Spooky season is upon us, and that can only mean one thing: Reading terrifying real-life horror stories until we can't sleep. From supernatural nightmares to chilling sights you can never unsee, you're going to want to keep the lights on for this one.
1. There’s No Place Like Home
My parents bought their first house back in 1972. It was a fixer-upper, but they decided to move in right away and fix things as time and money permitted. Within a few days of moving in, the new neighbors came over to introduce themselves. They also let my parents know that the previous owners had moved out after a nasty divorce.
They had lost their second baby from an illness, and their relationship went downhill from there. My parents were horrified, more so because they were newly pregnant and couldn't imagine going through such a thing. They eventually pretty much forgot all about it. Life went on. They were in love with their new life and their new house.
In preparation for the baby, they decided to wallpaper the nursery. Now, my dad told my mom there was no need for wallpapering the inside of the closet, but she insisted. She was kneeling down, scraping off old paint inside of the closet when her eyes fell upon something that made her blood turn to ice.
Written in crayon, at about eye level for a kindergartner, in childish scrawl were the words: “I KILLED THE BABY.”
2. What's In The Bag?
I grew up in a house with woods and a bike trail behind it where I spent most of the time with the other neighborhood kids. We were all between 12-14, and each had our own fort in the woods that we built with our best friends. We did our best to keep our forts hidden, so even the other kids didn’t know where they were.
One day, we’re outside and watching who was coming through on the trail especially listening out for when we heard bike tires. A car recently fatally hit one of our friends, and we all thought that he’d just show up again on the trail on his bike. So, we always ran out of the woods to the trail whenever we heard tires.
We heard some pass by and ran out to see who it was. We saw this out-of-shape adult man without a shirt on with a bag slung over his shoulder. He was riding away from us so didn’t know we’re there. We noticed that he gave off a whole creepy vibe, so we kept watching. He went a little further and pulled off to the side.
He walked into the woods with his bag and then returned a few moments later without the bag. He grabbed his bike and got back on when my friend yelled, “What’s in the bag?” He looked down the trail and saw one or more of us. Then he started coming right for us, cycling down the trail in our direction at a much faster pace than he did before.
We all booked it into the woods, but because none of us were familiar with where each other’s forts were, we didn’t end up running to the same places to hide. We split up and hid in our respective forts. I cannot remember how long we hid for. I just remember hearing movement not too far away but not knowing who it was.
When we finally came out of our hiding places, the man was nowhere to be found. We eventually walked down the trail to where he’d ditched the bag but couldn’t find anything. We just assumed that he’d gone back and grabbed it when he left.
3. The Headless Horseman
I was driving on a road in between fields on a cold autumn evening. It was dark, and there was mist in the air just like in a horror movie. Suddenly, this creature walked in front of my car. A huge creature with almost no recognizable features. My old car didn’t have very good headlights, but it had functioning brakes.
I managed to stop a meter in front of this monstrosity by approaching slowly. It had the shape of an animal, but it was enormous. Its head was higher than the roof of my SUV while standing on all fours. It had a huge chest, almost no stomach, an enormous moving neck, and the head...The head! It had NO EYES nor a mouth.
Even with the headlights, I couldn’t see any of its features. It was somehow absorbing most of the light. It was like most of the creature had no hair—just some solid plate-like skin. It moved its faceless head to look at me and then back. Then with two long steps, it walked into the field and then disappeared into the mist.
I immediately stepped on the gas to get into the safety of the city. I talked about this with many people, but they all just said I was making it up or had no idea what it could have been. But a few years later, I talked with my ex about it who lived close to where I saw the creature, and she finally shed some light on that disturbing night.
There was a farm where a horrible man lived. He was known for neglecting and mistreating animals. Before officers took him in, there were some incidents when his animals jumped over a broken fence in search of food and to get away from him. That day I had seen a horse. A hurt, suffering horse with incredibly long hair.
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4. Scary Movies
Our town had a mom-and-pop video rental store. It was a nice small place where my dad sometimes took me on Tuesdays or Fridays to pick out a movie. Back then, I was obsessed with Back to The Future and almost always picked it when I had the chance. One time I got it and brought it home then went to my room to watch it. The only problem was, the video was not a movie at all.
Someone had recorded a snuff film over the tape. It took me several minutes of watching it to realize what I was seeing. I ran out screaming and crying and told my dad. He ended up fighting one of the weird guys that worked at the video store, and I think officers may have even taken the guy in.
5. Delivering The Sad News
I delivered newspapers when I was 14. I had the route for the blocks around my house, so it was easy for me to do without a car. One day, I was walking down my street on my route when I saw sawdust on the road soaking up the large and long puddle of liquid on the road. I just assumed that there had been a car accident.
I thought it was probably there to soak up gasoline or something, so I continued. A few neighbors were out talking about a block down, and they asked me if I heard what had happened. I handed them their newspaper and told them that I hadn’t. They told me that something happened to my elderly neighbor across the street.
This sweet kind woman was in her nineties and had been showing signs of memory issues. Everyone knew she shouldn’t have been living on her own. Her husband had passed a few years earlier, and she had just met a new man around her age who picked her up and took her out to dinner and to church. It was the sweetest thing.
And she was very happy again. So, that day, she was late trying to catch the bus and about to miss it. She was on the wrong side of the street for the bus stop, so while the bus was paused at the stop sign, she grabbed the side rearview mirror to get the driver’s attention. But the driver didn’t have to look that way.
He didn’t notice her and hit the acceleration. She was dragged along the asphalt until the driver heard her screaming. That's when all the horrible puzzle pieces clicked into place. It hadn't been gasoline that the sawdust was there to absorb; it was her blood. I had to walk by it going home and realizing what she went through left me hyperventilating behind my house sobbing.
6. Guess Again
When I was seven, I woke up in the middle of the night with an earache. I decided to tell my mom and stepdad about it, so I walked out of my room—and saw something that filled me with dread. Someone was sitting on the chair in the living room about three feet away from my bedroom door. The person looked strange. The face was just kind of distorted. But it was dark and I couldn't see well.
"Mom?" I asked. The person shook their head, and I started getting scared. "Mike?" The person shook their head again. I decided the best course of action was to go back to bed so I wouldn't have to walk past this person. I climbed in bed and closed my eyes for a second, before opening them and seeing the person standing in my doorway, smiling madly and nodding furiously.
I screamed at the top of my lungs and closed my eyes. My stepdad came running out of his room in his underwear with a baseball bat. That was a scary sight in itself. When the lights came on, there was no one there. For the longest time, I told myself it was my cat, sitting on a pile of my clothes.
7. Black Magic
My dad passed from cancer the day I turned 16 after about two weeks in a coma. It was really fast. There was a total of less than two months between diagnosis and his passing. He passed in the house. We had a hospice attendant and my mom was very good about seeing to him in those final days. Anyway, a lot of weird things happened after he passed.
But one thing that happened still freaks me out to this day. It happened about twelve hours before he took to bed for the last time. He was in our living room napping on the couch while my mom was in the kitchen cooking. No one else was home. Suddenly, he jerked awake and was shouting for my mom in a very loud, agitated voice. Clearly angry with her.
"Beverly! Don't do that! Don't EVER do that again!" She ran into the room, alarmed, and asked what he was talking about. And, without any explanation, he simply said, "Don't do that. Don't walk past me like that in that long, black wig." Sometimes I think he saw the grim reaper. It was the eeriest thing I’ve ever experienced.
8. Smile, Though Your Heart Is Aching
About five years ago, I lived downtown in a major city in the United States. I've always been a night person, so I would often find myself bored after my roommate, who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep. To pass the time, I used to go for long walks and spend the time thinking. I spent four years like that, walking alone at night, and never once had a reason to feel afraid.
I always used to joke with my roommate that even the dealers in the city were polite. But all of that changed in just a few minutes one evening. It was a Wednesday, somewhere between one and two in the morning, and I was walking near a heavily patrolled park, quite a ways from my apartment. It was a quiet night, even for a weeknight, with very little traffic and almost no one on foot.
The park, as on most nights, was completely empty. I turned down a short side street in order to loop back to my apartment—that’s when I first noticed him. At the far end of the street, on my side, was the silhouette of a man, dancing. It was a strange dance, similar to a waltz, but he finished each "box" with an odd forward stride. I guess you could say he was dance-walking, headed straight for me.
Deciding he was probably intoxicated, I stepped as close as I could to the road to give him the majority of the sidewalk to pass me by. The closer he got, the more I realized how gracefully he was moving. He was very tall and lanky, and wearing an old suit. He danced closer still, until I could make out his face. His eyes were open wide and wild, head tilted back slightly, looking off at the sky—but that’s not what scared me.
His mouth was formed in a painfully wide cartoon of a smile. It was so unsettling. Between the eyes and the smile, I decided to cross the street before he danced any closer. I took my eyes off of him to cross the empty street. As I reached the other side, I glanced back...and then stopped in my tracks. He had stopped dancing and was standing with one foot in the street, perfectly parallel to me.
He was facing me but still looking skyward. Smile still wide on his lips. I was completely and utterly unnerved by this. I started walking again, but kept my eyes on the man. He didn't move. Once I had put about half a block between us, I turned away from him for a moment to watch the sidewalk in front of me. The street and sidewalk ahead of me were completely empty.
Still unnerved, I looked back to where he had been standing to find him gone. For the briefest of moments, I felt relieved, until I noticed him again. He had crossed the street and was now slightly crouched down. I couldn't tell for sure due to the distance and the shadows, but I was certain that he was facing me. I had looked away from him for no more than ten seconds, so it was clear that he had moved fast.
I was so shocked that I stood there for some time, staring at him. And then he started moving toward me again. He took giant, exaggerated, tip-toed steps, as if he were a cartoon character sneaking up on someone. Except he was moving very, very quickly. I'd like to say at this point I ran away or pulled out my pepper spray or my cell phone, or anything at all, but I didn't. I couldn’t move.
I just stood there, completely frozen as the smiling man crept toward me. And then he stopped again, about a car length away from me. Still smiling his smile, still looking to the sky. When I finally found my voice, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. What I meant to ask was, "What do you want?!" in an angry, commanding tone. What came out was a whimper, "What the fuu…?"
Regardless of whether or not humans can smell fear, they can certainly hear it. I heard it in my own voice, and that only made me more afraid. But he didn't react to it at all. He just stood there, smiling. And then, after what felt like forever, he turned around, very slowly, and started dance-walking away. Just like that. Not wanting to turn my back to him again, I just watched him go, until he was far enough away to almost be out of sight.
And that’s when I made a horrifying realization. He wasn't moving away anymore, nor was he dancing. I watched in horror as the distant shape of him grew larger and larger. He was coming back my way. And this time he was running. I ran too. I ran until I was off of the side road and back onto a better-lit road with sparse traffic. Looking behind me then, he was nowhere to be found.
The rest of the way home, I kept glancing over my shoulder, always expecting to see his creepy smile, but he was never there. I lived in that city for six months after that night, and I never went out for another walk. There was something about his face that always haunted me. He didn't look intoxicated, and he didn't look high. He looked completely and utterly insane. And that's a very, very scary thing to see.
9. Four Goodness Sake
I was in Taiwan one year when I was younger, and had traveled to a busy night market. These are popular gatherings of food and shop stalls that usually operate in the evening. Nearby, I spotted a sign for a net cafe in a five or six-story tall building. Thinking I’d fire off some quick emails, I walked in through the dark, small entrance of the building.
The building was older and hadn’t been well maintained, but it’s not out of the ordinary in Taiwan. The entrance just had a dark hallway that led to a small elevator. I pressed the elevator call button and entered. The elevator was uncharacteristically new compared to the building, but I didn’t think much of it. Like some Chinese and Taiwanese buildings, there wasn’t a fourth floor.
The number four is considered bad luck in that culture, so it just read 1-2-3-5-6, which was usual. I looked for the floor the net cafe was at, which was the sixth. I pressed the button. It lurched into action quietly and began the ascent. When it stopped, I figured it was my floor, so I instinctively began to step out. Right before stepping out, however, what I saw outside the elevator stopped me.
It was pitch black, only lit by the light in the elevator. It looked like it hadn't been occupied for decades, with some random pieces of furniture covered with white cloth or similar things. It was a small building, so each floor was single occupancy. I could see pretty much the entire floor from the elevator. Thinking I must have gotten the wrong floor, I checked the light that indicates which floor you’re on.
Strangely, there was nothing. None of the indicators were on, but the floor button to the net cafe was still lit so I knew I hadn’t gotten there yet. All this happened within a couple of seconds. That’s when I noticed a figure moving in the distance of the floor. It was not very visible, but I could make out what looked like a person dressed in some kind of gown, moving slowly towards the elevator, where I was.
I was thoroughly creeped out, so I started pressing the close door button. As soon as I pressed it, the elevator light flickered off and I was in pitch-black darkness. I was very close to peeing my pants, and it’s actually kind of freaking me out thinking back to it. The lights flickered back on a few seconds later, and the door closed. The elevator jolted back to life.
A few moments later, it opened again to the net cafe. I was beyond relieved at this point. I walked out immediately and sat down at a computer. After gathering my wits a bit, I walked over to the cashier’s desk and told them what I saw. The girl working there listened. Her reaction was chilling. Her face turned a bit ashen, so I asked her if she heard of something similar.
She told me that she’s never experienced it, but some coworkers and occasional customers have brought it up. Basically, the building has six floors, and the fourth floor had a history. Apparently, the floor used to be a hair salon of sorts, until one of the employees took her own life there for some reason. She slit her wrists over the hair wash station.
The store continued operations despite stories of weird appearances. When customers got their hair rinsed, the water would look a little red, like the customer was bleeding. Little things like that. And a couple of people reported seeing someone’s figure walking away in the mirror, but wouldn't see anyone when they turned to check. Naturally, the business closed down a few months later.
The building owner tried to re-rent the place out, but never had any luck. Most businesses are quite superstitious, and no one wanted to rent the fourth floor after someone had lost their life on it, even at a very cheap price. Finally, after dropping the price to nearly nothing, a stationary supplies store wanted to rent. During the renovations of the floor, however, several accidents happened.
Tools would end up in strange places, a mirror from the previous business shattered when no one was near it, and finally, a worker had his hand jammed between the elevator doors when it closed on him unexpectedly. The workers refused to continue working and, finally, the business left and the building owner gave up and shut down the floor.
He then had the elevator company come in to replace the panel so that the elevator could not go to the fourth floor. Let me repeat that. The elevator was programmed to never go to the fourth floor. It doesn’t even have a button. But for some reason, sometimes when people take the elevator, it would go to the fourth floor and the doors would open, and some, like myself, would see a figure walking around in the dark.
10. Bed, Bath, and Beyond
I was once in a hot tub with some friends late at night, and we were all telling some stories. One of the guys told us this one. It was the story of a girl he knows. I’m not 100% sure if it's true, but multiple people in the hot tub who knew her verified it was true. So one day, this girl was called over to babysit. She did it a lot for these people, so it was routine for her.
Anyways, she was told to put the kids to bed at 9:00, and she did. After she put them to bed, she started watching TV and doing homework, waiting for the parents to come home. But then, she started hearing some noises coming out of the basement, like pans falling and stuff. She just ignored it and thought it was the washing machine or something.
Anyways, a little later, she starts hearing the noises again. She decides to call the authorities and tell them she was hearing noises coming out of the basement at the house she's babysitting at. The lady at the station told her there's a patroller in her area, and that he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. Anyways, in about five minutes, she hears a knock on the door.
When she answers, she’s shocked. It's a full SWAT team. She asked, "I thought they were just sending a patroller." One of the guys told her: "After you hung up the phone, we heard a second phone on the line hang up." It turns out there was a man in the basement, listening to the conversation. The lady in the station waited and heard him hang up, then immediately sent the swat team to help.
They went downstairs and caught him. He was wanted for multiple serious offenses.
11. A Scarring Memory
One of the scariest things I ever heard was when I worked in retail. My store used to do layaway and that was where I worked. Right by the layaway counter, we had three bathrooms—a men's multi-stall, a women's multi-stall, and a family bathroom. Well, only the family bathroom had a door that locked. All the others had a push-and-pull swing door.
I was in the back cleaning up and I thought I heard screaming, so I walked out front by the counter. I heard more screaming. I was not sure at first where it was coming from. I ran and checked the men's and women's bathrooms and they were empty. But I still heard the crying and screaming. I made a terrifying realization. It was coming from the locked family bathroom.
I banged on the door but the yelling, screaming, and crying kept going on. It sounded like a child and I had no idea what was going on. I called for a manager because I had no way of getting in the door since it was locked. This whole time there is still crying, screaming, and banging. After several attempts of trying to open the door, we called for a rescue crew.
We had no idea what we were getting into, but it didn't sound good. I think it had been about 15 minutes at this point, although it felt like forever. Then the sound just stopped. No more banging or crying. Nothing. We banged on the door until the authorities came. When they finally did, they had to kick the door in since we had no key.
As we all stood around and looked in, it was absolutely horrifying. All we saw was blood all over the place. We were not really sure what happened at first, but the officers told us to back up. That is when they pulled out a lady and a child. A bloody child, maybe three years old. We all just stood there in shock. The child was not moving. We all thought he was deceased because of all the blood.
They took the lady away in handcuffs and the child to the hospital. We all had to give statements. Later, my manager told me what had happened. She just snapped. The kid wouldn't stop crying and she just had enough and did whatever she could to make him stop. He did survive. I was sure he was a goner, but he wasn't. She had just knocked him out from hitting him so hard.
For that to happen right behind the door and not know what is going on or be able to help was pretty scary to me.
12. An Urgent Call
One morning at about 1:00 AM, I got a phone call from my little sister's cell. She lived a time zone away to the east, so it was 2:00 AM there. It woke me up, and I immediately sensed that something was wrong. I picked up the phone and groggily said "Hello?" when I heard a muffled woman's voice—possibly my sister's—say, "Please, help me."
She sounded terrified and desperate. I immediately thought I was having a Taken moment. I figured my sister was being kidnapped, and she had found some way to quickly call me for help. I didn’t know what to do. Should I hang up and call the authorities? Should I yell into the phone? Should I keep listening and try to pick up some kind of relevant information?
I really wished I had one of those fancy phone recording devices that the Taken guy had right then. I opted to keep listening. As I did, I occasionally heard muffled yelling and screaming, much to my horror. Her phone must have been hidden away pretty well. Then, something strange happened. I heard what was clearly my sister's voice, also muffled, but completely calm.
I didn't hear what she said, but it was a very casual, conversational tone. Then I noticed for the first time that there was also scary music along with the yelling and stuff in the background. Turns out my sister had pocket dialed me while watching a horror movie…
13. A Glitch In The Matrix
This happened when I was in eighth grade. I attended a small private Christian school at the time. School started at 8:00, but my Dad had to work early so he usually would drop me off at about 7:15. I would then go to before-care, where an adult basically supervised everyone who was early. I remember it as an ordinary morning, I felt totally fine and did what I usually did in before-care.
I went to the back corner of the cafeteria, lay my head down on the table, and closed my eyes for a few minutes before my school day began. All of a sudden, everything changed. I started experiencing this sharp pain in my chest, the best I can describe it was it felt like my chest was having a cramp, like you get in your legs when working out or playing sports.
I didn't panic, but I got out of my chair and quickly walked out of the room and down the hallway towards the restroom. As I walked down the hallway, the pain got sharper and sharper and my vision started going dark. The last thing I remember was falling to my knees and realizing I wasn't going to make it to the bathroom.
By the time I was completely on the floor, I was unconscious. I have no idea how long I was out. The next thing I remember, I was waking up on the floor of the hallway, and I quickly realized two things that I to this day find strange about the situation. First, the last thought I had before I passed out was realizing I wasn't going to make it to the bathroom, yet when I woke up, I was actually a few steps past the door to the bathroom. But there was more.
Second, this was near the end of the before-care time period. School was about to start, and the hallway at this point was usually pretty busy, yet when I went to go to the bathroom, the hallway was empty and when I woke up, the hallway was still empty. I went into the bathroom to compose myself and make sure that whatever happened wouldn't start again.
After that, I went back to before-care and on with my day. I felt completely fine and to this day, that pain in my chest has never returned.
14. Big Brother Isn’t Watching You
When I was an early teenager, I got involved with a Big Brothers program. My Big Brother was a guy named Chris who, like me, was a little odd, and so we got along really well and hung out a lot. When we had been paired for about a year, he told me that he was going on a trip to Baltimore. He also told me the date that he would be back on.
I waited for a few days after his return date before trying to call him, but when I did, the person on the other line said, "There's no Chris here." I looked in the phonebook to make sure I had dialed correctly, and I know for a fact that I did because I had the number circled and it matched the number I had dialed. But the man repeated, "We've been living here for a long time, and there's never been a Chris here."
Chris never returned from Baltimore, and neither I nor the Big Brothers program ever heard from him again.
15. Treasure Island
This was around 2006 when I was 10 years old. It was after midnight. I was sleeping in one of my aunts' beds while my brother slept in another's, adjacent to mine. Across from us was our grandparents' bedroom and, downstairs, next to the laundry room, was my parents' bedroom. I woke up, groggy and confused and needing to pee very very badly, and suddenly I heard a voice.
With eight people in the house, that wasn't uncommon. Someone had probably gotten up to go to the washroom and either started talking to someone else or they had answered the phone. Mind you, I was still half-asleep, so to me a phone call after midnight seemed totally reasonable. Well, it turns out that couldn't have been possible because I didn't recognize the voice.
That was what immediately woke me up. And I froze, clutching my blanket while sitting up in bed. It was a man. His voice wasn't deep, not like my dad or grandfather's, and he kept prattling on about some “treasure.” He was right outside the door, but he never turned the doorknob or made any attempt at entering any of the rooms.
He just kept passing by, as if pacing, all the while talking to himself about this treasure. I was terrified and looked over to my aunt, who was sound asleep. I still don't know how I managed to not wet the bed. Eventually, the voice went silent, and I somehow fell asleep. The next morning, everyone is doing their thing, getting ready for work or school, or busy in the kitchen, so I assumed it was all just a dream.
I really wish I'd kept my mouth shut. As I'm eating breakfast, I told my mom and grandmother about the voice, and laughed at how weird the brain is. They froze. Everyone froze. It turns out the voice was real. I hadn't mentioned his obsession with a “treasure,” but my grandfather did. As did my mother. And brother. Everyone agreed about the 'treasure' thing.
Apparently, he combed the entire house, but he never actually entered any of the rooms. Nothing was taken, all the doors were locked, and all the windows had screens, none of which were missing. Two weeks later, while I was helping my grandparents clean out the garage, my grandmother found several empty Coke cans behind the old sofa, which had been up against one of the walls for quite some time.
There were also empty bags of chips, candy wrappers, fruit cores, and peels. All of which were taken from the garage. The sofa was high enough for someone to lay underneath. So the guy had clearly been inside our house. Inside our garage. We've moved now, as have my aunts. But my grandparents still live there, and we're only about a three-minute drive from them.
We still don't know who he was, how he got in, and, most importantly: How long had he been inside our home?
16. 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.
17. A Beautiful Night In The Neighborhood
One morning last December, around 4:00 AM, I wake up to a piercing, shrill, alarm-like noise. In a panic, I jump out of bed thinking it might be a phone or my car alarm or something. But as I was trying to locate the origin of the noise, I realized it didn't change frequency or volume regardless of where I was in the house.
There was no point of origin as far as I could tell with my semi-conscious brain. So I'm stumbling around in complete darkness with a tiny flashlight, when I think to myself “How stupid am I?! I just did the cliché horror film thing and started walking around in the dark instead of turning on the lights!” So I find the light switch. Click...click...click! CLICK! CLICK! It doesn't work!!
I look outside. The whole neighborhood's pitch black. No street lights, no cars, nothing. I grab the phone. There’s no signal. I find my mobile and call a friend. They don't pick up, probably because it was 4:00 in the freaking morning!! However, my twisted brain led me to the conclusion that something awful had happened. Panic started to set in.
So there I am, the shrill noise is still there in the background, I'm standing in complete darkness, and perhaps the sleep deprivation combined with the rush of adrenaline caused by my immense fear led me to the notion that the end of the world had arrived. I thought that whatever's happening didn't matter. The adrenaline was wearing off and I felt exhausted and pretty down in general.
So I slinked off back to bed, falling asleep thinking I'd rather pass peacefully in my sleep than fully aware of imminent emptiness and darkness. That day, I found out our power had been cut in the night, which set off a neighbor's home security system. He wasn't home to turn it off, which explains the lack of electricity and the awful noise.
18. Big Show Off
My friend and I lived on an island and were out on his little boat going for a ride. One guy on the island had just bought a Jet Ski and had purposely splashed us as we were leaving the dock. There’s a line of big rocks piled up to shield the boats from big waves by the dock that also blocks people from the open water.
On the other side of the rocks was where our ferry came in to dock. We saw the guy on the jet ski riding at a high speed to the dock. He was trying to get between two rock piles, but there was a cable running between them just below the surface. He hit it, and the cable ran up the front of his jet ski, decapitating him.
19. Poking Around
When I worked for my dad, I’d meet him at the station in the morning. One time, there was a man there begging who came over to us. Luckily, my dad handled him well. He looked like a homeless man and gave off a weird vibe. We’re just about to leave the station but looked back one more time to make sure the man was okay.
He was talking to a young woman still begging. We were listening to their conversation, and the woman aggressively refused to “help” him. After this, the man pulled out a knife and attacked the woman. Fortunately, she was wearing a big jacket, so the wound wasn’t severe, but we immediately called for emergency services.
20. A Surprise In The Basement
I was a junior in college. Me and five other guys rented the upstairs of a college house. There were two separate apartments on the first floor, and the basement was communal with a washer and dryer and a bunch of rooms which were boarded up. The landlord said it was because they needed work, and he didn't have the time or money.
Anyways, I knew the downstairs occupants. Some I had classes with, and one I worked with. My coworker went up to me one day and asked, "Do you ever hear anything…weird in the basement?" Come to mention it, I, and my roommates, had been hearing odd sounds. My coworker said he just heard it again and thought it may be a person.
I snuck down. Sure enough, I heard movement in a room. The boards were removed. Now I was sketched out—but I had no idea what was coming. I threw open the door and this man, in his mid-30s, who I had never seen before, casually turned around. He was in a nice, three-piece, dark blue suit. He smiled and said, "Well, hello there, fine day today, isn't it?"
Honestly, I was so caught off guard by his demeanor. "Who are you? How did you get in here? And why?" I asked him. "Ah, yes, I bet this seems odd. I used to stay here. I just…I just like to stop back from time to time. Tell [landlord’s name] I said hi." He then swung his jacket over his shoulder, said excuse me, and walked past.
I know I should have grabbed his name or called the authorities, but he knew my landlord's first name, which wasn’t listed on the property. I called the landlord, and asked who this guy was and why he was there. The landlord was speechless. He replied, "Those rooms are boarded up for a reason. I'll have to secure that again, now."
"What about the guy?" I asked him. The landlord just hung up on me. Every time someone asked him about it, he just left, hung up, or changed the subject.
21. A Beastly Encounter
When I was very young, we had a particularly nasty snowstorm that wiped out power for days. We lived in New England, in the middle of farmland, so while our neighbors were within walking distance, it was a short hike to get to them. I don't recall exactly what led to this, but my mother needed to visit a neighbor to lend them something while my father got the generator running.
I wanted to go with her, so she put me on my snowsled and pulled me along that way. It was dark out, and everything was covered in snow. When we hit the midpoint of the walk back, we both heard this horrifying howl like something out of a monster movie, which echoed through the forest. My mother picked me up out of the sled and ran home. We both described the sound to my father, who didn't believe us…And then we found something terrifying the next week.
We found a bunch of deer that had been torn apart just 30 feet into a wooded path near our house, and not by poachers or hunters. I've been around coyotes my whole life, and they definitely didn't do this either. Coyotes will pick apart their prey and run off with pieces. This was four or five full-sized deer with large chunks missing.
22. Monsters Under The Bed
When I was 12, I woke up in the middle of the night to loud breathing under my bed. I was convinced there was a demon or cryptid or something that was going to eat me. I finally decided to risk it and run up to my mom’s room to sleep in her bed. I made it safely without being dragged under the bed. My mom was convinced I just had a nightmare, but the next night, I heard it again.
Since it was only around 9 at night, I called my mom so she could hear it. She was about 10 feet away and could hear the breathing clear as day. There was nothing under my bed. Over the next couple of months I kept hearing it, although not nightly. It slowly started to sound more like purring than breathing. My brother came home from college, and checked under my bed and made me lift my hands to double-check that I wasn't playing a prank. We never found out what was breathing under my bed.
23. Just A Coincidence, Right?
I was driving down the highway and happened to look to my right. I saw a woman with a bun, staring at me with a terrified expression from the car next to me. Before I really figured out how to react, the car pulled off at the next exit. About half an hour, later a different car with a different driver pulled alongside me, with the same woman in the passenger seat.
By then, I planned to pull into the next service station to report it. The car disappeared before I could get any details, and I thought there was no point calling the authorities with no details, so I carried on driving. Literally about four hours later, yet another car pulled alongside me, with the same woman, except this time I took one look at her and went white as a sheet. She appeared to be SCREAMING at me through the window.
I pulled over and called the authorities. Apparently, they had received three other calls about the same woman and car in the same area in the last few minutes. I never heard anything more about it, but I didn’t see her again, and although I kept an eye on the news, I didn’t see anything about it. Hopefully, it was just a giant coincidence. Who knows.
24. A Nightly Visitor
About ten years ago, I was sitting in my room when I heard my doorknob slowly turning. I thought it was my dad seeing if I was napping, and he was trying to be quiet. I watched the knob turn and heard the springs in the mechanism squeaking, and then the sound of the latch slide off the metal plate as it was pushed open a bit.
I sat up to greet my dad and ask what he needed, except I didn't see anyone. Then, the door moved like it was pushed again, and it opened a little more. Through the door, I clearly saw my dad in the living room, sitting on the couch. I just couldn't explain it. The door was shut all the way and latched properly.
To make things worse, I also frequently saw a shadow figure peer around my door frame. The figure was about six feet tall, solid black, and the side it peeked from was about three inches from door frame to wall. No one could fit in there, and it would just stare at me in my bed. The figure would also keep leaning in and out of view.
25. A Road Trip Of Horrors
My family and I were on a trip from Mexico City to Acapulco. Suddenly, during the middle of the night, the car broke down, and a squad car quickly came to our help. There were three officers in the car, and the chief offered to take me to the nearest gas station, where I could find a mechanic and told the other two officers to stay with our car.
They seemed absolutely not pleased with the order, until the chief told them, "Don't worry, there's a woman and two children." That seemed to calm the two officers. While driving to the gas station in the squad car, I asked the chief what that was all that about—but I wasn't prepared for his answer. The chief told me that there had been many accidents in that part of the road. But it wasn’t just that.
All of the accidents involved young men traveling without a female or child. Those who had survived, said that they crashed because they could see a very beautiful woman next to the road, but once they came close to her, she turned out to be just a rotting corpse staring at them, and they crashed because they were paralyzed by fear.
26. Not As Alone As You Thought
I was parked at a dirt turnout in the Arizona desert between Cameron and Page for the night. This is out in Navajo country, I believe. At about 2 AM, I woke up to scratching at the window of my truck, which went on for about 15 minutes. I was sitting there in the dark, scared, wondering what was happening, with my Bowie Knife in my hand.
After it ended, I waited another 15 minutes or so before I opened my curtain and looked out the windows. I couldn't see anything outside, and I was still the only one parked there. I got out the next morning, and all I found were some footprints coming to the truck and eventually walking back into the desert.
27. A Dark Premonition
When I was 13, I had a weird nightmare of me kneeling on asphalt and holding my hand to my mouth, in the worst pain of my life. I told my mom about the dream because it scared me so much. Two years later, I was hit by a car while crossing the street and ended up in that exact position, kneeling on asphalt, holding my mouth while blood poured out.
My head had apparently bounced off the rearview mirror, and that had knocked my two front teeth back into my soft palate. I didn't remember the dream, but my mom did, and it really messed with her. I don't believe in premonitions, but I often wonder if maybe traumatic events can echo somehow through time.
28. A Driver’s Nightmare
I live in a small mountain town. It takes three hours to get to the nearest city. I make that drive two to three times a month, and have done it for ten years. I have the trip committed to memory. One night, I was making the drive at 2 AM to catch an early flight. I went through a big sweeping curve to the left… and all of a sudden, I was driving on a straight road. I KNEW there wasn’t a straight section on that highway for another 30 miles. I looked around, trying to figure out where I am.
There wasn’t a single highway sign on the side of the road. My phone had no service, so I couldn’t check my location. I looked out the window and realized the high desert scrub trees have been replaced with a thick forest. That’s something that we don’t have here. I kept looking at the clock for the next 15 minutes I was driving.
For some reason, I was on a straight road through this ominous dark forest, when I should’ve been on a curvy mountain pass in the desert. Right about the time I started to have a full-on panic attack, a sweeping left curve appeared, and I was finally out of the forest, back in the scrub. I chalked it up to drowsy driving and an overactive imagination. But the most terrifying part came later.
It happened AGAIN two years later, at the same spot, except this time I wasn’t alone. I had my brother riding beside me on a similar airport run, when all of a sudden I was on that straight, forested road. This time, we were on that road for about five minutes. After about five minutes of driving down that dark, heavily forested road, my brother looked around, and finally asked, “Where are we?” As soon as he asked that, cue the sweeping left curve appearing, and after taking it, we were suddenly back in the desert. Even though I can’t explain it, I’m at least grateful I had a witness.
29. Get out, Right Now
My family moved into a new house when I was 11 years old. The previous owners were a family, and the mom passed of cancer. They sold the house shortly after she passed. Growing up, my sister and I always had an uneasy feeling about that house. Strange things would happen, but everything had a plausible explanation...except for one time when I was 16.
In the middle of the night, I was having trouble sleeping. While I was lying there in my bed, the door to my room opened on its own. I could hear footsteps come into my room. I couldn't see anyone, but I felt like someone else was in my room. Ever have someone come up behind you while you're on the computer? It was like that.
I could hear the footsteps get closer to my bed. Then, right next to me appeared compression on my bed, like an invisible person was sitting there. I could even feel the weight shift. I reached out to touch the compression, and all of a sudden a bunch of blue static electricity shot out from the spot I touched. I screamed and ran out of my room, waking up the entire house.
I couldn't explain what I saw that night. I was almost questioning my own sanity, and that's why I don't tell this story often. For the record, I was 100% sober at the time. Also, because I could move, I don't think it was sleep paralysis. The strange thing is that years later, my sister ran into the daughter of the previous family. She told my sister that her mom had actually passed in the house, not at the hospital.
30. The Basement Dweller
I heard what I thought was my brother singing. We had a piano in our basement as teenagers, and early in the morning or late at night, he spent quite a bit of time on it playing music. I should note, we lived in an old house, and sound traveled relatively well, so even when he was being “quiet,” you could hear him all the way up on the top floor.
One morning, around 8 AM, I woke up and went about getting ready for the day. My brother was singing in the basement, being loud and obnoxious. His voice is very distinct. I remember walking out of the bathroom, leaning over the top of the stairwell, and shouting down for him to shut up. He kept going, so I shouted louder.
But then I remembered my brother wasn't home that day. He'd left earlier that morning with my parents. The singing stopped. I went downstairs to find the basement dark. I was alone in the house.
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31. 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. The more she talked, the more terrified I got.
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 the second 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. After my mom told me what happened, the rest of the horror story came flooding 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 authorities. By the time the officers 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 officers 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 officers 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.
They 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 like crazy, 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.
32. Monsters Under the Bed
My old house was definitely haunted. My normally quiet dog would growl in empty dark rooms, and I'd see shadows quickly move across the hallway. The worst moment, though, was when I was about 9. I couldn’t fall asleep. I was randomly looking around my room when I saw some sort of creature crouched in the corner, with a dark body but a bright red face.
Now, being a wimpy little kid, I immediately wrapped myself up in my bed covers and forced myself to sleep. I never saw the thing again, but it still creeps me out to this day.
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33. No Laughing Matter
My dad bought this old run-down house as a fixer-upper. I was about 8 or 9 at the time, so I couldn’t do too much to help him, but I remember helping him clean out the attic. It was full of tons of old newspapers and toys; the people must have been hoarders. Just tons of toy dolls and cars and all that. That creeped me out on its own, but I only found out the real story much later.
This is the really scary part, the part my dad waited until we were grown up to tell us. One person came by to look at the house when it was near finished and for sale. She said she really wanted it because it was full of spirits. My dad thought she was wacky but whatever, if that's what she liked, good for her I guess.
Some time later, my dad and mom are laying in bed at the house when they hear a woman laughing somewhere in the corridors. They both rolled over and just looked into each other’s eyes as they listened. They stayed that way until it stopped, then never talked about it for a long time. They both get chills when they tell that story now.
34. The Midnight Visitor
This happened about two months ago. I was alone in the house, as my parents were away working for the weekend. They were due back that evening, but then my mom texted me to say that they'd broken down and were waiting for a tow truck to pick them up. I asked them if there was anything I could do, but they told me to go to sleep as they'd probably be back late.
Fast forward to 3 am, I woke up to use the toilet. When I left the bathroom, I glanced over to my parents' bedroom. The door was shut and I could see a light on inside. It had been open and dark when I went to bed, so I thought "Oh, they must be home." I stumbled toward the door and remember stopping myself, thinking "No, I won't go in, I'll just speak to them in the morning."
So I turn back toward my room and go back to sleep. I awoke to terror. The sound of the front door opening downstairs. I glanced at the clock. It was 45 minutes after I'd last woken up. I thought it was a bit strange, and got a tense feeling in my stomach. I walked out of my bedroom and glanced over to my parents’ room, only to see the door open and the light off.
The bed was also made, so no one had been in it. I felt sick. I went downstairs and nervously asked my mom "Have you just got home?" She was like "Yeah, why?" I just sat staring into space wondering what the heck happened. I'm still wondering now.
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35. Team Reassemble
I was calibrating medical x-ray equipment in an emergency room of a level 1 trauma center. I heard the usual sounds—voices, doors opening, chairs shuffling—but then I heard this kid crying. He was actually screaming with what sounded like a very powerful set of lungs. I guessed he could’ve been around high school age.
Everyone was moving quickly as they normally did, but their faces showed grave concern. When one of the techs had a moment, I took the chance to ask if it was a kid who fell from his treehouse. He shook his head then said it was a full-grown man who came in, “some assembly required.” I could not resist and took a peek. Big mistake.
A man of over 6’ and 200lbs wearing a leather jacket lost his arm just above his elbow, and one of his legs was twisted in the opposite direction it was supposed to be in. It was a visual that I will never get out of my head. With that much blood, I can still smell the iron permeating the air. But that’s what I get for looking.
36. Pest Control
I was on a trail backpacking and stayed at a multi-story shelter, which was like a barn. These shelters were notoriously overrun by rodents, so things have to be stored in trees. Most times, it’s a group of strangers sharing the barn, which made it a great way to make new friends. One morning, I woke up to a huge thud.
I thought it was my imagination but kept hearing it. I peeked my head down the ladder and saw a guy sitting really still with a headlamp pointed at some peanut butter crackers. What I saw next was absolutely gruesome: A rat approached the crackers, and he slammed a knife into it. Then he took it and piled it onto a stack of other rats who’d met the same fate.
It creeped me out a lot, but the guy was rather chill for what he did and made everyone coffee the next morning. He had totaled over a dozen rats, and then we had a funeral pyre for them.
37. Street Smarts
One day, I was coming home from my school, and there, in between two buildings, were three big guys beating up another guy. The guy was on the ground and had blood all around his head. One of them noticed me and walked over. He was wearing an orange ski mask and pulled it off. He got on one knee, so he was on my level.
This massive guy stared me straight in the eyes and said, “this is a bad guy. We’re teaching him a lesson, ok?” I nodded very fast; I was so scared. He smiled at me then said to keep it a secret and not to tell anyone what I saw. I nodded again, and he told me to go home. I obeyed and took off running all the way home.
When I got there, I just sat on my porch shaking. I realize now that the fact he took off his mask was to make me feel less scared. But if he was a different person, he could have taken off his mask because he didn’t care if I saw his face. He would have made sure I didn’t live to remember.
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38. Behind Closed Doors
My uncle was babysitting me when I was a kid and brought me to work with him for the day. He was a landlord for some buildings in a city at the time and had received complaints from the neighbors that an elderly woman had not been seen for a while. She lived on the ground floor, and her door was locked from the inside.
So, he had me climb in through the window to open the door. I crawled through the window, and, being naturally curious, followed the awful smell instead of going straight to the front door. In the bedroom, I found this lady’s body face up on the ground. The place was a mess, so I’d assumed the smell was something else.
I bolted to the front door and watched them take her away in the ambulance. I don’t know anything else, and I never really talked about it. It was a weird day.
39. Sounding Off
In the middle of the summer two years ago, I was sleeping in my bed peacefully when I heard the loudest thunder I've ever heard in my life. Normally, I am not afraid of thunder. But this time my entire house shook as if it was a huge earthquake. I shake it off and go back to sleep. No big deal. The next thing I knew, I was jolted awake by a flash of bright purple lightning and the loudest thunder that Zeus could possibly create.
Then I started to hear the screams. It seemed as if outside my window was a choir of demented Satan-spawned creatures screeching in cries of agony. As I laid in bed terrified, I thought to myself "This is actually happening. I can hear them. This is how it ends." Later, I found out that the screams were just a pack of foxes that were scared by the intense lightning, but still. That was some scary stuff right there.
40. Window Shopping
I was about 15 minutes from finishing the night shift at work when there was a massive crash on one of the windows in the office. So I get up and go to check it out. Someone has thrown quite a sizable rock through one of the windows on the front of the building. This is made especially weird because I'm working in the industrial district at 11:30 at night, with none of the other businesses in the area open.
I go back to my desk, put a quick call through to security to let them know, and decide to head home. As I'm leaving the building, I'm freaking myself out about it more and more. I end up running to my car, getting in, and taking off. I'm almost home and I've started to calm down a bit when I make a disturbing realization. I hadn't unlocked my car when I got in back at work.
It had been unlocked the whole time. I do a quick check with my hand in the backseat for any possible creeps that might be hanging around there, but there's nothing there. Fast forward 30 minutes. I've called a friend of mine who says he is out drinking. So I decide I'm going to join him. I jump on my bicycle and start riding over.
I'm doodling along the road on my bike. It's a nice night and I'm in no big rush. I’m just enjoying the moonlight when I hear someone riding behind me. I straighten up and stick to one side of the road. He passes me really slowly and, when he is right beside me, he shoots me a smile I can only describe as purely insane. I kind of flinch and am taken aback as he rides on.
All of a sudden, sheer terror washes over my body. I realize he is riding my mom's bike. Needless to say, I sprinted the heck home. When I got there, sure enough, her bike was missing and one of my car's doors was open. The back left one. I was driving, and had no need to open that door.
41. Climb Every Mountain
About a year ago, I was climbing a tree in my front yard at around 4:30 in the morning. I had walked a lady friend to her car and was chilling until I got the "I'm home" text. The weather was nice for tree climbing, so I just did it. This particular night, my neighbors didn't lock their gate like they normally do, leaving easy access to their tool shed, lawnmower, etc.
I guess the guy forgot. It happens, but it was definitely noticeable. It was a large gate, right next to the road, with a bunch of expensive old man tools right behind it. So, as I observed the gate from my lofty perch and considered all of the reasons it might be open, I noticed a car coming down my street very slowly, eventually coming to a halt right in front of my neighbor's driveway.
I looked into the car and saw two young men pointing and looking intently around his yard. Sketchy stuff during daylight, but much more so at night. After a minute or so of being too nervous to do anything at all, I realized I was leaning pretty heavily on some branches, exposing myself more than when these two had just driven up. That was when it happened.
The guy in the passenger seat noticed me first. He did a panicky sort of double-take when he first saw me, followed by what I generally assume to be the words "OH NO!", and rapidly punching the driver in the arm. Attempting to look menacing, I did the only thing I could think of which was to hold my arms up in a claw-like pose, like an angry tree-rex.
When the driver saw me, he did the same panicky double-take before slamming the gas and hauling outta there as fast as he could. I like to think I was the creepiest thing those two ever saw.
42. Tuning In
As a kid, I was playing around with a radio once, just slowly spanning through the static trying to find a station. I had found an old television antenna, attached it to the side of our house, and ran a wire out my window to it with an alligator clip attached to the radio antenna, allowing me to get a way broader range of signals.
So I'm sitting there, middle of the night, slowly sweeping frequencies, and suddenly I get to this station that's playing this very weird crackling sound. It sounded sort of like cracking knuckles, or maybe Rice Krispies cereal, but with a fixed, rhythmic pattern instead of being random. I sat there listening to it for a second. Then it suddenly stopped and I heard something bone-chilling. This faint voice said: "It doesn't work. We're already gone. We're already gone."
It took a second for the weight of the words to hit me, but when they did I freaked the heck out and almost threw the radio across the room. I'm pretty sure it was just someone messing around with a radio transmitter, but it sure scared the heck out of me at the time.
43. Standing Ovation
When I was around 20, we had this weird neighbor that we didn't think about too much. One night, I was awake at 2:00 AM and noticed out my window that I could see the reflection of a fire. So I went into the completely dark living room and peeked through the window to make sure it wasn't someone's house. It was the neighbor, with a bonfire in his driveway.
He was just standing with his back to the fire, staring directly at me. Now, I hadn't made a sound or anything. There is no way he heard or saw me coming. He was just staring directly at me. So being completely freaked out, I went to bed and couldn't fall asleep because I was convinced he was going to murder me. About half an hour later, I hear crunching, and I'm like, "It’s probably just a raccoon in the driveway."
Then I hear the clapping. I look out from my window to the driveway, and there he is standing in my gravel driveway, clapping, and staring directly into my bedroom window.
44. Late Night Snack
My parents were out one night, and my brother and I were home alone. We were probably 12 and 10 at the time, respectively. Anyway, there's a knock at the door and I hear a voice say "Pizza." Initially thinking it was my father playing a joke, I instinctively went to open the door. That’s when I made a disturbing realization. It wasn't my dad's voice.
"We didn't order any pizza," I said. There was no reply and no audible movement. I went to my bathroom window, which allows some vision of the footpath leading from the front of our property to the front door, but you can't see the door itself from there. So we waited for about 15 minutes, clutching a cricket bat and some ornamental fireplace poker until finally the dude moves away from the door and walks away.
Just some guy with dark hair in a long ponytail, a long dark coat…and no pizza.
45. I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This
When I was seven or eight, I used to spend Friday nights at my grandma’s house. She spoiled the heck out of me, so I loved it. One night, though, I suddenly had a strange urge to call my mom. I dialed my phone number—I mean, I knew my own number, right? A woman answered, and I suddenly blurted out, “Mom come and get me.”
I have no idea why, to this day, that came out of my mouth. Like I said, I loved it there, and up until that moment had no thoughts of being picked up. Anyways, the person on the other end starts to sound panicky and says, “Where are you??!” Then it hits me that this isn’t my mom, so I just hang up and go back to watching television.
So weird, and while it seems so minor, it’s stuck with me for 30 years.
46. Sound And Colour
This happened at my grandma's house. I was lying awake on the couch in the middle of the night when this kaleidoscope of colors and lights appeared on the ceiling and began moving around the walls. I silently watched it until it disappeared, and then I went to sleep. I shared the living room with my sister, and my grandma slept in a chair to keep us company.
Since it was dark and I hadn't heard anything, I assumed I was the only one still awake to see it. The next morning, I found out the chilling truth. At the breakfast table, my grandma brought up the "light show" she had seen the night before, and she didn't seem to know what it was. She described what I'd seen perfectly.
After she left the table, my dad and aunt both seemed very concerned that she might be losing her mind. In my little kid brain, I thought if I told them I'd seen it too, they might think the same about me, so I kept quiet about it. If it hadn't been for the fact she'd seen it too, I would've chalked it up to a number of things. But I honestly don't know what to make of it.
47. An Unseen Presence
This is going sound absolutely crazy and I've literally only told my sister, parents, and close friends about this. Just recently, I've considered writing this all down, as my wife feels it’s interesting. Back in 2000, my girlfriend and I were both 21 and our daughter was two months old. We moved into a council house in Essex, UK.
One night we were both asleep in bed, both of us unclothed as it was during a particularly hot summer. My girlfriend woke me up with a slap and said, "You're funny." I turned over because I was angry she'd woken me up and asked her what was going on. I took one look at her and felt faint. In her hand, she had a large adjustable wrench.
She went on to explain how the coldness of the wrench woke her up the instant it was placed on her bare chest. She thought it was me playing a prank and wouldn't believe me when I said it wasn't. I was so scared that someone else had broken into our house and put it there that I got up and checked all the windows and doors. I then didn't sleep for three nights straight.
The wrench was mine; it was kept in a toolbox in a walk-in cupboard downstairs. At the time, though, there was no access to the cupboard, as we were having a new kitchen fitted and it was blocked. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare. After that, there were many strange, creepy things that happened in that house.
I remember the bath filling up with water overnight to the point where the second I put the tip of my fingers in the water, the water poured over the edge. Also bangs, footsteps upstairs, etc. Still, the wrench was the one thing I struggled to explain. Nobody ever liked to stay at our house, but we only found this out after we moved.
Family and friends would say they never liked it there and would avoid spending too long at the house. Roll on to 2006, I'm no longer with my daughter’s mom and I'm out with work friends for a drink. The girl behind the bar is giving me glances every now and then and I'm feeling good as I think I may have a chance with her. It got so weird, so quickly.
She asks me what school I went to and where I work, as she recognizes me from somewhere. I tell her and she says you must just have a recognizable face as I've seen you before somewhere. I tell her where I was from before my split from my ex and moved to another area, and she says she lives there now. So we both agree it’s very possible that we've crossed paths before.
She tells me the road she lives on. So I say "Oh well, that explains it. I lived on the same road." She then tells me the house number, "302"...the very same house I lived at. What she said next will stay with me forever. "I've been living there five months and I hate it, me and my boyfriend think it's haunted. I've even woken up during the night with an empty pint glass on my chest."
I told her about the wrench and she burst out crying. We exchanged numbers so we could chat at a later date. A week later, I spoke to her and her boyfriend and they said they had moved back to his parents’ house. I never heard from them again. I'm 100% a skeptic and don't believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but this has really tested my limits.
Even to this day, my ex thinks it was me who put the wrench there. It wasn’t.
48. Don’t Be A Stranger
My friends and I used to hang out at this coffee shop almost every single night for years. There were six of us. One summer, this guy "Isaac" started showing up every night. He was around our age and was from out of state, staying with his grandparents for the summer. He became part of our group, playing board games with us and talking until like 2 am.
He would walk to the coffee shop and I'd give him a ride back to his grandparents' house at the end of the night. At the end of the summer, he went back home and we never heard from him again, as this was pre-social media. Maybe about five years later, after our group had mostly grown apart and we were reuniting while everyone was in town for a holiday, we were sitting at our coffee shop reminiscing.
I brought up Isaac, saying, "I wonder what happened to him." Their responses made my blood run cold. Nobody knew who I was talking about. I even have a photo of him, which I eventually found and emailed everyone, but nobody recognized him. Not a single person. It's now been over a decade, and still, nobody remembers Isaac but me.
Unsplash
49. 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 weapons 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 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 officers 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 behind bars. I still remember the incident pretty clearly.
50. 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 Colt 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 9-1-1. Later found out the guy had shot himself (bullet to the roof of the mouth) but he slightly misfired and probably lived for around 30 seconds after the shot. The authorities were very surprised we didn't hear a shot 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.
51. 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.
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. 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 piece 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 heater 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.
55. 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 problem 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.
56. 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 loaded. 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 9-1-1 in the city where the hotel was located to get some officers 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.
57. 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.
58. 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 heck 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 authorities and some soldiers that were on exercise or something. Turns out there was a suspected 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 authorities 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.
59. 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.
60. 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 past the car, the engine revs up and those two dudes tear out of there like the devil'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.
61. 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 9-1-1?" 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 authorities 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 officers. The rest of the story is pretty boring. He stole my neighbor's bike, and the authorities 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.
62. 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.
63. Ignorance Is Bliss
When I was about 17 or 18 years old, my friend Wendy and I worked at the Elks bingo hall every Thursday night. As my grandma lived close to the hall and to our high school, we would spend every Thursday night at my grandma's house after work. We would be at the Elks pretty late, not getting back to my grandma's until around 10-11pm. So, one Thursday night, Wendy and I were chilling. I opened the fridge in the kitchen to see what's good, with Wendy standing directly behind me.
As I opened the fridge, I heard a very stern female voice coming from the living room say, "Can I ask you a question?" Wendy and I went about getting our snacks without mentioning it. We sat down at the kitchen table, and Wendy said: "So, when you opened the fridge a minute ago, did you hear a voice coming from the living room?"
The TV was not on, nor was the radio or anything else. Wendy said that she had heard an older female voice, but she could not make out what it had said. I said what I thought I heard, and we agreed that it was too scary to think about. We just agreed that it happened, and then pretended it didn't. We had to spend the night in the house, after all.
64. Night Of The Doppelganger
I had just graduated from university, and a friend and I took an all-inclusive trip to Cuba. We shared a room, and had beds that were spaced about two feet apart. We'll call my friend “Anna.” On the first night, around 1 AM, she woke me up by saying, "What are you doing?" I sat up and looked over at her. She was sitting up and staring at the foot of her bed, looking stunned.
She looked over at me, and then back at the foot of her bed. She paused and said "I... thought I saw you at the foot of my bed." I convinced her she had been dreaming, and eventually we fell back asleep. The next day was normal. The following night was not. I woke up in the middle of the night, and I knew something was wrong right away.
It wasn't fear, just...something was wrong, different. I looked up and Anna was standing at the foot of my bed. She was in her pjs, and her hair was down, just like she had been when we tucked in. When I looked at Anna's bed, she was there, fast asleep. I sat up and stared at the “Anna” at the foot of my bed, then quickly glanced over to the “Anna” asleep in her bed. I did this several times, to confirm I was really awake. "Anna?" I whispered.
The version of her in her bed stirred and groggily said, "What?" "Are you in bed right now?" I asked. At this point, the Anna that was at the foot of my bed turned around and started walking across the room away from me. "Yeah," the version of Anna in her bed said. "I see you at the foot of my bed," I said. There was a silence from the “Anna” in her bed.
The other Anna continued walking away. "I'm going to turn on the lights," I said. I reached out for the switch beside my bed. At that moment, the Anna walking away turned back and looked at me. She faded away about two seconds before I turned on the lights. For the rest of our trip we slept with the lights on.
65. They Watch You Sleep
One night, while me and my partner were spending some time at his parent’s home, I was trying to sleep and couldn't get comfy. I woke up at one point feeling like something was standing by the door and walking across the room towards the bed. I turned my phone light on and shone it around the room, but nobody was there.
I rolled over quickly and cuddled up to my partner. I hid almost under the covers. After what felt like an eternity, I felt like I was overreacting, so I pulled the covers lower and stopped holding my partner as tight. Suddenly, a chill hit me. It was this wave of unease and terror. I felt a pressure on the bed, as if somebody was sitting on the edge of the bed.
The covers began reacting like they were being sat on and pulled. I felt the bed move, and my body tip like it would when somebody sits next to you on the bed. It was like whatever it was had sat close to my lower back, and was facing the wall away from us. I was about to freak out when I felt the pressure on the bed go and the presence leave the room.
The next morning, I told my partner and we joked a bit about it being one of the relatives from the two urns downstairs. We went down for some breakfast, and my partner told his mom how I got a bit of fright last night. After hearing about what happened, she actually went pale. My partner, who was expecting her to joke about it, asked what was up.
She said she was feeling uneasy because the same thing happened to her last night. She said she had woken up and felt like someone was by the door. She had tried to forget it by putting it down to a trick of the mind, but then felt somebody standing over her. She turned the light on by her bedside, and nothing was there.
She turned the light off, but then felt something sit next to her, the same way as I had felt. She said it sat facing away, and then got up a few minutes later before leaving the room. My partner's mom might joke about stuff, but she wasn't joking that day. She’s not the type to make jokes at your expense or to further freak you out.
66. A Visitor In The Dark
I live with my parents, and my room is on the other side of the house. One night, around 3 AM, I randomly woke up. Then, I heard somebody knock on my door. I thought it was my parents, so I just said, "Come in," loudly. Nobody came in. I assumed they felt bad because they woke me. Then, I heard another door open and assumed it was just my dad.
About 15 or 20 minutes later, both my parents came down the hall talking, opened my door, and asked me what was wrong. I said, "Nothing. What are you talking about?" They then told me, "We just saw you in the hallway. We called out, but you turned and walked away." Creeped out, I said, "I've been in bed this whole time. Is this why you knocked on my door 20 minutes ago?"
Then they told me, "We didn't knock on your door." We combed the house, thinking we had a burglar or something, but there was no one. Also, we have an alarm and it was still armed, so it seemed unlikely that somebody broke in. My dad stayed up for an hour or two and went back to bed. The dogs started barking at something around 6 AM, but again, there was nothing.
Dogs barking at nothing is not usual, but it was spooky considering what just happened. We had lived in the house over 15 years without any weird happenings or ghost stories. My mom, after the fact, decided it was her brother Chuck, who passed a few years back. I look a bit like him apparently, so she thinks his ghost pranked us or something.
67. A Night Of Terror
One night, about a year or two ago, I was in my room, trying to sleep. It was around midnight, and I was on the edge of falling asleep. My parents were down the hall, watching TV. Suddenly, there were two loud bangs on my door. I got up and opened it. Nobody was there. I asked my parents if they had knocked on my door, or if our dog was banging her head on the door.
They said that neither of them had gotten up, and our dog was completely asleep on her bed. I shrugged it off and went back to my room. I figured maybe the house was settling, or something like that. I laid back down on my bed for a few minutes. I was laying completely still when my coat, which had been laying in the middle of my bed, was PULLED down the bed.
I wasn't moving. It didn't slide because of gravity. It looked like it had been PULLED. I don't live on a hill. It wasn't possible for it to have moved on its own. When I finally fell asleep, I had a weird dream. I was being chased down a never-ending hall by a black shadow figure that was wearing the coat that had moved on its own.
I still have no idea what happened that night. Other weird things have happened to me before. I would hear things like what sounded like footsteps in my room one time when I was home alone. I swear I could hear unexplained breathing in the house as well. But none of those events were like this one. And nothing like this has happened since.
Pexels
68. Not Quite Done Living Yet
I work for a funeral company. One afternoon, I did a viewing for a man who was having his funeral the next day. Usually, we put the bodies back in the fridge, but we’d been really busy, and we only had a very small fridge that was already full. On occasions like this, if they’ve been embalmed, we’d leave them in the chapel with the air conditioner cranked up.
So the next morning, I was the first one in, and I walked into the chapel, only to be greeted by a horrifying sight. The man who was embalmed was somehow out of his coffin, laying face down on the floor. Not sprawled, but perfectly neat, like he’d floated up out of his coffin, turned face down, and floated down to the ground. Obviously, I nearly had a heart attack.
My first thought was that someone had broken in and had done this. Maybe staff members were playing a prank? It was a very sackable prank, and I couldn’t imagine any of our staff doing that for any reason. And what’s more was that we had security cameras and motion detectors and swipe cards so you can see who had come and gone, but there was NOTHING!
Unsplash
69. The Ballroom Of Horror
I used to work in hotels. This one particular hotel was well known in the area for its paranormal events, but once you'd been there a while you'd get used to it. The events were rarely frightening. When I was hired, another employee had told me that our large ballroom was haunted, but I was just like, "Yeah, whatever."
So we’d had a week of wedding receptions. The ballroom in this hotel was large enough that it could hold two or three smaller parties at a time. Every night for that week, we'd had at least one party going in the evenings. On Saturday night, this one reception was plagued by issues. Lightbulbs were blowing out, breakers were tripping, equipment was malfunctioning.
I felt bad for the bride and groom because of all the issues. Soon, Sunday rolled around. The hotel was quiet, and there were no events scheduled. I headed over to lock up the ballroom, and that included making sure all the lights were turned off. To get to some of the switches, I would have to cross the room to the opposite side.
I walked in the door and just stopped. It sounds like a cliche, but all the hairs on my arms and neck stood up. The atmosphere in there just felt really, really tense. I felt like I was intruding, and I just hastily backed out and closed the door. The two guys who set up audio and visual gear then showed up to set up part of the ballroom for a meeting the following day.
They went into the ballroom. Just as quickly, they promptly come right back out. One of them said it felt like something was physically stopping them from going any further. The other said he heard something or someone growl something, but couldn't make out any words. I believed the stories about the ballroom after that.
70. Listen To Your Kids…
When I was a toddler, probably about three, my mom, siblings, and I had just gotten home from a trip to the store. She was busy with my younger brother, so she didn’t notice when I waddled upstairs to my room. A few minutes passed, and I came downstairs and stood in the kitchen doorway with a “weird expression” on my face.
She asked me what was up, and I said, “The man upstairs told me to come back down.” My dad was at work, and there was no one else staying with us. My mom was freaked out and we immediately left to stay at a family friend’s house until my dad could come home to scope out the house. Nothing was missing, no signs of entry, nothing. We still don’t know what I saw.
71. A Guardian Angel
I grew up in a very old family home way out in the country. I was quite a responsible child and my parents would allow me to stay home from a very young age. They always figured I was safe enough with our big dogs, and we were off the main road and behind a gate. One Saturday afternoon, when I was about 9, they ran into town to do some errands and left me alone.
I remember it was summer, so I was out in the yard reading a book with my dogs, Roscoe and Lady Sara, on the lawn next to me. All of a sudden, the dogs both quietly stood up and moved in front of me with their hackles up. The two of them were very protective and would never allow someone they didn't know to come close to me.
A minute later, a man came walking up our driveway. He was quite polite and doffed his hat and asked if the lady of the house was home. I explained that they had run into town but would be home soon. He was dressed in clean, but dated clothing, and he had a sharp beard and a small gold pocket watch that he fiddled with as he talked.
He was polite and well-spoken, and never once did I feel frightened. That was a tad strange because I was a shy, untrusting child who didn't cotton to strangers. All this time, my dogs had been standing in front of me but not growling. They were just watchful. He looked down at them and said their names, except he called our girl “Sara.”
Now, this was where it started getting really weird. We only ever called her by her first name, “Lady.” As soon as he said their names, they cocked their heads, sniffed him over, then whined and wagged their tails before lying back down. I figured he was friends with my folks and didn't think much of it. My mother had raised me to be very polite so I asked him if I could offer any refreshments.
He said he'd be glad of some water and he would bide out on the porch for a bit. So I bustled into the house and made up lemonade and put some lace cookies on one of mom's pretty rose plates with a cloth napkin. He didn't talk much, but just sat back, rocked for a bit, smoked a pipe, then thanked me for the refreshments and said he must be on his way.
He started across the yard, and my dogs walked on either side of him to the driveway as calm as you please. He knelt down and gave each one a pat and lifted a hand in farewell, and faded into the dusk. I went in and laid down for a bit and when next I woke up my folks were home. I forgot to mention any of this to my mom until we were headed to church the next day. She didn’t think much of it.
Now, every Sunday, the dogs would ride with us to the church and wait in the back of the truck. Afterward we would all go down and have a picnic at the lake while my dad did a little fishing, and my mom read in the shade. The dogs and I would wade in the shallows and hunt for lizards. This time Roscoe wouldn't come when we called. He just sat on the porch and whined.
When we got home that afternoon, the sheriff was waiting there, and he had a big man in cuffs. The man had several deep bites on his hand and leg. Roscoe was shut up in the garage and angry, with a pretty deep gash on his side, some broken teeth, and a knot on his head. The sheriff told us someone had happened to see this man turn into our drive and called it in.
It turned out that this man had been robbing rural houses in the area. He was caught with pillowcases full of my mom's silver. When the sheriff questioned him, the man said he had snuck up the drive to the treeline the evening before, but had seen a man sitting on the porch, so he left and came back when he saw us leave for church.
Dad questioned the neighbors about who had called it in, and also who had stopped over, but no one ever admitted to either the call or the visit. My parents chalked it all up as a very lucky coincidence, and we went on with our lives, but with better locks on the doors and instructions to me to be more wary of strangers.
Some years later, we were at an elderly relative’s home for a visit. She and my mom were flipping through an old photo album and reminiscing about the family, when I looked over and very excitedly told my mother that the man in the photo was the same man who visited back when we were robbed. My mom went white as a sheet.
She explained that it couldn't possibly have been the same man, because that was her great uncle Hap, and he had passed when she was nine years old. That picture was the last picture taken of him. In the picture, you could see our family home, with two dogs laying on the porch. On the back of the picture, in faded pencil were the words, “Hap and Essie with Roscoe and Sara at grandma’s.”
72. A Real-Life Horror Movie
I was driving in rural areas in New England. It was late, and there was fog. It was extremely dense fog, and I was driving on back roads. Suddenly, things started going wrong. First, my headlight just up and went out. Next, the car started making noises, and the check engine light came on. So, I pulled over, with nothing much around except fields and fog and dark.
I looked at the engine and did what I could, but the car now wouldn't start. My cell phone had no service as well. It was like one big cliché, but I was not stupid enough to go wandering the roads right now. So I reclined my seat and decided to take a nap for a couple hours until the sun came up. When I woke up, the sun was coming up.
Slowly, the fog was going away...and I was on the main street of a tiny town, parked in front of a motel. There were houses everywhere. I was sure I was just off the woods. There was a service station 50 yards up the road. I walked up to it and talked to the guy there. He walked over to look at the car, asked me to try to start it...and it did. And...BOTH headlights were working. I drove on, but never got the name of the little village, and I couldn't find it on a map. I always felt like I was in this big setup for a horror movie that just didn't pan out.
73. You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger
I was hiking through the remnants of a remote, long-abandoned town and the surrounding area. To get to as far into the woods as I was, you had to cross fallen trees over a creek three times. I had just crossed the third "bridge" and was about five miles in and something blue caught my eye just ahead of me. What I saw made me stop in my tracks.
There was a man, in his sixties at least, wearing blue satin pajamas and sitting in a tree. The closer I got to him, the louder he laughed. It wasn't a maniacal laugh, but it set off all the alarms in my head nevertheless. He also wasn't wearing any shoes, yet he looked well-groomed and cleaned. I gave him a friendly nod as I passed, and he just kept laughing. Then it stopped.
I turned and he was gone. There was no branch cracking, plants rustling, nothing...He was just gone. Still rubs me the wrong way. The area I was in was a pretty rough hike, very secluded. Not very many people venture as deep as I was that day. No idea what was going on there, and honestly I’m not sure I ever want to find out.
74. The Thing That Walked Through Walls
My mom has the best paranormal ghost experience that I've heard recounted to me, and it’s impossible for me to find a believable rational explanation for it. She's Kate. It happened when she was on holiday with her parents. They were on their way to Devon from Suffolk, and this journey took a long time and required an overnight stop.
She was around 14 years old at the time, very precocious and wilful, but enjoying the prospect of a small holiday with her mom and dad. They arrive at a hotel for the overnight stop, and Kate goes to relax for a bit in the TV alcove they have upstairs while her parents go for a drink at the bar. Happily watching TV, she's surprised to see a man poking his head into the alcove.
The only way she can describe how he looks is "he had very old skin." Despite being startled, she apologizes and offers the use of the TV to the man, who just stares back at her blankly, and then leaves just as suddenly as he arrived. Kate is a little freaked out by this, and upon reuniting with her parents before getting to their rooms for the night, she remembers telling them about the man, hoping she hadn't upset anyone.
She expected an "Oh, that's probably the man in room three...." but instead they seemed confused and "perturbed" to use Kate's words. Kate has a room to herself, so she says goodnight to her parents and goes to bed. Once in bed, Kate starts to read her book, fully enveloped in the story. Then the strangest thing happens.
I'm going to use the words she used when she first told me this story; "I felt a man walk through the wall behind me to my left. I was so scared that I immediately hid under my bed covers and shut my eyes as hard as I could and wished for him to go away. I felt him slowly walk down the left side of my bed, around the end of the bed, and he continued in that direction until he went through the wall facing the right side of my bed."
When she couldn't "feel" him any more, she came out from under the covers, and decided that she must be going crazy, letting her imagination get away from her. To this day, she is a very pragmatic, skeptical person, so she thought it was in her head and that was the end of it. Fast forward to 10-14 years later, and she's having dinner with her parents.
This isn't a regular occurrence as she's moved to London, where she would meet my dad and later have me, but her parents still live in Suffolk. They are talking about weird experiences they've had or their friends have had, and my mom remembers this experience, leading with, "I got myself all worked up in that hotel we stayed at thinking someone walked through the wall..."
Once her mom hears this, however, she goes white and has a very serious look on her face. She explains that she had exactly the same experience. Upon discussing the night further, they work out the wall the "thing" walked through from my mom’s room was the wall straight into her parent's room. Absolutely bone-chilling.
75. We Are Not Alone
I used to work at a place that had to be manned 24 hours a day. I handled sensitive documents and files, and if somebody needed this information in the middle of the night, I would have to fetch it for them or confirm that I had it. So security is really tight. I’m talking bars on windows, and multiple locked doors to get to where I am.
They would give me work to do during the night, but they underestimated how quickly I could get it done. So like most nights, this one, I finished my work in like 30 to 45 minutes and pulled out my phone and played games. No one else was in the building with me. It was getting to be the last third of my shift when all of a sudden I hear a door close.
I look to the security camera and see someone walking down the hall toward my room. At first I thought it was just somebody who came in ridiculously early, so I turned around and waited for them to come in. But nobody came in. Now the hairs start rising on the back of my neck. I decide I’ve got to do something about this or I’ll go crazy.
This isn't a really big building, so I figure I'll find the guy wherever he is and start checking offices and storage rooms. I come up empty handed, but I do see that a fire door had shut. I go to try and rewind the camera, but the digital recording is password protected and I don't know the password. The whole thing freaked me out.
I mean, the way the person was walking down the hallway, like a determined walk right to where I was. So, I sit with my spine tingling for the last couple hours of my shift and finally people start coming in. My replacement shows up and I tell her what I saw. At this point, I figured I must have imagined the whole thing. I'm told to go home and the manager and girl who replaced me would look over the camera.
After getting home, I call my manager and ask what was on the camera. They said that the video showed the fire door closing…but then the video froze for about an hour, and the next thing it records is me reopening the door.
76. The Tell-Tale Foot
My parents’ house was brand new in a really nice subdivision, and I was five when we moved. I wasn't ever an anxious kid or anything, but I was TERRIFIED of the house. I refused to be upstairs alone, and I had really frequent panic attacks. We lived there for 15 years before I moved out, and I was never comfortable. I live in a 75-year old farmhouse now, and I don't get uncomfortable the way I did in that house.
Only one creepy thing actually ever happened to me there, though, and this is it. Last year, 32-week-pregnant me went back up to see my grandmother before I had this baby, and I was staying with my parents. My dad was traveling for work, so it was just my mom, my sister, and me. My mom had gone to the grocery store, and I was lying on the sofa.
The way the living room is set up, you can see the reflection of the bottom two feet of the foyer and staircase in the TV, and also the kitchen on the other side of the living room. So I'm lying there messing around with my phone, and I hear the stairs creaking. I look up at the reflection in the TV and I see a pair of bare feet standing in the foyer.
I think it's my sister, so I tell her to come and sit with me and feel the baby kicking. There's no reply, and the feet turn and walk toward the kitchen. So I sit up to say hey…and there's no one there. At all. My sister wasn't even home—she'd gone to work. My parents have moved closer now and they're closing the sale of that house at the end of this month. They're a little sad, but honestly I'm incredibly relieved.
77. A Bridge to Another World
I was driving home late one night, somewhere between 1 and 3 am. The stretch of road I was driving goes through the back end of a couple of counties in the Deep South. Nothing around but forests, fields, and the occasional group of shacks huddling under a light that only barely keeps away the night. I'd driven this stretch of road many times before, even at this time of night, so it wasn't really a big deal. Just a long trip.
Since there was rarely any traffic that time of night, I was able to turn the stereo up and push the pedal down. And then I came to this bridge. Nothing really noteworthy about it—it's not ancient or a covered bridge or all that spooky. Just a concrete span over swampland, trees growing right up near the edge and turning the road into a dim trail at the bottom of a dark canyon.
I didn't think anything of it. Until that night. It was humid out, and as the temperature dropped there was a little bit of fog. Not enough to really slow me down, but I had to turn off the high-beams. So I'm shooting across the bridge and it hits me that it seems to be taking longer than normal to get across it. Maybe I was just tired? Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me?
And when I thought I was finally getting to the end of it, I saw a figure walking on the opposite side of the road. At first, no big deal, right? Guy walking in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Probably lives nearby, probably not sober. Watch them to make sure they don't fall in front of the car. But my mind is already racing.
I mean, this is the middle of nowhere. There are no houses around. There are no lights but the stars and my headlights stabbing out at the darkness. And as I whiz by going way too fast for my own good, I notice two terrifying things: First, the figure is wearing what appears to be a straight jacket, the sleeves undone, and the straps trailing to the ground. Second. It has no face. Not like, there's no head there. There's a head shape. And the place where a face should be, but no face. Just an expanse of darkness that I took to be his skin.
I chalked it up to going really fast, contrast between white jacket and dark skin at night, and thinking creepy thoughts. I mean, surely I couldn't have just seen that. I tried to spot him in my rear view mirror, but it was so dark there was nothing to be seen. I slowed down a little, and was suddenly off the end of the bridge and on normal two-lane blacktop again.
I briefly considered turning around and seeing what it was. Surely it was just a trick of the light or my mind playing tricks on me. Right?
78. Monsters Are Real
Once upon a time, I lived with a couple and their child. They asked me to babysit so they could have an evening together. I agreed. Fast forward to bed time: The child doesn't want to go to sleep because of the "monsters." The child is adamantly sincere, which creeps me out a bit. But I play it cool. I look around the room, pretending to scare them away.
This does the trick and the child falls asleep. Later, I'm sitting in the living room, which is oriented so the couch faces away from the main entry. I'm watching TV, expecting the couple back at any minute. That's when I hear the entry door open and close, just like I've heard it many times before. With a smile on my face, based on my success with the child and the knowledge of my good deed, I stand and turn towards the door.
There is no one there. I'm skeptical of the paranormal, but this unnerved me. Once the couple actually returns, I tell one of them about it. He says, "Oh, yeah, we were going to tell you that stuff happens here all the time, particularly in the child's room, but we didn't want to scare you." Needless to say, I slept poorly in my basement bedroom for several days.
79. A Glitch in the Matrix
My sophomore year of college, I lived on campus but my boyfriend didn't. He worked on campus, however, and would often hang out in my dorm with me between class and work. My bed was lofted with my desk underneath it, and sometimes I would take a nap while he sat at my desk doing homework. One afternoon I woke up from a pretty vivid dream and started telling my boyfriend about it.
I remember hearing him respond, and in the middle of my response, I felt this eerie shift in the atmosphere. It was like the whole room suddenly became slightly darker and colder. I quietly said his name, but he didn't respond. That’s when I remembered he had been at work for about three hours. I grabbed my backpack, ran out of there, and did homework in the library until he was off work.
80. It’s Coming From Inside the House
My sister was visiting my parents for the weekend. That night, I called her about something, just wanting to chat, but when she picked up, she was clearly very upset. She told me she was home alone and "something was happening." I asked her if there was someone in the house, like an intruder. She told me there were animalistic growling noises coming from the corner, and my mom's dog was going nuts.
She also said the hallway lights were flashing on and off. I told her to get her jacket and calmly walk out of the house, taking the dog with her if she could, and that I would be by soon to pick her up. She went outside and brought the dog with her. Her friend was even closer than I was, so she picked my sister up and they hung out at her friend's house for a while.
About twenty minutes after that, my brother, who also lived nearby, stopped by the house to return some tools he'd borrowed for my dad. He went inside because he saw the lights going on and off, and he's an electrician. Once he was inside…they stopped. He kept hearing someone walking around in the other room, but when he'd go in there, no one was there, and when he called out no one responded.
He checked the whole house and then also heard animal growling noises from the same corner as my sister. This is an outside wall corner, with windows, not enough space for a raccoon or something to be trapped inside the wall. My brother felt really unnerved and left.
81. It Came in a Dream
I had just moved into a new house. One day, I was downstairs when I heard what sounded like furniture moving around upstairs. I went up to investigate but when I got up there, everything was quiet and nothing had moved. I then went back downstairs, only for the dragging sounds to start again. I go back up; nothing. This went on for about an hour. I almost called the authorities because I was positive that someone was in my home.
I ended up calling a friend and kept them on speakerphone while I searched the attic, thinking maybe an animal could be hiding, but I never found anything. Eventually, I gave up my search and went to bed. But it was far from over. That night, I had a dream that I was driving to work in the rain and fog and crashed my car. Someone approached me and asked "Are you ready to move on?" That's when I woke up.
At the time, I was working mid-shift, so around 10 PM that same day I got in the car on a foggy and rainy night and made my way into work without any issue. The building I worked in had security cameras all over, and it being so late, I was the only person coming in. When I get inside, the person I was relieving asked who I came in with. I was alone, but she swore someone followed me inside. It was a very unnerving 12 hours to say the least.
Unsplash
82. Insides And Out
Some guy drinking and driving was hit by a car right in front of me in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. His condition was unstable, so the trauma helicopter was on its way. I was holding a sheet with another person so onlookers wouldn't see what was happening. And, well, it was nothing I wanted to see.
I heard his ribs crack from the CPR. Then something wrong happened, and the trauma doctor had to open his chest right there. I have no medical background at all and saw some things that I was never meant to.
83. Give Me A Hand
One morning, someone using an angle grinder woke me up. I knew it was my younger brother who usually used it to cut stuff. A few minutes later, I heard a noise of liquid splashing just like in the horror movies. I wasn't sure if it was a dream or not because I was half asleep. Seconds later, my brother came into the room.
He held his right hand with his other hand to keep it on his arm. He looked at me and told me to help him stay alive. I was in shock and then grabbed something to put around his arm and called the emergency number. But I was so shocked that I could barely talk. I put myself together and told the operator what happened.
So, we waited for the ambulance. I don't know how long it took them to arrive, but all that time, I sat there with my brother trying to keep him awake. I watched how slowly the light in his eyes faded. He passed out a few times. When the ambulance came, I got out of the house to get some air while they did their stuff.
The first thing that I saw was the angle grinder with the power cable cut off and a long line of blood. There was no time for them to get him to the hospital fast enough, so a helicopter came. My brother survived. He can move his arm and carry things but lost most of its dexterity which sucks because he’s right-handed.
84. Down On The Farm
I was buying a house last year, and one of the places I decided to look at was a renovated farmhouse. The main building itself was pretty nice and I was considering it as an option, but then the realtor took me to check out the old barn that was on the property. From the outside, it looked like it could be converted into a really nice workshop.
I walked inside and almost immediately felt something fall on my head. I brushed it away and did the "get it off me" dance until it fell to the ground. It was a tiny spider. Then another dropped on my head. I repeated my freak-out and got another, larger spider out of my hair. Then, I made the mistake of looking up. There was a huge black spot on the wall, which I realized after my eyes focused was the biggest cluster of spiders I have ever seen in my life.
In that moment, I was a faster sprinter than Usain Bolt.
85. Trailing Behind
I used to work in a trailer park for my parents. Quite often, people would start using controlled substances, begin to fall behind on rent, and get evicted. Whenever we evicted someone, their trailer was usually too torn up to actually do anything useful with it. Essentially, to prevent having a pile o' garbage trailer in the middle of the park, we'd buy it from them and just tear it down.
Anyway, here comes the creepy part. Many of these occupants had children. More than half of the children's rooms I found had locks on the doors, from the outside. Inside the children's rooms, it was always quite evident that the kids would sometimes be locked inside for days at a time, due to the "bathroom" corners that would sometimes appear.
It gets even more disturbing. The doors on the insides of the rooms typically had scratch marks along the edge of the door and the door frame. Getting rid of all of the stuff inside before beginning demolition always frightened me. I was always afraid that I'd end up finding a deceased child somewhere among the filth. It never happened, but the odds of it potentially happening were, in my opinion, quite high.
86. Taking Them For A Ride
Just last year, I was in New York City and riding a packed subway. Mid-ride, a man gets up with a strangely large backpack. He cleared his throat and said something so disturbing, it’s unforgettable. He said: "Alright everyone, the time has come." At that moment, the people on the subway's faces turned to utter fear. A mother nestled her son, and I tensed up, ready to pounce. None of us knew what was coming next.
He went on to say "I am a poor man in need of food. If anyone has anything on them or if they could take me out for food, it would save my life." My girlfriend and I got him some KFC and asked him to approach a large group of people differently. All in all, he was a nice guy. Didn't even look homeless. My girlfriend still refers to it as "The day the KFC guy was gonna destroy us."
87. Bad Chemistry
I heard this creepy story and it’s always stayed with me. Essentially, Karen Wetterhahn was a chemistry professor at Dartmouth. She was working with an organic mercury compound that was relatively unknown at the time. A drop spilled on her gloved hand. No big deal, usually. Turns out dimethylmercury penetrates latex gloves really quickly, and a drop on the hand is a life-threatening sentence.
She slipped into a coma about six months later and then passed. The really terrifying part is the description of her coma. One of her former students described it as not being "the kind of coma I'd expected.” Apparently, she was thrashing about. Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain.
Absolutely terrifying. I am so glad I'm not a chemist.
88. Strangers Under A Train
I watched in horror as this intoxicated-seeming guy fell onto a commuter rail track just as the train was coming. Maybe he did so on purpose, but I don't know. Either way, the sound and sight of him getting run over has stayed with me for life as the scariest, most brain-scarring thing ever. I hope no one else ever has to hear those awful crunching and splattering noises again,
89. Baby Face
I used to have a truck that I swore had the ghost of a deceased baby in it. I used to get home late from my job as a dishwasher. After I parked and was sitting in my driveway with the engine off, I would hear this really faint sound of a baby crying. Late at night when it was quiet, it used to make my arm hairs stand on end. I used to get home and hop out of the car in fear of hearing it.
One night, I decided to sit there and just listen, trying to pinpoint the sound. Eventually, I discovered that it was indeed not the ghost of a baby. Rather, whenever I undid my seat belt buckle, the old spring of the seat belt retractor would very slowly start pulling the belt in, creating a faint noise that sounded like the wailing I had been hearing.
90. A Horror Film
I had been working on a student film a few years ago and I was tasked with taking care of all of the equipment. Earlier that day, I had leaned the camera crane against the wall in its large oddly shaped bag, not thinking anything of it. Fast forward to that night, when I wake up to find a dark figure leaning against my wall as if staring at me as I sleep.
I slowly roused myself, making sure to stay very still before mustering up the courage to say "Who are you?" in a shaky voice filled with terror. I sat there motionless for ten minutes before I fully woke up and realized I am an idiot. It was just the crane I had placed there earlier. Strangely, that was the most terrified I have ever been in my life.
91. 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.
92. 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 a bunch of officers show up and start arresting my stepdad.
My mom is yelling at the officers 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. Law enforcement showed up and assumed my stepdad was the shooter and busted him. All in all a pretty fun night.
93. Ronald McSecrets
This one time when I was little, my dad woke me up at like 2 am said "Get ready, we're going to McDonald's.” I was so confused and kept asking why, but he wouldn't answer anything besides, "because" or "to have fun.” The rest of my family—my two brothers, my sister, and my mom—didn't come with us and they were still asleep when we left.
The play place was closed, and we just kind of sat there for an hour or so eating, then went back home. To this day, I still have NO idea why he frantically needed me out of the house, and he swears he doesn't remember that happening, but the whole thing was SO weird that I kept the toy that I got from the Happy Meal to remember it by, and I still have it to this day…
It's my only proof of this weird freaking night that my dad (almost scarily) hurried me to McDonald’s at 2 am. I have two guesses why. First, my sister pooped the bed and they were worried I'd make fun of her. Or maybe they somehow noticed something like rats in my room? Were they worried I wouldn't be able to sleep if I knew that there were rats and they needed an hour or so to get them out???
Either way, a very strange night that my dad refuses to tell me the truth about, which only makes me think it's something much worse. Like. I'm 23 now. If he said "Yeah, your sister pooped the bed and we didn't want you to know," I'd have been like cool, nice, good thinking. But he REFUSES to believe that it happened at all. WHAT HAPPENED.
94. Calling All Angels
After I totaled my car, a man with burn scars all over his face and hands came up to my window. He asked if I was ok and then came and sat in the passenger seat. He said, “I need you to know that everything happens for a reason.” I said, “I know.” The next thing I know, I’m talking to the other driver and the authorities, and the guy is just gone. No one else saw him.
95. Gone With The Wind
It was 1978 or so. I was in my college house making dinner. I yelled upstairs to one of my roommates that dinner was almost ready. She yelled back: "Okay, I'll be there in a minute!" She never came down. Halfway through dinner, someone got annoyed and went up to get her. Turns out she was gone. Like completely gone, nowhere to be found—but that wasn’t even the weirdest part.
There was nothing missing from her room, but no one ever heard from her again. Just like that, she disappeared and became an official missing person. A year later, they found a skeleton in a nearby garden, but the authorities quickly ruled out the possibility that it could be her. Her name was Bev Gold and I still wonder to this day what on earth happened.
96. Watch Out For That Last Step
I was on vacation in Ithaca with my boyfriend at the time. We had literally, I'm talking ten minutes, just gotten into town and stopped at a suspension bridge near Cornell's campus. I'm terrified of heights, so my boyfriend was coaxing me step by step over the bridge. It was gorgeous and we stopped in the middle to take a picture.
On the side we had come from, there was a parking lot with steps leading to the bottom of the gorge. But on the far side, there were hiking paths with no barrier. A woman walked past us and offered to take a picture for us. We declined. What she did next was absolutely chilling. She smiled and walked quickly to the far side of the bridge where she smoothly jumped off into the gorge.
There was not a second of hesitation. It was almost like she expected the path to keep going. The sound of a person hitting the ground from a jump like that sticks with you.
97. 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.
98. I’ll Huff And I’ll Puff
When I was 14, we shared our house with another man who lived on the floor below us. I was home with my younger brother while our mom went out. All of a sudden, the man came screaming and banging on the door. He was yelling about how downstairs was flooding and it was coming from our bathroom. I didn't know what to do.
But because he was an adult, I trusted him and opened the door. He came in, ran into the bathroom, and did something. After I told my mom, she called management. What they told her was truly disturbing. There had never been a leak. There didn't find water marks or any other signs of flooding. So, my mom told us not to open the door for him again.
The next time my mom went out, he came banging on the door again. We told him that our mom said we shouldn't open the door for him. His reaction was terrifying. He did not appreciate that and he went absolutely crazy. "Let me in now!" He screamed over and over again all the while banging on the door. We never found out why he wanted to come in.
99. All The Lonely People
Growing up, I always wanted to go on a bike ride at night. Something about it just seemed really cool to me. It wasn't until I was 13 that my mom finally let me. She told me to wear my helmet, take my phone and flashlight, and follow the parameters she had set for where I was allowed to go. She gave me about four miles, which was a lot to me.
So, right after the sun had set, I was off. I loved it. I rode along this path for 10 minutes before the only thing I could see was some of the lights from the houses on the inside of the limits. After 15 minutes of riding along this dirt path, I suddenly hear singing. It sounded like it was just a few feet in front of me. I stop riding to hear it better. It was a woman's voice.
She was singing “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles. But she wasn't singing the words, just the melody. Her voice was strange. You know how when you have phlegm in your throat, your voice gets kind of scratchy? That's what her voice sounded like. I inch forward to try and see her. I get close enough to see the silhouette of her hair bouncing up and down, like she was headbanging.
I decided to get my flashlight out. I'm thinking that maybe this person is in need of help or something. Or maybe this is an insane person and the light will scare them away. So I take the flashlight out of my pocket, point it at her, and turn it on. The moment the light hit her, she stopped moving completely. She was facing away from me.
She had disgusting hair that seemed to be sticking together in clumps. Some of her hair was ripped off, too. She was wearing a very oversized, bright red hoodie. I was almost too scared to move. I think she was, too. I conjured up as much bravery as I could and said "Sorry" in a very, oops-this-is-the-wrong-room kind of way. She didn't respond.
I turned off the flashlight and put it back in my pocket. Just as I was turning my bike around, she screamed. She screamed in an awful, horrifying high-pitched voice. I nearly pooped myself as I threw myself back onto my bike. I heard her voice getting closer to me. I booked it as fast as I could. I didn't once look back behind me, and I didn't stop pedaling.
Her screaming eventually grew quieter and quieter until it dissolved into the howling of the wind.
100. Some Devastatingly Flawed Logic
I worked at a daycare. One of the mothers gave me the heebie jeebies. She would show up randomly and be like "my baaaaaaby, I neeeed my baaaaby." Like, moms love their kids and miss them, but her obsession with her daughter really made me feel weird. I should have trusted my gut when it came to this lady. It turns out that she was not at all okay.
Tragically, she ended up killing her daughter so that she could be an "angel." It really messed me up when I found out and I regret not doing anything to this day.
