At some point, we all learn that there really are things that go bump in the night. All of our "silly" childhood fears aren't necessarily so far-fetched; there are bad things in this world, and terrifying experiences can and do happen to good people. Here, Redditors tell the horrifying times they were scared stiff. A word of warning: don't read these with the lights off.
1. I Thought We We Were Sunk
My brother and I were home from school because we were sick. We had a craft room in our mostly unfinished basement. We were down there playing with miniatures. At around noon, my mom went white as a ghost. We heard the front door unlock, open, close, and someone walk across the foyer to the kitchen and turn on the sink. They then turned off the sink and went up the stairs to the second floor.
I figured it was my stepdad and called my mom to let her know he came home for lunch. What I didn't know was, she had just gotten off the phone with my stepdad, and he was in his office at work. She called him back, and he came ripping home while we hid in the basement. Although we never heard the person come back down the stairs, we didn't find anyone in the house.
2. The Calm And The Restless
I was working as an interpreter for a researcher in one of the most active volcanoes in the world. At around four in the afternoon, I had a really really bad feeling. I felt so restless. At that time, I was a few kilometers from the peak, and I stayed in the last village before the mountain. Everyone in that village was already evacuated.
There were only journalists, photographers, and a camera person for TV stations and some locals. They all told me to chill. I remember when I decided to leave the area, they were still lighting up and drinking coffee and some were eating instant ramen. It was so quiet and calm, but I felt so restless. I left the village at around 4:15 PM. Just a few minutes after 5:00 PM, the mountain erupted, sending lava and pyroclastic flow sweeping the whole village.
All of the guys were crushed instantly. It still gives me chills until now.
3. The Old Tenant
I was downstairs and the only one awake in the house. My wife was asleep upstairs in our room and my daughter in hers. All the doors were closed. Any sounds from the upstairs rooms were usually very muffled. I got up from the couch to fill my water cup and heard a very distinct, very loud male cough and throat clearing from the landing upstairs.
It was followed by the sound of footsteps moving across the upstairs hall. I immediately turned ice cold. With goosebumps covering my body, I ran upstairs. I found my daughter asleep in her room, my wife asleep in ours. There was nothing in the office or bathroom upstairs. There was an attic door, but it was latched from the outside. I even checked the basement for good measure, and there was nothing there.
A few years before we bought the house, the previous owner's husband died upstairs. I don't believe in ghosts, but we had a few weird incidents up there since moving in, mostly involving my daughter seeing someone who wasn’t there. I attributed it to a 2-year-old’s imagination, but who knows. His widow said he was a great-grandfather, and my daughter is in the room his granddaughter slept in.
4. Blinded By Fear
When I was about 12 or 13 years old, we lived on a ranch about 25 minutes from town, with my only neighbors being my grandparents, who were very old. One day, my parents were visiting my sister at university, and my brother was in town visiting his girlfriend, so I was home alone. I was sitting in my room chilling when I heard a heavy creak on one of the steps outside.
I paused my video and stared at my window that had the blinds closed. I ignored the sound and kept watching YouTube. A minute later, I heard three more HEAVY steps. I sprang out of bed and into the hallway while calling my mom. I frantically explained the situation, and she asked me, "Are the dogs even barking?" They weren’t, so I let out a sigh of relief and hung up the phone. That was a mistake...
The SECOND I ended the call with my mom, the dogs started barking, baring teeth, hair standing up and all. I wanted to get something to defend myself, but that required me to run across the main room, which was all windows. I didn’t want to see what was out there or for them to see me. I ran to my room and grabbed a blade. I called my brother and told him to get home immediately. My dogs barked for another few seconds, and then they stopped. I never found out what was behind the blinds because I was too scared to look.
5. Could Have Heard A Pin Drop
About a decade ago, sometime in January or February, we were standing outside in downtown Chicago puffing a dart. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my friend gets this worried look on her face and says, "I don't like this spot. Come over here." It wasn't three seconds after we took a few steps that this giant ice block fell off the building and shattered exactly where we had been standing.
It would very likely have crushed us had we not moved. It was so shocking that everyone on the bustling street just stopped and stared at us mouths agape. You could have heard a pin drop after that. It was insane. I never looked at her the same either. She says she doesn't know how, but she had some sixth sense thing going on without a doubt.
6. My Angel Was Harping On Something
My family and I lived in a two-story house with a semi-open floor plan downstairs. My kids were at school, and my husband was at work, so I was home alone. I was sitting on the couch in the family room with my daughter's cat, Angel. She was sleeping on the cushion to my left while I was working on my laptop facing the front door.
The house is quiet, with no TV or music on. Angel suddenly sat up and looked over towards the door. She jumped off the couch and sat down in the middle of the foyer. She looked up and over her shoulder towards the top of the stairs. I couldn’t see the stairs because I was in the family room. She very slowly started to move her head as if she was tracking someone walking down the stairs.
She did this all the way down until she was looking directly at the front door. I was sitting on the couch, frozen, afraid to breathe. There was not a sound in the house. About ten seconds later, she started moving her head again, tracking someone walking back up the stairs. She was quiet the whole time and didn’t meow.
Her only movement was her head following whatever it was that only she could see. She followed it all the way up and sat there for a few more seconds. She then came back over, jumped up on the couch next to me, and went back to sleep. I didn't move from that couch until it was time for me to leave and pick up my kids from school.
7. No One Home
I went shopping. When I got home, I shouted to my brother that I was back home, and I very clearly heard him say, “Ok.” His response wasn’t loud, but I heard him. After I put most of the groceries away, I called him again to ask what he wanted me to do with the food he asked for. He didn't answer. I thought he hadn't heard me, so I went upstairs. He wasn't there. To this day, I have no idea who replied when I shouted up. All the windows were closed, and there's no way anyone could have left without me seeing or hearing them.
8. In The Heat Of The Night
My room faced the street. I had the window opened because it was super hot out that night. At around 2 am, I was laying in bed when I briefly heard what sounded like loud breathing coming from outside. Then, suddenly, my dog threw herself against the window, barking and growling like crazy. I grabbed the bat I kept under my bed, woke up my dad, and we checked outside. What we found was disturbing—there was a set of shoe prints in the dirt in front of my window.
We just went back inside and locked everything. I haven’t unlocked that window since.
9. A Little Too Pushy
I was talking to this guy I met on a dating site. We hadn’t met in person yet. He kept asking to meet up and he was rather pushy. Something told me not to. I stopped talking to him. Two months later, he was incarcerated for kidnapping a woman. They found her in his home state. He was originally from down south now living up north.
10. The Nightmare Next Door
I shared a wall with a family on one side and a middle-aged couple on the other. I woke one morning at around 5 AM to the sound of a woman screaming at the top of her lungs and some loud thumps that lasted around 20 seconds. Then it was completely silent. It happened so fast that I wasn’t sure where the noise had come from or if it was even real.
I thought about calling the authorities or investigating, but after 15 minutes of silence, I fell back asleep. But it got even freakier the next day. As I got home from work, I saw the middle-aged couple getting home. The woman had a cast on her leg and a cast on her arm and visible bruises on her face. Her husband was helping her up the stairs. I asked what had happened, and her husband said she had had a work accident.
11. I Wasn’t Dreaming
I was walking to class and got hit by a car. I'm not sure what happened in the moments leading up to it, but when I woke up in the middle of the road, I was shocked—I was cradling my head and totally covered in blood. I distinctly remember lifting my head, looking at my blood-soaked arm, and thinking, 'I'll deal with that later.” I put my arm back under my head and went back to sleep. Luckily, it turned out okay.
12. Show And Tell
My wife and I were in a hardware store when a fellow who worked there called us over to show us different kitchen tiles. We told him we weren’t there for that, but he insisted on showing us how durable some of the tiles were by smashing them with a hammer. I mean, he was pounding on them to the point we both stepped back a bit.
I thought he was just a new hire who wanted to do right, but I was unnerved by the zeal evident on his face as he hammered the table and the energy in his eyes. As it turns out, he was the dude who had kidnapped and buried the two missing women in our area in his yard. We put together the picture and his workplace as stated in the news a few months later after the FBI caught him.
13. No Road To Recovery
When I was three, my mom and her friends were getting ready to go out to the bar in the next city over. My mom was super young when she had me, so she was often out on the weekends with friends. So this wasn't unusual at all. However, on this night, I, a usually super well-mannered kid, threw the biggest tantrum of my life.
I was screaming at the top of my lungs, throwing myself around, and throwing things because she was leaving. She was super mad because she couldn’t leave me with the babysitter like this, especially since she felt something was wrong because this was VERY unlike me as a child. Her friends left and she stayed home with me, still pretty angry at me.
The next morning, she and I walked to my Grandma's house to use the phone. She called her friend’s house to hear about the night and her friend's mom answered. They had been trying to get a hold of my mom all night. There was some unspeakable news. There had been a horrific car accident. All of my mom’s friends, except for the driver, had passed. Had she gone, there is no way she would have survived in the car.
It still haunts me to think about this day. My mom never really recovered from it.
14. He Was Lurking In The Darkness
It was dark outside and I was biking home from a friend's house. I passed by a guy sitting in his car, doing nothing. A couple of seconds later, as I turned into my street, I felt that something was off. Then I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that same car came around the corner behind me, with screeching tires. I managed to get onto our driveway before anything happened and the guy honked as he drove past me.
I never saw him or that car again. To this day I'm convinced he was trying to run me over.
15. Told To Kick Rocks
When I was a teenager, my grandmother was sick. She had been getting worse, but there was no cause for immediate alarm or anything. I was driving to my after-school job when my dad called me and said she called and said she missed me and how I should go see her soon. Something in my body just flipped. Like I somehow knew internally I needed to go right at that moment.
I blew by work and started driving straight to her house. I called my boss on the way and explained the situation and how something just felt wrong. He told me to come in or get fired. I told him to kick rocks and went to see my grandma. I was the only person with her when she passed that night, and she was able to tell me so many things that she had to say before going.
It was 100% worth being fired over. Screw you, Dave, you were a horrible business owner and I laughed when your awful business inevitably went under a year later.
16. Joint Efforts
My friend and I were drinking and we both got super tipsy. While he was in the bathroom taking a leak, I heard a deadening thud that stunned me. Turns out, he collapsed from an aneurysm. His wife ran to my house to get help. I found him with his pants down on the bathroom floor and I screamed at her that she needed to call for help NOW!
I dragged him out of the bathroom, shoved some ice down his pants, and I began CPR. First responders came. He wouldn't wake up but he still had a pulse. I was hopeful. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any brain activity while I was giving him CPR. His wife kept him on life support and prayed, but they finally took him off.
17. The Evil Feeling
In 2004, my mum had booked a flight for herself and nine-year-old me to visit India for Christmas. We got to the airport and she started having a panic attack. She's claustrophobic, so I assumed she just didn't want to get on the plane, but she was yelling and decided to leave. I kind of dismissed it because I was nine and more focused on Nintendogs.
But, I asked her about it a few years later and she said she just had this “evil feeling” about going. It turns out we would have been caught in the Tsunami.
18. Early On In The Ride
In a taxi on the way from a friend's wedding a few months ago, I had a weird feeling something was wrong early on in the ride. I kinda brushed it off, thinking I was being stupid. About 50 minutes later, we plowed into the back of a Land Rover and smacked it across the entire road so hard that it got wedged into the bank on the opposite side of the road, so the passenger door wouldn't open at all.
Amazingly, no one was injured beyond whiplash, even with a 95-year-old in the other car, but the taxi was a complete write-off.
19. A Mother’s Worst Fear
I went to see a movie at the mall with my two teenage sons. We had arrived separately and parked our cars in different sections of the lot. When the movie was done, I was leaving the mall and driving up a ramp. In my periphery, I saw a sight that made my stomach drop—my son's car had its front end smashed in and there was smoke coming from the front. I quickly made a U-turn.
As I drove towards them, I could see my older son, who was driving, standing outside of the passenger door with my younger son, who was 14 at the time. Luckily, the passenger airbag had deployed, so my younger boy had only a nasty scrape on his face. Thankfully they were both okay. I hope I never feel fear like that again, ever.
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20. A Very Bad Day
In my early 20s, I woke up one day with a feeling of absolute dread I could not explain. I called my mom to come over and then called my boyfriend to come drive back home. He was on his way to work. I lost my ability to speak during that second phone call, and the whole right side of my face started tingling. I thought I was having a stroke in my early 20s and that I was going to die.
It turns out that was to be my first ever migraine with an aura with aphasia. When the headache started an hour later, I wanted to die.
21. To Kill A Nerd
When I was 10, I was on a holiday in Patagonia, Chile. I am the biggest animal nerd ever. So, I was out exploring when I found a passed cow. Now, earlier that day, my father told me about how the farmers of this land lay some of their passed cows in the field for the condors, so my over-enthusiastic animal nerd self went almost running over there.
When I was there, I saw some chucks were gone. That’s when the feeling hit me. I remembered that condors are vultures and if you have ever seen vultures eat, you know that this wasn’t how they did things. As I remember this, I hear a growl coming from a nearby bush and a huge cougar comes out and is mad. It thought I was eating its kill, so thank god for my animal nerdiness, because I didn’t run.
I made eye contact and slowly walked away. It was one of the only times I was truly scared for my life.
22. Saved By The Beast
I was home alone with my dog. I went to bed fine, but when I woke up, my dog was sitting by the door that led into my house from the garage, staring at it intensely. The door was open. Someone had broken in while I was asleep. My dog likely saved me from being hurt or seriously robbed. I had officers drive by my house at night for a week until my parents came back home.
23. Don’t Shut The Light!
When I was 15, my two little sisters and I stayed over at a relative's house. They took the guest bed and I made a pallet on the floor. Our aunt reminded us several times to keep the bathroom light on before going to bed, but I didn't listen. I got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, turned the light off, and got back in bed.
As soon as I laid down, I realized that I had turned the light off and tried to get up to turn it back on—but I couldn't. I could sense a dark presence hovering over me. It felt as if someone was pushing on my chest holding me down. I tried to scream but felt something over my mouth and couldn't get anything out. I struggled like this for what seemed like hours. Eventually, morning came and the feeling went away. I have never been so afraid in my life.
24. Friends Until The End
This was in the late 80s. I was coming home at about two in the morning and was walking home. Across the street, walking in the opposite direction, was a fabulously dressed-up drag queen obviously heading home from doing a show. Following her were six intoxicated chads. The energy was just “off.” So I crossed the street, walked up beside her, and said, “Hi, I’ll be escorting you home.”
We linked arms and strutted back to her place, with the chads making rude comments and threats the whole way. Sadly, the next day, there were reports of several bashings in the “gay village.” The person I walked home with was my friend for 25 years until their passing. My dad, a tough Italian type, absolutely loved Bibi and would often give her rides home after work.
In fact, when my dad got sick, she came and helped my mom look after him. It was also my dad who INSISTED that Bibi came to his funeral in full drag. We giggled the whole time because nobody could figure out how this tall Irish drag queen knew my dad. My dad had a really twisted sense of humor. They both did.
25. It’s Too Late To Move
As a young kid, maybe five or six years old, my mom and I were at the local KFC. We placed our order and she told me to go find us a table. We were the only ones there, and I picked a corner booth. My mom was walking over with the food and I got up and said, “Mom, we can’t sit here.” She thought I was being a little kid and just wanted to run around the restaurant.
She said something like, “No, you picked this one. We are staying here.” I was persistent and somehow convinced her to another table. Mid-meal, a car on the highway lost control on the highway and crashed through the walls of KFC into the restaurant. They entered through the corner booth. Had we been eating there, we would have been quashed or injured terribly.
26. Fever Fright
I was sick and had fallen asleep on the couch and woke up around midnight. As I was lying there trying to motivate myself to walk the two flights of stairs to bed, I heard a slight creak from the front porch. I didn't think much of it, as we get opossums and raccoons on the porch from time to time. But then I heard a sound that sent a chill down my spine. The doorknob to the front door started turning.
They were turning it slowly, probably just to see if it was locked. Since I was sick, I questioned if what I heard was real or if I was just feverish and hearing stuff. I checked the curtains to the window, looking out on the porch. The blinds were down, and the curtains were fully closed. Then I heard light footsteps, and the knob turned again.
I thought about trying to peek through the curtains and blinds but decided I didn't want to tip off any visitor to my presence. I checked to make sure all other first-floor windows had the blinds/curtains closed. I waited another ten minutes and thought, forget it. I went to bed. I figured any attempt at a break-in would be heard, and I would deal with it then. Nothing further happened again that night.
27. A Harrowing Holiday
One year, during the holidays, I was skiing down a hill when I saw a ghastly tragedy occur—a five-year-old girl fall about 30 feet from the chairlift. I was about 15 feet away from where she landed. She was face down on her stomach. I called the ski patrol immediately. They probably came in about five minutes, but it felt like an eternity. I had no medical training other than very basic "Do not move the injured person."
Since her face was directly in the snow, I took my jacket off and I held her neck and head still. I had a nearby person slide my jacket under her face. I tried to distract her by asking her what she got from Santa, and I sang her favorite Christmas song. I kept holding her neck still until the ski patrol took over and sent her in the ambulance. Later, I found out that, although she had some bad bruising, she walked out of the ER that day.
28. I Dodged A Bullet
I was living on my own with my dog. I was gaming on my computer but got hungry, so I got up to make dinner. A few minutes in, when I was making some bratwurst, I heard two quick, loud cracks from my gaming room followed by a louder one after a couple more seconds. Thinking that my dog had gotten onto my desk, I rushed to the room.
I saw that the window that I sat in front of, where my computer was, now had three holes through it. My heart sank as I saw two shells lodged in my wall and one stuck in my desk chair where I was just sitting. If I didn't have a craving for bratwurst, I would have had a stray bullet through my heart.
29. A Feeling You Never Forget
I was camping with friends at a lake. We went to a party across the lake. The lake was populated, sparsely, with cabins and campsites. Most of us got intoxicated, and we lost track of time. By the time we left, it was dark and we had absolutely no light to navigate our boat back across the lake. Knowing what we were doing was dangerous and stupid, I was already on edge.
Luckily, this story isn’t about a boating accident, just a profoundly eerie experience. We got lost. We spent approximately eight hours on that lake trying to find our campsite. It got more scary as the night went on. Multiple times, we believed we’d found it, getting off the boat, before realizing we were on someone else’s property, or just wandering into the woods.
The eerie chilling feeling got worse and worse. I felt like I was disassociating. I felt like maybe we’d all passed and were now spirits haunting this lake. We all felt something like this and psyched ourselves out talking about it. By now, we were out of fuel and using our oars. We were straining our eyes, staring into the darkness. Finally, we found our tents.
The night had been so alienating that I was genuinely terrified I was going to open up my tent and a copy of myself would be in there already. Or, more like the real me would be in there. I felt like I was the copy. I’ve never felt such a chilling “wrongness.” But, we worked up the courage eventually, and of course, our tents were empty. I’ll never forget that feeling though.
30. Needed To Bee Rehomed
I was in my backyard when I heard the oddest noise. It made every single hair on my body rise and every ounce of my being said, “Go inside.” I booked it inside and less than 30 seconds later, a MASSIVE swarm of bees descended upon my house. Apparently, a hive at one of my neighbor’s houses decided to rehome themselves.
They were hitting the walls/roof/windows, you name it, as they eventually made their way over my home and continued on their way. But that's not the worst part. I am ungodly allergic to bees. I get stung and I get an Epi-Pen and a ride to the hospital to ensure I don’t die. If I hadn't booked it inside and was outside when that swarm descended, I would have been stung and a goner, no question about it.
31. Who Was That Man?
There was a random man knocking on my parent’s front door repeatedly and asking me, by name, to open it. I looked through the peephole and saw a man that I didn’t know standing right in front of the door, looking right into the peephole. I remember he had some gray hair but was balding and was wearing a brown flannel.
He kept asking for me and banging on the door. Being a scared kid, I ran away from the door and called my mom crying. By the time my parents got home, the guy was gone. It’s been years since it happened, and my parents just recently told me that it was probably my great-uncle, who I have never met, looking for someone to borrow money from.
32. That Crucial Decision
I live in LA, and downtown LA isn’t exactly the best place at night. I was going to a dispensary late at night in 2015, in an area of downtown that’s not heavily lit, and very empty. There were no cars, no people, just a few run-down buildings on Main Street. It was late, around 11 PM, and the dispensary was just closing up. I came out, by myself, and started walking to my car.
I was maybe a couple of hundred feet from my car when I spotted these guys across the street in a huddle. As I started walking closer to my car, I had this feeling they clearly weren’t up to any good. So, I started walking a little faster to my car, and one of the dudes screamed over, “Why are you walking so fast man?” And that's when they started walking towards me.
Rather than answer and pause, I decided to start running to my car. I unlocked it and got in. As I was starting my car, they had run up to the back of my car and just as I drove off, one of them slashed the back of my bumper with a blade and they screamed, “Good thing you got those white boy instincts.” Sometimes it’s literally a matter of one second and making that crucial decision to not stop that saved my life.
33. Off The Deep End
I had just turned 22 and was living in Austin at the time. My friends and I decided to go out to the lake for my birthday weekend. Naturally, we went to a club a few days before and got some dancers and cocktail waitresses to come with us. When the weekend came around, we were having a good time. One of the girls had a little too much to drink and realized she had lost her phone.
She started freaking out saying that we had to take her back to the bar where we had lunch earlier or she was gonna jump off the boat. We told her not to worry about it, that we would get back and find her phone, and if not, we would chip in and get her a new one. She wasn’t listening and started trying to jump off the boat. We were able to restrain her and thought we were in the clear.
But then, five minutes later, her behavior escalated and it was too late—she just jumped off the front of the boat and took one of the guys on the boat with her. My best friend and I knew it was going to be bad—then we saw the water change color behind us to red. We both sobered up fast. He jumped in and swam out to her, while I threw out the life ring to pull them to us as fast as possible. We then pulled her into the boat.
The other girls all began to freak out. The guy that she took over the front of the boat with her was miraculously untouched. The worst part of it, for me, was that I knew we needed to apply pressure to her wounds. So, as we made our way to the nearest place for paramedics to reach us, I sat on the back of the boat and kept solid pressure applied on her back.
What made this so hard was her screaming. I still remember her begging me to let her go, saying that I was hurting her. But, I knew we had to slow the bleeding. I honestly don't know how long I had to do it it seemed like forever. I was able to keep pressure applied the whole time. I honestly thought that she wouldn't make it, but, remarkably, she pulled through. I haven't been on a boat since.
34. I Was Shaking In The Shower
I was working as a hostess during college and had a customer who was hanging around outside my work after an altercation with me. I lived close by, so you could see my house front door from my work front door. My boss let me sneak out the back door and sent someone to talk to the customer to distract them, so I could get home discreetly.
I went home and stayed upstairs for a few hours, with the doors locked and the curtains drawn. I was going to be home alone for the weekend and was nervous. My coworkers texted me that the customer eventually had to be removed by law enforcement. After I had calmed down, I decided to shower. While in the shower, there were a series of loud bangs and stomping sounds in my house.
I was paralyzed in fear. I thought that the customer had obviously seen me come home and had come back to find me. Then the front door slammed, and the house was quiet. I got out of the shower, shaking, and got dressed before opening the bathroom door. The house was fine, and I was alone, but the door was unlocked. A month or so later, my roommate informed me they had come home early that weekend to get travel supplies, hence the banging. That was the longest weekend of my life.
35. All The Signs Were There
I was out walking my dog when I got a funny feeling about my dad. He had heart problems and is prone to heart attacks. I called him a few times and he didn't respond, so I started to run back. He was slumped in front of the sofa, showing all the early signs of a heart attack. I phoned an ambulance and gave him basic treatment. The paramedics arrived, and they told me the most heart-wrenching truth.
They said if I had been any later he would have passed right there.
36. I Was Knocked Out Of Bed
I had just moved to Maui. I always had my bedroom window open at night with the fan blowing. There was a screen on the window, but I could see out perfectly. I lived on the second floor, and you could just walk right by my window. At about 3 AM, I heard someone saying something outside and saw a figure just standing there staring.
My girlfriend, who was lying next to me, was asleep. I nudged her slightly, and she woke up. I saw the silhouette move toward my front door, and then I heard a knocking. I rolled off the bed to stay low and then closed my window. I got up and looked through the peephole and saw two people—a man and one woman who were saying something like they needed to call for help.
My girlfriend and I debated letting them in but instead just stayed quiet. We were in a big apartment complex right across from the beach. They kept knocking for 5-10 minutes, then finally left. Two days later, I was reading the local paper. That's when the chilling truth came out. On the front page was a story about two people knocking on doors saying they needed to call for help. They would get in and rob the place. Two people were hurt, and one died. They finally caught them, and the mugshots were of the people who were knocking on my door.
37. Felt It In The Bones
On a New Year's eve many years ago, my girlfriend and I went to spend the night at our former roommates' new place. They were a gay couple back before it was as accepted as it is today. An hour before midnight, I felt a crazy urge to go home and started a fight about it with my girlfriend, because she wanted to stay as we had planned.
I won the argument and got my way, and we left in such a hurry that we forgot our blankets and pillows. A couple of hours later, a real-life nightmare occurred. In the middle of the night, someone came by and set their house on fire and both friends passed. I'm still torn up about it today because I know that someone came by that night wanting to buy some kind of pills from one of my friends and was quite rudely turned away.
I wasn't paying attention enough to see their face, so I don’t know who it was, but I know in my bones that's the guy that did it.
38. Shark Tales
I was snorkeling in Croatia, collecting seashells and the like. I went on a deep dive to get some nice ones from the bottom of the sea. I was swimming back to the surface when suddenly, I saw a shadow the size of an SUV pass over me. I looked up and immediately became flooded with fear—it was a shark. I was terrified but was running out of air, so I had to swim up towards it or I was going to drown.
I resurfaced in record time and tried to climb onto my tiny inflatable mattress. I was too scared to get on, so I hung onto it frozen, with my mask submerged, so that I could see the thing approaching. All I could think of was, "Why didn’t anyone tell me that there are Great Whites in the Adriatic?” The shark swam towards me.
I thought it was the end for me, but it passed me by, uninterested. It was so close, I was able to count the scars on its belly. It was easily twice as long as me. I waited for about 20 minutes then swam back to shore EXTREMELY SLOWLY so as to not attract its attention.
39. His Goal Was To Spook Me
When I was about 11 or 12, I was home alone when a really creepy-sounding dude called my house and asked where my dad was. Like an idiot, I told him he wasn’t home. The guy’s response was to start laughing and then tell someone else, “He says he’s not home.” The dude in the background started creepily laughing creepily as well, and then the line went dead. I ended up grabbing two hockey sticks and waiting by the front door until my parents returned. It was terrifying and weird.
40. A Case For Later
I was managing an overnight shift at a McDonald’s. It was just me and another guy in the store around two in the morning. I noticed a beat-up ford falcon with a mismatching bonnet roll into the car park. One guy hops out of the car and immediately starts casing the place for camera locations and how many people are inside. This immediately raises my suspicions, but I pretend everything's cool and serve him as normal.
They must have got spooked, because they get in the car and drive off after getting their food. Once they were clear, I called for help and told them what happened, along with the number plate and vehicle description. A few hours later, help comes in and says they've pulled the Ford over and found a kilo of illicit substances and merchandise. They later admitted to scouting the place for another couple, who was planning to rob us later that night.
41. Came Out Unscathed
When I was little, I always used to sleep over at my cousin's house who had an awesome wooden bunk bed that I would sleep on the bottom bunk. When I was seven, I went over for another sleepover. We ate Chinese food with my aunt and uncle, then my cousin and I stayed up late playing video games before going to bed. When I was little, I used to fall asleep right away and sleep deeply.
My family still jokes that not even a car going through the house could wake me up. Anyways, sometime after I've fallen asleep, I wake because I have this ridiculous feeling that I HAVE to roll over. I didn't want to, because I was comfortable and sleeping how I normally do in the middle of the bed with my foot hanging off. I kept arguing with what felt like myself rolling over until finally, I did.
But apparently, it wasn't enough, because then I had the urge to literally cuddle as tight as I could against the wall. Since I had already rolled over, I figured why not. As I'm trying to press myself as hard as possible against the wall, the bunk bed collapses and a broken metal bar goes straight through the bed where I had been sleeping. I was stuck, somehow unharmed, in that little space against the wall until my uncle could cut me out.
My cousin had fallen from the top bunk when it collapsed but was also unharmed.
42. Grab Valuables And Get Out
It used to be a five-minute drive home from work, and I would always go home and make a sandwich/nap during my lunch hour. This warm September however, in the late morning, there was a fire out in a pasture that had crews already on it. The fire was uncontrollable and had unrelenting winds that gave me a very bad sinking feeling.
After having a quick lunch and reaching out to my roommate who couldn’t make it back, we opted for me to throw all of our valuables in my little Toyota Corolla and get the heck out of there. We escaped just in time. In the matter of an hour, the fire had spread at least a couple miles, and, as a result, our residence and about half the town had succumbed to one of the worst in a series of fires across the state of Oregon. This happened only 17 months ago.
43. Between The Sheets
I lived in an apartment by myself. Every once in a while, when I would be about to fall asleep, I would feel a weight next to me as if someone else had gotten into the bed with me. At the time, I was dating a woman who would sleep over from time to time, but I had never mentioned this to her. While she was over, I had to leave one night due to a family emergency. I told her it was okay if she slept at my place and that I would be back the next day.
When I got home that morning, she told me, "The weirdest thing happened last night. As I was falling asleep, I thought you had come home and gotten into bed with me because I definitely felt someone get into bed on the other side. But when I opened my eyes, you weren't here.” It completely freaked me out.
44. Dazed And Confused
A few years ago, I went to sleep one Sunday evening and lost two full days. I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming for my fiancé, but he wasn’t there. I thought it was still Sunday night. It was actually late Tuesday evening or very early Wednesday morning. I called my fiancé, frantic, asking where he was. His response made my blood run cold. He told me he had left for his work trip out of town—at 5 AM Monday morning.
I must have gotten up to use the bathroom and take care of the animals because I hadn’t soiled myself, and the dogs hadn’t gone in the house either. However, I have zero recollection of those missed days. I was terrified to go back to sleep while I was home alone for that week, and it’s never happened again.
45. I Had To Sit This One Out
When I was 11 or 12 years old, I had a PC and was playing with WordArt. At around noon, a chair from the kitchen table suddenly started to shake violently. No one else was around. I ran out to the front yard and waited for my mom to come home an hour later. To this day, I still don't know why the chair was moving like that. It never happened again.
46. A Sense Of Dread
A few years ago, a group of friends and I went out clubbing. We went into this one bar, and the moment I stepped in the door, I felt a sense of dread. Every cell in my body was telling me, "Get the heck out of there!" So, after about 20 minutes, I convinced my friends that something felt really wrong, so we left and went home. The next day, there was a news story about the club—and it made my blood run cold.
Later that night, a group of people had been gunned down in front of the club...The perpetrators had been in the club at the SAME time as me.
47. Not One, But Two
When I was about 15, I took my youngest sister on a quad bike ride through some bush tracks in a "shack community." We got to the bottom of a large, steep hill on the outskirts, where I felt I had to stop for some unbeknownst reason. It was not even five seconds after I stopped under the hill when another quad bike flew over us.
The guy landed, hit the brakes, slid into the bushes, jumped off, and ran over to us visibly shaken. He was apologizing profusely. He'd been annoying the rest of the community for a couple of weeks, with many complaining about his reckless driving. Well after this incident, he started to drive a bit slower. My parents nearly lost two children that day.
I didn't tell them about it until I was in my late 20s. Quad bikes are now against the law within that township for unrelated reasons.
48. Sudden Changes
My family had gone on a trip. Since I had to return to campus, I stayed behind and was home alone. One afternoon, I was in my room, behind a door I locked obsessively, when the stereo came on deafeningly loud. For about an hour, David Bowie played at such a high volume that I couldn't hear anything else. After it stopped, I stayed in my room, petrified, for hours.
This was before Bluetooth technology, and the stereo was from the 80s, so there was no remote. Either someone was in the house with me, or it was the weirdest glitch ever. We checked with several family members with keys who might have stopped by, but everyone denied being there, and there were no signs of any entry at all. At least the music was really good.
49. The Internal Alarm Sounds
I was solo backpacking within Inyo National Forest. I had just set up camp and was walking beyond this lake and up above the treeline. After walking about a quarter-mile up this meadow, the hairs on my neck began to stick straight up. I had instant chills. I didn’t know what the reason was, but the gut reaction was enough for me to return to camp.
The next morning, on the way back to the car, a Ranger asked me to be careful, there had been Mountain Lion sightings in the area. I think I found out why my internal alarm went off.
50. A Few Hours Later
I work in a bar in Southern California and while I was pouring a drink during the day shift, I had this very weird feeling about an earthquake happening. Nothing was shaking or anything...I just got this weird image of everything coming down briefly. Seven hours later, the shift is over and I'm at home on the couch watching TV. I completely forgot about this earlier thought.
WHAM, there was a massive earthquake that hit and knocked a ton of things down in my apartment. It was so creepy to me!
51. An Unknown Danger In The House
My parents took me in, as foster parents, when I was four. They adopted me a couple of years later. They continued to take in foster kids throughout my childhood—around 70 kids in total over the years. Having new kids in the house over the years had its positives and negatives. The experience that terrified me the most happened when I was 13.
We had a foster kid move in, named Jack, who was 17. He would wake me up every morning by punching me and laughing. I'm talking full-on body punches. However, it wasn’t anything that my parents would notice, because he was too smart for that. He told me that if I ratted him out, he would end me. After a few months, he ran away. I was incredibly relieved.
A few weeks after he left, I was taking out the trash when it was dark outside. I went behind the garage to dump the garbage and saw my dad's motorcycle parked behind it. I was confused because it had snowed that day. It didn’t make sense that he would ride his bike in the snow, then leave it outside. So, I went into the house and asked him about it.
We found out the freezer in the garage had been emptied. He called the authorities. It turned out Jack had moved six blocks away with his friends, but soon he was long gone. A few months later, I was watching the late news with my mom. A story came up that sent chills up my spine—it was about a group of guys breaking into an old man's house, in a town an hour away.
They tied him up and robbed him. As they were leaving, one of them said, “Go on, I will be right there.” The other guys went outside and he came out a few minutes later. Little did they know that the guy who stayed behind beat the tied-up old man to oblivion. The guy’s picture came up. It was Jack. He was taken in. I'm not sure what part of this whole mess scared me the most, but knowing that he might have actually harmed me if I ratted him out has stuck with me.
52. Things That Go Thump In The Night
I was standing in the kitchen talking on the phone when I heard a thumping on the floor under my feet. There was no way into the area under the floor, and there was a cinderblock wall between the basement and the hollow space. The thumping happened again. It was as if someone was hitting the ceiling with their fists below me.
The lights flickered, and the picture on the television jumped up and down. I ran to the living room and jumped onto the couch, and buried my head under the blanket. When my parents pulled into the driveway, everything stopped, and it never happened again.
53. Knew What Was Coming
I had a very bad feeling on the day my good friend passed. I had this horrible sense of dread and an overwhelming need to get to him. I was absolutely panicked. I swear I could hear a clock ticking in my head. I had been texting with him hours before and we were supposed to go cut down a Christmas tree together.
I had to threaten the girl whose house he was at to go back to the house and check on him, or I was going to call for help. She had left him there to go decorate a tree at her mom's. I didn't have a vehicle and had never been to her house, so I couldn't even get to him myself. I was on the phone with her when she found him. I was absolutely gutted.
54. Wrong But Also Right
I was hanging out with a friend. He was driving. I thought I saw what looked like skin cancer on his ear. It wasn't. But, he went to the doctor and they found a melanoma on his forehead. It wasn't even a mole…I guess it was under the skin. The doctors took an inch out of his forehead and said he was very lucky he caught it early.
55. Just Friendly Enough
I was always uncomfortable around a mutual friend at university. There was nothing specific about him, but whenever he was around, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. He was friendly enough but always felt off. When there was only a seat left next to him at lunch, I would go eat by myself. He gave me a hug once and it was like touching a limp spider. I felt disgusted afterward—and for good reason.
He ended up being suspended from campus due to multiple assault allegations.
56. Always Trust Your Gut
My sister and I were house-sitting for our grandparents. I woke up and she was gone, and I just somehow knew. I just had that bad feeling. So, I texted her and texted her until she finally answered. My older cousin had convinced her to go riding in the mountains with him with booze. He got intoxicated and got her tipsy. I had woken up and texted her in the middle of her getting harmed by him.
Our parents didn't even know she was gone. He was only letting her text back so I wouldn't think anything was amiss. But, we were able to talk vaguely enough for me to help by pretending to be sick. If I had woken up a little later, I wouldn't have a sister anymore. If I just hadn't gone to sleep and left her alone, she wouldn't have gone through that.
She's in therapy and I still have trouble sleeping and waking up. I have terrible anxiety anytime we're apart. Trust your gut guys.
57. Stranger In The Night
I had just gotten home at about 2 AM. I was puffing away in my car before stepping inside, as I always did. I was parked in the driveway and scrolling through my phone when I noticed someone walk past my car. It was weird, but I didn't think anything of it. Then l I looked up and saw a man standing directly behind my car just staring in my direction.
I panicked and froze. He was yelling for someone. I thought if I just ignored him, he would go away, which I thought he did. I finally felt safe enough to make my way in, when this man popped up IN FRONT of my car and slapped against it. I drove off and called the authorities. They found him passed out on my neighbor's patio. It's still not funny.
58. A Dream Come True
I was working remotely in the Outback and had an incredibly vivid dream about my Nonno, who had passed several years ago, holding a dog leash from our deceased dog. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was waiting for my Nonna. I woke up incredibly freaked out and very distressed. After I calmed down and "woke up," I went about my day and got a phone call at around 3 PM from my mother letting me know that my Nonna had passed.
59. A Shaky Feeling
I was boarding my plane flight after vacation. It was early in the morning and the second I stepped foot on the plane, I froze and the absolute worst feeling overcame me. I was with my boyfriend and we both had to get back for work, so I made myself stay on the plane. A half-hour later the plane suddenly dipped. Then the pilot got on the intercom, voice shaking, telling us that there was a national emergency and we would have to land at the closest airport immediately. That was 9/11.
It took me four days of hitchhiking and bus travel to get home. I did not fully understand what was happening until I got to work right off the Greyhound and the TV was on. I thought the entire country was under attack.
60. I Couldn’t Unlock This Mystery
I was home alone. I don't usually latch my room door, but I did. I then dozed off for a bit and woke up like 20 mins later and found my door WIDE OPEN. I thought that maybe I hadn’t latched it properly, so I made sure to do so. I got lost watching a movie. I got up to get some water and saw that my door was wide open AGAIN.
I got so freaked out I just screamed out loud. I heard the pattering of footsteps and ran after them. However, it couldn't have been anyone because the main door was locked, all the windows were shut, and there was NO ONE in the house. I spent an hour and a half searching and found nothing. It still creeps the heck out of me.
61. Saved By A Night In
This past spring semester, some friends and I were going to an off-campus party and needed someone to drive us there and back so we could get intoxicated. This guy we sort of knew offered to take us if we gave him some gas money. We all just had a bad feeling about it and just figured we should have a night in watching movies instead.
The guy struck the same deal with some other people going to the party after we left, and it turns out he got intoxicated at the party without telling them, drove back intoxicated, and got in a huge car wreck. The girl in the passenger seat passed on the impact. Everyone else was in the hospital for weeks afterward. If we hadn't all had the gut feeling not to go, I could have been a goner. That's the kind of stuff that keeps you awake at four in the morning.
62. Block To Block
In our last year of secondary school in the UK, we had a massive changing room for physical education split into two sections for either side of the year. We'd always used the B block, but this time, about 20 of us decided to follow the lead of one friend who said, “Why don't we use the A block?” We questioned why and he just replied, “I don’t know, this side is so old and manky compared to A block.”
We were really early, so we were guaranteed space to get changed. Once most people started filtering through the changing rooms, they noticed most people were at A block, so they all hopped on the bandwagon and ditched B block. It was an unbelievable coincidence. B blocks ceiling collapsed 10 minutes later.
63. The Unconscious Prediction
About a month before the event happened, I was becoming really anxious. I was in the shower and randomly had a thought that I had to start preparing for my boyfriend's passing and funeral, and that I should start writing his obituary that I would read. I was really confused as to why I thought this, so I went out to my mum and told her my thoughts.
We both thought it was strange but just passed it off. A month later, my boyfriend was playing football and got hit in the head by another player's hip and passed. It was a very confusing time and I did end up speaking at his funeral. To this day, I'm still scared about what happened.
64. Placed Right Into Danger
When I lived in the Falkland Islands, my family and I would often take trips to pretty remote areas or islands where we were the only ones there. The island was pretty dangerous in itself with its drop cliffs and roaming sea life like seals and penguins. Our bedrooms were all in the attic space. One night, I had a really bad feeling.
I couldn't sleep and so I went downstairs. There was a whole elephant seal pushed against the front door, trying to get in. It sounded like he was headbutting the door, but I'm not entirely sure. As it turned out, a whale had washed up on the beach and had taken up all the space, so all the sea and land life came to our little house. I was so scared. That thing was MASSIVE.
65. Not The First Time
Me and my friends were waiting for a bus when a group of guys came along. One asked us for a dollar, which we gave him, and then they just stayed to chat. They were perfectly nice, but all three of us had a really bad feeling about them. They asked us if we wanted to come to a party with them, but we said, “Oh, no thanks, we have to get home.”
One week later, one of the guys was on the front page of the newspaper. He had just been released from prison for stabbing someone and had done it again that night.
66. Someone Else Always Will
Some acquaintances of mine looted jewelry from a relative of one of their families. I had no clue. They tried to pawn it and get me to sign the receipt. Oddly enough, I saw three cop cars drive by the store when we were walking in. I didn’t sign, so another guy did. As it turns out, they took around 20 thousand dollars worth of jewelry and they put the guy who signed in lockup for nine months.
67. Lifetime Pass Living
Once, my ex-fiancé and I were walking through the Scout camp I worked for. It was late, about 10, and off-season, early fall. As staff, I had a lifetime pass from the camp master. We can be there whenever we want, and it was a beautiful night for a walk. I know those 160 acres like the back of my hand and had never once felt anything weird there until that night.
There was a weird vibe, and the back of my head was screaming, “Get out of here, right now!” So we bail and head to Taco Bell. An hour after we left, this dude was running from some officers, pulled into the camp’s lot, and decided to get aggressive. The authorities took him out.
68. Coyote Ugly
My friend and I were about 15 years old. We were walking through the woods on the mountain behind my family's summer camp in New Hampshire. The woods were pretty thick in that area. We weren't on a trail or anything, just putzing around in the brush as teenagers do. However, I had a ridiculously good sense of direction and could always get home from the area, so we weren't concerned.
It started to get a bit dusky, so we started to head home, which I had estimated to be about a half-hour walk down a steep slope. Walking down a super steep incline like that was quite the workout on our calves. At that point, we were about a 10-minute walk back from camp, so we stopped on a big rock for a second to rest. As we sat down, I heard movement to our left.
I heard leaves rustling and sticks cracking. We sat very quietly and thought it was just a harmless deer or something, but we were so, so wrong. Instead, out from behind us, this huge upended tree root structure came the biggest COYOTE I had ever seen in my life. It was absolutely gigantic—larger than a great dane. We were completely terrified thinking we were about to be eaten by a pack of coyotes.
It took a few steps, not toward us, but just straight ahead, to our right. It was looking at us and sniffing its nose up. We were just frozen in place in fear and uncertainty, not at all sure of what to do. Suddenly, the animal stood up on its hind legs. I can not possibly convey how wrong that sight was—it was unnatural. It immediately turned my blood to ice.
It stood there for a few seconds just looking at us. It took a few moments before our bodies could unfreeze enough to run as fast as humanly possible down this incredibly steep leaf-covered mountainside to our camp. We made it home in record time. There was no further sign of that thing. I have not gone back into those woods since.
69. The Birds Are Chirping
When i was a kid, my family moved into a house with a backyard that was connected to a long stretch of woods with a creek running through the middle. I was down in the creek one day when I started feeling uneasy. It was quiet, but then it sounded like the entire bird population started chirping, and eventually turned into a loud droning noise they all made. I heard something heavy in the treeline walking slowly towards me.
This was during late spring, so I couldn't see anything, and I booked it straight to the house. I'm confident it was a coyote, but at the time, my imagination ran wild and it scared the heck out of me. I will never forget how creepy those birds sounded.
70. All Pancake, No Bacon
I was riding my motorbike in the Himalayas when there was a blind corner up ahead. I had a sudden overwhelming sense that I had to get from the middle to the edge-side of the road. There was a massive truck that was going way too fast and came about six inches from taking me out. It totally would have pancaked me. Further around the bend, my riding buddy had stopped and was looking back with sheer terror on his face.
71. Buyers Beware
Me and two American friends went to this underground bar in Roppongi, the red light district of Tokyo. When we got downstairs, all the guys in the room disappeared and some sketchy-looking girls came and sat next to us. We were not about all that, we just wanted to have some drinks, so we thought we would leave without a drink.
Upon leaving, one of the guys physically had to break free from the girls since they were crazy. The next morning, we met two Dutch guys who were out for a full 24 hours after being drugged and looted in basically the same situation we were in. They lost their passports, cash, and phones. Lucky for us, we left. Beware.
72. Someone’s Looking Out
I was mowing my backyard with a ride-on mower, and I began to get an overwhelming feeling of being watched. I started looking around and thought I saw a figure in the upstairs window. I tried to ignore this as no one was home, and continued with mowing when I started to feel an unbearable sense of dread. This made me immediately stop.
As I did so, the ground in front of me gave way, forming a massive sinkhole. If I hadn't stopped immediately, I likely would have been crushed by the tractor.
73. Something Made My Mountain Dog Mad
I had a giant Bernese mountain dog. The thing was the least aggressive animal I had ever met and never barked. I was home alone one night when I was about ten years old and heard a dog barking up a storm. Since my dog never barked, I figured it couldn’t be mine and didn't think much of it—until I saw him at the sliding glass door.
All his hair was on end, barking his head off. I let him in, and he physically shoved me back and stood between me and the door. It was the five of the scariest minutes of my life. He just growled and barked the whole time. He wouldn't let me anywhere near the door. Then, like a light, he just turned around, licked me, and laid down. I have no earthly clue what was out there.
74. Lost Them Along The Way
I had a gut-wrenching feeling the time I noticed three men in a white truck following me. I thought I was being paranoid at first, but when I pulled into a gas station, they followed me. Even then, I was so used to being told I was overreacting that I didn’t call for help. I just kept driving…in the opposite direction from the town I lived in…until they got caught at a stoplight.
I quickly turned into a neighborhood and took a bunch of random turns and drove around some more before heading home.
75. Maybe Was Right
My mom and I were going grocery shopping when my mom asked me if we should go to Walmart or Publix. My first thought was Publix, but out of nowhere my body said, ”Maybe we shouldn’t go to Publix.” Flash forward, it turns out someone brought an explosive to the Publix we almost went to, and it started a huge fire.
76. I Was Completely Baaffled
I was living in the annex of an old farmhouse that was built around the 1700s, so it was very old and creepy to begin with. I went outside for a smoke at around 1 AM. The house was in the middle of nowhere. It was pitch black out, and there was no one else around for miles. Suddenly, a sound cut through the silence. It was a man's cough. I looked around but couldn't see anyone.
Everyone else was asleep, and all the lights were off in the house. I wandered over to the hedges and trees, a little worried I was disturbing someone trying to rob the place but couldn't really see anything since it was so dark. I thought it was a better idea to just go back inside, lock the door and turn on some lights to ward anyone off.
Then, I heard another cough, this time, close by. It was followed by the crunching of twigs at the base of a tree and the sound of feet coming towards me. I fumbled for my phone and turned the flashlight on, practically running backward at this point. Apparently, a sheep had escaped the field and was munching on the lawn when I disturbed it. Who knew they cough like an adult man.
77. Not Worth The Money
I was walking home in the early hours of the morning. A guy came up to me with a baseball bat and walked alongside me. He started making weird conversations about how “weirdos come out at this time of night.” He dropped a $5 bill on the ground and dared me to pick it up. I sped up and made my way away from him, but the vibe was undeniably creepy. I didn't pick up the money.
78. One Step Closer To The End
When I was about eight years old, my family and I lived on the third floor of an apartment building. I was walking out to the balcony just behind my dad. I had one foot out of the sliding glass door and before I could put my second foot down, the scariest thing happened unexpectedly—the balcony collapsed with my dad on it. There was broken wood everywhere. I thought he was gone. Luckily, he lived, although his legs got messed up. It was the closest I had ever come to meeting my doom.
79. Midnight Mob
It was around 2 AM, and I had to take my dog out to go to the bathroom. As I was standing out in the yard, I noticed there was a really big dude walking down the sidewalk towards my house. The guy looked over at me and screamed, “Hey! Come over here, right now.” He sounded really angry, and I was definitely not about to go over to him.
I locked myself in the house and watched him from inside. I prayed he would just leave, but this nightmare was just beginning. He was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, just staring at my house and looking really mad. As I was watching him, two cars pulled up to the curb. A bunch of people got out and joined him to stare angrily at my house. I was very confused at this point because I didn’t have any enemies, and I wasn’t sure what all these people wanted with me.
The guy who originally screamed at me started walking toward my house and yelled, “I said come over here! Right now!” At that moment, the motion-activated light on my porch went on, and I could see a giant goofy-looking dog sitting on my porch. The dog sprinted away when the light went on, and the big dude went chasing him up the street.
The people got back in the cars and chased after the dog as well. As it turned out, the big goofy dog was their family pet, and it had escaped from their house. It saw me in the yard with my dog and was running towards me to play. The big dude was just yelling at his dog, not me. The other people were his family members trying to help catch the dog. I saw him walking down the street a few days later and introduced myself. Both the dog and the man were very friendly. It was a happy ending to an initially creepy situation.
80. Better Skip It
Back in the day when I was 13, I didn't feel like going to my horseback riding lesson. So, I stayed home. It turns out one of the horses in my group had a heart attack mid-air over a jump and landed on its face, which threw his owner over his head only to land on his passed body. I'm pretty okay with not witnessing that one. Rest in peace, Dakota, you were our favorite horse.
81. Who’s Afraid Of The Dark?
When I was very young, I used to stay at my dad's house one weekend every month. One night, I was trying to sleep on the floor in his living room, in front of his giant big-screen TV, while he was asleep in his bedroom at the other end of the house. I was always terrified of the dark. I was one of those kids who would turn off the light and run as fast as I could to get to my bed.
My dad wouldn't let me sleep with the light on in the living room, and he barely let me sleep with the TV on. I always had horrible insomnia, so I would just try and watch whatever weird cartoons were on at 4 am. I was watching TV and his little Jack Russell terrier was curled up next to me, so I was petting him. He had a doggie door, about 15 feet away, in the dining room that led outside.
It was one of the magnetized ones that would click whenever it was opened and closed. I would hear it click and think nothing of it because he went in and out all the time. However, I heard it click when I was petting him and he was right next to me. At that moment, I got chills up my spine. I just stared at the TV and clutched the dog. A few minutes later, I finally worked up the courage to turn and look at the doggie door.
What I saw looked like a monster. There was a tiny gremlin head poking through the doggie door looking around. Then it slowly lowered its eyes and locked eyes with me. The only light was from the TV. It felt like we were staring at each other for ages. It then slowly lowered its head back out of the doggie door. I couldn't see any kind of shadow or silhouette move outside.
I assumed it was just standing outside the door, so I didn't take my eyes off of it until the sun came up outside and I could see there was nothing there. I finally gave in to the exhaustion and went to sleep. The only thing I could think of was that it was a bat—my dad had a bat in his house the following week that he caught and let out. But in the dark, it just looked exactly like a gremlin with a demon face and it was terrifying.
82. Simply Not Surprised
I had such a bad feeling on the day my gynecologist found a lump in my neck while doing a routine thyroid exam. I just knew it was cancer. She and my primary care provider tried to convince me it was nothing serious. I was the only one not surprised when the biopsies came back as cancer.
83. A Case Of Mistaken Identity
I was a nanny for a wealthy family. I was doing some homework while the 18-month-old was napping. I had the monitor on and everything. I went to the bathroom, then returned to a shocking scene—a woman, who I knew wasn't his mother, was in his room bending down over his bed. I grabbed a blade from the kitchen and my phone and ran upstairs. Turns out, it was the cleaning lady. I had forgotten she was in the house.
84. A Divine Intervention
Country lanes in the UK are pretty narrow and have lots of blind bends. I was driving down a lane and there was a cyclist in front of me, in the middle of the road, not wearing a helmet, and heading toward a completely blind bend. I suddenly thought, if a car swings around that bend they are going to smash into the cyclist and pin him to my car. It was like a “final destination” vision.
I couldn’t hear or see another car, but I saw this accident so vividly in my mind. I immediately slammed on my breaks, honked my horn, and pulled over. The poor cyclist guy shat himself and stumbled to the hedges. Mere seconds later, some idiotic teenager comes speeding out of the blind corner and missed us by inches.
If we were still on the road, this guy would have plowed straight through the cyclist and into my car. I completely freaked out, to the point where the cyclist came over to calm me down. I don’t remember much but I know I was saying, “You were gone,” over and over again. I’m not a religious person at all, but that’s the closest I’ve come to believing in some kind of divine intervention.
85. A Funny Story After The Fact
I do real estate photography. One day, I was alone taking photos in an empty house, which is quite normal. I had this really uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t alone. I had already checked the whole house before I started taking photos, but I kept getting the feeling that someone else was there. The feeling was so strong that I had goosebumps and felt nauseous.
I’m not a small guy, but I felt like a little kid scared of the dark. I decided to re-check all the rooms to ease my mind, but didn’t find anything. I checked closets, bathrooms, and the bedrooms, but I was definitely the only one there. As I finished photographing the last room in the house, this feeling that someone was with me was so overwhelming that I pretty much sprinted out of the house after I took the last shot.
I felt better when I got outside, but I still had an uneasy feeling. The realtor ended up pulling in the driveway as I was finishing photos of the front of the house and asked if the house cleaner did a good job. I said it looked fine to me, and she went into the house with her husband to prepare it for a showing. When I was photographing the backyard, I noticed them both out of the corner of my eye through a back window—and that's when I almost dropped my camera.
There was a third person with them. I was confused because they came alone without anyone else. As it turns out, the house cleaner wasn’t finished before I pulled up and came in. She saw a large guy with tattoos come into the house and panic, so she jumped into the kitchen pantry and hid. By the time she realized I was the photographer, it was too late for her to come out without it being awkward, so she stayed in the pantry the whole time.
I’m not sure if maybe I saw her out of the corner of my eye when walking past, or if maybe I smelled her perfume, heard her breathing, and didn’t realize it, but my subconscious was screaming at me that someone was there. It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been inside a house like that before and made for a funny story after.
86. Shared Individual Horrors
When my kids went to bed, I used to go out to the barn where I had a bottle stashed. I'd have a drink and ponder the day, think about my late wife, and attempt to decompress. I suffered heavily from PTSD. Add to that, the recent loss of my wife, the stress of raising two children that didn't really know me, and intense pain from severe burns I had received before leaving the Marine Corps…it's safe to admit that I was extremely suicidal.
One particular night, I wrote out a long letter to my family, letters to my children, and placed them along with my will, financial documents, etc., on the kitchen table. I went out to the barn with a .40 caliber pistol and had every intention of getting intoxicated and eating a round. I was as low as I've ever been in my life.
All of a sudden, my dad walked into the barn. He lived two hours away, and we hadn't spoken in a couple of weeks. He picked up the handgun, cleared it, and dropped the magazine without a word. I asked him what he was doing there at 10:30 at night, and his response shocked me to the core. He said, "I had a bad feeling. Let's talk."
That's the one and only time I've ever seen my dad cry. That's the only time we've ever spoken in detail about our individual horrors of combat. My dad saved my life that night, and I've made sure to live my life in such a way, as to make him proud of everything I do.
87. A Wife’s Intuition
I woke up at midnight one night while visiting my mom from out of state. I had this sudden panicked urge to check my house cameras. My phone’s battery was at 0% right as I clicked on the app. I charged my phone and the second it turned on, I went to the app. I caught my husband in our home with another woman. My heart was beating out of my chest from the second I woke up to hours after I saw what I saw and heard what I heard.
It was the weirdest and most horrifying moment of my life.
88. He Wasn’t Playing Around
When I was younger, I kicked a ball over the fence at my dad's friend’s house. Naturally, I poked my head over the fence to see how far it had gone. I saw a man a decent distance away in the backyard. I called out and asked if he could pass my ball back over but he didn’t respond. So, I asked my sister if I was seeing it right.
She looked over and thought it was a scarecrow. I went to tell my dad and his friend and they looked at it. They called out but still nothing. When they jumped the fence to check it out, they immediately froze with fear—it turned out I was calling out to a man who was no longer alive to pass my ball back over. The authorities came out. The whole thing was really creepy.
89. Fright In The Attic
I was home alone with my sister and brother. We had a door to the attic on the ceiling that you would have to push up to open. We were sitting in the living room and heard the door to the attic open and then close. We all walked over to it. After a few seconds of staring at it, it flew open. We all screamed and ran outside. My mom pulled into the driveway a few minutes later and was confused to see us all sitting outside. We checked the attic after that, and there was no one there.
90. I Was Screaming
I was lying on the couch watching TV late one night. Suddenly, I heard a tapping on the glass. I brushed it off, only to have it happen again about a minute or so later. I turned to look out our sliding glass back door, which had always given me the creeps. What I saw there made me scream. I saw someone standing outside wearing a Scream costume. My mind started racing as to who it might be. However, I wasn't about to go outside and find out!
They slinked away into the darkness before I found my nerve. It turned out my 70-year-old grandma decided to scare the daylights out of me.
91. The Ax-idental Stranger
When I was young, I used to live in a house on top of a mountain in the middle of the woods. My dad had built the house when he was 17, and it had no hot running water or electricity. Every night was lit by candles and every day held endless exploration in the woods. It was great. The biggest downside was that we had an outhouse.
My dad was out of town for a week on a business trip, so it was just my mom and me. It was around eight or nine at night. Candles were lit, and we were reading together on the couch next to the fire when there was a knock on the door. The front door was sliding glass so that you could see out, but people could also see in. Against the dark, there was the silhouette of a man with an ax.
My mom shoved me into my boots and coat and stationed me by the back door. She said, "If I scream, run and don't stop running." The look of fear is still engraved in my memory. I had my hand on the latch and was freaking out because my hands were tiny, and the door latch was big. It was hard to open during the best of times.
I wasn’t sure that I could get it open. She opened the sliding glass door. The man with the ax said, "I'm here to deliver your firewood!" Apparently, my dad had hired him to bring a couple of cords to the house. It didn’t cross his mind how creepy showing up at night, unannounced, with an ax would be.
92. It Was Lights Out
I was around 13 or 14 years old. My parents had friends over, and all the adults went somewhere. Because the adults left, I was stuck with watching three dogs, which was pretty easy. I let them out when they went to the door, checked their water, etc. Since it was around Christmas, we had these fake glass candles on the windows that were plugged in for decoration.
Around midnight, I was lying on the couch with the dogs watching YouTube when they started getting all weird and started staring at the door. Every few minutes, they would get up and start barking frantically at it. It freaked me out—and it was only going to get worse. I looked out the windows to see if someone was in the yard but didn't see anyone, so I thought it was an animal.
They kept doing it. I was getting aggravated, so I just kept yelling at them each time. After the sixth round of barking, I got up to pull them away from the door when the candle on the window was suddenly thrown across the room, breaking the glass. Then the power shut off after it was yanked. The dogs started barking more, so I immediately booked it upstairs.
I slammed the door shut with the dogs behind me. I called and messaged the adults, but they weren't responding. The dogs were staring at my door all night, but nothing else happened. I fell asleep, and my parents yelled at me for the broken candle the next morning when they got back. I still don't know what happened that night, but I was terrified.
93. Turn Up The Volume
My stereo turned itself on at 4 AM one morning. There was a talk show on, but from my bedroom upstairs, the volume was too low to realize that. Therefore, I thought people were in my living room talking while they were trying to rob me as I slept. About 10 minutes later, a commercial I recognized played, so I realized it was just the radio.
94. Your Secret Is Safe With Me
As a teen, I stayed the night at my best friend's house and slept in their guest room. I was woken about 2 am to the sound of her older brother arriving home intoxicated from a party. He saw me in the guest room and leaned against the doorway to say "Hi." He then stumbled down the hallway to his bedroom but never turned the hallway light off, and it made it difficult for me to get back to sleep.
So after about ten to fifteen minutes I got up and walked down the end of the hallway to the light switch. I turned it off and started walking back to my room when I briefly glanced into his bedroom as I walked past...I couldn't believe my eyes. His door was wide open and he was sitting at his computer with his back facing me. He was naked from the waist down, masturbating to what looked like a transgender adult film.
I must have made a noise because he swung around and saw me staring. Then I immediately and swiftly returned to bed and lay in the dark not able to get the image out of my mind. Five minutes later I heard him creeping down the hallway. I was like, "Oh God, here we go.” He looked so sheepish and uncomfortable. He stood in the doorway and apologized for what I'd seen and begged me not to tell my friend, his little sister.
I swore I'd never tell them and told him it's fine and to go back to bed. To this day they wonder why he hasn't got a girlfriend and they think perhaps he has a crush on me because he acts weird around me!
95. Turning A New Leaf
One New Year’s Eve just after all my parent’s friends had gone home, we heard rapid knocking at the door. There was a woman in a pink and white coat who was shivering and stammering in Spanish. My dad, who’s fluent, began calming her down while taking her into the house. My mom came to his side, and then reached out to touch the woman's jacket.
When she lifted her hand, she had a horrifying revelation...She realized that the jacket wasn't actually multi-colored. The pink was blood, and she was shivering from the shock of a broken arm. My dad had calmed her down enough to get her to tell us what happened while my mom called the emergency number. She said that she and her brother had hit an ice patch.
It happened a mile away on a steep hill, and they went over the bank to the bottom. My dad and I grabbed our coats to go find the car. When we found it, my dad went down the hill first after firmly telling me to stay where I was. Being a stupid teen, I went down after a few minutes and when the car came into view, I learned why he’d told me to wait.
The car was wrapped around a tree, and the poor guy’s head was twisted all the way around. That sight still haunts me to this day whenever I drive on cold nights.
96. Doom From Above
When I was seven years old, my mom gave birth to my little sister. My dad and I went to visit her in the hospital to check out the new family member. As seven-year-olds often do, I got bored, so my parents sent me to the kiosk right outside the main building to get an ice cream. As I was walking towards the kiosk, I cut over the lawn as it was a shorter walk.
Suddenly I feel and hear a really heavy thud right behind me. I turn around to see an image that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It was the warped, mangled body of a man in a hospital gown maybe 40-50 cm from where I was standing. The man had jumped off the hospital roof after receiving the news he had terminal cancer.
My mom and a lot of the others in the birth ward even saw the guy flying past the windows. The guy basically just fell short of taking me with him. A group of doctors and psychiatrists asked me to get emergency therapy, but I insisted on getting my ice cream and going home. To this day, I can still recall the thud of the body hitting the ground and his body lying next to me, clear as crystal.
97. Non-Playable Character Failed To Load
I met a girl at university and after we graduated, we decided we'd move in with each other. The plan was whoever got a job first would pay the rent etc. while the other looked for a job in the same city. I got the job and we moved into a small house together. Months later, she's still having no luck finding a job. I feel like garbage one day, which is unusual for me, and come home from work extremely early, before lunch.
I walk in through the front door and I’m greeted by a bizarre sight. I look into the lounge and see her just...sitting there. The TV isn't on, nor the radio, and she's just staring straight ahead, not even moving. I stood there and watched her for a while out of curiosity. I'm sure everyone wonders what their partners/friends do when they think no one is around.
She did nothing, just stared dead ahead. The closest I can describe it is like in older computer games where you'd get into a room and an NPC hadn't noticed you yet and would still be stood there, waiting for you to get in and "activate" them. We'd had a fight the night before so I just shook my head and went off to bed.
At around 4, I get up and go downstairs again and she's still there staring dead ahead, at which point I obviously worry and try to get her attention. Nothing I did, even shaking her or shouting would wake her up from whatever it was, so I called my dad—he's a dentist but knows a lot about medicine generally—and ask him what I should do. He says he'll be round in 20 minutes, and to keep an eye on her till then.
Around 4:30 she suddenly gets up, goes into the kitchen, and starts doing chores, washing up and getting tea, etc. I follow her and watch before asking her if she's okay and she says she's fine, pretty casually like nothing had happened. I asked her what she'd been up to that day and she launched into this long explanation of how she'd gone out job hunting and where she'd gone and managers she'd spoken to that day. It was creepy.
I told her what had actually happened and she looked at me oddly like I was the crazy one, insisted that she'd been out job hunting and had only just got back. I told her I wasn't judging her and it was fine that she hadn't been out job hunting, but I was worried about her and she had definitely been sitting there all day.
My dad came by and suggested she may have been having an "absence seizure," which is a type of epilepsy. She had scans, etc., and nothing showed up (no tumors either). Since she didn't believe MY story things got pretty tense between us, especially because after possibly having an absence seizure, she had been banned from driving for a year.
Over the next six-ish months before we broke up, I did some pretty odd things to try and prove what had happened, including booking days off work without telling her and then pretending to go to work, only to park around the corner, come home sneakily and then observe her. A lot of the time I'd find her stood there doing nothing again.
When I asked her about it she'd still have these long explanations of what she'd done that day. It happened so often that I kind of got the feeling my girlfriend was only really "on" when people were around, and when she thought no one was around she'd just go into a default "off" state until people got back. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s all I could come up with.
Weirdly, some of her stories were backed up by other people. Like she said she'd gone to meet a friend that day, and later when I checked with the friend, she said that it was true. This is the only part I can't really explain to myself, and I've kind of just dismissed it as the friend being nice and trying to back up her friend. We broke up, though we're still friends, and I haven't mentioned it to her since.
It still freaks me out though, and I worry about what other people are like when they think no one is around.
98. The Others
My mom and older sister describe how I used to randomly start crying and asking where my mom was, even when she was right in front of me. When my mother would try to comfort me by saying she was right there, I would shout for my other mom. I would then describe this person, who apparently always held a bloody hammer. They said it scared them out of their wits, but one day when I was two years old, they tried to ask me about it and I couldn't remember anything.
Pxfuel
99. I Can See It In Your Eyes
My boyfriend’s younger brother and I were taking a bike ride down the street to the shops late one afternoon. As we get onto the main road, we notice a dude across the street heading in the opposite direction. He is walking with a limp, his head is bowed, and he’s got a plastic bag in his hand. We're only a few metres away from him when he crosses the street onto our side.
As the bro rides past him, this stranger lifts his head up and smiles in his direction as they pass each other. I'm a little while behind, so I don't pay too much attention to this—that is, until the bro stops, turns around, and gives me a funny look, just as this guy is passing him by. I still don't think too much of it at this point, assuming that he had just stopped to let me catch up.
As soon as I myself passed the stranger and made eye contact with him, I realized that this was not the case. When the stranger looked over and nodded at me, I saw nothing in his eyes. When I say nothing, I mean like black pits where his eyes should have been, or just an eyeball that looked entirely black. I don’t know how else to describe it.
When I finally catch up to the bro, we stop around the corner and he says to me "Did you see that???" "You mean his eyes?!" I asked. "Yeah, it looked like they weren't even there!" he replied. We then kind of sat there for a while processing what we had both just seen. Had the bro not related the same feeling and experience to me as I had felt when the stranger looked at me, I doubt I would have ever thought anything of it.
I probably would have just assumed it was the light angles playing tricks on me or some such thing. It was a sunny afternoon, so glare certainly could have played a part. He could've been wearing contacts, I don't know. But none of those explanations feel like they fit. We got home later on and told everybody what had happened, but no one believed us. They still don't to this day.
100. Kids Know More Than They Let on
My mom told me this story the other day and it freaked me out. When my oldest sister was little, like 3 years old, she asked my then-pregnant aunt to pick her up to hold her. My mom said she was like "She can't pick you up, honey, she has a baby in her tummy." And then my little sister was like "That baby is dead!" My mom freaked out, but my aunt and grandma were fine and were telling my mom it was all good, she was just a toddler and didn't know what she was saying.
Well, lo and behold my aunt goes to the doctor the next day for a routine pregnancy checkup, and the baby was dead. Give me the willies just thinking about it.
101. I'd Rather You Didn't
My six-year-old daughter was in the passenger seat a few days ago and looked at me and said, "Dad, when I'm seven I'm going to kill you. No wait, when I'm eight." I asked, "How are you going to do that?" She smiled and said, "I'm gonna drive over your head with this car."
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102. The Cabin In The Woods
My uncle used to have a cabin in the woods near Winter, Wisconsin. I used to spend time there in the summer tearing through the woods with my two cousins. One extremely early morning, when I was about ten, my uncle woke us up roughly and told us it was time to go fishing. It was still super early and we were all confused because it was pitch dark.
He hustled us down to the dock where he kept his little fishing boat and quickly launched us into the water and away from the house. At this point we were all getting a little freaked out—but this was just the beginning. My uncle wasn’t talking. We just sat, shivering under a blanket at the bow of the boat, while my uncle stared wild-eyed at the shoreline and waved a flashlight furtively ahead of us.
We eventually arrived at my uncle’s friend’s cabin across the lake and tumbled into his house. Our uncle sent us to the loft to sleep. He and his buddy locked the doors and left, not returning until well after sunrise. Eventually, our uncle showed up with the truck and trailer already packed with all of our gear, and he told us it was time to go home.
Many years later, my uncle confided to me that the reason he’d hustled us home was because he’d woken up around 3 AM to a strange “Thok! Thok! Thok!” sound from outside the cabin. He’d gone out to investigate, when a massive jack pine fell directly across the narrow driveway, blocking us in. Startled by the noise, he swept his flashlight along the tree line.
Just in time, my uncle saw a man, holding an axe. The man slinked away into the dark of the trees and woods. He and his buddy returned to his cabin later, and had to take turns chainsawing the tree that fell across our narrow driveway apart, while the other stood watch with a rifle. He never found the man, and he never found the axe.
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