A real life horror-story?

[Kyriakos]

Has anything very frightening happened to you which you could share?

Here is something from my life:

When i was 9 year's old i used to go to a stone wall which served as a barrier between two of the buildings opposite my own apartment-block, and stayed there in the afternoon, together with some other kids of the neighbourhood. Since my parents dissallowed me from leaving the neighbourhood itself, i had a very strong sense of its borders, and this wall was so close to my house that i could view it as a part of this small world which was already explored by me. Since the frontiers of the world were small, but not so small that they could be seen from there, it felt even more like a safe place to be, although still the interior of my building was the core of my world, and also in a way the core of my social world too since many others kids from there were going to the same school as me and so i knew them.
One afternoon, as it already was dark, i was again siting on top of that short wall, next to some other kids, when suddently i heard a strange voice from behind me. Since i was always too carefull not to show any emotion, i continued looking straight ahead of me, towards those who were standing there infront of me, but they obviously had turned their heads towards what was making the voice. It appeared to have been another kid, although its tone was strange, and sounded more like it was trying to make some short of joke, since no individual word could be heard, but rather it was a continious sound, but i couldnt make out if it was enthousiastic, or more like a cry. It sounded more like the sounds that very small children make, when they cannot yet speak, but want to communicate some emotion.
However i finally was about to turn to to see who was making that noise, although i had felt that he was approaching where we were all along, and so i expected to see him pass infront of me, or perhaps stop to adress some of the other kids. But what happened was very different, since i felt him touching me. Indeed he put his arms around my waist, and started pressing me, at which point i finally saw him.
It was a very tall, but also fat, kid, who had an unussually large forehead, which also seemed to be a bit bloated. Its eyes looked smallerin proportion to the rest of his face; its mouth was continiously open as he continued to make those noises, and it would not let go. I was terrified of what was happening, since i couldnt explain why this unknown kid had chosen to treat me in this way, and moreover i couldnt understand what his behaviour was about, although i was in pain.
Then his father run towards us, and seperated his son from me, apologising for what had happened. He probably also explained to me that his son was mentally handicapped. He asked several times if i was allright, and i replied that i was, although i was only beginning to cope with what had happened. His son kept making noises, although now they were clearly sounds of distress, and they were climaxing as he was being forcibly carried away, towards their home, in the building beside the wall.

 

[CoolioVonHoolio]

wow that is strange. i dont really know what to say.

 

[Krupo]

Getting hugged by a kid with medical problems really does *not* qualify as a horror-story, no matter how creepy or surprising the context.

 

[MjM]

Maybe it does if your 9...

 

[Winner]

Getting hugged by a kid with medical problems really does *not* qualify as a horror-story, no matter how creepy or surprising the context.

Yes it does, when you're a kid. A little bit of empathy, please

 

[Kyriakos]

It does, although i could have mentioned other, more mental-type horror stories, but i consider this one easier to follow As i mentioned i was too sheltered as a child, being confined mostly to a small part of the neighborhood, which i saw as my entire world. While this isnt unussual for children, i think that most were allowed to go out into the world more by that age. Moreover i hadnt previously come to contact with a kid with down syndrome, so i didnt at all know why he was acting as he was. Fear of the completely unknown is a very strong fear
Actually this event had a second episode, a few nights afterwards, when i had become interested in the kid with the down syndrome. Here it is, to the best that i recall:

I was again standing near that wall, although now in its abslute edge, deep in the frontier between the two buildings, to the direction which was away from my own building. Infact the other wall, vertical to that one, which created the frontier between those two buildings and the part of the neighborhood behind them, was in sight now, and i also was walking near it from time to time. Various other kids i knew were also standing there, or sitting on the wall. I do not recall what had drawn us all there, although possibly it had nothing to do with the kid with the down syndrome, however suddently the same disorganised cry was heard, this time from above. I looked up and saw the kid in his balcony, in the fifth floor of the building infront of me. It had gone out, and was in very distressed look. I thought that in this mood it might even try to climb on top of the bars, which was a fascination i had at the time due to many dreams where I was the one climbing on top of a balcony's bars. I also thought that due to its mental condition it probably could more easily attempt such an action, without even knowing of its dangers. So i made a decision.
Sadly i cannot recall the actual reason i decided to do this, although it seems more possible that it was out of a fixation with death, rather than real hatred towards the kid with the down syndrome, which i had already considered as not accountaable for its actions, and already had noted that it wouldnt be left to go anywhere without its father and so it didnt constitute a real threat. I was of the view that it could possibly- although then again maybe it couldnt even distinguish me from all the other kids, below- be following my own moves. So, being careful to find an excuse to do that infront of the other kids, i climbed on top of the short stone wall.
To my surprise, and exitement, the kid above mimicked my move.
However now i had to be even more carefull. Childish exitement, for various reasons, was overlapping with my ever-existent sense of the need to protect myself from accusation. I still wanted to see if the kid would follow me if i jumped down from the wall though, jumping to its death. However this i could not at all do like that, because obviously it would have made me look horrible infront of the others, had they realised what i was doing. Due to the nature of this memory i do not recall it entirely, however i remember that i remained standing on the wall for a considerable time, and then, perhaps as i saw him turn his head towards the interior of his house so guessed that either a voice from his father would be being heard from the kid, or it was thinking of him, i looked down, and pretenindg to be occupied with the actual jump itself, i took a small jump.
Due to my pretenton i couldnt immediately look up to see what effect this could have had. Besides, had it produced the result that the kid had jumped itself, this would become known to me shortly anyway. So instead i kept looking down, pressed my hand on my leg, which was midly irritated by the jump, and then walked back to the wall.
However in reality something was heard near me, having fallen to the ground with force.
I do not remember this moment in my thoughts.
However what it turned out to have been, was not the kid itself, but its school-bag, full with his books.
The crying voices continued to be heard in a while, and only ended when his father took notice of his anxiety, and made him return inside the house.

Some days later it was learned that the entire family left the neighborhood.

 

[Civrules]

Many years ago, when I was still in my homeland (when I was about 8), me and my friends always used to go to a fort which was right by our small mountainous city (that fort’s a tourist attraction now).

Picture of Fort from up top. It’s integrated to a very scary/steep rock formation:

One day when we were just standing on the back side outside one of its walls, when we heard some strange noise coming from one of the cannon openings on the inside (which was covered in hay). The noise got louder and louder when eventually the hay started to get shuffled even more and got pushed out, when some… thing came out of the opening and started hissing at us.
There were around five or six of us, and we started running like hell, never looking back.
We had to actually cross in front of the fort’s entrance as we headed back. It was open and we looked in but there was nobody in there. As I recall it, it looked like one of those scary Hawaiian masks that people ware.
So the conclusion was that someone set up a prank on us. Still don’t know who, why, and how he/she knew we were there (and why someone would ware such a thing anyway!). There weren’t a lot of other people up there at that time of day either.
Fun times now that I think about it.

 

[CoolioVonHoolio]

ok well i have a nice story to tell.

so my friends and i went to devils hill. let me give you some background on devils hill: devils hill is a very steep hill in the middle of a thatcher woods on the border of river forest and maywood. it is used for sledding and for bike riding, but we love it because we can sled all we want there, because nobody is ever there! sure beats the crowded hills. so we decided to go sledding. but it was kinda late and some were reluctant. it ended up being just me and 2 of my best friends going. we got there and started sledding. after about ten minutes we heard loud screams that we being kinda muffled out in the woods. we went to investigate of course. we saw out from behind a bush about 5 guys raping a girl. they mustve seen us because one started going off to where we were so we bolted. i looked back and saw 3 of them running after us. that mustve been the scariest moment of my life. we dropped our sleds and just ran and ran and ran until we got to the street. i guess we lost them of something because we never saw them again.

key:
big blue circle: devils hill
little blue circle: rape site
red line: path to the hill
green line: where we ran

(everything is only approx.)

 

[silver 2039]

Did u call the police or anything?

 

[CoolioVonHoolio]

of course. i think there mightve been a story in the newpaper about it, but this happened a couple years ago.

 

[Shaihulud]

I was swimming on the beach in the afternoon when the surf was very heavy, I was quite far out when the life guard sounded an alarm about a shark being spotted and to get out of the water. I felt my body slid past something(propably a seaweed) but in my panic, I was convinced it was the shark and i nearly drowned. It took me some time to regain the preesnce of mind to reorient myself, i was not used to swimming in the sea.

 

[North King]

Only one interesting enough to tell.

OK, so, a little background.

Northern Michigan is essentially a vast swamp in spring, a huge forest in summer, a sea of dead leaves in fall, and in winter, which is half of the year, a lump of snow.

Well, it was early fall of 3 years ago, so half the trees were bare, while the other half had bits clinging to them. There were leaves blowing across the streets; basically the whole environment was dominated by dead leaves blowing every which way.

Now, a string of cougar (or mountain lion) sightings had occurred around this time. I don't remember which came before or after the incident, but I know that people had encountered a lone cougar several times. One report from a friend of my family's said that one of their dogs had been disemboweled by the cougar...

But that day, I wasn't really thinking of it. My mind was on other things, I don't quite remember what. Homework was probably chief among them, but regardless...

I was walking the two of my dogs around the block. Silly little things. One was a hyperactive sled dog--if you've ever walked a sled dog, you'll know what I'm talking about. They pull everywhere, and when they pull, they pull, sometimes enough to throw you right off your feet (which had happened to me with that dog before). The other was a massive but young, plodding German Shepherd, very cute, and utterly a wimp, but usually following the sled dog's lead.

So my block of houses is in a vaguely rectangular form, and the typical walk I took my dogs on was around it. I was only a quarter of the way done with my walk, my mind still on other things, when I rounded one of the corners of that block.

My house is built on a large hill, more actually a sand dune, left over from the sedimentary times of the great inland seas. As such, the houses are built almost on levels, different layers of sediments, with roads that went at rather steep angles to connect the layers, and other roads which ran parallel to the layers, hence the rectangular pattern of the streets.

I was at the top of one of those streets, looking down as I rounded the corner, and my heart literally skipped a beat.

Not more than fifty meters from me was a long, brown, well camoflauged, but definately moving creature. We have deer here, yes. And dogs. And even, if some stories are to be believed, wolves. But this thing didn't move like any of them. It moved, slinking along, just like when a house cat would stalk something.

But this wasn't a house cat. I have good perspective vision, and as it happens, it was walking through grass which I knew roughly the height of. It looked around two feet tall at the shoulder, and four feet long. Just a little smaller than my larger dog. I knew it was a cougar. I will swear to this day that it was a cougar. Perhaps the same one that had also disemboweled someone's dog with hardly a scratch.

I stood there, looking at it for what seemed like an eternity. But it took no interest in me. It went slinking off into the woods.

I turned tail, and dragged the dogs back home, since they were pulling like crazy to get at that thing.

 

[Mirc]

The scariest moment of my life was when I went to buy something at about 9 pm and it was already night. I came with a lot of things back home and I had some bread in the bag. Then I heard something like a cry. It was a child running as mad and trying to enter his house. He opened the door, got inside, then locked the door twice. I saw a something like a cart pulled by three poor gypsies trying to sell some scrapheap to get some money. They were running also as mad and I heard some strange noise behind them.
I saw what happened: about 15 unbelievable huge dogs were barking and running to get them (dogs usually don't like poor people because they smell strange and they are violent many times). Then the dogs saw me and stopped following them.
They started to bark so loud and they were running as fast as they could. I thought I was going to die then, because each of them was bigger than me! I was just 50 meters from them, and I realised I couldn't try to stay in place and be quiet and nice to them (as everyone tells you to do in such situation).
I started to run (maybe I never ran that fast before), and after 25 seconds or so (the only thing I could do is pray, and I did it a little), then I was saved by a van which passed by and attracted the dogs.
When I saw they left, I got in the first block of flats and I called my father to come and take me because I was too scared to walk alone that evening.


Also meeting a bear in the forests is not something to forget.

 

[Kyriakos]

I liked the fifteen-headed cerberus dog story
My own story has an undercurrent of a childhood fashination with death, which was obvious in other episodes of my life then.

 

[Mirc]

Thanks!
I love greek mithology BTW. I plan on creating a mod for Civ3 called "Dawn of European Culture" which will have 2 parts: "real civilizations" (I didn't think too much at this name, so it is a bit simple) and "mithological civilizations".

 

[Krupo]

Yes it does, when you're a kid. A little bit of empathy, please

Perhaps we have different understandings of the term "horror-story". Perhaps "anything that scares you" is what the term means to you.

On the other hand, I associate it with actual horrific things, real (rapes, genocide) or imagined (ghosts, zombie attacks). The story could only in theory count if you put it under the category of "imagined", but then it seems like you're associating the kid with a zombie attack or something similar.

So hey, I'm offering up TONS of empathy - but it's for the disabled kid.

 

[Kyriakos]

While i accept ofcourse that the mentally handicapped kid would have spend almost its entire life in fear due to its inability to understand what was happening to it and why others reacted in this way towards it, i think that you miss the point in my story. To be met with something which you have no knowledge of can indeed cause horror, and moreover i was hurting while the kid was hugging me. Im sure that he didnt realise that, but this made it even more frightening to me, since all i could see was some unknown, large kid, making me hurt, and then keeping a strange smile and making happy noises.
The rest of the story has to do with other things in my childhood, and by that time i wasnt afraid of the kid anymore anyway

 

[BCLG100]

not a long story but we were driving along someday at night time, i was in the back of the car and we saw this woman pushing a pram except they were all dressed up in victorian clothing and stuff. we initially thought that maybe it was a fancy dress or something but then we realised that the road she was pushing up there wasnt a house for about 5 miles and this was the dead of night, also when i looked behind to see her going i only saw her for a fraction of a second before vanishing and yes i appreciate it was dark so maybe that was the reason.

 

[Kyriakos]

And you didnt drive back to see her again? Perhaps she would be wearing a hood, unter which she would be just a sceleton

I would have urged the driver myself to just keep on driving

 

[BCLG100]

Yer it was in a friends car and was his grandma driving so we carried on going, it was after a nights swimming so i thought it might have just been my imagination but after my friend said something i dont think it was.