Did anything really scary happen in your town/neighborhood when

[Southsideirish]

you were growing up that really rattled you and your secure little life?
I lived about 5 miles from the townhouse where Richard Speck murdered those 9 student nurses. I'll never forget those few scorching hot summer days and nights when the city had a huge manhunt on looking for him. I was working a little north of downtown and used to commute on the Englewood El - God, I was scared and grateful to get home and lock the door and be safe and secure with my family.
Of course the '60's riots were terrifying, too, as we lived on the south side 'were scared to even open the door.

[El Supremo]

1. Sputnik

When we saw it blinking over Kansas City one evening I got really scared.

[Pegleg Thd]

3. My uncle was murdered

when he caught 2 guys stealing from the company they all worked for.That was 52 years ago.

[Southsideirish]

5. One time I was out playing with my friends and we saw something

in the sky - this was in the middle of the flying saucer scare of the 1950s'. I ran into my house screaming that "they" were coming to get us but my family were all sitting around watching Milton Berle and said it was just "weather balloon." When I saw how relaxed THEY were - I calmed down too but 'still wonder to this day what it really was.

[nini]

2. Richard Ramirez - the Night Stalker in So. Cal

it was the only time we slept with all windows closed and locked during the summer at my house.

I was in my 20s I think but it's the only time I was actually scared that he could come our way. That was a stressful time when he was on the loose.

Also, the Watts riots as a kid.. they spread down where we lived but were not as devastating as in Watts. But I remember all of us being in the living room scared shitless hearing the sirens, helicopters and mayhem

[Southsideirish]

10. Its amazing with what we lived through as kids that we are halfway

normal - esp that stuff from the '50's with the hiding under the desks, air raid drills, fallout shelters, etc.

[Spirochete]

4. When I was about 10,

some guy killed two kids with a hammer not too far from where I lived. Then a couple years later he escaped from prison (took gun from guards transporting him somewhere and drove off in their car), and was assumed to be back in town somewhere, and cautions bulletins were given. I think they caught him over the river in Oregon, though.

[bigwillq]

6. When I was in high school

Three people got murdered in our local Duchess restaurant. The place was closed for a week for health reasons (clean up) but when it re-opened I was sacred that another shooting like this would happen.

At my high school, Duchess was like our late night hang out. We all would go there to eat after various sporting events and then hang out in the parking lot.

Other than that, nothing really close to where I lived happened that scared me.

Thanks for letting me share.
-WIll

[NJCher]

7. I was in Chicago around that time

After Speck killed those nurses. We were staying at my aunt's. I, too, was terrified. I remember one night I stayed up almost all night just watching the window!

To this day I can tell you all about that window. It was a casement window and it was also in a Tudor house. There were rhododendrons outside.


Cher

[Southsideirish]

11. You know the lead prosecutor of the Speck case once wrote a book

about it and I swear, of all the books I have ever read, this one is absolutely the most terrifying. He takes you through the whole thing. How Speck was waiting to ship out and was killing time. He walked over to this park which was across from their house and went to get a drink of water from a fountain. That's when he spied one of the girls walking past the screen door in her slip and 'decided to return there. Imagine that - a second or so earlier or later at that fountain and he never would have noticed them.

[SW FL Dem]

8. We had a huge train accident - a tanker

exploded and many volunteer firefighters died.

[flamingyouth]

9. My friend's older sister was murdered when we were 9

She was 15 - and they still have not caught the killer(s). I keep hoping that with the new DNA technology, they will catch the perp once and for all. I think that incident spawned a lifelong interest in shows like "Cold Case Files," "American Justice" and the like. RIP, Sara. You were a good kid. :loveya:

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. I remember the Speck murders very well.

Although I lived on the North Side. It was just before my 17th birthday and my parents had gone out of town, leaving me and my 21-year-old sister home alone. We lived miles and miles away, but feared that our parents would be so upset at the thought of us without them to protect us that they would head home immediately. They didn't. (Not that we had any wild parties planned. We just wanted them to enjoy themselves.)

[Richard D]

13. Yup

I was right down the street from where the Baldwin Hills dam was. My grandparents and I were stuck in traffic when it gave way. We got to higher ground and watched the cars getting washed away. Somehow though I wasn't scared; being really young and being with my grandparents I knew nothing could happen to us. It was nice being innocent.

[Richard D]

14. Yup

I was right down the street from where the Baldwin Hills dam was. My grandparents and I were stuck in traffic when it gave way. We got to higher ground and watched the cars getting washed away. Somehow though I wasn't scared; being really young and being with my grandparents I knew nothing could happen to us. It was nice being innocent.

[fudge stripe cookays]

15. That's wild.

I just heard about this a year or so ago. I was watching a program on PBS called "The Wrath of God" which has a couple different episides.

It was amazing watching the footage from the TV coverage of the huge section just caving in!

FSC

[Capn Sunshine]

23. There's a pretty decent video at LATimes.com

I just happened to be looking at it this weekend:

http://tinyurl.com/2b9yw

[fudge stripe cookays]

16. 1980. A girl was murdered from the HS I was preparing to go to...

She was on her bike, and was picked up by a carload of 4 guys from another high school.

They found her body up near Waco, raped and shot. A friend of mine who was 2 years older than me had known her. It scared the crap out of me. A year or so later, a carload of guys was joking around while I was walking home from school (very close to where she'd been), and they pulled the car over. I took off running; I was terrified.

When I was around 24 or 25, a friend of a friend was abducted. Her name was Colleen Reed, and they put Kenneth MacDuff (one mean motherfucker) to death for it. He FINALLY told her family where she was before they executed him. I hope he burns in hell.

[scarlet_owl]

17. I lived down the street from a woman

who killed her children. I remember all the sirens and listening to the news story about it. I had nightmares for a long time after.

[DrWeird]

18. Whatcom Falls exploded.

There was a beautiful park with a series of waterfalls in the middle of Bellingham, Wa. I used to swim there almost daily, just a perfect natural swimming hole. One june day I decided to go swimming but had second thought as the water would still be just a bit too cold.

Anyways, a gas pipeline that traveled under the creek ruptured and sent millions of gallons of jet fuel streaming down the creek, through town. Witnesses could see the fumes in a large cloud twenty or thirty feet above the creek bed. After about twenty minutes it somehow ignited, and the whole creek went up. It was like a damn napalm attack, only bigger. Three kids were killed.

The gas company was neglegent in the whole thing. Never the less, their seedy CEO blamed two of the kids for "playing with matches."

[m-jean03]

25. Were you in town that day?

I was, and I was as devastated as you. The older boy who was killed went to high school with me at the time, and I swam at Whatcom Falls a lot.

I remember seeing the explosion, the big mushroom cloud, from the other side of town, and knowing something awful had happened.

Terrible, tragic story. The gas company CEOs have acted like rat bastard scum, you are absolutely right. :grr:

[NMDemDist2]

19. we had a small plane crash after take off into the ice cream shop

my mom had taken me to just an hour before. we lived in the neighborhood and the noise and then the sirens were horrific and they ran the footage on the News for a few days

was pretty scary, I was about 8 or 9 i think

[Wcross]

20. The Erie Canal burst nearby and killed some people

I guess I was 12 or so, the canal ruptured in Bushnells basin and wiped out some houses. I lived along the canal and down hill from it and was worried for a time that it might burst. I also got hit by lightning that same year at boy scout camp.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. One spring night when I was in ninth grade

there were seven tornados over the Twin Cities area at once.

One of them passed over the high school athletic field across the street from us, although it missed our block.

We spent the whole evening huddling in the basement with the radio, and my mother just about freaked when my father stepped outside to pick up some of the golfball sized hailstones that were falling.

Although our neighborhood was spared, large parts of the area were smashed. A huge Tudor style house in the next suburb, a real landmark on our drives to Minneapolis, was turned into a pile of scrap lumber.

There was great confusion among the national news media, because four of the affected communities were Mound and Spring Park, west of Minneapolis, and Moundsview and Spring Lake Park, north of Saint Paul. The latter two were much more badly damaged.

Early the next morning, we got a call from some friends of my mother in Germany, wondering whether we were all right. Later, some members of our church came back from a trip to England and reported that they had seen a picture of our town's fire chief on the front page of a London newspaper.

[NJCher]

22. fascinating story, Lydia

Seven tornados!!

Lucky you that your neighborhood was spared.

I lived through one when I was a young adult. The aftermath--seeing the mud slung everywhere, trees uprooted--made me feel like the devil had been though.


Cher

[Blue-Jay]

24. One of my HS friends went crazy and killed his dad and kid brother.

It was the weirdest thing. Just went into their rooms in the middle of the night, wielding an handaxe and a hammer, and butchered them. This guy was set to go to college in a few months too on a full ride scholarship for football and wrestling. He was always the FIRST person to break up a fight or stick up for a little guy that was being picked on. He had kind of retreated into his own little world after his Mom dies, and we all figured that he just needed some time to grieve.

He's still in the nuthouse, and apparently he got his ear bitten off by one of the other residents some years back.

It still spooks me to think of how Jerry could've snapped like that.