When we think about creepy experiences, we tend to imagine supernatural stuff. This article is about to remind us that sometimes the creepiest things are very, very rooted in the real world.
Reddit user Salamanda0913 asked:
What is the creepiest thing you have experienced that you still think about to this day?
That's not to say there is no mention of potentially supernatural experiences - but most people responded with moments that were terrifying for them because they were all too real. We're talking about those moments when you realize your "safe place" isn't safe, when you suddenly understand just how close you were to something horrific...
All of us have creepy experiences, but these experiences have stuck with people so much that they felt compelled to share them. Read at your own risk, folks. Some of these might leave you thinking twice about a few things - like how much you actually like the song More Than A Feeling by Boston.
Two Rottweilers And A Mirror
When I was about 8 or 9, my moms friends took us to see the puppy they were going to buy. The owner offered us to walk the parent-dogs (two Rottweilers, I remember their names til this day). They were super friendly and walked off leash with the two kids of my moms friend, and myself.
When we arrived in a grassy area surrounded by trees, a tall guy approached us. The man was wearing one of those long, leather trench coats and had a very small mirror.
He grabbed my shoulder and the dogs went completely nuts. I remember he tried shining light into the dogs eyes with the mirror. The mother dog stayed circling me while I ran to the house and the other dog chased after this guy until he was gone.
It was terrifying, but what really stands by me is that those dogs didn't know me, from before yet they protected me and my friends as if their lives depended on it.
- quanide
A Visit From Dad
So, I was about 12 at the time and it was around 2am one day and I was playing an online video game with my friends.
We're in a call as I hear a door slam.It was quite a loud one, loud enough for me to hear through my headphones.
I was freaked and just froze in my chair and took off my headphones. Then I heard footsteps. I was sure someone broke in or something, but I was to afraid to get out of my room. Everything was silence after a few seconds, and there was no one in our house. The door was locked as it was before, and it seemed like everything was back to normal, so I tell my friends I'm logging off and I tried to go to sleep. It took me ages before I could fall asleep, but eventually I did.
The next morning, I tell my mom about what happened.
Her face went white. She told me she had dreamed about my dad.
In her dream he came to our house, slammed the door and woke her up with the sound of the slam. She was so excited to see him! She hugged him and kissed him and they went into my room where they saw me playing video games, and my dad told her that I grew up so much and was really happy to see me. He was the one who taught me how to play that video game when I was like 5~ish years old.
My dad has passed away when I was 6. (Heart failure)
It's still creeping me out to this day.
- Lishayy
Old Curtains
When me and my Mom moved to a new house. She had some re-decorating to do.
One of the things she wanted to change was to get some new curtains for our bathroom, the curtains in there were torn, dirty, browned and just ugly as sin. So she bought some new curtains.
As she is quite short, she can't reach our attic, which is where she wanted to store the old curtains (It was rented so we couldn't throw them away) so I put the curtains into a box then put the box into the attic. It was difficult since there is no light and even at 6'2" I had to stretch to reach, but I managed to toss the box onto a pile. The new curtains went up. All is good.
The next day when I come home from school the horrible, dirty curtains are back up in the bathroom. New curtains are nowhere to be seen. I asked my Mom why she had changed the curtains back over. She was terrified. She hadn't changed them and had no idea how it happened.
Still bothers me to this day.
Run, Forest, Run!
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My brother had a party in college at his place on campus (they had trailers that were on campus and were a part of housing). There were a bunch of parties that night in that area. I was there for a little bit but was still in high school and had hockey practice in the morning, so had to get home early.
My brother and his buddy were on the porch late at night (like 3-4 AM) when in the distance, in the dark, they saw someone randomly running through the night with a football. My brothers buddy even yelled out "Run Forrest, run!"
Next morning the police knocked on everyone's door to interview the people who lived in the area. Apparently a 13 year old girl was murdered and the body was found near the campus, but the head was missing. They believed a student may have killed her.
There was a massive search and a few weeks later, they were looking at the track and field complex behind where my brother lived and they found the head when emptying a port-a-potty at the track... my brother is fairly certain the random guy in the dark running with the football was actually the guy running with the head.
Catfish
I got catfished by an old man on a dating app. I was in a lonely and quite vulnerable time within my life back then. I was around 20 years old, looking for a good time, and just wanted to be with someone. I was a bit shaken up for maybe a week after it happened, but I eventually got over it and moved on with my life.
There was this young and really attractive dude, or so I thought, whose profile I came across on the app. We spoke and we exchanged pics and messages. We planned to meet up. He gave me an address and later in the day I took an uber to that address. I was standing around for hours, it was really dark and was getting late in the night. I had previously knocked on the door of the address, then resorted to standing around near the address to see if I'd get a message or response; nothing.
I sent him so many messages with no responses and I was disappointed, but I didn't give him trouble about it. More so disappointed about the wasted Uber money than I was with him because it wasn't exactly the cheapest ride there and back.
The next day, on the dating app I was using, he sent me some story about something happening with someone in his family. I don't exactly remember it, but thinking back I'm shocked that I actually believed him when he told me. I felt so stupid. That same day as we're talking, all is forgiven and we chalk it up to "sometimes things just happen."
We planned to meet up again at a much earlier time. I came to the same address.
As I'm knocking on the door, I don't get a response and I look around. But this time, I see an old man sitting in a black car across the street from the house and he's just staring at me. He was staring as if I was candy that he just couldn't resist and he just had to have me. I waited around a bit longer. The old man is still there just staring at me and I get a little uncomfortable and worried.
That's when it hit me, HE was the 'young and really attractive dude' that I'd been talking to this entire time. I didn't know what to do upon the realization, but I wasn't going to confront him. I remember being so angry, followed by deep sadness. I got an uber to go back and I blocked him on the app after sending him a nasty message (don't know if he saw it or not before I blocked him, but I didn't care.)
But he didn't stop there, HE FOLLOWED the uber that I was in. I kept a watchful eye out for his car. I was so damn terrified, but was relieved that he ended up losing us on the highway. I never saw him again after that, but I'll never forget the disgusting and snarky look that he had on his face as he was staring at me. Just seemingly so proud of what he did.
I couldn't think straight for a solid week after that. The wasted money, the emotional trauma, and the pure anger. I learned an important lesson about being safer on dating apps and teaching myself that sometimes we're just vulnerable and we shouldn't get so caught up in that.
More Than A Feeling
I was in the Navy stationed inland because I was in a school. I had a friend drop me off at a store and when I was done started walking back to the base. I noticed this car driving slowly in the road keeping pace with me. Some weird guy was smiling at me. I am also a guy. More Than a Feeling was playing - loud.
Eventually the car went ahead of me, but then there it was on a side street waiting for me to pass. Again, he drove next to me slowly with the same song playing. This scenario went on for about 7 or 8 blocks, same song playing over and over. I finally made it to a near by mall and went inside.
I stayed in one place inside the mall to make sure I lost him, I was pretending to talk to someone on a payphone. Suddenly there he was inside the mall peeking around a corner. As soon as he turned around, I ran out of the mall through the closest exit and ran about another 2 blocks to the Navy base.
I never saw him again but it creeped me out so much that every time I hear More Than a Feeling playing, it reminds me of the experience.
Call Some Hippie Chap!
I had a house in London It was quite old, circa 1835. In the basement the plaster was cracking and falling off of the one wall. We had to remove it to treat it with a damp proof membrane. Removing the plaster to bare brick revealed a bricked up doorway. We opened it up to see what was behind it.
It was a small room with a rough wooden bed all rotted away only the frame remaining and a upright chair.with the back broken and a kind of tailors dummy stood on a wooden frame. The dummy had the heart, liver, kidneys and other anatomical parts drawn on. They were stabbed multiple times.
Mildewed newspaper cuttings where on the chair, most too badly rotted away, but the ones in the center could be read. They were ink pictures of women with names like. "Florrie Corrigan the Irish rose" and "Irene Atkins the Clapham nightingale" Some had their faces disfigured or slashed. Some had dripping wounds and cuts drawn on them. Most had a big furry vagina drawn on.
My wife was fairly freaked and had a hippie chap come and pray / chant in the room to remove bad spirits.
Storage
So when I was 14 me and my mom moved to a new city. We moved in a flat and the storage was in a separate place in the building. Our storage space was just around a corner. One evening I went to the storage space around 11pm to get some old plushies and when I opened the door and went around the corner I saw an middle aged man dressed up as a clown just creepily standing there in the back, I swear he had this crazy look in his eyes.
I bolted out there as fast as I could. I told my mom and she called the police. When they arrived the man was still standing in the corner and he didn't fight back when the police arrested him. Apparently he used a lot of drugs and was just spacing out. They never told me how he got in the storage space, but they changed the lock after that incident.
The Dog Sees
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My grandma had Alzheimers and maybe dementia when she lived with us. Her room was also like right down the hallway from mine, so it was really common for me to be woken up in the night to her laughing, screaming, or talking. One night things where different, I could hear her talking and someone responding.
I got up to take a close look and I noticed my dog looked like something was wrong, which was weird to me. I went up to the door to hear things better. She was paralyzed on her right side so I though this was just my mom coming to help her with something, but the responding voice was a male voice. My dad didn't live with us and I don't have any brothers, nor did this sound like her own voice at all.
My first thought was that it was my uncle but why would my uncle be at my house? If he was then there was something wrong with my grandma because he would only come this late when there was an emergency. I also would have heard him coming through the front door. I put myself against the wall in a way that I could see into my grandmas room but anyone in the room couldn't see me unless they where at the room door. I couldn't see anyone or anything except my grandmas feet.
I got close enough to make out what they were saying now, but what made this weirder is that my grandma wasn't speaking English and neither was the person she was talking to. They where speaking Farsi, her native language. This was the conversation I heard.
Voice- They have been treating you well?
Grandma- Yes they have been treating me very well
Voice- Who is the guy in the hallway?
Grandma- That is my grandson, he's a good kid.
Voice- I think the dog sees me.
At this point I freaked out and made my way back to my room. I thought I was in a nightmare or something and I wanted to wake up. My first though was that I could pinch myself, that didn't work so I tried to poke myself with my knife. I did it pretty hard because it left a mark in my hand that stayed for a few days. I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn't.
I watched the sun light come up through my window with this very uneasy feeling that I was being watched. My grandma lived for another 5 years with us and a few more minor weird things happened but this one always stuck with me.
Nosebleed
I've told this before on here but years ago, me and my family went camping. At this campground, you could rent golf carts as it was rather large and had a lot of trails. So it's late and me and my sister (probably aged 13 (me) and 16(sis) around the time) are driving down one of the trails, our parents and other siblings back at the camp site, and we come to a fork in the path. To the right, is the obviously clear trail, to the left it looks like a trail but there's still quite a bit of brush. We take the left trail.
After about a minute or two down the trail we both started getting a very uneasy feeling. Like that chilling feeling of when something completely shocks you. Out of nowhere, we both hear the unmistakable voice of our mother say "Honey, why is your nose bleeding?"
My sister whipped the cart around and we sped back to the main trail. When we got back to the trail my sisters nose dripped 3-4 drops of blood and stopped. We went back to our camp site and called it a night.
To this day neither of us have any kind of logical explanation as to what possibly happened.
- CarsenAF
The Light
Went out to a secluded camping spot years ago. A buddy had this secret site up in the mountains that he used in high school. Literally middle of nowhere in the mountains, about an hour off main roads with no gps. We got out, lit up a joint and started setting up, when I saw a single light through the trees about 100 yards away. It was moving as if it was a headlamp of some sort. When I pointed it out, my high buddy shouted hello towards it and the movement stopped abruptly with no reply.
I wasn't that nervous until my friend who's spot this was said he'd never saw another soul in this area for all the years he'd camped there.
We called out again, but the light remained motionless. We were all getting a creepy feeling, why it wasn't moving anymore and I casually/jokingly commented that if it was me and I wished us harm, I'd have strapped the headlight to a tree and then snuck around behind us...
Literally at that moment a branch snapped about 30 feet to our left. We immediately threw everything back into the truck without a word and hightailed it out of there without looking back.
Something From The Forest
I was about 17 or 18 at the time and me and my friends (2M 2F) and I decided to go camping. One of my friends knew a guy who had this large territory with a nice house by the lake and the guy was away that day, so he let us use the property. He had a dog as well, who he left at the property since he knew we were gonna be coming to keep him some company. The entrance to the property was fenced off, but the rest was just surrounded by forests and a lake. We decided to set up our tents in a small open field next to the forest.
Fast forward a few hours to after some of the classic camping activities.
We went to bed around 1-2 am and the girls were staying in one tent while me and my friend stayed in the other. Me and my friend BOTH woke up at the same time around 3-4am since we heard some twigs and branches breaking as something was slowly approaching our tent. The footsteps were really heavy so it could not have been the dog.
You could tell that whoever or whatever it was, was very careful about approaching and tried placing their steps carefully so we wouldn't hear the twigs snapping, At this point me and my friend were absolutely terrified. Right before it reached the tent, the dog started barking in the distance and came SPRINTING to our tent.
We heard the mysterious thing run away into the forest and about 5-10 seconds later I poked my head out of the tent and tried to see anything running away, but I only saw the dog coming out of the forest back to us. In the morning we asked the girls if they had heard anything and they said no. God bless dogs. Might've saved our asses.
- TonijsB
Time Loops
My friend experienced these prolonged deja vu experiences that would last days at a time. He referred to them as time loops, and they worried him heavily. I suspected it was just deja vu, being a misfire in the brain that just feels like you've already experienced something when you in fact hadn't.
One day we were talking about it, and as we did I walked towards my piano to play for a while. As I did so he said plainly "Hold me closer tiny dancer"
I hadn't yet pushed a key but that was what I wanted to play. I decided then not to and went towards the tv that had switched to commercial. We sat and as soon as we did, a commercial came on that played Tiny Dancer.
He seemed worried and so did I. There were a bunch of similar instances that occurred after this one. He died in 2017, and we never did figure out what that was.
- envy_313
Static
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After watching "The Ring" in theaters for the first time around 13 years of age, I was incredibly freaked out. Later that night I was up late watching Even Stevens reruns because I couldn't sleep. I shit you not, all of a sudden my tv went to the black and white fuzzy screen like in the movie, with the same noise. I quickly ran to unplug the tv and turn on the light (and my change underwear). This had never happened on this tv before, and never happened again.
Real Estate Photos
This happened when I was younger, I'd say 13 or 14. I was going for my usual walk around the neighborhood when a man in a pickup truck stopped at the corner in front of me, he rolled his window down, pulled out a camera, and took a picture of me.
Royally creeped out, I rushed back home, sneaking through a back yard hoping he wouldn't see me. I went into the garage to tell my parents (they were having a garage sale). They didn't think much of it and told me to go inside if I was so worried about it.
The dude did show up again. This time he was taking pictures of the house across the street from us. The house was for sale so I assumed he was a real estate agent or something... but why would a real estate agent need pictures of a little girl?
Legs, legs,legs
Once I went to a conference with my sister. She is much much younger than me, but we look very alike. There was a "photographer" there who approached us and took a couple of shots. I didn't mind, he looked ok. But then, he became really annoying, photographing us at any point, going after us wherever we went.
At some point, I casually asked to look at the pictures he took from the day, in case i can use one or two. And holy crap. All I see is just a few pictures of attendees at the conference and the two of us from all the angles: our legs photographed from behind, me separately, my sister separately, legs, legs, legs, top. I got so spooked and started to delete everything as far as I could go and just tried to avoid him as much as possible.
My sister was 14 at the time.
Voices
I have an old amp for my guitar in my room. It's pretty messed up and kind of broken. Sometimes the amp will hiss and pop until you shake the input jack to just the right spot.
A couple of times while I was home alone and was playing guitar, I'd hear voices, which freaked me out. I would do a quick run around the house to make sure it was empty and return, by then, the amp would be hissing and popping once more. Another time when I heard the voices of sounded like it was coming from the corner of my room where the amp is, so I put my ear up to the amp and what do I hear: a commercial for some sort of medicine.
Turns out my amp sometimes can pick up radio signals. Moral of the story, check your electronics.
The Top Of The Stairs
This happened back when I was 9 years old. My parents were going out to dinner with friends for the night and hired a babysitter to watch over me while they were gone. We'll call her "Sarah" for the purposes of this story. She was in the 8th grade at the time and just so happened to be the daughter of my 3rd grade teacher. (I was in 4th grade when this happened.) We were in my basement with most of the lights off watching a taped documentary about the 9/11 attacks, which had occurred only about a month or so before this. At some point Sarah said she had to use the bathroom so I paused the tape. While I was waiting for her, I decided to get us a couple of those push-popsicles from the freezer located in the large unfinished storage room in our basement.
The entrance to the storage room was located immediately at the bottom of the steps leading upstairs, so you had to walk right past them in order to get in. For some reason it didn't hit me right away, but as soon as I opened the door to the freezer I remember getting this extremely eerie feeling that I saw something out of the corner of my eye at the top of the steps. As I walked out of the storage room I looked up at the top of the stairs leading to the basement.
I didn't see anything, but I remained standing there looking up at the same spot for a few more seconds. It was dark up there due to the lights being off, but there was still enough light to see what happened next.
I saw a head slowly poke its way out of the left side of the door frame at the top of the steps. The expression on the face looking down at me was something so disturbing and so terrifying there's no way I can fully convey it with words. Their eyes were opened so wide with their upper lip sort of tucked under itself exposing their top teeth with their mouth partially opened, creating this horrifyingly insane face that I can never get out of my mind. I know it's such a cliche, but I really did feel completely frozen with terror.
After a few seconds, still with only their head poking out of the side of the door frame, they screamed at me so f*cking loud with this high pitched (almost feminine) scream. I was so terrified I felt like I was going to pass out.
Then I heard the bathroom door fly open and hit the wall from the other side of the basement. Sarah began frantically calling my name and started running over to me. The head looking down at me was gone. I told her what happened and we turned on all the lights in the basement. Sarah grabbed the phone and called the police.
My basement had a sliding glass door and several windows which all had thin blinds. But a person outside would still be able to see the silhouette of someone standing in front of them if the lights were on. So we sat with our backs up against the back wall so nobody would be able to see us from the backyard.
While Sarah was on the phone with the police we could fear footsteps and crunching leafs coming from outside. Then we heard what sounded like a person with sweaty hands putting her hands on the sliding glass door and rubbing them up and down creating that squeaky "rubbing on glass" noise. Then they started making these moaning noises in an unmistakably sexual way.
I looked at Sarah and she was beginning to breakdown and cry while still trying not to make too much noise. It seemed like forever until we heard the sound of heavy boots coming from upstairs, then the sound of a walkie-talkie. We heard someone yell "(such and such) county police!". We yelled that we were downstairs and two police officers came down.
We must have look absolutely terrified, because they looked at us like they'd seen a ghost. As we all walked back upstairs together there were several other police officers there. One of them was on his hands and knees at the stop of the steps putting his noise towards a puddle of liquid on the floor as if to smell it, and I heard him say "urine". This fucking lunatic pissed himself on my floor.
The police took our statements and stayed with us until my parents arrived. They searched our entire house top to bottom as well as our entire neighborhood and the nearby area, but they never caught the person, and that's what scares me the most. To this day I'm left with more questions than answers. It was all just so fucking bizarre. I'm now 27 years old, and to this day I still can't help but feel severely traumatized by this experience. I still talk to Sarah from time to time, and she tells me she feels the same way.
- Lefty092
Red Square
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Once, I was visiting a friend at her university. We spent the day chilling and hanging out, then for the night, she had invited a couple of her friends from other dorms to meet me and have a drink. I had bought a bottle of vodka, so we were all happily drinking that. Once we were nicely drunk, we realized we had a problem. We had run out of vodka. We scoured the kitchen all together, everywhere- in cupboards, in fridges, on the surfaces..... before the others had the idea of going back to their dorm to pick up an old bottle they had from the night before.
They brought it in, and it was called Red Square vodka (I remember making a point that I'd never seem that brand of vodka before). We drank a bunch of it, and half was left when we started winding down. After a while, we all decided to go to sleep, as we were all very drunk and very tired.
The two friends left, leaving their vodka. I grabbed it off the table, ran after them, and gave it to them, before returning. Me and my mate cleaned up, and sat talking for 10 or so minutes. Suddenly, just when I was about to go to sleep, I look at the table, and see the bottle of vodka. Red square, with the exact amount of vodka we had left, in the exact spot it had been before I picked it up to give it to them. I pointed it out, and we sat there in shock.
There was no way we hadn't seen it. We had scoured the entire room before going to get that bottle, and had sat in the room for hours after, and there it was, smack in the middle of the table. The same bottle. We called up the others to confirm that I had in fact given them back the bottle they brought. I had. And yet, it was sitting here, right informer of me. The same brand, the same amount, the same place.
Sometimes I wonder about that. As soon as I do, everything I think I understand is called into question.
- _AnonOp