
People Share The Creepiest Urban Legends They've Ever Heard
[rebelmouse-image 18355862 is_animated_gif=People seem to love to be scared by movies or stories, but not so much when they think it might actually be true. It's even worse when the thing that goes bump in the night bumps into them.
Reddit user KilljoySadid asked "What's the creepiest urban legend/folklore you've ever heard?"
People shared not only legends and folklore, they shared their own experiences. Here are the twisted tales they had to tell.
Mothman
[rebelmouse-image 18355863 is_animated_gif=Mothman. In a 13 months period between 1965-1966, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia reported seeing a winged beast with big red eyes. The last report was the beast standing on the Silver Bridge. And then the silver bridge collapsed. The beast wasn't reported again afterwards.
I drive through all the time to visit family in NC. Stopped there one night, and I didn't know it was Point Pleasant. I wake up, and look at the window the next morning. BAM. There's the bridge.
Beast of the Isle of Jersey
[rebelmouse-image 18355864 is_animated_gif=On the little island I grew up on, there was a story of a "beast" that would come into your home at night and mess with kids. And it turned out to be true.
He entered homes at night dressed in a rubber mask and nail-studded wristlets. It went on for a period of eleven years from 1960 as the beast roamed the island.
Caught in 1971.
Ghostly Visit
[rebelmouse-image 18355865 is_animated_gif=This is one of those stories that keep your mouth wide open and your eyes bulgy. When my dad was a young adult, before he got married to my sweet mum, he had this very good friend, they met in school and hit it off. This friend we will call John. John's mum had a little store where she sold drinks, food, candy and other groceries, so John was like this cool kid back then if you know what I mean (free food, free drinks if you became John's friend).
So, well he became good friends with my dad and they always met in the shop. God knows what mischief they embarked on being young adults and knowing my dad A LOT. John's mum, sister, and younger brother knew my dad as they had gotten that close.
Then fast forward to a couple of years later, they've both gone their separate ways trying to find their footing being grown men. They hadn't heard from each other in years. So that fateful morning when dad went out and to his surprise saw John at a bus station was really nice... They talked and laughed like old times and then, according to dad, John became sad and said my dad never called on him and his family, that he should have at least gone to check on his mum and sister (sister had a crush on dad then). Dad felt bad and agreed to go say hi to them at the shop. The bus came and he hopped on and went on his way.
A week later he decides to go visit shop, hoping to find John's mum, the sister or John himself. He even bought some gifts (you know, to apologize). He laughed at how foolish he looked with his gifts when he learnt what happened.
So he got there and saw the mum, greeted her and apologized for not coming by to say hi after all these years and she told him it was fine. He proceeded to tell her that he even met John some time last week and they had a good talk, and asked her where he was. This was when the woman looked shocked and white as if she was suffering a stroke. Confused, dad asked what was wrong and when the woman finally came to she said John had been dead months ago and broke down weeping. Dad was even more confused because he had talked to John just last week.
Long story short, John really was dead. He had died in an accident and dad almost fainted when he saw it was true. The experience saddens him and makes him laugh too. He was glad his friend chose to somehow say goodbye to him.
Clownman
[rebelmouse-image 18355866 is_animated_gif=Clownman. I lived right outside Pittsburgh, PA as a teenager, in a little, poor, town called Swissvale. The next communities over are Rankin and Braddock, which are steel production heyday ghost towns that have been plagued with poverty. A strip of woods, lined by a train track follow the river upon which our communities reside. Right next to the river looms the decrepit abandoned steel mill I believe once called Carrie Furnace.
As teenagers do, my friends and I used to cut through the park, across the tracks, and to the river to drink, smoke pot, and hang out. Eventually, we started exploring the steel mill. I loved it. The graffiti and sculptural artists, the wildlife that randomly took over, the bums who made it home, etc all made it a worthwhile adventure. I became comfortable there.
Then my friends told me about an abduction of a teenager whose bloodied body ended up strung up on a set of city steps. The killer was an insane man who dressed as a clown with a horrid, bloodstained mask. "He lives in the woods and in the steel mill. He walks the tracks with a butcher knife he hasn't even bothered to clean. Don't come here alone".
I got into a fight with a boyfriend one night and stubbornly decided to walk alone from the river - across the tracks, and through the woods. I got to the tracks, turned and looked at the steel mill. Further down the tracks I saw a figure. I couldn't see a face, but the baggy pants were rather clown like. I ran like you wouldn't believe. I've never felt fear like that before. It was probably a bum. But who takes chances with an urban legend like that?
In the Trees
[rebelmouse-image 18355868 is_animated_gif=At time of my dad's passing he and my mom owned a cabin up in Oregon by Mount Bachelor. The cabin had been put up for sale since my mom could no longer afford the payments and renting it out was not covering the payments either. The cabin was set to go on the market for sale in less than a month and was in the process of finalizing all the paperwork with the Realtor and lawyer. So for that month's time the cabin was not going to be rented out any longer and was going to be vacant. I saw this as a chance to get a way for a while and clear my head in light of all the things going on. I quit work, packed up my snowboarding gear, grabbed my dog and headed up in my dad's car( that he had willed to me) to the cabin.
My first two days at the cabin were normal. The cabin itself was two stories, bottom story had the living room and a side guest bedroom along with small kitchen. Upstairs had another two rooms along with a walk out balcony attached to the master bedroom. Most of my time there was spent either in the living room, kitchen or master bedroom. Third day came around and I was going through my usual routine of playing with my dog, playing games and watching DVD's. That day it was pretty heavy snow fall so I did not feel like trekking down the hill to the main road in my car and decided to stay in. That's when things started getting a bit weird. In our area there were only two other Cabins adjacent to ours. Both these cabins were currently empty. All other cabins were around a mile away from ours. Surrounding us was mostly forest and very tall pine trees. Around midday while outside with my dog I noticed what looked like footprints in the snow around the area surrounding our cabin. It was still snowing so the foot prints looked semi fresh like someone had been there in the last 20-30 minutes before me...alright...whatever, the prints lead away from my cabin and they disappeared in the snow towards the denser part of the trees.... disregarded the footprints and went back inside.
Nighttime came around and decided to head to bed. My dog Midnight was laying on the bed with me when I noticed his ears perk up to a standstill/listening position. This was followed by him quickly jumping off the bed and running downstairs to the living room. I lay in bed and stayed silent (I was kinda freaked out) and could hear him moving around downstairs back and forth. After around 5 minutes he ran back upstairs to me and started to do his doggy dance for the sign that he wanted to go outside. I can't say no to him so we both went downstairs to the outside driveway for him to do his thing. Only, he didn't want to pee. As soon as we were outside he started to pull on his leash trying to drag me to where he wanted to go. He kept looking into the dense part of the trees were the prints had been earlier. But he also kept sniffing the side of the house and looking up towards the roof. After he figured out that I was not going to go to where he wanted he sat himself down and just stared into the darkness...a bit unusual for him but alright, maybe there are forest animals out there that he wants to chase down.
I did not want to chance anything so I pulled him back inside and we both headed back upstairs. Around half an hour later I was lying in bed when I heard what sounded like hooves walking on my roof. It was only a series of around 6 steps and I rationalized that it could be a pine cone falling from a tree onto the roof or maybe a kind hearted forest animal running around. But here's the thing, the steps seemed to be spaced apart like a man length stride. So it was really freaking me out. Midnight also heard the noise and was quick to run to the balcony door expecting for me to let him out. I considered myself strong enough to handle myself.....So I grabbed my coat and shoes along with my cigarettes and flash light and went out onto the balcony. As soon as I was outside I lit up my cigarette and started canvassing the roof with my light....nothing there. Weird, must have been all my head? What about Midnight hearing the noise? Maybe he was feeding off my fear or paranoia. I started to calm down and relax again.
My eyes started to adjust to the darkness and I kept smoking and just staring at the stars and trees next to our cabin. That's when I saw it. In a tree that was a little taller than our cabin and around 20 feet from the balcony I saw what looked like a man crouched in a squatting position in between two branches. It was squatted on one branch and its arms were extended above its head holding onto the branch above it...what the f' is that? I wasn't sure if I was really seeing this thing and stood just staring there motionless. I noticed Midnight stand up and start pacing behind me and lightly barking at the same time. The thing still did not move. I put my cigarette out and was debating on shining the light in the things direction, but something in my head kept screaming not to. So I walked backwards to the inside of the room and pulled Midnight with me.
Once inside I locked the door and shined the light in the things direction but there was nothing there. I shut the curtains to the door and retreated back to bed. But later on in the night I heard light tapping at the door, like someone was tapping on the glass with their fingers. It was consistent and did not stop for nearly an hour. Midnight seemed to stare at the door but he wouldn't go near it anymore.
The weirdest part was that I had a feeling like someone was inviting me to open the door. But at the same time I kept hearing my dad's voice in my head telling me to stay in bed and not do it. I listened to my dad's voice and just stayed where I was. Passed out eventually and woke up in the morning and everything was normal.
The Whistler
[rebelmouse-image 18355870 is_animated_gif=When I was about 8 years old I was taking my dog for a walk through the neighborhood with my mom. It was maybe 11pm. We live next to a swamp/woods area on the edge of our neighborhood in Lansing, Michigan. I remember it being very silent and slightly windy. From down in the swamp we heard somebody whistling at us. It sounded sort of like a bird, but each whistle was different enough where the lack of consistency made it human-like. The whistle sounded higher, then lower. I can't really describe it. My mom had a concerned, slightly terrified look on her face and grabbed my hand and said that we should go inside quickly. I didn't understand because I was too young, but seeing my mom freak out made me freak out too. After a while, though, I kind of forgot about it.
Two years later, I was taking my dog out again, late at night. There is a large bush that could easily obscure a person behind it just next to the front door. As I was finishing the walk, the whistling noise started again, same pitches, same inconsistent, human-like tones. As soon as I heard it, a chill went down my spine as I remembered exactly the feeling of seeing my mom, terrified, looking down into the swamp at something I couldn't see (maybe she couldn't either). I ran inside as fast as possible. Years went by and I thought about it less and less. I told only a handful of people, and eventually it slipped from my mind.
Fast forward to last summer: I'm 24, started dating my girl Sarah. We moved out to South Dakota for work. For Independence day, we decided to go to Pierre, SD and watch the fireworks along the bank of the Missouri river. There was a free camping spot behind a hospital where you could pitch your tent, hang out, and see the fireworks up the river. We were near the end of the campground and there were very few people around us. As it was getting dark, the fireworks began. They were pretty far away, so the illumination they brought was very little. Thus, we had to sit right at the edge of the river to be able to see them. A huge thunderhead was moving in and a storm was imminent, so the air seemed electric and the wind was picking up. The atmosphere was eerie to say the least.
The police boats herded all the other boats off of the river and had left our area to do that elsewhere. Most of the other campers walked up the river to have a better view of the fireworks, but Sarah and I stayed back and were drinking PBR tallboys and kicking it. Suddenly, we heard the sound of a paddle methodically dipping into the water. We saw a figure steering a canoe about 20m off shore. Sarah decided to go get more beers from the car, leaving me alone to stare at this mystery person. And then, of course, they whistled at me. My entire body was frozen and covered in goosebumps. It was the exact same whistler from my childhood, more than a decade earlier. I looked at the figure, but it was much too dark to discern who it could be. They were wearing a hat. When they were perpendicular to the shore from me, they stopped paddling, turned the canoe to face directly at me, and whistled right at me. I was so frightened I stood up and shouted at them "who are you?!?" They didn't say anything, just whistled a couple more times, turned the canoe 180 degrees, and paddled out of sight.
I'm a videographer, so I already had my camera by my side and was taking video of the fireworks. As the canoe was almost out of sight, I grabbed my camera and got a shot of them whistling as they went away. When Sarah came back from getting beers, she was very confused as to why I was so freaked out. When I explained, she was freaked out a bit too. I was convinced we would both be murdered that night. How did this whistling person follow me, after 14 years, all the way to South Dakota? Was it a coincidence? Why was it the same whistling noise?! Who was that person and where did they go?!?! So many questions still unanswered. To this day I'm more afraid of being outside in the dark where I might hear that whistling again.
Skinwalkers
[rebelmouse-image 18355872 is_animated_gif=One night driving home, I decided to take the scenic route, listen to some tunes on the way. I was driving home on some really empty back roads from the woods, and there's a deer in the middle of the road. I drive slowly back there, because this isn't uncommon. It doesn't move, so I come to a stop. This was no doe, this was huge buck. It looks at me, I look at it. Just as I was about to flash my high-beams, the thing fucking stands up on two legs and takes off full sprint. I sped the f--- away, probably creepiest thing I've ever seen.
I chalked it up to having been really scared, but like I've said I've come across plenty of deer and that never happened. So then I figured, hmm? Maybe rabies? Got home and googled "deer on two legs." That was the first time I'd heard of "skinwalkers"
The Raven
[rebelmouse-image 18355874 is_animated_gif=There was a cemetery about a mile from where I grew up (in the middle of nowhere) that dates back to around 1850. Everyone who died in the area was buried there for awhile, but it's been owned by one family for about 60 years, so they're the only ones who use it now.
One of the graves has a big crow carved out of wood, I think, and painted black. It's ominous as hell and always creeped me out as a kid. It was always there, brooding over the grave.
We drove by one Sunday on the way to church, and the crow turned and looked at me! I almost s*** my pants. It flapped its wings and flew away. I swear to god, that thing was perched there in the same position without moving for years, until one day it flew away. I never saw it again. I still have no idea what the deal was. Was it a real bird that always happened to land in the same spot and perch there perfectly still while I was watching, day after day, year after year? Or was it a carved bird that I hallucinated flying away? Or was it something else?
Either way, I'm not setting foot in that cemetery ever. And I'm still irrationally afraid of crows.
The Widow
[rebelmouse-image 18355875 is_animated_gif=This was a story that was told to campers at one camp site up near some forest mountains when I was in the Boy Scouts.
A long time ago, before this particular camp site establishment was founded, there was a widow who lived in the area, alone with her child. She had lost her husband from some sort of accident, had no job or family to support her. Eventually lost her house to foreclosure, forcing her to live alone up in the mountains as a hermit with her 6 month old baby. She lived off the land, scraping and salvaging what she could, and despite her conditions, was able to take care of her child. Though one unfortunate night, there was a severely disturbed man who had escaped the local asylum, and fled up into the mountains where the widow lived. The man stumbled upon her campsite in the middle of the night, and in his moment of insanity, attacked her and then slashed her throat with a knife. As she laid bleeding on the ground, dying, he approached the crib where her baby was sleeping, and stood over it. After a brief pause, he began hacking the baby's head off, the widow still alive witnessing the act. When the deed was done, he took the baby's head in one hand, and walked off into the night. Using the last ounces of her strength, she crawled toward her child's lifeless corpse, and cradled it's body till she finally passed. When their bodies were finally discovered, the police launched a three day investigation and search for the man who was still at large in the mountains. On the third day, he was finally apprehended, blood and viscera still caked to his arms and chest (all the evidence that he committed the crime), but they couldn't find the baby's head. Did he throw it down a ravine? Did he bury it in the forest? No one knows.
Although decades have passed since the incident, it was said that on calm nights, the widow's spirit would rise up and roam the mountains and the forests, her cries of pain and anguish echoing through the valleys. It is said that she searches for her child's missing head, though because she has been roaming for so long, she had forgotten what it looked like. And in her grief, if she sees you, she'll charge at you screaming and try to take your head off. And only when she tries to put it back on her baby's body will she realize that it's not the right head. So she'll throw your head away, and keep searching for another head till the break of dawn.
Man-o-woods
[rebelmouse-image 18355876 is_animated_gif=In the Northeast U.S., there's a story about Woodspeople or Man-o-woods. When you're driving along a road in the woods and catch a glimpse of what looks like a person in the corner of your eye, but when you look directly at it it's gone, they say you might have encountered a man-o-woods.
They are masters of camouflage and can sense when someone looks at them. They come to a halt so you can't sense any movement. It's speculated that they wear bark, mud, moss, and grasses to blend in. They're supposedly human, but extremely simple-minded; barely verbal. They're very small in stature and avoid contact with civilization mostly. Nobody knows where they live or congregate, but they usually move on if there's too much activity around.
They're also peaceful. Around some farmlands, they will do very simple chores at night or off in the distance. They may sweep a barn floor or stack some wood, but anything more complex is beyond them. They do it in exchange for not bothering them as they sleep in the barn for a night or for some bread and vegetables left out for them to find. They've never been known to steal or kill animals or livestock.
El Silbón
[rebelmouse-image 18355878 is_animated_gif=We have one in Venezuela called "El Silbón" (The Whistler) typical of the wetland plains and prairies regions we call "Llanos".
Description is usually of a very emaciated man dressed in cowboy's (llanero) rags with a wide brim hat that hides his skeletal face. He roams the countryside and patches of bush at night, with drooping shoulders, downcast stare and a heavy bag full of bones and half decomposed remains slung over his back.
There are two distinctive features, however, that make him particular: he continuously whistles, a high chord progression C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C that goes higher in tune with every note - and is unnaturally tall and strong, with some accounts describing him as towering over 6 meters in height.
His origin is not clear, with some tales stating him as an accursed parricide. But whatever he is, he is feared by lone travelers. Especially drunk or unfaithful men that travel through the country. Story has it that his ominous whistle is suddenly heard very loud and close, yet the source cannot be pinpointed - and contrary to logic, when the sound gets lower and appears more distant it is an indication of his immediate proximity.
He will then kill by strangling or by concussion and devour the victims and throw the bones in the bag. Can be seen occasionally wading over the high walls of haciendas/fincas and honest prayer should keep him away.
Wendigo
[rebelmouse-image 18355879 is_animated_gif=This story relates to the Wendigo. A bunch of friends and I were out one night to do some urban exploring, hiking through woods, etc (what else is there to do when you live in bum-fuck nowhere).
We were walking up a hill towards a connecting public park that was just kind of an open field with walking paths surrounded by dense woods. Standing on the edge of a treeline we looked out into the open field and saw what we all thought was a deer. Not that strange , deer are everywhere. We walk out into the field some more while watching the deer. As we get further out into the field this "deer" stands up on two legs and covers about 100 yards in what seemed like only a few strides. This freaked us the f-- out and we left as fast as we could.
I've been in the woods nearly all my life and I've never seen anything like that. Scary.
Jersey Devil
[rebelmouse-image 18355880 is_animated_gif=I lived by the Pine Barrens in New Jersey for a long time, so we would go out and ride the sugar sand trails for hours. One night we're on a deserted stretch of road, sitting in the middle of it with no lights, bullshitting.
All of a sudden, we see this light way down at the end of road where the forest starts up and it becomes a trail. We figure it's not a car, because most cars get stuck in the sugar sand and it's only one solitary light, not a pair of headlights.
At this point, the Pines are silent and pitch black save for this light. We stand up and get to the side of the road, thinking the vehicle should be making it's way to us soon. We wait and wait and wait. The light doesn't move, nothing.
We try to decide on whether or not we should go down and see if whoever it is needs help, but the light goes off all of a sudden and we wait to see if it would come back on. After a while, it doesn't and we become uneasy and decide to leave.
A few days later I told another good friend about our experience and he told me of his mom's story about how the Jersey Devil shines a light that brings in curious people to eat.
White Car
[rebelmouse-image 18355881 is_animated_gif=So about my 3rd year in Japan I move to a small town. I am living way up in the woods north of the little town I work in. It is a narrow winding road with a river on one side and a steep mountain on the other. The road is so narrow that there are places to pull over and wait if another car is coming.
One night I am heading home after work, keeping in mind that if I see a car heading towards me I (or they ) have to pull over. I am heading north with the river on my left and mountain on my right. I get to this place that the road curves to the left with a big rock on the left side of the road, right at the curve. I see car lights of a white Taurus type car to the left of the rock (kind of over the river) coming from the other side and so I pull over to wait for them to pass.
I keep waiting for them to come around the rock (which has a small shrine in it) but they never come. Huh. Weird... but there are a few buildings up there. Maybe they pulled in just as the rock obscured my vision of them. I head home without thinking much about it.
Later that night I get the munchies and the only store was back south in the main part of town. So I am driving south this time and come to that same corner. And I see the same white car, past the rock shrine, coming north towards me. This time I am by the buildings and I pull over and wait for him to pass.
But no car comes.
This is really weird because on the north side there are places a car could disappear but on the south side there is no where to go. Only a steep mountain on one side and a river on the other. As I ease around the bend...nothing. No car to be seen.
So this sticks with me until one day in October I am teaching a culture lesson about Halloween in the local junior high school. The subject of ghosts comes up and I jokingly say, "Hey, I think I saw a ghost! Do you know the road that goes north with the shrine in the corner of...
SCREAMS OF TERROR FROM HALF THE CLASS
Like total panic, girls are crying, guys are shouting, and the Japanese teacher has gone deadly white. Some are literally in the fetal position moaning "stop stop" over and over. I was floored at the reaction.
It seems that the rock was a dangerous place but was unable to be removed because of the shrine without offending the gods there. A white car crashed into it and someone died. People freaked because there was no way I could have known about it.
Poinciana Woman
[rebelmouse-image 18355882 is_animated_gif=I live in Northern Australia and everyone growing up in my town knows of the legend of the poinciana woman.
A quick google search will elaborate into the many variations to the story but the one I grew up to know is that of a woman who was attacked and hanged herself from a poinciana tree when she had discovered she was pregnant. She is said to appear as a beautiful woman to entice men; with long dark hair dressed in a white gown, and is said to be situated at our army reserve.
When I was around twelve, and my younger brother ten, he had been in his room and I was in the lounge room on the computer. He had come barreling out from his room screaming can you hear that! Can you hear that?! before dragging me over to the window.
There was a faint feminine moan/hum, we could hear it moving from the window we stood at, to the one across the room and back in a clockwise direction. The wind had picked up with the noise despite how still the night had been. The sound became so loud that we were on the floor covering our ears crying, when I've brought it up recently my brother agrees it was almost as if the sound had been in our heads. This went on for about ten minutes before abruptly stopping. No wind, nothing.
We found out the next day that our older siblings had been at the army reserve that night before they got home and had been "taunting" the poinciana woman before they left when they heard footsteps assuming it was security.
What creeps me out most is that not long after this happened, I realized that we had a poinciana tree outside of that window.
The Fife Witch
[rebelmouse-image 18355883 is_animated_gif=My mum told me this story about the village where she grew up in Scotland.
The village's earliest known settlement is from 3000BC, so it's old. It's been home to the Picts and the Romans. Nowadays there is a small woodland and the rest of the surrounding land is farmland. The woods used to be much larger, they are what survives of a large forest that almost completely surrounded the village. Legend says the forest was home to witches.
When the forest was being cleared for expanding farmland a lone witch came out of the forest to tell the villagers to stop. She said the trees would not forgive man for their destruction and if the villagers did not heed her words then all of their land would become infertile. And all the women.
Frightened, the villagers agreed but asked for a small part of the forest. A deal was made that this, and only this, land could be cleared. The witch also said that for every harvest of every crop grown there, one sack of produce must be taken to the edge of the forest and left.
This practice was followed for hundreds of years until the villagers abruptly tore down much of the remaining forest to grow wheat and build a mill. Again a strange woman came from the forest into the village and threatened the villagers. She said they had broken the promise and would suffer. This time the villagers took the woman and hanged her. Her last words were that the price was now three sacks.
The man who built the mill was scared and after the first harvest he took three sacks into the woods. Unlike his neighbours his crops did not fail and his wife became pregnant. Always he paid the woods their due and before long he was the richest man in the village and had three beautiful, healthy daughters.
Unfortunately the man grew greedy and thought he'd no longer pay his three sacks. The next morning his youngest daughter went missing. The whole village came to help look for her but the man asked that his men run the mill as normal so he didn't lose any money. There was soon a commotion at the mill, some of the workers had fainted others were crying, some were shouting. The man came to see what was happening. A horrified worker told him they had started up the mill as normal, but blood had poured from between the stones. They had found his missing daughter.
Distraught the man sold his land and fled the village with his family. The mill was torn down and years later a silo was built there. By the 1960's the silo was ancient and crumbling. It was also rumoured to be haunted either by the farmer, his daughter or the witch. Sometimes all three.
This part is my mum's story. One day she and her friends had a bet to see who could spend a night in the silo. One boy who was always boasting of his bravery volunteered. Between them, my mum and her friends conspired to keep this a secret from their parents by lying about camping in each other's gardens. That evening the boy, John, climbed the silo loft and mum and her friend gave him a bag of food, a blanket and a torch. They told him they'd be back in the morning but were actually planning on coming back later to frighten him.
They had waited a few hours and snuck back to the silo and alarmingly they could hear John sobbing and crying for help. They found him quite a way from the silo pulling himself along on his stomach. John had jumped out the silo loft and broken his ankles. He was carried back to his parent's house and taken to hospital. After the inevitable week of punishment my mum was allowed to visit John. She said he still looked as terrified then as he had that night. She asked him what happened. He said he told his parents and the doctors that he fell but the truth was he saw something. Not long after he was left on his own he could hear something shuffling around in the loft. He used the torch to see but there was only empty grain bags. He tried to ignore the noise but finally it sounded like it was moving toward him. When he shone the torch on the grain bags again he saw that they were crawling, dragging themselves along the floor towards him. That's why he jumped.
The silo's long been demolished but they've built homes there now. Eeek!
Photos
[rebelmouse-image 18355884 is_animated_gif=A friend of mine from college had a project for his astronomy class and he needed to take progression pictures of a constellation over a course of a night. He went out to a field in the middle of nowhere and set up his camera on a timer next to his truck, where he slept that night.
Next morning he's looking through his pictures and he sees a picture of the constellation, picture of the constellation...picture of him sleeping in his truck...picture of the constellation, picture of the constellation.
Montana Hitchhiker
[rebelmouse-image 18355885 is_animated_gif=So, I had a football coach back in high school who was also one of my teachers for a semester. He told us one story that freaked us all out pretty bad.
He had a coaching job at a small college in Montana when he was a lot younger and newly married. He said that after practice one evening, he was making his long commute home, and the route ran alongside just fields and fields of hay, grain, whatever. Since it was late summer/early fall, it wasn't even approaching dark yet. His car was an old beat up truck with just a bench seat.
Anyway, he's driving along when he sees a hitchhiker on the shoulder. This being back in the day and in small-town Montana, my teacher pulled over to let the guy in without a second thought. The man was described as wearing a really old, outdated style of suit. He also had a big, stylish hat. This guy looked like he was out of the 40's. My teacher thought it was weird that he was so overdressed, it being super hot out. But maybe that was the only clothing he had.
So the guy gets in next to my teacher without a word. Teacher asks him where he needs to go, and the guy just points forward. Teacher drives on.
Later, my teacher tried talking to the guy, just trying to make simple conversation, but the guy wouldn't speak or even acknowledge him. He just pulled his hat down like he was sleeping.
Out of nowhere, the guy just tips up his hat, looks out the window, and says "Stop the car, Now." My teacher pulls over and lets him out, not wanting to offend a possibly crazy man. The guy stands on the side of the road for a second, and then at a dead sprint, just runs off into the field beside the road, until my teacher couldn't see him anymore (granted the crop was fairly tall). He waits there for a while, thinking maybe the guy had to go to the bathroom or something and didn't want to do it next to the road. After a long enough wait, my teacher gets back in the truck and starts to accelerate back on to the road.
The thing about really old trucks is that they don't accelerate very fast. As my teacher got back on to the road, he looked in his rearview mirror to check for a safe merge. But there wasn't a car in sight. What there was, was the hitchhiker, on all fours like an animal, running (crawling?) after the truck at an inhuman speed. Meanwhile, my teacher is beginning to fish-tail as he attempts to go faster. The whole time his eyes glued on the mirror, watching the man chase after his car.
Eventually, he was able to get up to speed and lost sight of the guy in his mirror. When he was able to stop at a gas station to use a pay phone, he called his wife at home to tell her the story, and to lock up the house. She thinks he's just messing with her, and he had been talking to her coworker about the hitchhiker. When he asks why she would think that, apparently at her office in the town she worked in, one of her coworkers told her a story of the exact same thing happening to them. And it is a well-known urban legend in that town. She thought it was just folks playing with the new girl at work, who had to drive home alone at night.
Anyways, my teacher assured her that he was not lying, and she evidently believes him and can vouch for her side of the story, because she showed up to one of our fundraisers and I asked her about it.
So yeah, now I just avoid lonely roads in Montana.
Deathly Protectors
[rebelmouse-image 18355886 is_animated_gif=In San Antonio, there was a school bus which broke down on a set of train tracks. After getting stuck there, a train immediately barreled down the tracks and before any of the children could get out of the bus, the train and bus collided and tragically killed all on board. It was such a tragedy, that they eventually named all of the nearby streets after these children.
So, as you drive past a mental institute, on roads named after dead children, you come to a hill. On this hill is where the road meets the train tracks. You park on the tracks and put your car into neutral. For an added effect, you can put white powder on your bumper. Then, you wait.
After a little bit, your car randomly starts moving by itself off of the tracks. It's even more odd, because your car doesn't go down the hill, but instead it goes up the hill. If you put white powder on your bumper, you go and look to find tiny fingerprints. Supposedly, those prints are proof of the reason why your car moved by itself off of the tracks...it's because the ghosts of the children who died in the wreck those years ago are what pushed you off of the tracks - to save your car, and your life, from being hit by a train like they were.
Goatman
[rebelmouse-image 18355887 is_animated_gif=Have family down in Alabama. They farm and own a huge amount of land down in Huntsville. Down south cousins suggest that we go out to their camp. We get to the camp and it's obvious something is weird. Air has this weird electric smell like right before a storm, like ozone. All of a sudden some older white guy and a white teenager come out of the bushes. Asks us what we're doing this far back in the woods. Say we're camping out. He tells us we need to be real careful out here and stick together; there was a big animal in the woods. His son, who is my age asks if he can stay and hang out with us. There's me, the white kid "Tanner", five of my cousins, and then four of their friends. In total, there were five girls and six boys. We all were around 15-17.
We head back to the camp. Tanner says he wants to run home and ask his dad if he can come out camping with us. My cousin Rooster says he's going to go with him since it's going to get dark soon. One of the girls also wants to tag along. It's about 7 o'clock, and it's starting to get pretty dark. They take flashlights and take the trail toward Tan's property.
About thirty or forty minutes later, there's the smell of ozone again. We immediately think that it's some kind of electrical malfunction. We search the trailers and nothing is on, and we can all smell it. All of a sudden, we can hear people booking down the path toward us, and Rooster, Tan and the girl all come running into the clearing, out of breath. And they don't even break stride; they all run into the trailer, right by where the fire is.
We all get outta there and into the trailers. They end up calming down; even Rooster is crying his eyes out at this point. The fire is guttering lower and lower, so my other cousins are about to go outside to get the generator out of a shed between the trailers.
Tanner goes, "F' no! Lock the front door, ain't nobody else going outside!" He's been crying too, and his eyes are bloodshot and puffy and his pants are dirty.
He goes on to tell us that they went up to his house. His father said sure, he could go out camping, but to make sure they were careful on the way back, and that maybe they should take one of the hunting rifles just in case. A few days before, one of their pigs had come up, ripped up and half eaten. He had gone upstairs and packed his stuff, and told his dad they would be OK without the rifle because coyotes avoid people. So they started walking back toward where we were camping.
So, Rooster finally stops crying and shaking; the girl already had, but she was just staring out the window with a dumb look on her face. He says they had gotten halfway into the woods toward the camp when they started to hear something in the forest. It was almost pitch black by this time, so they weren't sure at first what it was. The girl says that she heard something in the bushes right off the trail and they all beamed their flashlights over there and there was someone standing back in the woods in a little hollow. Rooster said they shouted at him and told him that he was scaring them.
He says that's when he realized that the guy was facing away from them. So they keep walking, and they start smelling the nasty coppery ozone smell. They say that they look off into the forest on the opposite side, and it's a dude standing in the forest, backward slightly closer to the path. So now they start power walking and Tan keeps going, "I should have taken the rifle." As they're telling the story, the smell is still super strong even inside the cabin.
They say that after they started walking faster, a kind of low gibbering had started coming from both sides of the wood. And as they started booking it back to the trailer, the girl said she had flashed her flashlight out into the woods to the side of them and had seen something jerkily walking itself through the woods. The gibbering just got louder and louder, and when they could see the light from our camp fire, something had come out of the woods about 40 yards behind them onto the track, and they had just flat out ran as hard as they could to the trailer.
All of a sudden, my other cousin, Junior, starts going on about how he went to school with a native kid that was telling him about the 'Goatman'. He just keeps going on and on about how it's the 'Goatman,' and how we're in his woods and blah, blah, blah. To sum it up, it's basically a man with the head of a goat and he can shape shift and he gets among groups of people to terrorize them. It's also supposed to be kind of like the Wendigo, and it's bad mojo to even talk about it and even worse if you see it.
So all of a sudden the smell just goes away. Nothing else weird happens that night. And we stay another night, and for the main part of the night nothing happens. At about 1 in the morning, we're outside getting drunk and telling ghost stories. As someone is finishing some spooky story -- I don't remember what about -- the smell comes back. It's so strong, that one of the girls literally starts vomiting.
We all go back inside, and we're standing around. We end up sitting in there for a while; the smell is just as strong, and we're terrified and all huddled in this camper. We end up cooking brats for everybody because nobody wants to go outside. It's one of those packs with four brats. We have a total of 3 packs. I grill them up on the stove and give everybody a hot dog. I get mine. After a while, one of my cousins gets up and goes over to the pot to get another one.
He starts grumbling about about how I get two brats and everybody else only got one, and I look at him like he's stupid. I tell him that everybody only got one because there were only 12 brats, if he wants more he should open up a new pack and cook some more.
That's when the girl that had been out with Rooster and Tan just starts screaming, "OH JESUS, OH LORD, GET IT OUT!" She's crying and shivering, and then it dawns on the cousin standing up what is wrong. Me and him both glance around the room, and then I feel my heart sink. I run out of the cabin and the girl runs out with us. The trailer door is banging against the side of the trailer as everybody books out of the cabin.
One of my cousin's friends ask us what was wrong. I start counting us. There's only 11 now. My cousin verified, there had been twelve people in the cabin. But being that everybody didn't really know each other well, nobody had really noticed the whole time that there was an extra person. And then I realized earlier that I had kind of noticed something was off. You know how when you're just having a good time that you don't sweat the small stuff, and you don't always keep track of certain stuff? I'm dead sure that someone else had been in the trailer with us, and that they had been there for at least a day, eating with us. What makes it worse is, I could figure out which one because I don't think anyone ever actually interacted with the other person/the Goat-man.
Hard Pass: The Most Overrated Places To Have Sex
"Reddit user sasukelikescarrots asked: 'what do you think are some overrated places to have sex?'"
Certain locations really damper on a good time.
For instance, it's not fun to do it in cramped spaces.
Looking at you, airplane bathrooms and backseat of cars.
Many cannot be bothered to maneuver in some odd location.
Beds. Beds are sexy.
Always were, always will be.
Redditor sasukelikescarrots wanted to hear about the places we should all avoid when getting it on, so they asked:
"What do you think are some overrated places to have sex?"
Elevators.
One... I'm claustrophobic.
Two... there is not enough time.
Fatal Attraction lied to us y'all.
The Worst
"The beach is the worst."
thotsnprayers68
"I hate sand so much so I agree with you."
Millionsmoney
Let Alone Two
"Airplane bathroom. Too cramped, and smells gross. Keep your Mile High Club pendant."
REUBG58
"I was thinking this too. I am also willing to bet that 99% of people who claim to be in the Mile High Club are lying through their teeth. Seriously, there's barely any space in those lavatories for one person, let alone two, and it's a little hard to get aroused when you're worrying about turbulence and people waiting to use the toilet knocking on the door."
Fresh-Hedgehog1895
Just Why?
"Public toilets... Why would you even..."
Reznik81
"The only reason I can think of is being a kid of an overprotective parent in high school and you want to desperately get it on with your boyfriend. Public restrooms are the only option sometimes. (Experience)."
I-couldbeadog
Too Wet
"The pool and the shower."
GrilledStuffedDragon
"I hate the shower. I think it was a comedian who said, 'I’ve never been having sex and thought you know what would make this better… If one of us was freezing.'"
"I personally like the shower cause my partner likes to be in the water and I like being cold so it works out cause sex gets me pretty warm anywho."
BOOboUraisin23
"The shower is for foreplay, not sex. Pretty much every time we shower together it’s a given that it will lead to sexy time, whether we were planning on it or not/in the mood or not…. intimacy and touching, etc.,?…. we just B-line for the bedroom. But sex IN the shower?… no."
Jibber_Fight
And a Happy Meal?
"McDonalds ball pit…"
ami2weird4u
"They have a cleaning machine that can clean all the balls and it's all sanitary. I think that could be a really good time"
copper_basket
Have some decorum people.
I'd go to Burger King.
Check Please
"The men's room at Applebee's during Happy Hour on a Tuesday."
Thiccaca
"Oddly specific."
some1sbuddy
Bad Idea
"Car sex."
Shrikeangel
"I spent my teens and early 20s having sex in cars. About a year ago (I'm almost 40) the wife and I are out and in the mood so let's have sex in the car like we used to. Bad idea, how the f**k did we used to have sex all the time back there, now it's uncomfortable and I got a cramp in my leg."
Psyco_diver
"Yes. The handful of times I’ve tried this, it’s always been so cramped and you need to keep repositioning or someone bumps their head. I guess it could be fine if you had one of those huge American tanks, but cars here in Australia never have that much room inside."
StellarSandDweller
Oh Lord
"Churches and graveyards. I've done it in both, and it's not really that great."
filly_fanatic
"Never in my life have I thought either of those locations sounded like a fun place to have sex. I guess if you have a kink for getting caught then it's as good as any because there's this perception of it being sacrosanct, but it just seems at best uncomfortable and at worst going to get me on a registry somewhere.
"hopeishigh
The Waves
"Waterbeds. One of my GF's had one, and I *hated* it. It's impossible to get traction or the proper angle."
disturbednadir
"Good call. There’s nothing to push off of. Nowhere to plant knees either. A true s**t show."
SocialMediaSoooToxic
"I knew there was a reason why I forgot about my waterbed! Thanks for reminding me about that abomination!"
TinyCamp7743
Wow. I mean. Y'all have really gone out and experimented fully.
Congrats.
Sometimes real-life experiences can be just as bone-chilling and inexplicable as a horror movie. From creepy run-ins with strangers to ghost-like haunting encounters in the middle of the night, these Redditors share their terrifying ordeals of wanting to run for their lives. Whatever their story, it's something they'll never forget.
A Narrow Escape
I’m a criminal defense investigator. I had a manslaughter case involving two brothers. The one accused of the manslaughters was very autistic, and his brother was a schizophrenic. The schizophrenic brother lived in a potato shack in the middle of the desert.
I needed to talk to him several times throughout the course of the investigation, and since he didn’t have a phone or electricity, I had to drive several hours out to his house and yell his name from the fence line until he came out of the shack. Weird, right? It gets even worse.
This investigation lasted for several years, and over time I developed a rapport with the schizophrenic brother, and I got to liking him. He would talk your ear off about aliens with golden eyes and the underground tunnels that connect all the Walmarts in the country, but he was pretty entertaining, and part of me wonders how much of it was for "show".
Eventually, the schizophrenic brother got a girlfriend who's not only a tweaker, but also mistook his schizophrenia for narcotic-induced psychosis. When she was in prison, I talked to her a few times when she wasn't intoxicated, and she was surprisingly charming and insightful. But things took a horrifying turn when she got out.
The last time I went to see the schizophrenic brother, it was a dark winter night. His tweaker girlfriend was there. She was lurking in the shadows and stared daggers at me the entire time I was talking to him. After our meeting, I started walking back to my truck to leave.
A minute later, he came running out and told me that he wanted to show me something in his shack. He had never invited me inside there before, and I was not thrilled by the prospect. The whole thing felt off to me, so I told him I had to get going, and started the truck.
The look of relief on his face when I declined to go inside convinced me that his girlfriend was waiting behind the door with a hammer or something. A few months later, I learned that she had shot him in his sleep and stashed his body in an old refrigerator. She had since plead guilty to manslaughter.
A Burning Realization
My partner and I were fighting a house fire. After realizing that our feet—through concrete-soled boots—became really hot, we decked the heck out of there.
Hot feet means that you’re standing above a fire. As fire burns upward, it weakens the floor beneath you. So we were about to plummet into a basement fire.
A Hair-Raising Moment
I was hiking with some buddies near the top of a mountain in Colorado. Suddenly, some bad weather started to roll in. But we were only 15 minutes away from the summit, so I went ahead while the others went back down.
As I was just about to reach the top, I felt static in the air and the hair on my head started to stand up. I immediately started to panic because I thought I was about to get struck by lightning. Naturally, I started to run down the mountain without ever getting to the top. I’m not sure if I was going to get struck but I sure as heck wasn’t sticking around to find out.
One Step Away From Disaster
While exploring an abandoned high rise with my friend, he suddenly grabs me from behind by the collar. After swearing at him, "What the bejeezus"?! he then ordered me to look down and I saw that I was about to step into an elevator shaft. The drop was about 20 floors to a concrete bottom with broken metal rods sticking out. We then went home. He saved my life that day.
Gruesome Discovery
I was solo camping in the woods during a phase where I wanted to be a survival expert. I hiked out, miles away from any roads or buildings, built a shelter and then hiked back the way I came.
Less than a mile away from my camp, I found something utterly terrifying. It was a slaughtered coyote, decapitated, gutted, and laid out like a sacrifice or something. The eyes were gouged out and it was strung across a big, flat rock—a rock which I used as a marker on the way in, so I knew it hadn't been there a day before.
I ran out of there as fast as I could, probably 10 miles back to my house. I still have no idea who would have done that, but I knew I didn't want to run into them in the woods alone.
Too Close For Comfort
My wife and I were camping on the Oregon coast and jogged through a guy's campsite that he'd set up on the trail down to the beach. On the way back to our campsite, I jogged a little bit ahead of my wife and she was really upset that I didn't stay with her. She said the guy looked really creepy.
We got back to Eugene and got a call from the state law enforcement officer asking if we saw anything strange (we were registered with the campground so they had our contact details). We gave an update of the guy camping above the beach and asked why they were calling us. They said someone had drowned an off duty female officer in a tidal pool, cut their tent lines, and took her car.
It turned out to be a homicidal maniac who'd been slaughtering people while traveling across the country. They caught him in southern California a few weeks later.
We definitely got the "dodged a bullet" feeling.
This Isn't A Drill
There was a lockdown at my school that wasn't a drill. It ended up being a false alarm since the guy who was armed never ran into the school, just running in proximity to the school.
But it sure was scary and I think what made it scarier was knowing that you couldn't escape. You couldn't leave without the risk of getting shot. You just had to stay in the classroom and pray that the shooter was dumb enough to believe that the room was empty after the teacher turned off the lights and closed the blinds.
You literally had nowhere to go or to hide.
Playing With Fire
One night, I was walking home from work, along a busy street. A man drove up beside me and told me that he was a firefighter. He said that a storm was approaching and I should get into his car. I said, "No, thanks" and kept walking. He kept insisting. Finally, I was about to walk past a hotel but he pulled partway into the hotel parking lot, enough to block my path.
Thankfully, the hotel guard saw how uncomfortable I looked. As soon as the hotel guard took a step towards us, the guy peeled out and sped away. That just confirmed that he was not a firefighter and I would have been in danger had I gone with him. Scary.
A Barking Mad Encounter
As a trucker, I've learned to find some creative ways to park. One night, I was at some random back road in the middle of nowhere in Texas. I found what I call a 'make-a-spot' area. I was alone with my dog. I decided to park for a 30 minute break.
When my dog got out to relieve herself, I realized that trouble was heading our way. My dog started getting really agitated—growling and snarling. I saw that off in the field next to my truck, there was a red light about six to eight feet in the air. And it was moving around very slowly.
It was deathly silent except for my dog who was barking maniacally. As the light got closer, she went totally ballistic. So I decided that I had seen enough and headed back to the truck. At this time, we were about 20 feet away from the trailer.
When we reached the truck, I heard a large crash coming from the brush. My dog became even more difficult to control and my adrenaline told me to run!
I opened the passenger door, tossed my dog into the truck, climbed in, and just when I slammed the door shut, something crashed into my truck. I have no idea what it was, but it made the whole trailer rock side to side.
I drove away as fast as I could without even putting my seat belt on. I drove for about 30 miles and only when I reached a gas station in a small town did I feel like I exhaled.
A few days later, I was walking up to my truck and noticed that the entire side of the sleeper of the truck was bent a little inwards. You could only see it when the sun hit the side at a particular angle, but the bend was definitely there.
A Sight To Remember
When I was a teenager, I was woken up in the middle of the night by some chaos going on in my house. I came out of my room and was shocked by what I saw. There was my dad, tearing through the house wearing nothing but his Red Wings jersey. He was holding his semi-automatic and headed towards the front door.
My mom swept me out of the way and locked us in my sister's room. Apparently, someone tried to break into my window but didn't realize that my parents' window was right beside mine. My dad woke up, grabbed his piece, and chased the dude down the street.
He was completely unclothed, running with a weapon at 3 am. He was screaming, "I'm going to find you, you schmuck"! I'm pretty sure every neighbor called emergency by that time.
Eventually, law enforcement officers came, with their helicopter–the whole nine yards. What they told us chilled me to the bone. It turns out the dude was a wanted felon. He had stood outside my window long enough to have puffed half a pack of smokes. The only reason he didn’t get into the house was because we had storm windows.
That's what he was trying to pry off when my dad woke up. They did eventually find him hiding in a neighbor's shed. At the time all this happened, my dad was in his 30s and was 6'2". He was a construction worker with a shaved head and a goatee. He was very menacing looking when he wanted to be.
Thank god no one had security cameras at the time because the image of this angry, unclothed man, running down the middle of the road in work boots, already kept the neighbors' tongues wagging for MONTHS. This happened in the mid 90s.
Preying On Fear
My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and had built a pretty nice fire. It was about 2 am and we were sitting there hoping the missing folks would wander into camp.
I heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprises there as we were in the middle of the woods. I was used to animals stalking around outside my camp. I knew there were two animals, one on either side of us. It was at about that point when we heard a bird-sounding chirp. It came from about the same area I figured one of the animals were. Then I heard another, from the opposite side.
I immediately realized we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It had a camper shell and was outfitted for truck camping.
Heart-Stopping Moment
My father-in-law suffered a heart attack on my back deck while we were working on something together. My wife and kids were out at the time. It was just the two of us and he actually passed in my arms.
I was talking to the emergency operator and could hear the sirens approaching. I also knew that my wife and kids would be returning home shortly and I would have to explain to them what had happened while they were gone.
I continued doing CPR on him but he hadn't taken a breath in two minutes and had no discernible pulse. I still can't believe what happened next.
Seconds later, he takes a massive breath and comes back to life. The ambulance arrived and rushed him to the hospital. He miraculously made a full recovery.
Those two minutes where I was certain he was gone and I'd have to deal with my wife and kids arriving and seeing it...absolutely chilled me to the bone.
Face Of Fear
Back when I was in college, I used to drive up the Oregon coast on the weekends. When I got tired, I would just sleep in my car. During one of these trips, I woke up from a nap while sleeping in the driver's seat. Something just didn't feel quite right.
It was just dusk and the light was fading pretty quickly. I yawned and stretched, and as I turned my head to the side, I caught a face ducking down below the rear passenger window. I hit the lock button just to make sure that the doors were locked but in my panic I accidentally unlocked the doors briefly.
I scrambled around and managed to lock them again. I stared at the window for a few minutes, knowing that someone was crouching just out of sight. Eventually, when I started the car, I thought I heard a scuffing sound. Whoever it was didn't reappear, but that was enough for me.
I cleared out of there as fast as I could, pulling back onto Highway 101. When I glanced back, I saw a bald figure in a red t-shirt with something wrapped around his face. He booked it into the woods from the side of the road.
That was the end of that weekend trip. I drove the two hours back to my dorm room with white-knuckled hands locked on the steering wheel. I had to pull over a few miles down the road to deal with the adrenaline shakes.
Bone-Chilling Finds
I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains, on a trail I knew pretty well. I was leading a group of 20 or so middle school-aged kids from the camp where I worked. As I turned a corner on the trail, I saw a jaw bone belonging to a deer.
It was pretty cool, so I showed it to the kids. There wasn't any flesh on it, so I assumed it was pretty old. A hundred feet further down the trail, I found another, a femur maybe. This one looked a little fresher. Further down again, I found yet another bone.
At this point, I was getting a little nervous, so I explained to the kids that we should probably turn around and head back. My students all groaned because they wanted to see more interesting stuff, but I herded them down the trail and back to camp.
Two days later, we got a call at the camp that someone had been mauled in the area by a mountain lion. Apparently, a mountain lion had set itself up in the caves on the cliffside and had gotten angry when someone got too close.
I'm glad we left the area when we did, even if my students would have loved to have seen more slaughtered stuff.
Deal Gone Wrong
One night, a couple of years back, I was driving an Uber and had just picked up four guys from a club. As I was listening to them talk, I realized that two of the guys had met the other two at the club and were on their way to get coke from one of their cousins.
There was an odd vibe and some of the conversation didn't seem to make any sense, but I was hyper aware that these intoxicated dumbasses were heading with two strangers to a drug deal—and I was the one driving them to it!
I did not want narcotics in my car, and I was very aware that we might be on the way to an ambush. If we started heading anywhere remote or sketchy I had to figure out how to end the ride.
The two wannabe dealers kept trying to get in touch with their cousin via cellphone. I dropped them off at an apartment just off a main street. After both of them left the car to go into the building, I just said to the two other guys, "Should we leave", and we did.
I still don't know if it was just a ploy for a free ride, or if the "dealers" were too inebriated or dumb to pull off a basic coke deal, or if it was something nefarious that didn't finish. I shall never know.
Close Your Eyes
It was July 27, 2002. I was at the Sknyliv air show with my dad. I had just turned five years old the day before. It’s one of my most vivid memories from my childhood—and the worst memory of my life.
When disaster struck, the pilot managed to land 10 meters away from me and my dad. He was on his knees, his parachute dangling in the wind and I remember him repeating, "What have I done"? over and over. I didn’t understand much of what happened. My dad only said for me to "Close your eyes, we have to go".
Years later, my dad told me that we would have gone further into the crowd but I refused because my shoelaces were untied. Him kneeling to tie my shoes was the only thing that saved us.
It wasn’t bone-chilling at the time but when I imagine what my dad witnessed that day, I get goosebumps.
Time To Move
I was 27-years old and dating a girl who lived in a crappy part of Hollywood, Florida with her young kid. The dad ended up going to prison for assault. The place she could afford was totally run down, with all sorts of addicts and strange folks living in the units around her.
She hated the place but she couldn't move in with me because I was just renting a room where I lived. It was still better than living with her parents. After my shift ended at 9 pm, I picked up some food then went to her apartment. I had no idea I was walking into my worst nightmare.
We were there for about an hour, just sitting on the couch watching her kid playing with a box when the banging started on the door. She looked terrified and thought it was her ex. I was freaked out too, because of all the stories I had heard about him.
The guy started cursing and hitting something against the door—hard. We didn't even want to look out the window or through the peephole in case he was armed. We called emergency but the operator was having a tough time hearing us.
Then we heard another woman screaming and cursing. He had the wrong door. We heard them start fighting, then things smashing, and more screaming. It sounded like she was spitting and we heard punches. We weren't sure who was getting hurt but it was loud.
The emergency operator finally told us that help was on the way, but this horror show was far from over. My girlfriend's kid got scared and started screaming. That's when the man outside started banging on the door again. He thought his kid was with us and shouted that he was going to hurt us for taking his kid.
My girlfriend completely broke down at this point and started crying. About 10 minutes later, law enforcement officers arrived. They apprehended both the man and woman and took our statements.
My girlfriend moved out a of couple days later and we ended up renting another crappy apartment but in a much better area.
Close Encounter Of The Strangest Kind
When I was eight years old, I lived in a trailer park. Most of my neighbors were fine but there were some sketchy folks around.
One day, I was really bored and asked my parents if I could walk up the street to my friend's house. He didn't live very far away but his house was still out of sight of my parents's trailer. Since it was the middle of the day, and we knew a lot of people on our street, my parents said yes.
So here I am, an eight-year-old little girl walking alone to my friend's house. Just as I got out of sight, I saw a strange man walking towards me straight ahead. I immediately became guarded because I was alone and also had never seen this dude before.
I kept hoping he would veer off somewhere away from me but instead, he kept coming towards me. I noticed his eyes were locked on me and he was smiling. I got the creeps but I was pretty close to my friend's house by now. That's when I made a bone-chilling realization.
I looked around and saw that nobody else was outside to witness if anything were to happen.
When he finally got close enough to me, he said, "Hey, do you think you could take your shoes off? Please, I want to see your feet". And I said, "Huh? What"? So he asked again to see my feet!!! That's when I turned around and sprinted as fast as I could back to my trailer. I was terrified.
Dangerous Rendezvous
When I was about four years old, I was playing alone in my front yard. My parents were both inside the house keeping an eye on me, but you couldn't see them watching me from the outside. We lived in a very rural area where maybe five cars would drive by a day.
I remember a man pulling up in front of our house where I was playing. He rolled down his car window to call me over. Even at that age, I knew I wasn’t supposed to get too close to this guy.
I took a few steps forward and he said, "Hey, can you tell me how to get to such and such place"? I’m FOUR. So I’m like, "Huh"? And he repeated himself, "I was just wondering if you could give me directions to this place".
The next thing I know, my dad storms out of the front door asking what on earth this dude wanted. The man mumbled something about needing directions and sped away.
Tracks With Eyes
My friend and I were walking on some train tracks while talking about mundane stuff. There were ditches on either side of the tracks. As we were walking, I glanced down and made eye contact with a guy who immediately started climbing up from the ditch, towards us.
I told her to run and we both got the heck out of there. We decided that we weren't going to do that again.
Vibes Don't Lie
My family and I were recently traveling all over Costa Rica. We love nature but we fear and respect it at the same time. We knew that there were crocodiles on the west side in Bahia Ballena. By talking to the locals, wherever we traveled, we learned of the dangers in the areas. Often, it was snakes we needed to be concerned with.
That day, we went to the east Caribbean side to Playa Negra. We unloaded our things on the beach near a ravine. I kept looking at the ravine and had a very unsettling feeling. I knew that crocodiles can look like logs and remain still until they are under attack. I kept staring but couldn't see anything.
For whatever reason, I just couldn't get myself to relax. I told my husband and we both became hyper aware. I checked the internet to see if there were any crocodiles in the area. The search results said that none had been spotted in nearly 10 years.
I then went on my Facebook group and everyone said not to worry about anything and that only in extreme drought do crocodiles show up in this place. But for whatever reason, I just couldn't calm down. We have a toddler so I was extremely cautious and nervous.
Finally, I apologized to my family about ruining their beach day but told them we couldn't stay. We ended up leaving and decided to do another activity. Two days later, we discovered why I'd been so afraid—and it was tragic.
We were at a restaurant and it was all over the news. A little kid about eight years old was seriously injured by a crocodile at the same area where I had those strange feelings. I almost passed out. I couldn't tell you if it was the exact spot since it was a rather large beach.
But it didn't matter. It could've been my family. I'm not easily frightened by things but when my vibes and intuition tell me to listen up, I don't try to rationalize it. I just listen. My husband totally trusted me and didn't complain, which makes me so happy. He's just such a good man.
Always listen to your gut even if you can't completely logically back up your reasons.
We Aren't Alone
About eight years ago, a friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia. When we got to about the third floor, I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell. It was a tripwire that swung an axe down from the ceiling.
Suddenly, we heard someone from up above shout, "YO"!
Time to go.
I've never covered as much ground so quickly as I did that day. I think we got two or three blocks away before we realized that we were riding each other's bikes.
Did You See That?
My mom's best friend owns a farm about a half hour from where I grew up. We would spend nearly every weekend there to help with the upkeep and to care for our horses.
As the sun was setting this one day, you could just feel the weather changing. The clouds were rolling in, the wind, the humidity, and the greenish tint outside all indicated that a storm was brewing.
Right after supper, it started to rain really hard. There was lots of wind and lightening, too. As I looked out the window, I thought I saw something strange above the barn on the far side of the yard. I was petrified. It looked like rotation in the clouds—and it started to lower down.
I pointed this out to my dad. He said that it was just rain bouncing off the roof of the barn. We both looked out for a moment and clearly saw it suck back up into the clouds. I got goosebumps. We looked at each other for a second in disbelief, then he shrugged, and went back into the living room. Meanwhile, I sheltered in the bathroom.
The next day, we saw in the news that an F-4 tornado ripped through a small town about 24 miles from where we were. I got chills when I saw the news reports.
Hissing Galore
We were tearing down an old outbuilding/office on my in-law's farm. While trying to save as much of the lumber as we could to reuse for a chicken coop, we pulled a large piece of plywood off one of the walls and discovered that the insulation was crawling with hundreds of snakes. These snakes immediately started slithering out of the wall towards us in a writhing horde.
We had seen rattlesnakes on the property before so I didn't wait a second longer. Never in my life had I moved as quickly as I did at that moment. I pretty much teleported into the back of my father-in-law's pickup. One minute I was standing in the way of hundreds of agitated snakes and the next, I was wondering if I could fit through the little rear window of a Ford F150.
Chills In The Night
I work as a private contractor and was working an overnight security gig in the middle of a large ranch near the border of South Texas.
My partner and I had been patrolling for hours without anything happening. We stopped for a few minutes to talk to each other when suddenly, we heard some cracking in the brush. Then we saw something that made our blood run cold.
There was an infrared light moving through the brush, freeze, then vanish. Obviously, we couldn't leave the job site, so we sat in painful silence for hours with rifles on the brush line. We never saw or heard anything else. It sent chills throughout our bodies.
Theoretically, no one else should have been running equipment like that in our area, and yet—here we were all huddled up.
Run For Your Life
I was 10 years old and living on Main Street in a small town. There were just a long row of shops on either side of the road. It was midday and I was only two blocks away from home.
An old red pick up with a 20-year old driver, and four other 20-year-olds drove by. They gestured over to me, but before I could respond, all four men hopped out at once, and darted for me. I had a 30 foot head start, and sprinted for my life.
I ran until I found a small crack, about 7 inches wide, between two buildings. I managed to squeeze in between the buildings just as the men caught up to me. One of them reached into the crack and touched my shirt but he couldn't get a good grasp of me. They were all too big to fit in the crack so they went around to the other side to get me.
By then, I had broken the line of sight and sprinted to a nearby place to hide. I stayed in a bush for over an hour—terrified. I don’t know what they wanted from me, and I’m glad I didn’t have to find out. I never felt safe again, and always thought they would come to my home to get me.
Beastly Encounter
My best friend and I were heading down a mountain after hiking about 20 km from scouting bighorn sheep. It was a couple of days before opening day of hunting season. We were hiking along the bank of a dried up riverbed and heading back to the truck when his dog suddenly stopped cold in his tracks.
We thought he had just heard a squirrel or some other little animal, so we ignored it and kept walking.
All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, a black bear got to about 25 feet from us and BOLTED off into the bush so fast that he was probably over 100 feet away before I would have even been able to get the bear spray out of the holster on my belt. I was startled and petrified.
I just want to point out that if you and a bear startle each other, and he decides to attack, you are 100% doomed. I have never seen something so big move so fast in my life.
Stranger In The Night
It was the summer of 2019 and I was house sitting for my dad while he was away for work. The house is in the middle of nowhere and isn't easily found on Google maps. When friends come to visit, I would usually have to drive to the top of the nearest paved road then lead them down to my dad’s place.
One night, after having a few drinks with friends, I was dropped off at the side of the house by a friend who lived close by. It was easier for him to do that so that he could simply turn around and drive off. I walked up the stairs and got into the house with my key through the side door that led to the kitchen.
The kitchen overlooked the front garden but the front door was nestled into a small porch and wasn’t visible from where I was at the time. I was making tea in the kitchen when I came face to face with my worst fear.
I saw movement in the front garden. I immediately turned off the lights. That's when I saw a man trying to look into the kitchen windows from the garden. He walked around to the back of the house, and cupped his hands to the wall-to-ceiling glass doors, trying to look in.
I wasn’t completely clear-headed that night but remember thinking that this was all a dream—in reality, it was a living nightmare. The man couldn’t see me in the dark but I was hiding behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining room/lounge area. Stupidly, I had left one of the glass doors closest to the front door unlocked. He started to enter through that unlocked door.
It was completely pitch black. He didn't realize that I was about 10 feet away from him. I had already called the friend who had dropped me off as I knew he would still be nearby whereas law enforcement officers would have taken at least 30 minutes to get to the house. I also knew that my friend's parents were ex-militia and kept artillery in a safe in his truck.
I remember just wanting to RUN and get the heck out of the house as soon as possible. But if I ran, I’d be alone in the middle of nowhere with a deranged man chasing after me. The situation felt like something out of a movie and not real at all. I was acting on adrenaline.
As the guy walked further into the house, I stepped out and pulled a blade on him—again, I was intoxicated and realized that it was a very stupid thing to have done. He tried incoherently to make conversation but I got him out of the door just as my friend pulled up with his piece.
The dude bolted to his car that was parked in an area concealed by trees on the property. It turns out he was the gardener. He had been keeping tabs on me. He knew that I was alone and house sitting for my dad while he was out of town. This guy was VERY high on opiates—he admitted this while I had the blade out.
Apparently, he had been waiting on the front porch for me to come home. Except that night, I used the side door, something I rarely ever did. If I hadn’t used the side door that night, I have no idea what would have happened.
I also have no idea what would have happened if my friend hadn’t come back when I called him, because the guy started getting aggressive and tried to come at me right when my friend got arrived.
We like to joke about it now, but it was the worst scenario I have ever experienced where I wanted to just run and get the heck away.
Trust Your Instincts
I was in medical school at the time. I was upstairs in the lab with a friend, practicing our surgical skills. The building had two staircases: a main enclosed staircase that led to the lobby and classrooms and another one that was outside that was only ever used in fire drills. It wasn't a fire escape but an older entrance that led into the lab classroom.
When it was time to leave, I grabbed the door handle to the main stairs that led into the lobby but was immediately filled with absolute fear and anxiety. My intuition kept saying, "Get out! Not that way"! For the first time in three years, I said. "Let's take the outdoor stairs...". My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit.
The next day, we discovered that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, a disgruntled classmate pulled a weapon on the staff and students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He was kicked out of the program due to poor grades and simply snapped.
My friend still talks about the incident and tells people to always trust their instincts.
Stranger Danger
When I was eight or nine years old, I was playing outside when a guy pulled up and called me over to his car. He pulled out a map and asked if I could hop inside and help give him some directions. My mom had put the fear of being hurt by strangers into me early so I screamed at the guy and he sped away really quickly.
I ran inside and told my mom what had happened. It was flat-out scary. I'm so glad she was smart enough to instill us with the dangers of following a stranger. I may have become another missing child had I gotten close enough for him to get a hand on.
Baffling Occurrence
Many years ago, I was working at the Cincinnati airport as a ramp agent for the now-defunct Comair Airlines. I was working to depart a plane by myself, so I was hustling around to get the baggage door closed, signaling the pilot on engine startup procedures, and I still had to unplug the power cart and marshal the plane out.
The power cart was a diesel generator, parked behind the starboard wing. The cable plugged into a jack on the plane’s belly. The pilot signaled me to disengage it, so I acknowledged him, and ran from my position in front of the nose, out toward the wingtip, and back in, following the trailing edge of the wing.
The exhaust from the turboprop engine was several hundred degrees, so you had to duck under the jet blast to reach the jack. I shut off the power cart, reached the jack, unplugged it and threw the cable clear, latched the door and then started running back toward the nose to get the plane rolling. Hurry, hurry, hurry…
I ran only a few steps when my left leg just didn’t drop. Instead, it extended. It did so for such a distance and time that I literally looked down at it, thinking, "What the heck…"? My foot finally planted on the ground, my knee locked, and I felt the impact in my teeth. My stride was interrupted, and I had literally been turned 90 degrees, and was now running directly away from the plane.
That’s when I realized that my next step would have taken me through the propeller. That was the closest I had ever come to fainting. I have no idea what caused that change in stride, but I was certainly glad of it.
Sizzling Encounter
I was maybe 11 or 12 years old when I witnessed something incredible—and terrifying. I love storms. There just happened to be a crazy thunderstorm that night and I decided I wanted to watch it from the doorway of our house. I got the bright idea to open the metal screen door to get a better look. So I was standing between the doorway, holding a chunk of the metal door.
Then suddenly, I see a flash of light, hear a sizzling sound, and then the loudest, closest BANG I've ever heard in my life! I let go of the door and ran back inside. I didn't get a scratch, but the hair on my arms were standing straight up and I had a huge adrenaline rush.
I don't stand in doorways to watch storms anymore.
Never To Be Forgotten
I was in the lobby of the World Trade Center on Sept 11th when the plane hit. Although I didn't know a plane had hit the building at the time, I experienced what sounded like a building bending and metal tearing. Then suddenly, all of the doors in the lobby blew open and burning hot air lashed into my face. It sounded like Hades was coming down those stairs. Turns out I was right.
Scared Witless
I must've been around 10 or 12 years old when this happened. I was walking back home one afternoon, around 3 or 4 pm, after strolling around the neighborhood, which was usually very safe, friendly, and quiet. I was on the opposite side of the block, walking past the houses behind ours.
There was a park that connected the entire block which meant you could cut through the houses to get home. I was only a few houses away at that point. I went through the park, a park I had played at my entire childhood, without paying much attention to my surroundings, when about halfway through, this older guy who wore a hoodie whom I didn't know called out to me.
"Dude, come over here for one sec", he said. "Um, what do you want"? I asked. "Come here, I just wanna ask you something", he yelled back. "Ok, ask me from over there", I replied. "No, no, come over, please", he returned. "No, tell me from over there", I responded.
At that point, another dude who was sitting next to him on the bench started to get upset. I heard a, "That's it" from him and they both stood up quickly and started making their way towards me. I can't recall how far they chased after me, but my instincts just told me to run like heck and I did.
To this day I still don't know if they were going to mug me, if they were just taunting me or what was happening but it definitely scared the wits out of me.
Straight Out Of A Horror Flick
My 17-year-old friends and I used to sneak into this abandoned mental institute. We navigated our way through a lot of it over the course of three or four trips.
This place was creepy—like it came straight out of a horror flick. The one time we went into the basement was it for me. One room looked like a freezer area. We had to walk through the thick plastic that shielded the doorway to get into the room.
Someone flicked a switch and it actually turned on this loud machine. We all jumped and screamed like 12-year old girls. Never again.
Spine-Chilling Sounds Of The Night
After the movie ended around 11 pm, my friend and I walked out of the theater towards our car. The theater we had gone to was pretty empty with just a few other stores around. For some reason, we walked out of the wrong doors and ended up on the other side of the mall. It was a good ten minute walk from our car.
As we were walking through the empty parking lot, it was pretty silent until we heard the most bone-chilling scream from about 100 yards away. It was definitely a woman screaming and it was one long, continuous scream—which honestly made it worse. The scream sounded like she had walked in on the loss of a child, or something terrible.
My friend and I immediately turned to each other with the same shocked look. We booked it out of there and called the law enforcement officers. We never did learn of anything happening that night, but I will always remember that scream. To make it worse, we had just watched the movie NOPE.
Just In Time
I was ice fishing on a lake up north with my buddy. It wasn't a big lake, but it was known for good fishing. We were fishing for a while but didn't catch anything when suddenly we heard a loud craaaaack.
The ice started to split from one side of the lake to the other. We had to get to shore ASAP! One side of the shore had already split into two giant slabs and were sinking. Water started running over the top of the slabs.
We had to get to shore NOW. I yelled at my buddy to run.
By the time we got to shore, the one slab of ice began breaking up with the other close behind. The ice quickly sank and disappeared from sight. Luckily, we made it to solid ground just in time, and lived to fish another day.
Fright Of My Life
There was supposedly a haunted house that a bunch of us high schoolers would visit occasionally. It was about a half mile down a gravel road on what used to be a farm.
There were two ways to get to the house: down a gravel road from the main road or down a long meandering path that led to a closed road in a neighborhood that backed up to the farm.
One time, a large group of us decided to head out to the area. We chose the longer path since there were more places to park for the six cars we had with us. My best friend had his foot in a walking boot due to an injury he had.
Anyways, after our usual bout of screwing around, we decided to leave. Everyone left rather quickly but I chose to stay behind and walk with my friend who was moving much slower. I soon came to regret that decision.
About half way back to our car, we looked over to our right and about 20-30 yards away in the field, we saw four guys holding artillery—just standing in the field. There was a bright moon that night so we saw them clearly. We both stopped, crouched down and whispered, "What the heck"?!
We peeked up over the high grass and they were just standing there pointing their artillery at us. We just bolted. Suddenly, my friend with the injured foot was able to run incredibly fast too. It was so freaky.
When we caught up to the others, they said they hadn’t seen a thing. We're still not sure what the heck happened out there and what was going on.
Terrifying Exploration
It was a nice summer's day. I went urban exploring with my mate in a storm drain. We only intended to explore the first couple of hundred feet but decided to keep going.
After a while, we could hear a lot of water echoing in the distance. Suddenly, I noticed the water level getting higher with a bit more flow. My mate tried to convince me that it was just a diverted river. I wasn't having any of it and made us head back as quickly as possible.
Suddenly, a freak rain storm, which became torrential, made things more difficult for us. Several times, I wasn't sure if we were going to make it out. Luckily we managed to escape. It was absolutely terrifying.
Let's Get Out Of Here
My friend and I met at Waffle House for lunch. A guy came into the restaurant looking for a piece of paper that he had accidentally left on a table. The waitress didn't know where the paper was located and might have thrown it away.
The guy got upset saying the paper was important and he was going home to get his pistol stored under his mattress. My friend and I quickly paid our check and got the heck out of the restaurant!
Horrifying Confrontation
When I was about 11 years old, this house down the street from my grandparents' house had a reputation for being haunted.
One day, I was walking to the shop to get supplies for my grandparents and I saw the owner of the house outside. He was about my dad's age and started talking to me. I really wanted to be the first of my friends to go in the haunted house, and I was asking a million questions about ghosts and stuff.
He told me that I could come inside if I wanted to. I said I had to go do my errands but he was pretty convincing and promised he wouldn't tell anyone. So we went up his driveway and into his haunted house. When we got inside, things took a dark turn. I heard him lock the door. I became hyper anxious and said that I had changed my mind about staying.
He had blocked me from the door and tried to change my mind by calling me a scaredy cat and stuff. I don't remember exactly what happened for him to let me out, but he did, and I ran for my life. I sat at the shop for ages just shaking and feeling nauseous without even knowing what I was scared of.
It turned out that the house wasn't haunted. The guy, however, was a monster who liked to do awful things to kids. His house burned down while he was in prison.
The Hunter Or The Hunted?
My late friend was an avid hunter and outdoorsman. He was literally born in the wrong era. He should have been a mountain man. Every year, he would go hunting in this sweet spot where he'd get the biggest bucks I'd ever seen. He loved this spot so much that he would never disclose the location to anyone.
Well, one day, as we were all hanging around, he mentioned that he had a new hunting spot. This was totally out of the ordinary for him. So we asked him why he decided to switch. He told us that when he got to his usual hunting spot, he set up camp and set out to scout the area. As he was walking, he smelled something that he had never smelled before.
This guy lives in a cabin in the woods and knows this area like the back of his hand. For him to smell something unusual is a big deal. But he simply shrugged it off and kept hiking around. He said he kept feeling like he was being watched or stalked, like what you'd expect a deer to feel as it's being hunted.
He then decided to head back to his camp and called it a night. When he got to his truck, he found prints he had never seen before all around his truck and camp. He left and never went back. The look on his face as he told the story was like none I had ever seen on him before.
He later found a new spot that he disclosed to us right before he passed. I'll be hunting there with my dad next season.
Eerie Greeting
Last year, a month before graduating from high school, I had a really creepy encounter. I was walking to school when an old man yelled at me from across the street. He kept yelling his name to me. He eventually caught up to me and told me that he was looking for a lady to marry.
He asked for my name and then asked if he could see me later. I naturally said no, but he kept persisting. I told him that I was still in high school. But it only got worse from there. Rather than backing off, he asked for my age. I told him that I was 18.
He kept asking to see me later. I eventually just said, "Sure", just to get him off my back. I walked away, and my school bus picked me up.
I later learned that he had a reputation for doing this. I also learned that when he was intoxicated, he once broke into a couple's house and wore the woman's pants.
Prowler On The Loose
I lived in south Everett, WA, for a couple years. Once I was walking home from the bus stop to my apartment, which took me behind a Home Depot. Suddenly, a van started following me. I heard the side door slide open and when I looked behind me, I saw only the top half of a man hanging out of the door looking at me.
I darted towards my apartment, running as far as I could. That's when the van started to speed up. It was at that exact moment, a guy started pulling out of the driveway of my apartment complex. He saw me running for my life, and stopped his car. The van immediately turned around and sped off.
The guy asked if I was okay. I asked if he could stay and wait for me to walk safely into my apartment, which was the building next to his. He did, thank goodness. I started carrying mace and a very large blade the next day.
Lucky Escape
One night, a co-worker got off the bus in Scarborough, Ontario, when a guy stepped out from behind the bus shelter and started calling to her to wait up. He ran up to her, but she screamed, "I don't know you", and ran into a convenience store.
The guy hung around outside for a few minutes, then walked over to a vehicle, got in and drove off. She waited for a neighbor in her apartment complex to come over and walk her home.
She filed a report and it turned out she had narrowly escaped Paul Bernardo, then known for his crimes against women in Scarborough, and later known as a homicidal maniac alongside his wife Karla Homolka.
A Terrifying Affair
A 500 lb hog got loose at the state fair and started charging right at me. I have never run so fast in my life.
Close Call
I was living in Baltimore some years back and was driving home through a rough area of the city. I was sitting at a stop light behind a car when another car pulled up next to me on the right. I didn't think anything of this until the light turned green and neither of the cars moved. Then I saw another car zipping up behind me. I then looked to my left and saw two guys running towards me.
I am so thankful that I left a good deal of space between me and the car in front. I hooked it around the car and sped off. I'm pretty sure I was going to be a victim of a carjacking or maybe something worse. I'm so glad they ill-timed their plan and I gave myself that extra space. The lesson here is to always keep your head on a swivel in Baltimore.
Creepy Sleepover
I was sleeping over at a friend's house when I got up in the night to get some water in the kitchen. That's when her father hugged me from behind. I was 14. I never went to their house again.
Signs From Above
When I was a kid, I used to be a Jehovah’s Witness. One day, I was with my mom and a few others going house to house, and preaching to strangers. My mom and I walked up this slanted driveway with trees around each side. The others waited for us in the car. They couldn’t see us from where they had parked on the street.
We knocked on the door and everything seemed normal. Just as the man answered the door, something incredibly strange happened. My ears started to ring and buzz like crazy. It felt like someone threw a helmet on my head and my body was screaming for me to leave.
The man listened to my mom’s spiel. He then said he was interested in hearing more, and invited us inside. Meanwhile, the feelings I had got more intense. The air felt thicker and prevented me from moving. My mom looked at me and she said I looked pale and distant.
She told him that I seemed to be ill and that we had to leave. As soon as we stepped away and I saw the car, I was completely fine. My mom decided to take me home anyway. We lived just two blocks away.
A few days later, we read in the paper about how the same man we had spoken to when I had those strange feelings, was apprehended for slaying several women. I think one of them was as young as 16 years old—just a child. I was 12 years old at the time.
My mom, a dutiful believer at the time, was convinced that the angels had stepped in to protect us and kept us safe that day.
Dangerous Attraction
When I was 16 or 17 years old, I was texting with a friend's older brother whom I had only met once in person at a ball game. He was about 19 or 20 years old and was a local paramedic. He was very sweet on me. At that age, I didn’t know any better and just loved the idea that an older guy was so smitten with me.
One day, he randomly showed up at the little country side cafe where I worked. He insisted that I take his letterman jacket even though it was in the heat of summer. It was weird but he was insistent so I took it. That was a big mistake.
We kept texting and things got weirder. He started getting possessive. I got scared and basically ghosted him. I never told him where I lived. Not even a few days later, I was home alone—way out in the middle of nowhere—with my younger stepsister when I heard banging on the door.
We live in an old, run-down, single-wide trailer so nothing was really "home invader proof". It was him. He was yelling for me to come out right away. Thenthings got even more terrifying. He started beating and kicking the door—hard. The whole trailer was shaking. He started throwing stuff at the windows and screaming.
I got my mom's pistol, hid my step sister in the closet and called the authorities. It felt like an eternity waiting for help. He didn’t stop until I heard tires on the gravel pull up. An officer came inside the trailer and said the boy claimed I took his letterman jacket and class ring and he was just there to get his stuff back.
The ring was apparently in the jacket pocket but I didn’t know that. I gave the jacket to the officer. I don’t know what happened to the guy but needless to say there were no further contacts. I still don’t know how he knew where I lived.
Is it just us, or does it seem like as the internet continues to grow, so do the solutions and "hacks" that turn out to be total snake oil?
And we don't mean "snake oil" like oil that comes... from a snake. Because that sounds painful.
Rather, we mean "snake oil" like deceptive marketing, scams, and fraudulent medical claims, like cure-alls and overnight dramatic weight loss options.
But every once in a while, there's a solution offered that sounds too good to be true, but it turns out to be totally legit.
Curious what surprisingly good hacks others had come across, Redditor ThePonyboyCurtis asked:
"What seems like snake oil but is actually 100% legit?"
The Powers of WD40
"WD40 cleans candle wax off your living room carpet. If ever in doubt, consult an old housewife."
- Eastern_Chemist3726
"There is a guy on Snapchat that I follow and I can't think of his screen name right now, but he legit uses WD40 on just about everything. It's crazy some of the sh*t he does with it."
- FreewayWarrior
"That’s because it’s a solvent. It’s not a grease meant to loosen up tight screws, it’s a solvent that breaks down the crap making your screws stuck."
- Carmelpi
Everyone Likes the Smell of Cedar
"I had a weird-smelling basement. Someone said to get aromatic cedar blocks, sand them down, and leave them there. I thought there was no way this could work. But it did. The smell is totally eliminated."
"12 blocks. Each two by two by two inches. Just top layer sand down, half a millimeter maybe. I left them next to a pipe that I believe is the culprit. The basement is like 900 square feet."
- thetorontotickler
"An offering to the stink gods."
- likediscolem
"Ah, inches, millimeters, AND square feet. You like to confuse both sides of the ocean, nice."
- mikehit
Don't DTR with Your Hiccups Just Yet
"The whole 'hold your breath to get rid of hiccups' trick."
"The thing is, most people just don't know the proper way to do it or why it works."
"It's got nothing to do with simply holding your breath. It's got to do with using your lungs to hold down the diaphragm and stop it from spasming."
"You breathe in until you cannot fit literally anything else into your lungs. When your chest is as full as humanly possible then you hold it and within about 15 seconds the hiccups are gone."
- shlam16
"So THAT's why it works sometimes and not others."
- tomtomclubthumb
"I've never had success until I held it until my lungs burnt. That 'oh my god, we're suffocating' feeling is a legit life hack for making your body stop acting stupid."
"It also works for stuffy noses. If you exhale all your breath, then nod your head repeatedly until your lungs burn, and then breathe back in normally, your nose will magically unclog."
"If you have really bad congestion because of allergies or a head cold you sometimes have to do this several more times (the most I've had to do is five times)."
- b0w3n
Impossibly Clean Windows
"Vinegar and newspaper to clean windows."
"I thought the ink would come off and make an even bigger mess."
"Almost turns the window invisible."
- ShadowWolfKane
Magical Mystical Magnesium
"Taking magnesium. It really can cure some joint, nerve, muscle, heart, and breathing problems."
"Of course, the only ones it can cure are ones that are caused by a magnesium deficiency which a surprising number of people have."
"Some life events that can rapidly use up magnesium in the body are pregnancy, surgery, viral illness, and major periods of stress."
- Easy_Independent_313
Not Just for Painting Toinails
"I was suffering with plantar fasciitis for over six months. I tried new shoes, new insoles, pills, and physical therapy, but none of those things fixed it."
"A friend kept suggesting I try these gel toe separator things like they wear when painting toenails. I thought it was silly, but they were only $10 on Amazon, so what did I have to lose?"
"I wore the neon blue gel thing at night feeling very silly. After the first night, my foot hurt like h**l, but after the second, it felt a whole lot better. I wore it for two weeks straight and plantar fasciitis was gone. Those things were like magic."
- J-Frog3
"The toe spacers are stretching out your tendons in the feet, therefore reducing the tightness that causes plantar fasciitis! Another thing that should help is putting something like a tennis ball underneath your foot and rolling it around."
- SPOOKSVILLE
"Sitting on your deck in summer or are you having a nice picnic when suddenly you're being accosted by the h**lspawn known as wasps? Get rid of them with this one easy solution: burn some coffee!"
"'Burn coffee?' I hear you say incredulously. Yes, burn coffee! Take a little saucer, pour a little pyramid of ground coffee on in, and use a lighter to light the top."
"It will smolder slowly and give off a smoke that smells, well, like burnt coffee. It will also instantly get rid of any wasps that are bothering you. No idea why, they absolutely hate the smell."
"Some people also dislike the smell of the burning coffee, I understand this. But ask yourself this important question while the smell is annoying you: what do you dislike more; wasps or the smell of burning coffee? I know what I would pick."
- ilikedmatrixiv
"I keep coffee grounds in a short jar on the deck for burning and put the lid on when we are going inside. It keeps the wasps away, and also, it repels mosquitoes."
- AuntieLaLa420
The Indoor Sunrise
"Daylight lamps."
"Someone mentioned melatonin, so it reminded me of the opposite. I bought a daylight lamp last winter because I get depressed when it’s dark outside for long periods of time."
"I got one off Amazon for 40 euros, and now I can’t live without it in the winter."
"I thought it was a sham initially, but the light basically imitates the wavelengths of light emitted by the sun (bar the UVs) and inhibits the production of melatonin. Not only that, but it also boosts my mood and morale. You just have to be careful because it’s difficult to fall asleep for a couple of hours after using it."
- Outside-Ad5864
"There's a subset of these types of lights that also work like alarm clocks. Wakeup Lights."
"The slightly more expensive ones even fake a sunrise for you. It actually slowly increases in brightness from a dull red, all the way to that bright white/yellow, and THEN starts making noises."
"I used to be such a heavy sleeper before I got mine, and now I can pretty easily get up even at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning even in the dead of winter. I could not imagine living without one going forward, HUGE quality of life improvement for myself."
"And I have not managed for a single family member to try it, not even outright borrowing mine for a week or two. Because they think it sounds dumb and pointless."
- LordOfDorkness42
Pain-Free Posture
"Good posture."
"I had chronic back pain for years. Then, just a few years ago I slept on my neck wrong and had neck pain that wouldn’t resolve."
"I saw a physical therapist and the first thing she did was look at how I sat and how I stood and walked. She told me nicely but essentially that my posture was horrible, affected by years of slumping in my seat and also being told continually by my mom to 'suck in that tummy!' when I stood or walked, which led to me thinking a pelvic tilt was necessary for good posture."
"The therapist showed me how to sit and stand with a straight back, my chest up and forward, and my back keeping a healthy lumbar curvature."
"Let me tell you, it was HARD. My shoulder/back muscles were not used to it and I had to train them like any muscle is trained, with a posture bra and also using a long sheet tied like a strap around my neck, arms, and waist. It also felt so unnatural at first to be sticking my chest and butt out, like I was looking for attention, which is part of the reason people have such terrible posture; we feel that’s 'immodest.'"
"No lie, three weeks later, all my back pain symptoms were gone and haven’t returned. I can do some slumping when I sit with no great penalty now, but when I walk, or when have to stand for a duration, or sit on something backless, I use my good posture and I am pain-free."
"I'm trying to spread the word on this makes me feel like a 1950s health movie ('Posture Pals!') but it’s so effective, I can’t stop sharing. Years of chronic back pain completely eliminated by just a few weeks of good posture training."
- amantiana
The Power of Meditation
"Meditation. When I was an alcoholic and drug abuser, my friend used to tell me about meditation to help with anxiety and stress."
"I thought, 'B***h, we use Xanax around here, no one’s got time to meditate.'"
"We no longer use Xanax and have the time to meditate."
- ManyAd9810
Water in the Ear
"Hopping on the opposite leg when you have water in your ear after swimming. It works every d**n time."
- rutharr1
"I need to try this. BRB (Be Right Back), gonna get water stuck in my ear..."
- pabloesceebruhhh
Magic Mouthwash
"Saltwater swish and gargle for toothache and sore throat (as long as it’s not something like strep). Source: currently have strep and ain’t nothing working."
"Otherwise, even the dentist tells me to salt water swish if I get tooth pain or something stuck. Total relief."
- allflourr
"I’m a once-a-year strep throat sufferer. For a severe sore throat, my doctor told me to mix a one-half cup Mylanta (kept in the fridge) with a tablespoon of Benadryl. Gargle every few hours. The cold Mylanta cools and soothes and the Benadryl reduces inflammation."
"She said saltwater only dries the throat out more and creates more pain. It works wonderfully."
- RealityIntruder
"A few jobs ago, I worked as a pharmacy tech. There was a doctor out there who would call in 'Magic Mouthwash,' a one-to-one-to-one ratio mixture of Mylanta, Benadryl, and Lidocaine."
"It's great for strep, as well as mouth sores often caused by radiation and chemotherapy. Sounds like you got the over-the-counter recipe."
- hunnythebadger
The Importance of Vitamin D
"Vitamin D supplements. it's much more important than any of us realized."
- pinkwardremoval
"I started doing this a few years ago and it's not straight-up noticeable right away but hot d**n, even a couple months into that first winter, I was like, 'Huh, I don't have that soul-crushing gloom like I usually do this time of year.'"
- High_Speed_Id**t
The Truth About Yoga
"Yoga. I have severe upper back pain and went through months of physical therapy. I couldn't keep up with the millions of appointments and started doing yoga as a way to stretch my upper back instead. I was doing it for 30 minutes each day and forgot that I had pain."
"It's so annoying that it does what people say it does because this whole time, I thought they were just being annoying but they're one hundred percent right."
"There's an app I like that's called 'Down Dog Yoga.' It's a blue dog as the logo, that's the app I really enjoy! You can customize the time and focus area so you can fit things in when you have time."
- Initial_Savings8733
Something For Our Four-Legged Friends
"Does a dog thundershirt count?"
"I had an anxious dog with storms and loud noises, so I got him one, and while not perfect, he did seem to calm down with it on more often than not!"
- tenacious-g
Whether it's mocking back-and-forth conversations in the comments section on social media about, 'But have you tried yoga?!' or laughing at an informercial about Dog Thunder Shirts or Wakeup Lights from the comfort of our couches, we've surely all questioned at least one of the items or hacks on this list.
But it's humbling to know that every once in a while, the thing that seems too good to be true... will actually deliver on its promises.
Fortunately, for most of these hacks, trying them for a week or two wouldn't be a serious feat, and who knows, maybe they would work for us, too!
Whether you’re an attendee, or—gulp—the host, there’s nothing quite as unpleasant as a friendly gathering gone wrong. Whether it’s an uninvited guest, a ruined surprise, or an unexpected disaster, anything can make a celebration go awry. Buckle up for these stories about the worst parties ever—because they’re sure to make you cringe.
It Was No Piece Of Cake
A long time ago in December, I was working at a bad company when we got awful news. We found out suddenly that our whole division was getting laid off like literally days before it happened. So most of us knew it was happening a day before the Year End party, which would be our last working day before the holidays and then we wouldn't be coming back.
We are all bummed...and then our manager comes in with a Christmas cake. He was going to be laid off too. And he says “At least we should have a cake to celebrate the season”? So we all kind of agreed; with broken spirits. But the most humiliating part was yet to come. He didn't have plates or spoons or knives or even napkins. So we all literally just had to scoop out a bit of cake with our hands, and just eat it. All the while, a cloud of sadness hung over us. It was quite depressing.
Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder
I had a friend from high school invited me and three other friends over for what he described as a "party". We thought that it might be a small gamer party with some nerdy board games or something as there were only the three of us plus him and his wife.
His wife then proceeds to start an hour-and-a-half presentation about Arbonne and tries to sell women’s beauty products to a group of males between the ages of 19 and 22. I was astounded.
Who’s Laughing Now?
When I was in college, a pretty attractive girl in one of my classes asked me to a party. Soon enough, I discovered the twisted truth. It turns out it was a "Bring the ugliest guy" theme party. However, in her short-sightedness, she forgot that I was the curve setter in the class and also her source of notes and class details.
She failed a required class and that threw her off a year.
A Disaster In Four Parts
I went to a formal and I had a really awkward date. She started off lecturing me about endangered free-range cows. Then started asking me random questions like "What brand of sandals do you prefer". Then she got into a religious argument with a kid who was Muslim and claiming that he is "worshiping a false God". Then when I finally got her to come dance with me, she sprained her ankle.
What Are The Odds
I used to work for a big company—a very large and roundly hated cable provider. They were incredibly cheap, and pinched pennies in every way imaginable. One year they celebrated the anniversary of their founding with a mandatory company picnic. If we didn't attend, we'd be written up. No time off granted, so it came out of our PTO. So on a dismal Friday afternoon, we bundled off to the "big party".
Which our jerk boss—the king of jerk bosses—had scheduled for a park. Lo and behold, that park was directly across from his house. And this "park" was a patch of grass next to a huge highway overpass. But then it got worse. It started raining, but the "party" was not rescheduled, we were all told to attend. It was held under the overpass, with all the bums in their tent city. Who, by the way, ate better than us because we were each allotted either one burger or one hotdog. They were frozen burgers and dogs from the local supermarket. No drinks permitted.
The "highlight" of the "party" was a raffle drawing for what we'd been told were going to be really great prizes. This at least wasn't too improbable, since vendors from big companies would send us extravagant gifts to try and persuade us to buy their stuff. It turned out that the big prize was, in fact, pretty cool—an R/C car that was one of the ones that was like, gas-powered and pretty expensive and all that jazz. Everything else was little grab-bags full of company-branded tchotchkes or t-shirts or whatever.
Naturally, the jerk boss drew his own number—total coincidence, he promised—for the big prize, which he took. There were exactly enough grab bags for everyone there, except one. Guess who!? Naturally, I was the only person who didn't get one. Mind you, I didn't care to have a company-branded t-shirt, but it was the parsimonious, cheap attitude that went with it that irked me. That, and the jerk boss walking over, pointing and laughing at me whole-heartedly and brushing tears from his eyes, saying, "Sucks to be you”!
I seriously exercised some willpower and just didn't say anything, and made to leave. He yelled after me, "You haven't been dismissed yet, you have to stay until 5”! And then pointed and laughed at me some more.
Yeah, that was the worst party I ever went to.
Lesson Learned
Grade 5. The nerdiest kid in class sent out invitations to almost everyone in our grade.
His mom had planned a huge pizza party, and had strung streamers and decorations everywhere, and we were going to go to Laser Tag after. I was the first one to show up, so we ate some gummy worms and watched Digimon while we waited for everyone else. Anyway, long story short, no one else came. She made us wait a couple hours before just driving us to Burger King and taking us home to play Nintendo.
So, all in all, it was actually a pretty awesome party because, you know, Burger King and Digimon and Nintendo. I even got to take home three treat bags after the fact, and probably would have taken more but wanted to look polite and not like a candy-addicted diabetic-in-training, you know?
I would later hear from one of my other friends and a group of kids we were hanging out with that most kids had thrown out their invites or hidden them so their parents wouldn't force him to go hang out with the unpopular kid.
Moral of the story: kids are not adorable bundles of innocence. Kids are jerks.
The Rare Reverse Surprise Party
About a year ago I went back home to visit my parents and some old friends. It all went well except for the night a friend and I went to a birthday party.
Here is the setup: My friend and I have been playing pool since noon. It is creeping up to 7:30 when my mom calls and asks if I wouldn't mind going to such and such's birthday as a representative of the family because she is stuck at work and wants someone to go.
I ask who it is and how old they are, my mom informs me that it is Caleb and he is probably turning twenty-one. I ask my friend at the bar and we both agree that 21st birthday parties are usually pretty fun, so why not?
We walk to the store and split a bottle of mid-shelf Scotch for good ol' Caleb, whoever the heck he was. We decided the easiest way to do a card was to have the cashier print off some blank receipt paper and quickly scribble out, “Happy birthday from [my] family,” and tape the “card” to the bottle. Good to go!
We grab a cab to the address my mom had texted me and roll right into this rager of a party. That’s when we realize where we’d gone wrong. It was a rager...of a fourth birthday party. It wasn't Caleb. Caleb didn't even live there anymore. It was Jeff.
We had already plopped our generous offering on the gift table by the front door before we had walked into the party proper. So here are two twenty-something dudes and we have just interrupted duck, duck, goose.
We left in such a panicked hurry we didn't even think about the Scotch we had both dropped $18 on. We just got out as fast as we could, walked as fast as two idiots can for a couple of blocks, and called a cab.
I got home to my mom laughing hysterically about the phone call she got from the family about our family's odd choice of gift for a four-year-old. She apologized to me and decided that she wouldn't choose me as a family representative for any future get-togethers.
Avert Your Eyes
I went to a Super Bowl "party" at this church. I don't go to church at all, but I went because this chick that I was crushing on was there—we were in high school.
So I get there, the game is on, there's snacks and video games, overall it's an alright time. And then the halftime show is about to start, which is always the most interesting to me. Well, we didn't get to watch it.
The church shuts off the projector, and instead this dude starts preaching Jesus and whatnot. Granted, I AM in a church, so I shouldn't be too surprised, but I was pretty angry. I felt like they were keeping me from the most entertaining part of the Super Bowl.
So whatever, I just go home and try to forget it. I go to school the next day, and everyone kept asking me the same thing: "Hey man! Did you see Janet Jackson's ‘wardrobe malfunction’”?!
A Sobering Experience
So there I was, an ambitious and fun-loving 19-year-old in my second semester of college. I had been the good student my first semester, but quickly, over winter break, discovered the wonders of drinking.
My roommate had a very nice and quite attractive girlfriend who would come by our dorm room on a regular basis and would go out with us to the various parties around town. She always seemed to have a good time, but the next day she would talk about how bad she felt, despite appearing to be completely fine. I should’ve known something was up.
Then one weekend she excitedly arrived to our suite and came bouncing into our room. She was amazingly excited to invite us to a party. Some of her friends were throwing a party at their house and she wanted my roommate and I to go. I had met a couple of these friends in passing and they seemed to be nice girls and were also quite attractive. The 19-year-old male in me was up for going to this party.
That night, my roommate and I walk over to his girlfriend's dorm room to meet up with her. She is driving and we excitedly head off to this party. Now let me preface the rest with one important fact. I had decided to pre-game for the party. I had a solid buzz going.
We arrive at the house and there are a few cars in the driveway. It's only about 8 PM so we are pretty early. The apparent number of people already there should have been a good sign of the night to come.
I was lied to. As we enter, I get my first glimmer of an idea that what I was hoping this party would be like, was simply not in the cards. I walked into what may have been the largest collective look of distaste that I have ever witnessed. I was the sole attendee that had brought drinks. And that would be the case for the entire night.
That’s when I found out the twisted truth. It was at this point that my roommate's girlfriend took the opportunity to inform me of what I determined to be a VERY important piece of information. At that moment I learned that she and all of her friends at this party were Mormons. So there I was, stuck at this house with about 25 Mormons and my roommate. That is all that happened.
They didn't play games. They didn't listen to music. They were offended by Law & Order as my choice for something to watch on TV. I had the joy of sobering up while listening to them talk about church. I twice asked my roommate to just punch me and knock me out so that I could just wake up when it was over and we were going home.
Welcome To Adulthood
It was my own 18th birthday. My mother thought it would be funny to have everyone dine and dash, sticking me with the bill when I went to the bathroom. But she didn’t stop there. Then when I got home, the locks had been changed and all my personal stuff had been bagged up in garbage bags and thrown out across the street.
That was really awesome. The joke was that since I was an adult I could pay my own way in the world from now on.
Attack In Black
I got confused about the address of my friend's party at his new house I'd never been to and showed up at a place with balloons around the mailbox with an address literally like 2 digits away. I’d got my friend a cheap katana from the swap meet and brought plenty of all-black, very real-looking airsoft guns, it was supposed to be an airsoft party.
So I walk in and nobody is around but I hear people laughing and stuff out back so I set the katana with a little Hello Kitty bow around it on the entranceway table with a loud metallic clack, whip out my 2 all-metal airsofts, pull my bandana over my face and my aviators down and walk into the backyard.
I see about a dozen VERY concerned and confused parents looking back at me with three or four toddlers sitting in a sandbox looking back at me in horror. "Oh…umm…oops, wrong party. So sorry everyone. Have an excellent birthday". And then I got the heck out of there.
Psychological Warfare
My 18th birthday party. My crazy ex had just about disassociated me from any of the remaining friends I had. They were so sick and tired of her, and me sticking up for her as I was blindly in love, that they wanted no more to do with us. Yet then she decided to add salt to the wound by inviting them all around to my 18th birthday party at her place. She sorted out a load of food, cakes, etc., and music. But of course, none of my now ex-friends were going to make any effort to go around to a psycho’s house for a “party”.
So as you can imagine my 18th birthday party was her telling me "See, you call them friends? They don't even come on your 18th birthday party just because they don't like me”!
She later admitted and confirmed my suspicion that she fabricated the whole thing on purpose, in order to make me realize that I had no one in my life other than her, and as such was unable to leave her.
Zero Chemistry
For prom I asked a chick I'd never spoken to but had a huge crush on. After I had asked her out and walked ten feet away my friends gave me a loud cheer complete with multiple high fives and huzzahs. It was the best feeling in the world—only to be followed by the worst party ever.
The next few weeks leading up to prom were terrible. I tried to talk to her between classes but it just wasn't happening. Prom was even worse. My parents made me spend way too much on photos. I literally have a yearbook full of them—at least I look fantastic. She said she didn't want to dance which I was fine with because I can't anyway but she also apparently didn't want to talk so we spent the entire evening outside, cold and in silence watching other people dance.
After that, we went to an after-party that neither of us were sure we were invited to. She didn't want to drink so we sat and caught stray ping-pong balls while straining at making idle chit-chat. Then her ex-boyfriend showed up and she decided she needed to go. She drove me since I didn't have my license.
The whole ordeal was very painful, but it helped me realize I need to get to know people before deciding to like them instead of just staring at them all semester. My prom date turned out to have no personality and the sense of humor of a six-year-old. I'm AT LEAST on the level of a seven-year-old.
The Freeloader
My buddy said he was throwing a Christmas eve party and that I should bring two birds because everything else was covered by people bringing to share. So I paid my $20 for some fine stuffed chickens and got some of the most delicious (and expensive) hot sauce in the country too, because why not go out for your closest friends around the holidays right?
I showed up early, and from the driveway noticed the lights were off. I rationed that I must be the first or even better that my dear friends had lit candles and were caroling or playing Yule-time games.
When I let myself into the living room, I was perplexed. The house was completely bare.
From somewhere in the dark nether came my “friend” trudging down the stairs dressed in nothing but his boxer shorts, wiping the spittle from his chin, his cheek still lined with bed marks and his hairy stomach grumbling like a rabid mongoose.
He mumbled something to me about the lights being shut off before he began tucking into my delicious poultry, ripping great strips of meat from the birds and stuffing them into his stupid face.
Though I didn't want to admit it, my mind was beginning to realize that the whole thing had been a ruse by this obese sloth to get a free meal.
He remembered his manners long enough to offer me a glass of water and then he was back at it, half-dressed, hunched over the living room table gorging himself on MY chicken and gargling down MY special sauce.
He was lucky he was late on his electricity bill because he didn't get to see me sitting in the dark, tepid glass of water in hand, shivering with rage.
Double Whammy
Me and my girlfriend of two years end up breaking up a week before her birthday, I had already spent quite a large amount of money on a surprise party for her and her friends. So I decided forget it, I throw it anyways, no sense in wasting all I’ve done. So her birthday rolls around and I get everything set up and whatnot, $200 on drinks, $100 on food, all kinds of decorations, etc.
Her and some friends get there and she pulls me aside. I couldn’t believe what she said next. She tells me that she is really thankful but wants me to leave because it will be too awkward. So I do because I am a gentleman. The next day everyone who was at the party asked why I wasn't there and said they wished I had been, even my ex said the same.
So a couple of weeks go by and one of our close friends wants to have her birthday party at her place as well, I get invited and all that. Things between my ex and I had been alright, we'd talked and stuff felt normal as if we were becoming friends and such. Night of the party, it gets really awkward. We are all trying to have conversation and be normal and act as if nothing ever happened, but she is just sitting there silently the entire night texting.
Whenever I would leave to go to the bathroom or get another drink, she'd snap out of it and talk to people but as soon as I sat back down she'd get quiet as a mouse. Next thing I know, some dude shows up that no one invited. Turns out it was the person my ex was texting all night and she invited him over to hook up.
Needless to say, once he showed up it wasn't long before the party ended—but the nightmare didn’t end there. The next day I got a text from my ex complaining about how I ruined the party. I felt like a fool for caring about a person like that.
Everybody Hurts
My 21st birthday party, and my parents had gone away for a month. I was head over heels for a girl who kept telling me "It's not the right time for me to be in a relationship now". Rather than hear the "no" which she implied, I'd just wait another month or two and ask her out again. My friends and I partied all summer and my parents left about a week before my birthday. My house was now party central.
All week long I had people trashing the place, crashing over, waking up and we'd all pitch in and get the house back in shape. It was working really well. Additionally, the object of my affection slept in my bed five nights in a row...just sleeping mind you.
Saturday's my birthday and we were set up right. My brother got us a keg, and my band was set to play the basement. People show up and things are rocking. While the band is playing I notice no one's hitting the keg. Some dude I didn't know showed up. Whatever, the more the merrier.
After my band is done, and feeling mighty as Mr Cool Guy Guitarist, I go to find my little peach. We've been spending time together after all, and I just rocked the house. She was in the backyard hooking up the guy I didn’t know.
I got very sad. Angry/woe is me sad. At about 9, a bunch of my friends, the girl included, left. They headed over to our bassist’s house. I kept my downward spiral of depression going. They got back around 2 AM. I had spent the last few hours staring at the ceiling from my bed. I go out to the back porch to smoke before the confrontation.
I then walk back to my room. There's the girl and four of my other friends passed out in my bed. Every bed in the house was taken. Every couch was taken. Every comfy chair was taken. I was beside myself with self-pity. I slept on my parents’ kitchen floor feeling very alone in a house full of “friends”.
Not Today
My former roomie had a Memorial Day barbecue party, invited a metric ton of people, including his cousin and her two-year-old. Along with his grandmother and aunt. I adored grammaw and auntie—such magnificently eccentric people—but had never met the cousin.
Well, I'd just come off a horrific 10-day stretch of 10-12 hour shifts waitressing—dealing with rude people and even ruder kids—and was very much needing to get tanked and eat barbecue. What happens? Cousin shoves her kid at me and books out to the backyard, roomie follows, grandmother and aunt follow, and somehow they've all seemed to assume I have a burning desire to watch this kid. Which I certainly did NOT.
So I went and chastised cousin and explained I would not be a babysitter, now or ever, and to watch her own kid. Her reply was infuriating. She told me, in front of everyone, "But it's a party! I want to have fun”! I could not believe this jerk was telling me this in my own house, seriously. I snarled something along the lines of "So do I, watch your own kid”! and stalked off.
Half an hour later, went to use my bathroom and shrieked the house down because there was little Jerk Junior, taking a messy #2 on my bathroom floor, right next to the toilet. People came running from all directions and cousin had the nerve to yell at me for not watching her kid that I told her I wasn't going to watch.
I yelled back that she'd better clean that mess up, and she snatched up her kid and bounced.
Unhappily Ever After
I just went to the worst wedding, here are some of the highlights: There were flowers falling down during the wedding, they had to break out duct tape during the ceremony to put them back up. The bride shows up 45 minutes late to her own ceremony. There’s no carpet down the aisle, so they roll out a giant sheet of cloth, more duct tape to keep it down. This is after all the guests were seated.
There, there limited amounts of food during the cocktail hour, and once it was gone, they didn’t refill. So bye bye shrimp salad. There was no meat option for dinner. The priest said, during ceremony, something along the lines of “It doesn’t matter if it's your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd try at it”. It was her 2nd wedding.
The dj/band was terrible. They didn’t play one good song. And the worst part? They told the father of the bride they didn’t have the song he wanted to dance with his daughter to. The whole thing was just really poor planning.
All’s Well That Ends Well
I went to a party with a friend from the restaurant I was working at. It was another employee’s house and he invited several others from work. It sounded alright until I found out it was from a place known to be a little…backwoods.
We barely find our way there and it is about ten at night. No one else is there yet except for the guy hosting it. He tells us people are on their way and shows us around the house. He lets us know that his kids (5 and 3) are asleep in the backrooms and that his wife is at a girl’s night with her friends.
A few people finally show up from work, including one of our bosses, who shows up with one of the cooks, apparently they are sleeping together. Makes things a little awkward—but it is nothing compared to what happens next.
The guy's sister shows up and starts yelling at him for throwing a party while he has his kids there. It’s awkward because he is acting like he was caught red-handed and is super quiet the whole time he is getting yelled at. She is yelling at everyone to leave while my friend and I slip into the basement with a few others. I feel like we were down there for YEARS with the awkward couple but I am sure it wasn’t very long in hindsight.
Eventually, we hear no more yelling coming from upstairs so we go check on things. That’s when we made an utterly disturbing discovery. We go to the living room and find the host MAKING OUT with his sister on the couch! My mind is screaming at me at this point but the awkwardness keeps me quiet and we just stand there…watching things escalate until clothes start coming off.
That’s when I say “Oh heck no” and my friend and I start tripping over ourselves to make a break for the door. We stumble in my car and I get to the end of the driveway and realize I’m in no condition to drive. The host comes out and I refuse to roll down my window, to face the situation. That’s when I finally learned the truth.
Eventually, I roll down the window and he tells me that was his wife, and I woke up the kids. We went back inside and played Wii bowling.
A Series Of Awkward Events
In high school. The awkward kid threw a party and invited everyone in our class. Every. Single. Person. The party was at his home, which was by no means big enough to fit our entire class, but it went ahead. About 15 people showed up.
The guy who was having the party was busy losing it because he invited girls—we were juniors at the time, he lived a sheltered life, I guess—while everyone else was playing some game with dice to break the ice. Eventually, he had a Wii boxing tournament. I won and got a $3 gift card to sonic.
As the night was winding down I accidentally pushed a friend into his stairwell and broke one of the supporting beam things. Then when everyone was leaving, we each got to take an ornament from his Christmas tree.
Escape Plan
Freshman year, I joined the Speech team at my school. There was a party after almost every meet, but I was kind of shy then, and I didn't feel like I knew the rest of the team (mostly upperclassmen) well enough to go to any of the parties.
One weekend, I finally get the nerve to go to one of the parties. My mom drops me off (fashionably late), and I knock on the door. The host, a senior, is visibly relieved to see me, and that is my first indication that I've made a terrible mistake.
There is a huge spread of food set out in the host's living room. Enough for at least thirty people. There are 15 on the speech team, and the only guests are me and another girl, also a senior, who is just not very fun to be around (constantly corrects people, breathes super loud, rude, combative, etc). The host is urging me to eat some of the food, so I have a piece of frozen pizza, which had been cooked in a microwave, so it was limp, soggy, and by now, stone cold.
The host then gets out some Eurogame with movable stackable tiles and plastic army units. It's confusing, it's difficult, and the girl is getting increasingly hostile toward everyone because she's frustrated.
Eventually, one of the coaches arrives, and when he walks into the party room, he physically recoils. He sits down, joins our game out of obligation, but says he has to leave 15 minutes later. I take a cue from him, go into the bathroom, call my mom, and leave a few minutes later.
From what the host later told me, the other girl didn't leave for hours.
Help Me, Indeed
I attended a wedding where the groom karaoke'd "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, uncensored. The bride walked up to him as he was singing and we thought she was going to stop it. No, she joined in. The older wedding guests were not impressed.
New Year, Old Drama
A very long time ago I noticed a correlation between how I spend my new year's eve and how the entire new year ahead goes. Crazy wild party? Crazy wild year. Didn't bother to celebrate? Boring year.
Well for the millennium, I couldn't have been more stoked to have been invited to a very rich friend's apartment, who spared no expense. He lived in a two-floor penthouse in a very la-di-da street in Boston that overlooked the Charles. Elevator opened up directly into the apartment. Every guest got a "starter" bottle of Dom Pérignon upon entry, with unlimited booze flowing the entire evening. Everyone, myself included, was dressed to the 9s. I had just graduated college, and it was a very good sign of the kind of life I was to begin leading after all that hard work. I had no idea what I was in store for.
Literally five minutes after we got there, my then-girlfriend excitedly bounded up to the host, who promptly told her something along the lines of "Please don't talk to me for the rest of the evening, I am very upset with you”.
She did not take it well. I spent the majority of the party consoling her in the coat room, drinking. She refused to leave. She wanted to keep making a scene until she got an apology, and the longer she waited, the worse her histrionics got. The host's boyfriend took a shift consoling her while I sought out the host, and when I confronted him and defended her, he basically explained that she had done something that had violated his trust. That’s when I found out the dark truth.
As a result, he had uninvited her (and by extension, me, but that he didn't mind that I had shown up), and that he would appreciate it if I would either stay upstairs and have a good time, or go back downstairs and do more consoling, or just leave. As hot as I was, as quick as I was to defend my lady, it seemed like a reasonable request, so I stayed upstairs a little more.
I knew I was being a jerk, but I had been down there for like two hours. Enough was enough. I started being social, which was always a little hard for me to do back then, and then suddenly some of my anxieties started melting away. I was chatting, laughing, having a great time, and then we all watched the ball drop on TV.
Shortly after midnight, I resumed my responsibility, and the girlfriend and I took the subway home—the transit authority had buses running all evening. When we got to the train station, we just missed the connecting bus that would have brought us the rest of the way home. It was the last straw for her. She started screaming about how everyone betrays you. She started kicking one of those wooden boxes where they keep the sand for when the roads get icy.
A bus driver saw this, drove up, and said he felt bad and let us board his bus and took us back to our place—he did it just for us—he turned the whole empty bus around after we got to our apartment. It was so affirming to me, that someone could be so kind, but it didn't matter to the girl. I put her to bed when we got home and stayed up and went to bed after watching the sun rise through the buildings and trees from my back porch.
I should have realized then and there that she wasn't the right person for me. But I let it slide. We had so much in the bank. So many good memories. I wasn't going to leave her over a stupid party. Later, I discovered what had happened between her and the host.
She had promised the host that she would write some sort of letter to a grad school he was applying to, and she said she wrote it, but she never did. I had caught her in a bunch of similar lies in the past, and I believed his story. I felt bad that I had defended her so vehemently at first during the poor guy's party, that he had spent so much time and money on. I also later found out that she knew that she had been uninvited, but she showed up anyway. Thanks for dragging me into it, ex.
The rest of the year was, unsurprisingly, full of drama, and we eventually broke up, but not before moving into another apartment together, not before I caught her cheating on me and let it slide again and after we broke up every day I had to overhear her berate for "wasting years of her life," using her power of dramatic storytelling and half-truth spin to make me look like a horrible person to the point where I lost half my friends. She whipped everyone up into a frenzy—she had strangers online affirming her "strength" on a daily basis. I've seen her do it to other people. I should have seen that coming.
Cover Charge
Just out of high school, a girl I knew was throwing a big birthday party at her house and her parents "totally wouldn’t be there". Not only were her parents there they also stood on the staircase and watched liked hawks the entire time. Eventually, it became a room of staring 19-year-olds vs bird-like parents from above—but that wasn’t the most deranged part.
The girl went upstairs to try and talk to them and when she came down she told us that her parents said we all had to pay $5 because "parties aren't free". I promptly left.
Seven Seconds In Heaven
When I was in the 7th grade, I went to a party where literally everybody started kissing, and I was the ONLY guy not getting any. I was the odd man out so I went upstairs and told on everyone to the host's mother and she stayed in the basement with us the rest of the night, with no more kissing.
Last Night The DJ Threatened My Life
I was at a party with my cousin. She starts making out with this guy, who then follows her around like a puppy, alternately telling her how great she was and what an awesome DJ he is. She tires of this and says, "Well go and get on the decks then”! So he goes to the kitchen to get on the decks.
Two minutes later he runs past us holding his face like he's embarrassed that he's leaving and doesn't want my cousin to see. About 20 minutes go by and we hear banging on the door, "POLICE, OPEN THE DOOR". Bear in mind this is the UK, and the authorities do not generally raid parties or bang on the door like that.
In response to that, nearly everyone there laughs and just shouts go away and other things like that. They then kick the door open and it is actually a bunch of officers. They start shining lights in everyone's eyes and asking random questions; "What have you taken? Do you know where so-and-so is? Where's the knife”?
What?! At this point we look at the room and seem to be taking it in for the first time, there is blood everywhere, all over the floor, all over my friend's handbag, all over the front door. Then one of the officers comes past with a breadknife in an evidence bag. That’s when we realized what had happened.
It would seem that my cousin’s friend was not embarrassed when he left, but was holding his face together. It turns out that the DJ decided that he was not going to let him have a go on the decks.
Thought that was probably a good point to leave.
In The End, it Doesn’t Even Matter
My 16th birthday party. For a girl, that's supposed to be a big thing, so I had it all planned out! I had a pool party planned, and my dad's band was going to play with me singing a Linkin Park song. It was super popular then, ok!
I invited everyone I knew, yet only a few people showed. My best friend, two girls who left about a half hour after they showed up, and a boy who's mom made him come because she was friends with my mom.
Talk about an epic fail. Still, my best friend and I tried to make the best of it but it never helped my wounded pride.
Funny though, my dad told me the other day that a girl came to his work that knew me in high school, with the flyer I'd given her for that party. I'm 26 now, and this happened just the other day. Funny that she kept it all these years but never showed. Life is weird like that.
A Man On A Mission
So I was about 16 and I had this crush on a neighbor girl of mine. One day we were talking after we got off the bus and she said: "I am having a little party tonight, you should come over it’ll just be a few of us girls". I said sure! I get to the party around 8 pm and notice there are only three girls.
While hanging out I realize there are no drinks and there are pictures of Jesus and crosses all over the wall. Well, being born completely atheist (and only having been to church twice) I know nothing about Christianity and honestly never cared to study up on it. So we go downstairs and she suggests we play charades.
I really wanted to leave at this point but I really didn’t want to be rude so we play. What happened next still makes me shiver with embarrassment. I receive my card and it says "missionary". Now, in my 16-year-old atheist young mind, I begin to think of something else. Needless to say, I acted out the missionary position for what felt like forever. I’m getting weird stares.
Finally, one girl asks what I got and I tell her and she tells me what an actual missionary is. I grabbed my jacket and left. I even started catching a different bus at a different stop after this.
Crushing The Crush
In high school, I was invited to a party that also included a girl I had a little bit of a crush on. I was a heavy kid and didn't have a lot of self-confidence so I never made a move. When she snuck up on me and jumped on my back (she later admitted she also had a crush on me), I laughed and attempted to lean back and set her down.
She didn't put her feet down.
When she kept hanging from my neck with my balance out of whack, I kept going and ended up falling right on top of her.
Doesn’t Add Up
I was 17 years old and a senior in high school and me and my friends knew of this abandoned house in a very prestigious neighborhood. The house was probably worth upwards of $2 million. We decided to go check the house out and see if it was legitimate. So we walked up to the house (which was on a hill, so not easily visible), and to our surprise, the back door was unlocked so we just walked right in. This place was HUGE! It was just giant empty rooms with no furniture or anything inside the house.
So later that week, I decided to tell one of my more "popular" friends about the house, and he recommends having a party there. So about a week later on a Friday, I logged into Facebook and almost every status was something along the lines of "Huge Mansion Party! Text me for details”! I assumed that he just went ahead and decided the throw a party there (he lived right down the road from it. So I walk to the party to find at least 200 people there raging out. Now this is where it gets interesting.
I looked over behind my shoulder and see a kid sink a Beirut shot from probably 30 feet, and he went wild out of excitement. He started smashing things, he was punching and kicking walls, and even put his head through a wall. All of a sudden, every person there started to destroy the house.
Windows were broken, the staircase was damaged, the chandeliers were ripped down, walls were completely destroyed, the entire kitchen was pulverized, and there was garbage everywhere. To say the least, the house had A LOT of damage. In the midst of destruction, we hear sirens. Everybody just bolted out of the house and the party was over, I stayed a little bit longer to realize that no one ever actually came.
The next day I drove by the place and there were 5 or 6 squad cars outside of it inspecting everything. I know that so far this party sounds great—but I'm about to explain why it was the worst party.
About a month after the party, I'm sitting at home and there's a knock on my door. I open it to find a couple of officers standing there and they say to me "We have a warrant for your arrest, you have the right to remain silent... blah blah blah". So they take me to the station, explain that they have pictures of me at this party and what I was being charged with. I ended up pleading guilty to the charges of trespassing and mischief.
The consequences include more the $3,000 worth of fines, a 14-week class on underage drinking, 60 hours of community service, and 6-month probation—all just because I attended this party. Turns out there were 84 other kids who got the same punishment as me...and oh yeah, a total of $200,000+ damage to the house. Yeah, the party was fun, but not worth the consequences.
Party For Me? No, Party For Thee
It was my birthday party that my girlfriend threw for me. I knew she was doing it so I asked her, "If you are going to do a party can I give you a list of my friends to invite”? She acted like she wasn't planning anything.
Long story short. The "surprise" party was all of her friends. The worst part is they were eating all my food that my girl had bought using a gift certificate of mine to a local restaurant...I was saving that gift certificate!
Unexpected Consequences
I was at a friend's birthday party, and when it all wound down there was a group of four guys who refused to leave when they were asked to. One of the guys said, "Who wants us to leave”? to a group of us, and seeing that no one was really standing up to them I put up my hand. I was surrounded by him and his four friends pretty fast, and we were being pushed toward each other by a huge group of people.
I remember being confident in the fact that I was surrounded by my friends who would back me up, and none of these guys were particularly big, so I wasn't going to back down—but there was something that I forgot about.
When punches started being thrown I realized the huge group of my friends around us consisted solely of females, who instantly cleared the area, allowing myself to take a decent beating from four guys before some of my male friends heard the commotion and stepped in to save me. I got a fractured nose and orbital bone.
A Good Excuse Is Worth A Million Dollars
I went to a Christmas or Halloween party a few years ago at a friend's apartment with a couple friends. Everyone was already going at it, being obnoxious, etc, so we tried to figure out a way to get out without people making a scene over us leaving five minutes after we showed up. So, I act like I get a phone call, throw on my best "oh no" shocked face, and say "Oh lord, we gotta go, my dog exploded", and just left. No one said anything.
So, now whenever we're in an awkward situation we want to get out of…someone's dog explodes.
Silence Is Golden
My friends are always amazed when I talk about this one. I went to a "mute" party: we were about 10-15 people, at this girl's house, and nobody was allowed to speak (or to write). We could communicate only with gestures.
I only knew one girl there, and it was extremely awkward. I really didn't know what to do, so it just ended up in a very long staring contest. The weirdest part was when I decided to leave, but couldn't say it to anyone, and I just took my coat and went out, without uttering a word.
And yet, like every time I've been to a party, I had imagined I would meet a girl there.
A Different Kind Of Surprise Party
Mine would have to be my seventeenth birthday. It had started like a normal day at school, completely fine, only thing abnormal was I had to be picked up instead of riding the bus. Well, my brother instead of my mom shows up, and immediately I see something is up.
The look on his face appears as if he had been crying all day. Come to find out that was the day his girlfriend had decided to tell him he had gotten her pregnant, and my mother had been less than happy about it to say the least. They had fought all day. Needless to say that dinner had been the most awkward moment of my life with pure animosity happening between my mom and brother while also trying to pretend to be happy.
A Different Kind Of Pool-Hopping
Years back I was at a pool party, and by nightfall, everyone was pretty inebriated. One of the guests thought it would be funny to fill a Jagermeister bottle with ipecac. And offer shots to the people in the pool. 12 or so people did the shots and didn't care that it tasted funny. A few minutes later it was a total puke fest, in the pool. Kinda like that scene from Family Guy, but in water so everyone was screaming and scrambling to get out as the puke swirled around them.
A Divine Gathering
My worst experience was when I was invited to a classmate's 18th birthday party in high school. I didn't really hang out with my classmates on a regular basis but figured that it was kind of a big deal turning 18 and that it would be kind of a jerk move to say no, so I said I'd come.
I knew that this girl and several others in my class were religious but not in a particularly annoying way—but in Sweden it's kind of weird to go to church every week. Anyway, when I came to the place where her party was supposed be, warning bells went off.
It was a church...So this was starting to feel really weird by now, but I stayed and eventually found the two only people in my class that I usually talked to—these two Muslim girls. It turns out that nearly everyone there was in her church. I can't really say that anything exceptional happened but I felt as I was in a cult. Everyone just seemed like they were over-the-top nice and friendly, in à creepy way. After an okay amount of time, I called my dad who came to pick me up. I said goodbye to the birthday girl and excused myself and lied and said I needed to get up early in the morning. But instead, I went to another party.
Fast forward to Monday in school. My two Muslim friends tell me what happened after I left—and I was horrified. They started playing soothing music and everyone was supposed to lie down on the floor and think about god. They found it a bit odd but decided to just play along. This worked out well until one of the girls' cell went off. The birthday girl's father then barges into the room, takes the girl's phone, and proceeds to lock it in a drawer. He gave her an angry look and said it was necessary so she wouldn't ruin the moment for everyone else.
Silver Linings
My friend's 11th birthday party. She invited a bunch of people and had it at a restaurant/arcade place. I was the only one who showed up. Her mom had rented a section of the place out and had awesome gift bags set up for everyone that had RSVP-ed saying they'd be there. Me and her still had a great time. To this day we're still best friends.
Party Pooper
I used to live with my girlfriend and she threw a big party for her co-workers one year. She was a checker at a well-known supermarket chain, and she must have invited thirty people.
Some necessary backstory: She had a Siberian Husky that was only partially housebroken. By that I mean she had him trained to do his business in one part of the house. I couldn't take him out on walks because I am in a wheelchair, or I'd have taken him out, and my girlfriend was working long hours, so she wasn't able to take him out every time he needed to go. So she designated a 3 x 6-foot area behind the couch as his toilet, and she put flattened cardboard boxes down for him to go on. It wasn't great, but it was the best she could think of.
So, the day of the party, I cleaned the house really well, and since we couldn't have a big piece of cardboard behind the couch ("What's that for”?), we just pulled it out and left the floor bare.
My girlfriend decided to make some blender drinks. Well, she overdid it, and I was pretty much left to host the party myself—even though I barely knew any of the people—while my girlfriend went to bed so that she could vomit copious amounts onto the floor.
Even so, everyone else seemed to be having a good time, and the party seemed to be going pretty well, even though there was hardly any seating. I didn't mind that bit since with my wheelchair I always have a set, but for everybody else, it was standing room only, other than three people on the couch, and two people on our kitchen chairs.
Since the dog lived in the house, he was there too, and sure enough, he decided he had to take a dump. Do you see where this is going? There wasn't anyone behind the couch (the couch pretty much cut that part of the room off from the rest) so the dog went back there and got himself hunched over and dropped a big dog log on the bare floor.
Nobody else saw him do this except me, and by the time I noticed what he was doing it was too late to stop him, and so all I could do was laugh…as I watched the party unravel.
The smell was pretty remarkable, but there wasn't much in the way of air current, so the aroma just sort of hung there in an invisible cloud of rank. I could tell though; when the folks on the couch smelled it because in unison they all screwed up their faces. One of them turned around and looked behind the couch (the dog was done and gone by then), and he went "Oh no" and all three of the folks on the couch got up and away from it.
As soon as the three people were off the couch, three more people who had been standing around with nowhere to sit for an hour saw their opportunity and they jumped over and sat down before anyone else could grab a seat. They lasted for about 45 seconds to a minute before they realized why the couch had been vacated. As soon as they got up, three more people grabbed a spot on the couch.
This went on for about three or four turns before the smell had drifted far enough to empty the room, and thus the house, and that was it. he party was over, and everyone drove home in the rain without saying good bye or even leaving a note for my passed-out girlfriend.
She never threw another party as long as I knew her.
Uninvited
When I graduated from high school three years ago, I wasn't invited to a single party afterward. Now the optimist in you might think that "Oh, people must not have had any parties, everyone gets invited to graduation events" Well my friend, my friends, the sad truth is that there was one. It was held at a local country club. There were over 200 people in attendance, for a graduation event of my class of 192.
How do I know this you might ask? I was present when everyone was invited. I was watching the computer when the Facebook Event creator, who was our class president, sent out the Facebook invites, and I watched her uncheck my name and one or two other kids' names before sending it. I was also present when the paper invites were given out, the school gave permission to hand them out in homeroom. I was the only one that wasn't given one in my homeroom.
On top of that, my school doesn't even have official graduation events outside of the usual honors day, commencement and such.
Spite Party
For my "Sweet 16", my mom and I planned out this whole theme of a nightclub and had a party planning place come decorate a warehouse with white curtains to white everything out, a disco ball, a DJ with lights, and a lounge area that had tables with glowing centerpieces and all. I'd been having some family troubles so it was an amazing thing for my mom to do for me, and a lot of money. I passed out the invites at school to all of my friends, and didn't invite the jock that had made a point of trying to make my life miserable. I had over 100 people coming.
Day of the party I got a flood of texts telling me that people "couldn’t make it”. I knew something was up—but I didn’t know how bad it was. The jock had planned a party of his own and invited everyone that was coming to my party. I ended up with about 30 people there...20 of whom didn't go to my school. Almost everyone I went to school with didn't show.
My mom even called that kid and told him he could come if he wanted to but to please not do this to me on my sixteenth birthday. I will never get over the humiliation from everyone at school the following Monday. I transferred schools after that. I will never forget that feeling.
Ghosted
My friend had his birthday party yesterday. The plan, for weeks, had been to go to a giant shopping mall for dinner, drinks, and general fun. About 20 people had been invited.
Well, I show up at the appointed time, and no one is there, not even the host! I call him to ask what's going on and he tells me that he changed his mind at the last minute and now everyone is going to just meet at his place—on the opposite side of the city, an hour drive. So I ask him if he needs me to help him call people to tell them about the change, and he says, "Nah, everyone is already here”.
So I said, “Guess I’ll just go home then”.
Micromanaging
Mine has to be my 11th birthday party, which my twin and I had planned. We had no idea how parties worked and ended up brainstorming a series of activities and games at SPECIFIC times. I kind of ruined the fun when I would constantly watch the clock and then freak out saying, "OMG GUYS, IT'S 6:31, THE GAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE OVER”! Gosh, I feel so lame...
The Jig Is Up
I worked at a furniture store where the wife of our manager decided to have a surprise birthday party and invited all employees over to her and manager's home. When we got there we all (15 people) realized that the whole house was furnished with STOLEN furniture from the company. It was very uncomfortable as we all waited for the husband to arrive. When he came in, the surprise changed into shock right away. Everyone left 15 minutes later. Manager was fired the next day by the owner. He was then given the choice of returning all furniture or being charged with theft.
Lesson Learned: Never Party With Co-Workers
My girlfriend and I both work at a movie theater and another girl we worked with invited some people over to her house. First off, let me just say that this place is in the middle of nowhere. So here we are, driving out to someplace where modern medicine hasn't made a foothold yet. We get there and the girl isn't even there.
She gets there an hour later and at this point, it's still just the three of us. Some more people finally show up, including her 40-year-old sister, her 8-month-old baby, and her trashy husband. Anyway, the girlfriend and I decide not to drink because at this point we want to leave as soon as possible without being rude.
This 40-year-old sister has no intention of leaving anytime soon apparently because she precedes to knock out more shots than there are minutes in the day. Fast forward 30 minutes and she starts screaming at us because she has forgotten that we were even at her house. Which...wasn't her house. It turns out that babies don't enjoy yelling at 2 in the morning so her baby in the living room starts screaming crying. Like this thing must have the vocal chords of a full-grown adult male lion. I'm thinking we need to get outta here at this point.
Before we make it out however, Joe Dirt over here pulls out a baggie of weed and a one-hitter. "Wanna hit this”?, he smugly asks. We decline because we are honestly thinking about breaking through the kitchen window to get to our car.
Everyone, except us, passes it around. Out of nowhere, a 9-year-old child comes out of nowhere from the back of the house. I’ll never forget what happened next. He confidently picks up this one-hitter and finishes it out, packs another, and finishes that one. I honestly had no idea what to do or say. The girlfriend and I promptly leave and go home.
It honestly felt like I was about to be on Cops. It was the perfect people, setting, and time for an episode.
Plot Twist
When I was in high school, maybe sophomore year, this kid began passing out invitations to a party he was throwing. He was in a few of my classes, everyone knew him, but he was one of those weird Reserve Corps kids who lived, breathed and ate ROTC. High and tight and all. Anyways, like I said, he passed out invites like a week before.
As the night of the party came closer, he told me, "Dude, there are so many people coming, I might have to un-invite people”. I was pumped about this huge party. Long story short, I showed up with one of my buddies, to the kid, his parents, and a table of party food. No one else came for the three hours I stayed there just to make the kid happy.
While I was here, his awkward stepdad showed us his saber collection, proved to us that he could do handstands, and watched The Last Samurai. The next week at school, I told everyone how fun the party was, and made the kid feel like a champ.
My Time Or Yours?
I had an office Christmas party where we were sent a stern letter saying if we dared to not stay an extra hour to make up for the time we spent at the party or didn't use PTO, we would be at risk for being fired. Oh yeah, then the budget was cut to $50 and everyone was told to bring their own food. Yay company morale!
Raise The Roofie
I went to a party in college that a lady friend invited me to. As soon as I got there she was headed out the door because she had to leave for some unexpected reason. She handed me a fresh drink in a red cup and apologized for taking off, but told me to enjoy the party without her. It was a pretty fun party as far as I remember, but I only drank that 1 drink that she gave me before I headed off to another party with my roommate.
That's as much as I remember. When I woke up, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In 40-degree weather, I was in only a shirt and shorts, cuddling with a minivan in a random parking lot. Confused and still a little messed up, I dusted myself off and walked three miles home. On the way back I stopped at a Qdoba and got a free breakfast burrito because they took pity on me, so that was nice.
As it turns out the chick got the "free" red cup/drink from some rando at the party and didn't get the chance to drink it. Lucky me. The night remains one of my most entertaining college stories and the biggest mystery of my college career. See, the story doesn’t end there. It turns out the roommate I left with also got roofied that night.
From what we gathered, we left the party with the intention of walking home and going to a neighbor's party when it hit both of us. Everything is a huge blur up until the next morning. I woke up in the parking lot with the van, his destination and circumstances were even better.
He woke up in a forest nestled into a nice den he made for himself out of sticks and tree branches. He has a picture of it somewhere, seriously looked like an animal's residence. We only know what it looked like because we collectively spent the entire next day trying to retrace our steps from the party to find where we ended up, neither of us remembered where the parking lot/forest was. We had to find where he woke up because he left his hat and phone there.
Through the tiny memories we had from the night, we traced our steps back and found where we ended up. I remembered a colorful wheel from the night, and he remembered walking through construction. That was all we had to go on. We found the construction and a nearby forest, and as we walked down a path there was a large colorful wheel in someone’s backyard that was some sort of children's plaything.
When we got to the den he made himself, there was also a 2 liter of Sprite and a bottle of the hard stuff laying by his things. We got his phone and stuff back and were going through his call log and found that he called a friend of ours at some point in the blackout.
We called her the next day and she said that we were being ridiculous when we called her and some chick kept saying weird stuff in the background. Neither of us have ANY memory of a chick being with us, and we still have absolutely no idea who it was.
Blending In
I was trying to break into the goth scene when I was a much younger lad—and it led to a seriously embarrassing moment. I hung out for 10 minutes at a wake that I mistakenly assumed was the party I was planning on attending. Thanks in part to my outfit, nobody suspected anything until I opened my stupid mouth. "Jesus, you guys take this stuff seriously. You even brought a…oh”.
Join Us
In college, my lab partner invited me to go to a party at a hotel with her "camp friends". I didn't know too many people in the area so I didn't think much of it, sounded like a great way to meet people.
No.
She brought me to a cult. First there was a lecture, took all of my willpower not to ram my palm through my forehead. Being a little lonely in a new city I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and not ruin any kind of a friendship with this girl. After the lecture we were split up and asked very personal questions, I was asked to sign up for more courses and to give money.
Politely gritting my teeth through the entire ordeal, about to leave she decided to stay, hang out, and get a ride from the other cult members. I had been her ride there, it was a long drive back to my apartment alone.