Festivals are wonderful things. Amazing bands, at least 10 minutes of solid sunshine, and a sense of freedom you’ve been longing for with each passing, dull commute. But festival highs are always capable of taking a nasty turn. One second you’re singing along to your favourite song in a crowd of thousands. The next you’re knee deep in unspecified brown goo. Pretty much everyone has their own festival horror story, and their own sage words of advice: approach every portaloo with caution, keep a spare phone in case you lose all your mates, get at least a couple hours’ sleep a night to avoid fever dreams.

But even the most thorough preparation can’t prepare you for the odd festival wobbly. Sometimes bad luck strikes in the worst way. Or, more likely, you’ve just had a few too many bevvies and it’s all your fault. Below are some of the best, most grim horror stories, as told by NME readers:

The original poo girl

Pretty much every festival has its own ‘poo girl’ rumour. You’ll overhear that someone, somehow, found themselves stuck headfirst in a portaloo. Most of the time this is cruel hearsay, but in 2009 it actually happened to a girl at Leeds Festival. “Yes, I am poo girl,” Charlotte Taylor told the Sunderland Echo after attending Leeds Festival. The “Specsavers apprentice” (important info, there) lost her handbag down the bog. “As I got up to leave I swung my body round to open the door and my handbag slipped off my arm and disappeared down the toilet. It had my phone, ticket and all my money in so if I left it I would have been stranded. I had both my hands down the toilet. I was straining so far down that I got wedged. My shoulders were stuck on both sides and I couldn’t move at all. I knew I couldn’t get out myself and was so embarrassed.” She had to be rescued by a team of firefighters. About as humiliating as a festival anecdote gets, but at least it’s something to tell the grandkids…

The environmentally friendly weirdo

“At Reading Festival one year a friend of a friend tagged along with us. He was an odd fella. He brought a spare tent with him, a tiny pop-up one, that had just enough room for someone to crouch in. And he pooped in it. Every day. Then he would chuck sawdust over it. He basically had a human litter tray – it was fucking disgusting.” – Anon

Tfw you get caught taking poppers to Disclosure at Glastonbury

It happens to the best of us.