No one can live forever, and sooner or later, every life comes to an end. Still, knowing that does little to prepare us for when it actually happens. And sometimes, the circumstances can be so sudden or unexpected that they are difficult to even process.
One Redditor asked people to share the craziest way someone they knew had passed away, and they came through with some truly wild stories. We gathered some of the most shocking and saddest ones below. Scroll down to read them, but be warned that this article contains sensitive and potentially upsetting content.
#1

My friend from high school had a real piece of [trash] stepdad. Anyway he died after being sat on by a cow. Sometimes justice is poetic.
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81points
#2
Each one by itself isn’t so crazy, but together it’s pretty wild. Some people I knew growing up got married. Pretty young. Had two kids. Driving back to Utah, they hit a patch of black ice, and the young mom just happened to be unbuckled at the moment to take care of a baby in the back seat. She was ejected from the vehicle and died. Age 22. The young dad gets remarried a few years later and has two more kids. While trimming branches from a tree, he falls and breaks his neck and died. So his wife with the four kids gets remarried. A few years later while celebrating her birthday she suffers either an aneurysm or embolism and slumps into her mother-in-law’s lap, dead. Her new husband, who is not related by blood to any of the four kids, quickly adopts them all, goes back to school to become a teacher, and finishes raising them all. Has yet to remarry. The kids are all in their late teens/early twenties now and they’re all great people, from what I hear.
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60points
#3

He was drunk, thought the gun was unloaded, tried to be funny, made a fatal Russian roulette joke.
Everyone else sitting at the table ended up in therapy and I'm glad I stayed home that night.
Everyone else sitting at the table ended up in therapy and I'm glad I stayed home that night.
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59points
#4

I know a guy who was using his body to hold a mattress down on the back of a pickup truck. They got out on the highway, the mattress with the guy on it blew off. He hit the highway and then in Looney Tunes style, the mattress landed on him. This guy was my father's cousin.
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57points
#5

My wife's grandfather was standing on the corn in his silo to break apart some that had gotten stuck due to moisture. Fell through and was buried in the corn. Nobody was with him so they didn't suspect anything until he didn't come in for dinner. Allegedly he had just found out he had cancer and knowing that, the family was at least grateful he went out that way instead of a prolonged illness.
FIR3W0RKS:
This is actually a horrendously common way for people to die on family owned farms nowadays, with 15-25 people in America dying every year to it.
Also, suffocation is a horrible way to go out, I would not wish that death on anyone, being buried alive.
FIR3W0RKS:
This is actually a horrendously common way for people to die on family owned farms nowadays, with 15-25 people in America dying every year to it.
Also, suffocation is a horrible way to go out, I would not wish that death on anyone, being buried alive.
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55points
#6

A tooth infection. The infection made its way into her blood stream and went to her brain. She had a stroke while she was in bed. I didn’t know she was sick at all and I don’t think she did either.
Longjumping_Ad_4431:
Probably more common, but when it happened I couldn't wrap my head around it... my Aunt died from a really bad toothache.
The toothache quickly turned into an abscess, then she was in a coma for a bit.
Toothache to death in less than a month.
That's wild to me.
Longjumping_Ad_4431:
Probably more common, but when it happened I couldn't wrap my head around it... my Aunt died from a really bad toothache.
The toothache quickly turned into an abscess, then she was in a coma for a bit.
Toothache to death in less than a month.
That's wild to me.
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45points
#7

My great grandfather worked in the coal mines his whole life. He had black lung, yet still smoked several packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes a day. And also drank a daily pint of Crown Royal.
He died at 92. He got hit by a truck walking home from the liquor store.
He died at 92. He got hit by a truck walking home from the liquor store.
45points
#8

Plane crash. He saved his daughter by bear hugging her. She was the only survivor.
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45points
#9

Didn't sterilize their hands picking an ingrown hair on their Brazilian wax - got flesh eating disease. Truly horrific all the bits they lost.
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43points
#10

For people in certain industries, likely a well known risk and not "crazy", but when I was younger a family friend died from going into an empty storage tank. Like a big one. Maybe the kind on tanker trucks, but not sure since I was a kid when it happened and didn't get the details. Despite being empty of liquid, there were fumes enough to displace all the oxygen and he suffocated. Two other people went in to save him, and one of them died, too. The other had lifelong effects from prolonged hypoxia.
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42points
#11

My uncle passed away, and at his memorial service, my grandpa (uncle’s dad) buried a portion of his ashes. While digging the hole at the cemetery, my grandpa was bitten by a spider on his leg. That spider bite became septic, my grandpa had the leg amputated but never ended up waking up in the recovery room, the infection was too far gone by that point.
40points
#12

Where my sister in law works they have a huge freezer where all the food for preparing meals is kept. A co worker was working a shift on her own and the door closed on her. They had all been aware of the issue with the door locking and not opening from the inside. They found her the next day dead. Poor woman. Obviously they finally fixed the freezer door, but typical government run facility, they didn't do anything about it till a tragedy occurred.
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39points
#14

A church friend of ours went canoeing in the winter before the lake froze over, he accidentally tipped the boat, he recovered but he didn’t make it back to the cottage and died of hypothermia.
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38points
#15

He was living in an apartment above his parents garage. He was out late one night, not drunk, no [substances]. He accidentally locked himself out. Instead of waking his parents up, he decided to climb in a window. He slipped and the window fell on his neck. He hung there til his parents found him the next morning.
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38points
#16

Falling in to a volcano. Really. She was a geologist.
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38points
#17

This just happened recently, unfortunately. Someone in my life went through years of invasive surgeries to remove cancers from all over her body and came out the other side. She’s been in remission for a couple years now. Last weekend, she was crossing the street and was hit by a car who fled the scene. She died on impact.
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37points
#18
I worked at a steel mill and a guy decided to pole vault over a large ladle of molten steel. He did not make it. Barely anything of him was recovered.
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37points
#19
A coworker of mine, a UPS driver, was sorting packages in the back of his truck while on his route when a small aircraft crashed into it. The plane and truck burst into flames, and he was k****d instantly.
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37points
#20
I had a friend in college who always had a beer in her hand. She also coughed a lot, nearly every time I saw her. I always figured she just had smoker cough because she'd share things and I always asked if she had a contagious cold and she'd say she'd had it forever.
Her cough turned out to be untreated pnuenomia. Her brother convinced her one night when she was wheezing so hard it woke him up to go to the ER. By the time she was checked over, it was too late and the infection was too far into her lungs. She died in the icu. She was 27 years old. A med student spoke to us after that and said it was tragically common for alcoholics not to know they had pneumonia as the alcohol would depress their coughing and the infection would get worse before they realized what was happening. (I'm sure smoking cigarettes didn't help either but I'm not a doctor, just a wild guess.)
Her cough turned out to be untreated pnuenomia. Her brother convinced her one night when she was wheezing so hard it woke him up to go to the ER. By the time she was checked over, it was too late and the infection was too far into her lungs. She died in the icu. She was 27 years old. A med student spoke to us after that and said it was tragically common for alcoholics not to know they had pneumonia as the alcohol would depress their coughing and the infection would get worse before they realized what was happening. (I'm sure smoking cigarettes didn't help either but I'm not a doctor, just a wild guess.)
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36points



