Teachers get to know upwards of 100 or more kids each school year. Do that for enough years and you're bound to come across the strange and the creepy.
When we imagine the scariest students a teacher can recall, we assume it revolves around violent scenarios. And that is true, often those are the most fearful recollections.
But violence is by no means the only avenue toward creepiness. Sometimes a student is fearsome due to his or her more subtle kind of scariness.
It may be a child that quietly plots. Perhaps its a sudden burst of energetic anger. Whatever causes the fear, it evidently leaves the teacher mulling it all over even years later.
These teachers of Reddit recall the unnerving forms of classroom horror.
guzhogi asked, "Teachers of Reddit, besides violence (or threats of it), what's the scariest thing you've seen a student do?"
When Grave Danger Starts to Feel Mundane
"I saw two 1st graders try to play 'pets' by having one tie their scarf around the other's neck and use it like a leash to drag the other kid around."
"Me + another adult had to run over because the girl with the scarf around her neck was starting to turn blue."
"That's the scariest part about working with little kids. They keep almost killing themselves or their peers and they never understand just how close to death they are."
First a Spectacle, then Unnerving
"A 15-year old student, on the first day of Summer term, poured a bottle of white spirit over himself, another two bottles over his school blazer, set fire to the jacket and put it on."
"Sadly, the student died of shock and the school was closed for the rest of the week."
"The fact that he put the jacket on after he had lit it was the scariest thing about the whole tragic episode."
Tapped In
"A kid was mad that he couldn't get more ketchup with his fries, and told my coworker, 'I hope your baby dies.' "
"My coworker just shrugged it off, she didn't have any children."
"Two weeks later, she found out she was 6 weeks pregnant..."
Real Life Horrors
"Junior in high school propose to his sophomore girlfriend, then they got married the following year after she turned 17." -- WatchTheBoom
"I've had zero contact with my high school / alumni association / class reunions, etc . . . but fifty years ago there was such a couple in my class, and every now and then I stop and think 'Hmmm, wonder how that/they worked out.' " -- DeeDee_Z
A Quickly Ticking Clock
"My sister taught a student that would occasionally faint or pass out if she didn't get enough hydration."
"One day she went on a fast cleanse and fainted at the top of the stairs and fell down 2 flights before being caught by a box on the side. She broke her wrist, and collarbone and fractured her skull."
A Careful, Scary Analysis
"The scariest ones aren't the kids actually being violent or threatening. Its the few I came across that had honest sociopathic tendencies, and were smart enough to hide their actions and put on a good face."
"Its the ones who you see LEARNING how to be better liars and better at hiding their cruelty. The ones you see getting better at faking empathy. You get to see that lovely little horrible development and can't stop it no matter what approach."
"Some people just simply don't have that core kernel of decency even the brattiest kid still possesses. At the end of the day they simply don't care about anyone else and you can't change that."
-- Darth_Mufasa
A Unique Form of Entertainment
"Seven year old was bored in class, so he decided to smash the class fish tank and punch and bite the student teacher when she tried to stop him."
"The kid likely had some kind of development disorder (ADHD or ASD were bandied around some), but Mum and Dad refused to test him, so the teacher got no support to help him."
"Eventually he was taught completely separately from his classmates because he was viewed as a safety hazard with kids his own age."
-- InkMage94
Incomprehensible Cruelty
there was this group of girls that manipulated a boy in my kindergarten that had no friends and into laying in a suitcase and they closed it and walked around with it as he was screaming because he couldn't breathe in there."
Beyond His Years in the Human Trafficking World
"Tried to sell a female student on craigslist...and they kept him in my class (which she had with me until her family moved because of what he tried to do)."
"To my understanding he had issues with keeping his nose clean in the past...and after the cops pulled him in he was going around bragging about what he tried to do and how he fooled the cops and what have you. He was disturbing."
-- QuimbyCakes
Not the "Research Skills" We Meant
"I had a 16 year old student, who not only suffered from schizophrenia but also hated my guts, give me a piece of paper. On that piece of paper was my home address. I have no clue how he got a hold of it."
Never a Dull Moment
"Repeatedly punch a cinder block wall until his knuckles started bleeding. Wound up with multiple broken bones in his hand. Had to wear a cast for a couple of months."
"Scariest thing I heard a student say, other than the usual threats of violence, was a fifteen year old girl who said she was going to fuck every guy she could until she got pregnant."
-- ZotDragon
A Less Confrontational Confession
"Once had an adult student I was tutoring to help with his writing skills."
"He insisted that I read his journal, quite forcefully, and I said I would take it home and give him feedback later that week when we met again."
"Each entry talked about how he loved to cut out pictures of porn and paste to his walls. At night, they would talk to him."
"I later found out he was a sex offender."
-- MagicJasoni
Well Where'd You Learn That?
"Not a teacher but a student, bio class and it was that time of year where we had to dissect a frog."
"10 mins into the lesson, all well and good, but just as we were being told what we were doing the quiet kid raises his hand and announces 'I've finished sir.' "
"That kid had systematically cut out EVERYTHING (brain, lungs, etc.) and put it on the table. Note we had never NEVER dissected stuff before."
-- harvey69420
Some James Bond Stuff
"I was a chemistry TA when I had a student drop a 4 liter bottle of concentrated hydrochloric acid on the ground. Immediately you could see chlorine gas filling up our lab and neighboring labs."
"Luckily nobody got hurt but it did do over $10k worth of damage to lab equipment and computers."
-- 1l1l1l1
When the Student is Only the Bearer of Scary
"I'm a first year teacher. Before [the virus] I was teaching nursery students. The scariest thing was seeing the scratches, welts, and bruises on one of my four-year-olds. When he warmed up to me he would tell me, 'Mommy hit me.' "
"I live in SE Asia, and other than making school a safe place, there was nothing we could do."
"He is tiny and harmless. His mother is a beautiful, well dressed, wealthy monster. It breaks my heart thinking about him being stuck at home with her."
-- Bill_llib123
Not Where That Goes
"I'm not a teacher but one time I was in science and the teacher left the class, people started mucking about and then the teacher comes back, everyone rushes back to their seats, one kid misses the seat and sits on a clamp stand."
"It went right up his a** and ruptured internal organs, he had to go to the hospital and receive advanced surgery. He is forever known at my school as the kid who got anal raped by a clamp stand because children are monsters."
-- kesteven1
A True Stoic
"[My mom] said the scariest non-violent thing she's seen a student do is climb the top of the playground equipment during recess and fall off head first no flailing like a video game character just limp body skull flop into the gravel."
"(To defend her honor, she was in her classroom eating lunch watching out the window-the recess patrol weren't watching.)"
-- zavazanax
An Ancestral Cheap Shot
"Straight up saw some guy kick another guy in the balls so hard he spit blood. I literally just walked up the stairs and saw it then immediately GTFO'd. I dunno what happened to them both but I know the kicker got expelled, at least from what I heard."
Potential Energy
"Breathing heavily and staring during a one-on-one class. Then threw their cup at a glass wall."
"Fun times."
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