There are some life experiences people just can’t forget no matter how many years pass them by. Creepy memories are often at the top of this list—for whatever reason, human minds have a strong palate for the eerie. From sinister strangers to poltergeist pets, here are some of the most spine-chilling things people have experienced.
1. Knock Knock
My mum used to start at work at three in the morning, and so she’d be up at about two having her coffee. One morning, I heard her up and went to see her. She made a joke about how she’d heard something outside and I, being in a bit of a silly mood, opened the blinds up wide as a joke and came face-to-face with something straight out of a horror film.
There was a guy just standing there, staring into the lounge room. That alone was creepy enough, but what sticks with me is the fact he didn't run or really react for what felt like an eternity. While I ran to get my old man and brother, he apparently just stood there and then slowly walked off.
2. Seeing Double
I was at my house with my dad. It was the middle of the day, and I was unemployed so I was just hanging around and doing nothing with my life. We have a wood furnace in the basement that needs to be tended to regularly. My dad was in the basement tending the fire; I was on the second floor in my bedroom. I decided to head downstairs, and as I was descending, I heard my dad ascending the basement stairs.
I forgot something in my room and immediately went back up to get it. A few moments later my dad came into my room, face white as a sheet. I asked him what was wrong, and he claimed he saw my doppelganger sprint past the doorway to the basement—the only thing was, my doppelganger had different clothes on. Neither of us could make head or tail of it.
I’m getting chills all over again just typing this out.
3. Scaredy Cat
I moved into a shared house and my housemate told me half the house had burned down and been rebuilt, and the ghost of the old man who’d perished in the fire visited them. I never had any experience of the old man but when half asleep I’d very clearly feel a cat or two jump onto my bed, settle down, and purr. But here's the thing. There was never any physical cat there.
Once in that house, I had a terrifying lucid dream in which a catlike paw was coming up from inside of my bed, clawing my thigh. It hurt so much that I thought I might be gouging myself in my sleep, but I woke up unharmed. Months later I moved out and met the landlord, who lived a few doors down, to return the keys. I said something like “must have been scary when the house burned down with the owner there, were they living here at the time?” His answer made my blood run cold.
He said, “Oh no, the owner was fine he got out. But he had about a dozen cats and several of them burnt to a crisp in the fire”. I’m pretty sure I was sharing my bed with unfriendly ghost cats.
4. Fork In The Road
There was a cemetery not too far from my house. It was tucked back into some hills, and because it was outside of the busy part of the city, I’d sometimes go there after work. I liked the quiet—it was where I’d go to think and just enjoy my own company. One night, my girlfriend at the time and I were driving to the cemetery in the middle of the night because it also had a better view of the stars.
On the way there, we saw a dog that was just standing there in the middle of the road to the cemetery. We stopped, but the dog just wouldn't move. We eventually had to move up a few feet—the dog started snarling and barking at the car, but still wouldn't move. I reversed back a bit and the dog was fine. Then I moved up again, and the same thing happened.
After we backed up, we figured that it was some kind of sign to not go to the cemetery that night. I started to do a U-turn and the dog came up to the side of the car and was barking at the window until we were moving back down the road. I've been to that cemetery dozens of times over the years, during all times of the day, and I never saw that dog again.
5. The Red Room
When I was 15, I dropped out of school, got a factory job, and moved into an apartment with a friend who did the same. After a few months, I managed to find a house for a cheap price. While talking to the owner, I learned that it was so cheap because the tenants would usually suddenly move out after only a few months of living there. Now, I was one of those people who really wasn’t scared of anything.
So, I move into the new house with my friend and we get settled. Everything is great for the first couple of months. After that, though, some unnatural stuff started happening. The chandelier in the dining room would sway as if it’d been hit by a strong wind, but all the doors and windows were closed. We didn’t think much of it at the time and just assumed it was stuff anyone would expect from an old house.
With the permission of the owner, we decide to repaint the kitchen and pantry. We moved everything out and started the painting process. We managed to finish the kitchen and get the pantry ready for painting, but I notice what looks like the outline of a door in the pantry wall where the shelves were. So, we take down the plywood and unveil a small door. We open that door and it opens to a smaller room, about 5x5.
The room has what looks like another door in the back wall. At this point, I became unnerved. I open that door and it reveals an even smaller room, about 3x3x4. The entire room is painted a creepy shade of blood red, and there’s a high chair, also painted red, bolted to the floor. I’m hit with a wave of absolute dread. We immediately close and cover that door, then close and cover up the original door.
I put the shelf back into place, and that same day, my friend and I packed up all our stuff and moved out.
6. No, We Don’t Have Any Sugar
In the late 80s, my mom was in the market for a house and finally found one. She met the lady who owned it, signed a contract, and a few days later, the lady was brutally murdered. I don’t know what my mom was thinking, but she went through with the purchase, even though they hadn’t yet caught who did it. My dad was a bad person, and my mom and dad had divorced. For years she suspected he must’ve had something to do with it and that the killer had got the wrong person.
The neighbors suspected the husband or some workers who had done some work in the house a few days earlier. But since there was no sign of forced entry, they couldn’t convict anyone. One day, a little after my mom had moved into the house, a teenage boy knocked on the door. She asked who it was, and he said he was a neighbor looking to borrow a cup of sugar.
My mom didn’t open the door and just told him she didn’t have any. 23 years later, they opened some cold cases and found the killer. It was that neighbor kid, 15 years old at the time, and he confessed he came into the house by asking the lady to borrow a cup of sugar. If my mom had opened the door, I would’ve probably lost her.
7. Catfish Catastrophe
I was 18 when I had my first long-term girlfriend. We ended up dating on and off for four years. When we first started fooling around, she clammed up and I backed off. On the car ride home, she explained that her last boyfriend was very forceful with her and that it would likely take her a while to open up. I, of course, was understanding and offered comfort—I was willing to wait.
Things seemed fine for a while, but whenever we’d have trouble, he’d creep back into the picture. This usually happened through AOL messenger. He’d talk to her, and then he’d message me threats and tell me he was going to get her back. This went on for our entire relationship. One time she called me hysterically because he’d shown up at her house and forcibly kissed her.
He was always a huge strain on our relationship until about the four-year mark, when she called me up really upset and asked if I would come over. She said she had made a big mistake. I assumed she’d cheated on me and I dreaded it was with this guy. But it was so much worse than that. When I get to her house, she explains that this old boyfriend was actually her the entire time.
I was catfished by my girlfriend for four whole years—constantly harassed and threatened in my weakest moments. It’s been 20 years since then and it still messes me up.
8. The Room That Laughed
In 1996, I was living in a northern Canadian town, working on the oil rigs as a low-level laborer. I was 20, just starting out and couch surfing, when a friend offered me a windowless basement room in his mom's house. The basement was unfinished. My friend’s mom was on disability and he and his brother ran the house. I quickly set up down there with a second-hand mattress, a little television, and a fan.
I had always considered myself a "tough" guy: I partied a lot, had fights, stupid macho stuff like that. I wasn't a squeamish young man. But after a little while of living in that room, I started hearing things. Not external groaning or banging or the house shifting or anything like that—what I was hearing was a soft, malevolent chuckling in my ear.
It sounded like someone whispering laughter. Over and over again. I thought I was going crazy. There was a bookshelf in there and I had a bunch of favorite books I packed around, and they kept falling off the shelf. I'd go up to use the bathroom upstairs and come down, and my books would be on the floor despite no one having been down there.
The laughing sound in my ear got so bad that one night I, as a big tough guy, went upstairs and asked my friend if I could sleep on the floor in his room. I remember being surprised because he didn't make fun of me. The next day he said, "Brent couldn't sleep down there either, he moved out pretty quick". Brent was his cousin—a guy I knew casually.
So I went to find him, and when we met up, he looked at me with cold eyes and said, "Yeah man, that room is haunted". I only went back in that room to move my stuff out. I ended up sharing a place in a trailer park with another buddy.
9. Uber Nightmare
This happened in India. I took an Uber at around 11 pm to get back to my house. Halfway through, the driver started taking random turns into smaller streets citing traffic. We weren't even moving towards my destination at this point. I politely asked him to follow the directions that Google was suggesting, to which he asked me to shut up. That's when I got really scared.
He then ended the trip in the Uber app but wouldn't stop the car or drop me off. Thankfully I had pepper spray with me—I'm a guy, and my friends used to laugh about how I always carry that thing everywhere—and started spraying in his direction. He crashed the car and I ran out. Here’s what I still think about...Uber takes away the SOS option after the driver ends the trip.
The driver knows where you live, so even if you take any real action, they could still harm you. The worst part was no one really cared or took me seriously. When I told my parents or my friends, they always found a way to somehow pin the blame on me. Maybe I was rude to him? Maybe I overreacted? My experience helped me understand what millions of women (and men) go through after much more serious trauma.
10. Scared Of The Dark
When I was little, I was sleeping over at my friend's house. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, which was located at the dark end of the hallway away from her room. When I stepped out of the bathroom, her older brother was standing outside the door, in the dark. He never said a word—he just walked up to me silently and put his hands around my neck.
Someone stirred and he dropped his hands. I immediately called my mom and left without even saying anything. My friend never believed me, and I never went back.
11. How To Summon A Demon
My kid is eight now. A few months ago, she told me she wanted to summon a demon. I briefly thought about sending her to an orphanage at that moment, but then she said not to worry, and told me this: “I just want to be its friend. I think maybe demons just take other people’s souls because they’re lonely. If I can make one my friend, maybe he won’t have to do that anymore”.
I wasn’t too sure what to make of that. But I commended her kind heart, and told her I don’t have time to deal with that type of social experiment if it goes awry. If I threw her out (or donated her), my life would be far less interesting.
12. Never Talk To Strangers
When I was 16, I went to Tampa with a friend. We were staying in a rundown hotel with a pool. That evening we decided to go take a dip. Everything was fine, it was just us at the pool and a table of adults with a little boy. We were on the opposite side of the pool when the little boy ran over to us and started chatting. It was pretty evident that the kid was lonely and the adults weren’t paying any attention to him.
The kid was young—probably around seven years old. I talked to him and didn’t think anything of it. He asked us if we were going to the theme park there (we were) and asked how long we’d been in town. Then out of nowhere, he asks us if we like vodka. It hit me as weird...I’m not sure I even knew what that was at age seven. I said no, we don’t drink.
He then told us that his parents let him have a few sips of their drinks and they would let us drink if we went back to their room. This is when I got really creeped out. Me and my friend got out of there real fast and ran back to our rooms. I’m not sure if the kid was just weird, but I felt like the people at the table (the kid’s parents) were trying to lure us to their room using their child. Very scary.
Max Pixel
13. We Need An Exorcist
When my grandparents passed, my family moved into their house to help take care of my uncle, who had special needs and had lived there his whole life. I remember not looking forward to it. I got a lot of creepy vibes in that house and had several nightmares while living there. One evening, I had a horribly realistic nightmare that made me not want to sleep for weeks out of fear of seeing the same thing again.
In the nightmare, I’d seen the scariest demon smiling at me with the blackest eyes: it had hundreds of razor-sharp teeth curled into a smile, and strange cracked white skin, almost like bone. The demon somehow conveyed to me that he was going to hurt me just by smiling at me. I did not tell my family about this dream. My uncle and I didn’t get along, so I rarely spoke to him unless completely necessary.
The next day after that nightmare, he asked me if I still had this stupid phone application for reading EMFs. I’d downloaded the application a few weeks prior because the house was creepy and I wanted to see if I could pick up any messages from ghosts or demons in the home. I told him I still had it, and asked why. His response shook me to my core.
He said, "Oh, I was just wondering because last night I saw something standing in my doorway". He then proceeded to describe the exact demon from my nightmare. I was so freaked out I don't even think I properly responded to him. I told my family about this, and they agreed that something was in the house. None of us slept well the rest of our time there.
Luckily, we didn't live in that house for very long before selling it. I still think about that demon from my dream sometimes and hope I never encounter that smile again. There’s also no way my uncle could've known what I dreamt, because like I said, I didn't tell my family about the dream. I fully believe that he saw the same demon in person that I saw in my nightmare.
14. Tinder Trouble
I briefly had a stalker in college. I’d met him on Tinder and went on one awful date where he told me he had in fact lied about his name and age. Naturally, I got freaked out and ended the date immediately. I went home and thought nothing of it. A couple of days later, I get a call from a roommate saying a guy dropped something off for me at 8 am.
This dude lived in central New Jersey, and I went to college in NYC...He made the trip out to give me a well-used hard copy of an album I had mentioned liking, apparently his “favorite album from his personal collection". But that wasn't the worst part. He also included an inappropriate drawing of us and a very long letter, the gist of which was “if I can’t have you no one can”.
After class that day, I saw him waiting outside my car in the university parking lot. I refused to go anywhere near him and reported him to the school. He kept texting me and I kept blocking him. He must’ve made at least 15 new social media accounts before he got the idea. I’m still scared of ever going to central Jersey because I’m scared I’ll run into him and he’ll follow me home.
15. Runway Turned Runaway
When I was 13, I started to pursue modeling. My mom drove me to a Seventeen magazine contest in Atlanta, Georgia, where lots of girls walked a runway to compete for a chance to be in the magazine. I was chosen as a finalist and was super excited! While I walked the runway, a man kept snapping photos of me and I assumed he worked for the magazine.
In the huge crowds of mostly moms and wannabe models, I got separated from my mother. And that's when the worst happened. I was quickly approached by the bearded man taking photos. He said, "You're really pretty. You know, with the right photographer you could really go places in the modeling world. I freelance and work with Seventeen magazine too. My portfolio is in my car...I'd like to show it to you".
Being a naive, small-town girl, I said yes and was in the parking lot, walking with him to his car, when I suddenly got a terrible feeling. I said, “Oh wait, let me go get my dad (who wasn't there that day), he'll want to see these too!” and took off running back into the mall. When I was inside the mall door, I looked back and saw that he’d ran after me a little, but had stopped.
A couple of weeks later I saw him on the news. His name was Christopher Wilder. This was the last year the magazine held these in-person contests.
16. Stranger Danger
When I was around eight years old, I lived in a nice, quiet neighborhood and would frequently take walks around the block, sometimes alone, sometimes with my mother. One evening before sunset, my best friend and I decided to go for a walk together. We were about halfway through when we were approached by an older man who was walking with two dogs.
He was panting and seemed frantic, and he immediately asked us if we knew whose dogs they were. Both of us said no and kept walking, trying to get home as quickly as possible because his presence alone gave us goosebumps. But we weren't rid of him yet. Even though we were walking away quickly, he followed us and asked us to help him find out whose dogs they were.
He wanted us to go knocking on all the neighbors’ doors to ask. We continued to say no and picked up our pace, which he then matched and continued following us, shouting “Let’s check this house! Help me find their owners!” At this point, we sprinted back home. He ran behind us for a bit but quickly got tired. The memory of him creeps me out to this day.
I have no idea if he was just somewhat socially challenged and didn’t understand that two eight-year-old girls are not the people to ask for help, or if he was hoping we would knock on that door (which I now suspect was his house) and then push us in and do who knows what. I’m happy our instincts told us to go home.
17. Scritch Scratch
When I was a kid, I heard constant scratching from the wall behind my bed. We had no idea what it was, but it kept me up at night. Being a kid, I had an active imagination and worried it could be any number of things. Was someone trying to break into my room? Was my room haunted by an evil ghost? As it turns out, we had a whole family of raccoons living in our attic, and they were making the scratching sounds.
18. An Eerie Desert Night
I was camping in the Simpson desert on a multi-day trip. We hadn’t planned on stopping, but it was getting late and one of the trailers had blown a tire, so we decided to repair it and then call it a day. Because the area was so remote, there weren’t any signs around, but our map told us we were on military grounds. We all had the eerie feeling we shouldn’t have been there, but we were exhausted and needed to rest.
After dinner, we were all stargazing. It was fantastic: there were so many meteorites and satellites whizzing around. I remember watching one satellite move very slowly...much slower than the rest. Then I noticed another, not far from that first satellite, moving very slowly in the same direction. I pointed it out to the group, and we were all watching these two slow satellites almost follow each other.
Then the first one just made this hard right turn, and we were all like, “What was that?” Then the one behind it did the same thing. And they continued to follow each other before both turned again. It really messed with me. I’m not one to put much heed into conspiracies or aliens, but I had no other explanation for it at the time, and it was so bizarre. I still have no idea what it could’ve been.
19. Do You Even Go Here?
I was at an 80s-themed internal work party at a fancy hotel in a different state. I started talking to some dude randomly—I barely knew anyone there, so I was trying really hard to network. He tells me he doesn't work for my company. Okay, no worries, I make a joke about free food. He stares me straight in the eye and picks up one of my french fries off my plate, dips it in ketchup, and eats it without saying a word.
I freaked out and dropped the food in the trash and just walked out of the room. I decided to ignore him and not think about it too much. A few minutes later, there he is, staring at me. I change rooms again; I'm short so I hid behind people and pretended to talk to people I half recognized from my home office. He keeps following me. I finally got the courage to approach a woman I’d seen around the office before.
When I asked if the party had any kind of security, she immediately asked if it was about the dude in the blue jacket and white hat. Apparently, she'd noticed him staring at me creepily, so I didn't have to try and convince anyone. Security took him away and everyone moved on, but I was scared and paranoid for the rest of the business trip.
20. Rescued By The Minivan
When I was about 10, I was walking around the neighborhood with a few girls that were a couple of years older than me. I didn’t know them very well. In my mind, they were the neighborhood cool girls and I was the tagalong. After a while, we noticed a car slow down behind us, and the driver was staring hard. We moved a little faster and he kept pace, so we took off running.
It was a huge neighborhood and he was crazily persistent. At one point, he even threw the car in park and started to get out. Thankfully we were faster. We dipped through shortcuts and ran through yards. To my adrenaline-fueled child's mind, we ran for an eternity. We finally got to one girl's house, but she lived with her grandmother who had a strict one-friend-allowed-in-the-house policy.
This was apparently regardless of an attempted kidnapping. Two girls went inside, and I and two other girls had to get to the other side of the neighborhood. We had gotten a couple of streets over when we saw him again and took off running. Just as I was coming to terms with possibly never seeing my family again, one of the other girls waved down a minivan, and it was her mom.
She drove me home, and I got grounded for taking a ride with a stranger. My mom still doesn't believe me to this day.
21. You Don’t Belong Here
My dad was a workaholic and never went on vacations with us. So every year it was just me, my mom, and my two sisters. One year we rented a little cabin at Lake of the Ozarks. A storm rolled in one night and in the flashes of lightning you could just make out an old lady standing out in the storm watching our little cabin. My mom got more and more freaked out as time passed and the lady just stood there, hair blowing in the wind staring at us.
Mom finally got the nerve to call out to her "Go away! You don't belong here". But she wouldn't budge. The next morning, the sun comes up and she's still standing there! And that's when it finally dawned on us. The creepy old lady was just a mop draped over a clothesline.
22. Caught Red-Handed
When I was in my early secondary school years, my mum asked me to take a bag of sugar over to my elderly neighbor’s house as she’d lent us some sugar the previous weekend. Being a bit bratty, I didn’t want to take it as I didn’t feel like interacting with anyone...but I took it anyway. I stood at my neighbor’s front door (it had a timber frame and there was frosted glass panel in the middle) and knocked.
I saw her walking down the hallway to the door and decided that I really didn’t feel like chatting, so I put the bag of sugar on the doorstep and legged it back to my house. Obviously, I didn’t say anything to my mum about leaving without talking to the neighbor. Three days later, my neighbor pops round to our house and asks if we noticed anything strange around her house in the last couple of days.
Naturally, my mum says, “Oh, my daughter went and dropped the sugar off to you, I thought you’d have spoken then”. I was caught red-handed and had to explain that I’d rudely dropped the sugar at the front and left. My mum didn’t have time to get mad because our neighbor goes on to explain that three days ago, her alarm was triggered and her house was robbed.
She had been on the interstate and forgot to let us know. So it wasn’t her walking down the hallway to the front door but the people burgling her home...sometimes your intuition speaks to you in weird ways. That day, I just didn’t want to talk to anyone and I still think about how lucky I am that I bailed when I saw that figure walking down the hallway.
23. Unwelcome Paparazzi
When I was ten, I went trick-or-treating with my best friend. It was just two of us, and we were both girls. I was dressed as a punk rocker and was wearing a mini skirt. I remember walking down the sidewalk and passing a car parked on the street. I’m not sure what caught our attention, but we both noticed the man in the car taking pictures of us. We were excited since we thought we might be in the newspaper. NOPE.
We were stupid kids, and this just seemed logical—why else would a random stranger take pictures of two ten-year-old girls while he was hiding out in his car on a night when children were known to be everywhere without adult supervision? But then we noticed the car was following us very slowly. We were far from our own homes, but we were only a few blocks away from my friend’s grandpa’s house, so we headed there and went inside.
We told her grandpa about it. We looked out the window and the car was parked right outside of his house with the man still sitting in it. After about 15 minutes of checking on and off, the car had left and her grandpa told us it was safe to go trick-or-treating again, so we did. As a mom of two girls now, I’m shocked that we were allowed to go out trick-or-treating alone all night at that age, and that we told her grandpa about what happened, and her grandpa didn’t call anyone! The 80s were so weird.
24. Remembrance
A few years ago, I was wondering about a guy I used to work with, who was painfully shy. I was the only person he talked to outside of his family. Glancing at the clock, I felt guilty that I’d not kept in touch since I left that job ten years before. I have no idea why he crossed my mind...but when I read the obituaries that day, I saw that he had passed.
His burial was at the exact moment that he came into my mind.
25. Mulch Madness
I was around eight or nine years old. I was walking to school and this older guy in his mid-sixties was going in the other direction. I remember thinking he looked weird because he was wearing sunglasses even though it was early and fairly dim outside. He was also wearing a long black trench coat even though it wasn’t cold. I stepped off the sidewalk to go around him because even my child brain registered that he wasn’t someone I wanted to allow close to me. Turns out I was right.
This whacko starts kicking leaves and throwing mulch at me from a nearby garden. I was too freaked out to register what he was shouting but he was grunting out something. I sprinted for about two blocks before I got to the crossing guard in front of my school. I didn’t want to tell anybody about it, but it kept haunting me for the rest of the day until I finally told my parents.
We filed a report with the authorities. I still have no idea what happened to him.
26. Just In Time
When I was 11, I was at softball practice and for whatever reason practice ended early. I didn’t have a cellphone to call my grandpa and let him know, so I had to wait alone at the park for around half an hour. I remember sitting on the swings when an adult man, in his 30s or 40s, came and sat down next to me. He asked if he knew me and I said no.
He told me that I must just have “one of those pretty faces” that feel recognizable to anybody. Eventually, he said that he had his car with him and could drive me home “so my grandparents didn’t have to worry about me”. Being 11, I didn’t think anything of this and started getting into his car. Luckily, my grandpa showed up just in time and I jumped out to go meet him.
The stranger sped off immediately—I often find myself thinking about what would’ve happened to me if my grandpa hadn’t shown up when he did.
27. Stakeout
When we were house shopping, we went to this big house surrounded by pretty dense landscaping in the front. There were mid-thigh bushes and such. We met our realtor and walked through the house for a solid hour or so, then met with them on the front porch and talked a bit about what we were looking for. We had parked near some bushes and the realtor (a petite female) had parked in the driveway.
My husband and I got back in the car and continued to chat while the realtor left. Suddenly, about six feet away from the passenger door, a man stood up out of the bushes and walked into the house. He didn’t look at us or give any indication he saw us. We called the realtor, who in turn called the owners, who said it was their son and “he doesn’t really want us to sell..."
We ended up not buying that house and it went off the market shortly after. I still wonder what in the world he was doing, hiding in the bushes!
28. A D&D Horror Story
My friend hosted a D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) game weekly for the five of us. One game night, he got a call from the authorities saying the ex was missing and he told them he didn’t know anything about it. They found her car later that same night. They’d checked a couple of security cameras and used her cellphone pings and his truck GPS to tie it all together. He'd planned the whole thing and taken her life. He’s been behind bars ever since.
I think about it daily having sat across a table from him every week for seven years. He threatened me with a pipe wrench once.
29. In The Boneyard
One time, I was out hunting in northern British Columbia on my own. I'm on my quad going down an old trail, and I come to the edge of a pond. I look down and there's a bone. This wasn’t unusual in and of itself. But I looked a bit further, and there was a deer skull there, too. That was weird—but then it got weirder. I keep looking and there's bone set after bone set.
I counted at least 20 separate sets, along with two fresh carcasses. It's completely silent. I was in the middle of this boneyard, thinking I should get out of there as soon as possible, and I suddenly get the feeling that someone is watching me. I sit and wait a few minutes, but there's nothing. It was the eeriest feeling. I later found out it was most likely a cougar kill site and given the sheer number of bones, the cougar must’ve been big and effective.
30. Because I Could Not Stop For Death
I used to take different routes home from work, where I worked the third shift as a cashier/stocker. One night, on one of those routes, I thought that I saw the Grim Reaper in a field. It just stood there, leaning on the scythe and watching me drive slowly past. I was very freaked out. So much so that as soon as I got home, I told my best friend about it, just in case something was about to happen to me.
A couple of weeks later, I was taking that route home again and fell asleep while driving. I ended up almost dying in a head-on collision with a dump truck. After I came out of a week-long coma (induced after 16 hours of surgery to save my limbs and life), my buddy asked me if the route I took home was the same one I saw the Grim Reaper on. It was.
Even in my half-conscious state, the question freaked me out.
31. A Dream Visit
My dad (who I was close to) passed suddenly. COVID had just started so we couldn’t have a proper funeral. Instead, we ordered cremation and waited. Life was a blur, so I had no grasp on the cremation timeline. I was barely functioning as it was. For five days, my dreams were silent like a black hole. Then one night, I had a dream about my dad—it was so vivid that when I woke up, I was so sure it was real.
In my dream, I’d sat up in bed as he called me on the phone to ask where my mom (his wife of a half century) was. He was upset that he couldn’t find her. “WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER?!” he demanded. She had been at my house since the night he passed...so I said, “Oh she’s in the girls’ bedroom”. Then dream-me got up and walked down the hall to find her.
As I turned the corner, my dad was standing at her door, checking in on her. He turned to look at me, and raised his left arm. Every watch he’d ever owned was on this arm. He silently pointed to his watches, as if he were trying to communicate to me about time. Then he stepped towards me. That’s when my brain finally understood that something was amiss.
I started screaming—both in my dream and in real life—while simultaneously crying and apologizing to my dad for being afraid of him. The emotional onslaught was mind-blowing. My husband was next to me in bed and had to hold me down to comfort me. The very next morning, the funeral home called me to let me know we could pick up Dad’s ashes. He had been cremated the previous afternoon.
32. Tax Beast
I ghosted this guy that did my taxes for a few years. He was such a creep and really gross. I was so uncomfortable with him that I decided to do my taxes myself at home. He then shows up at the apartment building I used to live at—this address was listed on my taxes the last time I did them with him—and I only know this because my mom lives there now and says a man in a full-length trench coat was there.
She said hello to him a few times, but he never answered. My mom got a glimpse of his face before he turned and ran into the woods. It was raining out, too, and he didn’t have an umbrella. When my mom told me all this, I thought she was recounting a dream—but nope. Larry the creepy tax guy really showed up to my old place of residency, in a trench coat, on a rainy night, and then took off into the woods.
33. A Christmas Miracle
One time there was this huge snowfall in my town, on Christmas day, which was weird for us. We didn’t usually get much snow. Me, my brother, my sister, and my sister’s boyfriend all went tobogganing on this big hill at the ball fields. There were also some trees at the park which I climbed and let myself fall out of, landing on the soft snow below. We had lots of fun that day—it was one for the books.
A while later I was walking near those trees and the snow had melted down to reveal they were surrounded by rebar stuck into the ground. I must have fallen right in between the pieces of rebar. If I’d been in even a slightly different position, I probably would’ve been impaled by rebar on Christmas day. It’s still creepy to think about.
34. The Mysterious Splatter
In 2018, I went on a trip to Bali and met some new people around my age. We all took a trip to a remote area and rented a huge two-story villa together. We were having a good time, but as soon as evening hit, it got eerily quiet. There were only four of us and we were surrounded by rice fields and other smaller villas with no one else in sight. We kept getting spooked by random sounds and movements.
That night, we attempted to sleep early because we were too scared to stay up. There was a bedroom downstairs and a bedroom upstairs, but all of us slept upstairs because we didn’t want to separate. The next morning, my friend went to the balcony to have some coffee and she shouts back, “Guys...what is this?” She’d found some smashed berries on the ground, concentrated in one area just outside the door.
This was bizarre to us, considering none of us even knew what berry it was and there wasn't a tree in sight bearing that fruit. There were only a few palm trees, but they were so far off from the balcony that there was no way the fruit could’ve come from those. We all were confused by it, but quickly forgot about it as we had to go out on an excursion. We just cleaned it up and left. Little did we know, that wasn’t the last we’d seen of it.
That same evening, we ordered some food, ate, had some fun, and then went to bed. The next morning, we woke up to the same thing on the balcony: more smashed berries, in the same exact spot right outside the balcony door. We were never able to find an explanation for it.
35. The Voice
This happened around 2008. One day I heard the voice of a young Indian man saying "Hello, hello?" while I was using my laptop. I had always kept the camera taped over, used virus software, periodically checked the download folders—everything you were supposed to do to keep yourself and your devices safe. But when that happened, I went into a total panic and assumed I'd somehow been hacked.
I meticulously went through every possible safety check again. I looked at which programs were currently running; checked whether the neighbors were accessing my Wi-Fi; confirmed that my camera and microphone permissions were off. I couldn’t find a thing. It happened on two separate occasions in the year after that, and it was the same man’s voice, too.
I no longer use that laptop.
36. American in Cambodia
It was 1996. I was alone by myself on a motorbike in a rural area of Cambodia, back when the Khmer Rouge were still actively hunting down foreigners and offering bounties to any local villager that could capture one. Being a white guy from America, I thought I was invincible. I’d stopped to enjoy the view for a few minutes, and a logging truck had passed right by me. I could see a group of men in the cab with their eyes all lit up.
Just as they passed me, they slammed on the brakes and came to a complete halt. That's when the panic set in. I started up my motorbike quicker than I’ve ever done before and flew out of there like a rabid bat. I briefly looked back, and I saw that the truck was slowly trying to turn around—but it couldn’t because the road was too narrow. Thankfully, that’s the last I ever saw of them.
37. If It Comes Back It’s Yours
I had my school ID written on a piece of paper. It had been a long morning. As I got in my car, it slipped from my pocket. I reached down to grab it and it blew under my car. I was annoyed, so I decided to ignore it and just left. Hours later, as I was exiting my apartment, I noticed that the same piece of paper had blown right in front of my doorway and at my feet.
Probably not the creepiest thing in my life, but it definitely weird.
38. Ring, Ring
One night, when my dad was working, it was just my mom and younger siblings at home when the doorbell rang at around 11 pm. We didn’t answer. The doorbell rang again and again, and then it started to ring obnoxiously without stopping. I was around 13, and my mom was terrified. Meanwhile, I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I, a young kid, could possibly do in the situation.
I ended up grabbing a fire poker and approached the front door with our large dog. I threw that door open and was ready to attack whoever was on the other side...only to come face-to-face with an empty porch. It was an electrical problem. The wires were somehow crossed. My mom still tells the story about how I was ready to protect the family.
My dad still says I was an idiot for coming out with only a fire poker.
39. Home Alone
I was home alone and vacuuming. I heard my dad yell, “I’m home!” I shut the vacuum off and hear him laugh loudly. I go over to the garage to see if he has groceries, but he’s not there. I open the door and he’s not outside. I thought maybe he was calling early, and it was a message on the answering machine, but there were no missed calls. I called him and my stomach dropped.
He told me he was out working in another state. My television wasn’t on and I lived a quarter-mile from the nearest house at the time. Not enjoyable.
40. Cut It Out
I've never believed in the “paranormal”. However, my grandparents passed within a couple of weeks of each other, so we had a double funeral. After the funeral, everyone in the family went back to my grandparents’ house just as they had left it. After a few hours of drinking, people began to argue about pointless stuff. When the arguments came to a head, the lights suddenly dimmed and flashed a few times as if there was a power surge.
It stopped the arguing immediately. I can't help but think it was my grandparents saying “cut it out” from beyond the grave.
41. Ward Theft
Many moons ago I was an editor. I was cutting a commercial late at night and because of the deadline, I needed to stay overnight to finish. I’m on the second floor of a 30-story building. Half the floor is editing suites, and the rest is rented out to various miscellaneous businesses—designers, developers, tech companies. The largest office on the floor was about 600 sq ft, and it belonged to a psychiatrist.
It’s about three in the morning and I’m super focused on my work. I suddenly realize I’m starving. The deli across the street from me is 24/7, so I decide to get some food. All the offices have sliding frosted glass doors. I open mine and realize the floor is completely empty and dark apart from the emergency exit lights. Suddenly, I hear the elevator open down the hallway. This was really creepy to me.
I knew that the entire building except for the 19th floor (a French company was up there) was empty. There wasn’t even anyone at the front desk. I slowly slide the door quietly and stick my head out of the office. Nothing. I see the light from inside the elevator casting a light onto the floor. But I couldn’t see anyone from where I was in the office. Eventually, I lock the office door, put my giant headphones on, and get back to work.
At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because at around 5:30, a loud knocking on the glass wakes me up. I jump up, open the door, and see one of the building managers and a cop. I explain to them what I was doing there, and they asked if I saw or heard anything. I said no, I’d had my headphones on and had fallen asleep. I spot my manager and she looks white as a ghost.
I ask what’s going on, and she tells me that someone broke into the building. According to what she’d been told, they’d somehow bypassed the two doors downstairs that required a key card, broke into the psychiatrist’s office, and stole files on three patients. I was there that whole time, either working or asleep, and didn’t hear anything. When she told me this, I was really freaked out.
All I could think about was what might have happened to me had I run into them. I ended up leaving that place several months later.
42. Bunny Suit
My best friend and I were 12 years old, and out before midnight on New Year's Eve in 1974. It was maybe 10 or 11 at night. We're walking from her house to mine, and it’s a very quiet street. As we walk by this big fir tree near the side of the road, a guy steps out of the shadows. He wasn’t being menacing, but it seemed as if he’d been waiting for us to get close enough to see him. The creepy part? He had a bunny head on.
It wasn’t a mask; it was a full head covering, something you'd see in a play. He had a fancy coat on. He just steps into the light of the streetlamp and nods his head at us as we walk by. It was the 70s, and at the time adults had absolute power over children—we were taught to never confront adults them or make them mad. So we walked on by.
Half a block down the street, we looked at each other and then behind us. No one was there.
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43. Petty Cash
I’m a secretary in a solicitor’s office. The receptionist was out sick this one day, and I had to cover for her. The reception is at the very front of the building and cut off from everything else. You have to walk through at least two doors and down a hallway to get to anyone else in the building. Because we were short-staffed, I was completely on my own out there. Now, this was usually not a big deal.
But on that day, this tall bloke comes in. He’s over six feet and he's wearing old clothes and a baggy hoodie with the hood up. He has his hands in his pocket and is acting all shifty and paranoid. I go through the usual "Hi, can I help you," protocol, but he's still acting weird and not looking me directly in the eye. He asked me if we dealt with armed robberies, and my heart leapt into my throat.
I didn't know what to say to this guy, and there was no one close by that could help if anything happened. No one would even hear me if I shouted. This guy didn't explain himself either, he just asked me that question and let it sit there between us. After the pause, I realized he wasn't going to say anything else. So, with all the bravery I could muster, I asked, "Are you talking about yourself?" and gestured to his hands in his pockets.
He changed in a second. He obviously realized how he was coming across and didn't want to frighten me. He took his hands out of his pockets and pulled his hood down so I could see his face and was just repeating, "No, no, love, I'm so sorry". He explained then that he was the one who was robbed and wanted to take legal action. By the end of the encounter, we were laughing about it and poking fun at the ridiculous situation.
But for a good five seconds there, I thought this is it, he's not going to be happy with the £30 in petty cash...
44. The Wrong Act Of Kindness
When I was around 11 or 12, I was in a Catholic after-school program. I distinctly remember learning about how it’s best to do acts of kindness when no one is watching, and to try not to brag about doing something nice. One day, I’m walking on the street and this older guy in his 60s calls me over. I lived in Brooklyn—us kids were always just walking around the neighborhood and random interactions like this were normal.
The guy asked me to help him carry his groceries, and I remember thinking, “This is perfect. I can do a nice thing and not tell anyone about it”. So I helped him out, and when I get to his place, he tries to get me to bring the groceries inside. I was a shy kid, but thankfully even I knew not to do that. I put them on his steps and he spent a good five minutes trying everything he could to get me inside the house.
He went on and on about being a teacher and having cool things to show me—but I stood firm and eventually said I had to leave, and that was it.
45. Creepy Confessional
I had a priest ask me, during a confessional, if I touched myself. I was a nine-year-old girl at the time. I never went to confession again. I did my own penance at home and lied to my family about going for years. I told my mom as an adult. It was too bad I hadn’t said anything earlier, as we had a priest who was accused of much wrongdoing and had to be moved out of the parish.
46. Paranormal Activity
When I was a teenager, my dad invited me to sleep over at his girlfriend’s house after we’d had several conversations about supposed poltergeist activity there. There were rumors about weird sounds and objects falling over randomly. That would probably scare off anyone else, but my dad knew I’d always had an interest in the supernatural. I was very keen to see if anything happened while I was there.
Around one in the morning, I was startled from my sleep by the girlfriend’s cat bolting all over the living room. In my half-awake state, I thought it was a giant rat running across the couch rather than a cat doing their typical midnight crazies. It didn’t come across like typical midnight crazies, though—the cat seemed more freaked out than maniacally ramped up, and it was breathing heavily and darting its head back and forth.
Placing a hand on the cat seemed to settle it down, but it still looked pretty on edge. After my heart stopped racing, I got up to use the bathroom and on my way out, I heard television-like sounds playing in one of the rooms at the end of the hall. This was odd because the house was dark, my dad and his girlfriend were sleeping at the other end of the house, and both of her children were away at a friend’s and a reform school respectively.
Groggy but still freaked out from getting woken up by a maniac cat, I slowly and quietly walked down the hall and looked into the room. I don’t remember the furnishings, just that it was mostly empty with a double sliding door closet set into the same wall as the door. The light switch didn’t work, but there was enough light coming from the bathroom that I could see well enough. The first thing I really noticed, though, was a burning smell.
It was the smell of a campfire. I started sniffing as I moved further into the room—I was suddenly more concerned about a possible fire than I was about a poltergeist. But when I got closer to the closet, the sound that I’d heard earlier started again. It sounded like a child crying from within the closet, and I was hit with such a conflicting feeling of both misery and malevolence that I immediately left the room.
I grabbed the cat from the hall and planted myself on the couch, petting it nonstop so it wouldn’t leave me by myself. Nothing else happened and I woke later that morning in a seated position on the couch. That was the last time I slept there.
47. How To Catch A Gravedigger
When I was 10 years old, I lived in the middle of rural Alabama. It was 1999. We had some odd neighbors, to say the least. There was no mom, and I remember the dad sometimes being unkind to his kids. One day, being curious kids, my friend and I followed my neighbor and his son and daughter when they left their house and walked into the woods.
I was very familiar with the area because it was back when kids could roam free until the streetlights came on. Anyway, we trailed them for about two miles: through the woods, across an old cemetery, down a railroad...They stopped at a clearing beside the tracks and my friend and I hid and watched. We saw them start digging, and when we saw WHAT they were digging, we got scared and bolted.
They were pulling up bones and putting them in buckets! I immediately told my parents when I got home, but they didn’t believe me. I'm now 32 but I still remember that day vividly.
48. A Tale Of Two Daniels
This happened when I was seven. I was walking downtown with my dad who was buying a CD—we used to go to the record store all the time and he’d chat music with the workers while I’d play on the Sega Dreamcast. I remember there was a guy watching me play and it looked like he was crying. He was just kind of...staring at me.
But because I was just a kid with a video game, I didn’t think too much of it. About 20 minutes later there was a bunch of people gathering outside, so we went to see what the big commotion was about. I couldn't believe my eyes. The guy who was crying was now on top of the roof standing on the ledge. He screamed, “THIS IS FOR YOU DANIEL” (my name) and jumped.
My dad put his entire body over mine to prevent me from seeing it, but the guy who jumped didn’t make it. I thought about it every day for over two decades. Skip ahead to about five years ago, I’m now at a Christmas staff party, drinking heavily with my team. A guy on said team and I have heart-to-hearts about our pasts, and he tells me that he’s bi.
However, he hasn’t been with a man in 20 years. He used to date a man behind his girlfriend’s back, who took his own life when he wouldn’t leave her. My coworker’s name is also Daniel. And then I put it all together. He was in the crowd with me that fateful day. Two strangers forever changed together but 20 years in the past. It haunted me for most of my life.
49. Mrs. Doubtfire In Real Life
When my friend and I were 17, we worked together at a Pizza Hut. We were closing up shop one weekend, and it was about 11 pm by the time we shut down and were ready to lock up. When we walked out to her car, there was an old lady sitting in her front passenger seat. I have no idea why my friend would leave her car door unlocked, but my friend opened the driver's door and asked the old lady if she needed help.
The old lady said, "I just need a ride home". We tell her that we just have to go back inside and call our moms to tell them we'll be late. We go back inside the store, lock the door, and call the authorities. Within ten minutes, they’re there arresting her. The truth was far more horrifying than we'd realized. As it turns out, it was actually a 47-year-old man dressed up as an old lady.
They told us he was carrying a knife around and that we were lucky to have gotten out of the situation.
50. Spooky Child
I have a spooky child. She’s always talked about ghost friends and how they passed. It’s usually just a quick mention of them every now and then. But there’s one incident I still don’t understand. We were living in a little rural town at the time. She was about four. She was playing out front on the patio, and I was in the kitchen getting her a snack. I could see her perfectly through the door...until I turned my back on her to reach for something in the cabinet.
Just as I did, I heard tires squealing and a huge thump. I whipped back around, and she wasn’t sitting where I had last seen her. I ran like mad over to the door, and there she was. Standing just to the side of the door so I couldn’t see her from my previous angle. I looked all around as I was scooping her up. Nothing. Absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary.
I put her down, and she was perfectly calm. Me...I was flipping out. I asked her what happened and told her I’d heard a loud crash when I was inside the house. She told me there was an accident—to which I’d responded, “Where? I don’t see anything”. Her response still haunts me. She said, “It was a long time ago. Addie was just showing me how she died. Can I have a snack now?”
Addie was one of her ghost friends. She still says spooky things here and there, but thankfully nothing as spooky as that.
Sources: Reddit,
