I shouldn't actually be alive now... :)

[Bill Ryan]

The moderators last night found themselves exchanging some personal stories about all-too-close brushes with death that were really quite hard to believe. We were amazed to learn that several of us had had these experiences.

I've had one or two, myself. Let me start the ball rolling with this one. But it doesn't compare with the incredible escapes of some others. :)

Please do share your stories of your very own Nine Lives. :cat:

~~~

I was once nearly swept over a 100 ft waterfall in Norway in a swollen glacier-melt river after I'd fallen out of my kayak.

I'd never intended to kayak over the waterfall! I planned to get out long before that. But the river was going so fast that after I capsized and had to bale out of my boat, I was being swept towards the thing at 20 mph. Maybe more.

Even though I had a lifejacket, I was being violently sucked under the water every few seconds. The water was icy, it was becoming hard to breathe, and it was almost impossible to swim.

When I saw the river bend coming, I realized my only chance was to try to swim sideways as hard as I could towards the outer curve of the bend, and just hope I might be able to grab something on the bank.

That worked: I somehow managed to grab some small tufts of grass... and they just held.

~~~
Who's going next? :)

[etheric underground]

Fell head first off a three storey flying fox. Should’ve been killed....
Ended up with massive head trauma, 2 broken arms, broken jaw, ripped off bottom
Lip ( put my teeth through it)
Also nearly drowned surfing a notorious surf location in NZ.
Wiped out... hit the ocean floor, leg rope broke...
and I battled to hold my breath to get to the surface, only to be smashed again.
On the 3rd impact, I started to think it’s my time.. I was out of breath
And seeing stars.... I gave in to the idea I was going to die...
I surfaced just in time to find the most lake like surroundings...
Was surreal.

[Praxis]

Mine is little more low key than Bill's:

I was a junior in high school.

Decided to go to the rec center to get some swimming in as my mother was already going.

Get in. Start the first 50m. Do a flip underwater and start the return 50m.

Start to notice that something doesnt feel right. I cant breathe. Like water in the lungs cant breathe.

I think that since it has been a long time maybe my freestyle breathing is not what it used to be so I stop and start treading water.

It is getting worse. I still cant breathe. It feels like there is water in my lungs and I am drowning. IMPOSSIBLE. My head is out of the water and I am definitely not taking in.

Still feel like I am drowning. I struggle to get to the side of the pool(with no life guard on duty) for what seems like eternity.

When I get to the side, I put my hands on the rim of the pool and start to cough. Like a scene from the exorcist, a bright red stream of blood starts flowing from my mouth. I keep coughing up a steady stream of blood for several minutes. I finally get my self out of the pool and over the a drinking fountain where I continue to stream blood for a bit longer.

It finally stops. I go and tell my mom who starts freaking out and we head to the doctor.

Turns out I had a congenital cyst in the wall lining of my lung and it got infected. The pressure from being underwater caused a rupture and was bleeding internally into my lung. So I nearly drown in a pool from the inside.

Needless to say, I didnt swim for a while . . .

[mojo]

The Sow Grizzly just feet outside the tent and didnt know she was there. When unzipping the tent opening and exiting out, both the Grizz and myself jumped vertically.That was the closest encounter to a bear.... That bear could easily have taken me as the next meal in Denali that day....

[greybeard]

Hemorrhaged after simple tonsil adenoid operation followed by double pneumonia age8.
Diagnosed burst spleen in sledging accident--you only have three days to live with that seemingy--on the third day in coma I was rushed into hospital--exploratory operation found cause and life saved. age 11.

Age 15 dinghy racing from Findhorn to Cromarty--a gale blew up out of nowhere -- The Moray Firth very calm till then.
The rescue boat was busy rescuing others and did nor realize we had capsized upside down waves crashing over us hanging on to the upturned boat--the rescue boat itself in danger ran for home leaving us.
I prayed for help--sometime later a fishery protection boat crewman spotted us and turned back rescuing us.
The boat/ship had actually passed us an was about half a mile away when the crew spotted us.
It was a miracle we were seen and rescue.

Im my late twenties I was well into alcoholism with delirium tremors and seriously contemplating suicide -- a concerned friend got me into hospital just in time--spent 9 month in psychiatric unit there.
AA saved my life never drank alcohol since

Aged 45 burst an ulcer and came too in hospital.

Age 55 I went to a seminar in Kavolum India put on by Ramesh Balsekar.
Went for a swin in the calm water of the Indian ocean---waves came out of knowhere and I hitthe bottom in about twenty foot of water that happened three time--fortunately I was used to being underwater and did not panic. Life guards saw my plight and came out and got me ashore.
Seemingly that was nothing new to that area --some one fishing of a rock the night before had been dragged into the water by a large wave and drowned.

AA sytarted the piritual quest and I am fortunate to be alive--I give thanks every night for being sober which I dont take for granted--I am forever a recovering alcoholic--the illness is not curable.
I am one of several generations.
Its possibly hereditary
Chris

[Bluegreen]

One time I went to a lake cabin with friends and went swimming. I went by myself toward the middle of the lake as a storm moved in. Being young and stupid I just thought it looked cool until I heard my friends yelling and realized it wasn't such a good place to be. I had nearly reached the pier when lightning hit the lake.

Next thing is being surrounded by my freaking out friends flat on my back and shaking uncontrollably. It was so strange. I knew I was going to be OK and wanted to say so but I couldn't speak or stop shaking. Just had to wait it out.

I learned a couple things that day :)

[Deux Corbeaux]

One evening, while on a winter holiday, my partner and I thought it would be fun to go tobogganing in the evening on a floodlit track.
In the middle of the track was a path, crossing a steep icy ski piste, leading to a cosy little bar where we drank some 'obstler schnapps'....

Before we continued our track down, we sat for a while on the toboggan before crossing the piste to the proper toboggan track....... when it began to slide, nose down and impossible to stop.

Putting our heels firmly on the icy snow didn't help the toboggan to slow down, as it was too heavy. It just resulted in an icy shower on our faces and eyes. We were almost blinded and could only see some tiny lights of the restaurant deep down at the end of the descent.
We had to keep tight to the sledge and to each other. I was sitting in the front and saw through my tears the tiny lights down the track and a dark blue sky above and thought, while bumping on the icy snow hills and flowing through the air,......well, there we go, this will be the end, life was beautiful......

I thank my partner for strongly putting his weight on his left feet all the time, thus slowly turning the sleigh to the edge of the piste.
Then suddenly we were flying up in the air, off piste, into the pine trees..... tumbling down, my partner on top of me..... After a while we found out we were "OK", the toboggan nowhere to be seen.

A serviceman, who made his last round inspecting the piste, found us and scolded us for having been on a ski slope with a toboggan.... And he was right.
He found the sleigh for us, which he took down. We managed to get down as well...., oh well, the adrenaline did it for us.

Back in our hotel room, after picking out the needles, we got a hysterical laughing fit for at least half an hour.

Two almost middle aged people went tobogganing .....

Add: .... saved by the pine tree familie.

[Eva2]

About six years ago I was in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. This particular area was always having these dry electrical storms and lightening would be continually streaking across the skies. Late afternoon one day, I happened to be standing on a second floor balcony of the place I was staying at watching the lightening bolts streak across the skies during one of these storms. I was holding onto a metal railing and all of a sudden I had a strong gut feeling that I needed to let go of the railing. A mere few seconds later a huge lightening bolt shot into the ground less than 20 feet from where I was standing and I remember being enveloped in all this blinding light. I heard a great commotion behind me as one of the guests in another room saw me from his balcony door and started yelling and running towards me. He thought I'd been struck and was actually surprised to see me alive and standing. That was a really close one. I often think of this event and wonder if that could have been one of my chosen options for exiting this reality :).

[Orobo]

My girlfriend an I were looking for trout in a shallow river in France. We climbed up on a railway bridge some 10 meters (30ft) high and wanted to see if there was some action down in the water.
The machinist of a fast approaching train on our side just discovered us when he was already on the bridge and blew the horn. We were lying on our bellies over the low stone sidewall with our legs on the track.
We jumped up and in flash I decided that jumping in front of the train was better than being run over or jump into the 30cm (1 foot) deep water. Both were missed the train by a hair.

[42]

Scuba Diving....Trapped inside a shipwreck at 80 feet in almost zero visibility, my tank became snagged and pulled off. thanks to a very experienced dive buddy, what could have been fatal became a really good dinner party story.

[Rosemarie]

Soooo I have just turned 19 and I am in flying school. I have already solo and have to make hours for my pilots license. One day Returning to Guayaquil I start my approach to land and the motor just stops. What the f*^+%k. I tried to start the motor and it just “cough” and “cough”( hope that is the word. ) The north part of the landing strip is near water , the south has constructions. At that time there was not that road around the north part, just a jungle of vegetation. Thanks God I am in the north side so i start to glide on top of the water first , then the top of trees I can touch and I made it just to very very beginning of the landing strip. And the little cessna 150 just touches the strip and stops there. I have never trembled so much in my life. I did not saw myself dying but it could have been so much worst. It looks like some waste ( don’t know correct word) got into the carburetor and made the motor stop. That would not happen now . Something about pistons, injections and filters. I did not want to fly again. My father made me go in the air the next day.

My second brush with death ...., i am in the north shore of Hawaii with my kids and a friend. Never been to that beach. Enter the sea , walk a couple steps and there is a huge drop. And at the same moments a couple of waves start to hit one after another. I thought I was going to drowned. Every time I came up for air another wave came. My Friend who was a local came to help, calmed me down and helped me get to shore.
Over the years I have heard of lots of people drowning there. Not surprised

Edit ; Strat , thank you for the explanation about what could have happened to the plane. I got an explanation from the mechanics of the Aereo Club next day , being 19 I just wanted it not happening again , (besides talking a foreign language; mechanics ) more than 40 years have passed since then. Jaja

[Intranuclear]

I have had so many "should have been dead situations, it's hard to even recall them all.

As a two year old, I nearly died from rheumatic fever which also affected my heart. I underwent 8 years of therapy.

As an 8 year old, I lived about 200 meters from a particle accelerator in Armenia which at the time was the 4th largest in the world. Next to it was a tall lightning tower to protect it. One day, it was stormy and I was on the balcony being amazed how the tower was attracting the lightning from the sky. As one of the bolts hit, I actually saw a thin arc jump from the tower and come towards me. Next thing I remember was me opening my eyes lying flat on my back on the balcony's concrete floor and my chest hurting and burning. When I finally got up and looked in the mirror, I saw a tiny black burn exactly where my heart was (well still is I guess).

Another event as a child, I was chewing on raw parsley or cilantro and not having ground it well, I swallowed. I was all alone in the living room at the time. Part of the parsley went down my throat and the other part blocked my throat. I could not breathe or utter sounds or cough. As I was blacking out, I felt my mothers fingers all the way down my throat pulling out the partially chewed material and I could breathe. How on earth she knew and appeared at the last moment, I still have no idea. I never asked her how the hell she knew. Since that event, I am extremely sensitive to other people chocking and paid it forward several times, including having saved a toddler who was playing with a bottle of talcum powder while he was on his back. Somehow, either the top was loose or the baby squeezed hard, all I could see was the baby's whole face covered by a little hill of powder. The baby could not even cry as his mouth, nose and eyes were under powder. I immediately jumped on the baby, turned him around and poured out all the powder and cleared the powder out of his nose. While this was happening, I looked back at his parents who were sitting nearby and watching me completely frozen. They did not react until finally the baby was even able to cry. All I could think of was my mother at that moment and me being able to pay her back a little for my life. The parents of the baby were looking at me later like I was an angel heaven sent.

Another event as a child while I was playing with old pliers with unprotected handles, I decided that it would be a great idea to touch an exposed electric socket (different country, different configuration) with the tips of the pliers. It was only a 220V socket (not US). My father was eating breakfast behind me. While I was frozen with the wonderful current overriding all my nerves, I felt a sharp kick from behind. My father had kicked me (not touching me) and lo and behold, I was saved. Again, how he knew what to do I have no idea. It happened so fast.
And this was not the last time.

Growing up, when we had no hot water, in order to take a bath, we used a heating coil that one put in the water to heat the water in the tub. I decided that it would be a great idea to get into the tub while the coil was busy heating the water. As I first put in one leg into the water, a powerful current froze my body. While I was shaking, somehow I ended up falling back which broke the current flow. No one had warned me about NOT getting into water while it was being heated.

As an older adult living in Sherman Oaks (near LA,California), I was using a land line telephone talking to someone. Meanwhile there was a good rainstorm and I could hear thunder which was getting closer to the apartment. All of a sudden, I felt unbelievable pain coursing through my body. I had never at that time heard that using a telephone could get one killed. I had never experienced pain at such a level. Perhaps a close analogy would be being torn apart, pouring salt at the nerve endings then being torn apart again. The only thought I could muster as my hand holding the telephone was stuck to my ear was that I desperately wanted to die. Talk about Hell. This went on for seemingly like an eternity, which it obviously was not. By that time I had been electrocuted many times, but had never experienced that kind of mental pain.

When I was working in Seattle at a video gaming company, the company decided to take all of us to a white water rafting. While having great fun going over the raging waters our raft got stuck on some rocks. I decided to be a hero and jumped into the water and tried to free the raft. Wow, what a bad idea that was. The bottom of my feet felt like they were being pulled by many horses. Even though I was wearing a life jacket and was holding on to the string of rope that went around the craft (serving as handles) I could not prevent being sucked into the water. I was down for quite some time and one of my hands had already gotten away from the rope handle as I could not hold on to it. Maybe because of that, my body tilted from vertical to more horizontal which lessened the pull and with the remaining arm still desperately holding the rope, somehow I managed to pull my body up and actually proceeded to free the raft and get back into it. My friends in the raft thanked me and stated how stupid I was for doing what I did. I acted like it was nothing, however, I was shaking with fear at having nearly drowned and have since realized how stupid it is to go white water rafting without serious training.

There were so many other events, including being stuck inside a hollow rock while doing a night scuba dive all alone. I had never had issues with claustrophobia and actually enjoyed being inside confined and very tight places. When I was stuck in the narrowing tunnel which was under a large rock (maybe 4 or 5 meters in diameter) I actually did not panic. I unfastened my buoyancy jacket that held my tank and regulator and left it near the end of the small tunnel and while holding my breath, push myself out of the rock, swam around and pulled my gear out from the other end, put it back on and continued having a great time. I had not realized the effect that event would have had on me. Many years later, while I was having an MRI and my head and part of my body went inside the tube and my fat chest and arms were touching the inside of the tube, I freaked out completely. I pressed the emergency button in my hand and terminated the MRI session. I had never had such a panic attack, but I think I am recovering from that too.

I'll stop now and let others have a go. I'm not sure but I may have gone past 9 lives.

[Denise/Dizi]

After reading the posts of others, I suppose I too, have faced death and lived to have another day..

I tend to engage in very unusual activities for a woman. So some of these activities may surprise you ... .As such, I have found myself in some sketchy situations. Some of those include:

Wrecking my motorcycle, and being fortunate enough to walk away from it. (Just 5 years ago).. I had some serious damage, but I walked away.

Being in a vehicle accident as the passenger, where the end result was months of rehabilitation to gain back the 3 inches on my leg that I lost, when I broke my pelvic bone. I was fortunate it didn't sever an artery.

Finding myself hurling nose first towards the ground, when the private plane I was in, ran out of gas... I REALLY thought that was my day..

And the worst one, because it was a deliberate action on the part of another.. Attempted Murder, or an attempt to cause me some serious bodily injury..(This still breaks my heart, so I will elaborate)..

When I was 17, I was nearly killed by a young man who was jealous that I wouldn't date him.. I already had a boyfriend, I wasn't just being a snob... but he didn't care.. He offered to "Work on my car for me" .

I felt that this was one way to keep our friendship going without him being so upset, so I allowed him access to my vehicle. That was a big mistake.. He loosened the nuts that held my steering wheel on, hoping I would die in a vehicle accident. I noticed that this was done, after I nearly went off of a 1,000 foot river ravine when I was turning my wheel, and it came apart from the dash in my hands! Fortunately I had already turned the wheel for the turn, and I was able to pull the E Brake, and hit the breaks, after downshifting the car into first gear, hoping to stall the car.

I later learned he did try to harm others before he finally took his own life. So I avoided/survived a murder attempt. Or at least an attempt to cause me serious bodily injury.

I think that life event changed me.. It changed how I see others actions, it made me hyper critical of others that cause innocent people harm.. And I spend a great deal of my life quietly watching others now, just to make sure that no one every deliberately harms another in my presence if I can help it. As no one warned me that my life was at risk by even knowing this person. It profoundly affected me.

Things in this life can humble you quickly. And life is very fragile.

[Constance]

Back in the early 80's, I had been visiting a dear friend (who has now passed) who used to live in far North Queensland, Australia. She, myself and a Canadian friend were driving back one late hot sultry afternoon to her home. I was the front passenger in the car whilst our Canadian friend drove and my girlfriend sat in the back. We had hired a little mini moke for the occasion

40891

(This is what a our vehicle looked like for all those who haven't seen one before)

and as we wove our way down the long winding highway, I became very drowsy and nodded off to sleep. However, our young Canadian friend who was driving, had also fallen asleep at the wheel. We drifted to the wrong side of the road and I woke up just before we hit the first car.

Before we knew it, we had then careered straight into a second and then a third car but amazingly, instead of spinning out, or coming to a halt, the mini moke continued on in a straight trajectory towards the other side of the road. We came to a grinding halt on the side of the road. In the next second that passed, a huge truck roared by.

My girlfriend who had been in the back seat of the moke began to start screaming hysterically but miraculously, we were all unscathed!

Nothing surprises me more than how we react to certain situations. I don't know whether I was in shock or whether I hadn't time to process anything but I remember calmly clambering out of the moke and then striding over to the other cars to see how the people were, and then rounding them all up so that they could take care of each other. In those days, we didn't have cell phones so I then ran to the nearest farmhouse to call the police.

When the police finally arrived, they stared at us, each other and at all the vehicles in disbelief. Not one of the twelve people in the three cars had been injured. It was a busy highway and at the time, due to the treacherous conditions of the road, it had rightly earned the nickname of "Death Highway".

The police officers who had inspected our little mini moke were surprised to see that the engine had dropped out of the vehicle's chassis and onto the ground. This was the only explanation they could give us for how they thought we could have survived not just one impact, but three impacts.

[Strat]

It looks like some waste ( don’t know correct word) got into the carburetor and made the motor stop. That would not happen now . Something about pistons, injections and filters

There's a tongue-in-cheek explanation for this, 'boogered up.' Sounds more like a clogged filter than something reaching the carb, unless it was recently maintained and someone did a shoddy job (or you lost 'spark' which would prevent the engine from restarting, if it was solely carb you may be able to punch the gas and get it going again, sorta like how carb vehicles run fine but stall at stoplights). This is partly why single engine planes sketch me out, if it stalls you're screwed. Another thing that sketches me out about planes is they are often maintained like cars, however with cars it's annoying to do the work whereas with planes it's absolutely mandatory and you need a higher standard. Meaning a filter on a plane should be replaced sooner than it would be on a car. If your filter clogs on your car you pull over and call a tow truck. If it clogs on a plane you pray to god you live. Complacency kills.

Yes, there are injectors which are much better, but they still rely on the same filters. Much of the other tech is the exact same. I would bend over backwards to be an airplane mechanic but that'll never happen due to health.

More on topic, I've had my brushes with death but frankly they are very dark experiences and I don't wanna be a 'buzz kill' so to speak.

[Bill Ryan]

Another one. :)

Way back in my 20s, I was scrambling up easy rocks by the side of a waterfall in South Wales. Simple stuff, in a steep V-shaped river gorge. No rope: it wasn't needed.

The very final move was to pull myself over the top with an excellent handhold on a huge boulder that was solidly wedged at the very edge.

As I pulled on to it, the entire thing came loose and then I was falling through the air holding on to this 5 ton giant rock that was bigger than I was.

I pushed it aside — and then landed on steeply sloping, rocky ground 40 feet below. I walked away without a bruise. That's kind of impossible. https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/561418376010792961.png?v=1

[DeDukshyn]

Man I have a lot of these ... At one point I almost began think I was some sort of god or had special protection.

I'll give an early one here now ...

I was about 17, at my friends house and we were jumping on his trampoline together - it was a large one maybe 15' - 18' across (round) and pretty capable. So I wanted to see how high I could get with my buddy double bouncing me each time I landed (we both were fairly seasoned on a trampoline, I had one as well). I was probably able to get my feet a good 9-10 feet off the trampoline - we were both in pretty decent shape.

So after about maybe the fourth or fifth iteration in this double bounce I suddenly found myself heading off center. I wasn't 100% sure if I could recover in the next bounce without trying to stop, but I decided I would. I underestimated how far to the max this trampoline was being stressed, not that it broke, but the tension that pulled me back toward the center of the trampoline, as I landed off center, was waaay stronger than I had anticipated (due to the trampoline springs pretty much reaching their max tension), and as I said, I also was adding my own extra intentional effort in the same direction to get centered again.

This caused me to flay way off to the other side, and at an extremely high height. Now, on the other side of the trampoline was about a four foot drop to flat and grassed area -- that is where I was going. Unfortunately, when I had landed the previous jump on the trampoline, I rather did (maybe reflex) partly, but just a small partly, try to absorb a little of the impact - but it absorbed into my upper body (arms I guess), not my legs, and so my legs went shooting up and I could clearly see I was going to land on my head on the area that was 4 feet below the bottom of the trampoline. The trampoline was four feet high, and I was probably 8 feet in the air above that (so at least 16 ft above the ground where I was about to land). My friend shrieked at the top of his lungs like a little girl - it was awful!

I hear stories about people getting "paralyzed" with fear or just panicking or acting stupid or whatever, but when I get into a potentially life threatening situation I get a focus that I don't experience at any other time. Time slows down.

I wasn't quite fully inverted as I came down, I was on a slight angle and my head and right shoulder were going to take the brunt of the landing. But somehow, I just became a ninja and simply "one arm dive rolled" it out. Not a scratch. Not a bruise, nothing. I just rolled out and jumped up like I was doing a parallel bar dismount and said "Tadaaah!!"

BTW, my friends face ... shoulda seen it. Jaw was on the ground. :)

[AutumnW]

When I was 12 or 13 years old I came home one cold winter evening and unable to turn the iced up door handle, knocked on the door. I could see my father sitting not ten feet from the door, ignoring my knock. I kept knocking and he kept ignoring me. Freezing, I knocked harder, now yelling, "please let me in!!! I'm freezing!"

Finally he gets off his chair opens the door and starts stomping around like a bull moose, yelling that I forced him to get up and that I could have opened the door if I wanted to. I told him he was mistaken, to which he replied, "*#%+!! to you!"

I replied in kind, "#%+!! to you, too!" You never want to agitate a bull moose... like never. I realized my mistake as soon as it slipped out of my mouth. I ran as fast as I could with crazy Dad, nostrils flaring, in hot pursuit. The bathroom was handy so I ducked in there, and locked the door.

Unable to unlock the door, he began hurling his body against it to break it down. This was pretty scary. He'd never quite lost it like that before. Eventually, after 5 or 6 good body slams he gave up and went back downstairs to finish watching his hockey game. After about an hour I slowly came out of the bathroom.

He looked kind of scared when he told me that it was a good thing I made it to the bathroom as if I hadn't he may have killed me. And he meant it. So unnerving for a child.

Anyway...I wish I had nearly lost my life climbing Everest instead! More sporting!:bigsmile:

[seehas]

very interesting thread everyone, i think i got something to share

i was still member of a paragliding school in switzerland and we did some group flying directly in front of a big north face in the swiss mountains, we had amazing thermals that day and i was wearing a radio to talk and listen to the coach that was flying with us there, the coach told us to use the thermals directly under that big cloud to gain altitude to pass the mountain and land in the valley behind that mountain, i was the last one to pass and i did use the thermals 2 or 3 times to often and was sucked into that big cloud, inside the cloud i was beeing sucked higher and higher, i could feel it after minutes my arms and legs had ice-crystals all over it and it was getting scary cold, i started to fly a spiral inside the cloud to lose altitude and i spiraled so long i got quite sick and even i could still feel i was going higher - i used my radio to contact the others and asked for help, the radio still did work and my coach told me to pull certain lines to reduce the sice of the glider and continue spiral - since i didnt know where i was flying "no sight at all" either i was faceing a stone wall in a few seconds or im going away from the mountain - after minutes that felt like hours the cloud started to clear and i could see the blue sky ...wow i was lucky that day


the other thing didnt went out that good for me, i was flying alone that day i got some not so easy winds and should have been on the ground since iam not that skilled, it happened when i was aproaching the landing area some gutsy winds with wrong break input made my wing fullstall in like 20meters, i fall down in a big field and a tourist found me and called a helicopter, (the moment i saw my wing collapsed i knew i was going to die for sure and all i was thinking was - "u stupid idiot, is that how its going to end?" one vertebrae got completly crushed and i got some titan in my back now but i survived it, that day i had my first flight in my new harness, i dont know if the harness safed my life but it safed me from beeing paralized 100% - _"the foam inside is much thicker" i couldnt feel my legs that well after the accident 2 operations made the feeling come back ... lucky lucky again


now nearly 10 years later i still get some adrenaline when i think about the cloud story

[happyuk]

In 1990 I was working on a building site in South Wales. A colleague removed a tall aluminium ladder from his van without watching what he was doing and hit some power cables overhead. I didn't realise what had happened until I heard loud cracking sounds coming from above, followed by a lot of sparks and smoke and the remains of the power cable landing close to me. The next bit I remember is standing in the doorway of a nearby house. I remember hardly anything of running between the van and the building while dodging the power cables that were burning and falling around me. A colleague said he had never seen me move so fast! I then spent the next few minutes watching the cables spark and clash together as they progressed along the rest of the cables all the way down the end of the street and beyond. The financial cost must have been immense. I still dread to think what might have happened had one of those high voltage cables landed on me

[Patient]

Seems like we all have at least one, if not more. :)

I was on an innertube in a river - didn't get to the shore in time before the rapids. The inner tube flipped over and I was turned over and found myself on the bottom being bashed on the rocks - my back and my head.

Next thing the rapids subside and i am drifting along the bottom looking up through the water at the sun shining through the water - i was thinking how beautiful it looked and having no pain and being completely comfortable I had no thought to getting out. Next thing I know i am being carried to the shore. I was puking water and i had the worst headache and back ache ever . I don't know who it was that pulled me out, but they saved my life.

[Iloveyou]

All your stories collected in one place offer an amazing picture! How vulnerable we are at any second in our 3D-existence, and how lasting and enduring at the same time.

At 19, 20 I always walked in the streets reading a book. Walking on city streets without reading I considered lost time. And it was cool! I only looked up briefly at crossings. Once, lost in my book, when I crossed a vast, almost empty square, I heard a man shout sharply: Stop! I looked up reflexively and the tramway that crossed the square flashed by in front of my nose and the book was snatched from my hand. I looked around me in amazement to thank the man who had warned me but there was nobody except a few people in the distance.
I‘ve heard / read similar things happen to many other people. It seems to be a common thing :)

Until my 40s I suffered from asthma, but it was easily managable, never got too bad. Though once the situation got out of hand when I renovated my apartment and had to deal with a lot of dust and dirt. I was out of breath for two days and nights and finally I could only breathe very shallowly while I was on a mattress on my hands and knees, head down. Needed all my remaining strength to get in a bit of oxygen. My two cats raged around the room and I couldn‘t do anything about it.

What is so amazing in hindsight is that there was no fear, no panic, not even the slightest concern. I felt so calm, happy and peaceful, had no wish to get out of this. Everything was alright. Then, something inside me (?) made me get up to the telephone and call the emergency number. As it was Sunday evening, I told the lady that I was a bit out of breath, but nothing to worry about. I told her I knew the emergency doctors were busy on Sunday evenings and maybe she could send a doctor to look after me somewhere during the next days. Or at least I tried to say that.

Ten minutes later the emergency team were at my door and treated me with oxygen and infusions. The oxygen level in my blood was lifethreatening low.

Life on earth, in an earthly body is truly a miracle.

[Constance]

With every story I've heard, my gratefulness and gratitude (that you are all still here to tell your story) continues to grow :heart:

[Orobo]

As a little boy I was on a holiday in Portugal with my family. I could not swim yet, but snorkling was easy with my head down and flippers on my feet.
I had been zigzagging away from shore for a long time when my snorkel got cut off because my head bobbed too deep. That had me flailing in panic, not being able to keep my head above water. I did not know where I was. When I managed to get a look, my father was standing on a rock out here and managed to reach out.

[jagman]

Wow.... A lot of you should be dead! My latest dance
with the reaper took place about a month ago when
I was driving to work in north central Texas. My brother was actually driving. We were about 20 miles
from work when a storm hit us. We had nowhere to run. We were looking at a F2 tornado no more than150 yards from our vehicle. We were on a farm rd that didn't even have so much as a drainage ditch to get out and lay in. So we made a decision to drive thru it. So with golf ball and baseball size hail hitting our windshield our ears popping we drove straight for this monster. When we got in the middle of it i felt the car lift up and come back down several times. It was so hard to breathe. It felt like my lungs were collapsing. Then all at once the funnel cloud lifted back up into the sky sparing me and my brothers life.

[shaberon]

I've had several similar brushes, and, so far I can say it was all close calls...nothing hit.

One was similar to Bill's first one, except it was in the Ozarks, not Norway, and it was a canoe, not a kayak. And it was really my bad judgement or loss of control in trying to pick up speed from a mini-rapid beside a fallen tree. Well, the canoe got folded in half like a piece of paper around the tree. We recovered, except we could not get our boat back and had to ride with someone else.

Been through several car incidents involving high rates of speed and other peoples' driving, almost ate a mailbox that way. Another one was like the tornado story but, I've never seen one, there are too many trees, so I was going down a rain-soaked highway trying to follow what I thought might be a funnel. Then a Datsun B10 goes flying past, hydroplanes, spins, and bounced off the guard rail several times into my lane, but then the spin flipped it back out of the way. The last one was a lot closer than I'd call "observational purposes".

My friend that had a similar Datsun, which he spun off the highway with me one time when someone pulled in front of us, was killed shortly thereafter around 4 a. m. on a dirt road in the country because a milk truck stopped in the road and turned off the lights. Smash.

Someone trying to show me an "unloaded" automatic pistol fired it right beside me and missed by inches, in a room full of people. It does put them in a "slow motion" moment.

I just try to be as safety aware as possible, no one is promised another day.

[Patient]

One thing I find interesting...water, how precious it is to our lives. About 70% of the Earth is covered in water, yet it is water that has almost taken many of our lives.

Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. :)

[thepainterdoug]

I was playing Ice Hockey and started itching. I also started to wheeze . I stood there on the ice and started to remove my jersey and saw big hives on my arms. i felt faint and started off the ice and towards the waiting room where some girlfriends of the other players were watching. as i approached them, i started to see flickering lights and my vision seemed to narrow and I couldn't breath . they ask am I ok and I said call an ambulance. I then remember feeling very calm and another me, a voice behind me in my head mused, so this is how your going to die. they told me i fell on the floor and threw up and was out. the ambulance came, got me to the hospital and the doc gave me steroids and intravenous and pulled me thru. well it turned out to be anaphylactic shock from , believe it or not a squirrel being in my hockey bag which i left out back. he got in there , left his acorns on the bottom and most likely pissed on my hockey gear, and i guess i soaked it in when i started sweating. the doc said he thought they almost lost me.

[Deux Corbeaux]

One thing I find interesting...water, how precious it is to our lives. About 70% of the Earth is covered in water, yet it is water that has almost taken many of our lives.

Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. :)

Right ! As snow is a form of water.

[Bill Ryan]

When I was a British student on university vacation, I spent a summer hitch-hiking in North America. At the end of my long adventure, I'd made my way from Canada all the way down to Mexico, and had finally arrived in Mazatlan, after not having changed my clothes for about a week. I was a real mess. :)

So I just tore off my clothes to my underpants and dived into the ocean. I've got fair skin, so I figured all I had to do was stay in the water and I'd not get burned. (I was just 21. What did I know?! :facepalm: )

I was in the ocean pretty much all day.

By the end of that day, I was quite red. A few hours later, I was like a lobster.

In huge discomfort, I crawled under a big palm tree on the beach, where I had my backpack and a 2 gallon container of fresh water. I stayed there for 2 nights.

By the third day I was hallucinating, and my entire body was cramping up. I was really sick, and seriously burned just about all over. I just kept on sipping the water, but I could barely move.

Then, out of nowhere, came a moment of crystal clarity:



If I didn't have salt, I would die.
I've never forgotten that. It was either a message from a concerned spirit guide, or my Higher Self intervening. But it was practically like a voice in my head.

I literally crawled to find a tourist with his family on the beach. I had no need to explain: they all stared at me in horror. The guy supported me into his car. I refused to go to hospital, so he left me in a cheap cockroach-ridden hostel where I lay in the dark drinking salt water.

My skin peeled like a snake, and it was painful to move, but within a week I was a lot better, and could continue my journey. I never went back into the ocean again that summer. :)

[Valerie Villars]

In October of 1985, myself, my husband and our six month old son were traveling from Colorado to Louisiana in a two door Datsun Nissan. We were young so we were driving the 24 hour or so drive, straight through, taking turns driving.

I was at the wheel and had taken, mistakenly, a two lane highway outside of Amarillo, Texas. Dumas, Texas to be exact. Of course there were no cell phones, no GPS and nothing but tumbleweeds and sky. We were the only ones on this highway. I had no seatbelt on and had just taken my son out of his car seat directly behind me and made him a soft bed on the back seat. I had stuffed pillows and blankets in between the back of the front seat and the back seat, in case my son rolled or moved. I didn't want him falling on the floor.

It was pitch black and I was hurtling along at 65 miles an hour. Suddenly, coming toward me were two headlights, seemingly out of nowhere. My last thought was "Jesus Christ, what is this guy doing?"

I woke up in a burr encrusted field many, many feet away, on my back. There was an ambulance and lights and someone was holding my son.

I had shattered my left hip into pieces and lost teeth, bleeding from below my mouth where there was now a lovely split. I still have the scar.

This tiny car was totaled and we were told later that no one understood how we were alive.

For all of my life, I could never understand how I got out of the car and walked into that field with a shattered hip.

Many years later I had some kind of a breakthrough to God and my question was answered, rippling and wordlessly by the most benevolent presence I have ever felt. "I pulled you out" is what this loving presence said.

I've had quite a few near brushes. One was with a man who was holding me hostage in a car with the most wicked knife I have ever seen and another time when a misogynist pulled a gun on my friend and I. Both times, there was an inexplicable instinct and action that got me out of certain death.

[Iloveyou]

I was playing Ice Hockey and started itching . . .
Forgive me, thepainterdoug, I was laughing so hard. Thank God you were rescued and seem to be doing okay now :) Actually I waited for anyone else to make this comment: I guess you‘re one of the rare people - if not the only one - who survived an almost deadly attack with squirrel piss :)

[DeDukshyn]

... the doc said he thought they almost lost me.

Yeah, death by allergy to squirrel piss? ... that'd be a bad way to go. :) Glad you lived.

[East Sun]

I always loved motorcycles. My Uncle introduced my brother and me to his 2 stroke by letting us ride down his long driveway when we were about 10 or 11 years old. That was back in the fifties. I did get to have three MCs in my life.
After retiring I did finally get what I wanted, a modern day Indian MC.

I chose a winding country road with curves and up and down hills to ride on as many motorcyclists did in this area. After I had done this rout countless times, one day I came down a hill to a 90 degree turn at around 45 or 50 mph. Suddenly I realized I was not going to make the turn. I went off the pavement onto gravel, the bike went down. I landed on my elbow and hip and went head first like a rocket straight forward. Time slowed down and I looked over at my bike sliding at the same speed I was going.

If I had hit the guard rail I would certainly have gone over down about 40 feet to hugh boulders below.
I can not figure why it happened after having done that turn so many times.

Maybe it was a warning that I needed to heed.
I still rode for 12 yrs after that, but a little more carefully.

[Dennis Leahy]

Mountains, oceans, rivers, streams, explosives, guns, drugs, cars... ah, which story to tell...

The middle of winter in Colorado, I was driving with my girlfriend in the mountains (between Eldora and Boulder), and saw a picture-postcard road leading off into the unknown. Impulsively, I turned down that road. The state of Colorado is well-equipped for snow removal and does a great job on their highways, but the idyllic-looking side road I took was covered in snow (but had been plowed.) Almost immediately upon turning onto that road, I remarked to my girlfriend that it was a mistake, traction was bad, and that I would turn around as soon as I could find a spot to turn around. The snow plow had cut a swath too narrow to turn the long car I was driving around, and so I kept going. We went up a hill, and I noted that I'd have to be very careful coming back down that hill...

I found a spot where it looked like the snow plow had lost traction and had spun a bit, creating a wider swath. I jockeyed the car back and forth and was able to turn around - and started heading back to the highway. When I got to the crest of the hill we needed to descend, I was going just 5 MPH, and tapping on the brakes, but had no traction at all. At the bottom of the hill, the road curved, and there was a wall of granite on the left side, and a cliff (very steep slope) on the right side. In slow-motion, we slid down the hill, bounced off the granite wall, and careened over the cliff on the right. The first thing we impacted was the tops of tall trees, and they smashed out the windows on the right side of the car. Playing Pink Floyd on 8-track tape (:ROFL:), the lyrics while we were going over the cliff were, "Life is a short warm moment, and death is a long cold rest." We landed, like a dart, car vertical in snow, with the front half of the car buried in the snow. I had instinctively grabbed my girlfriend and pulled her to me, and we ended up standing with all 4 feet on the accelerator pedal, with the engine winding at full RPM. Did I forget to mention that we weren't wearing seatbelts?

Once the car had come to rest, my girlfriend's dog (a beautiful but dumb-as-a-rock Afghan hound) jumped out through one of the broken window openings, and my girlfriend and I climbed up the steep slope to the road. No seatbelts, no airbags (c'mon, there were no airbags when cars had 8-track tape players), and yet somehow, we were all entirely unhurt and unscratched. Once back up standing on the road, realizing we had escaped injury, I started laughing. The drop was 75 feet.

[rgray222]

I was on a trip from Asia to Europe via the Middle East back in 1978. We stopped in Iran for a few days on our way to London. We knew that the country was having some trouble but had no idea to what extent until we arrived. One of the guys I was traveling with was a friend of the Iranian Ambassador based in Washington DC. The ambassador had set up a guy to meet us at the Tehran airport. Naive as I was back in those days I thought this guy that was going to show us around and act our tour guide for a few days. His name was Mr. Sugaman, a great guy with a very low key demeanor. Mr. Sugaman always wore the same clothes, baggy brown sports jacket, white shirt, no tie and crumple brown pants.

We stayed in the Tehran Hilton, a beautiful property overlooking the desert with snow-capped mountains in the distance. We started to get a sense of how bad things were when we arrived at the hotel, the only people there seemed to be journalist from around the world. The three of us each had a room at the Hilton on the same floor. That night Mr. Sugaman sat in an uncomfortable chair strategically placed so he could easily see the doors of each of our rooms.

The next day Mr. Sugaman reluctantly but graciously acted as our tour guide. He took us around showing us some of the historical and beautiful parts of Tehran. On the way back to the hotel I told him I wanted to buy a puzzle ring. He didn't say a word but on the way to the hotel he stopped and told my two companions to stay in the car. He escorted me into a very large bizarre bustling with people and activity. He presented me to a vendor and told him what I wanted.

Mr. Sugaman silently disappeared as the vendor pulled out several trays of rings. I was finalizing the purchase when something just did not seem right. As the vendor was handling the money he was not looking directly at me but behind me. Before I knew what was happening Mr. Sugaman grabbed me by the shirt collar right behind my neck and gave me an alarming tug without letting go. As soon as he had me turned around and still hanging on to the back of my shirt I could see that there were about 40-50 men intently staring at me (the foreigner). The men were between the nearest door to our car and the vendor's booth where we were standing. Mr. Sugaman and I stood there for a second (which seemed to be an eternity) before he pulled back his baggy sports jacket and produced a pistol with a barrel that must have been two feet long that was obviously down his pant leg. It was such a bizarre and unexpected sight that I actually found it somewhat comical. Mr. Sugaman marched me forward with one hand while pointing the gun at the men with his other hand. They backed up enough to open a clear passage to the door. We both ran to and jumped in the car and he sped away.

Mr. Sugaman was not our tour guide he was our bodyguard.
I probably owe my life to him.
Thank you Mr. Sugaman

Just as a foot note, someone broke into my home (I was living in Ireland at the time) and stole the puzze ring along with other stuff. I think about the ring once in a very great while, not for the value but for the memory and especially Mr. Sugaman.

[Carmody]

We sure are a crazy bunch....

[thepainterdoug]

yes indeed ILOVE YOU, and lived to tell about it. of course we hockey players like to tell war stories of almost dying by getting checked into the boards, or hit with a slap shot. With me, it was potential death by squirrel piss, add some squirrel dander for good measure .

[Bill Ryan]

One more. :)

About 25 years ago, I was living in the Scottish Borders, near Biggar. When driving from the south, I always used to take the A701 from Moffat, a fast road with many long curves and bends in it as it rolled through the Scottish hills.

One day heading home, I rounded one bend, and immediately in front of me were two cars heading straight for me, one overtaking the other. They were seconds away. There was nowhere to go.

I braked and swerved violently, and veered right up a 45º steep grassy bank at the side of the road before veering back to rejoin the road, all at 60 mph. I'd thought I'd be in a head-on collision, for sure. But somehow I just managed to swerve past the car heading directly at me. It all happened in a split second.

A minute later, a car behind me started honking and flashing at me. I stopped. The other driver got out. He was white and shaking.

He'd seen all this — from about 100 yds away — and had himself just avoided hitting the overtaking car as well. He told me what he'd seen me do was unbelievable, and asked if I was okay. (I was.)

He'd been unable to see any daylight at ALL between my car and the one I just missed.

[thepainterdoug]

Bill / you couldn't have done that, saved yourself.
Some orchestrator had that planned and played it out. you were meant to be here to continue what you are doing, and so strongly the other participants, not random, were meant to continue on as well.

[Rosemarie]

Have been thinking if I should share this , Trying to tell this page in my life the shortest way posible and convey the fear for our lives we felt. Lets leave politics aside. This is my story and what I experienced.

It is Nov 1989. There is a civil war in El Salvador. The guerrilla , the FMLN decides to launch a mayor offensive into the city of San Salvador. Before the fighting would be generally outside the capital in small towns. I do not remember how long that particular event lasted. Maybe 15-20 days fighting in the suburbs of SS. During all that time there are curfews, nobody outside from 6 pm to 6 am. Eerie silence , and then as night approached you would see planes throw hundreds of lights coming down like in small parachutes ( they have a name , it escapes me ). They are to illuminate the coffee plantations besides the suburb where I live and where the guerrillas are supposed to be hiding. Slowly coming down and moving with the breeze. A sight to see and enjoy if you did not know the reason for them.

We are sleeping in a mattress on the floor in a room between our bedroom and bathrooms and closets. No windows. After a week my parents tell me to please go home to Ecuador and I decided to take my little kids ( 3 and 1 years old )!there , but return to be with my husband.

The day I return I tell my husband the safest place in the house is a small storage room in the kitchen with 4 concrete walls and and iron door beneath the second floor. That night we start hearing the fighting very very near... we start exchanging phone calls with our neighbors. All of a sudden there is a huge explosion in our property , we hang the phone and run to the first floor. Going down the stairs there are huge windows and we see some men trying to look inside the house. It is dark ( no electricity ) and they do not see us. We run to the kitchen and my husband , a couple worked for us and Fiona our german shepherd go inside this small storage room ( maybe 6 ft x 8 ft ) as we hear the window ( huge ) break.

We hear men walking around , talking , in what felt like days. Imagen being scoped there with a dog and praying that dog does not bark. This happened around 12 at night. So we continue to hear fighting and the phone rings almost all night long. Around 5:30- 6 am we realized there is silence and we see light coming through the door. We decide to make a run for it. So we open the door and ran like crazy to the front door of the property which is like 50 feet away. As we open the door we see our neighbors with soldiers planning a rescue. Our neighbors knew something had happened to us.

We found that the big explosion we heard was the guerrillas that where in the coffee plantation that boarded our property making an opening in the wall so they can enter our property and fight with the soldiers which were outside in the streets and then escape to the forest that same way.

We closed the opening , order a new window and stayed there until before christmas when we went to see my parents and kid. Life had to continue.

Peace accords were signed in Chapultepec, Mexico in 1992.

Edit: spelling mistakes as always.

[ulli]

I must say, Rosemary, you have been through some incredible stuff. Real nightmare scenarios. I hope your life is no longer the danger zone it once was. Please stay safe from now on.

[Rosemarie]

I must say, Rosemary, you have been through some incredible stuff. Real nightmare scenarios. I hope your life is no longer the danger zone it once was. Please stay safe from now on.

Ulli. Thank you. Can I say it is a little boring now. ? Sometimes I think I could use some excitement.

[ulli]

I must say, Rosemary, you have been through some incredible stuff. Real nightmare scenarios. I hope your life is no longer the danger zone it once was. Please stay safe from now on.

Ulli. Thank you. Can I say it is a little boring now. ? Sometimes I think I could use some excitement.

I know what you mean, I also find that boredom is the other side of the coin of life.
Adrenalin rush is addictive, or maybe the addiction is more to do with the relief one feels when danger has passed.
When you feel that you now have an excuse to celebrate.
It can’t have been easy sharing that terrifying experience.

[thepainterdoug]

Rosemarie/ Im in awe of your story ! in light of it, perhaps I should remove my squirrel encounter... lol

[Rosemarie]

To tell you the truth I think with some hindsight I can say your squirrel incident was maybe more dangerous than mine. The guerrillas did not harm anybody they encounter in the other houses they enter. They just wanted a safer place from where to fight the soldiers. At that moment we did not know it off course.
Rosemarie/ Im in awe of your story ! in light of it, perhaps I should remove my squirrel encounter... lol

[Bill Ryan]

And another. This is a rock climbing story, but it's a little hard to explain. :)

When climbing, the lead climber heads up, with their safety rope below them, not above. They periodically install anchors in cracks in the rock, when they can.

The anchors are removable metal wedges in rock cracks, attached to a karabiner (metal snaplink). The rope runs freely through the snaplink. If the lead climber falls, the idea is that their partner holds the rope, and it'll come tight against the snaplink and hold the fall like a pulley from above.

So if one's 10 feet above the highest anchor, the lead climber will fall twice that distance — 20 ft. As one climbs higher, one needs to put in more anchors (if one can!) — or else the potential fall becomes long and dangerous.

It's critical that each new anchor is wedged immovably in place. The idea is that they can be removed from above, but will just wedge themselves even more firmly with a downward pull.

http://projectavalon.net/Running_belays.gif

~~~

Anyway. I was on a difficult climb in the English Lake District, long ago. I'd installed four anchors, so I felt pretty safe. But then I fell.

The top 3 anchors all pulled out, which isn't meant to happen. :) (Never happened before, or since!) I was left suspended on the 4th and last.... upside down with my cheek just gently grazing the rock ledge way below.

I was full of adrenaline, and was just fine. My poor partner, who'd helplessly watched everything come unzipped, was visibly shaking.

I never climbed with a helmet. If the final anchor had also failed, I'd have been piledriven head first into the rock below, and certainly wouldn't be here now.

[thepainterdoug]

Bill / wow, thank the heavens! I think the guy who willingly climbed El Capitan free of all ropes etc ,accomplished the most amazing human feat I have ever seen.
Few of us will ever know what its like to live on the edge of complete peril every step of our way. And he willingly did this.

Rosemarie/ in a sense I know what you mean. but the mental anguish you went thru out does my squirrel incident for sure. its what we know that frightens , not what were unaware of.

[East Sun]

In my 20's I lived in a big city in Europe. One Sat. night I went into a bar and had one drink. As I was leaving I noticed a few people standing on the sidewalk. One person near them seemed out of place somehow. I started to walk and noticed that the guy started to follow me very closely. I moved over as I walked to let him pass, he moved over behind me. I turned to see what he wanted and he stabbed me in the chest with a knife. He raised the knife again. He was holding the knife in a strange way not by the handle to bring it down or up but to stab forward, very hard to block or duck from. I could see rage in his face and fight or flight kicked in. I took off and he followed close behind. When he stopped I crossed the main street I looked down at my white shirt to see it covered in blood.

I thought I have to drive to the hospital. My car was a street away. Suddenly I felt very weak and was not walking well. I was on a back street with not many people. I asked a passer by to call an ambulance, he just kept walking . Now everything was going black and I was staggering. I grabbed on to a lamp post and slid to the ground. Fortunatly two guys came past and I stammered that I had been stabbed. They put me in the back of their car and took me to the hospital. I never saw those two guys again so I could not thank them.
I was in the hospital for 5 days. The Doctor said the wound was 2 1/4" inches deep and 2" from my heart.

You never know when your time may come, just out of the blue.

[avid]

1986, a wine tasting south of the city, got a black cab home with partner (no safety belts then), in the back having a joke, then Blackness.... Our taxi driver, on a dual carriageway at 50mph ignored out-of-order traffic lights, we were T-boned by another cab. Partner shot through window, severe facial injuries and cracked neck, I stayed inside wearing fortunately leather trousers and jacket, in the rotating cab. When the policeman said “are you okay” I said I had broken my neck, it felt so bad.
500 metres away, Major A&E, saved my life. Hangman’s fracture, c1 cracked, c2 and c3 broken.

Spent weeks with traction on a rotating bed on lambskins, and then months with halo and full body cast, pleaded to see my son, partner, was initially given 24 hours as I developed pneumonia, but my best friend physio on A&E pumped me out, so here I am, still can't sleep without adjusting my head position, my folks were brilliant, Mum retired early to look after me, my son was really shocked, this has haunted me for years - trying to make it up to them.

When my folks were in a bad way, I gave up everything for them, to make up, thankfully it was a wonderful decision, as I am back home, unencumbered by an aspergers’ torturer, free, looking up at the sky in our beautiful family garden.

Here and now!

[scanner]

I was 17 at the time this happened. I'd been courting a young lady, and we'd had a disagreement about something trivial, as you do at that age. So I left earlier than usual, around 9.45 pm. The weather was good, no rain, so good for the motorcycle I was riding. It was an Elvis bike. A penny bun for the person who knows what an Elvis bike was, I digress. On my way home, I wasn't riding fast or stupid, as one does at that age.

Unbeknown to me, in a pub Car Park, a car was being stolen, allegedly by a drunk driver. I don't know how they came to that conclusion they have never, to this day, caught anyone for their crimes against me, some 47yrs ago. I continued home down a wide sweeping right-hand bend closing into a near hairpin. I, could see the cars headlights coming straight at me, on my side of the road. There was nothing I could do to ride my way out of it. The drunk was going so fast, he hit the front of my bike head on, knocked me into the air, I came down through the windscreen of the stolen car, head first, allegedly. They had to cut me out of the car, the drunk had left me for dead. I died in the Ambulance on the way to the hospital, so they told me a week later when I woke up in the hospital. Fractured skull, broken right femur and two broken wrists. Many stitches, cuts and bruises.

I was in hospital many months, the surgeon, at that time was old school and didn't believe in plating and pinning broken bones. O natural was his buzzword. I didn't complain too much, it was a training hospital and lots of young nurser to talk too and date when I was up and walking again. The young lady I was courting visited me a couple of times and never returned, I've haven't seen her since lol.

[Bill Ryan]

:bump: :bump: :bump:

[East Sun]

In my 20's I lived in a big city in Europe. One Sat. night I went into a bar and had one drink. As I was leaving I noticed a few people standing on the sidewalk. One person near them seemed out of place somehow. I started to walk and noticed that the guy started to follow me very closely. I moved over as I walked to let him pass, he moved over behind me. I turned to see what he wanted and he stabbed me in the chest with a knife. He raised the knife again. He was holding the knife in a strange way not by the handle to bring it down or up but to stab forward, very hard to block or duck from. I could see rage in his face and fight or flight kicked in. I took off and he followed close behind. When he stopped I crossed the main street I looked down at my white shirt to see it covered in blood.

I thought I have to drive to the hospital. My car was a street away. Suddenly I felt very weak and was not walking well. I was on a back street with not many people. I asked a passer by to call an ambulance, he just kept walking . Now everything was going black and I was staggering. I grabbed on to a lamp post and slid to the ground. Fortunatly two guys came past and I stammered that I had been stabbed. They put me in the back of their car and took me to the hospital. I never saw those two guys again so I could not thank them.
I was in the hospital for 5 days. The Doctor said the wound was 2 1/4" inches deep and 2" from my heart.

You never know when your time may come, just out of the blue.

Bill, It's amazing to me that you could pull this up out of the blue.

I still maintain that because we have had a "so called" "miraculous' escape that
it was angels that saved us.

[Sue (Ayt)]

Besides several slo-mo traffic close calls, there is one unusual save that I remember clearly, but to this day I have never figured out.

I have this cousin who was just a little younger than me, who I was raised closely with when I was a child. My mother got pregnant with me, then shortly after my aunt became pregnant with her. We were both the first child. But the thing is, somehow my cousin became my nemesis in those days. To me, I saw her as evil. If I had a little plant, she would snap it off. When I had a small pet mouse, she smashed and killed it with a milk bottle. She would bite me, and seemed to enjoy destroying what I loved. Sadly, I saw her as my tormentor.

One day, when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, my cousin and I were in a swimming pool. Our mothers were chatting at a table by the pool, but not really watching. We were in the deep end, clinging to the side, when my cousin got the idea to dunk me under the water and then sit on me, well beyond any point of a fun prank. Thing is, this cousin was also quite fat, and weighed much more than me. After the initial dunk, it became apparent to me that she did not intend to let me up. In fact, she then sat on me, keeping me under the water with her full weight, no matter how I struggled to reach the surface. It became apparent to me that she did indeed intend to drown me.

And after much struggle, I became resigned that I was not going to be able to escape, and that was it. Now, this was where it got weird. Suddenly, and instantly, I was standing on the concrete at the side of the pool, looking down at my cousin who was still in the pool, who was looking up at me with a shocked look. I, too, was shocked to the core, looking down at her. Our eyes met, and then I ran out of the pool area into the house. To this day I can't remember anything beyond drowning, and instantly being out of the pool.

[raregem]

I was in the cab of a 350 truck pulling a trailer with several telephone pole logs. We were on a mountainside in California climbing the road and the trailer started fish tailing. We were pulled backwards down the mountain and started to flip over several times. About halfway down the mountain side a tree was jutting out and this where we stopped rolling. I was concerned for a moment the truck might start on fire but no. The only injury was a 3 jagged blade on a chain saw that was in the cab. It went through my jeans and leg. Minor injury on me (a few stitches) and none on the other two passengers. No head injuries, nothing.
Behind us was an off duty paramedic couple who saw the whole thing happen.
I have another mountain story for another time. Mountains are beautiful but have stressed me out when driving.
Austin has rolling hills...lol

[greybeard]

I think close encounters near death events, strengthens a person in many ways.
Through all I mentioned page one -- I have no fear of death but certainly would want to exit this world "quietly" without leaving any kind of mess for others to clear up.
So life is valued, enjoyed, lived a moment of a time, with a degree of gratitude.
My signature below is fundamental to this life.
Chris

[Anka]

Dear Chris,
Your playful and joyful spirit, in all the goodness of your soul, always demonstrates, at least for me, that in fact you are fundamental to the signature of your life and in the projection of the attraction of good thoughts.:sun:

Three years ago I was in terrible pain from the spine,
for 6 months, I fell asleep in tears of pain and sadness and several times when I fell asleep I thought there was an end.
The irony is that I was actually just falling asleep, but the feeling of ending I experienced it often enough to understand the art of living and dying.

I now serve my life in the perspective of a fantastic spiritual escape as I did not hope to feel, in a different detachment from the perception of others about life and death.
"I shouldn't be alive" should be kind of a cliché for me, because I had enough experiences near death and now I have the feeling that in fact, all my life I have trained to die, a great step, maybe I'll make it sometime.:)

[hohoemi]

Once when I was a teenager we were driving through the mountains with my some of my family in two cars. Up front was my uncle, who at that time was known to drive like a maniac (he was in some accidents because of this but survived all without lasting damage). Following was a car driven by my granny, more of a sedate sunday driver, with my cousins and myself in it.

For some unknown reason my granny was trying to keep up with my uncle's car up that winding mountain road, including overtaking various cars despite the narrowness of the road and a complete lack of visibility because of all the curves. At some point, we suddenly found ourselves overtaking a truck - with a second truck heading directly for us down this narrow road, with a mountain face on one side and a cliff on the other.

The way this looks in my memory, there would barely have been space enough for a motorcycle between those two trucks, let alone for a small car. Despite this, we just drove between them, without even brushing their sides.

I have no idea whether my memory is distorted or some kind of miracle happened, but even at that time, I didn't understand how we got through that situation alive, let alone completely unscathed.

[Bill Ryan]

:bump: :bump: :bump:

[mountain_jim]

reposting this recent post, an experience from my season working in Zion National Park

(yes, I have felt intuitively protected from premature departure -

to fulfill my purposes for this incarnation?)


Another personal note on the location shown here

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/historyculture/images/ZMCTunnel_3_EastEntrance.jpg?maxwidth=650&autorotate=false&quality=78&format=webp

We as off-duty employees of the park concessionaire (1978) were inside this tunnel at night, returning from that portal pictured in my earlier post, when car lights coming caused us to run to tunnel exit. (there was no sidewalk or area to be out of the car lanes inside the tunnel).

That wall to left of the car shown - I leapt over it to get off the highway, in midair my guardian angel(?) suggested urgently that I did not know what was on the other side - I reached out and grabbed the wall while going over, and my feet found an extrusion to hold me up, preventing me from falling 60 or so feet into a likely dry-canyon gulch death.

My best friend jumped before me, closer to the tunnel, and he landed on the close area before the steep drop and was unhurt as well.

:facepalm:

Another time this helpful internal voice saved me from my car being hit broadside by a redlight runner - when light turned green I 'knew' to stay there and not enter the intersection - then the car raced through where I would have been at a very high speed.

[Ewan]

Once when I was a teenager we were driving through the mountains with my some of my family in two cars. Up front was my uncle, who at that time was known to drive like a maniac (he was in some accidents because of this but survived all without lasting damage). Following was a car driven by my granny, more of a sedate sunday driver, with my cousins and myself in it.

For some unknown reason my granny was trying to keep up with my uncle's car up that winding mountain road, including overtaking various cars despite the narrowness of the road and a complete lack of visibility because of all the curves. At some point, we suddenly found ourselves overtaking a truck - with a second truck heading directly for us down this narrow road, with a mountain face on one side and a cliff on the other.

The way this looks in my memory, there would barely have been space enough for a motorcycle between those two trucks, let alone for a small car. Despite this, we just drove between them, without even brushing their sides.

I have no idea whether my memory is distorted or some kind of miracle happened, but even at that time, I didn't understand how we got through that situation alive, let alone completely unscathed.

I was beginning to think I would not have a story to share until I read this post. It jogged a memory long forgotten. Yes I'd had quite a few encounters where I pondered later how the heck I wasn't seriously hurt but never death.

My sister, who is 18 months older than myself and had been driving for over a year whilst I had just literally passed my test less than a month earlier. It had been agreed, when Dad Ok'd us borrowing the car on holiday, that she would drive there (Loch Morlich in Scotland, only an hour from where we were staying) and I would drive back.

We are on the return journey and a narrow bridge up ahead, it looks about 1.5 times the width of a car. There is a truck heading towards us and I, being brash and confident I am sure we can beat the truck to the bridge, and put my foot down accelerating. I can see (or am aware) of my sister getting tense and I remember grinning at her, to me, paranoia. However, it became apparent that we would reach the bridge at the same time and it was too late to slam the brakes on - we would have probably come to a halt the other side of it.

I remember my sister screaming, and I literally clenched my teeth, closed my eyes and held on to the steering with rigid arms. One, two seconds, no bang, no screech of metal. I opened my eyes again and we are sailing on regardless. I glance in the rear view mirror and the truck is also continuing onwards quite unperturbed. I don't think my sister spoke for the rest of the journey home and I was in no mood to say anything either. I remember looking back at the time and wondering how the heck that just happened.

[Vangelo]

Oh God, I have multiple stories that I have completely forgotten until now. I will try to relay them in chronological order. These all happened in Boston Massachusetts in a rough part of the city.

I was about 5 and a bunch of kids jumped me, my brother and two cousins. Everyone escaped but me. They held a knife to my throat yelling that if my brother and cousins did not come back they were going to kill me. By chance, a cop car drove by and they scattered. The cop did not even stop. He had no idea there was an issue.

I was about 7 and on the roof of a 4 story building. My brother and cousins ran and jumped across to the other identical building. I followed them and landed with the top half of my body on the roof and my legs dangling on the side of the building.

I was about 16 and a drugged out guy stumbled over to me and my friends, he pulled out a screwdriver and lunged at me trying to stab me for no reason. Luckily I saw him and blocked the first strike.

I was 16, it was during the riots that happened because of the forced school busing issue. My friends and I were walking home and we found ourselves in the middle of a protest. We were the only people of our race there and that got the protestors more upset. We ran and luckily escaped with minor bruises.

I was about 17 in the passenger's seat of my friends muscle car. We had just finished upgrading the engine's carburetor and the brakes and my friend wanted to see if he could get the car to hit 100 miles per hour. So we did what any teenage boys would do, we decided to test it. The street we picked to drive the car on was long enough (we thought) but it ended in a "T" onto a very busy street. We hit 100 but did not have enough time to stop. Somehow he was able to slam on the brakes and screech into the busy street, between moving cars going right to left, just like a movie scene. It was a miracle.

I was 18 and came home after midnight. For some reason I decided to drive my car around the block before parking on the street to go home. There was a guy with a large bowie knife hiding in my neighbors walkway behind a bush. Had I got out of my car he would have got me. I yelled at him from the car and he ran.

I have been blessed and must have a guardian angel.

[grapevine]

When I was a young girl, just before my 13th birthday, I had a week's holiday in Polperro, Cornwall with an aunt and uncle.

The steps down to the beach were carved straight into the cliff face with a sheer drop on one side and halfway down I noticed a little bird on a tuft of grass. Without thinking I put my hand out and instead of flying off it tried to peck me. I jumped back in horror, but then proceeded on my way down the steps.

When we got to the bottom my uncle and aunt were ashen faced and said that when I jumped back my heels had been over the edge for a split second, and they wondered what on earth they were going to tell my parents. I'm so glad I was completely unaware.

¤=[Post Update]=¤


Oh God, I have multiple stories that I have completely forgotten until now. I will try to relay them in chronological order. These all happened in Boston Massachusetts in a rough part of the city.

I was about 5 and a bunch of kids jumped me, my brother and two cousins. Everyone escaped but me. They held a knife to my throat yelling that if my brother and cousins did not come back they were going to kill me. By chance, a cop car drove by and they scattered. The cop did not even stop. He had no idea there was an issue.

I was about 7 and on the roof of a 4 story building. My brother and cousins ran and jumped across to the other identical building. I followed them and landed with the top half of my body on the roof and my legs dangling on the side of the building.

I was about 16 and a drugged out guy stumbled over to me and my friends, he pulled out a screwdriver and lunged at me trying to stab me for no reason. Luckily I saw him and blocked the first strike.

I was 16, it was during the riots that happened because of the forced school busing issue. My friends and I were walking home and we found ourselves in the middle of a protest. We were the only people of our race there and that got the protestors more upset. We ran and luckily escaped with minor bruises.

I was about 17 in the passenger's seat of my friends muscle car. We had just finished upgrading the engine's carburetor and the brakes and my friend wanted to see if he could get the car to hit 100 miles per hour. So we did what any teenage boys would do, we decided to test it. The street we picked to drive the car on was long enough (we thought) but it ended in a "T" onto a very busy street. We hit 100 but did not have enough time to stop. Somehow he was able to slam on the brakes and screech into the busy street, between moving cars going right to left, just like a movie scene. It was a miracle.

I was 18 and came home after midnight. For some reason I decided to drive my car around the block before parking on the street to go home. There was a guy with a large bowie knife hiding in my neighbors walkway behind a bush. Had I got out of my car he would have got me. I yelled at him from the car and he ran.

I have been blessed and must have a guardian angel.

Bloody hell Vangelo. Be careful - you only have 3 lives left! :)

[Bill Ryan]

:bump::bump::bump:

(It seemed topical! :))

[onawah]

I must have been on sabbatical or something when this thread was active, because somehow I missed it.
But I am definitely a member of this particular Avalon "club" as I had a NDE in 1972, 2 months after I had left the East Coast (Philadelphia) for California (the S.F. Bay Area) at the age of 24.
There are 2 old posts of mine, one which describes the incident here:
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?31565-Angel-Spirit-Guide-Makes-Self-Known-in-Real-Life-Experience&p=321587&viewfull=1#post321587
... and another which describes another later, but very related incident here:
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?120126-The-reincarnation-error&p=1534914&viewfull=1#post1534914
They are both pretty long, so I won't copy them here.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

A sequence of hair-raising clips. Definitely belongs in this thread!

1891554471659950136
https://x.com/crazyclipsonly/status/1891554471659950136

[Mike]

About 20 years ago I was working on a roadside crew on a very hot summer day. We started at 7am and went to around 3pm most days, but on this day our boss wanted to work an extra 2 hours.

It was very hot that day and the humidity was devastating. I was gassed by 3:00 and come 5:00 I was dehydrated and deliriously tired. At the end of our work day we'd drive along the edge of the highway off-ramp and collect the cones we'd laid out earlier. This was accomplished by using an enormous metallic arm on the back of our truck...

When the work was done the metallic arm would fold up on it's own and crash back down into it's original position. While this process was taking place, a whiny beep-beep-beep warning alarm sounded to alert everyone to stay clear of it.

I recall hearing the beeping but I was so out of it that it just didn't register. It sounded like an alarm clock going off miles down the road. I was in a trance man. Probably some kind of heat stroke. At the time I was crouched on the back on the truck, directly on the platform the metallic arm was due to crash down upon...

I don't know what moved me to do it, but for some reason I stood up and took about 5 paces forward, just barely getting missed by the huge metallic arm in the process. Surely it would have crushed my skull and killed me if I hadn't.