The world and the people who make it up are not always as pleasant as we make them out to be. Sadly, life has more than its fair share of nasty, terrifying, and just plain disturbing things. Look no further than the true stories people have shared about their own wild experiences to find out what I mean. Almost any of these cases could be a scene out of a horror movie! Here are some of the most disturbing stories that people on Reddit have experienced firsthand.
1. Barely Human
Myself and a big group of mates found a body in a river. We were probably 16. It had been there a while, it was really bloated and not a good color. Barely looked human. Just called 999 and notified the police. Found out a while later it was a guy who had gone missing a week prior from a town upriver.
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2. Lurking in the Shadows
A few years ago I went to the kitchen around 2 AM to get a glass of water. I figured why put the lights on if I'm gonna be done in five seconds, right? So, 10-year-old me was in complete darkness when I noticed someone staring through our window, with their hands pressed against the glass (we had see through curtains).
I screamed at the top of my lungs and froze, mom woke up and came running to the kitchen to me crying like a baby in my pajamas. He was already gone but I told her what happened, so she went outside with a knife to look for him but never found him. And that's why we don't have see-through curtains anymore. I still have an irrational fear of the dark.
3. TV Troubles
I was walking home from a party about a year or so ago. I live on a bumpy, unpaved hill. So I'm walking up, and I hear someone talking. I wasn't sure who was talking, but all I know was that it got louder the further up the hill I got. Then I realized, it wasn't coming from a house, it was coming from this grown-in patch of land. So, being the ignorant little turd I am, I walk into the bushes. I've never been in there, so I was freaking out. Then I came to a clearing. In the middle was a lone black/white television playing an old TV show. Then, I heard rustling coming to my left. I ran home as fast as I could.
4. Opposites Attract
My ex-husband kidnapped my kids. A church was helping him hide them from me. I was a Catholic (therefore an idol worshipper in his eyes) and he was Baptist. He wasn't religious when we got married, but had been in the past. I guess when he hits a life crisis, his answer is the nearest megachurch. He was in the army and told them I was killed in a car wreck and had to go get the kids. Then he went into hiding. I got a colonel up at 3 AM and was back with the kids in 72 hours. The scariest weekend of my life.
5. Hobbies Save
When I was a kid, I had a man try to get me to go back to his car to see his puppy. I was fishing alone at a park close to my house. He talked to me for a little while and was a nice guy and all but I didn't care about seeing his puppy. He left shortly after. I was an adult before I realized how different my life would have been if I liked puppies more than I liked fishing.
6. Reputation
There was an ER physician who came to my med school to give a lunchtime talk. While he was there he told a story about an event that happened when he was a resident physician working under a very well-respected attending. A teenage girl came into the ER with all of the textbook signs of bacterial meningitis—fever, stiff neck, sensitivity to light, and a severe headache.
Bacterial meningitis is a medical emergency, as it can and will kill an individual within 24-72 hours. There is a short list of bacteria that cause it, which can be identified by doing a procedure called a lumbar puncture, taking a sample of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord by puncturing the space around the spinal cord with a needle.
However, if the patient is showing signs of increased intracranial pressure (from swelling around the brain), making an opening in the spinal column, even with a needle, can have the effect of opening a window on an airplane, and parts of the brain can actually be sucked through the bottom of the skull and herniate into the spinal column, resulting in death.
If patients are showing signs of increased intracranial pressure, treatment can be started with broad-spectrum antibiotics without doing a lumbar puncture. There's no reason that the causative organism needs to be identified before treatment. The ER resident did a quick physical exam and noticed signs of increased intracranial pressure in the teenager.
He reported this to the attending physician along with his treatment plan which he planned on starting immediately. The attending physician ordered him to perform a lumbar puncture. He wavered a bit, but ultimately wanted to keep a good relationship with his attending, so he documented what he had found in the patient's chart and then performed the lumbar puncture.
The patient's brainstem herniated through the bottom of her skull and she died. The theme, or point, of the talk wasn't about the dangers of the medical hierarchy or advocating for patients, it was about the importance of good documentation. The physician, who at this point had been independently practicing for 10+ years, even stated with pride, "And guess who wasn't included on the lawsuit brought against the hospital by the girl's parents because of his excellent documentation?"
This hierarchy and these people still exist in medicine, and you have no idea, when you receive medical care, if you are being treated by one of them. It's frightening, the amount of medical errors that are knowingly made every year because someone didn't want to speak up or ruin their reputation, even at the risk of a human life.
7. Stay in School
One weekday, I'm playing video games like I always do when I'm truant. I start to hear banging against one of the doors. Not like knocking banging, like "Let me into your room so I can kill you" kind of banging. Something was REALLY mad at me. I thought it was some angry animal that got into my attic through the roof. I called my Mom (I was 15 I think) to call my brother (who never answers my phone calls) to come home while describing the situation.
He was busy, so she decided to come home to look in the attic. Nothing in there. I thought for a while that something made me hallucinate, I never did drugs and didn't have any illnesses that made me hallucinate. We moved out, and later my Mom talked with the current house owner while she was out walking. They asked her if there was anything unusual about upstairs (my room), and he basically told her that dogs go to that same door and scratch and stare up at it. It's creepy.
8. Making a Break for It
I've been stalked by a few creepy guys. Probably the worst was when I went running to a park and on the way, there was this car that kept turning around and honking and waving at me while I was running up this hill. Once I got to the park, I noticed they were gone and I started doing my handstand routine. I noticed some guy on the bench because his shirt was pretty unique.
When I started to leave after about 30 minutes, I was on the street and I saw that same car again parked across the street. The guy walked out and was wearing that same shirt (he had been watching me the entire time at the park). He started walking towards me after getting something out of his trunk—not sure what it was. At this point, he was halfway across the street before I ran home.
9. Double Trouble
I'm a twin and my sister and I were in our cousin's wedding. The night before, during the rehearsal, we were sent to get something from the church (we were in the reception hall). The church was dark but unlocked. As we tried to find our way up the stairs, we saw a man standing at the landing on the stairs. He told my sister and me to follow him, he had something to show us. We ran out and went back to the reception hall. No one asked us for whatever we were sent for and we never told anyone. I still wonder why we didn't tell anyone. My parents still don't know.
10. Just Say No
When I was a kid, me and my friend were walking into a nearby park just after lunch. As we entered, an older guy who was probably in his mid to late teens approached us. He asked if we wanted to see the guns he had in his trunk. We, of course, said no and tried walking away, but he grabbed my friend and tried dragging him toward his car. We screamed for help and he let go and ran off towards his car.
A little while later, a couple of police officers stopped us and asked if we had seen a teenager matching his description so we told them what happened. Luckily I had a great memory as a kid and remembered his license plate so after telling the cops everything they escorted us back to my place. A week later we found out this guy had abducted six kids and ended up being tried as an adult instead of a teenager and is probably still in prison. I still remember the incident pretty clearly.
11. Still as a Statue
I found a body when I was 14. Me and my family were hiking Easter morning along the Grand River and me and my sister wanted to explore the riverbank so we each went our separate ways. I saw a backpack hanging from a small tree so I went over, but when I got closer I thought I saw a mannequin. The mannequin’s hand was holding onto a branch and it was laying face down in the mud, wearing jeans and a hoodie with the hood up.
There was a gun on the ground (I thought it was fake) and an empty pack of Scooby-Doo fruit gummies. I decided to kick the thing, but when my foot connected with its thigh, I instantly knew it was a person. Bolted out of there and I told my dad. I thought I kicked some sleeping homeless dude and I was super paranoid sprinting back towards my parents.
My father went to investigate and said it was a body so we called 911. Later found out the guy had killed himself (bullet to the roof of the mouth) but he slightly misfired and probably lived for around 30 seconds after the shot. The police were very surprised we didn't hear a gunshot because it was that recent.
The reason why I thought it was a mannequin was that his hand was elevated, this caused all of the blood drain out and pool in his body which made his hand look snow white like a mannequin’s hand would. Never saw any blood and never got to find out what was in the bag. Thank God I didn't see his face.
12. Figure This Out
I was 12 years old, and we were three kids sharing two bedrooms. So my dad decided to put up a half wall to make a third. If I stood on my bed, I could see into my brother’s room. We were young and used to throw a ball over before falling asleep. One night I was just drifting off when my mom taps me on the shoulder and says, "Pssst. What are you doing?"
I thought, that's a very weird question, obviously I'm sleeping. So I turn around to answer her, only it's not my mom. It's not a person. It looked like a 3D shadow of a man. Just black. I screamed while my eyes were closed, the figure disappeared. My mom and dad came running into my room, I tell them everything, they think it's just my imagination, but tell me if I'm scared to go sleep in the room with my brother.
I tried to sleep, but I was shook. My brother woke up once to go use the bathroom upstairs and I pretended I was asleep. I didn't want him to know I was still afraid. I hear him go into my room, right next door, climb on the bed (springs) and then just stop. I thought he was trying to purposefully scare me so I look up to show him I'm awake, and see the figure again.
It had its arms crossed with its head resting on his hands, even though it had no facial features whatsoever, I knew it was looking at me. I try to convince myself it's just dark, it's my brother playing a prank and I'm seeing things...then I heard the toilet flush upstairs. It was just that one night. I never saw anything like it again, or even close.
But yeeeaarsss later, in my 20s, I was living alone and felt the tap on my shoulder. Again, I heard: "Pssst. What are you doing?" That was the last time I heard it. I'm 31 now. It's not a ghost story. I will remember that day until I die.
13. Appearance Versus Reality
I moved out a year ago and always had sleep paralysis when living with my parents, but when I moved out alone it turned into people breaking in. Freaked me out the first few times, but eventually, I got semi used to it. Until, one day, I was taking a nap in the middle of the day on my bed and I heard people breaking in, normal stuff at first.
Then they came into the bedroom and started rummaging around things. I thought it would go away soon, but then one of them came over and started touching me. It was terrifying, because now I wasn't sure if it was sleep paralysis or real, and I didn't want to move in case they tried to do anything. Finally, they left and I just woke up.
Checked the house everything was still there, but it was so scary especially since I am a woman. I'll never forget that. It's the only time I've had more than just auditory hallucinations.
14. Foisted by Your Own Petard
This is actually kind of embarrassing, but anyway, last year I was watching my parent's house while they were out of the state. They live on a wooded plot of land and have been known to have trespassers on their property. I got home one night at about 11 PM, and I'm standing in the foyer and the way the foyer is I can see into the kitchen which has windows, the only light in the house is the moonlight coming in the windows.
Against the light, I can see the silhouette of someone standing there. My heart immediately started slamming against my chest and I ask who’s there. No answer. I ask again, and as I'm asking I'm moving my keys that I was holding into the spaces between my fingers so I had a weapon. Again there was no answer. I start moving and the figure starts moving too, exactly the same way I was. I put two and two together and I flick on the lights and I see a reflection of myself in the mirror that's in the foyer.
15. What Did He Want??
My girlfriend and I went to Walmart one night at about 11:30. We park close, with only one spot open to us on our left. As we were slowly making our way down the grocery aisles I happened to notice a guy out of the corner of my eye with no buggy or cart. When I looked over he grabbed a box of something and stared intently at it.
You know, not the kind of absent-minded "I am shopping" kind of look. I make a side note of it, and we continue down a few more aisles. After seeing the man in our aisles and vicinity a few more times, I tell my girlfriend we should aimlessly wander around other parts of the store for a bit, so I can gauge if my suspicions are correct.
About 30 minutes later, we end up at the self-checkout, guess who is sitting on the bench in front of the self-checkout with no bags? I think to myself, maybe coincidence, maybe not. As we leave the Walmart, all of a sudden I get this feeling and tell my girlfriend to stop and I stop abruptly as well. When I turn around this guy has almost run into us he was following so closely and we had stopped so abruptly.
He stared at me like a deer in headlights, and so did I, because I couldn't really mentally process the implications of what he (presumably) intended to do. After a brief deer in headlights, he keeps walking like nothing happens then gets into a windowless white van that is now occupying the empty left parking spot next to my car.
This was a few years ago, and I still think about it a lot and what could have happened. There were too many coincidences for that to merely be my anxiety interpreting the situation as something it wasn't.
16. Repay the Favor
When I was 12, I saw two tourists struggling to communicate with the cashier at a bookstore in Indonesia. I'm bilingual so I just hopped over and helped translate before going back to browsing my books. After paying, one of the guys came over to thank me. He wanted to take me out for dinner to repay me. Being 12, of course, I told him I can't have dinner without my parents' permission.
He went, "I'm sure you can sneak out, right?" Er, no. By now, I noticed his friend came up behind me so I'm kind of boxed between them in the middle of two bookshelves. My sister had already ducked under one and ran off, leaving me alone. They were really persistent and asked me if I could grab lunch or drinks instead. Er, I'm 12.
Finally, one of the salesgirls noticed something was off and came to ask if anything's wrong. I got the hell out of there. My sister and I went to another store, and suddenly, my sister started freaking out since they were right behind us. Ok, maybe it's a coincidence. We went to a lingerie store. They followed. Ok, we're definitely being followed.
We ran to the store our mom was in and the salespeople there called security. I thought they were slightly creepy at that time, but now that I'm older, holy cow they were freaking creepy.
17. Gunning It
In high school, me and a buddy made the ill decision to smoke weed in a graveyard around 8 or 9 at night (summertime so it was just now getting dark). I smoked to the point of being totally out of it. We were just chilling next to a tree when I see a man walking down the graveyard path. I got a little nervous immediately but blew it off.
I then see the man pull out a handgun and aim toward something—he didn't notice us at this point, and I couldn't see who or what he was aiming it at. I was so terrified I thought I was mildly hallucinating; I couldn't even move. My friend hit my side and said: "Dude this guy has a gun out, we gotta get the heck out of here."
We both slowly got up but like the stoned idiots we were, we hit a rock trying to get up and the man finally noticed us. He was a good 200 feet away from us, but the second he saw it he slowly moved towards us with the gun in his hand. We started running at this point, I looked behind my shoulder once and saw him start to run towards us as well.
We booked it out of the graveyard and were finally back in my neighborhood. I was terrified for days after that.
18. Too Much Information
One day my friend and I go to Disney World. I'd renewed my ticket online but had to take the paper up to the booth for a new pass. We're going to Magic Kingdom so we stop by the Ticket and Transportation Center because there isn't a line. Fast forward to later in the day and I start getting texts that say “Hey! How you doing?”
Weird, because it's from a number I don't recognize, and they call me by name. I don't really hand around my number a lot so it's odd and I say “Hi person whose name isn't in my phone.” So he says his name was Steven and asks what I'm doing with “that ugly guy.” Okay, so there are people who would know who I'm with but it is very unlikely it would be anyone who would text me this.
Also, I surprisingly know very few Stevens. The texts go back and forth for a bit with him saying not to worry, that I know him. He sends me a WDW badge that has Steven on it (not sure if he was trying to play the odds on me knowing a Steven who works at WDW or what). And then says have a good day at Magic Kingdom.
This adds to the creep factor because we decided to go to MK as we were driving there. Neither of us remembers really telling anyone which park we ended up at. I say that I have no clue who he is (because obviously, you should say something more by this point if I'm not catching that you're that Steven I actually know) and he sends back that I don't seem to care to find out and have a good day.
So, I stop responding because this seems like a good place to end it. He sends me a Maps pin of a screenshot showing directions from wherever he is to my home address, with the text “Not a bad drive.” So my friend and I start walking to guest services because this is obviously no joke, and he's reasonably identified himself as an employee of theirs at this point.
It is also worth mentioning that almost no one I knew at the time had my home address because I lived at home and didn't like having people over and bothering my family. The last message he sent me was “LOL, well, don't get too creeped out, I don't want to mess with you that much. I promise you that I am somebody you already know.” He was the guy who printed my pass.
In a transaction that took all of two minutes MAX he decided that he should take my cell and home address off of my account. My understanding is that Disney fired him that day—although they didn't really want to say too much, I think they started moving into liability control and even a cop came in and told me there wasn't a crime but I chose to file a report anyway because HE HAD MY HOME ADDRESS.
I end up getting a detective call later who tells me that I can press charges and I do. I kind of asked his opinion and without interjecting, he said that based on how the guy messaged me, he's probably done it a lot but I'm the first one to connect the dots and do anything. Get a letter from the state’s attorney and send back that I'm still willing to testify.
I've heard nothing since. I'm guessing among all our crazy FL cases, mine didn't justify much manpower. Luckily, I was at least able to put a face to it because the idiot had his cell phone connected to his Facebook account. I still get the heebie-jeebies looking through the messages years later. I kept them because the detective instructed me to.
Even knowing that the case probably isn't going anywhere at this point, I feel reassured that I have them if anything did happen—since he still has that address.
19. A Sudden Change of Personality
Late one night I got a call from a friend I knew was out of town for a conference. My wife and I were in bed, just about ready to turn out the light. My friend was speaking gibberish, but absolutely panicked. She said she was bleeding, she had no idea where she was, then more gibberish. She asked me and my wife to pick her up from the airport.
Her flight was cut short or something and she was on her way back. Never got details on why. Bad phone reception along with all the other confusion. So we hopped into the car to go pick her up. This was about 11 PM. Halfway to the airport, she calls again. More absolute panic. She's sobbing over and over, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!!" and I was like…there is nothing to be sorry about.
I had no idea why she was so panicked. I told her it's okay, but she was phasing between sobbing and just gibberish. Also, she wasn't flying back. She was in a hotel. We drove next to a mountain and lost the cell signal. But she sounded sure she wasn't flying back tonight. The airport wouldn't let her fly. They thought she was drunk. So we turned around and tried calling her for an hour or so.
She finally called us. She was in a dark hotel room two time zones away, not where her flight was headed, but the layover location. She didn't know if someone was with her in the room. Or maybe they had left the room and were coming back. She had no idea why she was there or what hotel it was. Normally, she's a very sharp woman.
I had to walk her through the steps of looking at hotel stationery to get the name of the hotel. Maybe the address. I had to tell her to look on the phone for the phone number. She's still sobbing and speaking gibberish. She said she was bleeding from her head and her glasses were broken. It was absolutely shocking and grim and so, so creepy to hear it coming from her, and not be able to take any kind of command of the situation.
I called the police in the city where the hotel was located to get the cops to do a wellness check on her. They took her to the hospital. She had been roofied on the airplane and couldn't tell us anything else about what had happened to her. We picked her up from the airport the next day. She remembered very, very little of it and seemed to be in complete denial, despite wearing the same clothes she left in and having blood smeared on her forehead and busted glasses.
But I remembered the panicked calls and the helplessness. It bothered me for weeks, maybe months. It's still one of the creepiest things I've experienced.
20. Misunderstandings Really Bug Me
I was in Italy near the Alps when I was around seven and I would walk down the hill to play with this kid that lived there even though neither of us could understand each other. The kid had a dog that we would play with too. One day when I walked down there, the whole yard was covered in bugs. They might have been locusts or some equivalent, but they were EVERYWHERE.
I was about to turn and run but I saw a mass in the middle of the yard. I then realized it was the dog, just laying, covered in bugs. I thought it might be dead but I ran to it and pulled on his collar. He just looked up at me then put his head back down. I kept pulling and I was yelling for the neighbor kid. No one responded. I then convinced the dog to get up and at this point bugs were also covering me and I was terrified.
I pulled the dog into this shed and I hid in there with him and cried. I think I was in there for like ten minutes and there was a knock... It was the neighbor looking at me through the window. He opened the door and started yelling at me but I couldn't understand him. I looked behind him and the yard that was previously covered in a plague of bugs was now empty. I tried explaining what happened but it was all lost in translation. I didn't go back over there again.
21. A Painful Story
A few years back I was presenting with signs of kidney stones. However, there were a few misplaced symptoms that didn't make sense. These symptoms were also in line with appendicitis, atypical symptoms which were the same symptoms that my mother experienced when she had appendicitis. Being medically competent (although more in trauma than anything else) I went to the hospital with intentions of getting a scan to figure out which it was (kidney stones run in my family).
After the ER resident performed some basic examination, he declared that I was constipated and could go home and return in three days if I was still in pain. He then walked away before I could even address any of my concerns. When the nurse came back I explained my medical background and told her I really needed a scan done. Luckily she agreed and got me in.
The next person I saw was the surgeon who promptly wheeled me up to the OR. When they removed my appendix it was so inflamed and twisted that it burst while removing it from the laparoscopic incision. Scary stuff, as someone my stepfather worked with experienced a near identical story with her husband. After returning home, the husband went to sleep and the wife woke up next to a dead guy in the morning. Medical mistakes happen but medical incompetence is another story completely.
22. Found in Translation
Myself and six friends (aged 18-28, mixed European group) were on a five-day river canoe trip. Our guides were an older (60s) rough-looking German guy and a slightly younger but shifty-looking Orinoco Basin native. One of our group knew fluent German, but for some unexplained reason, didn't share with the guide that she could speak it.
Later, told us she didn't want the creepy dude making comments to her that no one else could understand. We were three days in, roughing it in hammocks on the side of the river, not having seen a village for at least 8 hours. The guides kinda kept themselves to themselves after dinner, which was fine, but this evening they were a bit further away and we could tell they were having a pretty heated discussion in a mix of German and local dialect.
Suddenly, the German girl in the group turns white and looks terrified and it takes us a few minutes to calm her down. She explained she heard the German guy talk about “making sure the others will be at the place and they will have the guns” and that “the crocodiles will get rid of the guys and the girls will go with them to (some village)” the day after next.
We kinda freaked out, but decided that being alone with these two dudes days from anywhere in the middle of the fucking rainforest, we were pretty much trapped. We decided on a plan, which, fortunately, went our way. Early the next day, we decided that the next time we saw another canoe expedition pass us, we would essentially shout and scream at them that we were being kidnapped and needed help.
Fortunately, a four canoe group came past and we enacted our plan. Our guides immediately just got the hell out of there, didn't even protest about our crazy accusations or anything, other than to pull a sawn-off 12 gauge from under a blanket and point it at us to stop us chasing them (which kinda validated to us that they were planning to kill/ traffic us, and they didn't hang around to get caught).
We got taken to the nearest village a few hours down a branching tributary, where we explained the situation to the local police and some soldiers that were on exercise or something. Turns out there was a suspected serial killer operating out of the area targeting tourists going into the forest, active since 1996. I was never able to corroborate any of the info we were told by the police using any Western media source or internet searches.
We still occasionally email each other about our close call, but it's been 20 years and we've moved on with our lives. I've never told family or my wife, and I don't think anyone else ever told more than a handful of people.
23. Good Decision
I ran on the track team in high school and during my first two years, I rode the late after school bus to get home. On Tuesday and Thursday, there were two buses that took students home, but on Mondays and Fridays everyone had to ride one bus and the bus was driven by this really creepy guy. He would look at girls through the rearview mirror and stare at them for lengthy periods of time while giving this really unsettling smile which made all of the girls uncomfortable.
One day this guy was the bus driver who took our team to a track meet at another school. The buses would normally stay parked in the parking lot for the duration of the meet. Well, I had a while until my next race, so I decided to go and watch my teammates run and I went to watch by the gate which was near the track’s entrance.
It started to drizzle, so I go to stand under this pavilion to keep dry and after a few minutes I see the bus driver there and he comes over to me and asks me if I want to get on the bus to keep out of the rain. At this point, I’m really nervous, but I say yes anyway because I’m afraid of what will happen if I say no. So the two of us start heading to the bus and I’m freaking out when a few of my male teammates see that I’m about to get on the bus and they decide that they want to get out of the rain too.
They come over to the bus as I’m about to get on and ask if they can get on, but the bus driver shakes his head and says, “Not you guys. Just her.” Now I’m really scared and I stutter out that I’m sorry but I don’t want to go on the bus anymore and I take off to the bleachers where I stayed for the rest of the meet. Even though nothing happened,
I still get sort of queasy thinking about what could have happened if those guys hadn’t come and I had gone on the bus.
24. Just Passing Through
Near where I live is this little place called Concrete City. It’s just this circle of empty concrete buildings that used to be homes to coal miners or something like that, but it is totally abandoned now and some of the structures are crumbling. It’s like a giant, concrete playground for young adults to smoke up, tag the walls, and play paintball.
So, me and a couple of others are wandering around the place, and we start coming up on this parked car. I could see two people in the front shuffling around and I was just thinking "Oh great, we're about to walk up on two people screwing." Nobody else in the group seemed to pay it any mind, so I keep walking. Then I notice it’s not a couple.
Two big dudes are in the front, staring us down, sitting stock still and looking shady. Still, we all just keep going and at this point, I'm just glad we're in a group of five and still kind of worried we're about to get screwed. As in, chopped to bits and spread around in piles. And then I see why I get this exact feeling. We're all right up alongside the car now, and I can't help but glance in the back window.
An open cooler filled with bloody ice, a second, closed cooler, probably filled with the same, and a pile of clear plastic bags. I keep my mouth shut and keep walking. When we're just passed the car, the engine revs up and those two dudes tear out of there like hell's behind them. So it could be a couple of poachers, or maybe organ theft and somewhere in concrete city lay a man with a missing kidney. I don’t know for sure, but it was definitely shady.
25. Mind Games...Or Not?
Halloween night 2015, I come home with my friend. I lived with four other girls and a roommate, but tonight my friend is staying in my roommate's bed. I've been asleep for hours when I start to wake up, because I feel something touch the foot of my bed. I open my eyes and I see a man crouched down at the foot of my bed. He's in all black, with a hood over his face, tied tight, with dark black sunglasses so most of his face is obscured.
I recognize immediately that this must be my sleep paralysis acting up again, but I'm scared so the attempt to scream comes out before I can process it all. Except this time, I hear this awful, blood-curdling scream. It sounds like a woman being murdered. She's screaming and screaming and it won't stop. It took me a while to realize I was the person screaming.
I've never heard myself sound like that before. I didn't even recognize myself...just terrified. The man sprinted away, slammed the door, and I heard him run back through the house. My friend in the bed next to me is sitting there silent. The house is silent. I felt like a helpless child again. I turned to her and said, "Is this when you call 911?" She didn't answer.
My hands are shaking when I'm calling, and I don't really remember much now. I know I started crying on the phone with the operator, because I was afraid he was still in the house or had killed my housemates (because none of them came running). The operator told me to lock my door and not to leave the room until the police arrived. I don't know how long it took, but the sun came up while we waited.
When I saw them out the window I went running outside screaming and crying to the police. The rest of the story is pretty boring. He stole my neighbor's bike, and the police never caught him—they found the bike though. I went to a therapist and it didn't help at all. She would say things like, "I bet you were really scared, huh." Yes, I was? That's why I'm here??
She gave me like a week's worth of anti-anxiety medication and told me to go home. I took three of the pills at once and just laid in bed awake and shaking all night. Didn't work for me at all. Started sleeping in class. Started missing notes. I'm better now but I've given up on sleeping well. I can't sleep next to people because if they move I wake up and if they talk or touch me I'll scream. But I don't really think about it anymore.
26. Man’s Best Friend
My friend and I traveled to Europe together when we were about 16-17. We both loved animals and would buy sausages to feed the local stray dogs. The dogs would follow us around for a time and greet us daily. They were two pretty big mutts that we had befriended. One day these guys roll up in a shady, falling-apart red sports car.
They said they wanted us to come party with them and followed us when we refused. We had started to get scared and went to the other side of the street to avoid them, only they turned around and continued to follow us, pleading to come with them. At the seemingly perfect moment, the dogs we had been feeding ran up to the car and started barking/trying to bite the passenger.
He rolled up his window and drove away. I have no idea how those dogs must have sensed we were in danger and came to our rescue, but we gave them extra sausages that day. I don't know what would have happened if they didn't chase the guys off.
27. Good Timing
Three days ago at 5 am I walked down to my garage to find two people in there robbing me.
28. Unidentified Disturbance
This happened back in 2008, just after my family had moved to a rural town in Oregon. I was 12 at the time and my family and I were driving home after visiting my step-grandparents that evening. It was late, around 11 PM, and my Mom had decided to take the unlit country back road home. I was in the backseat with my younger brother, trying to tune out my parents incessant arguing up front while my brother was zoning out and looking out the back window.
Very suddenly he nudges me and points out the back window, insisting I turn around and look. I'm very tired and irritated with my parents who at this point who won’t stop yelling at one another so I shrug him off. He becomes more insistent and I can hear fear creeping into his voice. I pull up my hoodie and ignore him. Now he's frantically trying to get my parent's attention and they're screaming at him to shut up.
This goes on for a while but eventually, he calms down, although I can hear him turn around in his seat every once in a while to look out the back window. The next day I ask him what had him all worked up in the car. He describes to me in a shaky voice that something had been following behind the car the night before.
He detailed seeing three dim points of blue-white light arranged in a black triangle shape following closely behind the car and when my Mom would break the tail lights lit it dimly so he could see a dome-shape in the middle of the black mass. He said it didn't jostle around like a car would when my Mom drove over the potholes in the road, and it was following us closely, so he thought maybe it was hovering off the ground.
It sounds ridiculous, but he told me this with such conviction and fear in his voice I know he must have seen something that night. We drove that road many times after and never experience anything like that again.
29. Who You Gonna Call
I was sleeping with my friend in her basement and I could hear what sounded like snowballs being thrown at the window even though it was the middle of summer. I went back to sleep then woke up again to someone saying “I'm so lonely, I'm so lonely,” and I opened my eyes to see a male figure standing by the side of the bed. I just stared and watched it lean over my friend who was heavily breathing in her sleep and like, hover its hands over her. I ended up hiding my eyes under the covers and tried to go back to sleep. I’ve refused to sleep in her basement ever since.
30. Lay Low
Recently a friend and I were swapping our favorite horror movies. We were childhood friends that grew up in the same Detroit suburb. I was thinking about an incident that had happened when I was in second or third grade (30 years ago) and she says out of the blue "I don't know if you remember this, but the police started patrolling our neighborhood when we were in second or third grade because when I was walking home from school two men in a blue pickup truck rolled down the window next to me and said, ‘Hey girl you need a ride home?' and one tried to grab me.
I took off running, tearing through yards. I told my mom, who called the cops and walked with me to the bus stop after that." I confessed that I was thinking about a time when my cousin Sean (recently passed away so he's been on my mind, also, he was really smart, much smarter than I) and I were wandering around the neighborhood as kids did in the 80s.
This blue pickup truck pulled up to us and one of the two guys asked us to "hop in for a ride." Sean said "no thanks" and instructed me to sneak into a neighbor's back porch (luckily unlocked) and stay down. I whispered I was afraid we would get in trouble for not asking the neighbor for permission (not the brightest kid—I would rather die than break the rules I guess) and Sean goes "stay here and hide. Act like we went inside because we live here."
One of the two guys GOT OUT OF THE TRUCK and went into the yard to look for us. We laid low. About 15 minutes later he left. I look back on it now and think "What a close call." We lived near the area of the Oakland County Child Killer (though in a much poorer neighborhood than he targeted) and I've spent the last few nights reading about the case and thinking about that blue truck.
31. A Universal Problem
My friend had invited me to go on a trip to Universal Florida with her family. On the way back home we picked up their new puppy, so we made frequent stops to let it use the restroom. It was around 8 PM when we stopped at a gas station in a smaller town. My friend and I decided to go in and use the restroom. When we got to the door there were two bigger men at the counter talking to the cashier.
I reached to open the door but the man closest to it reached over and held it shut for about 30 seconds while they continued to talk to the cashier—this should have been my first clue to hold my piss and get back to the car. But eventually, he moved and let us in. The bathroom was one of those single stalls, so I went and used it first, then waited on my friend by the door once I was finished.
I noticed the guys kept glancing in my direction, and I was starting to feel very uneasy. My friend and I exited the building and were talking about how odd the men were when not 30 seconds after we left, the two men started following us. Luckily, my friend's car wasn't too far down the sidewalk and we booked it the rest of the way, jumping into the car as fast as we could.
The two men slowed down and kept walking as soon as they saw my friend's mother in the car, and luckily that was the end of it, but I have never been so creeped out in my life. I'm positive if we had been alone we would have been abducted that night.
32. Run Like the Wind
When I was in fifth grade I was at my friend’s house. We were hanging out behind her house by the lake. Two high school-aged guys came up and saw us. One guy said, "Oh okay, we will leave." We both had a strange feeling and left to go to her house. We stayed there for 15 minutes before heading back up to our spot. Once we got there the two guys were there.
They asked if we wanted to sit there; however, we declined their offer and started walking on the dam. After about 50 feet I hear something behind me, so I look over my shoulder. They were following us. I told my friend that, but obviously she didn't believe me till she looked too. At that point they were running after us. Adrenaline started pumping through us.
We got to the end of the dam where the dry waterfall was. I looked over my shoulder and saw one was following our exact route and the other was attempting to cut us off. Somehow we managed to outrun them after running for what seemed like an eternity. When we made it to her dad's house we didn't leave for a long time. We decided not to tell our parents. In hindsight, we should have.
33. Bolting
When I was about 10-11 my parents went out of town for the night. They trusted me and said my cousin could come over to hang out and play video games while they were gone. Around 11 at night I decided to run over to the mini mart, it's about three blocks away. Being that age, I had an imagination that had me scared of any shadow so I ran most of the way.
As I was passing a school called Sunnyside, a large man came running out of the bushes towards me, he was probably less than 10 feet away when he ran out. I've always been a fast runner but when this guy came out, my mind kicked into survival mode, and I booked it like Usain Bolt on coke. Made it to the store, got what I needed as quickly as I could, then headed back to my house.
I decided to head down the street on the opposite side of the school and as I passed the playground I notice the same man hurriedly walking across towards me. Once again booked it all the way home, and thankfully wasn't followed. I'm 17 now, but it still terrifies me thinking what could've happened had I not outran him.
34. The Power of Love
When I was younger, I had my first boyfriend in high school, so I was like 14. We dated about 8 months. He was awful and I finally worked up the courage to break up with him. And he lost his mind, begged me to stay, threatened to hurt himself, and the works. I was scared. But after I get home I don't hear anything from him for a few days, I told my parents and they called his parents and asked that he didn't reach out to me anymore.
Anyway, about a week later I wake up in the middle of the night because I heard a sound. I live in a farm community and we don't have AC so my window was wide open. We get wild cats, racoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes, and deer all the time so at first I just ignore it and roll over. Then I heard the sound of something pulling on the screen of my window.
I freaked out and ran thinking I was about to get murdered. My dad grabs the axe he keeps under his bed and goes out back to find this intruder. Sure enough it was my ex trying to break in just to talk. My dad was ready to kill him, and I probably would have stopped him. My dad drove him home so he could wake up his parents and have a chat with them at 2 AM.
35. Outside the Tent
My sister, myself, and three friends were camping in my friend's fenced-in backyard one night. Three of us were 15 years old and the other two were 13 years old. We sat in the tent and talked late into the night, when we heard scratching on the tent. There was just enough light outside that we could see a silhouette of a person walking around the tent.
We thought it was our friend's older brother, so we started yelling at him, "Casey, stop trying to scare us!" and "Casey, leave us alone!" He didn't say anything. This tent had mesh at the top of the tent so you can see outside, so one friend stood up to tell him off. Immediately after standing up and opening her mouth to yell at him, I saw her pale and she sat back down, terrified, saying "It's not Casey."
That sent a chill down my spine. We all shut up and sat there, silently panicking, watching this guy continue to walk around the tent. He must have heard us, but still he stayed. Finally, my bravest friend started yelling at the guy, threatening him and putting on a big show. We heard him kind of shuffle away and that's when she burst out of the tent to try and scare him off.
She later told me that as she ran out of the tent she saw this guy standing by the gate into the yard, messing with his pants, like he was putting himself back together. She chased him out of the yard and watched him run down the street and around the corner. We all went inside after that. I'm still uncomfortable with camping, 13 years later.
36. Her Own Personal Reality Show
Not nearly as serious, but a little creepy: my neighbor is an old lady. She comes outside every once in a while to chat with passersby and garden. The first conversation she had with my dad, she complimented the painting he has hanging in his bedroom. No big deal, she probably saw us moving it in, or glimpsed it at some point before we got curtains.
But then she meets our dog and says, "Well, he's much scarier through the window, isn't he?" Again, no big deal, we know he has a habit of pushing aside blinds to stare outside. She comments on things like this often, asking us why we didn't walk our dog that morning or when we got a new sofa, but she's just an old lady, right? She's probably bored and outside a lot.
Then she meets me. She swears she's already met me, but I had never seen her before in my life. She asks me how I like my room and tells me about the girls who had it before me. Weird, but okay...she rubbed me the wrong way but I don't really mind—she's fairly easy to avoid. Or so I thought. As I was taking the dog outside, I happened to glance over and see her staring at me through the window.
She lowers the blinds when she sees that I saw her, but is peeking through them watching me. Later, I go to the kitchen and see her again watching me very intently through the window (our blinds were slightly open to let light in). Then upstairs in my parents’ room (there's a window in their bathroom), I see her again as I'm replacing the towels, watching.
The more I looked for her, the more I saw: she was watching basically all the time. Not only from her window—she sits in her car and watches us from the street. She sits on her porch and watches. She slowly walks down the street and watches us—literally all hours of the day. And she does it to her other neighbors, and she did it to the people who had our house before us—everyone knew to keep your blinds and curtains shut at all times, otherwise you can guarantee she watches you. It freaked me the hell out.
37. Unwanted Visitor
I was on a backpacking trip on the Appalachian trail, and my dad and I stopped at one of the many public cabins. We set our bags down and joined the campfire. It was just us and a middle-aged Asian couple. We begin talking and the sun sets, so we don't expect anyone else to come. Nevertheless, this huge guy with long silver hair sets his small pack down under the awning and joins us at the fire.
He was no less than 6'8” tall, extremely muscular, and had his hair tied back into a ponytail. Imagine a more muscular Geralt from The Witcher. We start talking and he seems very friendly. Then, my dad asks the man: "So, where are you from?" No response. My dad repeats the question, thinking the guy didn't hear him. No response.
The Asian guy asks the question, and suddenly, the big guy explodes, yelling, "I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T F***ING KNOW!" He then takes out a huge Bowie knife and a whetstone, and starts sharpening it. All of us decide to pack our stuff and book it to the next cabin, which was about seven miles away. It was a walk, but we eventually made it there, and there was a dirty hippy dude already there.
He stunk like hell, but was harmless. We stop at the campfire hangout for a bit, then I see a reflection out of the corner of my eye. I turn around and see the big, silver-haired guy standing in the treeline, spying on us. At that moment, I nearly shat my pants, because there was no way all of us could take this guy on. He was built like a WWE wrestler, and we were all under six feet tall.
I let the other people know, and the Asian guy took out a revolver, and told the man to "Go the hell away." Big guy stands there for a moment and silently walks off into the woods without making any sound. After that incident, we agreed to have someone keep watch. Since the Asian guy had a gun, he volunteered while we slept. In the morning, I was so glad big guy didn't come back because the Asian man fell asleep. That story still gives me chills.
38. Not-So-Secret Admirer
A guy followed me home from the train station once. I think he still knows where I live. I got out of work and was waiting at the train station. I had my headphones in and was staring at the TV with the arrival/departure times. This guy suddenly appeared out of nowhere, got really close to my face, and asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said nothing and walked away quickly.
He looked/smelled homeless and had these big, crazy eyes that were darting around the room as he spoke. He had gotten so close that he'd spit on my cheek. There are weird people at train stations. Whatever. I'll never see him again anyway. Move on. After I get off the train, I take two buses and walk a few blocks to get home. I was focused on the podcast that I was listening to and wasn't paying attention to my surroundings.
All of the buses were also very crowded. When I reached my stop and started to walk home, I noticed that the creepy guy got off the bus behind me. There was nobody else around, so I ran home. When I got to my door and started to unlock it, he was standing at the end of my driveway. I was crying and fumbling with my keys.
Then some of my neighbors pulled up in a truck, and I screamed, "HELLO! SIR! HELP!" Then the creepy guy turned and walked away into the woods. I called the police, but they didn't show up for a while. They had me write a statement, but seemed uninterested. My husband left work early and came home. We saw the creepy guy lingering around the neighborhood and walking past our house a few times in the following days, but he eventually stopped. Haven't seen him since.
39. It’ll Take a Lot to Kill This Pain
I had a friend in college who I thought was just a friend. Always thought she was so cool because she’d do anything for anyone. Turns out it was just me and most of the stories were lies. She was prescribed painkillers for something and had no problems sharing them as we hung out and smoked often.
We’d drive outside of campus through the cornfields and get high, listening to music and talking. One day she picks me up at my dorm and offers me a drink. Cool, but it’s already open. At first, I really thought nothing of it but then I take a sip and think something is definitely off. I taste the painkillers. Oooookay, maybe I’m paranoid?
I ask her to take me home and she asks if we can stop by her place first. Ok, but I think it’s a bit strange. We walk in and it’s literally trashed, dishes piled up, a few bags of trash laying around. She starts GOING OFF about how much she cleans and her roommates just trash the place, how she just “did the dishes yesterday and took out the trash” (I’m seeing food dried to plates, trying hard to understand how four girls can make three bags of trash in 24 hours, no freaking way she was telling the truth).
Then I realized how she was cleaning—dropping it low, thong showing, flirtatious talking—and now I realize I’m starting to feel the effects of the painkillers; with every new bout of blurred vision and itchy skin I realize need to get the hell out of there NOW. Texted my brother to meet me in the middle of campus and to keep heading towards her place if I didn’t show up.
The last thing that I remember is hugging my brother and then waking up the next day. She never tried to speak to me again but made sure to ask everyone we knew why I was mad at her to see if I told anyone. You’re lucky I didn’t, JESSICA! If a girl is obsessed with horses, run far, run fast and don’t look back.
40. Shots Fired
I was 11. Woke up to the sound of screaming and shouting. My cousin (who was living with us) was about 17 and in my room holding the door from being opened. On the other side of the door was my mother screaming to be let in. My sister was in the bunk under mine and she was crying. Suddenly my cousin comes to and opens the door.
My mom rushes in and asks my cousin and us if we were okay. There was a commotion in the hallway and living room but I couldn’t tell what it was. When I peeked out of the doorway I saw my stepfather holding a small 22 caliber rifle looking out the windows frantically. Suddenly cops show up and start arresting my stepdad.
My mom is yelling at the police and I’m sitting there with my cousin and sister completely baffled. We all notice the broken sliding glass door and suddenly realize there are large bullet holes all over our house, through the entertainment center, and above the couch where my cousin was sleeping just minutes before.
I guess what happened is someone was shooting at some people walking by our apartment and the stray bullets all hit our place. My cousin woke up and immediately thought people were inside shooting us so he ran to the kids room and kept anyone from coming in like a badass. My mom woke up and immediately thought to check on us but couldn’t get into the room because of my cousin. My stepdad grabbed his gun out of instinct. The cops showed up and assumed my stepdad was the shooter and arrested him. All in all a pretty fun night.
41. From Playdate to Child Abduction
It was a very long time ago—back in 1973. I know that it was summer, I was six, and we were living on Monica Lane in Madison, Wisconsin. Thing is, I sort of recalled it but never put two-and-two together until a few months ago when I was talking to my mom who went into great detail.
I was a very gregarious child; outgoing, extroverted, friends with anyone. It was at the time a middle-class neighborhood, and three houses down from ours, on the same side of the street, was a huge park. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a salesman, but mom worked 2nd shift at Merriter, while my dad worked days. I rarely had a babysitter, only if they went out for dinner or a movie. But they did go out often and there were always older kids in the neighborhood to babysit.
One sitter who I really liked lived a few blocks or so away, and down the street a little bit. Vicky had babysat a few times before that and it was pretty uneventful. She'd play games with me, and do my hair, play dress-up, pretty basic stuff. So anyhow, one day I had gone with friends down to the park. I remember there was a ball field at the time, and a sandlot next to the field. My friends wanted to play on the monkey bars, but I wanted to play in the sand. I looked at the sandbox and my babysitter Vicky was standing there. I told my friends I was going down to the sandbox and ran off.
We played in the sand, building a castle, and then she asked me if I wanted to go get something cold to drink. It was stifling hot, and I, of course, said yes. So she takes my hand and we start walking to her place. She starts telling me about her puppies and asking if I want to play with them. Of course, I get giddy and now can't wait to get to her house. This was where my memory had stopped and after my mom told me what happened, the rest of it flooded back.
My mother just happened to be talking to my sister and I about some of the places we lived, and we got to Monica Lane. I told her I remembered the park and how big it seemed, and she asks me if I remember being kidnapped. I immediately thought she was kidding and then the look on her face told me otherwise. She said it was around five in the afternoon and one of my friends had come to the door to ask me to come back outside, sure that I had gotten bored and walked back home. When my mom checked the house, she realized I wasn't there and (seven months pregnant with my sister) sprints to the park, screaming my name.
After asking several kids if they'd seen me with no clue, she went to the ball field and asked the older boys if they'd seen me. One of the boys (she guessed around 14) said that he'd seen a younger woman playing with a girl that fit my description in the sand and walk off in a general direction and that was all he knew.
My mom ran across the street to one of the houses and asked to use their phone and called the police. By the time the police got there, my dad had come home and some of the neighbors were trying to help my mom. So there's this search party out looking for me, screaming my name and knocking on doors. The police had gone back to the park to ask the boys if they knew who had been with me and if they knew who she was.
Between the boys and the neighbors, they had deduced who it was that had led me off, but I have no idea how, honestly. The police and the entourage go to her home (she lived with her parents but they weren't home) and knock on the door. She came to the door and told them she hadn't seen me, and that she'd been home all day.
The police asked to come in and for some reason, she said okay. They went through the house and went to the basement and found me. That's what my mom knew and then I remembered. It was literally like a flood gate had opened and I started crying. At six, you sort of trust everyone, and she'd been in our home. I never got a bad feeling from her and my parents didn't, either. But when we walked into her house I remember that cold, holy feeling washing over me and getting very worried. I remember starting to cry and saying I wanted to go home, over and over.
She takes me into her kitchen and gets me a glass of water and a tissue. I hear dogs barking, and next to the kitchen is an open stairway that goes down and where the barking was coming from. She starts trying to cajole me into going downstairs—telling me there's all sorts of toys and games. I reluctantly agree, and she grabs my hand to head down the stairs. The dogs are going nuttier and I start screaming.
At this point, Vicky is getting bizarre. She's screaming at me to "SHUT UP!! IF YOU DONT SHUT UP I WILL THROW YOU IN THE CAGE WITH THE DOGS AND THEY WILL EAT YOU!! SHUT UP!!" Dragging me down the stairs and still screaming. I was scared out of my mind. I remember crying so hard I was hyperventilating, and I am screaming so hard I'm not making sounds. Vicky then flips a switch and starts being syrupy sweet, trying to calm me down. She tells me that she was just playing a game and tells me she wants to play hide and seek.
She must have been relatively skilled at calming me down because the next thing I know, I hear knocking on the door upstairs and I wasn't crying. The houses were all the same sort of tract houses that Sears used to sell, not huge but not small, but you could hear everything at any spot in the house. I keep hearing the knocking and she tells me that it's her friends. They're coming to play hide and seek!!! She convinced me to let her put a piece of masking tape over my mouth, so I wouldn't make a sound, and lifted me into this big wooden box next to the kennel. She put a big pile of blankets over me and told me to be really quiet, so they didn't find me.
The whole time the dogs were going crazy but when she calmed me down, they calmed down, too. They still looked incredibly mean, but they were no longer frothing at the mouth, and only slightly growling. Until the knocking started. I remember scrunching in there, confused. Still scared and convinced that the dogs were going to get out and eat me. I was crying again and hyperventilating. I remember taking the tape off my mouth because I couldn't breathe, but remembered I needed to be quiet because I was afraid of what she'd do if I screamed.
I laid in that smelly box next to a big bag of dog food, sweating to hell, tears rolling down my face. I sort of pushed the blankets to the side but only enough so that I could pull them back over me when someone came. I recall thinking about my dad and wondering if he'd come find me. All of a sudden, I hear what sounds like adults yelling my name. They come down the stairs and the dogs are going crazy again. Over and over men are yelling my name and then I hear a man say, "If you don't shut those dogs up I will!!"
I was in a large storage box (like a carpenter’s toolbox type of thing) with tape hanging off my mouth when they opened the lid. I remember a very nice man asking me my name and if I was okay. I don't remember answering him in anything other than screams and tears and grabbing his neck so hard my dad had to practically pry me off of him.
I remember my parents taking me to the hospital to be checked out and that's all I really remember. Mom said that Vicky was found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and last she knew was in prison but couldn't remember when the last time was she had heard anything. We moved from the area shortly thereafter, and I haven't been back since.
I do know that mom said that her parents were odd but that they didn't know them. She had met Vicky from neighbors that had used her as a babysitter and had never heard of anything bad and that I always seemed happy with her. She lived in the general neighborhood, but it would have been two blocks over and one block down. Mom said they never picked her up, she always walked over. When they'd get home, they'd drive her home but never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Mom and dad had only met her parents when they came to the door to ask for forgiveness; that Vicky hadn't meant to do anything bad, and was a good girl. Mom said my dad picked up her dad by the shirt and told him that if they ever came on our property again, he'd kill them. I remember her name and sort of what she looked like, but would have no idea if she walked up to me who she is.
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