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The Scariest Moment Of Your Life (Fortean Or Not)

1. That notorious 'bedroom scene' in the 1989 Woman in Black adaptation. I was so scared that I literally fell off my chair(!)

2. The Innocents (1961). The obvious scary scenes aside, I'm affected by Miss Jessel's misery. There's an atmosphere-beneath-the-atmosphere about the film.

3. Ring: Sadako climbing through the telly. I hoped that frantically pressing 'rewind' would send her back.
 
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I was night-fishing with my mate (both 14) off a large sloping slab of rock on the Cornish coast. Although the offshore waves were quite rough, there was a partially sheltered lagoon (10-12 foot deep) to my right. I baited up and put the torch down, which then started sliding seaward on the wet slab. I made a grab for it even though I vaguely remember a warning shout from my mate to leave it. Then there was muffled darkness.. and coldness.. and wetness as I was doing a head-stand on the bottom of the Atlantic. Think my mate was the most scared at that moment until (he said) I broke the surface of the lagoon with a resounding expletive. Walked back to the holiday home and stripped off wellies and coat and everything bar my pants and hung them on the washing line before going inside.
Never thought about it until this thread. Weirdly getting the willies.
 
Techy had the odd clencher watching me cycle over this. :chuckle:
 

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Floyd1 said:
I'd have thought that being a window cleaner you'd have had plenty!
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Oddly enough, nope. When I used to use ladders to clean windows I always kept my mind on the job. I knew two window cleaners who are now dead because they took stupid risks. My view when I used ladders was that if I was in anyway unsure, I wouldn't do the job.
 
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When I was in my early 20s I worked in a shop and two raiders came in, I clocked the older guy pulling down the balaclava and the young fellah hopped the counter waving a syringe. I didnt want to give them the money but he held the syringe to the neck of the girl working with me and the older guy outside the counter was saying stick her with it so I walked over to the younger guy and told him to put the cap on the syringe and I would give him the maybe 200 punts hidden in the cabinets near the till. He did what I asked him, I gave him the money and they left. I had noticed he was shaking and the real scumbag was outside the counter. Freaked me out at the time. Another time in a different shop a lad pulled a shooter at about 2am so I emptied the till, about 2 minutes after he legged it a few local cops came into the place as they did every night. I was sort of glad they hadn't arrived a few minutes earlier as it looked like a real gun. I gave up retail after that for a desk job.
 
I think the scariest Fortean moments in my life were when I thought I saw a ghost come through the bedroom wall, which on reflection after more than 50 years was likely a bad dream. But the other time, in the same house/maisonette, was when I was alone doing the washing up when something distinctly tapped me twice on the shoulder. When I spun round there was no one there. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time and that was definitely a bum clenching moment.
 
I had a dream where I woke up in a dark grimy room about 30ft long and in the gloom at the far end, I saw a crouching figure in a red slip making weird noises. Suddenly it turned towards me and ran screaming at me at an impossible speed, hands outstretched with dirty claw fingernails grabbing for me. A night hag.
I woke up pretty shaken but thinking about it now, my brain set the whole thing up. The dark grimy room. The distance between her and my bed. The floorboards that allowed the barefoot thumpy flopping of her feet. All scaled correctly for the desired horror effect.
Don’t trust your brain. This is the sort of shit it pulls when you’re not watching.
 
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To the people who've had to tell the police their child has turned up safe or wasn't even missing in the first place - the Plod love this.
They get to go home on time and won't have to worry about being the one who finds the body. :nods:

Heard this from the horse's mouth, more than once in fact. Yup, my kids showed me up too. :chuckle:

I also worked in kids' homes where it was the practice to report a missing kid right away even if we suspected they were at a friend's place or sitting around with mates in town. We would cancel the alert as soon as they turned up or rang in.
 
Aydee_Aitchdee said:
Same, I'm realizing just how boring my life is....bit glad of it, really
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I use a mixture of intuition, cognitive intelligence and common sense. It seems to have worked so far.

For instance, a few nights ago and as usual I parked my van in my space in the car park to where I live. As I was getting out the van, all of a sudden I had this feeling of something wasn't right or sense of something imminent. I simply got back in the van and parked it out on the road. The way I see it is why ignore your own senses?
 
kesavaross said:
I use a mixture of intuition, cognitive intelligence and common sense. It seems to have worked so far.

For instance, a few nights ago and as usual I parked my van in my space in the car park to where I live. As I was getting out the van, all of a sudden I had this feeling of something wasn't right or sense of something imminent. I simply got back in the van and parked it out on the road. The way I see it is why ignore your own senses?
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Did anything actually happen?
 
I managed to accidently piss off someone scary just over 25 years ago. I'll call him Steve.

I'd heard about some huge Jamaican bloke about 5 years earlier who'd had some girls working as prostitutes. One of them broke free from working for him, he'd seen her a year later in a kebab shop so him and his brother had got behind the counter, took a knife and slashed her legs so he spent time in prison for that. Steve was over 7ft tall, a kick boxer with a class A drug and alcohol problem, an artist (I still own one of his works) with a high I.Q. He was also a gun dealer I later found out.

I'd bumped into a mate and was telling him about an agency who were hiring. My mate wasn't interested but 7ft+ Steve was. I still didn't realise who Steve was. He said he didn't have a bank account so like an idiot, I told him he could have his first wages paid into mine then he could open his own bank account.

Come payday and the agency screwed up so they didn't put his wages into my account. This saw me lying on the kitchen floor with my legs against a wall and my back against our flat's front door with Steve repeatedly trying to break the door open. Steve even hijacked the neighbours flat so he could get a good run up. He didn't get in and I told the ex to call the police, shouting through the door to tell him to f**k off.

After the police turned up, they were visibly shaken. One of them told me Steve must be mellowing out because in the past it had taken six officers to get him in a car. I later found out they were looking for him anyway about a post office that had been robbed in Derby.

I expected they'd bail Steve and he'd be back and he was the next evening. He was well known in the town so a mate's girlfriend advised me "We don't blame you for calling the police. If you have to again, say you think he's armed .. then they'll send an armed response unit.". That's exactly what happened. The second evening, I'd turned a sofa on it's side to barricade us in, I had sugar in the water in the kettle if he had somehow managed to get in and other set ups but he didn't get in ..

After this, I had to keep my head down. I bought a new black hooded jacket. My Dad didn't take the threat seriously so I went to Birmingham and bought a legal high-ish power air pistol then had that adapted. I had to quit the agency job because Steve was waiting for me there. Steve was attacking my mates to try to find out where I was now living. Him and his brother had already been in prison for killing someone in London. I can look after myself but I really didn't want to see what would happen with Steve and Rob.
 
Swifty said:
I managed to accidently piss off someone scary just over 25 years ago. I'll call him Steve.

I'd heard about some huge Jamaican bloke about 5 years earlier who'd had some girls working as prostitutes. One of them broke free from working for him, he'd seen her a year later in a kebab shop so him and his brother had got behind the counter, took a knife and slashed her legs so he spent time in prison for that. Steve was over 7ft tall, a kick boxer with a class A drug and alcohol problem, an artist (I still own one of his works) with a high I.Q. He was also a gun dealer I later found out.

I'd bumped into a mate and was telling him about an agency who were hiring. My mate wasn't interested but 7ft+ Steve was. I still didn't realise who Steve was. He said he didn't have a bank account so like an idiot, I told him he could have his first wages paid into mine then he could open his own bank account.

Come payday and the agency screwed up so they didn't put his wages into my account. This saw me lying on the kitchen floor with my legs against a wall and my back against our flat's front door with Steve repeatedly trying to break the door open. Steve even hijacked the neighbours flat so he could get a good run up. He didn't get in and I told the ex to call the police, shouting through the door to tell him to f**k off.

After the police turned up, they were visibly shaken. One of them told me Steve must be mellowing out because in the past it had taken six officers to get him in a car. I later found out they were looking for him anyway about a post office that had been robbed in Derby.

I expected they'd bail Steve and he'd be back and he was the next evening. He was well known in the town so a mate's girlfriend advised me "We don't blame you for calling the police. If you have to again, say you think he's armed .. then they'll send an armed response unit.". That's exactly what happened. The second evening, I'd turned a sofa on it's side to barricade us in, I had sugar in the water in the kettle if he had somehow managed to get in and other set ups but he didn't get in ..

After this, I had to keep my head down. I bought a new black hooded jacket. My Dad didn't take the threat seriously so I went to Birmingham and bought a legal high-ish power air pistol then had that adapted. I had to quit the agency job because Steve was waiting for me there. Steve was attacking my mates to try to find out where I was now living. Him and his brother had already been in prison for killing someone in London. I can look after myself but I really didn't want to see what would happen with Steve and Rob.
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Jeez, Swifty. You do get involved with some characters.
That's pretty scary.
 
Hi @Swifty. Did I imagine it or did you say in a post a while back that you'd enrolled on a writing course? So does that mean a book will soon be on offer? I don't think you'll be running out of material anytime soon. :) Perhaps you could get on the writing course at UEA?
 
Sollywos said:
Hi @Swifty. Did I imagine it or did you say in a post a while back that you'd enrolled on a writing course? So does that mean a book will soon be on offer? I don't think you'll be running out of material anytime soon. :) Perhaps you could get on the writing course at UEA?
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Hi Sollywos. I'm starting a course on the 10th of January, it's a screen writing course and it's free so I thought why not. I'm not sure what I'm going to write yet but I doubt it'll be a book. It's more likely to be a short film, I know some local characters who've agreed to act in it and a good editor, I own a decent enough camera so hopefully I can make something again.
 
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