Sometimes, kids go through something so messed up, the only option is to just push it down and try to forget about it—but memory is a funny thing. These adults recalled their freakiest childhood memories, and they're definitely the kind of moments you'd like to forget.
1. Gut Feeling
It was late at night and I heard a car crash outside my house. For some reason, I had a gut feeling about who it was and told my parents, and I was right. But that’s not the creepiest part. It was actually a friend of the family that I had only met once years and years ago, and who did not even live close to us. It was either the hugest coincidence-guess in the world—or something else.
2. The Visitor
I was young, 5-7, somewhere in there. I was sleeping in between my parents for whatever reason. I woke up, I remember the clock reading around 4 am. There was something standing by the window, looking out into the front yard. It looked like a man in a brown wool robe, about 6'4" tall or so.
I started to stir and sat up in bed, and the thing turned and looked at me. Dear god, that face. Extremely pale white skin, lots of really pronounced wrinkles, and the face drooped like it was melting, down into a really pointy chin, almost similar to a Scream mask but with all of the features of a living being. Its mouth was hanging open and its eyes were wide, almost like it was worried or frightened.
It kept its gaze on me while it moved away from the window, in front of the bed, and out the open bedroom door. The second it exited the room, the lights turned on on their own and both of my parents jumped up on either side of me, breathing heavily like they'd both just woken up from a nightmare.
To be clear, I was fully able to move during this, I don't think it was sleep paralysis, but I'm not sure what it could have been other than some kind of demon or really ugly ghost. I've never seen it since, but I can still picture it clear as day.
3. Love Me Some Sweet Milk
It was the early 1990s when I was a kid. I slept over at a buddy’s house for the first time. The next morning we woke up and his mom made us cereal. The milk tasted sweet, even for my childhood taste buds. Something about it all seemed off. Just as my buddy finished his bowl of cereal, his mom came over and turned the bowl on its side to pour the leftover milk from the cereal bowl into a milk carton.
The mom then did the same with hers. I felt my face turn red with shame and embarrassment and my stomach turn. Horrified and confused, I asked, “What is that? What are y’all doing?” He turned to me and said, “That’s our cereal milk.” As it turned out, his ENTIRE family poured all of the leftover milk from each bowl of cereal back into a separate milk carton, specifically for cereal. I drank this entire family’s backwash.
4. Goofing Gone Wrong
A friend and I went to another friend’s house to sleep at night. We were all goofing around, as most 10-year-old boys do, to the point our friend’s dad started yelling at his son. It was a little bit awkward and tense, and then my friend told his dad to “shut up.” That was the wrong thing to say. His dad decided his son needed some old school punishment and made his son pull his pants down, and made us watch as he whipped him a few times on the bare cheeks with his belt.
5. The Great Escape
I remember one night my parents tucking me in to bed and I remember falling asleep. I even remember waking up from a dream laughing that night—it was a good dream.
But some point after that I woke up. When I realized where I was, I was stunned. I was in my backyard laying in my shed. The creepy thing is we had an alarm system that would make a loud ring whenever a door opened in my house. I never heard it go off and neither did my parents or siblings.
It was impossible for me to get out of the house that night without waking up my entire family. My family was quite shaken by this and it scares me till this day.
6. Twist And Shout
My mother had these porcelain bells shaped like milk maids. The bells were under the skirts—weird ornamentation, I know. My mother was rather uptight about decorations in general and blamed me for moving them often. I just assumed it was our cat so I started keeping an eye on them and moved them back if they were out of place.
One night I snuck downstairs to watch TV. I casually checked the bells when I picked up the remote. They were all facing the right direction, approximately in the center of the room as they should be. A few hours later I hear a bell. I swatted in that direction, assuming the cat was playing with the bells again.
I realized immediately the cat had been asleep in my lap and all the maids were now facing the walls. I didn't sneak in any late-night television for a while after that.
7. Are You Afraid Of The Dark?
I was about 7 and my brother was 13 and we still shared a room. I was always afraid of the dark when I was a kid. Periodically I would wake up in the night and call for mom to come and turn on the hall light to be used as a night light—much to the enjoyment of my brother.
One night in the middle of winter I woke up and right before I called out for mom, I made a terrifying realization. I noticed there was a man on the deck that was on the other side of the wall from our bedroom. I froze. I was totally freaked and tried to scream, but I could only make this high pitch squeaking sound. The only thing I could do was cry.
After what seemed like hours, my dad heard me and came in to see what was wrong. The man was gone of course when I told him and he blew it off as a nightmare—but that’s when my brother spoke up. My brother, from under his covers, said that he saw it too.
With that my dad went outside with the baseball bat. There were footprints in the snow outside our window and the window of my parents’ bedroom. That one took a while to recover from.
8. The Memory Sticks Out Like A Sore Thumb
I remember playing in my grandparents' backyard when I was like 6. My grandfather was tending to his garden and I was picking up rocks. One of the rocks I picked up looked weird. I realized it wasn't a rock...it was a thumb. A severed thumb. No blood, but it was hard and pale.
I freaked out and threw it. Then I ran to my grandfather. He searched the area I told him I tossed it but nothing. I swear I know what I saw. I was really put off by rock collecting after that.
9. The Stuff Of Nightmares
When I was little, I would have dreams that came true. I'd dream of someone coming for dinner and then there would be a surprise guest the next day. Stuff like that. Then when I was about 5 or 6, it started to get dark.
I was dreaming about cousins in car crashes or a friend's older sister cutting herself and it all happened within a week or two. It started to freak me out so decided to tell my parents. At first, they tried to calm me down—but then they started noticing it and getting freaked out, which only scared me even more.
And then one day, I stopped dreaming. I haven't had a dream, prophetic or otherwise, since and honestly it kind of scares me to think about.
10. Watched Over
When I was a kid, my mom would keep my bedroom door cracked and leave the hallway light on for me. The night-light wasn't enough for me, I guess. One night I remember waking up to the sound of someone calling my name softly from outside my bedroom. It was a woman's voice, but not one I recognized. Also, the light in the hallway was much brighter than normal. Very bright.
I wasn't scared at all but the voice kept repeating my name softly for some time until it faded away and the light in the hallway faded back to its regular brightness. Then I just laid back down and went back to sleep. I still remember it clear as day. I do remember telling my mom about it to see if it was her but she said no and told me it was probably just a dream even though I swore it wasn't.
Shortly after that I got into a really bad car accident with my mom and aunt. They both were badly injured but I only had a few cuts and bruises. I also was the only one in the vehicle not wearing a seat belt. My mom later told me that it was probably a "guardian angel" that visited me before the accident. I was six at the time.
11. Told You!
My dad was sick of me being scared of the dark and shut my door with no lights on. What happened next was seriously terrifying. Like less than a minute later I felt scratching and biting all over me. I screamed, and he ran back in and I had scratches all over me but we couldn't find anything that could cause that in my room.
It could’ve been a vivid dream where I self-inflicted those injuries but I'm a pretty light sleeper, and nothing similar has happened since. It still bothers me.
12. Lost & Found
I was about six years old at the time and we were at an old cemetery where my mom was trying to find an old grave of a relative. She couldn't remember where the gravestone was and was standing still, looking around. While she was standing there, I suddenly felt compelled to run off in a certain direction.
I kept running among the headstones until the feeling to stop came over me. I came to a stop in front of a headstone and looked at it to find that it was the headstone of the person my mom was looking for.
13. Firestarter
When I was 10 years old, I stayed the summer with my Aunt Joan in Heath, Ohio. Her home was really old and spooky. It had the creaky doors, dark basement, attic, and standard horror movie vibe going on. Lots of my relatives were freaked out being there, but I always enjoyed it.
My aunt and I were preparing dinner one night when a framed picture in the dining room fell off the wall. I asked who the bearded man in the photo was since I hadn't seen him before. Her answer was horrifying. She firmly told me to not ask about the person in the photo because they "died angry, and stayed angry". Okay then…
About halfway through dinner, my aunt went into the kitchen to get dessert, so (being a little twerp) I took the opportunity to ask Uncle Mark about the guy in the photo. He stopped chewing and looked at me with annoyance clearly written on his face. "What did your Aunt say about that thing”?! He barked.
I kind of winced because Uncle Mark was typically a very low-key kind of guy. My aunt walked into the dining room, ready to chastise me as well, when a dish towel on the table began to smolder, finally erupting into flames. Uncle Mark slowly stood up and smothered it with his napkin.
He didn't say a word to me, but he promptly raised his voice to his wife in the other room. Neither one mentioned it again and I wasn't invited back for anything other than whole family trips. My Uncle Mark is nearly 90 now and has suffered from dementia for some time.
My only interaction is to send him a card once a month. Last Christmas he was pretty chatty and I got the nerve to ask about that night from my youth. What a mistake. He became very still and asked me "Do you want James to burn this whole house down”?! My parents both told me to "let it go".
14. Deep In The Forest
I was out at our cabin in the remote mountainous wilderness of Colorado with my dad, and had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. This necessitated a flashlight and shoes, because the outhouse was far away. There was no one but me and my dad for miles in any direction. Or so I thought.
I suddenly heard voices in the distance and stopped in my tracks. It seemed to be coming from my right, deep in the woods in the middle of nowhere a quarter of a mile from the road. Being 11 and unafraid of the world, I foolishly yelled "Who's out there”? There was silence for a few seconds, then a shouted string of profanity so vulgar it terrified my virgin ears.
I stood stock still for a moment like a terrified rabbit but heard nothing else, so I ran back to the house and woke my dad up. He got up, loaded his gun, and turned all the lights on, but we never heard another sound. To this day, we have not seen or heard another person within 15 miles of the cabin.
15. Looking For Help That Won’t Come
I lived in Pennsylvania and my house was always creepy. My parents joked around that it was haunted. One day though, their jokes proved to be true. I was playing basketball like a normal kid when all of a sudden, a little girl starts running at me. She was drenched in blood and she was screaming for help. She shrieked, "Help me please”!
I ran inside to get my mom and help the girl. We went back outside and she was gone. Since that day, we didn’t speak of the incident until a couple of years ago. One day I looked up that old house after we’d moved. That’s when I made a chilling discovery.
Reports came up of a girl who perished after a car crash who had lived in that house. I clicked on a picture of her and it was the same exact girl that came up to me that day I was playing basketball. I mentioned it to my parents and they were already aware, and we were all convinced that house was haunted.
16. Do Not Disturb
As a kid we played in the basement a lot. The floor was open and cement so we could roller skate around. Also the walls were either dirt or brick so we were allowed to shoot BBs at targets. Basically, I wasn't scared of the basement at all as a kid.
One day my sister was in a side room that had jars of peaches and pickles. Dirt cellar type room, stayed cold even in the summer. She wouldn't let me in and I was sure she was eating peaches. I could see her feet under the crack of the door and I stuck my fingers under and she messed around with my fingers and giggled.
I felt that her fingers were wet and I said "don't eat all the peaches, I want some”. That’s when things turned creepy. She pushed down on my fingers SO HARD and it hurt and she was grunting and basically freaking out. I started screaming and tugging.
Finally I pulled my hands back and she was quiet. She then kicked the door really hard. I ran upstairs to tell on her. I couldn’t believe what I saw. There she was with my mom in the kitchen. It was pretty freaky. No one believed me. In fact my mom just said my imagination had gotten away from me and to forget about it.
17. Flesh Tunnel
I went to a girls' sleepover when I was in elementary school for a friend's birthday. We had a great time laughing and telling scary stories before bed. I woke up the next morning with a fever and terrible nausea. I went home and I was only getting worse. I had a huge spot on my leg right in the middle between my ankle and knee. It was hot, puffy, and red.
I went to the hospital. The doctor initially thought I was bitten by a spider, but it turned out I was suffering from a really bad staph infection. The night before, we were playing on the stairs, when I slipped and scraped my leg. The infection was spreading fast and was eating away at my flesh. I had a tunnel up to my knee cap that had to be packed with fresh gauze every day. I almost lost my leg.
18. Whirling Dervish?
I had a friend that I would sleepover with relatively often. One night after we had gone to sleep, he turned a lamp on, stood directly in front of the area where I was sleeping, and just spun in place while making weird noises. I asked him what he was doing and he talked about being possessed. I laughed because I thought it was funny. He kept going for about an hour, long after I had expressed that I was tired and asked him to stop.
He kept saying that he couldn’t since he was possessed. Eventually, I turned over and tried to fall asleep, despite it all. The following morning, he insisted that it had not happened. He had never walked in his sleep during a sleepover before, and to my knowledge, he didn't make a habit of it. No matter how much I pressed, he wouldn't admit to doing it. It was very disjointed and unsettling.
19. Poking Around
When I was a child, my grandparents' house always creeped me out. I was terrified of the basement, and there was something off about the rest of the house. Once when I was 10, my mom and I were sleeping in my Grandpa's bed. I couldn't sleep and I was facing the middle of the bed so the back of my head was near the space between the bed and the wall/window.
All of a sudden, I feel something poke the back of my head twice. I was petrified and froze so I never turned my head to see what was poking me. To this day I don't know what could have happened but I can still feel those pokes.
20. No Thanks
It was definitely one of the strangest experiences in my life. When I was 10-12 years old, I was in my room preparing to fall asleep. The lights were already out and I was facing the "open" room with my face and my back to the wall. Suddenly someone sighed directly into my face. I heard it AND I felt it—a sudden gust of air.
I thought it probably was just my dog sitting in front of my bed and sighing to demonstrate how "sad" he is because he wants to sleep in bed with me. I stretched my hand in the darkness to pet him when it hit me that he couldn't possibly be in the room. I let him out before going to bed—he slept mostly in my parents’ room—and closed my bedroom door.
God...I’m still getting chills when I think about how scared I felt, but as all kids do, I just covered 100% of my body with blanket...because you know, monsters won't get you then...and eventually fell asleep.
In the morning after this unpleasant event I woke up when it was already bright to strange sounds, like something or someone is scratching the carpet under my desk. I couldn't see it from the bed. I got scared again but this time made warning noises and threw the books from my bed in that direction, trying to scare it off.
After a while noises stopped and I could stand up and run to my parents. I never experienced anything similar after that ever again.
21. A Shared Experience
I was young, maybe 8. Just so you know, I always go to sleep in my bed and I'd never, ever fall asleep on the couch. My grandpa died and we got back from his funeral. That night I went to bed, in my room as usual, but I woke up in the middle of the night on the living room couch.
When I looked up, I saw my grandpa's ghost. It wasn't scary or anything, at the time it felt natural. He didn't say anything but there was this understanding between us. I went back to my room and went back to sleep. I would've assumed it was a dream but it was so vivid and real that it stuck with me for years—especially since I woke up on the couch, which made the moment stick out even more in my mind.
It wasn't even a "I saw a ghost”! moment. It was just a weird vivid memory that seemed so normal at the time that I didn't think anything strange of it—until much later. When I was about 20 I told my mom that story and she said "Was it the day of his funeral? Because I saw his ghost that night too”. That messed me right up.
22. Who Is Mr. Frost?
When I was 7, my dad had bought a pocket watch that came with its own stand. He put it on top of our TV, since we didn't have any other clock in the house besides the bedroom just yet (we had just moved in two weeks earlier). Me being me, I got up in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep to get a quick late-night snack.
I sneak halfway across the living room when I notice that the pocket watch's tick was getting louder and louder. I stopped to inspect it, didn't seem to be that bad, I ignored it, got my snack, started heading back. Again, I heard the tick of the pocket watch getting louder and louder. I stopped again, then heard the following sung in a song:
"Mr Frost is a bad man, Mr Frost is a snitch. Mr Frost is a bad man, beat us within an inch”. I bolt to my room, hide under the covers and refuse to come out. Ever since then, I've hated that pocket watch. I've tried many times to search for someone named Mr Frost in my area and nothing has come up.
23. Playback Time
I went to a girl’s sleepover when I was about eight years old. There were three of us. The girl’s dad put an audio recorder under the teddies on top of her cupboard when he came in to hand them out. We were talking about crushes at school and such. The next day he played the recording out loud to wake us up, laughing, and listening closely to what we were talking about, in front of us.
24. A Terrible Birthday Present
I am the first and only grandchild in my family, so my grandma was always very fond of me. She was always planning birthday parties for me, and every year she said she couldn't wait for me to turn 15 because it's a very celebrated birthday in my country. When I turned nine, I made a terrifying prediction to her. I ominously told her that she wouldn't make it till then, and that in fact, she would only be there for my tenth birthday.
I have no idea what made me say that. But the prediction came true. She passed exactly two weeks after I turned ten. My whole family still remembers this to this day.
25. Hiding Behind A Costume
Many years ago, I was looking for a Halloween costume with my mom to wear to elementary school. This occasion was a big deal to me, because I was homeschooled before that. We spent a couple of hours going to several stores, and couldn't find anything that I liked. It was getting dark outside, so we were going to have to find something and go home soon.
There was an old Halloween costume store, one of those really weird places that somehow is open year round. We decided to go in and check it out, as a last ditch effort to find something. We got out of the car and walked through the front doors. We then get up the steps to go into this place and something comes over me that I still can’t explain.
I felt huge, unbearable pressure all over my whole body, like the physical feeling of being hated by something. Imagine that feeling, combined with a sense of something wanting to hurt me and wanting me to leave. My little third grade self turned to look at my mom, and in the same instant she turned to look at me. It was extremely freaky.
We didn't say a thing to each other. We just turned around and went back to the car, after only walking three steps into the store. I remember getting inside the car and asking my mom if she had felt the same thing that I did. She said that she had essentially had the same exact experience as me. We prayed together in the car and left.
As an adult, I can still remember how bad it was. And I am getting tensed up just writing about it. On the bright side, I did end up with a costume that year though. We went home and my mom stayed up late with me working to cobble together a cowboy costume from the things we had at home.
26. Just Saying Hi
I was like 9 years old. I was sleeping in my parents’ bed. At that point I think it was a Saturday morning and my dad had gone bike riding with his friends real early and I woke up and got in bed with my mom. I was having a bad dream and I woke up and looked around and went to go pee. When I got back into the bed there was a white pale hand waving at me from behind the closet.
I thought I was dreaming but I was so shocked I couldn't do anything. I kind of put it in the back of my mind—until a year later, when I made a disturbing discovery. My older cousin said she had seen a hand waving at her behind her mirror when I was at her house. It made me realize I really experienced that and didn't imagine it.
27. It’s Miller Time
The house I grew up during a large portion of my childhood was built sometime in the 1930s. It was pretty big, which was great for a kid like me who loved to explore. Problem was that all throughout the house, I would routinely get this creepy vibe—like as if someone were watching me, or this overwhelming feeling that I wasn't safe and needed to leave particular areas.
Now, it could have had just been an overactive imagination. Kids are definitely prone to having those. Problem was I wasn't exposed to scary movies or stories as a kid; I think my parents recognized how scared I would get by my own imagination, and I couldn't even fathom how bad it would be to actually see or hear something.
Still, even as an adult now looking back, there are two particular events which I can't possibly explain. Both of them involved the basement, which I'll mention was primarily unfinished.
The first incident was on a weekend. My Dad and I were sitting in the living room watching NASCAR, and during a commercial break he asked me to get him a Miller. Unfortunately for me he kept it down in the basement in this little mini-fridge, and I was already kind of scared of going down there. Not wanting to upset him by telling him no, I went for it anyway.
Before I even made it to the steps I was already getting that feeling that I shouldn't go any further, and that I should immediately turn right around, but I kept going on. As I got to the basement steps that fear continued to grow and grow. You know that feeling you get when you can just tell that someone is staring at you? Like a sixth sense, your spine gets kind of tingly and you have this overwhelming feeling to look in the direction, that's what I was experiencing tenfold.
When I finally reached the bottom of the steps I was almost completely paralyzed with fear, I slowly turned my head to the left towards where the open/dirt area was and said “Hello”? As soon as I said that two red glowing orb things emerged from that dark part. I'd say they were eyes, but I can't be sure. I didn't study them long enough before I ran up the steps as fast as I could.
My Dad must have heard my running. He met me in the hallway and asked what was going on. I told him about what I saw, and he immediately headed down there. I think he might have thought it was an animal or something, but after a few minutes he emerged with a can in hand and telling me it was nothing.
The second event took place a year, maybe a year and a half later. It was during the summer, and my family and I were outside (Dad, Mom, younger brother, and myself). I had to use the bathroom and headed inside using the front door, as I had refused to use the side door since that previous event.
When I went to go back outside, though, I had the thought I'd try and be brave and face my fear. I headed towards the side door, sat at the top of the basement steps, and waited. It didn't take long for me to get those same feelings all over again. I shouldn't be there, something was watching me, I needed to leave immediately.
I was truly tired of the fear though, I wanted to be brave and face whatever threat was down there, so I stayed. But as soon as I had made that determination I saw a shadow dart across the wall opposite of the handrail. It was human, looked male, seemed extremely large. No real fine details, again not enough time as I immediately bolted out the door.
I told my Dad about it, this time he seemed a bit more concerned. I didn't follow him into the house, but I did hear him grabbing a baseball bat before he descended down. Just like last time, though, he emerged, nothing to be found.
There were other events, but those were the two primary ones. I still have nightmares about that place too. They are always so odd. Before they involved me being inside the house already and going down to the basement to face whatever was down there. That's ended, and now I'm always outside the house. The weather is odd, like it’s not sure if it wants to be night or daytime.
I have this feeling like I need to go in the house and explore it further. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
28. On The Ball
When I was young, I apparently had a few odd interactions with animals. For example, I would always know that a person had animals before we went into the house. They also tended to come over to me before my parents. These events were mostly just little things that were probably explainable by me being a fairly observant little kid.
The one that sticks out to my parents, though, is the time we went to a new car garage to have them work on our car. As we pull up, the owner has a big old black lab dog laying in the middle of the lobby. The guy informs us that the dog is comfortable with people, and that we can pet him if we want. I shake my head and say "He’s sad, though."
My dad looks at me and asks why I think that. I reply, "He lost his ball, so he’s sad now." My dad said that the owner immediately went pale, stared at me for a minute, and then looked at my dad and said, "He's had a favorite ball for ten years that just went down the sewage drain yesterday, and I couldn't get it back out." I have no idea how I could possibly have known that!
29. The Friendly Ghost
When I was six or seven years old, I was out with my mom. When we returned home, as I was walking towards my room, I heard someone say hi to me. So, being six years old, I assumed it was my dad and said hi back. I then went to my parents’ room, only to find that it was empty. The weirdest thing is that my mom also heard someone say hi, so I wasn't hallucinating or anything like that. It never happened again, and I still don't know what happened that day.
30. Look, Up In The Sky!
One time, my brother, his friend, and I all saw some lights up in the sky that darted around like UFOs. We went to get my mom and she was totally nonchalant about it. "Yep, those are UFOs," she said, and went back into the house. Her response was so subdued that we figured she was humoring us and that they weren't actually UFOs.
Years later, I asked her about it. That’s when she told me that she had to force herself to act calmly that day because of how terrified she was.
31. Lonely Old Nana
I stayed over at my best friend's house almost every week when I was in elementary school. Their grandmother lived with them and everyone treated her like a burden. They told me she was crazy and mean but she was always very kind to me, and because I was raised to be nice to my elders, I was kind in return. One day, when my friend had to go talk to her mom about something, the grandma asked me into her room.
I had never been in there and it was decorated completely differently from the rest of the house. I could tell she had moved an entire house’s worth of stuff into one bedroom. I can’t remember our conversation, but she gave me a little metal bracelet and asked me to hide it from the family. I was scared to wear it, as I didn’t want my friend to get mad.
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32. All Tied Up
When I was 12, I slept over at my supposed best friend's house. Her then 17-year-old brother played his music very loudly and then shook his junk in my face. My friend and her brother then tied me to a chair and made me watch a movie that freaked me out. After that, they proceeded to laugh their butts off when I woke up in the middle of the night screaming from a nightmare. I’m not friends with her anymore.
33. A Man’s Garage Is His Castle
I had a best friend with a big house. His dad was a HUGE garage dad. He had his brand new fishing boat that he cleaned every day in there, all his trophies, life relics, everything was in the garage. The floor of the garage was nicely carpeted, and legit everything in there was spotless. Anytime I went over, his dad spent most of his waking hours in that garage.
My friend, his brother and I somehow got into a "water battle" with the garden hose and some super soakers. I can't remember how or why it started, but as you can guess, we moved our battle into the garage and left the garden hose running inside. We must've left it running from lunchtime, and his dad didn't come home until 5 or 6 pm.
I'll never forget the earth-shattering screams and wails I heard. My friend's mom just closed her eyes, sobbing, as my friend and his brother begged for her to do something while their dad dragged them into that garage. The screams and yelling from the dad inside the garage continued for the entire hour it took for my parents to come and pick me up.
34. Swim Date Scuffle
I was meant to stay the night with a kid just a few doors down from my grandparents’. He lived with his grandparents and his grandpa was a facilities manager at an upscale apartment complex and offered to take us swimming there for the day. His grandfather dropped us off at the main pool and said he’d be back in a while.
The pool was Olympic-sized and simply had too many people, so we decided to explore and ended up at a smaller pool on the property elsewhere. We were swimming, having a good time and everything was great—that is, until he started a splash fight. We were going back and forth and then he started screaming at me at the top of his lungs. Then he went too far, and I knew I had to act.
He ends up cornering me and tries to push me under the water, still screaming. I wrestle myself free and hit him square in the nose. His nose started bleeding like Niagara Falls and he started cursing at me repeatedly as loud as his lungs could muster. I got out of the pool and grabbed my things and headed back to the front of the complex. People were staring and trying to calm him down. He started walking after me, hands at his sides in fists, covered in blood from his nose.
I make it back to the front of the complex and am desperately trying to get someone to let me use a phone to call home. No one would listen. They’re enamored with the screaming kid who, by the way, is still lumbering after me. He’s a mess. Out of nowhere, his grandfather appears and snatches him up and disappears with him through a door. I was still trying to get someone to let me use a phone when his grandfather reappeared.
He asked me what happened then told me he has to take the kid home, and that I can’t go with them. They finally let me use the phone. My parents didn’t answer, so I ended up getting ahold of my aunt who was still working and couldn’t come to get me for another two hours. The office wouldn’t let me stay inside so I was outside in the parking lot standing around waiting, still having no idea what happened.
My aunt showed up and off we went. When I got home, I got yelled at for being so far from home. A few days later my mom went to talk to the kid’s grandfather. She came back and told me that we couldn’t hang out anymore. She told me that he needed medication to keep him calm and that he had missed his dose that day. The situation wasn’t my fault. I never saw him again.
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35. The Orb
I was about five or six. One night my parents and I were watching TV in the living room of our ranch style house in the suburbs in the Midwest. A strange light coming from the hallway got our attention. In the bedroom at the end of the hall there was a 1x1 foot glowing orb of light floating about three to four feet from the floor, illuminating the dark room.
The orb seemed to realize it was being observed and moved very quickly and before we knew it the orb was outside like it had passed through the wall or windows. It then very quickly went around the house, jumping or passing through two 6-foot fences in a matter of seconds. We saw it do this through the windows and our dog started freaking out.
My dad freaks out and grabs his revolver and a flashlight and storms outside. It had rained recently and there was mud outside but no evidence of foot prints or anything to rationally explain it. While the event is family legend now, my mom thought it was a ghost or spirit, my dad thought it was aliens, and quite frankly I have no idea.
I lean towards ball lightning but it seemed to have at least some level of intelligence and seemed to make deliberate, not random movements.
36. These Boots Were Made For Walking
Between the ages of five and 10, I would randomly wake up at my grandparents’ house from time to time. We lived only six blocks away. When I was a teenager, it was confirmed that, as a child, I had an issue with sleepwalking. I knew where my grandparents’ house key was kept, of course. So I would go to bed normally in my home, and then in the middle of the night I would walk to their house without knowing.
I would then unconsciously unlock the door, go to the couch or to my old room, and lay on the floor until morning.
37. Wax Museum
When I was about nine or ten years old, my dad took me to visit with an older hunting buddy friend of his one time. My parents were divorced and my dad lived in a completely different part of the country. So while I had known this guy since I was a toddler, I didn't share any of the same common interests as either of them.
The older friend was an arms dealer and had lots of catalogs. This was before the internet was in wide use. The catalogs allowed people to order bullets, magazines, ammo, etc. People often spent hours going through listings to determine what they wanted to order. We got there fairly early and my dad said that after an hour or two we'd all go to Hardee’s for breakfast before going to shoot clay birds.
Now, I'm a kid. I don't care much about guns or hunting for sport, and am just incredibly bored throughout this whole experience. So I start wandering around the house, reading my video game magazines that I brought with me. Very quickly, that hour or two has passed and they're still down there. I ask if they're going to leave any time soon.
The friend suggests I check the refrigerator in the kitchen and see if there's anything I want to eat. I look through the fridge and find nothing. However, on the kitchen table, I see an apple and decide that it will be appetizing enough to hold me over until we can leave. As I pick up the apple and prepare to take a bite, his wife comes running into the room.
She screams, "Don't eat that! Everything in the bowl is wax!" I tell her thank you for warning me, and continue to wander around the house burning time until we can get going. Maybe another 30 minutes later, I go back to the basement where they're going through catalogs and ask when we are going to Hardee's. My dad’s friend asks if I'm still hungry after going through their fridge.
I tell him that I was going to eat an apple, but his wife told me it was wax before I made the mistake. Both of them give me a blank stare. After about 20 awkward seconds of shock my dad explains that his wife had recently passed. I then go back through the house to try to find her and show that they were just joking with me, but sure enough she was nowhere to be found.
Roughly 30 years later, before he himself passed, my dad still insisted that I must have imagined the whole thing. But I didn't. She told me not to eat the wax fruit.
38. The Big Sleep
I’m a parent of toddlers and kids now, and I have a creepy story from last year. We were driving with my then three-year-old son in the car, and we stopped at a red light next to a cemetery. Out of nowhere, my son looked over at the cemetery and said something so disturbing, it’s impossible to forget. He told us: “There are people laying down there, and they can’t get up!” We all kind of shuddered and didn’t know how to react.
My wife asked my son what he was talking about, and he again pointed to the cemetery and said, “All of the people laying down in the park are stuck.” My wife and I just looked at each other in silence. We were both completely freaked out. At this point in our son’s life, there had been no recent losses in the family and we had never discussed the concept of passing away with him.
I’m still creeped out when I think about it.
39. A Dangerous Game
My friend's older brother pulled his Colt out and started waving it around. My friend and I were playing Nintendo. His brother thought it would be funny to scare us so he pointed the freaking thing at us. We screamed and said to stop, but he laughed and said it wasn't loaded. He pointed it at my friend and pulled the trigger. But he was wrong. It was loaded.
The brother shot my friend in the face from point-blank range. He didn’t make it. I still have nightmares about it now as an adult.
40. Field Of Nightmares
When I was 10 years old, I often visited a friend who lived around four miles away from me. To get there, I had to walk next to a huge cornfield with only a couple of houses on the side of it. After spending some time at his house, I had to walk back home. The street I walked on was mostly empty and there was rarely anyone walking their dog or jogging there.
So I was alone on it with no one around most of the time. The houses were always empty and looked like people simply left them behind and nobody new moved in, with windows barricaded and doors always shut. One day, I walked back home and my shoelace came loose. I bent over to tie it. All of a sudden, it happened. I saw a shadow reaching over me.
I quickly looked behind me and saw an old lady with short black hair. She was standing right behind me and had the scariest smile. She then started reaching for my shoulder, only a few inches away from me. I immediately started to run for my life, only turning around one more time to see her still standing there and still staring at me with her evil smile.
I ran all the way to my house and broke down crying when I got home. My parents told me that nobody lives in those houses. I walked by the house a few more times over the last 11 years, but I have never seen anyone near that house ever again and it is still empty. I have no explanation for what happened that day. But I get shivers just writing this story.
41. Not As Imaginary As You Thought
As a young child, I used to have an imaginary friend. My parents found that cute and, one day, they decided to ask me what this imaginary friend looked like. I said he was a grown up man who always looked very sad. They asked around and a neighbor informed them that the renter before us had fit that description. They also informed them that this man had taken his own life.
42. Classic Wool Eyes
My family lives in a super rural part of east Tennessee, and we have a family homestead that's been passed down for generations called the Turley House. Legend in the family has it that it was a civil war hospital, which I can totally see because it's absolutely ancient and creepy.
We also have a legend in the family that we're all haunted by a demon/spirit/god-knows-what called Wool Eyes. He's so prominent in our family's history that he's just a fact of life at this point, so it's not unusual to hear somebody say something like, "Oh look, Wool Eyes is at it again. He must be upset".
One of the creepy experiences I had growing up has to do with the never-ending rosebush. There were two rosebushes on the corner of the house that weren't very big. I have some distinct memories of playing around them and getting absolutely lost in the rosebushes, running in circles for hours and hours at a time.
Eventually I would find my way out, but it would be hours later and my mom would be super angry that I was gone for so long. I never really thought much of it because kid logic, but I asked my mom about it years later and she said that all the kids in the family have stories about getting lost in the same spot.
Everybody always blamed it on Wool Eyes, saying he was just having fun messing around. I wish I could go back and explore the house some. It’s got some crazy stories through the years.
43. The Other “It”
When I was around 6 or 7, my family and I lived in a two-storey house with all the bedrooms upstairs. My mom would always send me to her room to collect diapers (my brother had just been born) and of course, my parents’ room was at the very end of the hallway.
I remember I had this distinct feeling that I could never recall, I just knew it when I felt it. The feeling was a warning sign that "it" was coming. Don't ask what the heck "it" was because I had no clue. When "it" was coming, I would get comfortable (lie on a bed or sit down) and close my eyes. I had to close my eyes though—under no circumstances could they be open.
I felt like it was forbidden to look at it. It was a like a set of rules that I had to follow or else something would happen. I was too scared to question it. "It" would slowly come in (the feeling would grow as it got closer) and it would come from the hallway through the door. I felt like it was floating because I could never hear footsteps. "It" would literally just talk to me, that’s it.
The subjects would range from small talk to something extremely creepy, like my mother's death. It would usually ask me questions like "How was your day" but I would never answer because, again, I was frozen with fear. At this point, I would wait and listen until I couldn't feel its presence anymore. Only then would it be safe to open my eyes and move.
It was weird because I seemed to forget the experience until the next one. After "It" left, I would just continue on with what I was doing like nothing had happened. The only time I'd actually acknowledge it was when the feeling would wash over me and I'd realize that I messed up by being alone.
I really don't remember much. Everything would kind of blur together (pretty much all my memories from then are like that), I only remember my thoughts and feelings at that time.
44. A Close Call
When I was about four and my brother was around two, we were playing outside in the front yard. We had a sprinkler so me and my brother were running around in it. I guess my mom was busy or taking a nap because she didn’t come outside while we were out there. I remember a man and a woman in a car driving down our private road. They stopped and called us over.
I remember them taking a few pictures and laughing and asking where our parents were. At this point my little brother had decided to take off his trunks and was running around. They kept taking pictures and told us to be safe and left.
I remember when I told my parents they were so mad and I thought I had done something wrong. Looking back now, I’m surprised we didn’t get kidnapped or something.
45. The Sixth Sense
Since I was born, up to when I was around 18, I could see and feel things that no one around me would. My parents discovered I had that weird power of sensing things that they couldn't and told me I was making it up, but knew I was right. They tried to force me into believing that the things I saw or sensed were just my imagination.
We lived in my aunt's house for a few months when I was around 7. Our bedroom door, which didn't have an actual door but the space where the door would go, was across from my aunt's bedroom door, and I could see my aunt's bed, where she was sleeping with her husband, from my bed where I was sleeping with my parents.
It was about 2 am when I started hearing a noise that sounded just like an airplane that is going to land. It kept getting louder and closer. I woke up my parents because the noise was getting too loud, and they said they didn't hear anything and got upset at me for waking them up. So they moved their heads to where their feet were and told me not to wake them up again.
At that point I got really scared, because I could hear this loud noise and all I can hug is my parents’ feet. Suddenly a bright light lightens up my aunt's bedroom, but the light only lit the bedroom and would not light any other part of the house. I could hear the airplane hovering outside my aunt's bedroom. We lived on the second floor.
Scared of the situation, I decided to close my eyes. Next thing I see when I open my eyes is this white transparent person shape thing that walks to my aunt and sits on the edge of her bed, waking her up but not her husband—but it got ten times worse. She then sits up on the bed and they start having a conversation.
I could hear them talking but I couldn't hear what they were saying clearly. After a few minutes, the thing walked to the window, which had iron bars for security, and walked through it. My aunt went back to sleep, the lights from outside turned off, and the hovering airplane noise started sounding like it was going away.
The next day while we all were having lunch, my aunt mentioned that Anthony, her brother/my uncle who I was named after and who passed after a brain tumor when I was one, came to visit her one last time to tell her that he will not visit her anymore because he was going on a long journey.
46. Dark Waters
I was about 8 or 9 when this happened. My family had a boat that we trailered back and forth from Lake Hopatcong in NJ. We were coming in from a day on the lake and it was already dark. I was obsessed with fishing at that age and the dock was a great spot to fish, so as my family was getting the boat hitched to the trailer I decided to throw some casts out.
I noticed some activity in the water about 30 yards from where I was standing which was about 60 feet from the boat ramp my family was hitching the boat at. I threw my line towards what I thought was fish feeding/jumping and whatever was causing the activity turned towards where I was and started swimming towards me with a kind of serpentine motion.
It was too dark to make out any distinctive features except a large head. I got the heck out...dropped my fishing pole and ran. No one believed me at the time but 20 years later my story hasn't changed and I still wonder what that thing was.
47. Thanks, I Guess?
I was in my grandma's car, in a parking lot. Grandma and Mom went into the store to grab something while I stayed behind. I rolled down the window for fresh air, but this caused the car alarm to go off. Some middle-aged guy walked up to the car and asked me if he should turn the alarm off, so I said yes. He then pulled out a fob and turned the alarm off.
I'm not sure how one is able to turn off somebody else's car alarm. It’s strange enough that I’ve never forgotten it.
48. Woke Up On The Wrong Side Of The Bed
I remember I used to sleep with a lot of blankets on my bed (top bunk) during winter, but when summer came around, I was too lazy to fold up the blankets and store them in the closet. I would just kick them to the end of the bed and leave them there. Back when I was a kid, I never made my bed either, because trying to make the top bunk was frustrating, and it's above eye level, so who cares?
Anyway, at the time I had a big down-blanket and a soft, fleecy one. It was summer, but I slept under the down blanket because it was a cold night. In the middle of the night, in a half awake/half asleep trance, I woke myself up because I was just patting my blankets on my stomach. I had no idea why I was doing it, but I recognized instantly that I was under the fleece blanket, not the one I went to bed under.
I rationalized that in the heat of the night, I kicked the covers off the side of the bed and when I got too cold, pulled the fleece blanket up from the foot of the bed. I shrugged it off, giving my subconsciousness kudos for almost fixing the problem without waking me up. The second thing I realized, before falling back asleep, was that my pillows were insanely plush and comfortable. It was the most comfortable thing I’ve ever felt.
Fast forward to morning, and a reluctantly pull myself from the bed. I look over the side of the bed for my blanket, but it's not there. It had been neatly folded into fourths up and placed under my head, which was why my pillow was so comfortable. I still have no idea what happened. I've never been active at night or done strange things like this, but even the fleece blanket, that was queen-sized, had been folded neatly to fit on my twin sized bed.
I can believe that I could pull my fleece blanket over myself without waking up, but there was no way I could have folded up my blankets and made major bed re-arranging, in my sleep.
49. The Dance Of The Dolls
When I was about 7 or 8, I went to my grandma's house for Christmas and caught a bad flu. Every time we went either I would get sick or my mom would get sick. It got so bad, my mom stopped going whenever we went. Anyway, I was sick so I was put to sleep in one of the guest rooms that had a bunch of Troll dolls (the ones with the pointy hair and the jewel bellybutton) inside.
I remember being awake and just sort of watching the dolls. I wasn't afraid of them, but I couldn't exactly fall asleep so I was just looking mostly in their direction. Slowly, one started to move. Just a hand at first. Then a wobbled step. Gently and silently, I watched as the dolls "woke up" and started a weird kind of dance.
They would spin awkwardly in a circle like a dosie-do kind of dance. Every turn they would stop and bow to each other. I felt that if I moved they would notice me, so I just stayed still. They didn't scare me, but I remember being uncomfortable and confused. After a few minutes, they quit the dance and went back to their places.
I got up and almost told my parents, but even then I knew they wouldn't believe me if I did, so I went to another room to sleep. I never saw this again, and the dolls were shortly after removed from the room and I've never asked about them since. It could be a fever dream, but in my memory it's clearer than any dream I've ever had.
50. Silent Scream
10 years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a man standing over me. He was black and bald and had no expression what-so-ever on his face. I screamed and scrambled away from him. I then watch my two dogs walk right past the man. Both dogs looked right at me and kept moving as though the guy was not there. I felt as though I was in another "world".
My dogs didn't even react to me screaming and I was aware enough to know that what was happening wasn't real because my dogs would have freaked out with the guy in the house or me screaming. Years later, it happened again and someone was home with me and they didn't hear me screaming either. Not sure what happened, but so far it hasn't happened again.
51. Adult Supervision Required
Back before we lost it to Hurricane Sandy, my parents and my aunt and uncle jointly owned an old storehouse near Seaside Park in NJ. It wasn't too old but it was built around WWII and it was right on the bay. It had a lot of character. There was this really cool round window that overlooked Barnegat Bay.
We spent a lot of summer weekends there. But this strange thing would happen. It would only happen whenever my mother and her sister would be there without my dad or uncle at night. It never happened when it was just the boys, or the kids in the house alone, or when it was empty in the winter. Only when my mom and aunt were the only adults. The round window would shatter, but not just shatter.
It would explode outward into the bay. A couple of times it happened when me and my cousins were sitting in the dining room where the window was, even on calm windless nights. There would be no broken glass inside. Strangest part is that one time my uncle replaced it with Lexan, this polycarbonate acrylic sheet. It was fine for most of the summer, then one evening in late August my dad and uncle were out late.
My cousins and I were in bed when there was a HUGE boom and the whole house shook. It was like someone set off a stick of dynamite. We rushed downstairs and my mom is in tears. There is a hole in the dining room where the window was. My aunt was in the kitchen and my mom was drinking tea when it happened. No one was hurt.
When it got fixed we installed a bay window instead of replacing the round one. It never happened again. When Sandy hit, the storm surge picked up the house off the foundation and swept it into the bay, where only the finished attic and roof survived.
52. The Room Remembered
We were renting a house, and for some reason they rented it with no carpet in one room, just concrete. One day my mom was doing the usual, hunting socks for laundry. My sister and I were playing outside, and she goes into the concrete room and sees a puddle of blood. She immediately calls for us to be certain we're alright.
She goes back and it was gone. Later, we found out the previous tenant had shot himself in the head in there.
53. Peekaboo
When I was about 4 or 5, my dad was doing some work in the basement of our house. He was covering a hole in a wall that was left since house was built. Because I was too short I asked him to get me up there so I can look through the hole. He did. I remember this like it was yesterday, I could see an entirely different apartment from our own, differently styled furniture, drapes, floor, everything.
It was like looking in on a completely foreign apartment. I didn't think much about this at that time, but now I wonder what happened that day.
54. This One Will Leave You Breathless
My mum told me that she was once calling my dad, and was alone in the house. Suddenly, she gets a bizarre chill down her spine. My dad immediately says, in as calm a tone as possible, "Darling, start recording." Nothing else. So she starts taking a video and, although there's clearly no one in the room and you can hear both my dad and my mum, there is definitely some loud breathing audible.
You can clearly tell on the recording that neither person was making the sound, yet it was clearly being picked up. And it was LOUD. Not at all tiny. So I don’t think it was coming from the phone or a TV or anything like that. And it continued in the same rhythm while my dad was speaking. When I got home from school that day, I found a magazine on my bed.
It was the August 1952 edition of Autocar magazine. So I take it to my mum. Here's the weird part. It was my grandfather's. He had been deceased for more than 12 years at this point, and my grandmother kept it as it was the last magazine he had bought before he went on his tour of duty, and the only one he hadn't thrown away before his passing.
No one had seen it in almost five years. I just asked my mum for confirmation, and she did confirm that this event really happened. And now I am even more creeped out than I was five minutes ago.
55. The Man In The Big Blue House
When I was a kid, my family lived in a blue house that was oddly shaped. One year, the house got completely gutted and nearly destroyed by a flood. They had to knock down a wall between the living room and the kitchen. So after the flood, you could see all the way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom door. This house was and still is very strange, for lack of a better term.
I was a terrible sleeper as a kid and would routinely wake up and just go into the living room and watch cartoons on low volume if I couldn’t go back to sleep. One morning, I’m out in the living room sitting across the chair with my feet up on a window sill. Don’t ask me why, I was just a stupid eight- or nine-year-old at the time.
From where the chair was, I could see just over the kitchen counter down that hallway to my parents’ room. A movement caught my eye. I looked up and saw the shadowy outline of a man walking towards me, kind of near to my parents’ door. Thinking it was my dad, I said something like, “Hey Dad, sorry if the TV was too loud.”
My dad is a notoriously light sleeper and would wake up from anything, so I assumed that this was the explanation for what I was seeing. Except there was no response. Within seconds, the weight of my foot breaks the window I was leaning it on, and my foot ends up going through the glass. Again, I’m not sure if this is related or if I was just a dumb kid. Likely the latter, honestly. But either way, I screamed as loud as I could.
My parents quickly woke up to figure out what was going on at 4:30 in the morning. At this point, I’m preoccupied, but I realized much later that I definitely saw the outline of a man. But there was no way it was my dad because: A) He came bounding out of their bedroom after my scream, and B) I realized that the shoulders of that outline were much higher than what my dad’s would have been.
Fast forward to a few years ago. We’ve moved far away from the blue house, and my mom and I are hanging out and catching up. For some reason, the blue house comes up and I tell mom that the place still gave me creeps and that weird stuff happened there when I was a kid. My mom’s response? “Oh, you must have seen the shadow man too!”
56. A Fork In The Road
I was very young when this happened, so what I remember versus what I was told is the main scariness of this story. So my family was driving around the backwoods in the New Hampshire and Maine area. It was autumn and we wanted to watch the leaves fall. We were staying at some cottage, and my family came to this area pretty frequently.
We were coming back from somewhere when my mother started screaming at my father for stopping abruptly. In front of us, on an unkept back road in the deep woods of New England, at a pretty late hour, was a traffic jam of quite a few cars stopped in all directions. I remember a lot of bright headlights. I also remember seeing my dad's face as he turned around.
I then remember that he started reversing the car. My mom went completely silent through this whole thing. I just remember my dad saying eerily calmly, "Ughh, I hate traffic." He turned around and started driving back up the road we came down, and we started seeing cars going past us flashing their headlights. My dad just kept driving, saying absolutely nothing.
The whole atmosphere quickly went from "Wasn't that a fun day!" to "Let's leave." Even as a kid, I went from annoying to quiet. Just a thickness in the air. Cars started coming up from behind, honking and flashing lights. Eventually, they just turned off the road and we drove back to the cottage. Years later, I mean decades later, my dad and I were having a drink together.
He says: "Remember up in the woods up north? We were driving around and we came to a weird traffic jam?" I was like, "Yeah. Why?" I honestly hadn't thought of it since that night. My dad goes "Well, your mother and I were pretty sure that was one of those ambushes where they block the road and try to rob you and leave you in the woods or worse.”
He continued: “You don't remember the cars coming up the road after us, trying to block us in? Or the cars chasing us and beeping at us until we hit the other route?" I said, "Well kinda, but I just figured it was traffic or people being weird." He just kinda stopped talking about it after that, and went on about how we should plant more trees in the backyard. So weird.
57. The Long And Winding Stairs
My grandmother was a real estate agent in Rhode Island. I was staying with her one summer and she had to take me along to see a potential listing. It was a very strange house because it was circular. All the rooms went along the outside and connected to each other, and there was a center part with a little garden that was open to the sky.
She went up to the second story, and I stayed downstairs because I wanted to walk around the loop one time. The problem started when I had walked a full loop but didn’t see the staircase that I had started from. I thought I must be confused, so I kept going to the next room. And I still couldn’t find them. At this point, I started to panic.
So I began running around the house as fast as possible, checking every room for stairs. And there weren’t any. Finally, I sat down by the front door and started crying. A little while later, my grandmother ran into the entryway room looking just as panicked as I had been. She started asking where I was hiding and why I was hiding and why I had not answered her calling out to me.
I never heard her calling out to me at all. Actually, the house seemed so still and quiet while I was sitting there that I was sure she had forgotten and left me there. We went home and didn’t talk about it really. Then, like 15 years later, I brought it up to my mom and asked if she knew anything or whether this was all just a crazy childhood nightmare that I’m remembering?
She told me she remembered it clearly, because my grandmother had called her and was absolutely spooked because she couldn’t explain what had happened and she thought she had lost me or that I had been taken by someone while she was distracted. She had apparently been looking for me for a while. I still don’t understand what happened really, because the house wasn’t even large or confusing to navigate.
I still get chills when I think about it.
58. I’ve Got A Bad Feeling
When I was about 8, I was playing outside in the snow before I was going to go downhill skiing with my neighbor and her family. While I was outside playing, my grandfather called my mother and asked if I was okay, because he'd gotten a phone call from the hospital asking if he knew someone in the hospital, a young girl.
He was really confused, since the only person they could be talking about was me. I only have a much older brother, and my (girl) cousin lives on a different continent. But that’s not the eeriest part. Many hours later I got into a skiing accident and ended up in the hospital—two hospitals actually, and two ambulances.
59. Guardian Angel
I was walking home from school and noticed a man follow me. I took a shortcut near the church in hopes that a church member would be there. It was empty, and I swear I saw my uncle, who passed three years prior, standing there waiting for me.
The man turned away and I held this figure's hand for a good minute before my mom walked up to me, asking me what I was doing. My hand was holding nothing but air.
60. Sleepwalk With Me
I was about 10 or 11 years old at the time. I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink. As I come out of my bedroom, I pass my dad in the hallway. He is walking to the front door. I ask him what he's doing but he doesn't say anything. Then I stand there and watch him walk out the front door. I go up to the door after he closes it and look out the window.
He's sitting, hunched over, on our sidewalk. He's under a large tree, just staring into nothing. I walked to my parents’ room and woke my mom and asked her what dad was doing. What happened next was so disturbing, it’s unforgettable.
She woke up and said, “What do you mean? He's right here”. She turned over and there was my dad, passed out in the bed next to her.
61. Exorcism Needed
Not sure if this counts as a kid, but I was 18. I was at a party at my friend’s house and I had got high. Got pretty tired from it, so I laid down on her couch for a bit. As I was dozing off, I see this shadow figure put his face very close to mine and snap his fingers in front of my face as he whispered "Wake up".
When the fingers snapped, a white light shot out and I opened my eyes to see the rocking chair on the other side of the room rocking. I got up and looked around to see if any of my friends had just left the chair but everyone was out in the backyard, and no one else was in the house.
I passed out in my friend’s bed later that night and when I woke up the next morning, I heard her mom talking in the kitchen about getting an exorcism in the house. I never went back there again.
62. Coming Out From The Cold
When I was a kid, maybe from about 6 to 10 years old, I had a recurring nightmare. I am standing at the end of my dark basement hallway, just staring into the utility room. The room housed a sump pump, water heater, miscellaneous tools and decorations, and most notably a pastel blue 50s-style fridge. I know I am not supposed to be down here and frankly I have no idea why I’m even there.
I feel like a character in MarioKart at the starting line of a race. The countdown has started but I can’t quite move until the countdown hits zero. Out of the fridge climbs a slim shadowy man. Slowly at first, but within about ten seconds he’s moving at an inhuman pace toward me. Countdown has hit zero and now I can move. I turn and run toward the stairs.
Sometimes I made it up the stairs and closed the door. Other times I didn’t. About two years ago, my mother sold that house and needed to be rid of this fridge. She had hoped my older sister and I would help move the thing to the curb. We both immediately say “NOPE”. It turns out she and I had the same wicked dreams about that thing. The same freaking dream.
63. Kids Say The Creepiest Things
I used to talk in my sleep as a child. I still do it, just not as much. Anyway, the spooky bit is that I would also sleep with my eyes open. I was constantly doing weird stuff in my sleep.
In my memory, the creepiest one was when my mother came into my room to see me sitting up, eyes open, staring at my closet door. When she asked what I was doing, all I would say was "It's almost ready" in a weird monotone. She shook me awake after that and I still remember the look on her face. The close second is when I heard someone whisper "Be careful where you leave your body" as I was trying to fall asleep.
64. Blue Bear Gone Bad
I had this bear when I was younger, my absolute favorite. It was a dressed in blue pajamas with one of those sleeping caps—almost like a Santa hat, but blue. One night I was asleep atop my bunk bed and I had woken up and had seen my Blue Bear walk—like Ted does from the movie—across my bedroom floor.
Blue Bear noticed me watching halfway through walking across the room. He stared at me and gave this evil look, and then continued into the cupboard. I was petrified, but never could explain it.
65. When Fears Come True
When I was around 7 years old, I was horribly afraid of being kidnapped. Every time I was alone and a sketchy car drove by I would hide in the nearest bush, tree, whatever. One time I did this when a very sketchy white van was coming up the street. It was the first time the car actually stopped.
I was frozen in terror behind a bush in front of my house. But then it got even scarier. The driver got out, walked up to the bush I was hiding behind, stood there for a minute and left. To this day I have no idea who it was and what the heck they were doing.
66. Blood Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloo—
My three sisters (two older, one younger) and I were playing Bloody Mary when I was about 6 years old. With the entire group in the bathroom, we were only brave enough to say her name twice. My oldest sister and I decided to sit in the bedroom directly outside of the bathroom and listen to our 8-track player, while my other two sisters mustered up the courage to try again.
About a minute later, they threw open the bathroom door and ran out screaming, screeching that they had indeed seen Bloody Mary in the mirror after repeating her name three times. After ten seconds or so we got them to calm down a bit, until my oldest sister asked them if they remembered to throw water on her to send her away.
To their horror they realized that they hadn't, and as they were telling us so, the 8-track we were listening to stopped on its own. Everyone looked at it, wide-eyed for a moment, before we all raced into the bathroom to dispel Bloody Mary with the glass of water we had prepared beforehand.
67. An Eary Story
About five years ago, my parents were sitting out on the back porch on a summer night. Out of the corner of her eye, my mom saw a person-sized white translucent figure float by a tree. She asked my dad if he saw it too, and he said yes. He is a tough guy, but he was really freaked out and so was she. So they both went inside.
The next morning, my mom was walking by the tree where they had seen the figure, and she noticed a very old-looking earring sitting on top of the dirt. She doesn’t wear earrings and it wasn’t the kind of earring I would ever wear. It looked like it belonged to an old lady and it was just dropped there somehow. My mom brought it inside and put it in her jewelry box.
The next day, it was sitting in the middle of the basement floor. From then on, I started hearing footsteps and whispering in my room at least once a week until I moved out.
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68. A Parting Gift
When I was three years old, my grandmother passed. She lived in our house with us and we were very close. She had told my mom many times that she would do her best to make her passing easy on me, since I was so young. The night that her life came to an end, my mom was lying in bed with her and heard her take her last breath.
My mom laid there and cried for about 30 minutes before coming into my room to check on me. It was about 5:00 in the morning, and there was no reason for me to be awake. But I was sitting up in my crib and playing when my mom came into the room. She asked me why I was awake, and I said: "Grandma Flo just came in to give me a kiss goodbye!"
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69. I Dreamed A Dream
I woke up one night when I was 12 years old, because I dreamed that my older brother got into a car accident. I got out of bed and wandered downstairs to the kitchen to get something to drink. My mother was sitting there and asking me why I was awake. I told her: "I had a bad dream and needed something to drink."
I got a glass of water when the bell suddenly ringed at our door. My mother went to look and see who was there in the middle of the night. Two officers were standing there. They asked if they could come inside for a moment. I couldn't hear what they were talking about because I was still in the kitchen and they were in the hallway.
After the two officers left, my mother came back to the kitchen completely pale and told me that I should go to bed now. I asked her what was wrong, when she informed me that my brother had been in a car accident and that she needed to wake up my dad and go to the hospital right now. When I pointed out that this was the bad dream I had before waking up, she only looked at me for a couple of seconds. That’s when she told me something I’ll never forget.
I prepared myself for a comment like "Don't be silly and go to bed now," but instead she said "Me too." So basically, we both had the same exact dream of my brother having a car accident. And we both woke up minutes before the officers came over to tell us that it really happened. Thankfully, my brother survived with just some minor injuries.
We saw the photos of the accident in the newspaper the next day. It looked 100% like it did in my dream. Even down to the smallest details. The way he lost control over the car, the spot where it flipped the first time, and the tree it came to a stop at. Even today, my mother and I still talk about this weird experience. Nobody else ever believes us when we tell the story.
70. Honey, I’m Not Home!
I was in seventh grade when my parents bought their first computer, so not super young. We had a small ranch, so my dad built a corner desk in the basement in one of the finished off rooms since there was no room anywhere else for it. The house had been built by my dad in the mid-1980s. No one else had ever lived there before us.
When my mom would get home from work, we’d hear her set down her keys on the counter and walk across the kitchen floor in her heels. It was a frequent occurrence for my mom to not be home, but for my brother or me to be on the computer and still hear sounds of her putting her keys down on the counter or walking across the kitchen floor.
This had happened to each of us quite a bit. It sounded the same as when she would get home from work. But when we went upstairs to check and see if my mom was home, she wouldn’t be home. We would tell my mom when it happened, and it happened enough where we tried to figure it out by checking the time we’d hear it.
A few times, she said she’d been thinking about work at that time and happened to look at the clock. We tried to figure it out and have no idea to this day why it would continuously happen. A few times, my mom mentioned she’d be on the computer and hear someone upstairs, and no one would be home. My dad didn’t allow pets in the house either, so it wasn’t just a cat being a jerk.
71. A Light At The End Of The Tunnel
In my mom's seaside hometown, there was an offshore decommissioned lighthouse. Even though utilities to it had long been shut off and the lighthouse was locked, it would randomly light up at times. When it did, it was clearly visible in all directions. No one could explain it. It happened so infrequently and at such odd hours of the night that by the time officials examined the structure, there were no signs of activity.
To this day, as I’ve mentioned to people many times, the lighthouse remains mysterious and a bit creepy.
72. Falling For You
I’m not 100% sure this fits, because my mom confirmed it years ago and then denied it when I asked her again a couple of months later. Either way, here it is! When I was little, my dresser was long but pretty short. It sat against the wall with one of the ends pointed towards my door. That dresser was heavy, an old wood one with all sorts of kid stuff neatly arranged on top.
Since it was in my bedroom, the floor was carpet. And I always slept with the door closed. One night, with no explanation, the dresser tipped over. But instead of falling forward, it fell 180 degrees to the side, falling in front of my door. All of the kid stuff spilled to the side. My mom ran to get me, but couldn’t open the door as it was being blocked by the dresser.
Eventually, with her pushing and me pulling on the dresser, she was able to slip in and move the dresser out of the way. Nothing was damaged, not even the glass figurines I had on top of it. My dad helped put it back upright the next day and we all moved on with our lives. Years later, I remembered the incident and asked my mom about it.
I was fully expecting to learn that I had blown it out of proportion in my memory, and that it only fell forward or something like that. Nope, she remembered that night as well. However, she added one detail that I could never figure out. She thought she heard me jumping on the bed that night, and that was why she thought the dresser tipped over.
I had been sound asleep, so I have no idea where she heard that noise coming from.
73. Flashing Lights
I remember this evening so clearly. It was a warm evening, the sun had just set, the evening was calm, no wind or inclement weather. My cousin and I are walking back to my dad’s house. We're talking and as we come about 50 meters close to my dad’s house, this blinding white light flashed twice. We both just stood there. We were both silent, standing there.
We both looked at each other and said "Did that just happen”? We both freaked out and ran the rest of the 50 meters back to my house. We, both very excited by this event, told my parents and his dad what happened outside but nobody witnessed this, as the curtains were closed inside. None of the adults believed us.
They said nothing, just kind of acknowledged us and continued visiting. The light wasn't accompanied with thunder because it wasn't lightning. The light was blinding, and the acreage is located in the prairies. I don't know if there is any logical explanation for this event but ever since then I have always believed that maybe, just maybe, it was aliens or some astronomical event.
I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous to some people but my cousin and I don't try to convince other people what we experienced, because we both know what we experienced.
74. Free Ride
My mom put me to bed in my room but I woke up downstairs. I thought it was a dream but some man picked me up when I was almost asleep, carried me downstairs, and put me down on some blankets between a sofa and chair. I was quite young so my parents still had a safety gate.
My dad wasn't in—he worked nights then—and my mom was asleep, so no one knows how I managed to get downstairs. I can still remember this now, strangely.
75. The Toilet Of Terror
I grew up on the central coast of California, and my family would frequently visit Big Sur for camping, hiking, or just hanging out and having lunch at one of the restaurants. I must have been about 7. Old enough to visit the bathroom independently, but still rather new to the freedom of walking around somewhere that wasn't my neighborhood or the woods alone.
I went into the bathroom at a restaurant called the River Inn, and there were three stalls—one handicapped, and two regular. All but one of the stalls (a regular one) were taken. I distinctly remember looking under the doors for feet, because I was a little kid, and for whatever reason preferred the handicapped stall. I saw no feet, but the doors were locked. Whatever. I went into the one open stall.
There was a HUGE SQUID in the toilet. Like, the body had to be at least a foot long, plus tentacles, coiled around the inside of the toilet bowl. It totally filled the available space. Cloudy blank squid eyes, gazing up at me from the pooper. I ran out of the bathroom in horror, told nobody, and held my pee for the 45-minute drive home.
What the heck was that squid doing there?? All I can surmise is it was a line cook prank, in an area that ubiquitously has squid on the menu. 25 years later, that terror toilet squid still haunts me.
76. The Haunted Castle
A friend of my family is very wealthy and has a big house that we all affectionately call "The Castle". Now it's no mansion, but from my low state of living it seemed like it. Somewhere between 6-8 rooms, a pool, two living rooms, giant basement filled with a flat screen and pool tables and all that. My friend and I would always crash in the basement when we stayed over.
It was close to Halloween time, so we just finished watching a scary movie and were called upstairs for dinner. I had just finished using the bathroom, so I closed the bathroom door and went to eat like usual.
When we came back down to the basement, though, the bathroom door was open. Because it was so close to Halloween we got all spooked and ran upstairs, telling mu mom. "We closed the door, and it's open!” Her response was seriously bizarre. She said: "Oh that's just Beakum”. And told us his story.
Beakum is the house owner's brother's imaginary friend from when they were kids. They made sure to emphasize that it was friendly, but whenever something moves, or doors open or close, they just blame Beakum and laugh it off. So my friend and I went back downstairs, terrified. For the rest of the night we kept watch on the doors to see if anything was different but sure enough if ever we both left the basement, when we came back one of the three downstairs doors was opened—and we got into the habit of closing them all.
My mom tried to scare us once with a wolf mask, which was funnier than anything. But anyway, as we were going to sleep there are two half-windows (I say half because they’re the small ones people have in basements) and two couches. I lay on one and my friend lays on the other one, and from the way we're laying we could each see one of the windows. And on my window is a white face.
It's very dark and hard to see, but it looks like three black holes on a white field that might just happen to make a face. But when I get up to look closer it moves away, almost like it's more of a reflection of light than anything else. I deliberately didn't tell my friend about it because we’d had enough fear for one day.
Two years or so later, we are all talking about the scariest things that had ever happened to us, and of course Beakum gets brought into the situation. I'm listening to my friend tell the story—and what he said sent chills down my spine. He ends with "Yeah that night scared the bejeesus out of me. I never told you this but when we were sleeping I saw this super creepy white face looking at me through the window”.
But we could only see different windows. I lost it, and was never more creeped out. It's been some time since we've been to the castle, but that story will always spook me.
77. A Sober Psychedelic Experience
When I was about 15 and sober, late one night I went with a group of about seven people to this supposedly haunted woods in our area called Okie Pinokie. There are various stories about these woods, the main ones being that seven bodies had been found in the woods and were never identified.
Parts of the woods were used as Native burial grounds or battlegrounds in the past. Also, a little girl named Stephanie who was sacrificed by some cult in the 1800s haunts the woods and you can sometimes hear her scream. Some of these are true, others doubtful.
The jerk of the group swore he knew the trails of the woods like the back of his hand, which it turned out he didn't. We got lost for about three hours wandering these woods until we wound up exiting on the opposite side. These woods are dense and dark, and being the geniuses we were, only one flashlight was brought along for the whole group to "share".
The light was conveniently in our tour guide’s hand at the front of the line the whole time, leaving the rest of us to follow behind in darkness. I was at the back of the line, right behind my girlfriend at the time because she didn't want to be last. After about an hour into wandering these trails aimlessly, I saw what I figured to be a "fresh" yellow glow-stick on the ground about 10 feet off to the side of the trail.
Didn't think anything of it. A few minutes later, I see another, but up in in tree and a different color. Then another, and another, way high up in trees and in just odd places. They gradually started increasing in number and variety of colors to the point that they were EVERYWHERE, and I finally realized that these were not glow-sticks when some were seemingly suspended in mid-air.
At first, they were only stationary, and then some were literally flying through the air, weaving through trees, slow and fast. At the first sight of these, I began to wonder if the darkness was beginning to make me hallucinate. I asked "Am I the only one seeing this”?, to which my girlfriend replied "No, but let's please not talk about it".
Everyone seemed very tense and intimidated, but I followed at the back of the group in disbelief, just observing and admiring whatever it was that we were seeing. These baseball-ish sized "orbs" had energy that I "felt", like personalities. Some felt bright and joyful, and sometimes seemed like they were dancing.
Others seemed shy and timid, and tended to be dim and slow. One in particular was dark and stationary, like a black/purple color that really blew my mind (as if being surrounded by flying balls of light in the middle of the woods isn't mind blowing enough) because it's pitch black but I was looking at a "dark light”? and it felt ominous.
I didn't feel comfortable walking past that one. But regardless, they were beautiful. They were around for no longer than a half hour, and gradually disappeared in the same way they appeared, shortly before we stumbled out of the woods and right into some guy's property in the middle of the night.
He was kind enough to tell us where we were and called the sheriff to give our friend a ride back to his van so he could come back and get us. No idea what it was that we saw. I obviously did a ton of searches on the Internet and never found any reports similar to what we experienced anywhere.
I've been back numerous times in hopes of seeing them again and never have. It's something I'll never forget, and unfortunately I have learned that I will rarely be able to share this story with anyone without being looked at like I'm insane.
78. The Witness
When I was like 4 or 5, me and my mom lived on the second floor of an apartment. I used to like to watch the scrolling text on the bank sign next door through the window. One day, there was a young lady—maybe 20s or younger—walking and a van pulled up next to her. I’ve never forgotten what happened next.
Some guy threw the sliding door open, jumped out, and started dragging her in. Of course she starts screaming for help and I called my mom into my room. She looked out the window, looked at me, and shut the curtain. She told me I was wrong and the girl was fine.
Not sure what happened or if anyone called 9-1-1. My mom might have and just didn't tell me because she didn't want me to be scared, but she doesn't remember it at all now. I hope that girl was okay.
79. Haunting People Is A Nonno In My Book
My grandpa passed before I was born. Neither me or my sister ever got to meet him. The last cousin to have met him was my cousin, who I'll call Jay. Jay was apparently one or two years old at the time, and he was my grandpa's favorite. The week after his passing, my family was creeped out because Jay kept calling out "Nonno," what he called my grandpa, and appeared to be talking to him.
One time, while his babysitter was taking care of him, he started calling out “Nonno” again, and the dogs even started barking. These dogs were always incredibly quiet. They never even barked at passersby. The babysitter got scared apparently, and started shouting something along the lines of "Please don't haunt me sir, please!"
80. Window Shopping
According to my parents, when I was a young kid, I would frequently cry at night because the "man in the window" was scaring me. My room was on the second floor. Also, my mom once saw him too. I wish I could remember what I saw more clearly so I could form an opinion on what it might have been, but I was too young at the time. Either way, it’s some pretty spooky stuff!
81. The Moor The Merrier
My older sister just told me about this. When I was about two years old, we were driving through the Yorkshire Moors. I pointed out of the window and said “There are deceased children buried up there.” Those who know their history know that this is true, but I have no idea how I could have known that as a toddler. My dad confirmed this story a few years ago.
Apparently, he almost pooped himself when it happened, because it was late at night and the car was on its way out after a 200-mile journey from Scotland.
82. A Quiet Storm
One day, me, my parents, and my sister all went to bed early, at around 7- or 8-ish. We were all incredibly light sleepers, and we typically woke up at the tiniest noise. Also, the floorboards downstairs were extremely creaky. Anyway, we woke up the next morning to make a disturbing discovery. The house was extremely messy. Like, nothing was the way we had left it the night before.
The foot stool was tipped over, all the contents inside of it had come out, the kitchen was a mess, the toys in my bedroom were all out, my parents’ clothes and washing were just splayed everywhere. There was nothing in the house that had remained untouched, not even our air hockey table.
83. An Old Friend
When I was a small kid, I once had a bad night where it sounded like someone was in my room. The grunting sound was later identified as my mom snoring, but there was one noise in particular that stood out and never got cleared up. It sounded like my neighbor was talking, only I knew for fact that he was away in another country at the time.
I also saw apparitions of a man walking around in my room. When I was a bit older, I asked my mom about it one time and she was like “Oh, that must have been your great-great uncle. He still walks around the house sometimes to check on the family.” Surprisingly, I wasn’t creeped out when I heard her say this. It’s kind of cool to think that a deceased relative is looking out for us.
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84. Just Passing Through
When my parents got divorced and I was in middle school, they bounced around houses a lot. My dad was renting this house that was pretty nice and in a normal upper middle class neighborhood. One day, I’m playing Kingdom Hearts 2 and, out of the corner of my eye, I see my dad walk into the living room, pass to the right of me, go into the kitchen, then walk back into his bedroom.
A few minutes later, I don’t know why I even asked this as I wasn’t scared or even consciously paying attention to what my dad did when he walked into the living room, but I walked into my dad's room and was like, “Hey, you just walk into the kitchen for something?” He looked at me with wide eyes and I immediately got goosebumps.
He responded, “No. Why?” And I was like, “I thought I saw you walk into the kitchen.” He told me he’d seen THE SAME EXACT THING out of the corners of his eyes ever since he moved in. He was completely shaken up. Like I’m not kidding. We moved out pretty shortly after, and nothing weird has happened to us ever since. That house was suspect.
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85. Floating On Air
I used to have night terrors when I was around the age of eight. Apparently, it's fairly common in prepubescent boys. For those who don't know, a night terror is basically a very vivid nightmare, filled with screaming, flailing, extreme fear, and, in my case, appearing to be fully awake with my eyes open and talking. I don't remember any of these episodes, but my parents and older sister do quite well.
There was one in particular. It included the usual screaming and what not. But when my mum came in to calm me down, I was seated on the bed completely silent and in fear. I was pointing at the corner of the room. She asked what was wrong and I basically described a corpse floating there, as if suspended in water, and I was adamant that it was there.
86. A Rose By Any Other Name
I am the parent in this story. When we bought our current house, my daughter was five years old. In our previous house, if she'd wake up in the middle of the night, she'd build a pile of her blankets and pillows in our room and wake up in "her nest." In the new house, she started building the piles in her own room, but she'd wake up on her striped bed.
When asked, she insisted that the nest was "for her friend Rose." She had actually had an imaginary friend named DeeDee, so a new one didn't surprise us much. She would tell us about Rose waking her up at night and wanting to rest, so she'd build a nest for her on the floor and then go back to bed. Years later, we were speaking to a sweet old neighbor who was the niece of the cattle rancher that had built the house at the turn of the century.
She happened to tell us about his first wife, who suffered a rough illness and passed in the house. Her name was Rose...
87. Keeping Your Head Above Water
When she was still a baby, my mom once found my little sister completely submerged and drowning in the backyard kiddie pool while I just casually played in the water next to her, either not noticing or not caring. I was either four or five years old at the time, and my mom said she was creeped out by me for a while after that. Years later, as an adult, I saved my brother from drowning and redeemed myself.
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88. Possessed
I had a real jerk as a cousin. He used to feed me all sorts of lies. One day, when I was around five years old, he told me that our neighbor, a man of around 35, had offed someone with a knife in the street. So, as usual, I went to my parents to confirm. And guess what! It was true! This seemingly nice neighbor had just lost his mind one day, threw a public meltdown, and took someone’s life out in the open.
89. A Tragic Course Of Events
When I was a kid, I once dreamt of our family car accident the night before it happened in real life. My parents confirmed that I spoke about it as soon as I woke up, and it actually ended up happening the next day. We lost my brother just like how I saw it in my dreams, something that I have not been able to explain. Maybe it was just a one in a million coincidence.
90. Beware Of Darkness
My mom and I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina for a few years when I was in middle school. Once, in the middle of a bright summer day, we were in our well-lit condo when suddenly it went pitch black. It lasted maybe two or three seconds, but it was enough for both of us to notice and still remember it almost 20 years later. It was like someone flipped the switch off and on for the sun really quick.
91. Just A Closer Walk With Thee
In the house I grew up in, every night at around midnight, these big loud footsteps would go stomping up and down the hallway a few times. I’d often think it was my dad getting up in the night, so sometimes I would stick my head out in the hall to see him. But there was no one there. And I’d hear him snoring away in his room.
This isn’t a particularly creepy story compared to some others out there, but it’s just strange to me that everyone in my family confirms that they heard these same footsteps, and that no one was ever that bothered by it or found out what the cause of it was. It seems like it happened for as long as we could remember, so we all just casually accepted it.
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92. Cleanup On Aisle One
I don't believe in ghosts or the afterlife. But when I was a kid, the vacuum cleaner in our family closet would frequently turn on by itself. It would always happen right around 2:00 in the morning, even while it was unplugged and rolled up in our closet. I have no explanation for it whatsoever. It’s the kind of thing that even makes folks like me start to wonder…
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93. Shadow Of A Doubt
I've had regular encounters with shadow people and almost all the extras that go with them since I was a little child. They always seem to find me wherever I am. They don't bother me most of the time, they just let me know that they are there. My parents would not discuss such things. But my sister confirmed that it really happened.
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94. Reckless Abandon
I live in Puerto Rico. If you have ever visited here, you know that there are a lot of abandoned houses. Where I live, there’s one at the end of my street. I can sometimes see a man just staring through a window, and then he always disappears. And then, moments later, he appears at another window. It’s the creepiest thing.
Sometimes, I can see him on the roof of the house. The authorities came to check it out once because a lot of people saw the same thing. But when they came, they said they saw no signs of anybody entering or leaving the residence. One weird thing that they saw was a pair of running shoes being left at every window in the house.
I say it’s weird not just because it was an abandoned house, but also because the shoes were brand new with no signs of anyone ever wearing them. I can still see him at night.
95. Coming In Handy
This happened when I was around five years old, but I remember everything like it happened yesterday. We had gone to a funeral for my mom's cousin in another town a couple of hours out. We got to the house and my mom went to see her aunt. She gave her condolences and I followed, holding her hand. I guess during the hugging and crying, my mom let go of my hand.
I started looking for her hand but not really looking up, just keeping my hand out for her to grab it while calling her name. There were a lot of people and the house was small, so I could only see the people standing around me. A couple of minutes later, I found her. Or so I thought, because she took my hand and started walking towards the door to leave.
I thought to myself as I was putting on my shoes that it seemed weird to come such a long way just to be here for five minutes. That thought led me to look up at the lady holding my hand. I instantly realized it wasn’t my mom. I have no idea where the woman was planning on taking me. I jolted my hand away from her and ran towards the room I had lost my mom at.
96. One Foot Out The Door
When I was 14, I had some neighbors who had about 10 kids. I would ride snowmobiles with two of the younger kids during the winter. I went over one morning and had to wait for them to get ready. While I sat at the table waiting, I could hear some moans coming from upstairs.
I asked what was going on and no one said anything. A moment later, the youngest son said, "Show him, mommy". The mom went to the fridge and pulled out a piece of toilet paper. She set it on the table in front of me and unrolled it. To my surprise, it was a baby's leg with a toenail formed on the big toe.
She explained to me that one of their middle-aged daughters had an abortion earlier in the week and when she got home she was not feeling well. When she went to the bathroom, "this fell out of her". I got up, walked out, got on my sled, and went home. I told my parents about it a few days later.
Apparently, the rumor mill in our small town was running rampant with stories about how the girl was impregnated by her older brother, one of the kids I used to ride with. The image of that leg with the toenail is still in my memory. It's not like the mom saved the leg to go back at the doctor for malpractice. She kept it as a talking point.
Freepik, cookie_studio
97. Her Anxieties Never Held Water
My grandmother (who lived with us) did not let me walk up and down stairs, and I was also not allowed to let shower water hit my chest. She believed that if I either fell on the stairs or did them too quickly, I would die. She also told me that if shower water pounded on my chest it would destroy my heart and it would be my fault if I had a heart attack. Both of these were enforced rules (amongst 10 million others) in my house.
She did lose one of her kids to heart problems, but the shower water thing is only an instruction for like RIGHT AFTER open heart surgery. Jesus.
98. Coming In Handy
This happened when I was around five years old, but I remember everything like it happened yesterday. We had gone to a funeral for my mom's cousin in another town a couple of hours out. We got to the house and my mom went to see her aunt. She gave her condolences and I followed, holding her hand. I guess during the hugging and crying, my mom let go of my hand.
I started looking for her hand but not really looking up, just keeping my hand out for her to grab it while calling her name. There were a lot of people and the house was small, so I could only see the people standing around me. A couple of minutes later, I found her. Or so I thought, because she took my hand and started walking towards the door to leave.
I thought to myself as I was putting on my shoes that it seemed weird to come such a long way just to be here for five minutes. That thought led me to look up at the lady holding my hand. I instantly realized it wasn’t my mom. I have no idea where the woman was planning on taking me. I jolted my hand away from her and ran towards the room I had lost my mom at.
99. Hereditary IRL
My friend’s family has a shrine for her grandma. When I first saw, I was like “Oh, she probably passed, and this is a way to commemorate her,” since we also have a little “shrine” for my grandma. I was on Facetime with her later on that night when I got home and asked about it. And it turns out that her grandma is VERY much alive and healthy.
She explained that she thinks her family is a cult with her grandma as the leader, and I don’t know…every time I go to her house, I freak out just a tiny bit.
100. Sudden Loss
I had my first ever sleepover with my best friend in the first grade. Things at night were awesome. However, when I woke up the next morning, everyone at his house was super distant, and they called my mom to come and pick me up ASAP. I didn’t know what was going on. As it turned out, unfortunately, his father had an aneurysm that night and didn’t survive.
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101. Off The Playground
My cousin disappeared. This happened seven or nine years ago. I think he was 14 or 15 when it happened. He was kidnapped from the playground he was playing in. They put him in a van and drove off to the nearby city. However, his kidnappers made one huge mistake: They left him in the van to get some food, and that's when my cousin made his great escape.
He said a kind auto-rickshaw driver helped him call his dad who was living in the same city at the time. But that's not the most terrifying part. Turns out, the perpetrators were organ traffickers who were planning on harvesting his kidneys. Even typing this out is terrifying.
