Reader beware, you're in for a scare!
We always enjoy––perhaps on some perverse level––hearing stories about that things that go bump in the night.
We'd just prefer that these things not actually happen to... you know... us.
After Redditor LionizedBacon asked the online community, "What's the creepiest thing that's ever happened to you or someone you know?" people shared their stories.
Warning: Some sensitive content ahead.
"One day she walked outside..."
I worked with a girl who casually told the story of someone almost kidnapping her little sister.
One day she walked outside to tell her 6 (?) year-old sister to come inside, and her sister was climbing into the open door of a car at the end of the driveway. My coworker screamed and the car drove off without the sister.
"The day prior..."
When my wife was little her friend was abducted and murdered. The day prior to the abduction my wife was riding her bicycle alone and was frightened by a man in a memorable car that was clearly following her. It turns out that it was the same car that the murderer owned.
This happened about three years ago or so. I was sitting in the kitchen, and it was around 10pm or so. I heard a really loud "thump" in the basement.
I live alone with two dogs so any sound is somewhat frightening to me.
So, as I'm walking down the stairs to the, basement, I hear the thumping again, in an oddly rhythmic pattern. I creak open the door into the basement bedroom, and I see my dog is just ramming his head and body into the wall, over and over.
I cant explain to you how shockingly unnatural looking it was. It looked like... he was controlled or something. I called him over, and he stopped and came upstairs with me.
Three hours later, I hear the thumping again. I get out of bed again, However, when I went down to check it, it was my OTHER dog that was ramming his head into the wall.
It was like he was possessed. Scared the cheese out of me.
Since then, nothing like that has happened, but what an unexplainable event...
"I was heading home..."
I was heading home from my mom's and was at a light next to a gas station when the person next to me told me there was something wrong with my tire. I pulled into the gas station and when I saw the person follow me in, I felt something off, so I didn't get out. Instead I called my mom on my cellphone and when the guy pulled next to me, I gave him a thumbs up through the windshield. I then drove back to my mom's (which I had just left and was only a few minutes away). I get there, get out, we look at my tires and they are just fine.
"Long story short..."
When I was about 3 or 4, my parents were building a big house and the lead contractor was always extra friendly to me. My parents were always a little bit... hands-off so I somehow ended up alone with the lead contractor in a half-finished house. I vaguely remember him and honestly don't know how long I was alone with him. My family always refused to say.
Long story short, my mom caught him right as he was loading me into his truck and snatched me up while screaming at him; all the while he's insisting he "just wanted to buy your daughter candy at the store!"
They never reported him. I still can't understand why.
"We call the police..."
I'm a biologist that often has to do field work surveying unmaintained private properties in the middle of nowhere.
Long story short, we find a body face-up in a stream deep in a thickly wooded wetland. The body looked several months old, at least. No clothes, no tools, no shelter, nothing nearby to suggest who he is or how he got there. We couldn't even tell race or gender from what we saw.
We call the police and they immediately tell us it's probably the missing person who ditched his car nearby. They apparently searched for weeks with dogs, horses, and ATVs but didn't find any sign of the guy. All they found was his family car loaded with cash and a handgun. They also tell us he seemed to be running from someone or something, real or imagined they weren't sure. Apparently the man didn't even close his car door - just ditched it at a rail crossing and took off running into the woods in a tremendous hurry.
I find his clothes about 30 yards up the stream bank from where the body was found. His pants were neatly folded and placed on top of his nice brown loafers, underpants and socks on top of those. He placed his glasses atop his socks, very orderly and in a nice pile. His shirt and undershirt were hanging from a tree branch right above those as if to dry.
I mean, the whole thing creeps me out even a year on. But what unsettles me is the fact that he ran from his family, drove several hours from his home, ditched his car, and fought a mile through briars and thick woods only to stop and carefully fold and hang his clothes before meeting his end.
I look him up every now and then and still can't find any more info about what happened or why.
"She then tells me..."
I was mid-way through a 12-hr road trip alone, driving all my college apartment stuff back to my parents' house. Car was totally overpacked with boxes, a bike, keyboard, and the like.
I'm very low on gas, so I pull over to a gas station in the middle of Nowheretown, Georgia. Sun is dipping low, and the gas station is empty, just off the side of the main road intersecting the highway. Few cars meander past on that road, but it's a quiet town.
As I'm pumping gas, a scraggly thin guy walks up and starts mumbling about asking for the time. I tell him the time and make small talk, but not a word this man said was intelligible. All the while, he's circling the car and commenting on my stuff, but, again, I can't really understand his words too clearly. I make an excuse to duck into the convenience store, which I needed to do anyways--my bike was rattling loose and I wanted a bungee cable to affix it more securely.
As I go into the store and search for a cable, I notice scraggly man also entered and he's now talking with the clerk of the store. On a scale of 1 to meth, the scraggly man was like a 8.5, but she's hardly even a 5 on that scale... much more trustworthy, while something about that guy gave me the creeps.
Anyways, I find my cable and as I approach the register, she makes small talk about noting my car overpacked and asked if I was moving somewhere, all the like. She asks about the cable and I explain it's to secure my bike more firmly...
She then tells me I should drive my car behind the gas station and they'll help me tie it up tight. Speaking in the plural, implying what I kinda already deduced: she and the man are associates somehow.
Again, my car is just outside the window of the shop, in clear view of the main road. She tells me I should drive it behind the building, where nobody could see it, for them to help me tie it up. As though that help couldn't be done in the normal refueling area.
At this point, my gtfo meter is maxing out at 3.4 rungeon so I thank her but tell her I'll be ok, and then I practically jog to my car and get in, locking the doors immediately. As I leave, I watch through the window as the woman and man are in a very animated conversation, gesticulating towards my fleeing vehicle.
Could I have been paranoidly misreading these people because they kinda looked like methheads? Sure. But making an offer that sketchy is not a very normal thing to do.
"When I was a child..."
When I was a child in New Hampshire I went exploring by myself and got lost in the woods. I was not worried about it in the least, and was just walking around. All of a sudden, I noticed someone standing about 25 feet away from me, and he was just standing perfectly still facing me. He was all bundled up in a bunch of shirts and jackets... one over the other over the other, and his face was completely hidden by what looked like dirty rags. He was wearing big flat lensed goggle. He just stood there staring at me. I stared back for a few seconds and then turned and ran. Maybe 30 minutes later I managed to find my way back to the edge of the lake, and was able to get back to where we were staying.
"My neighbor..."
My neighbor had a stalker. The man would sit in the car and watch her, hide in bushes. It was awful for her. We called the cops on him several times.
"Naturally..."
I lived next door to Ward Weaver in Oregon City during the time he killed two teen girls. During the time these girls went missing, I began to notice a smell of something rotten.
Important note, right up the road from us is a chicken processing plant. I was well aware what rotting chicken smells like...this wasn't chicken.
Naturally with everything occurring and them not having found the girls, I called the cops and reported the smell. They told me it was the plant down the road and hung up.
2 weeks later, Ward Weaver is arrested and they find a concrete slab. Underneath that slab are two oil drum barrels.
The girls were inside. The smell I experienced was rotting human flesh. I will never forget that smell.
