What is the worst thing that has ever woken you up?

[OliveCrab]

A fire

Also - fire. Only people who’ve had a house fire can have any semblance of an idea of how traumatic it is. Heart goes out to you Op. Wishing you everything you need to get over this.

An earthquake. In Lincolnshire!

Tornado 🌪

Oh God. I'm so sorry. What an awful thing to happen.

God, that's terrifying. What happened next?

Cat jumping up on the bed to proudly present me with a live rat. 😫

That reminds me of the time my mum got woken up in the middle of the night by some banging. My cousin was staying with us and was sleeping in the back bedroom. He had got woken up by a bat flitting round the room and was trying to chase it out with a broom.

Same here. They rang at about 6.30am to say he had passed in the early hours of the morning. They didn't want to ring my DM as she was disabled and would have struggled to get downstairs to answer the phone. When I rang to tell her later on in the morning, she was more upset that I had had the responsibility of informing her. She thought it might have been too much for me.

An urgent need to throw up.

(1) Before we disabled the cat flap, the cat used to bring mice into the house at all hours, sometimes depositing them on the bed. One night I woke to find a mouse, for some reason, running laps up and down my body. (2) As I dozed on an airplane, an elderly gentleman standing in the toilet queue next to my seat suddenly collapsed - on top of me. When people - especially large men - faint, it's not delicate but more tonne-of-bricks. (3) The sound of a stealthy key in the front-door lock in the middle of the night. From a deep sleep, both DH and I were immediately wide awake. (4) A blood-curdling scream. Again, both DH and I were suddenly wide awake and in full fight-or-flight mode. And then another scream, and another... at which point we realised it was just someone in our building having sex. Unfortunately this woman, who was 'a screamer', sounded not like she was having fun but like she was being murdered. Woke us every time, no matter how much we tried to ignore it... until, one night after she'd started screaming, we heard someone in another apartment stick their head out into the courtyard and say loudly, 'You know, everyone can hear you...', and then slam their window shut. Silence... and then the screamer's window slammed shut too... and we were never bothered again.

Water pouring through the roof/ceiling into the bedroom at 6am on Christmas eve.

Black smoke completely filling the room and a small (well it was about 2ft tall) fire raging on the windowsill and engulfing the wooden frame.

Earthquake in Chile 8.9 on Ritchie scale.

A massive flea running up my arm (had given my 9 cats Johnson's flea tablets as my new kittens had fleas but not ready for more spot on yet, then fell asleep.
Maybe worst was my oldest cat drooling into my open mouth while I slept and woke immediately. He drools when he's happy.
He's also shit full on liquid diarrhoea into my open handbag without spilling a drop on the floor. Oh and that time he sprayed up my back because I was remodelling the house and he didn't like it (he was neutered at 5 months and turns 16 this November) regardless he knows how to spray when he's pissed off.

My son coming in to wake me up because he couldn't get in to the kitchen to make breakfast. Why couldn't he get in to the kitchen? Because there was a burst pipe in the ceiling pissing water all over the kitchen. But he didn't wake me up about that just ignored it until it interfered with his breakfast

Not being able to breathe. My ex had fallen asleep with his arm flung out across my throat. He was totally out of it and I woke up not just struggling to breathe but completely out of breath and unable to inhale because of the dead weight of his arm on my windpipe. I was pinned, I couldn’t move away and I had had no breath to make a noise to wake him. It was really terrifying. I managed to dig my nails into his arm and the pain must have registered enough that he rolled away from me. He was still fast asleep though while I lay there panting and crying.

My parents lived on a private road on the side of a mountain. You couldn’t “accidentally” be there. I was staying there looking after my 96 year old grandmother while my parents were away and was woken by a man trying to open all the doors. He was asking if *random man’s name lived there, and of course, that was made up. My german shepherd put her feet up on the door next to my face and made her hair stick up and was snarling on the in breath as well as the out breath. Her name was Mush and she was the gentlest, most intuitive dog I had ever met - I had never seen that side of her before or since. He must have had some pretty evil intentions that she was picking up. He asked if “He” was a guard dog. I replied that yes, “he” was (so not!) and I was about to open the door and tell him to attack. The guy said “I’m going, I’m going” and got in his car and drove off. This was before mobile phones, so I phoned the police with a description of him. Seems he was a rapist who had been breaking in and violently raping sleeping women of ALL ages.

Cockroach in a glass next to the bed
Earthquake
Many cat related incidents
Recurring choking dream
Ghost standing over my bed

A nightmare that my week old baby was tangled in my duvet cover and she was dead. I woke my partner up frantically searching for her in the bedding in tears.
I had the same dream about 4 times in the space of a week.

The police telling me that a house a few doors down was on fire and that they were worried the gas might explode.

Terrifying and frequent nightmares.
Phone calls about parental medical emergencies (although all have passed away now).
I put my debilitating insomnia down to these things.

My son when he was young. He would come through to my room in the middle of the night and just stand staring at me. I always sensed his presence and opened my eyes to a dark figure standing beside me. Wee creeper.

I remembered another one from when I was a child and we had gone to visit my Nan. I woke up to Mum at the bedroom I was sleeping in window saying he's got a gun. My Nan said get away from the window he'll shoot you. I couldn't sleep that night I was terrified.

I've remembered another one too!
Back in the 90's, I'd bought an old style Ford Escort estate for £25! It hadn't been driven for 10 years, it had just been sat in a garden, covered over. It started first time and all it needed was one new tyre! I loved that car. Anyway, I digress.
4am one morning, it sounded like the front door was being kicked in! I ran down to find a big burly copper stood there. He asked if I was MoonWoman and if I was the registered owner of said car. I said yes? He said it had been stolen. (It was under the bedroom window and we'd never heard a thing!)
It had been hotwired and was being driven towards Bradford. And the only reason the coppers were alerted to the fact something was dodgy, was because the two scrotes whole stole it, had switched the headlights off when they saw the police car coming towards them! Apparently the driver turned down a road to get away at speed, not realising there were two bollards there, which the car didn't fit through. So him and the passenger had wedged themselves into the car, the driver crying because he'd busted his ankle! Shame!
Husband went back with the copper to retrieve it safely and bring it home. I phoned the insurance and they organised a garage to come and collect it. When I went to clear it out before it went, I found a hypodermic needle, in its cap and a vial of clear liquid, laid underneath the windscreen wipers.
I phoned the copper and he came to collect them. He rang me a couple of days later to say it was saline! 🙄
The car would have cost £1, 050 to repair, which wasn't worth it and so it was written off.

A ring notification which I normally ignore but it was a random person walking round our house looking in the windows at 3am!

Earthquake