I was diving with some friends and found a fisherman’s glove with a hand still inside it… We brought the glove to the local police and they told us that they hadn’t received any kind of report of a guy with a missing hand.

I don’t know if this counts but I’m a water lover, so maybe so. While water skiing in the lake one time (Louisiana) when I flew off I landed like pretty much on top of an alligator. I kinda felt my leg hit him and we were like eye to eye when I gasped for air. Then he went under. The moments after that were the most terrifying moments of my life because I was so certain Id feel him bite my foot any second and drag me under. I started screaming and couldn’t stop until the boat was back to me. You don’t realize how long 2-3 minutes is until you’re alone in the open water. Never again for me.

I spent a week snorkeling and diving in the keys. Barracudas are terrifying. I saw a couple sharks, and they ignored me. The barracudas though, they’re curious. I vividly remember being a few feet underwater and looking over my shoulder to see a nasty row of barracuda teeth about 4 feet away. I swam away as calmly as I could for a full minute, stopped, looked over my shoulder, and the thing was in the exact same spot, 4 feet away, like I hadn’t even moved. F**k barracudas.

I was diving off the Florence, OR coast with some friends and we found a body on the ocean floor in the creepiest condition possible. He was a surfer who’d gone missing a few days prior so he wore a wet suit with his legs, arms, and head exposed. Crabs had eaten the flesh from his exposed bits so basically he was a torso with a skull and skeletal limbs.

The creepiest dive of my life though, two buddies of mine and I were on a night dive in the Pugeut Sound hunting prawns. It was about 1am and we’re a good 100ft deep, the pitchest black you could imagine. We used to do this thing on night dives where we’d get in a circle, turn off our lights, then stir up the water and watch the bio-luminescence float around us like floating stars in a black watery space. Beautiful. Only this one time we turn off our lights, stir up the water, and the water glows just enough to reveal a fourth person sitting in our circle. We were at a dive resort so it wasn’t so odd to see another diver, only it was 1am–we’d seen no one else prepping a dive at the dock. He was also alone which was odd considering the dangerous conditions of a night dive in those waters, and he had no fins or gloves.

I don’t know how he swam so well without fins or didn’t get hypothermia without boots or gloves. We wore drysuits because it was so cold but this dude was in a wet suit with exposed skin and we thought we saw a giant gash in one of the legs. So the three of us all notice him and we’re too f**king scared to move, I can hear my buddies panting in their regs, and the guy just smiles and waves, then swims away. That was 100 times creepier than skeleton dude. Whenever you think you’re alone and someone just shows up, like in an alley at night, it’s weird as f**k. 100ft under water at night is terrifying.

I like kayaking when I get the chance, but one day, in a lake up in Glacier Nation Park, Montana (The most beautiful place I’ve ever been, and I totally recommend it) when I saw a small boat. A little, vintage looking, tiny motorboat. The little tiny mini speed boats you always see in 70’s movies set in Miami or something, just a few feet underwater, perfectly preserved. I could reach down and touch it. There was no signs of damage, no signs of why it sunk. It was strangely eerie. I had to leave because for some reason it just freaked me out. The idea that something could sit, inches from the air but still submerged for years, probably. It made me so uncomfortable and I don’t know why.

I was a teen and snorkeling with my dad in Hawaii. Really enjoying ourselves, tons of fish and some smaller sea turtles and no other people. All of a sudden a sea turtle the size of a mini cooper starts swimming towards us – came completely out of the dark of the ocean. Scared the piss out of me (literally), I’ve never swam back to fast in my life. We got back to the shore and walked around to some cliffs and could see the turtle’s shell on the surface, it was easily the size of a small car.

I was diving a spear fishing spot about 30 miles off shore. I was 60 feet under water. There I was swimming along when I noticed them a school of Mahi Mahi. There were about 30 maybe 40 of them. These fish where all between 2 and 5 feet long. They were so beautiful with their sides flashing all different colors. That’s when I felt the tug on my leg. I looked down at my legs to see a 12 tiger shark pulling on my dive fin and taking me along for the ride. In a second he had ripped the fin off my foot. The shark then swam away but kept circling just at visual range. I think he was still curious about how I tasted. I kept an eye on him the whole time I was swimming back to the boat. Scariest moment I have ever had in the water.

So imagine this scene: me and my dive buddy are going through an underwater cave and suddenly everything, for no apparent reason, is tinted red, a color that you are literally supposed to be unable to see while diving at that depth during the day. Upon exiting the cave, everything was back to blue. I thought it was just me so I didn’t signal to go back up. After the dive my buddy asked me if I’d seen the water tint red too. We can’t explain it and the folks from the local dive shop had no idea what we were talking about.

I went snorkeling in Coron, Philippines in the shallow waters just enjoying the reefs. When I went back on the boat I felt something heavy inside my shorts. I thought it was just water caught up in there, so I shook my shorts and a snake fell out. I freaked out but my sister was able to take a picture of the (venomous) coral reef snake before it went back into the water.

I was diving off the coast of Fiji and we went through a natural tunnel (like a 10 meter cave/passage through a rock formation). So we start swimming through the cave and suddenly the light was weird, like the blue tint from the water has been replaced by a red one. Now all divers will know that this isn’t only weird because the color changed but also because red is the first color to disappear after a certain depth (usually between 30ft -10m- and 40ft -13m-), and we were over 70ft (23m) deep. Also bare in mind this was late morning on a sunny day.

Just going to start this off by saying I’m an idiot when it comes to sea life when i was little i would grab smaller moray eels, chase barracudas so i could watch them, would pet sea turtles with shells the diameter of 3′ or more, but one thing that really scared the piss out of me is when i went down probably 20′ to grab a big conch shell i saw, and just as i grabbed it an octopus tentacle the width of my forearm grabbed my arm and squeezed me against the shell, I managed to pull it off me although it definitely was tough to do (the f**kers are strong!) needless to say I surfaced, went back down to look at the perpetrator, then noped the f**k away from it while I still had all my fingers intact.

I was scuba diving down a ledge that was dim, and a bit murky. A doll’s head lodged on the ledge face made me scream into my regulator…oh yeah – and was covered with a slight film of algae for that creepy aged look. i had a great time leading my buddy over to have the same shock.

I was diving in Thailand and we were at a site diving where there were two steep hills underwater full of rock formations, coral etc. Between these two areas was a sandy bottom with scattered rocks ranging between the 1-5 meters across, all full of holes and full of life. We were swimming from one hill to the next and inspecting these rocks along the way. I was swimming along one large one when I get wacked in the side of my stomach very hard. It startled the shit out of me and I quickly back off. The dive instructor noticed and came over and we inspected what happened. That’s when we a gigantic moray eel (I’m later told it was a Giant Moray). He was absolutely massive, never seen one so big. Was easily a couple meters in length and was probably as wide as my head. We assume I had passed too close without noticing and he attacked, he hit my BCD and luckily didn’t persist.

Was doing a drift dive down in Mexico. Saw a VERY large grouper off in the distance. Let myself drift towards it. I soon realized it was far bigger than I had thought and I was putting myself in danger (possibly). This thing could have taken me down too far or damaged my gear or knocked me out. I’ve seen videos of these things eating 4 foot sharks. And this bad boy was bigger than the ones in the videos. I was a bit shaken after that dive.