Tony Soprano once said, “‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation.” In case you didn’t catch his drift, it was an implication that dwelling on nostalgia can either signal an unfulfilling present or be a dangerous way to divulge information.
But for everyone else who isn’t a cynic or hiding something dark, reminiscing is always a fond way to bond over a shared history. It’s why subreddits like this one thrive, particularly through images of the past that instantly bring you back to a simpler time.
Here are some of the many posts on the page that you may need to explain to a younger person in your life.
For the most part, we reminisce to recall the happier moments in our lives. While it is often a fruitful bonding experience, it can also be a healthy activity for seniors. A 2022 study published in Frontiers in Psychology described nostalgia as a “precious resource” for older adults, as it fosters a sense of safety and supports healthy aging.
“By doing so, they find safety in sources such as familiar patterns and coherence, continuity in the sense of self or relationships, and affectionate close bonds,” an excerpt from the journal reads.
The study also emphasized the importance of nostalgia and its role in regulating emotions, physiology, and behavior. It noted that feeling wistful about the past has the potential to support the brain-heart regulatory response to threat and safety.
#7 This Always Seemed To Appear On My Parents Coffee Table Between Thanksgiving & Christmas
Memoirist and speaker Diana Raab further discussed the benefits of reminiscence in an article for Psychology Today. As she explained, doing so in a social context “inspires a sense of warmth and connection,” which ultimately nurtures relationships.
Raab likewise doubled down on the benefits of nostalgia for seniors. In her article, she noted how reminiscing about the good old days “can be an antidote to loneliness” while also promoting prosocial behavior.
“Looking back on our lives tends to minimize loneliness and isolation,” said Raab, who holds a PhD in transpersonal psychology.
Chartered psychologist Jolanta Burke also recognizes the power of reminiscence. She even offered tips on how to tap into our past with utmost fondness, which would benefit in the long run.
One tip she provided is to consider one of your happiest moments in life and write about it in a journal. Another tip would be to make a list of positive memories and pick one to recall. According to Burke, it’s about letting these images and emotions surface so we have something to hold on to and even write about.
#16 If You Can Tell What This Is, You Might Be Old
Some do it for the thrill of the hunt, others to fight corporate waste. A few go in simply to pass the time because they have a spare hour. But regardless of why you’re there, every once in a while, a secondhand store might surprise you in a way the mall never could. That was made abundantly clear to us by the subreddit r/Thrifting. It unites 27,000 people who are constantly sharing their experiences, advice, and, of course, pictures of their proudest finds. Here are the ones that received the most attention among the members.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is believing that you know everything there is to know. Even if you’re highly educated and brag about how brainy you are, there’s always—always!—something new to learn. If you keep your curiosity alive and well, and stay humble, you might fill in some of the biggest knowledge gaps you didn’t even know you had.
Today, we’re featuring some of the strangest, most interesting, and frankly mind-blowing facts about the human body that internet users shared in a couple of awesome online threads. Scroll down to check them out and, hopefully, learn something new.
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#1
Took anatomy in university, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was the wrist/hand.
There is so much packed through the wrist and into the hand it’s insane. You got muscles, tendons, bones, veins, arteries, and nerves, all bottle necked through about a 2” x 1” opening.
And not only that, but think about how strong your hands are, and yet how delicate and precise they can be.
When blind people win a competition they raise their arms in a victory salute, in spite of never seeing that done before. It seems to be inherent, and some suggest that it shows our connection to primates. Gorillas raise their arms to show dominance over others.
As T. Alexander Puutio, Ph.D., who teaches organizational performance and leadership at Harvard and Columbia, stresses in a post on Psychology Today, there are many benefits of staying curious as you age.
For example, older adults who “remain intellectually adventurous maintain better cognitive functioning and enjoy lower dementia risk than their less curious peers.”
What’s more, novel experiences stretch your perception of time, so you feel like you live longer and more vividly.
Not only that, but curiosity also predicts “greater meaning in life and higher psychological well-being across cultures.”
#4
Your heart rate slows when your face touches water, its called the mammalian dive reflex.
The appendix has a purpose and is not just a genetic remnant. It holds onto bacteria as a reserve for your digestive track incase your system is rapidly flushed (toxins, new bacteria, swift kick to your g***h). In a sense, its a lifeboat for probiotic (if your system was healthy and stable before it hit the fan).
Meanwhile, Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D., the author of ‘Paradoxical Strategies in Psychotherapy,’ notes that curiosity improves cognitive functioning while also helping your mind work more logically and efficiently.
Moreover, staying curious about the world can also boost your confidence, self-esteem, sense of pride, purpose, and life direction.
“Virtually all of us are endowed with a sense of adventure. And so we’re attracted to, and motivated to engage in, what’s novel or new. That’s how, ongoingly, we’re able to take in what previously we weren’t conscious of. As a result, we start to recognize what may still remain outside our awareness, which can incite us to continue our pursuit of knowledge and understanding on an ever-deepening level,” Seltzer writes on Psychology Today.
“Furthermore, as we’re driven to indefinitely expand our knowledge, we become interested in related questions not previously considered. And that prompts us to seek out fresh experiences to obtain information that now draws our curiosity. Needless to say, this well-nigh perpetual venture serves to enrich our lives and make them more meaningful.”
#7
If your second toe is longer than your big toe, it is called Morton’s foot.
No Olympic sprinter has ever had a Morton’s foot (instead conforming to the standard downhill toes).
However, statues from Ancient Greece (as well as later Roman statues, Michelangelo’s David, Venus de Milo, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and the Statue of Liberty) all portray Mortons feet as it was considered an ideal of beauty.
When you’ve read through all of these intriguing facts, we’d like to hear from you, Pandas. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments at the very bottom of this post.
How do you continue to stay curious about the world, no matter how many responsibilities and other things you have going on in your life? What are the weirdest things you’ve learned about the human body that sound fake but are completely true? What do you do to accept the world for what it is, not what you think it should be? Tell us all about it.
#10
If you held the pancreas in your hand it would dribble through your fingers because it has the viscosity of snot. That’s why pancreatic cancer is pretty much impossible to operate on.
The part of your eye where the optic nerve exits is what gives you a blind spot, because there are no photoreceptors at that part of the retina. It’s a bit of a design flaw, but luckily, the spot is “filled in” by your brain so, you don’t notice.
Right before you vomit your mouth fills with quite a bit of saliva, this normally happens like 30-45 seconds before you vomit. It does this to help protect your mouth from the acids in the vomit. It’s also a good indicator that you are going to vomit. So if that happens to you find the nearest toilet, bush, or garbage can.
There’s something called “placebo sleep”–if you trick your brain into thinking you got a good night’s sleep you will become convinced you got a good night’s sleep.
Tilapia skin is close enough to our skin that it can be used to paper over burns and let them heal faster.
Also, our immune systems are similar enough to pigs’ that they are the (non-primate) animal that transmit diseases the most easily to us, which is likely why many early religions banned pigs as dirty.
#20
Your memories are not concrete. Every time you think about a memory it becomes volatile and can be changed. There was an experiment where people were told that they had committed a major crime earlier in their life. This was of course false, but after being told repeatedly for weeks the people became completely convinced that the crime really happened.
The 52 bones in your feet make up one quarter of all the bones in your body. When they are out of alignment, so is the rest of your body.
#24
Dunno if this counts exactly but coconut water can be used as a temporary replacement for blood plasma. Yaknow, like, for emergency surgery on a stylised desert island?
Human babies are so helpless when they’re first born because they’re not done developing yet. It has been hypothesized that when humans evolved to walk on two legs, one of the consequences was the narrowing of the birth canal, meaning that babies need to be born earlier or else their heads would be too large to pass through. In theory, a human gestational period would ideally be between 18-21 months!
That females are born with ~2 million eggs already in their ovaries, although that’s down from a peak of 6 to 7 million while in the womb. They lose eggs over time naturally, and by the time they hit puberty they’re down to ~300,000.
Still debate on whether or not they create new eggs in their life-time or if what they’re born with are all they’ll ever have, they’re still doing studies to try to figure this one out.
That muscles can exert a lot more force than they actually do. They aren’t used to there full potential all the time because it would destroy the muscle.
When you get an adrenaline rush you are able to tap in to more of your muscles and become significantly stronger.
#31
The most abundant metal in the human body is Calcium, not Iron as a lot of people think.
The acid in your stomach could burn your skin! I always thought that was pretty interesting, and reminds me of the scene in Alien, where the alien blood burns everything.
#33
The average human heart pumps about 7600 liters (2000 gallons) of blood every day.
Your heart does a lot of work. Take care of it.
#34
During the average person’s life, they will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools. Now I know where Mark Spitz got his name from.
#35
When a baby is born, it’s teeth are right under its eyes.
#36
Alot of taste is influenced by smell.
#37
You are at your tallest each day as soon as you wake up in the morning.
#38
It’s funny but the nail on the middle finger grows faster than the rest. And the nail on the middle finger of the leading hand is generally a champion in terms of growth rate)
We still don’t know why but the growth speed of the nail is somehow connected with the length of the finger, so that fingernails on long fingers grow faster than all, and the slowest on short ones.
#39
There are no muscles in your fingers, they are powered by muscles in your hands and forearms.
There is a natual chimerism present in every woman’s body. Early in foetal development every cell has to decide for itself which X-chromosome it will use. Once that decision is made it sticks everytime the cell divides. So you get clumps/stripes of cells that share the same x-chromosome next to stripes/clumps that have the other chromosome active.
#41
The dimple of skin between your nose and your top lip is called the philtrum.
#42
All the processes that happen in your body happen in complete darkness.
When people think about bodily processes they think of images of pink and red things moving around in a well-lit environment. In reality it’s all pitch black.
#43
That the brain operates on the same amount of power as a 10-watt lightbulb.
#44
I’m pretty sure alot of people know about the whole ‘eyes take in an upside down image and the brain flips it’ thing, but if you wear glasses that flip what you see upside down your brain will eventually adjust and flip how you perceive it the “right” way up, this means that when you take the glasses off you’ll see upside down naturally until your brain readjusts again.
#45
No matter how warm or hot the outside cold air is our nose changes it to 98F immediately breathing it in.
#46
The sound of women’s voices triggers the part of a man’s brain that is triggered when listening to music.
If you’ve ever eaten a freshly grown tomato from a local farmers market, you know how anomalous and quirky natural plants can look. But this time, we’re taking the oddness of Mother Nature to a whole new level.
Please meet the aliens of the plant kingdom that resemble little creatures you’d see in Ridley Scott’s movie. This is due to a condition known as vivipary, which basically, and now you may hold tight, refers to “live birth” in Latin. And it means precisely what it sounds like—it’s when the seeds start germinating while still attached to the mother plant.
So let’s dive into the fascinating world of vivipary in plants as compiled by Bored Panda, so we all know what gardeners’ nightmares are made of, and the next time you eat your lovely salad, don’t take it for granted.
In order to find out more about this unusual phenomenon, Bored Panda spoke to David Lifton, a gardener and blogger who runs the Instagram account “Young Ground Grows.” David said that vivipary is pretty common sight for him because he has been growing his own produce on his allotment garden for eight years.
David explained that vivipary is a condition whereby the seeds of a fruit begin to sprout from inside the fruit. “Every seed contains growth hormones that are programmed to activate when the conditions are right (heat, light, humidity). And they normally do this once the fruit has dropped and has rotted away in the soil.”
However, these growth hormones can be tricked to grow prematurely in situations where fruits are left out in hot or humid weather.
David also said that you can eat vivipary fruits, but you need “to cut around the sprouted seeds and check there’s no softness on the skin, bad odor, or signs of mold, as this would indicate the fruit is off.”
Even though vivipary-affected fruits and veggies look odd, to say the least, it turns out the condition is more common than we think. “If you grow your own pumpkins and squash and store them away for a few months, when you come to open them up, you may find the seeds have begun to sprout!”
Plus, “if you live in the western hemisphere, you’ll most likely find vivipary in supermarket peppers,” David said.
#7 Forgot About This Tomato While On Vacation And It Sprouted
#9 Vivipary (Premature Germination) Of Corn Kernels. This Condition Is Most Likely To Occur When Kernels Have Dried Down To 20% Moisture Or Less And Are Then Rewetted By Rains
Other places where you can find vivipary fruits is near the equator, “where length of day and temperatures stay consistent.” Here, David explained that “vivipary may be a far more common sight in lots of fruits,” not just sprouting tomatoes.
#10 This Bell Pepper Has Other Bell Peppers Growing Inside Of It
#14 I Find These Wonders Of Nature Often On My Plate
Just as I was about to gobble up these pomegranate seeds I saw some green sticking to one of the seeds and thought it could be the coriander greens I was handling the same time I peeled the pomegranate. But it turned out to be a sprouting seed, a fine example of viviparous behaviour. I have experienced in earlier in papaya, many citrus fruits, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelon and even mangoes
#16 How Vivipary Is Happened In The Given Picture Of Mangifera Indica, Showing Emerges Of Seedling After Germination While The Fruit Still Attached With Mother Plant Identify This Abonormality……
Someone is always watching. Well, that might not be entirely true, but it’s best to behave as if it is. You shouldn’t ever do or say anything that you wouldn’t want others to know about. Because it might just come back to bite you in the form of karma.
Redditors have recently been recalling times they witnessed instant karma, so we’ve gathered their best stories below. From reckless drivers getting pulled over immediately after speeding through school zones to people getting caught in the midst of trying to scam someone, these tales make it clear that karma can be fast-acting when it wants to. So enjoy scrolling through these stories, and be sure to upvote the ones that inspire you to be on your best behavior!
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
#1
I’m a commercial loan officer. Some real estate had been referred to me by a broker. He had called me demanding approval, and I told him it would likely go to our loan committee scheduled for the following day. Unknown to me, he called our headquarters and bullied the receptionist into pulling our bank’s president out of a meeting so this random broker could demand our approval.
My favorite ever bank president told him, “If you must have an answer right now, then the answer is no.”.
Standing on a crowded NYC sidewalk during morning rush when a messenger bicycle goes whizzing past. Some dude in the crowd reaches out and pushes the guy on the bike, and he wipes out spectacularly.
Bike rider jumps right up, runs back and just lays. this. guy. out. KPOW, dude hit the deck like a ton of bricks, out cold.
Rider then calmly goes over, gets on his bike and rides off.
I worked at the service desk at a Zayre store many years ago. The managers were usually lazy and spent most of their time in the coffee shop, ignoring pages for assistance. A customer was at the service desk demanding cash for an item she was returning after paying by check that day. In those days a customer had to wait 10 days to be certain the check cleared before they could have cash back for a return. She was having a holy fit demanding cash immediately. I paged the manager and for once he showed up. He told the customer to wait and she stood there smirking at me. He went to the office, found her check and handed it back to her. The look on her face was priceless!
To find out how this thread started in the first place, we got in touch with the Reddit user who started the conversation, MadBinton1996. They were kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda and answer a few of our questions.
“I have been asking questions on r/AskReddit that I think are interesting, specifically because you’ll find that a lot of people from around the world have experienced the same thing as myself,” the author shared.
#4
When I was a kid I grabbed my cat’s paws, and gently made him hit himself in the face saying “why are you hitting yourself?” He goes to bite my hand, and I yank my hand back quickly and smack myself in the face.
I was being tailgated and honked for driving slow on an icy road. They went around me then braked to make a turn, slid through the intersection and crashed into a pole.
I turned slowly, made eye contact, rolled down the window and let loose a loud Nelson “Haw Haw!”.
I always get instant karma! One time, I was young, and I wanted to skip work and hang out with my friends all day. So I called in and told them that my car was towed and that I wouldn’t be able to make it in. We were all excited to have the day off, until I went outside and saw that my car had actually been towed! I spent the day tracking it down and paying hundreds to get it out of impound. That’s what I get. I’ve learned my lesson. Never lie, never brag, and never challenge the universe, it can always get worse.
“The reason I had thought about posting this was because the same day, a car cut me off and got pulled over immediately by the police,” the author continued. “This was something that a lot of people had posted about as well, which made me laugh.”
#7
I once had the pleasure of watching an aggressive driver who was cutting people off and then brake checking them down it to an unmarked state trooper and ended up cuffed and stuffed 🤣 it was glorious!
Someone being really rude unnecessarily to a cashier and then leaving their phone on the counter and me just keeping my mouth shut and letting them walk out the store.
Some kid overtook me (I was doing the speed limit) in front of an elementary school. He did so by driving over the middle lane used to turn left on both sides. Right after he passed me a cop was driving the opposite way. The cop flipped a u-turn, turned on his lights, flew by me and pulled him over. I drove by him slow and looked over at him to see his reaction. He was not happy. I was.
Finally, we asked MadBinton1996 what they thought of the replies to their post. “I enjoyed reading the comments. And the main surprise, as I mentioned before, is that there were so many people saying the same thing [that happened to me] happened to them!”
#10
In 7th grade gym, I messed up in volleyball causing my jerkwad classmate Paul to yell at me for not getting the ball, saying “this is why nobody likes you” At that moment from a few feet away and completely unrelated, a jokester classmate named John kicked a different volleyball and it smacked Paul right in the face as he was still yelling at me, knocking a tooth out of his mouth and he started bleeding.
I was on a short domestic flight the other week – I was near the back of the plane. As soon as we landed and the seat belt sign went off, a guy a few rows behind me sprinted up the aisle. He got to pretty much the middle of the plane before other people had stood up and blocked his path.
5 mins later, they announced the backdoor was opened as well and we could depart from the rear. The guy went from potentially being one of the first off the plane (being right at the back) to being the last off the plane. As I left the back of the plane I could just see his head swiveling back and forth.
A big pick up truck was tailgating me on an ice covered road. When we got to a straightaway, he gunned it to pass me on a double yellow line. He immediately spun out and hit a sign post. No injuries but he did some nice damage to his truck.
This was back when I worked 3rds. I was on my way to work, sitting at a traffic light waiting to turn left. Some teenagers pulled up beside me to go straight. Right when the light turned green, they got me in the right eye with a green laser pointer and sped off. I merged over and followed them (a very bad idea in hindsight). I wasn’t going to chase them down or anything, I just wanted to spook them. I guess they were scared because they ran a red light and *instantly* got pulled over by the cops. I was a little shaken from seeing them run the light, but I was hooting and hollering when karma fell on them.
We were about 3 cars back in a left turn lane at a red light. The turn lane and straight lanes turned green at the same time. Everyone moves except the moron directly in front of us. We beeped and she finally looks up from her phone and slowly moves forward while the turn signal cycles to yellow then red right as she enters the intersection. Sheriffs Deputy was proceeding next to us in the straight lanes when this happened. He immediately turns left behind her, lights her up and is writing her a ticket when we next got the green light.
I was a Walmart cart pusher for 5 years. Brutal job, but countless opportunities for mischief and mayhem. One day, this boomer drives his official Grand Prix pace car to Walmart and takes up four parking spots so it would be safe from door dings. I waited till he and his wife go inside and then I put a note on his car that said I scratched his car to teach him a lesson. Because I was working the parking lot, I was there to see his reaction when he came out. He went nuts when he found the note and screamed at his wife and then spend the next 30 minutes searching for the non existent scratch. He even had his hood up examining the engine bay.
I saw somebody decide that everybody was driving too slow on the highway during a blizzard. So they went into the second lane which wasn’t plowed and had no cars in it (everyone was following each other in single file), and decided to go fast. Not 400′ later they were in the ditch.
In 2nd grade this boy always picked on me. Punching, smacking, hair pulling, kicking, etc. then one day I’m sitting on top of the monkey bars and he’s pulling my arm and hitting me to make me fall, I tell him to stop or I’ll push him off. He didn’t stop so I shoved him off. He fell and broke his arm. Left me alone after that. He ended up apologizing in high school and admitted he had a crush on me and that’s why he was a jerk.
Little league game: dad telling hi kid loudly to watch what he was doing at all times, then he walked right into the light pole and fell backwards.
#22
I once had a person in a Cadillac undertake me on the interstate then proceeded to bob and weave around several more cars passing on the left and right. I was hoping for a cop to magically appear. But they weren’t needed because the idiot lost control and went head first into the concrete divide. Fortunately he didn’t hit anyone else and everyone was able to slow down to get around them.
I was giving my wife grief about always shaking out her shoes before putting them on. Then I went to put on my shoes, felt something wriggling inside. It was a giant desert centipede! 😱.
Boss chewed me out for something stupid publicly on the sales floor of a grocery store. When she was done she tried to walk through these large double swinging doors and someone was coming out full speed with an overload cart full of stuff to stock and knocked her in her back. I asked if she was ok and then laughed uncontrollably.
I was helping my dad build a shed. I have a bad back (disc issues) and took a few 3 minute breaks when it gets too painful. He started telling me I’m just lazy. I cried. He nailed 3 of his fingers together with the framing nail gun, and I had to drive him to the ER.
I was riding the tram home one afternoon and a few seats in front of me was this scruff with her feet on the empty seats, eating sweets and throwing the papers on the floor. Absolutely vile and disrespectful.
She got off at the same stop as me, only to be stopped by the ticket inspectors for not having a ticket and fined on the spot.
#27
An aggressive driver turned around to flip me off and promptly got T boned in the intersection.
I was at this night club just down the street from where I lived at the time, and noticed this nerdy looking fella approach a woman and asked her to dance. She shot him down immediately, and by the looks of it she wasn’t sugarcoating it either, so our nerd friend slinked away and parked at the bar instead.
A few minutes later the woman was dancing, and asked this blonde guy standing at the outskirts of the dance floor for a dance. He pointed to his friend, who was the nerdy guy from earlier, and while I couldn’t hear them over the music she was apparently rude enough earlier to make the blonde guy tell her to get lost. So now it was her turn to slink away, and I was all like “Ooooh, karma!”.
#30
One time, a guy at the coffee shop was trying to cut in line and totally ignoring everyone behind him. He’s smirking, acting like he’s above it all. Then just as he leaves the counter carrying his coffee, he slips on a little puddle and drops his coffee all over himself. In front of everyone he was trying to skip past.
#31
Not me but my sister, she once saw this car with two people in it driving horribly, weaving in and out of traffic and apparently having a great time scaring people. The passenger throws a beer bottle out in front of the car. It shatters, they drive right over it and it flattens a tire. .
Was at an NFL game and afterwards this guy was talking smack to a random couple in the other team’s jerseys. He was walking forward and looking back talking – wham! Right into a metal stop sign and he goes down hard! Everyone had a good laugh at his expense.
#33
When someone cuts me off and immediately gets cut off by someone else. It brings me pleasure.
#34
Maybe not best but first one I remember. As kids my friend spits gum out of the car window. We get to the destination, friend steps out of the car onto a piece of gum. Hot asphalt in the summer, that gum is hard to remove.
#35
I was walking at night and saw a guy in a fancy car with his lights off. I tried to signal that his lights were off, he did the same signal back and flipped me off. I saw him get pulled over 10 seconds later.
#36
There was a big traffic jam and the dude behind me was darting back and forth between lanes aggressively without a signal until finally pulling off to the shoulder and speeding past. I hear a crash and then inched by where he rear-ended another car with the same idea.
#37
Me. I was boasting at a basketball game that my family never gets sick, and not 3 minutes later my 5 year old niece projectile vomits in my lap.
#38
One kid got to the bus as the door was closing in the rain and the driver didn’t open and let him on. So he ran to the next stop and beat the bus there and got on and we all cheered him and booed the bus driver. The kid got on and didn’t pay just walked right on to applause and the bus driver didn’t say a word.
#39
A friend at work tried to gossip about someone and realized that person was literally right behind her.
#40
My ex one day he went to hit me during an argument. The moment he swung, he dislocated his shoulder, and I had to hold off from laughing.
#41
Wife and I were walking around California Adventure. We had to step around an obstacle / person and in the process, apparently got in front of someone else.
Said someone else proceeded to make a minor huffing sound, step to the side, and charge forward. Love that he was in a hurry and staring down at his phone, because that distraction is what allowed him to plow straight into one of the light poles on Buena Vista Street with his forehead.
We had to restrain ourselves till we get out of earshot of this cat.
#42
1993. Me not paying to get into the frat’s kegger and then immediately falling down the stairs to their basement. I was already drunk.
#43
Pointing and belly laughing at friends on their hands and knees throwing up after an all you can drink day trip, within 30 seconds, I was right next to them doing the same. We were all laughing at that point.
We all have that friend who pollutes our Facebook or Instagram feed. Now the actual toxic waste they spill might differ, but whether it’s cringy boomer comics or their very, very amateur nature photos, even the most mundane posts can become poisonous in huge amounts.
I usually try to distance myself from these people without actually confronting them; I unfollow them. But Michael James Schneider, a writer and artist living in Portland, Oregon, has found a more creative way to deal with them.
When he got fed up with the ridiculous amounts of balloons popping up on his social media feeds, Michael decided to point out how ridiculous they can be by becoming part of the cult.
“I try to make commentary about, or poke fun at, social media. The balloons were a social media trope often used in bridal showers and gender reveals, so they were a natural progression of that idea. I love the contrast of profound, funny, or challenging quotes spelled in silly balloons. And since another common cliche is endless selfies, I tend to put myself in most of the photos. They often make people cringe, but the cringe is the point,” Michael told Bored Panda.
The artist usually gets the phrases from the Internet. “I source them online, most of the quotes are curated from other, far wiser people, and me and my friend slash assistant, Andrew Jankowski, try to attribute them as accurately as possible.” Michael is also asking people who repost his art to please do their best to credit the people who originally said these phrases too.
Words aside, another important part of each photo is its background. “One of my favorite things to do is spot a brightly colored wall when riding my bike in Portland, and make a mental note to visit it later,” Michael explained his location scouting. “I choose colorful walls based on what direction they’re facing (for lighting reasons), how public they are (so that I can set them up subtlety), and how textured the wall is (since very textured walls won’t hold the type of tape I use).”
After the photoshoot is over, the balloons go back to Michael’s basement, waiting to be used for the next shoot. The artist said these types of air-filled Mylar balloons aren’t great for the environment, so he discourages people from buying them if their intention is to throw them away after use. “I reuse them from shoot to shoot and I have an alphabet in each color. I sometimes choose to use different colors if I’m out of a letter, rather than purchase more, and then I photoshop the colors to match afterwards.”
Michael has been trying to make it as a creative ever since he put his 20-year experience in retail management on pause. He paints, directs, writes, is an amateur interior designer, and has done theatrical set and production design. “I don’t claim to have the answers for anyone, least of all myself, but I’m having fun on the journey. Or at least pretending to on social media.”
Some people were born to swim underwater, and I am not one of them. Even if all of us were natural born water athletes, it kinda faded away at some point—the point we realized lakes are buzzing with moldy fish, and the seas are full of sharks and marine monsters. (Thanks, Jaws, for giving a whole new meaning to chilling at the beach, I didn’t ask for it.)
But the fear of ocean depths is not completely irrational. Because when someone asked the divers and dear people on Reddit who spend a lot of time underwater to share “the creepiest and most unexplainable thing you’ve seen while in the depths?” it wasn’t fun.
From 20+-foot-long fish that could swallow you whole to seeing things that aren’t there, these are some spine-chilling answers that could easily pass as a script for The Deep Blue Sea sequel.
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#1
Not a diver but, when I was surfing NZs west coast beach I felt something rap around my leg so I looked down and it was fishing line so I tried to pull it up and then the line got heavy, I assumed it was a fish, but as I pulled the line closer it got really heavy and I began to sink so I hoped on my board and paddled closer to shore, I slid off my board and was in chest deep water, my friend came over cause he noticed something was wrong. We both pulled the fishing line in and we saw a large silhouette in the water so we dragged it to the surface and it was a dead body, (someone rock fishing fell off the rocks last week and was missing) there was a hook stabbed into his neck and fishing line rapped around his face and dug into his skin. We brought the dudes body to the shore and called in the life guards then threw up due to the lack of his eyes.
#2
An old WW2 ammunition ship off the south cost of england was full off brass topped shells. Most had been taken by divers over the years and it was now very rare to see them, apart from a pile in one corner of the ship. This pile of shiny brass metals was miraculous untouched and remarkably clean after spending years underwater and you only found out why if you swam near then. Out of the murky darkness the largest eel i have ever seen snakes forward, without exaggeration this thing had a head the same size as a horse’s head, full of jagged teeth. I could not see the body as it looped into the dark and deeper into the ship. No one got near those shells. Turns out for years this thing had been guarding the shiny brass shells, slithering over them making them shine. We found out at the bar later that he was famous in the area and many people went to the wreck just to see him. No idea why this giant creature was guarding them like a dragon and its horde, but some said eels are like magpies and like shiny things.
#3
I dive myself but this story is actually from my grandfather who is a dive master. He and my grandma went diving in Cancun for a vacation and with both of them being dive masters they knew what they were doing. The lead of the dive group caught on and had them help out some of the new divers with clearing their ears or getting the weight belts set to the right weight. Well, my grandfather got a young 20 something year old girl who had just got her diver certification. They had planned on diving off a drop off. If you don’t know what a drop off is, it is when it goes from a 40 foot reef to a cliff that god only knows how far down. Well they swam over the reef and on the last part of that particular dive went over to the cliff to see what was on the wall. The young girl that my grandfather was helping, which by the way was certified to dive no more than 60 feet, rapidly started taking a nose dive down the wall. 50,60,70,80 feet down the wall. My grandfather and the dive lead tried to grab her and chased her down to 120 feet, the limit they could safely go with the amount of air they had, and watched her continue down and down until they couldn’t see her anymore. She never came back up and no one knew why she did it. It shook up the whole dive group especially my grandfather as he felt responsible for not stopping her in time.
The ocean is deep, vast, and scary. Who knows what lurks in those crystal marine waters? In fact, much remains to be learned from exploring the mysteries of the deep since more than eighty percent of it remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.
Imagine that the lowest point on Earth, the Challenger Deep section of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, sits at a staggering 36,000 feet below sea level. The depth could engulf the summit of Mount Everest plus 7,000 feet added on top of it.It’s also the home of some of the most frightening-looking deep sea creatures like frilled sharks and giant tube worms.
#4
About 3 years ago my boyfriend and I went on an unguided dive in Egypt. We both knew the dive side from previous trips and felt pretty comfortable to go alone: It’s not a very difficult one and we didn’t want to hold up a group in case my boyfriend wanted to take some pictures, which can take a while. One of the perks of this particular dive side was a single choral at 38m, with a 90% chance to find a long nose hawkfish (a really cute guy, please google it, 10/10 would recommend). The normal procedure would be to spend most of your dive at ~ 25m, make a quick stop at 38m to check for the hawkfish and make your way up again. This should usually take you only 5 minutes or something, however we didn’t find him and wasted quite a lot of time looking. At this point I was getting kind of sleepy (in retrospect this was the first sign that something was going horribly wrong) and wanted to finish the dive, so I could take a nap on the boat. I basically dragged my boyfriend away from the coral and we’re about to make our way up again until I notice something. Hidden between one of the rocks was the strangest looking octopus I’ve ever seen. It was bright red (you cannot see the colour red that deep underwater, its pysically impossible) and had super weird silvery eyes. All in all it looked super funny and we were both laughing at its stupid face. My boyfriend makes quite a few pictures, until his computer goes a*****t and basically forces us to slowly ascend and make 3 deco stops along the way. That finally snapped us out of it, because we did not intend to make a deco stop, let alone three. We finally reach the surface with only 20 bars left in our oxygen tanks (a huge no go, you should always have at least 50 on reserve) an are still absolutely blown away by that strange octopus. We’ve never seen something like this before, and change our equipment ASAP so we can look at the pictures. Exept, when we go through the pictures, there’s nothing. Just 20+ pictures of one single rock, no octopus or anything in sight. The rock wasn’t even a strange colour and that’s when it dawned on us: the depth, the time, our strange behaviour underwater: That sounded a lot like nitrogen poisioning. You should know, the longer you spend at great depths, the more likely nitrogen poisioning becomes. It’s basically an anesthetic that firsts makes you high and delirious until you pass out. And underwater is basically the worst place to pass out, ever. So here we were, at 38m, giggling at a rock without a care in the world, basically tripping on nitrogen whith our oxygen running dangerously low. I’m pretty sure if it weren’t for our computer, we would have passed out and died. We still cant explain how we both saw exactly the same thing, though. Tl,dr: basically had an LSD trip underwater. Would not recommend.
#5
I’ve done a number of dives, and the strangest thing I ever saw was a large deep freezer with a heavy industrial chain wrapped around multiple times with about 5 cinder blocks attached. It was very very rusted and the deep freezer itself had to have been 30+ years old, probably more. This was about 90 feet deep just off Vancouver Island, Canada. The situation gave myself and the other divers the newbie jeebies. Logged the gps and depth co-ordinates and notified the police. We were able to find out what was inside, since one of the divers had friends with local police. 10 porcelain dolls….
#6
Probably half a shark. Still swimming around but his entire left side was just gone, organs hanging out of him and everything. Like a living resident evil zombie shark. He must have been very recently attacked because i doubt you can live very long with your entire insides poking out.
But for some people, the fear of underwater depths is so strong, it actually qualifies as a phobia on its own. Known as “thalassophobia,” which stems from the Greek thalassa (“the sea”) and phobos (“fear”), it is characterized by intense and persistent fear of deep bodies of ocean.
According to Very Well Mind, this phobia is different from aquaphobia, the fear of water, because thalassophobia centers on bodies of water that seem vast, dark, deep, and dangerous.
#7
Got charged by a mother humpback, her curious calf had swum around us and we were between her and the calf. Two of us never saw it coming, we were watching the baby, but our third diver watched her come. She kicked down and swam under us last minute. We didn’t see anything until that 60ft freight train passed just underneath us
#8
Rescue/Recovery diver here. Every time I’ve recovered a drowning victim I get the creeps. Unfortunately a lot of people are under the impression that every underwater environment is like the movies and there’s absolute clarity, that’s rarely the case. One evening I got called out for a young girl that jumped from a bridge, she likely survived the fall and entry. We have a morbid term for what happened to her upon hitting the water: “plugged” I found her with a surprising amount of visibility in relatively shallow water. She was stuck in the mud to just below her knees, and you could see the fear locked into her eyes/face. There’s nothing peaceful about suicide by bridge.
#9
I had a dive master that told me once he was diving somewhere and found a full skeleton wearing diving gear with the air on the tank turned off pretty deep down. If I remember correctly they said they reported it to the police and it was found out the man’s wife turned off his air while they were on a dive to m****r him.
Meanwhile, some ocean mysteries are so spine-chilling they can easily crack the bravest of us. You’ve probably heard of the Bermuda Triangle, where a US Navy ship disappeared in 1918 with 300 crew members. In 1945, five navy bombers vanished while flying over the area. Just the thought of it combined with how little we know of the deep waters is enough to make one’s stomach turn.
#10
At Sand Hollow Reservoir in Washington County, Utah there’s an old school bus and retired flight school airplane at the bottom for divers to explore. There’s a geocache in the bus so my brother (retired Army Ranger) and myself (Civilian mechanic with no diving experience besides trying to beat my son in a breath holding contest in the pool out back) set out to find it on a sunny summer day. After about 15 minutes we found the bus; Rusted, rotting and covered in algae. We entered from the back and began searching for the geocache. We found it, signed it and swapped the item out. What we took out was a piece of paper wrapped in multiple zip lock bags and the zipper cut off and torched to seal it indefinitely. On the paper was a single instruction, “item too large to put in container, check driver seat.” Intrigued we made out way to the front. Now, I wish I was making this up. I was the first to reach the driver seat. I got to the front and what do I find? A body, wrapped in trash bags and taped with a 45 pound chain around the ankles. I let out a blood curdling scream like a 5 year old was just told he couldn’t have a cookie right before bed. My brother without reacting grabbed the body, pointed to the weight and we made our way toward the surface. Once we got to the surface we put our flag up and got on our boat once it arrived. We called the rangers over the radio and met them at the docks where we met a fleet of park rangers and county officers. They cut the bags while they were taking our statement to find that someone had left 130 or so pounds of sugar in gallon zip lock bags in the shape of a body.
#11
This isn’t my story but my dads. So when he was in grad school he did some field studies classes some of which involved diving in Monterey Bay. One day he was diving counting something off of the Santa Cruz Pier and he finds a shopping cart with bricks and cinder blocks and a chain attached to the handle. He naturally followed the chain and found a bare foot wrapped in the chain. He assumes something probably ate the rest of the body and apparently his friends had seen similar things too. Also not mine but my dads friend. He says he was on a shelf counting mussels when he felt something tap his tank and he looked around and didn’t see anything. He figured it was a seal cause they like to play. When he was nudged again he saw it was a great white. He says he thought to himself “if it gets me it gets me I can’t out swim it”. Now I don’t know if he was actually that chill I sure wouldn’t be but that’s how he tells it.
#12
There’s a sea-loch in Scotland called Loch Fyne that is popular with divers. Once on a dive, in what I thought was a remote part of the loch (I used a boat to get there), I was descending a vertical wall and came across garden gnomes around 10 metres down, just sitting in the ledges. One was fishing. We concluded that it was another dive club having fun.
So, 3 days ago I went snorkeling off Mnemba island in Zanzibar. Everything went normal, and we start heading back. I grab my net bag and put my black fins, black mask, snorkel and black wetsuit inside. Once back ashore, I grab my bag, jump off the boat and head to the rental office to return the equipment. At that point I feel my bag is moving somehow. At first look, it seemed like a flat, black, worm squirming quickly. After rotating the bag, I realised I was looking only at the tail of an otherwise ~1m long Black sea-snake, one of the most venomous reptiles I could find, trying to get out of the net. How it got there, I have no freaking clue.
#14
My dad used to work as a diver and he told me the reason he gave up diving. Basically a small boat sank about an hour from our hometown and he was sent down to the wreck to find the bodies if there were any. He quickly located the wreck and opened up the door and a corpse littered with tiny prawns came rushing towards him and essentially ‘hugged’ him. That was the day my dad decided to quit diving. He told me so many creepy stories that i could write more here.
#15
When I was a kid we used to go to a place during the summer holiday which had some very nice beaches and in particular an estuary with a very wide river mouth. One summer there was a “king tide” where enough of the water emptied out of the river into the ocean that you could snorkel quite easily from one side of the river mouth to the other as it got so shallow that it was only a meter or so deep at the deepest part. One day I decided to snorkel across from one beach to the one on the other side of the river, and about halfway across where the depth to the bottom was maybe half a meter, I was swimming along the surface looking down with my mask/snorkel on and a MASSIVE stingray passed directly underneath me. This thing was easily 2 meters across, covered in white scars and missing its tail. I just froze in the water and it felt like my heart stopped. If I had’ve let my breath out, I would’ve dropped in the water low enough that I would’ve landed on it, it was so close. I wasn’t in any danger but having a massive creature appear so unexpectedly, so close up was absolutely terrifying.
#16
I’m a commercial diver, and was once on a job cleaning a potable water reservoir. I’d been in other reservoirs before, but this was by far the biggest, at 40×80 metres. To get in you had to open a hatch in the ground (the whole reservoir was underground) and climb down a ladder. The hatch was in a corner, so when you were in the far corner of the reservoir, it was completely pitch black, and you just had to hope your light didn’t go out. I was about half way through a three hour dive when the batteries in my torch started going flat. I watched the beam get narrower and dimmer until it cut out completely. It’s not a huge problem if you lose light, as you can just follow your umbilical back to the hatch. Just as I started walking back, some obnoxiously loud banging started somewhere in the reservoir. I was the only diver in there, so it both confused and scared the s**t out of me. Needless to say I ran back to the hatch as fast as I could. I ended up getting my torch changed out and doing another hour in the water, but didn’t hear the noise again. I still have no idea what it was, but the combination of my torch going out and loud banging coming from somewhere gave me a h**l of a fright.
#17
You can dive in man made lakes and check out what’s left of old flooded homes and communities. It’s pretty dark and spooky down there no matter what, especially when you think of all the big fish swimming around that are barely silhouettes until they’re close. My buddy likes to dive in lakes. He said the creepiest thing, by far, is finding cemeteries 100 ft + beneath the water in the dark, eerie quiet. 4 day edit: I asked him about big fish. He said there’s definitely s**t down there bigger than he expected – 4 or 5 feet. They’re attracted to the lights and noise but watch from a distance – which is nonetheless discincerting, just dark, 2d shapes drifting nearby. None of the monsters other folks are bringing up though.
#18
I dive myself but heard this story from a garda diver. In 2010 a man took a test drive in a car with the salesman and in a suicide attempt he drove the car off the pier into the sea and drowned. The salesman managed to escape my breaking the window and swimming to the surface. The divers were dispatched to retrieve the other man’s body. This isn’t in the news report which I have a link to below for anyone interested. Simply through working in marinas at the time I was able to be part of the conversation with the diver in question. When he got to the car, he said, the man was still facing forward, hands on the steering wheel, eyes wide. He’d been there a couple of hours now, where it gets creepy is when the diver opened the driver door, this combined with the smashed window caused the currents to flow through the car and the man’s wide eyed head turned around slowly with the force of it to face the diver.
#19
I have 150+ dive but can’t say I’ve seen anything all that creepy. But I do have a cool dive story to share. I was diving the Blue Hole in Belize and we were at max depth which is 120 feet. It gets weird at that depth. The light level is getting pretty low and it feels… oppressive. You realize you’re WAY down. There are some lemon sharks that swim around the Blue Hole. They are curious and like to check out divers, but they are harmless. They look mean as h**l though and can get 8-9 feet easily. At 120 feet one of them decided to come check out me and my (now ex) wife. She was a bit in front of me but when she saw the shark beelining towards us she quickly swam behind me and SHOVED me towards the shark. I was NOT expecting that and it took a minute to process what happened, but I felt bad for her more than anything. She was terrified for a few seconds. I laughed about it later and said at least I knew where I stood with her. She is a good diver but the sight of that 8 foot shark swimming straight at her with a mouth full of teeth triggered her survival instincts. I didn’t hold it against her. 🙂 As I got shoved towards the shark, who was at that point only about 6 feet away from me, he calmly turned to the side and glided right past me and then went on to check out some other divers. We started our ascent and I didn’t see him again. It was a very cool experience.
#20
When I was a kid swimming in the lake at summer camp, I dove underwater and I swear I saw someone in SCUBA gear hiding underneath the dock watching us. I told the lifeguard, but he wasn’t able to find anyone
#21
I got told a story once by a Maori Language teacher of mine during my time at High School. We didn’t learn much Maori, just listened to stories. A dam in the Waikato, New Zealand had begun to have visible cracks in the concrete on the outside part of the dam and some drivers were organised to dive down and check the inside submerged part of the dam for damage on that side. While they were down there, there was the usual debris you would find behind a man made wall which prevents the water from flowing as it would normally do if there wasn’t a dam there. Turns out what they thought were large logs were in fact huge eels which had gotten to the size of logs due to being prevented from migrating to the sea, where they breed and die. So from being prevented from doing their natural life duties they just get larger and larger. That would be creepy seeing eels deep down in the water just floating around…
#22
This isn’t my story but I though it was creepy when I heard it. My great grandfather and great great grandfather ran a diving business together in a small town. This happened a long time ago, probably mid 60s. My grandma and her friends (one of which was her boyfriend) decided to go down to the beach and all the boys decided to go into the water, and swam near the well-known spot where the current of the water is so strong can drag a boat underwater. The boys went near it and were dragged underwater and killed immediately (they were 14, 15 and 16 might I add). The coastguard were notified and my grandmas Dad and his Dad were called out to retrieve the bodies, once the current had relocated them to a safer diving spot. The divers went underwater and found the 3 bodies and the description still sits with me even 4 years later I was told: One boy (the youngest) had his arm torn in such a way by the current that it looked like it had simply been snapped off. The 15 year old boy was bobbing around with his eyes wide open and chest bloated. But the 16 year old boy had his skull caved in, where he was obviously smashed against something hard when he was flung by the currents of the water.
#23
Not a personal story, but one about the lake near where I live. The lake near my home is man made, except instead of flooding a plain or clear cut forest, they just flooded a dense patch of woods surrounding the river, trees and anything else that was there. A combination of this and the wildly unpredictable terrain has lead to hundreds of drownings…and subsequent deaths due to sudden drop offs or people getting trapped underwater. The army corps of engineers refuses to dive on the lake because they have labeled it too dangerous, meaning most of the bodies are still down there, somewhere. There are also local rumors that amongst the forest trees are buildings and homes, long since flooded and forgotten..
#24
Obligatory not me but.. My dad used to do a bunch of diving around some lakes in Minnesota, but his favorite was diving in the old iron mine pits around Crosby, MN. These lakes are almost always glass clear (except when pine pollen season hits) and exceptionally deep compared to the natural lakes. After a certain depth, theres a layer of silt (I think just decomposed matter) that lays flat and blocks out the little bit of light that gets to it. There was this one pit that my dad went diving into that had these steps leading into a cavern, being at the right depth for the silt to gather, making a very, very ominous looking stairway to nothing. Thus being dubbed: The Stairway to h**l.
#25
I dropped my goggles and was trying to reach down in the river and grab it but I pulled out a sheep skull by its sockets. Wasn’t as creepy in hindsight but 10 year old me was scared.
#26
My time to shine. I was an instructor/tech xr /mixed gas/overhead/the whole shebang when I was a young idiot that was pretty much trying to die. I can remember diving in a spring system in Florida with manatees and bumping into something on the bottom. Manatees just normally chill at the top and are literally like big floating sausages. So I looked down and saw a MASSIVE gator tail swish off into the less than clear water. I’ve done shark dives in the Bahamas, run into bulls, tigers, the whole gambit, but that right there terrified me. Another fun one was I was leading a group off of pcbc on the twin tugs and had a bull shark follow the entire time and no one else even saw it until we came up. That was hilarious to see their reactions.
Listening to your instincts and knowing when to trust your gut are skills that can end up saving your life. Just like many animals can sense approaching danger, human beings, too, have an almost primal drive to survive. For some folks, it’s what kept them away from harm.
Internet users took to a captivating online thread to reveal the scariest moments in their lives when their inner alarm bells told them that they needed to leave, ASAP. We’ve picked out the most interesting cases to share with you. Scroll down to read them and to remind yourself that if your gut tells you something is wrong, it most likely is.
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#1
I was in high school when we had the Tohoku Earthquake in Japan in March, 2011. I lived in Mie prefecture at the time, so luckily far enough from the tsunami, but the earthquake was still strong enough that we had to evacuate the building. All cellphone data was offline, so we had no communication with our parents and no idea if there was a tsunami coming towards us (I could see the ocean from my school’s building).
I only got a taste of what the people closest to the epicentre must have felt like, and let me tell you, it was terrifying enough, I hope to never experience that again in my lifetime.
On a lighter note, I’m proud to say that, while staring at the face of such catastrophe, my community’s first reaction was NOT to hoard all the toilet paper that could be found.
Years ago I had flown home to Denver and took the shuttle to the parking lot. There weren’t a lot of people on this shuttle but there was this one guy who kept asking me questions, some semi personal, and I couldn’t wait to get off that shuttle and get away from him. When the driver stopped at my area I stood up and then the guy stood up and got off the shuttle. I had a really bad feeling in my gut so I stayed on the shuttle and rode it all the way back to the terminal and back to the parking lot. The driver asked me why I didn’t get off the shuttle and I told him about the guy and I had a bad feeling in my gut about him and he said always believe those gut feelings. When we finally got back to my area at the park and ride, the shuttle driver waited until I got into my car and backed out before he left.
I was in Barcelona with some friends, ended up in a pretty “local” bar and having a few drinks with the barman, he talked about another bar and said he’d take us in a taxi as he was finishing soon.
Got in a taxi with him and started to drive a LONG way, started to get rural and I asked him how far? He just laughed and said something in Spanish to the driver, who laughed aswell…
We stopped at some traffic lights and I pushed my two (a lot drunker than me) friends out of the car and told them to run.
Found an other taxi luckily and jumped in, taxi driver was surprised as us, we were miles from anywhere we should of been as tourists. He was on his way home but took us back to the city.
Your gut won’t always be right… at least at first. You have to hone your instincts over time to make them more accurate.
According to psychiatrist and psychotherapist in training Dr. Alex Curmi, your instinctive reactions are the brain’s “best guess about what to do in a given moment.” However, the quality of those guesses can “vary enormously.”
“It is a biological miracle that the human brain can integrate so much information from its environment and produce guiding instincts that we rely on every day, yet those instincts are so easily distorted. Unresolved trauma, limited experience of life or emotional immaturity can all muddy the waters, steering us away from what is best for us,” Dr. Curmi writes in The Guardian.
#4
I was staying over at a friend’s house for the first time- I was around 11 or 12. Her dad took us to a gas station and I grabbed some candy and went to pay and he got angry…not like jokingly angry but actually offended I was going to pay for my own stuff. After that, I felt something was off and let him pay for my stuff begrudgingly. Before night, I just couldn’t shake how uncomfortable I was. I kept thinking I was super sensitive but I still called my parents and convinced them to pick me up. Come to find out, the guy was a p*******e and had molested a few of her friends during sleepovers. I found out a few months later that he had r***d her and her little sister and she invited friends thinking it would spare her since he would focus on her friends instead.
I’m now a mom and I just feel so…angry but also pity her so deeply. She was willing to sacrifice her friends to spare her and her sister, and has to live with that now.
I was living in Kansas. My boyfriend and I were sitting on a friend’s front porch when cops came flying up the street, slammed on the brakes, and yelled “get in the house!”
We did. Our friend wasn’t home, but thankfully the door was unlocked.
Turned out, there was a man walking around shooting anything that moved. We didn’t know this at first – this was around 2002 so we didn’t have the net in our pockets. Our friend came home maybe an hour later and told us what was going on. Not long after there was commotion in the backyard, it was the guy with the police on his tail. They arrested him a few feet from the back door.
In high school we were eating at a Burger King. A friend kept saying it was too hot inside let’s leave. No one else felt like it was but she insisted. We all walked outside and about 20 seconds later a car smashed through the restaurant where we were sitting.
However, if you engage in introspection and experimentation, over time, you’ll be able to improve and hone your intuition. You’ll be able to recognize what’s simply “unhelpful baggage of past experience” and what is actually useful and matches your expanding understanding of reality.
“In this way, our gut feelings can become indispensable tools rather than mental noise that leads us astray,” Curmi states.
“Much as weighing scales require calibration to be accurate, so do our minds. We can achieve this by venturing outside our comfort zones, testing our emotions against reality and sometimes opposing them, and seeking continual feedback. When it comes to life’s many complicated problems, by all means trust your gut – but only after you’ve taught yourself what’s worth trusting.”
#7
I was at the fair with my wife and 6 year old daughter. From the moment we arrived I had the feeling we shouldn’t be there, I can’t explain it beyond a feeling in the pit of my stomach that was telling me this wasn’t the place for us. I told my wife, but she brushed it off because she loves the fair, the girls were having fun, and we had tickets for the monster truck show. Halfway through the monster trucks there was an intermission and I took that moment to say nope. We are leaving now, not going to argue about it, it’s time to leave NOW. It was a 25 minute drive home and by the time we arrived home it was already on the news, the local papers website and all over Facebook that there had been a gang related shooting at the fairgrounds in the concessions area we had to walk through on the way out. Huge police response, EMS etc. It happened probably less than a minute after we had gotten to the car. We didn’t hear the shots. We never told our daughter but needless to say my wife trusts my gut now.
Edit: For those asking: the feeling started in the car and grew stronger as we approached the fair. I can say to the best of my memory I spoke up before we even entered the gates and the feeling grew stronger over the course of the next 4ish hours we were there. We went on rides, saw animals, ate all the food etc but as the monster truck show went on it got to the point where I couldn’t ignore the feeling anymore.
One of you is correct in your guess about where and when this took place. The USA is in obvious need of more sensible gun laws. Seeing the amount of places people have said this has happened somewhere else makes me sad.
My fathers’ story, not mine, but still. He was working in construction as a contractor, leading a team who were working on an old estate on a hillside. It was a clear day, weather was fine and they were up there on the scaffolding, working on the chimney. Rather suddenly, my father experiences this pressure to go down, right now. It’s a hassle, you have to climb down this scaffolding, they hadn’t been up there all that long, so he resisted for a bit. But it was just this tremendous push, this urging, to descend ASAP, so he told his team to go down. They asked why, they didn’t understand, they were in the swing of things, why go down? My father finally just ordered them down. So they went, and a few minutes later they all stood on the lawn, looking at one another sheepishly. At that moment, completely unexpectedly, a lighting strike hit the chimney they’d been working on.
When he told me the story hours later, he was still upset!
When you’ve read through these stories and upvoted the ones that left an impression, let us know in the comments below what you think, Pandas.
Which of these situations genuinely scared you the most? What are the most dangerous situations you’ve personally been in? How often do you trust your instincts, and has it saved you from danger?
#10
When my husband and I were teenagers, and first started dating, we were parked in an empty golf course for some privacy. We had been to this spot before and it was a great place to walk around at night and then make out in the car. Tonight was different. As soon as we pulled in, something felt wrong. I reclined my chair back to hide myself, paranoid someone was watching us. We sat for a few moments, making awkward small talk. I was suddenly filled with overwhelming dread and sheepishly asked if we could leave. My then boyfriend immediately obliged… a little too quickly considering the hormones of teenage boys and the plans we had to fool around. He peeled out of the parking lot, my seat still fully reclined because at this point I’m absolutely convinced we aren’t alone. The bottom of the Honda scrapes the ditch of the driveway as we pull out in a panic. At this point neither of us had communicated with one another what we were feeling but his reaction was enough to know we were on the same page. We were in danger. We speed a few miles away before we broke the silence, and I put my seat back in its upright position. I tried to laugh it off and admitted I wasn’t sure why I was scared. Neither of us really had an explanation for the sudden fear we both experienced, but decided not to question it too much. We found out after the fact there was a brutal attack on a couple teens walking home from the burger joint by the golf course, by a schizophrenic homeless man. I’m convinced we both felt like someone was watching us because he was… and I know if we had gone on our normal late night walk something horrible would have happened. This happened almost 16 years ago, but I can still remember that fear so vividly.
I went to a house party in college with a group of 5 other friends…it was hosted in a lofted apartment and the whole drive there I kept saying we shouldn’t go because I just had this horrible gut feeling something bad was going to happen. An hour after arriving (mid beer pong game), there was a loud cracking noise and the floor gave out similar to the way the Titanic split in half. Myself and the group I went with all fell 12 feet to the concrete floor below along with the folding table and a bunch of glass bottles. The only people hurt? Myself and two of my friends. I remember looking up once I hit the floor and seeing the refrigerator about 2 feet from falling down on top of me. I think I said “I told you so” for the rest of the year haha.
Was camping at a national park with two friends – three of us in a tent. One of those spots that you drive up to and has a picnic table and a fire pit, so it’s not deep woods camping.
Middle of the night I have to pee. Go out to a nearby spot and do my business no problem. Walking back I stop to look at the stars and light a cig. I’m there maybe a minute or two when suddenly I had a wave of what I can only describe as primal instinct. My adrenaline sharpened everything as I listened. Nothing had changed, no sounds around, but I just knew something was there and was watching me.
I calmly put my cig out and walked back to the tent without any sudden movements. Got in the tent and waited, listening. There was nothing so I figured I must’ve spooked myself out. Went back to sleep without issue.
In the morning we found our camp spot absolutely destroyed. Some animal had come through looking for food I guess, but not messed with the tent thankfully. Even my friend’s old baseball hat that he had been sweating in all summer was ripped to shreds. We found pieces of it all over. (It had been sitting on the picnic table.)
Woolsey Fire 2018. I evacuated our family at 7:45pm amidst heavy smoke and wind. Official evacuation order came at 2am, by which time fire was everywhere, power was out, and roads were gridlocked.
I was in an old apartment building visiting a friend. We were just sitting on the couch when we heard a sound like tearing fabric, only ten times louder. Then we saw a massive, horizontal crack instantly appear and run across the ceiling above us, showering us with dust. My friend just yelled ‘Out! Now!’ and we bolted. It turned out the main support beam above their unit had given way slightly. We stood outside shaking for an hour watching the emergency crew work.
13 years ago. At the beach parking lot where everyone came to hang out as a young adults in the summer evenings.
Something just came over me. It wasn’t dread or fear, but something just felt off. Overall, a bad feeling. I’ve never experienced anything like it before but my gut told my brain that it’s time to go home.
Honestly, it wasn’t strong enough of a feeling that I could have easily changed my mind due to my lack of fear. (Not sure why, I just have never been incredibly fearful person.) I said to my friend at the time, that I am leaving something feels off here.
I get home, and less than two hours later a gang shooting happened at the beach. Unfortunately, a few friends from my old high school were shot. Fortunately, they survived. They weren’t the target, just wrong place, wrong time.
Luckily I left, because I was about 6 months pregnant at the time. Who knows what could have happened if I stayed.
I was out at the bar with my friends and I couldn’t shake this “I need to go home now” feeling. We were having fun and nothing weird was happening, so I brushed it off for a bit but eventually I couldn’t shake the feeling. So I went home super early. When I walked in the door, my whole house smelled like gas. One of my dogs had turned the gas on the stove on while I was gone but it didn’t ignite. I quickly shut it off and ran around the house, opening all of my windows even though it was winter. I got the fans out to try to clear the gas. Focusing first on my bedroom, where I contained my dogs and cats. Slowly the house aired out… but I fear what could have happened if I didn’t listen to my gut. I would have been out for hours.
After COVID started my hubs and I would go to the lake more often, even in the cold/rain/snow etc. one day I was standing on the pier, like I did a million times, and there’s these metal bars that jut into the water (like stabilizing the concrete like a partial ladder without rungs). I’m staring straight down, into the water- there’s no barriers- nothing preventing cars or people from going off the edge- the concrete pier just ends and it’s completely black water. So I say, “don’t you wonder how many people have driven off here?”
Spouse laughs at me and was like, “no one,” Also “why would you say that.” I kind of back peddled because I didn’t want him to think I was being dark of paranoid. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
A day or two later, they were pulling the car of two missing people from the spot I was standing in- with said car pictured on the front page newspaper and a diver between the same bars I stood between.
There’s barriers there now.
Oh, and i had taken a picture. The calm black water, a bit of concrete pier, and the bars are all pictured but my feet are out of frame. I still have which idk if it’s creepy or just memorable, cuz I didn’t feel scared or have the “we should leave” feeling. I just felt strongly, something was down there. I’ve looked at the pic a million times and you truly can’t see anything, which makes it oddly more uncomfortable.
On a trail in the Great Smoky Mountains (I can’t recall the actual trail but something like Indian Grave) and out of nowhere we heard this noise that we thought could only be made by a large, severely injured cow. All three of our faces drained of colour and we booked it out of there. Later we were sitting in a restaurant in Dollywood and via YouTube, we found the source of the noise…a baby bear. I’ve never heard that noise before or since but my heart missed a beat that day and something deep in my animal brain knew to leave that location immediately.
May of this year, myself and my best friend went to Spain for my 28th birthday. We stayed in Lloret De Mar, but decided to spend my actual birthday walking around Barcelona.
It got to around 7:30pm and we got to the bus station to go back from Barca to Lloret, only problem is the clerk was adamant there were no more buses or coaches going to Lloret that evening, and we would have to get a bus to the next town over, and then get a bus from there to Lloret. Bit of a hassle, but it beats sleeping in the bus station! We go outside, and we are waiting for our bus to the next city for around 20 minutes, until we see a bus go past us clearly labelled as going to Lloret De Mar.
Me and my friend are confused, but we already had a ticket to the neighbouring town so we just waited for our bus to show up. I’d looked online and found that the bus we needed to get from the next town was at 9pm (that was the last bus to Lloret) So we HAD to make it.
We get to the bus stop, and we were both struggling to understand the timetable. My phone was on 2% and my friends was on 19% or so, but I could see ’21:00′ on the board, so I was pretty sure the last bus was due at 9pm. We saw a man walking up the street with a big hiking backpack on, and asked if he was Spanish. He said yes, and we asked if he could tell us when the next bus was. He read the board for about a minute and a half which I thought was odd as clearly he could understand the timetable better than me or my friend could.
This guy then tells us there are NO more buses coming tonight going to Lloret (which again, I’d seen online and on this board that it was due at 9pm). I thought maybe I had read it wrong after all. The man said that he could book a taxi for us or we could get a lift with him.
Now, obviously two young women are not stupid enough to accept this mans offer to chauffer us home, but it really stuck out because as I mentioned, he walked up the street and had a huge hiking backpack on. Didn’t seem like he was out via car if that makes sense.
We ask if he can book us a taxi. He gets on the phone and it seems to be a pretty long call just to book a taxi. That’s when he said two words and my heart dropped into my stomach. “Inglesas chicas” WHY would the taxi man need to know that we were English girls? The guy then gets off the phone and tell us that the taxi that will arrive will be silver. I said “how do you know that?” he stumbled over his words a little, and then said “most Spanish taxis are silver”.
I just knew this did not sound right. We waited at the bus stop and thought about what we would do if this car shows up because we were DEFINITELY not getting in it. 9pm rolls around, and the bus to Lloret De Mar shows up. We jump on that bus and go back to the hotel.
I dread to think what could have happened if we had got in that “taxi”. Funnily enough, this birthday holiday was also meant as a way for me to release the trauma I had been holding onto since my 25th birthday. Happy 28th to me!
ps. sorry if writing is shoddy, I don’t leave comments often.
My family was living in South Sudan during the civil war some years back. I was 11 at the time and I remember waking up to shooting all around our house and in the village. Once it died down the whole village left and went to the refugee camps in Uganda. We followed them and moved to Uganda as well. It was a very scary and traumatizing time.
Seeing the second explosion go off at the Boston Marathon bombing.
The adrenaline dump was so massive that my brain couldn’t form memories for a few moments. It felt like no time at all and forever all at once between the boom and my trying to get inside of the bank I was in front of. (Obviously closed for marathon Monday.)
Once I started thinking, I ducked into the nearest alley, figuring it would be a lower likelihood for more bombs, and once there hunkered down in the deepest doorway I could find to text my family, breathe, and make a plan to get home.
Not me obviously, but my grandad who grew up in Notting Hill (yes that one) in London during the blitz. They were frequently air sirened and had to sleep in the tube but one night nothing. But he insisted they go, told me that he was losing his mind insisting that they go sleep in the tunnels. His parents gave in because he was otherwise a pretty calm kid. The front of their house was blown off that night.
He told me they had a dog Winkie who could hear the planes too so if the dog started barking usually the siren would follow a few minutes later. Crazy times.
I was eleven, and me and my friends made plans to go into the city centre. Day of, my father told us to go to a shopping mall nearby instead, for no reason but a gut feeling (although he didn’t tell us that at the time) and we listened. Later that afternoon, when we would’ve been there, a man stole a van and plowed down a lot of people in the city centre shopping street. We would’ve gotten caught under the wheel or gotten stuck far away from home since the man tried to escape in the metro so the city turned off the entire underground in search of him. Instead we could go home to the closest friend and eat sandwiches and wait for the metro to reopen. People died, and everyone knew somebody who was there. I love my dad.
I was sitting in my car after high school one day and feeling like I needed to stop texting and leave.
Then I started seeing people running down the street towards me – 3 or 4 people on each side of the street towards me. I bug out and drive like 5 blocks away to call 911 and then I can see that they have guns and are threatening or shooting each other.
So then I drive off a second time and don’t stop.
But I almost got caught in crossfire twice in 5 minutes.
I went to a nightclub that had a reputation for violence breaking out. My companion for the evening convinced me to go, saying it would be fine because they installed metal detectors.
Even in the parking lot the vibe was off. I would have preferred to go back to her place and drink there but I allowed her to change my mind and in we went.
The vibe inside was even worse. People were eyeing and sizing up each other and not a whole lot of dancing. After I finished my beer I told her we’re leaving. We went back to my place for the rest of the night and she complained a few times I ruined her fun.
The next morning there was an article in the paper about either a fight or a stabbing (it’s been 30 years so I don’t remember, but both had happened there on the past) and it boiled over into the parking lot.
The town shut down that club a day or two later and it sat empty for years, which was probably for the best.
In my early 20’s, first car. Myself and a friend went to a house party held by people that we knew well. The party was great, high vibes and everyone was having a great time.
Out of nowhere, I was overcome with a feeling of absolute dread, like a sense of impending doom that was totally impossible to ignore.
I told my friend that it was time to go. Now. He looked me in the eyes and didn’t hesitate, he said ‘ok, let’s go’. We both got in our cars and drove away, and when we rounded the corner out of the street we spotted about 15 cars all parked up on the side of the road.
Turns out a local gang, who were notorious for crashing parties and literally kidnapping people and torturing them, bashing girls as they held down their boyfriends, all sorts of terrible s**t like that, this gang had found out about the party and were waiting down the street to raid it.
After we left we heard that the gang had crashed the party, bashed as many guys and girls as they could, kidnapped a couple of people and even ran over a partygoer as they drove away.
A powerful lesson at a young age to trust those gut feelings.
#27
Wife and I did a road trip down south in New Zealand to place called akaroa. It’s a cute little French town on the east coast of the South Island. We’re fans of hiking so we parked up at a nearby forest trail and started our walk. It was like 3pm in the afternoon on a beautiful sunny day. But we didn’t see a single other person on this track. We’re very used to bush walking in remote places. But at some point during this walk I felt goosebumps and a sense of dread. It was very weird. I haven’t felt like that very often. I noticed there were no birds chirping at either which felt very odd. It really felt like someone was watching us. At some point I told my wife I don’t like this feeling and I think we should cut our hike short and get back to the car. We both hurried back. Still don’t have any explanation for that day but I can very clearly remember how I felt. Everything in my body was screaming at me to just turn around and get back in the car.
#28
Hiking. Someone yelled ‘landslide!’ We ran. The trail disappeared.
1991 – first gulf war – I was 9 years old. The first night they started air raids my older brother woke me up telling me to grab my glasses and run to the basement. Keeping a hold of those glasses became the most important thing for me to do ever and since.
In 2008, in college my friends and I broke into an old abandoned hotel from the 1930s In mineral wells tx. It was straight out of a time warp. Out of I believe 12 floors, we made it to 3. We went up past the pool (apparently the hotel was famous for this because of the minerals in the water that supposedly cured illness), around the kitchen and massive ballroom floor, past the old elevator with the pull gate where a kid apparently got his head severed and by lots of old creepy bedrooms with furniture still in them. Then we heard a noise. A super loud screeching noise down a hallway that was pitch black. We all shined our lights in the direction, saw nothing but the sound was getting louder and louder. We all bolted as fast as we could! No clue what it was but I’ve never been more terrified in my life.
I’ve posted this before. Took a train and bus trip around Ireland in 78. Was going in to Sligo when I had an instant feeling of overwhelming dread, something I’d never had before (or since). It was heavy and oppressive. I just grabbed my stuff and ran across the platform to get a train going right back out. I ended up in Mullingar where I had a great stay and dinner with people I met at the B & B, so maybe that was what was supposed to happen for me. I have never been able to figure this out.
#32
We were on the Indian coast when the tsunami hit. The waves rose like a wall, roaring and unstoppable, and we ran for our lives, terrified we wouldn’t make it.
When the lightening almost hit us and everything turned green for a second before a massive bang. And that’s when we went inside.
#34
Was solo traveler one evening in Vietnam, Saigon maybe 20 years ago, walking relatively late at night. Somehow find myself being invited into a small store it was a few steps up off the street, very empty of product and just a handful of mid to older men sitting on milk crates playing cards. Was quicky seated and began being fed multiple shots of whiskey, there was an under current of aggression despite everything outwardly facing friendly. The old man sitting next to me was captivating my attention, felt evil and had this long thumb fingernail that he was jabbing into my kneecap and thigh trying to explain the game, while others were starting to lightly huddle on the other side of the shop, talking and glancing my way. At the opening to the store one of them gentlemen stood and put his hand up to grab the roll top steel door, like a garage door but for tiny shops. It was solid, so one quick pull and I was behind doors. Gut reactions had mounted enough evidence and I grabbed my bag and jumped out of there in a second or two, never looked back but heard the gate slam down when I was further into the street.
These moments can be common when traveling alone and not being too cautious. Maybe it was a harmless game of cards and I was being paranoid, I’ll never know but I am glad I didn’t wait around to find out.
#35
So my house is about 12 kms away passing very silent plantations. from my high school and normally I go back home for lunch before the extracurricular time started (school ended at 13.00, extracurricular started at 15.00). Usually I go back home with my friend but at that time I feel very scared on going back home so I successfully bugging my friend to not go back home early and wait like 30 more minutes.
There’s robbery in the middle of the road we passed like 15 minutes before we reach that part and the guy robbed gets his hand slashed(like no more hand slashed), thankfully he’s alive but seeing the blood smeared everywhere on the road churns my stomach. That delay I did might save our life.
#36
My girlfriend and I were hiking Mount Carleton ( 820m) when all of a sudden our phones started sending multiple warnings of a tornado in the area. Reception is terrible there so we only got the messages closer to the top and for a usually busy hiking area it was eerily quiet.
The top of this mountain has a lone fire watch cabin from many years ago and a 360° view stretching miles of land in a national park. This is a spot where people would usually relax after the long hike and take in the sights. While taking in the sights we could see clouds forming in areas and another warning sent to our phones. We were already on high alert but this was our “yep, lets get the h**l out of here”
As we started our trek down the mountain into a more wooded area the sky all of a sudden turned pitch black and the loudest snap of thunder we’ve ever heard came just from above us giving us a nature jump scare. Seconds later pouring rain came down and turned our trail into a small river covering our hiking shoes. Soaked to the bone but happy we were getting closer and closer to our car. A hiking trip to never forget.
#37
I had a few, but the one I can’t explain was when I was riding my bike to the shops for food and some beers while on vacation. Weather was pretty bad but still rideable. On the way there nothing felt off other than me being wet as h**l and the bike not liking the wet. On the way back I got a crazy urge to just whack open the throttle and get it over with. Not something I’d usually do in the dark and rain on roads I don’t know, but honestly going 15 over the speed limit felt too slow.
2 days later the weather cleared up, I rode the same road, and there was a 10 km pas stretch that had fully flooded, trees uprooted and trash in the branches at 2-3 meters high.
I’m not from a place with flash floods at all, and this area had never been prone to them before. I’m guessing the preceding drought dried up the ground and instead of seeping in, the water washed away a natural dam. What I don’t get is how I felt it coming while cold, sleep deprived and on top of a very vibrant motorcycle.
#38
Car full of naive young teenagers on a road trip. My friend driving decided to do a lazy three point turn on a corner on a winding road in the forest. He had fully blocked the road halfway through the turn and I piped up from the back seat ‘hurry it up mate, a couple of motorbikes might come screaming around the corner’.
Just as he got the car back in its lane, two motorbikes came screaming around the corner…
#39
A few years ago, 4 of us tumbled into a city centre bar for a few drinks after a gig. I felt something seemed off, it was a karaoke night and 2 of us put their name down to sing a duet. I had a bad feeling about the place and persuaded the others to leave and not wait their turn. Reluctantly, we all had had a few drinks prior to our arrival and they wanted to sing. Had to be forceful but eventually we left. Later that night there was a shooting in the bar. We would probably have left at that stage anyway but I felt we had to leave immediately.
#40
Two buddies and I had just graduated university and were out on the town one night bar hopping. We were feeling no pain from a night of drinking and while walking back to my apartment at the end of the night we spotted a pretty wild house party happening. Music playing, people hanging out in the front yard, and the front door open. We walked over and started talking to some guy out front. He invited us in and we found some beer in the kitchen and started to drink.
My one buddy started playing beer pong with this group of women. They had never played before. We were having fun but the conversations I was trying to have with these people just seemed off. I finally asked the guy that we had first met out front if he went to the same university we had just graduated from. He looked confused. He then told me that he was in high school. I laughed it off. No way. And as I looked around the house and at the people there I had this panicked realization…we were officially at a high school party. How did we not realize this walking in? My heart sank and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Here we were with a house full of underage teens drinking in a strangers house. I felt like I was going to puke. Grabbed my buddies and yanked them out of there.
Thankfully nothing bad happened and we got out of there. But to this day we still laugh about this drunken mixup.
#41
Not really a scary one but this past summer, me and my family were at the fair and this guy kept “running into” my grandma. My grandma was 79 years old at the time, I might add. We were just going through the fair and at 3 different times throughout the day/night, this guy just kept happening to find where we were at. By the 3rd time, we said let’s go cause this guy was clearly stalking us or, more specifically, my grandma. Why? I have no clue but we weren’t going to stick around and find out either.
#42
Not really scared, more like a NOPE moment. I drove for Lyft off and on for about a year, this was in charlotte NC. I took on a ride that was in an outlying neighborhood at the airport. So I go to the address and it’s on the road with a few houses, all dark. Streetlights were few and far between. I get to the address and I can’t find any house numbers. I pull into the driveway that’s listed, wait not even 30 seconds and get a feeling something isn’t right. No house lights come on, no message or call asking to wait… I don’t see anyone. So I back out and leave. Right as I’m get to the end of the street I get another ride request for the same location. I declined and got out of there fast.
Walking home one night, I try to take what I thought was a shortcut through an industrial park. I lived in the area my whole life. I knew there was a way through but couldn’t check as my phone battery was depleted. So I’m walking in what I feel is the right way and get towards the edge of the industrial park. The road keeps going but there are no street lights there. The road looked like a fairy tale description of what you expect a dark tree lined road would be. That feeling of a bad idea to travel down that road was so overwhelming that I went back and took the long way home.
#43
I was walking near a park that I had never been to for an ultimate frisbee league game. I had gone there early and decided to wait near the gates where there was very bright lights.
Then, there was this homeless looking dude that walked past me and grabbed a suitcase out of the bushes near where I was waiting. I managed to get a whiff of the dude and he smells like weed..? I instantly felt uneasy and fast walked out of there.
While fast walking, the dude turns around and fast walks in the same direction I am going. Internally, I was scared as heck, trying not to look spooked, and walked out to a much brighter area of the park outside with other people around. The dude walks in a different direction and disappears into the darkness…
#44
First and only time I went to the World Trade Center was like 6 days before they went down. Was in a fight with my boyfriend and pretty consumed with my feelings but as soon as we got to Windows on the World I felt intense panic and dread like I’ve never felt. I even asked what kept planes from flying into the buildings. It’s weird because I’m usually completely oblivious to danger and not prone to panic or anxiety but I couldn’t get to the elevators fast enough. I’ll never forget it. Had intense dreams about those spaces for like 10 years after.
All around the world, residents, and staff of senior care homes have been under lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Naturally, in times like these, when most means of communication are limited, boredom can easily kick in. For this reason, Robert Speker—an activities coordinator at a care home called Sydmar Lodge in England—got creative to cheer up the residents, and his latest activity quickly went viral. He came up with an entertaining idea of a photoshoot recreating classic album covers with Sydmar Lodge’s residents and staff, which he later shared on his Twitter account.
Talking to the Jewish News, Robert said: “I did the project to make them happy and I think the models’ families have enjoyed it, with even grandchildren posting about their grandparents, but the risks of Covid means they could be in lockdown for a long time and I want to make it a good time.”
Scroll down to see the bad-a*s recreations and vote for the ones you liked the most!
Relationships—we’ve all been there. To some degree, anyway. And though it’s to some extent rainbows and butterflies, romance and all that good stuff, it’s also in part being dumb and making mistakes ‘cause we’re all human and relationships are hard, man!
Well, former journalist Christie Smythe’s recently confessed her love for Martin Shkreli, former hedge fund manager and now convicted felon—securities fraud and racking up HIV meds’ prices by 5,000%—explaining how she left her own husband for Shkreli, quit her job, and even froze her eggs for him.
This prompted one Twitter user to ask people what are some of the most embarrassing things they have done in their relationships with not-so-good significant others, and a good number of people responded with some of their craziest stories.
Bored Panda has compiled a list of some of the best responses, which you can scroll through and vote on below. And while you’re down there, why not let us know what you thought of them in comment form!
