Fiction can be terrifying, but is anything really as scary as knowing monsters and awful experience lurk in the real world, too?

These people say no, because they experienced terrifying things firsthand and lived to tell the tale.

The history of the boiler room.

I used to run the boilers in a DOE building. Apparently at some point in the eighties, three people were mu**ered over involvement in a big vcr theft- vcrs meant for the school system had apparently been stolen out of this warehouse, it was an inside job, something went wrong- the head custodian was found shot to d**th, and later the bodies of the other two were reported buried in Monticello- but word is, they had first been incinerated.

In the boilers I was in charge of operating and maintaining.

There were three operational boilers, and one that wasn’t in service- no clue which one was supposedly used, but when you’re firing them up, you’re typically the only person in the building- not a single day went by that I fired them up and didn’t wonder which one was used. But that wasn’t what gave me the real Heebie jeebies.

You have to clean the interior of these boilers really well, otherwise the fire won’t transfer heat to the water very efficiently- especially with #6 oil, these boilers would build up a lot of soot. You have to suit up in a Tyvek suit, wear a mask, and climb right into the firebox-

I found myself staring down the business end of that burner many times, wondering what that panic would feel like. (I’m reasonably sure these people were d**d before getting put in the boiler though.)

Once, I was actually in one boiler while another one was running- the valve that isolated my boiler from the main steam line wasn’t holding, and by the time I realized how warm it was getting, it was enough to panic- trying to lift myself up and belly crawl through the small opening, the metal was almost too hot to keep my hands on for long.

Definitely creepy experience, considering the history of that boiler room.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That there’s a guy casing the bar that I work at literally right now, and I can’t do anything to stop him.

He’s been in asking what time/days we’re open, and what days we have security. Caught him feeling the corners of our windows and doors too.

Unfortunately, until he breaks in and robs us, the police won’t do a thing.

Some creep.

Years ago when I was 8 my family lived in this big weird house kind of on the edge of a small town.

The school district was in the middle of a big restructuring so even though we were only a couple grades apart my brother and I went to different schools and took different buses.

This left me as the last person to leave in the morning and the first person to get home in the afternoon, which meant it was my job to make sure all the lights were off and the door was locked.

One morning I noticed the basement door was open and the light was on so before I left I turned off the light and closed the door. When I got home that afternoon the light was on and the door was open again. I just assumed that I’d forgotten to actually take care of it when I noticed it in the morning so I went over to turn off the light and close the door.

When I got to the top of the basement stairs I looked and there was a big shadowy male figure towards the bottom of the staircase. I freaked out, slammed the door and pushed a bunch of boxes against it and then went and hid in my closet.

For months I didn’t tell my family because I was positive what I had seen was a ghost and didn’t think anyone would believe me.

Then about a year after that incident my mom and her boyfriend realized that small amounts of money had been going missing for months (totaling around $800-900, but never more than $60 at once). So we all walked around the house with flashlights trying to figure out how they could have gotten in.

Turns out some creep was climbing in through a small hole in the outside of the house, shimmying through a crawl space, then coming up into the house through the basement.

Realizing I had been alone in the house with him on at least one occasion was one of the worst, most terrifying moments I’ve ever had.

Lucky to be alive.

A guy i worked with was riding his dirt-bike through the woods and somebody hung a cable between two trees. My buddy caught his throat on it and saw the dude steal his dirt-bike.

Woke up in the hospital with a lacerated throat and a broken larynx. Pretty crazy what somebody will do for something so cheap.

A d**dly belch.

The Lake Nyos Disaster. The lake periodically belches a cloud of invisible carbon dioxide gas that suffocates everything within a 16 mile radius.

In 1986, over 1700 people and all their livestock d**d without even understanding what was happening to them.

It is quite the tale.

The case of Elizabeth Smart. She was kidnapped, repeatedly raped, psychologically tortured, and then brought around in plain sight in heavy religious garb. She had brushes with people who could have helped her, but her kidnapper claimed she wasn’t allowed to speak in public or reveal her face for religious reasons.

The reason she was rescued is because her sister was awake during her kidnapping and pretended to be asleep. She knew she recognized the voice, but it took her nine months to remember is was a guy that used to do yard work for the family.

The police didn’t believe her because of the elapsed time, but pursued it to appease the family.

A hometown nightmare.

This is a hometown story that stayed with me. It happened literally right around the corner from where I grew up, maybe a two minute drive away.

Judy Kirby mu**ered six children and one adult by intentionally driving the wrong way on a divided highway in an attempt to commit suicide. She had been hospitalized for depression, but had also just ended a relationship with her ex husband’s brother and was by some reports involved in drug trafficking and fearing an imminent arrest.

She picked up her sister’s son, who was celebrating his tenth birthday that day. She then loaded her three children into the car, supposedly to pick up a gift for the nephew. Instead, she went missing with the carload of kids. A short time later, calls started coming in to 911 about a car going the wrong way down the highway at a high rate of speed. They made it about 90 seconds before a head-on collision with another vehicle, driven by a father with two children and another child along for the ride.

The crash annihilated both vehicles. The only survivors were Kirby herself, and the child who was along for the ride in the other car. There were pieces of children all over the highway. She was sentenced to 215 years in prison.

I have no idea what’s wrong with people.

The story of Mary Vincent always stands out to me.

In 1978, 15 year old Mary was hitchhiking. A man named Lawrence Singleton picked her up.

He brutally raped her, and eventually made her get out of the car. She planned to run, but he noticed, and cut both her arms off. He threw her into a ditch/ravine and left her to die.

She packed her stumps with mud to stop the bleeding and spent all night crawling out.

She eventually makes it to the highway and starts walking, na**d and covered in bl**d. The first car that saw her sped away in fear. The second car was a couple on their honeymoon. They picked her up and she survived.

A haunting tragedy.

When I was in Fourth Grade, we had buddy classes with First graders to help teach them how to write and read properly.

My buddy was Cameron Bell, A six year old blonde boy who was a bit quiet but loved to draw angry birds.

One morning, I came to school and my teacher was in tears, a police officer in the room beside her.

As we sat down after the bell rang, we were told that due to an “unfortunate series of events” Cameron had passed away.

After school, I rushed home to find out that due to the loss of his mother years prior, his father took him to the nearby church and shot him in the head before shooting himself.

I still shake thinking about Cameron, and the innocence that was taken. I missed his messy handwriting and angry birds drawings.

It’s been 9 years since the tragedy, and his smile still haunts me.

No way out.

Nutty Putty Cave in Utah was sealed up in 2009 after John Jones was trapped upside-down in a small crevice while spelunking. When rescue teams finally arrived he had been upside-down for so long that his legs were drained of bl**d.

The only possible way to have gotten him out was to break his legs, which would’ve sent him into fatal shock. He d**d after being trapped for 28 hours. His body’s still in the cave.

Totally random.

My friend had this neighbor who was a retired mechanic. They lived on some properties with large front lawns and long driveways. His neighbor had a couple derelict cars parked up near his garage that he took parts from occasionally.

This neighbor of his started hearing noises while sitting in his living room, coming from his front yard. Every time he’d go to the window, there would be nothing there. He assumed it was a raccoon or a coyote or whatever. He kept hearing the noise so he’d go outside to look around but would find nothing. He’d put out traps and occasionally catch something, yet the noise persisted.

Soon, he started claiming that he was hearing voices coming from the front yard, like whispering. He’d go outside and look around the perimeter of his property but would find nothing. It was persistent so he’d started calling the cops. Every time the cops came and looked around and would find nothing. So they told him he needed to stop calling them for this, and perhaps get a security camera or whatever.

So this guy thought he was losing his mind. One summer evening he couldn’t sleep, so he went to the back patio to smoke a cigarette. Suddenly, he heard voices coming from the front of his house.

He put his cig out and snuck around to the front and got there just in time to see the doors to his derelict conversion van silently shut. He ran back to the backyard and went inside his home and called the police to tell them what he had seen.

The police arrived and approached cold (i.e. without lights/sirens) and when they approached the van, the doors swung open and a bunch of people ran out in every direction.

Upon searching the van, the cops found syringes and paraphernalia and determined that people were shooting up in there.

A chance encounter.

I’ve posted this before, but mine: When I was a baby, my dad played on a softball team. Typical social team, out for beers and pizza after with the guys, family event-type-thing. My parents were good friends with 2 of the other couples, both of them had young kids as well.

On this occasion, the other 2 couples had left their kids at one of their houses, with a babysitter they were splitting. They invited my parents back to the house to have some more beers that night, but I was being fussy and my mom nixed the idea (though they would 100% have normally gone back to hang out)

Well, it turned out my fussiness on that day saved our lives. When the other parents got back to the house, they walked in on a home invasion. Two men had broken in, tied up the kids and the babysitter (and her boyfriend), and were waiting for the parents. Took the parents hostage as well, and made the dads drive with them to banks/a grocery store where one dad was manager and clear out accounts/a safe.

They then came back to the house, and slaughtered both families, the babysitter, and her boyfriend. Kids included.

They caught the 2 guys later on. My dad attended the trials, and said it was the first time he had ever had thoughts of supporting the d**th penalty. It still gives me chills to know how close we came to getting ki**ed that day, too.

Play stupid games…

My dad and some friends got drunk and went for a drive on some back roads and were going as fast as the truck would go as teenagers. My dad was slightly less drunk than the others and eventually demanded they let him get out. They pulled over and he and one other girl got out. He and the girl started walking to town while the other three sped off in the opposite direction.

Well less than a mile up the road from where they got out is an extremely sharp turn, which they missed and hit a tree going pretty close to triple digits (miles per hour). Two of them d**d on impact and the only reason the third survived is because they crashed in front of a house that two doctors lived in. The survivor was paralyzed and lost his leg and part of his arm and was in the hospital for eight months before dying. This was in the ‘60s so medical care wasn’t what it is today.

When I first got my permit my dad took me to that corner to explain the importance of safe driving. It gave me goosebumps about how close he was to being in the truck. He said that the dad of the driver got what remained of the truck to be hung up in the center of town for months after to be a warning to all.

I feel ill.

Amateur rugby. Guy gets hit pretty hard and dislocates his hip. While waiting for the ambulance, a guy runs up saying he’s a physio and can at least relocate the joint.

He cracks the hip back into its socket and the guy SCREAMS.

One of his testicles had been jolted out of place in the accident – and had been chilling out in the empty hip socket.

Squish.

Very well-planned.

John List ki**ed his whole family-wife, mother, daughter and two sons. He meticulously planned the whole thing-cancelling all delivery services, excusing the kids from school, and even turned the air conditioning as low as possible to preserve the bodies for as long as possible.

After he ki**ed them all, he placed the bodies in sleeping bags and lined them up. He then wrote a letter to his pastor explaining why he had to ki** them.

He then leaves and isn’t heard from again.

18 years later he’s remarried and doing the same job as before but this time he doesn’t have any children. He’s finally arrested after a tip was given to the FBI.

Crazy thing is that because he planned it so well, the bodies weren’t discovered until a month after the murders so he had a huge head start and essentially started a new life in the same career and was heavily involved in a new church down in Virginia. Took 18 years to capture him.

Not a police officer.

Carol DaRonch was at a shopping mall in Salt Lake City in 1974 when she was approached by a man claiming to be a police officer. He said that someone had tried to break into her car and asked her to come with him. He then said he would drive her to the police station and she got into his car.

However, this guy was not a police officer and he did not drive her to the police station but rather, pulled into a parking lot. He then cuffed her, pulled out a gun and threatened to ki** her if she resisted. Only, he messed up. He meant to cuff both of her wrist but only managed to cuff one.

She escaped and fought him off despite being hit over the head several times. Her kidnapper was Ted Bundy. He ki**ed another woman just four hours later.

Her escape also helped identify Bundy and she is part of the reason he was eventually arrested.

It’s hard to trust people.

Dude was working on a tuna steamer and they closed him in and steamed him. I can’t help but imagine that as anything but a truly terrifying and painful way to die.

One of the main reasons I never could bring myself to do real factory labor is because I don’t trust people enough to not tuna steam me.

Just two drops.

There was a woman who worked in a science lab who spilled two drops of organic mercury on the back of her gloved hand.

Those two drops destroyed her entire nervous system and brain.

Yeah, I’m happy to just read about stuff like this.

Knock on wood.