25 Distressing Events Witnessed As Children That Only Made Sense As An Adult

Our memories often fall short of the reality of situations, and the things we remember experiencing as kids is no different. An average sized dog can seem larger than life in our minds eye. Similarly a movie we watched may have had a significant impact on us as at a tender age, but a rewatch as an adult can leave a lot to be desired. Incidentally, a recent Reddit topic touched on the experiences people had in their childhoods that may have been disturbing but they dismissed in their youthful ignorance. People only realized the true nature of the events they witnessed in hindsight and we've shared a few of the most strange experiences in the gallery below.

#1

Image source: WeepyBarometer, Curated Lifestyle/unsplash I was playing at a friend's house in grade school. I went looking for the bathroom, but opened the door to the laundry room instead. My friend's mom was sitting on top of the dryer and completely freaked out when she saw me. It didn't occur to me until about 20 years later that she was probably m*******ting.

#2

Image source: HannahBanana3000, Getty Images/unsplash I was 7. Had to pee really bad, but my mom was in the bathroom. After waiting and knocking (and complaining), I just went in without waiting for a response. Found my mom sitting on the toilet and slumped over pale as hell. As calmly as I can be, I call my aunt over, who freaks and calls an ambulance. My mom was gone for over a couple of months. Family just told me she was traveling whenever I asked about her. Years later, I learned I screwed up my mom's s*****e attempt, and she had been in a psych ward for months. Edit: Mom is still around but creates a lot of drama everywhere she goes. I've gone no contact/limited contact often to avoid it. I am 30 to give you all a sense of time. My mom used to actively avoid my questions, so I stopped asking. Older cousin has learned from her folks that her psych time was long since she kept claiming she had nothing to live for.

#3

Image source: anon, Anna Dudkova/unsplash When I was around 6, my family rented a smaller house on a farm. The farm was way out of the way and had a long road that led to the main street. The owner of the land had a *very* smart and large German Shepherd named Lady. I would hang out with her a lot. One day, Lady took off running all the way down the road, and I ran after her. So as I was convincing her to follow me back, a blue truck pulled up and a woman hopped out. She went on about Lady and how she used to own her when she was younger, before putting her up for adoption. I don’t remember much else of what she said. I responded here and there, but I do remember her offering to give me a ride up back to the house. The entire time Lady stayed right in front of me, staring the woman down and not moving. The lady took a step forward. Lady just growled at her and stood her ground. Eventually, the woman gave up trying to coerce me and left. That night, I mentioned it to my brother, saying that I had met Lady’s previous owner. Because at 6, I had no f*****g idea. He said, “Uhm, you know she was probably trying to kidnap you, right? Mrs. Anderson has had Lady since a young puppy.” It didn’t really hit me until I thought about it a few years ago. When a dog knows someone(especially a previous, kind owner), they’re usually pretty f*****g excited and greet them. But for her to protect me the way she did... it didn’t even cross my mind. Scary to think back on it.

#4

Image source: tacosdetripa, Nick Monica/unsplash I was 8, and I was playing outside with some friends in my front yard. An old disabled guy came up to me with a gold fish in a bowl and asked me if I wanted a fish. He asked me to get in his car to look at other fish. I didn’t feel comfortable, and luckily, my mom had come running from the house. I didn’t realize until I was much older that I almost got kidnapped.

#5

Image source: Gone333, Yianni Mathioudakis/unsplash When I was around 9, I went snow sledding with family and friends. It was a popular sledding area with a few different hills and some woods. This older guy in his 40s had an awesome toboggan with a flashlight rigged up on the front. He was flying down hills 10x faster than anyone. He was there by himself, and it was getting dark out. He came up to me and started telling me about this secret hill in the woods that was huge. He told me I could use his sled. I followed him for about 2 minutes until I realized I couldn't see my family or friends anymore. I was maybe 20 feet into the woods before I was overcome with a horrible gutwrenching feeling. I dropped my sled and ran like hell back toward my family. I remember hearing his footsteps behind me moving as quickly as I was. By the time I got to my family and told them, he had disappeared. I am 100% certain I would have been molested and/or m******d in those woods. Telling this story makes me feel the way I did when I was 20feet into those woods, 21 years ago. Scary as f**k. EDIT: Didn't realize this would blow up. Parents, talk to your kids about strangers. My situation would have ended much different if my mother hadn't driven these ideas into my head at an early age.

#6

Image source: Salt-Pile, Getty Images/unsplash When we were 5-6 years old, one of the teachers at my primary school had a "favourite" kid in my class. He wasn't our teacher, but if he was on playground duty, he would come out to the playground when we were there, find her, crouch down on the ground, and tell her to sit on his knee. Then, when she did, he would stroke her hair and tell her what beautiful blonde hair she had. At the time, the rest of us were kind of jealous of her because we thought it just meant she was important. She was kind of quiet but from a fairly rich family, I guess, and always had nice clothes and stationery. This teacher would openly say she was his favourite and ask us where she was if he couldn't find her. I remember walking around a corner or something and seeing them by themselves, with her on his knee as he talked to her softly. Years later I feel really quite disturbed by it. That poor kid.

#7

Image source: WrongSideofaBanana, Getty Images/unsplash Growing up, I was a quiet and shy kid, but I’ve had vague memories of me at a young age screaming at the top of my lungs and being forced to take some sort of medications. I also had recurring, intense nightmares about being kidnapped. It wasn’t until last year (I’m 27) that my mom revealed a piece of my past that made everything click into place. When I was 4, a man lured me away during recess at my daycare and I was missing for about 6 hours. Nobody knows what exactly happened during that time except that he eventually dropped me off down the street from the daycare and sped off. After that, I started having severe episodes/fits that required sedatives to calm me down. They stopped with time because I think I repressed the incident. I still don’t know what happened while I was missing but the nightmares now make sense. Edit: I just wanted to say thank you for all the kind words you sent me. I am really lucky considering how many kidnap victims don’t get to come home at the end of the day. I also see my lack of memories as a blessing in disguise. Honestly, I don’t really want to know what happened during those 6 hours...it just feels like it would do more harm than good. I could probably use some therapy, but all things considered, I’m doing really well!

#8

Image source: Jerk0, Chen Mizrach/unsplash Next door neighbor kid tried to drop a hammer on my head from a tree. It hit my shoulder, fortunately. I had no idea I was almost k****d. The kid went to juvenile after trying to set our other neighbor’s house on fire.

#9

Image source: slinky999, Katie Gerrard/unsplash When I was in 7th grade or so, I had a best friend, “Sammy”. She lived with her dad and brother. Her parents were divorced, and her father was raising the two kids. Her father was pretty funny and liked to joke around. One particular day, Sammy and I were in her room. She had one of those folding room dividers between the door of her room and her bed. Her father came in and demanded that she change her underwear. Right at that time, when I was also there. And while she was changing her underwear, he was popping up and peeking over the divider. I thought it was funny at the time and that he was joking around. Now, I’m not so sure. ?

#10

Image source: too_generic, Howard R Wheeler/unsplash I found an unloaded (real) revolver in the street behind our apartment when I was about 5-6. Put it with my other (toy) cowboy guns (that was a thing). Played with it, didn’t like it much. The real gun was heavy, and too hard for me to pull the trigger. The plastic ones were much more fun. Eventually, my mom found it and (in retrospective surprise) didn’t freak out, just made it disappear.

#11

Image source: forgetasitype, Mariela Ferbo/unsplash I have a good one. When I was around 5 or 6, I was at Kmart with my mom. This was back in the 70s, so as my mom shopped, I would hang out by myself in the toy department. I especially loved the Simone game, where you press the buttons and try to match the pattern. So one day I was standing there at the display playing Simone, and an old man started talking to me. He talked to me for a few minutes, and then he told me to come with him. He took me by the hand and started walking toward the back of the store, where there were double doors that led out to the back parking lot. I remember wondering where we were going, but not being particularly concerned. As we were passing the last couple of aisles, I suddenly saw my mom at the end of the aisle. I kind of snapped out of it and realized that I should go to my mom rather than go with this guy. I pulled away from his hand and ran to my mom. I didn't say a word because I knew she had told me not to talk to strangers. Later, I realized that I had been very lucky to escape several unpleasant scenarios.

#12

I had a friend when I was about 5 who always wore what I thought were really bright socks on her arms. I thought they were rad. I remember being confused that she called her parents by their names instead of ‘mom’ and ‘dad’. I found out much later that it was because they were her foster parents after her real father had held her in a bathtub of boiling water. Her red socks were actually bandages that her foster parents tried to make a little more fun. I hope she’s okay now. Image source: BibbidiBobbityBoop

#13

Image source: Auntie_Ahem, Jon Tyson/unsplash When I was about five, my family went to a new park to play baseball. It was in an area we hadn’t been to (we lived in Denver but didn’t typically stray too far), and I wasn’t thrilled (f**k baseball). Anyhow, after much pleading, I got permission from my mom to go play up on the hill about 100 yards away. There was a huge swing set that was still within view of the field. They’re engrossed in their game, arguing over who has to sit in the outfield, yada yada, and I’m just chilling on my swing, minding my own business, playing Never Ending Story, when a couple of girls that were young enough to not be scary, but old enough to be super cool (12 maybe?) showed up, start screwing around on the slide, then asked me what I’m doing. They ask about my life, talk nerdy 80s and early 90s movies with me, and ask what I like to do. I say dancing, and they say, “Oh, we too! Yeah, Mark loves watching us dance!” In my naïveté, I say, “My dad loves coming to my dance recitals, too.” They giggle and tell me no. Mark is kind of like their substitute dad since neither of them has a dad. He’s a man who takes care of them because they don’t have moms or dads, and he wants to take care of them. They explain they aren’t related, just friends who didn’t have a home, so they live in the same home together, but Mark is great because he takes them to travel and meet other girls their age. Well, I like to travel, I say. Really? Come meet Mark, they say. We think you’d really like him. He’s nice to us; he would love to have a friend who’s younger to spoil. He gives them lots of presents, they say, especially when they have fun with his friends. I want to. Mark sounds like a cool dude. They’re really nice girls, non-threatening. Never talk to strange adults, right? But these girls aren’t adults, and they vouch for Mark. However, that morning, the discovery of Alie Berrelez’s body had been in the local paper. My mom, typically a free-range parent, had been loath to let me stray from her side that morning, so reluctantly, I tell them, nope, I’m going to go see what my family is doing, and I run down the hill before they can protest. I didn’t have any reservations about hanging out with them, I just knew if I disappeared my mom would be pissed. I told my Mom, she blew it off as a funny story, and I mostly forgot about it. It wasn’t until this past year, when I did training on investigations into human trafficking, that I remembered those girls. I hope they were either 100% full of s**t or turned out alright.

#14

Image source: Sherman_Beardman, Daniel J. Schwarz/unsplash I think I was like 4 or 5, and my mom's side of the family was having a camping trip in Colorado. Idk why I ran off, but I did. I found this other campsite, and there was a van with a bunch of kids playing in it. Some guy told me I could go in there and play with them, and I did, and he shut the door. I was oblivious to the whole thing, and I was just playing with the other kids. Meanwhile, my family is freaking out and looking for me, and they finally found me and tried to get me out of the van, but the door was locked. They told the guy to get me out, but he was being weirdly persistent about it and saying that I was just playing and he'd bring me back later. My grandpa basically said if he didn't open the door he was going to actually k**l him. So I got out of the van, and we left, and I was sad that I couldn't keep playing. I’d had a couple of dreams about the incident when I was older, and I always thought they were just dreams until the story got brought up at a family reunion a few years ago. It shook me to the core when I realized just how close I was to being taken away from my family forever. EDIT: Wow this blew up way more than I thought it would. For all of you asking, the other kids in the van were his kids. The police arrested the ,guy and I’m assuming they took the kids with them.

#15

Image source: TheRealWedgeAntilles, Dhilip Antony/unsplash I had a childhood friend for about a year or so who lived just down the street from me. From what I can recall, he was a pretty normal kid. I remember him getting really excited one day about an upcoming visit from his uncle. He told me about a game that he and his uncle would always play together called "toiletee". From what I remember him telling me, the game involved his uncle trying to finger dollar coins out of the kid's naked a*s and the kid doing the same to the uncle. This was only ever played in the kids' tree fort, and he was allowed to keep all the dollar coins when the game was over. Thank Christ no one was allowed to play except my friend and his uncle. I moved away a short time later and never saw the kid ever again. It wasn't until many years later that I remembered it and thought to myself, "holy s**t, that's super f****d up".

#16

I was 6 years old. My mom and I lived on the 2nd floor of an apartment complex. My mom and I just got out of an a*****e household, and we were low on money. I was often bored, so to cure that, I would put my ear to the floor and hear what was going on downstairs. My mom didn't mind. She was usually swamped with work, and as long as I didn't end up hurting myself, it was fine. One day, I did this and heard two people—a man and a woman — yelling and screaming at each other. The man sounded very angry, and the woman was crying and screaming. I got up and told my mom that people were fighting. She looked up from her work and asked me some more questions. She eventually got up and told me she would be right back and to stay put. A while later, my mom comes back with the sobbing woman. My mom calls the cops, and they question all of us. Told us to have a good day and offered places for the woman to stay. I didn't understand until much later that that woman was in an a*****e relationship and my mom told me I saved her life that day. The man had a knife and was cornering her. Image source: genjen97

#17

When I was little, I was playing on the porch of my house with a friend of mine. We had cap guns that we were pretending to shoot at each other. My dad saw us from the window and rushed out, livid. He grabbed the cap gun from my hand, smashed it on the railing of the porch, and told me to get inside. After that, I was not allowed to have toy guns, and I didn't know why. All I knew was that I had never seen my dad that upset in my life. When I was in my 20s, my mom told me that when my dad was a teenager a friend of his shot himself in the head in front of my dad and a bunch of his friends. I finally understood why he was so upset seeing me and my friend shooting at each other with these guns that looked pretty realistic aside from the orange tip and realized it must have triggered a terrible memory of that day for him. Image source: -eDgAR-

#18

I lived next to some super duper Mormon people (living in Utah). They were strict Mormons, and so the "obey your parents because of the word of wisdom" thing was deeply ingrained in their family. The kids did all of the chores around the house and got "chore points" to spend. They spent them on a list of rewards. There were some smaller ones like "30 minutes on the computer" and some more expensive ones like "go on vacation to visit the cousins". Pretty normal stuff right? Except the one that said "alone time with Daddy". Well, 2 years after my family moved from that town, it turned out that their Dad was arrested on 20+ counts of m*lesting his poor kids. Haunts me to this day to think that I could have been a victim as well if my Dad didn't have a suspicious feeling of the guy from day 1. My Dad has real-life Spider-Senses. Image source: HungoverPine

#19

I had an imaginary friend (female) that I used to meet up with out in the woods when I was younger. We'd climb trees, build forts, just generally do stuff that kids do. Well, one day I went back and I couldn't "see" her for some reason. I called and yelled and for whatever reason I couldn't find my friend. I didn't mention it to my parents for years and years and when I finally did, it was jokingly because I thought I had just grown out of it. Come to find out that my friend had been very real. Both of her parents were raging d**g addicts at home and there was abuse in the home as well. She hung herself in the barn at 11 years old.. My parents somehow shielded me from this for nearly 5 years.. Image source: Mr-Howl

#20

When I was four or five, my mentally handicapped teenage aunt would take me to the bathroom, and we’d get naked & fondle each other. We did this for a while, until I tried to invite a friend to join. She acted like it’d never happened, so I didn’t speak of it again till I was in my early twenties when the movie Magnolia triggered a rush of memories. I bawled for the rest of the day. I also developed issues with s******g my pants while she was molesting me, and didn’t make the connection for a long time. I didn’t think anything was wrong with that until all the adults in my life started criticizing me for s******g my pants over the course of a few years. She had a kid a couple years ago (one of those where she kept it a secret till she was heading to the hospital). This past year, upon learning that there are suspicions that she’s doing the same with her five year old daughter, I made the local authorities aware of our past. Her age at the time kept her out of trouble, but social services knows there’s something up, and they’ve been stringing my aunt along while a trustworthy family member cares for her daughter. My aunt isn’t putting up a huge fight, so it’s looking like her daughter may be out of the woods for the foreseeable future. Image source: thisguyfightsyourmom

#21

Image source: katmarie676, kerpow69/reddit When I was about 6 or 7, my cousins and I had a lemonade stand in front of my house. This younger couple drove up and asked me specifically if I wanted to go to Jungle Bungle. It was like Chuckie Cheese's but way more fun. My cousins didn't even let me answer, so they quickly ran inside with me in tow. They told my parents, and we weren't allowed outside the rest of the day due to the couple still circling the area. I don't remember if my parents called the cops or not. I didn't realize how close I got to getting kidnapped since my d*****s probably would have gone had it not been for my wonderful cousins.

#22

Back when I was between 4-6, I used to live in a foster home with my older autistic sister (6-8) due to my mom's drug use. There I was frequently abused both emotionally and physically. I had my own room, but I only went in it when child services came over or when my foster parents or their own kids wanted to have company. The rest of my time was spent on the toilet, in the basement. I slept, shat, and ate there for weeks at a time whilst being rarely fed, and after months of this, I had an incident completely uncharacteristic of me. It was after my foster mother at the time gave me my plate of food and finished her barrage of screaming. Before uttering her last word, she, with one quick motion, turned off the light and slammed the door shut. I was utterly terrified. Quickly, I began to scan my hands along the walls, pants still around my ankles, in a pathetic attempt to find the switch in the darkness, yet to no avail. I couldn't find it. What was minutes of this felt likes hours to me at the time. It was only until after my adopted mother came in and turned on the light to laugh at my "p***y reaction," as she came to put it later, that she and I noticed s**t smeared all over the floor, wall, and ceiling. For a good number of years after that, I convinced myself there was no way I could have done that. "How would I have even gotten it on the ceiling?" I would ask myself. It wasn't until just a year ago when my brain all but suppressed the aforementioned memory that I saw a Phillip DeFranco video hit the front page, about a YouTube family who abused their kids for ad revenue. One kid in particular, named Cody, got the brunt of it. At one point, their videos go on to say that Cody wasn't allowed to go to Disneyland with them recently, due to the fact that he smeared s**t all over the bathroom walls. This is when Phillip DeFranco interjects, stating that abused kids will do that in fits of rage or trance-like states in order to subconsciously gain control over an aspect of their life. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was the one who smeared s**t all over their bathroom, and it's a sign I was considerably abused a lot worse than my brain will allow me to remember at this point in my life, probably for the better. Image source: Hello_Im_Corey

#23

Image source: forgetasitype, Getty Images/unsplash When I was in 6th grade, in 1984, my social studies teacher would reward students with trips to the movies with him, going out to eat, or coming to his apartment to hang out. The cutest boys in class would win all the time, and it would always be weird reasons like "doing his best" or "being extra helpful." I was jealous because girls never got to win. Years later, I realized it was really sketchy. I even tried to find him, because it was possible he was still "giving good boys special treatment," but he had died from lung cancer years before.

#24

Image source: PlanningMyDeath, Levi Stute/unsplash I was at a family reunion when I was really little, and some long-distance uncle asked me to go help him chop wood. My Mom intervened just before I got in his truck, and later on, I realized I was probably about to get m*lested. I had never met him before, and he left the reunion right after that. Edit: I was aged somewhere from 4-6, so I doubt I would have been any help chopping wood.

#25

I'm going to preface this by saying this is the first time I have ever spoken about the below incidents. They occurred twenty years ago and still cause me pain to this day. For my own sort of closure, I am going to tell you about it now. I'm sorry if it reads awkwardly. When I was around six, I rode the bus to school. My little sister would also ride the bus with me and since we were so young, it was mandatory that we would sit in the front of the bus. At one point during the year, a sixth grade boy took a liking to me and would sit beside me every day. He was very sweet at first, telling me that my hair or eyes were pretty. He would bring me candies and toys almost every day. At one point he asked me to be his girlfriend. I was over the moon. A first grader with a sixth grade boyfriend! Wow! I was like a Disney princess! He kissed me a few days later and when my sister (who was in the seat behind me) noticed, she started laughing and saying she was going to tell mom. Boy gave her a pack of stickers to keep quiet and leave me alone. She was content and never said a word. The next day he told me that I was a good girl and he had brought me a gift. He told me to close my eyes and I did. I heard his pants unzip and when he told me to open my eyes. Without going into detail, he asked me to kiss *it* and when I refused, he forced me to do more than that. This all took place in the front of the bus. I don't exactly remember what happened after that. I never told anybody but after that day, I never saw him again. This while part of my life had been pushed from my memory for a while. At least until my sister, a few weeks ago, asked me if I remembered a boy bribing her with stickers on the bus. It all came flooding back to me and I broke down. I still want to break down, if I'm being honest. I didn't really understand what was going on back then. Now I just feel sick to my stomach. I can't remember his name. I can't remember his face. But what he did to me refuses to leave my memory now. If you took the time to read this, thank you. Maybe now that it's 'out there' and not stuck on my head, I can finally get some closure. I'm sorry for the word vomit. Image source: ProudYeti