildly different story that they believed was over mine at first. When they came out of the house to cuff me after all this, I told them I had a video. They let me show it to them, which quickly changed things."
If you have a similar story you feel comfortable sharing, feel free to comment below or fill out this anonymous form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.
