"This Can't Be Happening": Real-Life Horror Stories

Going In A Different Direction

Back in the 70s, friends and I planned a camping trip for a long weekend. We picked up a hitchhiker headed to Kernville and dropped him off on the way. We thought it was no big deal, but when we got to our campsite, my girlfriend made a chilling discovery.

She found a note from the hitchhiker on her bag. It said, “I could have made all of you disappear forever". We didn’t sleep that night.

adanipse

Lost Backpack

I was exploring the forests near my house with my cousin. We were on a steep hill and as we looked down, we saw that there were a bunch of craters at the very bottom. As we looked inside one of the craters, we saw something strange. There was a backpack in there.

We tried to climb down, but the hill was too steep and slippery to do it safely, so we planned on returning later with a rope. The next day, there was a news story about how there was a backpack with the remains of a girl in that forest.

A guy walking his dog found it after the dog would not stop barking at the edge of the crater and staring at the backpack. My cousin and I decided not to go exploring in the forests anymore after we saw that news clip.

somewhatofalegend

All In Your Head

When I worked in healthcare, I had a patient who got a sinus infection. He stopped taking his antibiotics after a few days because he felt better. Then, overnight, everything fell apart. He got to the Emergency Department, where the doctors realized he was experiencing stroke symptoms.

It turned out that the sinus infection had spread to his cranial cavity. There was so much pus in there that it was twisting his brain. No one thought he would survive the surgery. The family was advised to expect the worst, but amazingly, he somehow made it through. It wasn’t an easy recovery though.

He ended up needing three more surgeries to wash all the pus out and then spent almost two months in the hospital. Take your full dose of antibiotics, people!

slappy_mcslapenstein

Break And Enter

When I was 16, I went to a flea market. It was the last day the flea market was open before closing down for the season. I came across a man in a booth selling knives, throwing stars, and all sorts of bladed instruments. Behind him on a rack was a katana. He sold it to me for $20.

Now, what is a 16-year-old guy going to do with a katana? Nothing. I kept it for years. It stayed either in a closet or under my bed for years. When I went to college, it followed. Fast forward to August 18th, 2006. I was living by myself in Charleston on the ground floor of a one-bedroom apartment.

My katana was under my bed. I have a sliding glass door with vertical blinds, a screened in patio, and a hammock hung outside. That night, around 3:00 AM, I woke up and heard my blinds rattling. I thought to myself, "Wow, it's windy outside”. But I soon came to a horrific realization.

I remembered that I never sleep with the sliding glass door open, and that someone was in my apartment. I was laying in bed, thinking of things that I can use as a weapon to defend myself and my home with. Then, I realized that the sword was under my bed. Oh, yes. It was righteous.

With my sword gleaming in the dim light, I crept around the corner and looked into my living room to find two very large men stuffing my belongings into garbage bags. When you're amped up on adrenaline, you say some dumb things. So, I yelled, "YOU! STOP!" They both turned and ran out the sliding glass door.

The only thought that going through my mind was that those jerks have my stuff...and I want it back! I chased them out of the door, through the wooded area behind my apartment and into a marshy area behind that. All of this was in my underwear, no shoes, no contacts, and with a big sword.

Sadly, I lost track of them and sanity seeped back into my brain. I realized that they might have a piece, I'm practically blind, carrying a very large blade, and the only people that know that I'm out here are me and them. I went back inside and called the authorities.

The burglars had cut away my screen on the patio and using the blade as a prying instrument, forced the lock on my sliding glass door open. How they managed to get past the hammock in the dark without getting wrapped up like a spider's prey is beyond me. For weeks, I made rounds to area pawn shops, but to no avail.

None of my stuff was ever recovered and I was uninsured. I lost my laptop, my DVDs, all of my video games, and my keys.

DeepFacedKiteFlyer

Distant Relative

I met a guy who had been traveling through Australia with a couple of friends, hitchhiking around as many people have done. He told me a story that I'll never forget.

One day, one of his friends told him they were near his distant uncle’s house. He'd never met him before, but he got his uncle's phone number from a family member. He called him and, as the hitchhikers had hoped, the uncle offered them a place to stay for the night.

He picked them up and drove them to his rural property way out in the bush. They said he seemed like a pretty friendly, cheery, and normal guy, so they had no worries about staying with him.

When it was time to set up a place to sleep, the uncle opened a closet that was totally full of sleeping bags and bed rolls. They didn’t think too much about it at the time, but looking back, that was a sign that something wasn't right.

They set up on the floor and stayed for a few days. Then the uncle drove them to the bus station, and they went on their way. A year later, the authorities took the uncle into custody. It turned out that he had been picking up young hitch-hiking backpackers, then taking their lives.

The guy telling this story was 100% certain he had slept in the sleeping bag of one of his victims.

pasomider

Warning Signs

My ex and I were out driving on a big Canadian road trip a year ago. One night, it was getting dark, so we decided to grab a hotel room and settle in for the night. On the way, we came across a car and a girl standing on the road and trying to flag us down.

Keep in mind, this was in a rural area and we hadn't seen any cars in a while, so we were already confused and weirded out.

Just to be safe, we stopped, mostly to see if the girl needed help. As my boyfriend rolled down his window to talk to the girl, I slammed my foot on the gas and took off. I happened to look at the opposite side of the road and saw three guys coming out of the bushes with baseball bats.

I don't know what that girl was doing, but I'm pretty sure she was going to lure us into something horrific.

Loundlooo

Shed Some Light

I lived in a house with four housemates for a year. We had a pretty big backyard with motion detector lights, a garage, and a tool shed that we never really used. Two of my housemates were very superstitious—they believed in ghosts, spirits, and other stuff like that.

So, when the lights in our backyard kept turning on randomly, I assumed it was animals, while my housemates were sure it was a ghost. One even said that she had caught a man-ghost looking through our window one night. She thought it was scary; I thought she was just being ridiculous. A few nights later, though, I became a believer.

I looked outside and swore that I saw a man standing behind the mesh door that led into our back patio. I screamed, got my roomies down, and made us all investigate. But by the time we got out there, whoever was there (if anyone had been there at all) was gone.

Anyway, flash forward a few months. I moved back to my home country and FaceTimed with one of my housemates. Well, it turns out that man hadn’t been a ghost. A homeless man had been living in our toolshed for God knows how long. It gave me the creeps for sure.

ieams85

Let Us In

I lived with three other girls in college. All three took off early for spring break, leaving me alone in the house. During my first night on my own, I heard someone bang on my front door at 2 AM. Then I heard more knocks at my back door. A man yelled, “I’m an officer. Open the door!” I didn’t believe him. I stayed in my room and started to panic.

As I heard bodies slam against both doors, and a man saying, “Little girl, open the door. We know you’re alone,” I frantically dialed 9-1-1. Thank God I did. As the sirens approached, I saw officers chase four boys from our school hockey team and pin them face down on the grass. I had to file restraining orders against all of them.

etrain828

The Lady In The Hall

When my son was not even three years old yet, he came to my room and kept telling me "the lady" was in his and his sister's room. I was half asleep and dismissed it, and told him to snuggle up in my bed with me. So he got in my bed, but every few minutes he kept waking me up to tell me about "the lady". Then he says she is at my bedroom door.

In an effort to show him there is no lady and we should just go back to sleep, I pick him up and walk him in the dark out of my room. We stand in the hall and I say, "See, there is no lady". His reaction terrified me. He points his finger down the hall where there is nothing to see at all and says, "Mama she’s right there. That's the lady! And this is HER house".

Nothing, not even a shadow where he was pointing. I kind of just tried not to show he was freaking me out and said, "Okay, she must be a nice lady," and took him back to my bed where he promptly fell asleep and I stayed awake for hours thinking this "lady" in my 100-plus-year-old apartment must be hanging out and watching me sleep.

kookenhaken

An Intersection Of Eeriness

I had an Android phone that had a Google "cards" feature option that could notify you like "15 minutes to home" if you were out. I thought this feature was annoying and useless, so I kept the feature off. After several months of no cards notifications, the strangest event happens.

One night I'm at home and a card pops up saying "35 minutes to home". It then pins me at a random intersection on the other side of town, let's call it 1st St & Story. I think, that's weird, I'm not even way over there, I don't even know where that is, and I’ve never been to that area.

I go to my card's settings to turn it back off…but it's already turned off. "That's weird". The next night, exact same thing happens.

"35 minutes to home from 1st St & Story". What the? Still definitely not over there. I check the cards feature and the notifications are still turned off, so no idea why I'm getting a notification. A few days later, a friend and I are out running errands, and he misses his intended exit so he takes the next one. Once on the streets, I ask "Where are we? I've never been over here".

Suddenly, a car to our right tries to turn left and crashes right into us. It messed up my friend’s wheel, so he pulled forward to the curb to call a tow truck. We had our kids in the car, so I call my sister to pick us all up. When my sister asks me for the location, I was chilled to the bone. I look up at the street signs: 1st St & Story.

permalink

Calling All Angels

After I totaled my car, a man with burn scars all over his face and hands came up to my window. He asked if I was ok and then came and sat in the passenger seat. He said, “I need you to know that everything happens for a reason". I said, “I know". The next thing I know, I’m talking to the other driver and the authorities, and the guy is just gone. No one else saw him.

cloud9atlass

Geriatric Grandparents

My sister and I were playing outside when an elderly couple walked by our yard. Our yard had this cemetery in the back that was a common local attraction for tourists as the house was built in the 1800s. Most of the graves were of children lost to illnesses. The old couple was pestering my sister. They were asking her to tell them her name.

We got scared and ran inside to tell our mom what had happened. The following week, I heard a chilling story on the news: It was about an elderly couple approaching a teenage girl and then grabbing her. It was the same couple who came over to us that day. It still scares me.

eddieswiss

Pause For Effect

When I was younger, my mother managed the apartment where we lived. Right before Halloween, she told a scary story about a tragic accident involving the two little boys and their mom above us in the vacant apartment. She said if you listened closely, you could still hear their footsteps running up and down the hallway.

At that very moment, we heard the sound of running upstairs. The look on my mother’s face was pure terror. She called the neighborhood patrol man and one of the on-duty maintenance guys to go and check the apartment. They found a homeless mother living there who had slipped through an open window with her two children.

My mom never told ghost stories again.

codeusasoft

What’s Out There

When I was eight, we all had to take swimming lessons at school. My mom worked late, so I went to after-school care and didn’t get home until after it was dark. One day, when we came home, my mom told me to get my swimsuit and towel, and hang them on the clothesline to dry. That way, I would be able to wear them the next day.

I was so confident going outside to do this. I had this real feeling of finally being a big kid, you know? But as I walked into our backyard, everything changed. Suddenly, a man leapt over our gate and started sprinting towards me. I screamed, jumped inside, and instinctively locked the back door.

Thankfully, he ran off and didn't try anything like that again, but it really messed me up. I slept with the light on until I was 16, and I get my husband to go outside for me when it’s dark.

CtrlAltDelusional22.

Face Off

I saw a dude with no face driving a car. No features at all, it was just blank. I did more than just glance at him, too; I was staring. Just smooth skin and a men's haircut. I've never told anyone because it's so ridiculous sounding and I don't think people would believe me. Maybe there’s a rational explanation, but I know what I saw.

onionofbensis

A Unseen Presence

It was like 4:00 in the morning. I’m quite the night owl, so I’m headed downstairs to grab something to drink. The kitchen is separated from the living room by a dividing wall, but I realize someone is in there because I can see a person's shadow from around the corner. I think to myself, "Oh my roommate must be up already. Maybe he has something to do".

So as I turn the corner I say, "Hey, good morning". I immediately get a chill up my spine. No one is in the kitchen besides me. I’m totally, completely alone. In fact, I search the entire first floor of the house frantically, and no one is there at all. So I head back upstairs and give a hard knock on my roommate's door.

No answer, so I slowly open the door. The roommate is passed out asleep, and doesn't seem like he is waking up anytime soon. There is no way he could have made it back up to his room that fast without running, and I would have noticed because the floors are creaky, especially on the staircase.

When he woke up in the morning, I told him about what had happened. His eyes got real wide and he turned pale. He looked me right in the eye and said, "That isn't a funny joke don't mess with me".

It turns out, he had been having bad dreams all night about someone being in the house who shouldn't have been, but whenever he confronted the person, he could never see their face; all that was there was a black silhouette. Haven't had that experience since, and we agree not to talk to each other about it.

DrConradVerner

Rebirth

I have memories that aren't mine. I described them to my mom one day, down to the house I was in, the view out the windows, what I was wearing, what I was doing. My mom looked at me with absolute terror in her eyes. It turns out the memories belonged to my cousin who drowned in a river before I was born.

I hadn't seen any pictures of her, the house, or anything. It still keeps me up at night.

Nightmare_King

The Call Is Coming From Inside The House

I was watching TV at home alone one night. It was Mad TV I think. Or Nick at Nite. Something harmless and not at all frightening. Then I noticed the image on the screen flickered slightly. Curiosity got the best of me, as it often does. I rewound it and then hit pause right at the point where it flickered. What I saw made my blood run cold.

In a little box on the screen sort of embossed into the picture were the words "I WILL BE BACK," and the E in BE was backward. It was so creepy. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had to just convince myself it was a glitch or something but I had the heebie-jeebies for the rest of the night. Luckily my sister came home a couple of hours later.

I've always wondered what that meant, who it was for, and how it even happened.

permalink

Quick Thinking

A girl I knew had a few drinks and decided to hitchhike home to a town about 40 minutes away from the one in which she’d been drinking. Note: It’s very common for people to hitchhike in this area.

She got picked up by a car full of guys, and all seemed fine until she pointed out they could drop her off just up ahead, but they ignored her and kept driving. She had that "instant sober" feeling that only comes with sheer panic.

She played it off like she was clueless and totally down to keep hanging out with them, and she acted like she was very plastered. In the meantime, they were passing through a more forested area of the highway. She fake dry-heaved and said she was about to puke, and really put on a show, so they stopped to let her out. She booked it into the bushes and just didn’t look back until she was safe.

whitethrowblanket

Hang Up

My mom once stopped to help an overturned car on the side of a highway. As we got out of our vehicle, my mom immediately called emergency as I wandered over to see if anyone needed help. Near the wreck, I saw the driver treating a woman (I think it was his wife) roughly. I was only a teenager and the guy was almost three times my size, so I tried to get my mom to come over.

She was busy on the phone, leaving me with these two people. I quickly realized that the man was plastered and looking for a fight. I figured that the only way we were going to get out of this was by playing it cool and then driving away as fast as we could. Once I could get my mom's attention, I'd find a way to tell her, but in the meantime, it was me and the two passengers.

The man asked me to help him move the car. I just stared at him and told him that was a ten-man job and there was no way he and I could do it. Then his wife started to scream at him. She was shouting that she got him hurting her and crashing the car on camera and that she sent the video to his sister. This caused the man to lose his mind.

He picked me up and literally threw me. Then he shoved my mom, took her phone, and pushed her down the bank. Panicking, I told him I had a blade, and I wasn’t afraid to use it if he touched my mother again. With that, he took his focus off my mom and stared right at me. As I tried to calm him, my mom snuck back into the car. When she was ready, I made a run for our vehicle.

On my way, a car that was speeding on the road almost hit me, but I made it to my mom. I heard her start the engine as I jumped in, and we tore off to the local station. The man was apprehended a couple hours later for two charges: one for hurting his wife and the second for assaulting an officer. We call emergency when we see crashes now.

El_Chapos_Cousin

How Kind

Once, my friend went out and met this girl who seemed really nice. After drinking with her, she passed out and woke up in an Uber. She told the driver that she didn’t know where she was. He told her that a girl brought her to his car because she wanted to make sure her "friend got home safe". My friend insisted that something very wrong had happened and told the Uber driver to pull over. He was a good man; he immediately believed her, stopped the car, and called for officers to come and figure out what was going on.

When the officers heard what happened, they said they recognized the address that the Uber driver had been given by this mystery girl. It turns out that there was some kind of human trafficking operation. A girl would slip something into a pretty girl's drink, then pour her into a cab, and send her to the same house. Until my friend called in, none of the girls had been seen again.

spacelordmthrfkr

Freak Incident

When my friend came home after work, his wife was gone. He thought she had taken the dogs for a walk and so checked the normal walk route. Then he saw all of these flashing blue lights. An officer stopped him and said he wasn't allowed to come any closer. But my friend had this sinking feeling. He looked over the officer's shoulder and realized that there was a woman bleeding on the sidewalk. That's when his stomach dropped: the woman was his wife.

It turned out that she had been on a walk in her neighborhood when a man randomly lunged for her. He had just been released from a mental institution and randomly happened to cross paths with her. Sadly, her injuries were too extensive and she passed in the hospital. It's the scariest story I've ever heard because it's so meaningless. This man ended her life for no reason.

Nick_Pears

Baked Even

There's a big bread factory in my town. One day, years ago, maintenance men had to go into the bread oven to fix some issue. The oven had been off for 24 hours before they arrived, but it was still hot. The maintenance men didn't want to go in, but the company insisted, saying that anymore time lost would lose them even more money.

So the maintenance guys took out baskets that held the raw bread on the conveyor belt, climbed onto the conveyor, and started up the machinery. Almost immediately upon entering the oven on the conveyor, the maintenance guys realize that something is terribly wrong. It's way, way too hot to be safe. They tried to run out, but there were too many baskets on the belt for them to get out. The path was blocked. They were trapped.

The only thing they could do was stay on the conveyor and go through the oven, a slow and horrifically painful process that essentially baked them alive. Those outside assisting with maintenance had to listen to their screams. Then the oven went completely silent. They saw one burnt body emerge on the other side of the oven. The second man somehow lived, but only for a few moments.

tails142

Baked Even

There's a big bread factory in my town. One day, years ago, maintenance men had to go into the bread oven to fix some issue. The oven had been off for 24 hours before they arrived, but it was still hot. The maintenance men didn't want to go in, but the company insisted, saying that anymore time lost would lose them even more money.

So the maintenance guys took out baskets that held the raw bread on the conveyor belt, climbed onto the conveyor, and started up the machinery. Almost immediately upon entering the oven on the conveyor, the maintenance guys realize that something is terribly wrong. It's way, way too hot to be safe. They tried to run out, but there were too many baskets on the belt for them to get out. The path was blocked. They were trapped.

The only thing they could do was stay on the conveyor and go through the oven, a slow and horrifically painful process that essentially baked them alive. Those outside assisting with maintenance had to listen to their screams. Then the oven went completely silent. They saw one burnt body emerge on the other side of the oven. The second man somehow lived, but only for a few moments.

tails142

Period Piece

I worked as an engineer and, unfortunately, being security detail came with the job, considering the hours were from 2 PM-11 PM. I was doing some rounds, and we’d noticed the previous day that there was a lock to an electrical room that had been removed. It was mid-winter, and we figured someone was trying to stay warm.

As much as I wanted people less fortunate to get ahead any way they could, it was my job to make sure that there wasn’t someone occupying some spot on the property. So, I went to check on the room. I walked up and noticed that the door was cracked ever so slightly. I popped my flashlight out and beamed it inside there.

There was slightly less than a foot of space between the wall and the machines that were in the room. Thinking it would be impossible for someone to be crammed inside, I did a lazy scan and went to close the door. As I was heading to the stairs, I could hear a shuffling behind me. It was late. There’s nothing going on.

I was newish to the city, so seeing owls or really big rats was still a thrill. So, I went back up and popped out the flashlight, but this time I crouched down to see the space beneath the machines. Sure enough, I saw legs. I called out to whoever it was and told them they need to vacate. They stayed still for a while.

Then they started to wriggle themselves out from the tight space. I stayed there because procedure would be to escort them off the block entirely. A woman popped out looking rough and started muttering absolute nonsense. She was taking her time, and it was snowing, so I got a little aggravated and told her to hurry up. Her insane response was absolutely horrifying.

This woman turned to look at me, stuck her tongue out at me with her mouth gaping, broadened her stance, and started to dig at her crotch. She pulled out a warm, totally used tampon and threw it at me, hitting me in the jaw and neck area. Then she proceeded to clamber away from me just yelling about something nonsensical.

theycallmeick

Tipped Off

I was a hostess at a nightclub. I had a tip jar at the front. It was a Saturday night, so it was looking nice. This dude came up and started talking to me. Apparently, while he was talking, he nudged the tip jar behind my computer screen, so I couldn't see him take $120. I only noticed when he went back into the club.

I told security who checked the cameras, saw him do it, chased him down, and forced him to give me my money back. It felt great—but then things took a dark turn. As they were dragging him out, he looked at me with this crazy look in his eyes and said that he was going to wait outside for me. All of the security guards walked me to my car that night.

crusty_peach

Satan Take The Wheel

I was driving home from work one morning and was waiting to turn right at a stop sign on a somewhat rural road. A number of cars were turning left onto the road I was on. As the last one passed, a blue minivan, I locked eyes with the driver. I nearly jumped out my skin from fear. I am 100% convinced that I either saw a demon or some physical manifestation of pure evil.

The minute I noticed him, the hair on my neck stood up and I felt physically sick. From what I remember, he had no deformities or anything explainable, but something still felt so...off and terrifying about him. It was like looking at something ALMOST human. This was probably two years ago now, and I've never forgotten that otherwise normal ride home.

wiscowarrior71

None Of His Business

When I was maybe seven or eight years old, I went to a local Burger King with my mom. I was impatient to eat, so I went to go play around in one of those plastic playground things that are about 20 feet high. There were no other kids in it, so I just started to climb to the highest point. But things got really weird, really fast…

A businessman in a white shirt and tie looked at me climbing up, then calmly put his burger down and proceeded to climb up after me. He didn't say anything as he did it. I was old enough to think that this was weird, and had flashbacks to our school counselor talking to the class about getting kidnapped and such. I rushed to the slide and ran straight to my mom.

I gave her a giant hug. I didn't tell her about the incident until later.

Permalink

Coming In Handy

My sister's bedroom was on the second floor of our childhood home. Late one night, she suddenly screamed and said she saw a hand on her window. We thought she was just having a nightmare and told her to go back to bed. The next morning, when we all woke up, we made a truly chilling discovery. We found a ladder leaning up against our house by her bedroom window…

Ruddiver

Getting Up Close And Personal

I drove my sister to get sushi in a not so good part of town one time. We were in the car about to get out, and I reached down to get my wallet. I looked back up to find the creepiest, most strung-out looking human being I've ever seen in my life. He had his face against her window, licking the glass. He then pulled his sleeve up to show us some scars on his forearm, face on the glass all the while.

I don't drive out to get food at that restaurant anymore...

Brosendorfer

Gone Girl

My cousin works at a truck stop in Kansas. She told me about some guy who parked his truck and got out, and then a woman got out of the passenger seat. It was kind of cold, so the trucker was wearing a coat and hat. But the woman was wearing summer clothes. My cousin thought nothing of it and did her whole "Hi, welcome in".

The trucker bought a coffee, but the woman just stood there in the doorway. Now my cousin was freaked out. She didn't want to be rude, but she was a teenage girl alone in a gas station in the middle of nowhere. "Excuse me miss, do you need anything?" She asked. "Who are you talking to?" The truck driver asked when he got to the checkout.

"The woman who got out of your truck?" My cousin pointed, but the woman had disappeared. She told me she had never seen a look of such pure terror on a man's face before. He just whispered a quiet "Oh no". Got his coffee and left. The woman did not get back into his truck, and my cousin couldn't find her in the store afterward.

She says it was one of the most terrifying experiences she had ever had while on that job.

Spirit_of_the_dusk

Man’s Best Friend

My family has a Bernese mountain dog called Ava, who is very big. She’s a quiet and lazy dog, but she also seems to be alert at all times. One night, my parents went out for dinner and left me at home with Ava. I was downstairs watching TV and my lounge is right next to the front door. At around 8:00 PM, the doorbell rang.

I opened the door to see a guy in fairly plain clothes standing there. He told me that he had a delivery for me. I was confused because he didn’t look like a delivery driver, and he had no parcel. Suddenly, I turn my head and see another guy around the side of my driveway which goes to our back door. This other man is clearly walking towards my back door.

I freak out and the guy at the door notices this. He barges through, shouting for the other guy. This is when Ava wakes up and begins to let out the loudest bark I’ve ever heard, making the guy stumble back. She rushed towards him and jumped up, grabbing his shoulder and literally throwing him out the door. His buddy came along, but saw Ava and started to run.

The other guy managed to slip out of Ava’s grip and run down the road. I somehow managed to get Ava to stay so I didn’t lose her, and they got away. I was so shaken up. I called my parents and then the authorities, and I gave them a statement. It’s safe to say that Ava got plenty of treats from then on, and I always keep her nearby when I am on my own.

reggie2006

Railroaded

I live in Tokyo and commute via those famously crazy crowded trains daily. There exists on them this kind of unspoken agreement that everyone works together to make this suck as little as possible. But that’s only when the trains are full. About two stops before mine, the train goes from sardine can to everyone on this train could lay on the seats and have room left over.

So, usually, I can sit down at this point. I'm also very obviously not a Japanese woman. But despite my appearance, I'm fluent in Japanese. One day, I sit down when the train empties out, ready to enjoy the 10 minutes of sitting that I get on my hour-long commute. I'm sitting with my legs crossed, as there are maybe ten people in the whole car and I'm not in anyone's way.

All of a sudden, a hand reaches out and grabs my bare knee. I jolt straight out of my skin, rip out my headphones, and look up at the hand's owner. It's some skinny old Japanese dude, at least in his 60s. He points at my legs and, in slightly broken English, says: "You must not cross legs on the train!" I'm totally bewildered by this.

I start to tell him in Japanese that the train isn't crowded right now, and that I'm not in anyone's way. But he doesn't like this answer. He starts to reach for my legs again. I scream as loud as I can, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" Thankfully, this was enough to get him to stop that, as another thing you don't do on trains here is make a fuss.

Djtaffi

A Taste Of His Own Medicine

I was standing in line at the local pharmacy to get my prescriptions. This is a small town and I am a regular there, so they know me on sight. I was behind a couple of other people in line, and there were a couple of people behind me. I kept feeling a tickle in my hair in the back of my head, but every time I looked behind me, the guy there was a few steps back and looking at the floor.

This happened several times by the time I reached the front of the line. The pharmacist told me she wanted to talk to me about my medication in the consultation room. I thought this was weird, because we both knew I had been on this medication for years and would be for life. Nothing new. I get back to the room and close the door, and she comes in from the pharmacy.

She told me that the man behind me had been stepping forward, sticking his nose in my hair, and smelling it before stepping back and looking at the floor. This shook me pretty badly as this is such weird behavior, especially in my little town. The pharmacy staff insisted on having me wait there until the guy was distracted by another pharmacy employee.

They then had a security guard walk me to my car and watch me drive off, to make sure I was gone before Hair Sniffer came out and saw what car I was driving or what direction I was going in. I still use this pharmacy and some of the same people still work there. I will always be grateful that they took the initiative to make sure I was safe that day.

Cygnus875

Wet And Wild

When my mother was young, she went swimming with her friends. While there, she had to watch helplessly as her friend was sucked into a whirlpool at the bottom of a drainage lake. They didn’t find his body for days. That’s why I never learned to swim.

Squaragus_Asparagus

Incognito Infiltration

I was a director of my college’s student government. There was this dude who was always willing to take on projects, so I assigned him a lot of work. I remember thinking he was pretty charismatic and well dressed, and he'd always done good work for me. So when he told me he owned a start-up clothing company, I bought some things from his website.

The next year I saw an article with his face on it. I found out that he was not what he seemed. He had been taking extracurricular classes as an excuse to stay on campus, even though he'd been kicked out of all his classes for a horrible reason. He'd been forcing himself on women at the university. His father was a wealthy professor and covered it up every time it happened. He seemed so normal.

HomelessSock

No Strings Attached

A co-worker's dad went into the nursery to check on his newborn baby only to find a horrific sight. The baby had reached for the blinds strap, somehow tangled his neck up, and began choking. The baby was already blue, and all of the veins in his face were popping up. Grandpa frantically called for emergency. Thankfully, EMS arrived in minutes and had the baby breathing again, but as a mother, I can't imagine anything scarier.

Offthepoint

The Phantom Of The Highway

I was driving one night in a really foul mood and speeding. Like when I say “speeding,” I mean at least 25 over the limit. Anyway, this car gets behind me and for some reason I can just tell it wasn’t an officer. It was a full-tinted Chevy truck with weird lights on it. Once it got behind me, I got a really eerie feeling I can’t explain. My body just knew something was wrong.

I figured if it was an officer, they would light me up for speeding, but for some reason they just kept pace with me, also speeding themselves. At this point I’m getting a little weirded out, so I turn off the freeway…and they follow me. I turn into a gas station and get out. If I’m going to get jumped, at least the cameras will pick it up and give my family some closure.

Something just didn’t sit right with me. I knew something was up. As I’m getting out of my car, the truck rolls its windows down. And what I saw still haunts me to this day. It was a heavily disfigured guy who just has this soulless stare. He starts to motion me with his finger, like telling me to come closer. I don’t care if he was going to give me the winning Powerball numbers, there was no way in heck I was going to approach his car.

I bolt inside the gas station, and at this point my whole body is shaking. I try to tell the clerk what’s going on as they stare at me, as my story doesn’t make any sense. Then, when I go to look outside, the truck is gone. I still have nightmares to this day.

Apprehensive_Art9012

Fortress Of Solitude

This story is 100% true. I experienced it myself in the summer of 1991. When I was about 10 years old, I lived on Woodway Drive in the Fox Harbor Apartments in Paducah, Kentucky. If you look up the address, you will see some woods just to the north of the apartment complex. My friends and I played in those woods every day after school and all day on the weekends.

During the few years I lived there, we cleared a small area in the woods and created a fort from various things we got out of dumpsters. It was our own place that no one else knew about, and it was awesome. One day, as we were walking to our fort, off in the distance we saw a man walking through the woods. He was walking parallel to us, but in the opposite direction.

We stopped talking and halted in our tracks when we saw him. We never saw anyone in the woods, especially not adults. When we stopped moving, he did too. He turned towards us and looked right at us. As I stared at him and was able to make out the details of what he looked like, I felt my heart stop in my chest. Not only was he was wearing what looked like a Halloween mask, he was also carrying an ax in his hands.

We stood there in silence and motionless for what was probably about 10 seconds, him looking at us and us looking at him. Then, he started sprinting straight at us. We did the only thing we thought to do, run straight to our fort. We were probably about 50 yards from the entrance to the fort and, in those 50 yards, he gained a lot of ground on us.

When we finally made it, he was upon us. All of my friends scurried up a tree and were screaming, but I was the last in line. By the time I could try and climb the tree, he was standing right there by us. He was screaming like a lunatic and waving the ax in the air. I was scared, had no idea what was going on, and my mind was blank on what I should do.

I grabbed a large stick and took a nice big baseball-style swing and cracked him on the face with it. He stumbled back a bit, moaned, and took the mask off. The craziest part? I recognized the face. It was the landlord and manager of the apartment complex. A man who was probably about FIFTY years old. He wanted to play a joke on us and thought this was the most appropriate thing to do. He was insane.

Brettuss

Window Shopping

When I used to walk home from the bus stop, I used to walk past a house where a man, maybe in his 40s, lived. If he was out in front when I walked past, we would say hello to each other. Perfectly normal. But sometimes, he would be inside at the window just looking out at me. He didn't wave or show any sign that he saw me.

My friend happened to be with me once when he did this, and she told me that it almost seemed as though he thought we couldn't see him. This behavior didn't happen all the time. Don't get the wrong idea, he wasn't a weird stalker or anything. Just sometimes, maybe about 10 to 12 times in total. Nothing ever came of it.

I eventually stopped bussing and started driving. He moved away from the area a few years ago, and then I moved away too even more recently. But I never forgot the creepy feeling of seeing him behind that window. I just remember that horrible feeling whenever I saw him watching, because I had no way of knowing what he was thinking.

smiles_at_strangers

Mother Goose’s Creepy Uncle

Today, I was standing outside of my dentist's office waiting for my wife. I was minding my own business and having a smoke when this old guy walked up to me from out of nowhere. With seemingly no emotion in his eyes, he looked straight at me and asked me “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

I was about to start laughing it off when I started to realize that he was being fully serious and didn’t mean this as any kind of a joke. I awkwardly said that a woodchuck could chuck as much as it felt like. He just stared at me silently for a few seconds, then turned around and walked away. I just stood there watching him go and thought the whole thing was downright creepy.

Permalink

A Voice From Beyond

Driving through an abandoned section of Baltimore at 3:00 in the morning, my CB radio turned itself on and crackled for a bit. Out of nowhere, some voice over the radio said in a deep Southern drawl, “I ain’t got no panties on". I could see up and down the interstate for miles, and saw not one set of headlights around me for hours...

THREEkoalas

Grin And Bare It

A few years ago, I was living alone in a little house. It had a heavy back door that would swell up after it rained. This always made it get really tough to open, and it would make a lot of noise. Late one night, I had passed out on my sofa in the living room on the opposite side of the house. But I suddenly woke up to a strange sound. Netflix was still blaring away on my laptop, but I guess I had felt a vibration or movement.

As I slowly squinted my eyes open, I realized the outline of someone was standing still in the hallway looking down at me. They were not very large or tall based on how much space they took up in the door frame. Being completely disoriented in my not-quite-awake-yet state, my mind assumed that it must be my girlfriend.

I was unclothed at the time, so I pulled back my blanket with my legs sprawled apart and called to her in my best deep voice "C'mere baby!" I guess once they realized I was a 200-pound man without clothes on, beckoning to them with my downstairs, the person immediately turned on their heels and booked it for the back door. By the time I stumbled up to the door, all I could hear was them taking off into the darkness at a full sprint.

Arnold_Schrodinger

A Devoted Follower

I was 13 years old and on vacation with my parents in Turkey. We were at an all-inclusive hotel and enjoying the holiday. The hotel was full of tourists from different countries. There was this one guy, around 20 years old, who was staring at me for some time. I felt uncomfortable and asked him how he was doing. Wrong choice.

The next few days, everywhere I went, he also suddenly appeared. Not flirting, just lurking for hours and watching me. He had a really strange vibe around him and I felt I shouldn't be alone with him. Now, I was still young and my parents didn't want to leave me alone in a foreign country. So he couldn’t really bother me at any point.

But one night, there was entertainment in the hotel, which became boring to me after some time. I told my parents I wanted to go up to our hotel room and that I would see them in the morning. I left and walked to the elevator. I didn’t know it, but I was making a dire mistake. The guy who had been watching me for days saw me leaving, and he had followed me.

When I saw him also coming into the elevator, I was shaking with fear. He looked at me silently with a sinister smile. "This is it". I thought. Who knows what horrible plans he had for me. And just before the doors of the elevator were closing, someone stuck his boot between in order to prevent the doors from closing. I am not kidding, all I could see was a boot.

The doors opened and it was my dad. He saw that the creepy guy was leaving at the exact time I had left and didn't trust it. He looked the guy in the eye and said hello. My dad took me to my hotel room. To this day, I am so glad for the rescue because I don't want to know what would've happened if he didn't.

dees94

Home Sweet Home

When I was 13 years old, my family moved from a village to a city. This city had a fairly high homelessness rate, so of course, there were always a lot of people looking for somewhere to stay. An old family friend of mine is a letting agent, so he often lets me use some of the unoccupied houses as a sort of recording studio for music that I create in my spare time.

He is totally fine with me using the houses for this purpose as long as I keep them clean and clear out for a while whenever there are viewings. This arrangement works fine for me. One night, after recording at one of the houses, I realized that I had forgotten my wallet there. So, I cycled back, got my wallet, and decided to check the rooms since the door hadn’t been locked properly.

I go upstairs and open the door to one of the bedrooms. Lo and behold, there was a man in his mid-30s lying on the bed like it was his own home. Both of us just looked at each other, completely startled. Neither of us said anything. I guess we came to some sort of non-verbal agreement, and I showed him out. Definitely a creepy experience…

Metal_Warrior_69

Personal Emergency

There was a fatal car accident. The first officer on the scene had recognized that the victim was the daughter of an emergency dispatcher. The same emergency dispatcher who had been relaying all of the information about the crash to emergency services. This was before cell phones, meaning the officer had no easy way to tell her what had happened. He just had to keep that horrible information to himself.

ChipLady

Going Somewhere?

When I was nine, I was playing at the school down the street from my house. It was the middle of summer, and my friend and I were watching some local boys play street hockey. One of the boys called my name and said a man in the parking lot was looking for me. The parking lot was mostly obscured by a nearby building, but I could see an old 70s style van that hadn't been there earlier.

I was walking over to the van when the mother of one of the other kids showed up looking for her son. When she saw me, she said hi and asked me where I was going. When I told her, she took my hand and started to quickly walk away with me. At that exact moment, the van pulled out and sped off.

My friend's mom walked me all the way home, and I wasn't allowed out of my yard without my parents for the rest of the summer. I was so upset and didn't understand why I was being punished. It was only years later that I had understood that I was likely being targeted by some opportunistic loser for I don’t even want to know what.

Im_vegan_btw__

Anybody There?

I once interviewed a woman who told me a horror story about something that happened to her as a girl. When she was ten, she had trouble sleeping. She thought that the Boogeyman was standing in her closet and staring at her whenever she tried to sleep. Every night, she would go downstairs and tell her parents about how scared she felt. And every night, her father would tell her the Boogeyman didn't exist and then send her back to bed.

This happened over several nights, and the father got tired of it. That night, he walked her back up to her bedroom, turned on the light, and said, "I'll show you there's no Boogeyman". As he went to open the closet door, something on the other side held it shut. The dad immediately sent his daughter out of the room and forced the door open to find that a man was in there.

He'd been sneaking into their house every night to stand in the girl's closet and watch her.

JamesRenner

A Midnight Visitor

When I was young, my parents and I relocated across the country to Maine. We lived in a very small town and our house was old, beat up, and on many acres deep in the forest. It had two stories, with the top storey being the main level and the bottom story being the bedroom level. My bedroom had several large windows that looked out into the forest.

I don’t remember having curtains or blinds but I’m sure I must have, because my mother never forgot details like that when decorating my bedrooms as a child, but I must have left them open one night. I remember waking up in darkness, with a faint glowing orb of light hovering just outside my window. I watched it in utter terror as it went slowly across one window, and then the next.

Then it paused, flashing briefly into my bedroom, before shifting into the third and final window and disappearing altogether. I was so upset by the ordeal that I went and woke my parents up, and my stepfather stormed the backyard. There was nothing and no sign of the strange orb. My eyes are watering as I write this. Deep down, as an adult looking back, I realize that orb was anything but magic. It was something much worse.

It was someone’s flashlight. It never happened again, but I’m still afraid of having window blinds open at night.

KindlyAggravating

God’s Plan

When I was in my 20s, I had a car accident that kept me in the hospital for about a year. It was a Catholic hospital and most of the nursing staff were nuns, and besides the normal checks they regularly just stopped in to chat and see how I was doing. Early one morning, there was a knock and this nun came in who I hadn’t seen before.

She introduced herself as Sister Greta, a member of the nursing staff. She sat on the side of the bed and we spoke for a few minutes, then she asked if she could say a prayer for me. She held my hand and said a prayer then wished me well and left. About five minutes later, there was another knock and one of the regular sisters came in to say hi.

I remarked it was going to be a good day because I’d already had one visit from Sister Greta and now I was getting another one. Her face went oddly blank. She said there wasn’t a “Sister Greta” on the staff and there were only two sisters around right now, it being so early. I pointed to the bed, which clearly showed where she had been sitting.

I described her and the habit she had been wearing, now getting a bit unnerved. The sister basically shrugged and bustled off. She came back about half an hour later with a book about the hospital’s history and showed me a picture of some nuns from the 50s. Their habits were exactly the same as Sister Greta’s that I’d described.

Turns out that patients regularly mentioned talking to nuns in old garb that definitely weren’t part of the current staff. I never saw her again or anything similar while I was there...I’m not religious by any stretch. Could the nuns have been pranking me? Absolutely. Despite perceptions they are a funny bunch, enjoy a good laugh, read comics and watch Star Wars. Only, there was never a “Ha, we got you!”

sadzanenyama