Redditors shared their scariest personal experiences, ranging from deadly situations to paranormal experiences.
Warning: you might not want to read these late at night… alone… with the lights off… did you just hear something?
Was sitting in my room at like 11:30 pm, heard lots of noise downstairs, assumed it was my mum. Heard her walk up the stairs to my room, stop, I called out to her, she didn’t say anything and walked downstairs. I went down about a half hour later to find a piece of paper with the words “You’re lucky I’m scared too” on it, and a whole bunch of stuff was missing. Called mum, she still hadn’t arrived home from a dinner she was at with her friends. I called the cops and locked myself in the bathroom, but I think they left when they realized I was still home, probably the most scared I’ve ever been when I was hiding in the bathroom.
megaman1410
Growing up, my bedroom was the only one that faced the front of the house/street. When I was about 8 or 9, I woke up to my dad calmly but firmly telling me to get up, go in the bathroom, and shut the door. I was annoyed because I was half asleep, but I listened. Apparently I was more tired than I realized, because I feel asleep on the bathroom floor. The next morning I asked my mom what happened. She seemed oblivious and confused. I looked at my dad like she was crazy, and I asked him why he had woken me up. He denied doing it. I was becoming frustrated to the point of tears, but I ultimately let it go.
Fast forward to college. I was home one break, and I decided to ask again. I had thought of that night off and on for years, and it still bothered me. This time, my dad goes, “Ha! I was wondering if you even remembered that.” Turns out that a lot of houses on our block were being vandalized and robbed all those years ago. Someone had broken into the garage and was inside the house. My room was partially over the garage. My dad heard it happen and quietly got me to safety. Police were called, the guy ran. He was never caught, however, and my parents didn’t want a terrified kid on their hands, so for years they pretended like nothing had ever happened. It wasn’t supernatural, but it was unsettling for sure.
Call_Me_Egg
When I was a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night to my bed shaking. Normally that would scare the crap out of me, but instead I was just kind of annoyed. I rolled over and muttered, “Stop it.”
The shaking stopped immediately. Then a male voice speaks right beside me, saying, “Sorry.” That’s when I freaked out. I’m pretty sure my childhood house was haunted.
NinaLaPirat
When I was 16 in the mid 90s, aka the “I know everything, I’m invincible and you can’t stop me” age, I got in a fight with an acquaintance while a whole bunch of us were hanging out at his house. Stupid fight, can’t remember what about, but I decided screw it, I was going home. I lived about 5 miles away but I didn’t have a car, and since it was 2am there were no buses. I was going to walk home.
In the middle of the night, though a not-as-safe-as-it-seem neighborhood, as a tiny 16 year old girl.
So I did. I think in hindsight, my friends either didn’t believe I was going to do it or were too startled by the sudden argument to realize what I was doing. I left the house and started hoofing it. About a mile out, the suburban housing neighbourhood melted into a main street with highway access. I started to notice a greyish minivan following me. It would follow me, pass me, turn a corner, and about 3 blocks later, it would do the same thing. I mean, really really obvious what it was doing. I crossed over to the other side of the street so I was walking the opposite of traffic flow, and thus no car could come up behind me. It kept doing it, on the other side of the street. About a mile later, there was a 24-hour Fred Meyer (west coast USA chain grocery/all-purpose store), lights bright, but parking lot emptyish. I immediately crossed the parking lot and went to head inside.
Just before I got to the doors, the minivan that had been following me, pulled up into one of the parking spots. A guy called out from the driver side and said:
“I don’t want you to walk over here, just stay there and listen. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing. I saw you walking a while back, but I also saw a dark car that was following you. A couple of times you went to turn around, or stopped, so it started following you down a parallel side street. When I saw it, I started to follow you both, just to make sure you were safe. Go inside the store, and call someone to come pick you up, please. I haven’t seen the car since you headed across the lot.”
He waited until I was inside the store, and then pulled away. I didn’t have anyone to call, so I just let the night cashier know what was going on, and hung out with her for about an hour and a half. Then I finished the walk home. I’ve never forgotten the incident, or that man, whoever he was. During the walk, I never saw the dark car he mentioned, but I’ve always been convinced he saved my life that night.
jwiley84
My sister’s husband and her had just had their first child a few months prior. My brother in law was working the graveyard shift at his job as my sister stayed home taking care of my nephew.
Around 2am, she heard loud knocking on her back door. She went to go check it out and saw a lady banging on the door asking for my sister to let her in. The lady told my sister that her husband had just beat her down the street and was looking for her. My sister was hesitant to let her in since she had a newborn in the house and didn’t want to interfere. She told the lady that the best she could do was call the police for her. The lady told my sister to not call the police and to let her in. This is where my sister got suspicious. She went to get her phone and called 911. When she went back to the door, the lady was gone.
The police arrived a few minutes later and they told my sister that the same situation happened a few streets down. Apparently the couple would do this act to get into peoples homes.
I’m sure this is very common but having it almost happen to my sister and my nephew just creeps me out.
JoshSecond
Woke up. Clock says 3:34 AM. I’m 17 and in my bedroom, it’s pitch black but I hear some rattling downstairs. Terrified, I quietly tip toe to my parents’ room. Weird, it’s empty. Where are my parents at 3:34 AM?
Go upstairs to my brother’s room. He’s usually awake all night, but while the light is on, no one is in the room. So I guess whatever those noises are downstairs, it must be them. Why are they awake? Maybe someone died?
I go downstairs. In the middle of my living room is what looks like 2 men stealing our TV. No one else is in sight. I run upstairs as quietly as possible, shut and lock my door. Suddenly there’s banging on the door.
I wake up. It was a dream and the relief washes over me. I look over at the clock. Weird coincidence, it’s 3:34 A.M. I’m shaking, but decide to go downstairs to prove to myself that everything’s fine. I go downstairs. The two men are in my kitchen, screaming at my parents and brother. I run upstairs to my bedroom and lock the door. 10 seconds later, I hear banging.
I woke up. It’s 3:34 A.M. This time, I had actually woken up and I didn’t manage to fall back asleep for about 36 hours.
synaesthetist
I used to work in a hospital (in the IT department) and we did a number of overnight rollouts, as well as on call work / response when issues occurred overnight. Many weird things happened, or appeared to happen.
The thing that struck me as oddest, was when I saw the coroner running at full speed down the corridor, in the opposite direction, towards the morgue. This guy, an older guy in his 50s or so, was going at full speed! I had never seen him above an amble before, but this time he was really going for it. As he got close to me he yelled “Out of the way – I got another live one!”.
I am not sure what was more disturbing, the fact that he was dealing with what I could only assume was a dead body that now appeared to be alive, or the fact he said “another”.
TheJooce
I collect Organs and tissues for transplant from decedents which usually entails going into morgues in the dead of night. Once, a dead donor was tubed and “burped” at me from the release of gasses from their stomach. Nearly. Crapped. Myself.
Kookycranium
Two years ago, I woke up around 1:00 AM thinking, “I can never go home again.” It was the most intense sense of homesickness I’ve ever experienced, full of panic and regret. I tried to calm myself down – logically, of course I could. My parents lived just a couple hours away, still in my childhood home. I’d fought hard to get away from the suburb I grew up in, so why this sudden intense longing?
The next day, I got a call that my dad had been hospitalized during the night and was in the ICU. He didn’t make it out. And while the house is still there, it’s not home anymore.
RainyDayRainDear
When I was in high-school, the days before cellphones were common, my friends were to come over to pick me up from my house one night. We had made plans at school for them to pick me up at 7pm. At 6, my parents said I had to come with them to do something, and I totally forgot to call my friends and tell them. They came to my house at 7pm, and called the house phone. No one answered. There was 4 of them in the car. They all told us the exact same story. They said that they were about to pull out of my driveway, but they saw someone peak through the blinds from the bedroom on the top floor right. That was my room, so they assumed that I was screwing around. five more times, they said that someone would peak through the blinds, and a couple of them said they even saw the persons eyes.
We got home at probably 7:10-7:15, and they were still in our driveway. One of my friends came over and said they thought I was messing with them. Then they asked me, “So, who’s staying in your room?” I told them that no one. So they asked, “Who’s…home at your house right now?” Again, I told them, no one. There stone cold faces then told me what they had seen repeatedly over the last 15 minutes. At first, we all thought there was a burglar in the house or something, so we called the cops.
They came over and inspected the house. There was zero signs of break in, nothing was touched and nothing was stolen. Our house had an alarm on it, so there is no way someone could have come into the house without setting off the alarm.
My family, my friends, and the cop all kind of stood around for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the situation. My friends swore up and down (and still do) that they couldn’t have imagined what they saw. All four of them saw the same things, and it wasn’t particularly a dark night so there eyes wouldn’t be playing tricks on them. To this day, none of us can make sense of the situation.
Yoinkie2013
My grandmother died of brain cancer about twenty years ago. About two weeks after she died I was hanging out over at my parent’s place and my mom got a call – no number, no unknown number, just blank caller ID. She answered it, got quiet, hung up and went to her room without saying anything.
When I finally got her to talk about it she said it was her mother, saying she was trapped and please come get her because they wouldn’t let her leave, over and over again, and then the phone disconnected. I asked her about it a few years ago and she admitted that it had happened two more times that year and then stopped, but she didn’t want to discuss it any more.
Santamente
Brakes went out on my car way out in the boonies, probably 10 miles from the nearest town and a few to the nearest house. I went into a ditch where I split my head open pretty good on the side window and broke my arm and a few ribs.
So, I’m in pain, it’s pretty hard to breathe, and as it’s circa 1997 I didn’t have a cell. Nothing to do but start walking.
It was a moonless cloudy night. In other words pitch and I mean pitch black. I could only tell I was still on the road by the sound my feet made on the concrete. Couldn’t see my hand in front of me.
So here I am in the middle of nowhere, bleeding out of my head from a gash that went on to need 35 stitches, broken arm, broken ribs, can’t see my hand in front of me, and what do I hear behind me?
The warbling call of a coyote. Then another, and another. Next thing I know there must be 20 of them and they sound like they’re in a blood frenzy.
Now under normal circumstances I could probably take a few coyotes. But I can barely lift my broken left arm and even moving my right arm makes my ribs light on fire. So I realize I am in a very serious amount of trouble.
Nothing for it but to keep walking. They’re close now, can’t be more than 100 yards.
Finally I see the light of a house in the distance. I want to run, but I don’t, I maintain pace, walk up to this place, and with no amount of manliness in my voice I proceed to bang very loudly on their door and beg for them to let me in.
Finally some old man answers the door pulls his gun on me and asks what I’m doing banging on his door at two in the morning?
“I got in a car crash and there are coyotes after me, please let me in so I can call for help.”
Guy grabs and shines a mag light back the way I had come, and sure as crap, had to be 25-30 coyotes.
Seriously, if that house was another mile away, or if lost consciousness in the crash or on the road, I’d have been eaten.
[deleted]
One night I got home really late from work and parked in my driveway. It was around 1am, so the street was empty. But when I got out of my car, I noticed two clowns walking down the road, pushing a third clown in a wheelchair. They weren’t even walking on the sidewalk – just walking silently down the middle of the road.
It was so creepy and unexpected that it took a couple seconds for me to believe what I was seeing, before I high-tailed it inside. After I locked the door, I looked out the window but they were gone. I have no clue what I saw that night.
blueninja268
I studied and lived in Edinburgh and the apartment I lived in was very old. It had old worn down concrete steps which spiraled around to each landing and the only light came from a skylight three floors up. In the winter months it was pitch black in this hallway.
On one winter’s night I was returning from the local Tescos, I was fumbling along the walls around the stairwell because it was pitch black. I lived on the third floor so was an absolute pain and took ages. Something brushed past me. There was no sound at all but I felt it. I never believed in ghosts before but I couldn’t explain this. Something definitely brushed past me and set me off balance. Completely freaked me out. Anyway, I make it to my flat eventually and all’s well. I quickly forget about the whole incident.
One month later I leave Edinburgh. I switch on the news one evening whilst eating my dinner and had the biggest shock of my life. There was a dead body found in the flat directly opposite mine; same hallway. Like, three feet away.
Now, you’re probably thinking no big deal yeh? Dead bodies are found all the time. Well, that body lay in the flat for five years. The whole duration I lived there.
Here’s the really messed up part of this story. I lived in a different flat in Edinburgh before this all happened and I used to receive mail from the previous owners / landlord. Guess who the letters were addressed to? Yeup, the name of the person found dead. What the heck?
I’ll never forget that name for the rest of my life: Isabella Purves.
RIP. proof
I_am_working_hard
On a way to a camping trip, I passed by an old, painted up car with decorations of muppets and stuff on it. Obviously owned by a crazy person who couldn’t drive over 50mph.
Without stopping, we passed the same car 40 minutes later.
MonkeyCube
On my previous job when our building was still under construction, the only floors that were occupied were the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th and 7th. One time I was alone inside the elevator going from 1st to the 6th floor when suddenly it stopped and opened on the 3rd floor. Normally I would just disregard it but rumors were all over that a ghost child was playing around on the vacant floors. So I pressed the closed button as I fast as I could. When it closed I heard noises like someone was tapping their fingers on the walls of elevator.
sizzlorr26
I used to work as a 911 operator in a relatively large metro area. One night at about 3 am or so I answered a call from an elderly lady who said she didn’t feel good. I tried to get more info about what was wrong – chest pain, trouble breathing, headache, is she diabetic, etc. She gave me her address and phone number and said no one else was home but the front door was unlocked so they could come in. I toned the call out as “general illness” and kept trying to get more details. No matter what else I asked about what was wrong, all she would say is “I just don’t feel good, can you send someone to help me?”
After a few mins she said “I’m gonna put the phone down for a minute, I need to go to the bathroom.” I tried to get her to stay on the line with me, told her she can do whatever she needs to get ready but I’d like to be able to stay in contact in case there’s a problem. She said “I’m gonna put the phone down, I’ll just be a minute.” And that was it. I stayed on the line and asked for her every so often but got no reply.
A couple minutes passed, then the fire department called on scene so I just disconnected and didn’t think much about it. Told them the caller advised front door is unlocked and she was in the bathroom. A couple more min and the one of the firefighters called over the air with a weird tone and said “Dispatch…uh how exactly was this called received?” I told them the call was first party from the patient’s home phone approx 8 min ago. He didn’t respond over the air, but called the desk from his cell phone (which usually only happens when something is going on that they don’t want broadcasted since anyone can listen in on the radios).
On the phone he said “are you sure this wasn’t a third party call from a family member or something?” I said “negative, caller advised ‘I don’t feel good’ and said no one else was home, so to the best of my knowledge, the caller is the patient…have you made contact?” He said “yea, she was in the bathroom like you said, but she’s probably been dead for about 12 hours. Cold to the touch, fully livid, full rigor, we’re gonna need a deputy out here.”
Afterwards we pulled the tapes of the radio and phone calls and checked the time stamps, address, phone number, and went over everything a few times to see if I missed something. I called them back in the morning after the shift to see if they had anymore info, but they were just as weirded out as we were. The phone was still in the living room and the patient was dead in the bathroom.
penguinluvinman
I had fever very often when I was young. The medicines didn’t help. One day, a stranger on the street asked my mom if I was always sick and who was the elderly following me. My mom was confused as there was no elderly nearby. The stranger pointed into the air and described my dead paternal grandmother’s look, the hair style and clothes she wore to her grave. My dad was from a different town and my mom would have known it if the stranger was a mutual friend. The stranger instructed my dad to call my grandmother to go back. My mysterious fevers stopped.
Reddit-Loves-Me
15 years old. I had just got home from work, so I went to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and get ready for bed. I’m in the middle of undressing when I look to my bedroom window to catch my reflection… and I see a man’s face. I dropped to the floor and turned off the lights, scrambling to get dressed, still watching the window. The face is gone, but I’m still watching, then… a camera.
No face, just a camera pointed at me sitting on the floor. I bolt from my room and tell my mom and brother. My brother went outside, and our ladder from the backyard was lying there. But nobody around. Couldn’t sleep for a year after that, just stared at that window. Haven’t thought about that in years.
udgeymcjudgerton
I was with my little brother home alone when we suddenly heard a creepy voice from the other room saying “Panda_Panda come here. I want to talk to you.” We didn’t know who or what it was and immediately ran upstairs. While we were running to our room, we heard someone nearby say “Do you boys think you can run from me? I see everything!”
At this point we were terrified, locking the door to our room, grabbing our mini baseball bats and crying. We were certain we were going to be killed or eaten by some monster. Then, it happened, a loud bang came from the closet and the monster sprang out. We both screamed, my brother fell, and I threw the bat at… my dad wearing an IT clown mask and laughing hysterically.
Turns out he was behind the whole thing. First, he had put all the cordless phones in the house on speaker and said he was leaving to run some errands. Then, he proceeded sneak back into the house, hide in our closet, and scare us.
_Panda_Panda_
I was 17 and had just gotten my license. Back in high school, my friends and I had made it a mission to find abandoned houses to throw parties in. We had a few good candidates, but the motherload was this house I would pass on my way home from work. It was an undeveloped shell of a huge home with a large property in the back. I had told one of my friends about it and one day before we went to see a movie, I took him to the house.
It was about dusk in summer so I had my headlights on. I pulled into the front of the house and we were there for like 10 seconds tops before we pulled back to go to the main road. A minute later, this big truck pulls up behind us with its high beams on and riding our tail. My friend and I took note of it, but paid it no mind as we headed back to the main road. At the light, I turned right, but the truck cut through the gas station at the corner and blocked us off. Out of the truck comes this big hulk of a man and my friend and I are freaking out. He raps on the window and I roll it down. Now, the really freaky part is that this a busy road and now there was no one in sight.
He asks us what we were doing at the house and I quickly lied and said we were making a U-Turn. He stares at us for a few seconds, smiles, and sends us on our way. To this day, the house remains unfinished and I’m convinced it’s a drug operation of some sort.
[deleted]
I was home alone once when my parents were out of town. We had just moved into our house, so there was an empty lot next to our house, with a house half built. My parents were the types to leave the outdoor side garage door unlocked. Well, while they were gone I was watching tv, and all of a sudden the door that leads into my garage from the inside starts to wiggle. I put my TV on mute and I listen again, I see it actually move that time.
I start freaking out and I’m kind of in shock looking for the phone, can’t find the house phone, so I search for my cell. Remembered I left my charger in my parents car so I’m frantically looking for the house phone. Our house was so new, my mom hadn’t even put blinds or drapes up in the kitchen or living room. Well, whoever was wiggling my garage door knob starts banging on the windows in my living room. Again no blinds or phone, and at that moment I realize this guy is seeing my every move, so I shoot upstairs. Again looking frantically for the phone and also trying to figure out how and where I’d jump out of my house to get away from the maniac that’s outside my house if I needed to.
He then starts pounding on my front door. I can tell at that point, he’s using something metal or plastic by the sound of the thumps. I really thought he was going to shoot my door open. I remember at that moment I was pissed at myself for being a dumbass teenager that frequently talked on the phone because I always just left it lying around, never putting it back on the base. I wanted so badly to push the the button the detects where my house phone is, but I thought if he heard where it was, he’d break the window nearest to it and take it.
I then remembered I left the phone in my moms room, and as I pass the hallway to her room I see two people pacing in front of my house. I’m freaking out trying to find my dads gun in my parents bedroom. I find the phone and call 911. As I’m on the phone, the window breaks. I’m upstairs and am scared to death. Suddenly everything goes silent. I’m waiting in my parents pitch black closet for what seems like an eternity, then I hear the sirens.
Cops show up but there is no one to be found. I figured that they hadn’t gone too far since it had just occurred. Cops never found my tormenters. On the plus side, the company building the house next door, same company that built ours, hired over night security to stay on our street until the house was built which was definitely refreshing.
Ladie_Frankenstein
Comments may have been edited for clarity.