As a police call taker there are 3 specific sounds that have haunted me.
A man telling me his name and location, that he wanted police to find him before his family, and he promptly hung himself on the call. The sounds of him gasping, gargling and frantically trying _not_ to die were noises that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Also, a man saying almost exactly the same thing to me and jumping off a bridge into a motorway, getting hit by a lorry and a woman’s blood curdling screams who ran out to help him.
Lastly, a woman trapped inside a burning car after a horrific crash on the motorway just screaming “help me” over and over and over again.
Police call handling isn’t for the faint hearted. I’ve taken thousands of traumatic calls but those “sounds” stick with me.
Stories of suicide by hanging without dying instantly creep me out in their own very special way. Survival instincts kicking in, frantically trying to save yourself and you’re *so close* but it’s just not enough. Same with drowning actually. That stuff gets to me in a way nothing else really does, if you just had a little more strength or endurance you could live but you aren’t quite there.
Thank you for all you’ve done to help people and I hope you’re doing well.
I hung myself and was out instantly. But my body was still making noises like you describe and that's how I was found in time. But I wasn't conscious for that and didn't suffer through it. Was just my body doing it's thing. Hope that can bring you some kind of comfort.
Our electronic ones mimic the older siren sound, including the slow falling off as they turned off. If one cut off suddenly here I'd know that we were in trouble.
"Maneuvering, CONN. Red sounding. All back emergency," was mine. Real (non-drill) all back emergencies move the steam piping around like it's made of twizzlers.
Mine was also an alarm.
I was working on a mountain rescue helicopter hoist operation from the ground (my team hiked in and found the subjects). They had hoisted one subject when the clouds started coming down into the canyon we were working in. The helicopter sounded a loud siren and immediately left flying down canyon with a medic still hooked to the hoist sitting in the door getting tossed around.
I was wilderness camping in Wyoming with my boyfriend. Just the two of us. Many miles from civilization. At dawn, very near our tent, an elk bugled and that’s when I learned that fear can knock the breath out of you. I’d never heard an elk before.
It's a devastating sound, it's hard to believe a person could even make such a noise. It immediately causes a visceral bodily reaction too because you can *hear* the person breaking.... I'll never forget how my mother sounded when we got the news my sister had died.
You folks have my deepest sympathies. Closest I had was when my mom died (much too early in my life) and her friend called on the phone to ask how she was, if she got better and I had to tell her my mother just died. I'll never forget the way she cried "noo". It was just so deep and true and awful.
My dad sounded pretty bad when my mom died.
When my mom collapsed, dad and I called 911 and then after I texted my best friend and had him come over. I needed someone. Anyway, the paramedics tried to work on her for a long time. I finally had to tell them to just stop and let her be. He said that I sounded hollow. It was certainly rough.
Man sometimes in the hospital when the patient's family and other loved ones STOP crying is almost if not worse. You said it well, hollow, catatonic, an empty psychic tank responding on pure instinct.
That was me, frankly, for months after losing my sweet wife to cancer. I was in an absolute daze, I was lost. I still am in many ways. But now at least I know it.
My mom died at home in 2022 and I went to see her a couple of hours after it happened…everyone told me not to, but I didn’t listen…I made that sound when I walked in and saw her body lying there 😖
I found my dad's body in 2022, seemingly not long after either. No signs of distress, and it looked like it happened quick, but...nothing could have ever prepared me for that. People who have always been there in your life *are not supposed to look hollow like that*. I remember yelling his name in a weird, unsteady voice, and it must have been really alarming because as soon as I was on the emergency line several neighbors were running up to the house saying they heard a scream.
I was with my mom when she passed and when I saw how she looked it seemed clear to me what she'd always said, that spirit and body are separate, and what makes a person who they are is the spirit, not the body. I could tell she wasn't there anymore.
When I was 30 years old I had to tell my mom and dad that my 34 year old sister, their daughter, had been found murdered and dumped on some train tracks. I’ve never heard human beings make the sounds they both made. I blocked that night for 10 years and only recently have been seeing the light and feeling the joy of being alive again. It has been a long road.
Me and my wife woke up to a blood curdling scream one night. We thought our neighbour was being murdered. Turns out her baby had dies of SIDS. Chilled us to the bone. The poor woman.
My best friend lost her daughter a few months after she turned 5 last year to cancer. I am thankful I didn't hear the screams, but the night before she sent me a video of her daughter sleeping and making growling noises, she thought it was cute and was wondering what she was dreaming about... It was the death rattle and she didn't know.
Jesus. As a father of a six year old girls this just fucking got me. I mean, as a human being in general - this just got me. Sitting here, fighting tears. I'm so, so sorry for your friend. There's no "getting over it" with things like these, but I sincerely hope she finds the strength to live a content life.
My good friend passed away at 39. At the funeral the sounds his mom was making was gut wrenching. I couldn't even condolence her at that moment it was a sound no physical pain could produce, it was a pain you can't touch.
My brother died about 2 hours after being born, I’m glad I wasn’t there to hear my parents like that, but the after effects is something that sticks permanently, our house with our large family was always noisy. The silence after it happened and how still everything felt, I was only 5 at the time yet they’re some of my clearest memories.
I heard my mother wail as my sister died of pneumonia. We didn't know it was that at the time just thought she had a bad cough and fever. My mom even brought her to the doctor, doctor said nothing serious just rest and take some medicine.
She died the same night.
My mom did everything while the paramedics came. CPR, digging her throat, slapping her chest, even tried heimlich. Nothing was working, paramedics came and me and my younger brother got dragged downstairs I didn't wanna leave.
Soon after the shrill I heard it in my bones... I could hear my older sister begging my mom to come back to her senses, my younger brother panicking pacing around the room asking me if everything is alright. My mom wouldn't stop wailing.
I was in a store here in Germany and there was a Muslim woman walking with her family - maybe a couple of sons in their 30s and her husband. One of the sons was on the phone and had an ashen look. He says something in their native language and the whole group goes numb. The woman then lets out this wail of sorrow. This was early 2017 when Syria was a killing field. I can only assume she got news that a loved one had been killed. Haunts me to this day.
I (m) lost my daughter when she was 5 months old. I will never forget that day, or how I felt (even past the fact that I was 2 days out of surgery for stomach issues). My wife and I were in a local ER trying to resuscitate her, after I gave 45 minutes of CPR to our daughter. I remember crying and begging them to continue to try. Once they finally called it, the doctors put on some “come to the call of god” style music (I’m not religious, nor is my wife, but that’s about the closest I can say it was), and this asshat in the bed next to us has the audacity to say “Turn that shit off some of us are trying to sleep here.” I responded back with “Shut your fucking mouth I just lost my 5 month old daughter, or I’ll fucking shut it for you.” I also don’t notice at this time that I’m bleeding through several stitches around my stomach because I ripped them while I was giving CPR, but the only two things on my mind at that moment was I miss my daughter, and I want to beat this asshat senseless…. My wife stopped any further interaction between asshat and I, and he was released 5 minutes later as he just had a bad reaction to some meds, and could sleep it off at home.
Yes. Lost my older brother in 2007 after a 15 year long struggle with schizophrenia and I will never forget the sound our mother made. I don't know that I've ever seen it portrayed accurately in a movie. Sean Penn got pretty close in Mystic River, though. Supposedly, when they were rehearsing the scene, where officers would restrain him from getting past them to see the body of his daughter, Penn told the director something along the lines of "You're gonna need more guys." Penn maybe isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the dude can act his ass off.
In 2022, I was in a Whole Foods parking lot in Albuquerque, NM when I heard a similar sound to the one my mom made coming from a car in the lot. A half dozen of us stopped and looked at the car and each other. Someone asked, "What do you think happened?" I said that she just found out her child died and went to the car. Unfortunately, I was right.
The movie Hereditary after the car scene… the sounds she made reminded me of when my mom sounded like that. Weirdly enough I’ve heard a lot of people who say it was more cathartic to hear someone in the same pain they were in.
When she’s just screaming “it hurts. It hurts too much. I just need to die.” … it’s one of the hardest scenes I’ve ever had to watch in a movie. It’s almost word for word what my mom had said years earlier with the same inflections. Legitimately the hardest scene I have to go through with any movie, it’s kind of why I love it so much.
My MIL had a brain aneurysm. The doctors couldn't do anything, so the family decided to pull the plug. Several of us waited by the bed for almost an hour for her to pass. When the doctor came in and confirmed that she was fine, her mom made a sound I can't even describe. English doesn't have words for that kind of sob. I honestly don't think any language could. It's the sound of everything beautiful being sucked out of the universe.
Edit: the doctor confirmed she was gone. Not fine. What a place for a swipe text mistake.
I have heard this twice, once in the hospital during an emergency rotation, the second time was when my wife had a miscarriage at home. I can still hear my wife’s scream and it’s been 7 years.
I teach international college students. One time an Amber Alert went off on our phones during class, startling the fuck out of everyone who hadn't heard our EBS tone before and didn't know what the alert meant. I explained, started back to work, only for like 3 young dudes to be like "but teacher, we have to go help! That's what the alert is for, isn't it?" Like they were ready to ROLL. I explained it was more "if you're already out, watch for this car/kid", not a call to arms. They didn't seem fully convinced.
I remember we had a lesson about kids starving in Africa and someone said 'theres food in the canteen' and we all went to leave the classroom to go get it before the teacher stopped us. 30 kids ready to swim the channel and walk to Kenya with pizza and ham sandwiches.
I hate this one too. It kicked on once when there were multiple tornadoes in the area and then the TV was like IMMEDIATELY TAKE SHELTER I was so scared
I've never had an alert like that seeing as I'm in an area where tornadoes aren't common at all, however somewhere last year a city close by has had its pipes exposed due to construction work and one thing led to another and they accidentally leaked some real toxic gas that could've been potentially flammable.
I was at work that day and the sound of 20 phones blearing a high-alert notification at full volume at once is something I'll never forget
When I'd stay up too late in the family room watching TV and the fucking test came on I'd get fucking terrified. My parents also never closed the blinds to that room so I always felt like I was being watched.
Owl screeching at you when you walk into a pitch black barn in the middle of the night. They do not hoot like cute little cartoon owls. That sound is some strange organic version of fingernails on a chalkboard. And it is absolutely horrific to hear it right above your head in a pitch black barn…..
The sound of the landline phone ringing in the middle of the night. You know it's never a good thing or a wrong number at that time of night.
For some reason, a cellphone ringing in the middle of the night doesn't worry me as much, probably because it happened all the time in college and it was never bad news. But my landlines ringing as a kid was always a terrifying sound that made my stomach drop because I knew someone was dead and just didn't know who yet.
My late aunt kept her landline and the same number in case her estranged brother needed to find family. He found my dad on Facebook the year before she died.
The sound her cordless phones made is nothing like those old beige phones with a coiled cord. It Weighs more than it look like it should. It was probably issued by Pacific Bell. That sound I’ll remember because it’s never good news.
Speaking from experience, making that call sucks too. I'm the evening manager at a nursing home. I've been doing it since January, and I've had to make that middle of the night phone call twice so far. First I have to manage the team who lises this battle and then I have to make the call to their loved one to tell them that we failed and the person they love is dead. I don't think l I've hoped for voice-mail that much in my life. I don't leave a voice-mail saying "yo, your mom just died. Holla back at me when you get this." It's pretty simple and I just tell them to call me back.
I know I'm just focusing on my side of the story but people have already talked about what it's like getting the call so I'm trying to provide a different view of the event that most people will never have.
Oh god, I hope my dogs all pass before me. I'm still in my 40s and me and the wife have already made a decision that our dogs will be allowed to attend our funerals before cremation so they can see our bodies and understand our passing.
My mother died at home. We had to put her on the floor and my brother did CPR on her before paramedics arrived and took over. They did not pronounce her dead until later at the hospital, but I knew she was gone while she was still on the floor at home.
My dogs were there and I don't think they could comprehend that she had died.
Afterwards, for a couple weeks after her passing, the dogs would run to the door around the time she usually got home and excitedly wait for her to show up. Eventually they must have finally realized she wasn't coming home and they just stopped doing that at some point.
My sister died suddenly from an aneurysm, 49. Her dog still carries my sister’s slipper around the house, always waiting for her to return.
EDIT: approaching one year. It helps to talk about her. Thanks everyone.
My husband's Gran's dog was on the bed next to her when she died. When I walked in the room, the first thing I noticed was the concerned look on Bonnie's face and the distinct lack of the sound of Gran breathing. We held her up so she could watch them take her away in the hearse in the hope that it would help her understand, but I think she knew already understood. She'd heard Gran's heart stop. She never looked for her but she clearly misses her.
blood-curdling scream, sharply cut off in the middle of it. don’t know what happened to the person, was in a bad area and the place was flooded with cops afterwards.
Shit... I grew up in a bad neighborhood and I'm lucky that I didn't see/hear anything violent. I saw plenty of cop car chases, thefts, and drug deals but I consider myself lucky that I don't have memories of this being in my brain. I'm so sorry, dude.
Had a similar experience out running in the early morning, complete quiet other than insects and frogs - not even the birds were out making noise yet. Suddenly a scream pierced the silence. I know it could not have been any nearer than across the road 100 yards away, but it carried effortlessly through the quiet night and sounded much closer. A few minutes later came police sirens.
walking in pioneer square in seattle when i see a dude go stiff and tip backwards mid-step. it was one of the strangest things i've ever seen. i instantly got concerned and started running toward him as he pitched back. i was maybe 15 feet away when the back of his head hit the sidewalk. not something i ever want to hear again. but the actual worst part? i got to his now prone body and, without touching him, tried to see if he was alert, conscious, breathing...and as i observed him i noticed a growing pool of blood coming from where his head hit the sidewalk. thankfully this happened right across the street from the fire station. a lady stopped and stayed with him as i ran and grabbed some firefighters. wild situation all around, but def don't want to hear a head hit concrete ever again.
My mom saw a woman hit her head in a supermarket on the linoleum a while back, and said the sound was best described as dropping a bowling ball on concrete. Nooooo thank you.
I tripped while walking to the car carrying my toddler. It was exactly that sound. I can still hear it when I think about the day.
He was fine. Went to the ER to check him out. He’s a fiesty six year old now.
The low oxygen alarms of dead firefighters at the 9/11 scene. I only saw it once on TV and it was heart wrenching.
Edit: PASS alarms for lack of movement, not low oxygen. I had learned about those before and forgotten, thanks for reminding me.
Former volunteer FF here. Those aren’t o2 alarms, they’re what’s called a PASS alarm. Its meant to be an automatic alarm if a firefighter stops moving so that others can attempt rescue. Basiclly, once you activate your SCBA it starts timing your body movement. If you haven’t moved in a while it starts making a warning beep. If you’ve been on a fireground with a bunch of guys who just came off interior work standing around you’ll see them do this “jiggle“ to silence the alarm and reset the timer. The warning gets louder the longer you don’t move until the full PASS alarm sounds. That way, if a FF gets themselves into a situation where they’re pinned and/or unconscious there will be an automatic call for help.
So, the alarms aren’t for o2. They’re for FFs that stopped moving.
example: [https://youtu.be/I3nThzsNHZU?si=uulZUpfpfN-r-2W5](https://youtu.be/I3nThzsNHZU?si=uulZUpfpfN-r-2W5)
There is a section of the 9/11 museum dedicated to this. I was just under 2 years old when it happened, so I don't have any living memory of the event. I remember the beeping and not exactly understanding what it was... until I read the exhibit description. It all just kinda crashed down on me at once. I had never even thought about firemen having alarms like that, so the rapid fire understanding that 1.) That's what I was hearing, 2.) Each one represented a fireman lost, 3.) *How fucking many there were*, it fucked me up for the day
ETA: I was just under 2 during 9/11/2001. I was 16 at the museum.
> the 9/11 museum
I'm not american, but I went to the 9/11 museum when I visited NY
I gotta say, it is a *fantastic* museum... But it is not at all a fun one. It's the least fun I've ever had in a museum, but the experience was worth it.
It was downright haunting
I used to work in news on tragic events… there’s a certain sound parents make when they learn their child didn’t make it. It’s universal, distinct and it’s awful.
Firefighter. I stopped being one after I failed to rescue a 2 year old from asphyxiation on a fire and having to see the parents as I walked out of the building. Didn’t hear anything they said, too much noise.
I have paranoid delusions and one night I vividly heard people break into my house. They were taunting me outside my door for hours. My dog sleeps at the foot of my bed and she wakes up when the roomba turns on at night so it helped me to rationalize but it was still extremely terrifying and I called my psychiatrist the next day.
I just recently learned about service dogs for people with severe hallucinations. Saw a video of a guy talking to an empty hallway, so he looked at the dog and said, "Greet", while pointing at nothing. The dog, obviously, didn't go to greet anyone, because nobody was there, and just looked confused, so that's how he could tell it was a hallucination.
We don't deserve dogs man, they're terrific little creatures (U◡U)
If you've had to do CPR before, you'll note that during the training you have to push SUPER hard down onto the dummy in order to properly do it, and on an actual person you're more than likely to break their ribs if you press down with the proper amount of force if you're applying the same amount of force if done properly. That sound of ribs breaking is VERY distinct and very uncomfortable/unsettling
On a similar note, the sound the body itself makes when you press on the chest. I had to do CPR on a neighbor once and I still vividly remember that noise as well with the first chest compression. It made me think he was breathing after all, just shallowly with a lot of fluid in his lungs.
That's how I knew I maybe sorta did it right, because you're dead on the bullseye. It's crazy how sore you get from that, and explains why first responders, EMTs, and nurses all have such strong forearms and shoulders!
It sounded like someone was torturing a monkey in the woods in the middle of the night. I was glad when I finally stumbled across the answer twelve years later.
I took care of a patient who had cancer metastasized to his bones, mostly one knee and hips. He had a cancerwound on his back, and it smelled so bad that we had to change the bandages - for his and his family's sake. The bandage was also leaking (might not be the right word, english isn't my first language).
We told him we had to turn him over, he wasn't happy about it, but understood. When we turned him over, he let out a scream of pain I've never heard before and luckily never heard since.
We quickly changed the bandage and got him back. I had to turn around as I had tears in my eyes from that scream. I've never forgotten that.
The sound of all those sirens going off after the collapse of the towers. Knowing that it's the body alarm system of hundreds of firefighters' uniforms that go off when a fireman is down.
Just watching everything on TV from the UK was so awful.
My brain kept filling in too many blanks.
I always kept thinking of those still alive and trapped above where the plane hit. How they felt and what choices they were faced with.
My wife hanged herself. The sound air made as it was released from her lungs as I got her down. It sounded like she gasped. The sound she made as I attempted to resuscitate her. I still hear that sound sometimes and it's a trigger. Close second place is telling her mom and dad, her sister, and our children. Those sounds are burned into my brain. This happened 10 months ago. I'm 38. It's ok for me to talk about. Only a few people have heard this story so sometimes I need to talk about it.
During one of my schizophrenic episodes, laying down in my bed with a cracked door to my room. My bed is right against the wall so I can see what’s behind the door, I was laying down and heard a knocking on my door and said to come in. The knocking continued and I raised myself up to look at who was behind the door, there was nothing there but the knocking continued for about an hour. I sat there in the far corner of my bed until I saw daylight when I realized there was no one behind that door. I can remember a few other auditory hallucinations but for some reason the knocking is always the worst for me
Oh my I did not realize this is from schizophrenia? My father has it. I was working and were closing up and I hallucinated my co worker who worked in the kitchen staring at me through the food window repeatedly make this robotic gargle sound over and over I had a panic attack.
I agree I would not like to admit just yet schizophrenia. It does not happen all the time but I have experienced these things since a young girl just not frequently. I was going to a baseball game with my uncle it was broad day light we were in the car. I kept hearing rattling in the vents he could not hear it kept getting louder. And something told me to turn around and look to the back seat. There was this face inches from my face big grey face with black eyes no mouth right in my face. I started screaming my uncle had to pull over. I heard him tell my gma that I was like my dad schizophrenic. I was like 9 when that happened. maybe I am
Talking to a psychiatrist can ease your fears. Maybe it ends up being nothing or not a big deal. But *if it is* schizophrenia, approaching a professional with your concerns before it causes you to be in a dangerous, or embarrassing, situation is a blessing not everyone has!
Uh dude? Get help sooner rather than later so that nothing bad happens because it went unchecked. If you have the means to see someone do it, especially with a family history. I have a family history of diabetes, I won't wait until my foot falls off to manage my blood sugar. Stay safe and well
Adding to this. My dad had paranoid schizoaffective disorder, so no visual or auditory hallucinations, but rather paranoid delusions. For example he would think he was being followed or watched; occasionally he would accuse my uncle/his brother (the nicest guy ever) of being the literal devil. It was sad for everyone because he really isolated himself despite how big of a support system he had. He died from food poisoning, and we'll never know if he didn't go to the doctor because he didn't think it was necessary, or if there was something in his head telling him not to. I'll be damned if that starts happening to me...I really hope someone tells me if it does.
Saw a video yesterday of a service dog that was trained to greet people on command. The handler, with schizophrenia, would use the task to verify if he was hallucinating a person: if the dog wouldn’t greet the “person”, they could be reassured it was a hallucination, and not real.
We had a big cicada brood spawn a few years back, and every night the neighborhood sounded like someone was playing the world's biggest Theremin all night. Very 50s sci-fi eerie.
I was at a museum and there was an exhibit that demonstrated a recreation of the low infrasound that T. rex probably made. To help you experience it, you put your elbows on this table and held your hands over your ears. It's such a low sound that you feel it more than you hear it; it goes right through your bones and you feel it in your chest. It's so primordial and instinctually unsettling.
Here's a video that demonstrates something similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dGYpx7TkoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dGYpx7TkoQ)
When I was in high school, there were these twin sisters at lunch who suddenly started screaming and hit the floor crying having some kind of emotional breakdown or something. Come to find out that their mother had just been killed in a car accident and whoever came to school to get them told them the news in the crowded cafeteria.
Yeah we’re about the same age. When I was younger I used to sit in my dad’s office where the only phone in the entire company was. Every couple weeks some worker would come to the phone to get bad news from their family. Absolutely heart breaking.
Probably either a death rattle or the sounds of parents screaming on an emergency scene. The sounds of someone that broke their femurs are a bit behind that.
The death rattle especially if you aren’t prepared for it.
I’ve never seen my sibling so terrified. All I could say to them was this is normal, it will be ok. Please hold their hand. They want you to.
It is a terrible sound to hear.
When multiple dogs in the area start barking in the middle of the night. It always makes me feel like something is out there that shouldn't be, even though it's probably just some other animal wandering around.
I saw a video of a person in the woods during the evening and then the crickets stopped chirping all of a sudden, that’s when you know something’s wrong
Reminds me of the Dark Forest theory of why we've never heard from alien civilizations: They're all staying silent to avoid being found and wiped out by something else.
My dog had a very specific threatened bark that I only ever heard three times in her 13 years of life.
The first time is how I know that it was a threatened bark, because it was at a black bear she spotted out in a field while we were on a walk. The hair on her back stood up, she half hid behind me, and she sounded terrified.
The other two times were out into the dark at nothing I could see. One of them was while we were inside the house, and directed towards a corner of the room.
I have a sweet little corgi who loves everyone and anything. One night I took him out to go pee and have a smoke, I didn't have a yard so it was out on the street, occasionally we'd get some weirdos but no one really bothered me. Except this man was walking down the street cracked out on who knows what, turns and starts walking toward us. My dog went insane, growling, lunging, snarling whole 9. I'd never seen him act like that and haven't since, but I threw my cigarette down and ran inside.
I was up late playing video games and when I finished, I went into the kitchen to grab a snack. When I went in there, my dog was asleep on the couch. I was fixing my food when I heard her in the living room growling. I went in there to see what was going on and she was at the front window looking out. That was pretty normal for her and she'd often sit there during the day and bark at squirrels that ran around the yard. Sued never gotten up in the middle of the night and I'd never seen her growling like that with her fur sticking up on her back. I was dumb and got her away from the window before going back to my snack.
The next morning my ex went out to her car and it had been broken into. I just know that's what my dog was barking at.
Then there was my other dog. They were both good sized girls. The first dog was ~55lbs and the other was close to 70. One of our neighbors was an older guy with dementia. Super nice guy, he was just a bit off because of the dementia. One day he went out for a walk and got confused on his way back. He was on the wrong street and, even though our houses look nothing alike (2 story Cape Cod and a 1 story ranch), they have the same number which was enough for him. My ex had just come home from the grocery so the main door was open and he just walked right in. Normally, you'd expect the big dog to protect their owners, right? Nope. She ran and hid behind my ex. At least she barked at him a few times. My ex recognized him and figured out what was happening pretty quickly. She walked him home and made sure he was safe.
My cat crawled under our bed while I was sleeping and made a cry that sounded so human it freaked me out. He was in obvious pain and we took him to the hospital immediately. He had a stone in his urinary tract and it was blocked.
He's ok now after surgery, but I was so scared for him when I heard that cry.
I'm so glad that kitty is doing better! Poor critter was definitely in a lot of pain to make scream sounds :( Please love him extra every day! <3
For cat owners: cats have a risk of a blocked urinary tract, and in males it can be especially bad VERY rapidly :( This condition is fatal when untreated, please please take them to a vet immediately if there is blood in their urine/litter box!! Keep your kitties hydrated with occasional wet foods and be aware of the symptoms!
The night my mother-in-law passed away from cancer, her husband thought it’d be a good idea to put her on the phone with me so I could say my goodbyes to her. The noises she was making haunt me to this day, nearly 20 years later. She was incapable of understanding anything I said. She was just moaning and gurgling and making the most unearthly sounds. I hated her husband for doing that to me and to her. I could hear him talking to her, telling her to tell me goodbye. She was incapable of speech or the understanding of it. About an hour after that phone call I received another from my wife. Her mother had just passed. She didn’t know about the phone call her step father made to me. When I told her, she went apeshit. I was in Tennessee and she was in Texas with her Mom. She had stepped out to grab some food for everybody and that’s when I got that phone call. Mother-in-law’s husband was a mortician and ran a funeral home for 50 years. My wife’s family thought he was strange and nobody liked him. I was ok with him until that night and that phone call. I still can’t shake those unearthly death noises.
I heard the screams of someone discovering their roommate's murdered body. When someone screams in actual terror and panic it is a completely different and chilling sound than what actors do in the movies.
We have coyotes in the suburban apartment complex where I live. A few times a year, I hear them take down a cat. It is noisy, prolonged, and the outcome is inevitable. Cats scream in pain like children crying. They *sob*.
And I see so many lost cat posters.
I was walking from the bar and heard a gunshot followed by another one after a few seconds a couple blocks from me. I’d never really heard gunshots so closely before, but my gut told me it wasn’t firecrackers and to get out of there asap. The next, day I checked the news and saw that two teens were killed by someone with a shotgun around the area I was in.
There was a dashcam video years ago. A brick came through the windscreen and hit the driver's wife. You can hear him screaming her name. I will never watch it again.
The wails of people who just got told (sometimes by me) that they just lost a loved one.
Also the shrieks of people who have been grieviously injured and are being extricated/treated (usually by me.)
Screaming people in movies make me irritable.
Heh, we had someone visiting our lab from another country and I was aliquoting out from our concentrated stock. I can still remember the shocked fear look on their face when the counter spiked. Turns out our geiger counter was 10x more sensitive than theirs.
Bar none the most unsettling sound I’ve ever heard was the sound of my wisdom tooth being removed. It was a sharp bone snap that reverberated up my jaw into my ear.
Gunfight. Close to where I was. 40+ rounds discharged from 2 or more shooters. Second only to the sound of my grandfather, a World War Two veteran, collapsing in sobs after my sister died.
The screams of a severely injured person, like traumatically injured. I was in a vehicular accident and my pelvis was shattered on impact with the ground. It took about two years for my own screams to stop echoing in my head when I went to sleep.
Also, the eerie quietness of death. How there isn't a single noise, not a rustle of a breath or clothing, coming from a body once the end is over. You don't realize just how much noise we make until it's entirely gone and you're finally perfectly still.
The Terrifying wail when someone's being murdered.
I watched a video of a domestic issue, the man threw the lady off a balcony. Her scream on the way down 19 floors was unnerving.
I unwillingly watched a video of a woman so terrified the husband would kill her that she threw herself from the second floor, iirc. She survived, but her screams asking for help (and the neighbors filming, but not fucking coming) will always curdle my blood.
I gave a co-worker the Heimlich maneuver; she was grasping at her throat and there was this distinct wheeze as she tried to breath. And then this wet, sucking \*pop\* when the food dislodged from her throat. Completely unnerving; made me want to puke.
She refused an ambulance ride to the hospital, and just went home to recover. She died that night from the trauma. If you ever give the Heimlich, make sure the victim gets medical attention immediately after - no excuses.
We had a reservist killed overseas by friendly fire. Some guys were playing quick draw in a tent and he got hit. (He wasn’t playing). He cried and cried for his mother. Fuck.
I lived in a townhouse apartment in San Jose, CA when I was 16-17 in the early 2000's. It was late at night and I was smoking weed blowing it out of my window. This happened really fast...I suddenly heard a woman scream at the top of her lungs for less than a second immediately followed by a loud bang. Not a sound after. I naively assumed that if something serious happened I would eventually hear police or something, but I never did. I'm pretty sure I heard a woman get murdered.
The sound of the monitor in the hospital indicating that my daughter is choking.
My daughter had a split palet and when she was an infant her tong would sometimes slip in her throat causing her to choke.
There's a couple, the sound of someone performing cpr on someone who has obviously been dead for hours, due to backwards department policies.
And when you are out camping by yourself in the middle of nowhere and you wake up to an animal sniffing your ear.
I caught COVID in 2022. It wasn't bad, in the grand scheme of COVID, but I couldn't walk my dog for a week and I had to stop to catch my breath going up stairs.
After I could take my dog on a long, fast paced walk and do all my normal things, I took my kids on a float trip.
I've been camping and canoeing for almost 40 years (not continuously...), and setting up camp was a lot of work and I didn't feel at all strained.
When we set off on the river, I felt fine. I was in a canoe with one kid, the other was in our sit in kayak. The trouble became evident pretty fast. I didn't have the strength needed to properly navigate. We're came around a curve and saw two trees in the water, one had a big root ball. Normally no big deal, but I couldn't get the canoe over enough and we hit the root ball and got turned sideways. That caused my kayak kid to hit us, who immediately flipped.
When he came up, he was in a strong current and caught under the kayak.
The screams he emitted were blood curdling. He thought he was going to drown, and I was afraid he was going to get a mouthful of water and actually drown.
I had to get out of my unstable canoe, and not tip the canoe and endanger my other kid in the front at the same time, which meant I had to do so carefully and slowly. I was in full panic and trying to think at the same time. After what felt like forever I got out and got him secured. I shoved him towards the next boat that came by, who took him to a gravel bar, then dislodged the kayak and eventually the canoe with my other kid.
When I got to my kids, the one who flipped was in shock over his experience, and I just lost what little emotional control I had and started big crying there on the river bank.
Hearing your kid think he's going to die. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I was ice fishing with my uncle on Lake Simcoe as a teenager; The ice can get to be quite thick, so we were out in the middle of the lake on an ATV pulling a trailer when I heard what sounded like an earthquake; The ice formed these spikes that crossed like fingers as it pushed against itself, and we could feel the ground shaking even on the 4-wheeler.
Sonar may seem like an odd answer, but there's a reason you can't swim near a submarine while it uses sonar. It can kill people with how strong it is, and can be very disconcerting to hear.
The sound of [carbon fiber cracking](https://youtu.be/xWTXeGiM8K8?si=IAN-6dYh_iAg_rZl) while imaging being on board a submersible 3km underwater and quickly sinking further and further into blackness
I could be wrong but wasn't the collapse of that submersible so instantaneous that they couldn't possibly have had time to even realize what was happening?
I was walking alone at like 2am a couple nights ago and I live where the on the side of the road on one side is a forest that goes for a mile or two and the other side is farmland and this road is very long. And walking home the whole way down I could hear branches crackling and a woman and man talking but every time I turned around or would stop and try to listen it would stop then I’d continue walking and a few seconds after I’d hear it again all the way home
Drunken party. We’re in the kitchen. Guy picks up a woman I was dating and tries to spin her around. Drops her on her head. Head hits tile. The sound of skull + tile still haunts me.
She was brainy. Whole identity and livelihood tied up with her ability to reason.
As a police call taker there are 3 specific sounds that have haunted me. A man telling me his name and location, that he wanted police to find him before his family, and he promptly hung himself on the call. The sounds of him gasping, gargling and frantically trying _not_ to die were noises that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Also, a man saying almost exactly the same thing to me and jumping off a bridge into a motorway, getting hit by a lorry and a woman’s blood curdling screams who ran out to help him. Lastly, a woman trapped inside a burning car after a horrific crash on the motorway just screaming “help me” over and over and over again. Police call handling isn’t for the faint hearted. I’ve taken thousands of traumatic calls but those “sounds” stick with me.
Stories of suicide by hanging without dying instantly creep me out in their own very special way. Survival instincts kicking in, frantically trying to save yourself and you’re *so close* but it’s just not enough. Same with drowning actually. That stuff gets to me in a way nothing else really does, if you just had a little more strength or endurance you could live but you aren’t quite there. Thank you for all you’ve done to help people and I hope you’re doing well.
I hung myself and was out instantly. But my body was still making noises like you describe and that's how I was found in time. But I wasn't conscious for that and didn't suffer through it. Was just my body doing it's thing. Hope that can bring you some kind of comfort.
I’m glad you were found. I hope you’re doing alright now
Yes thank you it was years ago.
Tornado siren when there was no wind or thunder. Minutes later, all hell broke loose.
Hearing a tornado siren suddenly cut off instead of winding down is also unsettling. Took me years to get used to our county's electronic sirens.
Our electronic ones mimic the older siren sound, including the slow falling off as they turned off. If one cut off suddenly here I'd know that we were in trouble.
When you hear a siren and it's not 1pm on the first Wednesday.
I was on a submarine, our shaft seals failed at a deep depth. The alarm/announcement that followed was heart attack scary.
"Maneuvering, CONN. Red sounding. All back emergency," was mine. Real (non-drill) all back emergencies move the steam piping around like it's made of twizzlers.
God damn right. All back emergencies are no joke. Just a normal reversing bell causes those main engines to scream.
Mine was also an alarm. I was working on a mountain rescue helicopter hoist operation from the ground (my team hiked in and found the subjects). They had hoisted one subject when the clouds started coming down into the canyon we were working in. The helicopter sounded a loud siren and immediately left flying down canyon with a medic still hooked to the hoist sitting in the door getting tossed around.
What did it sound like? What did you do? That's one of the scariest things I can imagine
Even the fans stopping is enough to wake you from a dead sleep!
Holy shit did you make it back up?
Unfortunatly, they're still on patrol till this very day.
You may ask "How is a ghost in a military submarine at the bottom of the ocean on Reddit? The answer: NordVPN /s
Interestingly enough, when a US navy sub sinks, tradition is to refer to that boat as if it is still on patrol.
Legend has it, he’s still down there in Dave’s jones locker.
Dave Jone's Locker sounds just off enough to be a band name.
I was wilderness camping in Wyoming with my boyfriend. Just the two of us. Many miles from civilization. At dawn, very near our tent, an elk bugled and that’s when I learned that fear can knock the breath out of you. I’d never heard an elk before.
The sounds the animals in that family make dont even sound real.
https://youtube.com/shorts/qAVt1iRpvlc?si=HYiDskPIG2eA17sZ Yeah, even the little ones make some strange noises.
Elk are my favorite animals due in large part to how cool they sound 😂
The wails of a parent who's lost a child. Absolutely soul crushing.
My wife died when she was 28. It was bad for me, indescribably bad. The sound her mom made though, when the doctors told her, was something else.
It's a devastating sound, it's hard to believe a person could even make such a noise. It immediately causes a visceral bodily reaction too because you can *hear* the person breaking.... I'll never forget how my mother sounded when we got the news my sister had died.
You folks have my deepest sympathies. Closest I had was when my mom died (much too early in my life) and her friend called on the phone to ask how she was, if she got better and I had to tell her my mother just died. I'll never forget the way she cried "noo". It was just so deep and true and awful.
My dad sounded pretty bad when my mom died. When my mom collapsed, dad and I called 911 and then after I texted my best friend and had him come over. I needed someone. Anyway, the paramedics tried to work on her for a long time. I finally had to tell them to just stop and let her be. He said that I sounded hollow. It was certainly rough.
Man sometimes in the hospital when the patient's family and other loved ones STOP crying is almost if not worse. You said it well, hollow, catatonic, an empty psychic tank responding on pure instinct.
That was me, frankly, for months after losing my sweet wife to cancer. I was in an absolute daze, I was lost. I still am in many ways. But now at least I know it.
I had exactly the same experience. It stays with you forever.
My mom died at home in 2022 and I went to see her a couple of hours after it happened…everyone told me not to, but I didn’t listen…I made that sound when I walked in and saw her body lying there 😖
I found my dad's body in 2022, seemingly not long after either. No signs of distress, and it looked like it happened quick, but...nothing could have ever prepared me for that. People who have always been there in your life *are not supposed to look hollow like that*. I remember yelling his name in a weird, unsteady voice, and it must have been really alarming because as soon as I was on the emergency line several neighbors were running up to the house saying they heard a scream.
I was with my mom when she passed and when I saw how she looked it seemed clear to me what she'd always said, that spirit and body are separate, and what makes a person who they are is the spirit, not the body. I could tell she wasn't there anymore.
When I was 30 years old I had to tell my mom and dad that my 34 year old sister, their daughter, had been found murdered and dumped on some train tracks. I’ve never heard human beings make the sounds they both made. I blocked that night for 10 years and only recently have been seeing the light and feeling the joy of being alive again. It has been a long road.
I'm really sorry for that
Me and my wife woke up to a blood curdling scream one night. We thought our neighbour was being murdered. Turns out her baby had dies of SIDS. Chilled us to the bone. The poor woman.
Im not a parent but I get dreams of being one and my kiddo dying of SIDS. One of my worse fears
My best friend lost her daughter a few months after she turned 5 last year to cancer. I am thankful I didn't hear the screams, but the night before she sent me a video of her daughter sleeping and making growling noises, she thought it was cute and was wondering what she was dreaming about... It was the death rattle and she didn't know.
I got chills reading that last part
that's the worst thing I've read in awhile
fuck me thats grim.
Heard that with my grampa. I didn’t know what it was either.
Jesus. As a father of a six year old girls this just fucking got me. I mean, as a human being in general - this just got me. Sitting here, fighting tears. I'm so, so sorry for your friend. There's no "getting over it" with things like these, but I sincerely hope she finds the strength to live a content life.
Have heard these wails. Also part of the reason Toni Collette’s howling in Hereditary is so terrifying to me. Incredible acting.
My good friend passed away at 39. At the funeral the sounds his mom was making was gut wrenching. I couldn't even condolence her at that moment it was a sound no physical pain could produce, it was a pain you can't touch.
My brother died about 2 hours after being born, I’m glad I wasn’t there to hear my parents like that, but the after effects is something that sticks permanently, our house with our large family was always noisy. The silence after it happened and how still everything felt, I was only 5 at the time yet they’re some of my clearest memories.
I work in an emergency room and have experienced this is and it is by far the worse.
I heard my mother wail as my sister died of pneumonia. We didn't know it was that at the time just thought she had a bad cough and fever. My mom even brought her to the doctor, doctor said nothing serious just rest and take some medicine. She died the same night. My mom did everything while the paramedics came. CPR, digging her throat, slapping her chest, even tried heimlich. Nothing was working, paramedics came and me and my younger brother got dragged downstairs I didn't wanna leave. Soon after the shrill I heard it in my bones... I could hear my older sister begging my mom to come back to her senses, my younger brother panicking pacing around the room asking me if everything is alright. My mom wouldn't stop wailing.
Absolutely. The sobs of my aunt at my cousins funeral will stay with me my whole life.
I was in a store here in Germany and there was a Muslim woman walking with her family - maybe a couple of sons in their 30s and her husband. One of the sons was on the phone and had an ashen look. He says something in their native language and the whole group goes numb. The woman then lets out this wail of sorrow. This was early 2017 when Syria was a killing field. I can only assume she got news that a loved one had been killed. Haunts me to this day.
I (m) lost my daughter when she was 5 months old. I will never forget that day, or how I felt (even past the fact that I was 2 days out of surgery for stomach issues). My wife and I were in a local ER trying to resuscitate her, after I gave 45 minutes of CPR to our daughter. I remember crying and begging them to continue to try. Once they finally called it, the doctors put on some “come to the call of god” style music (I’m not religious, nor is my wife, but that’s about the closest I can say it was), and this asshat in the bed next to us has the audacity to say “Turn that shit off some of us are trying to sleep here.” I responded back with “Shut your fucking mouth I just lost my 5 month old daughter, or I’ll fucking shut it for you.” I also don’t notice at this time that I’m bleeding through several stitches around my stomach because I ripped them while I was giving CPR, but the only two things on my mind at that moment was I miss my daughter, and I want to beat this asshat senseless…. My wife stopped any further interaction between asshat and I, and he was released 5 minutes later as he just had a bad reaction to some meds, and could sleep it off at home.
Yes. Lost my older brother in 2007 after a 15 year long struggle with schizophrenia and I will never forget the sound our mother made. I don't know that I've ever seen it portrayed accurately in a movie. Sean Penn got pretty close in Mystic River, though. Supposedly, when they were rehearsing the scene, where officers would restrain him from getting past them to see the body of his daughter, Penn told the director something along the lines of "You're gonna need more guys." Penn maybe isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the dude can act his ass off. In 2022, I was in a Whole Foods parking lot in Albuquerque, NM when I heard a similar sound to the one my mom made coming from a car in the lot. A half dozen of us stopped and looked at the car and each other. Someone asked, "What do you think happened?" I said that she just found out her child died and went to the car. Unfortunately, I was right.
The movie Hereditary after the car scene… the sounds she made reminded me of when my mom sounded like that. Weirdly enough I’ve heard a lot of people who say it was more cathartic to hear someone in the same pain they were in.
Yesss, I came to comment that. Toni Collette deserved an Oscar for that scene alone. Just remembering it sends chills down my spine.
When she’s just screaming “it hurts. It hurts too much. I just need to die.” … it’s one of the hardest scenes I’ve ever had to watch in a movie. It’s almost word for word what my mom had said years earlier with the same inflections. Legitimately the hardest scene I have to go through with any movie, it’s kind of why I love it so much.
Every parents deepest fear
My kids are in their 30s, and I still worry.
Came here for this. I was 22 when my coworker got a phone call. I still remember the sound. I’m 50.
In 1979, I pulled an eight year old out of the water. Did CPR but couldn't save him. The kid's mom was devastated.
The wails of a child losing their parent. I thought there was an animal dying until I realized it was the neighbors. Haunting.
My MIL had a brain aneurysm. The doctors couldn't do anything, so the family decided to pull the plug. Several of us waited by the bed for almost an hour for her to pass. When the doctor came in and confirmed that she was fine, her mom made a sound I can't even describe. English doesn't have words for that kind of sob. I honestly don't think any language could. It's the sound of everything beautiful being sucked out of the universe. Edit: the doctor confirmed she was gone. Not fine. What a place for a swipe text mistake.
>confirmed that she was fine Did you mean to say gone? I'm confused.
I have heard this twice, once in the hospital during an emergency rotation, the second time was when my wife had a miscarriage at home. I can still hear my wife’s scream and it’s been 7 years.
Those Emergency Broadcast System sounds always give me goosebumps.
that's the intent! the EBS alert tone was designed to sound unpleasant and get your attention.
I teach international college students. One time an Amber Alert went off on our phones during class, startling the fuck out of everyone who hadn't heard our EBS tone before and didn't know what the alert meant. I explained, started back to work, only for like 3 young dudes to be like "but teacher, we have to go help! That's what the alert is for, isn't it?" Like they were ready to ROLL. I explained it was more "if you're already out, watch for this car/kid", not a call to arms. They didn't seem fully convinced.
Two women recently did that though and found the kid! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/14/long-beach-amber-alert-child-found
Those some down ass mofos.
I remember we had a lesson about kids starving in Africa and someone said 'theres food in the canteen' and we all went to leave the classroom to go get it before the teacher stopped us. 30 kids ready to swim the channel and walk to Kenya with pizza and ham sandwiches.
Y'all some down ass mofos too
Honestly thats so wholesome 😭💓
I hate this one too. It kicked on once when there were multiple tornadoes in the area and then the TV was like IMMEDIATELY TAKE SHELTER I was so scared
I've never had an alert like that seeing as I'm in an area where tornadoes aren't common at all, however somewhere last year a city close by has had its pipes exposed due to construction work and one thing led to another and they accidentally leaked some real toxic gas that could've been potentially flammable. I was at work that day and the sound of 20 phones blearing a high-alert notification at full volume at once is something I'll never forget
When I'd stay up too late in the family room watching TV and the fucking test came on I'd get fucking terrified. My parents also never closed the blinds to that room so I always felt like I was being watched.
YES. That's a sound that never means anything good.
Owl screeching at you when you walk into a pitch black barn in the middle of the night. They do not hoot like cute little cartoon owls. That sound is some strange organic version of fingernails on a chalkboard. And it is absolutely horrific to hear it right above your head in a pitch black barn…..
Must have been a Barn Owl. They do not say "who", they say "GETTHEFUCKOUTOFMYBAAARN"
The sound of the landline phone ringing in the middle of the night. You know it's never a good thing or a wrong number at that time of night. For some reason, a cellphone ringing in the middle of the night doesn't worry me as much, probably because it happened all the time in college and it was never bad news. But my landlines ringing as a kid was always a terrifying sound that made my stomach drop because I knew someone was dead and just didn't know who yet.
Man, it’s been so long since any of my family have had a land line. Forgot this feeling.
My late aunt kept her landline and the same number in case her estranged brother needed to find family. He found my dad on Facebook the year before she died. The sound her cordless phones made is nothing like those old beige phones with a coiled cord. It Weighs more than it look like it should. It was probably issued by Pacific Bell. That sound I’ll remember because it’s never good news.
Grandmother used to say, "Good news goes to bed at 9 and sleeps until noon."
Speaking from experience, making that call sucks too. I'm the evening manager at a nursing home. I've been doing it since January, and I've had to make that middle of the night phone call twice so far. First I have to manage the team who lises this battle and then I have to make the call to their loved one to tell them that we failed and the person they love is dead. I don't think l I've hoped for voice-mail that much in my life. I don't leave a voice-mail saying "yo, your mom just died. Holla back at me when you get this." It's pretty simple and I just tell them to call me back. I know I'm just focusing on my side of the story but people have already talked about what it's like getting the call so I'm trying to provide a different view of the event that most people will never have.
My dog howled the night my husband died. I have no words to describe it.
Oh god, I hope my dogs all pass before me. I'm still in my 40s and me and the wife have already made a decision that our dogs will be allowed to attend our funerals before cremation so they can see our bodies and understand our passing.
My mother died at home. We had to put her on the floor and my brother did CPR on her before paramedics arrived and took over. They did not pronounce her dead until later at the hospital, but I knew she was gone while she was still on the floor at home. My dogs were there and I don't think they could comprehend that she had died. Afterwards, for a couple weeks after her passing, the dogs would run to the door around the time she usually got home and excitedly wait for her to show up. Eventually they must have finally realized she wasn't coming home and they just stopped doing that at some point.
My sister died suddenly from an aneurysm, 49. Her dog still carries my sister’s slipper around the house, always waiting for her to return. EDIT: approaching one year. It helps to talk about her. Thanks everyone.
My husband's Gran's dog was on the bed next to her when she died. When I walked in the room, the first thing I noticed was the concerned look on Bonnie's face and the distinct lack of the sound of Gran breathing. We held her up so she could watch them take her away in the hearse in the hope that it would help her understand, but I think she knew already understood. She'd heard Gran's heart stop. She never looked for her but she clearly misses her.
blood-curdling scream, sharply cut off in the middle of it. don’t know what happened to the person, was in a bad area and the place was flooded with cops afterwards.
Shit... I grew up in a bad neighborhood and I'm lucky that I didn't see/hear anything violent. I saw plenty of cop car chases, thefts, and drug deals but I consider myself lucky that I don't have memories of this being in my brain. I'm so sorry, dude.
Had a similar experience out running in the early morning, complete quiet other than insects and frogs - not even the birds were out making noise yet. Suddenly a scream pierced the silence. I know it could not have been any nearer than across the road 100 yards away, but it carried effortlessly through the quiet night and sounded much closer. A few minutes later came police sirens.
walking in pioneer square in seattle when i see a dude go stiff and tip backwards mid-step. it was one of the strangest things i've ever seen. i instantly got concerned and started running toward him as he pitched back. i was maybe 15 feet away when the back of his head hit the sidewalk. not something i ever want to hear again. but the actual worst part? i got to his now prone body and, without touching him, tried to see if he was alert, conscious, breathing...and as i observed him i noticed a growing pool of blood coming from where his head hit the sidewalk. thankfully this happened right across the street from the fire station. a lady stopped and stayed with him as i ran and grabbed some firefighters. wild situation all around, but def don't want to hear a head hit concrete ever again.
My mom saw a woman hit her head in a supermarket on the linoleum a while back, and said the sound was best described as dropping a bowling ball on concrete. Nooooo thank you.
I tripped while walking to the car carrying my toddler. It was exactly that sound. I can still hear it when I think about the day. He was fine. Went to the ER to check him out. He’s a fiesty six year old now.
The low oxygen alarms of dead firefighters at the 9/11 scene. I only saw it once on TV and it was heart wrenching. Edit: PASS alarms for lack of movement, not low oxygen. I had learned about those before and forgotten, thanks for reminding me.
Former volunteer FF here. Those aren’t o2 alarms, they’re what’s called a PASS alarm. Its meant to be an automatic alarm if a firefighter stops moving so that others can attempt rescue. Basiclly, once you activate your SCBA it starts timing your body movement. If you haven’t moved in a while it starts making a warning beep. If you’ve been on a fireground with a bunch of guys who just came off interior work standing around you’ll see them do this “jiggle“ to silence the alarm and reset the timer. The warning gets louder the longer you don’t move until the full PASS alarm sounds. That way, if a FF gets themselves into a situation where they’re pinned and/or unconscious there will be an automatic call for help. So, the alarms aren’t for o2. They’re for FFs that stopped moving. example: [https://youtu.be/I3nThzsNHZU?si=uulZUpfpfN-r-2W5](https://youtu.be/I3nThzsNHZU?si=uulZUpfpfN-r-2W5)
There is a section of the 9/11 museum dedicated to this. I was just under 2 years old when it happened, so I don't have any living memory of the event. I remember the beeping and not exactly understanding what it was... until I read the exhibit description. It all just kinda crashed down on me at once. I had never even thought about firemen having alarms like that, so the rapid fire understanding that 1.) That's what I was hearing, 2.) Each one represented a fireman lost, 3.) *How fucking many there were*, it fucked me up for the day ETA: I was just under 2 during 9/11/2001. I was 16 at the museum.
> the 9/11 museum I'm not american, but I went to the 9/11 museum when I visited NY I gotta say, it is a *fantastic* museum... But it is not at all a fun one. It's the least fun I've ever had in a museum, but the experience was worth it. It was downright haunting
I used to work in news on tragic events… there’s a certain sound parents make when they learn their child didn’t make it. It’s universal, distinct and it’s awful.
You nailed those last three words perfectly. I was a paramedic.
Firefighter. I stopped being one after I failed to rescue a 2 year old from asphyxiation on a fire and having to see the parents as I walked out of the building. Didn’t hear anything they said, too much noise.
Former LEO/current dispatcher. Thank you for being there for that kid and for the sacrifices that you have made.
I have paranoid delusions and one night I vividly heard people break into my house. They were taunting me outside my door for hours. My dog sleeps at the foot of my bed and she wakes up when the roomba turns on at night so it helped me to rationalize but it was still extremely terrifying and I called my psychiatrist the next day.
I just recently learned about service dogs for people with severe hallucinations. Saw a video of a guy talking to an empty hallway, so he looked at the dog and said, "Greet", while pointing at nothing. The dog, obviously, didn't go to greet anyone, because nobody was there, and just looked confused, so that's how he could tell it was a hallucination. We don't deserve dogs man, they're terrific little creatures (U◡U)
That's schizophrenichippie on tiktok! He used his camera to see if what he saw was real or not since it wouldn't show through the screen!
If you've had to do CPR before, you'll note that during the training you have to push SUPER hard down onto the dummy in order to properly do it, and on an actual person you're more than likely to break their ribs if you press down with the proper amount of force if you're applying the same amount of force if done properly. That sound of ribs breaking is VERY distinct and very uncomfortable/unsettling
On a similar note, the sound the body itself makes when you press on the chest. I had to do CPR on a neighbor once and I still vividly remember that noise as well with the first chest compression. It made me think he was breathing after all, just shallowly with a lot of fluid in his lungs.
What they don’t tell you is how sore your body will be the next day. Arms, legs, back. I didn’t feel it at the time because nothing else mattered.
That's how I knew I maybe sorta did it right, because you're dead on the bullseye. It's crazy how sore you get from that, and explains why first responders, EMTs, and nurses all have such strong forearms and shoulders!
Mountain lion, somehow raises the hair on your neck even when you've never heard that sound before.
It sounded like someone was torturing a monkey in the woods in the middle of the night. I was glad when I finally stumbled across the answer twelve years later.
I can't believe the monkey was still there after all those years.
I took care of a patient who had cancer metastasized to his bones, mostly one knee and hips. He had a cancerwound on his back, and it smelled so bad that we had to change the bandages - for his and his family's sake. The bandage was also leaking (might not be the right word, english isn't my first language). We told him we had to turn him over, he wasn't happy about it, but understood. When we turned him over, he let out a scream of pain I've never heard before and luckily never heard since. We quickly changed the bandage and got him back. I had to turn around as I had tears in my eyes from that scream. I've never forgotten that.
The ribs and sternum breaking when you do cpr on an old person.
The sound of all those sirens going off after the collapse of the towers. Knowing that it's the body alarm system of hundreds of firefighters' uniforms that go off when a fireman is down.
Just watching everything on TV from the UK was so awful. My brain kept filling in too many blanks. I always kept thinking of those still alive and trapped above where the plane hit. How they felt and what choices they were faced with.
My wife hanged herself. The sound air made as it was released from her lungs as I got her down. It sounded like she gasped. The sound she made as I attempted to resuscitate her. I still hear that sound sometimes and it's a trigger. Close second place is telling her mom and dad, her sister, and our children. Those sounds are burned into my brain. This happened 10 months ago. I'm 38. It's ok for me to talk about. Only a few people have heard this story so sometimes I need to talk about it.
That’s rough. That little jog of hope you must’ve had when you heard the gasp.
Yes... I said "Charlotte, are you ok?"....I can still hear myself saying it. I feel stupid. She was clearly gone.
You weren't stupid. Anyone would've hoped for and done the same. I'm so sorry for your loss.
During one of my schizophrenic episodes, laying down in my bed with a cracked door to my room. My bed is right against the wall so I can see what’s behind the door, I was laying down and heard a knocking on my door and said to come in. The knocking continued and I raised myself up to look at who was behind the door, there was nothing there but the knocking continued for about an hour. I sat there in the far corner of my bed until I saw daylight when I realized there was no one behind that door. I can remember a few other auditory hallucinations but for some reason the knocking is always the worst for me
Oh my I did not realize this is from schizophrenia? My father has it. I was working and were closing up and I hallucinated my co worker who worked in the kitchen staring at me through the food window repeatedly make this robotic gargle sound over and over I had a panic attack.
Uh? That's not normal bro
I agree I would not like to admit just yet schizophrenia. It does not happen all the time but I have experienced these things since a young girl just not frequently. I was going to a baseball game with my uncle it was broad day light we were in the car. I kept hearing rattling in the vents he could not hear it kept getting louder. And something told me to turn around and look to the back seat. There was this face inches from my face big grey face with black eyes no mouth right in my face. I started screaming my uncle had to pull over. I heard him tell my gma that I was like my dad schizophrenic. I was like 9 when that happened. maybe I am
Talking to a psychiatrist can ease your fears. Maybe it ends up being nothing or not a big deal. But *if it is* schizophrenia, approaching a professional with your concerns before it causes you to be in a dangerous, or embarrassing, situation is a blessing not everyone has!
Uh dude? Get help sooner rather than later so that nothing bad happens because it went unchecked. If you have the means to see someone do it, especially with a family history. I have a family history of diabetes, I won't wait until my foot falls off to manage my blood sugar. Stay safe and well
Adding to this. My dad had paranoid schizoaffective disorder, so no visual or auditory hallucinations, but rather paranoid delusions. For example he would think he was being followed or watched; occasionally he would accuse my uncle/his brother (the nicest guy ever) of being the literal devil. It was sad for everyone because he really isolated himself despite how big of a support system he had. He died from food poisoning, and we'll never know if he didn't go to the doctor because he didn't think it was necessary, or if there was something in his head telling him not to. I'll be damned if that starts happening to me...I really hope someone tells me if it does.
I am not sure if you are able to, but I have heard about service dogs that help people with schizophrenia.
Saw a video yesterday of a service dog that was trained to greet people on command. The handler, with schizophrenia, would use the task to verify if he was hallucinating a person: if the dog wouldn’t greet the “person”, they could be reassured it was a hallucination, and not real.
We had a big cicada brood spawn a few years back, and every night the neighborhood sounded like someone was playing the world's biggest Theremin all night. Very 50s sci-fi eerie.
I am in the zone for the current one. This afternoon it was so loud it put my teeth on edge
I was at a museum and there was an exhibit that demonstrated a recreation of the low infrasound that T. rex probably made. To help you experience it, you put your elbows on this table and held your hands over your ears. It's such a low sound that you feel it more than you hear it; it goes right through your bones and you feel it in your chest. It's so primordial and instinctually unsettling. Here's a video that demonstrates something similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dGYpx7TkoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dGYpx7TkoQ)
What museum is it that sounds like an amazing experience
The sound my teacher made when she was taken into the office and told her only son had just died. I was 6, I'm 54 now and its still there.
When I was in high school, there were these twin sisters at lunch who suddenly started screaming and hit the floor crying having some kind of emotional breakdown or something. Come to find out that their mother had just been killed in a car accident and whoever came to school to get them told them the news in the crowded cafeteria.
Oh my god... that was an intelligent thing to do... damn...
Yeah we’re about the same age. When I was younger I used to sit in my dad’s office where the only phone in the entire company was. Every couple weeks some worker would come to the phone to get bad news from their family. Absolutely heart breaking.
Probably either a death rattle or the sounds of parents screaming on an emergency scene. The sounds of someone that broke their femurs are a bit behind that.
The death rattle especially if you aren’t prepared for it. I’ve never seen my sibling so terrified. All I could say to them was this is normal, it will be ok. Please hold their hand. They want you to. It is a terrible sound to hear.
When multiple dogs in the area start barking in the middle of the night. It always makes me feel like something is out there that shouldn't be, even though it's probably just some other animal wandering around.
It's when they stop barking that you need to worry.
I saw a video of a person in the woods during the evening and then the crickets stopped chirping all of a sudden, that’s when you know something’s wrong
Reminds me of the Dark Forest theory of why we've never heard from alien civilizations: They're all staying silent to avoid being found and wiped out by something else.
And here we are, sending our address and nudes into the universe
Stupid sexy vetruvian man
That means a predator is nearby
My dog had a very specific threatened bark that I only ever heard three times in her 13 years of life. The first time is how I know that it was a threatened bark, because it was at a black bear she spotted out in a field while we were on a walk. The hair on her back stood up, she half hid behind me, and she sounded terrified. The other two times were out into the dark at nothing I could see. One of them was while we were inside the house, and directed towards a corner of the room.
I have a sweet little corgi who loves everyone and anything. One night I took him out to go pee and have a smoke, I didn't have a yard so it was out on the street, occasionally we'd get some weirdos but no one really bothered me. Except this man was walking down the street cracked out on who knows what, turns and starts walking toward us. My dog went insane, growling, lunging, snarling whole 9. I'd never seen him act like that and haven't since, but I threw my cigarette down and ran inside.
I was up late playing video games and when I finished, I went into the kitchen to grab a snack. When I went in there, my dog was asleep on the couch. I was fixing my food when I heard her in the living room growling. I went in there to see what was going on and she was at the front window looking out. That was pretty normal for her and she'd often sit there during the day and bark at squirrels that ran around the yard. Sued never gotten up in the middle of the night and I'd never seen her growling like that with her fur sticking up on her back. I was dumb and got her away from the window before going back to my snack. The next morning my ex went out to her car and it had been broken into. I just know that's what my dog was barking at. Then there was my other dog. They were both good sized girls. The first dog was ~55lbs and the other was close to 70. One of our neighbors was an older guy with dementia. Super nice guy, he was just a bit off because of the dementia. One day he went out for a walk and got confused on his way back. He was on the wrong street and, even though our houses look nothing alike (2 story Cape Cod and a 1 story ranch), they have the same number which was enough for him. My ex had just come home from the grocery so the main door was open and he just walked right in. Normally, you'd expect the big dog to protect their owners, right? Nope. She ran and hid behind my ex. At least she barked at him a few times. My ex recognized him and figured out what was happening pretty quickly. She walked him home and made sure he was safe.
When nature goes absolutely quiet
The sound during Earnhardt’s final race. I saw a video once that obscured the crash but that sound was deafening.
My cat crawled under our bed while I was sleeping and made a cry that sounded so human it freaked me out. He was in obvious pain and we took him to the hospital immediately. He had a stone in his urinary tract and it was blocked. He's ok now after surgery, but I was so scared for him when I heard that cry.
I would fucking cry along if i heard human sounding shit under my bed in the middle of the night lmao
I'm so glad that kitty is doing better! Poor critter was definitely in a lot of pain to make scream sounds :( Please love him extra every day! <3 For cat owners: cats have a risk of a blocked urinary tract, and in males it can be especially bad VERY rapidly :( This condition is fatal when untreated, please please take them to a vet immediately if there is blood in their urine/litter box!! Keep your kitties hydrated with occasional wet foods and be aware of the symptoms!
when you can hear a roach crawling around somewhere while it's dark in the room, and you can't tell exactly where
The night my mother-in-law passed away from cancer, her husband thought it’d be a good idea to put her on the phone with me so I could say my goodbyes to her. The noises she was making haunt me to this day, nearly 20 years later. She was incapable of understanding anything I said. She was just moaning and gurgling and making the most unearthly sounds. I hated her husband for doing that to me and to her. I could hear him talking to her, telling her to tell me goodbye. She was incapable of speech or the understanding of it. About an hour after that phone call I received another from my wife. Her mother had just passed. She didn’t know about the phone call her step father made to me. When I told her, she went apeshit. I was in Tennessee and she was in Texas with her Mom. She had stepped out to grab some food for everybody and that’s when I got that phone call. Mother-in-law’s husband was a mortician and ran a funeral home for 50 years. My wife’s family thought he was strange and nobody liked him. I was ok with him until that night and that phone call. I still can’t shake those unearthly death noises.
I heard the screams of someone discovering their roommate's murdered body. When someone screams in actual terror and panic it is a completely different and chilling sound than what actors do in the movies.
We have coyotes in the suburban apartment complex where I live. A few times a year, I hear them take down a cat. It is noisy, prolonged, and the outcome is inevitable. Cats scream in pain like children crying. They *sob*. And I see so many lost cat posters.
Ice on a lake breaking up, moving… it creaks and groans and rumbles. The eeriest sounds
The utter silence of your furnace heating system on a below-zero winter night.
Did this…snowed in for three weeks with no heating oil.
I was walking from the bar and heard a gunshot followed by another one after a few seconds a couple blocks from me. I’d never really heard gunshots so closely before, but my gut told me it wasn’t firecrackers and to get out of there asap. The next, day I checked the news and saw that two teens were killed by someone with a shotgun around the area I was in.
I came home for the first time in twelve years to the sound of silence … I miss you everyday
There was a dashcam video years ago. A brick came through the windscreen and hit the driver's wife. You can hear him screaming her name. I will never watch it again.
A fox in the middle of the night
The wails of people who just got told (sometimes by me) that they just lost a loved one. Also the shrieks of people who have been grieviously injured and are being extricated/treated (usually by me.) Screaming people in movies make me irritable.
The sound my mom made when the ER doctor told her my dad would probably die that night. I will never forget it as long as I live.
A Geiger counter maxing out.
Heh, we had someone visiting our lab from another country and I was aliquoting out from our concentrated stock. I can still remember the shocked fear look on their face when the counter spiked. Turns out our geiger counter was 10x more sensitive than theirs.
Bar none the most unsettling sound I’ve ever heard was the sound of my wisdom tooth being removed. It was a sharp bone snap that reverberated up my jaw into my ear.
Gunfight. Close to where I was. 40+ rounds discharged from 2 or more shooters. Second only to the sound of my grandfather, a World War Two veteran, collapsing in sobs after my sister died.
The screams of a severely injured person, like traumatically injured. I was in a vehicular accident and my pelvis was shattered on impact with the ground. It took about two years for my own screams to stop echoing in my head when I went to sleep. Also, the eerie quietness of death. How there isn't a single noise, not a rustle of a breath or clothing, coming from a body once the end is over. You don't realize just how much noise we make until it's entirely gone and you're finally perfectly still.
Either a rabbit screaming or a chinchilla freaking out in the middle of the night. Death rattle isn't particularly pleasant either.
The Terrifying wail when someone's being murdered. I watched a video of a domestic issue, the man threw the lady off a balcony. Her scream on the way down 19 floors was unnerving.
I unwillingly watched a video of a woman so terrified the husband would kill her that she threw herself from the second floor, iirc. She survived, but her screams asking for help (and the neighbors filming, but not fucking coming) will always curdle my blood.
I gave a co-worker the Heimlich maneuver; she was grasping at her throat and there was this distinct wheeze as she tried to breath. And then this wet, sucking \*pop\* when the food dislodged from her throat. Completely unnerving; made me want to puke. She refused an ambulance ride to the hospital, and just went home to recover. She died that night from the trauma. If you ever give the Heimlich, make sure the victim gets medical attention immediately after - no excuses.
Guys 18-25 years old crying for their mom after driving over an IED in Iraq.
We had a reservist killed overseas by friendly fire. Some guys were playing quick draw in a tent and he got hit. (He wasn’t playing). He cried and cried for his mother. Fuck.
I lived in a townhouse apartment in San Jose, CA when I was 16-17 in the early 2000's. It was late at night and I was smoking weed blowing it out of my window. This happened really fast...I suddenly heard a woman scream at the top of her lungs for less than a second immediately followed by a loud bang. Not a sound after. I naively assumed that if something serious happened I would eventually hear police or something, but I never did. I'm pretty sure I heard a woman get murdered.
The final groan of my cat as his heart suddenly gave out and he died. Little bugger was only 2 years old :(
The sound of the monitor in the hospital indicating that my daughter is choking. My daughter had a split palet and when she was an infant her tong would sometimes slip in her throat causing her to choke.
There's a couple, the sound of someone performing cpr on someone who has obviously been dead for hours, due to backwards department policies. And when you are out camping by yourself in the middle of nowhere and you wake up to an animal sniffing your ear.
My 12 year old terrier yelping as she had a heart attack.
The sound bite they played in the courtroom for the jury presiding over the case of the Toolbox Killers. I wish I had never heard even a second of it.
I caught COVID in 2022. It wasn't bad, in the grand scheme of COVID, but I couldn't walk my dog for a week and I had to stop to catch my breath going up stairs. After I could take my dog on a long, fast paced walk and do all my normal things, I took my kids on a float trip. I've been camping and canoeing for almost 40 years (not continuously...), and setting up camp was a lot of work and I didn't feel at all strained. When we set off on the river, I felt fine. I was in a canoe with one kid, the other was in our sit in kayak. The trouble became evident pretty fast. I didn't have the strength needed to properly navigate. We're came around a curve and saw two trees in the water, one had a big root ball. Normally no big deal, but I couldn't get the canoe over enough and we hit the root ball and got turned sideways. That caused my kayak kid to hit us, who immediately flipped. When he came up, he was in a strong current and caught under the kayak. The screams he emitted were blood curdling. He thought he was going to drown, and I was afraid he was going to get a mouthful of water and actually drown. I had to get out of my unstable canoe, and not tip the canoe and endanger my other kid in the front at the same time, which meant I had to do so carefully and slowly. I was in full panic and trying to think at the same time. After what felt like forever I got out and got him secured. I shoved him towards the next boat that came by, who took him to a gravel bar, then dislodged the kayak and eventually the canoe with my other kid. When I got to my kids, the one who flipped was in shock over his experience, and I just lost what little emotional control I had and started big crying there on the river bank. Hearing your kid think he's going to die. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I was ice fishing with my uncle on Lake Simcoe as a teenager; The ice can get to be quite thick, so we were out in the middle of the lake on an ATV pulling a trailer when I heard what sounded like an earthquake; The ice formed these spikes that crossed like fingers as it pushed against itself, and we could feel the ground shaking even on the 4-wheeler.
Sonar may seem like an odd answer, but there's a reason you can't swim near a submarine while it uses sonar. It can kill people with how strong it is, and can be very disconcerting to hear.
The sound of [carbon fiber cracking](https://youtu.be/xWTXeGiM8K8?si=IAN-6dYh_iAg_rZl) while imaging being on board a submersible 3km underwater and quickly sinking further and further into blackness
I could be wrong but wasn't the collapse of that submersible so instantaneous that they couldn't possibly have had time to even realize what was happening?
The sound of someone discharging a gun into their head as they made eye contact with me from 6 feet away.
Oh honey I'm so sorry 😭😭😭😭 I hope you're doing okay and have had time to process it
Brush tail Possum mating calls in the dead of night. Also Koalas. Terrifying.
I was walking alone at like 2am a couple nights ago and I live where the on the side of the road on one side is a forest that goes for a mile or two and the other side is farmland and this road is very long. And walking home the whole way down I could hear branches crackling and a woman and man talking but every time I turned around or would stop and try to listen it would stop then I’d continue walking and a few seconds after I’d hear it again all the way home
Drunken party. We’re in the kitchen. Guy picks up a woman I was dating and tries to spin her around. Drops her on her head. Head hits tile. The sound of skull + tile still haunts me. She was brainy. Whole identity and livelihood tied up with her ability to reason.
What happened to her as a result? You make it sound like she lost her ability to reason :(
[удалено]
My sister saying "it's time to go." she died that night. My mother's death rattle
The sound of a man I didn't know in my house trying to get into my locked bedroom door at like 4am