The clown from ‘It’? The ‘Saw’ movies? Those are all peanuts compared to the stuff that actually happens to people at any given point.
Below are 18 of the scariest true stories that happen to everyday people like you and me. Check them out! A source to even more can be found on the last page.
Staying in a motel with my wife one night, she falls asleep really quickly but for me it takes a while to drift off to sleep. So I’m lying there in the dark for a while and I distinctly hear a voice coming from somewhere in the room quietly, though just above a whisper, say: “I think they’re asleep now.” – Immediate fright response; I bolt out of bed, turn on all the lights and start frantically searching the room; I look in the bathroom behind the shower curtain, under the bed… nothing. It’s a one room motel room, the door is bolted shut, there’s nobody else in the room. My wife is now freaked because of my actions.
What I experienced is called a Hypnagogic Hallucination; a not an uncommon experience during the initial stages of sleep. But if I had not known what that was I would have thought the room was haunted.
NWBoomer
Somebody mailed my friend a bunch of pictures of his wife just going about her day. Some of them were taken through windows of their home.
Police were called and everything, but nothing ever came of it. They actually moved because of it.
iMakeItSeemWeird
My friend was visiting family in the states. They lived in a rural community of Maine and one morning she woke up before everyone else and decided to go for a run. After ~30 minutes she turned back and started noticing a van following a few blocks behind her. She thought it was strange so started turning down a few streets with the van following every move. She started sprinting and the van sped up too.
She ran to the first house she could find and started banging on the door. No answer. Hopped the fence and started banging on the back door. Dog in the house started barking at her but no one answered. She jumped into the empty pool in the backyard and hid while dialling 911. A car parked in front of the house and man started calling out to her offering her a ride home.
The dog in the house was now barking like crazy and the man left after about a minute. Police showed up and took her back to her family’s place. She gave a report and they identified the van from a nearby HVAC business. It had been stolen early that day and the same man was arrested in the next county at a gas station.
pm_me_recipies_girl
My friend came home from school one day to find that her house had been broken into. She decided to go inside, and look around whilst she called her mum. She was done looking at the second floor when she made for the stairs, her mum convinced her to go outside and wait for the police (who she had called). Later on, the police asked the family if they owned a crowbar, the said they didn’t. They then said it looks like the offender was still in the house when she got home, and they were waiting at the top of the stairs with a crowbar, which they stupidly left behind when they fled.
FlarpyBlundergufff
I was only 4 when this happened. Was playing outside with my siblings and neighbors and while they’re busy playing, a lady approached me and took me to her place. A nearby neighborhood. After a while, everybody was freaking out and they started looking for me everywhere. This lady was severely depressed, her husband left her after their son died. He couldn’t handle her depression apparently. She took me to her place, fed me and gave me tons of candy. For couple days. She also made me wear her deceased son pajamas. At some point, She took me to buy some candy from the store, the store owner knew her so he reported that to the police. She didn’t hurt me at all, the doctor even said I was well fed. I always think of her and pray she’s in a better place now, even tried to go visit her when I was a college student, her house was sold and she moved away apparently.
[deleted]
I was stalked by a 40+ year old man from the ages of 10 till 14. My parents told me about it when I was 13. I was unaware but they were.
He had been following me to school, he had been mailing me things, taking pictures of me, and sending my parents threatening messages in all sorts of way.
MasterMedic1
This happened about three years ago or so. I was sitting in the kitchen, and it was around 10pm or so. I heard a really loud “thump” in the basement.
I live alone with two dogs so any sound is somewhat frightening to me.
So, as I’m walking down the stairs to the, basement, I hear the thumping again, in an oddly rhythmic pattern. I creak open the door into the basement bedroom, and I see my dog is just ramming his head and body into the wall, over and over.
I can’t explain to you how shockingly unnatural looking it was. It looked like… he was controlled or something. I called him over, and he stopped and came upstairs with me.
Theee hours later, I hear the thumping again. I get out of bed again, However, when I went down to check it, it was my OTHER dog that was ramming his head into the wall.
It was like he was possessed. Scared the cheese out of me.
Since then, nothing like that has happened, but what an unexplainable event.
beavers103
When I was 19 I was visiting my grandmother in Indiana. Unfortunately she ended up in the hospital so my mom and I took turns staying with her.
One morning I was sleeping at my grandmother’s house when I woke up to her front storm door slamming. I sat up and realized there was a chair next to me that wasn’t there the night before.
I got up and went to the front door. The main actual door was wide open and only the storm door was closed. A man was walking across the lawn, his back to me. Normal walking. For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I also wasn’t wearing my glasses so I kind of assumed this guy was a postal worker. I didn’t put the chair by the bed thing together until later, when the toilet seat slammed down and scared the crap out of me.
But why was the toilet seat up?
savahontas
Context: my mom’s college boyfriend became her stalker after she left his awful butt back in the mid-80s.
Several years ago, just before the last Harry Potter movie came out, my mom and I were marathoning the other seven movies and at about 1am the phone rings. Normally we don’t answer, we figure if it’s important they’ll leave a message, but a call that late at night is probably urgent. Mom answers and almost immediately her face changes and she tells me, “Go wake up your father.” I’ve never seen my mom this scared, I run upstairs and get him. Back downstairs she’s still on the phone and I have no idea what’s going on. Dad has some words with the caller and we hug it out in the kitchen.
This is when I found out my mom had a stalker. Despite him being silent for years, and their whole breakup happening halfway across the country, he somehow found us. Said he’d driven by our house. Complimented the neighborhood. Freaks me out to this day, wondering how much he knows about us, and if I’ve ever talked to him unwittingly.
lvhq
Friend was sleeping at home during summer when his housemates were away. He slept with the bedroom door open (which is horrifying enough) but woke up when he heard burglars walking up the stairs.
He didn’t do anything and just laid there terrified, and one of them closed the bedroom door. When they left he found a knife in the kitchen that didn’t belong to anyone in the house.
12pillows
So, about three years ago during summer I had a habit of staying up late playing games with my window open. This usually wasn’t a problem as my neighborhood was usually quiet. However one night someone knocked on my window around midnight. When I went over to investigate I heard someone calling out for help in Spanish. My family was up and I assumed it was one of my neighbors, so I went outside. Once I saw the person I immediately knew something was off cause: 1.)This wasn’t one of my neighbors and 2.) This person’s clothing was ripped and they didn’t have shoes on.
Turns out the person was a she (I thought it was a young boy at first) and she only spoke Spanish. I tried communicating with my basic Spanish skills to no avail, eventually I went inside to ask my parents for help. We ended up calling my uncle, who was fluent in Spanish. He helped translate and told us that she said she was being human trafficked from Honduras, and needed help. She wanted either $500 or a car to LA. We couldn’t give either and offered to call the police, but she seemed adamant that the police didn’t get involved.
After this bombshell my family went inside and decided to just call the police. After making this decision we wanted to check up on her atleast, but as my mom and I were walking outside we saw a car with no headlights pull onto our street. We immediately noped back inside. Once we felt that the coast was clear we went back out and the lady was gone. We called the cops and filed a report but we never heard anything more.
chowmeinninja
I was 22 years old. I had just gotten a place closer to my new job but the neighborhood I lived in was secluded.I was having a normal night, maybe my first week there. I watched some TV and fell asleep. When I woke up around 1 A.M., I was about to go to my bedroom when I remembered to turn off the bathroom light at the opposite end of the house. As I was walking through the living room, I could barely see through to the kitchen and even farther, the dining room. It was pitch black because the bathroom door was closed. In the dining room however, I saw something tall standing up in the corner. I froze and as my eyes adjusted, I saw it was an old man or woman in a white gown with white hair. “Hey!” I yelled. The old person sprinted towards me like a jet. I sprinted back to my room were the light was on. I put my hands up, ready to fight and the old person came lunging in and when they saw me they stopped and said ” Why are you in my house?” I pretended I was leaving and apologized while I eased into the closer bathroom, locked the door, and called 911 with the house phone. The woman left shortly thereafter.
dubmcswaggins
I was outside playing with friends one afternoon…we were around 9 or 10. We lived in a quiet area. As we were playing, we noticed a man in a truck drive by over and over again. Each time he passed my friends yard, he would drive slowly. We then realized that this man was recording us with one of those old hand held recorders. It freaked us out. We ran inside their house and called his mom. She told them they needed to stay inside and that I should go home. I tried explaining that my mom wasn’t home at the moment..but she still made me leave. I lived about a mile or two down the road. I’ve never ran so fast in my life. I was terrified that man was going to find me as I was running back home. When my mom found out what happened. She was super pissed off my friends mom hadn’t allowed me to stay at their house until she could come pick me up.
heylookitsatyler
On a warm summer night my wife and I were in bed reading with the windows open, after dark. We heard someone nearby shouting loudly, maybe a block away in our residential neighborhood. The words were mostly hard to understand but at least once quite distinctly: “Help me! I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!” After a minute or so it trailed off.
I couldn’t see anything out any window. My wife REALLY didn’t want me to go out to check it out. Both our hearts were pounding like crazy. Obviously someone was hurt, but was there still danger?
So I called the local police and explained. In a few minutes a cop car drove by in the direction of the shouting. A few minutes after that I saw a policemen with a flashlight chasing someone across a nearby yard. I checked to make sure all the doors were locked. After that, nothing happened for what felt like a really long time.
Finally we called the police back to see what was up. Turns out it was just a local teen, drunk, trying to talk to the neighborhood girl who recently dumped him. At some point, trying to get her attention, he broke a window and cut his hand. When the police showed up, he ran, because he was drunk and didn’t want to get busted.
So much less scary than the stories we had been spinning in our heads! Finally we were able to sleep.
Kinkin50
I was living in my car for a few months. I would just drive out of town and park off the side of the road on logging roads or whatever to sleep.
Found this one place to park which was nice because it wasn’t too far away but also far enough that no one else would be there at night.
First night I was there I had a waking dream that someone was outside my car looking in. Freaked me out but whatever. Parked other places for a few nights.
Went back there for a few nights and had similar freaky nightmares both nights. Someone outside the car, trying to get in. Basically said screw this place and avoided it for awhile.
I was tired one afternoon and decided to go back to have a nap. Laid there for about ten minutes before hearing a noise and suddenly theres this other dude walking his bicycle down out of the bush right past my car. I recognized him as someone who runs around picking bottles out of trash cans. Very creepy, guess he lived in a camp in the bush right there.
-obliviouscommenter-
When I was seven years old, I was walking to my babysitter’s house all by myself. She only lived a block from the schoolyard, I’d done it all the time.
This car pulls up beside me on the road, and the driver keeps gesturing to me to come closer and shouting ‘Come here. COME HERE!’ I’m frozen on the sidewalk and shaking my head ‘no’ while my knuckles turn white clinging to my backpack.
All he says before driving off is ‘Stay away from Christina.’ And then I never saw him again.
Christina was one of my on again/off again friends in grade school, along with another girl who alternated between hating me and being buddy-buddy. I had completely forgotten about it after a while, and went on being on again/off again with both of them.
In fifth grade, the other girl invited me to the pop machine in the back hall at lunch. Cool, okay. Quality time with a girl I’ve known since I was a baby. Sure. We get back to the classroom and Christina tells me that people were playing with my lunch and hid my stuff, but she was ‘nice enough’ to bring it back for me. I started drinking the pop I’d brought for lunch and something was really off. I spit it out and ran for the water fountain to rinse my mouth out.
Turns out, Christina and her sister had topped up my drink with Lysol. If I’d drank much more I probably would’ve been stupidly sick. The police were called, and a restraining order was put on both of them. It was delightfully ineffective however, because the school was so small there was no separate class to put them in. They got three and four day suspensions.
I have no idea if the two events are related, who that man was, or how he knew how bad Christina was at the time. But that memory sticks with me to this day.
ConsumptiveMaryJane
This happened about 9 years ago on July 5th. We had some extra fire works so we decided to grab a few beers and launch them off. I was living on the north shore of Long Island at the time and at the end of my road was a 100 foot cliff with stairs to the beach. Along the sides of the cliff there was a trail. On the left side you have 100 foot drop to the beach, on the right, a large State Park. There’s nothing for a good 4 miles into the Park.
We finish up with the fireworks at around 3am and decide to head back home. We’re just cracking jokes as we walk when we hear some leaves ruffling on our left. We weren’t freaked out at first, big state park with a ton of deer. About 5 minutes later we hear more ruffling, but it’s for a longer period and sounds distinctly like someone walking. We stop to listen, but as soon as we stop, the ruffling stops. We were too stupid to bring a flashlight and this was before flashlights on cell phones so all we had was the light from the screen. We make it about 50 more feet and all the sudden we hear the ruffling again, this time it’s right on top of us and a man comes out of the woods. It was extremely dark, but we could see that this man was wearing a pinstripe suit, matching top hat, and thin rimmed circular glasses. He just looked at us and said, “Hello, good evening Gentlemen”. We hauled our butts and never looked back. Ran for about 3 minutes before we reached the end of the trail.
To this day I have no idea why that man would deep in the woods, alone, in a full suit, at 3am. Still gives me chills.
Squidward_sucks_eggs
When I was a teenager I was home alone one weekend and I was sleeping in my parent’s room since there was a TV in there. Sometime around 2am I felt like I was being stared at, from the direction of the hallway. I looked up and I saw a shadow person looking at me. It was weird because it was a pure man-shaped black mass and I could see him in the dark hallway, I’m guessing light from the tv helped. I sat up and stared back but I was terrified. We looked at each other for probably 5 seconds and then it turned and walked down the hall, a few seconds later I heard a loud crash. I was so scared I turned the TV to the Disney channel and stayed awake for as long as possible.
When I woke up the next morning I walked down the hall to the bathroom and that’s when I noticed a mirror that was hanging and fallen off the wall and was shattered. My family still doesn’t believe me but I know what happened.
nessag