1. The Dentist
When I was little, around 8, I hated going to the dentist. He always made me uncomfortable for some reason. I remember thinking his smile stretched too far and seemed forced, like clowns.
Anyway, my mom always came with me and went back so I wouldn't be scared. One day, my dad had me (divorced parents) and had to take me to the dentist, but he tried to make me go back alone so he could sit out in the lobby doing whatever.
The assistants had to literally drag me back to the room, and you could hear me screaming and crying down the hall, refusing to sit in the chair.
Finally, my dad came back to get me, irritated I'd made a scene. He rescheduled my appointment to when my mom would have me, and we just left.
He made a big deal about how bad I was acting and told my mom she was spoiling me and all sorts of crap. Two weeks later, it's on the news that my dentist was charged with multiple crimes.
vuhleeitee
2. Close Call
I lived in a small college town, and my apartment complex was within walking distance from the bar/downtown area. One weekday night, I stepped out on our front porch to get some air as I was studying.
I brought my textbook with me and sat down on the stairs while I smoked. A girl, who I had never met but who lived one apartment over but down on the ground floor, came home from downtown.
She was by herself, and you could tell she had been drinking from her walk. She got into her apartment and barely got the door closed before some guy, who came out of nowhere, knocked on her door.
She opened it, and I noticed he introduced himself, which was weird because it was after 2:30 am. Who comes to a strange girl's apartment at that time?
So I decide to stay outside and pay attention. They ended up talking for over ten minutes. She later acknowledged how weird the situation was but did not know how to end the conversation.
He would do the creepiest things, like reaching up and stroking her hair at least three times, and would try and slowly inch his way closer to her and the door.
I made a point of being loud with my textbook so he would know I was there, and he disappeared as eerily as he had come. We called the cops, and days later, they had the girl, and I sat with a sketch artist.
As soon as the sketch was made public, floods of calls came in. The guy turned out to be a known wanted man who followed lone girls home from bars and pretended to be a cab offering them a ride. This girl just got lucky because she lived so close to the bars that he didn't get a chance to pull the cab routine.
TummySticksss
3. Plain Sight
When I was little, my mom would take me to the department store and let me wander around the toy section while she shopped (normal in the 70s).
One day, as I was playing Simone Says, an old man walked up to me and was making small talk while I played. He eventually told me to come with him and took me by the hand.
We walked right down the main center aisle of the store, right towards the EXIT sign in the back. As we crossed the last row, I looked to the right and saw my mom at the end of the row.
I told him I saw my mom and had to go. I pulled away my hand and ran down to her. I didn't tell her what happened because I didn't want to get in trouble for going with a stranger.
forgetasitype
4. School Bus
When I was a kid, I was always the last kid picked up by the bus driver to go to school. One day, I was waiting for the bus by myself, and a bus with no kids pulled up.
The bus driver smiled and told me to hop on. I just had a bad feeling, I said, "Where are the other kids?" He said, "We will go get them now. Just get on."
He got more and more pushy but didn't do anything crazy. I just kept saying no, and he shrugged and left. The actual bus pulled up a few minutes later.
I went to school, and my parents didn't know until I mentioned it that night. Looking back, I can see they were pretty worried. I remember them scrambling to make a few phone calls.
oneb62
5. Toy Bait
When I was younger, my mom would take me and my younger sister to the supermarket with her and let us look at the toy aisle (like maybe 1/5th of an actual aisle) for a couple of minutes while she'd go up and down the nearby aisles.
I remember one time my sister and I were looking at toys, and this one older man started talking to me. He said, "You like those toys, huh?"
I'm sure I responded positively, of course. Then he said something I remember verbatim to this very day, over 20 years later: "If you come with me, I'll buy you all these toys."
Even though I was probably only 7 or 8, I knew about stranger danger and told my sister to leave and go find our mom. We walked away and found her, and I never mentioned it to anyone.
enforcetheworld
6. Faceless Guy
On a cold winter night in a remote village in Québec, Canada, in 1990, I and my two brothers were asleep. We were 1, 3, and 6 years old.
In the middle of the night, someone entered our house without knocking, walked around, and was talking to himself. Our house is 2 miles from the village, in a rural area.
My father woke up and went to the living room where the guy was. He had a car accident one mile from our house with his buddy, who died instantly, and his scalp fell in front of his face, so the first time my father saw him, he saw a man with no face.
He was drunk, and his body was frozen. He was speaking to himself: << Je vais mourir, je vais mourir!>> Which means << I'm gonna die >>.
The fact that his face was partially frozen might have saved his life, preventing him from losing too much blood. My father took him to the hospital 25 km from our house by car.
He did survive. To this day, my father is still blessing the fact that we never woke up during the night with all the noise.
ralal
7. Guy In The Woods
Went camping with some friends on a hill a few kilometers out in the woods from one of the guy's house. There are a few hiking/four-wheeling trails in the area that lead up to the hill, so it's known by the locals.
It was about midnight. We had a fire going and were just sitting around having a good time, then the guy sitting opposite of me yelled, “Who are you.”
I turn around, and there's this man, about 6 feet tall, staring at us from the edge of the woods with a big rock in his hand. Weird.
One guy knocked an arrow in the compound bow we had, the guy across from me grabbed the hatchet, and I pulled the knife off my belt.
We had no clue what we were doing, but the guy wouldn't say anything to us. He eventually just backed into the woods. No sleep was had that night, and we kept a very large fire going.
GenesisProTech
8. Overhearing Crime
Once, I was walking my dog in a park in London, Ont. There are houses that sit on the edge of the park and back onto the Thames River and hiking trails. It was a hot day, and my dog was thirsty, so I brought him to the river to drink.
We got down to the river and were behind a house with a large privacy fence that sat on the edge of the park. While my dog was drinking, I heard loud banging noises like a hammer coming from the backyard.
I thought somebody was building a shed or something. All of a sudden, the hammer stops, and a man says, "Shut up! Nobody knows you're here." And the banging began again.
I froze in fear and then ran up the bank back into the park. I was now directly beside said creepy house. A man came out of the backyard gate in fatigues with a rusty old wheelbarrow.
He was heading towards two vans parked in front of his house. He noticed me looking at him as I was walking past, setting down the wheelbarrow, and just staring at me until I was out of the park. I called the police when I got home and still have no idea what happened.
[deleted]
9. Different Business
Last year, a guy came to my house's door around 9:00 at night. He knocked, and I got my mom, and she went out to see what was up.
By the way, we live in a very rural area, so visits that late are extremely uncommon and strange. The guy talked to my mom about how he was opening a business, asked whether she liked American-made products, and then handed her a Clorox container as a 'sample.'
He went back to his minivan and opened it to get a 'vacuum cleaner' when my mom saw five other men sitting inside. She told me to run and get my phone since we don't have a landline. I couldn't find it, so I got my knife and stood around the corner.
She threw the container outside and told them to get the heck off her property, as well as that she was calling the cops. They peeled out of the driveway, and we never saw the car again.
so_so_so_bored
10. Abandoned House
My friends and I explored an abandoned house recently. We entered through the garage, which still stored a family's items. Some items I remember are a nice fishing boat with a cover, a snow blower, and the metal cage things people around here put around plants to stop animals from eating them.
There was an old straight-six engine in the corner with the head taken off. One wall of the garage looked to have collapsed in.
At the back of the garage was a tiny room with a workbench where the head of the engine from the garage sat with the valvetrain half taken apart.
Just beside the tiny workroom was the stairs to the first floor. Everything was covered in a 1/2-inch thick layer of black rottenness.
All the items were still in the house, but many of the shelves had fallen over, and many things were broken. The only really creepy thing was a teddy bear face down on the ground, with its back somehow absent of the layer of black rotten.
My friend then put his foot through the floor, so we got out of there. I bet the top floor was more interesting, but the floors were very rotten.
theswegmeister
11. Grandpa And Hitchhikers
My grandfather owns several forests around the village he lives in, and he drives through them every week to check how the trees are doing and whether something needs to be fixed.
He really loves his trees and has a sharp eye for any potential sickness or insect that could pose a threat. A decade or two ago, hitchhikers were very common.
Even in the thinly populated areas of Bavaria, he encountered them regularly and was always happy to help. He literally picked up every single hitchhiker he found.
One day, however, he had a bad feeling about one. Without any reason, he dismissed this one hitchhiker standing on the side of the path.
Later that day, there was a radio broadcast about a previously convicted guy who attacked someone in the woods and got caught trying to flee by hopping onto someone's car.
[deleted]
12. The Stare
When I was 12 or 13, we went to a food chain on the way to the beach...I went to pee before I ate and to wash my hands...just as I started peeing, this guy came in, walked to the urinal next to me, and just watched.
Doesn't pee. Just watches. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, his eyes locked onto my junk (what there was of it). I had a bathing suit on, so I'm doing the whole junk flop over the thing (guys know what that means), so I can't hide it.
I can't stop it (I can now, though...not sure why when you're a kid, you can't stop your pee). He smiled creepily as I finished, put things away, and washed my hands.
He just stood there smiling. I gave him another look as I left the bathroom and never saw him again. I was with my friend's mom, and I didn't say anything because I didn't want to get in trouble and really wanted to go to the beach.
That logic makes no sense, I realize that now, but I ate my Filet O Fish with a WTF? Look on my face, and had an awesome day at the beach.
[deleted]
13. New Roommate
This happened to a friend of mine’s housemate during their time at university. It was at the house she lived in before moving in with my friend after this event occurred. During her second year at university, she lived in a house with three other people.
At Easter, everyone returned home to their parents for the Easter holidays. On her first night after returning from the Easter break, she woke up in the morning to find some things moving about in her bedroom. She thought nothing of it and put it down to moving it herself the night before and not remembering.
She woke up the next morning to more stuff moved around. Like her TV and chair, etc., she started to get a bit scared and told her housemates to quit moving her stuff about as it wasn't funny and very creepy.
They all said they didn't touch anything. The next morning, even more stuff had been moved, and she started to get very worried. Again, she told her housemates to stop, but they swore they hadn't touched anything and were getting very concerned.
On the fourth night, she woke up in the middle of the night. She looked over, and in the darkness, she could see a figure sitting at her desk. She freaked out, ran out of the room, locked the door, and called the police.
The police turn up, and they unlock the door. Sure enough, there is a guy there, probably early 20s, sitting at her desk. Calm as anything. The police arrest him and take him away.
A couple of days later, they found out that the guy was actually a mentally handicapped person who lived at a care home not far down the road. His mother, who was his full-time carer, had looked after him until her death a year or so earlier when he was then moved into the home.
He's been a missing person for a few weeks now, and it turned out that the house this girl and her friends lived in used to be his and his mother's house. In particular, her bedroom used to be his.
He eventually told the police that when he ran away from the home, his old house was where he went to. He managed to get in somehow and spent the whole time there.
Two and a half weeks. Sleeping under the girl's bed. He came out at night while she slept to move her stuff, so it was like how he had it when it was his bedroom. Safe to say, she moved straight out of there, and that's when she moved in with my friend.
wordsfromlee
14. Dad’s Illness
I was driving down the motorway with my boyfriend in the passenger seat and my dad in the seat behind my own. My dad is an epileptic, and his fits are extremely sporadic.
Sometimes, he goes extremely stiff, and other times, he will try to get out of places or grab and punch people. Mid-conversation, I felt his hands wrap around my throat as I was driving.
He was pulling my head back and making it increasingly difficult to drive. My boyfriend managed to help steer the car into the hard shoulder, but it was one of the scariest experiences in my life.
[deleted]
15. Couch Nightmare
When I was about 10, my family of six lived in an extremely small apartment. 2 bedrooms upstairs and then the living room. When I was tired of my siblings, I would sleep downstairs.
One night, I was lying on the couch facing the front door and watching the sky through the window by the door when a face showed up in the window illuminated by a lighter.
I freeze, and the face goes away. I'm pretty relieved, thinking it was maybe our weird neighbors, seeing if my parents were still awake when it showed up again.
I tried to scream, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out, not a sound. The person then kicks in the door and walks into the room.
He sees me, smiles, and goes towards the kitchen. As he comes out of the kitchen with a knife, my dad makes it down the stairs, and the guy books it out of there. I still can't sleep easily on couches to this day.
Jaynechelsea
16. Black Wire
I'm not sure if this counts as creepy or not. But I was walking through a ravine with my best friend when we were kids. We spent the summers up near Saugatuck, Michigan, and would go out on our own all the time to hike through the rivers and ravines that were around that area.
We had hiked for about an hour through the shallow water and were looking for cool rocks and other things in the river. We came across a large black cord-looking thing, and my friend picked it up.
He immediately became frozen and had a very scary look on his face. I had no idea what was going on, and I was only in 5th grade, so I didn't know that he had picked up a high-voltage wire and his body was locked in place.
He couldn't move and couldn't do anything but just stand there with all this electricity flowing through his body. I almost grabbed the big wire to take it out of his hand, but something made me not do that.
I picked up a big rock and threw it down on his hands to knock the huge wire onto the ground. This worked. He immediately came back to reality but was obviously out of it.
He sat down for a while, and finally, we decided to walk back to our summer house. We never told anyone, but I realize that if I had gone to pick up that wire, we both would have been locked in that ravine.
I have no idea what would have happened. I have no idea why I stopped grabbing the wire from him, but I am glad I somehow was smart enough to think about it before I did anything.
jlarrison
17. Neighbor Savior
When I was about six, a car drove by my house while I was outside on a slip 'n slide with my next-door neighbor. The car slowed down when he got close to me, rolled down his window, and started talking to me.
Still, he was talking kind of quietly to where I couldn't make out what he was saying, so I walked closer, and he asked, "Don't you go to the school down the street?"
I said, "Oh yeah. Why?" "Because my son said he recognized you." I heard the car door unlock, and there was a man in his mid-30s sitting in the back seat.
Right as the door started to open, I felt someone grab me by the collar of my shirt and yank me into their arms. It was my neighbor's mom.
She dragged me all the way back to her house, and as soon as the driver saw her, he peeled off. When we got back to the house, she called the cops immediately. I did not even realize how close I was to getting harmed until I saw my mom crying when she heard about what happened.
inselfwetrust
18. Girl’s Instincts
A few years ago, when I was fourteen or so, I was out walking my dog, a hyper Chesapeake retriever mix, in a rural/suburban area. It was a fairly quiet road.
A car would breeze by once every five minutes or so. An old gray Toyota Carolla or some car like that passed by. Nothing unusual.
But a minute later, this car passes AGAIN. And the car slowed down a ton when it was coming toward me, giving me the impression this guy was checking me out.
This guy ends up passing up and down the road, stalking me. I ended up faking having a cell phone and talking to someone on the other end in case he got any ideas. The dog gave me a sense of security, too.
After maybe the sixth or seventh time this guy does this, I duck into the woods to hide. He swings by twice more, and I wait ten minutes to see if he comes back.
He doesn't. I ended up running back home with a very confused and disappointed dog. I think later on, a news story matched my stalker's description, and he was charged with a crime. Could be wrong, though. Still creepy. I didn't go for a walk for about a week after that.
Gurahave
19. Missing Cat
When I was in middle school, my friends and I were hanging out on a trampoline in the backyard late at night, maybe around 11 pm or so.
The backyards are all "connecting," meaning trees and small fences are separating them, but you can walk through them. Some guy came through and asked if we had seen a little orange tabby cat, and we told him no.
He said he lives around the corner, and if we see it, he will give us a reward. Okay cool. We think nothing of it and go back to talking about Pokemon cards and why Charizard is a god on paper.
No joke, 2 min after this guy leaves, this little cat wanders through, and we think, "Is that the cat he was talking about?" My friend grabbed it, and we all proudly marched to the guy's house to collect our reward.
The guy is sitting on his front porch, and we bring the cat to him. He's so excited and says, "Oh, I have the reward inside. Just come in, and I'll give it to you." We were kinda sketched out, but we decided 2 go in and 2 stay.
He says, "Oh, if you don't come in, I can only give the reward to the ones that come in." He was gonna give us $100 a person to go in.
Still, we had 2 guys go in and take what felt like forever, but they came out and had $200 with them. They said there was plastic on everything in there, and something felt wrong.
I feel as though if we had all gone, we would have been killed. But keeping 2 outside who knew where their friends were, I guess, was enough to deter him. Still was a weird occurrence.
yeakirkers
20. The Homeless Man
I was walking home from the bar and stopped at what I thought was a safe spot to squat down and pee in the bushes. I was so wrong.
I had scoped out the spot poorly because, not halfway through my pee, I looked up to my left, and about 10 feet away was a homeless man.
We locked eyes while I was peeing. He told me that we were lovers, I said "k." He then told me he had been following me for the last six blocks.
I cut the stream, pulled my pants up, and started to walk swiftly to my house. And then he said something referencing his genitals, and I started to run.
eleven11eleven11
21. Free Dove
This happened to my wife during college. She lived on campus in a more remote mountainous area. One night, maybe 8 or 9, she and a few classmates decided to take a nice peaceful walk up the mountain road past the college.
They'd been walking for 10 minutes when suddenly, car lights flicked on in the darkness at the side of the road, and a vehicle came screeching past them.
2 seconds pass and a half-naked girl comes running out of the darkness, SHRIEKING. Terrified, my wife ran the other way back to the college. Luckily, the others stayed with the girl and helped her.
seanlame
22. Taking Action
When I was 8, I had a friend spending the night one....night. It was super late, and we were playing Barbies in the living room.
I then suddenly got the feeling that we were being watched. I looked to my right, and there, in the window, stood a man. I remember everything about him to this day.
This was a little over 20 years ago. He was a white man. I could tell because he was wearing a short-sleeved, dark blue t-shirt that had a little pocket on the chest.
His arms were very hairy. He also wore black gloves and a black ski mask. He had his hands cupped on either side of his face to block any glare from the street lights to get a better view of us.
I yelped and curled into a ball. My friend saw him and did the same thing. She asked me what we were gonna do. I said, "At the count of three, we're gonna run upstairs and get my dad." I got to two and took off.
My friend was right behind me. We barged into my dad's room and told him what we saw. He leaped out of bed and ran outside, but the guy was gone.
ILikeMyBlueEyes
23. Hand Prints
When I was in like 4th or 5th grade, I lived with my Mom and her GF in a 2 bedroom apt. Well, we had strange things sort of happen around the house, but I was young and imaginative.
Well, one day, we woke up. Well, rather, my mom's girlfriend woke up, and soon I was being shaken awake. "WHAT THE HECK DID YOU DO TO THE KITCHEN?!"
I was like...umm..I stay in my room pretty much all the time. She yanks me out of bed and drags me by my arm to the kitchen. My Mom is standing in the doorway of their bedroom right next to mine.
I look and see cocoa powder ALL OVER the counter like Nesquik. Now, we were pretty freaking poor back then, like, my meal at school was 75% of what I got to eat in a day.
I swore up and down I didn't do it, but as I got closer, there were little hand prints all over the cocoa. Smearing and smacking it everywhere, on the cupboards, the fridge. It was on the floor even, with little footprints.
My hands were clean, my feet were clean. But I was the only child in the house, and they sure as hell didn't think someone broke in, or hell, not even a ghost. I got a pretty good spanking for that.
PrityBird
24. Horrible Mistake
I had just moved to a new city and was living on my own for the first time. I worked late night shifts at my job, and rode a bike home a fair distance.
It was about 1 AM and I was riding my bike home when I began to approach the local elementary school. The school was on the opposite side of the street, lit up from the inside with those orange lights they turn on at night.
As I began to approach the school I noticed something strange. I couldn't really make it out but something seemed off. I stared hard, squinting to see it better as I got closer and closer.
Then, as the school was directly across from me, I saw: A little girl standing INSIDE the school, staring out the door at me.
I flipped and pedaled my arse off. After a few moments I kinda got a grip and looked back over my shoulder, and there she was, standing on the sidewalk staring at me.
I rode home like a bat out of heck and avoided that street like the plague for weeks. Then, one day I worked a day shift and figured hey, it can't hurt to bike down that street during the day...
So yeah, turns out during the day they have these two wooden cutouts of kids they put up to mark the crosswalk. At night they store them just inside the door.
I had seen the one inside the school and not noticed the one that apparently was forgotten and left outside, until later, making it appear as though the same child had been in both spots.
[deleted]
25. Night Escape
I was walking with my older brother one night- we were returning from a game he had. It was probably 9-10 at the time, I was maybe 10.
For some perspective, I'm now 18, going on 19 in a month. We were approaching the apartment building where I live and saw a figure. He was probably the size of an average man.
Not surprisingly, the darkness conceals his upper body, including his face. We stop dead in our tracks. Usually, security guards patrol the grounds at this time, but their rounds start at 11.
This shouldn't have scared us, but he started running toward us. Like, I mean SPRINT. He was running really, really fast at us. My older brother screamed at me to run.
He chased us for an entire length of a street until my older brother told me to go under a fence that is arching above the ground, perfect for our sizes.
We were scared shitless as we saw him try to climb over the fence, but luckily we were very close to home. A week later, we found out that a child went missing the night after we escaped. To this day, the child was never found.
SpartanKane
26. The Cabin
My parents bought a cabin in the Washington mountain range. My mother and sister would go there and spend weekends. My mother talked about how they would wake up, and the side door of the cabin would be open.
They changed the locks, but it continued. What was odd was we never arrived to find the door open. It only opened when someone was staying in the cabin. Summer or winter, it didn't matter.
I laughed it off, thinking they left it open or didn't close it properly, etc. I decided to spend the night in the cabin during the winter. The cabin was not heated but did have electricity and a small wood stove.
So I drove my Jeep out after work and got to the cabin after dark. I arrived, and a light snow had started to fall. I was very cold and regretted going because it was only 13 degrees F.
I closed the door and locked it, pulling it several times to ensure it was closed and not going to open in the middle of the night. Yes, I was laughing at the stories of it being open in the morning. I climbed into bed and put an extra quilt on to keep me warm. I quickly fell asleep.
I had a nightmare. I dreamed that I woke up. The cabin was freezing. I walked from the bedroom to light the fire. I immediately saw the door open and turned 90 degrees to see a tall lizard-like demon with glowing red eyes staring at me.
I immediately woke up from the dream. I then noticed that it was freezing. So I climbed out of bed and walked towards the other room to relight the fire. As I enter the room, I turn and see the door sitting wide open in the darkness.
Snow had blown in on the floor. The nightmare WAS COMING TRUE! The nightmare was playing out exactly, and the next part was to see a giant demon. I yelled and fumbled for the light switch like a madman. The lights came on, and there was nothing there.
I looked at the snow and saw no footprints or evidence of tampering. So, in my engineering mind, I assumed the structure's heating caused some structural shift and the door to pop open. I still didn't go back to the cabin for quite some time.
A few years later, a house was built directly across the street. A few months after the new owners moved in, I introduced myself. We chatted briefly, and I asked how he and the family liked the place. He smiled and said, they're a bit spooked by it all.
I asked, “Spooked?” The guy replied, “Yeah, they think a monster comes into their room at night.” I must have turned as white as a sheet at that point.
[deleted]
27. To The Rescue
I worked as a Security Guard for a mall. I was stuck with the Night Shift. The car was broken, so I rode a bike outside the mall. It was about midnight when I heard someone yelling for help and waving his arms towards me.
I pedal like a freaking madman to get over to him. He looked 17 and was poorly dressed for the season(winter). I asked what was wrong, and he said, "My friend won't get up!" "Alright, let me call someone!"
Reach for my phone to call 911, but then the guy grabbed onto me, and another man came out of the bushes near us with a weapon pointed at my head.
Long story short, I got mugged while they handcuffed me with my own handcuffs. Thought I was gonna get worse than that. A nightmare.
RoboGandalf
28. The Scream
I was at the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago, camping in a tent with some friends. Around 11:00, I was still awake, but everyone else was asleep, and suddenly, some women started screaming from what sounded like a few campsites over.
They weren't joking around, or they were very good actors; they sounded terrified. They screamed for about 10 seconds, at first two or three of them, then eventually just one.
The screaming stopped, and I heard someone much closer to our tent start running. Then a car door slammed, but the car never started.
No one else woke up, and I was too scared to move, even to get my phone. I didn't fall asleep until the sun was coming up. Sigh.
In retrospect, it was probably something like an elk really close to their tent as opposed to, you know, since this was a decently populated campground. I didn't hear about any incidents after.
ms-cnidaria
29. Unusual Home
It involves an apartment in a complex in Coney Island in the 80s. Seemingly deserted, the man inside invited me over to trade video games, which happened, but inside that apartment, a refrigerator loaded top to bottom with pudding cups.
Three grand pianos covered in canvas tarps stuffed like puzzle pieces in the largest room, barely fitting (had to crawl over or under them) with a full ballroom chandelier (hung from the ceiling but too big to fit so it draped over the pianos.)
Absolutely no furniture or electric appliances (except the fridge, his computer, and The Fan), no lamps, no TV, no toaster, nothing.
His bedroom had a bunk bed (he lived alone). The window had been removed completely and replaced with a massive industrial fan that blew air into the room like a hurricane.
This fan would blow floppy disks off the desk so they were weighted down with pudding cups. Also, he lived on the 13th floor.
The man himself was (I kid you not) absolutely normal-looking. I have no idea how I made it out of there alive; god smiles on fools and madmen, and this story had both.
grinr
30. Strange Figure
At one point in 2005, my cousin and I were riding down a dirt road in lower Alabama, heading back to my place from his. This is all pitch dark, undeveloped swamp.
I was paying attention to the CD book when suddenly he started losing his mind and hyperventilating. I tell him to pull over because I think we're going to crash, but he refuses over and over.
He refused to go back to my place, which was deep in that same swamp, so instead, we drove twenty more minutes up to Walmart.
When we pull in there, he describes to me the person is kinda thin and tall and completely, for the most part, apparently brown. He said it was a pale grey color and described it as a llama.
At first, I figured it actually was a llama, an escaped pet or something... but I'd never seen him so scared, even when we got jumped by a van full of skinheads.
[deleted]
31. Sea Issues
Maybe it's weirder than creepy, but it spooked me. I was in the Coast Guard for 4 years. Two of them spent time on a 210' cutter home-ported in NC, so we did a lot of patrols in the Caribbean. Naturally, we passed through the Bermuda Triangle frequently.
Before you call us aliens, the Caribbean and anywhere near the Sargasso Sea can be pretty spooky in its own right. I'm talking dead calm conditions where the sea melts into the horizon.
It looks like you are trapped in a huge sphere of blue, freak squalls that come up surprisingly quickly. St. Elmo's fire, you name it.
Anyways, we (me and the rest of the deck department) would have to stand watch for 4 hours at all times of day, either 4 hours standing up manning the helm or 4 hours up on the flying bridge standing lookout.
I was frequently stuck on the 4-8's (4 am to 8 am), the very definition of the graveyard watch. So, one night, I'm on the helm in the Bermuda Triangle.
The quartermaster asks me for a compass check (where you look in a little window at the magnetic compass reading), and it's spinning rapidly. It sent a chill down my spine.
Never in a million years did I think this actually happened. But there it was, spinning away. When I tried to explain to the QM why I couldn't give him a compass check, the GPS computer suddenly went dead. Just simply quit.
The Officer of the Watch immediately goes up to the flying bridge to make sure there isn't anything metal affecting the compass and calls the Captain on deck and engineers to fix the computer.
It continued like this for the next 45 minutes, with everyone on the bridge on full alert, thinking there was a sub tailing the ship, and sonar repeatedly showed nothing.
The captain (who is usually super professional) finally goes: "Welp, that's the weirdest freaking thing I've ever seen." and retreats to his cabin.
The poor QM had to plot coordinates by dead reckoning until we got to Miami. I have plenty more spooky seas it wastes. I can post later if people are interested.
theNorthernDivide
32. Hunter Guy
My boyfriend and I decided to go to a secluded hot springs in Idaho. It was March, but there was still a lot of snow on the ground. The hike was only two miles in, but the warm, humid air made the ground incredibly slick and treacherous.
We weren't going to let that stop us. We got to the hot springs. We were there for several hours with not another soul in sight. We figured the ground was too treacherous for anyone to try to hike in.
Suddenly, we both spot a guy walking up towards the hot springs. We figured he would get in, and we would leave. Instead, he climbed up to where we were sitting and asked us questions like have you seen any deer or animals?
We said no and that we would leave if he wanted to get in. He would not leave and just kept staring at me. I was still naked. We started getting really uncomfortable, and my boyfriend was getting prepared to fight this guy.
My boyfriend had a knife, but it was in his backpack several feet away. The guy finally turned away and left, and we quickly got dressed and hiked back out.
We still had the uneasy feeling of being watched. In addition, it was not hunting season, nor did this guy have a gun or look like he was prepared for hunting. We both were thinking of ways to get out of the situation and how it could have turned out really bad.
yournewfave
33. Terrifying Nights
When I was a kid, my room didn't have curtains or blinds. One night, I was trying to sleep, and it looked like a man was outside my window.
I screamed and ran and told my parents - but they didn't believe me, and said it was just a nightmare. I tried to go to sleep, and I brought our dog to my room for protection, but the dog wouldn't stop barking, so my dad took the dog out.
Then I saw the gleaming creepy eyes watching me - an upside-down face grinning from outside my window. I screamed, but still, my parents didn't believe me.
I thought I was going to be murdered all night. The next morning, there was yelling and then the cops. Turns out a wanted man was hiding out on our roof.
When he tried to leave in the morning, our neighbor saw him climbing off our roof and into his yard, so he beat the crap out of the guy before calling the police. My parents didn't apologize and never got me curtains even though I begged.
not0your0nerd
34. The Call
I worked at a campground on the night shift. 12a - 8a, every night. It wasn't bad. I would bring in my PS2 and game a good portion of the night, only having to deal with 1 or 2 people on busy nights.
It was just me in this little 8' x 8' shack, with nothing around but dark all night. During my first week there, the other third-shift guy who was quitting told me about this payphone a few feet from the shack where I worked.
He said it rang every night at 4:17a, just once. It was probably just an automated test call, he guessed. He's never answered it himself. I go for a few months with the job. It was the middle of summer, so most nights, I had the windows closed so I couldn't hear the payphone go off.
In mid-August, I started leaving the windows open during the night. Sure enough, at 4:17 a.m., the phone would ring once every morning. The ring even sounded creepy, like the payphone was submerged in water and then put where it sat.
One night, I got up the nerve to answer it. I set an alarm at 4:15 and would go wait at the phone until it rang. When it did, I answered it. But there was no sound. Just dead air, like someone was on the other line but wasn't answering.
I said hello a few times and hung up. I did this every night for a week with the same results. I didn't think anything of it and left it alone after that for about a month.
The first week of October, I decided to answer the phone once again. I set my alarm, and when the time came, I answered the phone. "Hello? Hello?"
Then I heard what sounded like someone inhaling through clenched teeth. The voice that sounded was rough and sounded like he had gargled gravel. The best comparison I can give is Horace P. Gauge from The Suffering.
He said my name. My complete name. First, middle, and last. It was a voice I'd never heard. My voice caught in my throat, and I hung up. I rattled some change into the payphone and hit *69. The number had come from California. I lived in Indiana.
[deleted]
35. Unknown Content
Driving out in the boonies with some friends in a pickup. Crew cab with a dog in the back and leashed to the truck. The driver pulls over so he can step off to the side of the road and take a leak.
We can barely see him from the glow of the parking lights, headlights turned off. His dog starts going freaking crazy. CRAZY trying to jump out of the back, barking, snarling, tugging at the leash, and my buddy just yells at it to calm down.
He zips up and walks across the front of his truck, and just as he turns to open his door, something massive whizzes by the front.
We all gave a "WHAT WAS THAT?" and the dog, who was trying to jump out of the right side of the truck, was now yanking on the leash, trying to jump out of the left side of the bed. We got out of there pretty quickly.
[deleted]
36. Basement Of Horror
This is the first of two instances. First, I was alone in the basement, playing GTA IV on my PC with my friend. It gets to about 1 AM, and we're having a blast, shooting RPGS and throwing grenades willy-nilly.
Then I hear a sound that really doesn't fit with GTA. I figure it's not coming from my headset, so I take it off. The sound that's being made is coming from an old music box that we have.
The last time it was used was probably 10 years ago. And this thing is just full-on blaring its song. I start chanting "NO NO NO NO NO" and book it upstairs, leaving my friend on Skype pretty confused.
My mom and dad are coming down from their room, my dad equipped with a baseball bat. As you can imagine, it was hard to explain to them that it was NOT an intruder.
My second instance was in the same basement. Now, my basement has a main area where most of our furnishings are and a satellite room off of that.
Then, there's the unfinished part of the basement where I'm sure the spirits dwell, but I digress (I'll post pics of the basement if this gets popular). Anyway, I'm playing GTA IV again with the same friend.
It's about 1 AM again, and we decide to call it a night. I'm browsing Reddit while I cool down from video games with my headset off to let my ears take a break.
At that point, I hear "Da da da daaaaaa daaaaaaa" (read with two little girl voices) from the bowels of the unfinished part of the basement. Now, it's pitch black around me except for my island of salvation at my computer.
At this point, I'm just so freaking done with ghosts that I say, "Screw it, fine, have the basement," and go upstairs and go to bed. There are a couple more instances of spooky ghosts, but they're not as scary as these two.
Coolclone
37. Nightmare And Reality
I'm a very practical and logical guy. When I first experienced sleep paralysis, I researched it. I found that with it, you may have odd/sometimes scary experiences, but that, ultimately, it was nothing to be afraid of.
Pretty used to it now. Anyway, I live in the Hudson Valley with my parents in an old wooden house built in 1712. Old, but Comfortable. One night, I fell asleep in the attic on the guest bed while watching The Walking Dead.
Around 6am (I think), I had a dream, I forget the beginning, but I remember trying to escape the house for some unknown reason.
Then I experienced a feeling of dread (probably from my sleep paralysis) and got the sense that a "feminine" ghost spirit/ghost/whatever wanted me to stay... badly. Nothing violent, but it was such an intense feeling.
I felt stuck, and this is when I noticed my sleep paralysis. I focused on moving my pinky finger (which helps me snap out of it) and woke up.
After a few seconds, the door to the back of the attic (the creepy part of the attic, lol) jumped open. Now, the door has a latch that is fairly secure... you can push the door all you want, but as long as it's closed, it won't open.
Also, this has happened with the door before at random moments. I closed the door, got back into bed, and turned on the lamp next to the nightstand. Within a few seconds, the lamp blinked off and on. This could be for a number of reasons, but I've never noticed that happen before.
I don't believe in ghosts, but it's been hard to come up with a logical explanation for this one, especially concerning the latch. I've fiddled with it a bunch, and you Have to lift it; otherwise, it won't open. Still happens some nights.
imn8bro
38. Uninvited Ex
I had been staying in my basement for the longest time. I have gone through some eye-opening family crises recently. Hence, I decided to finally break up with my loser ex, and it was pretty bad. Safe to say the cops were involved.
At the same time, my brother decided not to come home that same night, so I stayed upstairs and slept on the couch just in case he decided to come home.
When I got up around 8 the next morning, I came downstairs and noticed my things were not where I'd left them, and my laptop was on.
I, of course, got very nervous at this point and checked the history on my browser. The last page visited was to look for a bus from my house to my ex's, who was due to leave in the next few minutes.
I had a mini panic attack and searched my basement to find that there was a makeshift bed in the back room, and the window was open. My ex had broken into my house and been sleeping in the back room, and I had just barely missed running into him.
Extyeve
39. Familiar Face
A few years ago, a former boss passed away. My father and I went to the wake to pay our respects. I had to wait in line to see the body and say goodbye.
After I said goodbye, I tried to find some former coworkers when I ran into my boss walking around. I proceeded to fall on my arse staring at the guy who was dead 2 minutes ago who is now walking around.
It turns out he had a twin brother that no one ever told me about. I can say I had a hard time functioning for quite some time.
UnknownGod
40. Strange Trash
I'm a garbage man. We are not the typical big-city types who get to use the fancy garbage trucks that pick up and empty cans on their own; we still need to dump garbage cans by hand.
One of our day's routes consists of rolling around the edge of our town, including rural pick-ups for households willing to pay the town to come into the Rural Municipality to get their stuff.
We were getting one house, just a typical farmhouse-type place. Lots of old vehicles around the house and shit. Open the trash can, aaaaand....hooves. Just hooves. A tonne of them.
I think they were pig hooves, though the amount of brown hair on them leaves me to believe they may have potentially been goat hooves.
Still, they were bigger than goats. Swine farming isn't that big where I live, so I'm not sure they were pigs, though we do have boar hunting around here.
Anyways, if you're throwing away boar hooves, throw them in a bad; don't just toss them at the top of your bin. Makes me assume you live in a house of horrors. It's not really a site one prepares themselves to see.
[deleted]
41. Locking Doors
I was sitting in the back seat of our station wagon when I was startled by a banging on the window. A man told me to open the door. Being at the uncooperative stage of my childhood, I asked, "Why?" He said, "Your grandmother is very sick. I'm supposed to take you to the hospital."
Several things ran through my mind: Both my grandmothers lived an hour's drive away. Relatives would have phoned first. And how did this guy find us in this parking lot fifteen minutes drive away from home?
I reached up and locked the door. It had been unlocked the whole time. The man tried to open the door. I reached into the front of the car and locked the front door.
Then I did the far side of the car. He eventually got around to checking all the doors. And I sat there like a goldfish in a bowl while the cat tried to get at it.
wallingfortian
42. Living Closet
About 6 months ago, my 4-year-old started having trouble sleeping and waking up at night. He was scared and eventually told us that he was seeing these two kids who wanted to play with him in his room.
A series of incidents around the time were unnerving and would have been my story, except… We thought it was all past us, and then one night a few weeks ago, he was screaming for me, so I went to sleep next to him and calmed him down.
Lying there in the near dark, I noticed the sliding closet door was partly open, which was odd because we always make sure the closet's closed when we put him to bed. I'm tired.
It's around 3 am, and I really don't want to get up and close the closet door, but it's bothering me. I'm feeling strange. I feel like I should close that closet door, and the closet itself is pitch black.
Did we leave it open this one time? So finally, after about 10 minutes of internal debate, I sit up on the side of the bed, get up, and walk over to the closet door to close it…
But by the time I reach it, it's already closed. It didn't make a sound. I didn't see it move. But it was open when I was in bed and shut when I got up to close it.
propagandery
43. Men With Masks
In the 1980s and early 90's, the street where my family and I lived in England was a street full of student houses/squats. It was a terrace of old Victorian houses that had slowly deteriorated and become pretty worthless.
My parents bought the house while a few other families started buying these ridiculously cheap, big houses. This was before my arrival, and they then did the house up.
Fast forward 10 years, and I am sharing a room with my younger brother. It is around 11.30 pm, and we are asleep along with my mum in the room next to us.
My dad is still awake downstairs and hears some people in the back garden. He looks out of the sash windows in the living room to see 3 men creeping up the garden wearing all black with balaclavas.
He proceeds to ring the police, who tell him to check out the front to see what's on the roadside of the house. He says at this point he was absolutely crapping bricks but checked anyway.
To check, he would have to open the front door! When he looked out onto the road, there was a car driving slowly past, and all he saw was the man in the passenger seat wearing a Margaret Thatcher mask waving slowly. Creepy as heck.
The police turned up in full riot gear shortly after and checked all the bottom floors of my house and outside but didn't find anything. He didn't tell my brother, my mum, or me until I was 20 years old, and he said that was the first time he had told anyone.
Part_time_stripper
44. Ignoring Red Flags
It was about 10 am, and I was asleep and hot awoken by some jerkward banging on the door, despite us having a doorbell. I decided it must've been an idiot or a door-to-door salesman, and in either case, I couldn't be bothered to get out of bed and answer the door.
Fast forward 10 minutes and I'm now awake and having my morning dump in the downstairs toilet. I hear loud noises in the garden (on the decking). I figured it was just a cat being a cunt. But then I started hearing voices.
I'm mid-dump, and this is the scariest thing that's ever happened to me in my life, and I haven't even realized it yet. I hear the noises and voices again, and suddenly, there's a guy sticking his head through the toilet window.
I had no idea what to do, he locked his eyes with mine, and I was just sitting there shitting. He tried to get in but was stuck in the window because it was too small for anyone to fit through.
I grabbed the bleach next to me and squirted it in his face. He withdrew, and his buddy helped him over the fence, and I guess they ran. I finished up my shit and called the police. They ended up catching them at the hospital.
TheMSensation
45. A Companion
I was a cat person for a long time. One of my cats was a Burmese named Judy, and she loved to jump up on the bed with a little meowed grunt when we were sleeping.
One night, after she hadn't done it for a long time (she'd been pretty weak and sick), I felt and heard her jump up and snuggle up against me.
The bed dipped under her weight and everything. I reached back to scritch behind her ears but couldn't reach her. Then I remembered she had died 2 days before.
Liv-Julia