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I Should Have Died

Updated on April 15, 2015

Three Spooky Tales of Brushes With Death

Most of us have experienced what we call "brushes with death" at points throughout our lives, but I have three tales that, I think, are just plain mysterious and spooky. I am not much of a spiritual person, but I have always felt that someone or something has been watching over me my whole life because things have happened to me where I should have not come out alive. A gut feeling, you could say. After reading these true tales, maybe you will feel the same. These three stories are one hundred percent accurate and true and have indeed happened to me at different times throughout my life. ***WARNING: The last tale is quite disturbing, so if you are easily affected by real-life violence, steer clear of that one. No, I am not joking.***

Photo Credit: Creative Commons


Photo Credit: glasseyes view, flickr, via CC
Photo Credit: glasseyes view, flickr, via CC
Photo Credit: micromatic.com, via creative commons
Photo Credit: micromatic.com, via creative commons

The Tale of the Beer Bottle

When I was in college, I took a class just for fun. It was called Beer 101. Yes, indeed. I was the only female in the class. We learned how to brew our own beer and brewed up a special batch from which we each took home two bottles. Having not been instructed on how exactly to store the beer but knowing I was supposed to give it time and finish the brewing process, I put one bottle in the fridge and I stuck the other bottle on my dresser in my room. Months went by and I pretty much forgot about both bottles. It could have even been close to a year that went by. Who knows. Suffice it to say, loads of time went by without a hitch.

Anyway, one day I sat on my bed and studied for an exam for the entire day. The beer bottle sat on my dresser directly in front of me, about four feet away. I eventually, after studying nonstop for roughly 10 hours, I decided to take a short break by visiting a nearby bar (This was college, bars were everywhere and we frequented them). I was only gone for about 45 minutes. When I came home, my roommate told me she was freaking out because she heard a very loud noise and had been home alone. This was probably at around 10:00pm, so it was dark, she was alone, we didn't live in the best of areas, and she heard a loud sound. Hence, upon my arrival, more freaking out commenced.

She revealed that the noise seemed to have come from my room upstairs. We carefully ascended the steps, armed with a baseball bat that we happened to have lying about for "protection". As we entered my room and turned on the light, we saw that the beer bottle had exploded. Big, angry shards of glass were embedded into the walls, my bed, my pillow, and even the ceiling. The bottle had been under so much pressure, that it exploded with such force that makes me wonder what would have happened to me had I been sitting there as I had been for 10 or so straight hours that day. I would have been in the way of the beer bottle and my pillow. This brings about a whole new meaning to the word "ferment".

Photo Credit: A is for Angie, via CC
Photo Credit: A is for Angie, via CC
Creative Commons
Creative Commons

The Very Strange Car Accident

It was the Atlanta Olympics, 1996. I am from Atlanta, but went to school about eight hours driving distance away. I was driving home for the big event. I remember there being a lot of traffic on the two lane highway. There were vehicles everywhere in each lane, but they were travelling at a steady clip. I was driving at around 80 miles per hour in the passing lane. To the right of me was a white van similar to the one in the picture to the right. Slowly, the white van began to inch over into my lane, only I was in the lane and must have been in his or her blind spot. I panicked and honked my horn, only the person did not hear it and kept inching over.

Not knowing what to do because there were cars behind me and in front of me, and because this all happened in the blink of an eye, I swerved off-road into the median. Travelling at 80 miles per hour in the median does not work, in case you were wondering. I immediately lost all control of my car. It all happened so fast, but I remember my car crossing over into the OTHER side of the highway, spinning all over and ending up back in the median and then back into the side of the highway that I was originally on, and then skidding sideways into an area where there was construction going on. I know this because, as I skidded along at a very fast pace in an uncontrolled car, I headed for one of those big construction barrels, and it was lined up to hit me directly on my door. Now, again, this happened so fast, yet I remember everything as if it was yesterday. I remember saying "goodbye", thinking for sure I was going to die right then. I remember thinking "those barrels are heavy, I am going to die." But, I closed my eyes, hit the barrel, which ended up NOT being heavy, and the car stopped in the grass on the side of the highway, roughly 20 feet from the road.

I opened my eyes to find that I was unharmed. And not only was I unharmed, but my car was too, for the most part. But how? The highway was packed full of cars on each side. How did I not hit anyone? The median happened to be flat on that one stretch. Why? Why did my car stop in one tiny spot where there were no trees for me to hit?

Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.

— Author Unknown

Have you had one or more spooky and mysterious brushes with death?

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The Intruder

Image Credit: wallpapers.windowsace.com via Creative Commons
Image Credit: wallpapers.windowsace.com via Creative Commons

This story is not super easy to tell, but I will try my best.

Many years ago, around the year of 1994 or so, I worked as a server in a popular restaurant that shall remain nameless in a busy location that shall remain nameless. The day was normal and the restaurant was busy. I worked maybe from around four till around midnight that night. I'm not positive what exact day it was, but I remember we were slammed and people were eating and happily enjoying football on TV. Sometime around five the phone lines went dead. As you might guess, that wreaked havoc in a busy restaurant, during dinner rush, with people paying via credit card. We couldn't figure out why the phone lines were dead, but we didn't think much about it, other than being annoyed that we had to do some manual credit card stuff with those carbon copy things. It wasn't until the next day that we realized they were cut intentionally by someone with a plan.

We finished all of our work at around midnight as a few drunk stragglers exited the building. I remember sitting down to enjoy a much-needed beer with the shift manager, my friend, before heading home to bed.

I was scheduled to work around ten the next morning, but I remember I was running a few minutes behind. I remember that because I am the kind of person who is never late, so it stressed me out that I was a bit late that day. As I pulled into the restaurant parking lot, I found numerous police cars and ambulances with lights flashing all over the place. Some of them were just arriving. It was chaos. Something major had just happened, but what? I pulled in, but immediately stopped as I was taking in the scene and realizing I should probably stay away. Just then, a friend and coworker ran up to my car, her face ghost-white and in severe distress.

Quickly, my friend told me a guy had come into the building from a back entrance. Later, as details came in, we found out that he had cut the phone lines the night before and had been hiding and waiting for the workers to arrive the next morning. As the workers, my friends, one of whom was the shift manager I had a beer with the night before, walked in to work via the back entrance as the intruder quietly followed them in, undetected. The intruder then proceeded to shoot and kill two of my coworkers, one of whom was the shift manager, and seriously injure another coworker and friend. During this time, other people who were just coming in to work ran and hid under tables and such in the front of the restaurant, understandably in terror. One of those people was the friend who told me what had just happened as I pulled up in my car. Apparently, the intruder, a disgruntled former employee, made his futile escape using a rickety old bike that was, big surprise, too slow to outrun the police. All of this happened within minutes right around the time that I was scheduled to work that day.

The guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.

— John Paul Richter
working

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