No matter how safe we may all feel in our day to day lives, the world is a big and frightening place. Things may seem fine, but one never truly knows what is lurking around the corner. Don’t believe me? Just read to these people who've been through hair-raising experiences and lived to tell the tale. Whether it was danger, horror, or just plain creepiness, these moments will not soon be forgotten by the people who lived through them—not now, or ever. Here are stories of the scariest moments people have ever experienced.
#1 You’re Not Alone
A few months ago I woke up around three in the morning and decided to go downstairs to the bathroom. When I opened my door and peeked over the stairs, I saw a bright light coming from my living room. Upon further inspection, I saw that the TV was on a channel that was all fuzzy. There was no one on the couch or anywhere in the vicinity.
I yelled out my mom’s name, and as soon as I made a sound, the TV turned off and my bathroom door slammed. I checked every nook and cranny of the bathroom and found nothing. That moment still haunts me to this day.
#2 Playing with Fire
When I was a kid, a drunken family member was in the basement and I was upstairs. He decided to start playing with guns. The gun goes off from downstairs. The bullet travels upstairs and misses me by about a foot or two—almost blew my head off. I still shudder thinking about it because I had just moved from where the bullet struck a minute or two before it happened.
One of four times in my 22 years where I really should have died but somehow didn't.
#3 Corroborated
I was 16 years old with my first girlfriend; we'll call her Megan. So I'm having this dream where I'm the "Walter White" of a big drug operation. Megan is heavily against drugs so naturally, I didn't tell her. One night in my room, I look out the window and she's there mortified, watching me while holding up a bag of drugs "that I made."
I panicked the heck out and just shot her. Now the weird part is a few days go by, and out of the blue, she wants to talk to me. She tells me about a dream she had, which happened to be my exact dream from her POV. I was stunned. I still haven't told her my side to this day.
#4 The Great Outdoors
When I was 10, a van sat in my driveway for about five minutes while I was outside playing with friends. Less than a week later, I was outside playing with friends again and the same van drove past my house at least five times in less than 20 minutes. A week or so later, I was riding my bike with a friend. The van drove past us, turned around and pulled over in front of us.
The doors opened, we both took off, and I've never pedaled so hard in my life. I didn't look back, but when we got to my house the van slowly started driving away. I didn't go outside for a while after that.
#5 The Dodgers
In high school, I went to a New Year’s Eve event with my brother and cousin. My cousin was into some shady stuff, and hung out with the gangster crowd. At this event, we ran into a group of guys my cousin had problems with. They exchanged words, and then suddenly pulled out a gun and pointed it in our direction. We froze in fear, expecting shots to go off.
Instead, we heard the screech of their tires as they took off. We started running, headed in the direction back home. As we get into the darker residential areas, we notice a car round the corner, approaching us with its headlights off. We quickly ducked into the nearest yard. The car drove by slowly, but we managed to remain hidden.
They sped off and we ran for another block, until we heard a car round the corner again. We dove into someone's yard once more, finding cover behind bushes and trees. We had lost them but they kept circling the neighborhood, always coming around, driving by slowly, scoping out the area. We ended up doing a loop around my house for at least a mile, trying to dodge these guys until we made it home.
#6 A Shocking Account
One time when I was fairly new at my electrical job, I was lighting a large industrial oven that basically has spark plug wires for each of the many burners. I was holding the framework of the oven with one hand and reaching in a burner access port with the other when I got pushed forward and my whole body sort of slammed up against the side of the oven.
I spun around ready to hit somebody for pushing me, but there was no one there. Then I noticed my fingers kind of burning/tingling. So yea, I realized that I had just gotten shocked with very high voltage, low amperage DC. I am not quite sure how I walked out of there alive that day.
#7 I Spy
The creepiest thing I’ve ever seen? I have an eight-year-old niece and a 14-year-old niece. My sister (their mother) is a single mom with a low paying job, so my brother and I have taken it upon ourselves to play the part of cool uncles who take them to do fun stuff. We always make sure to include my sister too, so she gets to experience stuff like Disneyworld, ski trips, museums, and all with her girls.
One summer we decide to go on a cruise. It was awesome. We went to Mexico and hit the beach. After swimming for a little while we were gonna go sightseeing and grab some lunch. We all decided to change on the beach at the gender divided changing rooms. I changed and was outside the female changing area waiting on my girls when a dude walked out.
White guy, probably late 20s, with a weird chin-strap beard and bottle-blonde hair. I thought, "Odd—this is the girls changing room." Then I noticed something in his hand that appeared like it may have been some kind of miniature spy camera. Now I will readily admit, I have a bit of a temper at times. I grabbed his arm and snatched the camera from his hand.
He tried to go all gangster on me and start using threats. I just snapped and started punching him in the face. People can’t really make threats when you're punching them in the face. Older brother shows up and is like, "What the hell is going on?!" Sister and the other girls walk out to find their brother/uncle fighting some guy.
Lifeguards separate us and call la policia. I give them the camera thingy and after they download the pictures of nearly 20 unsuspecting women/girls (including my nieces), I'm free to go. Mexican jail wasn't that bad (I was detained for nearly two hours).
#8 On Thin Ice
It was the middle of winter and I was about 11 years old. My friend and I had just gotten into an argument and taken different ways home, even though we lived in the same neighborhood. I walked through a wooded area that ran below a cliff (which coincidentally had a big creepy mansion on it). I think the snow was about hip deep, but the path was mostly compacted.
At the base of the cliff below the mansion, there was a small grove of trees with a pond in the center. I saw that the pond was frozen over, and decided to try to "skate" around on it a bit. The ice looked thick enough, and it didn't even creak when I stepped on. I played on it for about half an hour, which I guess is what did it in—I was standing in the middle when it gave way under my foot.
I screamed, but there was no way anyone heard me—nobody lived in the mansion, and the closest other houses were across the river. I crawled on my belly towards the edge where I had come on, and that gave way under my hand as well. My hand went in, and then my arm, and then I managed to pull myself halfway to my feet and jump to the ground, breaking all the ice I'd just been standing on.
I was a strong swimmer, but also wearing snow pants and a heavy down parka. There's no way I could have swam out if I'd fallen in, and the water was cold enough to kill me quickly. I still get a little bit afraid just thinking about it. I nearly died, alone in the woods, because I was too bullheaded to apologize to my friend.
#9 Foxtrot
While backpacking in the White Mountains, I was hiking up Tuck's Trail, headed to the caretaker’s cabin for the night. All the way up as I hiked, I could hear something off in the woods, maybe about 20 yards out, following me. Whenever I stopped hiking, it would stop moving. When I continued on, it would continue following.
I didn't say anything because I thought it was just in my head that first time. Then each time doing the same hike at night I'd have the same thing happen. So freaked out, I barely wanted to do the hike anymore. Finally, I asked the caretaker if they had the same experience. Turns out there was just a fox that kept watch of all passersby to look out for his family’s den.
It may not seem so scary as a story—but at the time, being alone in the mountains under only moonlight, it made me hike faster than I ever have before.
#10 Camping Gone Wrong
When I was about nine years old, I went boat camping with my best friend Rachel and her family. Rachel's family consisted of her older brother Ian (who was 12), her mom Linda, her stepdad Larry, and Larry's brother and his girlfriend. Growing up in Oregon, "boat camping" is when you would fill up your boat with all of your camping supplies, then cruise along the shoreline of a river or lake, and pick out a spot to camp.
Usually, it was a great experience to be out in nature, away from the usual annoyances of camping with strangers in a campground. However, the only way in or out was by boat, and this was in the early 90s before cell phones. We had found a great spot along the Columbia River and set up camp. We ate dinner together, and then the adults drank some beers while we played in the river.
As the sun went down they started a fire, and we got ready for bed in our tent. That's when we heard arguing coming from outside. We opened our door and witnessed Larry grab Rachel's mom by the arm, swing her through the air and slam her onto the ground. She screamed in pain. We could tell Larry was drunk. He drank often and was usually an angry drunk.
Larry's brother put Linda into the boat to take her to the hospital, leaving us there with drunk Larry and only his brother's girlfriend to supervise. Larry began to throw everything in sight into the fire. Lawn chairs, a boom box, beer bottles. "The Girlfriend" tried to stop him, but he smacked her in the face and she ran off into the woods behind camp.
As if he could feel us watching him, Larry suddenly turned to our tent and started making his way towards Rachel and me. We tried to zip the door closed, but he shoved his head inside. "You kids are freaking worthless! You don't deserve to live! I should drown you in the river right now!" We were cowering in fear, trapped in the tent.
Then Rachel's brother came up from behind him and hit Larry over the head with a rock, knocking him out. We scurried out of the tent and all ran into the woods to hide. We had been running for about five minutes when "The Girlfriend" called out to us. She was hiding up in a tree. We decided this was our best option so we found other trees nearby and climbed up.
We waited up there in the dark for what felt like hours before Rachel's mom came looking for us. Her arm was in a sling; Larry had dislocated her shoulder. She informed us that Larry's brother had taken him to the hospital for his head injury, so we were safe. We climbed down from the trees and spent the night at camp.
The next day Larry's brother returned to take us all home. To this day, I can't believe they left us there with that alcoholic monster. We told Rachel's mom what happened after they left, that Larry had threatened to drown us, and she begged me not to tell my parents. My mom is my best friend though, so of course, I told her right away.
Rachel's mom actually stayed with Larry after that, so I was no longer allowed to play at her house. While it was a terrifying experience, I decided that I would never date anyone who was physically abusive, and I never have.
#11 Horrible in Hindsight
I didn't think it was creepy at the time, but now it gives me the heebie-jeebies. I was spending the night at a friend’s house. Her older brother called us into his room to play a game. She didn't want to, said she didn't like it, but he insisted. He laid down in bed, she was in the closet. I had to get into bed with him and let him kiss and touch me.
I then had to go do the same thing to his sister in the closet. If she was able to do everything back to him the right way, I won. Needless to say, I never won. I was nine or so, she was a year younger, he was three or four years older. I didn't understand what was happening, and I kinda wish I didn't now. Yeah, creepy.
#12 A Familiar Friend
My grandmother died on my ninth birthday. She was pretty sick, skin cancer. She went into the hospital during Hurricane Bob and stayed there until she passed. I remember things got pretty bad that New Year’s so my parents went to the hospital and my aunt was watching us. I remember laying in bed, praying (and I'm not religious at all) that she'd be okay and, if she wouldn't be okay, that she'd at least be happy in heaven.
I was also extremely sad that she was going to miss my birthday (New Year's Day...also, kind of selfish of me as a nine-year-old). At around 11:30 pm that night, I woke up to someone calling my name out in the hallway. When I went to look, nobody was there. I checked all the bedrooms, the kitchen, etc. Everyone was asleep so there was no way my aunt or brother were calling my name.
I figured I just heard it in my dreams and went back to bed. As I was trying to fall back asleep, I distinctly (like, clear as day) remember hearing my grandmother. I couldn't see her, but I could certainly feel her and hear her. I can't say for certain I wasn't dreaming, but if I was, this was the most lucid dream I've ever had. She said to me: "I held on for as long as I could so I wouldn't miss your birthday. My present will be a little late (sarcastic laugh). It will be here next year. Happy Birthday!"
Then silence. The next year, my aunt gave me a cat for my birthday. The cat (Felix) and I instantly bonded (much like my grandmother and I). He followed me literally everywhere, never leaving my side. He would walk on a leash with me, ride in the car with me, etc. The day I bought my first house is the day he abruptly passed away from cancer. He lived nearly 19 years.
As weird as it sounds, I'm convinced my grandmother had planned to come back to me as a cat and stuck with me until she felt she was no longer needed.
#13 Weathering the Storm
I woke up in the early morning to the loud boom of lightning striking our house. The smoke alarm was going off in the basement. The strangest thing was that we had a metal detector not plugged into anything, and it was going off. It made a weird static buzzing noise. I went outside with a flashlight to see if I could see where it struck and found what looked like a burn mark where the drainage pipe went into the ground.
In the basement, there were burn marks on the drainage pipe where the electricity arced to the copper pipe next to it. The A/C was damaged as well. Freon was smoking up the basement. I went back upstairs and decided to call the fire department just to make sure we didn't have hidden sparks anywhere. The police officer who came said he saw the lightning from a few streets away.
It may not seem scary or creepy to read, but put yourself in that moment. Waking up suddenly with alarms going off, and not really sure if the big explosion you heard was lightning or something else. I still don't understand why the metal detector was going off. We lost a computer, microwave, coffee maker, surge protector, and A/C in that storm.
#14 Shark Tank
I was kayaking off Isle of Palms, South Carolina, about eight years ago. Got smacked by a wave and bailed out, and my cousin who was paddling with me decided to ditch since it was obviously going to take me a while to swim back in (can't get a closed kayak flipped back over easily in the waves, so I had to bail out). She went back in, and I started kicking towards the beach, holding the boat in one hand, the paddle in the other, and fighting the damn skirt trying to swim. It sucked.
I got tired after a while and started floating, thinking that surely she'd eventually tell the authorities I was missing, and someone would come get me. Mostly I thought about how embarrassing that was going to be. Then I felt something swim underneath me. Something big, that took a while to pass by. I yanked my legs up to my chest and tried not to shriek.
After a few seconds, there was this hollow thunking sound and the kayak lifted out of the water a foot or so. I frantically searched the water to see anything, but at the same time really didn't want to see anything. Nothing else happened. After what seemed like an eternity I started kicking towards shore again and eventually made it back.
I never saw an animal of any kind, but I know it must have been a shark. I don't know why the exploratory bump was of the boat and not me. I have never been so terrified and helpless in my entire life.
#15 Clowning Around
The summer after I graduated high school, I spent a lot of time at my best friend's house. We used to live in a fairly large neighborhood—I lived in the front and she lived in the back. It was always a lot easier to drive through the neighborhood than back out onto the main road. It probably took about five minutes to get back to my house from hers, with all of the stop signs.
Anyway, one night we were watching a movie and it was getting late (maybe midnight or so?) and I decided to head home. I got my stuff together, headed to my car and started the drive. I was two streets away from mine, stopping at a stop sign, when from the bushes this enormous guy wearing a clown mask and bright red hair jumps out and starts running at my car.
I had NO idea what to do. I hadn't completely stopped yet, so I gunned it, and this clown guy is chasing me up the road. Stop at the next stop sign—barely—and he's still chasing me. I got home and told my parents. They didn't believe me, but I felt really uneasy about it, so I called the non-emergency number for my county. They said that they had been getting similar reports all week.
#16 Grandpa to the Rescue
When I was about twelve, a guy followed me home from school and subsequently tried to break into my house. I walked home from school with friends, but after we got to the main road, I was basically on my own because I lived farther away than the other kids. One day, I noticed that a little white pick-up had passed me quite a few times, but being the naive little girl that I was, I assumed that they were merely lost.
The pick-up turned into my neighborhood at which point I ran as fast as I could to my house. I considered myself safe once I made it inside. I went about my usual after-school routine; kicked my shoes off, turned on the TV, grabbed a snack out of the fridge, and let my two dogs in from outside. As I'm about to sit down to enjoy my snack, I hear a car door slam.
I run over to the blinds and, sure enough, I see the little white truck sitting in my driveway. A few seconds later, there was a knock at my door and my stupid young self answered it for whatever reason. I asked the guy what he wanted, but he didn't say anything. No, he just tried to force his way into my house. I slammed the door as hard and as fast as I could and somehow managed to lock it as well.
My two trusty beagles start to go bananas. The guy bangs on the front door for a few minutes and then proceeds to the backyard where he starts to bang on the back door. I army crawled my way to the kitchen because that's where our landline was. Called my grandpa who lived down the street because I figured he could get to me faster than the police could.
My grandpa told me he would be at my house in less than five minutes and to call the police after I hung up. At this point, I start to scream/beg the guy banging on my door to not kill me as I cry hysterically. Then the guy just suddenly stops and I hear a car door slam again. I run back over to the blinds and see that the pick-up is gone.
My grandpa shows up a few seconds later. I run over to him and tell him that the guy left right before he got there. As I'm telling my grandpa all of this, I see the truck pass by my street as it headed towards the neighborhood entrance. I try to point it out, but I'm guessing I wasn't making much sense because he just pushed me back towards my house.
There was no sign of the guy other than that he left the back gate open. We never ended up calling the cops. I had to go to my grandpa's house after school every day for a few months though. I really thought I was going to die that day.
#17 I See You
I was nine and watching Spongebob. I went to the kitchen for a drink, and when I came back, the TV had a message: "Welcome back. Did you like your drink?" Scared like crazy, I went to the living room to see if the message would still be there (like turning it off and on again). When I came back..."You know, I'm not like cake. I'm still here when you get back."
Truly scared by now, I get my dad. And like every cliché horror movie, the message ain't there.
#18 Getting Buffaloed
I was on a solo hike in Yellowstone National Park last summer when a herd of bison got in the way of the trail. Since the trail was circular and I was about 75% of the way done, I decided to diagonally move pretty far away from them while still maintaining the course. I didn't maintain the course. I got lost. It was about 1 PM and I still had a good three liters of water left in my backpack, but holy crap I was lost.
My first attempt was to search for high ground and see if I could find the parking lot where I was parked. Upon finding high ground, I noticed a riverbank. Since the river eventually leads back to trailheads, I decided to walk down and meet up with the river a good 1/3 of a mile away from the crest of the hill. On that walk down, another herd of bison was in the way. I managed to sidestep that one without losing course.
After that, I ran into a geothermal area in which I can safely say it's been years since the last person has stepped in that area. And there, I found a lone bison, startled by the arrival of a human. The bison and I were in a standoff that I couldn't lose, but the bison was the decider as to whether or not he was going to gore the hell out of me.
Eventually, I slowly walked out of its way still facing it. Fortunately, the bison eventually walked out of the area, leaving the path open and clear. Now, it was approaching 3 PM. I finally hit the riverbank and start following it closely until I can find any semblance of a trailhead. At 4:30 PM, I find a parking lot out about two miles in the distance. I start walking towards it.
At 5:00 PM, an elk who just birthed a calf is getting super territorial, time to reroute again, keeping my eye on both the elk and the parking lot. No way in hell was I going to lose sight of that. At 5:30 PM, I see a posting for a trailhead. Holy mackerel, I ended up at a trailhead eight miles away from the trailhead where I started. At 5:45 PM reach the parking lot. I'm six miles away from the parking lot where I had parked. I managed to hitchhike my way to my vehicle.
At 8:00 PM, I arrive back at my site. Take a long shower. Decide not to solo hike for the rest of my time in Yellowstone.
#19 Horror Unmasked
I used to live in a rented house that, along with my neighbors, sat across the street from a fairly bustling city park. At night, when the park was deserted, I would walk out my front door, sit on my porch and look at the trees and the stars. One night, around 1 AM, I opened the front door and started to sit down. That's when I saw a man standing in the deserted park.
He was directly in front of my house. The man was dressed all in black and was wearing a Halloween skull mask. The mask seemed fairly intricate, but was most definitely a store-bought cheapo. The sight of this guy sent a chill down my spine. He didn't move at all—although I know he saw me. The entire neighborhood was silent and still and we just paused there holding our ground.
We watched each other for a long time until he finally sauntered away. I ended up calling the cops because I figured this guy was casing the neighborhood. Cops came, took my statement. Nothing ever came of it. A couple of months later, I'm doing some yard work around the side of my house. I'm pulling a huge tangle of weeds out from a thicket underneath my kitchen window.
I see something that looks like trash and pick it up: it's the mask I saw that night.
#20 All a Big Misunderstanding
I got a new cell phone, and about a week later I got a very strange text from a number I did not recognize. It said something along the lines of, "What the hell! I'm going to beat the freaking crap out of you, where's my freaking money, jerk?" I was confused. At this point, only about three people knew my number, and all of them were in the same room as me when this text came in.
I didn't recognize the area code, so I googled it. It was a Texas number (I live in Canada). So I replied saying something like "I have no idea who you are, this is a new cell phone and I just got this number last week." It went well. The guy’s reply was something close to, "Oh damn, sorry! I just got out of prison yesterday and I'm trying to get ahold of this guy who owes me some money."
#21 Skipping the Formalities
A blocked number once called my cell phone. I just said "Hello?" and a deep, creepy voice replied, "I will find you." That was the fastest I've ever hung up. I could barely sleep that night.
#22 Fiction Becomes Reality
Where I live is very dark because there are many trees and hardly any street lamps. I was driving home after hanging out with my girlfriend, and on my way back, I see several bikes in the distance. They were laid horizontally in front of me, like a blockade, blocking off the road. Luckily, I have read tons and tons about situations where people stop, get out to move whatever object and get kidnapped, car stolen, etc. So I lock my doors and wait a little bit.
Eventually, I decided that it’s too dark for me to wait around and see if anyone picks up the bike or tries to break into my car. I decided to just drop it into first gear and run over the bikes. Either way, if it was a prank, they deserve it because who the heck thinks that that will be funny. If it wasn't a prank, then thank goodness.
As I drive further, I suddenly see humanoid figures moving out of the bushes in the distance behind me, just barely lit by my tail lights, looking at my car as I disappear around the corner. I kept flooring it, hitting 7,600 RPMs, and stayed at a friend's house for the night. Unfortunately, I lowered my car at the time so it got scratched.
But not comparable to whatever intent those people had. I never imagined a situation like that would happen.
#23 Gah!
My girlfriend and I had a fight, and like a good dog, I was sleeping on the floor next to her bed. Yeah, I know. At some point in the middle of the night, I woke up because I heard her door open. I didn't process it because I was still mostly asleep, but then somebody yelled very loudly, "GAH!" and slammed the door shut.
I sat upright in time to see a poster that had been hanging on her door go floating to the floor. I was a little creeped out, but I made the decision that what I had heard was some remnant of my dream and that all I had really heard was the poster falling off the door. Her mom was fast asleep and her brother was staying at her dad's house.
As I lay back down, my girlfriend sat up and said something that sent shivers down my spine. She goes, "Did someone just yell 'gah' and slam the door?" Yeah, I got back into bed with her after that.
#24 Out on the Open Roads
Happened to my wife, not me. We live about six hours from Vegas, and she went there over one weekend to visit some family. She calls me from the road on her way back (it was late, the sun had gone down) and says, "Just so you know, this car has been tailgating me for about an hour." We decide that at the next exit, she will get off the highway and pull into a well-lit gas station.
She does, and the car pulls into a gas station across the street. She leaves, the car follows her again. She goes another half hour and hits some traffic. Starts accelerating, switching lanes, etc. The car stays on her tail through it all. She also noticed that the car was a dark color, with no license plate or temp tag.
The driver had removed the make and model and everything, and they had darkly tinted windows. So she finally decides, "The next time I see a cop car, I'm getting myself pulled over" and she does. The female officer asks why she suddenly sped up AFTER seeing the cop car. My wife explains what has been happening for the past few hours, the cop escorts her the 45 minutes home and says, "You’re the fifth person to report this in the last couple weeks. Some of the other reports ended in sexual assaults and/or robberies"... So that was nerve-wracking.
#25 It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s...
As a child, I lived in a small city in the south of the Dominican Republic. One summer night around the year 2003, I was sitting in the garage listening to a Discman around 9:40 PM. As I was listening to the music, the music stopped, and I froze in slow motion (and I swear this is true)—I saw a really huge brown type of bird/bat/humanoid thing flying above me.
It lasted about two minutes until it disappeared into the trees. Until that thing vanished, I couldn't move. I then ran inside and told my mom. She said it must have been an eagle, but that thing was bigger than me. A few days later, I was visiting some friends in the neighborhood where a man who used to work late at night told a similar story, the only difference being that he had gotten a closer look and said the "bird" was wearing white sneakers.
He called it "El pajaro con tenis" which means "The bird with sneakers"...I think about it today and it still gives me the chills…
#26 Putting On a Show
I was working at a movie theater at the time. I was closing with another usher. Part of our job is to check all the theaters after the last show to make sure nobody has fallen asleep (it happens). I walk in a theater and notice that all the lights had been turned off. This is usually done by the projectionist when he/she closes down the booth for that theater.
I started to hear faint singing coming from around the corner of the wall. It wasn't a song from the speakers. We heard those songs 80 times a day and there were only like eight of them. There was a girl singing around the corner, in the pitch black after midnight. I called out to her and all of a sudden I heard LOUD footsteps coming toward me from the darkness of the theater.
It started near the front row and just got louder and louder as it traveled up the aisle. They were basically stomps. I didn't hesitate one second. I turned around and sprinted to the lobby. This was a back theater. The only exits are the fire escapes from within the theater. Nobody came down the hall to the front exit.
The other usher, who was a lot tougher than I was, was able to turn the cleaning lights on in the theater and went inside to find nobody. We checked every theater. Nobody. Just to be sure, I went outside and checked every single fire exit. I live in the Northeast. We get some decent snowfall. All the exit doors were snowed in shut with ice built on top of them.
The only place they could be were the hallways in the back of the building that lead from behind the screen to the safety of the street. Screw that. Could have been kids. Could have been something else. I'll never know.
#27 Memory Can Be Fleeting
During college, I had a lousy apartment in a small building. It was cheap and close to campus, but my best friend and her boyfriend lived in the apartment next door, and that was by far its best feature. One night we got drunk in her living room, and at some point, I stumbled home and into bed. I woke up before dawn feeling like I was going to puke...and someone else was in the bed with me.
I couldn't remember going to bed clearly, but I was single at the time and was sure I had done so alone. I spent the few hours before it got light outside trying to see who it was without waking them up. It wasn't a great part of town, and I didn't always lock the door when I was home and awake because we would all go back and forth so much.
Turns out it was my friend. I got mad at her for making me contemplate my death and kicked her out. Later she came over and asked why I was mad; apparently she got into a fight with her boyfriend and knocked on the door, which I answered. She asked if she could crash here, and I said that she could. I never remembered any of that.
#28 Happily Ever After
Here's a good one. It happened this year. So, I've been trying out Tinder. It seemed like a pretty fun way to try and meet people. I met this one girl a couple of months ago, let's call her Charlotte. So Charlotte was this cute little thing, dark hair, and piercing blue eyes. Her profile said she had a thing for tall guys, so I started talking to her.
Figured it was worth a shot to try and get with this girl (being tall myself). So I did. Turns out that this was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life. I was talking to her for a week at first. This week was just a little back and forth flirting, talking to each other about our lives, etc. It was fun. In the second week, she started to branch out into other social networks that I had.
She found my Facebook. No big deal, my Facebook is hooked up to Tinder. A few days later she found my Twitter, Instagram, and other things. Weird, I thought. They all have different usernames. I asked her why she was adding all of my stuff, and she told me that she really liked me, and thinks that it's going to work between us, so she wanted to ingrain herself into my life. A little creepy, I thought. Maybe just really clingy and excited.
Within another week, we decided to meet up. She gave me an address to meet up at. It was on the other side of the city. She said it was her house. Okay, no big deal. This should be fun. Maybe I'll get to meet her family, I thought to myself. It was evening when she wanted me to come over. I drove into the neighborhood and something felt very wrong.
It looked like a really low-income area, and a lot of the homes were in disrepair, some were even abandoned. I pulled up to the house that she wanted me to meet her at. I parked and got out of the car, stood on the sidewalk and stared at the house for a bit. There didn't seem to be anybody there, didn't look like there had been in years.
There were no cars in the driveway, and the windows were all covered in one way or another—blinds, curtains, newspaper. There was an active WiFi network, though, so somebody obviously lived there. I walked up to the house and heard some shuffling in the garage. The houses around that one seemed really quiet too. Something felt really, really wrong.
My conscience told me to get the hell out of there, so I started up the car, floored the gas and drove out of that neighborhood. When I got home, I went to go check out her profiles. None of them really had any text-based posts, just images of her. No interactions with friends or anything either. The profiles looked fake, like the ones bots use.
I realized that Charlotte was probably not who she said she was. I quickly deleted her from my social profiles and removed Tinder from my phone. About five or so days later, an unknown number started to text my phone. Stuff like "Where were you?", "You never showed up...", "I was looking so forward to this." "You don't stand up a girl like that."
She must have grabbed my phone number off of Facebook. I called my provider and blocked/reported the number, deleted my own accounts and made new ones with more privacy settings. It's been a month since all of this went down. Nothing else has happened since. I'm still pretty freaked out about it. I move to a new city for school soon, and I'm just itching to get away from here.
#29 Getting to Know Myself
In high school, I practically lived with my girlfriend. It was just us two on the top floor, her mom was on the main floor, and her brother was in the basement. She always told me that the house was haunted, specifically the top floor and attic, and I mostly believed her. She said that the first week she lived there she woke up one night to use the bathroom, and when she flipped on the light there was a little girl standing in there. She never saw her again but swears she saw her that once. Anyway.
One morning I woke up with her sitting up in bed, staring at me wide-eyed with a look of terror on her face. When I asked her what was wrong she just started screaming until she woke up. She told me that she woke up and I was nailed to the wall in a bloody pentagram. She had several little night hallucinations when we were together, most of them involved her having conversations with imaginary people in her room, but nothing ever as bad as seeing me nailed to the wall.
#30 Strike Up the Band
I was walking home from a band rehearsal, since I lived about 2,000 feet away from my high school. I was listening to music. It was mid-November and there were no cars in sight. I live in a pretty decently sized city so street lamps are very common. I walked along, minding my own business, since it was about 11 PM and who goes walking around that late?
My dumb self decided that it was a perfect time to walk around the perimeter of my school, since it's also a track to run on, and contemplate about how depressed I am. About 45 minutes into the walk, I suddenly heard what sounded like a car driving recklessly and very rapidly. The car looked as if it was going straight for me.
I watched as my whole life flashed before my eyes and ran as fast as I could into the grass away from it. Long story short, it was a drunk driver, with his child in the car, who wrecked into the sign at my high school. I looked into the car, from afar—the driver was dead and the child stared at me as she died. It was beyond the worst experience of my life.
The really weird part is that I froze there for about 10 minutes in complete despair and awe that this actually happened. I snapped out of it, called the police, and left the scene. About 45 minutes later, I was curious as to why I never heard sirens so I went back to see what was happening. The car and the bodies were gone. I'm not trying to make it sound like spooky or anything, but I was legitimately in terror.
I had six months of nightmares and still suffer from clinical depression.
#31 I’ll Stick to Winter
A while back, I kept receiving phone calls to my home phone from a blocked number. Why I kept answering them, I'm unsure. The first time I answered, I just said, "Hello?" and I got a deep voice of a woman (very masculine sounding but it was definitely a woman) saying, "Don't you ever mess with Summer again. Jimmy and I are coming to find you and beat you up."
I hung up quickly. And I kept receiving these calls. Days apart, sometimes a week apart. I got about four calls of "I'm going to beat you" before my dad was home, and I handed the phone to him. They never called back. And it's weird, because I used to know a girl named Summer who lived across the street from me and had a mother who was...not so good.
Summer lived with her grandma, and the voice on the other end of the call reminded me of her mother. I still don't know who was calling, though. For some context, her mother was crazy. My dad once found her passed out on the sidewalk after taking too many pills, so we called an ambulance. Later that year, we had some Christmas lights on some bushes in our front yard and she took scissors and cut them.
We saved that woman's life, and she cuts a five-year-old girl's Christmas lights.
#32 Childhood Memories
I had a high fever one day way back in kindergarten. So high that I was hallucinating. Going to sleep was painful. It felt like I was going to sleep on a bed of nails. I was tossing and turning, but it was too painful in any position. Then a kid walks in the room and stands at the end of the bed. From what I can remember the kid somewhat looked like cheese, but with a gaping hole in his head and a sword being impaled through his brain.
He just stood there. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in the morning feeling better. That night will haunt me for the rest of my life.
#33 The Long Road to Recovery
For me, it wasn't paranormal nor anyone's fault except my own. When I went cold turkey off of Xanax and morphine, I hallucinated. The first few days were just chronic physical pain, but after 72+ hours of no sleep and little to no food or water, my body went whacky and I started hallucinating/dreaming/sleepwalking. I really don't know what to call it because it was a combination of the three.
The worst one though was the night before I finally admitted myself to the hospital. I dreamed that there were a bunch of cops trying to get into my house, and I refused to come out. Eventually, my close friends and members of my family started showing up outside. They all begged me to come out, but I still refused. Eventually, they started killing themselves.
I watched my mom shoot herself in the head, and my dad go crazy over it. Then my boyfriend decided to send his dog into my house to coax me out, and when I still refused, the cops shot the dog to death, driving my boyfriend insane. My aunts, uncles, grandparents, all of them—one by one all killed themselves in front of me, and I still wouldn't come out.
Eventually, after everyone was dead and days had passed, the cops broke down the door and shot me over and over again. I thought I was dead. I remember feeling at peace and looking out the window seeing days, weeks, years pass. I felt like I was a ghost. Then I woke up. I immediately called my parents and confessed about my drug addiction, and that I was in trouble now.
I admitted myself to the hospital that day, and although they had to strap me to the bed because I got out and walked around the hospital naked (I don't remember any of this, I was told about it after the fact), I came out of it and made a full recovery.
#34 Missing Person
I got admitted to a psych ward a few months ago for suicidal stuff, but was placed in acute care (for the really crazy people) because the depression one was all full. All sorts of nutty people were around me. It was a living hell. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if it was meds or just lack of sleep, or what, but I swear to goodness, I kept seeing this very dark-skinned African-American lady just lying around everywhere.
Out in the grass during smoke break, on the bench of the cafeteria tables, and on the floor in the hallway. I introduced myself, and she said her name was Shul. Everyone else acknowledged that she was there and tried talking with her, but she really said nothing. I think the story was that she just moved here from a faraway country (not sure if that's true, or just rumors I heard from other people).
I remember one night, I actually started crying because I missed my wife and daughter so bad. I went out and talked to a tech who said that he would try his best to get me moved over to the depression ward. As I was talking to him, I saw Shul screaming and getting thrown down to the floor and carried off by six other techs. There were six of them because Shul was definitely a large woman (not fat, but just very large).
The next morning when we asked where Shul was, the staff all kept denying that they even had a Shul. I know I wasn't the only one, because other patients were asking for her too. And one patient said she left behind a shirt. Not a clue what happened, but it scared us pretty bad. Like what could happen next to one of us? Not super spooky, but it was very scary for me at least.
#35 This Story Deserves a Hand
I had a poltergeist experience in Southern Oregon. It was at a campsite, I had just gotten up to urinate. I went back to my tent, got into my sleeping bag, and was overcome with a heavy feeling of "wet" static and heavy atmospheric pressure. My tent went from being relatively dark to pitch black and I could no longer see what was directly in front of me.
I bent upward and felt a hand across my face. I was pushed back down, and then I felt hands around my ankles. I wasn't able to move, scream, or anything. I tried my best to fight off whatever had a hold of me. Nothing worked. Then I started sliding to my right. After being pulled a couple of feet to my right, I was able to let out a scream and move my arms.
I tried punching in the general direction that it felt like the hands were coming from. There wasn't anything there. Once I felt the hands come off me, the pitch-black darkness went away, and so did the "wet" static. I got up, made my way out of the tent, and didn't see or hear anything. I packed up my belongings and left.
#36 Cutting to the Chase
A few years ago, I was driving back from a concert in Raleigh, NC. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep in my car for a bit, but I had work the next morning so I started the three-hour drive. I eventually took a wrong turn and made a u-turn. I looked down at my fuel gauge and saw that I had about one-eighth of a tank of gas left.
As I look up, I see in my rear-view mirror that another car had done the same. That's not that weird per se, but at 2 AM with hardly any other drivers on the road, it was unsettling. After about 20 minutes of this driver following me from behind, I decided to pull over and let him pass me. However, the car didn't pass me.
Instead, as I'm waiting, he enters into the same parking lot I'm in and parks in front of me, his car's headlights shining in my face. We sit there for two minutes before I decide to get out of that future murder scene. I hit the gas and get back on the highway, with the other driver doing the same. Now, I'm normally not prone to speeding, but I'm at least 20 MPH over the speed limit at this point.
Keep in mind I'm low on gas and the other driver is keeping up. Eventually, he slows down and when I come down a long hill and don't see his headlights for a few moments, I slide into a backroad. Thankfully, no headlights followed.
#37 Now This One is Outside the Box
When I was 16, I would jump on my trampoline out back for hours every night. Literally, hours. I would listen to my iPod and just daydream to get away from a rough family life. One night when I was jumping, a kid ran past our fence full speed carrying a box about the size and shape of a skateboard. He ran to the park behind my house and held it by the edge, then tossed it into the air so that it flipped a few times before landing on the ground.
At this point, I was a little weirded out because he was just standing over it staring for a pretty long time. Then, out of nowhere, he just bolts full speed back past our fence like he didn't even notice I was there. Alright, that's a bit weird. I just kept jumping and staring at where the box was—and here's where it gets creepy.
The box looked like it was moving. Then something started to rise out of it. I actually stopped jumping, rubbed my eyes, and watched as what looked like a full-grown man rose out of a box that was like two inches thick. He had an elongated head with no hair. His skin was orange, and his eyes were huge and pitch black. He raised one arm up to his side and the box just kind of went into what I can only describe as a trench coat.
He walked over to the only pavilion we have at the small park, grabbed the metal beam holding up the overhang and started to bang his head hard onto the beam over and over. At this point, I had rubbed my eyes quite a few times and couldn't even move. I had no idea what I was seeing. Then without warning, he just stopped, quickly whipped his head around, and stared right at me.
It was as if he could somehow feel me watching him. A giant, and I mean giant, smile came across his face as those dark eyes just stared at me. He tilted his head back and forth a few times. I had goosebumps and my eyes started to tear up. Even typing this is making my hair stand on edge because I won’t ever forget that look.
As I was about to start crying (and I don't know why I wanted to cry but his face just filled me with terror), he turned around and kind of phased down the road off into the distance. Phase like those units the Protoss have in Starcraft that leave a "trail" of themselves for a short period of time, if that helps to explain it. He was gone. That was it.
I bawled my eyes out and sprinted inside and called my best friend who assured me I was seeing things and needed to calm down. I’m sure I sound insane and no one will believe me, but this is the creepiest thing that has happened to me. I know what I saw and to this day when I think about it my eyes begin to water and my hair stands on edge. Never saw anything like it since.
#38 He Must Have Liked Your Faces
Both my parents are from the UK, so when I was young, we would go visit my grandparents there over the summer. Usually, it would be planned such that my cousins would go at the same time as us. So as it ended up, all the adults would sleep in the upstairs bedrooms whilst all the kids would be sleeping on the floor in the living room.
Of course, we stayed up all night playing video games. Late one night, we hear a crashing sound, and all look up to the huuuuge windows and sliding doors in the living room that border the back garden. We see a figure crashing through the backyard fence, sprinting across the backyard, and peering into the large glass windows—right at our young, terrified faces.
He gives us a quick grin, sprints to the other side of the yard, hops the fence and is gone. All of this happens in the space of about 10 seconds. Needless to say, my cousins, siblings, and I all dart upstairs and awaken all the adults. Cops are called. They start searching the area and knocking on neighbors' doors. One house doesn't respond.
Finally, they choose to break in. They find an entire family of three generations and six members murdered in their beds. It was a random attack, as they caught the guy a few hours later, and he had no connection to the family at all. I don't want to think about if he had picked my grandparents' house instead. ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.
#39 Getting A Little Pushback
I don't tell people this in real life because they would rightfully not believe me, but I used to work at a fast food place as a closer and had a couple of really strange things happen to me. One night, me and the girl closing with me were finishing up. I was wiping a counter when I felt her come up behind me and shove me hard into the counter.
I had a bruise on my hip from it, so I turn around and yell, "What the hell..." only to see no one there. Then from the other side of the store, I hear her call out, "What happened?" I don't really believe in paranormal stuff but I really have no way to explain what happened that night. There's no way she could have pushed me like that and then run to the other side of the store without me seeing her.
It's been years since that happened and I wonder if I've started to exaggerate the story in my mind, but it's not like I completely made it up. That's not the only creepy thing that's happened there, but it's the only one that I can't blame on some weird noises or an overactive imagination.
#40 Strange Things Lurk in the Shadows
It was a few years ago. I used to have a late-night job and didn't have a car, so I did a lot of walking. One night I got home later than usual, around 3:00 AM. Before going inside, I would usually have a smoke and listen to some tunes to try and unwind before attempting to sleep (I have had chronic insomnia for about eight years).
So unlike normal, I was smoking on the steps by the front door rather than dancing like a damn fool in the backyard. I was just looking around my neighborhood and suddenly stopped cold at the house across the street's front yard. I am not superstitious or anything like that. But man, did my heart stop and a chill ran through my body!
It was about 10 to 12 feet tall and all solid white. Except for "its" face. It was like a slender, tall, demented looking thing. And I can swear it KNEW I was looking at it and it looked right back. I calmly finished my smoke and went inside. Where my room was I could see that house from my window. Every so often I would check and sure enough, it was still there, still seemingly knowing I was watching.
Not long before daybreak, I passed out. I woke up around 10 in the morning, and without a second thought, went straight to the window to check on "it." Nothing was there. The rest of the day before work I kept trying to think of an explanation. "It was the moon playing tricks on me,” or “the lack of sleep was getting to me."
I left to start walking to work around 6:00 PM. That house was right along my route, so to put my mind to ease once and for all I went to investigate. What I saw still makes the hairs on my arms stand up. There was a trail of muddy footsteps right where I was looking all the way to the road. Not only that, but the trail lead right in the direction of my house.
I no longer work night jobs and have a car. I've never been able to make sense of it, but every so often I keep my eye out. You can never be too careful…
#41 The Cat’s Meow
I used to have a cat that was big, black, and fluffy. Me and my brother got him a long time ago. He named him Naruto. Anyway, Naruto died of complications with his bladder a couple years ago. I wasn’t around when he was buried but I got to say my goodbyes. He was a very good cat and had a keen sense of bad things. He would always sleep next to me when I had a bad day or just rotten luck.
Well, ever since he passed, he has been a staple in my dreams. He isn’t just a normal cat, but like a zombie cat. At the end of every dream, I bury him. This has happened multiple times. I only ever see him in my dreams if I had a bad day. Recently, I have moved into a small house with a couple of roommates. I had decided to take a nap in the middle of the day.
During dreaming, Naruto sat in front of me, howled and then scratched my face. I woke up and there was smoke everywhere in my room as well as the rest of the house. Turns out one of my roommates had left the stove on with some food cooking while he ran to get something from the grocery store—dumb idea, I know. My room was right behind the kitchen.
If Naruto hadn’t woken me up in the dream I might have died in a house fire. The next night, I buried Naruto again. I haven’t seen him in my dreams since.
References:
Source: Factinate
