1. It’s Coming From Inside The House

I was once in a hot tub with some friends late at night, and we were all telling some stories. One of the guys told us this one, a story of a girl he knows—the people he was with verified it was true. So one day, this girl was called over to babysit. She did it a lot for these people, so it was routine for her. Anyways, she was told to put the kids to bed at 9, and she did.

After she put them to bed, she started watching TV and doing homework, waiting for the parents to come home. But then, she started hearing some noises coming out of the basement, like pans falling and stuff. She just ignored it, and thought it was the washing machine or something. Anyways, a little later, she starts hearing the noises again.

She decides to call the authorities. The lady at the station told her there's a patroller in her area, and that he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. Anyways, in about five minutes, she hears a knock on the door. She answers, and it's a full SWAT team. She asked, "I thought they were just sending a patroller..." One of the guys told her, "After you hung up the phone, we heard a second phone on the line hang up."

Apparently, there was a man in the basement listening to the conversation. The lady in the station waited and heard him hang up, then immediately sent the SWAT team to help. They went downstairs and caught him; he was wanted for multiple cases of assault.

bondmaxbondrock

2. The Gentleman Caller

About five years ago, I lived downtown in a major city in the US. I've always been a night person, so I would often find myself bored after my roommate, who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep. To pass the time, I used to go for long walks and spend the time thinking. I spent four years like that, walking alone at night, and never once had a reason to feel afraid.

I always used to joke with my roommate that even the dealers in the city were polite. But all of that changed in one, chilling instant. It was a Wednesday, somewhere between one and two in the morning, and I was walking near a patrolled park quite a ways from my apartment. It was a quiet night, even for a weeknight, with very little traffic and almost no one on foot.

The park, as it was most nights, was completely empty. I turned down a short side street in order to loop back to my apartment when I first noticed him. At the far end of the street, on my side, was the silhouette of a man, dancing. It was a strange dance, similar to a waltz, but he finished each "box" with an odd forward stride. I guess you could say he was dance-walking, and headed straight for me.

Deciding he was probably tipsy, I stepped as close as I could to the road to give him the majority of the sidewalk to pass me by. The closer he got, the more I realized how gracefully he was moving. He was very tall and lanky, and wearing an old suit. He danced closer still, until I could make out his face. His eyes were open wide and wild, head tilted back slightly, looking off at the sky.

His mouth was formed in a painfully wide cartoon of a smile. Between the eyes and the smile, I decided to cross the street before he danced any closer. I took my eyes off of him to cross the empty street. As I reached the other side, I glanced back...and then stopped in my tracks. He had stopped dancing and was standing with one foot in the street, perfectly parallel to me.

He was facing me but still looking skyward. Smile still wide on his lips. I was completely and utterly unnerved by this. I started walking again, but kept my eyes on the man. He didn't move. Once I had put about half a block between us, I turned away from him for a moment to watch the sidewalk in front of me. The street and sidewalk ahead of me were completely empty.

Still unnerved, I looked back to where he had been standing…to find him gone. For the briefest of moments I felt relieved, until I noticed him. He had crossed the street, and was now slightly crouched down. I couldn't tell for sure due to the distance and the shadows, but I was certain he was facing me. I had looked away from him for no more than 10 seconds, so it was clear that he had moved fast.

I was so shocked that I stood there for some time, staring at him. And then he started moving toward me again. He took giant, exaggerated tip-toed steps, as if he were a cartoon character sneaking up on someone. Except he was moving very, very quickly. I'd like to say at this point that I ran away or pulled out my pepper spray or my cell phone or anything at all, but I didn't.

I just stood there, completely frozen as the smiling man crept toward me. And then he stopped again, about a car length away from me. Still smiling his smile, still looking to the sky. When I finally found my voice, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. What I meant to ask was, "What do you want?!" in an angry, commanding tone. What came out was a whimper, "What the…?" Regardless of whether or not humans can smell fear, they can certainly hear it. I heard it in my own voice, and that only made me more afraid. But he didn't react to it at all. He just stood there, smiling.

And then, after what felt like forever, he turned around, very slowly, and started dance-walking away. Just like that. Not wanting to turn my back to him again, I just watched him go, until he was far enough away to almost be out of sight. And then I realized something. He wasn't moving away anymore, nor was he dancing. I watched in horror as the distant shape of him grew larger and larger.

He was coming back my way. And this time he was running. I ran too. I ran until I was off of the side road and back onto a better lit road with sparse traffic. Looking behind me then, he was nowhere to be found. The rest of the way home, I kept glancing over my shoulder, always expecting to see his stupid smile, but he was never there. I lived in that city for six months after that night, and I never went out for another walk.

There was something about his face that always haunted me. He looked completely and utterly insane. And that's a very, very scary thing to see.

danrennt98

3. You Think You Know Someone

Once, my father went camping at a non-commercial campground, which is usually more secluded, with no camp manager or outhouses. It was during early spring so it was still pretty cold out, and there wouldn't be many people out there camping. There was only my dad, a few of his buddies, and a rough-looking old Chevy with a makeshift, Frankenstein-esque camper mounted on it just a few sites down.

Being sociable and considerate campers, my dad and a couple of other guys went to say hi to their neighbor and let them know to holler if they were being too loud while they were there for the weekend. The guy they met was a seemingly nice man who was minding his own business and politely thanked them for introducing themselves.

He looked like he'd been out there for a few weeks, with a clothesline up and everything. During my father's three-night stay, the group would wave at their neighbor occasionally and invited him over for coffee in the morning once. After they didn't hear or see him for a couple of days, they didn't think much and ended up finishing their stay.

On the way out of the campground, they passed his camp, which was still set up the way it was when they went to say hello. My dad was driving his truck toward the exit with a friend in it, who shouted at him to stop because he thought he saw something. My dad saw it as well from the corner of his eye while driving, but assumed his mind was playing tricks on him. What they had just seen was haunting.

He really did see the guy hanging from the tree and not just a plastic bag. They got out and dialed 9-1-1 their spotty reception. The scene was pretty horrific. My dad recalls a note stuck to the tree with a buck knife. He was too sickened to read it, but he felt bad for the guy and always says how badly he wanted to cut him down from the tree, although he obviously couldn't save him because he had been long gone.

Officer and the ambulance showed up. The group got a "thank you" and were sent on their way after getting some information about the situation. The creepiest part of this story, though, was the fact that it occurred at my dad's favorite campsite, which we were staying at when he told us. He waited until we weren't kids anymore to say anything about it, but it still gets to me.

MultipleColoredChloe

4. Is Anybody There?

I worked with a lady once who was pretty old—I'd say about 70 years old. Since our job was pretty boring, we talked a lot and she had all kinds of crazy stories. But this one creeps me out still. She said when her grandma passed, they had her buried in a wood box in the backyard, as was pretty customary in those days. Well, years later they have a family plot in a cemetery and decide to dig her grandma up to move her to the family plot.

She paused at this point and shivered. When they took the lid off the coffin, their eyes went wide. It had claw marks all over the inside. The grandma had apparently been buried alive.

DontDreamitBeeit

5. Too Close For Comfort

When my mom was young, she and her mother lived in a trailer in the backyard of a family member’s house. My mom was about 12 at the time, and the man in the neighboring house started to stare at her from time to time. She got a creepy vibe from him but figured her was just a harmless lonely guy. She soon found out how wrong she was.

One night when my mom was alone, she heard something on the roof of their trailer, then she heard what sounded like footsteps slowly walking along the metal rooftop. Given they were dirt poor at the time, they did not have a phone so she eventually ran out of the trailer and into the house without looking on the roof. When her uncle went outside to investigate, nothing was on the roof.

A few weeks went by with no incidents and my mom figured she must have been overly scared of nothing. More weird stuff would randomly happen, but only when she was alone, and it was always spaced out by a week or two. If I remember correctly, this occurred over maybe a couple of months…before it stopped completely.

Months go by without any weird instances at all—until one fateful night happens. My mom wakes up to find the trailer is unbelievably hot, like she could feel the heater on full blast. She got out of bed and was about to go to the control for the trailer's heater but she was overcome with a bad feeling and decided to just go into her uncle’s nearby house.

The uncle went out to the trailer again and this time noticed that the lock on the door was broken or messed with. He looked inside quickly but didn't see anything. His wife made him call the authorities and when they came out, they searched the trailer and made a horrific discovery. They found one of the kitchen knives behind a chair next to the heating controller.

They suspected that the neighbor went into the trailer, turned the heat up, and crouched behind the chair waiting for my mom to come by and then…who knows. It's been a long time since I heard the story but from what I remember, the officers questioned the neighbor but really couldn't do anything about it. Luckily, my mom and grandmother were able to move out of that town right after that.

My mom told me that about five or something years later she was visiting her other family who lived in a nearby town and she saw the neighbor at the grocery store. She bolted out before he saw her.

thisNameIsSooClever

6. Going Up?

I was in Taiwan one year when I was younger, and had traveled to a busy night market. Nearby I spotted a sign for a netcafe in a 5-6 storey building. Thinking I’d fire off some quick emails, I walked in the dark, small entrance of the building. The building was older and hadn’t been well maintained, but that’s not out of the ordinary in Taiwan.

The entrance just had a dark hallway that led to a small elevator. I pressed the elevator call button and entered. The elevator was uncharacteristically new compared to the building, but I didn’t think much of it. Like some Chinese/Taiwanese buildings, there wasn’t a fourth floor (it’s considered bad luck), so it just read 1-2-3-5-6, which was usual.

I looked for the floor the netcafe was at– 6th floor—and pressed the button. It lurched into action quietly and began the ascent. When it stopped, I figured it was my floor, so I instinctively began to step out. Right before stepping out, however, the sight outside the elevator stopped me. It was pitch dark, only lit by the light in the elevator, and it looked like it hadn’t been occupied for decades, with some random pieces of furniture covered with white cloth.

It was a small building, so each floor was single occupancy, and I could see pretty much the entire floor from the elevator. Thinking I must have gotten the wrong floor, I checked the light that indicates which floor you’re on. Strangely, there was nothing. None of the indicators were on, but the floor button to the netcafe was still lit so I knew I hadn’t gotten there yet.

All this happened within a couple of seconds. That’s when I noticed a figure moving in the distance on the floor. It was not very visible, but I could make out what looked like a person dressed in some kind of gown, moving slowly towards the elevator where I was. I was thoroughly creeped out, so I started pressing the close door button frantically.

As soon as I pressed it, the elevator light flickered off, and I was in pitch dark. I am this close to peeing my pants, and it’s actually kind of freaking me out thinking back to it now. The lights flickered back on under a second and the door closed, and the elevator jolted back to life. A few moments later, it opened again to the netcafe.

I am beyond relieved at this point. I walked out immediately and sat down at a computer. After gathering my wits a bit, I walked over to the cashier’s desk and told them what I saw. The girl working there listened and her face turned a bit ashen. I asked her if she'd heard of a similar story. She told me that she’s never experienced it, but some co-workers and occasional customers have brought it up.

Basically, the building has six floors, and the fourth floor had a history. Apparently the floor used to be a hair salon of sorts, until one of the employees completed suicide there for some reason. The store continued operations despite stories of weird appearances—when customers got their hair rinsed the water would look a little red, like the customer was bleeding.

A couple people reported seeing someone’s figure walking away in the mirror, but wouldn't see anyone when they turned to check. Naturally, the business closed down a few months after that. The building owner tried to re-rent the place out, but never had any luck. Most businesses are quite superstitious, and no one wanted to rent the fourth floor after someone had perished in it, even at a very cheap price.

Finally, after dropping the price to nearly nothing, a stationary supplies store wanted to rent. During the renovations of the floor, however, several accidents would happen. Tools would end up in strange places, a mirror from the previous business shattered when no one was near it, and finally a worker had his hand jammed between the elevator doors when it closed on him unexpectedly.

The workers refused to continue working and finally, the business left and the building owner finally gave up and shut down that floor. He then had the elevator company come in to replace the panel so that the elevator could not go to the fourth floor. Let me repeat that—the elevator was programmed to never go to the fourth floor. It doesn’t even have a button.

But for some reason, sometimes when people take the elevator, it would go to the fourth floor and the doors would open, and some, like myself, would see a figure walking around in the dark.

Permalink

7. A Message From Beyond

One night, there was an altercation in the middle of our street at 2 in the morning that woke our whole house up. My stepfather and my uncle were still up drinking and went outside to see what was going on. There was a young man kicking the heck out of one of our older neighbors. We found out afterward the young man was dating the older man's daughter.

My stepfather and uncle went out to break it up and in the commotion, the guy plunged the weapon right into my stepfather. He stumbled back on to the porch and fell, and I tried to catch him. His blood smeared down the front of my shirt, and the younger guy took off and we called 9-1-1. This is where it got truly chilling.

We were in the hospital until the early morning. When my mom and I got home there was a message on our answering machine. It was a friend of mine from school, crying and apologizing for calling in the middle of the night, but she had just had a dream that there was screaming and a fight, and I was covered in blood. She begged me to call her back.

The time stamp on the message was the same time as the fight. This is in the late 80s, before computers and even cell phones really. I lived on the other side of town from her. There was no way she could have known what had happened.

morgueanna

8. The Place Under The Stairs

Just a few months ago, while I was still in school, I rented an old house with two of my friends. I lived in the basement and they each had a room upstairs. Several strange things happened to me while I was living in that basement. The first was that I had just gotten a dog and he was about four months old at the time. Now and then, right when I turned the TV off to go to sleep, my dog would start whining and growling at one corner of my room.

He would usually not get on my bed because he wasn't allowed, but during these times, he would jump on my bed and get as close to me as he could, all without his eyes ever leaving that corner. This happened about five times over the course of four months. Then, toward the end of the school year, when I was about to move out, the scariest thing that has ever happened to me in my life occurred.

Under our stairs was a little door that led to a small space that had a dirt floor. There was also a really weird, old wooden piece of what looks like a map nailed to the inside of the door, so it's a pretty spooky place. Up until the day before this incident, we had kept a small chair in front of this door that I laid my coats and things on, but we had some friends over the night before, so we brought that chair upstairs.

It was dark (probably 8 pm) and I had just been upstairs in the kitchen. I had just gotten off the stairs and was about to open the door to my room, when the door to the little closet under the stairs opened so slowly and with THE loudest creak I've ever heard in my life. I stood rooted to the spot, frozen in fear, staring at the closet, waiting for whatever was about to come out of it to show itself.

I literally stood there for about five minutes, absolutely terrified. Eventually, I opened the door to my room and locked it as fast as I could. I wasn't sure either of my roommates was home, so I called my female roommate and she was there. I spent the rest of that night upstairs with her, still too scared to go back downstairs. I do not scare easily.

Now I know many of you will probably say it was the wind or the fact that I had just come down the stairs or something just as my roommates did, but I've had those things happen to me before and been kind of creeped out, but this was different. The second I heard that closet open and looked over to see it opening so slowly, I felt this sheer terror.

It honestly felt like there was someone or something else in the room with me that wanted me to see that door open.

mojavespider25

9. Home Sweet Home

So when I was about seven, maybe younger, I went to my mom's best friend's house with my mom in another city. It was just me, my mom, and her friend. Nobody else in the house. Except, when I was there, I saw a family which consisted of a mother, a teenage boy, and two younger girls who looked really burnt just walking around the house together without taking their eyes off me.

At one point, they even told me to go with them. I didn't think anything of it at that point because I assumed they were house guests. But many years later when I told my mom, she mentioned it to her best friend. Her best friend told her they actually had to move out of that house because they had had many haunting experiences, such as finding all her new baby's toys out in the middle of the night after she tidied it, things moved around, and blankets and pillows on the floor as if people slept there.

She asked her husband thinking maybe he did it, but he was just as scared as her.

Shawtytina

10. Doom From Above

When I was seven years old, my mom gave birth to my little sister. My dad and I went to visit her in the hospital to check out the new family member. As seven-year-olds often do, I got bored, so my parents sent me to the kiosk right outside the main building to get an ice cream. As I was walking towards the kiosk, I cut over the lawn as it was a shorter walk.

Suddenly I feel and hear a really heavy thud right behind me. I turn around to see an image that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It was the warped, mangled body of a man in a hospital gown maybe 40-50 cm from where I was standing. The man had jumped off the hospital roof after receiving the news he had terminal cancer.

My mom and a lot of the others in the birth ward even saw the guy flying past the windows. The guy basically just fell short of taking me with him. A group of doctors and psychiatrists asked me to get emergency therapy, but I insisted on getting my ice cream and going home. To this day, I can still recall the thud of the body hitting the ground and his body lying next to me, clear as crystal.

myhatisbread

11. Midnight Visitors

This happened to my friend's dad. This guy isn't the type to make stuff up, so I believe him 100%. My friend's dad, Jack, and his brother Tom lived with each other in the 80s. It was just the two of them living in the house, no one else. So, this one night Jack is coming home at night and walks into his living room to see a bunch of old people sitting around talking.

As he walks in, they all just quiet down and awkwardly look at him as he walks by. He doesn't see Tom anywhere, so he just assumes Tom will be back to tend to his strange guests. Jack has work the next morning, so he goes in his room to get some sleep, but is kept up from all the people talking. He walks out from his room and is promptly met with Tom, who is coming out of his room to tell Jack to keep his friends quiet.

However, Jack was coming out to tell Tom to keep HIS friends quiet. They walk out from the hallway into the living room…only to see that it's empty with the leftover smell of musk.

MilkChugg

12. What A Way To Ruin A Night

Oh man, this happened in my junior year of college. Not my proudest moment. Me and maybe half a dozen friends are hanging out on Saturday night and we are just crispy baked. Then there was a knock at the door. Serious knocking. Panicked knocking. What do we do? Gotta be officers, and we are so screwed. Like, I'm getting kicked out of housing this time.

So one of the girls goes to answer the door. A guy with insane Ted Kaczynski hair and no pants is SCREAMING at the door to let him in. The girl screams and tries to shut the door, but the guy is forcing his way in. He is bleeding pretty bad, and is suddenly basically draped over my friend in a heap. He is totally incoherent, just keeps yelling PLEASE and making no sense otherwise.

My friend runs down to help the girl. I could muster precisely zero courage. I was terrified. I stood at the top of the stairs like a housewife who had seen a mouse in an old cartoon. WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO!? OH GOD WHAT DO WE DO!? We have to call the authorities! Right? I CANT DO IT I'M FREAKING OUT MAN. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY HANDS! Someone finally calls and tells the authorities an old, possibly homeless man is trying to force his way into the apartment.

I remain totally panicking at the top of the steps, helping in no way whatsoever. My friend has now wrestled the guy out of the apartment and is trying to calm him down. Eventually, officers come and they take the disheveled, pantsless homeless man away in an ambulance. We close the door and sit back down in the living room. "Is anyone else not baked at all anymore?" someone asked.

We were not. We'd go over the series of events a hundred times over the next few weeks. I tried to downplay my role as the guardian of the stairwell. Like a week later, though, we'd find out it was neither an old guy nor a homeless guy, but rather a friend of a friend on a really bad acid trip who had lost his pants and ran through a field in a panic.

soomuchcoffee

13. Peeping Tom

I have to preface this by stating that I am a guy. I used to run quite a bit—five miles every day without fail. One day after finishing my run, I got a knock at the door and it was a young man about my age, like 27, asking about the duplex next door, as it was for rent. Typical questions about the neighborhood and the street and whatnot.

I was cordial and informative, but I had some food cooking and needed to get back inside. I told him to call the number on the sign, but before I could excuse myself inside he interjected. The conversation went something like this: Him: Wait...do I smell pot? Dude, do you have weed in there? Me: No, I'm cooking salmon. Him: Oh, cause if you were, I'd be totally down with that. By the way, you've got really nice pecs. Do you work out a lot?

Me: Yeah, I guess...look, I really gotta go. If you have questions about the duplex, call the number on the sign. Him: Cool, thanks. I go back inside the house and he drives off. I instantly call my landlord and tell her to under no circumstances let that guy rent the property, because he gave me the creeps. Well, fast forward two days.

It's a Sunday night around midnight. I'd just finished watching a movie on the couch and I had played a lot of soccer that weekend. Generally, I've found that if I can soak in a hot bath for about 20 minutes, my knees feel better in the morning. So I get up from the couch, walk by my bedroom, and notice that, since I'm kind of a restless sleeper, I must have knocked the blinds and curtains adjacent to my bed askew.

No biggie, I'll fix it tonight before I go to bed. Then I get into the bathroom and notice that someone must have opened the window to the bathroom when I had friends over several days ago. I don't have a bathroom exhaust fan, so it only makes sense to raise the window and blinds a bit. I close the window and shut the blinds.

I've got one of those nifty kitchen timers that I set to 20 minutes and I just sit in the bath, waiting for the time to expire. During this quiet time, my mind starts replaying the weekend's events, and I start to get an uneasy feeling. Subconsciously, I felt something was wrong, but maybe I was just being paranoid. Then I thought about the bedroom window and the bathroom window both having blinds askew.

And come to think of it, I believe the blinds behind the TV had one little slat that was sort of peeled up, too. But, no, now I'm really just being paranoid. And I hadn't even thought about the weird encounter from two days ago. But now, I'm sitting in a bathtub and the darn timer seems frozen at this point. I tell myself that I'll get up when the timer is done, put on some clothes and take a look around the house. Well, I snapped.

Five minutes left and I couldn't take it any longer. I don't know how to rationalize what I did next. It just seemed purely instinctual. I hopped up and got a towel around me. I turned off the bathroom light, made my way quickly through the bedroom door and then the living room area. I then cut the kitchen and living room lights. In the darkness, I pulled a pair of pants up so that I was at least wearing something.

I wasn't going to go back into the bedroom for a shirt. The only light on in the house was my bedroom light. I went over to the front door and flung it open quickly to peer out. Nothing. Crickets. This was the middle of the summer, and the crickets were overwhelmingly loud. Louder than the sound of my squeaky storm door opening.

I decided I was definitely being paranoid, and turned to go back in. I turned, but at the last second I had that thought: I won't be content to sleep tonight unless I properly dismiss the paranoia with a walk around the house. So I barefootedly and cautiously make my way down the front porch stairs, and down the sidewalk to the side of my house where the bedroom windows glow.

The front of the house is definitely clear. I then tiptoe to the corner of the house to get a view of the side of the house. As I peer around the corner, not 20 feet away from me, I see the stranger from two days ago, his face glued to the bedroom window. His hand is in his shorts. I'm instantly enraged. Apparently, he is completely unaware that I have exited the house, much less flanked him.

I decided in that instant to surprise him. The following conversation was a mix between my anger, his fear, and most strangely of all, the feeling of amusement that this is actually happening to me. Keep in mind, the conversation doesn't really make a lot of sense because the guy didn't really have time to think. It really couldn't have been more than about 15-20 seconds before the ordeal was played out.

Me: YOU SICKO! Him: (Surprised and mortified) AHHH!! Me: I'm going to catch you and beat the heck out of you. Him: You don't know me!?!? (backing away) Me: (Aggressively approaching) I know exactly who you are, and I'm going to catch you. Him: (Transitioning from backing away to turning away and starting to run) Please don't hurt me. I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! Please don't hurt me!

At this point, it's an all-out chase across a neighbor's yard. I'm wearing nothing but a pair of warm-up pants, but I'm gaining on him. I was playing soccer daily at the time, so I was definitely going to catch him. But he made it easy. I chased him across one gravel driveway, which wasn't fun, but I was on his heels by the time he reached the second one, and he took a nasty fall right into the middle of the gravel.

I very nearly kicked him across the face with my shin, but I suppressed the urge. I tell him to get up. At this point he knows he is caught, so he is completely compliant...well, kind of. I ask him where he parked, and he lied and said a few blocks down. I ask his name, and he gives me one. I take his keys from him and tell him we're going to his car. We walk about 30 feet and he stops and says, "Actually, this is my car."

Wow, ok, so you parked basically right next to my house. So, I open his car and he's like, "What are you doing?" I explain to him that there's no way for me to know who he is, since he has no wallet with him. I open his glove box hoping to find some real ID. Bingo. I found a receipt for tire rotation or something. The car shown on the receipt matches the car he's driving. But the name doesn't.

I call him by the name on the receipt and he starts crying again and apologizing about lying about his name. I'm convinced I have him scared, and now I just want to go to bed. I know the authorities will take hours and it's already like 1:00 and I've gotta be up early. So, I take the little folder thing the receipt came in and I told him to write down a confession of what he did.

It was only just becoming apparent to me that not only was he a peeping tom, he had come into my house when I wasn't there to adjust the blinds in order to see in. Now I've got a written and signed confession. I write his license plate down and then I decide to make sure I never have to see this guy again. I take his phone and write down numbers of obvious relatives: Mom, Dad, etc.

Just a few. And then I tell him "I never want to see you again." I made it clear for him that if he saw me somewhere, he'd better make sure I don't see him. Anyway, at this point he's sitting in his car. I toss the keys and his cell phone into his car and tell him to get lost. He sits in the car sobbing for a while as I'm walking away, but he's got the engine started and leaving by the time I'm back in my house.

At this point, I sit down and pour a drink. And then I decide I wished I had called the authorities because I'm not getting any sleep, so I call the officer to show them the confession and all the information. The officer who shows up writes a few things down and tells me I should have detained him. Two days later, I call them and ask them about a report.

No news, and no news would come. No report. Oh well, he's never coming back. Wrong! He knocks on my door about a year later. I open the door, and he must have seen the anger. He backs away from the door with his hands up and says he came to apologize. He said he was very sorry. I told him I accepted his apology and to not screw up like that again. And then he said thanks and walked away. Very strange.

deuce_bumps

14. Gone In The Night

I lived in the Hollywood Hills, and this happened in the early 80s. One night, I heard crazy knocking at my door at 9 pm. I go to answer the door and there's a lady there just beside herself, talking about "There's so much blood..." She looks normal and is dressed in clean clothing, so we let her in. She tells a story about seeing someone get hurt.

I call the authorities and two uniformed LAPD officers arrive in 10 minutes. They take the lady away, and tell us that she was reported missing, has a mental condition, and lives up the street. All good. 30 minutes later, another knock at the door. Two different officers this time, responding to the call. They have no idea who the other two officers were!

They take our information and statements, our description of the officers, and the lady as well. Radio conversations back and forth ensue, and they really don't have any idea how any other officers could have picked her up, because they were given the call 40 minutes ago. Still no idea what happened to this day.

omegatron88

15. Ghost Busters

I supervise the night crew at a Subway. The day crew has never mentioned it, but the night crew always make jokes about our "SubGhost,” although I've stopped being sure that it's actually a joke. Now hear me out. I'm not saying the Subway I work at is haunted...but I'm not saying it's not haunted, either. It's open 24/7, so past midnight just one person stays by themselves until day crew rolls in around 6 am.

I always spend at least an hour a night alone, and quite a while with just one other person. Sometimes we hear voices. The music is off, there's only one or two of us, but we can hear people having a conversation, although it's too quiet to pick out words. The first time I heard voices I looked at my supervisor and asked if she heard them too, and she looks me in the eyes and casually says, "Yeah, it's the SubGhosts talking."

It sounds like a joke, but now I realize when I'm training a newbie on the late shift I've given the casual "It's just the SubGhost" response more times than I can remember. There are voices, there are weird crashing noises, and sometimes when no one is in the room things fall off the counters for no discernible reason. Once our owner bought new paper towel auto-dispensers to replace the old push dispensers.

I was alone right before the graveyard guy came in when I heard a towel dispense. I walked around the corner and everything was quiet. I was about to walk away when another towel came out. Then another. Then another. Finally it goes full SubGhost and dispenses the entire roll continuously without stopping, much like when a cat finds out how to unroll your toilet paper.

It only stopped when there was no paper left. No one else was around, but a few days later the owner switched them back, so we now have the manual paper towels back. If there is a SubGhost, I don't really mind. Stupid day crew is oblivious, but us night crew tend to become quite familiar with the sandwich spook, and its presence is so constant that the voices have almost become comforting.

shinydragonite

16. Window Watcher

This happened to my friend. She told me that when she was little, she was playing with her little brother and sister one night. Her little brother looked out the window and said, "Who is that man?" They all went to the window to see what he was talking about. She said there was a white figure sitting on top of the telephone pole, and it looked like a man.

He was staring at them with a huge creepy smile. Then he just stood up and jumped off the pole and simply vanished before they saw him hit the ground. She said it scared them so much, her sister won't even talk about it.

DontDreamitBeeit

17. The Uninvited

My creepiest thing will forever be the man who watched me at my window. It's nothing paranormal, but honestly. I was texting my girlfriend, playing a game, and I heard rustling outside my window—keep in mind I live in the basement as an "apartment" at my mom's house. I don't have any curtains, and I turned off my iPod.

I could see someone actually staring at me. This went on for about 10 minutes. I texted my little sister to get the bat and turn on the lights upstairs. After he saw the lights, he ran off. I have never been more creeped out…except for the recent occurrence. I thought I imagined the "FWOOSH" and "PLOP" sound in the middle of the night, but I brushed it off. The next morning, my stepdad was cleaning the yard and found the A/C cover in the other window well.

I went upstairs to get ready to wash my mom's car when they told me. They asked me if I heard anything, and I told them about the strange sounds I heard. I now keep a knife and an aluminum bat with me. We called the authorities the first time it happened, and they said they couldn't do anything. Short of breaking into the house, we're stuck dealing with this person (or people) until they do break in.

Permalink

18. The Final Countdown

I delivered newspapers in a fairly rural area the summer after I graduated high school. One night, it's pouring rain and I'm driving down this dirt road that is a cul-de-sac to a farmer's house. I've been down this road a few dozen times and know the routine—drop the paper off in the box at the end of the drive, turn around, and go back up the road and off to my next stop.

This time, as I am getting out of my car to place the newspaper in the holder, I see this man in the ditch wearing a drenched white shirt and running at me as fast as he can. He got within 20 feet of me, and I could see what my mind pictured as a hatchet or axe in his hand. I had never ran so hard in my life to the front of my car, jumped in, and took off.

Everything happened so fast that I almost didn't realize where I was. It must have been about 5-10 miles later that I attempted to call 9-1-1, but there was no signal using my Motorola flip phone in the middle of nowhere in the year 2000. I had to stop at a farmer's house to call the authorities at 2:00 am. Turns out the guy took his own life within an hour of his run with me in that wooded ditch.

Permalink

19. Deja Vu

This whole thing still freaks me out. I was waiting at the bus stop around two years ago, and just start chatting with this lady who was waiting for a different bus. It was just a normal conversation, but there was an odd undertone that I could just barely make out, and I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. I don't know what it was. but I know it was there.

Finally my bus comes, I get on, and I am the only one there. All of a sudden I hear "Hey!" I glance up and there's a little girl who says "Remember me?" She reminded me strangely of the woman I was speaking with at the bus stop, but younger. You could cut the tension with a knife, and when I got off I swear she watched me as the bus left.

I'm certain that I was the only one on the bus when I got on.

Permalink

20. The Other Side

When I lived in South Africa, I traveled a lot with a Christian missionary and humanitarian aid worker named Piet. He handled the spiritual stuff, while I tended to work more with the local (mostly Xhosa) people, helping them with non-spiritual issues. In July 2010, we went to a village in the middle of nowhere. As soon as we stepped out of the truck, we knew something was wrong.

We hadn't been able to contact our guy in the village all day, and there was no one around at all. Piet and I went from house to house, looking for, well, anyone, but everywhere was completely empty. Eventually, we saw a figure run around the corner of a building on the far side of the village. It was a young woman, stark naked, running straight for us.

Her arms were flailing, and she was running like an animal, occasionally dropping to all fours, then back on her feet. As she got closer, Piet told me to get back in the truck, then he screamed at me to get in the truck. I'd seen this guy watch a Xhosa witchdoctor burn a dozen chickens alive and not bat an eyelid, so when he lost his cool, I knew it was serious.

I closed the truck door as she reached us. She was covered in blood; there were cuts and slices all over her face, arms, and breasts. One of her ears was missing—I think, there was a lot of blood—her teeth were bloody, and she had a look in her eye of absolute, untamed rage. The screeching sound she made is unlike anything I've heard before or since.

I can still hear it so vividly in my mind. Looking into her face, seeing her wide psychotic eyes and gaping mouth as she made that unholy sound froze me in my seat. Piet had started the truck, and already started reversing up the dirt track, but she followed. He turned the car, and all the while she was scratching at the windows and metalwork.

Then he sped off up the track. She followed us still. She didn't keep up, obviously, but for a while I thought she was going to. I've never seen someone run that fast in bare feet. The journey back to our base town was almost silent. I spent most of it concentrating on the sound of my own breathing, and the rumble of the road. I asked Piet what that was, and what we should do.

He said the girl was no doubt insane, had a psychotic break or something, but the locals would have immediately thought her possessed. If she didn't kill herself, the other villagers would within days. He suggested that they had gathered in one house for safety. This happened in the Eastern Cape, which I would argue is the darkest, wildest, and most bizarre part of the country.

Strange things happen there a lot, and often just get buried or only picked up by one of the crazy tabloids like the Mercury, and subsequently ignored or written off. There are vast swathes of grassland punctuated by the odd settlement, without any adequate law enforcement. A lot of people live in these isolated settlements, and will only leave to work or to get food.

Many spend their whole lives in the village of their ancestors, as do their children, and so on. We did call the authorities, and the officer said “we will look into it.” We never heard about it again. South Africa has some very developed areas (the major towns and cities, for example) but there are enormous parts of this country that have remained almost untouched for decades.

The further you go from Johannesburg or Cape Town, the more rural and strange things can become. I'm not saying that all of rural South Africa is like this. A lot of the villages we went to were nice, simple settlements where the people welcomed us, gave us food, gaped at us for being white, and so on. Some were more sinister.

We eventually got in touch with the guy we were originally trying to see a day later. Piet asked him if everything was all right, and he said “We had a bad presence in the village. It is now gone.” I don't know for sure what happened, but I can guess, based on what Piet said. Piet's been back once since to that place, without me, and they seemed fine.

He told me he didn't ask about the girl, as he didn't know what had happened, and he didn't want them to react. I don't think he wanted to know.

banginchoonz

21. Wake-Up Call

My grandfather passed in 2008. He was a big fan of opera music and would blare it in the morning if he and my grandmother ever had any grandkids sleeping over. It was a good wake-up alarm. About a week or two after his funeral, I was lying on my bed when I began to hear a scraping noise. I looked in the direction the sound came from to see a clock radio on the top shelf of my desk turn to face me, sliding across the desk in my direction, and it started playing all by itself.

The music it was playing was opera music.

Polite_Werewolf

22. Shattered Dreams

My best friend and I were having a sleepover at her house. We were teenagers, and for some reason we were home alone. We're goofing off upstairs when suddenly we hear a crash downstairs. We of course freak out for maybe 30 minutes before we get the nerve to go check it out. I grab a bat and we slowly creep down the steps.

In the kitchen, we find a glass bowl had fallen and broke, but the really creepy part is that all the pieces had been picked up and put in another bowl on the table. We still have no idea how that happened.

stardust7

23. Beyond The Veil

A few years ago when my grandpa was really sick, my family and I were around his bed all saying our last words to him. We were all crying and saying goodbye. A little later, his breaths were getting less and less frequent and we knew he was about to go. But on his last breath, his eyes opened up really wide he smiled, looking the happiest he had in years, and then he was just gone.

To this day I still can't imagine what he felt or saw.

kyguy3000

24. Alone And Vulnerable

My boyfriend works the night shift, and I was asleep alone in the house. Suddenly, I got woken up in the middle of the night by my puppy whining in the living room. I assumed it's because he wants outside. I'm just about to open the back door when I hear this weird scratching or clicking sound at the front door, like someone was sticking something in the lock.

I go to check, and I can see the silhouette of somebody standing there through the window in the door. I then notice there is a second figure in the living room window, although it's too dark to make out any features. I know they can see me because I didn't have any blinds at this point, and they just stood there. I totally freaked and called the authorities, then my dad.

I huddled in the kitchen out of sight of any windows and waited for someone to come. My parents live across town and showed up before the officers. The strange figures were gone at this point, but the neighbors across the street were up and saw the car they had come in. I ended up staying at my parents’ place that night, and when I came home the next morning, I noticed the basement window was partially kicked in.

I got a security system installed the next day. I still have no idea who it was.

Cupcake1964

25. A Load Of Trouble

I survived a kidnapping attempt in the 1980s. This was in a Sacramento neighborhood late at night, when I was visiting a friend when I was maybe 9-10 years old. Three of us walk out to go play at this park at an elementary school several blocks away. It was around 10:00 pm at night. We were playing Frisbee in the street in front of the school, and our Frisbee lands in the street.

Just as it touches on the pavement, a white van pulls up and stops, as if to allow us to get our Frisbee. I walk toward the van and grab the Frisbee, then move to the side to allow the van to pass. As the van passed, the most terrifying thing occurred. The sliding door opened and a guy dressed in black like a ninja came flying out and tried to grab me.

He had a harness on and the van had been rigged with a telescoping mechanism that allowed him to come out around five feet while hanging from this harness. The harness was operated by another person inside, also dressed in black. So there were at least three people involved in this attempt, including the driver of the vehicle.

I barely dodged his attempt to grab me and all three of us ran toward the elementary school and hopped the fence, ran along the fence through bushes, and then hopped a second fence that allowed us to be inside the school. We were scared as heck and could hear the van driving around and assumed they were in hot pursuit of us.

We found a way to get onto the roof of the school from inside, thank God, and proceeded to observe the van driving around the school for at least 30 minutes in an obvious attempt to find us. This scared us even more because one would think the would-be kidnappers would flee, but I suppose they thought we couldn’t identify them.

This was before cell phones, so we stayed up there until around 45 minutes after we last saw them. It appeared that some of them were searching for us on foot also, which added to the fear. We eventually escaped and went back to my friend’s house, and never told anyone in our family out of fear of being punished for being out late playing.

Skeptic1222

26. Seeing Double

This is just good old human creepy. In the late 90s, I went to a yard sale that was about six blocks from my house; I live in a fairly small town. I found this silver cigarette case that I thought would make me look stylish and uber-sophisticated at the bar. I bought it for $2 from a guy who was at least 85 years old. I took it home and then immediately dropped it on the sidewalk.

It got dented in one corner, but it was still good-looking so I used it for a while. After a couple of bar trips, it became a pain in the butt, as it only held eight smokes, so I tossed it in a nightstand drawer and forgot about it. A few months, later I saw another yard sale at the same place and stopped to look. I found a case just like the one I bought and picked it up. But here's the weird part...

It not only had the same dented corner, but I opened it up and there was a smoke that was my brand inside. For some reason, I felt the need to buy it again for $2 from the same old geezer. When I got home the “original” case was not in my nightstand. I will never forget the smile that old guy gave me when I bought it the second time. I have no idea how he got it again, though.

sonikaos

27. Magical Thinking

When I was child, I vividly remember having dreams where I was in a toy store, or was playing with a toy I didn't have, and if I gripped it really, really hard, I would wake up with the toy in real life. My family was by no means poor, but very often my toys were bought from garage sales. One time, they had bought me a really cool He-Man action figure.

For too long, however, he didn't have a Skeletor to fight. I begged and pleaded, and my family tried to find one at garage sales. No luck. One night, I dream about playing with a Skeletor at the toy store. I wanted it SO BAD. At some point, I realized I was dreaming. I didn't want to stop playing with it, so I gripped it hard in my hands, making sure that when I woke up I would have it. And I swear to God I did.

I was stoked. My family asked me where I had gotten the toy, knowing that I wanted one. When I told them I took it from a dream, they seemed pretty amused. In retrospect they likely bought it for me and slipped it to me in my sleep. If that was the case, they did this a few more times. Another time I took a Power Ranger from my dream, and then a GI Joe car. Heck of a power to have as a kid.

BMLM

28. Sister Acts

I'm a female, first of all. I'm 21 now, but when I was four years old, my sister had just turned 16. She had just gotten her license and was so excited. It was probably only September, and she got her license in July. My sister is from my dad's first marriage, and she lived with her mom and stepdad while I lived with our dad and my mom.

We lived about 30 minutes apart. My dad worked late hours, and my mom frequently traveled for work, so I had to spend a lot of time at a babysitters (which was costly) until my sister got her license. My dad finally gave her permission to pick me up after she got out of school and take me to her mom's until he was off work. She was so excited to finally be able to use her license!

I know I said I was only four, but I remember this event so vividly. It took years for my sister to even ask me if I remembered it, but when I told her all the parts I remember (about 80%) she filled in the rest for me. It was one of the first times my sister would get to pick me up from my babysitter, which means it would be one of the first times she'd been allowed to drive with me alone.

Almost as soon as we pulled onto the main road, a white pick-up truck swerved behind us. Weird, but whatever. After a few turns, my sister noticed that the truck still followed her. Even when she would just switch lanes, he was right there switching behind her. My sister, being a bit of a paranoid person, tested it a little and switched lanes several times.

She said she heard his tires squealing by his quick cuts to get behind her again. She told me not to worry, and I remember being an oblivious little kid. She looked scared, but I had no concerns. The man started to get really angry. I don't remember anything about what he looked like, but I do remember that he had this look of pure hate on his face

It’s strange that you can sometimes remember expressions but not the faces they were on. He wasn't only angry, he was full of hate. He was honking the horn repeatedly, just laying on it, and he was very close to our car. He was swerving back and forth, trying to get our attention. He would pull up beside us occasionally, flip us off, and honk.

The first big event came about when we pulled up at a four-way stoplight. It's a bigger one, so there was a lot of room in the intersection. We were the first ones at the stop light in our lane, and nobody was beside us. The man used this lane to pass us and pull his car in front of us almost in the intersection. He was now blocking us.

I so perfectly remember that white pick up truck. He got out of it, and started storming towards our car. He was screaming so hard I remember thinking his face almost looked purple. Neither one of us remembers what he was saying, but he pulled up his shirt to reveal to us that he had a gun. He pointed to it and at us, threatening us and closing the gap between us. My sister put her hand over my body, told me to close my eyes, and floored it through the intersection.

She said she was worried we were either going to hit him, or get hit in the intersection, but it was a better chance than sitting there and waiting for the psycho to shoot. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare. He hopped back into his car and followed us. My house was closer to where we were than my sister’s, so for some reason, she decided to go to my empty house.

Obviously, he followed us and blocked us into the driveway. He got out and walked towards my sister’s parked car. Once again, she had to think fast and swerve her way across our lawn back out onto the road. This was before cell phones, and she had just started driving and was still young. She had no idea what to do, really.

He followed us back onto our neighborhood road, pulling up next to our car and hitting his truck against us, trying to make us skid or wreck. There is a smallish area of grass between my neighborhood road and a major busy road, and it was obvious he was trying to push our car hard enough to send us into the traffic beside us. I remember him doing that little gesture where you drag your finger along your throat, like you're slitting it.

His face was still purple. There was a gas station nearby and my sister decided on the last Hail Mary move she could think of. I remember her talking to me so seriously and sternly. She told me she needed me to be a big girl and the second we pulled by the door of the gas station, to undo my seatbelt and jump out, and run inside so fast that I shouldn't even worry about closing my door.

I was to run inside and go directly to the person behind the counter and tell them to call 9-1-1 because a bad man was following us. We pulled in and she threw the car in park and I jumped out and did as I was told. She was only a few seconds behind, but she had to actually stop the car, park it, turn it off, whatever. She closed her door and mine for me, and just ran inside with me.

The man came into the parking lot behind us, and when we were inside, he went through my sister's car. By the time officers arrived, he was gone. They never found him, and we never knew what provoked him or what his plan was. The only thing he took from the car was my sister's ID and the cash she had on her. I can still so vividly picture what was happening, but I don't remember being scared.

I don't remember my sister ever showing that she was freaking out, although later at her mom's she did lose her mind, sobbing her eyes out and yelling, understandably. I think the way she handled it really prevented it from being a really traumatic experience for me. It's still scary, but it's not something that haunts me, and I have her to thank.

sparty_party

29. Nighty Night

This happened to my cousin, and my other cousin and aunt witnessed it. My younger cousin's name is Jenny, my older cousin’s name is Jane, and my aunt's name is Myra. So Jenny and her mom Myra are in New York to visit Jane while she's in her master's program. They tour around NYC and stay at a hotel in Manhattan somewhere.

Anyways, in the middle of the night Jenny is having nightmares. After talking with her after the fact, she describes sleep paralysis to the tee. Apparently Jenny was being drawn in and suffocated by a massive TV that drove her through the bed and into the ground. She woke up screaming and crying, and vomited and peed her pants in the bathroom.

My aunt Myra goes to help her and wash her off, and they both head back to bed sometime later. A while later, my aunt checks on Jenny again, who is now staring directly at her with a blank expression. She's sleeping with her eyes fully open. My aunt is creeped out, but then a new terror came to visit. She and my other cousin Jane are starting to hear whispers and children's voices.

They leave first thing in the morning…but one more creepy thing happened. There's a photo of my family from this time where Jenny has fully blackened lips. Not Photoshop blackened, but they're perfectly black. Almost as if she had put on some makeup or lipstick. But of course she didn't. To this day, we have no idea why her lips showed up like that.

AsianRainbow

30. Paint By Numbers

My parents were on their honeymoon in Key West. When they arrived at the hotel to check in, they were told that the room would be non-smoking. With my dad being a smoker, they requested a different room. They got the room switch and went to their room. As they got off the elevator, the smell of fresh paint was overwhelming.

Down the hall there was a painter with all necessary supplies laid out around him, and he was painting the wall. As my parents walked passed him, they casually greeted him and the painter gave absolutely no acknowledgement of their presence. Whatever. When they got to their room, the smell of paint was even worse in there, so bad it wasn't even bearable so they decide to go to the front desk to change rooms again.

When they explained the situation, the attendant looked very confused and informed them that there wasn't a scheduled paint job on that floor for that day but agreed to change their room. My parents go back to their floor to grab their luggage…and the painter is completely gone. All the supplies are cleaned up and gone within 10 minutes, and the smell of paint was completely gone.

At this point, my parents were freaked out but didn't think much of it and go to their new room. The next morning on their way to breakfast, they overhear a tour guide talking to a group. My parents tuned in when the guide mentioned the floor that they were originally supposed to stay on. Apparently a long time ago there was a painter on that floor painting and he fell down the elevator shaft.

Now, my parents don't normally believe in the paranormal but after an event like this that they had no explanation for, it freaked them out a good bit.

mdb2408

31. Repeat Offender

I was hitchhiking home from high school (I know, I know) and got picked up by a really weird guy with stereotypical creepy thick glasses. For the record, I am a guy. It was really hot in his truck—he probably had the heat on in retrospect—as we drove along a main road. At one point he mentions the heat and said that it was OK if I wanted to take off my shirt. I had the perfect response.

I said, “No thanks” then opened the door and rolled out into traffic when the truck was coming to a light. Thank God the door handle hadn't been removed or anything. Bonus: I hitchhiked around a year later and the exact same guy pulled up and asked me if I wanted a ride. He didn't recognize me and I said no, then realized at that point that he must do this kind of thing often. I never hitchhiked again after that last day.

Skeptic1222

32. Whistle While You Work

This one hits me every now and then when I wake up in the middle of the night. So I was around 17 and had gotten home from work rather late. I went straight to my room to change and found myself hungry. It was probably around 1 am by this time and I didn’t want to cook anything and make too much noise as I was afraid I’d wake the parents.

So when I ventured to my kitchen, I started shuffling through the cupboards looking for a quick fix of snack food to tide me over until the morning. Now, our kitchen was positioned so that the kitchen door led to our back yard. The door itself was an old wooden door, but my dad had added one of those metal security gates on the outside for good measure. It was one of the security gates where the holes on the door were small enough so that insects could not get through, and therefore we could leave the wooden door open in the summer to allow for a breeze to go through the house.

In addition to the security door, my dad had also installed one of those auto security lights, you know the ones that go on automatically whenever their motion sensor is triggered. Usually the light would only go on when I would let my dog outside to pee at night. However, on this night my dog was already lounging in my room waiting for me to come back with some snacks for him as well.

Anyways, getting ahead of myself. So, I was busy creeping through the cupboards and finally hit the jackpot with some pop tarts. Knowing my dog, I didn’t want to chance him snagging the tart from my hand as I ate it, so I busted those things open then and there and ate them raw. As I am standing there eating the first pop tart, I hear a faint whistling sound from outside.

The wooden door was open. At first I thought it was the wind, but then I noticed that the whistling was a distinct tune and not random whistling. I didn’t know the tune but I could tell that it was from a song…it sounded like a happy and sad song all rolled into one. I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s the best way I can describe it. It was odd.

After standing there for around 20 seconds, I decided that it must be one of my friends who lives down the block screwing with me. Maybe they were on the other side of the fence and whistling there to scare me. Right when I am thinking this thought, I see the security light suddenly turn on. I quickly looked around the surrounding area but don’t see anyone or anything that could have set the light off.

The whistling is still going on……Now I am in panic mode. Is it one my friends? If so, where are they hiding? If it’s not one of them, then who is it? I am stuck standing there now and can’t move as I stare outside waiting for something to happen. Nothing does. A minute or so goes by, with the whistling continuing and the light remaining on.

Suddenly the whistling gets louder and I see the doorknob to my metal door start to move up and down. I can see through the metal door to see that there is no one there. The whistling sounds like it’s right outside now and the door knob keeps moving like someone is trying to get in. The security light is still on so I have a clear view of the front of the door and know for sure there is no one there.

Screw the pop tarts. I dropped the box and jetted back to my room, slammed and locked the door, and hid under my blankets with my bat and dog. I never went out to the kitchen at night after that.

primesfr

33. The Room Where It Happened

My mom told me one that's creepy. When I was a baby, maybe about six months old, she put me into my cot to sleep one afternoon. It was a high sided wooden thing with a drop side for access that required you to press in two little nubs, one in each corner, to release the side. Well, she came upstairs one day and found me outside the cot, asleep in the middle of the floor about two metres from the cot.

The sides were up and there is no way I could have opened it; I couldn't stand and the sides were far too high to jump over. Apparently she never felt comfortable leaving me in the room after that. Also, when my younger brother was born he was put into that room as his bedroom. One evening my mom and I were on her bed playing with my baby brother and we heard this noise coming from his room.

Panicked, my mom went to look and one of his musical toys was in the cot playing to itself despite not being activated.

JdotAllan

34. An Unwelcome Visitor

When I was about six years old, I was playing with the kid next door one afternoon. Then the lights went out all of a sudden. We were by ourselves since all of her family members were at the hospital with her mom, who was suffering from leukemia then. When the blackout happened, my friend went out of the house to the porch. I was by the door looking outside when something made me look back into the house.

There, in the living room, was a shadow figure walking around—tall, dark, no recognizable features whatsoever. It was as if someone was wearing a black whole body suit, but not as definite as a real person would be in a room. It wasn't too blurry either, but I noticed it moved around the room as if it were looking for something.

I actually wasn't scared at this point, since I've never seen anything like it and I was a curious child. The next thing I knew, it went up to the second floor, so I followed it and continued to watch the shadow figure walk around the bedroom. Again, it seemed like it was looking for something. Then it started moving towards the wall on my right.

I remember thinking “Oh my god, is it gonna disappear!? Is it gonna disappear!?" And sure it enough, it vanished through the wall. I forgot about all this until I was around 17 and was watching one of those "Real Ghost Stories" on TV. One guy talked about his own experience of seeing shadow figures in a hospital where he was confined for a few months.

He mentioned that he sometimes saw them beside people who were about to pass. Chills ran up and down my spine when I heard this. I remember my friend's mom passed just a week after I saw that shadow thing. But at least I now have my own understanding of what that dark figure I saw might have been: some kind of grim reaper.

lanadog

35. Bread And Circus

I was at Wal-Mart standing in front of the French bread. Suddenly, I notice this strange guy standing there, starring at the food. He’s about 40 years old and wearing jeans shorts. He’s a little overweight with a handlebar moustache, tight shirt, and flip-flops. I pick up one loaf of bread and he turns to me with a strange smile. I put the load down and walk away, shivering.

After 30 minutes or so, I change my mind and go back to the bread aisle and that dude is still standing in the same spot...just staring. So I put the bread back...He IMMEDIATELY grabs it, the one I just put down, and storms to the cash register. Pays and leaves. That is the only thing he bought...What the heck?

MrFromEurope

36. What Happens At Sleepovers…

I was at a friend’s house spending the night when I was in middle school. As expected, we'd stay up to all hours, which didn't matter most of the time except the bathroom was right near his parents’ room. About the only time we'd get in trouble was when someone would wake them up when nature called. To avoid this, we'd go out the basement door and just pee in the woods.

The door stayed unlocked most of the time because we'd managed to lock ourselves out more than once. This was also compounded by the fact that we'd all wander out and find something to do in the woods on a regular basis. This night, his older brother was home and kept barging in the basement door and raining chaos from above, so we decided to lock the door just to deter him.

Not that it really would have kept him out, but at least he'd have to use the key and that took the “barging in” fun out of it. About midnight, we heard the handle jiggling and didn't think much of it, figuring it was his brother. After about five minutes of off and on handle fondling, we finally hit the door and yelled for him to stop. Quiet.

No response, and no more clattering of the handle. Great, we can move on right? Wrong. About 10 minutes later it started again, and the process repeated. This went on for about two hours, until finally after telling him to stop we just said, “screw it” and ignored it. He continued for about 30 minutes after our last attempt for him to stop and then just gave up.

Well, fast forward to about 9 am. We were just stirring and one of my friends had to go to the bathroom. If you've ever had a sleepover like that, there are bodies strewn wherever there is space, and once the first person starts walking around it kind of stirs the nest. We all started stretching and making our way to relieve ourselves of all the soda we'd binged on the night before.

As I go walk outside, I grab the door handle to close it behind me and noticed it felt rough. After looking at it, I saw that the space around the keyhole was all but destroyed. There were giant scratch marks on every surface and the metal guides were bent and skewed. I asked my friend that lived there what had happened, and he said it was the first he'd noticed it.

Not really wanting to get blamed for something his brother did, we went upstairs and told his parents about the night before. After his dad went down to see what we were talking about, he went completely white. ​He immediately sprinted upstairs to call the authorities. Evidently, someone had been trying to force the lock open while we were all inside.

That's actually happened to me more than once on different occasions, but what completely freaks me out about this time was that this person knew we were in there and that we knew someone was trying to get in. Even so, he REPEATEDLY tried to force his way inside, heedless of our complaints. God knows what sort of person that was.

MicMcKee

37. Middle Of The Road

When I was younger, maybe around 12 years old, I was alone at home with my sister who was 10 at the time. Our mom had gone down the road to a family friend's house, but it was really late (past 10) and she was still not back. We were watching TV when suddenly someone hit the letterbox twice really hard, and without looking we opened the door straight away, since we assumed it was our mom.

When we opened it, there was no one at the door. Instead, in the middle of the road there was a lady just standing there, staring at us. It was really dark so we didn't see the face or anything properly. We just shut the door and freaked out. Our mom came back around 20 or so minutes later, but it definitely was one of the creepiest moments ever.

Shawtytina

38. The Last Straw

So I have these cousins who have always somehow lived in haunted houses. It probably makes more sense to say they're haunted. My uncle and aunt used to live in a small house first, and they had just one child at that point. Whenever they were downstairs, they'd hear someone walking upstairs, and whenever they were upstairs, they'd hear someone walking and doing things downstairs.

They eventually moved and then at their third house, strange things happened too. Blankets would get pulled off when they were sleeping, you'd see family members walk into a bedroom that no one stayed in but when you walked in, no one was there. This all happened regularly. Eventually, my aunt started going slightly crazy and said it was after she saw this scary ghostly woman standing in the hallway in their house.

Shawtytina

39. A Heavy Burden To Bear

I was out at a restaurant with some friends a long time ago, probably 10 or 11 years ago. We were all eating at some Italian place. We had just ordered our food and were all chatting when some random, creepy-looking dude came out from the back area. He walked to the front of the place, turned around, looked at everyone in the restaurant, and then stopped at me.

He looked right at me and said, "YOU! I need your help." I sat there thinking, "What the heck is this guy talking about?” Whatever, though, I got up and went to "help him." Apparently, he needed help putting on a backpack because it was "heavy." There was literally nothing in the bag. There was no weight to it at all, nothing whatsoever.

After that he thanked me and walked out. I still have no idea what the heck was in his bag or why he chose me out of a full restaurant of people. Weird people like talking to me for some reason.

Permalink

40. The Ghosts Come Out To Play

One time my friend and I slept on the floor in the lounge of my house overnight. We got pretty tipsy and decided to go for a walk. So at about 2 am, we walked to the cemetery on the other side of the block and looked inside. At the same time, we both screamed and ran like heck. We had both seen a clear, white object move quickly across the cemetery.

We initially thought one or the other of us might have imagined it, but we had both seen it at the same time. We ran all the way home, and didn't leave the house again until morning.

beatleforce1

41. Guardian Angel

When my aunt was in college, she took a night lab class that would let out late. One night she was walking back to her car and someone came up behind her, pressed something into her back, and told her to keep walking. Suddenly a man coming toward her who she had never met before looked at her, threw open his arms for a hug, and said, "How are you? I haven't seen you in so long!"

He then whispered, "play along. He has a gun." My aunt immediately played along, hugging back and acting excited to see this stranger. The guy who was behind my aunt quickly backed off and walked away. This hero then took my aunt to the nearest emergency alert post, pushed the button for her, and told her to stay put while he went to get help. He never returned.

pegasusthebicycle

42. A Narrow Escape

A few years ago, I taught English in Slovakia. One Friday night, I went out with the rest of the teachers for pizza and other, assuredly wacky, shenanigans. Eventually we wound up in this weird, underground club. Not really my scene, but whatever. I went to the washroom, and while I was occupied, another guy walked in. He said something in Slovak.

I don't speak Slovak, so I said, “Sorry, can't help you.” Then I heard this click, like a lighter. I started laughing and made some joke about smoking wasn’t allowed, washed my hands and left. Then we all decided to head for home. Since I can't speak or read Slovak, I didn't follow local news outside what my co-workers told me.

Monday morning, bright and early, I found out what really happened that night—and I couldn't believe it. Someone had shot up that club not long after we left. Apparently his weapon jammed and it took him ages to fix it in the washroom. I think I used up every piece of luck I will ever have that night.

Easy-Tigger

43. Sixth Sense

I had a dog once that was super loyal and loving and would always come running to me when I called. Like, he would almost crash into me whenever I had treats for him. One day sitting in the living room, all of his hairs stood up on his back and he was just staring over my shoulder, growling and showing his teeth. No matter what I would do to try to get him to come to me, he would never break his stare at that one spot and just kept growling.

I eventually carried him out of the room because it was freaking my roommates and me out so badly.

Loyd_Rage

44. A Tall Dark Stranger

I was walking to the store late at night, probably around 11-1 am. I don't fully remember, but the streets were isolated. I live in the Bronx in a not-so-nice area, but I've grown up around the "not-so-nice" people in this neighborhood all my life, so I’m not afraid that anything will happen to me because a lot of them actually look out for their neighbors.

Anyway, while I was walking, the streets were completely empty—until I heard footsteps behind me. Being the cautious person that I am, I turn around to take a good look at the man for a long minute just in case I had to identify him later. I'm a short girl (5'1) and this man was twice my height. I was a bit creeped out now but kept walking like normal.

After a while, he caught up to me and asked if I was Dominican. I sternly said yes and kept walking. He then asked if I was 18 (I was 17) and I replied no. I was ready to cross the street because he was freaking me out. As soon as I said “no,” he looked at me, disappointed, and said, “Oh never mind,” and ran away from me. It was such a small thing, but it really creeped me out thinking about what may have happened if I had told him I was 18 and what exactly this guy was planning.

NoImDominican

45. The Milk Of Human Unkindness

There I was, a young man in a crowded Chicago bar. It was 2 am, and I was slightly tipsy. I had just been denied by the girl I foolishly spent the whole night talking to, and I "celebrated" by taking a couple more shots. Suddenly, all the drinks from that night came rushing to my bladder, so I decided to head to the bathroom before calling it a night.

After stumbling through the crowd, I finally made it to the dilapidated bathroom that was located downstairs. When I walked in, I was met with a shocking sight. There, standing in the middle of the men's bathroom in a dive bar at 2 in the morning, was a blonde breastfeeding what looked like a newborn babe. Whether I was too far gone or just in shock at what I was seeing, I couldn't seem to move or speak.

The silence was broken when the woman, clearly appalled that I was staring, yelled, "Do you mind?" and proceeded to squirt her breast milk at my face. The woman's attempt to hit me was successful. Without saying a word, I walked out of the bathroom, wiped the milk from my face, and exited the bar. Since it all happened so fast, it wasn't until the next morning that I was able to process the absurdity of what had happened the night before.

Jesters

46. No Laughing Matter

About two years ago, I was in my room reading a book when I hear it. Soft as ever, two little girls giggling. Not just any giggle. It was the kind of giggling you hear in horror movies. I immediately put down my book and listened. After about a minute of holding my breath, I decided it must have come from outside. Then that night, just as I'm about to drift off to sleep, I hear it again.

Two little girls giggling. Now it was 2 am and I was pretty darn sure there weren't two little girls outside my window at that time of night, so I began to freak out. I sat up in my bed and waited for what felt like forever just listening. Then I hear it again. I jumped out of my bed and go spend the rest of the night in the guest room. By the next morning, I was convinced my room was haunted.

For the next week, I avoided my room and spent my nights in the guest room unbeknownst to my family. I was afraid to tell anyone for fear I was going crazy or they wouldn't believe me. But every time I spent more than an hour in my room, I would hear those two little girls giggle. By the end of the week, I was a mess. I could barely sleep and was terrified of my room.

Then one morning my brother walks up to me and says, "You deaf or something?" Obviously, I was confused, and after further questioning, he tells me about this small device he had placed in my room. Apparently, its like some sort of prank device that's easily hidden and can make a variety of different noises, my brother, however, choose the creepy as heck little girls giggling sound.

He wondered why I hadn't heard it or said something about all week and I just wanted to punch him in the face. So my room wasn't haunted after all! Moral of the story, sometimes your brother is just a jerk.

SoFullofDoubts

47. Innocence Lost

When I was six, my mom and dad took my younger sister and me to a baseball game, leaving my grandmother to babysit my youngest sister. When we got back, my grandmother told my folks that two guys had come by the house with photography equipment and asked whether a young girl with red curly hair lived there, a description that sounded just like my sister who was at the game with me.

They said they had spotted her and that she would be a great child model for some advertising work they were doing. When my grandmother said she wasn't home they said they would come back another time. My grandmother and mom didn't think much about it, but my dad got an awful feeling in his stomach. He said "Something's not right here" and called the authorities.

15 minutes later, several FBI agents showed up and began conducting interviews with my grandmother and my parents while I ran around and showed the agents my helicopter. The truth was bone-chilling. Turns out we had been targeted by a child theft ring; the photographers would take a bunch of photos and wait until the toddler threw a tantrum and then they would ask the mother to go grab a toy to keep the child entertained.

While the mother was out of the room, they would grab the child and bolt, leaving everything else behind. The FBI told my folks that my sister had likely already been sold and would have been out of the country within 24 hours if they got her. We were advised to change preschools and other aspects of our daily routine. It still gives me the chills to think about what could have happened to her.

Needless to say, my mom became pretty overprotective; it was a few years before she even trusted us with a babysitter. We are just fortunate that everything worked out.

Terefel

48. It Follows

This is something that happened to me back in 10th grade. I couldn't sleep and I was feeling restless, so I decided to take a walk along the greenway near my house. Most people would have reservations about walking through the woods alone at night, but it was a safe neighborhood and I knew the greenway like the back of my hand.

After no more than five minutes of walking through the woods, I hear a girl singing. I recognize the tune right away, it's “Camptown Races.” You know, "Camptown ladies sing this song, Doo-da, Doo-da." I look around for the girl, but it's pitch black. Not wanting to suddenly come across her and frighten her, I shout out, "You have a nice voice!"

No reply, she just keeps singing. Weird. I continue walking, but the singing isn't getting any further away. Is she following me? Or are we just coincidentally walking in the same direction? So I make a sharp turn and start walking down another path. The singing follows. Another sharp turn. Again it follows. Okay now I'm 100% sure this girl is following me.

I start trying to pin the location of the voice with no luck. I think she was purposefully changing her volume to prevent me from knowing when I was getting closer or further away. Now I'm really starting to get freaked out. I bolt and start sprinting back home. I was running track at the time so I was pretty certain I could ditch her.

I get home, kick off my shoes, and turn on my TV. I'm about 10 minutes into an episode of Aqua Teen when I hear a voice that's not coming from the TV. It's a girl's voice singing frigging “Camptown Races.” For a brief moment I just sit there in pure terror. This can't be happening. I run outside barefoot and frantically look around.

I realize that the voice is coming from above me. She's on the garage roof. I kept a ladder on the side of the garage so I could climb up. The ladder was the only way up or down unless you wanted to jump and chance a sprained ankle. This is it. I've got her. I race up the ladder just in time to see a figure in a red hoodie disappear off the side of the roof leading to the backyard.

She had jumped. I watched her race across my backyard, completely unfazed by the fall, and book it over our six-foot fence like it was no big deal. I briefly considered chasing after her, but I couldn't in my bare feet. Frankly, I don't know if I wanted to. I don't believe in ghosts and ghouls but I'm still freaked out by the whole thing to this day.

CamptownRaces

49. Flowers Of Evil

My grandmother told me a story that creeps her out still. Back when my grandfather was alive, my grandmother woke up one night to hear something smash downstairs. She woke my grandfather up and made him go check it out with a baseball bat, and when he got downstairs there was a broken flower pot in the middle of their family room floor, about 20 feet from where it usually was.

There was no dirt trail; it was just smashed on the floor in the middle of the room, as if someone dropped it straight down.

AI0

50. Bon Appetit

My mom just recently told me the story of her friend's creepy dad. One night when she was younger, she stayed over at this friend's house. The friend's creepy dad offered them "fresh venison" for dinner. My mom had never had venison, but of course, she ate it so as not to be rude. Well, the friend later tells my mom that her dad is not a hunter. The truth was so much more gruesome than she was prepared for.

Years later, we learned that creepy dad had cannibalized several women over the course of his life. Mom is pretty sure she ate human meat.

nottaclevername

1. The Spreadsheet Expert

I’m kind of the Google Sheets expert at work, and I make lots of new tools for different departments to use. Enter the “new guy” who needed to collect, aggregate, and display a bunch of data. My boss was like, “Send a calendar invite so you can tell her exactly what you want and she can set it up for you.” The new guy was having none of that and insisted he was going to do it all by himself.

Well, a week later, he created this really bad sheet that didn’t have half the information we needed, and we had to have the numbers for the State by the next day. So, my boss asked me to fix it and the new guy was like, “Yeah okay, that’s not really possible. This is as good as it’s going to get!” Boy, was he in for the surprise of his life.

Two hours later, I sent them both a fully functional and automated sheet that did everything we needed it to, and we’d be able to use it indefinitely, which meant that the next time we needed the data for the state report, it would already be done. The new guy ended up saying something like, “I would have added that in if I’d had more time.”

Wishyouamerry

2. A Mythical Blogger

I once went to a museum with my sister and her friend, who I hadn't met before. We got to the Greek art bit and her friend started telling me how she was super into Greek mythology. I thought that was cool because, unbeknownst to her, I was doing a Master's in it at the time and also keeping a blog of myth retellings.

My blog was pretty popular, and it was a relief to have something in common with this stranger. She then got weirdly haughty and told me she probably knew more myths than I did. Being polite, I didn't want to directly challenge her on it, so I just asked her to tell me her favorite so that we could have a conversation about it.

She proceeded to tell me the myth of Daedalus and the Minotaur. I asked her how she'd heard of that one because it's fairly obscure. Her response made my eyes widen. She told me she'd read it on a viral blog post on a blog about mythology. Turns out that it was my blog.

Teashoesandhair

3. Perfect Fencer

While I was in high school, I was the reigning city fencing champion in both the youth and adult tournaments. My high school decided to do a school-wide fencing unit for Phys. Ed. and the coach they brought in to teach all of the students was my actual coach. During my classes, my coach naturally brought me up to help demonstrate the various moves.

However, for some reason one of my classmates didn't understand that I wasn't chosen at random. He started talking about how I looked like I didn't know what I was doing, and how he could probably completely cream me in a duel. Now, he actually was pretty good for a guy who'd never fenced before, and at the first opportunity, he decided to have a go at me. It was about to go down.

I picked him apart, not giving up a single touch, and used the opportunity to practice my parry and ripostes. I admit I took a bit of sadistic pleasure in thoroughly beating him. Afterward, my coach made a point of congratulating the other guy for doing so well against the city champ, which changed his attitude considerably.

Philip_Anderer

4. Unexpected Baller

I'm a very unassuming-looking guy. 5'8", 150 pounds, and not a tattoo to be found. But back in the day, I was pretty athletic and I could hang in games with fringe D1 or semi-pro guys. I can't emphasize how much I didn't look like it at all. Anyway, in college, while hanging out in someone's room, it came up that I played basketball a bit.

Out of nowhere, some dude I didn't know started running his mouth about how he could destroy me. He just wouldn't stop talking. I gave him every out until it basically became personally offensive. The other guys were a bit tired of this guy hanging around and they knew I could play, so we all trooped over to the gym, late in the winter, so we could settle things.

Here's a spoiler alert: I ended up winning 11-0. I'm not sure if we played after that, but I remember it was 11-0 because I made sure to not let the guy score. And I'm a pretty mellow guy—I would have laid off and let him score a couple when it was clear that I was better, but this guy was a real jerk, so I just clamped down on him start to finish. I blocked a ton of his shots.

He stopped hanging around nearly as much after that, so I was kind of a hero to the rest of the guys. I totally drove that snake out of our nation.

Historical-Regret

5. A Tricky Pool Player

While I'd never claim I was an expert, I used to be pretty good at pool. My aunt and uncle had a pool table in their basement and my parents, for a variety of reasons, would go over regularly and spend all day there. There was nothing else for me and my brother to do, so we just played pool all day for years. Eventually, we got bored and saw that they had a book on trick shots, so we started doing that for fun.

I never really mastered the tricks, but they made for really good practice in understanding how to get the ball to do what you wanted. So anyway, for my buddy’s 20th birthday, he wanted to go to a pool hall and he invited a ton of people. Then he told me it was going to be a tournament, with drinks for individual games and a 50/50 type of deal for the winner.

He would get half regardless because it was his birthday, and he insisted I attend. We got there, started the first game, and they broke. That would end up being the only shot they got. At the end of it, I just looked at him and said, "I told you not to invite me..." I found out afterward that a bunch of them had never even played pool before and I felt pretty bad, so I took the money and bought everyone drinks with it.

Sorcatarius

6. I’m The Real Pianist!

I guy I went on a date with tried to serenade me with his mediocre piano skills. He was incredibly patronizing to me and tried to explain to me what the notes were, even though I had told him that I was also a pianist. So, after his endless explanations, I asked him to move over on the bench so I could play. The best part? He had no that I’m a two-time Carnegie Hall pianist. He never called me back afterward. Worth it!

Permalink

7. A National Competitor

I asked an 11-year-old if he wanted to play pool with me at the small rec room where I was staying in Alaska. That turned out to be a huge mistake on my part—he ended up being a pool genius, having competed in pool tournaments nationally. I won the first one because he scratched on the 8-ball, even though I had only pocketed two. Then he cleaned up the next two games without giving me a chance to get more than one ball in. I was maybe 19 then.

jbrittles

8. Pizza Bake-Off!

A neighbor on my block in Brooklyn challenged me to a pizza bake-off. I recently catered pizza for my daughter’s school and word got around the neighborhood my pizza was pretty darn good. My first thought was, "This guy is a Brooklyn native; my pizza will be terrible compared to his!" But there was something about him bragging that made challenging him irresistible.

He talked about how pizza was in his blood, and how his dad ran the pizza place around the corner years ago. I remained silent and let my skills answer for themselves. I got a buddy to let us use one of Baker's Pride ovens at his restaurant. We even had total strangers try our pizzas. Every last person chose my pizza over his.

I never mentioned to him that I'd worked in pizza places almost every day for the last thirty years. I never mentioned that when I'm not working at a pizza place, I'm making pizzas at home at least once every two days. I never mentioned that at nine years old, I knew that I wanted to be a pizza man. Here I am at 45, getting ready to start my own pizza business.

Yogisogoth

9. Silver Strikers

My brother and his best friend were in Baltimore for a baseball weekend in 2009. They were hanging out at a bar across from Camden Yards and there was a Silver Strike bowling video game at the venue. In our local bar back in Boston, we had one as well. I’m decent at the gam,e but my brother and his buddy were really amazing at this game. They were bowling 300 games and whatnot.

So these two random dudes were playing the game while drinking. We asked them if we could play once they were done, and they asked us if we wanted to play against them instead. We said sure and the rest was history. My brother and his buddy absolutely destroyed them. Like, it wasn’t even close. The dudes said it was a fluke and they wanted a rematch, but this time for a round of drinks. Again, annihilation city.

Even after that, they kept wanting to play, hoping to eventually win a game. After thirteen whole rounds, they finally gave up. They were great guys. We saw them the next day at the same bar and they walked up to us with drinks in hand, asking for yet another rematch. To this day we still hang out with them whenever we go to Baltimore. And to this day, they have never won.

Jerichomega

10. The Fake Expert

I worked with a guy who was supposed to be an expert in what we do. He would blast through jobs and hound our supervisor for more work. He would get through tasks a lot faster than I could and I didn't understand how...until I had to support him one day and found out he was faking everything. He didn't really do good work—anything he submitted was never up to our standards. When I confronted him about it, he got annoyed at me and insisted I had no idea what I was doing.

He thought he had the upper hand...until my supervisor swooped in. When he checked his product, he was reprimanded for doing a poor job. Then, I had to work with him to get him up to speed. After six months, he was still failing, and I was working on his projects as much as I was working on my own. I checked on some of his work, gave him a list of problems I saw, and he completely lost it and didn’t listen to me.

So I left him on his own. I told my bosses that I'd no longer be carrying him. They were getting ready to fire him, but he beat them to it and quit. He found another job where he could be a project supervisor for more money and better benefits. He failed there, too. We sent his new company a basket of muffins and a thank you note. I ended up getting the company car, a $5 an hour raise, and a bunch of other benefits.

Permalink

11. A Challenging Forecast

People say all kinds of random things about how weather and climate function. Little do they know that I’m a meteorologist in disguise, working as a data scientist but with an actual master's and Ph.D. in meteorology. When I politely correct people, they are usually super interested to know more. But occasionally, I get something like, “Oh yeah?! And how do you know?”

I always respond with the same jaw-dropping answer: "Well, I have published several papers on the matter, and would love to discuss it all night," I’d say to them. So far, they’ve all backed down after that.

jmortin

12. The Best Shot

For reference, this is clay pigeon shooting, known as ‘trap’ in the south. Well, I'm from a rural area and not exactly super "southern," so when I'd go to other trap fields to practice in different conditions, there's always a person or two who place bets with me. This is definitely an old money sport with some of the bets going upwards of 5,000 dollars.

I had an old BT-100 that I got in a trade for a lead shot and some cash on the side. While the shot was not cheap, it was still much lower than other people’s shots and some folks would take that and assume I was a newbie. But they'd end up learning their lesson pretty quickly—the team I was on went to the Nationals almost every year from 2011 to 2018.

It was always funny because some would be good sports, but others would throw an absolute fit. One time, I saw one guy damage a 10,000 Perazzi because someone else had beat him. There was a guy from the county next to us who could blow us out of the water, and he always shot with an 870 pump...from Walmart.

Glickington

13. Fight Night

In college, my buddies and I always got the new fighting game whenever it came out, and we would put in a few hundred hours or so on it, just goofing around with the various modes before dropping it. During that time, we'd have fight nights a couple of times a week where we'd all get together at someone's place and duke it out.

It's not like I never won, but I was always just middle of the pack. After two years of this, no one would ever consider me to be some sort of fighting game wizard...until one fateful day when my luck changed for the better. For the first time ever, the group decided to pick up a 3D fighter instead of a 2D one: Soul Calibur 3 I think. Unknown to anyone in our playgroup, I had previously been obsessed with Soul Calibur 3, playing for 10 hours a day.

I had done this every day, for three to four years, playing against five other people who were doing the same and were just as good as me. It honestly wasn't even that fun. After the first half-hour, they were playing with 200% health while I was playing with 50%, picking random character select, and I still hadn't passed the controller once. After that, it was agreed that we would all play only 2D fighters from then on.

tehm

14. The Chess Master

I'm a Chess master. I think when people hear that, they think, "Oh, he's really good at chess." But what it actually means is that I've played in international tournaments and beaten other masters, earning my right to that official title. Anyway, I get challenged a lot by friends who think they're pretty good at chess.

What they don't realize is that their version of 'pretty good' does not compare to my version of 'pretty good,' and they all end up destroyed by my pieces in less than ten moves every time.

MapleDanish

15. Breaking The Language Barrier

My brother works for a scientific instrument company as a technical expert in gas chromatography. He and his colleagues went to a trade show once to show off their new instruments. A couple of German scientists come up and asked them a bunch of questions, breaking the conversation intermittently to speak to each other in German. But here's the plot twist: my brother is fluent in German.

He let them talk amongst themselves until one of the Germans said, in German: “I bet this instrument is just as terrible as the last one.” To which, my brother replies, in German, how it was, in fact, not terrible because they’d done a tremendous number of improvements. The two Germans, now stunned that they’d been caught, politely thanked my brother, apologized, and walked away.

KaeTheGSP

16. A Professional Lesson

I just graduated from teacher's college and I’ve been working as a casual relief in the meantime. I play lacrosse is generally a small sport and even smaller here in Australia. I tried out for the last World Cup team and made it to the final cut. I was working with another teacher who was also stationed at the school. Before the period he spoke to me and said, “Hey mate, we are doing lacrosse today.”

He continued, “It’s a bit of an odd sport that's hard to teach, so just wait over there and then you can just help with supervision,” and walked off. Being a CRT from an agency, I wasn’t sure how I should speak to him. I tried to tell him that I used to play competitively but he didn’t give me a second, so I just listened and did my thing.

After a few minutes, I had enough. I just grabbed a stick and ball and started to work my way around the class, giving them pointers and hints. The way he was teaching was completely incorrect and I didn’t want to say anything, so when the kids broke off into groups, I kind of just taught them the correct way. He pulled me over at a drinks break and asked how I knew so much about lacrosse.

I told him about my playing history and his jaw dropped. He asked why I didn’t speak up and say anything and I said I tried to tell him. Anyway, I ended up running the rest of the class and even ended up teaching him and the correct way to teach the game.

jumpercableninja

17. Surprise Ping Pong

I was hanging out with a girl who I was seeing at the time, and they had a ping pong table near the bar. Two guys were playing, and they were making a big show about how good they thought they were. They were showing off with grunting, rolled sleeves, the works. When I handed them back a wayward shot, I made a comment about how it looked fun to play.

They said that I could get the next game after one guy who was waiting, but their “rule” was any challenger they added in the queue to play would have to buy drinks for everyone else if that challenger lost. Little did they know what they were getting themselves into. I played competitive ping pong in a league back in med school and had placed highly in some New York City championships.

I still play every so often in my current city and I have won a few tournaments here as well. I ended up destroying the two guys. I didn’t have to pay for a drink or give up my spot until my date was ready to go. No one even made it out of the single digits.

KidPowered17

18. Beware The Water

I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, including four years of NCAA, but I'm on the shorter side, so people don't assume I was any good. I was at a friend’s house on a lake one summer, and a macho guy challenged me to race to a buoy in the middle of the lake, to prove... something, I guess. The lake is deceptively large, about a half-mile across, so I warned him that if he wasn't a strong swimmer, it could be dangerous.

He was running out of gas after about two minutes, so I offered to let him off the hook. He still insisted he would finish. After I went to the buoy and started swimming back, I looked over at him and just sighed. I found him floundering, so I lifeguard swam him back to the house. His ego took a deserved hit that day. Don't get overconfident around water, even if you think you're a strong swimmer.

Squeakycleaned

19. Forty-Eight!

In primary school, I'd say grade three or four, we had a head-to-head times tables tournament. The teacher would ask a random multiplication question to a pair of students at a time, and the winner progressed. I wasn't exactly an expert at times tables, but I was an expert at 6 x 8. For whatever reason, 6 x 8 just wouldn't stick in my head when I was younger, so I had to spend additional time to bring the answer to the forefront of my mind.

I was decently prepared for any other multiplication problem, so while waiting my turn I was constantly repeating in my mind: "six times eight equals 48, six times eight equals 48, six times eight equals 48" over and over again. That strategy would end up working in my favor. Lo and behold, when it was finally my turn to be quizzed, the teacher casually selected 6 x 8.

Not an iota of time had elapsed from the teacher finishing her sentence when I yelled "48!" The astonishment spread as I became a human-computer in the eyes of my peers. Even the teacher was taken back. I went on to win the tournament, having already won in the minds of my would-be opponents. It was more than victory; it was complete annihilation.

PahoojyMan

20. Kart Battles!

I was visiting Kyoto a couple of years ago. My wife and I walked into a tiny bar that had five people in suits laughing and talking in Japanese. We instantly knew that this was not a tourist bar and felt pretty out of place. The bartender spoke the most English, so I asked him what his favorite Shochu was. Things got a little more comfortable as we drank and eventually, the whole bar tried to talk to us.

Someone mentioned Mario Kart and I said, “Yeah, yeah,” so the bartender pointed to an old Super Famicom in the corner, and apparently, I had accepted the challenge. I smiled to myself and my wife thought it was funny because I used to have some skill at the game. I had no idea what to expect, but when the bartender selected Battle Mode...I was floored.

I hadn’t played in a few years, and he buried me in less than a minute. The whole bar was laughing and I was a little stunned. But then got to the second and third rounds. I destroy him. Three balloons to zero. Everyone cheered except for the bartender. Two shots were put in front of me, and I threw one down. Round 3. We were down to one balloon each and I swear it was the longest battle round of all time.

I was sweating. Shell, dodge, shell, dodge. I had him in my sights and I fired. It missed. The shell bounced off the wall and I self-KO'd. The crowd went wild. So that’s the story of how a self-proclaimed Mario Kart expert embarrassed himself and his country in a small bar in Kyoto. We drank a lot and made a lot of great friends that night that we’ll never see again.

Jonpaul333

21. Hustling On The Table

While in undergrad, I brought a new college buddy over to an old high school friend's house to hang out. There were a couple of other friends there, just hanging around, drinking, and playing pool. My new buddy was a pretty low-key guy; a wallflower, if you will. When he first meets people, he can be pretty quiet and he tends to seem a little out of place.

But after he gets to know people, he opens up and is a blast to be around. My old buddies, for some reason, decided to hustle my new buddy in pool. I mean, super textbook shark moves. "Let's play a friendly game, and if you think you're any good at it, we can play for money," etc. Well, I knew something that they all didn't. They were in for a shock: My new buddy played on the circuits for a while, winning pool tournaments across Texas.

He lived and breathed pool, and, of course, he saw these guys coming from a mile away. I just watched it all go down. I figured, if they are going to treat someone that I bring over in a snobby way, they deserve what they get. He roped 'em in as only he could. He missed some super easy shots to keep the game interesting and then pulled out the "lucky" win...

Soon after, they played for money. I can't even remember how much per ball, but he played two or three games, slowly playing better or "lucking out" just enough to keep them engaged while still taking their money. Then, the last game happened, and I'd never seen someone come alive more quickly. He sank shot after shot after shot.

These were shots I couldn't make if I practiced for a year straight. The entire time, he kept taunting them and updating how much money they owed them. I don't think my old friend had a chance to take a shot at all. Afterward, they were all furious: "How could you bring this guy over here and let him hustle us like that??"

"How could you try to hustle a new friend of mine just minutes after I bring him over and introduce him to you?" I snarled back. "You earned this one, man." It ended happily, though. They all became good friends and they are still in contact with each other two decades later.

Othersideofbroad

22. Whose Paper Is This Again?

There was a story about an old geotechnical engineer who used to work for the company that I work for. Several senior staff had to attend a meeting with the client, and some government regulatory staff were being awkward and not approving the design. The geotech guy was pretty much quiet the whole meeting. Throughout the discussion, the government guy kept referencing this one research document and rejecting any other suggestions.

Near the end of the meeting, the geotech guy asked the government guy if he had the research paper with him. He said yes and placed it on the table. The geotech guy then pointed to the author of the paper while simultaneously sliding over a business card. That's when he executed his "gotcha" moment. Turned out, it was the geotech guy’s own paper that the government guy had been referencing to defend his argument. The government guy went bright red and apparently approved the design the same day.

MoodyBernoulli

23. Climbing For Money

A local mall had a portable climbing wall. "Make it to the top and win $100," a sign read. The route was actually pretty challenging. As I walked by, the guy asked me if I’d like to try. He told me, “Nobody has made it to the top, so do you think you can do it, buddy?” At that time, I hadn't disclosed my big secret—I was a top 12-ranked climber in my age group and I kind of laughed to myself.

After taking my $100, I then proceeded to call the rest of my climbing team, and one by one they went to the mall and claimed their $100. After the fourth person, they got suspicious and took the sign down. We later told him we were all nationally ranked competitive climbers, and he got a good laugh. The company that owned the rentals was the one who lost the money—he just worked the booth and wasn’t the one who lost the prize money.

CaptainWaders

24. Tetris, Attacked!

There is this old SNES game called Tetris Attack that I played religiously when I was growing up. I got pretty good at it. I'm actually still half-decent, but I only play every few months when I visit my family. Anyhow, I was kinda-sorta seeing this guy and I have NO idea how the topic came up, but he challenged me a game of Tetris Attack.

He was NOT ready for what was coming to him. I had sincere doubts that he had ever played before despite his posturing, and it turned out...I was right. I trounced him and he actually said, "How are you so good at this stupid game?" Practice, my dude. Years of practice.

Unsolicited_Spiders

25. Submarine Cruise

My wife and I were taking an evening cruise for adults in Portsmouth Bay. The ship drove around the shipyard, where my submarine and several others were stationed. My wife and I were having a quiet drink when a really loud know-it-all started spouting misinformation about each submarine. He was calling them all the wrong classes, the wrong names, etc.

He literally pointed to my submarine and said, "...and that is a 637 class." My wife finally spoke up and said, "Actually, it's a 688." The guy got all gruff and scoffed: "Well how would you know?" My wife smiled and hugged my arm. She dropped the bombshell in the sweetest way ever: "That's my husband’s submarine, it is the Minneapolis St Paul, SNN-708." His faceturned beat red while his date laughed.

LeepII

26. Unmentionable Mascara

A Japanese client that studied in France asked me for a translation job but wanted to change all my sentences to prove she was better than me at my own mother tongue. She ended up writing something grammatically correct but it sounded so much like innuendo that if you Googled the terms, you would only find unmentionable videos and writing.

I had to tell my boss what she was forcing me to write (because it was for a mascara brand that was supposed to be sold in France) so he could stop her and after that, she stopped trying to best me.

Sarahohimesama

27. Lifting Weights

I am a government auditor. One of the programs I oversee is a sort of boarding school for teens with delinquency history and it’s very athletics heavy. I’ve put on like 30 pounds of body fat since getting this mostly sedentary job and drifting into bad nutrition habits. Basically, I’m meaty underneath with above-average strength.

Prior to this job, I had a side gig as a personal trainer and posing coach. At the program one day, I needed to interview a student who didn’t want to leave his weightlifting class. He told me he’d talk to me if I could deadlift the bar he was working with, like 90 kg. He would soon regret making that wager with me. The staff was visibly annoyed that this guy was giving me a hard time, but I was wearing stretchy pants, so I gave it a quick set-up and pull.

The interview followed and now it’s an ongoing joke at the program that when I ask for interviews, they ask if I need chalk or anything for the mandatory deadlift.

Tankautumn

28. Through Fire And Flames

My college has a dedicated gaming room in its central building. There are TVs for people to plug in whatever they want. I went in one day and saw someone playing Guitar Hero. He was playing on Expert, so he was decently good, but he was not perfect. I sat down, chatted him up, and eventually, he challenged me. It was a Pro-Face-Off on Through the Fire and Flames.

I'm not perfect at Through The Fire And Flames, but I figured what the heck, it'll be fun. Well, our fearless protagonist got a little too big for his boots on that one—he couldn't even hit the intro. The higher your combo in Guitar Hero, the more your score is multiplied, all the way up to 4x. If you don't hit the intro and can't keep your 4x through the fast strumming at the beginning, you're immediately behind somewhere in the echelon of 30k to 60k points.

The solos didn't fare him much better. He blamed his gear.

Im_Zackie

29. Never Again

I had a mate who would play Call of Duty with me a and I'd usually beat him in a 1-v-1 match, but he would occasionally win a game or at least get close before we switched to a different game, Motorstorm Apocalypse. I was a legitimate top 10 player on that game with multiple #1s, while e had just started playing through the offline mode. He was winning the races though, so he thought he was good.

I warned him, but he insisted on a 1-v-1 to show off his skills. Two minutes later, he started sweating like crazy. I'd go on to lap him on a three-lap race, and he ended up quitting the race before he was finished due to embarrassment. He never played that game again.

TryThat12

30. Forwards And Backwards

I have studied memorization techniques and mnemonics. I decided to have a bit of fun with my teacher. He wanted us to write down a list of 20 items. He was the type of guy to quickly call you out for not paying attention in class. I sat there memorizing the list in my head knowing full well he would see me not writing anything down.

He chewed me out for not taking notes, as predicted. He took the bait. I said, "I have it all in my head." I knew he would call me out and have me recite the list. The next day, he turned to me in the middle of his lecture and had the biggest smug smile. "So, what were those items from yesterday?" I immediately proceeded to list them in order without hesitation. Then listed them backward. His smile grew bigger and bigger, and the rest of the class was cracking up!

RollerDerby88

31. The Google Boys

Astronomer here! If we were to just meet on the street, you probably wouldn't guess I was a scientist since I am a woman who enjoys dresses when the weather is nice. This was doubly true when I was a few years younger in my 20s and single. At the end of college, I was doing a summer internship in Mountain View, California where if you went out there'd be a lot of Google boys.

They would literally sometimes wear "Google" shirts so you'd know. I remember getting stuck chatting with one, and when he asked my major, he sneered at me saying, "D you really know the subject?" He asked me if I knew what the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle was, and I explained it in great detail. When I later explained his 20 other questions, he said "it's probably not so hard because they go easy on women because they don't want to scare them off."

Oh, but it gets better—he then he proceeded to tell me at length about a lecture he attended in Mountain View that he'd been lucky enough to visit, as a Google employee, by Jill Tarter who runs the SETI Institute. He even went as far as to tell me about the Allen Telescope Array they were building in northern California because I "might not know about it."

I gave him a minute for his spiel. Then I proceeded to drop the mic on him: I actually was working for Jill that summer at the SETI Institute, on interference mitigation for the Allen Telescope Array. And did he want to hear what she was really like, or see some pictures from the ATA site? I'd also just met Frank Drake, and he was really nice! Oh man, was that guy not happy! But at least he stopped talking to me like right after.

Andromeda321

32. Yes, I Do Know, Really

I’m a female mechanical engineer and I often get people working at Lowe’s, car shops, and dealerships talk down to me or say that I don’t understand basic concepts. For instance, a guy at Lowe’s swore up and down that bolt threading and pipe threading was the same thing. Another guy swore there were no diamond-tipped hole saws and tried to sell me a Dremel for the same job. I then found one in the tile section.

I’ve had mechanics swear up and down that my air filter in my car needed to be changed when I had just changed it weeks before, and my filter is circular and not square like the one they brought out to me. The best is the car salesmen though—they don’t seem to really care about my opinion, especially if my husband is there.

I’m usually the car buying decision-maker, but my husband also knows a ton about cars, and so they try to sell to him. It’s always hilarious. I usually just let them talk and clarify later with my husband because I’m not out to embarrass anybody.

buttsmcgillicutty

33. The Kart Racer

Everyone thinks they are amazing at Mario Kart. They used to be good as a kid and think they still are. I played two to four hours every day in undergrad a couple of years ago. I raced in local and school tournaments and won most of the time. I was within seconds on several course records. I have every course memorized and know exactly when to break on every turn.

I don’t play much anymore, but anytime somebody sees my Mario Kart painting, they tell me how amazing they are. I’m happy to absolutely destroy them.

phish13

34. The Punching Challenge

When I was in the army, we had a gut-punch challenge. I chose not to participate since I have very heavy hands, but there was one guy who kept egging me on. I just kept saying no, until he started talking too much trash and I couldn't take it anymore. So, I let him go first. He reared back and I just absorbed the hit. Honestly wasn’t a bad punch.

But then it was my turn. I sized him up a couple of times with practice line-up swings. He mocked me while I did this. I gave him one more warning, and he laughed it off. So, I pulled back and blasted him. Square on the belly button. He doubled over and his face went pale white. Lips blue. Air out of his system. He spent a couple of minutes struggling to catch air.

Unimmortal47

35. Caught In The Crossfire

There was this game called Crossfire. It’s an FPS game that’s still around I think. Back in high school, this one kid wanted to play me one on one because he heard I was good at it. He talked a big game and had a pretty good rank from his public games, so he seemed like a formidable opponent. I accepted his challenge.

What he didn’t know was just how good I was at the game. He probably thought I just got good from playing it a lot, but in reality, I was on the #1 team in Canada at the time. I was playing against top teams all over the world at that time and would regularly play pick-up games with top players daily. Needless to say, he got absolutely wrecked.

Jkccuts

36. Oh, You Don’t Speak English?

I live in Northern Vermont, so we have a ton of tourism from French-speaking Canadians coming down from various parts of Quebec. I am a bilingual American and I hold two degrees in French, the master’s being in Quebecois language and literature. While bartending one day, a customer from Quebec tried to pay her bill in Canadian money, which is about .73 cents to the American dollar.

The Canadian bills didn't even add up to the bill total if the two currencies were on par. So, I politely explained all of this in English, but she replied in French, saying that she doesn't speak English. That was my cue to hit her with the surprise of her life. To the delight of my entire bar crowd, I then politely but forcibly explain all of this in perfect Quebecois French. Her face at that moment is almost worth the pain I feel every month paying back my student loans.

FemmeFatale427

37. Don’t Look Like A Gamer, Do I?

When I was a freshman in undergrad, our floor had one of those big icebreaker meet-ups. One of my fun facts was that I really loved video games, which at the time was an understatement. I was bordering on obsessed. I was a girl, pretty athletic, and decent looking, so most of the guys kind of thought that was funny...and they probably thought I was just saying it to be quirky.

I didn’t bring my consoles to school because I was worried that my grades would be in serious trouble if I did. One of the guys on my floor invited me over to his dorm to play Xbox with him. When I get there, he asked me if Halo 3 was cool. I thought we’d maybe just go through the campaign together, but I noticed he was setting it up for a one-on-one. Big mistake on his part.

He says something along the lines of: “If I win, will you go on a date with me?” I ended up kicking his butt several matches in a row, with him really trying to win. Finally, I just told him we could hang out and play co-op together.

biowaresphinx

38. The Kids Section

I was working at a bookstore after school. since I was too shy to talk to coworkers, and no one wanted to get stuck in the kids’ section where I was often placed, I would spend a lot of my downtime reading. It was great as kids’ books are quick and easy, and you can catch up on ten new books in an hour.

On slower days, I could finish some of the kids’ chapter books in one go. Some series I would read from start to finish in a week. I quickly learned a LOT about the books in the children's department. Over time, I made friends with a lot of the local teachers and would try to get recommendations from them.

It was really helpful with summer reading and holiday chaos. I knew just about every book in that department, and a solid amount of the teen section, which was still sort of a 'new' reading section. However, as I was still in high school and it was very apparent that I was just a teenager helping them, some people wouldn't want to ask me for help.

They must’ve thought I was too young. Perhaps they thought a particular series was for little kids, so they needed to ask a parent instead. Whatever the reason, apparently I looked too young to be able to offer the help they wanted. Of course, every situation always ended in the same way—my co-workers would bring them right back to me. I loved proving them wrong and there were a lot of times where someone would assume I wouldn't know what was up

They’d be super vague and frustrated, and then amazed when I would just hand what they asked for within the next 30 seconds, or describe the cover in detail, with some plot points and my favorite part of the story. Some would even come back and ask for my help with their lesson plans.

brandnamenerd

39. A Really Long Game

A friend of mine is really good at hockey. He played in the OHL here in Canada and was invited to a few NHL training camps, but he never made the cut. Anyway, he ultimately quit pursuing professional hockey after college since it didn’t seem like he’d ever make it. One time I invited him to a drop-in league game where anybody could play.

Maybe two minutes into the game, this one guy on the opposing team (who was kind of good but definitely never played at the level of my friend) scored a goal and immediately came over to our bench to taunt us. “How you boys like that? It’s gonna be a long game for you.” That lit a fire inside my friend. We ended up winning 21-3, my friend scoring 18 goals and never saying a single word back to the other team.

CulturePlug

40. Pitch Perfect

I have a perfect pitch. It's not a thing I can turn off; notes simply are a pitch clear as day, much like how red is clearly distinct from green. Anyhow, it was music class in junior high. My teacher explained that Mozart had perfect pitch and he walked over to the piano, played a note, and said: "And just by hearing it, he'd be able to tell you what now that was... now can any of YOU do that?"

At the time, I honestly had no idea this was rare. I raised my hand, and the teacher, with a smug look, pointed at me and he was absolutely gobsmacked when I answered. I hit the note right on the money, octave and all. He figured it was pure luck, so he did it again and asked me to face the other way. I answered correctly again. He also tried it with chords, sequences, and two hands worth of notes.

Still right every time. That day, I learned that perfect pitch is actually kind of rare.

itskayguys

41. Alpha Running

I know a guy who tries to be a major alpha at any interaction with another male. One time, he challenged me to a distance race, saying they could run longer than I could. I knew he wasn't a runner at all, but he did not know I ran ultramarathons and had recently set the course record in a 50-mile race. Well, I said sure, and we set out the next morning at 6 am around a track with three of our mutual friends watching.

I just trailed behind him by like 20 feet at a casual pace. That way, he'd always be expending energy trying to put distance in between us. Surprisingly, he kept that up for like four miles, which is a lot for a non-runner. I eventually ran up to him and stuck with him for another mile talking about my running accomplishments.

Eventually, our friends wanted to leave, so I told him, "If you want, we can run in together." He agreed. But then, during the very last lap, he hit me with a curveball. He said, "Sorry but I'm gonna win" and tried to speed up to pass me. I was like, "Okay," and I dropped my pace. I still came in like 150 meters ahead of him.

He was full of excuses and challenged me to a sprint a few days later. I also completely wrecked him at that. Just give it up dude, you don't have to be "alpha" all the time.

UltraBuffaloGod

42. Five-Minute Mile

When I was a junior in high school, I was in a PE class of pretty much all freshmen. We were required to take two years of PE and I decided to do it my last two years instead of the first two like everyone else. There was one kid in the class—your typical freshman football player who thought he was gonna be the lead quarterback or something.

Anyway, in the first week or so, I didn't really say anything or talk to anyone because I didn't know any of the freshmen and I was a pretty quiet guy anyway. Soon after, our coach told us we were going to do the mile, and, of course, Mr. Quarterback started talking it up, thinking he was going to win. People like that really annoy me.

What he didn't know is that I had been keeping a secret the entire time—I've been running track and cross country for the last 2.5 years and had a mile PR at that time of about 5 minutes. To make it even better, I was kind of a bigger guy, 5'11", 180lbs; not fat, but you definitely wouldn't guess I could run a 5-minute mile or really anywhere close. Anyway, back to the mile—we lined up and of course, this kid went out like a bullet, so I just trailed a few paces behind him for the first lap and made my move in lap two, just barely overtaking him.

I could've just totally pulled away and won by a long shot, but I decided that I would just stay a few paces right in front of him the whole time to just drag him along. I won just a couple of seconds in front of him with a 6:15 time. He was totally exhausted right afterward while I had barely broken a sweat. He shut his mouth a bit more after that.

Aidenj6

43. The Real Competition

Seven teenage boys tried to get my boyfriend at the time to play Daytona, the arcade machine game, with them, as it was an eight-person setup. He offered me his place, which they accepted, thinking a woman in her mid-20s wouldn't be much competition. They had no idea who they were messing with— I worked at an amusement arcade at the time and played Daytona maybe 20 to 30 times a week.

I thrashed them, even playing in automatic mode. I may even have thrown in a "Did you just get beat by a GIRL?" as I strode off. I can still do it too. No-one has ever beaten me in a public playoff, though as a now middle-aged woman, I rarely get asked to take part.

ecapapollag

44. On Top Of The Scrabble Board

I got really good at Scrabble after playing for years. Now, lots of people think they are good at Scrabble, but there are those who are ‘pretty good at a casual game’ and those who have the tw0- and three-letter words memorized, think about rack management, open vs. closed board, etc. Unless you regularly play against other competition-level players with timers and the Scrabble Dictionary, you are probably not the second kind of good.

So, I was meeting my significant other's mother and she thought of herself as a great Scrabble player. Not good, great. I tried my best not to play against her, saying I don't play casually, but she got a little aggressive with her insistence and I relented. We drew tiles and I drew high. The first word I played on the open board made her jaw drop.

It scored me 111 points. She and my significant other never got closer than the end of that first round. I was calm, polite, and good-spirited throughout as I demonstrated the difference between casual and competitive play (a few hundred points). There was no big blow-up, but I don't think either ever fully forgave me.

RedditFact-Checker

45. Do You Play?

I was hanging out with this girl I liked. We were just reading in a classroom that had a piano in it. At one point, I went over to the piano and she said, "Oh, do you play?" Now, I grew up with a piano, and I've learned like three songs from YouTube, but I only know them in a "what to hit in what order" kind of way. However, it is enough to impress most people.

So, I say "Of course," thinking that I would charm the heck out of her. With the most "get ready for your pants to hit the floor" attitude, I sat down and played that song from Amelie. After I was finished, she said "That's pretty good. Can I try?" When she started playing, I knew I'd screwed up. Apparently, she'd been playing piano her whole life.

She even studied classical music at university at some point. So yeah, she was not impressed.

Dachten

46. Dressing Contest

I was a firefighter in college with a bunch of other college kids. We spent nearly every shift challenging each other to these types of competitions, debating how to shave off time, and I usually was the top finisher. After college, I went on to some small-town, part-time departments. As the new guy, I didn’t want to be a know-it-all, so I never really talked about my experience unless I was asked.

One day, the full-time professional firefighters dropped into one of our training sessions and challenged the new hires to a race to put on all our gear. The standard for this is 90 seconds from wearing street clothes to all clothing with mask, helmet, gloves, and the air tank. I did it around 40 seconds in my prime.

The laughter started to settle down as I tucked my pant legs into my socks and carefully arranged all my gear on the floor...but things got really quiet during my last sequence. I both-foot jumped into my boots while putting the flame hood on mid-air and one handing the mask while putting on the air pack. We didn’t time it, but I was dressed and “on-air” before some full-timers had their coats zippered up.

It then became a regular thing for the full-timers to come up with some new competition to challenge me on and there were rumors they would practice on their shifts. But years of practice meant I’d never been defeated...

thebestmailever

47. A Real Distance Runner

I was a competitive distance runner for a while in my early 20s. Not a top professional or anything, but I’m talking 5k in the 14:15 to 14:30 range and 10k at around 30:00 even. Not fast enough to go to the Olympics, but fast enough for local sponsorship and pretty much a guaranteed win at any local road race, usually by a pretty big margin.

I was running a 5k or 10k nearly every weekend for the prize money, which for the record, was never a lot—only $100-$200 or so in value. But it was enough to pay for running gear, travel to races, and other things. Every week, I would search online for whatever race had the most prize money that weekend and I would drive up to race it.

I was going places where people didn’t recognize me. Every so often, the local town hotshot with a big ego who was used to winning their small church's 5ks would “challenge” me or talk hot stuff before the race. It never worked out for them. Normally, I would show up, not really talk to anyone, humbly run my race, and go home.

I wasn’t there to prove anything to anyone; I just wanted the $200 gift card or whatever they were offering. But when this happened, I had fun with it. I’d let them talk, which would always include them bragging about their personal record or recent race times. “Yeah, I won this race last year...I ran a 17:45 and won by a minute”...things like that.

I’d respond with, “Wow that’s impressive!” I mean, an 18:00 for 5k is a good time, but if you know 5k times, you'd know 14:30 for 5k is a different world. For reference, around this time, I ran the marathon in under two hours and 30 minutes. I averaged 17:45 per 5k in my marathon. So, it was not really going to be a “competition,” but I wanted them to think it would be. If they asked me about myself, I’d just brush it off and just say, “Oh, I’m just out here to have fun and support the local charity” or something like that.

When the race came, the real fun began. They'd take off like a bat, trying to prove a point. They’d try to put distance on me, but I’d just stay on their shoulder, letting them dictate their pace. This was almost always a pace they couldn’t actually sustain the whole race. Remember, at this point, they’d told me what they ran, so in my head, I knew what pace they should be able to sustain. I’d let them lead for the first mile, just running right behind them and never letting up.

Then, I’d slowly come parallel with them and take over. I’d constantly read their pace and run just fast enough to let them think they still had a chance, so they wouldn’t let up. They’d push themselves harder as a result, and you could see it on their face—the grit, the struggle to hold on, and their ego preventing them from slowing down to a realistic pace. They'd got lost in the moment and wouldn't realize what was happening.

That's when I'd slowly start creeping up my pace ever so slightly, but progressively until they started to hit their limit. At about two miles in, it'd be game over for them. They'd reach their lactate threshold, the point in which their muscles are producing more lactic acid than their body can remove and reconvert into energy. This is the physiological breaking point that forces a runner to slow down significantly.

When a runner hits this point, their body literally no longer has the strength to continue at that pace. That’s when I’d kick it into overdrive. I'd leave them in the dust, quite literally taking off nearly twice as fast as they'd slowed down to. By the time they’d reach the finish line, I’d been done for five minutes or more, despite them having been with me for two-thirds of the race. I stay and watch them stumble across the line, slowly, huffing and puffing, defeated.

Distance_Runner

48. I Didn’t Get The Email!

The property management company for my homeowner's association insisted that I had received emails that I never received. So, I asked them to prove that I had received them. I'm a software engineer and at the time I had just finished an enterprise email delivery system; like an in-house, constant contact. I knew the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act by heart. I KNEW exactly how their system worked.

So, this property manager said, "I know how email works. You wouldn't understand." At that very moment, I couldn't help it—I had to put the guy in his place. I started to explain very methodically how email delivery works and how they'd track various actions. I spent about five minutes detailing my credentials and why I was absolutely certain they had never sent me the emails they alleged I received. When I was finished, the HOA board just agreed to waive the fines.

-aged-like-wine-

49. With Just One Letter

I dated a guy in college who was incredibly book smart. He was working on his master’s with the intention to pursue a Ph.D. I was doing the good old five-year plan for college and I was quite content with my level of brainpower compared to his. What he underestimated was my fondness for word games, especially Scrabble. I like to think I'm quite good.

Well, in the three years we dated, we only played Scrabble once, and I beat the Scrabble tiles out of him. But the icing on the cake was the epic way in which I had secured my victory—I got a 50+ word score for playing just one letter. He literally wiped all the letters off the board and had a small hissy fit, claiming that I cheated. I got out my trusty Scrabble dictionary and proved his loss.

Sidesleeperzzz

50. Impromptu Band Member

A buddy of mine was at a concert in bad seats and he started complaining about it via Twitter. All of a sudden, the band started reading some tweets and called my friend up to sit on stage for a couple of songs. They sat him at the piano and during the next song, they jokingly said, "Okay, piano solo!" The crowd laughed, but my buddy's next move shut them up real quick—he just started jamming out, as he plays the piano in his own band. Talk about dream moment getting to play with your favorite band.

noplanplan