Most of us want to believe that we’re too brave and too sensible to be frightened by something as simple as reading a story, no matter how scary it might be.
Right…?
Well, we might be as brave as they come, but if you’re going to read something that’s creeped out a bunch of folks on the internet, you might want to at least read it while the sun’s still up.
Or make sure someone else is home. Just in case.
1. I would never be ok.
I sat on the bed while using the phone, and when I dropped the phone I saw something under the bed.
There was someone under my bed… My eyes widened and I choked the urge to scream. The person under my bed was lying still with his back towards me and his head to his chest, so I couldn’t see his face. And he didn’t see me, trying to be rational while so many thoughts rushed through my head, I picked up the phone, said “Sorry I dropped my phone, I’m just gonna take a shower and call you back.”
The bathroom is right by my bed so I hastily walked in, quietly locked the door, turned the shower on, jumped out my window (my apartment is on the first floor) and called the police. They told me to wait nearby, but to go to across the street and see if anyone comes out the door to the apartment complex. This was during summer and it was still light out, I placed myself across the street, hiding behind a car while watching my open bathroom window and the entry door. I called my boyfriend and he came to me just before the police.
I gave them my keys and they went inside. Only moments later two cops came out holding a thin and tired looking man. His eyes looked crazy, but he didn’t try to get away. The policeman that had stood beside me and comforted me while the police searched through my house (I was a mess, shivering and crying) told me that the man stood outside my bathroom door with one of my kitchen knives waiting for me to come out.
This man had somehow crept in my entry door while I was getting my mail and hid under the bed.The man that was trying to hurt me turned out to be a homeless person and was placed in a mental hospital. My boyfriend moved in with me the very next day.
2. I wish I didn’t have an attic.
One of the creepiest ones I’ve read is where someone was living in their attic. That really creeped me out for a bit. The idea that someone could be living in your place and you don’t even know.
Another one where these urban explorers were crawling through the inside concrete work of a bridge. They found evidence of someone living in there.
3. I have so many questions.
A rapist lived inside a child’s bed for 3 months whilst hiding from the police in Manchester (2007) her parents had no idea he was there. Totally true story.
4. That’s not funny.
I live in England now but for a few months I lived in Wales in a really old row of houses that were built for coal miners. The day I moved in I unpacked all my stuff (it wasn’t much, I was only there for 8 months, for work) and went to bed, absolutely cream crackered.
I was laying in bed, just drifting off to sleep when I hear a knocking sound. I sat bolt upright and started listening for the origins of the knocking. It was a gentle sound at first but got progressively louder.
After about 10 minutes of me shi**ing myself I locate the knocking (which had become a banging by now)… it was coming from the ceiling. I went down stairs to get the biggest knife I could find and apprehensive, climbed into the loft. In my loft was a bloke in his 20s!
Turns out in some of those old houses don’t have separating walls so you can move all the way along the row of houses with access to any of them if you cared for it.
This was my new work mates idea of an initiation joke. It almost ended up with one of them getting stabbed but it still makes me laugh to look back on. You better believe I put a bloody great padlock on the loft hatch the next day, just to be safe.
5. Are we sure it’s nothing?
This one always freaks me out because I sleep talk and use a sleep recording app. Sorry for the amp link, I’m doing this on my phone. There’s a bunch of other posts that do analysis on the recording.
A lady records audio while she’s sleeping. She sleep talks, asking “what are you doing?” and a voice replies “nothing.”
6. Nothing good, that’s for sure.
The Australian guy who posted about the shipping container out in the desert and when he came back later everything was torched.
I think it was used for kiddy p**n or something similar
7. Hope you’ve got a good hiding place.
One where this lady lives by herself and in the middle of the night she hears crashing in the downstairs of her house and then hears someone large running up the stairs toward her.
She grabs her cellphone and climbs into an attic in her closet.
She called 911 and it was apparently some guy who had escaped prison and was looking for someone to prey on.
8. Why is this so scary?
There was a guy who sold a house but didn’t tell the owners that there was a secret bunk on the property and was still living there.
He never posted again.
9. That’s one horrible twist.
The one where a man asks Reddit for advice when he finds out his wife was cheating on him with the neighbor. He takes Reddit’s advice and files for a divorce.
The kids were stabbed to d**th by the wife the next day.
I think he even wrote in a update how every time he visits his kids’ grave there’s always somebody from his wife’s family stalking him there.
10. That kid is never going to be the same!
Where a kid wakes up in the middle of the night due to tv static and hugs his suppose father who is sitting on couch.
Kid asks father later that morning why he was watching tv so late but father says it wasn’t him.
11. Static people are no joke.
There is one story about some kid having a sleepover in the basement of a rich kid and he saw a tall, only somewhat human shaped figure on the basement wall due to the static from the TV.
The static turned off and the kid went back to sleep, only to wake up to the friend’s mom screaming. Years later the friend’s mom said that she saw a tall, oddly shaped figure in front of her bedroom door.
That story first appeared when I was about 12 years old and it scared the sh** out of me for a whole month and made me extremely paranoid to go to bed without the whole room lit up.
12. A complete nightmare.
A week or so before my 10th birthday, I walked to the corner store with a $5 bill and picked up a jar of Ragu for my mom. On my way home, a man I’d never seen before fell in step with me and began talking.
“Hi!” he said, cheerfully. “My name is Dr. Ramsey. I’m a pediatrician. Do you know what a pediatrician is?”
I walked along silently, not replying and fervently hoping he would take that as a sign he should leave me alone. Subtleties were not his strong suit, though, because he kept right on chattering.
“Are your parents looking for a pediatrician for you? Of course, you’re almost a big girl now, you’ll be needing another kind of doctor soon, won’t you? That’s okay though. They can still bring you to me until then. What’s your name? You have beautiful hair. I was just on my way to get some suckers for the candy jar in my office. Do you like suckers?”
Thankfully, we were nearing my house, so I ran forward, up the back steps and into through the kitchen door. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of a very long, very scary ordeal. It didn’t take long after that for “Dr. Ramsey” to begin showing up. At first, it seemed benign enough…at least to a kid. He would drive by nearly every day, smiling and waving. I told my mom, who said maybe it was on his way home from work. But then, the phone calls began.
My dad called me into the living room, and sat me down. He asked about the day Dr. Ramsey followed me home, and if I talked to him. He said I wasn’t in trouble, but that I needed to tell him the truth. I told him know, and he asked if I was sure…could I be forgetting something? I told him know again, and he frowned, then asked “Then how does he know your name?” I didn’t know.
It turns out, that was not all he knew. He knew my sister’s name as well. Pretty soon, neither my sister or I were allowed to answer the phone. He called several times a day; at first, neither of us knew what he was saying. Then, one night, one of my brothers told us that he was telling my parents that he was going to hurt me (and later, my sister).
Things got complicated after that. My dad had called the police, but as this was before there were any stalking laws, there was not a lot they could do. They told my parents to call back if he “tried anything”. My dad then called a friend of his from back in the day, who happened to be a cop. For the next month, my dad’s friend escorted me to and from school. Suddenly, life as I knew it came screeching to a halt. I couldn’t walk to school alone, I couldn’t play outside, I couldn’t walk to SuperAmerica (sort of like a 7-11 for those who don’t know).
When access to me was completely denied, things escalated. It was around this time he began threatening my sister as well. Then one afternoon my sister, two of my brothers, my mom and I were in the kitchen. One of my brothers saw a glimpse of someone in the garage; they’d seen him too. Dr. Ramsey came bolting out of the garage, my brothers chasing after him. They ran all the way to Cherokee Park, where he lost them in the trees. My parents called the police again, but nothing came of it. The only information they had was a description and a name that was almost certainly fake.
A couple weeks later, we woke to find our dog hanging from the side porch. She was a gorgeous saddle-back German shepherd, born the same day I was. We were all devastated. The cops said there was no evidence it was him, and ruled it accidental, but none of us believed that.
His phone calls became more informative in the meantime. He would talk about who was home, and who wasn’t. If my brother would say my dad was home, he would tell him who was really in the house. He also would talk about the house itself…about the window in the kitchen he could easily open with a knife from the outside even when it was locked, and about the french doors that connected the living room to the side porch and how the lock could be finagled from the outside if you jiggled it just right. That night, my dad put in some carpenter nails at the bottom of the french doors until he could get a new lock ordered.
My parents had to go to a company event for my dad’s work. My older brothers were at Saints West roller skating rink. My sister was on the phone with her best friend. My little brother was on the floor asleep. I was watching Devo on the Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack. It was late. Suddenly, the top of the french doors swung inward, and in the few miliseconds before the nails in the bottom caused them to snap back, I could see his silhouette. My sister whipped the phone at the television, and we ran up the stairs.
About halfway up, we realized our little brother was still asleep on the living room floor. As quietly as we could, we slipped back down the stairs to get him. We all went into our bedroom and didn’t turn on the light; this way we could see outside. We watched out the window for a while, and when we didn’t find him, we crept down the hall to our brothers’ room to look. We looked down and could see someone standing at the backdoor. He knocked, loudly.
“What do you want?” my sister asked out the window. He stepped back and said “Is this the Mercy residence? I have a pizza for delivery. Can you come to the door?” She scoffed at him, declaring she was not stupid, she could see he didn’t have a pizza, and she was calling the cops. He left.
A short while later, my brothers returned home. We told them what happened and they walked around the yard, watching for him. They came back in, and things settled down. By now we’d pretty much given up calling the cops because it never helped, so we just went back in, each of us (except my youngest brother, still asleep) carrying a knife from the kitchen “just in case”. Eventually, one of my brothers went into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal as a snack.
You know that sensation you get when you can just feel someone watching you? Yeah, he had that in spades. He kept looking around the kitchen, through the doorway into the dining room, at the windows. He didn’t see anything, but he could still feel eyes on him, so he went closer to the door to try to see better. The kitchen lights were reflecting on the windows of the door (it had 3 rows of 3 windows), so he still couldn’t see.
He stepped closer, then closer again, until he was right up to the door, then cupped his hands on either side of his head so he could see. There on the other side of the window pane was Dr. Ramsey, smiling back at him. He turned to yell for my older brothers, and when he looked back again, he was gone. They went out again to look for him, but didn’t see him.
The next night we were at the table playing crazy 8’s, and my brother was restless. My sister asked him what’s wrong, and he said he always felt like any minute now there would be a ‘boom boom boom!’ on a door or window. Almost immediately after he finished his sentence, “BOOM BOOM BOOM!” on the window right behind him. In the chaos, the two eldest ran out, but he was already gone.
A couple of weeks later, I was at school and we were outside on the playground during recess. I was swinging upside down when I saw that now-familiar blue Ford Galaxy cruising by, moving slowly. There he was, smiling and waving. He called my name, and I ran to the teacher and told her. The school had been told all about him, and she took me inside right away and called my mom. That same day my mom had gotten a call from the school office asking her to verify that my dad was picking me up, as he’d called to say he was on his way. He wasn’t.
Not long after that, I woke up one night, thirsty. I went down to the kitchen for a drink and there, sitting alone in the dark, was my dad. On the table, a gun. He was tired of the the police waiting until Dr. Ramsey “tried something”, he was tired of his children being terrorized, he was tired of being afraid every time he left for work that something would happen to us while he was gone. I sat with him for a time, watching, before he sent me back to bed.
These events, and many more, took place over a period of around 18 months. Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. He had vanished from our lives; the phone calls, the drive-by with the creepy waves, everything. For a long time, during and after the Dr. Ramsey days, I would have a recurring nightmare in which I would wake up to find him standing over me as I slept. It took a long time before I felt like a kid again.
I found out years later that when he was calling, Dr. Ramsey would tell my parents that he was going to r**e and k**l me, and later my sister…and that there was nothing they could do about it. I don’t know what happened to him when he disappeared. I don’t know if he was in a car wreck, locked in prison, in a coma…but sometimes I wonder if the wait ended for my dad when he was sitting in the darkened kitchen one night. I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to.
13. Sometimes the details just hit you wrong.
It’s probably here somewhere, but I read this one where it was from the perspective of a kid. It was about 9 at night and someone knocks on the door of their house.
The kid’s dad goes to open the door, but notices that the security light hasn’t been tripped by someone coming up to the door, so he keeps the chain lock on and opens the door just a crack. He can see that there’s more than one person there, but they’re standing in the shadows and he can’t make out their faces. When he asks who’s there, a laughing voice of a girl asks if “Kenny” is there. Not sure of the name.
The dad says there’s no one by that name at that house, but the sound of the voice is familiar to the kid. The dad slams the door, makes sure all points of entry are locked and they go to sleep. In the morning, every house on the block has been broken into and vandalized except for theirs.
It turned out to be a group of older kids from school.
It may not seem that scary, but the thought of someone deliberately loosening the security light bulb so that you can’t see them when you open your door at night freaks me right out.
14. Every single night.
I can’t find it but one where this kid was spending the night with his new friend. Went down into the basement to go to sleep and saw an abnormally tall native american man standing in the corner.
The “man” looked at him so he ran upstairs to sleep in his friend’s room. He woke up around 3 am to the sound of whispering coming from the floor vent(which led to the basement). His friend was awake too and said, “I hear it every night”.
15. She’s one lucky girl.
Years ago, I was on a cross country trip, solo, to a family reunion. I was supposed to make it a friends house, but there was horrible weather, it was slow moving. Then a terrible accident happened just ahead of me, and I was stuck for quite a while. All told I was five hours behind schedule.
I was exhausted, in need of a bathroom and a shower, so I pulled into a little strip motel off of a fairly back roads state road. It was obviously small and dirty, but would work in a pinch.
There was a window to the outside where check in was. The guy there eyed me up (then a college aged girl), asked me if I was traveling alone. I went to hand him my ID and credit card, but he insisted cash only. Red flags were going off at this point, but I scrounged together just enough cash and he tossed me the key.
The room was dirty, barely bigger than the bed. The first thing I did was go to the bathroom, then I flipped up the mattress: dirty, signs of bed bugs. A moment later, I spied a cockroach.
That was it, I was out. I decided I would use the parking space at least, and sleep in the back trunk hatch of my suv. I curled up, using a suitcase for a pillow and random clothes for a blanket and fell asleep for an hour.
I woke up aware of someone talking on a phone outside, and glanced out to see the guy from check in standing outside (it was now around 3 am). He finished up his call, then walked quietly over TO MY ROOM, unlocked the door, and walked in. The lights didn’t turn on, and a minute or two later later, he came back out, slamming the door behind him, and cursing, with ANOTHER GUY. I hadn’t seen guy two enter, so I still don’t know where he came from.
They angrily talked for a moment, then check in guy walked over to my suv. I covered up my head quickly with a shirt. After he tried the locked door, he peered in the backseat, but between my tinted windows, and blending into the general mess, he didn’t notice me in the hatch.
The two guys walked away to the far side if the lot. talking more, the one gesturing across the street where a diner was. While they were distracted, I climbed up to the front seat and started up the suv, they turning around in surprise as I pulled away.
I called my friends back home and told them, but didn’t want to worry my family, so I said nothing to them. When I got back home some three weeks later, we figured out the name of the hotel thanks to google maps and called the local police. They told me the place had closed down only days before I called.
16. Creepy is an understatement.
I have a creepy one from my own life; during my teenage years I would stay up extremely late playing World of Warcraft (headphones on, my back to the door).
My parents had broken up years past and my dad was working nights to pay the bills, basically. He wasn’t home this night.
It was a bit creepy being home alone, so I would always close the door to my room. Headphones on and forget about being home alone, by speaking to friends in the game.
Cut to the middle of the night, I turn off the game to go to bed where I turn to see the door to my room slightly ajar, the front door to the house wide open, as well as the back door out to the garden.
No sign of break in, but I assume someone broke in through an unlocked door, heard me speaking, checked me out from behind, and left the house in a hurry.
I always double checked the locks after this ?
17. Cult stuff is always creepy.
Probably the one from that one user who went to like a summer camp which turned out to be a cult.
He managed to escape but they followed him around everywhere, he then stated in another reddit post that the story was made up but it all was really weird.
I wonder what he did after that since he never posted again after asking how u delete posts, which was a bit odd
18. Alternate universe?
A story of a dude on a road trip with his brother.
They go into a Red Robyn late at night in a town they’ve never been before and everyone recognizes them. Like they just left the diner.
When they’re obviously confused, everyone acts like the OP is just messing with them.
19. An actual nightmare.
The one where a man gets a bad splinter that gets so bad his hand starts going numb.
He pulls it out only to find its not a splinter but a parasite that had buried into his hand, and it laid eggs.
20. Purple Mommy.
Purple mommy.
When my son was first learning to talk, he would tell us about something called “purple mommy”. It could be an imaginary friend, but these details are a little bit creepy.
Here’s a few of the purple mommy details.
Purple mommy is all purple with long hair and bright all white eyes(at the time he mixed up purple with black, so he could have meant she was all black).
Purple mommy picks him up at night, and turns off the lights. We would often find my son out of his crib in the morning, which would mean him crawling over the railing and to the ground, at a time when he was barely walking. Definitely found the lights in his room off a few times too, even though he’s terrified if the dark.
Purple mommy needs a bandage because she has blood everywhere.
Purple mommy has no smile, meaning a mouth.
Purple mommy can take her head off.
Purple mommy really doesn’t like daddy.
He told us all of this stuff for maybe a year or a little more. If we ever asked where she was, he’d always point to the same spot. A corner of the room behind his open closet door. He would also wake up crying almost every night during this time.
Once, during a really rough night, my wife went to ask him whats wrong, and his answer was “purple mommy wont let me sleep.”
21. A random detail.
There was a story where a friend had invited her friend over for a sleepover. Since it was a single bed, the friend had to sleep at the bottom of the floor beside the bed. The girl woke up in the middle of the night to find her friend standing at the doorway and calling her to go out and get Tandoori chicken to eat. When she refused, the friend yanked her hand and pulled away.
They went out of the house and the friend explained she didn’t want to get tandoori chicken. She instead pulled her out of her house because she saw a person underneath her bed when she woke up in the middle of the night.
22. Probably something worse.
A woman was driving on road between maize fields at late night. Suddenly she spotted a body lying in the middle of the road.
She wanted to check but it was scary so she just drove past the body. After some xx metres she looked at her rear mirror and saw a group of people coming out of the maize field.
It was a trap. Maybe for robbery or something worse.
23. Careful who you let in your home.
After getting our coffee we sit down.
Me: So, what’s this story you have for me? You sounded pretty shaken up.
Lisa: Well, yesterday I was taking care of D and NS and D went down for her nap. When I walked by her room to check on her, she was singing, “Blood, blood from the baby, it’s okay he wanted to play. Blood blood from our mommy, that’s okay she d**d today.”
Me: *wide eyes* What… the f*ck?
Lisa: I KNOW. So, I sat her down and asked her where she learned that song and she said she learned it from her imaginary friend, Rupert. She said he talks to her sometimes and they sing together, mostly at night.
Me: That’s insane.
Lisa: I know, so I asked M about it and she said that D has been saying that for a while and that Rupert has been apparently trying to get her to get up in the middle of the night, go to NS’s room and get him out of the crib to be in her room.
Me: How long has this been going on?
Lisa: Ever since they brought the baby home. There’s no way she could have learned that unless someone told her. Her parents don’t watch anything that would trigger that and she’s very well sheltered.
Me: *After leaning back and thinking for a while* Wait… Oh f*ck.
Lisa: What?
Me: When they brought him home, did they buy new baby monitors?
Yes. That was it. We called the family and had them check it out. The monitors didn’t record, but they could move and also have audio output. They waited until night, then stood outside the daughter’s door until they heard a man talk over the monitors and start singing to her.
Immediately, they unplugged them and called the police, but there was nothing that they could do to trace the guy. I walked them through two-step authentication on Nest units after that and Rupert hasn’t come back. F*cking sickos, man.
24. Very bad things.
The original is an Iraq vet who was with his girlfriend driving through a desert highway. They see what appears to the aftereffect of a car crash; two vehicles. Twisted metal, the road has various bits of broken plastic and steel. There are bodies around, she wants to stop to see if they can help.
He does not stops here.
The scene is quite sanitary – where’s the blood and guts? He slowly drives around the bodies and continues on a bit and halts. Nothing. Then a couple of the bodies sit up. He hits the gas and races away.
It was a set up for… bad things.
25. That will stick with you.
It was a guy on I think legal advice whose wife had gone batsh** crazy and was stalking a woman she didn’t really know. It was a friend of a friend or a coworker or something. To the point she showed up at the venue of the ladies baby shower and was telling people she lied about who the baby’s father was
He had this long bullet point list of the crazy stalker things his wife was accused of when she finally arrested for stalking and harassing this woman. And in the end his question was how much is he personally liable for financially in all this. No plans to divorce or anything. Just can the courts force Him to pay restitution for his wife’s clear insanity?
26. I would have left, too.
There was a young girl (probably a toddler) who would tell her dad there’s a man in her closet. It would happen often at night until her dad got sick of it and went to the closet.
He pulled at the handle but the door opened a bit, then shut as if someone was pulling it shut from the other side.
He told the kid to get out of their room and close the door, and he opened the closet and there was a dude in there.
27. A glitch in the Matrix.
So I guess a little context is in order. My girlfriend and I had been together about a year at the time, never had big problems, we are both pretty relaxed people. Never have had a big fight, never had trust issues, the whole shenanigan.
So one day I was out in front of my apartment building smoking a cigarette, this was before we lived together. I had seen her the night before, had a nice dinner, gone out to a bar, then gone to my place, after which she took a taxi home. So as I’m standing out in front of my apartment building, she pulls up in a taxi. I wasn’t expecting her, and was pleasantly surprised to see her. I put out my cigarette, smiled and walked up saying something like “Hey, what are you doing here?” (in a very friendly way).
She scours at me, and slaps me square across the jaw. Obviously I’m dumbfounded, and at a loss for words so I just kind of looked at her. She never said anything, just barged past me into the building.
I followed her up to my apartment, asking her what was happening the whole way, she goes into my apartment, grabs her bag and some of her stuff she left there, throws a few things at me, breaking a glass or two and knocking down a bunch of stuff on a shelf. She calls me a pig, says she knows everything, and that I’ve broken her heart. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on obviously, and she stops on her way out when I touch her sleeve, glares at me again and slaps me. She tells me something like “I hope I never see you again” and walks out. I followed her to the street and she got in her cab, and drove off. The street was pretty empty, this was maybe 8-9am, and i watch her drive off. At this point I’m just lost for words, scared and sad.
Then, as I’m watching the cab drive away, someone hugs me around my waist from behind. I turn around, and its her, in running clothes (she was wearing heels and a leather jacket before), and I went completely pale. She said “hi” in her usual happy-go-lucky tone, then noticed my look and said “what’s wrong”.
I spun around, no taxi. It had literally driven away 5 seconds earlier, no way it could’ve turned in that time, and all the lights were red. I didn’t say anything to her, just ran upstairs. Her bag was gone, things were still broken, my door still wide open. So then I told her.
We were both monumentally confused, there’s no way I could have mixed her up with someone else, and she’s an only child. We had security check the cameras, and sure enough, Me following a girl to my apartment. The angles weren’t great, and the film wasn’t great quality, but it was pretty easy to see me and my face, but hers was always hard to make out looked a hell of a lot like her, but never a clear shot.
No way it was the same girl.
Still creeps me the f*ck out, and we don’t talk about it.
28. Goatman. Love the sci-fi twist.
I’ve not read it in years, but I was always spooked by the one in which a group of friends are hanging out together when suddenly they all get the feeling that someone else was had also been with them… except they can’t remember who.
29. Definitely a ghost.
I was in Vegas once sometime around 1996. Our cheap a** hotel room had a gap under the door, enough to get a few fingers through. I was somewhere around second grade and had brought a Batman action figure to keep me occupied. I ended up sticking him under the door a few times for whatever reason. As I pulled it back in a hand followed like it was trying to grab it. It moved around like it was feeling for the figurine and then pulled back
I threw the door open and there was no one there. No doors opening or closing, no elevators or fire escapes near us, not a god d**n sound in that hallway. I still can’t figure out how anyone could have disappeared that quick. Even if they sprinted to the room across the hall and the door had been open,
I should have heard/seen them closing the door or something…
30. What if…
It pretty much said something like : “Do you ever hear a faint static noise when you’re lying in bed in complete silence ? If you listen closely, you may start hearing whispers. But when you can hear them is when they can start noticing you too.”
The story was really short and probably better written than that, but I had to sleep with videos or music playing as I fell asleep because the more I focused on silence the more I kept convincing myself I was hearing things xD
I would so not be ok if any of these had happened to me, y’all. Yikes.
What’s the scariest story you’ve read online? Share it with us in the comments!
