Dodged A Bullet: Heart-Stopping Close Calls
Phew. That was a close one, right? There are moments in life where you just know you dodged a bullet and you get that simultaneous rush of fear and relief coursing through your veins. These Redditors shared their stories about times when they survived the most harrowing of close calls—and they're utterly heart-stopping.
1. Slow Burn
I was born two months early, as my mom had to start chemotherapy. Right after I was born, I got an incredibly high fever. The medical staff couldn't figure out why; they were completely stumped...until they made a gruesome discovery. After two days of trying to solve the puzzle, they noticed that one of the nurses had turned the incubator up too high. They were literally cooking me.
2. Gardening Angel
Years ago, I lived in Vancouver and liked to go for long walks (it was a beautiful city to do so).
I was heading to a friend’s house first to drop something off and cut through a neighborhood with a lot of Southeast Asian immigrants (the ones I got to talk to were mostly from Vietnam).
I was aware of a van behind me, but it was mid-day, and there were people out, so it was only a passing thought.
A lady was working in her garden, and as I approached her house, she started to look behind me. Then she came out onto the sidewalk and started talking to me in her native language. I understood none of it, but her body language was agitated.
She kept gesturing for me to come with her up to her walkway. As I looked behind, I saw three men getting out of the van, which was now parked just behind me.
By this point, the woman had a good grip on my arm and dragged me almost to her porch. She kept talking to me and pointing to stuff in her garden, and I just listened, nodded, and kept a good eye on the men and van. I don’t remember how long we were there, but the men finally left. Both the woman and I let out huge sighs of relief. She then patted me on the arm, said something, and then went back to her gardening. I booted it to my friend’s house. I tried to forget about it—but the next day, I heard utterly chilling news.
The news ran a story on a woman who was kidnapped. The victim was grabbed on the next street over from the woman’s house, not long after my encounter with her, by five men in a van.
The men were distinctive, and their descriptions and the van they used fit the ones I had seen. That woman saved me from something horrible, and I am forever thankful.
3. Call-In Carsick
I was supposed to go on a six-hour road trip with a friend and her family. She even promised me the front seat because she knew I get pretty car sick.
But I decided not to go at the last minute—we had a bit of a falling out leading up to the trip and so they left without me. Little did I know that my decision to not go would spare my life.
An hour outside of town, they rolled their minivan off the freeway trying to avoid some road debris.
The front passenger seat was completely obliterated by a huge boulder when they rolled. I would have been a goner. Sadly, her husband had to be cut out of the car and is permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
4. The Chatty Bouncer
Back in the 90s, several of us went to a bar we knew had a dance floor. We'd been at a pub previously and were half intoxicated upon arrival. The bouncer checked most of our IDs as usual, but then tried to chat up my one friend.
The whole time, he wouldn't return her ID. She wasn't interested and a line was building up.
He gave up and returned her ID. The rest of that evening was normal and we forgot about it. A few weeks later, we saw on the news that the bouncer had been taken in for murder.
He'd memorized his victim's address from her ID and again been totally obvious about being interested in her. He probably would've become a serial murderer if he hadn't been dumb enough to get caught his first time around.
It still freaked us all out—especially that one friend.
