12 Disturbing Events That Crushed People’s Spirits

In life, we should be ready for anything, embracing both the highs of joy and the lows of unease. Yet, there are moments so unsettling they etch into our very souls. The people in this article were forever changed by such sights and experiences. Still, they pressed on, showing remarkable courage.

• I was fast asleep, and was suddenly woken up by the sound of loud hums broken by giggling. I look over, and there’s my husband, in some kind of trance, humming and giggling in bed. I shake him. No response. I turn on the light, and he doesn’t flinch, but begins flapping his arms.
  I call 911, and the paramedics come. Over that time, he slowly emerges from it, and starts talking. They insist on taking him to the hospital.
  We spend several hours there, and over that time he begins freaking out at me for calling 911. He takes off his wedding ring, throws it in the garbage, tells me I’m a horrible person he never wants to see again. That’s when the nurses sit me down and tell me what’s going on.
  To my horror, they inform me that he has bipolar disorder. He’s in deep mania and is psychotic. They involuntarily admit him, and he spends the next few weeks coming down from it. In that time, I grieved as if I had watched him die. Watching your partner go completely psychotic is so heart-rending. They’re just totally gone— their body is there, but they are not. It took me a long time to recover.
  He’s now, after two years, stabilized on the right meds. He’s able to hold down a job, he’s back to his whole self, and we’ve talked everything through. It’s a cruel disease, but treatable. © ke_marshall / Reddit

• I entered a friend’s place for the first time without prior knowledge that he was a hoarder at age 40. Total shock. The dude has a normal job, friends, etc., but he’s an absolute hoarder. Mice in the flat, trash in the kitchen reaching almost to the ceiling, mold everywhere on one wall of the bedroom. I didn’t dare to use the bathroom... Utter shock. © R***lutionary-Mud194 / Reddit

• I lived in a house once that had child-sized footprints on the ceiling of one of the bedrooms. The ceilings were extremely high. I could think of no way someone would get a child’s feet up there. Not even climbing up a ladder and holding a kid upside down could’ve done it. © madeanotheraccount / Reddit

• I saw a tornado flatten a carnival when I was a kid. That was terrifying. It flipped a ferris wheel, smashed a grandstand, and blew away all the merchants’ tents. I don’t think anyone got hurt, luckily. © Jerry_Williams** / Reddit

• I had an accident in which I lost 2 full weeks of memory. I have seen pictures where I’m in a wheelchair being pushed around the hospital by my parents and brother. I have my eyes open, I’m laughing, but I remember literally zero of it. Nothing. It’s a void. © mahade / Reddit

• I work for a bank and had a guy always come in and do international wires of very large amounts of money. One day, when we were verifying his info to complete this wire, I had a specific warning that meant I had to call a number the bank had listed as unspecified. Well, that number was the FBI, and they asked if this man was still at the branch, and I said yes.
  I went out and acted like nothing happened, and within 5 minutes, the whole building was swarmed. He looked me straight in the eye and asked, «That’s for me, huh?» And I shook my head yeah.
  I got transferred to another branch and haven’t heard anything other than he was sending money to violent organizations. © po*tictroll / Reddit

• I woke up one night around 1 am, heard the shower was on... I first thought it was my brother; he works night shifts, so I thought he had come home late and was in the shower... It went on for about half an hour until I got up and went to see what he was doing... No one was in the shower, my brother wasn’t home yet, I was the only one in the house.
  Still to this day, I have no idea how it turned on or who did it... Almost 5 years later, I still think about it and get scared... Even writing this now, I feel like turning every light on in the house. Why do I do this to myself?! © designerlogic / Reddit

• I woke up to my child seizing, foaming at the mouth with blue lips. That image and the fear I felt will always haunt me. She’d never had any seizures previously, so I had no idea what was happening, and words can’t express the terror. She is okay; she has since been diagnosed with a rare brain disorder that causes frequent seizures. That was just the very first one. © M***adone_Martyr / Reddit

• When I was about 6 years old, I was in my house playing a game on the PS3. All of a sudden, I heard my mom screaming, and I went outside, and her boyfriend at the time was having a heart attack, and I had no idea what was happening. I remember going back into my room and hearing the ambulance come. I never really understood the situation until I got older. © optimisticcolgate / Reddit

• I was walking in the hallways during passing period at school once, and a kid had a seizure. It was horrifying to witness; I was walking right next to them. The ambulance and other people had picked up the poor kid a few minutes later. © AcanthisittaSuch6340 / Reddit

• This happened to me when I was about 8 and still scares me to this day. One evening, I went to let my dogs in from the back garden at around 9 pm. It was pitch black, so I quickly opened the door and my dogs came bounding in. As soon as they came in, I locked the door, and at that moment, a person on the other side pulled the handle down, trying to get into my house. We had a glass door, so even in the dark, I could see the outline of a man standing there.
  I ran to my dad, and he ran into the back garden after this man and saw him running down the road. Since then, I have closed and locked doors at the speed of light. © ActiveSloth1234 / Reddit

• Heading to my then-boyfriend’s house one night, we took this back road as a shortcut. It was dark— I don’t remember being able to see the moon at all, and very few other cars were on this road, so all we really had were our headlights as far as sources of light. I was talking to him, and turned my head back to look down the road when I saw this old man crossing, wearing a plaid shirt and moving rather quickly.
  I remember the plaid vividly, and he seemed to really stand out in the dark. Before I had time to react properly, my boyfriend drove through the man. I watched him pass through the hood, the dashboard, down the middle of the car, and vanish. It was like time had suddenly slowed down, then caught back up with itself. My boyfriend saw nothing, but I insisted we never take that road again after. © illumi***** / Reddit

Another disturbing experience occurs when our reality is upended upon uncovering a deep and dark family secret. This is precisely what happened to the people in this article, and the shocking revelations they made are guaranteed to leave you speechless as well.