Watching horror movies can be fun, but when the scary moments in them come to life, that's a completely different experience. The following stories are of people who got the fright of their lives in the most unexpected ways, and they prove that sometimes what you see on the big screen can translate to real life. Read on for some bone-chilling tales:
1. No Strings Attached
A co-worker's dad went into the nursery to check on his newborn baby only to find a horrific sight. The baby had reached for the blinds strap, somehow tangled his neck up, and began choking. The baby was already blue, and all of the veins in his face were popping up. Grandpa frantically called for emergency. Thankfully, EMS arrived in minutes and had the baby breathing again, but as a mother, I can't imagine anything scarier.
2. Bad Vibes
I used to trail run by myself a lot, not on super remote trails, but it also wouldn’t be uncommon for me to not see another person while I was out there. The last time that I went, I came around the corner and there was a guy eating blackberries from a patch along the trail. I ran past and gave one of those quick runner waves.
As I was entering the woods a little further up the trail, I glanced behind me—and what I saw shook me to my core. He was walking behind me, not directly behind me, but much closer than I felt like he should have been considering that he seemed pretty distracted by the berries not long before. I was especially freaked out because I was already tired and facing an uphill climb while he had been relaxing and I knew he’d be able to overtake me.
I sprinted into the woods, grabbed the sharpest rock that I could find, and cut through the forest parallel to the trail before I took the turn until I could get back on it and run back in the direction that I’d come from. He was probably some random guy who thought I was crazy, but I had some very bad vibes that day.
3. Invisible Hand
My eerie story involves a nightstand. My nightstand has three drawers and the handles are floppy in a way that you have to use your whole hand to open a drawer. Mind you, they are made of heavy metal. One day when I was around nine years old, I woke up around 7 am, long before my parents. I decided to read to get some homework out of the way, and all of a sudden the middle handle of my nightstand when from down to up, to the point where the whole underside was showing.
Since it's kind of old furniture, I heard the creak of it and it sounded as if someone grabbed it with force and just flipped it and left it there. My two hands were holding my book so I was completely freaked out. I might add that I only have a ceiling fan, but the air it gives out is DEFINITELY not strong enough to flip a handle from down to up; for that you require an actual human being.
I left it like that for the next few days and it hasn't happened again since almost 10 years later.
4. Personal Emergency
There was a fatal car accident. The first officer on the scene had recognized that the victim was the daughter of an emergency dispatcher. The same emergency dispatcher who had been relaying all of the information about the crash to emergency services. This was before cell phones, meaning the officer had no easy way to tell her what had happened. He just had to keep that horrible information to himself.
5. Mass Hysteria
It happened on Oxford Street (in London) on Black Friday. My friend and I were walking around jokingly said, "Hey, this would be the perfect place for a terrorist attack." Famous last words. There were thousands upon thousands of people pressed together in these busy streets. I swear, like five minutes later we hear this roar of thousands of people screaming all at once.
The sound pulsed through our bodies as the mass of people around us suddenly started running. I grabbed my friend who was panicking and dragged us into a store to go hide behind a pillar. After like 30 seconds they locked the doors and people who still wanted to get in started slamming the windows. Inside the store people were crying and there even was a kid without a parent, screaming.
After a few minutes, they finally said we could go out through the back. Heavily armed cops yelled at us to run again and we went to an office building that was packed with people, again waiting for news. During all that, my parents were there too, but not with us. All my mother had sent me was a text message saying, "Shots!"
I swear, thinking about how I felt that evening still gives me shivers. In those moments, you really believe people are shooting at you. There's nothing louder than the collective screams of people around you. The event even has a Wikipedia page: “Oxford Circus Panic."
6. Lightning Strikes Thrice
Back in 1996, when I was 14 years old, I wandered into the local general store by my house. I started browsing the magazines because back then I never actually bought anything, I just read it in the store like a delinquent. I was into ghost stories and paranormal stuff back then, so I picked up some tabloids. It was one of those newspapers where the cover story is usually something like "Woman in Newark Gives Birth To BatBoy (Exclusive Photos Inside!)"
It must have been around the end of the year or the beginning of 1996, because the cover story was a list of predictions that were going to take place that year. It showed a map of the United States and blurbs that pointed to where major stories would take place. There were a bunch, but three of them jumped out at me: a blizzard in the New England area, a bombing at the Olympics in Athens, Georgia, and a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island.
I put the magazine away, bought some candy, and put it out of my mind for the time being. As much as I was into the paranormal, I didn't really buy into any real predictions like that. Well, there was a blizzard in February of 1996, which was the largest snowstorm in NYC history. Something felt off about it, like there was something I was supposed to remember about it, but I was more focused on the fact that school was canceled for a week and a half.
Being 14 at the time, the fact that the world was covered in snow and the multitude of snow days given to us took precedence in my thoughts. Then on July 17, 1996, there was a plane crash off of Long Island. TWA Flight 800. It happened pretty close to where I lived at the time and it was a pretty big crash, so it was all over the local news. It suddenly became very clear what was going on.
My best friend, Veronica, called me that day and we were chatting on the phone about random things, and then the conversation turned to the news. I took a chance at her calling me crazy and told her at that point what I had read a few months earlier. I told her that the blizzard was the first sign I missed and that there would now be a bombing at the Olympics as well.
We didn’t know what to make of the weird circumstances but decided to wait and see what happened during the summer games. Even today, I feel a bit guilty about Flight 800. There’s a big memorial set up at Smith Point County Park Beach, with a list of all the people who perished that day. I’ve been to it several times. It’s so eerie walking around there, wondering if I could have done something to prevent it.
I was just a kid then, though, and I didn’t have much to go on (a blizzard in New England during winter? What are the odds?). I’ve been told since then that there were probably several people who read that same tabloid and were in a better position to do something, but it’s still kind of haunting even now. In any case, I remember watching the parade of nations coming in on Opening Day during the 1996 Olympic Games.
It was this weird feeling of dread, because I knew what was going to happen. I felt like I was watching people walking to their doom. I had no idea how big the attack would be, but it was really weird to sit there and watch everyone walk in cheering and to just know in the pit of my stomach that things were going to go horribly wrong. I sat there and prayed everyone would make it out of the situation alive, because there was just so little I could do.
About a week into the games, I got the news—there was indeed a bombing Centennial Olympic Park—two people were fatally wounded, 11 were injured. I got a call that day from Veronica. She asked me if I saw it. I was sitting in front of the television, watching the news coverage, and told her that yeah, I saw it, and yeah, I knew it would happen.
She asked me again how I knew and I told her that all I knew was that I read it somewhere. Since that day, I’ve tried to go back through the Sun, National Enquirer, and any other tabloid-ish magazines I could think of that the stationary store would have stocked. I can’t find that many back copies though, so I haven’t found much of anything in the past decade and a half.
I haven’t told many people about this because it was just too weird. I don’t have many explanations for what happened. The only rational way I can explain it other than the wild idea that these tabloids really do have psychics working for them, might be that since these things were man-made disasters (other than the giant blizzard), that someone might have caught wind of people high up plotting them, tried to go to the regular newspapers and was written off as a conspiracy theorist.
In the end, maybe the only newspaper they were able to use to tell the world were these tabloids. I did have a shrink once who my parents forced me to go to because I was having physical problems the doctors all thought were caused by stress. The shrink was a bit of a Jesus freak and I’m not sure how he got a counseling license, but I told him about it because the anniversary of Flight 800 was coming up and it was on the news.
He got this wary look in his eyes like, “Oh, she’s reeeeally crazy, I’m gonna have to prescribe LOTS of pills for her,” and asked me, “So, you think you can see the future, then?” Apparently, the belief that one can see the future can be attributed to so many different mental illnesses. I just rolled my eyes at him, because he clearly hadn't been listening to me at all.
“No. I don’t think I can see the future. I think I can read.” That all happened 21 years ago. It was the strangest occurrence of my life.
7. Going Somewhere?
When I was nine, I was playing at the school down the street from my house. It was the middle of summer, and my friend and I were watching some local boys play street hockey. One of the boys called my name and said a man in the parking lot was looking for me.
The parking lot was mostly obscured by a nearby building, but I could see an old 70s style van that hadn't been there earlier. I was walking over to the van when the mother of one of the other kids showed up looking for her son. When she saw me, she said hi and asked me where I was going. When I told her, she took my hand and started to quickly walk away with me. At that exact moment, the van pulled out and sped off.
My friend's mom walked me all the way home, and I wasn't allowed out of my yard without my parents for the rest of the summer. I was so upset and didn't understand why I was being punished. It was only years later that I had understood that I was likely being targeted by some opportunistic loser for I don’t even want to know what.
8. There’s A Reason You Need A License For Forklifts
I was working at a warehouse and there was a forklift that had an awkward load, like the guy sifted it a little bit. I went up to straighten the little bit off on it. Well, the guy operating the forklift was a complete idiot and backed through a doorway with the load quite a ways into the air and it smacked into the top of the doorway at great speed. He had gunned that forklift like he was racing the thing.
Now, back to me. I am right in front of this load that is now coming at me at high speed. The load was poorly stacked and heavy as lead metal. Time stopped. Two thoughts went through my head: try to stop it or get out of there. I went with getting out of there, which was the right choice because when that stuff hit the floor it left massive dents and gouges in the cement floor, there was no way I could have stopped that, too much weight, and too much speed.
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9. Dear John
Something I cannot explain or understand: In high school, I had a friend, we'll call him John. John and I played football together, and we would always get extra lifting sessions in at the high school gym. We remained friends after high school and even worked together for a bit. He ended up getting into selling pills, and our relationship deteriorated to the point where we were no longer speaking.
Fast forward a few years later and I have this dream. In my dream, I am back at my high school gym lifting weights with John. We were just chatting about random stuff, having a good time, and then he suddenly says that he has to go. I tell him I don't want him to leave because I want to keep hanging out and I missed him. He just says he's really sorry but has to leave.
I say "OK, see ya later" and he replies with a nod and a "See ya." I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. I see it is my mom and answer it. She tells me that John passed last night and is asking if I am OK and other mom stuff. She had heard from John’s mom, who called in saying that John’s siblings would not be at school the rest of the week because of his passing.
My mom was a secretary at the school they went to. I can't help but think that something paranormal had happened to allow me to make peace with and say goodbye to my friend and have some bit of closure. He was 25 when he passed from an overdose and was the first person really close to me who had passed. I’m equally freaked out and comforted by the idea.
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10. Anybody There?
I once interviewed a woman who told me a horror story about something that happened to her as a girl. When she was ten, she had trouble sleeping. She thought that the Boogeyman was standing in her closet and staring at her whenever she tried to sleep.
Every night, she would go downstairs and tell her parents about how scared she felt. And every night, her father would tell her the Boogeyman didn't exist and then send her back to bed. This happened over several nights, and the father got tired of it. That night, he walked her back up to her bedroom, turned on the light, and said, "I'll show you there's no Boogeyman."
As he went to open the closet door, something on the other side held it shut. The dad immediately sent his daughter out of the room and forced the door open to find that a man was in there. He'd been sneaking into their house every night to stand in the girl's closet and watch her.
11. Attic Invasion
I've been through a lot of scary stuff but I think the most legitimately terrifying was someone breaking into our house from an adjoining attic crawl space to rummage for pills in our medicine cabinet. My (now) ex was working swing shift and my very pregnant self thought it was him coming home after the night shift to shower. I thought it was weird he didn’t kiss me but figured he’d had a bad night at work and went to shower immediately.
Imagine my surprise when he DID come in and kiss me a while later and I had a whole revelation moment that there had been a man in there earlier who was not my husband. It made it worse than I was pregnant at the time and extra emotional.
12. Animal Instincts
I grew up in a fairly rough area. When I was eight or nine-ish, I was walking down this wide series of alleyways by the back garden of a relative's house. It wasn’t a dodgy alleyway with low visibility, it's more of a large path that connects the back gardens of the terraced blocks on both sides. You're in plain sight of pretty much every window, so I felt very safe.
I was a few dozen feet from the back gate to the house, and I don't know what came over me. I didn't hear, see, or sense anything. I just twitched and my head and flung to the side—narrowly missing a large rock that a rough, mentally unstable kid had thrown at me. If that had hit me, I'd have been either screwed up really badly or worse. I had no reason to believe it was coming. I still think about it to this day.
13. Better Not Squashed
My mom passed an accident where two semis had completely crashed into each other. It looked like a normal accident, with both drivers seeming fine. They were walking around outside their cars, with emergency staff surrounding the scene. Because of this, my mom didn't think much of it--until she learned the truth. The news covered the crash. They said there weren't two semis, but three vehicles. There had been a car smashed in between the trucks. The driver was one of my brother's teachers.
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14. A Lion’s Trip To The City
I used to go out for these long walks in the woods at night, as depression makes me value my personal safety less than a few minutes of peace. I thought my worst-case scenario was a creepy stranger—I was so wrong. I went for these walks often, until one day I got stalked by a mountain lion that had wandered into the city.
The feeling of having an apex predator follow you is a nearly indescribable, primal thing. It's so disconnected from any fear I've felt in my modern life, but at the same time unmistakable for anything other than what it is. It's baked right into every cell of your body. You practically glow with terror. Externally, I was just walking home, but internally, I was absolutely and totally aware that there was a big cat behind me.
I knew that it wanted to eat me, and I couldn't stop it if it decided to do this.
15. There Is A Light
So this is kind of deep. In high school, I was going through some serious depression. One night while at my wit’s end,I had planned on taking a bunch of pills to overdose in my room. I was at a low point. I had a handful of probably 50 different pills in my hand, and right before I took them I asked God one more time—I’m not overly religious but grew up with a background—if there was a reason for me to live, show me now because I didn’t see a reason to live.
And I swear on my life, everything that took electricity went off in my room. Lights, TV, even my radio all shut off all at once. I thought it was a power outage, but my hall light was still on so I realized it was only in my room. A few seconds later, all the power to my room was restored. That to me was a sign from God that I needed to go on. A few years later in college, I had hit rock bottom again.
I thought my life was meaningless and on campus, I went for a walk super late at night. I was to my breaking point and I was sitting under a street light crying, asking God if I should just end it all. All of a sudden, the street light above me went out. That was the only streetlight within a couple of hundred feet that went out. Mind you, there were probably 50 of these poles.
That was a sign to keep on going. It’s unexplainable, and to the average person it sounds super unbelievable, but to me, those momentary power failures told me I needed to live and God didn’t want me to end my life. I still struggle with depression and I know those are just little things, but I’ll always remember them. I just encourage you all to pay attention.
16. A Big Part Of Life
Back in the late seventies during her first semester at college, my mom met this guy named Bob. They were lab partners, and she’d thought he seemed cute and nice. She was too shy then to ask him out, but she definitely liked him. If Bob had asked her, she would have happily gone on a date. But he never did, so they just stayed friends.
But then things got...weird. Even though they studied different major, my mom kept noticing that Bob was often waiting for her. He'd be outside of her other classes, the library, the student union, and out in front where her dad picked her up and dropped her off. This continued into the spring semester.
Puzzled, but not yet alarmed, she asked him how he always knew where she would be. Bob loudly said, “oh, I asked the registrar’s office for a copy of your schedule!” My mom went to complain to the secretary who gave it to him. She blew it off because, “you guys are dating.” It was creepy, but since my mom was doing an exchange program the next year, she just left it at that. She figured that when she came back for her final year of university, he would have moved on.
Flash forward to her final year. She returns to university and...Bob is nowhere in sight. She figured she was free, but the whole situation was far from over. While my mom was at one of her grad school classes, my grandma heard a knock on the door. It was a man wearing a naval uniform. Since my grandmother had been a Navy nurse, she let him in.
The man started off by saying how sorry he was for my mother’s loss, which completely mystified my grandma. Before she could ask him what he meant, he continued, saying: “Well, ma’am, I just came back from overseas, and I found out my old friend Bob had passed. He had spoken so highly of his fiancée, your daughter, and I wanted to meet her.”
My grandmother told him her daughter didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé. It didn’t take long for the friend and my grandma to realize that Bob had made up his entire engagement. The whole thing was so creepy.
17. Genius Ideas
I had a snowboarding accident. I was stupid and went with my brother up to the top of the mountain for one last run as a snowstorm was about to start. By the time we got to the top, it was getting worse. We had another genius idea and decided to go through the fun off-piste area. About five minutes down the mountain the wind had started gusting heavily.
My brother had an easier time as he’s on skis and is heavier than me. A gust managed to knock me over and I fell on my arm, breaking it. I was in too much pain to continue down in that kind of weather so we decided that my brother would continue and then alert the ski patrol about the situation. Sitting there on the mountain off-piste in the middle of a heavy snowstorm with a broken arm all alone just waiting was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been.
I honestly don’t remember how long it took them to find me again but it was likely an hour or so. But seeing the lights of a snowmobile coming towards me was amazing. They got me down the mountain with no issues and then I received the standard lecture from my mom about safety. You know what I’m talking about.
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18. Night Rider
One early morning around 2 or 3 am, I was driving home on some back roads from my girlfriend’s house when I was 17. There was a truck behind me for about two miles before the driver started getting closer to me, closing the gap between our cars and eventually getting into the oncoming traffic lane and speeding up again. I figured he just wanted to pass me since it’s a one-lane road, so I let off the gas to make it easier for him.
When he gets beside me, I look over and make eye contact with this dude. It was dark and I didn't actually see his eyes, but I knew he was looking back at me. This is when it gets weird. He slows down a little to stay next to me for what I guess was one or two hundred feet, and then gets back behind me. I was terrified, but started planning to lose him and defend myself.
Where I'm from, the roads twist and turn through the woods, so the next time a curve separated us, I floored it and found a pretty hidden driveway to pull up in and cut my lights off. I was waiting for him to drive past me…but he never did.
19. Barely Making It
I was living in a big city a few years ago and didn't know anyone. A guy I was seeing came to visit me. At the end of his trip, I accompanied him to his train home. After that, I slowly walked back to the streetcar to go back to my apartment. It was about 2 PM and very bright and sunny outside, and I was feeling friendly. As I sat down on the bench at the streetcar stop, the man sitting next to me said hi.
I said hello back, but I felt something was off. I tried to ignore it and keep enjoying my day. Shortly, the streetcar came, and we both got on. It was crowded so we ended up sitting pretty close to each other. Once I saw my stop approaching, I got up. The man stood up too. I could feel him breathing right behind me. Even worse, I could see his reflection in the metro car window. He was very slowly looking my legs up and down. I started to feel very uneasy. The doors opened; we got off.
I made my way quickly to the end of the platform but realized he could be following me. There were several exits around, so I suddenly changed direction to go to another exit. He changed his course as well. Then I turned around again; he followed. I did this a few times, and he changed his path to match mine every single time.
Eventually, he caught up to me and approached me. He got closer and closer until I was up against a wall. A he smiled brightly at me, he said "Hello, how are you?" I was terrified. No one stopped to even glance at us, so I knew that unless I did something, I would not get away from him. I glanced to the right and saw a staircase. Without warning, I sprinted away.
Since I’d caught him off guard. It took him a few seconds to start following me. Somehow, the stars aligned and I managed to get on a train right as the doors closed in his face. That incident and several others of men following me home or in the street make me paranoid when I walk outside alone.
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20. He Knows Too Much
I was 17 and was coming home from my girlfriend’s place around three or four in the morning. I live in an apartment and would regularly jump my backyard fence. I climbed up to the second floor and came down the stairs to climb through my window on the first floor. I got to the fence and heard a bone-chilling sound. It was a car screeching its tires at top speed.
Even worse, I got to the top of the fence and I heard footsteps running towards where I was. I was caught off guard because no one should be back there at that time. I landed and turned around to see who it was. It was a neighbor who lives in the building. This 32-year-old gangster. I felt relief because we were on decent terms and he knew who I was growing up—but he had an Uzi in his hand.
He half pointed it at me, shaking as he did so. I was so frightened. But he lowered it realizing who I was as I said "... What’s up?" He was obviously high. He asked me to hold the firearm so he could pee. He pushed it into my chest as he did so. I could feel him shaking from adrenaline and illicit substances. I felt like I didn't have a choice. I was stuck for a second but I managed to take a step back raise my hands and say, "Nah bro. I cant."
He said it was all good, telling me to use my shirt to hold it so he could pee. I repeated, "Nah. I can't. Put it on the floor. And do what you gotta do. I'll keep watch." He proceeded to pee. He was turning my way every other second because his loaded firearm is on the floor between us. I looked the other way. I was trying to not make him nervous.
I looked into the sky and hear a helicopter approaching. It was low and its searchlight was scanning the area. I told him, "Yo, I gotta go." He asked if I had keys to the backyard door. I nervously pull them out and said, "Yeah I do. Let's go through." I hurriedly walked to the door. I opened it for us. He lives on the first floor as well. We went opposite ways. It was a huge relief.
I had to jump through my window still. I could barely manage to get the screen off because I was shaking so much. I managed to get in 10 seconds later and was shaking and was nervous from what just happened. I washed my face and changed my clothes. I got ready for bed and tried to calm down. I began to think my nightmare was finally over—but it wasn’t.
I put Adult Swim on and tried to relax and drift to sleep. Twenty minutes later, as I’m drifting off to sleep, a red laser points through my curtains. I’m was scared because my bed was visible and the dot seemed like it was shaky and searching. I was terrified. My only thought was he went and got high again, thought about what happened, and decided I saw too much.
I was literally hugging my wall standing on my bed trying to avoid the laser beam. I thought I was dead. Then the light shut off. It flicked on and off a couple of times. I noticed the angle wasn’t floor level. It was coming in from the second floor. A neighbor girl I used to talk to had two younger sisters and their window was across from mine but on the second floor.
They were shining a laser in my room. Most likely they saw me jumping into my room and decided it was a good idea that night to shine a laser beam into my room. I was angry and sent her a few texts blowing up about them shining a laser into my room that late at night. She understood without me having to explain and they stopped immediately.
But jeez, the thoughts that were running through my head. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry about the situation.
21. Restless Spirit
One evening, I was driving to my then-boyfriend's house from work. It was early dusk, so still bright out, and I was driving a route I was familiar with. As I crossed a set of old train tracks, all of a sudden I saw a woman sitting in my passenger seat. I did a double-take, and as I looked the second time she was gone, but standing outside the car about 20 feet away, waving and sort of sadly-grim smiling.
I remember every single detail of what she looked like—50s, mid-length brown hair with dirt and leaves stuck in it, red shorts, white T-shirt tucked in, white fold-over socks, Keds. I had never seen her before and haven't seen her since, but the instant I crossed those train tracks, I knew without a doubt in my mind that she had been killed there and her body was buried there.
As freaked out as I was, it made me really, really sad and I wanted to pull over to find her. Realistically, I couldn’t have, but something in my brain desperately wanted to. I burst into tears and called my boyfriend, sobbing about the train track lady and how I wanted to help her. I had to explain to him what happened over and over. To this day, I have no idea if he ever believed me but I know what I saw and I am pretty sure I know why I saw it.
I moved from that area a few years ago and I still hope someone finds her so she can rest.
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22. You’re Coming With Me
My friend came back home with her first date. They were both a little tipsy and high. She went in to change, and when she came back to her bedroom, her date bent down to remove his shoes. As he got up, he immediately grabbed her and dragged her out against her will. She struggled, but he just covered her mouth and brought her outside.
He took her out of her apartment complex with a strong hold the whole time. Then finally, he let her go, and she asked him what exactly was wrong with him. He told her that he had seen a man who was hiding under her bed.
23. Not Playing Games
My scariest experience was probably when I went to the park with my seven-month-old puppy and he got attacked. Two dogs came running at him and he thought they wanted to play, but nope. They lunged at him and one had him by the neck while the other had his back hind leg. My mother had to pry open the dog’s mouth to get it off of my dog’s neck. Somehow he had no scratches or bruises at all, but it was really scary.
24. Tropical Demon
My family stayed in a pretty awful condo in Hawaii when I was around 12. After a few days, we agreed it felt “weird.” After a few more days, we start waking up to all the kitchen cabinets being open. A little while later, my sister says she woke up in the middle of the night to a tall, dark figure standing over her, which only disappeared after she had properly terrified herself and shut her eyes.
Near the end of our stay, my mom nervously tells us that before her morning run, she was leaning into the bathroom mirror and saw a dark figure rush past the hallway behind her. My 11-year-old sister and I decided we’d had enough, and that we had seen enough spooky ghost shows to get to the bottom of this. Mostly jokingly, because I think neither of us wanted to admit that this condo was truly horrifying us, we held hands and tried to make contact late one night. It’s just us and our mom—I remember her begging us not to do it, that it wasn’t funny...sorry mom.
A couple of minutes in, I interrupt my sister because I am hearing a noise just outside the room, on the patio. It sounds exactly like someone scraping or dragging their foot along as they walked, but the patio was lit and nothing was there. My sister goes to say something, I say SHUT UP because I’m freaking out. Then, the room speaks to us.
No joke. It might have been a foreign language, I’m not sure, but in English, it sounded like “I hate you.” The sound of the voice is burned in my brain—it was like an angry, hiss-like whisper but somehow also a shout. As I said, it didn’t come from anywhere in particular, but the entire room. Long story short, my sister runs off sobbing, I freeze in fear and probably a puddle of my own pee, we get the heck out of Hawaii, and I try to tell myself that I did NOT just interact with a tropical demon.
Yes, this really did happen, and no, I can’t really explain it. I think I’ve cried a couple of times thinking about it because that voice we heard was so, so chilling. If I remember correctly, the man who used to own the condo passed there—make of that what you will.
25. Like Riding A Bike
I was a toddler and lived with my mom in a cheap single wide trailer in a really bad trailer park. I slept at my aunt’s overnight a lot because my mom would work graveyard shifts. She picked me up from my aunt’s house around 7 AM one day, and we went back to our trailer. I remember immediately not wanting to go inside. I just had this terrible feeling.
I begged to ride my bike, but my exhausted mother just wanted to go to sleep, so we went inside, and she laid in bed. I sat up watching the TV for a while. And being the toddler that I was, I kept waking my mom up asking to go ride my bike. She said no and told me to go play in my room. I didn't want to, so I asked to lay with her. I told my mom that I felt like there was someone in my closet, and he wanted to hurt me.
My mom, who was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, got up to show me no one was there. We went in my room, and then we saw the folding closet door open, but then it got stuck. Inside was a man who had skipped out on his bail, been watching my mom’s comings and goings for a few days, and came into our house when she was at work.
We bolted out of the house, ran to the car and then drove to the station. Unfortunately, the guy escaped before the officers showed up.
26. Rethinking Life
I fell from a height of seven and a half meters, ruptured my lungs, broke three vertebrae, two teeth, and a jaw bone. I was unconscious for about a minute, then started spitting loads of blood while lying on my back. I got anesthetized and put into a helicopter in about 15 minutes, but it sure as heck felt like an eternity.
One would think that the most significant thing you feel is pain, but the shock just hits you so hard that although you scream in pain, on the inside it's just this wild state of delirium, fear, and thinking, "This is it." The drugged nightmares were also something else, especially since they had to give me two times the anesthetics and kept me in an induced coma for about three days.
The fear in this situation doesn't only come from the first-person perspective, but also from the camp kids that were around to see me fall and most importantly my family nearly losing me. It’s definitely made me rethink my life choices and my view on life in general.
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27. My Ghost Cat
I have never owned a cat, my current apartment has had a zero-tolerance policy for pets since it was built, and unlike most neighborhoods in Tokyo, I've only ever seen one feral cat, and it was bright orange. For the past six years or so, there was been a brown/dark grey cat that I see sitting inside my apartment entranceway, walking down the hall, crawling under my kitchen table, etc.
And sometimes, at all times of day, I'll hear a faint purring too, like there's a cat sitting just out of view. Other people have seen or heard it, and I had a full mental health check-up recently, so I'm not hallucinating either. I named it Sconey, and now feel bad when I have to go on business trips because my "cat" will be all alone. My ghost cat.
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28. Little Help Here
One time when I was about 16, I went to a laundromat with a friend. I wasn’t as familiar with the neighborhood, since it was near my friend's house instead of mine; I was just there to hang out with her. As we walked inside the laundromat, we saw an older man standing near his car looking. My friend walked right passed him. She didn’t give him a single glance, but he caught me looking at him and asked, “will you come help me find my phone. I dropped it down here somewhere and I can’t find it.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I looked into the car and noticed a second man in the car staring at me. I’ll never forget how he looked at me. I just snapped my head away and followed my friend inside. When we got inside, she told me that those men were known in the area. They would use ploys to get young women into their car. After that, you don't want to know what they did.
I was shaken up because if I had been a little younger and a little dumber, I don’t know if I would have seen the other man in the car. I might’ve helped him.
29. No Laughing Matter
I had metastatic thyroid cancer and my third surgery was to remove lymph nodes that were adhered to the nerve that controls my voice. There was a possibility that I could lose my voice altogether…and I’m a professional comedian & actor. Going in for that surgery was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Fortunately, I didn’t lose my voice!
30. A Chilling Pattern
When I was maybe 15, my brother, who was 17 at the time, and I were driving home, pretty late at night. The road to our house had a lot of hills, so it was hard to see oncoming traffic or anything else until you topped one of the hills. When we got just over a big one, we saw a figure just standing in the middle of the road. My brother swerved out of the way and nearly went off the road to avoid hitting them.
We looked back and saw nothing behind or around us. It thoroughly freaked us out though, so we called 9-1-1 and reported it, thinking it may be someone trying to attempt suicide or something. Nobody ever followed up with us about the report. A few years later, my brother sends me an article he came across about other similar sightings and occurrences happening on the same road.
Except some of the earliest ones had dated back decades before we ever saw anything.
31. Seen Some Stuff
My friends and I were drinking one time and going around asking, "hey, whatever happened to…?" In this case, it was a guy who had a free period with a few of us in high school. He was a nice kid. We Googled him, and there were a couple appellate court decisions visible in first few results. We kept looking into him and discovered his chilling story.
He had gone to Afghanistan. It had really messed him up. The court notes said he saw things there that completely undid him. He came home with PTSD and delusional schizophrenia. He had been on a mission to hurt his mother to save her from demons and send her to heaven. He'd tried and failed numerous times. We looked for his social media accounts.
It was just threads and threads of manic rambling about demons. It was sad to find this but also terrifying to think you could be "normal" then through one set of circumstances or another, become completely insane within a few years.
32. Panic Mode
The scariest thing that instantly comes into my mind is about my son who was at that time one year old. He was sleeping on the couch next to me and his mother was sleeping too (at his feet). For some reason, I'd had a bad feeling and as I touched his forehead, I made a disturbing realization. It was ice cold even though he was sweating. At that moment I realized that this was going to be serious. He had an epileptic cramp.
My brain was in panic mode. I grabbed him, holding him close to me, waking his mother up. We both were in a state of fear and panic we've never experienced before. As he cramped up I tried to call the ambulance and somehow between all the crying and stuttering, I was able to give them the proper details. After I hung up he cramped so hard that he got all stiff-looking, with big dead eyes to the ceiling and in the next moment his body relaxed.
He became like jelly. He was unconscious and we thought he had died at that moment as there were no signs of life whatsoever. His eyes were closed and I had a hard time holding him as his body was like running out of my arms. I really hope I never have such a moment again in my life. Finally, an ambulance came and I went with him to the hospital.
Like I mentioned before, he had a cramp, fell unconscious, and we knew that he had a mild form of epilepsy. He's now nine years old, perfectly fine, and the epilepsy is gone. Or at least there are no signs that can be detected by neurologists. I hope no one has the feeling that we had that night.
33. The Room Of Requirement
I was snowmobiling with my brother and father at the time in the cottage areas of Northern Québec. Basically, think of cottages with only gravel roads (if at all) separating them and no vehicular access in the winter months unless on a snowmobile. I was maybe 10 at the time, my brother was 12, and this happened in the early 90s. Our Ski-Doo broke down on the middle of a lake, and even though it's an easy fix, easy becomes relative at -30 Celsius before the wind chill factor, and in the dark to boot.
So as my dad was swearing at the Ski-Doo (as French Canadians are known to do) my brother spots a little cottage on the bank of said lake, suggesting we seek help or shelter. At this point, the sun was beyond the horizon and temperatures were dropping. Figuring it was better than failing on the engine, we cross to the cottage to find it unoccupied, yet unlocked.
Not too keen on the idea, but still preferable to an almost certain outcome of both his children freezing, my father decides to enter. It was a small, simple yet quaint one-room cottage with a basin for cooking and washing (of course, no running water) lined by a counter, a kitchen table with four chairs, an old but clean sofa, and a single bed. But most importantly, a functional wood stove.
My dad lit some candles, lit a fire in the stove, and told us to settle on the floor while he laid down on the couch and we went to sleep. We didn't use the bed for fear of a lack of respect for the owner. The next morning, we cleaned up our stuff, did a quick sweep, and left a quick thank-you note explaining our situation. We went back to the snowmobile, which my dad managed to fix in the daylight (it was also much warmer), and headed towards our own cottage.
The weird part? My brother and I wanted to show the cottage to our older sister afterward, so we grabbed the Ski-Doos and headed over. It was maybe an hour Ski-Doo ride. We saw our old tracks, we saw our footsteps to and from the lake bank...but the cottage was half burnt and what was left of the roof had caved in, covering the one and a half remaining wall left standing.
All rotten with moss grown over it, which means it had been standing abandoned for a few years at least. ...We did find our note, though, in pristine condition.
34. A Step Back
I had the most likeable, kind stepfather. When I was a ten-year-old boy, he treated me really well. We would rent movies together and do lots of nice activities. But everything changed when he cheated on my pregnant mother. When she broke up with him, he became enraged and threatened her, and she didn't take it too seriously at the time. Until one horrible night, when he lashed out.
He hid in our apartment. Luckily for me, I was with my grandmother. He tied up my mother when she got home and beat her viciously. Neither she nor her unborn baby survived that night. He said in trial he would’ve done the same to me. Since then, I’ve learned more awful things that he did. I couldn't see it as a kid. I have had no contact with him for 17 years.
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35. Catcalls Gone (Even More) Wrong
My boyfriend, his sister, her boyfriend, and I were walking home from a bar in downtown Houston to her boyfriend’s apartment after a long night. A car full of teenage kids, some of whom may have been in their 20s, offered us some bud and we said no. They then continued to drive down the road catcalling me and my boyfriend’s sister.
The boys with us were telling them to get out of here and they eventually hopped out of their car and ran at us. Thankfully nothing really came of it but I was scared they would either 1) be armed or 2) get really physical with us. I was taking a video after some time and they literally parked in the middle of the road and charged us for just trying to get them to leave us alone.
36. The Uninvited
When I was a teenager, my family lived in a big 115-year-old brick house. Plenty of creepy stuff happened, but one night I was heading to bed when the door between the first-floor kitchen and the basement stairs absolutely SLAMMMMMMED shut. It had a unique sound that I recognized immediately as the kitchen/basement door.
There were no windows open that could've caused a draft, and our dog was asleep on the second floor. I was also on the second floor, and my parents were both asleep in the third-floor attic that had been converted to a master bedroom. None of us could've shut the door. Terrified, I worked up the courage to go investigate, carrying my hilariously teeny pocket knife for protection.
As I went downstairs, I turned on every light. When I reached the kitchen, the door was wide open. Even more freaked out, I ran back up to bed. A minute or two later, I heard a definite "Sssshhhh, ok, ok" from downstairs. I lay in bed and was ready to accept my demise. Eventually, I somehow fell asleep, and in the morning I was the first downstairs and found that the lights were all off and the basement door had been shut again.
37. Just Close Your Eyes
When I was about five, I woke up to my house surrounded by loud voices and bright white lights. It turned out that a group of dangerous people had broken into our house after a heist and were using my parents as hostages.
38. Hard Restart
My scariest experience was when my heart stopped beating one night. When this happens, your body screams for oxygen. You breathe and still suffocate because no blood is moving the oxygen from the lungs to the brain. You go into ultimate panic mode and see your life pass before your eyes. Eternities later (or, at least, that’s how it felt to me), or about three to five seconds later (according to the doctor who explained the process to me), my heart restarted with one of the "backup systems" the heart seems to have.
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39. We Are The Hollow Men
Shadow Men. Sometimes called Hat Men. I've seen one twice. The first time, I was at my uncle's house at night watching some TV. The way his living room was set up, the TV was against the east wall, and the west wall had the couch against it facing the TV. The north and south walls had chairs facing into the room, so you could talk to anyone on the couch or other chair, or you could watch TV.
Beside the TV was the door leading to the hallway running east, where the bedrooms were. Sitting on the couch, watching TV, you could see down the hall. One night I was visiting. My uncle had recently gone through a divorce and his kids (my cousins) were coming by for the weekend, but this was the night before, so it was just the two of us.
We were watching television and I saw something cross from one of my cousin’s rooms to the other across the hall. I started staring down the hallway. My uncle noticed my response and asked me, "You saw him didn't you?" Turns out he saw him pretty often. On another visit, I awoke early one morning after my uncle had gone to work. Again, my cousins were going to be there later that day, so I was the only one in the house.
As soon as I opened my eyes there was a solid black silhouette of a person wearing something like a fedora standing at the foot of the bed. I blinked and it was gone.
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40. How’d You Get Here?
I was in the drunk tank with a guy who’d been in a brutal fist fight. The other man was in intensive care in the hospital. While we were together, the guy spent the entire time telling me all of the very specific details of the fight. After three days, the CO’s came and brought him to isolation. His victim didn’t make it. I was 17 at the time. I’ll never forget being scared to fall asleep right next to this guy.
41. Deer Runs Into The Headlights
I was leaving work late at night, around two or three in the morning, for a half-hour drive back home. The town I was working in had lots of deer around. As I was leaving town, there was a deer that was at the side of the road trying to decide whether or not it was going to go. I slowed down to well below the speed limit—25–30 miles per hour—if I recall correctly.
It looked like the deer was backing off, so I sped up slightly, up to 40 or 45, and then at the last second, right as I cross the deer's path, it jumped into the road. I hit the brakes and lost control of the wheel. My car flipped halfway up and I was convinced at that moment I was about to have a very bad, possibly fatal accident.
But the car came back down and I was facing the opposite direction in the other lane. Had anything had been just slightly different—a stiff breeze, an oncoming truck (two-lane road), a rancher farting in the wind—I would have probably been dead. If the car finished its roll, it would've been down a fairly steep grade off the side of the road. There would've been no way I would have walked away from that.
42. The Bystander Effect
Years ago, I was waiting at a traffic light. The light turns green, so I let off the brake and slowly start to go. The car to my left started to do the same, but someone decided to enter the crosswalk at just that moment. The driver taps the horn, which drew my attention. I look over and the pedestrian quickly goes around the car and enters it from the passenger-side door.
The female driver looks distraught and drives away somewhat quickly. To this day I'm not sure if I witnessed a carjacking or a kidnapping.
43. Listen To Your Elders
My mother-in-law was a very funny and cool woman. She and my wife were really close, and sadly, she passed when our son was about four months old. A few years later, we moved into an old 1930s era craftsman house. Our son was three by then. I was giving him a bath one night, and he was looking over my shoulder at something.
He asked why Grandma called Mommy a funny name. I paused and asked him what he meant, thinking he was talking about my mom. He then said, “why does Grandma call Mommy [very specific nickname]?” I was shocked. My wife and I had never used that nickname. It was something her mom had called her since she was a baby.
I asked him where he’d learned that. He said, "the farmer told me." I asked him who the farmer was. He said he was his friend. I told my wife about it later, and she was reduced to tears over the whole nickname thing. We both knew there was no way for him to know it, and we just marveled at it, not knowing what else we could do.
The next weekend, my son was playing alone in his room. My wife was at work, and I was at home in the office next to my son's bedroom. Through the shared wall, I heard him talking like he was having a conversation. He was saying things like, “yes,” “no,” and, “I don’t know that,” and then laughing. I started to get a little creeped out, so I went into his room and asked him what he was doing.
He told me that he was playing. I asked him who he was playing with. He told me he was playing with the farmer. I asked him where the farmer was. He told me that he’d left when I came in. What?! My wife came back, and I told her what happened. She was just as weirded out as I was. We had no idea what to do and figured if it happened again, we would do something.
A few days later in the middle of the night, we both heard our son saying, "Grandma says you and I can't be friends anymore." We went to check on him while freaking out. He was sitting up in his bed. We asked him if he was okay, and he said, “yeah, Grandma says I can’t play with the Farmer anymore.” He never once mentioned the farmer again. Not ever. He's 13 now and remembers none of it. But we do.
44. Premature Birth
My firstborn son was born four weeks early. He had severely underdeveloped lungs. He was taken down to a better hospital in Anchorage. It was practically out of state. The little champ fought a little over six weeks before being discharged to our home in Fairbanks. It inspired me to be an EMT. But, jeez, no child should have to go through such things.
I'm happy to say, he is six now, and just fine but he is still my baby boy and I love that little guy to bits and pieces.
45. Like Hitting A Brick Wall
I was walking through my house at night, on my way to bed. I turned the kitchen light off, then opened the door to go upstairs into a pitch-black room. I took a step into the room and stumbled back. It felt like I'd walked into something like a big piece of material—I immediately smacked the light switch on, and there was nothing there. I ran up the stairs, leaving all the lights on overnight.
46. Unfriendly Stranger
I was walking out into a parking lot one night when a guy got my attention and asked for a ride. I did not know this person and don't give random strangers rides so I already knew I would say no. But before I could turn him down, he launched into this story about how he was a truck driver who needed to go to the to the gas station across the highway, since it was within walking distance to his big rig.
I didn’t buy it, so I made up some excuse and told him that there were apps he could use for help. He started yelling at me, saying that it was just a ride and that he needed help. At that point, I just said, "I gotta go," and quickly turned around and headed to my car. I heard him say, "okay fine, you jerk" as I got into my car and just sped away.
Initially, I felt really bad for not giving him a ride, but the way he’d yelled at me made it seem justified that I said no. A year later, I was at a restaurant eating lunch and decided to open Facebook on my phone. What I saw next just spooked me to the core. The article had a mugshot of that same guy from that night.
He was a fugitive wanted on several major charges across the state where I was living. One of the ways he would trick his victims was by asking for a ride and then when they were out of sight, he'd off them and take their stuff. He then would take their vehicle and travel to the next area to find his next victim. I almost choked on my drink.
47. Missing Elevator
My experience was short but definitely super scary. When I was a kid my mom and I were waiting for an elevator. When it came, I opened the exterior door and started stepping in. My mom grabbed me quickly on the shoulder and pulled me back. When I looked forward, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The elevator was not there at all.
It was a black void, basically. My mom saved me from certain doom there. That was a fall from the eighth floor in an elevator shaft.
48. What Lies Beneath
When I was 12, my family lived in a house that had a very large pond behind it. Think, less of a pond and more of very small lake. So when we first moved to this house, the neighbors’ son was always out at the pond fishing. When I would talk to him, he would swear that there was an absolutely huge catfish in the pond. He really wanted to catch it but was never able to.
He said he knew that it was there because he had seen it eat some of the baby ducks and geese that lived there. Apparently, he watched them get sucked down under the water while swimming on the surface. I thought it was interesting that a fish could eat baby ducks, but never really gave it a second thought. The neighbors’ son eventually moved out, and he never did catch the catfish.
After living there a few years, when I was probably around 16, I finally saw what my neighbors’ son was fishing for, or at least saw its effects. My friend was spending the night, just hanging out playing video games all night on some random weekend, when we heard the ducks on the pond completely losing their minds. This was around midnight and normally we didn't hear the ducks inside, so we had to see what was going on.
At first, we didn't notice anything. It just seemed like the ducks were going crazy every once in a while for no reason. Around 10 to 20 would fly off the pond for a little while and then come back down, the whole time freaking out. Then we noticed it. Ducks were being pulled under. We watched as several ducks were pulled under the surface by something, and all the ducks around it would flip the heck out and move away from that spot.
It was insane. I have seen ducks dive for food before and this was not that. They would kind of struggle as they were being pulled down, throwing their wings and head up as they went down. It seemed like something was grabbing their legs and pulling them down. And let me clarify, these were not baby ducks. These were full-grown adult ducks being pulled under and not resurfacing.
The next day, we told everyone and very few people believed us, as these things usually go. Never really saw anything like it again, and I had stopped thinking about again it until one night something else...happened. It was a cool summer night, and I had my window open, playing a game on my Nintendo SP, when I heard something outside.
It sounded like someone with big sloshy wet boots was stomping through mud. I was sitting on my bed next to the window looking at my SP when I first heard the sound. It sounded like, whatever it was, it was walking down the fence line to the pond. I jumped off my bed to go look out the window. When I looked out, I saw what I can barely describe.
At the end of our fence, about 20 feet away from the pond, was this giant brown and black mass of something. The size of it was around a small car and it was rounded with two shiny black eyes near the top. It was also looking right at me. As soon as my eyes met its eyes, I collapsed with fear. I have never felt anything near that level of fear before in my life.
One time I almost got into a fatal accident from car surfing, and the fear I felt then was a drop in a bucket to what I felt when my eyes looked into whatever it was. I lay there on the floor, unable to move, unable to breathe, and listened to the creature "walk" to the pond. I heard splashing and that was it. I laid there for what seemed like hours and eventually moved to my bed and stayed awake in fear all night.
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49. Ruining It For Everyone
A kid in my class was absolutely cruel to another student, even doing stuff like burning his poor victim's face. One day, the kid went to the class he shared with his tormentor, ran to his desk, and blew his own brains out in front of the cruel kid, the teacher, and the rest of the class. The poor kid’s body slumped forward, and his head fell right on the mean kid’s desk.
Almost everyone in the class switched schools after that. My brother, who was there too, barely spoke for a year after that day. It took me until I was 25 and he was 35 for us to talk about what happened.
50. Mistaken Identity
One time when I was about eight or so, my apartment got raided by the SWAT team and all that. I woke up at four in the morning, hearing banging on the door and my dad went up to open the door. When he opened it SWAT members rammed into him and got him in handcuffs. I went down to see what was happening and they all yelled, "Careful, there are kids in here."
They went rummaging through all the rooms making holes in the walls, breaking doors—all that jazz—and my dad got incarcerated for a month for possession of a firearm and worse. The thing is, he didn't even do what he was accused of. He just looked like the guy they needed.
51. I’m No Hero
The university that I went to was in a large city that had small hills and large mountains in the distance, some near, some far that wove in and around the city. One morning, I parked in the lot in the first aisle of the second parking lot as I always did. As I got out of my vehicle, I was overwhelmed by a compulsion to physically look at and go to a specific point in one of the hills that you could see from the campus.
At one time or another, I had explored every one of those hills and mountains before that time, and the point that I felt compelled to look at and go to was nothing special. The area was low rolling hills, quite visible for miles, with no boulders nor trees nearby. With nothing of note to look at, it was quite a boring area. It was only hours after I had been on campus that I heard that a student went missing the day before.
The student was from a completely different major and someone whom I had never even heard of. We had absolutely no connection other than we went to the same large university at the same time. I have no idea why, but the second that I heard about the disappearance, I connected it to the compulsion that I had felt to look at and go to that one point in the hills.
The person remained missing, and news about the disappearance had waned long, long before, yet every day as I got out of my vehicle and when I went back to it each afternoon, I was compelled to look at and go to that one point in the hills. I was far too busy with school to heed the compulsion to go. Quite frankly, I was also too scared to tell someone because stories had come out in the news that the authorities had framed innocent people who had come forward with information.
Every day as I was parking in the morning and every night as I went back to my vehicle, I was called to look at that point by something, even though I couldn't see even the outline of the hills in the dark. I tried desperately to distract myself for a few days, but it didn't work and I finally just gave in to looking at that one spot in the hills twice a day and silently apologizing over and over.
I wished that someone else would go to that spot and look around because I knew that spot had something to do with the disappearance. I don't remember how long it took, but it was a long time, but they finally found the remains of the body at the exact spot that I had been compelled to look at every single day and night the entire time.
The authorities had withheld certain details, some of which that came out when the body was found. The detail that struck me the most was that the night that the student disappeared, their vehicle had been found in the second lot, first aisle, the same one that I always parked in. I still have to silently apologize whenever I think of the experience.
52. Locked And Loaded
I was a bouncer, and on one slow night, a guy tried to get into the club after last call. After arguing with me, he just tried to push his way through to the door. I grabbed him by his dreads and threw him back to the street, which made him very angry at me. He told me that he was watching me and that I had better watch my back.
I had heard that threat before, but this guy meant it. He turned around and hit the button on his keychain, popping the trunk of his car. He went in his trunk and armed himself. He was right in my face. This was the first time I'd ever had this happen to me. I had often thought about a situation like this and joked about it with coworkers, saying that I'd take a guy down if it came to that.
Nope. I was so wrong. I only felt crippling fear. I luckily had nothing in my bowels to vacate because I certainly would have if there had been. While trying to keep my voice from cracking, I used one arm to point up and say, "you're on camera, get out of here." Then I backed up into the club, locked the door, and puked in the washroom.
53. Hooligans on Motorcycles
I got stranded in a strip mall parking lot at night and these two guys with full helmets on in sports motorcycles kept circling the parking lot and stopping in front of me. I got really nervous so I got up when I thought they had gone away I went to cross the parking lot to a store that still had all the lights on inside.
They came out of nowhere and drove up onto the walkway and blocked me in on both sides. I tried my best to look unfazed but I was terrified. I stepped around them and kept walking and they started charging at me and faking out at the last minute. I just kept going until I reached the store and they sped out of the parking lot finally.
54. She’s Got The Look
One night I was driving home pretty late, probably around midnight. My house is just outside of a pretty small town. There are a lot of houses in the area, but they're all fairly spread out. My family alone lives on three acres, and there's a good amount of area between roads in the area. As I was approaching the road that led to my driveway, I noticed a person on the side of the road with her back to me.
She was basically standing exactly where my road meets with the main road. She saw my headlights and turned to look at my car and stared me down as I slowed down and turned onto my road. I will never forget the way she looked at me. I drove home terrified that she was going to follow me and sufficiently freaked out when I got home. I know it doesn't sound that weird, but this is a place you rarely see a hitchhiker in the middle of the day. And just the way she looked at me was so weird. Still freaks me out.
55. No Ability For Fragility
There were people at my university doing construction. Three guys were standing on a big glass roof that was supposed to be stable. Well, it wasn't, and all three fell right through the thing. Two guys got out okay, but it was a 20-something temp worker who ended up losing his life that day. His body was horrific. It was an awful way to go.
56. In Need Of Adrenaline
My daughter was five and went into anaphylaxis. We drove to the hospital as she turned purple and pink and spoke in delirium, then went flaccid and even beyond flaccid (it’s hard to describe; it was like her spine relaxed). I thought she had died in my arms. They gave her adrenaline and she came back. It was 20 years ago and I still feel freaked out when I think about it.
57. You’re Not Supposed To Be There
A few months ago, my boyfriend and I were going to run an errand. He had left his backpack with his laptop in it on my coffee table, and for some reason I was insisting he take it with us, saying he might need it or someone could break in and take it. But he didn’t want to and was being very stubborn. So we leave and decide to take his truck instead of my car.
Fast forward. We’re home and he wants to start doing some homework but he can’t find his backpack anywhere. We are both so confused as to where it could be because both of us clearly remember him leaving it on the coffee table. We search high and low. We even go look in his truck like maybe he just instinctively took it with him (we don’t live together).
Then, for some reason, I had the urge to go look in my car. The one that hadn’t been driven in days, and that he doesn’t normally ride in. It was sitting right there on the driver’s seat. I cannot explain it as hard as I try.
58. No, You Stop
My wife’s friend was driving home from work one evening. She was in a quiet area when an unmarked car sped up behind her and started flashing his lights to get her to pull over. She still doesn’t know why, but she remembered feeling like something wasn't right. She kept driving, even though the flashing car was behind her, and called the local station.
She asked the operator about an unmarked car wanting to pull her over. The person on the phone did a quick check. What they said was, "Ma'am, I'm going to need you to keep driving and stay calm." Within a few minutes, four marked cars came speeding up behind and, before she knew what was happening, boxed the unmarked car in between them and forced it to stop.
The dispatcher told her to drive around the corner and stop. After they put him in the backseat, the officers told her the full story. It turns out they had been hunting this guy down for pretending to be an officer. He'd flash his lights, get young women to pull over, and then attack them.
59. Frozen Toes
I was on a tugboat that sank last winter at midnight and I spent 8-to-10 hours on the beach in -40°C weather. I ended up with fourth-degree frostbite and I lost two toes. All I was wearing was PJ pants and a long sleeve shirt with no socks or shoes.
60. Back To The Future
I was in high school and had an essay project coming out later that day based on a randomized prompt. I was chilling on the couch, then very abruptly found myself in the classroom with a prompt mentioned wondering what the heck just happened—then I realized that no, I was still on my couch, and was back in my living room. I spent the rest of the morning studying the prompt I'd seen.
When I got to class, it was the same prompt, and it was the same everything. I could have mentioned something to the teacher beforehand, but I was honestly just so bewildered by the whole thing that I was too afraid it would end up somehow creating a time paradox.
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61. Almost The End
A van of six people was on their way to an engagement party when the driver, who'd worked too many shifts in a row, dozed off. He woke up to realize that the van was out of his control and, in the seconds that he had, decided to save himself and jumped out his door. This van, out of control, went down and rolled over multiple times, ending four lives on the spot.
There was one lucky person who survived with minor fractures and another who had barely survived. Her skull cracked. The bone under her eyes broke and caved in. Glass from the van’s window stuck in her eyes. She broke her nasal bone, jaw, hip bone and fractured her toes. She also dislocated and broke her shoulder bone.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she lost her teeth as well as a huge chunk of skin from her feet. She was wheeled into the hospital and had multiple surgeries. She said the only thing that got her through was thinking about her kids growing up motherless. When I saw her after surgery, she was completely wrapped in bandages.
She couldn't speak for months and couldn't walk for a year. This was my mom in the year 2006. I was 9 or 10 then, and the memory of her mummified form still haunts me in my dreams.
62. True Fear
On an inner canyon hiking trip, I took the wrong way back up and had to climb a small section and grabbed a rock that moved three inches towards me. You never experience true fear until it’s something that’s out of your control.
63. Running With The Devil
A few years ago, I got a call from a friend on my cell phone. When I answered I heard no tonality, so I hung up. Right after I hung up, I get a notification that he left me a voicemail. That's when it gets weird. The voicemail was a seven-minute-long guitar solo that sounded like a recording from TV or something. Keep in mind that the whole, "pick-up the phone - hang up - voice mail" process was only 30 seconds long.
I called my friend back, and he said he didn't call me. I'll never know what happened but I still wonder sometimes. Still, yeah, everyone has this horrific story about shadow people and ghosts and here I am with my wannabe Van Halen phone-tergeist. Still scared me though.
64. Free Range
A friend of mine went backpacking in Australia and wanted to work on a farm. So, she placed an ad about herself on a website and got a response. A man picked her up to take her to the farm. At the farm, the guy instantly became horrifically violent. He dragged her out the car, chained her up, and tormented her. I don't want to write about what he did to her, but I'll put it this way. At the end, she genuinely thought she wouldn't live to see another day.
He left her, assuming she wouldn't last much longer. Luckily, though, she had her backpack nearby, and he hadn’t chained her well. She slipped out and sent messages to people she had met, alerting them about what had happened. She then pretended to get back in the chains while one of her friends called to send officers to rescue her. She’s safe but traumatized.
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65. Smells Like Fear
I was in Africa and every evening a big male lion would walk through the camp. He would roar outside my tent and it was blood-curdling. I could even smell him he was so close. Nothing separated me from him but a thin layer of canvas. He would hang around for 45 minutes to an hour at a time. You cannot imagine the horror of that sound.
66. Weird By Numbers
The most recent unexplainable event happened last month, actually. I was in the middle of my math final when I found a note in the plotting menu of my graphing calculator. All it read was "Little man wishes you a nice meal." I had thought it was a joke from one of my friends, as it’s somewhere along the lines of an in-joke we have, but our calculators were cleared at the start of the test and I had been separated from all my friends for an hour at most.
67. Did You See That?
About seven of us were driving two cars in tandem along the interstate on our way to see a concert. Most of the interstate goes along the river that borders two states. There’s one section that jets out into the river essentially making a small lake between the east and west parts of the road with guardrails on both sides.
I was in the left lane going 65. It was dark out, and suddenly, I saw a Texas Chainsaw looking person in a long trench coat. His face was bright red and he was standing in the middle of my lane. He raised his arms and started coming towards the car. I was able to swerve just enough to avoid him. Then, of course, I was worried for our friends.
They were about eight car lengths behind us. They swerved hard almost losing control but somehow didn’t hit the scary, bloody faced horror show in the middle of the highway. There was no wreck or evidence of damage to the guard rail. We stopped to report it but never heard another thing about it. It scared us all to our cores.
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68. Screw Your Guys, I’m Going Home
I was at a park with my dog. He was playing with other dogs off-leash and having fun. Then a dog started messing with him and trying to pin him to the ground. He basically said screw this and ran out of the park. My heart stopped. He started trying to run home, but he has no idea how traffic works so he just bolted down the middle of the street.
I ran after him as fast as I could. Fortunately, he was a puppy so he hadn't reached his full running potential yet. I caught up to him and grabbed his tail (the only thing I could reach) and pulled on it and he stopped and yelped. He missed getting hit by cross traffic by about three inches.
69. It Runs In The Family
I was at work and got attacked by a sense of dread, as if something horrible had just happened. For some reason, I thought of my mother, with whom I am not completely amicable with, but we still talk and stuff, so I snuck out of work and called her. She said she felt the very same feeling, and that she could have sworn she heard my voice whispering downstairs.
She knew there was no way I would have been there, so she just locked her bedroom door, thinking that someone might have broken in. While on the phone with me, she got another call. It was her sister, telling her that their mother just passed. It freaked me out when she came back to the line, crying.
70. Freeze Fall
I went ice fishing with my dad when I was ten, but it had just snowed the night before, so you couldn't see any of the ice. On my way out to the ice house, I fell straight through an unmarked hole that had a very thin layer of ice covering it. The scariest part was instantly shutting down and sinking because of the icy cold.
I could look up and see where I had fallen through but couldn't swim back up to it. After a few seconds, I finally willed myself up and to the edge where my dad pulled me the rest of the way out.
71. The Dangers Of Sharing The Road
I was riding my motorbike. Suddenly, a bus turned into the next lane. I wasn't going fast—I was under the speed limit—but it was so sudden I was sure I would hit it. I hit the brakes hard and went into the longest skid of my life. I went on driving for 500 meters shaking as adrenaline was pumping in my veins. I stopped and drank half of my water bottle.
I decided to never drive behind a bus ever again.
72. Welcome To The World, Little Man
The most unexplainable thing that’s happened to me took place while I was deployed to Iraq. I had this really vivid dream that my sister had my nephew, and I got to hold him. I remember specifically looking into his eyes and thinking he had the most beautiful smile. I woke up, lay there a moment, and thought about how cool of a dream that was. I hadn’t talked to my sister in about a week, but there was about a week left before his due date.
After I had gotten ready and was just putting boots on to head on the mission, my squad leader walked in with the Red Cross message—he was born. I can’t explain it, but it’s probably the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.
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73. Straight To Your Door
I live on a street with no exit. One day, I was cleaning and heard my younger daughter talking. There was just one problem: My older daughter was at school, so who was my daughter talking to? I checked on her and saw there was a man on the street talking to her through the window. I quickly ran outside to catch him, but he ran away before I got there.
A few weeks later, my older daughter was riding her bike when she quickly came inside, crying and panicking. She said an old man was trying to talk to her while she was outside. She described the exact same guy that I saw talking to my younger daughter. I reported it and haven't heard anything back. I better not see him ever again.
74. Eat Your Potatoes
My scariest experience was the time I wasn't able to control my hands or fingers, and couldn’t speak properly due to a sudden drop in my blood potassium levels when driving home. I called an ambulance because I thought I was having a stroke. Then I started getting better at the ER and cried thinking it was a panic attack and thought I had wasted everyone's time. Well, I was in for a surprise.
They ran an EKG that was normal but looked odd compared to my history and they checked my blood. I had a potassium level of 2.2 which is apparently very, very bad as it causes muscles to seize up. What they were seeing on the EKG was that it was having some effect on my heart. Yeah. That was scary. Eat your potatoes.
75. Double Trouble
My mom and I were driving up a parking garage. We pass an orange car that has blue headlights with a man driving down the parking garage. We continue up to the next floor…and there is the exact same car with the same man heading down the parking garage. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if my mom wasn’t also there freaking out about it. The weirdest glitch in the matrix I’ve seen.
76. Sad To See
My dad read to his blind neighbor after school when he was ten. She lived with her son and was well into her 90’s but loved having my dad's company. She fell and broke her hip one day, so he could not see her for a long time. When he did visit, she was sitting in her soiled diaper, looked fragile, and had many bruises. Since my dad was only a kid, he didn't know what to do so he just didn't do anything. He regrets it to this day.
It turned out that her son was horribly mistreating her. A few weeks after my dad last saw his neighbor, an ambulance came to her house and took her away. Her son had gone too far. He grabbed her forearm during a struggle and degloved her. She survived for a while at the hospital, and my dad got to visit her one last time, but to this day, he hates talking about the whole thing.
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77. Your Periodic Warning Against Drinking And Driving
I used to live near a large open stormwater drain with no fencing around it. Three intoxicated guys drove their car straight into it. The scene was horrific. I went out and found the driver trying to get his friend’s foot out of the windshield. On the field on the other side of the drain, I saw the third passenger who was covered in blood. I asked if they were okay and my neighbor called the ambulance.
The blood-covered friend passed out and was twitching so I ran to the car, grabbed a towel from the back seat, and ran to help him. I found a large, deep cut on the back of his neck and head. I rolled him to his back and used the weight of his head to put pressure on the wound. I was talking to him, trying to keep him awake and he went into shock, twitching, and was unresponsive.
This was the moment I thought a man died in my hands. I was able to wake him and the ambulance took over from there. That was the most harrowing moment of my life.
78. A Quiet Place
In middle school, we had a group activity. We were all talking more than working and making tons of noise as restless youngsters might. Then…we all stopped. It suddenly got quiet as a classroom of 22 10-year-olds faced their assignment all at once and started working. Including me. Five seconds later, we all looked at each other in half disbelief and half amusement at the chance of all of us deciding to get work done at the same time.
Our teacher was all terror though. They didn't come to class the next day and were always uneasy in that room. I talked to her before graduating, and she said she thought she heard a piercing noise before we all collectively faced our work. She was always a bit nutty though, so only half trusting her sounded good to me—but still half nonetheless.
79. Hot And Cold
A work friend had introduced me to a guy, and we briefly dated. We enjoyed each other's company and ended up in bed together. A couple days later, he called my work and left a creepy message with the secretary. It just said, "I want nothing to do with you, leave me alone, and never call me again." It was weird since I never did call him, but I figured, oh well, his loss.
A couple weeks later, officers discovered a body that was shoved in a well the next town over. Not long after, they caught the guy. It was the same creepy guy I had dated oh so briefly. He pleaded guilty. What was his motive? She wouldn't sleep with him.
80. Close Call
Doctors informed me that our two-year-old daughter had high white blood cell counts and is likely an indicator of pediatric cancer while my wife was traveling for work. I had to go get additional blood work and wait days for the results. It turns out she was fighting some bug and was healthy, but those precious few days were the scariest time of my life.
81. Blinded By The Light
A couple of years ago, my friend and I were sitting in another friend's kitchen. Their dad was there too and cooking us lunch, and we're just chatting. It's a normal, sunny day, and it's about 3 pm. Suddenly, my entire vision goes completely white. It was as if the entire room filled with whiteness. It wasn't painful like looking into a flashlight, and it wasn't the sun reflecting off something and into my eyes.
I just couldn't see anything except pure whiteness. Naturally, I freaked out a little, but just assumed my vision went whack or something. I didn't want to seem weird, either, so I didn't mention it to my friends. A couple of minutes pass, and then the friend's dad goes "...Did anyone else see that?" Turns out we ALL lost our vision for a couple of seconds to the same blinding whiteness.
We all described it exactly the same way: We couldn't see anything, pure whiteness, lasting three seconds. We all proceeded to freak out, but no one could offer any explanations. I went outside to see if there was a plane overhead—maybe the metal reflected the sun into the room?—but absolutely nothing. No planes or clouds.
Also, we were all facing different directions in the room, so a light couldn't have been able to reflect into everyone's eyes. To this day, we still have no idea what caused it.
82. Skin Of Your Teeth
My friend was in a really awful traffic accident. He was riding his bike in the bike lane next to a big truck. He was in the blind spot of the truck, fell under the truck, and was dragged 600 meters. His face scraped on the asphalt. He lost his eye and a lot of his arm skin. It was so bad that he had one arm amputated.
What makes it extra scary is that he was fully conscious the whole time.
83. Down The Mountain
Earlier this year while backing our truck up at night on a mountain road, our rear tire slipped off the road. The truck rolled twice down the side of the very steep mountain. We miraculously landed upright on a fire road below the road we’d been on originally. The moment the first tire went off the side and I could feel us falling was by far the scariest moment of my life.
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84. Even Ghosts Need To Sleep
This happened multiple times. I was left home alone a lot around the age of 10. No big deal. But sometimes I could hear someone snoring really loudly in my parents’ room, only there was no one there when I checked. This kept going on for about two months, then it stopped.
85. Hall The Way Out
I was around four years old, and my parents had just separated. My mom and I had to move into an apartment that was so small that we had to share a bed. We set it up just under the window, so that the light would shine in behind us every morning. Well, that's what we wanted. What we got instead was a complete nightmare.
One hot summer night, I woke up and saw our cat sitting in the door frame. It was strange because our cat was typically always in bed with us. As I was watching him, he walked into the bedroom and meowed. I turned to face my mom and wake her up. In the few seconds that it took for her to wake and ask me what was wrong, we both looked back up and saw a man standing by the living room door.
I still don't know how she managed to do it so quickly, but my mother somehow picked me up and threw me out of the open window. She quickly followed, and we were able to start screaming for help. Someone heard and called for emergency. Officers arrived but couldn't find any signs of forced entry. They only found that our front door was unlocked which led them to believe the man must have exited that way.
The strange thing was that my mom swore up and down that she had locked, bolted, and chain locked the door that night. A couple days later, she was cleaning up in the kitchen and opened the water heater closet. She found a notebook with names and drawings as well as a pair of gloves and some gum wrappers. She called officers over again, but all they could do was speculate that the man had been in our house and hid until we were asleep.
86. Revenge Of The Oxygen Tank
My oxygen tank cut off the air while I was on a scuba dive 15 meters underwater at NIGHT. To this day, no one knows how the oxygen tank closed. It wasn’t malfunctioning because I realized the problem 20 minutes into the dive. For 20 minutes, there was absolutely no problem.
87. Baby On Board
I had a dream once where someone brought a random baby to me and I kept thinking to myself, “Who the heck’s baby is this?” and it was like the main focus of my dream. I woke up to find out my cousin had her baby that night.
88. Just Mom’s Friend
I moved to my dad’s when I was 10 and didn't know anyone in the area. Being an outgoing kid, I quickly made friends with some of my neighbors. One was a girl who was 12, and we ended up having the same circle of friends. One day, I'm at her house when we hear a knock on the door. My friend thought it was her mom since she knocked a certain way, so she answered the door without thinking.
Meanwhile, since I wasn't supposed to be there, I took off through the window and went back to my house. Later on, I learned about the danger I'd escaped. The woman at the door was not my friend's mother. Her mother worked at a mental institution, where one of the inmates had recently been released. She was the one at the door.
Thankfully, my friend's little brother was able to run away to find help. But my friend wasn't so lucky. The lady must have had a breakdown because she attacked that 12-year-old girl, removed her head, hid it, and left her body in the tub. The officers eventually found the head in the worst place: the family's Christmas presents.
89. Mystery Box
My boyfriend went through something with his gallbladder last year. This is a dude who never goes to the doctor or hospital. He could barely stand and before we left for the hospital, he put a lockbox down on my dresser and said if he dies then everything inside it was mine. I've never seen him like that before it was really weird and scary.
I still don't know what's in that lockbox.
90. Sixth Sense
I tend to have moments where my brain tells me to do something with presumably no insight. For example, I was walking past a drink machine one day when I was overcome with the sensation to press a button. Hard to explain, but it was an intuitional feeling. I pressed a button, and out popped a drink. Honestly, it was really strange even though it might sound normal.
91. Doggone In The Wind
I was sitting in my room after getting out of work on the second floor. My little brother was downstairs watching TV, and his dog was in the hallway outside my door napping. All of a sudden, the dog started making all kinds of noises. He was jumping, barking, clacking nails, howling, everything. I went to check, and then I heard someone.
A deep voice said, "aw, that's a good girl." It wasn’t my brother, so I went, "oh, you're home early!" thinking it was my dad's friend or our roomie. But as I opened the door, no one was there. Just my dog, wagging her tail and staring at the empty hallway. I talked to my brother about it and he said he heard the same voice. We looked everywhere, but we couldn't find anyone.
It still gives me the spooks to this day.
92. Revenge Of The Frightened Parents
I was over at a friend’s place playing some board games and just hanging out. Out of nowhere, we heard knocking. We ignored the first couple because the sound was very light. Eventually, we started checking the doors and we saw no one was there. We went down to her basement—and what I witnessed made my blood run cold.
I saw the palm of a hand smash against the basement window. We ran upstairs and grabbed knives. I ran towards my phone and called the cops. While telling them the address, my friend yells, “It’s just my mom!” Apparently, my friend had been out on a long walk with her phone off for hours and her parents got scared when they couldn’t reach her. So, they scared her as revenge.
93. Tabling The Issue
I watched a table just slam to the ground from a standing position in the middle of the kitchen. My mom was there too and saw it happen with me. It changed my perspective on some things.
94. Premonition Mission
I was at work one day when my ex-wife called me out of the blue. She usually didn’t call me because she worked the night shift. She told me to call my friend Danny to make sure he and his family were okay. I asked why. She said that she had a dream but couldn't remember it and kept pressing me to call him to make sure.
So, I called Danny and checked in with him. I told him about my wife's dream. He was mildly amused but told me that he and his family were fine and to thank my wife for her concern. I called her back and let her know. She was very dubious. Then I found out that Danny got another call right after we spoke. In it, he learned that he’d lost his son.
95. An Unexpected Dinner Guest
My wife and I were eating dinner one night when a stranger walked into our house. I’ll never forget looking up and seeing the look on his face as he stood there. He told us he was the angel of doom and was collecting souls for the apocalypse. He said there were demons outside everywhere. I thought “This is it, we’re done for.”
Luckily he didn’t have a weapon and didn’t attack us. I talked him into walking outside with me so I could help him out. As soon as he stepped through the door I slammed it shut, locked it, and called law enforcement. By that time he was in the road screaming nonsense. It turned out he was high on some really weird stuff.
The whole thing didn’t last too long but being told the angel of doom is in my house to collect souls almost paralyzed me with fear.
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96. This Old House
My husband had some terrifying experiences in his house growing up. In this story, he was about 10 at the time, I think. When they first moved in, his parents gave him the choice of one of the bedrooms upstairs. The house was three bedrooms, one being downstairs. He immediately had weird, scary vibes towards one of the bedrooms that he says instantly caused him to choose the opposite bedroom.
He couldn't say exactly why it was he didn't want to sleep in that room. It just thoroughly creeped him out. So anyway, one night his parents were out and he was alone, and he basically started to hear thumps overhead. Loud banging. Loud thumping. Naturally, he was terrified because they had no pets that could cause the noises and as far as he knew, he was the only one in the house.
So he mustered up some courage, grabbed a baseball bat from the crawl space, and headed towards the stairs. The minute he stepped one foot up a stair, he heard a loud growling sound that intensified the closer he got. Except there was nothing up there. His mom also had similar occurrences while home alone. At one point, they did get a cat and while alone one day, her cat began to shriek and freak out near the stairs looking up to that very room.
My mother-in-law recalled hearing the same loud bang and thumps and it terrified her so much that she took out a bat herself and headed up to look, again finding nothing. There are just so many bad vibes in the house, mostly in that bedroom. The neighbors ended up telling them eventually that the guy who owned the house was a really miserable person that lived alone.
He would go weeks without venturing out and eventually his body was found in that bedroom. So that might explain the creepy vibes of the room.
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97. Leave It As It Was
There's an abandoned house next door. The previous owner moved 25 years ago and never sold it. I got a flashlight and gloves, pushed the window open, and got inside to the basement. There was a grand piano there that still played but was very much out of tune, old WW2 stuff, and what looked to be a signed Elvis poster.
There was other really cool stuff that no one should ever had left. There's basically a whole story in that basement including a broken wedding picture frame and instruments everywhere. The main floor had an unmade bed, molded food in the fridge and on the stovetop, half-empty bottles turned solid, and lights still on.
Then I started walking upstairs and heard crying from one of the side rooms. That's when I freaked out and haven't been there since.
98. Stray Bullet
When I was 10, my school, St. Anthony’s in South Bend, Indiana, had a fair that featured a ride called the Bullet. How it worked was two people sat in a revolving barrel that’s a small bullet-shaped cage that revolves as you go around a circle like a Ferris wheel at average Ferris wheel height. Well, a six-year-old and I were getting on and the guy is loading us in and starts having us put on our belts, which I start to do. As the kid is getting in the seat, that’s when disaster struck.
The ride fired up accidentally. The operator ran to turn it off, but it was too late. We shot up to the top super fast, probably around 30-40 miles per hour. Remember how I said it revolves? It turned so the door we came in was pointing straight down and since it started suddenly, it was not latched shut. I was really lucky and had belted the top portion so my chest and upper body were held with my legs splayed out against the small cage above the door.
The poor kid though hadn’t had anything on, but I had grabbed him and he was doing the same thing with his legs holding onto the seat, with the doors swinging open below us to probably about a 100-foot drop to concrete. Everyone started screaming and gathering as the operator started slowly climbing up to us and we were just hanging there as a huge crowd formed.
I locked on to him for life and oddly enough, never got tired holding his likely 60 lbs. I also remember being very calm about everything just watching the crowd and the tree line and thinking how embarrassed I was for the attention. We said very little. I just asked if he was okay and he looked at me and nodded with a pale face and that was it.
We just clung there, waiting for the operator for what felt like forever. I remember at one point someone yelling for us to switch places because he was so young, which was weird but there was no way I was going to move or adjust my grip for fear of falling. Though it felt like forever it was likely about 20 minutes for the guy to finally get to us and close the door.
He told us to put on our belts as best we could. Then he climbed down, started it up, and we got down and off. My parents were pretty absent so, of course, they weren’t there to scream at the guy. I just remember being in a daze until my parents came and got me.
99. Two Places At Once
Our upstairs neighbor was ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night, waking up the whole family. I went out of my room and saw my mom talk to the man upstairs and he asked for a glass of milk. The day after, my mom asked his wife if her husband was thirsty the night before, because he asked for a glass of milk in the middle of the night. She looked shocked to hear this.
The wife said that it couldn’t be him, because he was visiting his parents on the other side of the country 15 hours away. He had been there for a week and came home again a week after. My whole family saw him and remembered it, and we had known him for years because us kids were at their house all the time because of his kids. But nope, he was 15 hours away.
100. Peering Into The Inner Self
My mother had to spend a few months in an asylum due to her being maniacally depressed. There was a woman in the asylum who painted the “inner selves“ of visitors. When she spotted me, her reaction was chilling. She started crying and screaming and called me a monster and devil and so on. It was my first visit there and I had never talked to her before.
After a few weeks, my dad and I went to the asylum to take my mother back home. One of the nurses approached me and handed me a painting from the lady who was so afraid of me. It literally was a black canvas with only two red eyes. It still creeps the heck out of me.
101. Itsy Bitsy
I got home from work late one night and walked right into this huge spider web on my front stoop. At first, I didn't think too much of it until I looked down and saw about 20-30 baby spiders all over me. I started freaking out and then noticed the parents sitting on my front door. They were huge–bigger than a quarter each.
I did not want to use the front door. I had no choice but to run to my back door. I threw all of my clothes off and jumped in the shower. I then watched in horror as baby spiders began falling out of my hair.
102. Eerie Timing
I was getting ready for work and was walking from the shower to my room. I overheard my brother speaking—I assumed on the phone—and for some reason, I stopped to listen. I never really eavesdropped, but this time I felt compelled. He was telling someone something, and all I heard was “...I think I’m just going to go to sleep.” I knew this was around 3:00 pm, because I was getting picked up for work at 3:30.
Right before I left, I knocked on my brother’s room and told him I was leaving. He didn’t answer, and I assumed he had, in fact, gone to sleep. I soon found out the disturbing truth. The next morning we found him dead at approximately 8:00 am. He was sitting up in bed facing his laptop; I’ll never forget the scene. After piecing everything together, we found out he was already gone when I heard him talking to someone.
His last communication on his cell phone had been around 1:00 that afternoon. My sisters still think I got the timing wrong, but I know exactly what time it was precisely because of my work schedule and from the time I had messaged the Uber to pick me up. Otherwise, I would have second-guessed myself, too. I also had no idea he could possibly be gone, so there was no reason to hallucinate his voice.
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103. Come And Play
I worked in a nursing home. One time, I had a resident refuse to get on the elevator with me because she was, “scared of the little boy.” I shrugged it off until I had a resident come out of his room and ask me for "candy for the little boy." I decided to ask my mom who was the charge nurse and an employee of 13 years.
She told me that residents would periodically report seeing a little boy who was always wanting to play. He appeared to all kinds of residents from those of sound mental status to those with severe dementia. They all reported seeing the exact same thing. When they moved to a new facility, the little boy came with them.
The little boy was particularly fond of those with limited sight. The residents described him as having dark black hair and that he lived in a "tent,” where a tree had fallen on him. Then once, I was feeding a resident who had recently suffered a stroke. She couldn’t use her right hand and required complete assistance.
As I was feeding her, I felt a cold hand on my arm. Right then, the resident said, "is that your boyfriend? He looks a little young for you!" I nearly peed myself. That resident who saw him had passed by the morning.
104. Don’t Look Down
I was in class, and the teacher was asking us how our weekends were. The quietest girl in the class started to speak, only to break down in tears. She said she was on a trip in the mountains with her mom. They stopped to stretch their legs during the drive, then looked over the cliff, only to see an overturned vehicle with an entire, deceased family scattered around it.
105. Something’s Down There
During university, I was living in a sorority house with 20 other women. The house was super old and in terrible condition. The basement had items from residents who had lived there years ago, but never took their stuff when they moved out. With so many of us, we wouldn’t notice stuff moving around because we assumed someone else just moved it, took it, or ate it.
One day, a girl was doing her laundry in the basement and noticed a bed set up behind the giant piles of junk people had left behind over the years. Then she nearly screamed when she noticed a man. He tried to calm her down by saying her that he was dating someone at the sorority and she knew he was down there. But the girl wasn't buying it.
She called the campus officers immediately and they investigated the man. They told us that he had been living in the basement for who knows how long. They guessed that he had used the basement door to get in and out of the house. He never came back to our sorority, thank God, but I don't think campus officers caught him either. Who knows where he's living now?
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106. Calling All Angels
After I totaled my car, a man with burn scars all over his face and hands came up to my window. He asked if I was ok and then came and sat in the passenger seat. He said, “I need you to know that everything happens for a reason.” I said, “I know.” The next thing I know, I’m talking to the other driver and the authorities, and the guy is just gone. No one else saw him.
107. Ronald McSecrets
This one time when I was little, my dad woke me up at like 2 am said "Get ready, we're going to McDonald's.” I was so confused and kept asking why, but he wouldn't answer anything besides, "because" or "to have fun.” The rest of my family—my two brothers, my sister, and my mom—didn't come with us and they were still asleep when we left.
The play place was closed, and we just kind of sat there for an hour or so eating, then went back home. To this day, I still have NO idea why he frantically needed me out of the house, and he swears he doesn't remember that happening, but the whole thing was SO weird that I kept the toy that I got from the Happy Meal to remember it by, and I still have it to this day…
It's my only proof of this weird freaking night that my dad (almost scarily) hurried me to McDonald’s at 2 am. I have two guesses why. First, my sister pooped the bed and they were worried I'd make fun of her. Or maybe they somehow noticed something like rats in my room? Were they worried I wouldn't be able to sleep if I knew that there were rats and they needed an hour or so to get them out???
Either way, a very strange night that my dad refuses to tell me the truth about, which only makes me think it's something much worse. Like. I'm 23 now. If he said "Yeah, your sister pooped the bed and we didn't want you to know," I'd have been like cool, nice, good thinking. But he REFUSES to believe that it happened at all. WHAT HAPPENED.
108. Lifesaver
I work as an ER nurse and had a patient with a little dizziness, a little nausea and a swollen abdomen. She was fairly bright, able to talk, and nothing seemed too horrific. But she was turning a grim gray color and breathing quickly. Our average wait time today was two hours. I could have put her back in the queue and moved on.
But I had a little dark feeling that there was something sinister happening here. So I called our most senior doctor out of a consultation and asked him to see her. Right now. Ever heard of your abdominal aorta? Enormous blood vessel that can pouch out, suddenly rupture, and make you bleed internally to death in minutes?
It’s called a burst AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm). You’ve heard of it now. That’s what she had. I’ve never seen one before. But now I have. Within five minutes, she was barely responding. Within ten, her blood pressure had dropped to a barely sustainable level. Within twenty minutes, I was pouring blood into her and eight people were around the bed.
Within an hour, she was on an operating table clinging to life. But because I raised the alarm, and because my team worked their butts off, that woman is still, somehow, alive. Feels good, man.
109. Something Much Worse Than A Ghost
I was about seven years old. My brother was about 10. It was well past our bedtime when our mom woke up off the couch to put us to bed. Our dad worked construction out of town back then, so it was often just us three at the house for weeks at a time. Up the stairs and to the immediate right was our parents' bedroom. Going left put you in the middle of a hallway.
Taking another left down that hallway led to my brother's room. The opposite end was my room, which was also across the hall from our upstairs bathroom. At either end of the hallway are windowed doors that we always kept locked and rarely used. The door on my end led to a balcony overlooking our front yard, and the door on my brother's end opened to our back porch.
My brother and mom both had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I only knew this because I was always a light sleeper and they just couldn't help flushing with the door wide open. This night, however, my brother stopped on his way to his room and came back towards the bathroom. That’s when he made a comment that chilled me to the bone.
He told me: "I'm gonna try to pee before I go to bed tonight. The past few nights, I've been too afraid to walk to the bathroom. I keep seeing a man wearing stripes at the end of the hallway." I don't know if my mom wrote it off as my brother telling ghost stories to try to scare me, or if she was already half asleep and didn't catch it, but she didn't react at all to my brother's confession.
I, on the other hand, was terrified by it. The fear of seeing a ghost-like that at the end of the hallway or through the windows is the reason I started running from the stairs to my bedroom at night. Years later, when I was about 18, my mom and I were having a conversation in her car about a dog named Max that we’d had for a very short time when I was little.
We were sharing stories about Max's tendency towards destroying my shoes and other unruly behaviors, when my mom blurted out, "Do you remember that time I opened the front door for the cops and Max ran inside to the kitchen and started tearing open that big bag of dog food we had?" This really caught me by surprise.
In all the years I lived in that house, we never once called law enforcement as far as I was aware. I asked her what she was talking about and she looked equally surprised, as if she had just revealed something by accident. Then, she said: "Oh, that's right! I never told you about this because you were too young at the time…”
She continued: "One night, I woke up hearing noises outside my window and, when I looked outside, I saw a man staring into my bedroom." She went on to describe how turning on the lights caused him to take off running, and how she had grabbed my dad's pistol before calling the authorities. I started to ask some more questions about the experience until something clicked in my head.
My mom said she couldn’t remember all the details she gave them when they showed up, but she remembered describing the man as a tall white male, wearing a striped shirt and jeans, with short dark hair, or something like that. They said it matched the description of a man they were looking for in the area. It turns out he had just escaped from behind bars, where he’d been charged with murder.
Now, I know it sounds so obvious hearing those two stories back to back, but it wasn't until a few years ago, in my mid-20s, that I pieced together that my brother had unknowingly warned us about a murderer who had spent multiple nights staking out our home. Who knows what he had been planning to do…
110. Maybe That’s Why The Seat Was Empty
When I was in school, aged 14/15, I used to get the bus back home at the end of the school day. There was always this creepy old guy who would sit in the same seat, on the same bus as me, every day. I never really thought much of him apart from that he would often stare at me. One day, there was an empty seat (a rarity as it was a busy bus more often than not).
It was on the aisle next to his. He began a conversation with me over the empty seats about my school work and started asking me when my birthday was; year included. I found this pretty weird so I just lied and got off the bus a little sooner than my stop. A few days later, I rushed past him when I got on the bus to sit at the back so I could escape his stares and not be noticed.
He hadn't noticed me so I felt a bit more at ease. When getting off the bus, I looked over at his notepad—and my blood ran cold. He was drawing a dirty picture of me. The fake birthday date I gave him was also noted on the page. I stopped getting that bus from then on.
111. The Cabin In The Woods
My uncle used to have a cabin in the woods near Winter, Wisconsin. I used to spend time there in the summer tearing through the woods with my two cousins. One extremely early morning, when I was about ten, my uncle woke us up roughly and told us it was time to go fishing. It was still super early and we were all confused because it was pitch dark.
He hustled us down to the dock where he kept his little fishing boat and quickly launched us into the water and away from the house. At this point we were all getting a little freaked out—but this was just the beginning. My uncle wasn’t talking. We just sat, shivering under a blanket at the bow of the boat, while my uncle stared wild-eyed at the shoreline and waved a flashlight furtively ahead of us.
We eventually arrived at my uncle’s friend’s cabin across the lake and tumbled into his house. Our uncle sent us to the loft to sleep. He and his buddy locked the doors and left, not returning until well after sunrise. Eventually, our uncle showed up with the truck and trailer already packed with all of our gear, and he told us it was time to go home.
Many years later, my uncle confided to me that the reason he’d hustled us home was because he’d woken up around 3 AM to a strange “Thok! Thok! Thok!” sound from outside the cabin. He’d gone out to investigate, when a massive jack pine fell directly across the narrow driveway, blocking us in. Startled by the noise, he swept his flashlight along the tree line.
Just in time, my uncle saw a man, holding an axe. The man slinked away into the dark of the trees and woods. He and his buddy returned to his cabin later, and had to take turns chainsawing the tree that fell across our narrow driveway apart, while the other stood watch with a rifle. He never found the man, and he never found the axe.
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