Life has the tendency to throw some inconvenient situations into our daily routines. You're late to work and you can't find your keys; you forget to charge your Bluetooth speaker before your trip to the beach; you barely have enough brown sugar for that cookie recipe: sometimes without reason at all, things just happen, and that's the natural order of things. But what about the supernatural order of things? Surely you can chalk it up to forgetfulness as the catalyst behind these happenings, but there are some inconveniences that simply can't be explained.
Waking up in the middle of the night is one thing that can easily shift from being a mere "inconvenience" to a petrifying moment of panic. These few Reddit users share some of the most terror-inducing moments they've ever experienced after waking up in the middle of the night.
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#26 Ice Bath
We have a window AC unit basically right above our bed. One night, ice must have gotten built up inside, and it fell onto the fan that blows the air out. I remember hearing a loud bang and then being sprayed in the face by liquid. My first thought was that someone broke in and injured my wife. Absolutely terrifying.
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#25 Under Distress
“OPEN UP! POLICE! WE HAVE A SEARCH WARRANT!”
It was about 6 AM, accompanied by loud banging. Turns out it was for the apartment beneath my bedroom window but I sat straight up and my first thought was, “Oh no, they got me!” despite being one of the least shady people alive.
KKRV
#24 Child's Play
My daughter had a Ring Around the Rosie doll when she was little. You put the doll's hands together and it would sing the song. Anyway, she left it outside one night apparently and the dew in the grass shorted it out. I woke up in the middle of the night to this faint Ring Around the Rosie song playing over and over.
It was creepy and we didn't have an outdoor light in the backyard so I had to go by myself with a flashlight and search the yard for this creepy doll.
#23 Helping Hand
I woke up to the feeling of something on my face, tried to brush it off and in my half-asleep state, I thought it was attacking me. Cue absolute freak out because something is crawling all over me and I can't get it off, just for me to find out it was my own hand that had gone numb while I was asleep.
#22 Child's Play: Part 2
Daughter had this Minnie Mouse baby doll that crawled on all fours when you touched a button on its back. Wife and I woke up at 2 AM to the sound of the doll's creepy laugh. Went out to the living room and the doll was walking straight into the corner. Each time it stopped it would just start right over again. The button wasn't broken or anything, so I'm not sure what happened. Donated it.
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#21 The Butt Stops Here
Someone slamming on the door of the apartment across the hall screaming, “Your apartment is on fire!”
It sounded like it was on mine. Woke up and immediately started choking on smoke. The fire alarm then went off.
Everything ended up being okay (someone flicked a butt off their balcony, it landed on one a few floors beneath it and set their patio furniture on fire, hence why someone saw it before the alarm went off). It was just so disorienting and terrifying to wake up to the pounding on the door, the screaming, and the smoke.
#20. "Excuse Me, But Which Direction to Camp Crystal Lake?"
Housemate coming home drunk after midnight from a Halloween party dressed as Jason from Friday 13th, walked into my room by mistake in his full Voorhees costume and just stood in the middle of the room looking around trying to work out where he was.
Woke me up as my door opened and I was frozen terrified for a good 30 seconds. Bought a lock for my door the following week.
#19. Just Short of Having A Heart Attack
I lived with my oldest sister and her two daughters. Her youngest (3 years old) was a sleepwalker. She was tiny, white-blonde & liked to wear a white nightgown that was too big for her.
Yeah, wake up to the sound of thumb-sucking right next to my head, roll over and see the world's shortest ghost.
Fandom
#18. Brace Yourself
When I was young(ish) I woke up to the sound of people quietly moving around downstairs when I believed I was home alone. Scared silly and still confused from the sleep I grabbed a telescopic wheel brace as the only available 'weapon'. Heart beating out my chest, fight or flight reflex in full effect when I heard the sound of footsteps up the stairs outside my room. Hand on the door handle and ready to fight for my life, I hear my dad's voice, immediately realize my parents had got back from holiday earlier than I expected. The endorphin rush was intense.
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#16. Where's Air Traffic Control When You Need Them?
The clear and obvious sounds of an animal in the bedroom. We had no pets. I'm in the UK so my sleepy brain at first thought it was a rat, or several rats fighting for their lives. After some minor panicking it turned out to be a pigeon trapped behind the boarded up fireplace. Slept on the sofa that night.
#15. The End Of Days?
#14. One-Cat Choir
I had a Siamese mix cat and one summer it started to ''sing" in the middle of the night. Sounded like a crying baby right in my condo. Freaked me out the first time I heard it.
#13 INCOMING!
A mortar alarm while sleeping in a tent in Afghanistan. You have about 30 seconds to get out of bed, get fully dressed, get all your gear and weapon and get outside. Pretty horrible especially when you had been up for over 24 hours straight and you get an hour of sleep before being violently woken up.
#12. Death By "Eye Spec"
I was sleeping in someone’s house. It was an upstairs room with an attic above me. On the floor, I was on (accessible by a small side door), the wall behind the headboard had a ceiling that slanted. I was asleep and woke up suddenly. It was a dark room with a slight light coming in from the streetlights outside the window. I see this item moving on the slanted ceiling. I keep looking thinking it’s an eye spec or whatever, but then I swear I see it fall and land on my head. I flicked it and it moved— seemed like a roach but I’ve never scooted out of a room so fast. I still think about this moment, 20 years later.
#11. One Helluva Tummy Ache
Went to bed at midnight. Woke up in searing pain at 2 AM, such grave pain that I thought my appendix had burst. Flipped on the lights to take a Tylenol only to find I had rolled over on a black widow spider that had bitten me.
#10. Making A Mockery Of Yourself
I have an electronic door lock. Late one night, I heard the beeps from the lock over and over and over. Four beeps every time. I grabbed my phone and checked ring.com. No one there. I went out on my balcony and the beeping continued. I finally pinpointed it. A mockingbird learned my lock tones and scared the crap out of me.
#9. A Furry Painful Alarm Clock
Fell asleep on the couch. Woke up around 3 AM to my cat clawing my face. Every time I tried to go back to sleep, he started again. Finally, I got mad and decided to put him in another room. As soon as I stood up, I smelled natural gas. The pilot light on my stove had gone out. The little guy saved my life.
#8. Cats: Bat's Best Friend
A bat that my wife thought was our cat until it flew at her. I wake up to screaming and a bat flying at my face. Turns out it was in our bedroom for about two days, and the damn cats knew and just hung out with it. Cats then proceeded to watch the hilarity as we try to catch the thing.
#7. Siren's Song
I woke up to someone whistling a really sad tune outside. At first, it was distant but it got louder as it came closer and eventually stopped right under my bedroom window. The person stayed there for at least 10 minutes and I was so scared. I didn’t dare peek through the blinds.
The next morning I checked the yard. Sure enough, there were footprints in the dirt under my window. I never figured it out and I don’t really want to.
#6. Spring Into Action
When I lived with my parents, I had a roll-up window shade. Well, the spring gave out early one morning and I did some sort of combat roll off the bed and onto the floor.
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#5. *Fasten Seatbelt Sign Illuminates*
Was asleep on a plane. All of a sudden I wake up and am 100% sure that the plane was going down. There was violent shaking and a loud noise increasing each second as it does in the movies. I looked around as I tried to comprehend my imminent death, and everyone was calm. It was then I realized, we had just landed.
#4. Cyber Attack
So first off, I listen to sleep music every night because otherwise, I can't go to sleep. So, I was over at a friend's house and she was all "Oh don't worry about it, I'll put on a sleep music station on Spotify". Okay, so then I wake up in the middle of the night to a deep guy's voice saying, "Someone is in your house right now... coming through your front door". I start whisper-screaming, "Diana... Diana! There's someone in the room." No response. Turns out it was a cybersecurity ad drawing the parallel between how you wouldn't want someone sneaking into your house, so why would you leave your information open to trespassing—BUT IT GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK!
#3. Don't Feed The Animals
Went camping in a remote part of the Wasatch mountains in the offseason, there was not another soul for miles. Woke up to what sounded like three different cats all talking to each other, feet away from the tent.
Spent the rest of the morning making as many sounds as I could in an attempt to scare off the mountain lions circling the tent.
#2. "Mr. Whiskers?"
I woke up to my son crying in our room, and an immense weight in the center of the bed between my wife and I. I reached over and felt damp, coarse hair. My first thought was, is that my cat? Followed by “THAT'S NOT THE CAT!” I immediately jumped out of bed and was screaming both involuntarily and uncontrollably to the point of hyperventilating and almost passing out, when I hit the light switch, nothing was there. Wife confirmed afterward that she felt something in the bed with us too. To this day we still have no idea what we experienced that night.
#1. Reflecting On Your Fears
I wrote a little story about it a few years ago:
Something wakes me. It takes me a second to realize that the unfamiliar place is my new apartment. I feel pressure in my bladder and reluctantly get up from the warm bed. As I turn toward the bathroom, the sight of a naked stranger facing me in the twilight stops me cold. Frozen by panic, heart leaping wildly, I open my mouth to scream and realize that the wild-eyed, open-mouthed bearded intruder is my reflection in the full-length closet mirror.
