21 People Describe The Most Traumatizing Horrors They've Ever Experienced

From FlyingBlobFish:

"Back in 2008 or so, my mother and I were driving my great grandmother to visit my great grandfather who was in the nursing home a few towns over due to Alzheimer's. Some other family was headed over on a motorcycle to meet us there.

About halfway there, we came up on a crash that authorities hadn't gotten to yet (we met first responders after we passed the crash).

I was intrigued being the eight-year-old kid I was, and looked at the damaged cars in awe. I happened to just get the glance of what I think was about half a motorcycle. About that moment my mother told me to cover my eyes, so I did as I was told. Not even two seconds passed before my great grandmother let out the most blood curdling scream I have ever heard, causing me to uncover my eyes and look. I saw several men in leather riding gear taking a knee around one man, who no longer had any arms or legs attached to his body. One arm was actually stuck in the front end of the fourth car I'd seen in the crash next to him. I immediately covered my eyes again in shock of what I'd just seen.

To this day, my mother does not know I saw it. The only person I've ever told I did see it was my grandmother who was not there that day.

I've remembered it at least once a week since that day and every time it feels just as scary as the first."

From NotNiftyy:

"Told to me by my uncle. He did some work welding on the inside of the semi-truck trailers that carry gas and whatnot, the ones that look like cylinders. Well, they were inside the tank welding and took a lunch break. One person didn't shut off the gas to the welder properly so it was leaking during the break. One guy got in the tank to keep working after lunch and as soon as he went to light his torch, the whole container ignited. The man was screaming as he was being burned alive, while the other men tried to get him out. When they finally got him out of the container, he was screaming and writhing in pain with all the skin on his body burnt off. He shriveled up into a ball and died soon after."

From TheButterBot:

"When I was in second grade I had a friend in the grade below me. She was the friend of a boy in my class who I didn't like, but she was nice and we both liked to read, so we would talk about books on the bus.

One day we were on the bus, sitting next to each other, talking about our latest pick-ups from the school library. We reached her stop, she said bye to me and got off the bus with her brother and older (middle school-aged) sister. I watched her siblings cross the road, but my friend had stopped before crossing to tie her shoes.

Our bus driver began honking his horn and screaming "STOP, STOP" out the window. I looked out the window in time to see her begin to cross before she was hit by the motorcycle. Her body flew up and hit the roof of our bus before hitting the road. The motorcycle stopped down the road, only half-aware that he had hit something.

I'll never forget her mother's scream. I watched my friend's unconscious body bleed out on the pavement, limbs broken and facing the wrong direction and everything. The bus erupted in panic. Due to us being part of an accident and the bus driver's determination to help her before the ambulance could arrive, we didn't move the bus. We sat there for a little over an hour before a second bus was sent to pick us up and finish our route. I couldn't take my eyes off her the entire time.

My parents tried to talk to me about it afterward and the school offered therapy, but I didn't really do either. I kind of just stuffed it down. She ended up dying in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The school held a service and her brother and sister left school for several months.

As it would turn out, that accident gave me a severe case of PTSD. I've never been able to drive a car. The mere thought of cars makes me anxious. I was hospitalized after a suicide attempt a couple months ago. I'm doing significantly better after my official diagnosis and new meds. I'm not sure if I'll ever drive.

It's also, may I mention, especially difficult facing PTSD as a civilian, not a cop or soldier. For some reason, many people don't believe I have PTSD because I wasn't either of the aforementioned professions. Don't judge, yo, mental illness can happen to anyone.

Also, it turns out the driver was legally blind and had his license suspended because of that fact. He ended up going to jail, but was released after only a couple years due to an illness."

From PoeBangangeron:

"I had to go to the morgue for a DUI. They brought in a 23-year-old girl who had just been ejected from a car. Her face looked like a smashed blueberry. Her boyfriend was in the hospital, about to be arrested. He had no idea she was dead. And they were getting ready to call her Mom. It was messed up.

Also, the coroners showed photos of people, mostly teenagers and younger kids mangled up in car accidents before they retrieved the body. It was awful.

But I totally deserved it. As does anyone who gets a DUI. It really is an eye opener."

From Otown-girl:

"In the 8th Grade one of my friends missed school and I was worried because he wasn't answering any texts or phone calls, so I walked to his house to check up on him. Even walking there I knew something was wrong, I had a horrible twisting in my stomach - I thought I was going to be sick. We were very good friends that had gotten accustomed to just walking into each other's houses - the place was like a second home to me - so that's what I did.

When I walked in (around 3:30 PM) the house was a type of silence I will never forget. It wasn't the 'sleeping household' silence. I walked very slowly towards his room but before I got to it I saw the blood on the tile of the bathroom. I will always haunt me how much blood there was. He was slumped beside the toilet, covered in vomit and blood, his hair was sticking to his face, he was cold and clammy. He had tried to overdose on some type of medication, but I guess he started throwing up so he slit his wrist vertically halfway down his forearm.

I tried to beg him to breathe but he was already grey. I tried to hold the gash together to stop the bleeding but it wasn't really bleeding anymore. I sat on the bathroom floor and wiped his hair from his face and tried to clean the blood off of his hand with my sleeve and I held his hand before it really clicked that I was sitting with a dead body.

When it did I frantically called 911 and I was too distraught to give them very much information other than that I was 13 and that he was dead. At this point I had gone into the hallway but when the operator told me to go outside so that they could find the house I put the phone down and went back to my friend. I remember sitting there holding his hand, silently waiting for the paramedics. But I was told later they were able to find the house because one of the neighbors called in saying they could hear screaming coming inside.

I will never forget seeing my childhood best friend slumped in a heap of vomit and blood and I will never ever forget that smell."

From tizod:

"A single engine plane crashed into an apartment building a few doors down from where I lived at the time. I was one of the first people on the scene. I just stood there frantically trying to call 911 but couldn't get through. A man emerged from the building and started coming straight for me.

He looked like a character from a cartoon who just had a bomb go off in their face. His hair was smoking and his face was blackened. He came to me screaming with both hands stretched out before him. The skin on his hands was melted away and hanging from what was left.

He screamed, and I screamed. I had no idea what to do. Thankfully a women showed up who had some kind of training and she proceeded to treat him for shock. I probably could have used some treatment myself.

In the end only the occupants of the plane and an elderly Holocaust survivor who lived in the building perished."