Sometimes, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and you witness something that you were absolutely not meant to see. Whether it's heartbreaking, gruesome, or just nasty, there's no way to turn back time and erase it—at least until they make those devices from Men in Black a reality.
1. Scrubbing The Record
I was hanging out with a buddy from middle school. He was shady about insisting that I only stay in his room, and that I enter through his back door and keep quiet. As we were leaving, I turned down the wrong hallway and walked into his kitchen. There was a doctor and some assistants in scrubs. Tubes, machines, and plastic wrap everywhere.
I was quickly ushered out, screamed at, and told not to talk about it.
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2. The Sadness of Waiting
I haven't seen it, but my mom said at the retirement home she worked at, the elderly people were... not all the way there. She said there was this one sweet old lady that always would wait in the waiting room. She had a baby doll she always carried close to her and treated like a real baby, too. She said that the woman was there every single day, waiting for her son to come visit her.
People would walk by and for anyone that would listen, she'd say, "I'm waiting for my son, he'll be here very soon!" over and over and over. But that's not even the saddest part. The woman had Alzheimer's disease, and unfortunately, her son was never coming. He had passed on in some freak accident. He never came and she always waited and that is probably the saddest thing ever.
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3. Thanks for Sticking Around
At first, I thought I’d found my dad's will. I was on his computer while he was at work and ended up finding a strangely titled word document. At first, it didn't seem like a big deal. It contained a note to each of his kids. It wasn't until I got to the last one, my youngest brother, that I realized it wasn't just a will. The start of that line read something along the lines of "If anything is going to make me change my mind now, it's writing this part.”
That’s when I realized I had found my dad's suicide note. I was about 14 or 15 at the time, and I had no idea how to go about talking to him about it. I decided to just keep it to myself. He started buying us gifts and stuff, and I would get really scared and I still just kept it to myself. I remember one day, on the weekend, I woke up in my bed to a loud bang coming from my dad's room.
I laid there in bed for probably half an hour frozen. Once I worked up the strength I went to his room and opened the door. He wasn't in the bedroom. I was so confused until I saw that the bedroom window was open. What had happened is that there was a gust and the wind had slammed the door shut, but my paranoid brain had heard a gunshot.
After that, I was laughing hysterically, and I don't have much memory of the day past that. Shortly after this incident, my dad returned most of the gifts he bought us kids and I slowly started to believe that he had changed his mind. I never confronted him about it until last year, about 14 years or so later. I had never fully accepted that he was okay now.
I called him distraught about a separate matter, and he started talking to me about depression. He told me on his own about he had considered taking his life, and went into detail about it, and all I could do was cry and tell him "I know." We talked a lot longer after that and we were finally able to put it all to rest.
4. A Little Less Conversation
I borrowed my now ex-husband’s laptop one evening while I was at home and he was out with his friends. His browser was open to his Gmail account, including an ongoing email chat between him and his mistress. He must have been chatting with her from his phone, because their conversation continued on the screen in real time as I looked on in horror.
I scrolled back through the previous several weeks of their chat. He mentioned having a wife. He also sent her naked pictures. Sooooo many naked pictures. He gushed over his feelings for her over and over again, but she mostly just seemed to want to hit him up for money. It was horrifying, of course. But also a terribly sad look into that jerk’s inner life.
We’re divorced now, thankfully. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
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5. Heartbreak At McDonald’s
Stopped in McDonald's for breakfast one morning. They were clearing a bad car crash at the intersection, flat-bedding a crushed Saturn. In the McDonald's sat a stunned old man. An employee came up to him and asked if he needed anything, and he said no. A couple of minutes later the manager came out with a cup of coffee and sat down with him and took his hand.
She seemed as sad a person could be, and he just looked...normal. Turns out his wife had just passed in the accident outside and he was waiting for someone to pick him up.
6. Outside the Terms of Your Rental Agreement (and Morality)
I worked for a downtown metropolitan hotel for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot I wasn’t supposed to see. Probably the worst was a kid with an old man. I checked this guy in at like one in the morning (not uncommon, because people travel at different times), but he was alone. Like an hour later he asked for something like a towel or blanket.
Anyway, I dispatched our runner to deliver it. Afterward, the runner comes to me and says he thinks something is wrong because he caught a glimpse of someone, and the old guy was trying hard to block the entrance. Since we were supposed to take stuff like human trafficking seriously, I asked our maintenance to cut his power so we would get a call to come up to try and fix the problem.
He does, and I go up with him to apologize for the inconvenience because the guy was also a top-tier member. Sure enough, we hear a kid in the bathroom hiding. I tried to ask who the kid was, and the old guy tried everything to shut us down from throwing his status around to bribing. So I called the authorities and let them deal with it.
7. Diary Of A Wimpy Parent
When I was about 11 years old, I found my mom's old diaries and read them. I found one from when she was pregnant with me. Apparently, she was seriously contemplating adoption. Then, in one from several years later, she was wondering whether she had made the right choice by keeping me. It was a pretty unexpected thing to discover.
Some have suggested to me that she might have just written this stuff to let some emotions out and never actually meant it. While I don't feel this way about my own children, I can certainly understand people blowing off steam. But for what it's worth, when I read the entry, it didn't come as much as a surprise to me. She and I have always had a strained relationship, even from the time when I was a young child.
I think she just never wanted the responsibility of having a child. I would describe my relationship now with her as superficial. And I would describe her as very emotionally stunted. In many ways, she reminds me of a teenager and I've definitely taken on the more sensible adult role in our relationship. The bottom line is that whenever she feels slighted, she will lash out emotionally to make the other person feel hurt.
I think she has deep-seated control issues that probably stem from being hurt herself. I am doing my absolute best to finally break this cycle. I am trying to find helpful resources, particularly books or podcasts, about overcoming things like this. I am hoping to be a better mom to my children than she has been to me. I believe I am a wonderful mom, but I also can sometimes feel my mom's tendencies creep up inside me.
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8. Shared Fear
I was sitting in my room at like 11:30 PM, heard lots of stuff downstairs, assumed it was my mom. I heard her walk up the stairs to my room, and stop. I called out to her, but she didn't say anything and walked downstairs. I went down about half an hour later, only to an absolutely terrifying note. It read, "You're lucky I'm scared too" on it, and a whole bunch of stuff was missing.
I called my mom, she still hadn't arrived home from a dinner she was at with her friends. I called the authorities and locked myself in the bathroom. I think whoever was in my home left when they realized I was still there. When I was hiding in the bathroom, it was probably the most scared I've ever been.
9. The Last Text
Without going into too much detail, I work in law enforcement and part of my task on this particular day was logging the personal effects of someone who had very recently passed in an accident. Just as I was picking it up, the cell phone lit up with the most heartbreaking text message I'll ever read. It just said, "I'm so sorry, please come back. I love you."
10. Stranger Than Fiction
I have a very early memory of getting out of bed one night because I'd had a nightmare. I was intending to cuddle with mum and dad, since I was maybe about five or six years old. There was a couple staying with us at the time. The guy was my dad's friend from high school, I think. My parents had a small courtyard attached to their bedroom.
I walked into the bedroom and could hear them in the courtyard. The glass door in between had a curtain across it. I peeked between the gap in the curtain and saw my mum and the other woman sitting around the table, no tops on, while my dad fondled the other woman's breasts and the other bloke did the same to my mum.
They were all drinking and lighting up, even though I never knew my parents to smoke at any other time. I legged it back to bed quickly. That nightmare was definitely worse than my unconscious one!
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11. Dirty Laundry Has Never Been So Fun
When I was in college I worked at an arcade/mini-golf joint that seemed to not care about actually making money, but it was never in any kind of financial trouble. When I got hired, the owner said, "I pay minimum wage and I expect to get minimum work for it." I worked the front counter and collected money for the mini-golf and sold cups of coins (or you could just use the coin changer).
The till was completely busted and would be off by $50 or more in either direction no matter what you did. I realized very quickly that I could just pretend to ring up golf fees and cups of tokens and pocket the cash, so I'd pocket $30-40 every shift, and nobody seemed to care. One of the assistant managers let me take a break 20 minutes after I'd just taken a break because some of my friends had shown up and wanted to smoke with me.
He was like "That is totally more important than your job." It was awesome. Then one day, I walked into the owner’s office while his secretary was recording figures in the ledger. I can read upside down pretty well, and it was very obvious that the figures she was recording had nothing to do with the business we were doing. We sold maybe $60 of golf fees a night, and maybe $100 in coin cups, but she was recording $600 and $1,000 for each.
I commented on the discrepancy and quipped about how someone would think we were in the laundry business and she got really squirrely and told me to leave the office. The next day the owner called me into his office, and we had a very circumspect conversation about how much I was enjoying working there and enjoying the perks of the job, and I very much got the sense that he was trying to decide if I was going to tell anyone anything.
Apparently, he decided I wasn't (and I wasn't), and so I kept working there. About a year later, the owner was detained for money laundering and we all got fired. Still the best job I ever had. The mob is an A+ employer, would work in fake business again.
12. In The End, The Kids Lose
I was at the mall eating at the food court with some friends, to the right of us there was a father with his two young daughters and son. They were celebrating his son's 4th birthday. The father made the table look really special with Spiderman decorations, a big cake, balloons, party hats...you could tell he worked really hard. He even asked us if we would take a picture of all of them.
They had just finished opened presents and was about to have cake. Then everything fell apart. A raging mad woman (the mother) walks up screaming that it's "her" day with the kids. She's screaming and he's trying to reason with her explaining he wanted to celebrate his son's birthday with him. The mother grabs the kids and drags them out of the food court. Leaving the father all alone at this nicely decorated table with an untouched birthday cake he had made.
He sat there for a good 20 minutes before cleaning.
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13. Shhh
One time when I was in middle school, I fell asleep on the couch in our living room. Around one in the morning, I woke up and saw a man walk through the wall adjoining our living room to my brother's bedroom. The man noticed me and turned to face me. He had half of his face missing as if he had been dragged along the highway.
He put his finger to his lips as if to tell me not to tell anyone and then turned forward and walked through our glass door out into the yard. Obviously freaked out, I ran into my brother's room to find an empty bed. I run screaming and crying to my parents and they freak out and start calling all my brother's friends' houses trying to find him.
When they finally got in touch with him they found out he had been at a college party drinking about an hour away. My dad went to pick my brother and his best friend up not wanting them to drive home drunk. The next day we got news so disturbing that it made my blood run cold. We found out that the kid who was originally going to drive my brother home passed on after he was ejected from his car during a drunk driving accident.
14. Seek, And Ye Shall Find
When I was seven years old, I was playing hide and seek with my cousins at my grandma's house. I hid in the wicker laundry basket with the lid closed. “This is awesome,” I thought to myself, as only a child discovering the greatest hiding place can feel. I could see through the small gaps in between the wicker. It was in my grandma's bathroom and just two feet in front of the toilet.
But then, something happened that I did not see coming. My grandma walked through the bathroom door not even thirty seconds after I had contorted myself and closed the lid above me. With my face pressed against the side of the hamper so that I couldn’t look away, my grandma walked in, sat down, and went to town on that toilet.
I couldn’t avert my eyes. I was staying perfectly still so that this awkward situation wouldn’t turn even more awkward. But the noises. The smell. My grandma’s privates. It was all too much to handle. I was never supposed to see any of it, and I very much wish I hadn’t. When all was said and done, I won the hide and seek game. But I lost my innocence.
15. Holding A Hand
I was in an accident in 2006. The driver of our vehicle was inebriated from the night before. Was cut off by a car trying to merge. Instead of turning right he turned left into oncoming traffic. We hit a Jetta head-on. My buddy was laying in the back seat and sleeping when it happened... after the truck stopped rolling and spinning I was able to get out through the back window area of the truck.
He was no longer there. Found him on the highway in a pool of blood surrounded by a group of people holding their hands over their faces trying not to look and panicking. I went on over to him and held his hand and for the 35 minutes it took the ambulance to get to us he cried and told me he didn't want to die this way over and over again.
He was in and out of consciousness and I remember right before the ambulance showed up he drifted back in and proceeded to pour out his heart to me. I've seen a lot of stuff in my 25 years. Used to be a less than honest man. Watched a few people pass. Even with all that in my past, that was by far the most emotionally disturbing thing I've ever dealt with.
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16. Hitting Too Close To Home
I saw one really weird message, and then got sucked into reading a whole huge text chain of my dad’s really disgusting and inappropriate text messages with his girlfriend. And that's not even the worst part. He calls her the same very specific and highly personalized nickname that he's called me since I was child. It was like a train wreck, I just couldn’t look away.
The messages had a really strong role play vibe as well, and I have never fully recovered from reading them. It seems that he refers to her by my nickname whenever they are being intimate or romantic. For more horrific context: Said nickname isn’t some common thing like “baby girl.” It’s a reference to a specific misprint on my soccer jersey from middle school.
It’s incredibly distinctive, sounds a lot like my actual first name, and, to make matters weirder, the girlfriend has definitely heard him refer to me by that nickname hundreds of times. Also, it sounds nothing even close to her own name. I have wracked my brain a million times about it to try and make myself feel even slightly less grossed out, but I just end up feeling more upset.
It seems most likely that they do some kind of role play wherein she roleplays as me while being with my dad. I have no idea why else using that nickname in this context would ever be a thing. So, I’m traumatized and haven’t looked at my dad the same way ever since. But I sure as heck don’t want to ask him about it. I haven’t told anyone in my life about this because what would you even do about that?
It’s the only thing in the world that I haven’t told my fiancé about, because I think he might actually go crazy if he found out.
17. Not Everything Should be Renovated
I broke into an abandoned supermarket when I was 14. Not sure what I was expecting to find. I was at the second level of the 2-level building observing this wide-open expanse-inside-a-building that had at one point been full of normal families shopping and employees working, but which had now been forgotten. I was thinking about how odd it was that I was the only one who had likely been inside for several years.
I heard rats rustling off in the distance. I had entered from a large ventilation duct from behind the building. I sat there still looking downward and considering whether to venture down and further into the store (and how I would get back out if I did). I sat for a while considering but suddenly, I heard a loud noise from the front of the store. I thought perhaps the owner was entering to survey or something.
Darn, good thing I had stayed put high and out of view. I saw two younger men entered moving suspiciously. They obviously were not the owners. It seemed like they were looking to loot anything that had been forgotten. They flashed flashlights around and then as they shined them to the right around the corner from the main entrance where they entered—the direction of the rats I heard rustling about—the light uncovered a man standing facing them, about five yards from them.
This happened so fast, but I will always remember it in detail, it’s burned into my memory. The man jerked his head around to look at them. His face was leathery, and he had brown hair. His hands were dirty with something. He yelled at them, "You are DEAD!" in the most terrifying voice I've ever heard. They ran, he chased, and I got out as fast as I could.
18. Down On The Farm
One time, when I was a kid, I went through my grandma's old jewelry box. I found a little flash drive at the bottom mixed in with the miscellaneous and broken jewelry. Being as I was immediately curious as to what secrets might lie within, I plugged the flash drive into my older brother's computer. There was a video on it, titled, "Oregon Farm 2011."
I clicked on it and immediately saw the most horrific thing that anyone could possibly ever imagine. It was a bald man with an extremely large you know what inserted inside my grandma's mouth. I panicked and immediately turned off the screen. But it was too late. The image was burned into my mind. I put the flash drive back.
I've never said anything about it to anyone, and I don't plan on it. I'll probably take this secret to the grave.
19. Hot Around the Collar
I once witnessed a guy set himself on fire. I was working in a hospital and was walking through the main foyer with my colleague about to leave to go home when this guy walked in the main door soaking wet. My colleague turned to me and said, "Is it raining outside?" But just as the words were coming out his mouth the guy pulled out a lighter and went up like a torch.
Fortunately, some painter and decorators were working nearby and grabbed their dust sheets and just jumped on the guy. That’s when I found out the disturbing truth. It turns out he was a patient who had been receiving treatment for mental illness. He'd gone to the petrol station just across from the hospital and doused himself in petrol before coming in and setting himself alight.
Poor guy didn't make it and for a long while, you could still just see the faint marks on the floor where the rubber from his shoes had melted.
20. Dad Never Quits
When I was young, I'd say about twelve or thirteen years old, I got a text from what looked like an unknown number, as no name popped up with it. It was clearly from a man. It said something along the lines of: "I'm just sitting here playing with my you know what, wondering if women play with their you know whats as well."
It was very gross to my young self but nothing too bad. But then, everything got so much worse. A couple of minutes later, I received a text message from my mom saying that the text my dad just sent me was meant for her, and asking me not to tell anyone about it. If she had just kept her mouth shut about it, I wouldn't have known that my freaking dad had accidentally sexted me.
My dad never acknowledged to me that he screwed up, and thank god, the incident never got brought up again. Oh, but that wasn't the end. Unfortunately, I once saw a photo of my dad's privates. For some reason, he did not delete his photos before giving 12-year-old me his old phone to play with. Rookie mistake, if you ask me.
21. Homecoming Grief
My dad is a Patriot Guard rider and does a lot of homecomings whether it be a KIA or a unit coming back. I sometimes drive to the airport if they are coming into the regional or will meet them at the funeral home or site of the service. They are always sad, but one stuck out for me. A local soldier had passed in Afghanistan and was in his mid 30s, no children or wife, just a career military man.
The jet was set to arrive very early on a muggy, warm weekday morning. Despite this, a good amount of the public showed up along with officers and firefighters from the local area. I was talking to the father of my friend who had passed in Iraq and I asked where the family was. He said only his mom, sister, and a cousin could make it. This is somewhat rare as usually the entire family and a group of friends are there.
He pointed her out and they were talking to a liaison from the Army. A person who worked for the airport said the plane was in final approach and was landing in about two minutes. The Patriot Guards lines up, the hearse pulls into place the Army Honor Guard gets information. The family slowly walk forward, the mom is arm-in-arm with the Liaison, as the plane taxis in.
As it comes to a stop and the ground crew checks the plane. The plane opens revealing the flag-draped casket. You could see the mom slowly begin to weep and shake as she waited for her son to be unloaded. They bring over a cart-like thing that will hold the casket before being placed into the hearse. As the honor guard marches the casket over to the hearse, the mother's legs give out and the liaison is doing everything he can to help her to her feet.
She regains her composure and walks over to the casket and just falls on it, crying uncontrollably. No parent should ever lose her child, but to think she was also seeing her family slowly fade away was rough. The hearse leaves the airfield escorted by a couple of officers and the 150+ Patriot Guard riders. As her car drove by us, her face was something I will never forget.
It reminded me of someone who was deceased, all color, all life was gone from it. Just a blank expression, the only sign of life was her slowly wiping away tears. I have been to a lot of homecomings, including my friends and that one was hard but I saw all of the people there to support his family and to support each other. At one of the hardest times in her life, she only had two people who could be there for her.
22. Time To Turn Off The Screen
A few years ago, a cousin of my female friend got back from Afghanistan, recently discharged. Let's call my friend Lucy, and let’s call her cousin Mike. I didn't know Mike that well, but Lucy and Mike were fairly close with one another. We were using Skype to play Magic: The Gathering with him from a distance, usually with about five or six of us actually there in person.
We're in California, and Mike's in Alabama. Lucy wanted to include him in the fun we'd have after classes and such, so we were trying to figure out a long-distance solution to include him. Mike seemed like a nice enough guy. Anyhow, we're midway through a game when Mike says into the camera, "I'm gonna go get another drink, be right back."
We're still rotating turns, so it's all good. The laptop is angled in such a way that it's directly facing Lucy. I can see it at a slight angle from the right, and another friend, Nina, is beside Lucy. A couple of minutes pass. We figure he's using the restroom or whatnot. No big deal. The next part, I remember almost in slow motion. It's surreal.
Everyone is laughing and socializing while this is happening, and Mike comes back and sits down. I can’t explain why, but I suddenly get this weird feeling, like this deep pit opens in my stomach and my skin feels overly sensitive. My friend across the table looks concerned and says something like, "You okay?" because I had stopped talking suddenly and must have gone pale.
I didn't answer. I was watching the laptop. Mike was hiding his hands and I didn't see any beer. Nina said, "Hey, Mike's back," and everyone started picking up their cards. Mike says something to the effect of, "Just a sec, I want to show you guys something!" Real cheery like. He then pulls out a pistol and does a sort of salute movement with it.
He then shoots himself directly in the temple with a .44. Queue chaos, screaming, vomiting, ugly crying, frantic phone calls, and a lousy, terrible night all around. Part of me is really sad for Mike, but the greater part of me wants to tell him to go screw himself for traumatizing two friends of mine, one severely so, and subjecting me to it in the process.
He hurt his cousin on purpose as his last act in this world, as suddenly and brutally as possible. Screw you, Mike. But also, RIP.
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23. To The Mouths Of Babes
Growing up with my little brother and single mom, we never had a lot, but she made sure we always had a safe and decent place to live, and there was always food on the table. She never really ate much, I remember dinners of baked chicken, beef stew, salmon. It was a lot cheaper back then. Good food, nothing terribly extravagant, but always nutritious, yet she barely ever ate.
When I was 10, I saw her eating peanut butter and jelly on crackers in her room after dinner. That's when I realized there was never enough food for all three of us, she would cook what we had for my brother and I, and she would eat the bare minimum, always out of sight, so that my brother and I wouldn't worry about the actual level of poverty we were at.
I never asked for another material thing from her after that night.
24. This Calls For A Fiesta!
Many years ago, in the early days of the Doritos Locos Tacos, I was at an empty Taco Bell with my now husband just enjoying some artery-clogging food, when a bunch of guys in suits came into the Taco Bell and sat down to have a meeting. This Taco Bell was in the hood, so they were very out of place for the rest of the setting.
My husband ignored them, but I did my best to listen in on what they were saying. They were discussing plans for a new menu item, but I couldn't tell what it was exactly. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I was certain was a prototype wrapper for a “cool ranch” Doritos Loco Taco. The suits left before we did. I told my husband what I saw as soon as they left.
Sure enough, about a month later, this Taco Bell location became one of the test restaurants for that very menu item, which was released nationwide soon afterwards.
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25. The Spooky Chair
My husband and I were house shopping and we were checking out this 100+-year-old house with our realtor. We entered through the front door. Nobody was there but the three of us, and nobody was living in the house at the time. We looked around quickly, spending no more than three to four minutes before deciding we weren't interested.
When we got to the front door to leave, there was a big rocking chair blocking it on the inside. My husband moved it without saying anything. I said to the broker, "How did that chair get there?" She just shook her head indicating she didn't want to discuss it and we all walked to the car in silence.
26. Extremely Horrific
When I was about nine years old, I was sitting in my mum’s car at a T junction right at the front. I was in the passenger seat. On the opposite side of the T junction was a hill with a bunch of houses on and a path going directly up the hill, which had quite tall fences on either side. I could see a woman walking down the hill with a big pushchair in front of her.
I could also see that her view of the path along the road was obstructed by the fences. She just walked out onto the path, pushchair first, and didn’t see that there was a guy on a bike cycling along the pathway. He couldn’t see her either, as she was obscured by the fence. He swerved to miss the pushchair, and came flying off the bike and straight into the road.
At that exact moment, a truck drove by and it ran straight over his head. Me and my mum saw EVERYTHING. She quickly put her hand in front of my face so I couldn’t see, but it was too late. I can still remember the woman’s screams and seeing the blood splattered on the road. My mum had to stick around to tell the authorities what had happened, as we saw the whole thing play out.
I remember my mum taking me home and buying us pizza, and us spending the whole night on the sofa under the duvet, as it clearly messed her up too. I had nightmares about it for years afterwards, but I hadn’t thought about it for a little while until I started reading some of the other stories here! I hope no one ever has to witness something like that again.
27. Ticket To Ride
I went to pay a ticket that I had gotten while driving with my headlights turned off. I walked into the courthouse office I was supposed to be in and looked through the glass. To my surprise, I saw the married and publicly elected male sheriff giving the female magistrate a back and shoulder rub. They both went white when I knocked on the glass.
The sheriff immediately stopped and walked over to another room. The magistrate gave me the weirdest look and said: "I guess Christmas came early for you." Without another word, he stamped my ticket and then gave me a receipt, showing that the charges had been voided. Sometimes, it pays to see something that you weren’t supposed to see!
28. Channeling Their Energy
At one point, without really thinking it through, my parents hooked up the home security cameras to our living room TV. So one evening, I’m doing some drawings and looking for something interesting to watch as I doodle. When I got to the right channel, I inadvertently watched about ten seconds of my mom and dad getting it on before realizing what it was and turning it off.
I didn’t feel like finishing my drawing at all after that. I just walked out of the room and sighed with my childhood hatred on full display.
29. Talking Back In Public
I was walking home one day and I saw/overheard a mother disciplining her child. I don't know for what. This kid must have been around 10 years old, he yelled back at his mother ''At least I know I will never work at a McDonald's or clean someone else's house for a job!'' The mother froze. Everyone who was walking just stopped to watch that poor lady walk away from her brat child in tears.
The kid just stood there and he seemed to know he crossed the line. He just kinda looked around at the people staring back at him. Nobody said a word.
30. Truly None of My Business
My wife and I vacationed to London a couple of years ago. After dinner, we decided to go try out some local pubs because, you know, London. We didn’t want to go to the tourist trap places, so we followed around some locals. It was about 11 pm when we got to the last pub. It was a nice-looking place with a somewhat younger crowd.
I really had to pee, but I couldn’t find a restroom anywhere. I walked up to the guy working the front door and asked him where the restroom was. He looked at me kinda funny and said, “Upstairs. First door on your left.” I thanked him and scurried back into the bar. The staircase was in the back left corner, blocked by a table. I found it odd.
I had to ask the group sitting at the table to move to let me slide by. They thought it was strange too, by the looks on their faces. You could tell that these stairs weren’t meant to be used, but I had been drinking and my bladder was about to bust. As I reach the next floor there’s a long hallway with about five doors.
The bouncer had told me it was the first door on the left, so, I tried it. Nope, it was a dark room with empty kegs. Pretty normal, maybe he meant the right door? Nope, dark room with extra supplies. I started to wonder if I was too drunk to follow directions, but then I noticed that I could see light under the door at the end of the hallway.
That must be the bathroom, or so I thought. I open up the door to find a group of people in very sharp business attire seated around an oval table. They were clearly having a meeting of some sort, with their laptops out. They were incredibly surprised to see me. They all froze in place and we all looked at each other for a good 15-30 seconds.
Finally, one of the guys says, “What the heck are you doing, mate?” I replied, “I’m just looking for the bathroom, the door guy told me it was up here.” They all looked a little confused, but the guy responded, “We don’t have a restroom in this building, now please leave.” I apologized and closed the door, then headed back down the staircase confused as can be.
The good news was that my urge to pee went away. I slid past the group at the table and returned to my wife, who had ordered some fish and chips, and told her all about what happened. We both agreed it was strange but ordered another round and thought nothing of it. About five minutes later, I notice the guy in the very nice-looking suit come down the same stairs.
He saw me, then went to the security guy at the front and said something to him, then pointed at me. I almost pooped myself. The bouncer walks up to me and says, “You guys have to leave.” I told him that I had not paid my tab yet, and he said not to worry about, just go ahead and leave. I obliged. My wife and I stand outside of the bar while we wait for our Uber to take us back to our hotel.
The bouncer is sitting there, just staring at us. It was a very awkward five-minute wait. When our Uber gets there, the bouncer says in a very Jamaican accent, “You all have a very good night,” followed by a very loud laugh. To this day, one of the weirdest events of my life. Why were they having a business meeting at 11 pm, in a pub, on a Saturday night? Why did the bouncer tell me to go upstairs when he knew there was no bathroom? Why did they kick us out afterward? Why did the bouncer creepily laugh at us?
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31. Santa Is Stuffing Someone Else’s Stocking This Year
I once walked into my dad's van while he was hooking up with a woman who was not my mom. My dad had a drinking problem. Mom took me and my brother to go looking for him because he was supposed to be buying Christmas presents. We found his van at a bar. Mom sent me to look inside the van to see if there were presents in there.
I looked into the back and saw my dad's bare bottom as he was plowing some chick. He turned over his shoulder, looked right at me, and said in the evilest voice, "Get out." This was 20+ years ago now and I still get emotional thinking about it. I still remember the entire thing so clearly.
32. Do You See Her?
I have a version of sleep paralysis, so as terrifying as it can be, I’m generally pretty used to waking up to seeing things. I was on a road trip with my friend and we were staying in a hotel off of Route 66. I went to sleep before her and she stayed up to watch television on her phone. We turned the lights off and I started to doze off.
Every so often, I’d wake up to her panning her phone light to the area in between our beds. After a little while, she got up to go to the bathroom. I woke up once or twice to see a dark figure of a woman standing in between our two beds looking at me. Being exhausted from driving and prone to hallucinating when I sleep, I thought nothing of it.
A bit later, I woke up to the sound of a door slamming and my friend crossing the room and climbing into bed… she was laying directly on her side, stiff as a board, staring at me. I yelled, “What the heck, Mary?!” And turned on the light...but there was no one there. My scream brought Mary out of the bathroom though, and I just told her I had a nightmare.
Later that night, I woke up again to see the woman standing in between our beds. But this time, she moved over to the desk in the room, seemingly writing something. I quietly said Mary’s name, but before I could say anything else, Mary cut me off, asking: “Is that you?” We turned on the lights and stared at each other for a minute.
She started to ask me what I’d seen, but I cut her off and told her that we were both too tired to get on the road at three in the morning and we’d already paid for the room. We slept with the lights on in the same bed for the rest of the night. The next morning as we were driving away, we compared notes.
She said she kept flashing her phone light because she kept seeing the shadow of a woman standing between our beds. It freaked her out so much that she went into the bathroom to watch TV with the lights on. She saw the woman walk over to the desk as well. We now both have tattoos commemorating the terrifying road trip from the underworld.
33. A Dog’s Life
Yesterday, my dog was barking while I was Facetiming a friend. I went out to the gate to see what he was barking at. I peeped through the hand hole to see my next-door neighbor peeing on the land between our places. I saw his thing exactly at the moment when he looked me in the eye, thinking the eye belonged to my dog and said “It’s okay, Buddy,” which is my dog's name.
So, in other words, yesterday I not only saw my next-door neighbor’s privates, but also got to make eye contact with him while he was urinating. Fun times!
34. The Howl of Loss
On the day before my oldest daughter's birth I had a no-stress test done. (Basically they put a mic on your belly and listen to your baby's heartbeats). While I was laying there comfortably, listening to the thumping of her heart in the speakers, a young woman, also heavily pregnant, is brought in to have an ultrasound because she hasn't felt any movements of her little one in the last four days.
The midwives assure her that the little boy is probably just having a calmer period, but what the heck, let's check. The gel is poured on her belly, the nurse starts looking for the baby and suddenly her face freezes and she says the last words you want to hear: "Excuse me, I'll go get your doctor." The minutes until the doctor got there...oh man.
She was frantic, knowing that something was bad but not knowing just how bad it was. The doctor gets there, looks for a while for baby movements, then tells her that the horrible news. This poor woman's baby doesn't have a heartbeat but because the pregnancy was so advanced, they had to induce her labor. I could hear her howl-like crying even from the door of the ob-gyn ward.
35. Waiting for the Last Two PowerPoints
A coworker told me this happened several months before I started at the company. The big boss man comes back from a site visit/weekend at his cabin not too far from the site. He has someone burn all the photos from his camera to a CD and makes a couple of copies. One copy is with my coworker and another guy looking at photos from the site.
Suddenly, the photos of the site trip end and there are dirty photos of big boss man’s wife at their cabin on the disc. But wait, there's a twist: Another copy of the same set of photos was currently in the boardroom PC, where big boss man is showing photos to the client. My coworker doesn't know what to do, tells our lead administrative assistant.
She confidently marches into the boardroom and ejects the disc interrupting the meeting. The big boss man asks, "What are you doing?" She simply says, "There's a problem with the disc," and leaves. Everyone is praising the AA with bigger balls than anyone else. Yes, she's amazing, and no she never got in trouble.
She was the second employee that was hired when the big boss man started the company two decades ago. This event happened almost nine years ago now and she's still an indispensable employee. My coworker who unexpectedly saw the pics never heard what happened after that. Nobody talked about it and everyone just carried on like it never happened.
36. The Walls Fall Down
I was sitting in our office room home alone when I was 19. I was typing a paper for one of my college classes. The office room used to be my sister’s room before she moved out, so a lot of her decorations are still there. She had a photo of a mountain range, an oval-shaped mirror, and three different hangings that read "faith," "hope," and "love." This makes five total things hanging on the wall in the room.
Suddenly, I got random chills. Which happens all the time, it was pretty cold. But this time, as soon as I got the chills, everything in the room hanging on the walls fell off simultaneously. This really freaked me out, but it got a tiny bit worse. I got up and walked out of the room only to notice EVERYTHING hanging on a wall in my house had fallen.
All the pictures in the living room and other rooms, all the trophies in my room from little league sports, and even a stand that held candles. I wasn't sure what to do. I picked up all the stuff and hung it back up, which actually took me around 15-20 minutes. Then I drove to campus to finish my paper. I never told my parents.
It's also worth mentioning this happened around noon on a sunny day three winters ago.
37. That’s The End Of That Peep Show
A bunch of teens in our neighborhood and I used to host foreign ESL university students for a semester, so they could live with an English family and practice their English while they were studying. Well, one night I was taking out the garbage, and I noticed a couple of boys hanging out along our fence. I shooed them away and went back inside.
Next night, same thing. Boys hanging out along our fence. I should mention that our house was next door to a church, so it wasn't unusual for people to hang out in the parking lot, but it did bug me they were leaning up against the fence after dark. I shooed them away again. Then every night for the next two weeks.
I started to get curious why they'd scatter as soon as they saw me come outside, and why they didn't go somewhere else. So one night, after they ran, I went over to where they were standing and looked toward my house...right into the bedroom window where our student from Japan was lying on her bed, stark naked.
Her room was on a lower level of a split so the view was perfect to see every detail. That night I had my wife knock on her door and suggest that she close her curtains at night without going into detail about why she should. She took the hint and we never saw those kids again after that.
38. Blood Brothers
My brother and I were both very curious children. One day, he pulled me into our spare bathroom all excited because he had found a “huge surprise” in the garbage can beside the toilet. Inside the garbage can, there was a tortilla chip bag with a whole bunch of these weird rolled up things inside. We opened it up thinking that they were surprise toys left inside the bag by accident.
Nope, they were my mom’s blood-soaked tampons. Why, mom, why???
39. Man’s Best Friend
Growing up, I was pretty chubby. In fourth grade, I was in the 25th percentile for height, but the 75th percentile for weight. My doctor told my parents to make me exercise, so they started to take me and my sisters out for nightly walks around the neighborhood. We got to know our neighbors pretty well, because dusk was generally the time when it was cool enough for most to take walks, and our family walks were essentially mandatory for at least a year.
After I hit puberty, I grew a bunch and lost a lot of weight, but I kept walking. I kept seeing my neighbors and getting to know them better. There was one neighbor that I would always walk with at least for a couple of laps. He was an elderly gentleman named Paul. Paul was a retired engineer. His wife passed a long time before I was born, and his kids all lived out of state.
He loved to talk about engineering, about his family, and about his life in general. One of the things he would talk about the most, though, was his golden retriever, Sam. Sam was given to Paul by his daughter, who was worried about him living alone. Every time I'd walk with Paul, he'd be with Sam. For years I'd walk with both of them. When I got a car, sometimes when I drove by his house, they'd both be outside enjoying the sun.
When I left for college, Paul wrote me a really nice card and he had Sam make a paw print on the back. On holidays, I'd go home to see my family, but I'd always make it a point to go see Paul and Sam, and try to take one walk with them. On the Thanksgiving break of my sophomore year of college, I went to see Paul, but no one was at the door. No big deal, he probably wasn't home.
When I went to take a walk, though, I saw Paul walking down the street much slower than usual. I ran to catch up to him, and Paul was crying. I asked him what was wrong, and he couldn't say anything without letting out little sobs. Eventually, he stopped trying to speak and showed me what was in his hand. Folded up neatly in his palm was Sam's leash.
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40. That’s Between You and WebMD
Years ago, a colleague had an old smartphone that he brought in to give to another coworker as theirs broke. The phone was sitting on the new owner’s desk, but she hadn't yet tried it out, as it was still charging after months of not being used. We were talking about how cool it was with the coworker—smartphones were not widespread yet—and I picked it up to see how it felt in my hand.
I pressed a button and the first thing that I saw was a Google search for "lump on anus.” I quickly put the phone back down. This must have been the last thing he searched for when he last used it a long time ago, and forgot about it.
41. A Terrible Day In The Neighborhood
When I was about seven or eight years old, I watched my elderly neighbor have a heart attack and drop to the ground. His face went completely blue and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, all about a meter away from me. I feel like there was blood too, but I'm not 100% sure about that bit. I had to run inside and get an adult to call an ambulance.
I'm positive that I saw him momentarily pass, but the paramedics managed to bring him back. No child should have to see that, though. It’s extremely messed up.
42. The Chihuahua
I'm a paramedic and had just put a car accident victim in a body bag. The coroner gave us the okay to load him up. He was wearing a heavy jacket and sweater so we just stuck him in the bag and began to load him. After we got underway to the morgue, I heard a terrifying noise. When I checked it out, the guy was thrashing around in the body bag violently. I was out of my mind.
My partner didn’t see it, but nevertheless, we pulled over, He goes back and opens the bag, while I was about to pee my pants. All of a sudden, a very small chihuahua jumped out and ran up to my partner. He must have been in the guy’s jacket pocket or somewhere else? Maybe he’d been knocked out or just quiet until we got underway.
It took me the rest of the shift to relax after that. 32 years in EMS and I've never had anything like that happen to me.
43. New Phone, Who Dis?
My wife's stepmom once dated a guy who shared my first name. As a result, she once sent a breast pic to the wrong contact, in other words, yours truly. She was around 60 years old at the time. I instantly deleted the photo, and then took the opportunity to get off my butt and down to the cell phone shop for a new phone and a new number.
I then texted all of my contacts, saying that I had just gotten a new phone number and may have missed anything that they’d sent me in the last four hours or so. I created the perfect excuse for us never to have to speak of even the possibility of something so wrong. But, at the same time, I still haven't gotten myself intoxicated enough to forget it.
44. All You Need Is Love
I was a nosy child and man, it came back to bite me. One time, I was looking through my grandmother’s address book without her knowledge. She had little post-its tucked away in random places. I came across a note that was a list of things she wanted to do to be happy. One of them was “Find a man that loves me.” My grandfather had passed a while back, probably eight years previous.
It didn’t make me sad then, but it really does now because she has dementia and can’t remember things that happened a few seconds ago.
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45. No Show Aunt
My grandmother had been struggling with various types of cancers for the past few years. She and my alcoholic aunt had a falling out years before. One day, my aunt called and set up a time to see her (it had been years since they'd seen one another). I've never seen my grandmother so excited. My mother and I spent hours getting her dressed, doing her make-up, and drawing an eyeliner flower on her bald head (a routine we'd grown accustomed to).
We sat her up in her wheelchair which, at the time, was a huge struggle in itself. My aunt never showed. The look on my grandmother's face broke my heart. My grandmother passed on a month later.
46. At Least They Were Clothed!
I once walked in on my wife sleeping clothed with another dude in our bed on New Year’s Eve. I was working a door shift at a bar that night. I got no texts from her throughout the evening to wish me a happy new year as she usually did. So when I get home, I'm walking down the stairs to our part of the house and I notice that the TV is on.
I walk into the bedroom and see her and this dude passed out on the bed, fully clothed, but with all the sheets removed. I yelled "WHAT THE HECK??" and they both jolted up. All I remember is saying "Get out of my house!!" followed by "No, you're not putting your shoes on! Get out now!!" to the guy. I grabbed his backpack and whatever else he had and threw it out the front door in our driveway.
My wife and I didn't really say much that night. She left ten minutes later to stay at the hotel she worked at. Apparently, the dude worked there too. Soon, she moved into that same hotel after we broke up. We tried to work things out for a little bit, but due to the fact that she had mistreated me many times in the past, I decided that I’d had enough.
47. Window Shopping
The thing I saw that I was never supposed to see was my neighbor taking his own life. I was just casually looking out my bedroom window one day, when I noticed that my neighbor was standing on the ledge of his house. Next thing I know, he jumped to his demise right in front of my eyes. It was a horrifying thing to witness.
48. Belly Buster
When I was pretty young, I once had to have an operation that involved the doctors opening up my stomach. But somehow, the anesthetic wore off while the operation was still going on and I woke up to witness the surgeon with his hand inside of my stomach. I started to completely freak out like you cannot even imagine. I definitely was not supposed to be awake to see that!
49. The Hurt You Give Yourself
It was about a year after my mom passed on, so I was about 11 years old, and my sister was 13. She and I had a rocky relationship at the time, but we had our moments. When she was at a band competition on the weekend, I was dropped off with her. The time came when she had to perform so she gave me her phone. I went through it, being the nosey 11-year-old sister that I was.
I was expecting to find some exciting eighth-grader gossip or a secret boyfriend, but what I did find was not a laughing matter. I found dozens of self-harm pictures. Bloody sinks and bloody words carved into my sister's skin. At the time, I didn't even know self-harm was a thing. I didn't confront my sister about the photos until years later, but I did immediately rethink all of our fights and how we were all hurting as a family.
My sister and I are best friends now, and those photos did help me gain the perspective I needed to change our relationship, but they still haunt me.
50. Be Careful What You Wish For
When I was young, maybe about seven or eight years old, I was at my grandparents’ house one afternoon. I was talking with my grandma and said: “I wonder if there is a website named after me!” She was just as curious as me, so we went on the computer to look it up. I type in my name followed by “.com” and, to both of our horrors, an adult website came up.
51. Blood is Thicker Than Discarded Oil
I used to work on oil rigs. One stormy night, I had to go to the cellar deck (the lowest level of the rig) to do a repair, and I caught the safety officer and the production supervisor opening a separator valve and emptying the contents (oily water) straight into the sea! They obviously chose a winter stormy night to do this so that by morning the oil would be elsewhere.
52. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service
I teach high school. While I was taking attendance at the beginning of a Zoom class a few months ago, one of the girls in the class was clearly video chatting with her boyfriend on the side. I know this because she literally lifted up her shirt for him and flashed the whole class. I guess she forgot that we could all see. That made for an awkward communication with her parents later…
53. Don’t Skip the Previews
I once arrived early to pick up a girl for a first date. She was renting a small garden apartment behind a bigger house. It was just after dusk and I walked around the corner. The sliding door was standing open and she was inside walking around, brushing her hair, wearing only her underwear. She did not see me, so I just walked back around that corner and waited another 10 minutes.
When I walked around again, she had a dress on. I never told her. The date went well. I got to see her underwear again several weeks later.
54. Buzzing Away
I once caught my ex-girlfriend cheating on me. I woke up early and saw her phone light up. I thought it was mine since I didn’t have my glasses on, so I picked it up and started checking it. Sure enough, bam! Bumble and Tinder were both open. Later, when she woke up, I said: “So who’s Mark?” Her face instantly fell. And that was the end of that relationship…
55. All the Glitters Isn’t Capital
I found out that a relative who everyone believes to be filthy rich—and always throws extravagant parties, put his kids in expensive private schools, sends his wife shopping and loves fine dining—is broke and close to declaring bankruptcy. He's in deep debt and he hasn't paid his bills in months from what I could see. He owes a loan shark too.
Now, every time I see him post an invite to my mom, I cringe at the thought of him owing more money. My mom knows, even though I never told her—she just knows.
56. Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
I once overheard my dad legitimately begging my mom to have intercourse with him. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said to her, but I did hear my mom stand her ground with, “It’s my body and it’s my choice. I don’t want to do it and you can’t force me to.” Obviously, at the time, I wasn’t supposed to hear any of that convo.
And even now I’m not supposed to know that my mom was concerned because my dad was sleeping with women in multiple states and she was worried about her safety since he’d stick his you know what in whatever was available. But I do.
57. Making It To The Wedding
My parent's lifelong friend, Scott, was an incredible athlete, huge guy (6'5 and 300 on a thin day) and the most sincere and amazing person I've met. He was diagnosed with cancer just over 4 years ago, and over the next 3 years, he received the largest dose of radiation and chemo every given to a human being, and took it like a champ. It spread throughout his body, and eventually to his brain. He went in for surgery, had a golf ball-sized tumor removed from his brain, and proceeded with treatment.
Two years into his treatment, his daughter is proposed to, and plans to get married the summer of 2012, though it's unlikely he'll make it that far with the amount of cancerous tissue in his body at this point. Even with all this, he refuses to give up. He pushes on, going from 300 pounds or more, to 170, and losing the ability to walk, but still keeping his sense of humor and iron-willed drive to keep going. He even called my brother on a regular basis to keep him pushing with football (he's now going to be going full-ride div 1 as a running back).
So the wedding arrives, and he's still kicking. He walks his daughter down the aisle with the help of his 3 high-school buddies (my dad and his 2 friends). Then he collapses into a scooter and recovers while he watches his oldest daughter get married. After the ceremony, he finds the strength to have a dance with his daughter, again with the help of my dad and their two friends. He lasts only for 30 seconds, but the entire time you can tell it was absolute agony, except it was the most inspiring and touching moment I've ever seen.
Shortly after, he talked for about five minutes about his struggles in life, which there's no way I could do justice for here, but rest assured the hardened, tough people he drove trucks with were sobbing like little children the entire time, along with myself and everyone else in the room. He passed three weeks after the wedding. Nothing will ever hit me as hard as that, and I'm actually tearing up just recalling the whole thing.
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58. A Shot In The Dark
I am a medical student, and I’ve had the privilege of taking practices in the rural area outside the city. The university offered a transport bus to take you to the different hospitals in case transport was an issue. I used to sit in the first row behind the bus driver so I could look out at the road. This was in order to avoid the motion sickness that I get on road trips.
One morning, when we were about to depart, the bus driver climbed inside the vehicle. Just as he was about to take a seat, the unthinkable happened. Someone came inside the bus and shot him six times with what I believe was a big revolver. He passed on the spot. The blood loss was out of control because, as I later learned, one of the bullets pierced through his aorta.
On a selfish note, I am glad the culprit was wearing a motorcycle helmet and that I couldn't see his face, because I swear that after he was done with the shooting, he looked right at me. It seemed like for a second, he contemplated the idea of getting rid of the witness, but then let me off the hook since I hadn’t seen his face. Either way, I was afraid of coming to school for the rest of the year.
It took me a long time to stop fearing that the guy would come back for me some day. Rest in peace, Mr. Bayron. You were the quickest and coolest bus driver I ever met, even when your driving made me really dizzy!
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59. Tiny Casket
My niece's funeral. She was born without a diaphragm and the doctors couldn't do anything for her. It was sad seeing her in the NICU. She was so small, so still, so cold. It was sad to say goodbye to her. It was sad going to her funeral. The worst part was the coffin. It was so small. I felt so sad for my little nephew because he would never get to know his sister.
I kept thinking about what if I never got to know my little sister. I don't know if I've ever cried so openly in public before.
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60. Picture Perfect
I needed a USB drive at work one day, so I asked one of my coworkers if I could borrow one. It didn't seem to work, though. For some reason, files wouldn't transfer onto it. I started looking around for clues and saw something I wish I could unsee: an absolutely massive adult photo collection on there. The coworker was looking over my shoulder the whole time. The only thing I could think of to say was, "Hmm, interesting."
61. Smile, You’re on Film
15 years old. I had just got home from work, so I went to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and get ready for bed. I'm in the middle of undressing when I look to my bedroom window to catch my reflection and I see a man's face. I dropped to the floor and turned off the lights, scrambling to get dressed, still watching the window. The face is gone, but I'm still watching, then...a freaking camera.
No face, just a camera pointed at me sitting on the floor. I bolt from my room and tell my mom and brother. My brother went outside, and our ladder from the backyard was lying there. But nobody around. I couldn't sleep for a year after that, just stared at that window.
62. All Planned Out
The thing I saw that I was never supposed to see was my mom's secret document outlining a plan for how she could take her own life. She had it written out on a small notepad that she kept in her dresser drawer. It had her planning on trying to make it look like an accident so that my dad could collect the insurance money.
She almost did it one day but, from my understanding, my brother unexpectedly came home early from either school or a friend's house, so she didn't go through with it.
63. The Elephant In the Room
I was helping my mother-in-law cleaning out her closet. It was all jokes and laughter until I pull out an unopened massive adult toy. We were both paralyzed for a moment before she slowly took it out of my hands and mumbled something about it not being what she thought it would be like, and that she ordered it online. She then backed out of the room and threw it in a cupboard. We then proceeded to clean the rest of the closet. I desperately wanted to tell my significant other about this awkward event, but decided to spare him.
64. What’s In A Name?
I have the same first name as the CFO of the company that I used to work for. Now, the CEO was not very technically savvy and, as a result, he accidentally emailed me confidential company documents more than once. So I saw many of my coworkers’ salaries that I don’t think they ever would have wanted me to see.
65. A Parting Gift
The thing I saw that I was never meant to see was my grandfather’s secret collection of adult magazines. I stumbled upon it while at his house one time when I was a kid. When he eventually passed at the hospital, I immediately ran straight to his room and purged it before anyone else even discovered that it had existed.
66. A Casual Encounter
One time, my mom's old friend came over. She is a little crazy, but very sweet too. She said I looked just like her daughter, and then spent about ten minutes scrolling through the camera roll on her phone with me, trying to find a picture of her. In the process, I saw at least two or three pictures of male privates. She was a bit embarrassed, but just said "I'm sure you've seen one of those before, sorry." I assured her that it was fine.
Honestly, by the looks of the thing in the picture, I was far more concerned for her!
67. What’s a National Secret Between Friends?
I was driving from West Berlin to West Germany in the late 1980s. My boyfriend gives me the wrong instructions, so I have to take an exit off the Autobahn to turn back and get back to the correct exit. On the small country road on which we found ourselves, we see a large truck with a missile on it, surrounded by Russian soldiers.
They were as surprised as we were, but just laughed and waved at us, as we got the heck out of there as quickly as possible.
68. Does Not Compute
I am a cybersecurity consultant for a large consulting firm and I was brought in to conduct a pen test, which means an authorized hacking to try and find any vulnerabilities. I gained access to one of the employee’s laptops, and what I discovered on it was shocking and disturbing. He had his personal Dropbox account linked to on the laptop, with hundreds of illicit images of children inside it.
It was horrific, and it still makes me nauseous to this day. I reported it to my leadership and to the Human Resources department, and law enforcement was soon involved. The man is behind bars now. I definitely wasn’t supposed to see that, but it’s probably a good thing that I did so the guy could be stopped.
69. Selling Off A Life’s Work
I went to an estate auction where an old widowed man sat and watched as his children sold his life's work for literal pennies.
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70. Going Ape
Living out in the country when I was about ten years old, my parents went to the local video rental place one day and brought back a few VHS tapes. They told me to pop in Planet of the Apes. I did, and whoever had it before clearly didn’t rewind it because it started playing mid video. And all we heard was a bunch of moaning, before catching a quick glimpse of some privates.
I stared, glued to the TV, while my parents freaked out and ran to turn the tape off right away. They had no idea what just happened, but we eventually figured it out. Apparently, the small local video rental store back then doubled as an adult video store as well. So, somehow, they had accidentally given us a copy of Playmate of the Apes instead of what we actually ordered.
71. Beautiful Ghosts
I lived in the middle of nowhere in Ireland growing up. A friend and I were camping outside in our field. We hear this singing in the middle of the night. My friend unzips the tent and looks out, he wakes me up and tells me to come to look. There in the middle of the field is a woman. Pure white skin, blonde hair, a dress made of some really light flowing fabric... tunic-like.
She's walking slowly across the field singing in Gaelic. I still have everything burned in my mind, from how she looked to how she sounded. Her voice was light but yet kind of raspy. Everything about her was ephemeral. My friend wanted to go talk to her, I pulled him back into the tent and we ended up hiding in our sleeping bags till the next morning. I'm almost 100% sure it was a fae. We were too far away from other people for it to have been a random person.
Another story is that I saw a ball of light over a nearby field another night. It hovered about 10 feet off the ground and then sped off over the field ridiculously fast. Then it disappeared into a hedge. No idea what it was. I'm a skeptic when it comes to ghosts, aliens, monsters, etc., but I'm a believer when it comes to the Fae.
Those things are real, and they ain't the little Tinkerbelle-like things. Fae are tall, beautiful and dangerous.
72. Out You Go!
I once saw my upstairs neighbor and another man push a crying girl through a door. I knew they were involved in substance-related deals, so I felt it necessary to call the authorities despite them already suspecting that I was being a busybody. I'd asked for my name to be kept out of the case, so I wasn't told the specifics, but my neighbor was gone for good shortly after that day.
So I guess he probably was up to no good, after all!
73. Brother From Another Mother
The other day I was going through some drawers, looking for my old passport, when I found a few of my Dad's old visitor's passports. Now, my Dad is older than most of my friend's dads. He's 70, while I’m still a teen. Well, imagine my surprise when, listed under "children" in the passport, there's the name of a kid who was born in the 1970s.
The best part is that the name isn't on his other passports from later on, so I guess I accidentally found out I have a (dead?) half-brother.
74. One Very Dark Shoebox
I once found an entire album and shoebox full of Polaroid shots of my grandmother in intimate positions. I also found VHS tapes of my grandparents having key parties with other people, as well as videos of them committing hate speech. I found this all while clearing out my grandfather's trailer after he passed.
I also found jars full of pee, but I don't think he cared whether I saw those or not.
75. The Old Dog And The Young Man
The day we put my husband's dog down. The dog's name was Duke, and they had been together for 12 years. Duke would sleep in the bed, and when he got too old to jump up, my husband would lift him into bed. Even when we were married, Duke would either sleep on my husband's side, on the floor, or on the bed with us. Whenever my husband came home from work, Duke would stiffly hobble down the stairs to greet him.
They had this kind of love equal, or even greater, than the love we had. Finally, Duke couldn't get up and down the stairs, he slept all day, and whined in pain whenever he moved. We knew it was time, but my husband insisted he take him for a walk first. That was the second saddest thing I ever saw, and old dog and a young man walking along the river slowly in silence.
The second was after the vet had put the injection in, Duke began to seize. Afterward, we found out it was the cancer in him that had been missed. The vet tried to suggest we leave, but my husband refused. He scooped up his dying, seizuring dog, hugged him close, and sank to the floor with Duke in his arms. He sat there, holding Duke close until finally he stopped and sighed his last breath.
It is the only time I saw my husband cry, but it was the most heartbreaking thing I ever watched.
76. Wrong Place, Right Time
I was definitely not supposed to walk in on my former boss going at it with the woman from the housekeeping agency that our firm used. But I did. I also was not due to receive the 35% raise that came my way the following month. But hey, I did! So I guess sometimes seeing things that you weren’t meant to see isn’t all bad!
77. That’s What I Call Clean Eating
Back in middle school, we had this really strange gym teacher, about 6'2” tall and ripped. My friend and I were going to take a dump and thought that the locker room toilets would be clean, since no one used them throughout the day. When we walked in, to our left was one big shower room and there was our gym teacher. It's so bizarre, I can't ever forget it.
He was showering while eating spaghetti out of a Tupperware container. Thank God he was wearing swim trunks, but he turned around and said you guys aren't supposed to be here, so we left.
78. Kicking The Bucket
Back in elementary school, I once accidentally spotted my teacher peeing in a bucket in our classroom’s storage area. Don't ask me why she didn't just use the bathroom. I haven’t the slightest idea. And no, she wasn’t not old. She was a perfectly healthy young woman. I then had to come back into the room for her class a few hours later and pretend that this never happened.
79. Just a Peep
When I was a teen I worked at a cable access studio and made mini-movies. My neighbors gave me their father's old video camera. They told me he never used it but it didn't seem to work anymore and had a tape jammed in it. I fixed it up and on the tape was hours of him driving around at night and filming people through their windows.
Nothing overly risqué was on it, but there is something unsettling about seeing Peeping Tom footage of a guy eating dinner with his family or over 20 minutes of some girls dancing around in their room.
80. Barnyard Boogie
I once inadvertently witnessed my mother and her male "friend" sleeping together in our family barn. This was way back when I was only about nine years old. After that incident, our parents divorced and never spoke with each other again. I'm now 37. It’s funny how time flies, but some moments still stick with you no matter how long it’s been.
81. Somewhere That’s Green
I was about eight of nine years old and my parents were going to be out of town, so they had me and my siblings stay with a family from our church that we didn't really know well. Once we got to the house (which was really nice, by the way), they had one rule. You can play wherever you want, but the basement is off-limits.
Me being the little jerk that I was, snuck down there the first chance I got and was supremely disappointed to only find rows and rows of plants growing under lights.
82. When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go
I was living with my girlfriend and her parents. One day, I ran down the stairs real quick to use the bathroom, only to find her parents getting down and dirty under the blanket on the couch. At this point, it was too late to turn around. So I just ran past them. I used the bathroom and came out to find her dad waiting for me in the kitchen. By far the most awkward moment I’ve ever had when it comes to parents…
83. The Saddest of Funerals
I used to work in an office of people that were very close. I moved on to start my own business, working on my own, and missed the camaraderie of that place. A few months later I pick up the morning paper and on the front page is a story about a bad car accident in which a man and his seven-year-old daughter didn't make it.
Then I notice the name and realized the awful truth. It was one of my favorite co-workers, absolutely loved by everybody. He was an older dad, had his daughter when he was 40, as did I a few months later. I was shocked and saddened beyond measure. The funeral was huge. Everybody from the office, all of his customers, anyone who ever knew him was there.
It was the saddest event I have ever seen. Grown men, myself included, were openly crying inconsolably. I went through the line to speak with his wife, but knew I couldn't keep it together and went to the back of the line. It didn't help. By the time I got to the front of the line again, I was a mess. I blubbered like a baby as I told his wife how he had been a good friend and an inspiration as an older dad.
If my son hadn't already been born, I would have named him after my friend. The worst part was the two coffins, and large and one small. Many of us couldn't even approach them. One guy walked in, trying to hold it together, and when he saw that little coffin he just lost it and burst out sobbing loudly. I have never seen a more grief-stricken funeral. This was no celebration of life.
Unsplash
84. The Worst Thing You Can Possibly See
My dad once gave me his phone so I could order something from it, because mine was out of battery. When I open up Google, the first tab I see is a search for: “How to tell your child a loved one is dying.” My mum had been ill for years now and I’ve been in denial about it getting any worse, but seeing this finally broke me down.
Pexels
85. The Best Secrets Go Belly-Up
I had to have been pretty little. Five years old tops, probably younger. My dad was at work and my mom was in the kitchen or something. I was supposed to be playing in my room. And I was for a while, but then I decided I would sneak into my parents’ room and jump on their bed. Because jumping on beds is fun and they would never know.
So, I successfully snuck in there, climbed on the bed, was about to jump and have a grand time until I see what’s on their dresser, straight across from me: my goldfish bowl with my clearly dead goldfish floating in it. Cue screaming and crying. The goldfish bowl was normally in the living room, I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it was missing that day.
I wasn’t in the living room much, probably by design. Apparently, when my parents woke up that morning, the goldfish was dead. Knowing I’d be upset, they decided to wait to tell me until my dad was home from work. But they couldn’t leave the dead goldfish where I could see it. They also couldn’t get rid of it because I would probably want to bury it.
So, they put it somewhere I wouldn’t see it. Unless I snuck in their room to jump on the bed. I’d say that plan failed.
86. Creative Editing
I once accidentally found a very intimate tape that my parents had secretly made together. In fairness, they were silly enough to put it at the end of one of our family home videos. To my horror, I was showing my boyfriend at the time our home videos, so that he could see me as a baby. So the video cuts out, goes to fuzzy gray for a minute, then cuts straight to my 80s mom naked on the couch with my dad smiling at the camera. I rushed to turn it off as fast as I could.
Forever burned in my mind.
87. A Poor Performance
I would see this couple panhandling outside different stores around town. He would be in a wheelchair, and she would push him. A couple of weeks ago, I saw the familiar couple on bikes riding behind a shopping center. Recognized them as the couple. I followed them for a couple of minutes, just to see how he miraculously recovered.
I saw them pull up to a nice home on the other side of town. I’m thinking maybe he got better, and they’ll continue panhandling. Nah. They opened the garage, parked their bikes, and casually strolled in. There was a new Chevy truck parked in the driveway. I talked to my cousin who’s a deputy, and he said really nothing can be done.
Technically, it’s not against any ordinance to panhandle in our city and they’re not breaking any laws.
88. Window Shopping
The thing I saw that I was never supposed to see was my neighbor taking his own life. I was just casually looking out my bedroom window one day, when I noticed that my neighbor was standing on the ledge of his house. Next thing I know, he jumped to his demise right in front of my eyes. It was a horrifying thing to witness.
89. Wanna See a Dead Body?
One night I was awoken by a few loud banging noises coming from right across the street. The house across was being renovated so it had a big metal dumpster out front and the sounds I heard were typical of throwing something in there. By the time I looked out the window I saw a car speed off, so I go check the cameras.
It was five in the morning on a Sunday, and I'm thinking who in their right mind is dumping stuff at this hour? Sure enough, I see a van pull up and a guy lifts some heavy looking items in. The infrared made it look like he was dumping a body, and given how strange this was for that early on a Sunday morning, I thought it was logical that he had actually dumped someone in there.
Cue me not being able to sleep the rest of the night. Once there was enough daylight I go out and investigate, fully expecting to find a dead person in there. I was astonishingly relieved when I saw that it was only an old tube-TV and a huge garbage bag full of AV wiring, speakers and a VCR. My guess is the guy must have spent all night wiring his new home theater system and just decided to swing by the nearest construction site to throw out his old stuff.
Creepy, but at least it turned out to be nothing!
90. Numbers Don’t Lie
The CFO of the company that I work for once left paperwork lying around on the printer. It indicated that the director level employees were getting 100k bonuses and making six-figure salaries, more than three times the managers at my company. We were laying people off while these sacks of trash were getting paid big time!
91. Olly Olly Oxen Free
We were playing hide and seek and I hid in a bathroom cupboard. The door had like slats/vents in so I could see out, but no one could see me. My friend’s mum walks in and goes to the toilet. Let me tell you, SHE IS IN THERE FOR A WHILE. Meanwhile my friends are getting frantic, I can hear them calling my name and running around the house.
Then someone knocks on the door. “Mum, we can’t find Susan anywhere. I think she might have left!” The mum finishes her business and rushes out, and she starts shouting my name and searches the house. I can’t get out of the cupboard, there’s seven girls and my friend’s family looking for me in the house. If I get out someone will see me and know where I’ve been hiding and what I’ve seen.
So I stay there, right up until she calls my mum. I hear her ask if I’ve turned up at home and the anxiety in her voice as she tells my mum that I’ve disappeared. I sheepishly make my way out of the cupboard to explain to my worried mum where and why I’d been hiding for over an hour. I was traumatized, she was mortified and furious. And to make matters worse, she was my math teacher for four or five years after this happened.
92. A Miscarriage of Privacy
When I was about 16, I was snooping in my parents' wardrobe. Found a diary written by my mother when she was 14, from the year 1970. Read some beautiful and brilliantly written entries about meeting and dating my dad, who was 16 at the time. I had to read a little between the lines in some slightly later entries as they were written with such flowery language.
In one such entry, all of a sudden, she discloses that she's had an abortion. It was performed by my grandfather, who was an anesthesiologist. She never told anyone.
93. You Can’t Go Where You Bloody Well Want
I witnessed a man cut into line at a KFC in a well-known casino. The man who was cut off asked the guy in front to get back in line and was told to shut up. What I saw next is something I will never forget: the guy in line pulled out a large knife and attacked the queue jumper. People ran in every direction. It’s stuff like this you never forget.
94. Burn After Spending
Leaving work late one evening, I saw the HR director and CFO in a dark office shredding papers—no, that's not a euphemism. I didn't say anything but quietly walked on down the hall. Two weeks later, we were raided by the SEC and several people were charged with cooking the books.
95. Yesterday’s Disgusting Discovery Is Tomorrow’s Hot Food Trend
When I was a kid, I slept over at a buddy’s house for the first time. The next morning we woke up and his mom made us a couple of bowls of cereal. The milk tasted really sweet, even for my child taste buds. Something about it all just seemed off. That’s when I witnessed it—something so gross, I still remember it to this day.
Just as my buddy finished his bowl of cereal, his mom came over and turned the bowl on its side to pour the leftover milk from the cereal bowl into a milk carton. The mom then did the same with hers. I felt my face turn red with shame and embarrassment and my stomach turn. Horrified and confused, I asked: “What is that? What are y’all doing?”
He turned to me and said, completely seriously: “That’s our cereal milk.” It turned out this sadistic freak and his ENTIRE family poured all of the leftover milk from each bowl of cereal back into a separate milk carton, specifically for cereal. I drank this entire family’s backwash. CEREAL MILK. Used. Cereal. Milk.
96. Parents Can Have Sleepovers Too
I went to a giant sleepover when I was 8 or 9 for a friend's birthday. He had all his friends over and his parents had also invited some friends over as well. As the night winded down, we all went into my buddy’s room to jam some Super Smash Bros. Fast forward to about 2 AM. Most of the boys had fallen asleep, save for a few of us.
I had to go to the bathroom horribly. I was holding everything in as I was terrified of using other people's bathrooms and making a mess or smelling up the place. Eventually, I asked my friend where the bathroom was. I still don't know if I misheard him or was just stupid and forgot the minute I walked out of the room, but I somehow ended up at his parents' door.
I opened it up full force—I will never, ever forgot what I saw next. I found myself staring at his mother in bed with this dude who’d been at the party, while his dad was sitting in the corner with the dude’s wife. I opened the door so quick they didn't even have time to semi-hide what they were doing. So there I was, 9 years old, frozen in place staring at his parents mid-swap with another couple.
I still see their faces to this day. The only reason I know they were swinging as I could see every single one of their faces. They all just looked at me trying to process what just happened. After a good five seconds of dead silence, finally, the father yelled to get out and I just shut the door. I stood there for what seemed like hours.
I finally made my way back to my friend’s room, completely forgetting about my full bowels, and just laid down. I laid there all night, wide awake, till 7 AM when my mom picked me up. I never told anyone and NEVER went to another sleepover at my friend’s house or even went inside his house again, in fear of having to see his parents and having that talk with them.
97. Side Chicks
When I was a poor college student my wealthy cousin and his wife went on vacation and offered to let me house sit to give me a break from my three slovenly roommates. They live a few towns over in a very nice house with a huge front lawn and a fancy, tall iron fence with double gates. The fence and gates are about 11 feet high. You have to have a remote to open the gates.
That first night I slept so well! I breakfasted like a king and then drove to school. I got back around five, made a supper fit for a king, and settled down to write an Econ paper. My cousin has a warning system for when someone driving turns off the road and comes up to the gate. There's a chiming sound and you can look at screens in a couple of different rooms to see who it is so that you can buzz them in.
I was deep into my paper when I heard the chime. I was confused at first and check my phone before I realized what it was. I looked from the sofa and could see a movement on the security screen. What I saw made my blood run cold. I stood up and got closer and had a clear view of two women getting out of a white car. One tried to squeeze between two bars of the gate—impossible—and then the other woman tried to boost her over the top of the gate—hilarious.
The top one fell and even from the house I could hear swearing. I was about to press the intercom button and ask what in heaven's name their problem was but I was chuckling at their antics and just watched silently. They peered at the house intently from between the bars like a couple of jailbirds for a while. The skinnier one actually stripped down to her bra and panties and tried to squeeze through the bars again. No dice. More swearing. And then it got even weirder.
Then, as the skinny one got dressed again, the bigger one went back to her trunk and got out a tire iron. As soon as she started with the hinges of the gate I was calling 9-1-1. They took too long and the women left. I showed them the video when they eventually showed but they couldn't get a license plate number. When my cousin and his wife returned the next week I told them what happened and we watched the tape. Their reactions said it all. He said that he had no idea who the women were but his wife looked furious. I packed up, thanked them for my "vacation" and left.
She divorced him that summer.
98. Pinpointing The Moment
One time, shortly after I turned 21, my dad took me to one of his friend's new bars, and we’re all drinking and having fun. I realize at one point that I lost my dad, so I go looking for him. Eventually, I find him in the back room. He’s with one of my friends who works in the kitchen at the restaurant where we all work together.
The second I enter the room, my dad immediately shouts: “Get out of here, don’t look! Just go!” It took me a couple of years to realize that they were doing lines off the pinball machine. I probably wasn’t supposed to see that...
99. The Remains of The Day
I swear this story is 100% true. So, in ninth grade English class, our teacher assigned us to group work for the day so she could chill out and grade papers. She had a “teaching assistant” who was another student at our high school. We will call him "Tim.” He was either a junior or senior at this time? So we're all working (see: messing around) at our tables, and Tim comes over and starts talking with me.
So, we’re on his phone looking at some fire 2013 memes, when a kid walks up and asks Tim a question about whatever dumb worksheet we were assigned. For whatever reason, Tim goes to help this student and leaves his phone with me. So of course, ninth grade me goes straight to his picture folder to see what’s up. So, what do I find? Dirty pics? Embarrassing pictures from last year’s Christmas party?
No…Tim's phone was harboring much darker secrets. Inside an album with an all-too-appropriate name were over 300 pictures of various poops in toilets. Thick poops, small poops, chunky poops, diarrhea... it was all there. I just kept scrolling down and down and it was just all poop. I was honestly just in shock, and as soon as Tim came back I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t see.
I had to know. "Dude. Why do you have so many pictures of poops on your phone???" "Oh, I, uhh, those are all mine...I send them to my friends as a joke sometimes. Nobody’s ever seen that before." And that was it about that. Long story short, I found the poop folder.
100. Behind Closed Doors
When I was around ten years old, my mom and I went to visit an aunt and uncle. This visit was because my uncle, as in my mom’s brother, had just had major surgery. During the visit, my aunt and my mom cooked a big dinner for everyone. At one point, my aunt tells me to go call for my cousin to come down for dinner.
I go to his room and open the door, only to be greeted by the sight of a huge stockpile of weapons and illicit substances spread out all over his bed. I awkwardly blurted out "YOUR MOM SAID COME EAT" and immediately slammed the door shut. It was no secret to anyone in our family the type of business that our cousins were in.
He came out of his room a few minutes later and scolded me for not knocking. I was scared out of my wits, but the young kid brain inside of me was also extremely fascinated to see that they were real-life "kingpins," like the kind you see in the movies. Nevertheless, I was clearly never meant to see their operation in action as I did.
101. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
When I was younger, I was at a friend’s house sleeping over and playing video games on the Nintendo 64. We wanted a late night snack, so we went downstairs to get some cookies. And we saw his mum lying on the sofa with another man and kissing him. My friend immediately cried and said: “You’re not my dad!”
Sadly, this was the last time I ever spoke to him because he had to move away with his father shortly after.
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