It’s usually safe to assume that living in the middle of nowhere is a peaceful and quiet experience. From random handprints on screen doors to UFO sightings, these stories are enough to prove otherwise. Follow along as these people share the scariest moments they’ve experienced while living in the middle of nowhere.
1. The Call Is Coming From Inside The Tent
I was camping alone in the middle of the plains in North Dakota. A storm blew in and I was stuck in my tent under some trees and got a super strange feeling. I had two phones on me at the time, one had Internet access and was for navigating and the other was just for cell reception. This was in 2013. All of a sudden, one of the phones started ringing and I looked at the caller ID.
The call was coming from my other phone which was closed and in my hand.
2. Footsteps In The Dark
15 years ago or so, I had a seasonal job with the US Forest Service in western Colorado for the summer. I was living in an old ranger station all by myself. One night, I had a creepy dream that someone was walking around the cabin while I was in bed. When I woke up that morning, the front door was wide open. For the rest of the summer, I slept with a large knife close by.
3. Right Across The Concrete
I was showering home alone and thought I heard someone walking through the house. The hardwood creaked something fierce and it was a distinct sound, so I know that's what I heard. I called out to see if my mom or brother had come home but nobody answered. I heard it again, this time in the hall, so I cut the water off, threw my robe on, and went to see who it was.
There was nobody in the hallway, but I did notice something creepy. There was a massive puddle of dirty water with small bits of grass in the middle of the floor directly under the attic door. I went out to the living room and there was nobody. I checked the rest of the house and it was normal except when I got to the Florida room. The sliding glass door which had been closed and locked was now wide open.
There were also wet muddy splotches like someone walked from the lake up the lawn, across the concrete, and into the house. But, there was no water anywhere else but in the hallway under the attic door. We were renting the place and it had a garage, but the door leading into it from inside the house was kept locked and we weren't given the key.
We were told by the landlord that we can't use it because he keeps stuff stored in there but I have a vague memory of my mom saying she felt like someone was in the garage, like living in it. I can't remember if she heard noises in there or why she said that, but it was definitely an extremely creepy old house.
4. Well That’s Unpheasant
My dad used to rent this house way out in the middle of nowhere. It was a good 45 minutes from any town and the closest neighbor was another 15 minutes away. On this property were several enclosures for raising pheasants. These belonged to the property owner, so my dad had no responsibility towards them, other than to notify the owner if he saw anything wrong.
He was high school buddies with the owner so they were on good terms. Well, one morning, he made a seriously disturbing discovery. In the pheasant enclosure furthest from the house, with a good 50 or so birds, every single one of them had been slaughtered overnight. What was even weirder was that it didn't seem to be an act of predation. None of the birds seemed to have been consumed.
Luckily, the owner had cameras and they got to see what really happened. Sometime in the middle of the night, a man neither of them recognized had wandered onto the property. He made no attempt to approach the house, but instead crawled under the enclosure's fence and proceeded to catch and stab each pheasant with a knife while wearing a headlamp.
They caught the entire event on camera, from him entering the property till he left early in the morning. Officers were called, but nothing ever came of it. My dad was so freaked out from the whole event that he made us stay with our mom for several weeks while he slept in bed with a knife. The property owner tightened up security with new fences and alarms.
He even bought some guard dogs. They were very well trained and super friendly to anyone who'd approach them during the day. Nothing ever happened again on that farm, and the bird-slaughtering psycho was never found.
5. What Did He See?
When I was a teenager, I went to visit my aunt and cousins who lived in the boonies in a town named Eager, AZ, close to the border of New Mexico and half a mile away from the town where Fire In the Sky took place. I was really into alien abductions lore. I suffered from sleep paralysis where I'd wake up but couldn't open my eyes or move my body.
Anyway, late at night after everyone went to bed, I put on a movie…I can't remember the name of it… but it was like the Blair Witch version of an alien abduction movie. I was really into it, and totally geeked out. All the lights in the house were off, just the TV screen. I heard something behind me and slowly turned around in my reclining chair only to see an ALIEN staring at me.
I FREAKED OUT and jumped straight into the air screaming. Guys…it was a half-inflated balloon left over from my cousin's birthday party.
6. On The Run
I was staying with my grandparents who lived pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and a dude knocked on their door. He asked for directions to town, but they lived on a dead-end road where the only way to get up there is to come from town, so he obviously knew where it was. They then pointed in the direction he needed to go, and then he said thanks. His next move was bone-chilling.
Instead of getting back into his car, he just ran off into the woods as fast as he could. They called for officers, but they never found him so we have no clue what happened. He left his car in their driveway and never came back for it.
7. Not A Common Enemy
When I was camping as a kid behind my buddy’s house, I heard the most god-awful terrifying screech. It was like two pieces of metal being rubbed together. Our hands were absolutely trembling while unzipping the tent and we hauled our behinds back to the house. Honestly, I was still scared in the house too, thinking something was going to come through the window and get me. It was probably a cougar/mountain lion I suppose, but they aren’t common here at all.
8. Get Out Of There
I was hiking down a trail with my dog in remote Northern Wisconsin, when I just got a weird feeling. At the exact same time, the heckles on my dog went straight up and he began acting really anxious. About the same time, I came into a clearing in the woods, and got hit with what I can only describe as a sound wave. It was like someone was blasting a subwoofer right next to me but there was nothing around.
The nearest road was maybe a mile away. Something told me to get the heck out of there. So I quickly turned around and hiked as quickly as possible the rest of the way back. I didn't hear that bass sound after I left the clearing, but I still felt like something was following me.
9. What Are You Talking About?
My wife and I were staying at a cabin in a rural town in the mountains. Around eight in the evening, an air raid siren for a fire, maybe, rang out for quite a while. We joked that it might be a zombie apocalypse, and after a while, we actually got a little nervous that we didn’t know what it was for. So, I put on my coat and pots and walked down the road to a small grocery store nearby.
I went in and asked if they knew what the siren was for. They said, “What siren?” When I went back outside, the siren was gone.
10. Making A Big Fuss
Our two normally placid black Labradors woke me up in my bedroom, on the ground floor, making an awful growly barking sound I've never heard them make with real aggression and fear in it. We lived in the countryside with a huge common and woods out the back of the house. I went into the kitchen, and they were glaring at the back door and making a big fuss.
This made my hair stand on ends and their obvious terror communicated itself to me. I grabbed a torch and steeled myself thinking maybe it was an intruder, armed myself with a fire poker, and opened the back door. It was pitch dark and, as I opened the door, both dogs shied away and ran to the other room. I poked my head and the torch out the back door. What I saw made my blood run cold. Just for a split second, I saw reflective eyes of a really large creature somewhere up the garden.
They blinked as they turned away, and then they were gone. There is literally nothing in England that can account for this. I slammed the door shut and me and the dogs slept in my bedroom half terrified. The local paper shortly after that featured an article about some unexplained sheep deaths in a farm a mile away from ours. They had been ripped to shreds as if by a large predator.
11. Where Did They Come From?
One Friday this summer, one of my neighbors who has no kids cleaned her storm door. She had no visitors that day. When she woke up the next morning, there were what looked like ten or fifteen children-sized handprints on her storm door. She called for officers just in case there was a missing child or something, and they came out to take a look.
Said it could have been raccoons which it probably was, but for a while there I was genuinely freaked out—and the story doesn’t end there. In the summer of 2020, I made the mistake of going out onto the porch at around 11 at night. I was about to take the trash out to the dumpster across my back yard but I felt something in the yard and froze. A few seconds later, I heard footsteps, and something moved around out there.
It was definitely not a person. I left the trash on the screened-in porch and locked the door behind me so fast. I don’t go outside after dark now if I can help it. We’ve recently had reports of black bears in the area, so that might have been it but there’s no way to be sure. I’ve never seen one here in person.
12. The Dog Knows Best
I live in a semi-rural village with houses and shops, but surrounded by fields. There are loads of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, like 1000 within a handful of miles. Anyway, there is this one prehistoric grave which is open, the contents having been moved to the museum. I jumped in one time to get a photo taken and my dog, a placid old black lab, suddenly started barking with full alert mode, hackles, danger, right at me, in the burial cist.
I still shudder to remember the moment. Maybe it was a snake, I don’t know.
13. The Symbolic Passageway
I lived in Japan and went on a trip in the mountains with a friend of mine. On a night ramble with him in an unfamiliar area, we both happened upon a torii (a traditional Japanese gate) that was immediately met with an impassable rock face. This seemed strange to me as torii were symbolically passageways. He and I both instinctively looked up to the sky while standing before the torii and somewhere that felt close to earth a great multicolored light appeared hovering above us, letting off light almost like a gas in the full spectrum of colors, before disappearing.
He and I both felt something incredibly significant had happened, but had no idea what. It was a very odd feeling.
14. Let Us In!
I lived 30 miles (48km) from the main road. There was private land all the way to the house and big panel windows all around the living room that looked over the property. We had no one near us, so privacy was constant. I was up late watching a monster truck rally with the living room lights on and no lights on outside. That’s when it happened. Two men come up to the window and slap their hands on the glass and look right at me.
I can hear them say to let them in and casually and slowly walk towards the front door connected to the living room. The door and connected frame was large and wide. When they walked behind the frame of the front door where I couldn’t see them, I heard nothing. I walked to an angle where I would be able to see them and saw nothing. They weren’t there or anywhere. It was like nothing happened and I started to think that I imagined the whole thing. The slow walk and dead eyes were just so weird.
15. The Known Nursery Rhyme
I used to own five acres of land with a cow field as my only neighbors on all sides. I’ve always sung these really silly songs to my dogs. One is the nursery rhyme, “Daisy, daisy.” I sing the songs inside my house mostly, because my dogs are indoor dogs. Anyway, one crisp fall evening, I was inside my house alone with my windows open. I heard a faint, low whistle.
It was the “Daisy, daisy” tune, whistled slowly and deliberately. At the end of the verse, the whistling stopped. I was too scared to look outside. I’ll never know what caused that noise.
16. Something Was Looming
I live rather rurally, like an hour from even a supermarket. A few months ago, I was in my recliner, trying to sleep. My eyes popped open—and what I saw made my heart stop in my chest. I could see a solid black figure standing just off the corner of the chair. It bent over at the waist and turned its neck funny. It was like it was trying to get a good look at me at eye level. I panicked a bit.
All I could do was yell, "What what WHAT!" and it disappeared. A part of me thought I must have been dreaming. But then, I realized that my German Shepherd dog was hiding underneath the foot of the recliner, something he had never done in his six years of life. He did that for the next few weeks.
17. A Buck Or Two
My mom lives in the woods with my young nephew. It’s totally dark at night, in a tiny house. She woke up in the middle of the night to a banging on the house. Eventually, she worked up the courage to look out her bedroom window. She saw a buck, banging its head against the siding. Just backing up and rearing toward the house over and over.
18. We’ll Just Do It Tomorrow
Was staying with my dad who lived in rural Kansas, 15 minutes from the nearest small town, an hour from a bigger city. He lived on an acre of property with the house being towards the front of it. One night, I had to return a shovel or something we had been using to the shed that was in the back of the property, right along a wooded area with a creek running through it.
I should mention the home was previously owned by puppy breeders, although the conditions looked like it could’ve been a puppy mill. Either way, wildlife was constantly being spotted in this area and we figured plenty of predators realized this was at one time a food source for them. So one night, I was taking the shovel back to the shed when it was dark out.
I had a floodlight on so I could see my way. When I got to the shed, I started to hear a low growl very, very close to me. Considering the forested and brush-filled area was only feet away from me, something could have easily been in there watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I was almost frozen until I realized I just needed to get out.
I kept the shovel with me and walked backward all the way to the house. I told my dad what had happened and why I still had the shovel, and he basically just said, “That’s ok, we’ll get it tomorrow,” which seemed odd because he was a very “no excuses” kind of guy. It makes me wonder if he saw something there previously.
19. Couldn’t Make It Through The Door
I grew up in the countryside in Italy. One night, I was going to my room when I stopped at the threshold of my door and couldn’t get myself to go in. I was frozen and had this feeling of terror. My heart was racing, I felt like hyperventilating, but I knew I had to keep my breath quiet. I just had this feeling of pure terror. I ran downstairs and drank some water or something and watched some TV with my parents.
After a while, I tried to go back to my room and the feeling was gone. I don’t know what could have caused it, I never had that problem before.
20. What You Least Expect
The mother of one of my friends retired to a cottage in the woods. A week or two in, she dropped her pants to have a pee in the toilet. In the process, she feels something “touching “ her in a very private place! She looked between her legs—and what she saw was so horrifying, it’s unforgettable. There was a black snake, several feet long, that was “chilling “ in the toilet bowl.
She got up and ran. It was only when she was a few yards down the road running away did she think to pull up her pants. She had movers remove everything from the place and apparently she never went inside the building again.
21. In A Bad Neighborhood
My girlfriend lived out in the desert boonies and I'd frequently spend the night out there. She lived near a state penitentiary that fairly consistently had escapees. This was a time before cell phones and alerts were a thing, so whenever someone would escape, officers’ helicopters flew over the area shouting over a megaphone.
In the quiet of the open desert, it was quite jarring to be abruptly awoken by someone screaming at you from the sky. We'd all bolt out of bed to check all the locks and windows. Good times.
22. A Mind Of Its Own
I used to live in an old house way out in the woods in Georgia, United States. My mom loves Christmas and even though almost no one drove by our house, we would do up the lights like nobody's business. Anyways, one year I went to unplug the lights when I woke up and no one was home. I unplugged them and walked a few feet away and heard a noise like something sliding.
I turned around and I kid you not, I watched the extension cord lift off the ground and plug itself back in. I stared at it for a few moments and unplugged it. It never happened again.
23. Out For Blood
This old man would get intoxicated, grab a hatchet, and look for people to punish. The entire village would hide. We usually hid in the bushes behind an old creepy house and would stand there for hours. We’d get bitten by mosquitos and it would be dark and cold. My granny would pray the whole time. I was maybe eight and I lived with my grannies in a rural Russian village.
24. The Mysterious Myth
Last year, we bought our home in a mostly rural county about an hour from our hometown. We are surrounded by woods. It is a super safe small town with very few problems here. I grew up in the city but have done lots of camping, and in the mountains, I am not easily spooked by sounds in the woods at night. One autumn evening last year, I was sitting out on my deck alone, looking at the stars, surrounded by the pitch-black darkness that comes with living out here.
My husband was already fast asleep. As I’m sitting there, I hear this sound in the woods. It sounded like a very large animal, I mean huge, not like a large raccoon, but more like person-sized. I could hear it lumbering very slowly through the leaves in the woods right beside the house. The sound made me think it was someone walking on two feet, not an animal on four legs.
The slow lumbering made me think that if it was a person, it would have to be a zombie. I shined my flashlight in the direction of the lumbering, which sounded very close given how loud it was. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black darkness, but the lumbering didn’t stop. It seemed to turn and again, slowly lumber off toward the rear of our property, which touches our neighbors 70 acres.
I’m thinking, our neighbors are big-game hunters, so if that was a bear and it wanders onto their property, goodbye and good luck, bear. But, I got right out of there and back inside, just to be safe. I tell my husband the next morning and he immediately says, “Sasquatch,” sarcastically. We think that sort of thing is ridiculous, but I’d been updating our friends on our new adventure via Facebook, so I jokingly posted that I’d heard of a potential Sasquatch in the woods the night before.
One of my long-time friends who lives in this county, texts me and says he needs to talk to me right away. I call him back and his voice is pretty excited, and he starts going in about how there have been numerous Sasquatch/Bigfoot/whatever you want to call it sightings in our county and hits me with a link to a local news article from a day or two prior reporting a sighting not far from where I live.
People in these parts legitimately believe these things are living in our area. Apparently, my friend used to be a skeptic too, but after moving out here, he delved deep into the whole thing, and now fully believes there is a Sasquatch family in our area, and that they have been to my home. Needless to say, I was slightly freaked out.
I do not believe in Sasquatch, but ever since, I always take my dog when I go out at night alone. There have been times when he just won’t leave the porch at night to use the bathroom when I know he has to. It seems like he senses a predator. He seems to be on high alert and clearly anxious about something. Before, I’d have told him to “git” and given him a little shove toward the grass. Now, that’s enough for me to go back inside.
25. Did She See It Too?
My grandparents used to live in a semi-rural place. One night, when I was walking from a shop to my grandparent's house, I noticed something bright green and wobbly floating in the sky. I asked my grandma what it was but she said she couldn't see it. Up until this day, I don't know what it was, or whether she saw it and was lying, or whether only I could see it.
26. Lady In Red
I had a woman in red knock at the door. She was dressed like a church lady wearing a red dress with a matching blazer, a matching red hat with netting, and red heels. It was a trailer in the middle of nowhere. I felt a sense of dread, so I decided to call out what she wanted instead of opening the door. Her reaction was truly disturbing. When I yelled to her, she didn't answer but tried to open the doorknob.
My brother came through the back door to get a pack of ale for his friends who were outside having a bonfire. He saw her, and went back out the back around to the side of the trailer and came back in. That’s when I really got scared. His face was ghost white and he told me in a serious tone to not open the front door, he also locked the back door and we went to his room.
After a while, his friends came looking for him and knocked on the back…He told them we were done and staying in for the night. After some prying about it, my brother told me when he went out back and around the side, nobody was there, but could clearly see her through the window when he went back inside. We have a lot of superstitions about lost spirits as travelers, but this one just scared the living heck out of both of us.
27. Into The Jungle
In Cozumel, Mexico, I was in a truck driving through a totally uninhabited area driving to a beach, and saw some creepy thing that looked like a stick figure drawing with a giant head cross the road in front of me and run into the jungle. I’ve looked up probably every animal that inhabits that island and I still have no clue what it was.
I don’t live there anymore, but none of my friends who still do have any clue what the heck it was based on my drawings of what I saw. It ran on its hind legs, looked like a stick figure with a huge head, and was all black and darted off into the jungle when it saw our truck.
28. Very Dapper And Very Strange
If you want to experience the countryside, then come to Ireland. I had a job putting up road signs. At a junction in the middle of nowhere, a man walked up dressed in a full suit looking very dapper and professional and carrying an old doctor's bag. He introduced himself as a doctor...and then jumped in a hedgerow full of briars, crashed through it and ran off through a field.
My workmate and I had to peel our collective jaws off the floor with the shock!
29. They All Fall Down
One night in the fall, we heard what sounded like huge trees falling in the woods. It was very dark out and there was no moon. It also wasn't cold enough to cause freezing, so that wasn't the reason. It lasted for about an hour and a half and then just stopped. We went out to look the next day and couldn't find a single downed tree that wasn't like that the day before. It was strange and definitely spooky.
30. Eating Some Crops
I lived in this quite huge house that was surrounded by a big fence with two metal doors that didn't have a lock. From time to time, small animals would come through and try to eat our crops. One time, around nine in the evening or so, I saw something coming through the doors. It was terrifying. It wasn't an animal but a person.
They looked very thin and malnourished. They were looking in my direction, so I believe they saw me. They stood there for a few minutes, took some potatoes, and ran away. I'm honestly thankful they never came back.
31. Just Couldn’t Say No
My mother is from a rural village in Mexico. She told me about an event that took place there. An elderly woman once got lost, and her family was really worried so they asked the neighbors for help to look for her. A bunch of people then started to do so. After hours, they found her all injured in the deep fields of the village and when asked why she was all the way there, she said that a big black dog asked her to follow it and she just couldn't say no.
32. What’s On Top?
This happened in rural Pennsylvania. We went camper camping in the middle of nowhere with some family friends. I woke up around three in the morning, cold sweating, with the hair standing up on my body. All of a sudden, the entire camper lurched as if something was trying to climb on top of it or shake it open. I was too terrified to look out the window to see what it was.
33. No Clue What It Was
I was once driving on a road in the woods at around two or three in the morning, going home. I usually encounter a lot of wild animals on this road. That night, I saw on the left side of the road a group of dogs. But, there was something almost twice the size of the dogs. I immediately braked to see what that was. That thing was black had a donkey-like head, no ears, red eyes and short hair.
As soon as I saw that it was not a dog I just drove away full speed. I wish someone could give me a rational explanation. I just want to drive alone in the night again, without being paranoid!
34. The Crying Baby
This is from my grandparents' place. We live on a reservation way out in the bush. My aunty and her husband were outside having a smoke and they heard a baby crying in the bush just out of the edge of their yard—but that’ not the creepiest part. They came inside and told my grandparents, and they came out and said that the crying would change its location and suddenly at that.
It would be crying at the edge of their yard which is huge, and then it would all of a sudden be on top of the house and then right beside them. They said there was no running noise or flying noise. It was just here and there. They got scared and my grandparents and aunty prayed around their yard while my uncle got out a knife.
They said the more they prayed, the further that crying would go into the bush. They thought it was some kind of spirit or something. I was just little at that time and I remember the next day I went there, and I wasn't allowed to play outside. I also saw a ghost in that house too.
35. A Walk Through The Snow
In rural Tennessee, one morning after a fresh snow, I went to our barn to get hay for the cows. There were footprints in the snow. The barefoot human type. I wear a size 13. The impression was bigger than my boot and then some. I never told anyone because they'd think I was crazy. This happened in the mid-80s.
36. Stuck In A Time Loop
A friend and I were driving home from a movie one night and we passed by the large hospital outside of town. This is a bit of a landmark because it’s huge, all lit up, and tells us that in a couple of minutes we’ll be in town and then our houses are only about 10 mins away. We keep on listening to music while driving and suddenly we pass by the hospital AGAIN.
This freaks us out because we realized that it had felt like 20 minutes since we first passed the hospital and never hit town. There’s no way to pass that hospital, loop around, and pass it again without going through town. We’d been traveling in a straight line the entire time. It was very weird.
37. Taller Than Generally Expected
I used to live in rural Eugene, Oregon. By rural, I mean behind my house was the forest, type of rural. Anyway, I was used to seeing the glow of deer, raccoons, and other animals' eyes reflecting in my back porch light. One day, I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to go watch TV and whip myself up something as a late-night snack in the kitchen.
When I was washing the dishes, I heard something from just outside my window in the tree line, and assumed it was a deer. So, I flipped the light expecting to see a beautiful buck or the eyes at least. Instead, what I saw made me completely freeze in my tracks. It was a set of eyes that was EASILY a handful of feet off the ground.
The shadow looked to be hunched over, so it was probably taller. As soon as the light came on, the figure went down and ran back in the forest with HEAVY footsteps. The next day, I got two dogs.
38. Screaming And Crying
I lived pretty deep in the woods and the nearest town was a 20-minute drive away. I woke up around six in the morning one winter morning hearing a woman screaming and crying. I looked out my bedroom window and I saw a woman walking down the street holding her face while sobbing and screaming. I thought maybe there was a car wreck.
So, I ran through the house and out the front door to see if she needed help. The screaming had stopped and she had disappeared when I got outside. There were about eight seconds between me and the front door, and nowhere for her to disappear anyways, as the house sat near a road that was pretty straight in both directions. To this day I'm convinced it was a ghost.
39. The Only One To See
I once saw a UFO. I live in a rural part of Australia. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was about 10 at night and I went into the garden. There were no neighbors for kilometers and this big black craft appeared. It made no noise and came from the direction of the bush basically. It was shaped a bit like the Millennium Falcon, which is my best description, but very black.
It had some lights around it and was very low. There was no noise at all and moved slow enough that I had time to call my husband to come and see. We just stood there, mouths open as it coasted over us and towards town. I googled it like crazy, but found no recorded sightings locally. I felt too embarrassed to ask people in case they thought I was nuts.
40. Following A Gut Feeling
I walked about a mile from home to go mushroom hunting in a usual area. I walked through a field of goldenrod as high as my shoulders and was about to enter the woods when I felt something strange. I felt like I needed to go or I wouldn't get out of there alive. I didn't hear or see anything, but I got goosebumps and I felt anxious when everything was fine before I reached that spot.
I stood there debating and decided to go hunt somewhere else. I've gone back many times and haven't experienced that again. I live in an area that has bears, wolves, coyotes, and bobcats. I've never had any problems with them on walks or hikes in the woods, but maybe that day would've been different or maybe there was a bad person in there.
I've learned to trust this feeling I get, it's saved me many times and when I ignored it I got hurt. Whatever was in there, I did the right thing in not going in.
41. The LEDs Playing Tricks
I was driving home from work one time, about midnight or so, in my wife’s SUV, a Nissan Pathfinder. It was a little higher off the ground than my sedan. I was coming up to a road and there was a car sitting there. They pulled out in front to go north while I was heading south. As the lights hit their faces, all I saw were eye sockets that looked empty but with just white lights, and their mouths were black pits.
I felt instant uncontrollable fear. It was probably just the LED lights playing tricks in my eyes, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more terrified.
42. The Best Time To Listen
I live in rural Wisconsin, surrounded by corn, marsh, and the works. I remember I was in my teens, outside at dusk with my parents but we were all doing our own thing. Suddenly, a woman's voice yells, "HELP ME," from the woods beside our house. It was just loud enough to hear, but quiet enough for me to second guess what I heard.
My mom and dad both turned to look at me like "You heard that too right?" My mom starts screaming, "DO YOU NEED HELP? WHERE ARE YOU?" It's moved from dusk to pitch black now and the hair stood up on my neck because it got TOO QUIET. My mom wanted to keep yelling, but dad just got up from his chair and said, "Inside." I think that's one of the only times I've seen her listen to him.
43. The Perfect Place To Hide
I used to live 30 minutes away from where I am now in the Philippines, and back then there weren't any convenience stores or supermarkets nearby in my village. It was just all grass, trees, and vines…perfect if you wanna hide messed-up or sacked bodies. One day, my parents and I drive home from my pre-school. Suddenly, my dad went silent and told me not to look. I bet you can guess what we saw.
44. A Glow In The Night
Right next to our house was a fenced-off lot that had been overgrown and a really broken down house. It always looked REALLY creepy at night and kids in the neighborhood told me it was haunted. You could look into the lot from our rooftop. One night, I was looking at it, and I saw a strange blue glow coming from inside and shadows moving across the windows.
I couldn’t place it at all and didn’t hear any noise, no people speaking or any indication of what was causing it. It really scared me. I brought it up to my family and they told me that drag queens were squatting there overnight so that they could attend a nearby disco. So…that was a relief.
45. Lurking In The Yard
My family lives in an old farmhouse, surrounded by a lake, field, and forest. There are no neighbors nearby. There’s also no reason for outsiders to be near, since it's a dead-end road. This happened to my aunt when she was dog-sitting. She wakes up in the middle of the night to some noise. Our dog was less than helpful as a guard dog and didn't alert her at all.
My aunt saw several people outside with flashlights, walking around the yard. She panicked and immediately put on all the lights and the people escaped. She called for help from officers, but it would have taken them an hour to get there since it was so far away. Nothing was taken, but it sure scared the heck out of my aunt.
46. The Night Vision Goggles
One night, I grabbed my son’s toy night vision goggles to see if they even worked. If they did, maybe we could see what was making all the weird howling noises in the woods for the last two nights. So, I looked across the yard into the woods and there were so many eyes. There. Were. So. Many. Eyes. They were everywhere. In one case there was a grouping of three eyes.
I had myself convinced it was just an opossum with its baby, and I just couldn't see the other eye, but then they all blinked at the same time. I have never ever used night vision to look in the woods again. Whatever deformity was there can have its space.
47. A Call For Help
I live alone in the woods fifteen minutes from my town. My neighbors are near, but not right next door. One summer morning, I woke around 4:30 in the morning to a strange “pounding” sound. It was still kind of dusky dawn lighting and I was in a daze from just waking up. Then, I started to hear a man’s voice yelling, “Somebody help me.”
I began to look out my windows to see if I could see anyone, but couldn’t from upstairs. My home has no window coverings on any windows. I went downstairs and caught a glimpse of him, naked with a thin t-shirt on, running around my house trying to jiggle windows and doors. He was very erratic, kept screaming for someone to help him, and kept running from door to window all around trying to find a way in.
In any normal situation, I would gladly help someone in need. But, this situation felt too unpredictable and dangerous for me to allow this person into my home. I was able to contact my neighbors who got my message and quickly made their way over to help me, faster than any officer could get here. The guy ran away straight into the trees before they arrived. He was picked up by RCMP shortly after. I have no idea what happened there.
48. Just A Typical Evening
I live in a city now, but when I was a kid I lived with my grandma in a very rural area of Florida that was known for being a dumping ground for murder victims. I never actually found a body whilst playing in the woods, but I did find a woman leaning over a creek in a dirty white dress at around six in the evening, right as the sun was setting. I heard her faint sobbing in the distance and went to investigate.
When I climbed over the embankment at the edge of the creek and finally saw her, she almost immediately started screaming at the top of her lungs, just staring into the water. Obviously, I wasn't a scaredy-cat, I was a brave 12-year-old. So naturally, I instantly pooped my pants and ran away. I still have no idea what that woman was doing, but that area was also known for having weird labs hidden in the woods, so that probably explains some of the strange people I met playing in that area.
49. Release The Dogs
We live in the middle of nowhere. Part of the back garden is woodland. Only farms are around us. One day, a man was standing watching us at the gates whilst we played outside. We didn’t think anything of it as kids. Later that night, the same man came back up the driveway and knocked on the door. We watched from the cameras—and what we saw next was unforgettably disturbing.
He then turned around and signaled and three other men appeared on camera…two at the front door and one at the back door. My dad let the guard dogs loose from the basement entrance. It's fair to say that it scared the men and they ran off.
50. Not The Only One
There was this trail where it was cool if people skinny dipped at the end of a hike. I was hiking alone and wanted to hang out by the stream as it was a hot summer day. I decided it’d be nice to take a quick dip before I continued hiking. I looked for a spot where there were no people and I saw some sunbathing down the trail.
So I purposefully went upstream a bit to be alone. When I was downstream, there was a lone man on the trail, so I stepped off to let him pass and I thought he had gone on. I found a private alcove and stripped, got in the water—and got a terrible surprise. To my horror, the guy reappeared about a foot behind me butt naked, and tried to start a conversation.
I said something and quickly got out and got dressed. I have never hiked so fast in my life out there. I had no cell service either, but everything in my body told me I was in danger. I was a few miles from my car.
Sources: Reddit,
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