People Share Their Most Frightening True Stories

9. Home Invasion

Years ago when I was 8 my family lived in this big weird house kind of on the edge of a small town. The school district was in the middle of a big restructuring so even though we were only a couple of grades apart my brother and I went to different schools and took different buses. This left me as the last person to leave in the morning and the first person to get home in the afternoon, which meant it was my job to make sure all the lights were off and the door was locked.

One morning I noticed the basement door was open and the light was on so before I left I turned off the light and closed the door. When I got home that afternoon the light was on and the door was open again. I just assumed that I’d forgotten to actually take care of it when I noticed it in the morning so I went over to turn off the light and close the door. When I got to the top of the basement stairs I looked and there was a big shadowy male figure towards the bottom of the staircase. I freaked out, slammed the door and pushed a bunch of boxes against it and then went and hid in my closet. For months I didn’t tell my family because I was positive what I had seen was a ghost and didn’t think anyone would believe me.

Then about a year after that incident, my mom and her boyfriend realized that small amounts of money had been going missing for months (totaling around $800-900, but never more than $60 at once). So we all walked around the house with flashlights trying to figure out how they could have gotten in. Turns out some creep was climbing in through a small hole in the outside of the house, shimmying through a crawl space, and then coming up into the house through the basement. Realizing I had been alone in the house with him on at least one occasion was one of the worst, most terrifying moments I’ve ever had.

wesailtheharderships

10. Trust the Cat

A relative of mine was in college and living in a small off-campus house by herself. At the time she thought she might have had a stalker. She had gotten some strange phone calls–no one answering on the other end, heavy breathing and that sort of thing, among other things.

One night she is home alone in her bedroom studying, just her and a cat that she had recently adopted. So recent in fact that she hadn’t even named the cat yet. The whole time she is studying, the cat is acting crazy. Pacing the floor meowing constantly, and sitting right in front of her closet meowing nonstop. She is getting really annoyed and finally has enough so she gets up and goes to the closet to open it for the cat and hopefully shut him up. When she opens it there is a man sitting in her closet and when she opened it, it startled him so he jumps up, pushes her out of the way and bolts out of the house, literally ripping a hole in the screen door as he tore through it.

She calls the cops, of course, gives a description. She had a clear look at his face. They find and arrest him. Turns out, he was also a serial rapist. He had been stalking her for weeks and broke into her house to wait in her closet until she was asleep. Same pattern with his other victims, but she was the only one to see his face. Her testimony put him in prison. The cat saved her.

Always trust the cat.

12. Weren’t Worth The Trouble

My ex’s father was a Sargent of police, so I have the details on this.

I was up late playing video games, my ex was asleep after surgery, so dead to the world. The back door was cracked open cause the cat was out. I shut the bedroom door to keep the cat out and crawl into bed at 4:30 am.

At 6:00 am my ex woke up, asked me why I’d left the bedroom door open, and went into the living room to discover we had been robbed.

We found an empty case of beer in our backyard shed, they had hung out drinking waiting for me to go to sleep.

When they were caught it turned out they were a pretty nasty group responsible for multiple home invasions and murders. Apparently, they had checked in on us sleeping and decided we weren’t worth the trouble.

My ex and I are generally light sleepers, only her pain meds and my all-night gaming session saved our lives.

13. It Wasn’t Breathing

So my dad is super skeptical about anything paranormal. He doesn’t believe in ghosts or demons or anything like that. Very rational, logical person. Not afraid of much.

He grew up in the countryside of Cuba. He and his family were farmers. One afternoon he was out doing something in the fields, and it was getting dark as he walked back. When he got closer to home, it was pretty much complete darkness minus the moonlight so he could make out enough to get through. Plus he was very familiar with the land so he was fine.

Suddenly he said he smelled a very strong stench of rotting meat. He walked around some trees and when he came to the clearing before his house, he saw a creature standing there. He described it as a horse with no head. No open fleshy wound or anything, it was smooth and had fur on it. But no head. And it was standing but as he walked around it to take a better look, he said it wasn’t breathing. He said it filled him with so much fear and dread that he took off running. He had goosebumps as he was telling me the story.

Many other family members witnessed some strange things on that land but this one always shook me the most because my father doesn’t believe in these things and he sure as h*ll doesn’t joke about them. And it just sounds creepy as heck.

14. No One Knows

Once, when I was driving to see a girl during her overnight shift at a local hospital, I experienced a non-substance-related blackout. The last thing I remember before the incident was driving toward a four-way stop in the middle of a residential area. When I came to, my truck was in park and running with the driver door open in the middle of the intersection, my shoes and socks were off and scattered on the ground next to the driver’s side door, and I was in the middle of a middle-aged woman’s yard about 40 feet away. She was screaming at me from her front doorstep, yelling “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” and standing with a child behind her as if I was a threat (which I am absolutely sure I appeared to be). I apologized fervently and drove straight home after collecting my socks and shoes. I have absolutely no recollection of the events during the blackout, no idea how long it was, and still have no clue as to what caused it or what it actually was.

That is the single-most terrifying thing that has ever happened in my life. This was about a year ago and I still think of it several times a day.

15. Lifetime of Experiences

I was an underground ‘engineer’ working on large machinery miles underground at a mining site. My specific duties were keeping a large boiler running. We had more than a dozen, each with a few engineers assigned to specific ones in shifts. These things were run 24/7 as they provided power to not only the mining shafts but the large town that was built underground to house all the miners and their families; we’re probably taking 20,000 people here. Now, these boilers were breaking down constantly and if more than 4 went down at once, the power was cut to the town to keep the industrial sector powered. If the industrial sector ran out of power, the air pumps would go down resulting in death, so yeah. I can still remember working on these giant 30-foot-tall boiler stacks and the specific parts that would be fashioned routinely to make-shift repairs to keep them up.

Nobody had been to the surface in decades due to pestilence and other assorted dangers. This was a fully self-contained city. We had politicians, service workers, weavers, cooks everything. Everybody worked. My wife worked at the school, where our 3 children were currently enrolled. In 3 years, Robert would be 16, in which case he would leave school and begin working. The other 2 were quite a bit younger.

I can still remember almost every street, house and building in the city down to the smallest detail. I have memories of hundreds of people; faces, names and personalities. I can picture how our small house was decorated and all the bits and bobs we had in it. I can see the children’s teddies, blankets and beds.

Anyway, I was mid-thirties at the time, so I had built up a lifetime of experiences with these people.

Suddenly, I “woke” up. Now I have that in quotations because I was already awake. I’m disorientated. There’s a whole bunch of bright white lights around me when all we have is the orange-sodium lamps underground. There are faces around me that I recognise and are asking me all sorts of questions.

It turns out I’d contracted a serious bacterial infection and was hospitalised with a fever. I’d been out cold for no more than 4 days. My brain had conjured up this whole world, people, buildings, and experiences whilst I was out cold. It was utterly surreal. I tried to talk to my then-girlfriend about it and she kind of focussed more on how serious my condition was, so I never spoke of it again with anybody.

Now I’m sure a lot of people have these types of hallucinations. But this was so crazy-real. It wasn’t like I was seeing pink dragons in my bathtub, I had 30 years of memories in my head of a life I’d never lived. A wife. Kids. Friends. Work colleagues. I could remember them all, but none of them existed.

This realisation threw me into a deep depression for a while. I’d omitted a whole bunch of detail from the story due to how, even 9 years later, it makes me feel sombre.

It scared me how my brain could conjure up something so real, that wasn’t.

reddituser

16. Turn on The News

My wife’s mom went on a date with Ted Bundy while she was at the University of WA. She was in med school, they bumped into each other on campus, and he said he was a medical resident. He was charming, she said and went to dinner with him a few nights later at a local student bar/restaurant. He kept pushing wine on her, ordering more when she declined, and his stories/history surrounding his “residency” didn’t track. She said she had to use the restroom, left out a back entrance, ran to a restaurant near campus owned by a family friend, and called her father. Her dad was there within 15 minutes to pick her up and as they pulled away from the restaurant, they saw Bundy walking around seemingly looking for her outside the bar.

She thought he was just a lying creep, with no idea of who he really was until he hit the news a few years later when her dad called her and said, “Turn on the news.”

17. On Her Own

I live with my mother, just the two of us in a rather large house. One night, I woke up at 3 am because I could hear someone sobbing outside my room, of course I knew something was wrong, but I stayed quiet and kept listening.

It was my mother, she was saying “Please go away” very softly and quietly while crying (she didn’t want to wake me up) and sh*t got real when I heard male voices, it was a home invasion.

I had to decide within seconds: to go outside my room and confront the robbers (which is clearly a bad decision if you’re unarmed) or escape through the window and ask for help. The latter meant that I had to leave my mother on her own, but I believe I made the right choice by seeking help from my neighbours.

As soon as I got out, one of the guys who was waiting outside in their car spotted me, so he called his companions and drove off as fast as they could, because I had already alerted my neighbours and the police.

Even though nothing happened to my mom, I still feel terrible and the thought of leaving my mother on her own really haunts me. But I’m certain it would have been worse if I decided to leave my room and confront them.

18. Locked Him Out

I preface this story by saying I’m a small, 23-year-old female, which is what made this situation a million times scarier for me.

I had recently broken up with my ex and was thus left to live alone with our animals in a 3 bed, 1.5 bath house we had previously been in together. It was my first time living alone so I was already a little on edge. At like 2 in the morning, my dog darted off my bed and started barking her head off. I woke up and heard the crackling of leaves underneath my window and then someone tapping on the glass. I froze for like two whole minutes as the tapping continued, getting much louder, and she kept barking like a maniac.

I opened my bedroom door and ran into the living room with my phone, not really knowing what to do in this situation. There were two entrances to my home and all of a sudden I could hear someone frantically turning the knob on the door of the kitchen, slamming on the door trying to get inside. Thankfully it was locked. I called my girlfriend (new girlfriend, not the one I previously lived with) and woke her up, explained what was happening, and screamed “WHAT DO I DO??” She was like “Call the police”.

As I was dialling 911, the slamming on the door stopped and I saw a man’s face through my kitchen window, looking inside. We made eye contact and I nearly pissed myself. He rounded the corner of my house to get to the front door and started doing the same with the knob, yelling unintelligibly at the top of his lungs. I finally got through to the dispatcher and she said a patrol car was near and just to stay in my house. I went and hid in my room with my dog, locking the door behind me. Less than five minutes later all of the noise stopped and it took me a few minutes to get out and check to see what was going on. The patrol car was already gone.

I got a call from the officer about thirty minutes later that the man had been very drunk and got my house confused for his. He was angry because he thought his wife had locked him out. I am so, so glad I lock my doors religiously because I have no idea what would have happened if the man had made the entrance into my home and found me alone. Ill-intentioned or not, drunk people don’t act rationally and I can’t help but think about what might have happened if he had mistaken me for his wife.

19. Final Destination

I’ve got a lighter story than some of the others. I was at a very well-known amusement park establishment around the US, think flags and there are 6 of them.

Now this took place when I was like 13 or 14, and up until then I’ve gone already a handful of times, and there’s one ride that I especially loved: Viper. It was probably one of their older rides as the whole thing was made from wood.

My friend can vouch for me on this, but I remember getting on the ride, sitting down, and thinking to myself that something about this was kinda off, I had some serious final destination vibes going on. At the time I couldn’t quite figure it out, but I buckled in and got ready for the ride.

So the ride starts, and I tried not to let it bother me. Around halfway through I realize what the heck was wrong. The f*cking seat is rattling way more than usual. Oddly enough I think my friend was also starting to catch cause we turned to each other and I said:

Me: Yo dude, is something wrong with this seat?

Friend: yeah… I don’t feel comfortable. I think I’m going to stand up a bit.

Me: alright me too.

I sh*t you not, 4 or 5 seconds after standing up, the f*cking seat falls through and there was nothing between us and the railings of the rollercoaster. Luckily the end wasn’t that much further at this point, and there weren’t any big crazy drops; so there weren’t that many obstacles to face. But hot d*mn did I hold on to that bar with my life?

In hindsight, I wish I pressed charges but being young and recently shaken, I just wanted to get out of there asap.

byho

20. Pretty Spooky

My mother filmed this one in her early years. She has got me for 17 years and at the part where the story plays I was already 3. We had a neighbor child (Lily) who recently died. I always went to play with her. When my mother was busy she locked all the doors and kept the keys out of my sight. I, however, found them anyway and unlocked the door to go to the neighbors garden to play with Lily. When my mother searched for me (in shock because she was scared I ran away cuz the door was unlocked) she found me, playing with myself and talking with “someone”. When she asked whom I played with I answered “Lily and we’re playing dollies”. Both were nonexistent at that time. She filmed it to show it to my father.

They were both really scared because Lily just died a few days ago and I didn’t know. But it seemed like I talked to her like always. Laughing and playing with dollies. The video is rather scary too.

AnnaSucksAtLife

21. First Memory

When I was 4 years old my house was bombed by terrorists, they made a movie about it. I don’t remember much but I still have the scars to prove it.

I remember the explosion knocking me off my bed and my dad yelling something out the broken window. By standing up I lodged some glass into my foot, so I had to butt-skooch down the stairs.

I remember the walls inside the house collapsing and our nanny’s arms covered in my brother’s blood.

The last thing I remember is the back of the ambulance.

This is also one of my first memories.

22. He Said Something

I was working in a theater a few months ago. I would clean the theaters after the movies. I was waiting for people to exit a theater and when I thought everyone left, I went in to clean. I was cleaning row by row and was in the middle when I looked up to see someone still sitting at the top (there weren’t any lights at the top row so I could just see his silhouette. I was creeped out but kept working my way up there. I told him the movie was over and he needed to get out. He didn’t say anything. I was extremely creeped out since the area the theater was in had a drug problem. I started heading back down to talk to the manager but he said something like “You forgot to clean up here”. I quickly left and told my manager. He and I walked back to the theater and no one was there. I have no idea what that guy was planning, but that is the creepiest thing I’ve experienced.

23. Held it Together

We were on a family vacation in these beautiful lake cabins at this really fun campground we went to every summer. and my mom, youngest brother (4 at the time) and I (5 at the time) went to the store to get food for the week while my dad and older siblings unpacked and docked the boat, etc.

The store was a good 30-minute drive into town as the lake was far from everything and it had started to rain on the way there. We arrived at the store and made a mad dash for the doors as they started to down pour.

We grab a cart and start our shopping we were in the cereal aisle when it sounded like a train was approaching. My mom grabbed my brother and I and kind of jumped on top of us. We had no idea what was happening and all of a sudden cereal boxes were flying everywhere. I remember hearing glass windows break and the madness of the lights going out and food flying everywhere and hitting us. The entire cereal shelf fell backwards into the aisle behind us.

An F3 tornado had ripped right through the grocery store. It was a disaster; we were banged up and bruised, the store was a mess, and people were injured, but luckily no one was seriously hurt or killed.

Ambulances came, and we all had to get checked out. Our car somehow didn’t have a scratch on it. At this point, two hours had gone by and we were cleared to leave and headed back to the lake.

We pull in and jump out running toward the dock and my mom was crying, she had held it together but just lost it at this point and my dad and siblings were in the lake have had no idea what just happened.

My dad sees my mom just bawling, and me and my brother were too and comes running over as we are all trying to explain what had happened.

We decided to stay as the lake was safe and had tornado shelters and it did not rain once the entire week we were there. We had to go to a different town an hour away for provisions. My dad drive with my mom the next day to see the destruction and the whole little town was destroyed. It was so sad. They did rebuild by the next summer.

It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been in and I’ve been terrified of storms since.

24. No Touched It

My antique clock passed through many generations of my family, has been broken for the last forty to sixty years.

It started ringing last Saturday.

No one in my family said they touched it.

reddituser

25. Stack of Newspapers

My family works on giving newspapers to the local neighborhoods near ours, and my parents were paranoid that something might happen if they left me and my two older sisters home asleep. We were quite young at the time so I kinda don’t blame them.

One night we were sent to one of the cars to go and continue sleeping in while my parents were outside discussing things with each other. Me, obviously being tired as heck from waking up suddenly at 4:00 am, I passed out quite quickly. The next thing I know, I wake up to a scream and both of my sisters and my mom crying.

Turns out, a person tried to steal our car with us inside it, not knowing that we were in it. My oldest sister noticed the car was driving a little too quickly so she stood up to see why it was. She screamed and it startled the man, which also made a whole stack of newspapers fall on him, worsening the situation for the man. He fled soon after.

May not be as scary as the others, but it makes me uneasy to think that I was almost kidnapped without me even noticing.

26. Suffering From a Headache

An acquaintance of mine sent his son to a triathlon camp in Texas.

A week later, his son came back from camp. The next day, the son was complaining of a headache. Four days later, he was dead. Healthy, happy, fit 12-year-old one week, dead the next.

Turns out the lake had Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba. Nothing scares me as irrationally as already being dead and waiting for your body to catch on.

Link for those interested.

persondude27

27. A Text From Him

In my freshman year of college, I had a roommate that was really into drugs. He wouldn’t do them in front of me and it never really affected me so I never really had the guts to say anything about it. He would tell me that he was going fishing and would leave the room for about 30 minutes and then come back high out of his mind. The weirdest part was there was no place to fish within ~30 miles, so I knew he wasn’t fishing but he still brought around his fishing rod for show.

One day he told me he was going fishing with a few friends and about 20 minutes later I heard pounding on my dorm door. He was laying on the floor unconscious with 2 guys who explained to me that they had to carry him back because he fell asleep. They left right after they dropped him on the floor and told me not to tell the R.A. (the person that is in charge of the students on the dorm floor) because he was already on probation with the school. I dragged him into our room and managed to get him on the couch, but still no signs of movement. I poured water on him and shook him to see if I could wake him up but nothing worked. I finally called the campus police and ran to get the RA to help with the situation.

The police showed up and I explained to them that he was probably on drugs and that he was carried back to our room unconscious by some of his friends. The cops quickly realized that he did not have a pulse and attempted to resuscitate him. There must have been 8 people in our small living room trying to figure out a way to get him breathing. Finally, they brought him back to life and he started punching the people around him. He was still really messed and up looked and me and kept making a fist while shouting and swearing at everyone around him.

The cops mentioned to me that if I hadn’t moved as quickly as I did, he surely would’ve died that day. I will never forget the bloodshot look he gave me once he realized what was going on.

He was kicked out of college and that was the last time I saw him. About 5 months after the incident I got a text from him saying I ruined his life and that I would pay for it. It’s been 6 years and he didn’t end up killing me or anything so I think I’m in the clear.

28. Every Loud Bang

One night I was at a bar and as I was standing at the back door, the front doorbell rang, as it was a private club, the bouncer did not let the guys in because they were thrown out earlier. A few minutes later, the front door exploded. A girl sitting right in front of the door was badly injured with large splinters that were 6 to 8 inches long that pierced through her hand and leather jacket and face. Debris had hit me standing at the back door, the bartender was telling everybody to get down and take cover. I ran and hid behind a pool table scared and shaking until the police arrived. Turns out they had stolen quarter sticks of dynamite and used some on the door. To this day when I hear a loud bang or something like it, I hit the floor. I have PTSD because of that. I was 18 then, and I’m now 57.

29. That is When I Knew

My father was a hunter. He was also a Mason and owned his own business and I remember every lesson that he ever taught me. One day he told me that we were going to go hunting on Wednesday. That was something that we never did. He always told me that I had to keep my grades up or I couldn’t go hunting. Secretly, I hated hunting anyway but I couldn’t tell my dad because of his expectations of me. But this time was different, something in my heart told me that something was wrong. I remember that morning like it was yesterday. As we drove in the dark I remember the feeling I had in my stomach. I kept asking myself, why we were going hunting on a school day. why did he kiss my mother goodbye like it was the last time. I also noticed that my dad wasn’t wearing his mason ring. I was so afraid but I didn’t know why. When we got to the place where we hunted, my dad told me that we had the whole place to ourselves because he had rented an acre of land so there wouldn’t be anyone getting in our way. We got out of the car and headed toward the spot where we had hunted before. It was still dark and cold. We had to wade through water that was covered with ice so I stayed behind my dad so he could break the ice as we walked. Pretty soon we came to a levy. It was too late to make it to the blind because the sun was breaking and that is when the ducks would fly from their hiding place. I could see the birds flying everywhere and my dad was shooting as fast as he could. He got one and told me to go get it. Just as I turned to step back into the water, I heard a gunshot and turned around to see my dad running. He had dropped his shotgun and was holding his coat over his chest.

I ran to catch him and asked him what happened. He said that he was shot and fell to the ground. I sat down next to him and tried to talk to him but he couldn’t say anything. He breathing but only a little. I was 12 years old and didn’t know what to do. I jumped up and started running. I was so scared. I must have run for an hour and finally found someone to help. I was out of breath but I grabbed the man’s hand and pulled him toward where my dad was. Then I realized that I was lost and couldn’t find the spot where my dad was. The man told me to keep running and he was going a different way and for me to yell if I found my dad. I took off again and ran until I passed out. When I woke up the sun was high in the sky. I felt like I was in a dream until I heard a helicopter fly over. I got up and ran in the same direction that the helicopter went and ended up at a cabin where there were a few cars and a sheriff. When they found out who I was, The cop took me to the hospital but before we went in he asked me a bunch of questions. He kept asking me how it happened. Over and over. I didn’t see it actually happen. The cop took me into the waiting room and I sat there waiting. The cop said that my uncle was coming to get me. When he walked into the hospital, the doctor met him and they talked for a min. Then he waved at me to come on and we left. That is when I knew that my dad was gone. I am 60 years old now and not one night has passed where I didn’t have a nightmare about that day.

30. Every Picture

Had two friends that used an Ouija board. When they went to bed, they could feel something there with them, watching them. The next day they mostly forgot about it. They went to the local mall (one of the biggest in the U.S.), and in every picture they took together, there was someone in the background. The same person. In. Every. Picture. They showed me the pictures that night so I know it’s real.

TheDirtyPeanut