When were you last really scared?We'd been watching the Shining. We were staying in an old church building. In hindsight, taking the shortcut home after midnight, in the mist, through the old graveyard was a bad idea.
I'm not sure what started it, but suddenly all the hairs on my neck had gone up and I was crapping myself. It was almost as bad as when, after a few cups of coffee too many and buzzing on caffeine, I got freaked out by my own reflection in the toilets.
When were you last really scared?
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chthonic, Thu 22 Feb 2007, 15:43)
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Plummet of doomA few years ago I got into parachuting. Scary enough you might think, but this story is about my last ever jump.
If you've ever seen a war movie and seen soldiers jumping from a plane, you'll see that they are attached to a line.
When they jump out, the line pulls the parachute out of the bag and "boof"! Parachute opens. Floaty, floaty. Nice.
It's the same when you start skydiving as a civilian. You get attached to a line and jump out of a little plane.
As you get better and more confident, you start doing what's called a "dummy pull". You jump out, reach round and pull a fake handle which mimics the one on a real parachute.
The jump master watches and makes sure you're in a stable body position and counting "1000, 2000" etc, and not just flapping your arms and screaming for mother.
And so it was with me. After 6 jumps I had stopped screaming and was (apparently) ready to move on to the next step.
This involves ditching the line. You are basically jumping into oblivion and are responsible for opening your
own parachute. Before you can do this, you have to sign up to be a member of the British Parachute Association and
give them several tenners. I think they've got wind that for many people, this is going to be their last jump so they'd better cash in now.
So up we go in the little plane. "In the door", "Get ready", "Go" !
I jump out. But without the pull of the line to slow you down, believe me, you drop like a fucking stone.
So I manage to pull the cord. Just as I do so, I'm flipped onto my back. Now this is not a good place to be when a parachute is opening. This is
how people get tangled up in parachutes and come down, to use a bit of skydiving parlance, "like a bag of washing".
Now everything slows down to a crawl and I start to feel utter terror welling up within me as 3 things come before my eyes; the sun, my feet and lots of parachute lines.
"This is how I'm going to die" flashed into my brain and I took in the deep breath that would be my final, blood curdling scream.
Then "boof"!
(, Fri 23 Feb 2007, 16:59, Reply)
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