Being a teacher these days has to be pretty scary.

Kids are unpredictable and volatile and, let’s face it: times have changed.

Check out these stories from AskReddit users about the scariest things they’ve seen students do.

1. Obsessed.

“I had a student who became obsessed with my colleague. The student was unstable and had threatened s**cide multiple times.

He started to believe he was in a relationship with this other teacher and it was the only reason to live. He’d corner the teacher a lot trying to get them to be alone. He told other students they were in a relationship. He even sat outside the teachers apartment after following him home once.

When I heard and saw how his crush was escalating I talked to the teacher and reported my concerns to admin. The other teacher was afraid he would lose his job because we are in the south and he’s gay and so he didn’t know how to handle the situation but was very uncomfortable.

He was right, the student totally flipped out when admin and guidance confronted him. He assured them it was a real relationship, and started trying to corner other staff to find out who told. He was escorted off campus by police multiple times. The teacher was put on leave and just quit and moved to another state, after which someone told the student I’d been the one to report to admin.

He started following me trying to find out where the teacher moved, interrupted my classes over and over even though I didn’t teach him, wanted to know what the teachers new address was, and threatening me. I had to be escorted to my car at the end of the day several times. we were all afraid of the student. He once stood outside the school for hours in front of the flag pole crying.

I was sure the kid was going to hurt himself or someone else. I begged everyone to get the kid help. His mom didn’t believe any of it was true and refused all help that was offered like counseling and a psych eval. She told the school that if they called her again making up stories about her son she’d sue. It was a mess.”

2. Creepy.

“I was teaching grade four and had announced my pregnancy to the class when I was about 4 month. Everyone was so excited.

One little guy however, made it his mission to try and ‘hurt my baby’. On several occasions he kicked a soccer ball at my bump, would try and trip me and one time even said ‘let’s meet this baby’ while opening and closing scissors.

There was some other contributing factors but I ended up taking leave early due to anxiety over this.

So, so weird. When I returned the next year he had moved to a different school.”

3. Great kid.

“Had a student tear up a bunch of kids artwork, jump on a table and throw said artwork at their faces all while shouting, “I’m THE BEST! I”M THE NICEST! I’M THE GREATEST!” And laughing.”

4. From a veteran.

“I have had several dangerously v**lent children over the course of my career, but it’s been really bad the past three years.

Kids trying to steal my teacher scissors so they could stab someone, flying desks and chairs, kicking and punching adults, self-harm, physically attacking younger students, vandalism, screaming and crying so loud no teaching can happen, growling when angry, running away…

I had a student last year who would get upset and stand against a wall banging his head until blood started to smear the wall. Yes, we tried to stop him, but it usually involved 3-4 adults restraining him. Kids can be really hard to restrain when they’re thrashing around. It never surprises me to hear of kids my students’ ages being put in handcuffs.

His Mom said the wall-banger was “fine” and didn’t need any counseling. My principal encouraged me to work harder at building a relationship with him. The kid would usually be returned to class within 30 minutes of being dragged out with a bandage on his head and a bag of Hot Cheetos.

I teach Kinder and 1st grade.”

5. Hmmm…

“I’m studying to be a teacher currently, and on one of my three week placements in a school a third grader had a notebook full from front to back with only the words “stop. bad. don’t. dirt. sad.”

Repeated over and over and over.”

6. Close call.

“Probably somewhere around my 8th year of teaching (lord I am so old), I had a student attempt s**cide in the bathroom.

Now I always keep a first aid kit in my classroom at all times (complete with tourniquet – cause’ America) and I teach middle school – so when I heard some screaming from the bathroom I automatically assumed a fight until someone started screaming “she is bleeding everywhere.”

I grabbed my kit and just rolled into the girls bathroom, to see blood everywhere as one of the older students (8th grade) had slashed their wrists deep. Start yelling to call 911 and apply pressure to the wound.

The girl, who was semi-conscious, kept whispering in my ear to “let me go” and “it’s ok,” while also haunting me and saying “I don’t want to die.” Thankfully emergency services came quickly and were able to get her to hospital.

I just sat on the bathroom floor, on the pool of blood, and just started crying. Legit crying hard, something I’ve never felt or done before. Like a deep wail s**t.

This of course freaked the kids out (because you have to imagine that I am not the smiliest or emotional teacher in the school) to where the students now started freaking out. Admin came in and just sat with me as I cried my heart out. Needless to say I took two days off (which thankfully led to the weekend).

I think it hit me so hard because I was also quite… depressed… in middle school and had similar thoughts of suicide. Of course, it also hurt because I have a daughter. It just hit me all at once and I was a wreck for weeks.

Girl survived and last I heard has a family and is doing well. Her mother had just d**d of cancer which led to the depressive episode.

I’ve had many things happen over my years of teaching, but this definitely was top 3 scary.”

7. Blame the devil.

“Look into my eyes without blinking for a long while, then saying in the creepiest 1st grade voice I’ve ever heard; “The Devil made me do it”.

Complete lack of emotion. (He’d just injured another student).”

8. Complete 180.

“When I was teaching special classes, nine year old did a 180. I adored him in the beginning, he was so sweet.

Suddenly started to pull his junk out to show everyone. Wrote s**ual things everywhere. Tried to do weird things with other students/teachers (head between breasts, head on junk, squeeze everyone).

Swore at everyone, starting throwing everything around. Said he’ll find my house and ki**l me.”

9. Dad’s story.

“My dad was the elementary school principal and there was a little girl in one of the younger grades who would fall asleep during class and wouldn’t wake up no matter what her teacher or my dad or the paramedics my dad called would do.

She’d eventually wake up on her own after several hours. She did this randomly, scaring her teacher, my dad and her parents a lot. Sadly, eventually, she d**d in her sleep at home.”

10. Gross.

“I was a teacher for 15 years. This happened to my GF at her school.

Grade two teacher hears sounds in the back coat closet. She finds a boy and girl from her class (6-7 yrs old) in the missionary position. When the boy hops off, he is not erect. They were just pretending.

Call both sets of parents in. Turns out they all get together on Sat nights and have “P**no Nights”. They watch pornos with the kids in the room. So these two kids were just mimicking what they saw. Childs Aid was called and my guess is P**no night got cancelled.”

11. The monster.

“This was a boy who was 4-5. I would help my mom who was the actual teacher.

This kid would constantly cry. All the time no matter what we did. I would ALWAYS set with him and color, talk, just anything to try to help him feel better. He would always make sad pictures of himself crying and a monster. He said no one believed the monster was bad. I told him we all have monsters sometimes but we have to be brave because once we face the monster, sometimes they go away.

I ended up telling his mom about this monster & she wasn’t sure what it could be. Long story short, the monster ended up being his dad. He cried all the time because the dad was “inappropriately abusing him.” I hate saying it any other way. Every day he was home.

But the mom actually walked in on it when she got off early from work one day. She tried to shoot the dad, he ended up in jail, she told me she put the kid in therapy. I’ve not seen him since but that has stuck with me. I thought it was just a creepy thing he thought about. The monster. Make believe or something. But no, his monster was real.”

12. This is terrible.

“Kid who was k**ling and dissecting cats, dogs, and hamsters, made a few attempts at k**ling a sweet younger sibling, and got into fights all the time.

He would say the most awful things in class, like when asked what he wanted to do for vacation mentioned luring a kid into the woods, getting him lost, so he’d d** in the forest. He was gleeful about it – like, he genuinely thought this would be fun.

He left my grade, and then I had one of the younger siblings, who was always coming in exhausted and scarred, bruised, etc. because his sibling would hurt him. We were told the most awful stories – throwing bunnies in a pillowcase and hitting the wall until the pillowcase was red, pulling whiskers off a cat and then suffocating it, drowning a neighbor’s puppy in oil, just… horrible stuff.

His mom would stay after hours just sobbing, talking about the ways she’d tried to get him help, and how there just weren’t resources available – insurance/the state wouldn’t sign off on sending him to a treatment facility because he had not succeeded in permanently maiming or k**ling anyone — yet.

We reported it, but we kept hitting the same wall — the parents took every sharp thing, every weapon, out of their house. They were hyper-vigilant because if he got so much as a pin, he’d use it on someone or some animal. They tried a short-term hold, but it made things worse. He just learned tricks to hurt and get things that he wouldn’t have, otherwise.

His dad worked out of town to try and afford therapy and interventions, so was gone a lot, so a lot of the kid’s rage at being controlled fell on the mom/siblings, which is likely why one day he managed to get a hold of a gun from a relative’s house, and then hide it, and wait for his mom/siblings to pull into the garage. He then k**led them, and tried to blame an intruder – but the evidence was pretty clear-cut that he’d done it.

The way I heard it, the first thing – before the police had put it together yet – that the dad said when he got a call from the cops was to ask if his son had k**led his family. He just knew. And, yeah, he was right.

The dad and mom both worked so hard to try and find some resource, some help, and there just wasn’t any, anywhere along the way. It was such a chilling domino of failures to watch happen in real time – and so completely heartbreaking. They were good parents. They did everything they possibly could have done.

Everyone knew it was just a matter of time with him.”