Has someone ever told you a story that sent shivers right to your spine? Here, spooked people share stories they’ve heard that give them chills to this day.
1. Imagine if she hadn’t gotten sick.
When she was about 8 or 9, my friend was walking home from school and got her key out to let herself in to the house. Her single mum worked and came home later on weekdays. As she reached up to put her key in the door her mum opened it, in dressing gown having left home sick.
Instead of greeting her, she looked straight past my friend and immediately said, “Who are you?” My friend turned around and a man in a long coat hurried back down the path and down the street. Being ill that day had potentially saved her daughter from something potentially horrible happening to her.
Pterodactyl_eyes
2. Heartbreaking.
Was talking to someone who was first on scene to the Virginia Tech massacre. He told me that although the sight of dead bodies was disturbing, what really stays with him was the sound of all the cell phones ringing from people trying to contact them.
Qyll
3. What are the chances?
This is a story about my dad.
One day when he was young, about 10 to 12 maybe, he was playing outside near a small river with a friend. He lived in southern Wisconsin, so it was probably cold as heck. While playing, they notice something strange in the water; it’s a capsized canoe, with 2 guys who were probably fishing, hanging on for dear life in the freezing water. He says they had already turned sort of blue-ish and could barely talk. So the 2 kids get the men out of there and essentially save their lives. It’s a big thing in their town, there’s a story about it in the local paper and everything. Everyone is happy.
Fast forward about 5 years.
My dad is on his way to a concert in Chicago with one of his buddies (the same kid as above) in his new car. Of course they were young and stupid and it was the 70’s, so who the heck wears a seatbelt, right? (continued…)
Well as they were driving past some bar, where there was some big party going on, a mobile home comes flying out of the parking lot out into the street. The driver obviously didn’t look at all and was probably drunk. My dad crashes his car head on into this trailer and totals his car. The fact that they weren’t wearing seat belts saved their lives; the bottom half of the car was crushed (the crash propelled them forward/upward).
Luckily nothing happens to him or his friend. Not a scratch, only shock. Just as they get out of the car and try and catch their breath, the propane tank on the trailer explodes and the whole thing catches on fire. Turns out these two guys were the exact same fishermen he and his friend saved five years ago.
reddit_user
4. A forewarning.
My grandmother’s entire life she had a recurring nightmare. In this nightmare, she would be walking down a long dark hallway, turn to the left, open a door, and see something terrible. She’d always wake up before seeing what it was.
In her 40s, she, her husband, my dad, and my aunt were on vacation. They booked the hotel at the last minute, so they ended up having to get 2 rooms with 2 twin beds on opposite sides of the floor. My dad wakes up around 3 AM and can automatically tell something’s not right. He calls out in the darkness “dad?” (continued…)
No response.
He turns on the bedside light. “Dad?” he says, a little louder this time. Still no response.
Getting worried, he slides out of bed and shakes his father. He doesn’t wake up. My dad ran down the hotel hallway to my grandmas room and started banging on the door. My grandma worriedly opens the door, and my dad shouts “something’s wrong with dad!”
He leads her down the hallway. A long hallway. To the last door on the left. My grandmother reaches the door, turns to left, and sees her husband dead in bed. Heart attack. She never had the dream again.
lechero
5. Silent intruder.
Friend of mine is kind of a nature nerd, so she goes out on these long hikes and camps for a few days, by herself. So one time she does this and returns safe and sound. Nothing happened. She gets her disposable camera developed, and there are three pictures of her sleeping in her tent.
Ol2pump
6. Maybe it’s not a myth…
My great-grandparents grew up in a small town located in the lower regions of Louisiana. When my great grandparents were first married, they lived in a small house near a cane field. Across the field, there was a Catholic church which ministered to most of the humble, bayou town.
My great grandparents made it a habit to attend church during daylight hours as it was a long walk to and from church, unless they walked through the cane. Well one night, for one reason or another, they decided to attend evening mass. They walked to church as the sun was shifting down below the visible Earth. When they exited the building, it was pitch black.
Fatigued from a long day of work, my grandparents decided to walk through the cane and avoid the long path. The crickets chirped as my grandparents crunched their way through the cane, one right behind the other. They could barely see through the dim moonlight, leaving them to rely on sound and touch. Working their way through the cane was tiring, and my grandfather stopped to catch his breath. (continued…)
My grandmother bumped into him, and they both froze. Another set of footsteps had joined theirs. They stood frozen in place, hearing the heavy thud of feet crunch against the cane. My grandfather began to slowly walk, my grandmother by his side. They were afraid to enrage the visitor. My grandmother noted its odd walking pattern.
Immediately, fear ran through her. She began to run, and then the footsteps behind them grew fast-paced. My grandfather took off after her, not wanting to be caught by the visitor. After about five minutes of sprinting, they reach the end of the cane field, their house in sight. They quickly raced to the door, fumbling to unlock it. A shadow emerged from the cane field, walking on four legs. It begins to run at them as they manage to unlock the door. As they open it, their dog runs inside. Their dog, Kaiser trembles as they lock the door once more. Kaiser was usually a fearless animal, and often accompanied my grandfather on his hunting trips.
His bravery was gone as the door began to shake. Something was banging and scratching on the door. My grandfather assumed it was some animal. Then, the doorknob began to jiggle. Somebody was turning it from the outside. Eventually, it stopped. Shuffling could still be heard outside of the door. My grandfather grabbed his rifle and stood guard all night as my grandmother slept. When the sun began to rise, the noises outside ceased. When they opened the door, it was covered in large scratch marks. To her death, my grandmother claims that she was chased by the Rou Garou (Cajun werewolf).
[deleted]
7. Close call.
When I was 13, my dad was taken to the hospital and my mother joined him leaving me in the house alone sleeping. When they came back they noticed handprint on all the downstairs windows of the house and snow trodden in the porch. They searched the house an nobody was there. The next day we find out our next door neighbour was murdered. I know its not that scary but when I think how close I came to possibly being murdered or worse it sends chills down my spine.
Youngappleby
8. Yikes.
My grandfather’s second wife was a sleepwalker, the kind that would get out of bed and do things like make a sandwich in the kitchen. My grandfather became used to it, and whenever he woke up in the middle of the night and she wasn’t in bed beside him, he would find her and gently lead her back to bed without waking her up, just as he had been advised.
But one night he wakes up and she isn’t lying in bed, but instead sitting on the edge of the bed, her back turned to him. He calls her name to ask what’s wrong, but she doesn’t answer, and he realizes she must be asleep. He can tell that she’s doing something, holding something in her lap, but he can’t see what it is.
He sits up, looks over her shoulder, and sees what she’s doing, still in her sleep: loading his revolver.
RileyJohnGibbs
9. A true hero.
When Chinese flag bearer and basketball phenom Yao Ming walked through the National Stadium during the opening ceremony of the Olympics, there was so much commotion where I was that I neglected to find out more about the little boy was that he was walking with.
It was Lin Hao, a nine-year-old who survived the deadly earthquake in Sichuan in May. It’s interesting how this tribute to the earthquake by opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou has been covered by the international press.
Many Western news outlets reported that Lin was an earthquake survivor, but they failed to mention that the little boy, who was attending the Yuzixi Primary School in quake-epicenter-Wenchuan County, not only survived, but after getting out of his classroom, went back into the rubble to pull two classmates out to safety.
During his rescue, he was hit by falling rubble and suffered injuries on his head and arms. It’s also been reported that while his classmates (10 survivors out of 32 students) were waiting for help, he encouraged them to sing songs to keep their spirits up. When he was asked why he risked his life, he said: “I was the hall monitor, it was my job to look after my classmates.”
prettyugly1
10. One action can change everything.
When I was in 11th grade, my math teacher went off on a tangent about everything happening for a reason and why it is always important to be kind. At first I was only half listening, then things got interesting. When he was a senior in university he decided that in his last days he would go around to students sitting alone in the cafeteria and strike up a conversation. He approached a girl sitting alone and asked if he could have lunch with her. She seemed hesitant at first but then agreed (continued).
They struck up a conversation and ended up talking for a while. She eventually asked him, in a startled way, why he came and sat with her. He explained to her that it had become his goal to sit with people he didn’t know. She told him that this wasn’t the first time someone had randomly asked her to have lunch with them. Apparently when she was in high school she was very shy and unpopular and usually spent her lunch breaks in the library. Towards the end of the year a group of popular girls asked her to have lunch with them. She was shocked and and said no at first, they persisted and she eventually agreed. They got in one of the girls cars and drove off school property headed to a restaurant. As they were driving down the road dozens of cop cars whizzed past them.
She went to Columbine High School. It was April 20th/1999. She escaped being in the library, where the majority of the shootings took place, because a group of girls decided to reach out to her.
Staybig
11. Don’t ask questions.
My grandmother grew up in a small town called Wiesloch, Germany during the Holocaust and WWII. She rarely talks about that period of her life but when we ask she would say things like, “Ya, I had friends who just disappeared. But we were raised not to ask questions.”
However, the most horrific story I heard was when she told me she was playing by a railroad track near her home with some friends. At one point, a large freight train came by. She heard what she thought to be scratching and screaming, but not those of an animal because she had heard that many times before when the train had passed. This time it was different. So she ran home and asked her mom what that could have been or meant. She said that her mom just yelled at her to never ask questions like that again and to stay away from the tracks and talk to no one.
TurtlesDontLikePB
12. When it rains, it pours.
I worked as a vet tech a couple of years ago, and this man came in to put down his old dog. Standard euthanasia protocol was used: get a basic history, ask if they want to be present, etc.
As a coworker of mine asked the do you want to be present part, he responded with “yes, because I lost both of my boys last week and I wasn’t there for them, and I’ll be darned if I’m not there to send off my last living family member.”
Both of his boys we later found out died overseas. After hearing this, our whole staff went into that our euthanasia room and just hugged this man and his dog several minutes past his dog moving on.
Out of my years in the field, I’ve never heard such a heartbroken man to lose his animal.
Iceshard32
13. Imagine being in the same room as him…
In her early twenties, my mom managed a photography studio in a mall in Scarborough, Ontario. One day my mom is working alone and this guy comes in asking for a photo but he’s being a little weird about it, saying he needs a picture taken of his hip. They did a lot of injury photos for court cases so my mom assumes this is what he needs and starts loading up the camera. When she looks up, he’s got his pants totally off and he’s exposing himself. My mom starts laughing hysterically and tells him to get out, she doesn’t have time for this nonsense.
About an hour later, a girl that was working at the denim store down the hall comes down to tell her about this pervert that took off his pants in the middle of the store, trying to expose himself to the female customers. They both have a laugh, he didn’t seem all that menacing, just (obviously) not all there. Two days later the girl comes running into my mom’s studio, pale as a ghost. On the front page of the paper is a sketch of the guy, with the title “Scarborough Rapist”. It’s pretty crazy to think that she was that close to getting attacked by Paul Bernardo in the peak of his crime spree.
Ashleighlynn
14. Nope, not the song.
When I was in my early teens, my parents used to go out dancing and left me alone on Friday nights. We lived in a rustic, soporific house, surrounded only by a desolate sawmill and a defunct car garage. The closest neighbor was about a mile away.
I used this opportunity to throw heavy metal albums in their fantastic stereo and play them at an enormous volume. One evening, I put in Metallica’s … And Justice For All and went to the restroom in a small corner in the house. “Blackened” was blaring in the distance and it seemed as if the floor was shaking. I walked back into the living room and looked at the front door and I could see the chain on the door pulsating in rapid rhythms. I remember thinking “the bass on this system is incredible!” Then, during the middle of the song, the chain stopped moving.
Man_with_a_big_gun
15. Finally able to rest in peace.
I’m a funeral director, and one day we had a man come in who lost his teenage daughter. She was a daddy’s girl through and through, so he was pretty torn up about her passing. He bought her the best that money could buy- nice casket, a good vault, etc.
But after she was interred, he kept having these nightmares that his daughter was drowning. In a bathtub, in the ocean, when a car she was in careened off of a bridge. They were a bit different every time, but the message was always the same. In every dream he could hear her screaming “daddy help me i’m drowning.”
Now keep in mind, drowning had NOTHING to do with her cause of death. At first he thought he was just grieving, but the nightmares wouldn’t let up. He came back to us and after explaining the situation, we got a permit to disinter her and move her to another cemetery. When the diggers removed the lid off of her vault (which, by the way, is supposed to keep water OUT) it was filled to the brim with water. After she was moved he stopped having nightmares.
[deleted]
16. Love can be found in the darkest places.
During WWII, my grandma used to steal potatoes and coal from Nazis for her family. One day she noticed a few men standing near a fence a but paid them no mind since she had just stolen coal and potatoes.
This happened for a few weeks her taking the same route and she noticed the men getting frail and weak so she snuck back later that evening and gave them some food. She continued doing this for awhile. She ended up saving their lives and that is how my grandmother met my grand father who was a Russian soldier being held prisoner.
Shady6669
17. Things went haywire.
This is a story that happened to my dad several years ago. My family runs and lives on a large farm, and around summer each year we are often forced to work longer hours than normal in order to harvest hay for the livestock in addition to the other routine duties.
Well, my dad was finishing up one of our neighboring fields and had just a few more bales of hay to go, so he decided to work through the night and be done with it. Around 2am he finished the last hay bale but noticed that it didn’t come out properly from the baler. He raises the arm of the tractor up as high as it would go, hitting about 10ft, to cast light on the bale (continued).
He exits the tractor and begins to approach the bale about 7ft from the tractors headlights. As he is removing excess twine from the bale he suddenly can’t see. Then the realization of what was happening started to creep into his mind. Something was standing between him and the headlights of the tractor. Waiting.
He came home several hours later, early in the morning, clearly disheveled. He told me the story, concluding that eventually it decided to leave. My dad said he stood in the newly restored light with his back against the hay bale for the rest of the night, unsure what to do. When the sun began to come up he circled the tractor and made his way home. He followed that by saying, “I knew almost immediately something wasn’t right. My mind wanted me to believe that a deer or one of our cow’s wandered in front of the tractor, but the lights were 12ft high.”
Nuova
18. One point for mom, zero points for predator.
When I was 4 and my sister was almost 1, my parents had been divorced a few months, and my mother was driving us from Las Vegas to Wichita to see our grandparents. At one gas station on the way, this man came up to the car and told my mother, “I hate to see a single mother travelling alone and I noticed we are headed in the same direction, do you want me to follow you for awhile to make sure you are safe?”
She politely said, no thanks and drove off (continued).
At our next stop for gas, he again came up under the guise of “checking” on us, he had been following us since the last stop. While he was talking to my mother, his sport coat blew open and I saw a gun tucked in his pants. After she again told the man we were fine, she left and I told her what I saw. While she was driving, she wrote a note to give to the next gas station attendant saying who we were, where we were planning on spending the night, and that this creepy dude was following us and what he looked like. Could you please call the law in (i don’t remember what town it was) and have them waiting at the hotel?
When we got to the next stop, mom raced in and handed the clerk the note and sped off with us. We got to the hotel and the manager had the cops waiting in one room and gave us another room with a pizza and pop. the man showed up and asked if his “wife and kids” had checked in yet and what room were they in. The manager gave him the key to the one with the police in it. They questioned him and found out he was a convicted rapist and also had a warrant out, so he was arrested.
Fattyboombaladee
19. The ghost honker.
Two years ago, I was in a car wreck and almost died. I was driving home late at night, fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into a tree on my driver side front door. I have no memory of what happened for the next couple of days, but I woke up in the ICU strapped to a bed with a respirator and feeding tube in me. I had broken bones in my skull, my collar bone, collapsed both lungs and ruptured my diaphragm. Every doctor I have seen since then looks at me in shock and tells be I shouldn’t be here. The chilling part of the story is how I was found (continued).
20. It’s not your fault.
I was 16, and it was very common for my friends and I to go camping in the mountains, bring weed, beer, acid, whatever. I was always a big fraidy cat when it came to getting messed up, so I usually abstained, parents warnings took to heart I guess.
This particular night most of my friends were tripping acid, while I was sipping a beer, enjoying the fire and whatnot, and a bunch of us girls decided to go off somewhere to pee.
We stumble off into the woods and end up walking for quite some time, one girl was searching for the perfect spot, and she was super high, but we all just went along. We finally come to a small clearing and decide to pee there. Everyone pees and we set off back to camp.
One of my friends hears a low moan coming from the other side of the clearing, tells us to shhh, but we don’t hear it so we urge her to come on. She is intent on investigating, so I decide to go with her. It was really dark out. You could only see as far as the lanterns light hit, so we were off into the unknown.
Our light finally revealed a car. A brand new lookin Subaru, it was really sudden like, and kinda freaked us out so we scamper back to our friends screeching like lil 16/17 yo girls and set off back to our camp all freaked out.
We tell the boys about it when we get there and they convince us we had happened upon another camp site and make fun of us for freaking out (continued).
Five years later, I am in nursing school and working as an admin asst in a labor and delivery hospital. I have made a really good friend at work and she and I hang out all the time. One night she comes over and we are drinking and she tells me her dad has been missing since she was in high school. She says he had tried to commit suicide a few times and her family figured that he succeeded, but no one ever found him. She secretly was hoping he just ran off to start a new life and maybe she would see him again someday.
Not very long after that, a man was found in a stolen Subaru up on the mountain where we used to camp, he had been there for years, through every season, freezing to hot, there was a hose from the tail pipe to the window, the man had committed suicide.
It made the news, and one of the guys from high school called and reminded me of that night in the woods, the car was found not far from our usual spot, wasn’t that nuts? That was what we saw.
At work, my friend got a call,from her mother, the guy in the car was her dad.
We heard him moaning. We saw the car. If we weren’t such dumb little kids we could have done something. I watched my friend fall apart over it, but didn’t tell her about my experience in the woods. I have always felt so bad.
Prettysoitworks
21. Thank goodness he changed his mind.
When my uncle was four he visited his aunt’s home for the summer. There were really no kids around that were his age so he mainly just rode his bike around the neighbourhood to amuse himself.
One day he rode a little too far and got lost, but luckily a car pulled over and told him that it was okay, he would take him back to his aunt’s house. So my uncle loaded his bike in the car and got in. The man started to drive, and my uncle, thinking it was one of his aunt’s friends, asked no questions.
It wasn’t until they turned onto the highway that my uncle started to ask the man where they were going, that his aunt’s house wasn’t near the highway. The man didn’t say anything to him and kept driving until suddenly he pulled over to the side of the road and seemed to think really hard on something. He then turned the car around and dropped my uncle off at the entrance to the neighbourhood. My uncle realized years later that this man had attempted to kidnap him and at the last minute changed his mind.
Spymachine
22. You don’t forget a face like that.
The story takes place one July morning in 1982.
I was late for my job as a fry cook at a country club on Cape Cod. As I raced my jeep over back roads in a rural part of town, I came around a tight bend in heavy morning fog. And there, standing in the middle of the road, was a man. Pale, and sweaty, he was wearing only a pair of shorts and a backpack.
I saw him only for a split-second, before I swerved and went off the road. But I’ll never forget the face. He stared straight ahead, looking me right in the eyes with a wide-eyed, maniacal look on his face. His mouth was open as if he was screaming, but there was no sound. I got out of the jeep and ran back looking to take a swing at the guy, but he was gone.
It wasn’t until ten years later that I saw him again. On TV. His name is Hadden Clark and he’s a serial killer. He’s the man I saw that morning in Woods Hole. I have zero doubt about it.
KazamaSmokers
23. Glad to know your priorities.
I was living in Eastern Canada in Halifax, Nova Scotia in a very old and creaky house. After I had been living there for a while, one of my friends from the West Coast came out to visit me and check out the city. He was staying for 3 weeks and he had brought a lot of bags and suitcases, at least 5-6 bags and other stuff like a squash racket, don’t ask me why. I told him he could sleep on the futon in the front living room.
One morning after a late night of drinking my friend bursts into my room yelling “FIRE! FIRE!”. In my hungover state I am barely even sure of what he had said when I jumped out of bed. The floor was hot against my feet as I ran out into the hallway, right behind my friend. I couldn’t see the fire anywhere, but as we ran towards the front door I could hear the fire roaring and crackling all around me, it was inside the walls. We run out onto the front yard and look back at the house to see black smoke billowing out of the roof.
We were standing there watching the house when I looked down and noticed all of my friends bags and suitcases neatly lined up on the front lawn, including his squash racket. When he noticed the house was on fire he had taken all of his luggage in at least two loads and placed it outside before coming back in to tell me about it. That fire had started in the basement where the furnace was, it spread up into the walls and was burning the entire foundation of the floor we were standing on. The entire floor and much of the house collapsed into that fiery pit not long after we had escaped. The firemen said we were very lucky to have gotten out when we did.
Needless to say, we are not friends anymore.
ImAVibration