Some stories are so powerful that they leave an indelible mark on the people who hear them. These stories, which range from heartbreaking personal losses to creepy true horrors, stay with people who lived through them or hear them, making them feel things that are hard to forget and impossible to ignore. Each story is a powerful reminder of how fragile life is and how powerful tragedy can be over time.

Because I was only 9, my mom had a hysterectomy when she was in the hospital. My aunt watched me for a few days. My mom called the house and asked to talk to my aunt on the day she was supposed to come home. My aunt has trouble hearing, so she put the phone on speaker. My mother said, “She can’t hear you, right?” as I walked away. When my aunt said no, my mom told her that there were problems with the surgery and that her stitches had come loose when she got up to go to the bathroom the night before. The woman lost blood on the floor, and a nurse found her there. She was scared that she wouldn’t make it. My aunt might have thought I could hear everything when the phone was on speaker. I pretended I hadn’t heard anything and ran to my room, where I cried all night because I thought my mom wouldn’t come home. Everything worked out fine, and after a week, she was back at home. But hearing her talk about that event when I was 9 years old still scares me. From marmaladecat7 on Reddit

“We don’t need to care about him since he’s adopted.” I was about 10 years old and on vacation at a nearby summer resort with some family friends. The couple had been trying for a long time to have a child, but after about 10 years, they decided to adopt a toddler instead. After a year, the woman got pregnant and had two more biological children. She still loved her adopted child very much. The husband, on the other hand, stopped caring about their adopted child and spoiled their biological child so much that he liked telling the adopted child about it. Some of the jokes he told about giving the kid back because they are not related by blood were hurtful and not appropriate. From Sweetragnarog on Reddit

I went to see my brother from out of state (I’m a woman). We went to the store, and then he dropped me off at his college apartment. He then went with my dad to do something else. The landline phone of my brother rang. When I tried to answer it, it went straight to his voice mail (this was in 1999). The voice message was from a man and said, “Hey, I saw you with an ugly girl not long ago.” GenXScorp and Reddit

I heard a girl I liked saying to her friend, “You know, he’s cute, but I think we’ll just just stay friends.” I heard that just seconds before I was about to ask her out on a date. K0m4r0v on Reddit

It was 15F and I was getting my impacted wisdom teeth taken out. The numbing agent didn’t work on me because I was awake. I told them I was hurt, not numb. The last thing they said was that I would have to come back later to finish if I didn’t stop crying. I ended up cutting ties. When I heard them laugh, I knew they thought I was being silly and weak. To my surprise, I have a genetic condition that makes local anesthetics not work right on me. from mgentry999 on Reddit

It may be a bit of a cheat, but seeing a plane crash into the World Trade Center on live TV when I was a happy-go-lucky kindergartenern never really left me. From AlphaBetaEd on Reddit

CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE…