When Hide And Seek Goes Horrifyingly Wrong
Hide and seek—a fun game we played as kids, right? WRONG. Unfortunately, for these folks, playtime took a very dark turn.
1. Into The Woods
When I was about eight years old, my six-year-old brother and three-year-old sister were playing some type of easy hide and seek in my grandparents' backyard. Well, there are woods behind their house. Our sister, being a defiant toddler, ran into the woods and my brother just saw her run in and ran in after her. That's when things went wrong.
They were in the woods for hours because she ran in so deep and they both got turned around. Our brother found a hunting post, climbed up it into the tree, and found a way out.
They then knocked on doors, covered in dirt and scratched up, until someone answered. A woman gave them a ride back because our brother was able to point out landmarks to get back to our grandmother's house.
They got back while my mother was on the phone with an officer, and they were discussing a helicopter to find them. We were this close to a search party. They walked a collective two to three miles. They could have gone miles deeper into rural woods if they didn't keep going one way and find the post. So yeah, watch your darn kids!
Telling them "Don't go into the woods" does not guarantee they will listen. The authorities were called and still showed up to give the kids a "talking to".
2. Toby's Gone Missing
When I was eight, I was at a birthday party for my neighbor's daughter. We had mutual friends, and one of them, let's call him Toby, wasn't really the brightest.
We all weren't, but he took the cake, like eating a wasp once and then wondering why his mouth was swollen. Anyway, the daughter challenged us to a game of hide and seek.
For context, they lived on a big farm, so there was plenty of space to hide. To keep the game from going too long, we all agreed to only hide in the barn and on the main plot, and not the meadow behind it. It only took the daughter about 15 minutes to find me and the other kids invited to the party, except for said Mr. Darkhead Toby. Soon, we started to panic.
By this time, it was about 5:30 PM and we were all getting ready to go home, but Toby was nowhere to be found. Our parents agreed to let us stay until 7 PM, hoping that he was found by then.
After Toby wasn't found, Toby's parents called 9-1-1 and a search squad was sent out. Still no sign of him, the officers gave up.
The next morning, I woke up to my parents telling me, in a tone of relief, that Toby was found. When I heard what happened, I couldn't believe it. Apparently, Toby somewhat got lost in the meadow and was only found eight hours later standing on the side of a road that was four MILES away, with his shorts and t-shirt all ripped and damaged.
He was only found after a relative spotted him with his headlights. Oh, did I mention that Toby was new to the area and didn't know where what was?
We are still friends to this day, 18 years later, and whenever we are really bored, we bring this story up and just laugh our guts out about it. About him not being very bright, yeah, he now has his masters degree in mechanical engineering.
So glad this story ended well, or else my life would be different now.
3. The Greatest Hider Of All Time
Ok, first some backstory. I take hide and seek VERY seriously. And I’m very good at it. Like, savant good. When I was in high school, I went to a camp every holiday (four times a year) where one of our activities was a nightly game of spotlight.
Spotlight is essentially hide and seek, but played outside on an oval in the dark, with weak flashlights.
Once you were found, you turned in your own flashlights and started looking for the remainder of the people hiding. It was a BIG deal to be the last one found. So, my first time going to this camp, I go all out.
Full matte black clothing, a beanie, etc. And I pick the best possible spot—it was in long, wet grass on the side of the oval.
Weird thing was, three other guys picked the same spot a minute later as time was running out, only they bunkered down closer to the edge of the grass where it was dry. They had no idea I was there. Inevitably those casuals were caught. The guy that found them was peering into the grass, trying to find me. Then the craziest thing happened.
As he moves further in, he actually steps on me. And thinks I’m just a pile of garbage. Because matte black clothes under torchlight look a lot like a garbage bag. So that hurt. Well, I stayed in that wet ditch for two hours.
When I finally made my way back to the dorm...it was not to triumph. It turns out everyone had forgotten I existed. Owch.
4. Taking The "Care" Out Of Daycare
One summer while in a horrible daycare, my younger twin brothers and I were forced to stay outside along with the older kids, who were 14-15ish, and were pretty entitled jerks if I'm being honest. I didn't like them.
Anyway, we were allowed to go outside of the fence of the daycare and often went up a hill into a forest near the daycare.
So one day these buttheads decide to make us play hide and seek in said forest, lest they go back to the lady who owned the daycare, Susan, and come up with some excuse to get us in trouble. By the way, Susan hated our guts for some unknown reason, and favored the older kids over me and my brothers. After five minutes in the woods, things go south—HARD.
Both of my twin brothers are very allergic to bees—something that the forest was filled to the brim with, as it turned out. One managed to get stung right in the foot when he took his shoe off for just a moment.
We had to carry him through the forest and down the hill because he couldn't walk at all. His screaming still haunts me.
When we got back to the daycare, Susan tried just fixing the sting on her own to avoid word spreading of how she didn't keep an eye on a kid with allergies. Well, she failed miserably.
Sometime later, my brother was taken to the hospital and thankfully recovered. We didn't go back to that daycare the rest of the summer, and it was closed down less than a year later.
