Not me, but my mom before I was born. She was riding in a convertible with a friend of hers. They came to an intersection and the friend wasn’t paying attention and lost control of the vehicle. There was a big rig going through the intersection and they went right under the trailer. My mom ducked, the driver didn’t not. Driver was decapitated, my mom was lucky and only ended up with a scalp full of glass and some serious psychological trauma. She had to get over 200 stitches in her scalp But nothing else significant. I think about it all the time and think how close I came to never being born at all.

I had an idiot friend and we were hiking. We got to this waterfall and he goes “dude let’s climb it!” I said no fucking way. He says “well I’m gonna do it and if I fall and die it’s on you for not coming.” So I climbed it with him. Got stuck halfway up on a slick ass rock. Pinched a nerve in my shoulder, so my right arm was useless. I thought I was certain to slip off the rock to my doom, but we managed to get me unstuck. That was the beginning of the end for that friendship.

I survived a car crash that wrecked my car. Rolled twice, landed upside down, learned the hard way that I didn’t have airbags (or at least they didn’t deploy). Did have my seatbelt on though, that probably saved me. Paramedic said he hadn’t seen a wreckage like that and have it end well. Not even a hairline fracture.

I was a senior in high school, and the student club I was in organized an unofficial beach trip towards the end of the year; no teachers or official permission, leaving me and a few other seniors in charge of supervising everything. After a couple hour’s worth of fun, one of the other students came running up to me and said that three of the younger members of the club had been swept out by a riptide and couldn’t get back towards the shore. Me and two other of the older students, all experienced swimmers, immediately went to go help them; my friends got two of the three kids in trouble and started guiding them parallel to the shore to get them out of the current, but the guy I went for was panicking, barely staying above the water, and started dragging me down with him almost immediately. I yelled for people to get a lifeguard and tried to keep both of us afloat, but after a few minutes (maybe five, maybe ten, it felt like forever) I was getting exhausted, having trouble keeping both of us above the water, and I couldn’t see anyone coming to the rescue. I started getting big mouthfuls of water and my leg muscles were starting to cramp up, and I remember thinking “Holy shit I might actually die right here, right now” as the current started pulling us further and further away from where everyone was. Thankfully for everyone involved, one of the students on the beach had flagged down a couple of surfers, who made their way out to where we were as quickly as they could and hauled first the younger student and then me onto the front of their boards and took us back to shore. I’ll always be thankful and appreciative for those strangers who put themselves in the dangerous position of rescuing two drowning swimmers.

Parachute deployed but failed to open. That was one of those moments, then training kicked in. Cut away failed chute, deploy secondary. But for a brief moment life was about to be over in my mind.

The hood on my car came open at 60 on the highway and completely blocked my sight in heavy traffic. I panicked and jerked the wheel a little bit which caused me to fishtail a little bit. I shit you not, my driver’s education teacher’s words from five years prior rang in my head to lean down and look through the the space at the bottom of the hood. I pulled over and used some wire I found in the trunk to keep the hood closed. Any time you close your hood make sure it latches securely by pulling on the hood like you’re trying to lift the front of the car off the ground!

Boyfriend finally woke me up shortly after we had fallen asleep in a small upstairs bedroom that had a smoldering fire. After we collapsed on the floor and couldn’t find the door that was not even five feet away, we kept hitting walls and corners and started to not comprehend anything. After feeling like I was baking in an oven I laid my head down on the floor thinking I’d never see my son again and how sad it was to die. It felt like an eternity and felt very lonely. My boyfriend somehow found his phone on the floor, called 911. Fire department showed up in what felt like two seconds but couldn’t break down the front door. They shined the flashlight up to window so he could kick out the AC unit, which he did. They finally came upstairs and we crawled to them and they took us straight to the burn unit since they didn’t know what shape we were in. I’m pretty sure the entire hospital toured through our room since they’ve never seen anyone make it out and look the way we did

One of the most surreal experiences of my life (I had a lot of weird ones around this time) was riding my bike on the sidewalk next to an extremely busy road at night. I hit something on the sidewalk – I don’t know what – and tumbled sideways into the street. As I fell, I saw the road light up from headlights from a car behind me, and when I hit the asphalt, I just laid there because I knew I couldn’t get out of the way in time. After a second or so I wasn’t dead, so I looked around and the street was empty. It wasn’t empty when I fell. There were cars going in both directions. That was 20+ years ago and I’m still not entirely convinced that I didn’t die. It’s possible that I imagined the headlights, but that road is NEVER empty like it was. It’s a major street in a major city. It always has cars on it, even at 3 AM. It was the first of many experiences that lead me down a path of questioning the nature of reality.

When I was a kid I was playing hide and seek with my siblings and I got the brilliant idea to hide in the trunk of the car. I meant to leave the trunk barely open so that it didn’t latch but accidentally closed it too far and it latched. Mind you this was before they put handles in cars to open trunks from the inside so I was legitimately stuck. It was almost completely dark so I started seriously freaking out and I thought I was going to die, so I started yelling for help as loud as I could and was kicking at the back seat thinking maybe I could break the latch that keeps the seat from folding. I was probably only in there for about 5 minutes before someone heard me and let me out but it felt like an eternity. To this day I firmly believe it was because of this incident that I developed some minor claustrophobia. I still have serious fears about being in small, cramped and dark areas.

Went white water rafting on the Gauley River and my raft flipped on pillow rock (one of the most famous class v rapids). Scariest moment of my life but, other than unexpectedly swallowing some water and almost vomiting, I came out completely unharmed.

I ate one of those Brach’s oval-shaped hard candies (think they were called Sparklettes) at home alone when I was 6. Got stuck in my throat. I stood there in shock for a few seconds as I started to realize I couldn’t breathe. I ran crazily around the room and ended up colliding hard into the back of the couch which caused the candy to go flying out. Best accidental Heimlich ever.

Tire popped going over a two-lane road with steep drops on both sides. My car jerked to the side hard, and my car went sideways. Half my car hung over the side and luckily it’s low so it bottomed out. I climbed into the back seat and jumped out the back door.

I went out for a surf on a stormy day and thought to myself, “no one else is out, those idiots.” Before being held down by 2 waves after eating it on the first wave of the set. First wave of the session. Was thrown down and held under and while being tossed around my leg rope wrapped around both my legs and one of my arms so I was probably being held at around 5ft under with only one arm free while my board tombstoned (board tip is barely visible at the surface but floats vertically like…a tombstone.) finally managed to catch a breath between sets before taking another 3 or 4 on the head and for sure just thought…well this is it. No ones out, fishermen will find my body or my board. Managed to get my other arm free and got to shore very quickly and then avoided the ocean for a few days even though the waves were absolutely perfect. There’s a reason no one was out, everyone else was 10 minutes down the road at another beach where the waves were smaller and cleaner.

When both the stewardess and pilot at different times came on the loud speaker of the plane saying they are doing their best to land safely. Then seeing the fire engines and other emergency vehicles on the runway waiting for us. The plane landed fine but as it was going for the landing a weird calm came over me because I knew I wasn’t going to make it and that was fine.

I was drunk and running in the woods when bam, barb wire fence straight to the throat. The last thing I remember I couldn’t breathe and was passing out and there was blood squirting from my neck. Woke up an hour later and walked home looking like a murder victim.

I had leg cramp and a momentary blackout when swimming in a diving pool when I was 16. I was really active and I overexerted my limit. Surprisingly I didn’t really panic. Just the dreadful thought: “Oh shit, I’m fucked”. Funny thing is that I didn’t really wiggle my hands out of the pool panicking like I usually see on the tv, just silently sinking. Good thing the pool guard on duty noticed me and went for my rescue by pulling me out. Really wish I thanked the guard more who saved me instead of me cluelessly sitting outside the lobby after the accident.

Fell asleep driving through the night with my brothers. They were supposed to stay awake and help me stay awake, but were out cold. I woke up as the right front tire kissed the gravel on the side of the highway, ripped the wheel to the left, and managed only to spin out. Weird thing was, while it was happening, I was crystal clear, fully focused, and totally in control — as if time had slowed down — but thinking that we were all dead.