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Have You Ever Had The Hell Scared Out Of You?

H

harryashburn

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 16, 2008
Messages
13
Nam. Central Highlands. '69. Midnight, 3/4 moon. I was a 2nd looie. I was peering under the trees about 30 yards away. I kept looking at what I thought was a NVA regular sitting against a stump sleeping. One of my men kept whispering "No, its just a stump." I kept replying "I think its a man asleep against the stump." We kept staring at it for what seemed like was a long time, but was probably just a few minutes.

You know how it is when you're staring at something in half-light; how your eyes play tricks. Finally I decided to shoot. Whatever it was fell over with a heavy thump. I smiled and felt vindicated. Everybody else had been asleep and didn't know what was going on. The E4 and I and the sarge walked over to get a closer look. The E4 laughed and said "I told you it was just a stump", and he poked it with his weapon.

Then it sat-up and looked at us.

All 3 of us screamed, dropped our weapons, and ran back to the unit. I and the sarge tripped and fell when we reached our defenses. The E4 kept on running behind us into the darkness. Everybody opened fire toward the trees, even though they didn't even know what they were shooting at.

I swear my heart was in my mouth. I was breathing so hard I couldn't speak or stand. I thought I was finding out how it feels to die of a heart attack.

After a few minutes, we found flashlights and walked back to the trees. We found nothing. No dead RVN soldier,no blood, no stump. From then on, the guys never seemed to trust me or Greg the E4 again. I don't think they even believed there was anything there, stump or man, to begin with.

Still to this day, ever time I remember that night, my heart races just the same.
 
harryashburn said:
Nam. Central Highlands. '69. Midnight, 3/4 moon. I was a 2nd looie. I was peering under the trees about 30 yards away. I kept looking at what I thought was a NVA regular sitting against a stump sleeping. One of my men kept whispering "No, its just a stump." I kept replying "I think its a man asleep against the stump." We kept staring at it for what seemed like was a long time, but was probably just a few minutes.

You know how it is when you're staring at something in half-light; how your eyes play tricks. Finally I decided to shoot. Whatever it was fell over with a heavy thump. I smiled and felt vindicated. Everybody else had been asleep and didn't know what was going on. The E4 and I and the sarge walked over to get a closer look. The E4 laughed and said "I told you it was just a stump", and he poked it with his weapon.

Then it sat-up and looked at us.

All 3 of us screamed, dropped our weapons, and ran back to the unit. I and the sarge tripped and fell when we reached our defenses. The E4 kept on running behind us into the darkness. Everybody opened fire toward the trees, even though they didn't even know what they were shooting at.

I swear my heart was in my mouth. I was breathing so hard I couldn't speak or stand. I thought I was finding out how it feels to die of a heart attack.

After a few minutes, we found flashlights and walked back to the trees. We found nothing. No dead RVN soldier,no blood, no stump. From then on, the guys never seemed to trust me or Greg the E4 again. I don't think they even believed there was anything there, stump or man, to begin with.

Still to this day, ever time I remember that night, my heart races just the same.
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Not sure what that has to do with telephones, but that is one of the creepiest stories I've read on this board.
 
locussolus said:
...

Not sure what that has to do with telephones, but that is one of the creepiest stories I've read on this board.
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Or, one of the funniest. ;)
 
Fantastic Story!!

Hi! What a fantastic story of a truly bizarre and frightening occurrence!! Has anybody got any similar stories? Not necessarily relating to telephones!? :)
 
Sorry I posted that on the wrong forum, didn''t notice the subject was telephones. Im old and dont have any grandkids to show me how to do all this. I think I do pretty good using the ol' Commodor 64!
 
I've now split Harry's story off, as it deserves a Thread to itself.

Definitely a v.creepy story.

Have you any idea what it really was, animal, human, or other? :shock:
 
Maybe I'm just being a bit thick, but why do you say that there was no dead RVN soldier when you returned, when you originally thought that the 'whatever it was' was NVA?
 
Ooh.. ooh! I've got one!

Over 20 years ago I was a a technician working for Sunderland Polytechnic's TV Unit in the Education Department. Basically we trained student teachers. Part of the job was to go on field trips with the students, lecturors and local schoolkids.

On one such weekend we went to an old shooting lodge in the North York Moors. The trip was lead by a lecturor called Patrick who was vehemently teetotal. Consequently my boss, Big Bob, hid a bottle of scotch in the landrover we were in with the intention of waiting until Patrick, the students and the kids had all gone to bed before retrieving the bottle and getting a bit merry.

Unfortunately, the night before the trip I watched the film 'An American Werewolf In London.'

For some reason, Big Bob had parked the landrover about 200yds from the lodge. When all others had retired he handed me a tiny Maglight torch and told me to go get the scotch. Now, this was the middle of nowhere. There were no street lights, the sky was totally clouded over and the torch had a pencil-thin beam. Being a city-boy, I had never experienced such utter darkness in my life before.

I pointed the torch in the general direction of the landrover, spotted it and then directed the torch at the ground as I headed towards it, periodically pointing the torch at the landrover to make sure I was still heading in the right direction.

Remember the film I had watched the night before?

Suddenly, to my right and terrifyingly close by came a growl from a Beast From Hell. I actually felt hot, humid breath on my cheek and neck.

This was it! My time was up and my throat was about to be ripped out by a werewolf!

As I decended from my 10ft vertical leap I swung the torch in the direction of my assailant.

It was a horse.

Never since has a bottle of scotch been so needed.
 
Wooah dude,

I'm not being funny here but....

It worries me that one would shoot at someone without knowing for sure who/what he/it was. The idea that it could have been a civilian or even a fellow American soldier does not seemed to have occured. One saw what appeared to be a man sleeping against a stump who was promptly shot at without even making sure of who or what it was...without even checking it out... just in case an innocent person was killed. Certainly leaves me stumped. Maybe in times of stress and battle soldiers have to protect their own asses otherwise they will be killed and I know Vietnam was no jolly in the park, but still I'm glad it was not me who chose to sit down and lean against that stump.
 
brother said:
Wooah dude,

I'm not being funny here but....

It worries me that one would shoot at someone without knowing for sure who/what he/it was. The idea that it could have been a civilian or even a fellow American soldier does not seemed to have occured. One saw what appeared to be a man sleeping against a stump who was promptly shot at without even making sure of who or what it was...without even checking it out... just in case an innocent person was killed. Certainly leaves me stumped. Maybe in times of stress and battle soldiers have to protect their own asses otherwise they will be killed and I know Vietnam was no jolly in the park, but still I'm glad it was not me who chose to sit down and lean against that stump.
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I've just told you it was a horse. And I didn't shoot it!











hang on.....
 
re: stump

@Pietros: THX for the tech help!

@Cavenaut: sorry..got my acronyms crossed.

@Brother: Wow! I thought it was you! I'm so glad it wasnt!
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
I've now split Harry's story off, as it deserves a Thread to itself.

Definitely a v.creepy story.

Have you any idea what it really was, animal, human, or other? :shock:
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What telephone story? I am confused.
 
No, neither have I. Candles perhaps, but not any onion.
 
Nope. Me neither. Although, there was this one time, at band camp...
 
@Cheeky381: re: "Well, I was brilliant, and it was a bloody good laugh!"

Whadday mean "I" was brilliant. what did you have to do with it?

"I never metaphor I didn't liken." - harry ashburn
 
:lol:
Thats my signature Harry, from the film Plunkett and Maclean, uttered by the sexy Johnny Lee Miller (excuse me while I have a private moment)!
Sometimes I am brilliant and it is a bloody good laugh, but I confess I'm an innocent bystander on this thread, watching it all unravel.... 8)
 
Harry - are you really using a Commodore 64 to browse this forum? That's fantastic if true!
 
ttaarraass said:
Harry - are you really using a Commodore 64 to browse this forum? That's fantastic if true!
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Yeah, I was thinking about that too. Pretty impressive.
 
Years ago I spent a time living at my mums. She had a phone in the room I was sleeping in. I worked at a cimema so came home at silly hours sometimes. One night I went to bed totally knackered and was in a deep sleep several hours later when my mum thought that she should unplug the phone from the socket in the room I was sleeping in so not to disturb me in the morning. It was by the side of my bed, so she crept in, bent down by the bed to unplug it.
In a deep sleep I thought I could feel breath on my face and became aware of a presence. In my slumber I opened my eyes to find a face staring at mine from a few inches away. I screamed the house down and she nearly poo'd herself!
I heard her go downstairs and then burst out laughing!
 
:D

When I was about 4 I used to religiously check under my bed and in the wardrobe in my bedroom to make sure Dracula, the wolfman and Frankenstein weren't hiding there to get me when I fell asleep.

One night I decided I was grown-up enough not to bother with these checks. (Okay, I still checked the wardrobe because you can't be too careful!)

I lay in bed playing with a Corgi car, making 'vrooom-vrooom' noises.

Suddenly an arm appeared from beneath my bed and grabbed me! I screamed like a stuck pig. :shock:

My sister had hidden under my bed for 45 mins waiting for just the right moment to make me prolapse my colon! :twisted:
 
I have so many stories about my evil sister.

Before The Evil Dead was banned as a video nasty, me and my mate Kieth got our hands on a copy.

We duly retired to my bedroom with cans of lager to watch it.

At the most frightening part my sister burst into the room screaming like a banshee.

I swear that without exercising a single muscle in my body I levitated 3 feet from my bed in a horizontal position. I reached the apex and began to decend. Unfortunately the lager in the can I was holding decided to stay where it was until I landed, when the whole lot sloshed down on me.

I hate my sister.
 
I wasn't going to post this until I'd had more time to think about it, but since such an appopriate topic popped up I thought I would share it. I'd not been scared stiff since the early 1990s until this happened recently.

Wednesday 26th January: I'm at home in bed. I wake at roughly 2am after having a slightly disturbing dream, I remember it so vividly that I find it difficult to shake it out of my head. In the dream I'm in a canoe type boat. There's someone sat behind me, and possibly a third behind them. It's late evening in a sort of marsh area, reminds me of the Everglades, the light is red, and we are heading for an island in the marsh, sort of a bungalow with red glowing curtains. We are heading there to confront something, but I don't know what, I just have this terrible sense of somthing evil.

Saturday 29th January: I'm now staying in a cottage in Cornwall. I wake at dawn and the bedroom is filled with a dim red light (not unusual in this house as it faces the sea and the rising sun is often red in Winter). I've just had the same exact dream again, but this time the Canoe did a barrel roll and there was music in the background as if it was part of a film. We landed on the island and everyone started crying, including myself, saying they didn't want to die. But I'm awake now and I'm too scared to open my eyes for some reason. I force myself to open them and my vision "jitters" from colour to black and white. I shut them and turn to snuggle up to my wife but I'm scared stiff like a child!

I discuss most of this with my wife the next morning and she says "it was just in your mind, funny how much sober things like in the light of day" and she's right. It all seems so silly. The lasting impression I have is that it has something to do with the house in Cornwall, that maybe this happens every year on this night. but of course, I have no reason to think this.

Sorry if it sounds dull, but as I lay with my eyes closed because I couldn't see in colour I was cacking my pants!
 
The worst scare I ever had was in a car park in Liverpool during the 80's.
We were travelling along the motorway towards the Wallasey tunnel when we overtook an old battered black van. The driver was the most forboding character I had ever seen. He turned to look at us as we went past and my blood froze when I made eye contact with him. Even my husband was creeped out by him.
We parked in a car park in the business area. My husband went off to his office and I went up to do some shopping. It was the run up before Christmas so it was dark when I returned alone to the cark park. It had gone 5 so it was pretty well empty. I turned round a corner to go to my car when I saw parked right next to it the old black van, with the driver sitting stock still inside it. He was just staring through the windscreen at a blank wall.
There were no other cars in that part of the car park so feeling panic starting to rise I walked as fast as I could out of the car park and up to my husbands office nearby. I waited for his meeting to finish and we went back to the car together. The van was still there but the driver was no longer in the cab. The van was so close to our car that my husband could not open the drivers door and had to use the passenger door and shuffle over.
We used the old Birkenhead tunnel on our return trip and were freaked out again when my husband saw that the van was right behind us in the tunnel. He held back so that it went ahead of us at the toll booths and watched where it went. We took another route.
 
re: Commodore 64

re: Commodore 64: You think that's cool? Hey, I just upgraded from an Etch-A-Sketch!

"The future ain't what it used to be." -yogi berra
 
I still have a Commodore in my mums attic somewhere, in its box. I remember it came with the game Robocop and a couple of others. My dad asked me what the hell I was going to do with a whole meg!!!
 
Spudrick68 said:
I still have a Commodore in my mums attic somewhere, in its box. I remember it came with the game Robocop and a couple of others. My dad asked me what the hell I was going to do with a whole meg!!!
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That'll be the Commodore Amiga A500, with a 512k memory expansion. If it was posh it might have come with a clock...no joke.
 
I don't remember a clock! Yes it was the Amiga 500. I couldn't remember what it was called.
 
linesmachine said:
Saturday 29th January: I'm now staying in a cottage in Cornwall. I wake at dawn and the bedroom is filled with a dim red light (not unusual in this house as it faces the sea and the rising sun is often red in Winter). I've just had the same exact dream again...

The lasting impression I have is that it has something to do with the house in Cornwall, that maybe this happens every year on this night. but of course, I have no reason to think this.
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Fascinating! Whereabouts is this cottage? I may go and have a look-see if it's not too far from here.

I guess it faces roughly SE, but that could be one of several places on the south coast, and even one or two on the north coast.

EDIT: Amazingly, a Google on Cornwall "Wednesday 26th January" turns up 1,270 hits (including this thread)!
 
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