You don't have to believe in ghosts to get creeped out. Plenty of everyday instances can leave you unsettled, not just in the dark of night. Keep reading to hear of some cases where even naysayers were left totally creeped out. That uneasy feeling will leave even the most fearless person a little off-kilter.
1. The Vanishing Act
Years ago—before cell phones—my boyfriend was driving me home, and we saw a man lying on the ground in the strangest position. He was kneeling with his head on the ground and bent at a sharp angle so that he faced the street. It was 2 AM, and the man was covered in sweat with his eyes open. We pulled over, and I hopped out of the car to check on him.
His eyes were wide open, and it seemed his face wasn't moving, but it felt like he was pleading for help. He didn't respond at all when we called out to him. There was no blinking, and he had glassy eyes. I reached out to touch him, and he was ice cold. I'm sure he wasn't breathing. I hopped back in the car, and we sped back to my house to call for help.
Ten minutes later, the authorities called back to ask for the cross streets again. They arrived at the corner, and there was nothing there. I verified that they had the right spot, and they said they would call back if they needed any more information. That was the last I ever heard about it. I checked the newspaper for the next few weeks, but we never found out anything else about that man.
2. Get Off My Tail!
The summer after graduating high school, I left work early and went up to my parent's cabin. I spent the night at the beach watching the sunset. Once the sun went down and it became nearly pitch black, I got to my car and started driving down the highway. After about 10 seconds of being at speed, there was an older Tahoe that started riding my tail and flashing its high beams.
So, I got up to about 60mph in a 45mph zone. They were still on my tail. I pulled off to the side road that my parent's cabin was off of, and they took the same turn. I thought that seemed weird because there were only about 30–40 houses on the road. So I went all the way to the end, which led to a maintenance area for the golf course nearby. Little did I know, my nightmare was just beginning.
The truck was still following me. At that point, I was freaking out because if I pulled into my house, they would know where we lived, and they were still following close by. I took a number of random turns, and the truck kept following every single turn I made for about 15 minutes. I finally had a chance to make a turn with traffic going through the intersection, which gave me a few seconds of a head start.
I pulled down a side street, went up 100 yards, turned off all my lights, and waited. The truck slowly drove by the perpendicular street and kept going. I then booked it home, pulled my car around the side away from the main road, and pulled every curtain. For an 18-year-old, I was scared out of my mind that night.
3. Mystery Meat
Our old house was on a corner, and instead of a backyard, it had a side yard with a small deck that wrapped around the back. The dining room had patio doors that led out to the back, and we would have BBQs and such back there. When I was about 14, we only had one desktop computer and one laptop for the family. My brother and I would fight over the desktop, so I would use the laptop to write music.
On one particular night, my brother had his friend over. They were downstairs, and I was at the dining room table on the laptop. As I was wrapped up in my writing, I didn't pay much attention to my surroundings. I heard a knock on the patio door, which startled me. I looked up, expecting to see my brother or his friend.
What I saw made my blood run ice cold. Standing at the door and waving was a person wearing a Halloween pig mask. Thinking it was my brother or his friend, I mouthed, "Good one", and gave the person the finger. They walked away. As soon as they left, I went downstairs to give them a piece of my mind, and to my surprise and dismay, they were both sitting on the couch playing PlayStation.
They swore up and down it wasn't either of them, and there was no way one of them would have had time to get back downstairs and unmask before getting on the couch. To this day, I have no idea who it was that knocked and waved.
4. That’s Bloody Scary
I was working in an office pretty late one night and was 100% sure I was the only one there. The AC system would shut down at around 7 PM, and until it did, you didn’t notice how much noise it made. The office got extremely quiet—which was unsettling, to begin with—and I had my office door closed. About thirty minutes later, I heard the muted voice of a little girl with a heavy British accent saying, "Mommy, I think he's in this one".
I lived in the southern part of the United States, so there was no good reason for a British child to be there. The door cracked ever so slightly, and I almost peed my pants. Then, a real-life little girl popped her head in and said, "Nope, wrong one. Sorry"! It turned out that her American stepfather was still in the building.
5. Hidden Talent
I once worked as a live-in staff member in a college dormitory. During the summer, we housed about 30 summer school students who remained on campus. These students tended to be highly academically motivated and were often high-stress individuals. One warm day in late June, my office received a call from a concerned sibling who said she and her family could not reach their brother, who lived alone in a room on the summer school floor.
This wasn't unusual as our office frequently dealt with students avoiding their kith and kin due to frayed nerves or general social awkwardness. Our standard protocol to check on a student was to try to reach them by our emergency contact information. Failing that, we would go check their room to verify they're living in the building and perhaps available then and there.
Then, we would have them call their family to verify we followed up on the original request. We could only enter a room with another staff member present to ensure the personal safety of staff and students. Anyway, it all seemed like a normal enough situation—but I had no idea what I was getting into. I failed to reach this student on his room and mobile phone and was working short-staffed.
Since I was on my own, I decided to go to his room and check on him. I arrived on his floor, and the floor seemed deserted as I had expected. I found his room number and immediately noticed the sound of a movie playing on a TV or computer from behind the door. I knocked three times and announced that I was a staff member checking on his health and safety.
There was no answer. I didn't think this was that remarkable, as college students are notorious for leaving electronics running while not in the room. I checked the floor showers and bathrooms and found them deserted. I returned to his door and knocked three more times, waiting about 20 seconds between each knock. Again, there was no answer.
My instincts started to buzz. I worked in residence halls for many years as a professional, and something about all the pieces of this puzzle weren't adding up. I was by myself, so I probably let myself get more worked up than if I was with someone else. I decided that, for some sense of closure or sanity, I needed the immediate resolution of keying into this student's room, even though I was by myself and not technically supposed to do so.
I knocked on the door one more time for good measure and again announced myself as the hall director. I keyed into the room, and that bad feeling came back even stronger. The room appeared relatively vacant. The student seemed to be living out of a suitcase, which was unusual for someone staying no less than eight weeks for a summer school session.
The bedding was tussled like someone had been sleeping in it, and all the lights in the room were on. And as I had suspected, there was an open laptop on a desk running on battery power playing The Matrix, but no student. I began to start rationalizing to keep from feeling unsettled. I thought surely this student and I had crossed paths on my way to his room.
I had never met him before, so I wouldn't recognize him, and perhaps he was just down in the lobby picking up food delivery for a late lunch. I decided to try and reach the student later in the afternoon or that night. As I left, I noticed another odd piece of evidence—the accordion closet doors, which were removed in most rooms due to disuse, were still in this room and were closed.
I couldn't remember the last time I actually saw someone use those cranky, dysfunctional doors. Then my intuition spiked higher than ever. I realized I was alone in a room with a potentially suicidal student who may have completed the task. I thought I was about to be "that guy" who discovers the body and then has a mountain of paperwork and undesirable tasks, not the least of which would be calling the family back to break the news.
I felt like I was talking to myself when my voice cracked as I spoke to the closed doors. I announced my name and title and that I would be opening those accordion doors in three seconds. I fumbled with the latch on the doors and finally disengaged them. As I slid the doors apart, I was unprepared for what I saw. There he was.
A 7-foot-tall man was staring at me embarrassingly as though I had found his secret hangout. We stared at each other for a good 15 seconds without blinking, breathing, or speaking. I finally realized what was going on, and my natural emotion was disbelief. All I could think to say was, "Um…are you in here hiding from me"? He looked at me and said, "Yeah".
My heart was still racing. I turned to leave, and before I shut his door, I turned back to him and said, "Call your sister. She's worried about you, and, frankly, I am too".
6. I Didn’t See It Coming
I was 18 years old, and it was the first time I had ever operated a bulldozer with an open-air cab and roll cage. I was clearing trees out of a waterway on a farm. All of a sudden, I was knocked out. When I came to, there was blood running down my face into my lap. The dozer was pushing up against a tree, just spinning its tracks. My neck and head hurt.
I had no idea what had just happened, and no one was around me. I wasn’t told how to shut off the machine and couldn’t just turn the key off. I called my dad, and he ran over. He turn pulled the idle bar all the way down, and it shut off. We were both clueless as to what had happened. Then, he saw a branch behind my head that I must have driven through.
I must have pushed it forward pretty far, and it snapped back into the cab and hit me in the forehead. I never saw it or anything.
7. Anything Goes
I worked at a grocery store in a specific department that had a lot of samples, and I could cut things to the customer's liking. We had a lot of interesting and unique items, many of which I'd nicely describe as an acquired taste. One day, I was working with one of my favorite co-workers next to the display case, and he was giving out samples.
This woman and her daughter walked up to try some. The mother was a regular, but I had never seen her daughter before, who was about 11–12 years old. The daughter really liked an item that very few people did. I was surprised. So in a cartoonishly astonished voice, I said, "You really like it"? She vigorously nodded her head.
The mother also thought it was pretty good but hesitated when she heard the price. It was totally fine; it happened all the time. She said she might come back for it when entertaining guests. They walked off, and my co-worker and I continued working. About 20 minutes later, the daughter returned to the case with this expectant look in her eye.
My co-worker asked if she was back for some more of the item, and she nodded vigorously again. We then saw her mother smiling and nodding at us and indicating to her daughter where she would be once her daughter had secured the goods. My coworker set about getting her stuff. I was making small talk with the kid, and as my co-worker went to hand her the parcel, she grabbed it.
I had never seen anyone under 30 like the item, so I said to her jokingly, "Aren't you a little too young to like that kinda stuff"? Her answer was so bizarre, it’s unforgettable. She took a step closer to me, leaned in, and said, as seriously and with as much honey as you could imagine, "I'm not too young for anything". I just looked at her with my eyebrows raised, told her to enjoy it, and walked away with goosebumps on my arms.
Then, she came back on a day I wasn’t there and asked my manager about me, like my name and stuff. That kid freaked me out.
8. He Was Taking A Gamble
I was a cocktail waitress on a day shift at a small casino in Idaho for about six months. Everything was creepy about the place, but one day there was a dude who wasn’t very old—about mid to late 50s—who had a stroke at a nickel slot machine. He pooped himself as well but managed to drag himself back up to keep playing while EMS was on the way.
9. My Fear Was Through The Roof
I was at home when I heard scratching from above the ceiling in the loft space. Thinking it might be a creature, I climbed on furniture and scratched the ceiling back. Whatever it was, it hit so hard from above that paint flaked off the ceiling. My parents thought someone had broken into the house because they heard the commotion from the garden outside.
My dad climbed into the loft to see what it was, but there was nothing there but undisturbed dust.
10. The Energy Was Crystal Clear
My partner liked crystals. I wasn’t into esotericism—he wasn’t too much either—but he said that he could feel their energy when some of them were strong. I always believed it was utter nonsense. One day, he came up to me—without saying anything—and handed me a crystal. I took it in my hand and felt an electrifying pain through my arm and chest until he took it back.
He never told me how they made him feel or which ones he thought gave off vibes, so I couldn’t have known anything beforehand. I just felt it. It was bizarre.
11. Unforgettable Face
I had a co-worker who didn't come to work one day. He didn't call and was usually very reliable. He lived alone and didn't have many friends outside of work. So, I went over to his place and convinced his landlady to let me in. I’ll never forget what I found His body was in his armchair, in front of the TV. He’d had a heart attack and had been deceased for about 12 hours when I found him.
I still remember the grimace of pain permanently etched on his face like it was yesterday.
12. This Place Left Me Pale
I did maintenance for a tanning salon. We had one store whose back doors would randomly slam shut. The radios would turn on by themselves pretty often as well. There were customers who wouldn't use certain rooms because they said they felt as if they were being watched. My partner and I spent hours searching for short circuits in the radios and checking air flows in the rooms and never found anything. It was creepy.
13. Ghastly Grandpa Gave Me The Creeps
When I was 17, I worked in retail as a cashier. I had a very old couple come through my line buying a wok. The husband, who was at least 85, started making conversation with me about the wok and asked if I liked Chinese food. I told him, “Yeah, I like Chinese”. Then, he winked at me and asked, “Do you want to go out with me to get some Chinese”.
I told him, no, and he replied, “Oh. Well.” He looked a bit disappointed and turned to look at his wife, who was on the phone. Then, he said, “Would you at least like to come home with me and live in my basement”? I declined. The rest of the transaction took place in terrified silence. His wife never said a word. To this day, I still wonder if he was trying to joke, or if he had dementia or something else that didn’t make him realize how creepy he sounded to someone young enough to be his great-grandchild.
14. Beckoned By Black And White
I was playing the PC game Black and White—which was not a horror game—shortly after it came out. It was late at night, and suddenly, I heard my speakers whisper my name. There was no reason for it, and nothing happened on screen. It was just my computer whispering my name. It scared the daylights out of me. Years later, I found out the disturbing truth.
They had recorded common names in one of the game files. If the name on your profile matched a name they had recorded, there would be a small chance it would randomly play while you were playing.
15. Photo Freak Out
I taught adult students. I had one student who was intense and creepy. When I first started, she kept giving me “welcome presents” as I was new to the country. They were just simple things like food, postcards, and books. It was a nice idea, but it seemed a little excessive. She added me on social media and then got upset when I didn't reply to her constant messages, even though I had told her that I didn’t really use social media.
I didn't see her for a few months and figured she had just gone back to her own school or stopped studying. I was relieved that she had clearly gotten bored of me. But then she came back. She gave me an envelope full of photos of me she had taken during my lessons without my knowledge. I was a little weirded out, to say the least.
16. One Of These Twins Was Not Like The Other
I was in the middle of my third year at university, and a bunch of friends had come down to visit. We were all pretty hungover from drinking the night before and went out for the usual post-greasy-breakfast hungover stroll around the neighborhood. Two of these friends were twin brothers. One of them, we hung out with all the time, the other we'd just met for the first time.
He was pretty normal the night before, joining in the fun. But, on this day, when we were all hanging around a local basketball court playing hoops, the twin brother kept following me around all over the place with the creepiest grin I'd ever seen in my life. He was staring right into the nether regions of my soul the whole time.
I would back away and join the group again, and he kept following me around. When we were walking back to the apartment, he and I were walking down the sidewalk behind the group. Suddenly, he moved over in front of me, stared at me with that creepy look again, and fell to his knees as if to worship me or something. I didn't know what to do.
I said, "Hey, buddy? You all right? We're heading back now, right"? He wouldn't say anything. He stayed on his knees, looking up at me with a clenched face and squinted eyes as if he were looking directly into the sun or something. Later that day, my roomie said he was tripping, so I thought nothing of it and moved on with my life. But the creepiness didn’t end there.
A few weeks later, we got a phone call from the twin brother we usually hung out with. He informed us that his other twin brother visited their aunt's place and inflicted her with 14 wounds using a sharp object. She didn't lose her life, but it was pretty bad. He had even called the authorities before going because he knew he was going to do it, but he couldn't stop himself because of "the voices”.
The ensuing court case was widely covered in the media as this was a relatively smaller community where this sort of thing didn’t happen regularly. I was reading one of the articles, and one of the testimonies was that this twin brother had severe schizophrenia and was hearing voices in his head. He believed to his very bones that his aunt was the devil and that he had been commanded by God to go and get rid of her. But that’s not the most chilling part.
As the newspaper article described, this “God” that told him to get rid of her was a guy in a group he hung out with on New Year's Day. It didn't take me long to realize that he was talking about me. I know for a fact it was a mental illness, but just knowing that I had somehow "commanded" him to go harm his aunt stays with me to this day.
17. My Gut Nailed It
I was walking down the street when I saw a rusty nail on the road. I picked it up and threw it into the yard of an empty house. After I threw the nail, a man came out of what I thought was an empty house and shouted at me. I freaked out—thinking it was about the nail—and kept walking toward my house. The guy didn't sound mad, but I couldn't determine what he was saying.
He started following me to the street and gesturing for me to come over, but my gut told me to keep on walking. I got home—but then things got even weirder. From my house I could see that the empty house was now surrounded by officers. After a while, it got worse, and men in full gear showed up. I found out later that the house was empty, but that a bunch of known criminals were camping out in there.
I nearly ended up being held captive. I narrowly avoided that situation.
18. Parking Lot Panic
I worked as a service technician in residential environments. I would go to houses and apartments and condos to do my thing. I was working in one particular condo building with over 70 floors and about eight elevators. The elevators were in two groups of four, with two giant elevator shafts. The two shafts were identical looking.
Because of that, It was easy to get disoriented as to which direction you were facing when you exited an elevator. After doing some work on a 65th-floor unit, I realized I had to go to a utility room on Parking Level 1. I hopped on the elevator and pressed P1, and took a lonely ride down 60+ floors. I got to P1, and when the elevator doors opened, I heard a chilling sound.
Someone was weeping. I was immediately worried for whoever was crying, so I started to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. It was a child crying, and since all the walls in that area were bare and concrete, the sound was echoing and seemed to be coming from everywhere. Panic didn't set in until I had searched all four corners of the square room and hadn't found anyone.
My mind started racing. I decided to nope out and head back to the door that would eventually lead me to the utility room that I was supposed to be working in. I rounded the corner, and there I found the source of the noise. It was a little girl with straight black hair crouched down, sobbing into her knees, facing the corner. I don't know why I didn't see her before, because I had already checked that corner.
For a moment, I considered running because the scene looked like it was straight out of The Ring. I thought she would turn around with no face or something. However, that moment of nonsense subsided, and I asked her what was wrong. She was just lost and scared, so I escorted her back to the concierge desk so security could help her back to her unit.
19. A Chilling Encounter
I was a nurse and used to work the day shift. One afternoon, I was walking down the hallway with my computer-on-wheels (COW) to pass around meds. I was in between two patient rooms that were not close to either door and far away from the nurse’s station and kitchenette. I could hear one of the physical therapists talking to a patient in one of the rooms, but no one else was in the hallway.
I was looking down at my papers to get myself organized before going to see another patient. All of a sudden—in my right ear—like someone was standing right behind me—I heard a female voice say, “I’m COLD”!!! They said it in kind of a jokey way. I turned around, thinking it was my friend goofing around on me, but no one was there. There was no one in the hallway at all.
20. I Was A Total Fraidy Cat
Years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I had a day when I wasn't feeling too great. So, I decided to skip out on my last two classes and head home. That meant no school buses, so I would just walk the three miles home. Before the age of cell phones, it was a pretty long, boring hike to take, so I decided to take a shortcut through some small wooded trail along the creek.
Eventually, I came across a deceased cat lying in the middle of the trail. As I walked around it, I noticed another lifeless cat to my left. I then looked to my right, and sure enough, there was another. Creeped out, I looked behind me and noticed two more and yet another two in front of me. But that’s not the most terrifying part. They were all laid out in a giant circle, with one in the middle. There was no visible damage to any of the animals, no blood or cuts. I sped up the pace and got out of there. I never took that trail again.
21. This Place Still Gives Me The Daily Blues
I worked as a cable tech. I once went into a basement that I still have nightmares about. There was a single pull string light in the center of the room. I couldn't really see much until I turned it on, but the walls down the stairway were covered in old newspaper. I was used to dark basements, but I was not prepared for what I saw when I turned on the light in this place.
All the walls were covered in newspapers. Every one of them was a headline about a tragedy or a fatal incident. There was a black and white framed picture on the wall, and below it was a large child-sized porcelain doll propped up in a rocking chair with a super old-looking cradle beside it. I stayed and did my job, but I still can't shake that feeling of—something—when I think about it.
22.Nightmare On L Street
We had quite a large L-shaped house. The “L” was cut into a hill, so part of it had a downstairs, which was almost underground. It had windows facing out, but most of the area was either in the hill or under another floor. I had the room on the bottom part of the “L” from when I was 13 onwards. My room had two doors, one that opened out to a rumpus room and one to an en suite.
It was always creepy, but being a skeptic, I dared anything there to do something to me. I grew up fine, but I could never sleep unless both doors were shut. When my parents went away, I would break the rules and bring my dog in to sleep on the bed with me. I woke a few times to see her alert and staring at the door to the rumpus room.
Occasionally I would hear a clawing at the screen on the window, but we had dogs, cats, horses, and the local bush turkeys, foxes, etc. I figured if something was there that shouldn’t have been, my dogs would've gone ballistic. But the story doesn’t end there. Years later, I brought a new girlfriend home to meet my parents. We slept in my old room, and twice out of the three nights we stayed there, she woke up screaming between 12 AM and 3 AM.
It only happened in that room. She refused to sleep in the house again. Then, my parents let my younger sister move into the room. She asked me if I had ever heard scratching on the window late at night. Both of the dogs we had, plus the cat and the horses, were all gone by that point. She also said she couldn’t sleep unless both doors were shut.
She would often put doorstops under both doors so she could hear if either door opened. She googled some stuff and decided to sage the room. After that, she had hectic nightmares and woke up screaming late at night a few times. I had never told her what my girlfriend had experienced. It was all pretty creepy.
23. A Heavenly Sight
I was an EMT. I had a Spanish-speaking patient who was having a heart attack and was writhing in pain. He was clutching his chest since the moment we laid eyes on him. As we were on the way to the hospital, he suddenly threw both hands straight up toward the ambulance ceiling, opened his eyes wide, and said, “Señor! Soy yo! Estoy aquí”! (Lord! It’s me! I’m here!)
Then he flopped down onto the stretcher lifeless. Our crew and lots of people at the hospital attempted resuscitation, but he never came back. I think he saw some vision of God or heaven in the back of our ambulance that night and promptly left his body behind with us suckers.
24. I Didn’t Know How To Address This
In my sophomore year in college, I ran into this guy who was a year younger than me. We were acquaintances who ran in the same circles. He was a nice guy, smart, and quiet. At parties, he would fold these really cool 3-D shapes in the corner instead of interacting. He would always just watch everybody. Once, I ran into him at a bus stop, and I stopped to say hello.
We had an awkward chat about our majors, and I asked if he had any contact with a mutual friend of ours that had gone into the army. He said yes, and I said, “Great! Could you pass him my number”? He opened his wallet and pulled out a piece of paper, which was the only thing in there. It had MY name, university address, and phone number on it.
25. Bad From Head To Toe
I used to manage a small family-owned retail store. It was the 4th of July, and the owners had taken the day off and dropped the responsibility on me. We had two stock boys bringing up some items on the forklift when I heard screaming coming from outside the storefront. One of them came flying through the front door on one leg, spewing profanity before collapsing on the ground.
I looked down and saw the actual bone of his ankle, and there was blood everywhere. The dude was riding tandem on the forklift—a giant safety no-no—when the driver took a hard turn and sent the kid off the side, running over his foot. The driver screeched to a halt, thought he stopped on the kid's foot—which he hadn’t—and popped the forklift in reverse, running over the foot again.
I learned that day that I keep my cool in emergencies. I grabbed and elevated the kid's foot and instructed someone to call an ambulance and another person to get towels to try and stop the bleeding. I held his foot up until the EMTs came. They managed to save his foot, but it went necrotic, and he went septic at one point but survived.
26. The Crow
I was working with a young client who had childhood-onset schizophrenia. The individual was a harm to themselves and others. My back was to the window in my office when they started screaming, "THE MAN IN THE BLACK IS HERE. HE FOLLOWED ME. NO, NOOO"! As I was trying to calm them down, they began to cry. He said, “He is at the window. I can hear him. He says he wants to hurt you.
“He will come in here and take your skin off. He wants you gone”. I was trying to calm them down, moving through the plan we had when they were overcome by their hallucinations. Then I heard tapping on the window. There was an enormous black crow at the window, tapping on the glass extremely hard with its beak. The bird was just staring at me.
It would tap, bring its head back and, slam its beak into the glass, then stare. It did it over and over again. I got the client to calm down, and we ended the session. The bird was still there. We left the office. The bird was still there when I came back. The next client came in, and again, still there. That bird sat at my window another four hours, staring and tapping.
27. I Had My Eye On Him
When I was at university, my friends and I lived in a ground-floor flat. My room was at the front of the building, and outside my window was the front garden. My boyfriend at the time and I had literally just finished getting busy, and I put my head on the pillow and glanced to my right, which is where the window was. There was a gap between the curtain and the window.
When I looked out, what I saw was seriously chilling. There was a pair of eyes watching me. The peeper and I both had the instinct to look away and then quickly look back. At that point, I shouted to my boyfriend that someone was watching us from outside. He jumped up, opened the window, and shouted various amusing warnings. He could see that the grass was disturbed, so someone had been there and, by the looks of it, more than once.
From further inspection the next morning, we found out that he had jumped the small hedge and exited through my neighbor’s garden. I told my friends and was pretty freaked out by the whole event. Then, my lovely friends decided to walk by my flat late the next night and bang on the window and make noises. I almost lost it.
28. We Met Our Match
I worked in a department with over 20 women. Every few months, we would all come in wearing nearly identical outfits. It was odd. We were of all ages, races, and styles, but there would be a day when everyone would show up in a black skirt and red blouse. A few months later, everyone was in brown slacks and a cream-colored dress shirt.
A few months later, gray skirts and black sweaters. We could never figure out the trigger—a TV show character looking good in that outfit the night before, or a visitor to the building who appeared polished—nothing. It always creeped me out, as it seemed to represent some sort of group think or collective consciousness working on us.
29. Closed For Business
I was a realtor. I was holding an open house in a very rough neighborhood. As I was showing a 35-year-old woman around the townhouse, I saw a person emerge from an alley. As we went upstairs, I noticed through a window that the person had nothing on from the waist down and was shuffling closer to the “open house” sign on the front lawn.
My potential buyer asked to see the front yard again. I tried to take her out back as I had a bad feeling about the front door. Well, my bad feeling was correct. As we opened the door, this mostly bare person was standing on the doormat. My buyer screamed and ran out the door. I dialed for help and watched the paramedics take care of this poor person. I took down my “open house” signs and went home to hug my wife and children. It was creepy, sad, and just plain awful.
30. Chomped At The Bit
I lived in the sticks in Michigan, in a decent-sized neighborhood with about 20 houses. Our streets made two circles. It was around noon, and I was home with my toddler, who was taking a nap. I was on my back porch, drinking coffee when I heard a piercing scream that seemed to last at least thirty seconds. I was startled, so I walked up my driveway to look around.
There was a man running down the street, cradling his arm and dripping blood on the concrete. He saw me and shouted, "Did you see that cat?! Which way did it go"?! I didn’t see an animal. I asked if he needed help, but he declined, saying an ambulance was on its way and he just needed to find the cat. Perplexed, I pulled off my long-sleeved shirt and handed it to the guy, telling him to at least wrap his injury.
He held up his arm, and his fingers were mangled. As I gently helped him wrap his hand, I asked, "A housecat did this to you"? He said, "This wasn't a regular cat. We just have to find him"!!! So, a few of our neighbors and I helped him look. The ambulance arrived a few houses down at his place, so we walked down and sat on the curb.
Suddenly, there was commotion from the other way, and a half dozen people were sprinting to the cul-de-sac to corner this animal. It disappeared around a house, and we heard a volley of barking. Another man came from behind the house, running full speed towards the ambulance. I was still sitting with the bloody guy, and the guy who was running gave him a tissue.
I almost fainted. In it was the bloody guy's thumb and first finger. We never caught "the cat", and I didn't get a good enough look at whatever it was to figure it out. The bloody guy said he was weeding his garden, and this giant black fuzzy thing with teeth and a tail chomped his hand under the bush and ran. He tried to follow it, but it was too fast. He got his digits stuck back on and then put a fence in.
31. Road Warrior
I am fairly small for a guy. Even though I was old enough, I didn’t drive. My buddy wanted to hang out, so we decided to walk toward one another and meet in the middle. We would both be walking about miles. It was 3 AM on a cold winter night, and I was wearing a black jacket with my hood up. About two miles into my hike along the main road, a car pulled into a parking spot of a home I was passing, just a few feet behind me.
He wasn’t entirely into the driveway and was almost halfway hanging out into the road. I expected it was just a kind stranger wanting to give me a ride, but I wasn’t about to take any rides from anybody. I kept pacing forward and ignored the car behind me, expecting them to roll down a window and shout at me. It didn’t happen.
The car just sat at the edge of that driveway, running but completely dark inside to the point that I could only barely make out the figure of a large man. I didn’t typically get frightened by much, but something in the air made me tense up, and my heart dropped to my stomach. I stopped and turned to look at the car. I had a feeling that the person driving was watching me intently.
The figure in the car was definitely facing me. I could see the reflection from his dash bouncing off of his eyes. I stared back. I figured he was about to yell out to me, but he just sat quietly in a strangely menacing way that I had only ever seen in movies. I waved at the figure, letting him know I saw him, and waited for some type of communication in return.
He didn’t budge, just stared intently. I returned to pacing away, slightly brisker. After just a few moments, I could hear the car slowly roll in reverse, so I turned to face it but kept pacing backward. The car kept creeping slowly. I pulled down my hood and stood still again, waiting for him to pass me. Instead, the man slowed to a stop beside me.
The passenger side window rolled down, and the man and I met eyes. No words were exchanged. Before I could even let out a “hello”, the man grimaced and accelerated away at a decent pace, almost as if he was disappointed by what he had seen. I’ll never forget how tense that interaction was for me. I’ve not felt anything like it since.
32. No One Saw It Coming
A controls engineer was working on his program for a machine on the shop floor. He was ready to start speeding things up, which can make weird stuff happen compared to slow speeds. A diamond-studded saw blade wasn't quite secured well enough to the machine. There was no guard protecting it quite yet because we still had to see that it was actually turning on and off as we expected.
Thanks to that mechanical design flaw, when we sped up, the saw blade shot out of the machine and ripped across the shop floor, and embedded itself in a forklift. Nobody got hurt or even close to getting hit, but it easily could've been a very bad situation.
33. I Had An Inkling The Place Was Haunted
I worked in a tattoo shop where two of the previous owners had lost their lives. One of them breathed their last just a block away from the shop, sparking long-standing rumors that the establishment was haunted/cursed. Weird stuff would happen. Speakers or decorations would fall off the shelves overnight and smash through our glass-topped light table, and the lights would flicker on and off.
One late night, I was alone in the shop tattooing some 18-year-old kid. The light above me started flickering. The lights above my station had always been perfectly lit, so this seemed unusual. It was flickering so much that it was starting to get annoying, and I began to feel nervous, even though I really didn't believe the shop was haunted.
Finally, after a few minutes of that, I stopped tattooing for a second, looked up at the light, and said in my head, “Okay, I get it, you're here. Can you stop messing with my light, please"? It was supposed to be kind of a joke, but the light stopped flickering INSTANTLY. It went back to just shining normally, and I went back to tattooing, pretty shaken up. From that moment, I knew the deceased shop owner was there, and I knew he was just causing occasional mayhem to mess with us.
34. What I Saw Didn’t Sit Well With Me
I took my three-year-old daughter on a hiking trail through some local woods. I let her lead the way, and she chose to turn up a path that had far less traffic than most of the trails in the area. About 10–15 minutes in on this relatively overgrown and barely-there trail, we were heading deeper into a more isolated portion of the forest than I'd ever been to previously.
Suddenly, we came across a disturbing sight—a white plastic lawn chair was tied to a tree by a rope, and the seat was covered in splatters of days-old dried viscous fluid. I snapped a picture, then picked up my daughter and noped right out of there.
35. Swing Girl
I was a member of a drama group that would meet in the evenings at a school. Very early on, they told me about "swing girl". After or during practice, when it was dark, a short walk from our stage in the playground would be a girl swinging. It was so dark out that you had to squint to make out the long hair and the figure, but you could clearly hear the metallic squeaking and the soft sound of chains of the swing as it went back and forth.
No one had gone up to ask her why she swings in a deserted playground after dark. It was eerie.
36. Caught On Tape
I used to work in a jewelry store. We had moved our store to another location, and the new place was for sure haunted. Lights would turn on or off randomly, stuff would be moved, and you would hear things moving around in rooms you knew were empty, etc. At first, my manager t would say, "Well, someone had to have moved it because I left it right here". We would all tell her none of us touched it.
She thought we were playing a prank on her, so she started watching the cameras to catch whoever was doing it. Her tune changed so quickly. You could see things moving on the camera. She was so spooked she called the owner of the building to see what happened to other store managers who had rented there. The owner said no one had ever reported anything like that.
I worked there for another two years, and we pretty much just got used to it. It never went further than hearing noises and the lights and things moving. It's one thing to think weird things are happening around you, but to see it on camera like that was really freaky.
37. Late Night Viewing
Almost every night, my TV would turn on by itself at some point between 3 AM and 5 AM. I used to think that maybe it was one of my cats who walked across the remote, but I tried hiding it and putting it in places where they couldn't get to it, and it still happened. So, I started turning the sound all the way down before I went to bed.
The TV will still get turned on, but at least then I wouldn’t be woken up by it. Some people I have told this to have said my house is definitely haunted.
38. Whistle In The Dark
I used to have a cat I would let outside during the day and bring in at night. One night, I went outside to get her. It was 3 AM, and I was whistling for the cat when I started to hear this noise down the street. It wasn’t uncommon to hear things at night around my house because I lived right next to an interstate, so I didn't pay any attention to the sound.
I went back to waiting for the cat, and after a minute or two, I began to whistle again. I paused for a second and heard the sound again, only this time I noticed it was closer, and something didn’t seem right about it. I whistled one more time, and that's when I noticed what was wrong. The sound I was hearing was someone mimicking my whistle.
Not only that, but while doing it, this person was getting closer to me. My road had no street lights, so I couldn't see the person or tell where it was coming from. I decided not to wait for the cat anymore, and I turned around and went back inside. It was creepy enough to make me think twice.
39. Bathroom Brusher
I worked doing IT in a relatively small but tall eight-story building. There were about 500 faces in our building, and I met them all when something went wrong—except one. Once a week, this guy would come into the bathroom when I was doing my business. I would be locked in my little stall when he would start up his electric toothbrush and brush for about five minutes.
After brushing, he would make this awful symphony of old man noises. He snorted and chuffed for what felt like an eternity. I would just sit in the stall and wait because there was something deeply unsettling about the idea of washing my hands next to this machine of noise. Then one day, I decided I wanted to know who this guy was.
I opened the stall door, and his stuff was sprawled out everywhere. He had a little book bag on the mantle behind the sink, with various things pulled out and placed evenly in a row. The whole two-sink counter belonged to him. There was a coffee mug, toothpaste, a weird container for the toothbrush, etc. I didn’t know who this guy was. He was well dressed, so he looked like he belonged in the building.
All the entrances had keycard access, and security was strict, so I knew he was supposed to be there, but I had never seen him. I washed my hands while he was still brushing away, and I heard him start his old man orchestra right as I closed the door behind me. Multiple people on my floor knew exactly who I was talking about.
However, they had been there even longer than me and had no idea who he was either. I was half-convinced he lived in a closet or something.
40. When Things Went Bump In The Night
When I was about 10, something really weird happened to my family. We were all asleep, as usual. I slept in the same room as my brother, and my mom slept with my father and younger brother. In the middle of the night, the safe in my parents' room started going off as if someone was playing with it. My parents didn't think much about it, went back to bed, and right as they did, my brother's toys started playing music without anyone touching them.
They were a little freaked out, but it went away after a few minutes, so they went back to bed. However, in the morning, when my mom brought my brother to the shower, she saw a red handprint on his back that was too big to be hers but too small to be my father's. I saw the handprint, and it looked like someone had hit my brother, but nobody had.
My mom called her family and told my grandparents about it. After a few phone calls, we made a stunning discovery. We learned that my paternal grandmother left us that night while we were sleeping. So our family came up with the explanation that my grandma wanted to see my newborn brother, so she paid us a little visit. It’s still a little scary to think about.
41. Random Acts Of Creepiness
I used to teach English at a Japanese elementary school. We had time after lunch recess, where everyone got into their assigned groups and cleaned a designated area. As the foreigner, I just got to join wherever I wanted for the day, helping out. I noticed that mid-cleaning, a random student—never the same one—would stop mid-activity and slowly turn their heads towards me.
Their bodies would stay still, and they would stare with their eyes narrowing and boring into you. Then they would snap out of it and say, "Sensei, nan yo koto"? ("Teacher, what's up"?) This happened several times a month, so I started finding other places to be during cleaning time. It wasn’t as if the kids were surprised to see me because I taught them all at least once every other week.
It wasn't a joke either because it wasn't just the older kids; it was all grades. This went on for all of the years I taught there. Just during cleaning time, and completely randomly.
42. This Doorknocker Got Dismissed
I had taken Thanksgiving week off along with one of the non-holiday days when this tweaker knocked on my door. My 10-month-old had been sick, and I was up all night and cranky. I don't know who this guy expected to answer the door, but it wasn't a tall bearded man with a bad attitude. He was mumbling something about the car in front of my house being the one for sale, and I was loudly saying, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU. WHAT! WHAT"?
Then, some lady in a minivan started honking her horn and yelling at him, "Nevermind, let's go, let's go"! I think he may have been expecting my wife to be alone and to try and force his way in. Either that or perhaps he was trying to do one of those, someone distracts at the front while someone else breaks in by going in to back. Either way, it was creepy.
43. He Was All Washed Up
I worked doing IT in a cube farm for a large insurance firm that took up three floors of a large complex. One day out of the blue, there were a ton of government-looking people roaming around. They had earpieces, were talking into walkie-talkies quietly, and looking horribly out of place rushing around. This was a few years after September 11, so we were a bit panicked to see that going on.
It lasted for about an hour, then nothing. Later, I found out the hilarious truth. It turned out that a dude on the floor above me had spent most of his day looking at racy stuff on his computer. He was caught and was going to be fired and escorted out but somehow caught wind of it and hid. They eventually found him hiding in a janitor's closet.
44. The Callback
I ran a small business. In my office, there were four other people. I was the only male, but I would get mistaken for a woman fairly frequently on the phone because of my voice. We all had different responsibilities. Two of the women were assistants who handled light housekeeping and helped the rest of us as needed. The other two handled money and accounting, while I handled everything else.
From time to time, one of the women would be chasing the money, make a call, and not get an answer. Sometimes, however, the people call back. More often than not, it's no big issue. They call and say, "Hey, this is this person, returning this woman's call". They're put on hold and get forwarded to the right desk. One day, everyone was at lunch except for me.
I answered the phone, and all the person said was, "Yeah". I asked, "What can I do for you"? He was slightly annoyed and said, "You called me". I asked who it was, and he reiterated, "You called me". I told him, "This is a business with five people in the office. We make a lot of calls. If you gave me more information", then he cut me off, told me to shut up, and called me an offensive name.
He persisted, "You called me. What did you want"? Again, I tried to explain that I didn't know if he was returning my call or someone else's. Again, he interrupted me. He asked me where I was located. I told him the company name. He told me that he was going to come down, assault me, and then decapitate me. I told him to bring it on, as it wasn't the first time someone had threatened me over the phone.
Still, I wasn't about to let it go. I called my local authorities and told them what had happened. They sent a wonderful female officer who took it very seriously. I gave her the guy's phone number. She left, and I went back to my day. A few hours later, the same officer showed up at my office to inform me that she met with the man to get his statement, and he threatened to off her too, after again using the same pejorative he used on me. It didn't work out too well for him.
45. Lights, Camera, Action!
Our family used to run a storage warehouse. For extra income, we would rent out the building for filming. One television show had been there a few days, and it was my turn to be on-site to unlock the building and turn on all the lights. It was early in the morning, but it wasn't dark outside. However, the film crew had blacked out the windows, so it was very dark in the basement, which would typically have a few small windows letting light in.
The building had oddly laid-out lights and even worse light switches. So, the long walk down the ramp to the basement was made worse because the few small windows were blacked out. I also didn't have a cell phone yet, so I couldn't use that to light the way. I walked through the pitch-black, running my hand along the wall to find my way.
I knew where the switch was. I just had to get there. After a very slow walk using my hands on the wall and in front of my face so as not to walk into anything, I reached the lights. When I turned on the switch, immediately beside me was a pentagram of blood with skulls all around it. My skin crawled in a way I had never experienced, and I got out of there. It turned out the show was Supernatural, and they do all sorts of creepy stuff. I was just not ready to see that after an eerie walk through such darkness.
46. We Lost Our Appetite
I was out having lunch in midtown Atlanta with some coworkers. We were sitting out on the patio. There were some high-rise condos right across the street from us. Some guy jumped from his 40th-floor balcony and landed all over the roof of someone’s Jetta. Everything went everywhere. The noise was pretty memorable as well. We got right out of there before ordering. It was a super silent ride back to work. One of my coworkers said he wouldn’t sit out on patios when eating anymore.
47. Valley Of The Dolls
I was a home health nurse and went to admit a patient. I walked into the foyer and noticed that there were dolls on the table and one on each step of the stairs. My first thought was, "Wow. They REALLY like dolls". Then the daughter led me back to the living room and kitchen. The living room was so full of dolls I couldn't see the sofa.
They were two feet thick on the floor, and every available surface was covered in dolls. There were creepy empty eyes EVERYWHERE. I would be shocked if there were less than 500 dolls in that room. We went to the kitchen and sat down at the table. The daughter had to move dolls onto the floor to give me room to sit on a chair. They were dolls NAILED TO THE WALLS—through the fabric of their dresses—just hanging with their little arms limp.
I had never seen so many dolls in my LIFE. There were big ones, tiny ones, all dressed in frilly dresses, and my goodness, the dust. I have horrible allergies, and I could not breathe. I did my work and got out as quickly as I could. The daughter was so nonplussed about the whole thing. It was apparent she had lived with these things her entire life.
I called the report into the office, and they asked if I was going to keep the patient for myself. I quickly responded, "NO, THANK YOU". They couldn't keep a nurse in the house. Everyone was creeped out by the dolls and the patient. The man had NO facial expression and the most monotonous voice I had ever heard. His eyes were just as empty as the dolls’.
48. A Night At The Movies
I used to work at a small, locally-owned second-run movie theater while I was in college. It was relatively old and a little run down, so there were a lot of things that felt creepy or "off" in general. I was one of the only responsible adult employees, so I was usually the person who closed down the place. This meant that after we closed concessions around 9:30 PM, I was the only employee there until the movies ended around 11 PM.
I would make sure everyone was out, check all the exits, lock everything up, and turn off all the lights. One night after locking up, I went upstairs to shut down projectors and lights when I heard something that made my heart jump. Someone was absolutely BEATING on the employee exit door. I heard some talking and mumbling but couldn't understand what they were saying.
I went up the back stairs and called my mom to figure out what to do. I waited upstairs out of sight for ten minutes, hoping they had left. When I came back down, they were still POUNDING incessantly. Then they spoke—and I got even more scared. They said they knew I was there and they just needed to come in and get something. At that point, all the doors were locked, and the keys were in the safe.
All the lights, including the outside ones, were off. Not only that, but I'm a woman, and I was only about 22 at the time, so I was definitely not opening the door for them. I could hear them talking about me and saying they knew I was there, and they could hear me on the stairs. I was terrified and close to tears. After about 20 minutes, it finally stopped.
I waited a few more minutes before leaving through the employee door. When I went out, they had left a NOTE on my car. I thought I was in the clear—but I was so wrong. Suddenly, they drove up beside me in a dark empty parking lot. Apparently, they forgot their glasses and wanted back in, but instead of calling or waiting until the next day, they decided to accost a young girl and terrify her at midnight while she was alone.
It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me at work, for sure.
49. Checked Out
I often visited Walmart in the wee hours of the morning. One time I went in at about 2 AM and noticed an elderly gentleman asleep on one of the mobility scooters at the entrance. When I left bout 20 minutes later, he was still there. I thought it was a little odd that no one from the store had woken him up, but whatever. The next day, I learned he was no longer among the living and spent the better part of the day displayed as a lifeless form at the entrance of Walmart.
Sources: Reddit,
