Home sweet home can transform into a haunted house in the blink of an eye. Everyone, no matter how old or brave they think they are, has had a moment of terror being home alone. You might want to double-check the locks on your doors and keep your windows closed after reading these terrifying stories about being home alone.
Scary Home Alone Stories
1. Sudden Darkness
The lights turned off all at once while I was in the kitchen. It was pitch black. I heard the door open. My brain went to "someone has cut the power and is coming to kill me." I grabbed the landline and a knife then crouched behind the kitchen counter hearing steps come through the house trying to breathe as quietly as possible.
Then I hear my mom go, "Hello? Anyone home?" The power went out by chance at the exact moment she came in the door. That would have been an awkward hospital trip.
2. Traveling Clown
I was home alone during the “clown incident” of 2016, where people would dress up as creepy clowns and freak people out. Let’s just say one of them knocked on the front door of my house. I was ten at the time and called 9-1-1. They had police come to my house and stay with me until my mom could get home.
3. Putting It to Good Use
A car illegally parked under my bedroom window in a dark alley when I was living in a bad part of the city. The cops told me they'd get it towed as it offered a perfect way to easily climb through my window. They didn't act fast enough. That same night I heard a sound while in the living room.
I glanced down the hall to my bedroom and could clearly see a guy crawling through the window. I grabbed a frying pan from the counter and hit him straight in the face with it. He fell back onto the car roof and ran away. The police didn't find him. I moved.
4. It’s Coming from Inside the House
My wife and I were turning in to sleep in the master bedroom upstairs. That’s when my mobile rang. I looked at it and it said "Home Landline." To say I was scared out of my mind is an understatement. Many thoughts ran through my head, mainly involving a sick serial killer having gained access to my house and calling me from my land line downstairs to tell me it's all over.
I even started thinking of what I could possible do to defend us. All this happened in a split second. I finally answered the call and it was an automated call from my home security system informing me that the battery was low.
5. Called the Fire Brigade
I heard gunshots when I was home alone for the first time as a 12-year-old. At least twelve cop cars and like two firetrucks showed up and I thought it was the end of the world. It turned out that my neighbor was a wanted criminal. We later found out that he had killed more than one person.
6. Noisy Neighbors
I used to rent a room in a basement apartment where my friend's family lived upstairs. They had family gatherings regularly so I was used to the noise of loud footsteps and voices while I was home. Once I was doing some homework in my room but they were being so loud upstairs, I was having trouble focusing because of all the chatter and feet moving around. It sounded like dancing was going on.
I texted my friend, "you guys sound like you're really having a good time up there. I'm not really getting anything done, can I come up?" His reply chilled me to the bone. He texts back, "no one is home, we went to Wisconsin for the weekend." Spooked, I went outside, saw that no one's car was there, and no lights were on in the house. I just went for a walk until someone else got home.
7. Suffering Alone
In college my live-in boyfriend had gone out with friends for an evening. I started to have a tingly feeling in my hand that wouldn’t go away. Then the tingling spread up my arm to the entire right side of my body. I called my mom because I was getting freaked out and started slurring my speech and forgetting words – it would always be on the tip of my tongue but couldn’t remember the specific word. We both recognize these as stroke symptoms and I called an ambulance.
Next thing I know there are firefighters, paramedics, and police at my house as well as my aunt and boyfriend that my mom had called. It turned out it was an atypical migraine and I was fine, but thinking I was having a stroke while home alone was terrifying. I still get nervous when I’m home alone or driving alone even though multiple doctors have said it’s a freak thing that probably will never happen again.
8. No Public Access
I was 15 and my parents and I had just moved into a house in a brand-new development. My parents were at work so I was doing what almost every teenager does when schools out – sleeping late. It was maybe 11 when I woke up and I was on my way to the bathroom when I came face-to-face with a guy. Surprised, he ran out. A couple of minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was the contractor apologizing for his guy.
Apparently, he was using our restroom and he didn't know someone had moved in even though the furniture should have been a clue. My parents were furious and they changed the locks.
9. Seeing a Guest Out
A raccoon crawled in my chimney, broke the ceiling, looked at me, and hissed. I opened my room door and led it downstairs and opened the front door. It ran into the street and then ran off looking like Sonic.
10. Neighborhood Watch
My little brother was home alone and called my dad because he could hear rustling in house. There was the sound of a hurried exit and an open window when a group of dads kicked in the front door looking for my brother. Apparently, my dad immediately sent a circular text to all his friends in the neighborhood as soon as my brother said he thought someone was in the house.
It's sobering that the window was open, but it makes me smile to think that four people took off sprinting to find my brother immediately upon receiving a text.
11. Figure in the Window
My girlfriend and I both travel a lot for work so it’s not unusual for only one of us to be home on any given week. Last fall she was in San Francisco and I was home alone for a few days. We live in an apartment on the top floor of a building. Above us is a roof with a deck available to everyone.
In the middle of the night, I get up to use the bathroom and on the walk back to bed, I look over to the study. There’s a sliding door in the study leading to a balcony. I immediately stop dead in my tracks. I see the outline of a person standing on my balcony — facing me. I run over, hit the lights, grab a knife from the knife block and start dialling 9-1-1.
The person’s a kid — no more than 16. He sees me hit the lights, grab a knife and my phone, and he immediately grabs the railing on my balcony and flings himself over. I run over assuming I just watched someone kill themselves only to see him safe and sound on the balcony below me. He then hurdles off that balcony.
He’s jumping from floor to floor. He hits the parking lot in the back of our building safely and then sprints off. Cops finally come and break up a party on the roof. It turns out he was just a drunk friend of someone on the second floor and got dared to do it. Also shout out to my dog for being asleep 15 feet from the balcony and not doing anything.
12. Not for a Child to See
I was in my basement playing some game on the computer and heard someone pull into the driveway. I naturally assumed it was my mother who was coming home from work. I heard the screen door open but when no one opened the lock on the actual door, I started to go upstairs and I saw a pair of legs go by the window.
I go upstairs and almost scream. I see two huge dudes in my backyard looking at the windows and talking about how the door was locked. It was an attempted home robbery. We had been broken into a few times at that point and had everything locked, but 10-year-old me was utterly terrified.
13. Bad Recall
When I was 11, I was home alone at night and the phone rang. I got a call from the local sheriff's office telling me that they just had apparently received a dropped 9-1-1 call from my number and asked if I was ok. I told them that I didn't call them and nobody else was home to call them. It creeped me out a lot for a while.
14. Just Out for a Quick Errand
When I was home alone with my little sister when I was 12, my mom had just run to the store for milk. These cops showed up at my door and asked if they could come inside to look around. I was a kid and confused so I said ok. They later told my mom that the house across the street was just broken into and the man had not been caught.
They were then led to believe he was hiding out on a different property somewhere. Basically, they thought this grown man was hiding in my garage or backyard while I was home alone with my sister. My mom never left the house without us again when we were kids.
15. That’s What Happens When You Eat Too Much Candy
I started choking on a clump of candy when I was home alone. I only survived because I tripped and fell on the couch in such a way that it dislodged the candy. I was nearly killed and then saved by being a klutz.
16. On High Alert
When I was 15, I used to babysit for my neighbors down the block. They had a really nice house. It had 3 floors with a built-in garage under the house that connected to the basement. It was the family's most used entrance of the house and they rarely locked the basement door as long as the garage was closed. They also had the type of security system where any time a door opens you heard "beep, beep, beep."
After the parents left one night, I was putting the kids to bed and I heard the "beep, beep, beep." I yelled out thinking it was the parents coming back for something but no one answered. The system on the wall kept reading "basement door open." I was freaked out so I called my Dad and asked him to come by since he was only a few houses away.
When he arrived, he told me to stay in the kitchen while he checked the house but before he could, we heard the "beep, beep, beep" again and then the garage door opened. When we ran to the window to see if the parents were pulling into the driveway, they weren't. Instead someone in a hoodie was running out of the garage door and into the woods behind the house. My dad ended up calling the cops. I'm still creeped out by it.
17. Pool Party
I was at a friend’s house when her parents weren’t home when we were maybe 10. It was her, my sister, her sisters, and me. We decided to go swimming. There had been a rash of burglaries lately but it was mostly people’s garages that were targeted. Anyway, we were in the pool in the evening when we noticed the kitchen light turn on.
We assumed it was her parents and so we looked in the window to do something silly to get their attention. But then we realized we didn’t know the individual in the house. We hid behind the wall of the pool terrified until her parents finally came home. It appeared as though he got spooked as he only ransacked the kitchen and left the garage door wide open when fleeing.
18. Big Bully
When I was 8, my mom commuted to a major city about an hour and a bit away. So, I would walk myself home from school, lock the door, and watch cartoons until she got home. We lived in apartment blocks and one day one of the older men in the apartment lost his wallet and figured I must have stolen it. Keep in mind, I've never stolen anything in my life and I had no clue what he was talking about.
He came and banged on the door so aggressively that I jumped out of my skin and he was belligerently demanding I open the door. I rang my mom crying and she jumped on a train to come home but she was an hour and a half away. She called some friends and they came and got me. At that stage, he had taken a break and gone back to his apartment, but left his dry cleaning there.
When mom got back, she stormed straight to his door and pounded on it like he had done to our door. He came to the door all shocked and she demanded to know why he thought it was appropriate to bang on the door for AN HOUR to scare a little girl. He replied that he thought I stole his wallet. Mom asked him if he still thought I did and he said that he found it in the carpark??? She looked like she wanted to kill him and forced him to apologize.
19. Like a Scary Movie
It was spooky movie night at a friend’s and we were three movies deep. I was hungry so I was like, alright I’m going to get my leftovers. I went downstairs by myself. When I closed the fridge, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and when I turned to see what it was, there was a ghostly white, skeletal thing just staring at me from outside the patio with shimmering hazy lights pulsing behind it.
I freaked, dropped my food, and ran up the stairs nearly in tears babbling about someone or thing in the backyard. It turns out that it was just my own reflection mixed with the lights and steam from the hot tub outside but I’ve never been so scared in my life.
20. Helping Someone Out
It was a hot summer and my parents went to a wedding. I had a project to do and it was around 1 AM and silent until a random drunk dude crawled in through my window with a bottle and blushed face. I was 20 ft. away at my desk from the window and we both just stared at each other. He was flustered and said, "oh sorry there, kid, wrong house," and attempted to leave the way he came. He was drunk and dizzy so I helped him by pushing him out the window. I thoroughly shut it and stared at it for 2 hours until my parents came home.
21. Alfred Hitchcock Scary
I was home alone watching some sort of ghost TV show about demons or something in my basement when I was probably 14 or 15. I heard something start tapping on the glass. I noped out of that basement so fast. It turned out to be a turkey tapping on the glass and I don't think I ever watched that show again either.
22. Walking in the Dark
After dinner I was walking from the lodge to my cabin about a hundred yards or so away. It’s dark so all I can see is what my flashlight illuminates plus a little on the periphery of the main beam. Anyway, I was walking back and, in the corner of my eye, I see red eyes staring at me unblinkingly. I turn the light on it and all I see is a pale white mass behind the still red eyes. I freak. It takes a little bit to get me jumpy but this sure as hell did. Picture a 6’5” 260lb man. Now picture him letting out an unbelievably high pitch scream and straight sprinting 50 yards or so into his cabin.
The next day I was talking to one of the guys that come up to help out during the day told him what happened and he about fell over laughing. I think the sincere terror in my voice as I described the pale monster really drove the funny nail home for him. Well, turns out there’s such a thing as albino deer and just so happens one frequents this property. Nobody thought to warn me beforehand.
23. No More Sleeping Alone
My grandparents paid me to house sit for them and take care of their animals for two weeks. One of the dogs was really clingy so I closed the door on him when I went to bed one night. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was too tired to move but I saw a black figure with a white face standing right beside the bed. It was making this horrific growling noise and leaned into me and pressed down on my chest.
It pressed harder and harder and then I was able to move my fingers and then I was eventually able to move my body but after that. I let the dog sleep in the room and slept with the lights on. That was the first time I experienced sleep paralysis and thankfully the times after that weren’t as bad.
24. Losing Power
Power went out while I was taking a shower late at night. I got out of the shower already freaked out and looked outside through the window. That's when I realized, my house was the only one without power. My dumb teenage brain thinks this is clearly an attempt on my life. But in reality, my house had a weird problem where the power would cut out if the water heater and air conditioner happened to turn on the same time. It had never happened to me before that, but my dad assured me that was the problem once he finally came home.
25. Motion Sensor
My house came with an alarm that kept track of movement in every room. I set the alarm before bed, but I woke up in the middle of the night because it was alerting me that there was movement going back and forth between my guest bedroom, down the hall, and into my office. My alarm has a robotic speaking voice, so in the dark I'd hear it say, "movement guest bedroom, movement 2nd floor hallway, movement office, etc." I assume it was a glitch, and nothing to worry about, but I ended up turning that function off.
26. Stranger Danger
I used to walk home from school when I was in the 4th grade. The house would be empty until about 5 when my parents got home. I was doing my usual routine of Mountain Dew Code Red, Doritos 3D's, and Toonami on cartoon network. I was only home for about 3 minutes when I hear a knock at the door. 99% of the time I stay quiet and just wait for whoever to leave. But for whatever reason I actually go to the door and call out, "who is it?"
This stranger dude’s voice on the other side says, “hey! It’s your buddy Mike!” I’m 9 years old. I don’t have a grown man buddy named Mike. My whole body went COLD and I felt my heart in my throat, goosebumps, and couldn’t move because I was paralyzed and terrified. The dude says again, "hey...! Open the door, we gotta go," as he jiggled the door handle really hard. Then he knocked again “bam-bam-bam” and jiggled the door handle aggressively.
I’m still like 1 foot away from the door. I actually never moved since all of this started because I didn’t want him to hear my footsteps. After a minute of silence, I heard a car door close and him drive away. I’m still freaked out for the next hour. And the worst thing was that was I was now super paranoid about walking to and from school because obviously he followed me that day and I had no idea I was being tailed.
27. Playing with Dolls
I was 12 years old and my dad was at his girlfriend's house. I went into my room to take a shower. I always put a chair under the door handle in my room because it didn't have a lock. My grandma loved giving me porcelain dolls and she decorated my room with shelves full of them. All of the dolls were on their shelves before I got into the shower.
When I exited my bathroom, one of the porcelain dolls was 10 feet across the room, face down on the ground. This doll must have flown across the room to have landed where it did. Also, the doll was not broken. Needless to say, my grandma was sad that all of the dolls were packed up and put in the attic for safe keeping.
28. Just Burrowing Through
There had been a scratching in my ceiling for a while and my landlady was dragging her feet over having it looked into. One night, around 2 AM, the scratching became so bad it woke me up from a dead sleep. I tried to reassure myself that whatever it was couldn’t really get through to me, and I would be fine until I could call my landlady the next day and really press the issue.
Then some debris fell from my ceiling. Whatever was up there had managed to dig a small hole into my room. I screamed and heard some scurrying away from my approximate location. I grabbed any stuff I needed for the next day, got out of there, shut the door tight behind me, and slept on the couch. I called my landlady first thing in the morning and she had someone come while I was at work that day to check it out. A mama raccoon had managed to get her way into the space between the roof and my ceiling and had given birth to a litter of kits.
The guy speculated that the kits were getting old enough to start wrestling around and that was likely what led to the hole in my ceiling. Luckily it was just small, about the size of a quarter, so there weren’t any angry raccoons hanging out in my room when I got home. They were able to safely trap and release the whole little family but I still started hunting for new apartments right away.
29. Gang’s All Here!
I was looking after my mother's house for a week while she was on holiday. She had two cats that would come in and out the house via a cat flap. They were very nice animals, always cuddly and playful even when they were old. I get woken up in the middle of the night by loud meows from downstairs. I thought maybe the cat flap was stuck and they wanted to get out.
I go downstairs to check and open the hallway door and there are at least 15 black cats sitting in the hallway staring back at me. Then I see my mother's cats sat amongst them just chilling and meowing happily. I left them all to it and they were gone in the morning.
30. Meat Carving
I was probably 9 and my sister was 6 and our 12-year-old babysitter was watching us so we were alone in the sense that no adults were around. Punk that I was, I squirted bug spray on my sister and she chased me in retaliation. I ran through some French glass doors to get away from her. She went for the knob and missed. Her arm went through one of the glass panes. When I saw what happened, I nearly puked.
She cut herself so deep, you could see muscle, tendons, and bone. It looked like a torn up piece of raw meat. The babysitter called my mom right away and held a piece of cloth on my sister's arm until she came home to take my sister to the ER. She had to get 60 stitches out of it. Luckily, nothing hit an artery so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it was terrifying at the same time.
31. Saving a Trip to the ER
When I was three, I got locked in our garage where I had a play area with my 13-year-old sister babysitting. She was in the shower and didn’t hear me knocking. I used my skate to break open the window and then climbed out of the broken window. Of course, I was seriously injured. I stood at the back-door bleeding all over the place and crying hysterically. She came downstairs and saw me crying in a pool of blood.
Our parents were a surgeon and a nurse. She called my mom who told her to WASH ME OFF and cover me with gauze and bandages and she would take care of it when she got home. My mom came home a couple of hours later and did not take the time to go to the hospital, but got out Betadine and stitched me up herself. It was a bunch of stitches. I still have scars.
32. Tater Pops
I was home alone at my dad's while he was working nights making my dinner and everything. I was probably about 14 or 15 at the time. I was watching TV while my potatoes were cooking when I heard something slam into the front door. I grab my pocket knife and check it out, but it was nothing. About 10 minutes later, I hear another bang on the front door so I repeat what I did before and there was still nothing.
It really freaked me out because we'd had a few houses get broken into on my street. It turns out I didn’t put enough holes into my baked potatoes and they exploded in the oven.
33. By Appointment Only. No Walk-ins.
It was about 8:30 at night and I heard the front door open. I called out from my room asking why my mom and dad were home only a half hour after they left for dinner. I almost ruined my pants and straight up jumped out of my bedroom window when a random male voice replied, “what? There’s somebody in here?”
It turned out that it was somebody who got hired to check on one of our neighbors’ dog while they were on vacation and he got the wrong house address. But the raw fear that gripped me when I heard his voice still gives me nightmares.
33. What’s Was That?
There had recently been a spate of break and enters in the suburbs where I lived. And when my family had gone away for the weekend, I had stayed home because I had work. I was up at midnight watching a James Bond movie with all the lights in the house turned off, and I heard a really sudden and strange thud from my kitchen.
I instantly knew it was a weird noise because nothing in the house made any noises like that so it was immediately suspicious. Just as I was about to get up to go and check it out, I heard it again. That's when I realised it was actually the thudding of the thick glass sliding door from the kitchen to the outdoor patio.
All of the lights were off, so I was making my way through the house turning lights on. When I reached the light switch to turn on the patio light, I hit all of the lights at once including the light at my front door, which was visible from where I was standing. We had those glass panels next to the front door, which I could now also see with the light on. There was nobody at the patio area at this time, but through the glass panels at the front door I saw someone sprint past and out of the yard. Even though I couldn't see any detail, it was unmistakable to see that it was a person running.
It later occurred to me that they were most likely kicking the glass patio door to try and smash it and break in, as I later learned that this is apparently one common method of entry during burglaries. I had initially assumed they were hitting it with something, but a boot would explain the deep hollow thud of the noise better than striking it with something. It was pretty spooky at the time - just that sudden realization of "that is not a normal noise."
35. In That Short Window of Time
When I was in middle school and old enough to be left home safely for an hour with my brother who was only 2 years younger, my mom left us home alone while she ran to the store. Soon after Mom leaves, my brother and I were watching TV in the living room when we see a bunch of smoke from the big bay window facing the front. We look and see a car that crashed into the ditch next to our driveway. I grab the phone and we go out on the porch. I call 9-1-1 and give them my address and then I call my grandma and tell her what happened. Cops and the whole emergency entourage gets there. I go talk to the cops.
Mind you, we lived on a state route. It's a two-lane road so the entire section of road in front of my house is closed off. My mom rounds the corner of the side road to pull onto the street and sees a ton of cop cars in our driveway and others shutting down the road, 2 firetrucks and at least 2 ambulances. She freaks out. The road is significantly higher than the ditch, so it is entirely possible to miss the wrecked car especially when you know you left your kids home alone. They allowed her to park in the neighbor's driveway since ours was currently occupied and we watched her sprint across the yards. The cops intercepted her, but by then, she saw that my brother and I were okay was able to calm down enough to talk to the cops.
36. Going to Any Lengths Necessary
My house was sort of out farther away from town. We had neighbors, but they were few and far between. There was a hiking trail opening across the street from our driveway, which was VERY long, and can’t be seen from the trail. My room had a large window facing out to the driveway. Anyway, I was home alone, cleaning my room, and singing 'We Are the Champions' extremely loudly as it played on my TV.
When I looked up, I see a man power-walking up my driveway VERY quickly. It's obvious no one is home but me since there aren't any cars in the driveway. So, I ran to the front door, which was open because it was really hot outside, locked it, then closed and locked my window. It turned out bro-friend did not like that. I called 9-1-1 because he was still approaching my house and I was getting scared by his demeanor.
While on the phone with the 9-1-1 operator, he started banging on my front window by the door and then the door itself. He tried kicking in the door and tried breaking the window. Sobbing, I went and hid in my mom’s closet with a knife because it could only be locked from the inside until the cops showed up, which by the time that they did, he was gone.
There were hand and shoes prints all over the door and front window and some hand prints on my bedroom window. They found him about an hour later walking up and down my street. He told them that he, “heard my pretty singing voice and just wanted to say hi.” He was also drunk, but admitted to being sober at the time of the incident and started drinking, “after she rejected me.” He also told them that he planned to come in to “have some fun” with me after he found out that I was home alone and that he was waiting for nighttime to come back.
37. Peeking Through the Window
Around 2 AM, I was working on my computer when I got an alert from my security camera that detected motion. I checked it and there was a person staring into my apartment window in full view of where I was working. I closed the computer, turned off the lights, and went into the bathroom for a bit.
It turns out being extra paranoid when someone is staring into your apartment late at night isn’t a good combination. I checked the camera memory and the guy was there for 20 minutes just real casual. I called the cops and the kid ran away and came back an hour later. I haven’t seen him since.
38. Horrifying Realization
I didn’t know until the following day about the scariest thing that happened to me while I was home alone. I lived in an apartment in a not so good part of a dangerous city with my boyfriend who worked nights. One day, our friend came over and called me to let him in our building in a hurry. It turned out there was this guy who had been crouched by my car in the parking lot and approached our friend to try and close him in. My friend pulled out a weapon and the guy ran off.
Upstairs, I noticed that the guy had left a green bundle near my car and assumed he would be back for it. It made me uncomfortable so I suggested we call the cops. Not 5 minutes after, a cop showed up to ask where the guy had gone. SWAT, K9, and about 10 cars showed up and swarmed our area because it turns out that the guy had escaped from county prison the night before with two other guys.
He was in jail for assault with a deadly weapon and repeated domestic violence offenses. He had climbed the fence in the yard behind our building where our landlord kept his camper, broken into the camper, and stayed there the night before. He had stolen all the electronics out of it as well as a butcher knife and was trying to break into my car before my friend showed up.
I had been alone the night before and had taken my dog down to the yard to go to the bathroom. I noticed that the barbed wire on the top of the fence had fallen down and my dog was nervous. But I brushed it off. The guy had been in the camper watching me the whole time and I never knew it.
39. At-Home Police Chase
Police were chasing a guy and he ran into our backyard and over the fence to another house. It felt like the helicopter was going to land on the house.
40. Aggressive Marketing
Once when I was around 7 or 8, I was home alone and I had been warned not to answer the door for anyone or else I could get taken away. There was one sales guy who had been banging on the door repeatedly for 6 minutes. I guess I hadn’t muted the TV fast enough. He screamed, “I know you’re home alone in there!” I about died.
41. Really Can’t Take a Hint
I woke up to someone in my house walking up the stairs to my bedroom. It was about 1 PM and I work third shift, so I was sleeping. In my haste, I didn’t grab my bat. I whip open my door and see my ex best friend who I've blocked on every social media site. She starts yelling at me for not responding to her and how she misses me. I don’t know what scared me more, the split second I realized there was an intruder or that someone I knew would just take it upon themselves to force me to talk to them by trespassing.
42. Trick or Injury Treatment
I was home alone one night close to Halloween in 2015. I heard a loud knock at the front door. I was eating dinner and then I slowly but cautiously made my way to the front door. When I opened the door, no one was there, but there was blood all over the front porch. It kind of freaked me out a bit but I thought it was a prank. I called the cops because it was strange, ya know? They said they would send someone there.
They called back and said someone was on a bike, fell, started bleeding badly, and was going door to door asking for help. I missed the person, but one of my neighbors helped them out apparently. Crazy.
43. See No Evil
Once, when I was around 12, I was home alone and taking a bath. I was rinsing my hair underwater and when I lifted my head, I realized I could suddenly hear what sounded like footsteps walking across the landing. Both my parents were at work and I knew it was far too early for them to be home, so I was entirely freaked out and convinced that someone had broken into the house and was walking around stealing things or whatever.
I was so freaked out and had no idea what to do at all. I was sitting in the bath naked with no phone or any method of calling for help, freaking out that surely the intruders were going to find me - or even worse, they already knew I was there because surely they would've heard the noise of the water from me moving in the bath?
I essentially froze and sat there and panicked for who knows how long before I decided to have a moment of bravery. I figured that they knew I was there anyway, so I waited for a gap in the noise, which to me signalled they had gone into a room and opened the bathroom door a crack so I could see what was actually happening.
I opened it and waited. Soon, the noise of the footsteps began again on the landing and from my vantage point I could see the entire landing. There was no one there. No one had broken in to the house. Later, when my parents got home, I asked them about it. It turns out, after they looked into it, it was a problem with the pipes that was causing them to make a banging noise that sounded like footsteps.
44. Clumsy Old Bird
I was sitting in my parents' farmhouse reasonably deep into the Scottish Highlands on a farm around 5 miles from the nearest small town overlooking a valley but on a road that wasn't travelled on much. I was totally alone just chilling in the living room and something SMASHED into the window right beside me. I almost pooped myself.
A huge crow, completely out of the blue, flew hard into the window. Double glazed so didn't break but made a hell of a noise about three feet away from me. I was freaking out. How could a crow hit that window in the house having not avoided the house altogether? I was on edge for hours afterwards. It survived and eventually kind of limped and eventually flew away. It was just a random occurrence but it gave me a serious fright all alone up there on a windy hill.
Later on, I could laugh as it left a perfect bird-shaped greasy mark on the window like something out of a cartoon!
45. Didn’t Even Try to Knock
When I was a teenager, I was house sitting for my mom who was on vacation with her boyfriend. I invited my girlfriend over, so we're hanging out in the living room, which was right next to the front porch. It's about 12:30 AM or so, when we heard loud and heavy footsteps on the porch. A guy goes next to the windows and swears really loudly.
Freaked out, we shut off all the lights in the house as the footsteps went away. We looked out the windows to see if there’s anyone out there and saw a big burly man with a kind of plastic bag. We live in a small town out in the middle of hillbilly country, so any stores or takeout restaurants were closed at this point in time so it's a mystery where he got this bag and what was in it.
This guy walks down the street, turns around back towards my house and disappears into a parking lot next door to us. Not 2 minutes later, we hear the doorknob to the side door, which was thankfully locked, jiggle. My dog starts going absolutely insane at the noise. He's a small dog with a loud bark, so I think he scared him away but that was that. We debated calling the cops but never did, and nothing else ever came of it.
46. It’s Probably Just the Cat
About two weeks ago my depression was kicking my butt so I decided to cancel my evening plans and just lie down for a nap. Shortly after sunset, I heard loud pounding on the front door alternating with rapid doorbell ringing. In the back of my head I though UPS was being aggressive, but I still felt terrible so I ignored the noise.
About ten minutes later, I heard a loud thump in the kitchen and assumed my cat had knocked something over. I got up from bed and was about to open the door to the bedroom when I saw beams from a flashlight underneath the door. I called out, “hello?” and the light disappeared. I walked into the kitchen and noticed the door was still locked but ajar and my cat was standing at the top of the basement steps looking down into the darkness.
At that point I received notification from my partner who was out of state for work that something had tripped the motion sensor camera in the kitchen. Two men had broken into the house and it was unclear where they had gone once they went back out the kitchen door. I called 9-1-1 and five officers and a canine unit were at the house within minutes. They sent the dog into the basement but didn’t find anybody. The would-be burglars hadn’t had enough time to take anything but my sense of security, but it wasn’t until I was telling my coworkers the story the next day that it started to hit me how much worse it could have been.
47. Didn’t Have to Pull a McCallister
I was about 14 and was playing computer games with my best friends. My parents who are usually adamant about me not staying home alone had to go pick up my grandparents from the airport. So here I was home alone, with my PlayStation and the pizza I ordered... score!
My friend and I were still playing at 2 AM when I hear the doorbell. I think, "oh, must be my parents. They must've forgotten the garage remote." I started walking to open the door but a gut feeling stopped me. That's when this dude went berserk. He began pounding on the door and screaming to let him in. I, in my panic, have frozen in place but I managed to get the house phone to call the police.
I also called my parents because I was 14 and freaking out. The friend I was playing COD with was able to hear the entire thing through my headset and I hadn’t responded to him yet. So, I was juggling my phone call to the emergency services as well as my parents and my call with my friend. I hung up with my parents, which is when the banging stops. I thought, "thank god, maybe he's moved on."
As I continued to talk to the phone operator, I hear the loudest bangs I've ever heard. He's trying to break a window to get in. He's still screaming to let him in. By now, I've called police and I was ready to accept my fate, when I heard a commotion and my older brother opening the door. It turned out the dude grabbed a statue and was banging on the window with it. It still blows my mind that the window did not break.
My brother and his friends threw him down our stairs. Coincidentally, that's when the police also showed up. The guy turned out to be a shirtless 20-year-old that was high on a hallucinogenic drug and had bolted from a party down the road after being caught with the birthday girl by her parents.
The paramedics were called and we had given him a blanket and warm water. The paramedics told us if he were outside for another hour he would've died of hypothermia. We declined to press charges but his parents came and apologized profusely. They've never bothered us again.
48. Listening to Polly
I was crashing at my uncle's place for a couple months in summer. While he was at work and sometimes at night, I would hear a woman yelling, "hey, you there?" At first, I was very freaked out, but a couple times during day time, I'd look for the source and try and talk to her. And she never replied.
I asked my uncle after a few days and it turns out it was the pet parrot of the guy who lived across the hall. I had heard him before making weird noises and screeching, but never had I ever imagined it could replicate a woman's voice like that. But yeah, I did see him do that in person sometime later, so nothing paranormal there at least.
49. Is It Friday the 13th?
Last year I was renting a house in a small, economically depressed old mining town in Appalachia. I lived alone. On one of the first warm nights of spring, I awoke around 4 AM to the sound of my doorknob turning. I figured someone must have the wrong address... but it kept turning, persistently. I didn't have a peephole or window to see who was outside, so I just approached the door from inside and yelled, "Wrong place, buddy!"
Then the door started shaking violently and a hand began punching it. I tried one last time and yelled, "Wrong place! Go away, man!" Someone on the other side growled at me and started making horrifying noises like a wild animal. I grabbed a kitchen knife and called the police, then waited inside. About ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I opened it cautiously to see an officer who questioned me about the incident. Then he asked me to close it again and remain inside.
Again, I couldn't see what was happening out there, so I just turned out the lights and waited quietly with the knife in my hand. For about 20 minutes, there was just silence. Then, out of nowhere, my living room window screen started to get pushed inside and the curtain started to move. The guy was pushing out the screen and trying to climb inside.
I held up the knife and yelled, "I'm gonna kill you!" in my most threatening voice possible. Thankfully, I immediately heard, "Get on the ground! Show me those hands!" Then I heard another horrible wail from outside as the guy was presumably tackled and taken to a police car. A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. The officer was back to tell me that the suspect had been captured.
This guy was a uniformed cop, but he was visibly trembling and super pale. I still hadn't seen what the intruder looked like. The next day, I ran into the officer while he was off duty and he told me that the suspect had told them his name was Jason Voorhees. He was probably a meth addict or some other type of drug user. Those habits don't go well with delusions involving slasher film characters.
50. Isolated Event
One night I was waiting for something to finish in the oven, so I started washing dishes. Once my food was cooked, I sat in front of the TV to eat dinner. I live about 15 miles out of town and don't have any close neighbors. I could hear what sounded like a truck idling. Because I'm in the middle of nowhere, sound travels. Sometimes something that's a mile away sounds like it's pretty close, so I didn't pay much attention.
It idled for 5-10 minutes, then sounded like it was slowly driving away, then briefly stopping, then slowing driving off again. I've got a long driveway, about a third of a mile, so it sounded like someone drove down my driveway, then turned back onto the road and drove off. Whatever. Anyways, after dinner, I went back to finish the dishes and had no water.
The only thing I could think of was that maybe the breaker had tripped for the well, which would impact my water supply. I get to the breaker box outside only to find that the door is open and the main breaker is off. I feel my blood run cold. The noise that I heard was someone shutting off the breaker and waiting outside.
I guess they thought it would shut off power to the house and I'd come outside to investigate. I locked my gate for the night and then again when I left for work that next morning. It rained most of the day, and when I got home, I could see where someone had pulled up to the gate, found it locked, then did a 3-point turn around in my drive. I locked my gate at night for a long time after that, but I always lock it when I'm away and keep a shotgun and a .357 handy now.
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