People love to watch horror movies, but when it comes to scary stories that get under your skin and stay there, nothing can compete with a tale from real life. These people shared the most terrifying things that have ever happened to them. They'll never forget these spine-tingling moments, and after reading this list, neither will you. Make sure all the doors are locked before diving into this one.
1. Going In A Different Direction
Back in the 70s, friends and I planned a camping trip for a long weekend. We picked up a hitchhiker headed to Kernville and dropped him off on the way. We thought it was no big deal, but when we got to our campsite, my girlfriend made a chilling discovery. She found a note from the hitchhiker on her bag. It said, “I could have made all of you disappear forever.” We didn’t sleep that night.
2. Distant Relative
I met a guy who had been traveling through Australia with a couple friends, hitchhiking around as many people have done. He told me a story that I'll never forget. One day, one of his friends told him they were near his distant uncle’s house. He'd never met him before, but he got his uncle's phone number from a family member. He called him and, as the hitchhikers had hoped, the uncle offered them a place to stay for the night.
He picked them up and drove them to his rural property way out in the bush. They said he seemed like a pretty friendly, cheery, and normal guy, so they had no worries about staying with him. When it was time to set up a place to sleep, the uncle opened a closet that was totally full of sleeping bags and bed rolls. They didn’t think too much about it at the time, but looking back, that was a sign that something wasn't right.
They set up on the floor and stayed for a few days. Then the uncle drove them to the bus station, and they went on their way. A year later, the authorities took the uncle into custody. It turned out that he had been picking up young hitch-hiking backpackers, then offing them. The guy telling this story was 100% certain he had slept in the sleeping bag of one of his victims.
3. Lost Backpack
I was exploring the forests near my house with my cousin. We were on a steep hill and as we looked down, we saw that there were a bunch of craters at the very bottom. As we looked inside one of the craters, we saw something strange. There was a backpack in there. We tried to climb down, but the hill was too steep and slippery to do it safely, so we planned on returning later with a rope.
The next day, there was a news story about how there was a backpack with the remains of a girl in that forest. A guy walking his dog found it after the dog would not stop barking at the edge of the crater and staring at the backpack. My cousin and I decided not to go exploring in the forests anymore after we saw that news clip.
4. Let Us In
I lived with three other girls in college. All three took off early for spring break, leaving me alone in the house. During my first night on my own, I heard someone bang on my front door at 2 AM. Then I heard more knocks at my back door. A man yelled, “I’m an officer. Open the door!” I didn’t believe him. I stayed in my room and started to panic.
As I heard bodies slam against both doors, and a man saying, “Little girl, open the door. We know you’re alone,” I frantically dialed 9-1-1. Thank God I did. As the sirens approached, I saw officers chase four boys from our school hockey team and pin them face down on the grass. I had to file restraining orders against all of them.
5. All In Your Head
When I worked in healthcare, I had a patient who got a sinus infection. He stopped taking his antibiotics after a few days because he felt better. Then, overnight, everything fell apart. He got to the Emergency Department, where the doctors realized he was experiencing stroke symptoms. It turned out that the sinus infection had spread to his cranial cavity.
There was so much pus in there that it was twisting his brain. No one thought he would survive the surgery. The family was advised to expect the worst, but amazingly, he somehow made it through. It wasn’t an easy recovery though. He ended up needing three more surgeries to wash all the pus out and then spent almost two months in the hospital. Take your full dose of antibiotics, people!
6. Geriatrick Grandparents
My sister and I were playing outside when an elderly couple walked by our yard. Our yard had this cemetery in the back that was a common local attraction for tourists as the house was built in the 1800s. Most of the graves were of children lost to illnesses. The old couple were pestering my sister. They were asking her to tell them her name.
We got scared and ran inside to tell our mom what had happened. The following week, I heard a story on the news about an elderly couple approaching a teenage girl and attacking her. It was the same couple who came over to us that day. It still scares me.
7. Pause For Effect
When I was younger, my mother managed the apartment where we lived. Right before Halloween, she told a scary story about a tragic accident involving the two little boys and their mom above us in the vacant apartment. She said if you listened closely, you could still hear their footsteps running up and down the hallway.
At that very moment, we heard the sound of running upstairs. The look on my mother’s face was pure terror. She called the neighborhood patrol man and one of the on-duty maintenance guys to go and check the apartment. They found a homeless mother living there who had slipped through an open window with her two children.
My mom never told ghost stories again.
8. Warning Signs
My ex and I were out driving on a big Canadian road trip a year ago. One night, it was getting dark, so we decided to grab a hotel room and settle in for the night. On the way, we came across a car and a girl standing on the road and trying to flag us down. Keep in mind, this was in a rural area and we hadn't seen any cars in a while, so we were already confused and weirded out.
Just to be safe, we stopped, mostly to see if the girl needed help. As my boyfriend rolled down his window to talk to the girl, I slammed my foot on the gas and took off. I happened to look at the opposite side of the road and saw three guys coming out of the bushes with baseball bats. I don't know what that girl was doing, but I'm pretty sure she was going to lure us into something horrific.
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9. Shed Some Light
I lived in a house with four housemates for a year. We had a pretty big backyard with motion detector lights, a garage, and a tool shed that we never really used. Two of my housemates were very superstitious—they believed in ghosts, spirits, and other stuff like that. So, when the lights in our backyard kept turning on randomly, I assumed it was animals, while my housemates were sure it was a ghost.
One even said that she had caught a man-ghost looking through our window one night. She thought it was scary; I thought she was just being ridiculous. A few nights later, though, I became a believer. I looked outside and swore that I saw a man standing behind the mesh-door that led into our back patio. I screamed, got my roomies down, and made us all investigate.
But by the time we got out there, whoever was there (if anyone had been there at all) was gone. Anyway, flash forward a few months. I moved back to my home country and FaceTimed with one of the housemates. Well, it turns out that man hadn’t been a ghost. A homeless man had been living in our toolshed for God knows how long. It gave me the creeps for sure.
10. What’s Out There
When I was eight, we all had to take swimming lessons at school. My mom worked late, so I went to after-school care and didn’t get home until after it was dark. One day, when we came home, my mom told me to get my swimsuit and towel, and hang them on the clothesline to dry. That way, I would be able to wear them the next day.
I was so confident going outside to do this. I had this real feeling of finally being a big kid, you know? But as I walked into our backyard, everything changed. Suddenly, a man leapt over our gate and started sprinting towards me. I screamed, jumped inside, and instinctively locked the back door. Thankfully, he ran off and didn't try anything like that again, but it really messed me up. I slept with the light on until I was 16, and I get my husband to go outside for me while it’s dark.
11. Hang Up
My mom once stopped to help an overturned car on the side of a highway. As we got out of our vehicle, my mom immediately called emergency as I wandered over to see if anyone needed help. Near the wreck, I saw the driver treating a woman (I think it was his wife) roughly. I was only a teenager and the guy was almost three times my size, so I tried to get my mom to come over.
She was busy on the phone, leaving me with these two people. I quickly realized that the man was intoxicated and looking for a fight. I figured that the only way we were going to get out of this was by playing it cool and then driving away as fast as we could. Once I could get my mom's attention, I'd find a way to tell her, but in the meantime, it was me and the two passengers.
The man asked me to help him move the car. I just stared at him and told him that was a ten-man job and there was no way he and I could do it. Then his wife started to scream at him. She was shouting that she got him hurting her and crashing the car on camera and that she sent the video to his sister. This caused the man to lose his mind.
He picked me up and literally threw me. Then he shoved my mom, took her phone, and pushed her down the bank. Panicking, I told him I had a knife, and I wasn’t afraid to use it if he touched my mother again. With that, he took his focus off my mom and stared right at me. As I tried to calm him, my mom snuck back into the car. When she was ready, I made a run for our vehicle.
On my way, a car that was speeding on the road almost hit me, but I made it to my mom. I heard her start the engine as I jumped in, and we tore off to the local station. The man was apprehended a couple hours later for two charges: one for hurting his wife and the second for assaulting an officer. We call emergency when we see crashes now.
12. How Kind
Once, my friend went out and met this girl who seemed really nice. After drinking with her, she passed out and woke up in an Uber. She told the driver that she didn’t know where she was. He told her that a girl brought her to his car because she wanted to make sure her "friend got home safe.” My friend insisted that something very wrong had happened and told the Uber driver to pull over. He was a good man; he immediately believed her, stopped the car, and called for officers to come and figure out what was going on.
When the officers heard what happened, they said they recognized the address that the Uber driver had been given by this mystery girl. It turns out that there was some kind of human trafficking operation. A girl would slip something into a pretty girl's drink, then pour her into a cab, and send her to the same house. Until my friend called in, none of the girls had been seen again.
13. Freak Incident
When my friend came home after work, his wife was gone. He thought she had taken the dogs for a walk and so checked the normal walk route. Then he saw all of these flashing blue lights. An officer stopped him and said he wasn't allowed to come any closer. But my friend had this sinking feeling. He looked over the officer's shoulder and realized that there was a woman bleeding on the sidewalk. That's when his stomach dropped: the woman was his wife.
It turned out that she had been on a walk in her neighborhood when a man randomly jumped her. He had just been released from a mental institution and randomly happened to cross paths with her. Sadly, her injuries were too extensive and she passed in the hospital. It's the scariest story I've ever heard because it's so meaningless. This man ended her life for no reason.
14. Baked Even
There's a big bread factory in my town. One day, years ago, maintenance men had to go into the bread oven to fix some issue. The oven had been off for 24 hours before they arrived, but it was still hot. The maintenance men didn't want to go in, but the company insisted, saying that anymore time wasted would lose them even more money.
So the maintenance guys took out baskets that held the raw bread on the conveyor belt, climbed onto the conveyor, and started up the machinery. Almost immediately upon entering the oven on the conveyor, the maintenance guys realize that something is terribly wrong. It's way, way too hot to be safe. They tried to run out, but there were too many baskets on the belt for them to get out. The path was blocked. They were trapped.
The only thing they could do was stay on the conveyor and go through the oven, a slow and horrifically painful process that essentially baked them alive. Those outside assisting with maintenance had to listen to their screams. Then the oven went completely silent. They saw one burnt body emerge on the other side of the oven. The second man somehow lived, but only for a few moments.
15. Wet And Wild
When my mother was young, she went swimming with her friends. While there, she had to watch helplessly as her friend was sucked into a whirlpool at the bottom of a drainage lake. They didn’t find his body for days. That’s why I never learned to swim.
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16. Incognito Infiltration
I was a director of my college’s student government. There was this dude who was always willing to take on projects, so I assigned him a lot of work. I remember thinking he was pretty charismatic and well dressed, and he'd always done good work for me. So when he told me he owned a start-up clothing company, I bought some things from his website.
The next year I saw an article with his face on it. I found out that he was not what he seemed. He had been taking extracurricular classes as an excuse to stay on campus, even though he'd been kicked out of all his classes for a horrible reason. He'd been forcing himself on women at the university. His father was a wealthy professor and covered it up every time it happened. He seemed so normal.
17. No Strings Attached
A co-worker's dad went into the nursery to check on his newborn baby only to find a horrific sight. The baby had reached for the blinds strap, somehow tangled his neck up, and began choking. The baby was already blue, and all of the veins in his face were popping up. Grandpa frantically called for emergency. Thankfully, EMS arrived in minutes and had the baby breathing again, but as a mother, I can't imagine anything scarier.
18. Personal Emergency
There was a fatal car accident. The first officer on the scene had recognized that the victim was the daughter of an emergency dispatcher. The same emergency dispatcher who had been relaying all of the information about the crash to emergency services. This was before cell phones, meaning the officer had no easy way to tell her what had happened. He just had to keep that horrible information to himself.
19. Going Somewhere?
When I was nine, I was playing at the school down the street from my house. It was the middle of summer, and my friend and I were watching some local boys play street hockey. One of the boys called my name and said a man in the parking lot was looking for me.
The parking lot was mostly obscured by a nearby building, but I could see an old 70s style van that hadn't been there earlier. I was walking over to the van when the mother of one of the other kids showed up looking for her son. When she saw me, she said hi and asked me where I was going. When I told her, she took my hand and started to quickly walk away with me. At that exact moment, the van pulled out and sped off.
My friend's mom walked me all the way home, and I wasn't allowed out of my yard without my parents for the rest of the summer. I was so upset and didn't understand why I was being punished. It was only years later that I had understood that I was likely being targeted by some opportunistic loser for I don’t even want to know what.
20. Anybody There?
I once interviewed a woman who told me a horror story about something that happened to her as a girl. When she was ten, she had trouble sleeping. She thought that the Boogeyman was standing in her closet and staring at her whenever she tried to sleep.
Every night, she would go downstairs and tell her parents about how scared she felt. And every night, her father would tell her the Boogeyman didn't exist and then send her back to bed. This happened over several nights, and the father got tired of it. That night, he walked her back up to her bedroom, turned on the light, and said, "I'll show you there's no Boogeyman."
As he went to open the closet door, something on the other side held it shut. The dad immediately sent his daughter out of the room and forced the door open to find that a man was in there. He'd been sneaking into their house every night to stand in the girl's closet and watch her.
21. Better Not Squashed
My mom passed an accident where two semis had completely crashed into each other. It looked like a normal accident, with both drivers seeming fine. They were walking around outside their cars, with emergency staff surrounding the scene. Because of this, my mom didn't think much of it--until she learned the truth. The news covered the crash. They said there weren't two semis, but three vehicles. There had been a car smashed in between the trucks. The driver was one of my brother's teachers.
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22. A Big Part Of Life
Back in the late seventies during her first semester at college, my mom met this guy named Bob. They were lab partners, and she’d thought he seemed cute and nice. She was too shy then to ask him out, but she definitely liked him. If Bob had asked her, she would have happily gone on a date. But he never did, so they just stayed friends.
But then things got...weird. Even though they studied different major, my mom kept noticing that Bob was often waiting for her. He'd be outside of her other classes, the library, the student union, and out in front where her dad picked her up and dropped her off. This continued into the spring semester.
Puzzled, but not yet alarmed, she asked him how he always knew where she would be. Bob loudly said, “oh, I asked the registrar’s office for a copy of your schedule!” My mom went to complain to the secretary who gave it to him. She blew it off because, “you guys are dating.” It was creepy, but since my mom was doing an exchange program the next year, she just left it at that. She figured that when she came back for her final year of university, he would have moved on.
Flash forward to her final year. She returns to university and...Bob is nowhere in sight. She figured she was free, but the whole situation was far from over. While my mom was at one of her grad school classes, my grandma heard a knock on the door. It was a man wearing a naval uniform. Since my grandmother had been a Navy nurse, she let him in.
The man started off by saying how sorry he was for my mother’s loss, which completely mystified my grandma. Before she could ask him what he meant, he continued, saying: “Well, ma’am, I just came back from overseas, and I found out my old friend Bob had passed. He had spoken so highly of his fiancée, your daughter, and I wanted to meet her.”
My grandmother told him her daughter didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé. It didn’t take long for the friend and my grandma to realize that Bob had made up his entire engagement. The whole thing was so creepy.
23. Barely Making It
I was living in a big city a few years ago and didn't know anyone. A guy I was seeing came to visit me. At the end of his trip, I accompanied him to his train home. After that, I slowly walked back to the streetcar to go back to my apartment. It was about 2 PM and very bright and sunny outside, and I was feeling friendly. As I sat down on the bench at the streetcar stop, the man sitting next to me said hi.
I said hello back, but I felt something was off. I tried to ignore it and keep enjoying my day. Shortly, the streetcar came, and we both got on. It was crowded so we ended up sitting pretty close to each other. Once I saw my stop approaching, I got up. The man stood up too. I could feel him breathing right behind me. Even worse, I could see his reflection in the metro car window. He was very slowly looking my legs up and down. I started to feel very uneasy. The doors opened; we got off.
I made my way quickly to the end of the platform but realized he could be following me. There were several exits around, so I suddenly changed direction to go to another exit. He changed his course as well. Then I turned around again; he followed. I did this a few times, and he changed his path to match mine every single time.
Eventually, he caught up to me and approached me. He got closer and closer until I was up against a wall. A he smiled brightly at me, he said "Hello, how are you?" I was terrified. No one stopped to even glance at us, so I knew that unless I did something, I would not get away from him. I glanced to the right and saw a staircase. Without warning, I sprinted away.
Since I’d caught him off guard. It took him a few seconds to start following me. Somehow, the stars aligned and I managed to get on a train right as the doors closed in his face. That incident and several others of men following me home or in the street make me paranoid when I walk outside alone.
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24. You’re Coming With Me
My friend came back home with her first date. They were both a little tipsy and high. She went in to change, and when she came back to her bedroom, her date bent down to remove his shoes. As he got up, he immediately grabbed her and dragged her out against her will. She struggled, but he just covered her mouth and brought her outside.
He took her out of her apartment complex with a strong hold the whole time. Then finally, he let her go, and she asked him what exactly was wrong with him. He told her that he had seen a man who was hiding under her bed.
25. Like Riding A Bike
I was a toddler and lived with my mom in a cheap single wide trailer in a really bad trailer park. I slept at my aunt’s overnight a lot because my mom would work graveyard shifts. She picked me up from my aunt’s house around 7 AM one day, and we went back to our trailer. I remember immediately not wanting to go inside. I just had this terrible feeling.
I begged to ride my bike, but my exhausted mother just wanted to go to sleep, so we went inside, and she laid in bed. I sat up watching the TV for a while. And being the toddler that I was, I kept waking my mom up asking to go ride my bike. She said no and told me to go play in my room. I didn't want to, so I asked to lay with her. I told my mom that I felt like there was someone in my closet, and he wanted to hurt me.
My mom, who was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, got up to show me no one was there. We went in my room, and then we saw the folding closet door open, but then it got stuck. Inside was a man who had skipped out on his bail, been watching my mom’s comings and goings for a few days, and came into our house when she was at work.
We bolted out of the house, ran to the car and then drove to the station. Unfortunately, the guy escaped before the officers showed up.
26. Little Help Here
One time when I was about 16, I went to a laundromat with a friend. I wasn’t as familiar with the neighborhood, since it was near my friend's house instead of mine; I was just there to hang out with her. As we walked inside the laundromat, we saw an older man standing near his car looking. My friend walked right passed him. She didn’t give him a single glance, but he caught me looking at him and asked, “will you come help me find my phone. I dropped it down here somewhere and I can’t find it.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I looked into the car and noticed a second man in the car staring at me. I’ll never forget how he looked at me. I just snapped my head away and followed my friend inside. When we got inside, she told me that those men were known in the area. They would use ploys to get young women into their car. After that, you don't want to know what they did.
I was shaken up because if I had been a little younger and a little dumber, I don’t know if I would have seen the other man in the car. I might’ve helped him.
27. Seen Some Stuff
My friends and I were drinking one time and going around asking, "hey, whatever happened to…?" In this case, it was a guy who had a free period with a few of us in high school. He was a nice kid. We Googled him, and there were a couple appellate court decisions visible in first few results. We kept looking into him and discovered his chilling story.
He had gone to Afghanistan. It had really messed him up. The court notes said he saw things there that completely undid him. He came home with PTSD and delusional schizophrenia. He had been on a mission to hurt his mother to save her from demons and send her to heaven. He'd tried and failed numerous times. We looked for his social media accounts.
It was just threads and threads of manic rambling about demons. It was sad to find this but also terrifying to think you could be "normal" then through one set of circumstances or another, become completely insane within a few years.
28. A Step Back
I had the most likeable, kind stepfather. When I was a ten-year-old boy, he treated me really well. We would rent movies together and do lots of nice activities. But everything changed when he cheated on my pregnant mother. When she broke up with him, he became enraged and threatened her, and she didn't take it too seriously at the time. Until one horrible night, when he lashed out.
He hid in our apartment. Luckily for me, I was with my grandmother. He tied up my mother when she got home and beat her viciously. Neither she nor her unborn baby survived that night. He said in trial he would’ve done the same to me. Since then, I’ve learned more awful things that he did. I couldn't see it as a kid. I have had no contact with him for 17 years.
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29. Just Close Your Eyes
When I was about five, I woke up to my house surrounded by loud voices and bright white lights. It turned out that a group of dangerous people had broken into our house after a heist and were using my parents as hostages.
30. How’d You Get Here?
I was in a holding cell with a guy who’d been in a brutal fist fight. The other man was in intensive care in the hospital. While we were together, the guy spent the entire time telling me all of the very specific details of the fight. After three days, the CO’s came and brought him to isolation. His victim didn’t make it. I was 17 at the time. I’ll never forget being scared to fall asleep right next to this guy.
31. Listen To Your Elders
My mother-in-law was a very funny and cool woman. She and my wife were really close, and sadly, she passed when our son was about four months old. A few years later, we moved into an old 1930s era craftsman house. Our son was three by then. I was giving him a bath one night, and he was looking over my shoulder at something.
He asked why Grandma called Mommy a funny name. I paused and asked him what he meant, thinking he was talking about my mom. He then said, “why does Grandma call Mommy [very specific nickname]?” I was shocked. My wife and I had never used that nickname. It was something her mom had called her since she was a baby.
I asked him where he’d learned that. He said, "the farmer told me." I asked him who the farmer was. He said he was his friend. I told my wife about it later, and she was reduced to tears over the whole nickname thing. We both knew there was no way for him to know it, and we just marveled at it, not knowing what else we could do.
The next weekend, my son was playing alone in his room. My wife was at work, and I was at home in the office next to my son's bedroom. Through the shared wall, I heard him talking like he was having a conversation. He was saying things like, “yes,” “no,” and, “I don’t know that,” and then laughing. I started to get a little creeped out, so I went into his room and asked him what he was doing.
He told me that he was playing. I asked him who he was playing with. He told me he was playing with the farmer. I asked him where the farmer was. He told me that he’d left when I came in. What?! My wife came back, and I told her what happened. She was just as weirded out as I was. We had no idea what to do and figured if it happened again, we would do something.
A few days later in the middle of the night, we both heard our son saying, "Grandma says you and I can't be friends anymore." We went to check on him while freaking out. He was sitting up in his bed. We asked him if he was okay, and he said, “yeah, Grandma says I can’t play with the Farmer anymore.” He never once mentioned the farmer again. Not ever. He's 13 now and remembers none of it. But we do.
32. Unfriendly Stranger
I was walking out into a parking lot one night when a guy got my attention and asked for a ride. I did not know this person and don't give random strangers rides so I already knew I would say no. But before I could turn him down, he launched into this story about how he was a truck driver who needed to go to the to the gas station across the highway, since it was within walking distance to his big rig.
I didn’t buy it, so I made up some excuse and told him that there were apps he could use for help. He started yelling at me, saying that it was just a ride and that he needed help. At that point, I just said, "I gotta go," and quickly turned around and headed to my car. I heard him say, "okay fine, you jerk" as I got into my car and just sped away.
Initially, I felt really bad for not giving him a ride, but the way he’d yelled at me made it seem justified that I said no. A year later, I was at a restaurant eating lunch and decided to open Facebook on my phone. What I saw next just spooked me to the core. The article had a mugshot of that same guy from that night.
He was a fugitive wanted on several major charges across the state where I was living. One of the ways he would trick his victims was by asking for a ride and then when they were out of sight, he'd off them and take their stuff. He then would take their vehicle and travel to the next area to find his next victim. I almost choked on my drink.
33. Ruining It For Everyone
A kid in my class was absolutely cruel to another student, even doing stuff like burning his poor victim's face. One day, the kid went to the class he shared with his tormentor, ran to his desk, and blew his own brains out in front of the cruel kid, the teacher, and the rest of the class. The poor kid’s body slumped forward, and his head fell right on the mean kid’s desk.
Almost everyone in the class switched schools after that. My brother, who was there too, barely spoke for a year after that day. It took me until I was 25 and he was 35 for us to talk about what happened.
34. Locked And Loaded
I was a bouncer, and on one slow night, a guy tried to get into the club after last call. After arguing with me, he just tried to push his way through to the door. I grabbed him by his dreads and threw him back to the street, which made him very angry at me. He told me that he was watching me and that I had better watch my back.
I had heard that threat before, but this guy meant it. He turned around and hit the button on his keychain, popping the trunk of his car. He went in his trunk and armed himself. He was right in my face. This was the first time I'd ever had this happen to me. I had often thought about a situation like this and joked about it with coworkers, saying that I'd take a guy down if it came to that.
Nope. I was so wrong. I only felt crippling fear. I luckily had nothing in my bowels to vacate because I certainly would have if there had been. While trying to keep my voice from cracking, I used one arm to point up and say, "you're on camera, get out of here." Then I backed up into the club, locked the door, and puked in the washroom.
35. No Ability For Fragility
There were people at my university doing construction. Three guys were standing on a big glass roof that was supposed to be stable. Well, it wasn't, and all three fell right through the thing. Two guys got out okay, but it was a 20-something temp worker who ended up losing his life that day. His body was horrific. It was an awful way to go.
36. No, You Stop
My wife’s friend was driving home from work one evening. She was in a quiet area when an unmarked car sped up behind her and started flashing his lights to get her to pull over. She still doesn’t know why, but she remembered feeling like something wasn't right. She kept driving, even though the flashing car was behind her, and called the local station.
She asked the operator about an unmarked car wanting to pull her over. The person on the phone did a quick check. What they said was, "Ma'am, I'm going to need you to keep driving and stay calm." Within a few minutes, four marked cars came speeding up behind and, before she knew what was happening, boxed the unmarked car in between them and forced it to stop.
The dispatcher told her to drive around the corner and stop. After they put him in the backseat, the officers told her the full story. It turns out they had been hunting this guy down for pretending to be an officer. He'd flash his lights, get young women to pull over, and then attack them.
37. Almost The End
A van of six people was on their way to an engagement party when the driver, who'd worked too many shifts in a row, dozed off. He woke up to realize that the van was out of his control and, in the seconds that he had, decided to save himself and jumped out his door. This van, out of control, went down and rolled over multiple times, ending four lives on the spot.
There was one lucky person who survived with minor fractures and another who had barely survived. Her skull cracked. The bone under her eyes broke and caved in. Glass from the van’s window stuck in her eyes. She broke her nasal bone, jaw, hip bone and fractured her toes. She also dislocated and broke her shoulder bone.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she lost her teeth as well as a huge chunk of skin from her feet. She was wheeled into the hospital and had multiple surgeries. She said the only thing that got her through was thinking about her kids growing up motherless. When I saw her after surgery, she was completely wrapped in bandages.
She couldn't speak for months and couldn't walk for a year. This was my mom in the year 2006. I was 9 or 10 then, and the memory of her mummified form still haunts me in my dreams.
38. Free Range
A friend of mine went backpacking in Australia and wanted to work on a farm. So, she placed an ad about herself on a website and got a response. A man picked her up to take her to the farm. At the farm, the guy instantly became horrifically violent. He dragged her out the car, chained her up, and tormented her. I don't want to write about what he did to her, but I'll put it this way. At the end, she genuinely thought she wouldn't live to see another day.
He left her, assuming she wouldn't last much longer. Luckily, though, she had her backpack nearby, and he hadn’t chained her well. She slipped out and sent messages to people she had met, alerting them about what had happened. She then pretended to get back in the chains while one of her friends called to send officers to rescue her. She’s safe but traumatized.
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39. Did You See That?
About seven of us were driving two cars in tandem along the interstate on our way to see a concert. Most of the interstate goes along the river that borders two states. There’s one section that jets out into the river essentially making a small lake between the east and west parts of the road with guardrails on both sides.
I was in the left lane going 65. It was dark out, and suddenly, I saw a Texas Chainsaw looking person in a long trench coat. His face was bright red and he was standing in the middle of my lane. He raised his arms and started coming towards the car. I was able to swerve just enough to avoid him. Then, of course, I was worried for our friends.
They were about eight car lengths behind us. They swerved hard almost losing control but somehow didn’t hit the scary, bloody faced horror show in the middle of the highway. There was no wreck or evidence of damage to the guard rail. We stopped to report it but never heard another thing about it. It scared us all to our cores.
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40. Freeze Fall
I went ice fishing with my dad when I was ten, but it had just snowed the night before, so you couldn't see any of the ice. On my way out to the ice house, I fell straight through an unmarked hole that had a very thin layer of ice covering it. The scariest part was instantly shutting down and sinking because of the icy cold.
I could look up and see where I had fallen through but couldn't swim back up to it. After a few seconds, I finally willed myself up and to the edge where my dad pulled me the rest of the way out.
41. Straight To Your Door
I live on a street with no exit. One day, I was cleaning and heard my younger daughter talking. There was just one problem: My older daughter was at school, so who was my daughter talking to? I checked on her and saw there was a man on the street talking to her through the window. I quickly ran outside to catch him, but he ran away before I got there.
A few weeks later, my older daughter was riding her bike when she quickly came inside, crying and panicking. She said an old man was trying to talk to her while she was outside. She described the exact same guy that I saw talking to my younger daughter. I reported it and haven't heard anything back. I better not see him ever again.
42. Sad To See
My dad read to his blind neighbor after school when he was ten. She lived with her son and was well into her 90’s but loved having my dad's company. She fell and broke her hip one day, so he could not see her for a long time. When he did visit, she was sitting in her soiled diaper, looked fragile, and had many bruises. Since my dad was only a kid, he didn't know what to do so he just didn't do anything. He regrets it to this day.
It turned out that her son was horribly mistreating her. A few weeks after my dad last saw his neighbor, an ambulance came to her house and took her away. Her son had gone too far. He grabbed her forearm during a struggle and degloved her. She survived for a while at the hospital, and my dad got to visit her one last time, but to this day, he hates talking about the whole thing.
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43. Hot And Cold
A work friend had introduced me to a guy, and we briefly dated. We enjoyed each other's company and ended up in bed together. A couple days later, he called my work and left a creepy message with the secretary. It just said, "I want nothing to do with you, leave me alone, and never call me again." It was weird since I never did call him, but I figured, oh well, his loss.
A couple weeks later, officers discovered a body that was shoved in a well the next town over. Not long after, they caught the guy. It was the same creepy guy I had dated oh so briefly. He pleaded guilty. What was his motive? She wouldn't sleep with him.
44. Skin Of Your Teeth
My friend was in a really awful traffic accident. He was riding his bike in the bike lane next to a big truck. He was in the blind spot of the truck, fell under the truck, and was dragged 600 meters. His face scraped on the asphalt. He lost his eye and a lot of his arm skin. It was so bad that he had one arm amputated.
What makes it extra scary is that he was fully conscious the whole time.
45. Hall The Way Out
I was around four years old, and my parents had just separated. My mom and I had to move into an apartment that was so small that we had to share a bed. We set it up just under the window, so that the light would shine in behind us every morning. Well, that's what we wanted. What we got instead was a complete nightmare.
One hot summer night, I woke up and saw our cat sitting in the door frame. It was strange because our cat was typically always in bed with us. As I was watching him, he walked into the bedroom and meowed. I turned to face my mom and wake her up. In the few seconds that it took for her to wake and ask me what was wrong, we both looked back up and saw a man standing by the living room door.
I still don't know how she managed to do it so quickly, but my mother somehow picked me up and threw me out of the open window. She quickly followed, and we were able to start screaming for help. Someone heard and called for emergency. Officers arrived but couldn't find any signs of forced entry. They only found that our front door was unlocked which led them to believe the man must have exited that way.
The strange thing was that my mom swore up and down that she had locked, bolted, and chain locked the door that night. A couple days later, she was cleaning up in the kitchen and opened the water heater closet. She found a notebook with names and drawings as well as a pair of gloves and some gum wrappers. She called officers over again, but all they could do was speculate that the man had been in our house and hid until we were asleep.
46. Just Mom’s Friend
I moved to my dad’s when I was 10 and didn't know anyone in the area. Being an outgoing kid, I quickly made friends with some of my neighbors. One was a girl who was 12, and we ended up having the same circle of friends. One day, I'm at her house when we hear a knock on the door. My friend thought it was her mom since she knocked a certain way, so she answered the door without thinking.
Meanwhile, since I wasn't supposed to be there, I took off through the window and went back to my house. Later on, I learned about the danger I'd escaped. The woman at the door was not my friend's mother. Her mother worked at a mental institution, where one of the inmates had recently been released. She was the one at the door.
Thankfully, my friend's little brother was able to run away to find help. But my friend wasn't so lucky. The lady must have had a breakdown because she attacked that 12-year-old girl, removed her head, hid it, and left her body in the tub. The officers eventually found the head in the worst place: the family's Christmas presents.
47. Doggone In The Wind
I was sitting in my room after getting out of work on the second floor. My little brother was downstairs watching TV, and his dog was in the hallway outside my door napping. All of a sudden, the dog started making all kinds of noises. He was jumping, barking, clacking nails, howling, everything. I went to check, and then I heard someone.
A deep voice said, "Aw, that's a good girl." It wasn’t my brother, so I went, "Oh, you're home early!" thinking it was my dad's friend or our roomie. But as I opened the door, no one was there. Just my dog, wagging her tail and staring at the empty hallway. I talked to my brother about it and he said he heard the same voice. We looked everywhere, but we couldn't find anyone.
It still gives me the spooks to this day.
48. Premonition Mission
I was at work one day when my ex-wife called me out of the blue. She usually didn’t call me because she worked the night shift. She told me to call my friend Danny to make sure he and his family were okay. I asked why. She said that she had a dream but couldn't remember it and kept pressing me to call him to make sure.
So, I called Danny and checked in with him. I told him about my wife's dream. He was mildly amused but told me that he and his family were fine and to thank my wife for her concern. I called her back and let her know. She was very dubious. Then I found out that Danny got another call right after we spoke. In it, he learned that he’d lost his son.
49. Leave It As It Was
There's an abandoned house next door. The previous owner moved 25 years ago and never sold it. I got a flashlight and gloves, pushed the window open, and got inside to the basement. There was a grand piano there that still played but was very much out of tune, old WW2 stuff, and what looked to be a signed Elvis poster.
There was other really cool stuff that no one should ever had left. There's basically a whole story in that basement including a broken wedding picture frame and instruments everywhere. The main floor had an unmade bed, molded food in the fridge and on the stovetop, half-empty bottles turned solid, and lights still on.
Then I started walking upstairs and heard crying from one of the side rooms. That's when I freaked out and haven't been there since.
50. Itsy Bitsy
I got home from work late one night and walked right into this huge spider web on my front stoop. At first, I didn't think too much of it until I looked down and saw about 20-30 baby spiders all over me. I started freaking out and then noticed the parents sitting on my front door. They were huge–bigger than a quarter each.
I did not want to use the front door. I had no choice but to run to my back door. I threw all of my clothes off and jumped in the shower. I then watched in horror as baby spiders began falling out of my hair.
51. Come And Play
I worked in a nursing home. One time, I had a resident refuse to get on the elevator with me because she was, “scared of the little boy.” I shrugged it off until I had a resident come out of his room and ask me for "candy for the little boy." I decided to ask my mom who was the charge nurse and an employee of 13 years.
She told me that residents would periodically report seeing a little boy who was always wanting to play. He appeared to all kinds of residents from those of sound mental status to those with severe dementia. They all reported seeing the exact same thing. When they moved to a new facility, the little boy came with them.
The little boy was particularly fond of those with limited sight. The residents described him as having dark black hair and that he lived in a "tent,” where a tree had fallen on him. Then once, I was feeding a resident who had recently suffered a stroke. She couldn’t use her right hand and required complete assistance.
As I was feeding her, I felt a cold hand on my arm. Right then, the resident said, "is that your boyfriend? He looks a little young for you!" I nearly peed myself. That resident who saw him had passed by the morning.
52. Don’t Look Down
I was in class, and the teacher was asking us how our weekends were. The quietest girl in the class started to speak, only to break down in tears. She said she was on a trip in the mountains with her mom. They stopped to stretch their legs during the drive, then looked over the cliff, only to see an overturned vehicle with an entire, deceased family scattered around it.
53. Something’s Down There
During university, I was living in a sorority house with 20 other women. The house was super old and in terrible condition. The basement had items from residents who had lived there years ago, but never took their stuff when they moved out. With so many of us, we wouldn’t notice stuff moving around because we assumed someone else just moved it, took it, or ate it.
One day, a girl was doing her laundry in the basement and noticed a bed set up behind the giant piles of junk people had left behind over the years. Then she nearly screamed when she noticed a man. He tried to calm her down by saying her that he was dating someone at the sorority and she knew he was down there. But the girl wasn't buying it.
She called the campus officers immediately and they investigated the man. They told us that he had been living in the basement for who knows how long. They guessed that he had used the basement door to get in and out of the house. He never came back to our sorority, thank God, but I don't think campus officers caught him either. Who knows where he's living now?
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Sources: Reddit,
