It could be people who weren't cautious of who's around, a message only meant for one pair of eyes or even a crime that was supposed to be done in secret. Whatever the case, the following people were definitely more than a little stunned when they witnessed something they were NOT meant to see.
Learning A Valuable Lesson
“I was five years old and had to go to the bathroom. I did not know that my older teenage sister had just gotten out of the shower. Yeah, she screamed some bad words and I backed out and forgot to close the door. That’s how I learned about the Nudity Taboo. I’ve always since knocked first before opening a closed bathroom door.”
A Little Too Close
“I was on call to a customer’s house to sort computer problems. I was introduced to the woman’s 16-year-old son who explained what he had been doing to the PC, basically adding hardware and attempting BIOS updates.
While he is talking, he and his mother have their arms around each other’s waists, almost cuddling which felt slightly odd. They go off to, ‘Get ready to go out later.’ I start working on the PC. 30 mins or so later I need to use the restroom.
I open the unlocked bathroom door to see the mother toweling off her wet hair with her son next to her, hand on her bottom, both naked. Son was obviously ‘happy.’
I shut the door and leave immediately. I didn’t send an invoice and never heard from them again.”
Prison Life
“I was doing 2 and a half years in prison for being a complete imbecile many years ago. I was walking down the hallway minding my own business, and two 60-something, 300+ pound apiece officers were in the act. Upon realizing that I had witnessed their performance, they quickly tried to cover themselves up, and all I could think to say was something like, ‘UH, imagoogalagalip. Zzdolipaqwak,’ roughly translated. I don’t know what I was saying, but what I was trying to convey was, ‘I DIDN’T SEE A THING, I’M SORRY, I’LL GO AWAY AS FAST AS I CAN AND FORGET THIS EVER HAPPENED,’ but it didn’t come out that way. I have tried very hard to erase the sight of the two 300+ pound guys that found each other so hot they could not wait till they got off of work to do that. Still, out of all the things I’ve seen in prison, that was the worst. I’d rather see someone get stabbed than that.”
Something No Child Should See
“I am an accident child.
I found out when I was nine years old. I saw mom’s phone lying on the bed, I took the phone to play games. Then I got bored so I vaguely remembered browsing pictures on the gallery. Then, I…well, mom received a message from dad. The message was quite horrible. At that time, they were fighting. They fought a lot, actually. They’re just… very incompatible. Very unhappy with each other.
Being the curious little tyke I was, I opened the text app. I briefly scrolled through; it seemed like another one hell of a ugly verbal fight. I kind of felt bad, but as I was about to close the app, I saw one message mentioning my name. In that particular message, I found out that the only reason my parents were forcing themselves into marriage was me. One of them wished I hadn’t happen. I tried to forget about it, I couldn’t.
Whenever they would fight, I would blame myself. Not that they fought all the time, we had our brief, happy memories too.
It appears our family was all fake rainbows and sunshine. But in the eyes of my two little brothers (…and me), we’re perfect in imperfect ways. However, it was just a matter of time. Not all married couples are soulmates, they said. It’s true. They’re divorced now.
I am torn between feeling devastated and relieved.”
Doris Isn’t In Distress…
“This one almost mentally scarred me…it still makes me shudder…
Elderly people in supported living often have necklaces or wristbands with red buttons on them. These link directly to a control center. The idea being that, for example, little Doris falls over and cannot get up. She presses her button. They answer and then call us. Sometimes these are silent alarms because Doris may be very sick or pressed it in error.
So. We were called to a silent alarm and off we went. On arrival, we walked into the supported living area and went up to the flat. The door was ajar and we knocked. No reply. ‘AMBULANCE,’ we called. No reply. Thinking that our female patient might actually be very sick we walked into the flat. Checking the living room…nothing. Bathroom…nothing. Bedroom…a very naked elderly woman lying on the bed with her eyes closed using a rather large…erm…adult toy…
We froze
She froze.
We gasped
She screamed.
We tried desperately to say something supportive, anything, anything at all, but our brains were rebooting from the large shock of the image in front of us. All my friend could mumble was something that sounded like ambulance…
After a time span that felt anywhere between ten seconds and five years, we turned away and made our apologies before leaving. We didn’t speak for about an hour.”
So Awful
“I think I was 9 or 10. I lived in rural East-Texas on a little farm about 12 miles away from the closest town. We had neighbors but there were only about 5 or 6 houses within a mile of us.
Anyway, one of those houses belonged to some family friends about a quarter mile away. I was staying on a sleep over one weekend. It was late and us kids were supposed to be asleep but we heard a knock at the door sometime in the late night hours. I remember it was raining that night as well. Startled we heard my friend’s father rouse awake and saw him exit the bedroom with a Colt .45 in hand. My friend and I snuck down the hallway to see what was up.
‘Oh, my god,’ is all his dad said. The door shut and we heard whimpering. We peeked around the corner and saw Mrs. C from down the street. She was in a torn nightgown, drenched with her face black and blue and bleeding. His dad picked her up and put her on the couch. It was only then we saw her bloody feet.
By that time my friend’s mom caught us in the hallway and we were rushed back to bed. Later, my friend Michael and I were hanging out and I asked him what that was about.
‘I heard my mom talking to my dad and she said Mr. C drinks too much, beats her up and makes her walk on broken glass.’ He said.
‘What?!’
‘Yeah, she comes over when it gets real bad, the other night was the worst I’d seen.’
‘Wait, how often does this happen?’
‘Don’t know, but she’s come over about four or five times this year.’
We never talked about it again but to this day I’ll never forget what she looked like that night. We lived there for another two or three years and to my knowledge she never left him or called the police.”
Sneak Peek
“When I was in 6th grade, a girl sitting next to me raised her hand to answer a question. I looked in her direction at just the right time to get a full on view of her boob from down her shirt sleeve. It was completely unintentional, but 6th grade me still thought of getting to see a real boob was the best thing to happen in school up to that point.”
It’s Not Your Fault
“It happened long ago when I was around 7-8 years old. And one summer afternoon, I was riding my bike when I witnessed something that still freaks me out. I saw a lady walking on the opposite side of the road and suddenly a cargo van with a company’s name on the side came and stopped beside her. Three men came out of it and forced her inside and took her away. Being a kid, I was petrified to even scream and call for help, let alone helping her in any way. I just got off my bike and hid behind a tree before they noticed me.
But I did memorize the license’s plate and ran back home to tell my mom. She calmed me down and called the cops and informed them. It shook me so much for days that I never asked my parents whether they had been following up with the police or if they knew if the police had found the lady or anything else.
Even after so many years, I don’t know what happened to the lady, but whenever I see that cargo company van, I remember that lady’s cries for help and I get shivers down my spine. It made me wonder if it would have made any difference had I been a little braver and tried to help her myself or called someone for help (there were few houses nearby), even if a little. God knows.
But I just pray and hope for that lady to be fine wherever she is, always being apologetic to her subconsciously.”
Time For Your Own Room
“Up to the age of 10, I used to sleep in my parents’ room on weekends. There was one night when I was about 8 or 9, I recall randomly waking up past midnight only to find my dad still awake. He was watching some ‘Chinese/Japanese show’ on the telly.
Intrigued, I sat up and watched it with him (he was oblivious to the fact that his daughter had just woken up). Turns out, the show was actually an adult movie – which I only realized in my later years. I vaguely remember the Chinese/Japanese woman in the show whining about the size of the men’s junk, to which the men responded by popping a magic pill into their mouth to make their junk ‘grow.’ For some reason, I found that scene utterly hilarious and burst out laughing. My dad then realized I was awake. He clumsily hopped out of bed and mumbled about how terrible that ‘show’ was, before ejecting the disc from the disc player and breaking it in front of me. No one mentioned anything about it afterwards.
There was once or twice when my younger brother and I caught our parents having some intimate time. We pretended we saw nothing and promptly went back to sleep (THEY HAVE NO CLUE THAT WE SAW WHAT WE SAW).
I guess that makes it to the list of childhood traumas.”
When Stupidity Saves You
“When I was 16, some friends suggested we go and camp the night (mid-week and mid-winter) on Camber Sands beach in Rye, which is a big, remote, flat sandy beach backed by undulating sand dunes in southern England.
We purposely arrived there at about 10.30 pm when it was dark, as wild camping is ‘illegal’ in the UK. Being ‘men’ and having no money, we arrived without any form of shelter or light, just a few sleeping bags and plans for a fire in the dunes.
Well it was blisteringly cold, cloudy (and windy) night with zero moonlight and you could barely see 10 feet in front of you. We were surprised to find that sand dunes are not the best place to find wood for a fire – so that part of the plan failed immediately. So after mucking about in the dark for a few hours, we got bored and decided to head home at about 2 am.
Until my friend suggested that before we do that, we head out to the water’s edge. At Camber, the sea goes out about half a mile or more at low tide, which it was, so we could neither see or hear the sea from where we were – so we just started walking in that general direction across the beach.
After a good 5 minutes of walking, a group of 4 middle-aged, ropey-looking chaps appeared out of the darkness, all sat on fold-out chairs in a semi-circle facing out to sea. With any sound of our approach disguised by the wind, when we said hello, it scared the actual crap out of them – one of them jumped so far out of his seat he virtually left the ground.
Finding that hilarious, and being stupid, innocent teenagers, we readily assumed they were nothing but friendly fishermen (nowhere near the water and with no equipment), and began to jovially tell them about our adventures that night.
Once they had recovered from shock, they all actively ignored our presence and didn’t really respond. Not taking the hint and (did I mention) being stupid, we continued to argue amongst ourselves about how much further away the sea was and discuss who would have the balls to go in. After tolerating our presence for less than 2 minutes, one of the chaps stood up and suddenly got very angry. With a bright red face and spitting through gritted teeth, he brandished a knife and threatened us with serious bodily harm (he was very descriptive) if we didn’t leave the beach. He was bloody terrifying.
At that point, we decided to leave the beach and go home, feeling a little hurt and wondering what on earth we did to make the fishermen so angry. ‘They were just pissed cos they probably hadn’t caught anything,’ suggested my mate.
It was only a few weeks later when telling my dad about the 4 somewhat aggressive fishermen that he chastised me for going anywhere near them and explained they were almost certainly waiting for a cross-channel shipment of drugs or worse, people.
I’m just glad we were 4 goofy, stupid kids and that we made that very apparent, as it could have gone very differently otherwise.”
“Still Haunts Me”
“To this day, I’m still freaked out about this.
It was 1985. I was five years old, and a little bit of a rebel (I still am).
Well, on this particular day I was at school. We were lining up to go inside. My friend and I were still talking, even though the teacher asked us to be quiet.
We continued our conversation. We weren’t really ignoring the teacher; we were just engrossed in our conversation.
Anyway, the teacher walked down the line, and told us to both be quiet. We stopped talking.
However, the moment the teacher turned to go back up to the front of the line, she dropped down dead.
I’ll never forget the sound of her collapsing. It was terrible.
We were ushered into the assembly hall, while the ambulance came to deal with the fallen teacher.
The sound still haunts me now.”
The Life Of A Trucker
“For a short period of time, I was a truck driver. I was stuck in heavy traffic on a four lane highway. Bumper to bumper, there wasn’t much to do as we crawled along. Next to me I pulled up on a Honda Civic and as I looked down, I could see every detail as the wife proceeded to give her husband enthusiastic mouth to junk fun time. Both were oblivious to me as we crawled along side by side until she had finished a job well done. I will never forget the look on her face, as she went to fix her unbuttoned blouse and compose herself, and she looked straight up and locked eyes with me. I am sure the broad smile on my face gave me away as she blushed deep red and began what appeared to be a heated conversation to her husband. Over the next congested 2 or 3 miles which took a very long time, we arrived next to each other multiple times, and she never looked up or made eye contact again.
Another time I was driving and pulled off at an emergency stop/roadside area pull off because my windshield wiper had become loose and was flapping, in the rain, only to pull up behind another car. As I pulled up, the car moved forward and exposed a very pregnant young lady who was squatting and attempting to pee. My headlights clearly illuminated her, and in her distress she was simultaneously attempting to pee, pull up her underwear, and waddle as fast as she could back to and get in the car. She was very clearly angry at her husband who had pulled up and allowed my headlights to reveal her in mid-stream to her consternation.”
Ummm…
“When I was in 9th grade, I came home from school and ate a plate of nachos, naturally. My little brother was sitting across from me at the dining room table doing his homework, and my mother was in the kitchen. My little brother proceeded to ask for help with his homework, to which I responded with incorrect answers, accompanied by elaborate explanations which made absolutely zero sense. My mother asked me to stop, but I was a teenager, so naturally I didn’t listen.
After the 4th or 5th wrong answer, my mom was annoyed that I wouldn’t be quiet, so she pulled up her shirt and showed me her chest. I stopped eating, threw my food away, and left the table.
I think it is safe to say this falls into the category of ‘things you were not supposed to see.’ To this day I have little respect for nachos or my mother.”
Possibly Saving Lives
“Being a kid who lives in Iraq, my childhood was filled of seeing dead-bodies on the street which caused my mom to cover our eyes on our way to school.
There was this one time we were going from Baghdad to our relatives house in Ramadi (a place filled with jihadi terrorists). We (me and my dad) were in the car and we saw 3 masked men digging holes in our lane in the street and preparing bombs, waiving their hands telling us to mind our own business and drive away.
10 minutes later into the road we saw 5 Humvees of American soldiers driving towards us (they always took the wrong side of the street to avoid bombs). The highway could barely fit one car because one half of it was damaged as a result of bombings and tanks moving on it, so there was no place to move which made both my dad and the Humvees slow down (nearly stopped). The first Humvee was just in front of me and being the one who is sitting next to the window, I waved to get the soldier’s attention and made sign with my hands that we saw people putting bombs. He pointed at the direction asking if it was that way (they direction they are going), and I nodded. Then our car passed them and we continued our way.
I really hope that I saved those soldiers lives. I never got to know what happened.”
Classified Information
“The company owner stopped by my desk to talk about marketing. When he left, he forgot a sheet of paper. I didn’t notice the paper until much later in the day.
When I finally noticed it, I picked it up to see what it was. It was a list of the company’s managers (I was one of them) along with their annual salaries.
It took me a second to realize what I was seeing and to figure out that the company owner had accidentally left it on my desk a few hours earlier.
As I scanned down the list… there I was… the lowest paid of all the managers.
I had already suspected I was the lowest paid since I was the youngest on the management team; the list of salaries confirmed it. At the same time, I could see that there was a clear ceiling on what I could earn inside the company, and that ceiling wasn’t all that far away.
I quit shortly after that. I shredded the sheet of paper since it would have been quite awkward to return it to the owner, and I didn’t want any other employees to see the list.”
Putting In The OT
“I worked for a web grocer startup back in the early ’00s. We did shift work, even in IT, and part of the gig was monitoring internet usage in the warehouse. Only the supervisor was supposed to have any sort of network access, and that only for email. Being a startup, we were cost-conscious, and were trying to save pennies everywhere we could, including limiting network access to those who needed it to do their jobs.
Well, one night, I noticed that the day-shift supervisor’s PC was logging a crazy amount of network throughput. Since that PC shouldn’t have been in use at all, it stood out. So, I went down to see who was doing what.
The day-shift supervisor’s office had no windows, but the door had a small window on it. Yet someone had plastered a piece of paper over that window from the inside. How odd. It was an imperfect job, however, and there was a corner where you could see into the office. So I looked. There, spread out in the desk chair, was one of the warehouse staff, a stunningly beautiful young woman with amazing uh.. attributes. Stark naked, she was pleasuring herself to a webcam that she’d brought in and plugged into the PC. Turns out she was an early pioneer in the Canadian ‘Cam girl’ sites, and would use slow times in the warehouse night shift to get in a few extra hours of web cam traffic.
I didn’t report her, but I did put an anonymous note in her locker telling her that work assets were to be used only for business, not for personal ‘activities,’ especially on company time, and then thanked her for ‘the show.’ Never had any further incidents of her abusing network resources for her own ‘business.'”
NO ONE Should See That
“My uncle had died after a brief fight with colon cancer. My entire family went to the house to pay our last respects. It was a somber and sad place and after some time, my aunt called the mortuary to come pick up his body from the house. It was a Saturday night and I guess the skeleton crew (not a pun) was working, which consisted only one skinny guy.
He languished putting my uncle’s body into a body bag, but finally he began to carry my uncle out on a mini gurney. Unfortunately, the house had narrow corridors and he was struggling to move around. I decided to try to help the guy and helped push the gurney. We had almost made it to the open space of the living room when he made a quick turn and lifted the whole thing upwards.
My uncle’s corpse popped into the air, falling towards me. Worse, he fell halfway out of his unzipped bag. I caught him as he fell onto me, with his eyes frozen crossed eyes staring right at me. I pushed him back onto the gurney, feeling creeped out. The guy looked at me with a scared look and said, ‘Sorry,’ as we pushed the body out into the living room. He took the gurney outside and thanked me again and said he’d take it from here.
No one saw this, lucky for the morgue guy, I can’t imagine my aunt or cousins seeing him fly out of the body bag like that and I only later told my sister about it.
I still have visions of my uncle, looking at me one last time.”
Hot For Teacher
“I was 16-years-old. I was doing an art project and needed some cotton balls, so my teacher advised me to get some from the nurse’s office. It was a small room on the first floor where the school nurse, a charming girl in her 20’s, was always ready to help anyone with anything.
I was really in a hurry to get the cotton balls because class was going to end soon. As I reached the room I dashed in, opening the door.
I saw the nurse, my English Teacher (a woman of about 30) with her hair undone, and my Computer teacher (lady of about 27). I saw that all of them were sweating a bit and had their clothing dropped down. They shouted at me to leave. I can still clearly see that day in my mind!”
The Milkman
“When I was about 10, my first job was helping the milkman make deliveries from the milk truck. I got paid a few dollars a day plus all the chocolate milk I could drink. He would take bottles in a carrier to a house while I loaded up the next carrier and store the returned empties in the rear of the truck.
Usually, he dropped off the milk at the front door, but sometimes somebody—usually the woman of the house—invited him in. Sometimes he’d spend a few minutes chatting before running back to the truck.
One time he went inside for a chat and stayed an extra long time. I finally got impatient so I went to the front door of the house. Just then he pushed the door open and I saw inside. The woman standing in the middle of the living room was just starting to put her bra back on. My jaw dropped. He hustled me back to the truck and said nothing.
Back in the day, we heard jokes about kids looking like the milkman, but on that day I saw that there could be some truth in it.”
Just Kidding Mom
“I watched an adult tape of my oldest brother (+recorded it).
I was 11 years old. Me and my younger brother were really bored and decided to use my oldest brother’s laptop to play games. We opened the screen and the first thing we saw was a hardcore adult scene that was going on with my brother and some random girl.
We looked at each other and ran upstairs to our room, locked the door and proceeded to watch the entire thing. It was almost like a mix of arousal, confusion and disgust (also we found it really funny).
Suddenly, I had the bright idea of recording it and then showing it to him later purposely just to tick him off and embarrass him. We took separate videos and spent the next week laughing our butts off about this private joke that we had.
A few days later, I wanted to test the waters with my parents and kinda put out the hypothetical of watching + recording a family member being intimate. Needless to say, my mom freaked out and started talking about therapy and counseling sessions. Luckily, I played it off as a joke. I deleted the video and me and my brother agreed to never speak of it again
(P.S. I come from a really conservative Asian family).”
Love Is Blinding
“My girlfriend’s friend was traveling from a different city and needed a place to stay. I offered him to stay with me. The three of us were chilling. Then I went to get cigarettes. When I came back and entered the room, I saw her lying in his lap and they were in the middle of a kiss. They quickly moved apart acting like nothing happened.
I too behaved like I didn’t see anything. Didn’t speak to her about it. We broke up a few months later, but not because of this incident. I loved her way too much, still a part of me does.
It’s been two years since that incident. I’m not sure if it was something I should or shouldn’t have seen, as it didn’t really affect our relationship then, love kept me blinded.”
Don’t Open Locked Doors
“Out of desperation having been unemployed for four years for a number of reasons, I had taken a job as a part-time cleaner at my local supermarket. Part of the duties are to clean the bathrooms.
Work for me starts at 5:30 am, and one of the first things I do is to clean the bathrooms, particularly the women’s. I assumed that the floor staff would not have started to come in, and I could quickly clean the room and leave so as to avoid any invasion of female privacy.
One day I was cleaning the stalls one by one and noticed that one was locked from the inside. I assumed that there was something wrong, i.e. the toilet was blocked/out of order. So using a coin I opened the latch. Half open, I found a woman duly seated on her ‘throne.’ Clearly she was shocked and made a squeal, I rapidly apologized and closed the door.”
The “Friend”
“When I was about 10 or 11 years old, my father went away to work in a different state. One night, my mom’s ‘friend’ came to visit late at night. I was watching TV in the living room and they sat there talking about normal stuff. After some time I decided to go to my room to sleep but I couldn’t sleep. I waited for around an hour or two maybe and I decided to go downstairs for a glass of water.
At that point I assumed that this guy had already left and that my mom was already sleeping, even more because all the lights appear to be off, but when I was about half way down the stairs I started to hear some strange noises and that is when I noticed that my mom and her ‘friend’ were doing it right there in the living room. I couldn’t clearly see them because the lights were off, but I could see that this guys was on top of her and the moaning and movement was evident. They were so into it that did they did not even take notice of me.
I went back to my room very disturbed. At that age, the mechanics of that were still not clear to me but the intimacy between my mom and this stranger was sufficient for me to know that she was cheating on my father.
That happened more than 30 years ago and I’ve never mentioned that to any one.”