no you're not paranoid. its really good practice to try and stay away from large, congested crowds. i know from personal experience one halloween. i was walking through a crowd when, in a matter of minutes, it became so crowded and congested to the point the air was literally squeezed out of your lungs and you were at the complete mercy of the wild back and forth sway of the crowd. everyone was trying to move through but no one could. the force against my body was enormous. luckily i was only stuck for about 5 minutes and managed to finally make it out of the crowd. but it was really scary. i can now understand how easily it would be for people to be trampled to death. since then i never try to walk through packed crowds of people.