Catching up on some much-needed ZZZs should never mess with your sense of security, yet that’s exactly what happened to these unfortunate folks. In fact, these hair-raising moments startled Redditors right out of their sweet, peaceful dreams and thrust them into vivid, living nightmares.
1. UnBearable Terror
My buddy and I were camping and saw a bear, so we decided to sleep in his car. I was still worried about the bear, so it took forever to fall asleep. Well, right after I fell asleep, I woke up to screams and something grabbing my face. I immediately started crying, knowing that a bear was about to rip my face off.
Then I realized it was my friend having a night terror. I was livid.
2. An Eye-Popping Sight
A few years back, I heard a thud in the hallway and my four-year-old daughter screaming in pain. She had fallen and gotten a small but deep cut just above her left eyebrow. When I got out into the hallway, a nightmare awaited me. Her face, hands, and pajamas were COVERED in blood, and she was holding her hands against her face. I thought she lost her eye.
A quick trip to the ER for a couple of stitches, and she was right as rain, but I gained almost all of my grey hair that night.
3. A Literal Crash Pad
I had just gotten home from visiting my parents, and I went to bed at around 12:30 AM. Then the unthinkable happened. At 1:04 AM, a car ran into my bedroom/connected half bathroom. My bathroom is about three feet squared, so that was completely destroyed, and the car was partially in my room.
My roommate and I went outside after calling 9-1-1- to search for the driver. Thankfully he was okay. He was lying on the ground about 20 feet away from a car. He had empty cans in his car and pill bottles. He told us he was 25, but we soon found out from law enforcement that he was 19.
This whole situation has been a mess because my landlord wanted to do all the repairs himself. I just moved back into my room last week and have been living in the living room for the past two months. I’m glad to finally have a bedroom again, but sleeping in that room still makes me nervous at night.
I still can’t use my bathroom after 10 PM because it makes me nervous. I’ll be fine eventually; I just need to get used to it.
4. A Sharp Awakening
I randomly woke up to my two-year-old standing over me with a kitchen blade. I swear to god my heart stopped beating. But then I realized what was happening. He wanted sliced apples at 4:00 in the morning and somehow managed to climb up on the table and pull one out. Now we keep them in the cupboard.
Mama Belle and the kids, Shutterstock
5. No Two Minds About It
In grad school, I awoke to my roommate standing directly over me, staring down at me. She couldn’t decide if she should wake me up or not. She kept hearing this deep voice mumbling at inconsistent intervals and was torn between “there’s someone in the house” and “I’m finally actually losing my mind” (she was studying psych at the time).
We finally figured out that it was the smoke detector wanting new batteries but good lord, it was terrifying.
Cast Of Thousands, Shutterstock
49. Looking A Fright
My first ever night terror. It was god awful. I was completely exhausted when I woke up from a very refreshing one-hour sleep. All of a sudden, this tall, lanky, pure black figure with yellow stoner eyes was looking at me through the dimly lit hallway out the door.
I screamed like a banshee, and the dude slowly went behind the thin doorframe, leaving ungodly imaginary claw marks on the walls. When visiting my old apartment, walking past that dang door still gives me chills.
Yuganov Konstantin, Shutterstock
7. The Sleepwatcher
I accidentally left my door unlocked when I lived in this studio apartment in Philly. I woke up, and it felt like someone was watching me. You know that feeling. Then I heard a shuffling noise and turned the lights on. There was a guy in a hoodie standing at the foot of my bed. I screamed.
It was a young, inebriated dude that I literally had to push out. He seemed confused, but I’ll never know what his intent was. I’ve never left my door unlocked since.
8. Man Vs. Nature
I once woke up to an earthquake at 4 AM. I lived in a house over the ocean on stilts, so my house was rocking like crazy. It was my first earthquake, and for some reason, my brain first thought that someone was robbing me. I grabbed a machete and ran outside shirtless in my underwear.
The neighbors next to me looked at me, alarmed, and started laughing.
9. Alarm Bells Were Ringing
I woke up, and my dad’s alarm clock was going off through the wall. He was a really light sleeper, and he always turned it off immediately. I instantly got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.
It had been going off for several minutes, and I think I knew before I got to his room that he had passed. It was just so incredibly out of character for that alarm to be going off like that. He passed in his sleep with the blankets still completely undisturbed, and I think I felt some small comfort at that, even though I was just a kid.
10. Like An Entity From Another REM
One time I experienced a form of sleep paralysis called autoscopic hallucination, and it occurred in a sleepy state when I was just waking from a nap. I saw an inverted image of myself that was so real—I remember standing in my bed and reaching for it. It gives me chills down my spine to this day.
It was four years ago now, and I hope nobody experiences this kind of thing.
11. Blazing Trails
My partner woke me up during a camping trip. I'll never forget the look of fear on his face. He woke me to gather all our gear and our dogs into our truck ASAP; the lightning we had spotted six hours earlier in the day had sparked a wildfire. We got out as ash and sparks were falling around us.
When we reached the top of the ridge surrounding our camp, we got out to look and watched the fire eat our entire campsite. We are so glad we called in the strike when we saw it. We met BLM and fire crews on our way out. The fire burned for like a week. It was one of the fires in Oregon in 2020, the Lakeview Paisley fire.
12. A Waking Nightmare
I woke up to a real-life horror show. A snake was eating my kitties. I lived in an urbanizing area that was under construction, and I was in the last house, and after me, it was just trees, wildlife, a small river, and a mountain. Snakes could be seen from time to time in the houses. We didn’t have poisonous snakes, luckily.
Well, I was sleeping, and my cat was in the next room with her babies (she’d given birth almost two months ago). The kitties’ crying woke me up. At first, I didn’t do anything because I thought nothing was wrong and their mommy was taking care of them.
Then their screaming got louder and wouldn’t stop, and it sounded different from how they cried when my cat jumped in their box to feed them. I woke up and went to see why they were crying, and there was this long snake with its body wrapped around one of the kitties.
I froze right there, and my heart dropped to my stomach. The Cat Mom wasn’t there. I screamed my brother’s name and then went to his room to wake him up, and he slayed the snake and freed the kitty. We’d had five kitties; the snake left us two (counting the one it tried to eat).
13. Mind-Numbing Terror
I sleep on my stomach with my hands under my pillow. At one point, one went numb. I was half asleep, and the other brushed against my numb hand. I couldn’t feel the touch and immediately thought, “Someone is in my bed with me”. I woke the house up with my screaming.
14. Time For Some Serious Shut-Eye
I awoke to my ex-girlfriend grabbing me and saying, “Don’t open your eyes; he’s right on top of you”. It turns out she was having a night terror and had a vision of a small child with a boot about to stomp on my face if I opened my eyes.
15. Caught Sleeping
I woke up to my husband yelling, “Get the heck out of my house!" But here's the horrifying part. A man broke into my house and crawled into bed with me; it turned out he was actually in the house for a couple of hours (door camera). My husband was asleep on the couch.
He came to bed and found the guy on the bed beside me, asleep.
Cast Of Thousands, Shutterstock
16. A Conscious Conscience
I found my mom lying on the kitchen floor with an empty bottle of pills in one hand and an off-the-hook corded phone in the other. I was 14, and I found her just in time. To this day, I get chills just thinking about the feeling I had to just “get out of bed” at 3 AM. I never woke up in the middle of the night. But this night, something made me.
She’s good now, 20 years later.
17. Good Night, Sleep Tight…
A bed bug infestation. I’d had them for weeks and had no idea what they were. I would see one or two here or there, and I’d just smush them, wonder what they were, and move on. One morning, I woke up early and found quite a few of them on my bed. I started looking more closely and that's when I gasped in horror.
I realized that the creases of the mattress were infested with them. Then I started to do some research, learned that I had bed bugs, felt my soul leave my body, then began the process of getting rid of them.
18. The Pottygeist
Back when I lived alone in an apartment, I used to wake up to just about anything. But I never woke up more terrified than the night when I woke up to the sound of my toilet flushing. To this day, I can only assume that a ghost just couldn’t hold it anymore.
19. A Dream Come True
When I was like 10, I had a nightmare that ended with a local newscaster recapping the events of the nightmare. His TV news set looked just like it did in real life, except there was a Native American “dreamcatcher” hanging up behind him—the same dreamcatcher that was on my bedroom window.
As I woke up from the dream and opened my eyes, a chill ran down my spine. The dreamcatcher was precisely in the same place in my field of view as it was in the dream. I sat there for quite a while, staring straight ahead and wondering if I had actually woken up.
20. A Nose For Trouble
I awoke to my seven-year-old son leaning over me, with his face about a foot from my face. In the dark, mouth open, with blood all over his face, he whispered, “Helllllp meeeee”…It was just a bloody nose. I’ve had more devastating things to wake up to. More threatening. But that was real fear. We had a firm talk to never lean over me again like that. Jeez.
21. Are You Kitten Me Right Meow?
A few days after my wife and I got our kitten (her first pet ever), I was woken up by both of them screaming. My wife had stepped on the kitten’s foot or something and wasn’t used to a hairy, pointy, howling animal in the darkness. And then, of course, she felt guilty and was crying about how she’d hurt the kitty.
The cat was fine, but she was upset, so she was hiding, which made my wife feel like the cat would hate her now…It was a long middle of the night. Accidentally squishing pets is old news to me, but I had so much adrenaline from waking up like that that I was basically vibrating with anxiety the whole time. Ugh.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A, Shutterstock
22. Things That Go Bump On The Night
I’d laid down and was just drifting off to sleep when I heard something thump against the edge of the mattress, maybe one foot from my face. My mind started racing. I forced myself up to turn on a light. It was a frog. It got in through the window AC, I guess.
23. Just Kidding Around
I was visiting my cousin and her family, including her three or four kids. So, I woke up one night to hear a soft step-step-drag...step-step-drag...I froze. Had someone taken out everyone? How long until they found me? I worked up the courage, phone in hand, to peek out the door.
I kid you not: I see a kid-size lump being slowly dragged down the hallway. With my heart in my throat, terrified for the kids I love, I crept to the door. The four-year-old was dragging a repurposed laundry tote full of stuffed animals down the hall toward her parents’ room.
She had an accident in bed, and I sure came close to having one myself.
24. But He’s A Creep, He’s A Weirdo…
When he was little, my younger son wouldn’t try to wake you up if he needed something. He’d do that creepy thing kids do where they just stand there looking at you until you wake up. Well, I woke up at about 1 AM in a dark bedroom and saw the black silhouette of a young kid standing right next to the bed. Holy moly, that’s scary.
Then he asked, “Hey Dad, wanna play Rock Band?"
25. Heart-Stopping Distress
I went to bed one night after eating dinner and watching TV, ready for work in the morning. That's the last thing I remember. I woke up three days later in the ICU with my family, who had traveled from three different continents to sit at my bedside, with no memory of what had happened.
It turns out I have a bad heart. But this answer isn’t for me; it’s for my wife. She woke up to the sound of her husband (who doesn’t snore) having agonal breathing while his heart was stopped and his brain was shutting down. So she had to call 0-0-0 (Australian 9-1-1) and give me CPR while the paramedics came.
26. Sounds Like A Real Blast
Once while staying at my girlfriend’s family’s cabin, I woke up to a loud blasting sound in the middle of the night. I shot straight up in bed, drenched in sweat, wondering who the heck got shot. It turned out the neighbor was a big-time bird hunter who liked to start before dawn. It was a horrible way to wake up.
Krakenimages.com, Shutterstock
27. Not A Pretty Penny
I awoke to my son telling me he swallowed a penny, and it was stuck in his throat. I’ve never moved so fast in my life. After a quick examination, we determined he was breathing fine, so we threw him in the car, and off to the ER we went (as opposed to calling 9-1-1). When we got to the reception desk, I started explaining the problem and getting him registered, and then I turned to him. He was looking very green.
I asked him if he was okay, and when he opened his mouth to reply, he puked all over the floor. My husband pointed to the floor and said, “Welp, there it is!" The staff started DYING. This, for whatever reason, made their day. They insisted we be seen anyway to make sure there was no tearing. The doctor came in giggling.
“Heard what you did at the reception desk! Making my job easy today”. My son was fine, but what a scare at first.
28. Gone With The Wind
I woke up to 161 KPM (100 MPH) winds hitting my house like a truck. It literally sounded like a boom and shifted the house a good degree. I also lost a shed which I never found, nor the lawnmower inside of it. That was last winter. It led to a three-day power outage and -30F temperatures. I’m glad I was prepared, but my gosh, that sucked.
29. Now She’s Shaking At The Knees
I woke from an unsettling dream to the feeling of someone shaking my foot. As I was lying there trying to process what happened, a hand cupped my foot and shook it again. I immediately sat up and threw on the light. There was no one there. My bedroom door never opened. I was the only one in my room, and my kids were all asleep. So yeah…I didn’t go back to sleep that night.
30. Running Scared
I remember years ago, I believe in 2017, when I was nine years old, I had a nightmare about a swarm of large centipedes, scorpions, spiders, and cockroaches, chasing me. It was so frightening that I ran out of my room, then into my backyard. The next thing I knew, I was desperately jumping fences.
The streets were empty, but I saw a few people in their backyard, and I jumped into their yard and yelled for help. They looked at me, confused, and then I pointed, screaming, “Look”, repeatedly. The creatures consumed them before they could react, crawling all over their bodies. I just ran and jumped yards.
I even tripped many times doing so, but I immediately got back up. I yelled at other people, but they didn’t seem to notice me, and I felt hopeless. I ran down a biking trail and jumped into a creek above the biking trail. Then I woke up in the middle of the night—and my blood ran even colder.
There was a real spider-like creature next to me. I was petrified. It jumped off the bed, and I waited a few minutes before launching out of my bed and running into my grandpa’s room.
31. Next Time, Give Him A Doggy Bag
One night, as I was exhausted and forgot to lock the doors, a stray dog found its way into my house. Unaware of its presence, I peacefully slept through the night. However, upon waking up, I heard unfamiliar sounds emanating from outside my room, and panic instantly gripped me as I feared that someone had broken into my home.
Suddenly, the dog entered my room, and at that moment, my heart leaped with a mixture of fear and uncertainty, intensified by the darkness that obscured its identity. The dog seemed equally startled by my sudden movement and the noise I made. Eventually, I realized that it was just a dog, and a sense of relief washed over me, allowing me to regain my composure.
I gently guided the friendly canine outside and offered it some water, though it had already helped itself to my leftovers from the table, so I refrained from giving it additional food.
Pablo Garcia Saldana, Shutterstock
32. Can’t Figure It Out
Probably like a few years back, I felt a really cold gust of wind, which kinda made me wake up early in the morning. I tried to close the window, and I saw a figure under a lamp post that reminded me of my deceased relative. It seems like a bunch of bologna, but it felt so real. The memory feels foggy but also really clear. I just can’t explain it.
33. It Shook Them To Their Cores
Our dog developed epilepsy; his first seizure was around 4 AM one morning. I’d heard an odd noise and gone down to check if he was okay. I screamed for my partner frantically when I realized what was happening. Obviously, the dog having a seizure wasn’t great, but he must have thought I was being butchered by the noise I made. I’m not sure what I expected my partner to do about it.
He was fairly useless and just cried when he came down, which was not the helpful response I had hoped for. The stupid thing is that I’m a nurse; I’ve calmly dealt with many human seizures and emergencies and never responded like that. Maybe it was because I wasn’t properly awake, it was so unexpected, and I get very attached to our dogs. The dog is still here on his medication nearly five years later.
34. Easy, Tiger
Once, I opened my eyes in the middle of the night only to see the shadow of, like, a BIG cat on the wall. In that land between awake and asleep, it was so terrifying. How was I going to run away from this puma or mountain lion? Then the hilarious truth dawned on me.
As I was figuring out my final thoughts of life before being eaten, I saw my cat enter the room past a nightlight that was on an extension cable behind my nightstand that perfectly projected her shadow as a giant cat. She just wanted snuggles. Good cat.
35. All Fired Up
Three times, out of a deep sleep, I jumped up and ran out of the house, yelling, “Fire! Fire! Fire!" All three times, the neighbors had set the dune on fire. Not only that, but I ran straight to the fire without hesitation and without stopping to see where the fire actually was.
No one else heard any yelling about it, but maybe I heard something subconsciously. One case was renters, so I wouldn’t have recognized any voices.
36. Ashes To Ashes
One morning, my mom woke me and my new wife for a chilling reason. The house was on fire, and I had to rescue the cats, but one ran back in (she survived and is okay with us six years later). For context, it was a few months after I had gotten married and my father had passed.
We moved into my mom’s place to help out. It was as bad a time as can be for losing a home. Seeing smoke, then running downstairs and seeing the kitchen just engulfed in flames while still waking up is not something I ever want to relive.
37. It Must’ve Been Really Cheesed
I had put a mouse trap in the drop ceiling as we had a mouse problem. It went off, but the mouse’s leg just got caught in it. I woke up to the sound of a screaming mouse zipping around my bedroom ceiling, bashing the mouse trap into things. It was so loud and so terrifying I had a panic attack and couldn’t sleep in the room again for the next two nights.
Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley, Shutterstock
38. Taking The House By Storm
Hurricane Andrew. It didn’t hit until the middle of the night, so my mother had my sister and I go to bed at our normal bedtime. We awoke to a tree falling down and the sound of wind a few hours later, but that was nothing compared to the stuff that went down.
We rode it out in a hallway. The house basically disintegrated around us, and the doors blew into the room connected to the hall we were in. The men that were there threw a mattress up to protect us. We were safe, but we lost everything.
Leonard the food guy, Shutterstock
39. A Triggering Memory
I once woke up to a barrel in my mouth. I grew up in Zimbabwe, and when I was 12, Mugabe allowed the conflict veterans to take a lot of the farms away. We had around 20 guys come to our house at 3 AM, and yeah…I woke up to the barrel in my teeth. They wanted my dad to go and slaughter a cow for food.
40. The Big Bang
I woke up to an absolutely huge explosion in the middle of the night (I’m Ukrainian). We get those often, but this one was very close to my home, so it was extremely loud, and waking up to such a bang was adrenaline-fueling.
41. Nope, Nope, Nope
When my husband and I moved into our new home, I woke up in the middle of the night to someone or something saying, “Hello”. I just laid there, totally scared. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to invite anything into our home.
42. Ciao Chow
One time, my then-girlfriend-now-wife was staying over at my place for the evening. At the time, I had this chow-mix dog that was pretty protective, but that’s why I loved him. One night I woke up to him growling, but I assumed it was nothing. Boy was I wrong. Then, I heard the front gate creek open.
Just when I thought it was from another apartment, someone appeared in the light and knocked on the door. It was like 2 AM. My dog freaked out, and so did I, but I got up the courage to go to the door because it looked like, in the faint light, this person was carrying a pizza.
I opened the door slightly to see this kid delivery guy, terrified at the sound of a large dog trying to get to him through the wall, telling me my pizza was here. I had not ordered a pizza. So, back out he went into the early morning to figure out who ordered this pizza, and back I went to try to fall asleep while wondering how I should have probably handled that situation better.
I was potentially lucky it was actually just a delivery guy.
43. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
I once woke up after a party to a neighbor yelling, “Your house is on fire!" It turned out one of the guests tossed their cigs into one of my planters the night before. Luckily, the only damage was the front wall getting singed and needing repainting. Pro-life tip: potting soil is flammable.
44. Scaredy Cat
I rented a house where I lived with my kitty. She’s not a dumb kitty; she’s frighteningly smart. Two things happened at night periodically. First, waking up to a loud, horrible scream just outside of my bedroom door (four feet from me). I thought my cat was being harmed.
It took three more times before I figured out it was a loose board. If I stepped on it, it was a normal squeak. My cat made it banshee-scream. I grabbed my hammer at 2 AM and beat the heck out of the board. It never banshee-screamed again. Second, I’m also a light sleeper. My cat is terrified of strangers.
I woke up to the feeling of her body tensing on my bed. Then I heard her low growl. I thought there were thieves or animals outside…until I realized she was looking down the hallway, adjusting her gaze as if watching someone approaching my bedroom.
By her gaze, it was six feet off the ground before she noped it out of there. Terrifying. After a few odd occurrences, I spent an evening praying over every room and hallway in my house. All the weird stuff stopped.
45. It Really Knocked Her Sideways
I’d gotten into a car accident that knocked me out cold. I woke up inside my car, lopsided and stopped on the sidewalk, blood in my hair and a horrible feeling of my head full of wet sand. No one helped me as I got out and sat on the curb and saw how bad my car was.
46. Her Knight In Shining Armoire
I woke up to my wife screaming there was a man hiding in our closet. I went full-stupid with my sleep-addled brain and ran straight into the closet screaming myself…only to turn around to my wife looking at me, concerned and scared, not understanding why I was in the closet looking for an intruder. I was so confused, and then I realized...
It turns out she has occasional night terrors that she wasn’t aware of. Twelve years later, we’re still going strong, and I will always rush into any closet for her, no questions asked.
LightField Studios, Shutterstock
47. He Couldn’t Resist A Rest
I got swatted. I woke up to pounding on my door, and apparently, I didn’t open my bedroom door fast enough because they smashed it with a battering ram. I had rifles pointed at me while I was handcuffed and thrown to the ground. They were screaming orders at me, but I couldn’t hear them because I had earplugs in.
RealPeopleStudio, Shutterstock
48. Mother’s Instinct
I was maybe five years old. I woke up to someone banging on the back door, followed by shots as they entered the house. It was my ex-stepdad, and he’d come to try to take my mother’s life. Thank God he was unsuccessful. She had been having a bad feeling for a few weeks, and they kept getting worse and worse.
She asked a really close male friend if he would crash on the couch that night. Then her psycho ex came in. Shots rang out. Her male friend got shot in the leg. But that's not the craziest part. My mom’s ex then proceeded to bite off her male friend’s ear, all while my mom hit the guy with a kitchen chair.
I honestly don’t know what made him give up and leave. Maybe the hurt back and bleeding head from the chair? Thirty years later, I realize I never asked that question. Anyway, all this happened while I was hiding under the covers in my bed one room away.
49. Bad Blood
I woke up in the ICU on CRRT and truly believed the doctors were fake and were draining my blood for fun. I did not share a common language with the ICU team, so they couldn’t tell me what was going on. Apparently, I did nothing but scream for help after the tubes were gone, and they transferred me to a ward where my husband could see me because I was driving them crazy.
When he got there, he was so scared—and when they finally told him where I was/what I'd done, he collapsed in laughter.
Zoriana Zaitseva, Shutterstock
50. As Helpless As A Baby
One night, I woke up to my husband’s blood-curdling animal scream. He was cry-screaming my name while holding our newborn baby and running at me. He had taken the baby for a bit so I could get some sleep. To be fair, it had been a stressful time since my water broke 10 weeks early.
We had been on edge and exhausted for a very long time, and as new parents, our anxiety was sky-high. Not to mention we had twins, so everything was extra intense. It turned out that while trying to change the baby, he bumped her head—pretty gently, I might add—on the corner of the bookshelf.
Then he freaked the heck out of his mind and started screaming in terror and running to wake me up while holding our undressed, crying baby. I had never seen a big, grown man so terrified. Our baby was completely fine; she cried for a couple of minutes, then was happy again. The doctors said absolutely everything was fine.
There wasn’t even a bump or a bruise, for God’s sake. But I was traumatized. It took me another four months before I could sleep again without waking up, terrified that something bad had happened. To make things worse, this happened again a few months later, but this time it was the nanny waking me up in tears and shaking.
My daughter had a feeding issue due to her premature birth and couldn’t feed normally. We had to give her milk through an NG tube, which sometimes caused her to puke but not get it out and choke on it. It happened twice while I was feeding her, and it was both dangerous and terrifying. Those were the worst days of my life.
Once, it happened while the nanny was trying to feed her. She called an ambulance immediately and then came to wake me up in tears and panic. She had yanked out the tube, and the baby was breathing by the time I rushed over. But again…terrifying. The whole choking thing was horrific, and I don’t think I ever got over it.
She is a happy, healthy two-and-a-half-year-old now. But I am forever scarred.
Sources: Reddit,
