Well this is my story, and I can claim it as either Fact or Rumour, at any time - but a valuable lesson was learnt at the time that has stayed with me ever since. It has no connection with anyone other than myself and the Instructor - I was embarrassed at the time, and now that I'm sharing it, will be embarrassed again, but it was an important learning incident at a critical point in my career.
With 5000 hours total, and twin time, I was sent to San Antonio for a month to Flight Safety to do my Initial Turbine Endorsement, Single Pilot, Systems Groundschool and Simulator training on Metro. There were about five of us on the Systems course, one fellow came from Angola and others from the U.S. When it came to the Simulator sessions, to operate single pilot, it was just myself and the Instructor.
The Simulator sessions progressed, and as I got used to the placement of everything, the handling, and the memory items on the checklists, the sessions moved on to Emergencies.
On a take off, the Instructor gave me an engine failure at about 100-150 feet.
Now I knew what I had to do, and there wasn't much time, so I did it. Part of the cleanup was to reach down and pull the big red Stop and Feather button. Handling the still strange aeroplane, watching out the front to keep straight, trying to remember the order of things, suddenly it all went very quiet in that Sim. I had pulled the Wrong Big Red Button.
With no time to even try a restart, all I could do was to try and glide it down onto, and overrun the simulated runway.
Back on the 'ground', the Instructor, in his Texan drawl, said "You won't do that again", to which I replied "No Sir !!!". "We prefer all our students to make their mistakes in the Sim", he said.
So ever since, when given an engine failure during a Renewal, or a Base Check, I take just a split second longer on the identification and confirmation, and get it correct. All the amount of reading of others mishaps, while valuable, doesn't compare to something you have survived, even if it was in a Sim.
I later did the real flying on the aircraft, to finish the endorsement, when it was delivered to the company.