Usually, when we look back on our childhood, we try to remember the good things—but not always. Ironically, it's the messed-up memories that have a way of sticking with you forever. Buckle up, because we're about to re-live these unlucky adults' most twisted childhood memories.
1. Door Jam
I was chasing my friends around the house when we were around ten years old. We were running in a circle set up where you go from a door off the kitchen into the yard and back through a sliding glass door to the living room. My friend started chasing me, so as I ran through, I slammed the sliding glass door shut.
The house was old, so this was not safety glass. My friend ran full speed into the glass door, going straight through the glass. It was like a scene from a horror movie. There was massive bleeding, and they had to go to the hospital. I still can't imagine being either parent at the end of that phone call.
2. Bad Daddy
When I was 13, I went into our computer room just in time to finish seeing my dad send an email that said, "I love you" and some other stuff to a woman who wasn't my mom. He tried to cover my eyes and act like he was joking around. I promptly left and went back a while later. I tried getting in his email, but he had changed the password.
Previously, we all knew it because his email was used to log into a lot of stuff within our family. I never told my mom—but I did get my revenge. A few years later, he divorced my mom and she asked me for help getting proof of him cheating from the laptop he had also used. I found EXPLICIT Craigslist messages that he had sent and received.
Just going to add a PSA here to parents, though: Don’t ask your child to do this. Take it to a darn computer shop and save your child the emotional and mental scars.
3. Who Invited That Guy?
When I was about 14, some friends and I had a campout in one of our backyards. This was in a regular, older neighborhood in the city. Certainly not rich, but not a scary place either; just a working-class neighborhood. Anyway, I have no idea what time it was, but I woke up and made a truly horrifying discovery. There was this guy standing in amongst us as we lay there on the ground in our sleeping bags.
He was just looking at us. I freaking froze, but I was ready to scream my lungs out as I watched him through the slits of my eyes. After what seemed like a year, he stepped out from between us all, went over and hopped the chain-link fence and walked off down the alley. I immediately woke everyone and we went inside to tell my friend's mom.
Obviously, we finished our sleepover inside. That was also the last outside sleepover...ever.
4. Ouija Boards Are For Amateurs
I grew up in a very rural area of the Southern US. A middle school girlfriend was having a sleepover and later in the evening her mom came in the room. That’s when the weirdest night of my life began. My friend’s mom told us that she could talk to spirits through her daughter. She made her daughter drink cabernet and then hypnotized her.
I don’t know how long we sat in that room, but a lot of time went by with her mom demanding that the spirits speak through her daughter. Over time, her daughter admitted to all sorts of terrible things—supposedly all these spirits speaking through her. This was over 30 years ago and I still remember it with complete clarity.
I remember the daughter slumped over in a chair, slurring confessions of super dark stuff like hurting people, being hurt, etc. She told us sometimes spirits would manifest in such a way that her daughter would attack her and tear the house up. It was really strange. Her daughter was a very quiet girl, the things that spoke through her were not like her at all. It was beyond messed up.
5. Quite The Sight
I went over to a neighbor's house in the 90s, a few months after we moved into the neighborhood. They had a son who was a year younger than me and a daughter who was four years younger than her brother. We were hanging out in the garage passing a hockey puck around when we decided to take a break and have a slight snack.
The brother was eating a chocolate bar of some kind and was finishing his last mouthful when his sister walked in the garage and wanted some of the candy, even though it was basically gone. This is where it gets weird. Her brother jokingly sticks out a portion of chewed-up chocolate bar and asks her if she still wants some.
She replies with a serious, "yes,” and he precedes to transfer some of his pre-chewed chocolate bar directly into his sister’s mouth like a bird! To this day, I have a hard time not visualizing them french kissing a chewed-up chocolate bar when I see them at their parents' house visiting.
6. Love Me Some Sweet Milk
It was the early 1990s when I was a kid. I slept over at a buddy’s house for the first time. The next morning we woke up and his mom made us cereal. The milk tasted sweet, even for my childhood taste buds. Something about it all seemed off. Just as my buddy finished his bowl of cereal, his mom came over and turned the bowl on its side to pour the leftover milk from the cereal bowl into a milk carton.
The mom then did the same with hers. I felt my face turn red with shame and embarrassment and my stomach turn. Horrified and confused, I asked, “What is that? What are y’all doing?” He turned to me and said, “That’s our cereal milk.” As it turned out, his ENTIRE family poured all of the leftover milk from each bowl of cereal back into a separate milk carton, specifically for cereal. I drank this entire family’s backwash.
7. Swim Date Scuffle
I was meant to stay the night with a kid just a few doors down from my grandparents’. He lived with his grandparents and his grandpa was a facilities manager at an upscale apartment complex and offered to take us swimming there for the day. His grandfather dropped us off at the main pool and said he’d be back in a while.
The pool was Olympic-sized and simply had too many people, so we decided to explore and ended up at a smaller pool on the property elsewhere. We were swimming, having a good time and everything was great—that is, until he started a splash fight. We were going back and forth and then he started screaming at me at the top of his lungs. Then he went too far, and I knew I had to act.
He ends up cornering me and tries to push me under the water, still screaming. I wrestle myself free and hit him square in the nose. His nose started bleeding like Niagara Falls and he started cursing at me repeatedly as loud as his lungs could muster. I got out of the pool and grabbed my things and headed back to the front of the complex. People were staring and trying to calm him down. He started walking after me, hands at his sides in fists, covered in blood from his nose.
I make it back to the front of the complex and am desperately trying to get someone to let me use a phone to call home. No one would listen. They’re enamored with the screaming kid who, by the way, is still lumbering after me. He’s a mess. Out of nowhere, his grandfather appears and snatches him up and disappears with him through a door. I was still trying to get someone to let me use a phone when his grandfather reappeared.
He asked me what happened then told me he has to take the kid home, and that I can’t go with them. They finally let me use the phone. My parents didn’t answer, so I ended up getting ahold of my aunt who was still working and couldn’t come to get me for another two hours. The office wouldn’t let me stay inside so I was outside in the parking lot standing around waiting, still having no idea what happened.
My aunt showed up and off we went. When I got home, I got yelled at for being so far from home. A few days later my mom went to talk to the kid’s grandfather. She came back and told me that we couldn’t hang out anymore. She told me that he needed medication to keep him calm and that he had missed his dose that day. The situation wasn’t my fault. I never saw him again.
Unsplash
8. Karma Has No Substitute
Back when I was in high school, I got stalked by a substitute teacher. His eyes lit up when he first saw me. He became the substitute teacher in all of my classes whenever teachers were out, which oddly enough started happening quite frequently. Somehow, he learned my schedule and started to meet me outside of my classroom.
He would show up at lacrosse practice and hide behind trees. He would show up at home and away games. He knew my birthday. I had independent study classes and once he found me in my French class. I was sitting in a window sill in a third-floor classroom and he asked me out on a date. He inched closer waiting for my answer, so I said yes, fearing being pushed out of the window. I started telling my friends, who started to witness his strange behavior.
Finally, on my birthday (a Friday), it was raining, and I was pulling out of my parking spot to take my friend home. Dude appears out of nowhere. Walks around my car twice and knocks on the window and states, "You're a brat. You're nothing but a rich, spoiled brat. You don't even deserve this car." My friend whose name is Van told me then and there that on Monday morning, he would tell the principal if I didn't.
I was terrified. I knew I would have been blamed. My parents were going to think it was my fault. All weekend, I was terrified. Finally, Monday morning comes, and I'm shaken. Over the loudspeaker, as the day's events were being announced, a voice mentioned that the substitute teacher would not be back, as he had a heart attack in church and didn't make it.
9. Unsolved Mysteries: Sleepover Edition
When I was in elementary school, my sister and I got invited to a birthday party. Everything was going fine for most of the night, and then the catastrophe happened. The host's mom came down to the basement and was clearly very upset, but didn’t explain why. She then had each of us line up on the stairs from the basement to the ground level of the house and brought us in one by one.
I wasn’t the first in line but no one was telling us what happened once it was their turn. Finally, I was up, and her mom took me into the bathroom and showed me a trash can with a piece of poop in it. She was basically on the verge of tears, pointing to the trash can and asking me, “Is this your poop!? Is this your poop!?” It wasn’t.
We never found out whose it was, or at least I wasn’t told. We have joked that someone will finally come forward in their final moments on Earth, but my sister and I have since lost contact with those girls, so we may never know.
10. This Is The Stuff Of Horror Movies
Okay, so this is kinda creepy. I'm an adult who doesn’t believe in ghosts and such, but then I think of this experience and wonder what the heck is wrong with me for being so stupid. I'd hardly call it an imaginary “friend,” but when I was around 12, I lived with my brother and his family. We moved to a new home, and one of my nieces, who was about four or five, would always avoid certain corners of the house because she was scared of “the green lady.”
The green lady was pretty much always located in the same corner in the family room, but on a couple of occasions, she'd move. So, my older niece, who was about nine at the time, would pick on her little sister and throw her toys in that corner. My little niece would avoid it like the plague. Then one day, her big sister PUSHED her in that corner.
I swear, NEVER in my life had I ever heard such a blood-curdling scream. Never again have I yet, and I hope never to hear that kind of scream again. She didn't even run away from the corner. She was backed into it, looking upwards in terror. Her fear had us all scared, I think. My older niece never messed with her little sister about that corner again.
Actually, none of us really screwed around with that corner again. Friends thought we were joking when they'd come over, and we'd casually say, “Oh, annnd stay away from that corner because we're pretty sure an evil ghost lives there.”
So, when did the green lady finally move from the corner? Here's the messed-up part: according to my niece, when my brother and his wife discussed moving out of the house, the green lady did not like that, so at bedtime, she followed them into their room. The other time, the green lady got mad again after my sister-in-law got pregnant, so she moved to the nursery and stayed in there.
During the time we lived there, which was for about two and a half years, all sorts of things went really wrong. My sister-in-law lost one of the twins she was carrying. The surviving twin was born with spinal meningitis and all kinds of problems; it was at least a month before the baby got to come home. Then my sister-in-law developed cervical cancer.
Later, my sister-in-law’s mom, who uses a walker, fell in the freaking pool and injured herself. Plus, we couldn't keep pets alive anymore. We had a golden retriever, a cocker spaniel, a cat, a couple of pet rats, and a guinea pig. The dogs got sick with pancreatic cancer, and tumors grew on their sides. Our cat got ran over, and the guinea got sick.
The rats were fine until my sister-in-law’s mom forgot to take the towel cover off the cage on a hot day, and the heat cooked my niece's rat. Eventually, we finally moved the heck out. But even after all this time, we all agree that something was wrong with that place and that whatever that green witch was, she was freaking evil and the probable cause of what made so many horrible things go wrong while we lived there.
11. Stepping up to the Plate
When I was about 14, I was at a big group sleepover with my friends. The mother of the girl who was hosting it was very strict about health, and she told us that we couldn’t order any pizza until we had eaten the massive fruit platter she had prepared for us. No one was touching the platter other than taking a few pieces to snack on.
It was getting late, the pizza place would be closing soon, and her mom was not budging about her rule. Someone needed to step up, and that someone was me. I started devouring the fruit platter, shoving pieces into my mouth and swallowing them without chewing. This was a platter for about eight people, but I was a woman on a mission.
We ended up getting pizza, but I got so sick I spent most of the night throwing up. I couldn’t even enjoy the pizza cause I was so full.
12. From Playdate to Child Abduction
It was a very long time ago—back in 1973. I know that it was summer, I was six, and we were living on Monica Lane in Madison, Wisconsin. Thing is, I sort of recalled it but never put two-and-two together until a few months ago when I was talking to my mom who went into great detail.
I was a very gregarious child; outgoing, extroverted, friends with anyone. It was at the time a middle-class neighborhood, and three houses down from ours, on the same side of the street, was a huge park. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a salesman, but mom worked 2nd shift at Merriter, while my dad worked days. I rarely had a babysitter, only if they went out for dinner or a movie. But they did go out often and there were always older kids in the neighborhood to babysit.
One sitter who I really liked lived a few blocks or so away, and down the street a little bit. Vicky had babysat a few times before that and it was pretty uneventful. She'd play games with me, and do my hair, play dress-up, pretty basic stuff. So anyhow, one day I had gone with friends down to the park. I remember there was a ball field at the time, and a sandlot next to the field. My friends wanted to play on the monkey bars, but I wanted to play in the sand. I looked at the sandbox and my babysitter Vicky was standing there. I told my friends I was going down to the sandbox and ran off.
We played in the sand, building a castle, and then she asked me if I wanted to go get something cold to drink. It was stifling hot, and I, of course, said yes. So she takes my hand and we start walking to her place. She starts telling me about her puppies and asking if I want to play with them. Of course, I get giddy and now can't wait to get to her house. This was where my memory had stopped and after my mom told me what happened, the rest of it flooded back.
My mother just happened to be talking to my sister and I about some of the places we lived, and we got to Monica Lane. I told her I remembered the park and how big it seemed, and she asks me if I remember being kidnapped. I immediately thought she was kidding and then the look on her face told me otherwise. She said it was around five in the afternoon and one of my friends had come to the door to ask me to come back outside, sure that I had gotten bored and walked back home. When my mom checked the house, she realized I wasn't there and (seven months pregnant with my sister) sprints to the park, screaming my name.
After asking several kids if they'd seen me with no clue, she went to the ball field and asked the older boys if they'd seen me. One of the boys (she guessed around 14) said that he'd seen a younger woman playing with a girl that fit my description in the sand and walk off in a general direction and that was all he knew.
My mom ran across the street to one of the houses and asked to use their phone and called 9-1-1. By the time the authorities 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.
The officers 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 like mad, 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.
13. And Those Are the Rules….
I went to my friend's house for the first time, as she always wanted to come to my house, not the other way around. However, she had never told me why. I was about to learn the truth the hard way. So, I got there, and after the first hour, it all goes downhill. The parents had strict rules about eating at the table. They proceeded to insult me about my weight to the point I nearly cried. After that, they continued to ask me questions about my race and family.
By the time night came, I found out they had a lockdown rule in their house. We weren't allowed out of the bedroom until morning. I didn't know that and ended up getting lectured the next morning. I also didn't know that I would be forced to attend their church in the morning before I could go home. That's how I figured out why she always wanted to stay at my house and not the other way around.
14. Get Me Out Of Her
I was at a typical sleepover—movie, video games, popcorn. When it came time to go to bed, I went into the bathroom, changed into my pajama pants, and walked back in to find my friend already in his bed and smirking. I didn't think much of it, so I crawled into my sleeping bag and asked if he wanted to play some more video games. He threw open his blanket and I saw he wasn't wearing any clothes.
The kid flashed me. I was understandably stunned and I said something along the lines of, “Put some clothes on." He responded, "Nope, my house, my rules." I was really uncomfortable by now, and didn't want to sleep. He covered himself back up with his blankets and said he would put his clothes back on, which he did. I tried to shrug it off, and we played some more video games for a little bit, then turned off the lights and went to sleep.
Not too long after the lights went out, I heard him rustling around, then getting out of his bed. He says, "I took my clothes off again," laughs, and tries to lay on me. I shoved him off, and he kept trying to lay on me. A brief back and forth went on, and at this point, I'm pretty much yelling at him to leave me alone and go to sleep. I heard him stand up. I thought he was going to leave me alone now. I was wrong—what happened next was the worst by far.
I started to feel something splattering against my sleeping bag where my feet were. It didn't take long for me to figure out that he was relieving himself on me. I told him I was going home, and as I'm trying to get out of the sleeping bag, he body-slammed me. I was stunned. As he went to jump on me again, I kicked him in the stomach as hard as I could, and he went down crying.
I woke up his mom at around midnight and told her what happened. She went into the room to find her bare son on the floor crying and yelled at me to leave. I called my mom and waited for her on their front porch, as my friend's mom was going bananas when she saw the pee on the sleeping bag and ground.
15. A Man’s Garage Is His Castle
I had a best friend with a big house. His dad was a HUGE garage dad. He had his brand new fishing boat that he cleaned every day in there, all his trophies, life relics, everything was in the garage. The floor of the garage was nicely carpeted, and legit everything in there was spotless. Anytime I went over, his dad spent most of his waking hours in that garage.
My friend, his brother and I somehow got into a "water battle" with the garden hose and some super soakers. I can't remember how or why it started, but as you can guess, we moved our battle into the garage and left the garden hose running inside. We must've left it running from lunchtime, and his dad didn't come home until 5 or 6 pm.
I'll never forget the earth-shattering screams and wails I heard. My friend's mom just closed her eyes, sobbing, as my friend and his brother begged for her to do something while their dad dragged them into that garage. The screams and yelling from the dad inside the garage continued for the entire hour it took for my parents to come and pick me up.
16. Birthday Bash of Bad Friends
My cousin and I were best friends growing up. She was six months older than me, and we were always together. When she would come over to visit, my other best friend who lived down the road would play with us too. We were a grand trio. My cousin was having a birthday sleepover. She told me she was inviting her friends from school who I did not know. She even invited my best friend who lived close by.
This was my first all-girls sleepover and I was really excited. When my friend and I arrived, my cousin’s friends were extremely cold to us. When we joined them in the bedroom, they laughed at us and didn’t speak to us for most of the evening. These girls went to a mixed boys and girls school so the group spent most of the time talking about boys and all the things they had done.
They took great delight in belittling and making fun of us, as we went to an all-girls school so we had no experience or interest in boys at that age. They continually alienated us from the conversation and would laugh with each other whenever my friend I would try to join in. This was my first experience feeling so isolated in a room full of people. I felt extremely uncomfortable.
During the night the girls got even nastier. I had enough and said I would sleep elsewhere. I moved my sleeping bag into another room. My cousin begged me to rejoin, as she didn’t want to get in trouble with her parents. I returned sullenly and felt like the smallest person in the world. Thankfully the morning came and I was only dying to get packed up and for my mom to collect me. When I got home, my mom asked me how the night went and I just broke down and sobbed my little heart out.
17. I Dreamed A Dream
I woke up one night when I was 12 years old, because I dreamed that my older brother got into a car accident. I got out of bed and wandered downstairs to the kitchen to get something to drink. My mother was sitting there and asking me why I was awake. I told her: "I had a bad dream and needed something to drink."
I got a glass of water when the bell suddenly ringed at our door. My mother went to look and see who was there in the middle of the night. Two officers were standing there. They asked if they could come inside for a moment. I couldn't hear what they were talking about because I was still in the kitchen and they were in the hallway.
After the two officers left, my mother came back to the kitchen completely pale and told me that I should go to bed now. I asked her what was wrong, when she informed me that my brother had been in a car accident and that she needed to wake up my dad and go to the hospital right now. When I pointed out that this was the bad dream I had before waking up, she only looked at me for a couple of seconds. That’s when she told me something I’ll never forget.
I prepared myself for a comment like "Don't be silly and go to bed now," but instead she said "Me too." So basically, we both had the same exact dream of my brother having a car accident. And we both woke up minutes before the officers came over to tell us that it really happened. Thankfully, my brother survived with just some minor injuries.
We saw the photos of the accident in the newspaper the next day. It looked 100% like it did in my dream. Even down to the smallest details. The way he lost control over the car, the spot where it flipped the first time, and the tree it came to a stop at. Even today, my mother and I still talk about this weird experience. Nobody else ever believes us when we tell the story.
18. Park Your Business Somewhere Else
My old childhood neighbors had nine dogs, a large German Shepherd/boxer mix and eight pugs. One old pug they rescued and a pair that they bred and had aspirations of becoming breeders with, and five of their puppies from the first litter because the wife couldn't part with any of them. That put the kibosh on the breeder plan and they did get them all neutered, to their credit.
Anyway, the fact that they kept an entire litter of puppies isn't the weird part. Because pugs have trouble in really hot weather and I live in the southern USA, it got very hot in the summer. The wife also didn't like to make the pugs go out when there was snow on the ground, because of how short they are. Their solution? Let eight pugs use their garage as a bathroom.
And I'm not talking with paper or pads down. I'm talking just right on the floor. They didn't clean it until it was too hard to walk through without stepping on poop. In which case they would pick up the poop and do a modicum of mopping. You might think, that's not THAT bad I guess, except you don't know that this wasn't an unused garage, they stored many things including spare furniture, workout equipment, books, etc., so it was all basking in the stench of two weeks’ worth of eight dogs’ worth of poop and pee for at least half the year.
I moved out of my home before they did theirs and I checked it a few years later and wasn't overly surprised that it had been condemned.
19. The Man In The Big Blue House
When I was a kid, my family lived in a blue house that was oddly shaped. One year, the house got completely gutted and nearly destroyed by a flood. They had to knock down a wall between the living room and the kitchen. So after the flood, you could see all the way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom door. This house was and still is very strange, for lack of a better term.
I was a terrible sleeper as a kid and would routinely wake up and just go into the living room and watch cartoons on low volume if I couldn’t go back to sleep. One morning, I’m out in the living room sitting across the chair with my feet up on a window sill. Don’t ask me why, I was just a stupid eight- or nine-year-old at the time.
From where the chair was, I could see just over the kitchen counter down that hallway to my parents’ room. A movement caught my eye. I looked up and saw the shadowy outline of a man walking towards me, kind of near to my parents’ door. Thinking it was my dad, I said something like, “Hey Dad, sorry if the TV was too loud.”
My dad is a notoriously light sleeper and would wake up from anything, so I assumed that this was the explanation for what I was seeing. Except there was no response. Within seconds, the weight of my foot breaks the window I was leaning it on, and my foot ends up going through the glass. Again, I’m not sure if this is related or if I was just a dumb kid. Likely the latter, honestly. But either way, I screamed as loud as I could.
My parents quickly woke up to figure out what was going on at 4:30 in the morning. At this point, I’m preoccupied, but I realized much later that I definitely saw the outline of a man. But there was no way it was my dad because: A) He came bounding out of their bedroom after my scream, and B) I realized that the shoulders of that outline were much higher than what my dad’s would have been.
Fast forward to a few years ago. We’ve moved far away from the blue house, and my mom and I are hanging out and catching up. For some reason, the blue house comes up and I tell mom that the place still gave me creeps and that weird stuff happened there when I was a kid. My mom’s response? “Oh, you must have seen the shadow man too!”
20. A Fork In The Road
I was very young when this happened, so what I remember versus what I was told is the main scariness of this story. So my family was driving around the backwoods in the New Hampshire and Maine area. It was autumn and we wanted to watch the leaves fall. We were staying at some cottage, and my family came to this area pretty frequently.
We were coming back from somewhere when my mother started screaming at my father for stopping abruptly. In front of us, on an unkept back road in the deep woods of New England, at a pretty late hour, was a traffic jam of quite a few cars stopped in all directions. I remember a lot of bright headlights. I also remember seeing my dad's face as he turned around.
I then remember that he started reversing the car. My mom went completely silent through this whole thing. I just remember my dad saying eerily calmly, "Ughh, I hate traffic." He turned around and started driving back up the road we came down, and we started seeing cars going past us flashing their headlights. My dad just kept driving, saying absolutely nothing.
The whole atmosphere quickly went from "Wasn't that a fun day!" to "Let's leave." Even as a kid, I went from annoying to quiet. Just a thickness in the air. Cars started coming up from behind, honking and flashing lights. Eventually, they just turned off the road and we drove back to the cottage. Years later, I mean decades later, my dad and I were having a drink together.
He says: "Remember up in the woods up north? We were driving around and we came to a weird traffic jam?" I was like, "Yeah. Why?" I honestly hadn't thought of it since that night. My dad goes "Well, your mother and I were pretty sure that was one of those ambushes where they block the road and try to rob you and leave you in the woods or worse.”
He continued: “You don't remember the cars coming up the road after us, trying to block us in? Or the cars chasing us and beeping at us until we hit the other route?" I said, "Well kinda, but I just figured it was traffic or people being weird." He just kinda stopped talking about it after that, and went on about how we should plant more trees in the backyard. So weird.
21. Dietary Madness
My mom was super, SUPER into nutrition. Like to a scary and not scientifically-accurate degree. I was not allowed to eat sugar—EVER. I mean I did not taste white sugar until I was 11-ish and caught on that I could just sneak it other places and she'd never know. I never had candy or chocolate of any kind until then (She sometimes baked sweet things, but it was rare, and she only sweetened them with apple juice). I get that sugar isn't good for you, but jeez.
I could not have honey either, because she believed I was allergic because my "hearing got worse" if I ate honey. Not sure how she came to that conclusion, because I never saw an allergist. I suspect I was just a normal kid—even now, if I'm focused hard on something I'm doing, I won't hear you talk to me! She also never took me to the doctor for any reason. I was not vaccinated until I was 18 and went on my own to do it.
I was not allowed to eat the same type of grain on more than one day a week. She had a list on the fridge like "Sunday - Wheat, Monday - Oats, Tuesday - Spelt, Wednesday - Kamut, Thursday - Rice," and I can't even remember the rest. Quinoa and teff were probably on there. Anyway, this was because she believed eating the same type of grain multiple days in a row would cause you to become allergic to it.
Her definition of "allergy" was vague and conflated sensitivities with allergies. She never saw a professional other than a legitimately-quack "nutritionist" who once made her believe she had cancer but NEVER SENT HER TO AN ONCOLOGIST. She did not actually have cancer, as far as I know. She was pretty obsessed with allergies, and she controlled everything I ate very carefully so as to avoid "giving" me more allergies. There were lists other than the grain ones—we also alternated soy, almond, and rice milks. Again, to avoid "creating allergies."
As far as I know, I only ever had one actual possible food-related...thing, and I outgrew it, so I don't even know what it was: until I was around 13, if I consumed anything containing the slightest bit of milk protein, I'd throw up violently not long after. I wish people had taken it more seriously whenever I told them about it, because people thought I meant "lactose intolerant" and tried to give me things without lactose but which contained casein. Or they were trying to be "nice" because they knew my mom controlled my diet like crazy. But my god, if a child tells you "I am allergic to milk," how about err on the side of caution because you don't know what's going on??
I do not know why she got the idea that I'm allergy-prone, because I wasn't and still am not! She made up a medical condition for me and made me eat as if I really had it, but never got me checked by a doctor to be sure. Umm, what else...oh, I wasn't allowed to eat potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, or peppers, because they're part of the nightshade family and nightshade is poisonous and so eating those foods would eventually cause toxins to build up in my body and end me. I don't even know where to begin with that one.
Within the last five years, she's stopped this entirely. She eats whatever, whenever. She still eats a lot of whole grains and fresh produce—great!—but she also eats potatoes (etc.) and even sugar sometimes. She still talks about her constantly-rotating cabinet of "allergies," but not as often. She thinks the stomach ache she gets from milk is an "allergy." And I'm like no, mom, switch to Lactaid?
She also gets a yearly physical from an actual doctor. And she seems much happier overall.
22. Stone Cold Stunned
When I was in the ninth grade, I was at a new friend's house for my very first sleepover with her. The whole house was asleep, and I was still awake (insomniac), and I suddenly heard the LOUDEST crashing sound of glass I've ever heard in my life! My friend slept right through it. My only assumption was that her elderly and partially blind dog had knocked over an antique cabinet or something, so I left the room to check on the dog as well as investigate what had happened.
When I stood at the top of the stairs and looked down, I could see a man standing downstairs in her living room, and shattered glass was absolutely everywhere, and there was a BOULDER in the middle of the mess. Once I got a better look, I realized it was her dad standing down there, and when he noticed me, he shouted up at me and said: "Go call 9-1-1!", which her mom was already in the process of.
The mom then collected all the girls, and she locked us in the master bedroom for safety. Once law enforcement arrived and investigated, they said that the boulder had been intentionally THROWN through the front living room window, and that two of their vehicles outside also had massive rocks shattered through the windshields. Later, I learned the bizarre reason behind it all.
It turns out that the older sister had thrown a big party the weekend before, and far too many people showed up. She had to start turning some teenagers away, saying she couldn't have any more people at the party. This group of guys from our high school were apparently so enraged about being turned away, that they came back the following weekend to mess with the family and destroy their property.
Once the windshields got fixed, the guys came back two weeks later and smashed the windshields again. The older sister ended up figuring out exactly who had done it, and not only did the family press charges, but all five of the guys involved got expelled from our school. The older sister also transferred to a different school afterward because of the embarrassment of the whole ordeal.
I never had a sleepover with that friend again…
23. Fall From Grace
It was a sleepover in friend’s basement with four of us there. I think this was fourth grade. Sometime around midnight the host friend’s dad opened the door at the top of the basement stairs to ask if we wanted snacks, but right as the words started out of his mouth, he comes tumbling down the stairs and hit his head pretty hard.
He didn’t move for what felt like forever, and we heard from the top of the stairs some delirious yelling. Because I was so young, I thought that it was the host’s mom who was freaking out because her husband just tripped and fell. Later, I learned the disturbing truth. My other friend explained to me that the host mom was extremely intoxicated and had pushed the dad down the stairs.
24. Highway Of Pain
There were two of the exact same moments. So, I used to hang out with my friends at a local shopping mall pretty often that is a bit far from the city. The only road that connects to the mall is a highway with lots of cars going fast and no sidewalk. Once, when we were in this mall, we had the idea to go to another mall that was closer to the city.
Conveniently, the highway that connects to mall 1 leads directly to mall 2. There was a small problem, though: We didn't have a car and we were pretty short on cash. So we decided to go to mall 2 on foot, through this highway. The distance from the two malls was just shy of 4 miles, so we thought we'd be fine. We were so, so wrong.
We went on our journey to mall 2, walking on the shoulder of the highway on the opposite way, so we'd see the oncoming cars. I also had a flashlight that I used to shine a blinking light into the direction of the drivers, so they'd see us. I was being very careful not to blind anyone, though. I know that it was still very dangerous.
It was nighttime and the wind was blowing pretty hard, and it was very cold, but we were laughing and chatting about all sorts of things, so we were fine. In the middle of the highway between those two malls, there is a huge valley that is well known for being a place where people go to throw bodies away. There were several corpses found in that valley.
We were pretty scared to go through this section of the highway, but we went there anyway. We were a group of four people and we all had knives, so we thought that we'd be fine. We made our way to mall 2 successfully, and then we proceeded to sit somewhere to talk. We sat down and talked about how cool it was to go from mall 1 to mall 2 on foot and that it was a fun experience. But then something strange hit us.
Talking a bit more, we noticed that none of us remembered going through the infamous segment of the highway. We didn't remember anything, and we couldn't even be sure if we went there or not. Still, the only way that we could be at mall 2 was by going through that segment. We then concluded that we must have been distracted and didn't notice that we went there. But scarily enough, that wasn’t the end of the story.
The next day, I was watching the news and saw that a body had been found at that place the night before, at approximately the same time that we were there. I was shocked because we'd have seen all the cars and helicopters there. That's when the craziest thing happened. The TV helicopter footage showed a group of four people, with a blinking flashlight, very near the spot where the body was found.
We had been there, even though we didn't remember. I shared the news story with my friends and we were all pretty stunned. We all went to a neurologist to see if we were okay, which we were. Fast forward six months, to last week. I was at mall 1 with the same friends as before and we decided to go to mall 2, on foot, the same way as before.
Result? Everything went fine, but we still can't remember going through that segment of the highway. No body was found there this time. We decided not to go there anymore.
25. Poverty’s Scars
My father told me that if I went to a friend's house and my friend's parents offered me anything to eat, I was supposed to refuse. I took this rule very seriously. I remember once a friend's mother offered me a slice of cantaloupe, and when I refused, she tried really hard to coax me to eat it. It got so embarrassing so fast.
My father grew up in poverty on a farm in the south, and he lived through the depression. He always had enough to eat, but there were some kids in the neighborhood who didn't. These kids were always hungry, and would try to scrounge food from neighbors. Neighbors would feed them, but they hated having to do it, and they blamed the kids' parents.
So the parents of the hungry kids had a bad reputation; the neighbors assumed they were (and maybe they actually were) alcoholics, or just generally lazy good-for-nothings. So my father's fear was: if I accepted any food from anybody, or if I appeared to be hungry at all, people would think I wasn't getting enough food at home, and therefore my father was a bad provider.
My father, by the way, had lots of paranoid ideas.
26. There's Grounded, and Then There's Grounded
Grounded at my house meant something different than what other people’s grounded meant. When I got grounded I could do absolutely nothing. Wake up, sit at the kitchen table, read a pre-chosen book all day that I had no interest in, go to bed. I was once grounded for six months because of a D. I was also made to do an insane amount of yard work. Every weekend was yard work from morning until night, then back to forced reading until bed.
My brother once got grounded and he had to write out the whole bible. He left the house before he ever finished. Also, I once got grounded because my stepmom thought I was worshipping Satan after she found my Diablo II video game strategy guide. I then had to throw away all of my CDs and the book and game.
27. The Not-So-Silent Treatment
At my parents’ house, I used to hear my mom calling out to me when she didn't. And she confirmed she'd hear me call out to her when I didn't. That was a common occurrence. Also, whenever I'd be alone for a little while, if my mom was late from work or at the grocery store, I'd usually be in the main living room playing video games.
I would often hear loud banging sounds from upstairs, as if a heavy piece of furniture tipped over. I'd go check and nothing was out of place. Both my mother and grandmother have confirmed similar experiences when they were alone in the house. There was also the time I was downstairs on my laptop and everyone else was in bed.
It was after midnight and I didn't realize just how dark everything had gotten without the lights on. I'm zoned out when I begin to hear it. What sounds like a murmuring coming from behind me. Like the low rumble you'd hear at a gathering when people are talking and you can't make out the conversation. The hairs on my neck immediately stood up and my body locked up from fear.
Tears ran down my face from the physical reaction my body was having. I refused to acknowledge it and kept staring at my laptop screen in silence. It took forever for my body to go back to normal. Some time later, I told my mother what happened and it freaked her out because she said she's heard the murmuring as well. I've always hated that house.
28. The Long And Winding Stairs
My grandmother was a real estate agent in Rhode Island. I was staying with her one summer and she had to take me along to see a potential listing. It was a very strange house because it was circular. All the rooms went along the outside and connected to each other, and there was a center part with a little garden that was open to the sky.
She went up to the second story, and I stayed downstairs because I wanted to walk around the loop one time. The problem started when I had walked a full loop but didn’t see the staircase that I had started from. I thought I must be confused, so I kept going to the next room. And I still couldn’t find them. At this point, I started to panic.
So I began running around the house as fast as possible, checking every room for stairs. And there weren’t any. Finally, I sat down by the front door and started crying. A little while later, my grandmother ran into the entryway room looking just as panicked as I had been. She started asking where I was hiding and why I was hiding and why I had not answered her calling out to me.
I never heard her calling out to me at all. Actually, the house seemed so still and quiet while I was sitting there that I was sure she had forgotten and left me there. We went home and didn’t talk about it really. Then, like 15 years later, I brought it up to my mom and asked if she knew anything or whether this was all just a crazy childhood nightmare that I’m remembering?
She told me she remembered it clearly, because my grandmother had called her and was absolutely spooked because she couldn’t explain what had happened and she thought she had lost me or that I had been taken by someone while she was distracted. She had apparently been looking for me for a while. I still don’t understand what happened really, because the house wasn’t even large or confusing to navigate.
I still get chills when I think about it.
29. Living Statues
When I was a kid, if someone knocked on the door, we were not allowed to move or speak until Mom decided that yes, we were home and would accept company over. Didn't realize how weird that was until my friend came over and seemed surprised when someone knocked on the door, and I covered her mouth and pulled her away from the curtains.
My mom refuses to answer the door for unannounced visitors and to this day will still pretend no one is home if she doesn't feel like socializing. It's even worse when they call her cell phone and hear it ringing from within the home despite every television being on mute and every light in the house being turned off.
30. Indiana Jones’ Nightmare Bathroom
It was 1996 and a 13-year-old me was walking around the town with my mates. I needed to pee and my mate W said I could use the bathroom at his house. His house was huge. We lived in a village that was mostly two to three bed terraces and semis but this was a double-fronted, detached house in a tiny, hidden avenue and the inside was beautiful.
I reached the bathroom, shut the door, pulled down my pants and sat down. As I was peeing, a movement caught my eye. It was a bathtub full of snakes! Suffice to say, it's a good job my bottom was already over the bowl. I’m not ashamed to say that I didn't even wipe, and I almost fell down the stairs getting out of the house. I never went back.
31. From Bad To Worse
I slept over at a friend's house once, and like many sleepovers, there was no sleeping, but this wasn't for a fun reason. My friend had warned me that they had cockroaches, but never specified how bad. I figured it would be a couple scurrying out when lights were off and that would be it. Little did I know, it was much worse than that.
Wall to wall crawling cockroaches. I had to shake some off of the mat I was supposed to sleep on. Her dad told me about how they oiled the inside of their leftover pop bottles and left bits of food at the bottom to lure them in so they could get rid of them. He then kindly offered me some cotton for my nose and ears so they didn't crawl in while I was asleep.
I convinced my friend we should stay up all night watching movies, and then wait to see the sunrise outside.
32. He’s Not Bothering Anyone
Back in the 90s, a family friend's dog had passed. I ended up going over a few days later to play basketball, and the dog was laying in its usual spot, in a small bed near the TV in the living room. I said, "oh, I thought spot passed," and he said, "he did." That's when it all clicked into place. The gears started turning and the horror of it all became crystal clear.
Turns out, they left their deceased dog just laying there and they were gonna bury it that weekend when the sister came home from college. But in the meantime, they just left it laying there. It was an emaciated old chihuahua, so it's not like it was a gassy, swollen, stinking mess. More like a tiny little dog mummy, all dried out. But still, who does that?
Public Domain Pictures
33. That’s One Way To Break A Game
When I was 12 years old, I went to the house of a neighbourhood boy who I guess qualified as a friend at the time. He had an NES, which interested me, as I grew up in a Sega household. When I mentioned it, he said something pretty disturbing. "Oh, yeah," he said casually, playing with a Stretch Armstrong, "that thing. My mom beat up her boyfriend and he collapsed onto it, so it doesn't work anymore."
This was my first exposure to not just the world of adults, but the world of super messed up adults who attack each other. I just burst into tears.
Flickr, Burnt Pineapple Productions
34. This Cloud Had No Silver Lining
For months when I was like 15 to 16 years old, I would wake up and see what I can only describe as a black mist in the top right corner of my room by my door. It was always in the same spot. It was maybe three feet in diameter, and it mostly looked like smoke or mist, but whenever I looked closer, it seemed more like something was hiding inside it—something curled up, completely black, and with red eyes.
Often, I saw it in sleep paralysis, but sometimes I saw it completely awake. I never told my family about this, but it was terrifying. A few years later, I was with my mom talking about all sorts of random things. We got on the topic of psychics, and she mentioned that when she was younger, she went to a party, and a friend introduced her to a woman who claimed to be a psychic.
According to my mom, this psychic went wide-eyed when she shook my mom's hand and absolutely freaked out. She looked at my mom's friend and said she had to leave the party; she wouldn’t stay in the house with my mom. The psychic then looked at my mom and told her something unsettling. She said, “You have something following you. There’s a black cloud above your head.” Then she left the party.
My mom never thought much of it; she wrote the psychic off as a rude woman at the party who was either crazy or on drugs. Now, fast-forward a few more years: I’m 24, my mom still lives in the same house, and she has a new daughter as well (my little sister is about three years old). My little sister’s bedroom is my old bedroom.
I’m there talking to my mom and one of her friends, and my mom casually turns to me and asks, “Hey, didn’t you used to have lots of nightmares when you lived here?” I answered, “Yeah, to say the least.” She continued, “Strange thing, I think your sister is having them now, too.” I responded with, “What do you mean?” What my mom said next shook me to my very core.
“Well, she keeps telling me about her imaginary friend that is a black rain cloud in her room that talks to her at night.” I absolutely freaking froze and felt sheer panic. I never told my family the details of what I saw. I looked at my mom and hardly choked out the question, “Did she say where the cloud is?”
“Yeah, actually, it’s always in the top right corner of the room by the door.”
35. That’s Really Messed Up
I was over at my friend's house when we were in the ninth grade. His little brother said his imaginary friend was standing behind us and that she hated us a lot. Later on, everyone was outside playing football, and I ran back inside to grab my stuff because my mom was there to pick me up. They had a super long hallway with their rooms across from each other at the end.
His brother had JUST gotten in trouble for having a messy room, which he blamed on his imaginary friend. As I'm walking back down the hallway, I hear beating on all of the walls in the hallway, and then things went ballistic in his room. I peeked inside, and there was stuff EVERYWHERE. I sprinted out of the house and saw that everyone was still outside, and I started freaking out.
They said they typically had their house blessed once a year by their priest but skipped that year because they took a trip to Disneyland. It took me months to go back over, and when I did, my friend pulled out a Ouija board. I just packed my stuff up and left. I haven't been back since, and I haven't spoken to him since high school.
36. Bar Hopper
We were 13. Normally I would always stay at my friend's place but this time we stayed at mine. My parents took us to the bar which was something people did at the time. My father decided to drink too much, and my friend and I were stuck in the bar from 8 pm until 1 am. It was getting pretty uncomfortable, so when my father got up to use the bathroom, my mom grabbed us and we ran out to the van.
He came out screaming and banging on the van. When we got home, we got some dinner and my mom went to bed. My friend and I decided to watch a movie in the living room, which I was never allowed to use. An hour later my dad showed up, just sat on the couch, and fell asleep an hour later. So we snuck off to my room and my friend’s parents picked us up to stay at his place. That was the last time I ever had a friend sleepover.
Pexels
37. Like a Bat Outta...
There were about six or seven of us at a friend's house. It was a hot summer night, so we’re camping outside in sleeping bags. It’s pretty late and we’ve been messing around with each other all night, tossing little pebbles and running around dragging each other about in sleeping bags. Just as I was dozing off, I felt a nudge, but waved it off.
Then, I felt a nudge inside of my sleeping bag and immediately heard a squeaky screech. I screamed and everyone immediately panicked with me. I’m zipped up in a mummy-style sleeping bag so when I stand whatever is screeching is still wrapped in it with me. A quick-witted kid ran over and helped shake me out of the bag and a huge bat flew out. Thank goodness, it didn’t bite me.
38. The Undiscovered Photographer
A few years ago, I was home alone with my sister and my parents and siblings went out for about six hours. we were sitting at the TV watching Dr. Phil when we heard a lock being fiddled with. All our doors were locked, so I was confused. I checked the house and found nothing. The next night, I was in my room walking around in booty shorts and a sports bra.
I heard a click sound. I thought nothing of it and laid on my bed facing the window. Then, I heard another click. I put on a t-shirt and I went to my window to slam it shut. When I glanced outside anxiously, I froze with horror at what I saw. A guy with a camera was hiding and he bolted. I screamed for my dad and he went after the guy. Eventually, the dude was caught.
It turns out he had multiple pictures of me over the course of two months of me sleeping, showering, and changing along with multiple pictures of other underage girls. So of course, he was incarcerated. That was by far the creepiest experience. I'm 17 now and I still get a pit in my stomach when I tell the story and I always feel watched
39. Heavy Handed Hijinks
I went to a sleepover for my mother's friend's daughter. I didn't know anyone else there and was pretty shy, but I was down for junk food and silly movies. In the middle of the night, one of the other kids started freaking out and having an anger or anxiety attack. She was screaming about how everyone hated her and was throwing stuff everywhere.
I stood up and immediately got hit in the nose by a heavy dinner plate that she had chucked like a frisbee. I fell backwards, hit my head on the window frame, and passed out. I underplayed how bad it had been to my parents because I didn't want them to freak out, so it was a week or so before my mom was concerned enough that my nose still hurt to take me to the doctor.
A month later it still hurt, so I fessed up to how bad the sleepover had been. My mom took me to a second doctor, who within minutes had referred me to get x-rays and see the plastics team. They found that the bridge of my nose had shattered into pieces and cracked vertically down the middle. The impact had spread pieces into places they shouldn't be, and because of the delay in treatment, it had started healing like that.
40. A Very Stylish Ghost
When I was growing up, I lived in a small bungalow with my parents. My room was directly beside my parents’ room. I had a fish tank with a light and used it as a sleep aid. The dim light of the tank and the bubbling sound of the filter never failed to put me at ease. One night, I woke up, and what I saw made my blood run cold. There was an outline of a man wearing a trench coat and a top hat standing beside my bed looking at me.
Naturally, I screamed as loud as I could and my parents came running into the room. They turned the light on and the man was gone. They comforted me back to sleep and that's all I remember about that night. But fast forward about three or four years. I move my room to the basement and my parents knock down the wall to make their room bigger.
Their bed was now in the same spot that mine had been in before. Over the next year or so, I would constantly wake up to screams from upstairs and hear my mom crying. She would always see the outlines of a man standing in the exact place where I had witnessed it before. They even moved their bed to attempt to put it where the figure would appear, hoping to stop it from appearing.
It still scares me to this day thinking about that house, and I'm glad I'm nowhere near there anymore.
41. An Earworm For The Eyes
All of my siblings and my cousins were having a big sleepover at my grandparents' house when my young cousin woke up me and my sister, and told us his bum was itchy. We were half-asleep and just told him to go back to bed, but he kept insisting it was really itchy and something was wrong. He pulled down his pajama bottoms. It was the most gruesome thing I’ve ever seen.
There were little white worms crawling from his bum and falling all over the place. My sister and I were horrified, and ran and got our mum, who then woke his mum. Needless to say, we all had to be treated for pinworms after that. Apparently it's highly contagious, and we likely all would have wound up like him from being in close quarters, playing all day, etc.
The image of his wormy bum is burned into my mind for all eternity.
42. More Museum Than House
When I was a kid, my friend Mario had a house where the upper floors were off limits to kids. The front door was on the upper floor, so when I came to the house, I had to immediately go down to the finished basement where the grandmother lived and the kids played. I would pass the kitchen, which was considered too dangerous for kids.
I would then pass through the living room/dining room, which was decorated like it was frozen in time for a cover of House Beautiful, complete with place settings, artistic folded napkins, and a floral centerpiece. The sofas and chairs were covered with clear plastic. The basement/rec room was a normal chaos of a kids area, though.
One day, I asked to use the bathroom, and Mario said, "there's one under the stairs," while pointing up the stairs, so I went upstairs and used that one. I was done, but couldn't find soap to wash my hands. Looking around, I smelled soap, and discovered a bowl of soaps formed like roses and seashells. I used one of those, dried my hands, and went back to the rec room.
A little while later, Mario's mom called down and asked if someone used the guest bathroom. I said I had. She called me up, and seemed very put off. She asked if I used one of the little soaps and the hand towel. I said I did. "Okay, but you are not supposed to use that bathroom, those are for guests." I replied I was a guest.
She stared at me for a few seconds and told me, in a flat tone, "I think you better go home now." So I did. Later, Mario told me I was not supposed to use that bathroom. I had used the decorative soaps and hand towels, which were for displaying only, not for using. I was eight, why would I know that? Mario told me that the upper floors were off limits, and I had violated this sacred rule. I had ruined her perfect decor, and I was not allowed back. Apparently, the parents and kids had bedrooms on the upper floors, but they were only used for sleeping.
They also had decor like shelves full of art and fancy things, but the kids were not allowed to touch them. The only place they could be kids was outside or in the rec room.
43. It’s All Fun & Games Until…
A group of us guys were over at our friend’s for his birthday, somewhere around 8-10-year-olds. We were playing Monopoly. The game had already been going on for a while and had gotten a little heated. The house rule was that if you don't realize someone is on your property before the next roll, rent is forfeited.
I roll my dice and land on a property where S had owned the Monopoly. I quickly gave my dice to the next player G and he rolled. G moves on before S realized what happened. S blew up! He started yelling and screaming about how I cheated him out of his rent. S ends up taking all of his money and walks away from the board.
G starts egging him on, saying things like: "You going to buy some fake toys with that fake money?" This infuriates S even more. It escalates into a real wrestle fight. There are five to six young boys all screaming and wrestling about "Fake Money." Now this all happened somewhere around midnight, after an evening of junk food and movie watching.
We were in the basement of the house and the parent's bedroom was immediately at the top of the stairs. The door in the stairs blows open. It’s my friend’s dad. He has his belt in his hands and booms, "If you all don't stop now, I will whip all of you!" That silences us all. We settle down and realize that we should probably be sleeping.
We all climb into our sleeping bags to try to sleep. S takes his over to the corner, with his money. G whispers, "You still going to buy those fake toys?" We all snicker. To this day, S is still so furious about that game. That was nearly 40 years ago.
44. Possessed
My first sleep over at my friend’s in middle school. His mom came in and put the “religious” channel on, which I guess helped him sleep all his life. I was on the floor in a sleeping bag and he was in a bed. I was so intrigued by the pastor I couldn’t go to sleep. But then, in the middle of the night, I got the scare of my life.
He sits up out of bed all a sudden and he screams: “I didn’t do it! It was him and it is over there!!” Multiple times. His mom runs in and basically soothes him back to sleep as he is repeating that phrase. I am on the floor stone frozen as she puts him down and leaves. He had a lot of weird sleepwalking moments, but that was my first experience with them.
45. Home Evil Home
I used to sleep over at my grandparents’ a lot when I was a teen, and even though I grew up in their home I was always afraid to sleep in their living room because I always felt a scary presence. One night I was falling asleep on their couch with my back to the room when I heard a dragging noise from right behind me that lasted several seconds.
I was alone, and it scared the absolute bejeesus out of me. It took a few minutes for me to be able to turn around, I was so scared. When I finally did, I saw that the heavy redwood coffee table had been dragged like a foot across the floor. I could see the tracks in the carpet. If it weren't for those tracks, I would have dismissed it as sleep paralysis.
The last time I went to that house was right before my grandma passed. She was in the hospital and I took her electric wheelchair back to her house. I didn't see anything, but from the moment I entered the driveway, everything felt wrong. When I did go into the house, I had a crushing, overwhelming sense that if I didn't leave now, that presence was going to hurt me, and badly.
I literally ran out the front door and didn't look back. I inherited the house and was glad to sell it. I don’t know why, but I swear it didn't like me.
46. The Wrath Of God
When I was a kid, I woke up to three women standing outside my window. I lived in the country, so I don't know how or why they were there. They were nuns. Two in red, one in white, with others behind them. I had never seen nuns before in my life. I jumped out of bed and started screaming at the old women in my window.
My mom ran in, but she didn't see them. I didn't sleep there that night, and I moved to the living room instead. The next day, there were signs of trampling through the bushes and flattened grass under my window. It's been about 25 years, and I still remember the eerie faces looking at me with anger and scrutiny. I don't know who they were.
47. Call In The Cavalry
When I was five, my family owned a huge ranch in the middle of nowhere. Around 7 pm, we were out on the property while my mom was back at the house. Suddenly, we heard the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life. I looked up in the sky and saw a huge silver-colored ball falling from the sky. I started grabbing at my dad’s shirt and pointing up.
I tried to yell, but it was SO loud he couldn’t hear me. He threw me in the truck and we raced back to the house. As we drove up, we saw my mom on the porch, shaking. We knew she had witnessed the same thing. We went inside and my parents immediately got on the phone and called the sheriff’s office.
They also called family, friends, and anyone they could think of for help. While they were on the phone with my grandpa about half an hour later, we heard another LOUD noise. Like a thousand explosions going off at the same time. We got back in the truck and started driving to the front of the ranch, still on the phone. That’s when things got truly weird.
As we got closer, we heard what sounded like large machinery at the gate. Sure enough, at the entrance of our property, we were met with two 18-wheelers and at least five black, unmarked SUVs. A man stepped out and demanded access to the property. So my parents opened the gate, they all drove in, the man got back out and told us to leave.
At this point, my mom was still talking to granddad, who heard all this happening. He very sternly told mom that we should do as they said. So we had to drive around doing nothing, questioning and panicking for over an hour. When we finally got back to our front gate, we saw all the vehicles leaving, but the 18-wheelers now had black tarps covering whatever was underneath.
That was it. We went back in the house in complete silence. We hugged each other, and went to bed. Never found a crash site, nothing left behind, no one ever contacted us, nothing.
48. Playing With Fire
A friend had bunch of us over for a sleepover for his birthday. There were 5-8 of us all around 10 years old, "camping" in a large tent in the backyard. Someone came up with the idea of putting gasoline in a 2-liter bottle and seeing how quick it'd burn, but we didn't want to set it off in the yard, so we snuck out and walked down the block.
We planted not one but three 2-liter bottles filled with gasoline and fitted with cloth rags for "fuses," lit them, and ran. Now being young and stupid, we didn't think there would be anyone driving that late at night, but of course, some poor soul drove by right as one of them went off. Luckily, the driver was a lane away, so there wasn't any damage that we could see.
So with that, we booked it back to my friend’s house and started goofing off until we heard the siren's from the fire truck. And yeah, we made sure not to tell anyone outside of that group what we did.
49. Aster
My sister had an imaginary friend when she was a little kid called Aster. She said she’d named Aster herself; she didn’t know her real name because Aster never told her. Aster was a little girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she wore a blue dress with lace on the top, but she never wore shoes. Okay. Sounds great.
Aster was pale. She was always tired. She often said her stomach hurt. Uh, okay? Aster has lines coming from her eyes. Aster's eyes are blurry. Um...Granted, it was strange, but Aster seemed like a reasonably normal imaginary friend to me. Maybe she was just a little bit weird, but hey, kids are weirdos, and they come up with weird things, right?
At least, that’s what I thought until I started reading up on our area's history, and I came across a story about a little girl who passed from typhoid a long time ago. There was a photo of the girl and her family; she was a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl that fit Aster’s exact description. And I was like, “...Hold the heck up.” So, I looked it up, and yep—lethargy and stomach aches are symptoms of typhoid. Cut to me having a mini heart attack.
My sister was a good bit older at this point, and she never brought up Aster anymore. I never showed her the photo or asked for more details about Aster because I don’t want to know, frankly. If my sister was friends with a ghost, that’s her problem because that’s some cliché horror movie stuff, and she can keep me the heck out of it, please.
50. Floating On Air
I used to have night terrors when I was around the age of eight. Apparently, it's fairly common in prepubescent boys. For those who don't know, a night terror is basically a very vivid nightmare, filled with screaming, flailing, extreme fear, and, in my case, appearing to be fully awake with my eyes open and talking. I don't remember any of these episodes, but my parents and older sister do quite well.
There was one in particular. It included the usual screaming and what not. But when my mum came in to calm me down, I was seated on the bed completely silent and in fear. I was pointing at the corner of the room. She asked what was wrong and I basically described a body floating there, as if suspended in water, and I was adamant that it was there.
51. Dirty Doesn’t Begin To Describe It
My best friend's parents never cleaned the house. All the cleaning that ever happened in that house was when the children were doing their chores, which the parents paid them for. There were crumbs, dust bunnies, stains and general dirt everywhere. There was cutlery lying in random places on the floor of the house. No one ever did laundry and there were dirty clothes piles all over the place. But that wasn't all.
They had a cat and a dog at the time so there was also a lot of hair and cat litter, as well as crumbs from their dry food all across the floors. There were three bedrooms, and this family consisted of a mom and a dad and their six children, two of which had moved out. One of the bedrooms didn't have a door because it had broken and no one bothered fixing it.
There were two bathrooms, but out of the two bathrooms, only one was functioning and the door wasn't lockable. The one that wasn't functioning, well, it was just sitting there. They could've at least turned the non bathroom into a storage or something. The beds didn't have clean sheets, and all the pillows and blankets were old and lumpy.
I hated visiting my best friend for all these reasons but she didn't seem to understand why I never wanted to come over. The few times I actually went to her house it always felt like something stuck to your socks every step you took. The floor always seemed to be moist or something and the dishes were piling up in the kitchen, despite then having a dishwasher. That house was gross. I hated it.
52. Private School Snobs
I was friends with a girl whose two-night, three-day sleepover was the talk of the summer. While at the sleepover, her mother came up to me and said, “Honey, this will be your last sleepover with us because we don’t associate ourselves with public school children.” I ate my waffles in silence the rest of breakfast and cried while packing my things that morning.
53. Nowhere to Hide
When I was around nine or ten, my friend's mom made us share a bath because we were both girls and it would save water. My friend seemed okay with it, so I didn’t make a fuss, even though internally I felt very awkward. Well, her mum ran the bath and it was just plain water. No bubble bath so I could hide under the foam.
We sat opposite ends of the bath with our knees up under our chins, awkwardly covering our bits. I was made even more uncomfortable by her snacking on a carrot and little tiny pieces of carrot falling into the bath and floating about.
54. Hiding in My Fort
When I was about 9 years old, a new kid moved onto the street and we became pretty good friends. We found ourselves playing video games way late at night, but I would always go home since I only lived a few houses down. One night he asked me to spend the night, so we built a fort in his upstairs game room using the couch cushions and blankets. Everything was fine until around 1 am.
Everyone in his house was sound asleep, except for me. I was laying there in my makeshift fort when I heard the sound of heels on tile walking down the hallway, adjacent to where we set up the forts. The sound was so distinct and loud, that to this day I could not imagine it being something else. The weird thing about it was that the floor in their house had carpet, so I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from.
I also didn’t have a phone at this time, so I was peering into the darkness through a crack in my fort when the walking sound stopped. After a moment of silence, it sounded as if it was sprinting in my direction. So I quickly hid behind the cushions when something knocked over the whole fort. This woke my friend up and he blamed me for doing it. To this day I have never gone back to his house to spend the night.
Shutterstock
55. Get A Room
Back when I was a senior in high school, I had all of my required credits so I had an early release where I got to leave school a period early. I convinced my best friend to cut her last class and come hang out with me. She wanted to go home to change before we went out, so I drove her home and we walked into her house. I'll never forget what we saw next.
As we entered, we found her dad on the family computer watching a live webcam girl and pleasuring himself. This was back when most families had one computer in a neutral area for the whole family. Considering that guy was basically my second dad, it was even worse. We just ran straight up the stairs and shouted "Hey, we're home early!"
I couldn't look him in the eyes for years after. She was understandably embarrassed but like I said, this was my second family so she just went into denial mode and it was never talked about again.
56. Sad Reality
I initially thought it was awesome that there was no furniture at my best friend's house in middle school, just mattresses on the floor and one dining room table with chairs. Nothing else. In the 1980's, a toy called a disc launcher was popular, which would shoot out a spinning piece of plastic about the size of a nickel.
No furniture or really much of anything in the apartment meant we couldn't lose the discs. In reality, it was that my friend's mom had lost her life and his father was so depressed he had trouble caring for the family. They moved regularly and had no furniture.
57. Almighty Jennifer Garner
I was hanging out with this girl at her house for the first time. Huge, lovely house that she lived in with a couple of roommates. But then I saw something truly weird. Her one roommate was apparently obsessed with the actress Jennifer Garner and above the fireplace on the mantle was this really strange Jennifer Garner shrine.
There was a giant, 5-foot tall poster of Jennifer above the mantle. There were also tons of candles, small pictures, autographs, and trinkets on the mantle itself. I don’t think it was anything too weird, but who in the world is praying to Jennifer Garner everyday?
Elektra (2005), Marvel Enterprises
58. Gut-Wrenching
My little sister had an imaginary friend called “Rhymey Guy” from the age of two to about five years old. He was half hamster, half-man, six-inches tall, and he always spoke in rhymes. Once, she randomly began freaking out in the middle of a meal, and when we asked her why, she said that Rhymey Guy had jumped into her mouth and she had swallowed him.
About an hour later, she started complaining that she hurt because “Rhymey Guy was eating her insides.” She said her stomach and chest hurt for the next week or so, and she would tell us that she was “trying to poop him out, but he kept crawling back in.” It was totally creepy, and after that incident, she told us that Rhymey Guy wasn't her friend anymore and that she was scared to go to sleep because he might crawl back inside her.
My mom had to “take him out of the room” every night to get her to go to sleep. When she was five and a half, or so, she told us that Rhymey Guy left to find “another girl to climb inside of.” The mind of a child is truly wonderful.
59. In Bed With the Bugs
I slept over at my friend’s house when I was about 12 before going on a weekend trip out of town with her family. Her mom was a hoarder. I found a weird-looking bug in my friend’s room during that first night. She nonchalantly tells me that it’s a bedbug. I barely slept, feeling all sorts of creepy crawly things and spent the rest of the trip with awful bites all over my arms. Miraculously none of the bugs came home with me.
60. Stranger in the Window
We were all hanging out in my friend's bedroom and a girl who was sitting on the floor facing the window said in a very calm voice, "I'm going to say something and you guys have to just keep looking this way. There is a man looking in the window. I'm going to go tell your dad." She stood up and walked out of the room. We were all too afraid to look. Someone then suggested we all go to the living room.
Meanwhile, the other friend had told the dad, and he took off outside with a baseball bat. We heard him yell and run outside. He was chasing the guy down the sidewalk. Her mom called for help. Law enforcement got there and her dad came back and told the officer what happened. We all slept on the floor in the living room, while her dad slept on the couch with his baseball bat.
61. More Of A Bath Family
I was at an old friend’s house years ago. I was also friends with her parents who were amazing artists and professors at a local university. I’d never gone in their family bathroom upstairs. Their house was never dirty or anything, just a really lived-in farmhouse with clutter. There were books piled everywhere but that’s fine, even interesting.
I wasn’t prepared for their bathroom though. Most of the bathroom was pretty normal, maybe a little messy. But it was their shower that caught my eye. The curtain was pulled back and I could see the whole thing. It didn’t look like it had ever been cleaned! It was so bad that I would never, under any circumstances, be willing to attempt to shower in it.
I would sooner hose myself off in the backyard. I’d rather shower at a truck stop. Disgusting. It was so bad that if you had to clean it, you’d have to start with a trowel or something to scrape the dirt and hair out.
62. A Bit Much
One time I slept over at my friend’s house and I got to borrow his sister's room to sleep in, since she was away for the weekend. It was very dark when I went to sleep, so I didn't really see anything in there. But when I woke up in the morning, I was in for a surprise. I could see that the room was completely plastered with posters and pictures of Leonardo Dicaprio.
There was not a single piece of the room that was untouched by his presence, and they were all looking at me passionately and seductively. This happened some time in 1998, so pictures of Dicaprio in a young girls room wasn't surprising at all. However, waking up to this as an 11-year-old boy was quite a weird experience.
Whenever I see a picture or video or hear the name of that guy, I can only think of this room.
63. Shut Down
I think about this pretty often. My mom and I were driving back from my grandmother's house in Chicago around dusk. While we were on one of the side streets in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, the lights in the car suddenly turned on and harmoniously got incredibly loud. I didn't know lights could make a sound like this.
They reached a boiling point and the whole car turned off. We looked outside and all the streetlights surrounding the car had blown out as well. The stoplights in front of us and a little ways away were all blinking as if the power had gone out. We were the only car in the area at the time. My mom turned the car back on and we drove away with no explanation—but it didn’t stop there.
After about 15 minutes on the highway, the whole car just turned off. We were able to pull over to the side of the road safely, and we turned it back on with no issues after that. I googled events similar to this around the time, but never came up with any answers or any other reports of this type of thing. I still don't know what caused it to this day.
64. The Last Visit
My mom said that I used to have “premonitions” when I was little, under the age of ten. My great aunt and great uncle were like grandparents to me and used to come visit in the summer from Mexico. I would miss them terribly then they would go. One year when they were leaving, I cried and cried. My mom said “Don’t worry! They’ll be back next year.”
I remember sobbing and throwing a small child fit. Apparently, I said to my mom, “No, you don’t understand! Great Uncle Tío is NEVER coming back!” And she kept trying to reassure me that they’d be back next year. I kept repeating “He’s never coming back!” I didn’t say anything about my great aunt. Sure enough, he passed within a few weeks of going back home, and he never came back.
My mom said it was really creepy, and I also later predicted my great aunt passing as well.
65. Strict House
I went to a friend of a friends house in the ninth grade and she had a beautiful home, super nice furniture and tons of snacks in sparkly containers. We were only staying for a few minutes and she was super nervous that her parents would find out, so we left quickly. That's when she told us that she wasn’t allowed to touch anything in the home without asking.
She couldn’t make a meal, turn the TV on, sit on the couch, or get a drink without asking. She said she sat in her room and read until her parents got home. If she got hungry, she would have to call her mom at work for permission to use the sink, microwave and dishes. At the time, I don’t know how I classified this information.
And not wanting to be a jerk, I shrugged it off and never mentioned it again. It was super weird. She was a good kid and I’m not sure why her parents treated her like that. I wonder what happened to her.
66. The House in the Woods
When I was eight, I had a sleepover at a friend's house who lived in the woods. They were living in a dilapidated house on the property, while their proper house was being built. Unfortunately, this house didn’t have an inside toilet, rather, a long drop out the back. Even worse was that there was a thunderstorm the night I was staying over.
The rule was that I had to use the toilet before bed, but after one look outside at the rain, thunder, and their horse standing between the door and the long drop, I decided to skip that step. I ended up wetting the bed that night and her dad wasn’t too pleased with me. I remember her brother coming home in the morning saying, “Ah you’re the one who wet the bed.” My friend also told all of our other friends at school.
67. Funny But Mean
My best friend in junior high lived with her grandmother, and granny collected dolls. She had an entire room upstairs full of them. One of them was life size and it laid on the bed in that room. It was creepy if you didn’t know what was going on in there, so naturally, anytime any other friends joined us at her house we told them it was her deceased aunt that they had taken to a taxidermist.
Then we would shove that other friend in the room with no lights on and shut the door.
68. He Was Just Hanging Around
My cousin had a friend called Monkey Man. My auntie asked him why he called his friend that, and my cousin said it was because he just hung in the corner of the room, which freaked her out. He would always wave at the window as they left the house and say Monkey Man was hanging at the window. Long story short, she did some research and discovered the houses in that neighborhood got built over mine shafts, where suicide was common.
I still feel like someone’s watching every time I walk past.
69. These Rumors Got Me Spooked!
I slept at the popular girl’s house, who lived across the road from the school. Dinner was good, we got to have ice cream afterwards, and I loved staring at the fire in her fireplace. There was a rumor at school that her older brother and sister had tried to kill a kid by pushing him into a pit at a house party. I don’t know if it was true or not, but as a kid, it was in the back of my mind.
We went to sleep at around 9:30 pm, which was quite early for me. I woke up a few hours later, sweating, with a warm pressure on my chest. I was freaked out! I couldn’t see what it was right away, then I realized it was their cat, curled up under my chin and purring. It really spooked me, so I had their mom drop me back home in the middle of the night.
Shutterstock
70. The Tag Alongs
I was in seventh grade and went to spend the night at a friend’s house. His parents told us they were going to a party and we were coming with them since they couldn’t leave us alone. By the end of the night, all of the adults were passed out, and the kids were left to fend for themselves. I slept in an empty bedroom, up against the wall in the corner.
When I woke up it was freezing because the house had no heat. There was no food in the kitchen. I was the only one up, so I just left. It took me three hours to walk home because it was so far away.
71. Super Soaker
When I was about six or so, I stayed at my friend's house and had to go to the bathroom. As I settled in front of the toilet, I realized something was wrong. I tried aiming, but I misaligned and an outburst of pee poured out. It was like an out-of-control firehose and it just went everywhere—in the bathtub, the rug, the toilet rim, and probably on the wall. I remember freaking out and just heading back as if nothing happened.
Unfortunately for my friend's mother, she found out that it had indeed happened. It haunts me to this day.
72. That’s Not Wall Art
I was about eight and sleeping over at my friend's house. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I had to go poop very urgently. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. The toilet was in the corner of the bathroom against a wall. As I approached the toilet, I turned around, and as I pulled down my pants I sprayed diarrhea all over the side of the wall and floor.
Panicked, I tried cleaning it up by dabbing it with toilet paper, but I just knew there was no way I could clean all this up. So in all my wisdom, I wiped myself up and went back to bed. In the morning I went down into the kitchen, where my friend and his Mom were sitting. She was like, "Cowboy, did something happen last night? Did you go to the bathroom?"
Again, in my infinite wisdom, I just denied it completely and asked to go home.
73. Nine Lives Weren’t Enough
I once had a sleepover birthday party with around eight girls. We're camped out in the living room gossiping, as tweens do. Slowly falling asleep. Around 3 AM, the worst howling you could imagine came from the center of our group. We wake up to find my cat, Helen, seizing on the floor and in the final throes of her life.
She's spraying pee as she contorts her body into horrifying positions. Immediately, the gaggle of girls start screaming at the top of their lungs. My parents come running downstairs, but the damage is done. They wrapped the cat up and took her away. Promised to take her to the vet in a few hours. Told us whatever we needed to hear to get us to calm down.
Helen didn't need a vet. She needed a hole in the ground. So, yeah. I literally lost my cat in the middle of my birthday sleepover.
74. Foolish Games
At a sleepover, this one friend introduced my sisters and I to a fun—and completely twisted—little game she liked to play. For the game, you take several deep breaths/hyperventilate and hold your breath until you pass out. Whoever fakes it had to sleep alone. Needless to say, my mom was absolutely furious when she found us all unconscious in different areas of the bedroom.
75. Walking On Broken Glass
My best friend was sleeping over one weekend when we were about 11 or 12 years old. We were hanging out in my room, with me on my bed and her on a mattress between my bed and the window. Out of absolutely nowhere, we hear a bang and my wall-length window totally shatters. Glass flies clean across the room, and we are both covered.
We both start losing our minds and run out of the room, covered in blood and cutting our feet up as we run. My dad flies into action mode and locks us in the pantry, grabs a turkey carver, and runs into the backyard to look for anyone who may have been behind the window smashing. There was no one, so he calls law enforcement and tends to our injuries.
When law enforcement arrives, they search my room for what could’ve caused it and discover a HUGE solid ball bearing, presumably from a truck. It had landed less than 20cm from where my friend's foot had been. If it had hit one of us it could have maimed us or worse. There are no roads or anything near us and my room faced into the back fence.
To this day, we still have no clue where it came from, or how it was traveling at such a speed it cleared possibly multiple fences and smashed a window. My mum had been out getting us happy meals while this whole ordeal went on, so she was more than a little shocked when she arrived home.
76. Shifting The Blame
It didn’t happen during the night of the sleepover, it happened the morning after. I was at a friend’s house when I was maybe 8 or 9. I had gone to the bathroom for a quick number one and gone back out. Nothing strange. Then my friend goes in after me and comes back out. About ten minutes later, I heard a bloodcurdling scream.
His mom comes storming out of the bathroom and screams at me. At first, I don’t understand what it’s about, but then she points me to the bathroom where there’s a big puddle of pee on the floor. She made me clean up her son’s mess, because he’d told her I’d done it. Needless to say, I didn’t really speak to my friend after that. It was an awkward breakfast.
77. Didn’t Make the Cut
I grew up with a girl a couple of doors down, who I considered to be one of my best friends. When we were about 10 or 11, she had a birthday party sleepover, and I was invited along with six other girls. We played games, did our hair, watched movies, and sang karaoke. Toward the end of the night, she told me, in front of all the other girls, that I couldn't sleep over because she could only have six friends there.
It was something she hadn't mentioned until that point. I was crushed, but I packed up my sleeping bag and all the stuff I'd brought over and prepared to walk home. But I didn't even realize how bad it was yet. On my way out, I passed another girl who was arriving late to the party with all her sleepover gear in hand. I walked home in the dark and didn't tell my mother what had happened. I played Monopoly by myself and pretended everyone else was there with me. My friend never apologized and I never said anything about it.
Shutterstock
78. Tiger Mom Torment
It began on Friday afternoon after school when I was in middle school. My parents weren't available to take me, so my friend’s mom, who is a Tiger Mom, and who I had never met before, picked me up. We had to go pick up her younger daughter from school, and the mom told me she had to speak to the principal. The mom told me that I was not to speak, move, or even breathe too loudly.
She told me to be quiet, or that she was taking me home. She snapped at me again in the car on the way to the house because I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to be quiet the entire time. My friend and the other girl were at the house by the time the world's most awkwardly silent car ride finally ended. Tiger Mom glared daggers upon our very mild greeting to each other and I only saw her once the rest of the evening.
My friend was constantly looking over her shoulder and trying to maintain our teenage fun through whispers, as we were walking on eggshells. It was more stressful than fun, so I was relieved when it was time to lock ourselves in the room for the night, where we were a little freer to talk and relax—or so I thought.
My friend got a few sharp texts from her mom telling her to keep us quiet. How she even heard us, I don't know. She was across their large house and downstairs. We were ridiculously quiet for three teenagers having a sleepover. The next morning, my parents were ordered to pick me up as early as possible. I was so stressed out by Tiger Mom, I was happy to leave without breakfast.
Pexels
79. Locked up for the Night
One night I stayed over at my friend's house, and his dad, who was an alcoholic, was really angry and got angrier as he drank more. We could hear him upstairs swearing and banging stuff around, and stomping on the floor. After a while, he came downstairs and started yelling at my friend for something he did wrong. A few seconds later, he pushed my friend across the room hard. My friend looked like he was hurt badly.
Then his dad came charging over and dragged me towards the hallway closet and threw me in there. He told me to keep my mouth shut and to let this be a lesson for hanging around his son. A few hours later, the noise stopped. I tried escaping but somehow he locked the door and I didn't want to bang on it because I thought he was going to hurt me. I just sat there crying for what felt like forever.
Eventually, the door opened and it was my friend telling me to hurry up and leave. Luckily I didn't have far to go to get home.
80. 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.
81. Believe It Or Not
I was in a car with my grandparents on our way back home from a road trip. I was casually watching random cars go by on the opposite side of the highway and whatnot, and then suddenly in my peripherals, I saw something that caught my attention...It was an RV/mobile home and it was literally ROLLING over and over sideways.
It must have rolled two or three times and then it came to a stop, upright, on its four wheels. I kind of gasped and tried to describe what I saw to my grandfather, but he didn't really pay much attention to me. I remember my grandmother looking back through the back window and saying, "It looks fine." I guess they didn't believe me. They didn't even slow down. I have no idea how it happened, what happened to the people, or anything. I think about it every few months.
Pexels
82. When One Door Closes
Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never believed in ghosts. To help you understand the situation fully, you should know that I lived in a condo with a front door inside of a building. It was essentially an empty hall, so everything echoed in that area. About a month after my dad passed, I dealt with my first ever “paranormal” experience.
I’m sitting in my living room, the only one awake, when I hear the front door SLAM open. I got up to check what happened and saw that the deadbolt was still in the locked position and the door was wide open. No one had come in or left. It was just...open. Every time I think back to it, I can’t explain it. No wind in our empty hall of doors, no people in sight, there was nothing.
83. Lace To The Finish
The shoelace. I woke up one morning and the shoelace from one of my sneakers had completely vanished. Just on one shoe. The lace on the other shoe was still there. I do not ever remove the laces of my shoes. The shoes were right beside me by my bed all night. I have always, always been a ridiculously light sleeper. The slightest sounds wake me up.
Nothing woke me that night. Moreover, the door was closed to my room, the floorboards creaked whenever anyone stepped on them, and the room was small. I 100% would have noticed someone coming in. Nothing else was disturbed in the entire house. Nothing had been moved or taken. No signs of forced entry.
My mum noticed nothing all night. She also has no sense of humor. There was nobody in the house aside from me and her, and nobody but us had the keys. We didn't have mice, and there were no traces of the missing lace anyway. There is absolutely no way that the shoelace could have gone missing. It was the weirdest thing I had ever experienced.
My mum remembers the incident well. But as soon as I mention it, she immediately doesn't want to talk about it because it freaks her out. I guess I can’t blame her for that. I am convinced that either somebody broke into the house and did NOTHING except take a single shoelace, or the house was haunted and a ghost took it.
84. Knowledge That Will Come in Handy
I distinctly remember sitting in the front seat of a van with one of my mother’s acquaintances whilst she went to collect something. The guy told me in detail about cutting up, cooking, and eating human beings. He said that palms were a delicacy you could fry up like bacon. It only occurred to me as an adult that either I imagined it, he was lying, or he was a crazy person.
Unsplash
85. Window Shopping
According to my parents, when I was a young kid, I would frequently cry at night because the "man in the window" was scaring me. My room was on the second floor. Also, my mom once saw him too. I wish I could remember what I saw more clearly so I could form an opinion on what it might have been, but I was too young at the time. Either way, it’s some pretty spooky stuff!
86. The Moor The Merrier
My older sister just told me about this. When I was about two years old, we were driving through the Yorkshire Moors. I pointed out of the window and said “There are deceased children buried up there.” Those who know their history know that this is true, but I have no idea how I could have known that as a toddler. My dad confirmed this story a few years ago.
Apparently, he almost pooped himself when it happened, because it was late at night and the car was on its way out after a 200-mile journey from Scotland.
87. Jack's Shoes
Most of my extended family live around the same area, so we have lots of gatherings. For the backstory, one of my uncles (let's call him Steve) lost a childhood friend when he was seven. Steve and his friend (let’s call him Jack) were having a playdate one afternoon and got a bit dirty in some mud. So, Steve’s mother gave Jack a pair of Steve’s shoes to borrow.
When Jack’s father came to pick him up after the playdate, they forgot to take Jack’s shoes back, and Jack accidentally got into the car while still wearing the shoes he’d borrowed from Steve. Tragically, the father and Jack got into a terrible car crash on the way home, and seven-year-old Jack passed. I’m not sure why, but the family had him buried in the shoes he had borrowed from Steve.
Fast-forward 30 years to a family gathering in 2010. My six-year-old cousin Sara is playing alone with some toys in a quieter room of the house. My Uncle Steve comes up to her and asks her what she is playing. Sara responds, saying that she is playing with a friend. Holding back a smile, Steve asks who her imaginary friend is.
Sara continues to play while saying that she is playing with his old friend Jack and that “he is sorry he forgot to give your shoes back.” My uncle’s jaw nearly dropped. He had not talked about Jack in years, let alone tell that story to a six-year-old. No one had brought up Jack that day nor at any family gathering recently. Every time I remember this incident, I get chills.
88. Parental Guidance
Listening from the next room to my parents arguing about my father's internet history having dirty websites in it, followed by a full-on argument about their declining bedroom life, was pretty rough on me when I was 12 years old.
89. Obsessive Father
One summer, when I was about 13, a friend of mine had a girl from her school who invited us over to go swimming in her pool. We go to her place and are shown to her room to change. As I'm changing my friend suddenly whispers "What the heck?" I turn around and see a bunch of used sanitary pads lined up on this girls desk. She comes to join us in her room and my friend flat out asks her what the pads are all about. She says, very plainly, "They're for my dad so he can check that I'm not pregnant."
GettyImages
90. Her Anxieties Never Held Water
My grandmother (who lived with us) did not let me walk up and down stairs, and I was also not allowed to let shower water hit my chest. She believed that if I either fell on the stairs or did them too quickly, I would die. She also told me that if shower water pounded on my chest it would destroy my heart and it would be my fault if I had a heart attack. Both of these were enforced rules (amongst 10 million others) in my house.
She did lose one of her kids to heart problems, but the shower water thing is only an instruction for like RIGHT AFTER open heart surgery. Jesus.
91. The Sound of Absolute Silence
I wasn't allowed to make noise. If I spoke above a mumble I was being surly. If I was playing it could not be audible outside of my shut bedroom door. If I was cleaning, which I usually was, then I couldn't make noise while doing it. The consequences varied; usually being screamed at, having something thrown just past my head, or having something I valued taken away.
My brother did not have the same restrictions. He's always been an avid musician. Played video games at full volume. Cracked jokes and was generally encouraged to speak up. The only time he had the same rules was when our mother was on the phone, which was pretty often. I don't resent him for being treated better and he frequently advocated for me.
Now I have some interesting quirks. I can wash dishes in complete silence. I still leave drawers and cabinet doors slightly ajar. I sneak up on people at work by accident. If people are watching TV with me I have to remember to turn up the volume for them. There are days when I can't handle the sound of turning on the shower or running the vacuum cleaner.
I have a decimeter app on my phone and frequently check to see how much noise I'm making. I even sneeze silently. But I blast the radio in my car and through my headphones.
Yes, I'm in therapy.
92. Not A Normal Thing To Share
When I was a kid, my friend's mom used to use the toilet with the bathroom door open. Number one or number two, the door would be wide open and we could just go and have a chat like it was normal. Another time, I stayed at their house and the following morning, I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth and washing my face.
The parents saw me and asked, "have you washed your bum?" I was a bit confused, as it's not a normal thing to ask a guest. Then they said, "the flannel is there for you to wash your bum." So yeah, this family had a bum flannel that they all used to wash their buttholes with and then expected me to use it.
93. A Sweet Treat Before It Ends
When I was in kindergarten my dad would routinely show up, sign me out of class, and take me for ice cream. Best memory ever. In retrospect, my dad knew he was dying, and passed when I was 6. He routinely did stuff like this. I feel as if I missed nothing, I’m now 35.
94. Flesh Tunnel
I went to a girls' sleepover when I was in elementary school for a friend's birthday. We had a great time laughing and telling scary stories before bed. I woke up the next morning with a fever and terrible nausea. I went home and I was only getting worse. I had a huge spot on my leg right in the middle between my ankle and knee. It was hot, puffy, and red.
I went to the hospital. The doctor initially thought I was bitten by a spider, but it turned out I was suffering from a really bad staph infection. The night before, we were playing on the stairs, when I slipped and scraped my leg. The infection was spreading fast and was eating away at my flesh. I had a tunnel up to my knee cap that had to be packed with fresh gauze every day. I almost lost my leg.
95. Gut Feeling
My dad left for work, got a weird feeling, and drove back home. When he walked in, he entered a nightmare. Everyone in the house was unconscious. He had to drag or carry them all outside one by one and call the ambulance. It turns out that my mom and her entire family had severe carbon monoxide inhalation. Because he trusted his gut, they all survived.
96. Parents Can Have Sleepovers Too
I went to a giant sleepover when I was 8 or 9 for a friend's birthday. He had all his friends over and his parents had also invited some friends over as well. As the night winded down, we all went into my buddy’s room to jam some Super Smash Bros. Fast forward to about 2 AM. Most of the boys had fallen asleep, save for a few of us.
I had to go to the bathroom horribly. I was holding everything in as I was terrified of using other people's bathrooms and making a mess or smelling up the place. Eventually, I asked my friend where the bathroom was. I still don't know if I misheard him or was just stupid and forgot the minute I walked out of the room, but I somehow ended up at his parents door.
I opened it up full force—I will never, ever forgot what I saw next. I found myself staring at his mother in bed with this dude who’d been at the party, while his dad was sitting in the corner with the dude’s wife. I opened the door so quick they didn't even have time to semi-hide what they were doing. So there I was, 9 years old, frozen in place staring at his parents mid-swap with another couple.
I still see their faces to this day. The only reason I know they were swinging as I could see every single one of their faces. They all just looked at me trying to process what just happened. After a good five seconds of total silence, finally the father yelled to get out and I just shut the door. I stood there for what seemed like hours.
I finally made my way back to my friend’s room, completely forgetting about my full bowels, and just laid down. I laid there all night, wide awake, till 7 AM when my mom picked me up. I never told anyone and NEVER went to another sleepover at my friend’s house or even went inside his house again, in fear of having to see his parents and having that talk with them.
97. 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.
98. Sudden Loss
I had my first ever sleepover with my best friend in the first grade. Things at night were awesome. However, when I woke up the next morning, everyone at his house was super distant, and they called my mom to come and pick me up ASAP. I didn’t know what was going on. As it turned out, unfortunately, his father had an aneurysm that night and didn’t survive.
Shutterstock
99. It’s All A Lie
My childhood was very abnormal. I slept in a bedroom with my dad, in two separate beds, while my mom slept across the house in her own bedroom. So it was obvious that things weren’t okay, even to young me. He was gone on weekends, and until the early hours of the morning most weeknights. But I only found out the whole truth much later.
I found a text message on my dad’s phone to an unsaved number saying that he would love to be spending Christmas with his “real” family. I was 13. I just wanted to play Snake, man. Even later, an adult with a family and life of my own, I found out that my dad was openly cheating on my mom with the same woman for the duration of their 18-year marriage, and I had a half-sister who is my age.
I’m 90% sure that the text message was to that woman, but I never bothered to ask.
100. Don’t Look Down
I was in class, and the teacher was asking us how our weekends were. The quietest girl in the class started to speak, only to break down in tears. She said she was on a trip in the mountains with her mom. They stopped to stretch their legs during the drive, then looked over the cliff, only to see an overturned vehicle with an entire, deceased family scattered around it.
