They're only meant to keep tabs on infants, but baby monitors have been known to pick up a lot more than that. It could be a fun little surprise, a glimpse into a neighbor’s day to day life, or a terrifying wake-up call to what goes on behind closed doors. Something that haunts you from that moment on. That you think back on and wonder, "Did I really hear that?" Well, you're not alone. The people of the internet have heard some truly strange things coming from their baby monitors—if nothing else, maybe these stories will help shed light on your own experience.
1. No Ghost in This Machine
My husband went upstairs to put my son to sleep, he came back down and we started watching a movie. The window was open and we could faintly hear our neighbors' dog barking two houses down. I look over at the video monitor (in night vision mode) and see my son standing up and a WOMAN WALK IN AND PICK HIM UP. He gladly went with her. I was just in disbelief.
I told my husband to go check, he went up there and kiddo was lying there like "trying to sleep here...what's your deal?" He came back down and we just kind of sat there dumbfounded until we heard the neighbors’ dog barking again...but on the baby monitor in our son’s room. Took us about an hour to finally realize they had the same monitor as us and we were watching their kid’s room.
2. A Little Eavesdropping Never Hurt Anyone
Our late 90s baby monitor picked up our neighbor's cordless phone. The Mrs. was talking trash with her bestie, thinking about having an affair or getting plastic surgery. Blah blah blah. So much bored housewife stuff. We laughed and changed the channel on the baby monitor.
3. What a Way to Get Busted
My parents are landlords, and back in the mid 90s at one point two different tenants complained that the guy whose apartment was between theirs was selling illicit substances and their baby monitor would pick up his cordless phone conversations.
4. Beware of Tricks, They’re Not Just For Kids Anymore
One time my friend and I were chilling in his garage, and his baby was asleep in his crib inside. Then we hear static from the baby monitor, followed by this really creepy, raspy voice whispering "I'VE COME FOR THE CHILD". Turns out it was just my friend's brother who had walked in the front door of the house (he had a key) and, upon realizing we were out in the garage, thought he'd freak us out a little. It worked.
5. At Least They’re Breathing? I Don’t Know I’m Not a Parent
Baby breathing heavy all of a sudden. That's the worst feeling.
6. "Low Man’s Voice" Immediately Makes It Creepy
Not my story, but my brother told me a few years ago he woke up in the middle of the night hearing his son crying his eyes out then a low man's voice saying "shhh be quiet" then silence. He ran into the room and the baby was asleep and no one else around, creeped me the heck out.
7. Guardian Ghost
My parents told me of the ghost of the little white house when I was about 13 or 14. The whole conversation started with some talk of ghosts, I'm not exactly sure how but it led to my mom telling me of the ghost "nanny" that I used to have as a baby. She told me that although I never cried much, the nights I would start crying they would awake to the crying over the baby monitor.
This would be quickly followed by the sound of the rocking chair in my bedroom rocking and I would stop crying. She told me that they would often come into my room and find bottles that neither of them had given me. The creepiest story she told me was the story of how I almost died. One of my grandmothers was supposed to be watching me because both my parents were at work but she was doing something or left, not a great grandmother. I had apparently become wrapped up in my blanket and was beginning to suffocate.
Well about the same time my other grandmother, fantastic grandma, got this strange feeling that she needed to check on me and apparently the feeling was so strong that she left work and came to the house to find me just in time that I didn't die. My mother surely believed in it and it was a pretty convincing story when she told it. At the end of the story, she told me that right before we moved into our new home, she thanked the ghost for all that it had done for the family and for keeping me safe.
8. Lullabies From the Unknown
When my oldest sister was a baby, my mom had just put her down for a nap and went to wash dishes. She had the baby monitor on the counter by the sink. Her then-husband was at work so she was home alone. After a while she heard a man’s voice coming through, singing a lullaby. No one was in the nursery.
9. They Weren’t Lying When They Said Grandma Would Be Watching
My uncle has a handful of stories, but I'll tell one of the better ones. One night over the baby monitor, they heard whispering and what sounded like my cousin's voice. Strangely though, they heard another voice that sounded like my grandma's (she passed a year before this). They go into her room and asked her who she was talking to, and she says "I was talking to grandma, she helped me find my doll". The doll WAS on the floor, but when they checked on her it was in her crib.
10. "They’re Here"
Not me, but my grandmother tells this story pretty often whenever any sort of ghost conversation comes up. My parents moved into this old house in CT when my middle brother was a baby and my oldest brother was about ten. I was not born yet. The house was pretty haunted, to the point that to this day my oldest brother won’t talk about it.
After several weeks of finding him sleeping in the hallway outside my parents’ door, they decided maybe he needed a little vacation. At this point my parents were in denial about their undead housemates, so they didn't mention my oldest brother's behavior to my grandmother who agreed to watch my middle brother while my parents took him to Disney World.
The first night my grandmother stayed at the house she heard a woman talking about my brother through the monitor, then she heard some faint singing. Wanting it to be something logical my grandmother assumed she left the TV on in the bedroom (my brother’s crib was in my parents’ room). She went up there, no TV, no radio, just my infant brother laughing at absolutely nothing.
My grandmother basically spent the rest of the week terrified, and wouldn't go back to our house after my parents returned. She had some other strange things happen, but notes the baby monitor talk as one of the scariest experiences she's ever had. My parents toughed out that house for about a year, until one day all the china came flying out of the china cabinet. My mom says she's never packed and gotten out of a house that fast. They stayed in a hotel until they sold it.
11. Trapped Shadow People
I was babysitting my niece once while I was staying at my brother's place and they had the baby camera set up so I could see her on the little TV it came with. I was studying and started dozing off when I heard some whispering and realized it was coming from the monitor. I initially thought it was some feedback or something, but when I looked at the TV there was a dark shadow near her crib.
I have never been more terrified in my life but the shadow was clearly there where it had not been before. I ran to her room and looked around and saw nothing but, I took her the heck out of there. I went back to the TV and the shadow was clearly gone. I told my brother what happened and he pulled me aside and told me not to mention it to my sister-in-law because she'll freak out, but that he had seen that same thing several times now, with the same whispering.
They stayed in that house for about four more years and when my niece was just learning to talk she would tell her mom about her "special friend". This to this day scares the heck out of me. When they moved out, my brother told me my niece had become inconsolably sad because she would miss her "friend". Her mom would tell her she could bring him along but all she would say was that he couldn't leave the house. We have never to this day told her about that darn shadow, and she apparently never saw it.
12. Beach House Bonkers
A few years ago I accompanied my brother, his wife and their baby daughter to a beach house owned by a friend of ours. The house is palatial: Four floors, seven bedrooms, a swimming pool, two kitchens, and even an elevator. We were staying for a week. One night I agreed to watch my niece to give my brother and his wife a night off, a mid-vacation date night so they could head to a nice restaurant in the touristy spots, walk the beach, etc.
I put my niece to bed in one of the bedrooms and joined my friend and his wife by the pool where we were hanging out, talking and drinking a few beers. I’m an overly cautious babysitter and kept one eye on the baby monitor, which has a camera as well as a microphone. It’s sensitive enough that you can even hear the baby turn over in her sleep or babble quietly in the crib.
As I was talking to my friend and his wife, I saw movement on the baby monitor: My friend’s mom was checking on my niece, I figured, and I saw her rest her hands on the railing of the crib and lean over to look at the baby. I could hear the baby babbling. It occurred to me it was odd that Eileen, my friend’s mom, would wake the baby, but I thought nothing of it.
Then my friend’s mom walked out of the sliding glass doors leading to the pool area. I was confused. How did she get from a second-floor bedroom to the poolside deck in two or three seconds? I asked her. "Eileen, were you just checking on Lucy?" "No," she said. "Why?" Eileen is an awesome mom and grandmother. She’d never lie to me and she’s not the type to pull pranks, especially about something like this.
I bolted from my chair into the house, up the stairs, and into Lucy’s room. No one was there. Lucy was sound asleep. One of the windows was open and the curtain was blowing from a breeze coming off the beach. I walked over to the window and closed it, checked on my niece again, then closed the door. My eyes were pretty much glued to the baby monitor until my brother and sister-in-law returned from their date night. I still don’t know what I saw that night.
13. Mischievous Pets
I never really had to use a baby monitor with my first son because we always lived in a house small enough that we could easily hear a crying baby. However, when my daughter was born, a friend gave me a really nice baby monitor set as a gift. Honestly, for several months it remained in the package. Then one day, my husband left on a business trip, and I thought it would be nice to have an extra set of "ears" on the baby.
I put the baby in her crib, and went to sleep myself. At about 2 a.m., I was jarred awake by an insanely loud crash. I was immediately on high alert, but that sound wasn’t the worst of it. On the baby monitor, I heard hard, ragged breathing. There was someone in the baby’s room. I reacted instantly. I grabbed the nearest thing to me (which happened to be a paper stapler of all things) and I ran to my child’s room.
My 115-pound self was ready to fight whatever was on the other side of the door. I swung open the door and flipped on the lights ready to take action. What I found was a partially dumped container of formula that had spilled all over the tipped monitor. My dog had it between his paws viciously lapping up every bit of it. Apparently, the cat had been perched on the shelf, and when she jumped off, the formula toppled over on the baby monitor and the force of it caused the monitor to fall. The dog was simply taking advantage of an unexpected treat. The baby didn’t even stir.
14. She Would Grow Up to Be a Great Impressionist
Deep satanic growling over the monitor. Seriously. A deep growling voice speaking unintelligibly, in a menacing tone. Then the sweet baby voice said clearly "hi dere". A man was in the baby’s room!! I was at my sister’s house watching a movie while her baby daughter slept. When we heard the man’s evil voice on the monitor we grabbed each other’s hands and rushed up the stairs, my sister pausing to pick up her baseball bat.
Breathing heavily with fear we listened outside the nursery door. The chattering was definitely coming from the baby’s room, evil deep voice and happy baby voice chattering incomprehensibly. Something didn’t make sense, so, being the dumber braver sister, I poked my head quietly around the door. To my relief there was nobody there but the fat adorable baby reaching upward, chatting.
Horrified we stepped into the room only to hear the horrible deep menacing voice again. Gradually it dawned on us that the baby had two voices coming out of her tiny mouth and one was satanic. Was she possessed by demonic forces? We stood over her cot while she smiled up at us happily. "Who are you talking to baby?" My sister asked nervously".
Daddy!" The baby replied, then made the growly voice again. It seems she was entertaining herself with a made up chat with her beloved daddy. The awful thing was when her father got home and said "hi" in his deep gravelly voice we burst into shrieks of laughter. That baby did a great exaggerated impression of her dad’s voice.
15. Neighbor’s Dark Side
My mom tells this story every time she gets the chance. We had the old baby monitors that all play on the same frequency, and one night she had laid me down for bed. After about an hour of me sleeping she hears a baby screaming and a man yelling. Then smack, screaming, smack, smack...and more screaming. Turns out next door neighbor was beating the holy living heck out of his baby for crying and she recognized his voice. Called the authorities and he was apprehended on spot...way to go mom!
16. Harrowing Whispers
I was just coming home from work and my two sister-in-laws had been babysitting my one-year-old daughter. They told me they had just laid my daughter down for a nap, then one sat in the living room, and one went to the bathroom. Suddenly the one in the living room heard whispering through the monitor, at the same time the other sister that had been in the bathroom was walking by and heard it from my daughter’s room.
Then my daughter started to freak the heck out, screaming and crying. They, of course, got her the heck out of there, and I walked in the door. Now my house was NOT a big house, and my daughter was always adventurous. After that day she would not so much as get within five feet of her own doorway. We tried to put her to bed that night and the second we shut the door she screamed and cried again, so we allowed her to sleep in our bed.
The next day was the same. Just walking by the doorway to the bathroom freaked her out. Luckily we were moving a few days later to a new house so we moved her crib into our bedroom and she slept perfectly. She still says she doesn't want to go back to the "old scary house" to this day, she is three.
17. Lifesaving Check Up
I was babysitting my younger brother (I was 12 and he was two), when my mom and her friends were off. My little brother was sleeping upstairs in my mom’s room and I was downstairs watching The Simpsons. I could hear my brother snoring heavily (he was a pudgy baby) for about 15 minutes. All of a sudden he stopped snoring, not like he started to drift away from snoring, or the snoring got softer, just one second he was snoring and the next nothing.
I thought the baby monitor had conked out, but the light was still on and I could hear the slight hiss that comes from the speaker. I got up and walked upstairs and opened the door. I couldn't hear him breathing at all. I walked to the crib and gave it a light shake. All of a sudden my brother let out a super long exhale and started to gasp for air and woke himself up and started to cry. I guess he was sleeping so heavily that his body forgot to breathe.
18. Cold Spots, I Know What That Means...
So, I am babysitting for my neighbor and I'm watching over the youngest boy while the rest of the family was at a soccer game. So, I put the kid in his room for a nap and proceeded to go sit on the couch and play on my phone. I keep hearing weird low sounds, like mumbles or whispers from a man with a deep voice, and I realize it's coming from the baby monitor. I keep listening and I can hear the word "asleep" keep being mentioned from the whispers. I go up to his room and open the door and it is cold as heck in the room and it got warm a few seconds after I step inside.
19. She Wanted to Play a Game
My house was a two-level building, one monitor upstairs in the kitchen and one in the basement (the basement had a few bedrooms and a rumpus room). One day I was looking for my little sister to see if she wanted to play hot wheels with me (this was about ten years ago). So I decided to use the upstairs monitor to talk to the downstairs monitor to see if my sister was down there.
I pressed the talk button then pressed the listen button to hear for her answer. All I heard was a young girl singing a soft song quietly. Almost sounded like "Ring Around the Rosie," but it wasn't. Anyways, freaked out, I asked my older brother to come downstairs with me. When we get down there all I see is our rocking chair...rocking. We quickly ran upstairs to find my little sister napping in her room. To this day my brother and I are spooked by it.
20. We’ll Never Know Who They Were
When my daughter was little, we had a plain audio monitor that I used while doing yard work when she took her nap. A few nights in a row, I would hear a baby crying, and then a woman scream at that baby to "SHUT THE HECK UP!" I ran into my little girl’s room and she is just laying there silently sleeping. We were surrounded by other homes with families, and I knew a friend across the street had a baby a little older than mine, so I went over the next day to see how she was doing.
I thought dang, she is stressed. But after a while of talking to her, everything seemed to be fine. I asked her what brand of monitor she used, and she said she didn’t have a monitor since she had her baby in the room with her (in a bassinet). I asked if there were any other families with babies on the street and she said no.
From then on, I still heard someone talking to a baby over the monitor. I would hear someone shushing, crying from both a baby and woman, and whispering. I ended up getting rid of the monitor after a month. I did investigate further, and no one else on our street had a baby. This is one of the many incidents that made me happy when we left that area.
21. Hackers Be Hacking
So apparently, baby monitors can get hacked. This was a few months back and I was at my Sgt's house. We were sitting in his living room, watching sports and discussing my future in the Marines (I had just gotten out of boot camp) and there's a baby monitor (audio only) sitting on the table. His newly-born daughter of two weeks was in the room down the hall.
As we're talking, a distorted voice announces that if he doesn't leave a large sum of money at the park on a bench, he will hurt his daughter. So naturally, both of us fearing for his newly-born daughter's life, we sprint scramble through his living room to the kitchen. He hands me his M4 and magazine and snatches a personal pistol used for home defense from a drawer.
We sprint down the hall, basically kick the door off its hinges, and scan for any would-be intruders. Needless to say, there wasn't any, although his wife wasn't too pleased when she found out we staged an armed attacked on her daughter. They ended up staying at a friend’s house for a few days and got a new baby monitor.
22. What You Thought Were One-Sided Conversations
My goddaughter told her mother that mom-mom came to visit. She thought her ex-mother-in-law stopped by while she was at work, but the kid goes "no mommy, your mom". And points to the corner of her room. Ever since she was baby even when she was just babbling, she would seem to be having a conversation with someone in her room. We would hear her over the monitor, babble and laugh with pauses in between as if she was listening and responding. When one of us would go get her in the morning or after a nap, she would be staring into the corner of the room, just staring or sometimes talking until she noticed one of us come in.
23. Grandfather or Something Else...
I don’t have kids yet, but apparently when I was little my parents used to hear an indistinguishable mumbling coming from my room on a weekly basis that was blatantly a man’s voice. These were the same nights as when my toys would turn on and start playing music in the middle of the night. I have no idea if this is true or not, but for as long as I knew her, my grandmother used to say that my grandfather (he passed on when I was just over a year old) was always watching over me.
24. Maybe They Were Sleep Training Them?
When my son was old enough to not need the monitor anymore, I was cleaning out his room and posting things to sell. Baby monitor was one of them. I had the receiver in my room, and the other end in my son’s, but it was turned off. I turned on the receiver part first with the intention of going to my son’s room to turn the other end on to see if it still works before I sell it.
Well when I switched it on, I heard another baby crying, definitely not my son as he was watching TV happily. I listened for a while thinking someone would come get him/her eventually. No one came the whole time, my heart broke for that baby. I could hear adults talking in the background, but not clear enough to hear exactly what they were saying.
The baby would cry for 20-30 mins, fall back to sleep, wake up, cry again for another while, go back to sleep. Cry for an hour, sleep, over and over, with no signs of him/her being moved/picked up/spoken to/played with, nothing! I wish I knew which house it was coming from. This was about five years ago, and I still couldn't figure out who it was.
25. The Scream That Spooked the Would-Be Thieves
When I was 9, my parents would sometimes leave me home alone at my constant insistence because I assured them I was old enough and mature enough. Well, this backfired on me badly. My parents were out to dinner one night, and I decided I didn’t want to come because it was Friday night and I loved the Friday night Nickelodeon shows.
While I was watching TV in the basement, I kept hearing this weird noise like a metallic scraping noise, like something metal grinding against wood. Eventually, I decided it wasn’t my imagination and turned the volume up on the monitor that was sitting next to me to hear what was going on in the living room. I heard it there too, except louder, and there were muffled noises that sounded like people talking.
Well, stupid me, I assumed that my parents were home early and they were messing with something on the porch. So I walked upstairs and through the window on the stairway landing, noticed my parents’ car wasn’t in the driveway, but there was this old beater parked on our street that was running but had the headlights off.
This kind of set off alarm bells for me, because I couldn’t understand why someone would turn off their headlights unless they didn’t want to be noticed. At this point, I started sneaking along, the voices outside were louder now and the scraping noises were still happening, plus there was now a faint banging. I approached the window next to the door and peeked through the blinds...My heart felt like it stopped in my chest, it definitely wasn’t my parents.
There were three guys I’d never seen before, all in their early 20s standing there looking at the door (my dad got a reinforced door jamb because where he lived when he was younger a guy broke into his house by shoulder barging). I was completely freaking frozen, I forgot to breathe and I had no idea what to do. Eventually, I must’ve made some kind of noise because suddenly one of the guys points his flashlight at the window I was peeking out at them from.
As soon as the light hit my eyes I panicked and screamed. I bolted through the house, out the back door, down the stairs and ran for my neighbor’s house. I was banging on my neighbor’s back door screaming for help when my neighbor, Mr. John, comes to the door with a gun. He asks me what is going on and I explain what’s happening at my house, he has me go inside with his wife and tell her to call 9-1-1, then takes off hauling butt towards my house with his gun.
I sat with his wife and played with their dogs until my parents showed up along with a few officers in tow. They never caught the guys who were trying to break in, because as soon as I screamed they hauled butt back to their car and peeled off, but every time I am home alone now I feel a profound sense of unease at random "bumps" in the night.
26. Or Was it Something Else?
My daughter's toys coming on by themselves. When she was little, less than a year old. I've always blamed it on faulty batteries because that is what keeps me from wetting my pants.
27. I Like How They Just Throw That Cemetery Line in There
One night, as my husband and I were getting into bed, the lights and television began to flicker. Our six-month-old son was asleep in the next room, and we heard loud screaming coming from the monitor. With the power still cutting on and off, I went over to check on him only to find that he was sound asleep. I returned to our bedroom and I heard crying again through the monitor.
At this point, all the power on the top floor had cut out. Dutifully, I went back into the nursery assuming he had woken up again. He was still asleep. At this point, I realized it wasn't him. "That's not our son". I said, gesturing to the monitor. At this point, we just stared at each other, exchanging our various what-the-hecks.
It's probably completely explainable, but we've never heard anything else through our monitor. Also, the nature of the power outage was strange and isolated to a couple of rooms. We later discovered it was a bad outlet in a room we use for storage. We also live next to a small cemetery.
28. I Wonder Who Taught Him That
I was at a friend's house one night, and she was putting her little boy to bed. Her baby monitor had a camera built in and was installed at the foot of the crib. She also had one of those mattress sensors in the crib. Well, we are sitting down, watching a movie and the receiver for the monitor is on the coffee table in front of us.
The sound sensor spikes and the screen goes white. She picks it up, and all you can make out on the screen is an eerie face. We go running into the room and her kid is sound asleep. We look around and don't see anything strange, so we go back to the movie. About ten minutes later, the same thing happens. I get up quietly and sneak into his room, while she stays on the couch.
I catch the kid standing up in his crib, with his face right up against the monitor. He is smiling like crazy and giggling. He looks over at me and quickly lays down and acts like he is asleep. I let her know what's up, and she laughs it off... a few nights later she tells me the same thing happened to the monitor, but her boy was sitting on the couch next to her, at the time.
29. Seriously Always Be Suspicious
Okay, in early 1990, I worked for a volunteer-based security group. We didn't have a radio license for real walkie-talkies yet, so we had a set of headsets that worked off some common household frequencies. These frequencies were used for kids walkie-talkies, cheap cordless phones, drive-thru speakers, baby monitors, and such.
During an outdoor distance test, I picked up some lady's cordless phone where she talked about gross medical stuff, but she couldn't hear us to get her to stop. So while testing a battery replacement, I picked up a two-way baby monitor in a nearby apartment. There was a baby fussing and the sound of some woman doing dishes".
I'll be right there, hon..". the woman said. On a whim, I pushed "TALK" on my headset, and said with a loud, demonic voice, "FEED. ME!" Then I heard the shattering of dishes. That was hilarious when I was 21…
30. But What Does His Wife Think it Was?
When my son was about eight months old, my other half and I were sitting downstairs one evening having something to eat with the baby monitor on the table. Then, over the monitor, came an ear-piercing shriek which was my son, but then there was the sound of a second scream over the top of that as if there was someone else in his room screaming at the same time (given myself goosebumps reliving that one).
I don't think I've ever moved so fast trying to get up those stairs to my boy's room. Once I'd calmed down and found he was fine, probably just had a bad dream, I rationalized it out and came to the decision that the second scream I'd heard was probably just reverb on the monitor. Well, that's my reasoning and I'm sticking with it…
31. It’s Important to Know What Toys Your Kids Have
On random nights when my daughter was little, and sometimes in the morning, I would get woken up by a little girl saying "peekaboo..". I would wake up, look at the video monitor, and my daughter would be awake, every single time. Sometimes staring right at the camera. I looked in her room at every toy, tore apart her crib, etc. looking for what could be saying this. I started getting really creeped out as it continued and I couldn't explain it.
About three months later, when my daughter was about nine months, she woke up from a nap, and I started hearing "peekaboo..". repeatedly. WTF. So I ran into her room and my daughter was pushing on this little soft mirror that is attached to her crib wall. Apparently the mirror had a button behind it that when pushed on said this. When she was younger and just kicked around, she would accidentally kick it when she woke up. Face-palm ensued.
32.The Devil Next Door
When my daughter was about eight months old I was in her bedroom cleaning while she was playing in her crib. I had her monitor turned down, but when I noticed the red lights moving, signaling noise, I turned it up. I heard, plain as day, a child screaming something along the lines of "I'm sorry, no!! please no!!!" The worst part is that I could actually hear him being hit.
I lived in a heavily populated area of Pittsburgh so there was no telling where this was happening. I grabbed my daughter and ran outside anyway, hoping to hear the child scream from an apartment or house so I could call the authorities, but I couldn't zero in on it. Such a horrible feeling, not being able to stop this poor child from being beat. I never looked at any of my neighbors the same.
33. Sing Me to Sleep
I used to babysit two kids, and they each had a video monitor that picked up sound. I put them to bed and was sitting downstairs doing homework, and I thought they were both asleep because it had been like a half hour since I had put them in bed, and neither kid was shifting around anymore. It was silent except for their breathing through the monitors. It was pitch black outside and the parents wouldn't be home for another couple of hours.
All of a sudden I heard a little kid’s voice singing. I couldn't tell what the voice was saying, but it sounded really creepy. I looked at the monitors, and neither kid had moved. Went up to their rooms and checked on them both. Apparently, the younger one (three-years-old) would sing to himself when he couldn't sleep, and his mom didn't tell me that. He was laying perfectly still singing softly, and I nearly pooped myself when I heard it through the monitor.
34. There’s a Demon in Him
New house, almost no neighbors, live across from a giant cornfield. Husband at work, well after dark. Son, four, and daughter, two, have been in bed for hours. I'm on the main floor, watching TV, they are upstairs sleeping. All of a sudden, I hear this terrifying, high pitched giggling. I can't tell where it's coming from. I run upstairs...daughter in her bed. Son's bed is empty. Dang. Go back, only daughter in daughter's bed. Run to my room, no kid, still this creepy, creepy giggling.
I check the bathroom, the spare room, the closets...I am literally terrified. My kid is gone and all I can hear is this giggling, which the more it happened, the creepier it got. I realized the laughter was coming from the bathroom, so I run back in and check—I whip open the shower curtain, and there is my baby boy, curled into as small of a ball as he can get, laughing hysterically, SOUND ASLEEP. And that was the night we discovered he could sleepwalk.
35. When Reality and Belief Collide
My almost-two-year-old was in his room chattering to himself before his nap. I was listening to him on the monitor, he was saying things like, "I'm sleeping grandma," "Okay grandma," etc. I went in to try to "reset him" so he'd fall asleep (he did, by the way) and asked who he was talking to. He said, "Grandma".
I asked, "Grammy V?" (my MIL's grandparent name). He said, "No, not Grammy—GRANDMA". I gave him a confused look and he clarified, "Grandma Baba". My mother's name was Barbara. She had been gone for eight years at that point. My son had never heard me refer to her before. I was oddly not freaked out, though it does screw a bit with my Atheist outlook.
36. You Should Really Turn Those off When They’re Not in Use
Not baby related—but baby monitor related. This happened in my rural German home village in the early 80s. As this is a very small village and everyone used to buy electronics at the same place, all parents had the same baby monitoring device—operating at the same frequency (this was true for radio-controlled doorbells and garage openers, too). One of the parents who used it, had it installed in their bedroom and never shut it off.
Over time everyone—except them—figured out that they were transmitting live footage of their intimate lives. It was a running gag, that if you met them you eventually dropped some "quotes" or cited their privates' nicknames when they were around. It pretty much freaked them out, but I guess they never found out where this came from and when their two sons were older they switched the baby monitor off.
37. Oh Boy
My great aunt owns a farmhouse that is older than any building in America. One night the family heard voices on the baby monitor (which they use to monitor sheep) and they thought some people were trying to make off with their sheep. As my great uncle grabbed his gun, my great aunt listened to the voices.
She noticed right away that they weren't speaking English, but some kind of French that she had never heard before. They decided to record the voices because they seemed to be having a long conversation and not going anywhere. After a while, my great uncle went out and checked the barn, but no one was there, just sheep.
A few years later my cousin was attending Cambridge and he took the recording in to a linguist professor. The professor told him that he couldn't be certain, but he believed the language on the tape to be a form of French that hasn't been spoken in hundreds of years. My cousins freaked out, but my great aunt and uncle don't believe in ghosts.
38. Changelings
Heard a strange hissing noise at 3:30 am through the monitor and our movement pad went off, walked into the room and he was fast asleep. He proceeded to wake up the next morning and tell me that for the last few sleeps he has, "been picked up and flown to a place in Ireland where his six brothers and sisters live". He's managed to name them and they remain the same each time I ask him about it. Safe to say his mother and I are slightly scared.
39. Friend Bear
Okay, so my daughter is now almost two and has long since moved into her own room. We have one of those video monitor things where you can see/hear the baby on this little TV thing or you can turn the picture off and just get sound. So one night maybe a month ago I'm sitting in bed, scrolling through Reddit or something, and I start hearing my daughter babbling to herself. Now, it's really late, like one or two in the morning. Much later than she is ever awake unless something is wrong and she is sick or cutting a tooth or something.
So I turn the picture on the monitor on and see her standing up in her crib facing sort of diagonally away from the camera. I can see her hands in front of her but only like half of her face. Now is a good time to mention that we have been teaching her ASL since she was about three months old, and she has been responding and conversing in sign since about ten months. I can see her signing things like "nice," "silly," and "fun" and, oddly enough, "no," "don't like" and "bear". Of course being the good and loving mother I am (and really not wanting to deal with an overly sleepy baby in the morning) I get up to see what the heck she is doing.
When I get to her room she is still standing up and signing/babbling towards the far corner of her room. I ask her what she is doing and who she is talking to and she signs/says (as best as she can) "friend" which she does with her whole hands and not just her index fingers and signs "bear" again. I tell her that no, see Bear (who is actually one of her stuffed toys) is in bed behind her not in the corner of the room but she just giggles at me and signs/says "silly" and "mommy".
I can see she is wide awake so I sit down in the rocker next to her bed and try to figure out what woke her up but all she will tell me is "friend" and "bear" and occasionally duck down like she is hiding and making shhh noises. I finally get fed up and ask her who Friend Bear is and her response literally gave me chills because she doesn't speak well yet but she managed to say, very clearly and with the most serious face a 20-month-old can pull off, "No name, no name, shhhhh".
Well now I am well and truly freaked out so I tell her to ask "No Name Friend Bear" to go home because it is too late to play and I did what any good loving mother would do. I gave her a pacifier, went back to my room, turned off the monitor entirely and hid under the covers in my room where my good and loving husband would protect me from nameless invisible bears.
40. Who Unlocked the Door Though?
My family used to have a baby monitor set up at the top of our stairs so that when myself or my brother were downstairs on the family computer, my mom wouldn't have to yell to us to come upstairs, she could simply talk at a normal level near the monitor and we would know to come up. It was really handy actually. Anyways, one night I am home alone as my parents are at my brother’s hockey game, and I am downstairs on the computer playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.
The monitor was always on full volume and as a kid, anytime I would hear a crack or a noise I would obviously stop playing and listen carefully. Well on this particular night I heard a bang, nothing that was too startling, kinda sounded like a cupboard door shutting. I paused my game and stared at the monitor. I then heard my front door unlock. The door didn't open, I just heard it simply unlock.
My heart dropped, it was eerily quiet. About ten seconds after the door unlocked I heard a massive loud bang, like someone stomping on the hardwood upstairs, and the baby monitor went to loud static. I immediately start crying and hid under the computer desk for an hour before my parents came home. When my parents got home they asked me if I had let anyone in because the door was unlocked, I explained what happened but they couldn't figure anything out. There was nothing taken, the baby monitor was still plugged in, and there were no signs of anyone else being in the house. To this day thinking about that night gives me chills.
41. Haunted House
This isn't something I heard from my kid's room, but it was something creepy heard over a baby monitor. I did home care for a little while, and there was this one client I had a couple of years ago. The lady I assisted had dementia, and she was just at the point where the good days were fading. We had a baby monitor in her room so we could hear when she was waking up.
I'll go ahead and mention that we also had bells pinned to her sheets so that when she was trying to get up on her own (fall risk) we would hear the bells jingle. It was common to hear her down in her room talking to "that man". Asking "who are you?" and "what is it?" to an empty room. One evening, she and I were in the living room together by ourselves, and I heard the bells start jingling on their own over the baby monitor.
There was no ceiling fan, the A/C/heat wasn't running, no windows were open. I always had bad feelings in her house, with things like cabinets opening and one really creepy time where it sounding like footsteps coming down the hallway which really scared me. I'm honestly glad I will never have to go into that house again.
42. Well That Was Considerate of the Woman
I moved into a new house over the winter. My first actual house I’ve owned on my own, so I was pretty stoked. And we just had our second kid a week before signing, so we’re excited to get her room remodeled for her. Walls painted, floors redone, making this house ours. Of course, we set up a baby monitor first thing, as the children’s rooms are on the opposite side of the house.
At first, there were no issues. Baby didn’t enjoy the room during the day, she’d stare at the walls as if she didn’t like the pale purple paint. We painted them a nice orange that weekend. We also got a cat. That’s when things started getting weird. The cat and the baby now had no problem with the room in the day. Our daughter was too young to do much other than be calm or fuss, but the cat was old enough to be a bit more expressive.
All day she’d stare at the southeast corner of the room. At night she’d arch her back and hiss, as if threatened. We’d start hearing faint noises like talking over the monitor at night, but never loud or clear enough to make out. I’m nothing if not a logical man. That corner had an old dresser that was rescued from an old army hotel when it closed. Perhaps the cat could sense old smells it didn’t like.
There was also the entrance to the crawlspace under that corner on the outside, so a lot of wires entered through there. Both children and small animals are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. I went under the house and removed about 100 feet of extraneous wiring from the previous owner’s satellite TV, and rewired that section of the house to eliminate possible interference and replace old wires with shielded cable. We also moved the dresser. Just in case.
But the noises didn’t stop. They grew more frequent. The cat refused to go in the room during the day. It would sit awake in the crib all night, body between the baby and the rest of the room, eyes locked to that corner, occasionally growling or hissing. We stopped letting our son have his radio on at night, in case we were hearing that.
As we met our neighbors we would ask if they had any small children, but none had baby monitors of their own. We installed an alarm system, and I took to keeping my favorite rifle loaded by the bed. Occasionally the alarm would claim our daughter’s window would open, but no alarm would sound and we’d find it secure when checked.
We ran out of explanations. We began letting our daughter sleep with us so she could get better rest. For lack of a better option, I continued renovation. We finished the bathroom, started on other rooms, but didn’t do any more in the nursery. Out of morbid curiosity, we left the baby monitor on at night. The noises still happened, but with that room being unused, they sounded almost sad.
After a week or so without any use of that room whatsoever, I was lying awake after a long day at work, watching an episode of Bones. Out of nowhere, clear as day, a woman’s voice comes over the monitor and calmly says "It’s okay. I’m leaving now". The monitor clicked off. We’ve had no problems since.
I talked to my wife about it, and we recalled one phrase the old owners said during the closing. They had their third kid and the house wasn’t big enough anymore. We had noticed a fair amount of construction material they left behind. "Well we had thought of an addition," she said looking at her husband, "but then there was that thing…" They didn’t make much eye contact after that.
