Imagine meeting your end because you accidentally stepped on a rake and the handle flew up, delivering a fatal blow to your forehead… It might seem crazy, but it can happen.

Death is coming for all of us. We just don’t always know when or how it’ll strike. Some people are lucky enough to go peacefully in their sleep. Others have left the living shocked by the way they suddenly took their last breath.

A person recently asked, “What’s the weirdest way you personally know someone died?” and the stories came flying in faster than the Grim Reaper himself. Some are tragic, others ironic, and a few are almost too bizarre to believe. They’re all reminders that while life is strange, death can be stranger yet.

Buckle up, because Bored Panda has put together a list of the best Final Destination stories for you to scroll through while you contemplate your own fate. May they motivate you to live life to the fullest… but always with a hint of caution. If you’re curious to know what you’re most and least likely to die from, you’ll find that info between the images.

#1

My dad’s great uncle had a heart attack and on the way to the hospital his ambulance was hit by a train and everyone died.

whoisfourthwall:

Wait, everyone? Even the people on the train? Everyone, everyone?

OP:

As far as I remember from the story my grandpa told me, it was a freight train that hit the ambulance. This happened in the late 1930s, early 1940s. When my grandmother passed away 20 something years ago, I found a newspaper article about the accident but I don’t know what happened to it. And there’s no one left on that side of the family to ask to find out more. 😪

Image credits: ScaryCarrie23

#2

Dude I used to party with fell way too deep into the booze. Like never saw him not blacked out. Lost contact for a decade or two and I saw on the local news he sobered up and was volunteering as a crossing guard at the local elementary school and he got k**led saving a kid by pushing them out of the way of a speeding car. Didn’t expect him to go out a hero like that.

Image credits: Oak510land

You’re more likely to die from an accidental opioid overdose than you are from a motor vehicle crash in the U.S.A. That’s according to data released by the National Safety Council or NSC.

Americans often worry about the wrong things, warns the NSC, adding that many people are paranoid about meeting their end in a car accident, or being struck by lightning.

“Fear is natural and healthy,” notes the site. “It can help us respond to danger more quickly or avoid a dangerous situation altogether. It can also cause us to worry about the wrong things, especially when it comes to estimating our level of risk.”

The NSC cautions that if we overestimate our risk in one area, it can lead to anxiety and interfere with carrying out our normal daily routine. Ironically, it can also lead us to underestimate real risks that can injure us or cause death.

#3

My son’s coworker just fell over dead one day. He landed on his dog and they both died. 🙁

simply_overwhelmed18:

Mine is a close call and not a death, but one of my sisters staff had a weird feeling one day he shouldn’t be alone, he wasn’t sick at all and couldn’t explain it. So he said yes to working a shift he wasn’t rostered on to work as someone had called in sick. Halfway through the shift in front of customers and staff he was behind the till and suddenly just dropped to the floor. They thought he was joking as he was only 18 at the time, but a second later they realised he was not responding to them. One other staff member was training to be a nurse and realised something was horribly wrong and started doing CPR. He survived, and they said if he was alone he would have died. He now has a defib and pace maker, but no one can tell him why his heart stopped. This was 2 years ago and he hasn’t had any type of heart issues since.

Image credits: Secret-Weakness-8262

#4

My elderly uncle was standing in a restaurant foyer waiting to be seated. A couple of kids were running around, one crashed into him and knocked him down. My uncle broke his neck, ended up paralyzed, and died of a blood clot a week later in the hospital.

Image credits: belgravya

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the U.S. and worldwide. In fact, there’s a 1 in 6 chance that this is how you’ll meet your end.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ischaemic heart disease is responsible for 13% of global deaths. “Since 2000, the largest increase in deaths has been for this disease, rising by 2.7 million to 9.1 million deaths in 2021,” notes WHO.

Ischemia is a condition in which some parts of your body don’t get enough blood, and in turn, not enough oxygen. In this case, it would be your heart. This is often due to a build-up of plaque in the arteries’ walls.

“As the plaque develops, the arteries narrow,” explains the Medical News Today site. “This makes it difficult for blood to flow around the body and increases the risk of heart attack or stroke. It can also give rise to angina, arrhythmias, and heart failure.”

Some of the best ways to prevent heart disease are to stop smoking (if you’re a smoker), to exercise, maintain a healthy weight, get enough sleep, manage stress, eat the right food and go for regular medical screenings.

#5

A small asphalt company in the town over hired a 15 year old kid as a favour to his father to help keep him out of trouble. On his first job, he stood behind the asphalt machine and for whatever reason the entirety of the hot molten asphalt contents of the machine dumped out onto the kid. He burned and suffocated to death at the same time. It was horrible news. This was 2007 ish.

Sproose_Moose:

This is like a thing that happened in my town. Boys were in a class where it’s woodwork etc but this was welding.
Drum hadn’t been properly processed to remove all of the excess oil/fuel.
I was in class when I heard a giant boom. The kid had welded into the drum and all of the excess petrol hadn’t been properly cleaned out so it’s sitting in a contained metal drum. He didn’t die instantly but had 98% burns to his body.
That was really disturbing and sticks with me over 20 years later.

Image credits: aHostileApostle

#6

A very special woman I knew was k**led by an elevator in a freak accident. She was just stepping on and it jerked up without the doors having closed properly. She fell back and got crushed between the floors, and witnesses in the elevator saw it happen. They were stuck for over an hour with her dead body still in place as emergency responders tried to free her.

She was one of 3 people I knew and really liked that died within 6 months. Had a very hard time dealing with that, it changes you when you’re young.

Image credits: MirthandMystery

If you’re worried about dying in a plane crash, the National Safety Council’s data might soothe your fears. While it’s not impossible, the NSC says there were too few deaths of that nature in 2023 to even calculate the odds. The same applies to train crashes and death by lightning.

You do, however, stand a 1 in 91 chance of accidentally falling to your death. Especially as you get older. There’s actually been a disturbing and sharp increase in the number of people dying as a result of falling in the U.S.

#7

When I was in my late teens, one of my friends crashed into a mountain while hang gliding.

Acheloma:

One of my brother’s classmate’s dads was a pilot. The whole family died when the dad crashed their plane into the side of a mountain. He flew them all that route to go to vacation pretty often, not sure what went wrong that day.

Image credits: Prize_Ice6474

#8

My friend was a house mom at a sober living house and snuck this dude in to have s*x. Dude was a big fella, like close to 400 big. My friend is tiny. Like 115, and that’s probably shooting over. She is tiny. As he was finishing he had a heart attack and died. She lost her job and b**ty call in the same minute.

Image credits: SoftSir5699

“In 2023, more than 41 000 individuals older than 65 years died from falls,” reveals the JAMA Health Forum, adding that more older adults die from falls than from breast or prostate cancer, car crashes, overdoses, and all other unintentional injuries combined.

More importantly, notes the site, the mortality rate for falls among older adults in the U.S. has more than tripled during the past 30 years. “In contrast, death rates due to falls decreased during the past 30 years in other high-income countries,” it adds.

#9

Just read a local story where a guy was trying to shoot a bird in a building. Bullet went through wall and k**led his 14 yr old daughter and then they tried to cover it up. Poor girl.

Image credits: hookahsmokingladybug

#10

My friends grandfather, 89 and in amazing health, went out for his regular afternoon walk, and someone backed over him on the way out of their driveway. It happened just last year. It was so tragic for his poor wife and family.

Image credits: ServiceFinal952

The National Safety Council has also revealed that a preventable death occurs every two minutes. And over 7,000 preventable injuries occur every hour, most of them at home. It adds that preventable injuries are at an all-time high in the United States, ranking as the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

“For too long, preventable deaths and injuries have been called ‘accidents,’ implying unavoidable acts of God or fate that we are powerless to stop,” notes the NSC. “This is simply not true.”

#11

Guy & his wife were with a tour group in Norway. They were on one of those peninsulas that went out over a fjord. He was taking a group photo, and backed up a bit to get the whole group in. He stepped backwards over the cliff.

Image credits: BigGrayBeast

#12

The owner of a garden nursery I frequented stepped on the business end of a garden rake, causing the handle to fly up and deliver a fatal blow to his forehead.

Image credits: budk11

#13

A blood infection from a nail salon.

Image credits: legacyxboo

#14

Grandma’s former neighbour had a seizure and was taken to the hospital. In the hospital she at some point stood up from the bed, looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Lord, may I come home?’ At that point she had another seizure and died.

Image credits: Meikeetc

#15

They were mad about being put into what was really quite an upscale nursing home by their kids, because they were an absolutely s**t, mean-spirited, narcissistic, person their entire life, , and nobody wanted to live with them in-house.. so a month later, they literally just willed themselves to die. Not out of sadness. Just. willed themselves. The most indefatigable iron-willed person I ever knew.

Image credits: tauntonlake

#16

One of my cousins tried to rob a doughnut shop while some cops were in there. Ended up finding out the actual plan was s*****e by cop, rather than successfully robbing the store.

#17

My childhood friend Dave’s mom Marla was a travel agent and tour guide in the 80’s. She was leading a tour through Europe and caught the flu. She soldiered on like a trooper, got the group back to the U.S., and then drove 2 hours home from the airport. She must have been exhausted and nearly delirious when she got home.

When she pulled into the garage, she accidentally left the car running, and accidentally left the kitchen door into the house open. The car exhaust filled up the house with carbon monoxide. She was found dead the next morning, upstairs in bed with her two little dogs. It was a tragic accident.

#18

Next door neighbor kid and his friend stole a stick of dynamite. They drove out into the desert to pop it off. One kid his behind the car and the other ducked down behind an open door with its window down but he wanted to see so he was peeking over the door. BOOM. Kid at the door took a baseball sized rock to the throat. Dead before he hit the ground. Other kid (my neighbor) was unhurt. But all kinds of f****d up. Years later he ended up with addictions and a 20 year prison sentence for an unrelated murder when a deal went sideways.

#19

Our friend was doing some tree trimming by himself on his rural property when he was crushed beneath a mammoth tree that fell the wrong way. I guess he was trapped for quite some time, so it was not a quick death. He was only 45.

To further compound this tragedy, his 14 year old son was the one who found him. That had to be traumatic.

#20

Water skiing at night. Skier got tangled in “brush”, let go and sank in the middle of what wasn’t brush but a water moccasin o**y. Died by snakebite.

#21

Sometime in the 80’s an ex girlfriend of mine her husband got drunk in the winter time driving home. He pulled over to puke,  fell out of his car and passed out. He was found face frozen to the ground. He had choked on his vomit.  Not a pleasant way to go. He was 28.

#22

Minor gallbladder inflammation, with a touch of narcissistic personality disorder. After the diagnosis, he got mad at the doctors for not “treating him” (treatment was diet changes for 2 weeks). He got progressively worse, often did the opposite of the doctors recommendations, and died less than a year later from multiorgan failure and sepsis.

#23

A friend of a friend’s dad got struck by lightning whilst mowing the lawn.

#24

I lived in Wakefield. There was a food plant called Farm Stores. Very big employer for the area. Staff were bussed in from nearby towns.

There was a massive mixing bowl for pork pie Mince.

One day several of the workers went out for a smoke leaving one lad on his own. He needed to retrieve something and ended up falling into the mixer. He got minced. Us in Wakefield didn’t dare eat pork pies for ages after that!

#25

This took place when I was in middle school, so mid-1970s.

My mom belonged to a weekly women’s bowling league that met every Thursday afternoon. It was mainly bored housewives with a few older widows, and was more social than competitive. Everyone cheered when the 69 year old widow managed to throw something besides a gutter ball.

Mom would always treat herself to a hotdog and coke from the concession stand, and have a pleasant chat with the woman who always worked there.

One day, the concession stand was closed because the woman had killed her husband the night before with a bowling ball. She dropped it on his head while he was sleeping, then picked up the ball and dropped it again.

The next day, the joke going around middle school was that his last words were “Spare me”.

#26

A relative was driving on the opposite side of the highway when a log rolled off a lumber truck and smashed into his windshield.

#27

I wasn’t officially allowed to date (I was about 15) but I was seeing a guy from a really strict church which wouldn’t let him date anyone outside of it. He sold shoes and I bought an unusual number of shoes from him because it was the only time we could spend together. His father owned a few vending machines and he’d help his dad out. One day his dad didn’t strap a vending machine to the forklift, it fell off and onto my boyfriend and killed him. I couldn’t even go to the funeral.

#28

Fella I knew went out and got drunk at a bar, then broke into some dude’s house to pass out on his couch (naked). Dude found him in the morning and shot him dead.

#29

When I was in 3rd grade, a 6th grader in my town was buried up to his neck in sand at the beach on a summer Camp trip. An air pocket collapsed beneath him, and he suffocated while his camp mates desperately tried to dig him out.

Parents: never under any circumstance bury your kids in sand at the beach.

#30

The weirdest for me is not unheard of among epileptic patients. A student had a seizure in the shower, hit her head and knocked herself out, fell on the drain, then drowned.

This was within a week of her graduating. It was heartbreaking for the students.

#31

My former manager at a funeral home took his own life by drinking embalming fluid in the funeral home’s prep room.

#32

A coworker died running a marathon a few months before his wedding. He was in his early 30s.

#33

One of my best friends at work was on a video call and died on his keyboard. Just went down hard.

They tried to move me into his cubicle. Couldn’t do it.

#34

A buddy of mine was running thru a campground and ran neck first into some chicken wire someone was using at their site. Slit his throat ear to ear. It was only a couple months after high school graduation.

#35

A lad I knew in the 90s was tripping on LSD with his mates. They went to cross the railway line and waited for a train to pass. He crossed first and was hit by another train coming the other way.

His mates didn’t know what was going on and spent quite a while afterwards traipsing up and down the railway tracks off their faces and shouting his name, unable to comprehend why there was bits of clothing, blood and meat all over the tracks glistening in the moonlight.

#36

This happened when I was younger and always has stuck with me : One summer a family of 5 I believe rear ended a truck carrying hot tar and the tar covered their car😖.

#37

30 years ago, friends father did a very high dose of LSD with two of his friends. They were sitting on the wall of a cliff, tripping hard. One of the friends said something to the extent of “I think I’m done. Bye guys” and stood up, got on top of the wall, and jumped to his death.

#38

A kid from my high school tried to heat up a lava lamp on his stove and shards of glass shot out and got him in the heart.

#39

My classmate from 3rd grade died when we were all in high school due to her brother accidentally shooting off a gun he had in the other room. She was having breakfast in the kitchen and the bullet got her in her side and sadly passed in the hospital.

#40

My very close friend growing up was named Theodore (Teddy). Hadn’t seen him in like 12 years, but we were buddies on FB and messaged fairly frequently. When I gave birth to my son I named him Theodore, I just loved the name. I called Teddy that morning about an hour after labor to tell him I had chosen his name, and his mom answered the phone. They had found him hanging in his closet about an hour earlier.

#41

When i was a kid my neighbor was ran off the road on his motorcycle by a drunk driver. He was decapitated by a guy wire to utility pole. It happened in my neighborhood, i didn’t personally see it but many others did. People talked about the horror of that for many years after.

#42

He died after trying to cut down an old tree; he n his buddies couldn’t get the last large branch to fall. Leaned against the tree for a rest and the branch came loose and that was it.

#43

A friend of my mom was riding his 4 wheeler and was attacked by an owl, caught a talon in neck and bled out.

#44

The manner of death wasn’t weird, just the circumstances, and I never actually met them, but this happened to the people who used to own my house. The house was owned by an elderly (84 years old) couple who had been HS sweethearts and had been married for over 60 years. He had been suffering from dementia and his health was declining but they still lived on their own. One night, she woke to find him unresponsive. She called 911, but they were unable to revive him and she died that same night.

#45

This isn’t really an answer to the question but one of my neighbors died in his house a couple years ago. I’m not sure how he passed away but no one found him for weeks & when someone finally went to his house, there were thousands of coke bottles all around the house. Just filling every part of the floor. They were everywhere.

#46

Jim Fixx. He wrote 2 books about running and died of a massive heart attack while……running.

#47

I have no tales of actual deaths that aren’t just straight up traumatic, but, I almost died by slipping on a banana peel with a butter knife in my hand when I was ≈9. I turned my head just in time for it to slice up my ear instead of plunge straight into my eye, which is where it would have gone had I not done that. Had to get my ear stitched because despite being dull af (as butter knives are) it tore through the cartilage and split my ear in half.

Would have been one hell of a story for my family to talk about if it had actually killed me.

#48

Choked on a baby carrot :/.

#49

Had teeth pulled and bled out in the bathroom.

#50

A auto parts salesman I knew gave up drag racing because his wife thought it was too dangerous. He took up flying remote control airplanes, and flew one into himself killing him 2 months before retirement.

#51

Stabbed 94 times by random psycho while sleeping.

#52

My classmates did some stupid senior prank thing at a waterslide park(clogging the slides with dozens of people) and one of my friends fell to her death after the slide broke off from like 3-4 stories up.

#53

High school classmate of mine was shot and killed while hunting with his dad. Another hunter mistook him for an animal of some sort and shot him in the head.

#54

They got swallowed by a sinkhole.

#55

My great uncle got shot by his dog going out hunting. He left the rifle resting on a stump and the dog stepped on it.

Least… that’s how the story goes from my great aunt.

#56

My neighbor had twin sisters. They never married and lived together their whole lives. One day one sister died suddenly from an aneurysm. The other sister was lost without her other half. My neighbor had been a widow for a few years and was an empty nester. She invited her living sister to move in with her. She agreed and decided to start packing that very day. She went up into her attic to get some suitcases cases to pack and fell through the floor of her attic and died.

#57

A friend of mine was driving home from work one day, stuck in traffic, when a garbage truck lost control on the overpass above him and fell on his car. Still can’t believe it happened. It was very sad….

#58

A good friend of mine was out hiking with other friends and ate what he thought were wild carrots. It turned out to be poison hemlock. They did airlift him to the hospital but he didn’t make it.

#59

My neighbor was water skiing on a lake. She wiped out, but was too close to the boat. The propeller got her, and d**n near decapitated her. She was still alive when they hauled her out of the water, but she bled out very quickly after.

I f*****g hate boats.

#60

My grandma was in the hospital for a non fatal stroke. A nurse aide was helping her eat and fed her a piece of chicken which she wasn’t supposed to eat due to not having her dentures in. She choked on the piece of chicken and died. This happened about 25 years ago.

#61

He finished a long distance run, ran down a boat ramp into a river, jumped in and was dead instantly from the thermal shock on his system.

#62

I’ve got a friend who was driving down the highway minding his business. As he drove under an overpass there was an accident on said overpass. A car fell from it and crushed his car.  Everyone survived except for him. 

I’ve got another friend who went on a hike with her dog. She did the same hike multiple times a month and one of her favourite places was right by this waterfall. So this time she went out by the waterfall, but she slipped.  She fell over the falls, hit her head on the rocks at the bottom, and that was that.  Her body was found by some children hiking with their parents. The dog was fine. .

#63

Struck by a blade that sheared off a tractor as he was driving past a farm. He was decapitated whilst going 90 km/hr.

#64

I’ve been thinking about this guy from my high school lately…. He was put on a 72 hour hold for s******l ideations. The hospital staff let him go after those 72 hours because he promised not to hurt himself. He IMMEDIATELY went to the top of the hospital’s parking garage and jumped off.

#65

Guy on d***s somehow got himself pinned between furniture and front door. He had been there for a minute.

#66

My grandma dug a hole and shot herself into it while on the phone with a sibling of hers. I was 12. It was not a good time. I’m close with another of her sisters now and we spend time together every month.

One friend in his mid 20s just suddenly died from a brain aneurism. We helped his family clean out his apartment.

Also have had several friends take their own lives.

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