Sometimes a run-of-the-mill day can be interrupted by something completely unexpected. Occasionally, it makes for a funny story. Other times, it creates a dark memory. No matter what, seeing something you were unprepared to see can have a serious effect. One thing is for sure, always knock before you walk in a room.
These haunted people share the most unforgettable thing they've walked in on. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Is Everything Okay?”
“I walked into my best friend’s house. I saw him sitting over in the corner of the room looking at the floor, and he was furiously trying to wipe tears from his face, which was bright red. I looked a few feet over and saw a weapon sitting there.
He was home alone. He didn’t know I was coming over, and I didn’t knock. It was pretty clear what I had walked into. I asked him if everything was okay. He had just been through a breakup with a kid involved.
But he just kind of looked up and said, ‘yeah, yeah actually I think so. I’m alright.’ Anyways, 15 years later we are still good friends. He married a new lady, has a gang of kids, and life is good.”
And They Never Spoke Of It Again
“Back when I was in college, my mom would tell me to bring all my dirty laundry home with me on the weekends I would spend with my folks, and she would do it for me. I only had 1 laundry basket, so I stuffed that thing so full of dirty socks and underwear and jeans and shirts. It weighed 40 pounds, and when I carried it out to my car I had to use my chin to keep it all inside the basket.
When I got to my parents’ house, I spent about five minutes getting the basket and clothes in the precarious position where I could carry it inside. Though my arms were outstretched, I still had enough leeway with my right hand to open the screen and turn the knob of the front door without the entire contraption collapsing on me. I took one step inside and was accosted with every child’s worst fear. My dad was going to town with my mom on the front couch.
At first, I really didn’t know what I was seeing, be it shock or the intense concentration required to keep all of those clothes from falling to the ground. At some point though, my mother’s eyes and my own made contact and an instant realization and panic came upon both of us. My father, though, had yet to notice.
The worst thing is, because I was overloaded and the screen had just shut behind me, I had no escape.
Finally, my father noticed I had entered the room, and like a gazelle demounted my mom and in three bounds, had exited the room. Finally, I was able to get the screen door to open, walked back out to my car, threw the basket in the trunk without caring about the contents and drove to a friend’s house.
To this day, none of us have mentioned it.”
He Knew It Was His Time
“It was a Saturday morning and I just talked to my grandpa on the phone. We made plans to go out to eat. I got off the phone and hopped in my car. At the time, he lived only a street away so it wouldn’t take me much time to get there. Honestly, I wish I never made plans to go see my grandpa. I arrived at the house and I stepped in and called for him but there was no answer. I went looking for him and I entered the living room. As soon as I entered, I saw my grandpa falling to the ground with the phone in his hand. He had a massive heart attack the moment I stepped in. At this moment, I was freaking out. I was checking for a pulse and dialing 911. He died before he hit the ground, and he felt no pain, thank god. He was always a mysterious man. Here’s what really messed with me though.
He was holding the phone. It turned out he was leaving me a voicemail. He said these exact words, ‘ Anthony I love you, but it’s time for me to go up-‘ This is when you heard him falling down. When I heard this afterward I was full of water works. The thing that made me happy though is that he died the way he wanted to. Holding a pack of red Marlboros unfiltered watching western shows. He was truly an amazing and mysterious man.
I do think it’s messed up he knew when he was going to die. I still have the voicemail saved and listen to it still. It’s hard to forget about your best friend.”
Pulling Herself Out Of A Bad Situation
“My husband hooking up with my best friend in my laundry room.
I sat down in shock and asked how long it had been happening. The answer was just as shocking: ‘Two years.’ At that time, I had a two-year-old and I was 4 months pregnant. She was my closest friends and Godmother of my daughter. They later told me the affair began the same week my daughter was born, when I was spending all my time at the hospital with her (she was 5 weeks early). His excuse was that he was overwhelmed and lonely and he felt under so much pressure. She comforted him. Our something. Poor idiot.
I didn’t even own a car of my own or have a bank account. I was a stay at home mom with only a GED. So I stayed for most of a year while they continued their affair openly because I was trapped by poverty and my own depression. I finally left when my son was 6 months old and my daughter was 3, and a year after that, I enrolled in nights classes at a local high school because I was HS dropout and needed an algebra credit. Then I went onto community college, and now I’m an RN in a Cardiac Operating Room working on my BSN online. The kids are 6 and 8 years old.
My ex married her a few weeks after the divorce was final. But he has almost divorced her twice (he lived in a motel for a summer two years ago), and he had his own separate bedroom in their house, so clearly things aren’t so green on that side of the fence. My kids spend half the week each week there, and I love that they have two loving homes, and he really is a pretty good dad, but I hate that that woman gets to be my kids’ stepmom after she stole my family from me and I have had to go it all alone.
And I had to do it all with zero child support since we worked out an agreement instead that he would only pay their school tuition. Also, I’m a military brat, so I have no family in this part of the country, I just followed my ex here 8 years ago. It’s been a lonely past 6 years. But I did it, and I must say, I’m doing better now than they are, and I’m proud of myself.”
Tragic Day On The Job
“I worked as a pizza delivery boy when I was 19 years old. I was sent to a block of flats. On the ninth floor, I walked up to the door and I heard a baby screaming. I knocked on the door and it opened a little because it wasn’t closed properly. I heard a barely audible ‘come in’ in a shaky woman’s voice. I pushed the door open and my life changed forever.
The place was completely devoid of anything apart from a round table, two chairs, and a wooden crate in the far left corner. Sitting on the two chairs around the table were two of the most broken women I have ever seen. The table was littered with needles. One of the women was still busy using. My eyes were immediately drawn to the far corner of the room where the screaming was coming from. Between the gaps of the wooden slats of the crate, I could see a baby thrashing from side to side.
I walked up to the table and put my delivery bag down on the place with the least needles. I took out their order and just dumped it on the table. They didn’t even know I was there anymore. I turned and left. Not a single word, no eye contact, apart from the ‘come in’ there was no way for me to know these women even acknowledged my existence. I completely forgot about taking cash for the order. I didn’t care, all I could think was that I needed to get out before I threw up.
I was walking back to my car with chaos going on in my head. This ruined me. I was destroyed. I was utterly broken by what I had seen. A few steps from my car, my legs stopped working and I hit the ground. Suddenly, I was flooded with emotion and screamed just like that baby. I have no idea how long I laid there screaming. It was long enough for me to work up the courage to get into my car and drive away.
I got back to the shop. I told my manager everything. He called the cops. We never heard about it again. This is South Africa, nothing is ever done about stuff like that.”
Sometimes, You Just Gotta Go Home
“A few years ago, my friend invited me over to chill at his house. I got there a little earlier than planned and just went on in. I was looking all over for him and finally walked into the master bedroom.
I guess he had just taken a shower or something because it was all steamy in there. He was just standing there on the bathroom counter in a squat position. He had nothing on, staring at himself in the mirror with a serious expression. He never saw me and I just backed out of the room and went home.”
One Day He Just Snapped
“My uncle was sitting in the dark with a weapon in his kids’ bedroom. He was in the doorway when I walked in. I got my aunt, and we asked him what he was doing. He said he was going to ‘kill them all.’ He was so calm it was creepy.
We called the police, and they came. He gave up the weapon without a fight. He was sent away to a psychiatric hospital for 10 years. His kids were 8 and 10 at the time, and I was 14. They say he had a psychotic break after watching a man get killed with a broken broom handle at a jail. I knew him all my life before this happened and he was completely normal.
Now, he is in and out of mental hospitals so often I lose track. He supposedly heard voices telling him to kill his kids when they woke up, so I can assume that he was waiting for them to wake up. Now I’m thinking about what would have happened if I hadn’t been spending the night with my cousins that night and walked in.”
A Newfound Respect For Nurses
“My dad was really sick. I spent the whole day in the basement playing video games, so I thought I’d check up on him. I walked upstairs and found him. He was trying to give himself an enema, but he was too sick to move and was having a hard time. He asked me to put the hose in his butt.
Long story short, I had to rub some vaseline on his bum and give his intestines a little cleansing. He looked like he had a tiny bit of hemorrhoid too. Needless to say, it was a very memorable time. To the caretakers out there, I salute you.”
Luckily, She Never Gave Up The Keys
“I moved out of my mom’s house at 16 years old due to being unable to deal with seeing the way she treated herself all the time. She had a problem with popping all sorts of pills to the point where she would pass out for days at a time. I thought she was dead multiple times because I couldn’t wake her up. She would never eat properly and spent all her time locked in her room. Despite this, we had a good relationship when she wasn’t messed up, and I loved her to bits. It killed me to move out but I couldn’t take it anymore.
After I moved out, it got worse and worse. Our relationship suffered because for a period I didn’t want to see her because I was so mad at her for not getting help. About a year went by and we were in a phase where we were talking a bit here and there.
One day, I decided to go into her house because I was annoyed that she was probably in one of her comas again. I still had the key to her house; I refused to give it back to her when I moved out. I opened the door and made my way through the mess of the house upstairs into her bedroom.
She was crumpled up on the floor, nothing on, white as a ghost. The next few minutes were the worst of my life. I was screaming at her and hitting her trying to get her to wake up, but just feeling how cold she was I knew it was too late.”
All In A Days Work At The Movies
“I manage a movie theatre, so on several occasions have I walked in on kids fooling around. And yes, I mean kids. Usually, they’re only about 13 to 16 years old because I’m assuming they have nowhere else to go that they can be alone to fool around.
The worst experience was earlier this year. A group of about six 15-year-olds came to a movie in the afternoon. I thought they’ll probably be noisy and need a good shhh-ing. So, I opened the door to go and check things out. Right there in the doorway, a girl was bent over with her skirt pulled up and a boy was right behind her going to town. He quickly slammed himself up against the wall as I yelled, ‘What are you doing!’ and shut the door. I opened the door just enough for them to hear me and told them to get dressed and get out.
They walked out red-faced and bolted to the back exit. I went back to my office with a look on my face like I just saw a ghost. My employees laughed their butts off for a good five minutes while I just shook my head in disbelief and disgust. I told them to get back to work and take the trash out. Well 10 minutes later, they come back in laughing hysterically and told me they saw them banging on the dumpster.”
Nothing Prepared Her To See This
“Walked in on my roommate smoking crank…while pregnant. Her excuse was ‘I’m just gonna get an abortion anyway!’ and of course, she never did.
My roommate went to rehab shortly after that and gave birth while in the program. After the baby girl was born, she lived with her dad (my other roommate) for 3 or 4 months until I moved out. The baby was small and couldn’t be left in her playpen or swing without someone being in plain sight. As soon as you would walk around the corner she would flip out. I haven’t seen her since then. She would be about 10 or 11 now. On top of all that, after a year of not talking to my old roommate Jeremy (baby’s dad), he called me up on Super Bowl Sunday. He had been clean for a year and sounded good. We buried the hatchet and put the past behind us. One month later his cousin called me and said Jeremy died of an overdose. Even worse, the reason he did the stubstances after being sober for a year was because his mom died. Addiction is just terrible.”
The Worst Day Of His Life
“Not so much walked in on, but woke up to. I shared a room with my younger brother at home. He was epileptic and would sometimes have seizures in his sleep. They would wake me up, and I would roll him to his side and make sure he had a clear airway.
Well, this one night I guess it just never woke me up. I woke up in the morning to my mother calling his name to try to wake him up for his job as a bagger at our local grocery store. It was his favorite thing in the world. He also had Aspergers, and this job was really one of the things he was most proud of, so it was very strange that he wasn’t up. My mother then asked me to wake him up.
That’s when the worst day of my entire life began. We had bunk beds, and I had the top so I climb down and checked on him. He was face down and cold and blue and stiff. I knew instantly. I started to scream, ‘Call 911. Call 911.’
I completely had a meltdown. I pulled him out of the bed to the floor and tried CPR on him the whole time crying hysterically. Obviously, it was all in vain. I was outside for the rest of the day. I was completely in shock and couldn’t do anything but talk to my best friends who came over immediately when they heard the news.
For the longest time, I blamed myself for not waking up when he had his seizure. I no longer do, but I miss him like crazy. No one should ever have to experience the death of their sibling. Let alone find them dead. It was definitely the worst day of my life.”
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
“My friend Jason was having a party at his house when I was in high school. His family was in the process of moving to a new place so he got to stay in the old one while they were in the new one during the transition.
Anyways, we were getting bombed off Jaeger and whatever we could get our underage hands on and my buddy Jason says ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
So he stumbles off and the party resumes, we are laughing and having a good time, when I hear the most terrible noise. It sounds like a thunderclap followed by the world’s saddest, loneliest trumpet.
I go running to the bathroom, a few party guests in tow, and I start knocking on the bathroom door.
‘Jason? Jason!’ I yell to no response. I try the handle and sure enough, wasted Jason left it unlocked. I opened the door to find the most terrible thing I have ever seen.
I see Jason with his head through the tank of the toilet, water mixed with black vomit pouring out across the bathroom tile, and his pants around his knees with his butt in the air, sputtering out tiny spurts of feces against the poo-covered wall from the initial blast.
Apparently, as Jason recounts to me later, he had sat down to poop when he felt the urge to vomit. In his haste to leap from the toilet and shove his face in the bowl, he had slipped and went face first through the toilet.
Then puked.
Then pooped.
He was fine.”
He Knew Something Horrible Was Happening
“When I was 17, I was awoken by the sound of my mom screaming. It wasn’t a regular scream, but a ‘this is the end, God save me’ scream. I hopped off the floor of my brother’s bedroom to hear shots. My brother ran in to tell me that my dad had just shot my mom. We ran back out into the living room just in time to see my dad shooting himself in the head. My older brother saw it, but I didn’t since I was behind him.
My mom was lying on her stomach covering her face, leaking blood, and trying to breathe. My dad’s head was leaking blood profusely. The worst part was when his body was fighting to breathe, and you could hear it from the back room.
We had a 5-year-old little brother who didn’t know what was going on. So imagine me, a young 17-year-old kid, trying to smile and lie, while trying to breathe and not have a heart attack. The cops, EMT’s, and firefighters came within a minute. Unfortunately, she passed away about an hour after the incident. My little brother and I had to sit in the police station and wait for the news
The smell of that night stayed in my nose for over a month. 9 years later, I’m still very wary around weapons. Happened close to 10 years ago. Live a normal life and doing pretty well for myself. Staying positive takes you far.”
The Stuff Of Nightmares
“Cockroaches. An ankle-deep layer of cockroaches.
During the war in Yugoslavia, infrastructure broke down and no one was collecting the trash. Yet, the people in my building kept using trash chutes until they got blocked up. The 17 stories of blocked up trash led to cockroaches infesting the whole building. So, people got together and found an exterminator to spray the building. For 3 days after, the ground level floor was covered in an ankle-deep layer of dead and dying cockroaches. We had to walk through them to get in and out. Cleaning did nothing. We would collect a box full of them and take it out to burn it. When you returned, you couldn’t tell where you cleaned anything up. Finally, after that there were none. But that was a rough period.”