Everyone likes to be scared sometimes; that’s why so many people love horror movies, haunted houses, and theme parks. But when it’s real life, the fun fades and is replaced with true fear. These Redditors share their true creepy experiences, from the paranormal and otherworldly to chilling encounters with real-life creepy people.
1. Fingerprint Evidence
One year, a friend of mine moved into a new apartment and after a week, she noticed that every time she woke up, she would have new bruises on her chest and shoulders, some large and some small, like fingerprints. It only happened to her and not her roommate. They didn't live there for much longer after that.
2. Self-Reflection
I was working on a computer, on a dresser with a mirror behind it. As I was working, I looked in the mirror and what I saw made my blood run cold. I caught my reflection in my peripheral vision not doing what I was doing. The second I focused on it, it snapped back. I know how mirrors work, but I also "know" that I saw something weird.
3. Bad Fingers
One time on the train, this old dude slipped his little finger in the mini pockets of my jeans. When I pointed this out, he turned away, whispered, “bad finger,” and slapped his own hand.
4. Looking for a Mommy
I was 18 years old and working retail. An older man in his mid-40s came in with a young girl who looked around 3. He came up to me and started chatting. I was polite at first, but then the conversation shifted. I don’t remember exactly what was said that led to this, but the guy was trying to get my number and being overly flirtatious.
He then looked at the girl in his arms. What he said next was so disturbing it’s unforgettable. He told me, I kid you not, “She needs a mommy.” I got away from him so fast. I still think about how gross that made me feel, and I actually worry about that little girl.
5. More than a Feeling
I was in the Navy, stationed inland because I was in a school. One day, I had a friend drop me off at a store when class was finished, and when I was done, I started walking back to the base. As I was walking, I noticed a car driving slowly along the road, keeping pace with me. The driver was some weird guy smiling at me. He had “More Than a Feeling” playing extremely loud on the stereo.
Eventually, the car went ahead of me, but then there it was again on a side street, waiting for me to pass. Again he drove next to me slowly with the same song playing. This scenario went on for about seven or eight blocks, with the song on repeat. I finally made it to a nearby mall and went inside. I stayed in one place inside the mall to make sure I had lost him, so I was pretending to talk to someone on a payphone.
Suddenly, there he was inside the mall peeking around a corner at me! As soon as he turned around, I ran out of the mall through the closest exit and ran about another two blocks to the Navy base. I never saw him again, but it creeped me out so much that every time I hear “More Than a Feeling” playing, it reminds me of the experience.
6. Workaholic
I was working a night shift, and the workstation next to me was shut down, so the screen was acting a bit like a mirror. I saw somebody walk behind me and turned around to call out to my co-worker…but then I realized he wasn't scheduled to start for another two hours and that I was supposed to be completely alone in the building.
7. Man’s Best Friend
When I was about 8 or 9, my Mom’s friends took me along with her kids to see the puppy they were going to buy. The owner offered to let us kids walk the parent-dogs (two Rottweilers) while my friend’s mom talked to the owner. They were super friendly and walked off-leash with us. When we arrived in a grassy area surrounded by trees, a tall guy in a long, leather trenchcoat approached us.
He grabbed my shoulder and the dogs went completely nuts. I remember that he had a small mirror and tried shining light into the dogs’ eyes to confuse them, but it didn’t work. The mother dog stayed circling the three of us while we ran to the house, and the other dog chased after the creepy guy until he was gone.
It was terrifying, but what really stands by me is that those dogs had just met me, yet they protected my friends and me as if their lives depended on it. I think we got lucky that day, and I'm forever grateful for those dogs.
8. A Bizarre Prank?
When I was in college, I had a desk chair that was on rollers, the kind where the pedestal ends in a five-armed “star,” with a roller at each end. The arms of the star were made of hard formed plastic, and were pretty thick. I was up very late one night cramming for a final, and went to bed for no more than an hour or so to take a nap.
When I got up I went back and sat in the chair, I made a bizarre discovery: all five of the hard plastic arms were warped and bent at almost 90 degrees, all in the same direction! It certainly hadn’t been like that an hour prior when I left it. Again, this was hard, brittle, thick plastic; it doesn’t/shouldn’t bend, it would just snap under enough force to create the shape that it was in.
I suppose maybe if you heated it up to soften it enough, you could reshape it, but how could that have happened? I lived alone, my doors were locked, and I was sleeping in the room, for only an hour. It would be the most bizarre prank in the world to break into somebody’s apartment with...a blowtorch or something? To reshape their chair legs?
I kept that chair for years and years even though it was basically unusable, because I thought that one day, I’d be staring at it and the answer to the mystery would come to me. I have absolutely zero belief in anything supernatural and nothing else bizarre has ever happened to me, but I still think about it, and I still can’t explain it.
9. Fear thy Neighbor
When I was around 20, we had this weird neighbor that we didn't think about too much. One night, I was up at 2 am and noticed flickering light, like a fire, reflecting on my window. So I went into the completely dark living room and peeked through the front window to make sure it wasn't someone's house. It was the weird neighbor, with a bonfire in his driveway, just standing with his back to it, staring directly at me.
Now, I hadn't made a sound or anything, and the living room was dark, so there is no way he heard or saw me coming. And yet, he was just staring directly at me. So, being completely freaked out, I went to bed and couldn't fall asleep because I was convinced he was going to murder me. About half an hour later, I heard crunching sounds.
I told myself that it was probably just a raccoon in the driveway, but then I heard the clapping. I looked out from my window to the driveway, and there he was, standing in my gravel driveway, clapping, and staring directly into my bedroom window.
10. Phantom Curtains
When my Mom and I moved to a new house, she had some re-decorating to do. One of the things she wanted to change was to get some new curtains for our bathroom. The curtains in there were torn, dirty, browned, and super ugly. So, she bought some new curtains and put them up. As she is quite short, she couldn't reach our attic entrance, which is where she wanted to store the old curtains—the house was rented, so we couldn't throw them away.
I put the curtains into a box then put them into the attic. All is good. The next day when I come home from school the horrible, dirty, old curtains were back up in the bathroom. The new curtains were nowhere to be seen. I asked my Mom why she had changed the curtains back over, and she told me she hadn’t. When she saw the old curtains back up, she was terrified, and had no idea how it had happened.
It still bothers me to this day.
11. Don’t Mess With Guard Dogs
My brother's girlfriend's nephew was watching his house one day while his parents were out. They had two German Shepherds, and all he really had to do was feed the dogs. A man in his 60s was walking past the house and saw him playing in the front yard, alone. The man asked him if anyone else was home, and he said "No." It was a huge mistake.
The next thing he knew, the man just walked right through the gate, into the yard, and grabbed the kid by his arm! He got about two steps back towards the street before the two German Shepherds came charging out of the house and mauled the man, quite violently. Thankfully, their house had a security system with working cameras, because the guy tried taking them to court.
He claimed that the dogs came out and mauled him while he was “just walking past.” The footage showed the real story.
12. Don’t Take Knives From Strangers
My wife and I went to CreepyCon in Knoxville one year to listen to one of our friends give a panel speech. On our last day in town, we were meeting up with one of my wife's cousins for brunch. We were in a parking lot across the street from the restaurant when a guy walked up to me. He was trying to tell me to park on some side street because it was free, but my wife was already at the pay machine.
Plus, I had already parked and really didn't want to risk a ticket on the word of a stranger. As it turned out, he didn't really care about where we were parking, he just wanted to make some money. He said he had something he wanted to sell me and then he pulled out a knife. I stepped back and looked at my wife, who stayed back, looking terrified.
The man tried to reassure us. He said, "Don't worry man, I'm not going to stab you. Do you want to buy this?" I told him that I didn't really want it and that we didn't carry cash. In his defense, he didn't hurt me.
13. Mail-Order Key
During my sophomore year in college, I lived in a rental house about three-quarters of a mile from campus with some friends. One day, I realized that my house key was missing. Over the course of the next week, I looked everywhere through the house for it—no luck. I even asked my friends several times if they had taken them as some sort of a joke, but everyone was just as bewildered as I was.
Then, I received a package in the mail from my parents. They usually send some sort of care package with candy/coffee/gift cards/etc. to help get through the last few weeks of class, and finals. All of that was in there as expected. I then went to throw the box out and heard something sliding around the bottom. It's a key.
More specifically, it's the key to the front door of my house. My key that went missing the week prior had somehow reappeared in a box delivered from my parents’, hundreds of miles away. They never had a copy of my key and denied ever having put a key in the box. I still think about this sometimes. I've never been able to think of a way that that key could get in there.
The package was completely sealed on arrival, and the key itself had no identifiers to show that it belonged to me or to my house.
14. Ghostly Message
My grandfather passed about two years ago. At one point when both he and my grandmother were alive, they gave my sister a necklace that had belonged to my grandmother. This had to be almost a decade ago, and my sister had long-since lost the necklace. We had even moved as a family, and she had then moved out and gotten her own place since losing it.
About a year after my grandfather passed, my mom and sister came home from a day of shopping and found her missing necklace lying on the floor on the ground floor of our family house. This made ZERO sense, considering that my sister had lost the necklace while we lived in our old house. Also, my sister had moved out and now lived in a new house. So she had moved two times since losing it.
On top of that, the basement had been finished about five years after we moved in, to accommodate my grandfather, who was ill and needed in-home care. So it couldn't have been lying there since we moved in, as the floor had been ripped up and replaced. No one had been home that day. My mom cleans the entire house once a week and surely would have seen it. The necklace was lying in an obvious spot in the middle of the floor.
We have zero explanation. That day did not have any significance to her/my grandfather/my grandmother as far as we know.
15. Late Night Liason
My grandma had Alzheimer’s and possibly also Dementia when she lived with us. Her room was also right down the hallway from mine, so it was really common for me to be woken up in the night to hear her laughing, screaming, or talking. One night, things where different. I could hear her talking. What really disturbed me wasn’t that sound, though, it was something else—someone responding.
I got up to take a closer look, and I noticed that my dog was acting nervous. I went right up to the door of my grandmother’s room to hear things better. She was paralyzed on her right side, so normally I would assume it was just my Mom coming to help her with something, but the responding voice was a male voice.
My Dad didn't live with us, and I don’t have any brothers, nor did this sound like my grandmother’s voice at all. My first thought was that it was my Uncle, but why would my Uncle be at my house? If he was, then there was something wrong with my Grandma, because he would only come this late when there was an emergency.
I also would have heard him coming through the front door. I put myself against the wall and peeked into her room in a way that gave me a clear view, but prevented anyone in the room from seeing me. There was nobody else in there. I got close enough to make out what they were saying, and then I noticed that they were speaking Farsi, not English.
This was the conversation I heard: “They have been treating you well?” “Yes they have been treating me very well.” “Who is the guy in the hallway?” “That is my grandson, he’s a good kid.” “I think the dog sees me.” At this point, I freaked out and made my way back to my room. I thought I was in a nightmare or something and I wanted to wake up.
My first thought was that I could pinch myself, so I tried. That didn't work, so I tried to poke myself with my knife. I know that I did it pretty hard because it left a mark on my hand that stayed for a few days. I tried to go back to sleep and not listen, but I couldn't, and the talking continued. I watched the sunlight begin to come through my window with a very uneasy feeling, as if I was being watched.
My grandma lived for another five years with us, and a few more minor weird things happened, but this one always stuck with me, because it was by far the strangest.
16. Disembodied Music
I occasionally hear faint music in my house. It’s usually when I'm alone or very early in the morning. I hear it from the A/C vent, or from somewhere in my kitchen/laundry room. I can't figure where it comes from. I thought it might be a radio we packed away somewhere, but it would need to be plugged in, or have batteries.
But batteries would have lost juice at some point, and we don't have outlets that high. I am partially convinced someone is living in the attic, but nothing is missing or damaged, and the dogs don't act weird.
17. Silent Stalker
About five years ago, I brought my friend with me up to my parents’ cabin. One day that weekend, everyone went out barhopping while my friend and I stayed behind at the cabin. We were sitting by the fire and suddenly, I saw something big moving through the trees really quickly. It was about 7 PM and summer, so it was still light.
Whatever that thing was, it was big enough to be a bear, so fast it was a blur, and most disturbing of all, it didn't make a noise. After seeing it, I looked over at my friend and asked, "Did that just happen?" He nodded. We looked from each other to the woods a few times, feeling paranoid.
Nothing else happened that night. I think back to that night every now and then, and I'm still not sure what that thing could've been.
18. Someone Like Me
I was shopping with my father once, and we were in line to check out when he realized that he had forgotten something and went to grab it. My two-year-old daughter was looking at the candy when a man got in line behind me. He said to my daughter, “Don’t wander away from mom or someone like me will snatch you.” He didn’t say “someone” would snatch you, he clearly said “me.”
I grabbed my daughter and put her in the cart and he just stood there, staring at her. I was about to leave when my father showed up, thankfully. The man said, “Oh, you’ve got a big guy with you,” got out of line, and left. I felt for sure that his plan was to try to take my daughter when we got to the parking lot. I think my 6’4” tall father made him rethink it.
I still think about that creepy guy to this day.
19. Mom Mimic
A number of years ago, when I was about 13 and my sister was 16, my family and I went camping. The campground we went to was rather large, with a lot of trails, so campers could rent golf carts to help them get around. So it was late one night, and my sister and I were driving down one of the trails alone, and we come to a fork in the path.
To the right was the obviously clear trail; to the left, it looked like a trail, but there was still quite a bit of brush. We took the left trail, drawn by a sense of adventure. After about a minute or two down the trail, we both started getting a very uneasy feeling. It was like that chilling, goose-bumps, adrenaline-rush feeling you get when something completely shocks you, but we couldn’t see anything unusual on the path.
Then, out of nowhere in the dark trees, we both heard the unmistakable voice of our mother say, "Honey, why is your nose bleeding?" My sister whipped the cart around and we sped back to the main trail. When we got back to the trail my sister's nose dripped 3-4 drops of blood and then stopped. We went back to our campsite, saw that our Mother had not left the campsite, freaked out, and called it a night.
To this day neither of us has any kind of logical explanation as to what happened.
20. Secret Room
Not long after my grandparents bought a new house, my grandpa decided to do some work in the cellar to make it into a workshop. It was pretty unfinished, just bare concrete. He figured he would make it into proper rooms. He was working at the front part of the cellar, and ended up chipping away at the wall too much, accidentally making a small opening into another room.
This room is not on the plans of the house from when they bought it. It is underneath the road at the front of the house, yet the local government has no record of a room being built under the road. There is no reason that it should be there. Feeling apprehensive but curious, they made the hole big enough to shine a light in.
What they saw terrified them. There was a bed in there. At this point, they decided to patch up the wall and look no further. I’m set to inherit this house. I have no idea if I want to reopen the room or continue in their path by just pretending that it doesn’t exist.
21. Chocolate Bath
I went on holiday with my parents when I was 7, and they wanted to go out for a meal, so my brother and I went to the Kid’s Club. At the Kids Club that evening, the workers melted loads of Cadbury chocolate, told all of the kids to lie down on the floor, and proceeded to cover our faces, legs, and arms with the chocolate, up to our clothing lines, one by one.
Thinking back to it now, a bunch of adults smearing chocolate over our bodies while we lay on the floor is super creepy and strange. I still think back on that experience to this day. I will never forget my parents’ faces when they picked us up from the Kids Club covered practically head to toe in chocolate. It’s a weird one.
22. Don’t Arm-Wrestle With Strangers
When I was around 8 and my brother was about 13, we were at the county fair. My parents were inside a shop while we were sitting in the outdoor food court, which kind of looks like a big airplane hangar. This sweaty guy approached us, looking to be in his mid-40s, wearing a stained tank top and sunglasses. He started talking to my brother about arm wrestling.
He eventually challenged my brother to an arm wrestle, and he agreed. The whole situation felt insanely odd, but I was only 8, so I didn’t say anything. After the arm wrestle, the guy started talking about how my brother was strong. He told him that there was an arm-wrestling competition going on in a house down the road, and he invited him there.
My brother, thinking it would be cool, decided to get up and follow him. I knew something was wrong though, even though I was so young. The place was very crowded, so I had to act fast before they disappeared. I sprinted inside the shop where my parents were and started yelling about what happened. My dad burst outside and caught the guy and he ran off, leaving my brother behind.
I think I saved my brother’s life that day.
23. Ghost Dad
I was about 12 and it was around 2 AM one night, and I was playing video games online with friends. I was all alone in the house. Suddenly, I heard a door slam, and it was quite loud because I heard through my headphones. I froze in my chair and took off my headphones…and then I heard footsteps. I was sure someone had broken in or something, but I was too afraid to go out of my room to check.
Everything was silent after a few seconds. I finally gained the courage to go check the house. There was no one in our house, the door was locked as it was before, and it seemed like everything was back to normal. I went back to my computer, told my friends I was logging off, and then I tried to go to sleep. It took me ages before I could fall asleep, but eventually, I did.
The next morning, I told my mom about what had happened, and her face went white. She told me she had dreamed about my dad the night before. In her dream, he came to our house, slammed the door, and woke her up with the sound of the slam. She was so excited to see him and she hugged him and kissed him and they had come into my room, where they saw me playing video games.
She said my dad commented on how much I’d grown up, and was really happy to see me. The weird thing about that is that my dad has passed when I was 6. That experience still creeps me out to this day.
24. Send Out the Clowns
So when I was 14, my mom and I moved to a new city. Since our place didn’t have much storage, we were given a space at a separate place in the building, just around a corner. One evening, I went to the storage space around 11 pm to get some old toys. When I opened the door and went inside, what I saw stopped me in my tracks.
There was a middle-aged man dressed up as a clown standing there in the shadows at the back of the room. I swear, he had the craziest look in his eyes. I bolted out of there as fast as I could, told my mom, and she called the authorities. When they arrived, the man was still standing in the corner. He didn’t fight back when the officers detined him.
Apparently he was really high and was just spacing out. They never told me how he had entered the storage space, but they changed the lock after that incident.
25. Go With Your Gut; It Could Save Your Life
In 2010, when I was 20, I traveled from Texas to Toulouse with a connection in Paris. I didn’t speak a lick of French, and it was my first time traveling alone. I had a horrible time navigating baggage and customs, and then finding the gate information for my connecting flight from Paris to Toulouse, so I was relieved when a young man in a uniform with credentials around his neck offered to help me find my gate.
I assumed he worked for the airport. He found my flight and told me how to get to my gate, but then he said that I would have to wait to go through security because I was so early for my flight. He asked if I had ever been to Paris before and I said no, and lamented that I had about seven hours to kill. He told me that he was about to get off work and had a second job as a limo driver, before offering to take me around Paris while I waited.
I was a little intrigued because I was single and he was French and cute and helpful…but a little voice inside told me to think. Luckily, the movie Taken had just come out and I, for the first time in my life, knew what human trafficking was. So I actually listened to the little voice in my head that told me to not be polite and declined the offer. Despite that, he still insisted on staying close by. I finally let him buy me a packet of cookies for a snack.
After chatting for a little while longer, I was beginning to feel uneasy, so I told him I needed to use the restroom. A woman followed me in and informed me that the man I had been speaking to did not work for the airport and that I needed to find an officer right away. She and her husband had overheard parts of our conversation and knew he was up to no good.
When I came out, he was gone and the woman’s husband was talking to security. They let me go ahead to my gate and told me not to leave with anyone. I’m sure I was almost sold into slavery. Thanks for the lesson, Liam Neeson.
26. You Never Really Know Who You’re Talking To
There was this young and really attractive dude, or so I thought, whose profile I came across on a dating app. I was about 20 at the time. We spoke and exchanged pictures and messages, and eventually planned to meet up. He gave me an address where we could meet, and later in the day I took an Uber to that address. But when I knocked, there was no response. No response to my messages either.
I stood around for a while, debating what to do, then noticed that it was really dark and was getting late, so I left. I was disappointed; more about the Uber money than I was about him because it wasn't exactly the cheapest ride there and back. The next day, on the dating app I was using, he sent me some story about “something happening with someone in his family.”
I don't exactly remember it, but thinking back I can't believe I actually believed him when he told me. I stupidly forgave him, and we planned to meet up again at a much earlier time that day. So once again, I went to the same address. I knocked on the door and, once again, I didn't get a response. I spun around to leave angrily, when I noticed an old man sitting in a black car across the street from the house, just staring at me.
He was staring as if I was candy that he just couldn't resist. I walked a little way down the road and waited around a bit longer. The old man was still there, and I could tell he was staring at me. That's when it hit me. HE was the “young and really attractive dude” that I'd been talking to the entire time! I got an Uber to go home, thinking that would be the end of it, but he didn't stop there.
He FOLLOWED the Uber that I was in. I was about to call the authorities, but then, to my relief, he lost us on the highway. I never saw him again after that, but I'll never forget the disgusting look that he had on his face as he was staring at me.
27. Wanted: Exorcist
When I was about 10, my sister brought over two of her friends, who were around 16 at the time. We were bored, so I convinced them all to play hide and seek. I lived in a big house that had several access points to a large attic. The house was also very “spooky” and was visited by priests once while I lived there as a child. The three girls dispersed and went to hide while I counted down from 50.
While counting down, I was interrupted by the most haunting screams I have ever heard in my life. I was petrified. One of the girls sprinted down to the kitchen, screaming and in tears. After calming her down, we asked her what had happened. She said that as she was hiding in the attic, she had seen a demon sitting at the other end of the attic, looking at her.
I never saw her again after that.
28. Real Talk.
The creepiest thing that I can remember is the look on someone’s face after getting shot in the chest. There was no panic, he didn’t make a sound. He just had a wide-eyed look of shock and looked around. I was so shocked that I didn’t have an initial reaction to run away. My buddy had to snap me out of it by saying, “That’s a gun, it’s time to go!”
Then I felt the weirdest, most cold sense of psychotic fear I have ever felt, and ran home. I lived half a block away and didn’t know if the shooter had seen me, so I hid in my closet since it’s possible to see my whole apartment from the ground outside. I don’t like that memory one bit.
29. Late-Night Visitor
When I was a kid, my mom took my cousins, sister, and I to a relative’s house to visit. All the adults went out that night and left a house full of kids behind with a babysitter. We had a good time playing with our distant cousins and when it was time for bed, my sister and I were put in a room with bunk beds with some of the cousins.
All of the younger cousins fell asleep pretty quickly, but one of the older ones and I stayed up talking. When we both started to get tired, all of a sudden we heard a scream and looked up out the window to see a man jumping off of the front porch! Needless to say, we both got freaked out and didn't want to move. However, one of us mustered the strength to get up and run into the living room to get the babysitter.
When we told her what had happened, she called her boyfriend over. He arrived with a pistol and checked all around the house, but didn’t find anyone. They gathered us kids together and we all slept on the living room floor.
30. Close Encounter
When I was around 8 years old, I was spending the night at my grandparent's house with my cousin. We had just finished cleaning up, and my cousin was leaving the room to go brush her teeth. As she walked through the door, it slammed shut behind her, all by itself! I ran to the door to try to open it, but it wouldn't open. It felt like she was holding it shut from the other side.
I banged and kicked the door, screaming at the top of my lungs for her to let me out because the lights were off, and I was still afraid of the dark at that age. What seemed like five minutes passed when, all of a sudden, the room filled with dim beams of light from the windows, the kind of light that comes from an aquarium in a dark room.
I backed up against the door and stared at the windows. I had no idea what was going on! Then I saw two tall, slender, stick figures walk by both windows in the room. These windows were at least 20 feet from the ground. I realized with panic that I couldn't move while watching them. The second figure passed the last window in the room, and I still couldn't move.
All I wanted to do was get out of that room! Suddenly, the light disappeared, and I could finally move again. I swung the door open as fast as I could and ran out of the room, screaming at my cousin. "Why did you hold the door!?" She looked really scared. "I didn't hold the door closed. I thought you closed it and wouldn't let me in. I thought you were playing!"
According to her, I had been trapped for just a couple of seconds. To me, it had felt like 15 minutes or more.
31. Snapchat Stalker
When I was about 13 or 14 my sister, best friend, and I were stalked. The person somehow took pictures of us without our knowledge and sent them to us on Snapchat. The person also knew our bra sizes, where we lived, and what we did every minute of every day. We would all get 5-10 messages on Snapchat daily, and every time we blocked the person, they just found another way to contact us.
We called the authorities, but they told us they could do nothing, as we had no idea who it was. It just slowly wound down eventually, but we never found out the person’s identity. It went on for a solid year. I'm 20 now, and I still think about it.
32. Considerate Dots
I was ten years old and staying at my grandparent's home in India in 1987. The first few nights I couldn't go to sleep because of the heat, and one night while lying awake, I saw two luminous dots moving on the wall in the otherwise pitch-black darkness. They were moving in a single file when the second one suddenly stopped.
The first dot stopped and went back for the second one, and then they continued moving along the wall until they suddenly stopped glowing. I told my grandparents the next day and everyone thought I had been dreaming or hallucinating. I've always thought they were some sort of insects, but they didn’t look like any insect I had ever seen.
Whatever they were, I'll never forget that night.
33. Tailgater
I was in high school and dating my first girlfriend. After a night of hanging out at her place, I left to go home. She didn't live in the best area, and I lived in the suburbs. As soon as I pulled out of her driveway, I noticed there was a car following me. At first, I thought nothing of it, but as I drove home, the anxiety started to build up, as I couldn't shake the car.
I drove around for longer than usual, seeing if the car behind me would lose interest, but he didn’t. I figured I should be able to park and run into the garage to call 9-1-1. I pulled onto my street and into the driveway really quickly…but the car blocked the bottom of my driveway! I ran for the phone and then heard yelling. I recognized the voice.
The creepy driver ended up being the stalker-ex of my girlfriend. He was yelling at me, telling me I could never see her again. My fear turned to anger and I just told him I was dialing 9-1-1 as I held up the garage phone, and he sped off.
34. Phantom Bite
When I was in college, I had four roommates that always went home over the weekend. I was usually alone from Thursday night to Sunday evening. One morning, I made a disturbing discovery when I woke up. There was a full set of human bite marks on my lower back. I shower before bed and moisturize, so I know it wasn't there the night before.
I went to work and showed all my colleagues, who were equally baffled. There was no swelling and it didn't hurt, it just looked liked someone had bit me. By the end of the day, it suddenly disappeared. From then on, I kept hearing knocking noises on my bedroom wall and the wall in the stairway. I would hear and see footsteps on the carpet.
One weekend, my little sisters came over to stay with me, and in the middle of the night they heard a woman screaming and something drop in the kitchen. I ran out to check on them and they were terrified. Early that same morning, my bedroom door was shaking from knocking and I thought it was my sisters, but when I got up, I saw they were still asleep. It only happened to me, and not my roommates.
Eventually, my roommate got a shaman to bless the apartment, and suddenly everything stopped.
35. Don’t Talk to Strangers
I remember being 8 or 9 and riding my bike around my neighborhood all the time. One day, a guy pulled up next to me and asked me for directions to some road. He kept asking me to come closer to his car because he couldn't hear me. I just thought he was weird and said something to the effect of, "I don't know, but I can ask my Mom." He drove off.
A few days later, I was out on my bike again when a panel van pulled up next to me. The side door slammed open and I took off into the woods, terrified, but nobody followed me. At the time, I didn't really think too much of it. I mentioned both incidents to my parents, but I don't think they took it seriously either.
We found out later that a convict was living in our neighborhood. He was eventually taken behind bars again.
36. Out of Body
When I was a child, our next-door neighbor Andrew sadly took his own life by sealing himself in his parents’ garage and running their car until empty while they were away on vacation. When his parents came home, officers and paramedics were called, numerous family members showed up in support, and everyone was crowded near the garage at the far end of the house.
My parents drove by their place at the time while out running an errand, not knowing at all what had happened. They both unmistakeably saw Andrew at the opposite side of the house, observing the crowd and paramedics. They wondered why Andrew was just standing there, so far away from everyone else, only to later find out what had actually happened.
37. Dress Code
I spent a lot of time home alone as a teenager. One evening, I was heading towards the back of the house when I started to feel really uneasy. Then I started freaking out for no real reason. There was a bathroom at the end of the hall and as I got closer to it, I noticed something odd. My reflection was completely normal, moving in the same way I was and everything.
The weird thing though, was that my reflection was wearing a different t-shirt than I was. It was around dusk, so not late at night. The bathroom was well lit by the hallway light, and I wasn't feeling tired or in any way unwell before I started feeling uneasy.
38. Late Night Runner
My brother had a party in college at his place on campus. They had trailers that were on campus and were a part of housing. There were a bunch of parties that night in that area. I was there for a little bit, but I was still in HS and had hockey practice in the morning, so I had to get home earlier. My brother and his buddy were on the porch late at night—like 3-4 AM—when in the distance, in the dark, they saw someone randomly running through the night with a football.
My brother’s buddy even yelled out "Run Forrest, run!" The next morning, they found out the dark truth. The authorities were knocking on everyone's door to interview the people who lived in the area. Apparently, a 13-year-old female had been decapitated by a student the night before, and the head was missing. There was a massive search.
A few weeks later, they were looking at the track and field complex behind where my brother lived, and they found the head when emptying a port-a-potty at the track. My brother is fairly certain that the random guy in the dark running with the football was actually the guy running with the head.
39. Pay Attention to Red Flags
When I was in middle school, we had this assistant principal who was a tad strange. He often would pet people's hair and would always point out dress code violations over the most redundant things. One day on the bus, people started calling him a creep because of something a girl had said. All of the kids spreading the story got in trouble, including the girl, and they were accused of slander.
The assistant principal was later transferred to a new school that had been just built down the road. Fast forward two years and I was eating noodles when the news came on and started discussing how our previous assistant principal was arrested for assault, getting into relationships with minors, and grooming kids. It turned out the girl who started the rumor was one of his victims.
It still bothers me to this day that they shut her up so quickly. On top of it all, she came from an abusive home with a family who hated her and a school who saw her as nothing. We need to listen when people say they are in trouble.
40. Special Delivery
I’m a FedEx delivery driver. About three years ago, while delivering medicine to a trailer park in Vegas, I encountered a man whom I’ll never forget. I had to obtain a signature, so I knocked on the door. Out came an old, overweight, tall, balding man with a yellow crust building up on his goatee. The first thing he said to me was, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you would be delicious.”
I gave him a nervous grin and made small talk to try to change the subject. He realized how nervous I was and started calling me Prince Charming. Never again did I deliver directly to him, but I would see him around when delivering to neighboring homes, and he was always giving me a creepy look.
41. Nightmare Vacation
When I was a kid, my family rented a beach condo for our vacation. The unit next door was a regular residence, and we met the family on the day before we left. They were leaving at the end of the week for their own trip, but the daughter had to work one more overnight shift as a nurse. The dad and the younger kids left that day, and the mother and daughter were going to leave the next morning and catch up with them.
That morning, as we were packing up our own stuff to go home, we started hearing sirens out on the road in front of the condos. As we watched through our windows, several emergency vehicles arrived outside, and eventually an air evacuation helicopter landed on the road. A gurney was rolled out of the unit next door and into the helicopter, and it took off.
A while later, we got the full, disturbing story. The daughter had come home from her shift and found the mother beaten to death. We hadn't heard or seen anything, even though we shared a wall. The creepiest part was that the officers found that the killer had accessed the house by the back porch door, the one facing the beach.
The bedroom my brothers and I were sleeping in was down on the ground floor, with the same porch door leading out to the beach, only a few feet away from the door the killer used. Talking about it later, we weren't even sure we had locked the door that night. We locked our doors every night after that.
42. Shadows in the Corners
One night, I was sleeping over at my friend’s girlfriend’s house. I was having trouble falling asleep, so I decided to get up and play some video games. As I raised my head off the pillow, I froze, my heart pounding. I saw two dark figures standing in the corners of the room. My first thought was, "No way am I getting out of bed", so I lowered my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes.
For some reason, I fell asleep easily after seeing them. I told my friend what I had seen the next day, and he told me that he had seen the exact same figures there before! He said that some days, he would wake up and the Xbox would be on, even though he knew that he had turned it off before bed. His girlfriend claimed that we were both crazy and that she had never seen the figures before.
However, we were certain we saw the exact same figures in the corners of the room.
43. It Started On a Pitch-Dark Dirt Road…
I was coming home from a friend's house at around 10 PM one night, and I didn't want my parents to get mad at me for missing curfew, so I decided to take a shortcut at a dirt road that didn't have any lights. At some point, I saw white, yellow, and red lights coming from within a portion of trees at the side of the road. I stopped the car, believing that someone may have crashed their car and be in need of help.
I opened the car door and stood outside to look for any movement. "HELLO?" I shouted. I was about to go investigate…but then I heard someone running and glass shattering very close to me. I got into the car and drove away as fast as I could, and when I looked back, the seat was full of glass pieces and a rock. Someone had broken my back window!
I got scolded by my parents for my decision to take the dirt road, which was notorious for hijacking. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had fallen for the bait?
44. Paralyzed With Fear
I’ve had sleep paralysis for most of my life. One night, I went out with friends and we went back to my best friend’s house afterward. I slept on the couch and woke up when the sun rose—but I was having sleep paralysis. As I lay there, unable to move but able to see my surroundings, I watched in horror as the blanket covering me began to slowly slip off of me and onto the floor.
Then, my arm began moving away from me, as though someone was pulling it. I could feel the top half of my body slowly sliding off the couch, and was only able to lay there in helpless terror. And then, suddenly, my best friend at the other end of the couch sat bolt-upright and yelled, “Leave her alone!” I woke up immediately and was able to scramble away from the edge of the couch.
He said he thought he was dreaming when he opened his eyes and saw a man wearing what he thought was a black hoodie pulling me off the couch. As soon as he yelled, the man disappeared.
45. Frozen Reflection
Years ago, I had a three by four-foot-tall mirror on a dresser that showed the whole room. I was moving stuff around on the dresser, trying to clean it up, and I noticed in the edges of my vision that my reflection wasn't moving. When I looked up, it went back to normal. I wasn't tired, and it was the middle of a warm beautiful day. I still think it’s incredibly creepy and chilling.
46. The Underwear Thief
When I was in university, living in residence, I was doing laundry on a Friday night, so no one else was around. I put my stuff in the washer and then realized I had forgotten my headphones. I went back up to my room to grab them, so I was gone for maybe five minutes. In that time, someone went through the washer and took only my underwear.
A couple of weeks later, someone started leaving my underwear on the doorknob of my room, pair by pair. It stopped after about two months, but whoever it was never got caught leaving the underwear. They must have known me and known my schedule perfectly.
47. Crazed Fan?
When I was 17, I was really into cosplay. So, one day I was doing a photoshoot with my friends in a park near my house. Since it was super close, I just walked there in my Lucy Heartfelia cosplay. A man in his mid-40s drove past me once, and then I assume he drove around the block, because the next thing I knew, he had pulled over next to the sidewalk I was on.
He called me over and tried to get me in his car, but when I told him I was underage, he drove away. I thought it was creepy but shook it off. I got to the park and we started taking pictures. I was posing when I noticed the man, there at the park, taking pictures of me from behind.
48. Don’t Follow the Light!
We went out to an extremely secluded camping spot years ago. A buddy of mine had this secret site up in the mountains that was literally in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, about an hour off of main roads, with no GPS or map. We arrived and started setting up, when all of a sudden, I saw a single light through the trees about 100 yards away.
It was moving as if it was a headlamp of some sort. When I pointed it out, my buddy shouted “Hello!” towards it, and the movement stopped abruptly. I wasn't that nervous until my friend who's spot it was said he'd never seen another soul in the area in all the years he'd camped there. We called out again, but the light remained motionless.
We were all getting a creepy feeling, concerned about why it wasn't moving anymore. I casually/jokingly commented that if it was me and I wished us harm, I'd have strapped the headlight to a tree and then snuck around behind us. Literally at that moment, a branch snapped about 30 feet behind us, to our left. We immediately threw everything back into the truck without a word and hightailed it out of there without looking back.
49. Midnight Message
One night, I awoke with a start, frozen in place, eyes wide open, having a familiar episode of sleep paralysis. This time, I didn't immediately begin the struggle, because something was different. My gaze was transfixed on the dark silhouette of a woman sitting on the edge of my bed. She had long, dark, stringy hair, and she appeared to be wet from head to toe.
She was reminiscent of a body that had been retrieved from a body of water. When I awoke, it was as if she became aware of my attention, and at that moment she spoke to me. I will never forget what she said, "I am the one you are always with, but you never want to admit." And then she was gone, and I was free.
50. Jack’s Lair?
I had a house in London that was quite old, circa 1835. In the basement, the plaster was cracking and falling off of the one wall. We had to remove it to treat it with a mold-proof membrane. Removing the plaster to bare brick revealed something disturbing: a bricked-up doorway. We decided to open it up to see what was behind it.
It was a small room with a rough wooden bed that all rotted away except for the frame. There was also an upright chair with the back broken. But the creepiest thing was a kind of tailor’s dummy standing on a wooden platform. The dummy had the heart, liver, kidneys, and other anatomical parts drawn on, and each part had been stabbed multiple times.
Mildewed newspaper cuttings were also on the chair, most too badly rotted away to read, but the ones in the center were more preserved. They were ink pictures of women with names like "Florrie Corrigan, the Irish Rose" and "Irene Atkins, the Clapham Nightingale." Whoever the papers belonged to had added some “edits.”
Some had their faces disfigured or slashed. Some had dripping wounds and cuts drawn on them. My wife was fairly freaked out and had the room blessed to remove bad spirits. I try not to think about it.
Sources: Reddit,
