People Share The Scariest True Stories They've Ever Heard

The Small Town Scaries

One day as a kid I was exploring the forests near our house with my cousin. The forest was on a hill, but there were several craters there because of bombs that were dropped there during the world wars (Germany). One day we saw a backpack at the bottom of one.

We tried to climb down, but it was kinda steep and slippery, so we didn't want to risk falling. We planned on returning later with a rope, and went home. The next day news story was that there was a backpack found with the remains of a girl, in that forest. A guy walking his dog found it, after the dog wouldn't stop barking and going crazy at the edge of the crater, while staring at the backpack. We stopped exploring the forests after.

somewhatofalegend

Please Actually Take Your Medicine

When I worked in healthcare I had a patient who got a sinus infection. He stopped taking his antibiotics after a few days because he felt better. His sinus infection came back with a vengeance. When he got to the Emergency Department he was presenting with stroke symptoms.

The infection had spread to his cranial cavity. There was so much pus that it was twisting his brain. No one thought he would survive the surgery. The family was advised to expect the worst. Amazingly he actually survived. He ended up needing 3 more surgeries to wash out and spent almost 2 months in the hospital. Take your full dose of antibiotics, people!

slappy_mcslapenstein

Close Call

I was walking out of a Walmart one night and this guy caught my attention and asked me if I can get him a ride. I don't know this person and I don't give random strangers a ride. He told me he was a truck driver and he wanted to go back to the to the gas station across the highway literally just within walking distance so he can get to his big rig.

I made up some BS excuse so i wouldn't give him a ride. I suggested to him that there's uber he can contact for help.

He starts yelling at me saying that its just a ride and that he needs help. At that point, I just said "I gotta go" and I quickly turned around and headed to my car. I heard him say "Okay". I got into my car and sped off. Initially I felt extremely bad for not giving him a ride but the way he yelled at me made it seem justified that I said no. I don't give strangers rides unless its family or friends.

Cut to almost a year later. I'm at a restaurant eating lunch. I decided to open up Facebook on my phone. What I saw next just spooked me down to my core.

The article showed a picture of the same guy, who asked me for a ride that night, in a mugshot. Turns out he was a running fugitive wanted on several murder charges across the state I live in.

One of the scariest things he did to trick people was that he would ask for a ride and then when him and his victims were out of sight of everyone he would then kill them by shooting them and he strips them of their money and their clothing. He then would take their vehicle and travel to the next area to find his next victim...

I legit almost choked on my drink when I saw that.

lugarius1990

OoooOOOoooOOOooo

The Lake Bodom murders are scary as hell

Like, there are 4 teens who go on a camping trip in Finland. The next morning, 3 of the teens are found murdered, and one of them is almost dead and severely injured, but survived.

No one knows who the murderer is today.

Forty-Four years later, the fourth teen, Nils, who survived, was accused of murdering them and gets sent to prison. But then he was released a year later, because there was little DNA evidence to prove this. And no good evidence to prove that he murdered them at all.

However, there is circumstantial evidence such as he allegedly fought his one friend due to an argument and was drunk. Some say this could've ended in accidental and/or intentional murder. However, I personally highly doubt that Nils is guilty.

Some other key suspects include the manager of the camp, who was known for being quite hostile, an ice cream vendor who admitted to the crime on his deathbed, and a man who lived only a short distance from the camp who claimed "to be in Germany" during that time. However, there is much doubt for his claim

There was a sketch released of the alleged murderer. Who seems to be an unsettling picture of an older man

snowythandi8

Nice Mental Picture, Thx

When I was young, I saw a documentary about a guy who got flesh eating bacteria in his nasal cavity. It ate his face and he's still alive. Eventually they removed the bacteria by removing the eaten parts of his face. He got a prosthetic face, which back in those days was basically a plastic Halloween mask that tried to look human. At the end of the documentary, he took the mask off. His face from his forehead down to his mouth was just a hole.

huggalump

Random Attacks

Lived w 3 other girls sophomore year of college. All 3 took off early for spring break, leaving me alone in the house. First night alone, I heard someone bang on my front door at 2am. Then I hear more knocks at the back door. A man yells "Boulder police, open the door!" When I didn't, I heard body slams against both doors.

Soon I hear "little girl, open the door, we know you're alone." At this point I'm so scared I keep accidentally dialing 611 instead of 911. When I eventually do get the police, cars roll up (thankfully) just minutes later. Officers have 4 boys from our school hockey team face down on the grass. I had to file restraining orders against them and the kicker - one lived across the street from me and we'd never spoken a single word before then.

etrain828

They're Lucky They Made It Out Alive

I met a guy who had been traveling Australia with a couple friends, hitchhiking around as many of us had done. One of his friend told him they were near his distant uncles house, whom he'd never met before. He got a phone number from a family member and as they had hoped, the uncle offered them a place to stay. He picked them up in town and drove them out to his rural property way out in the bush.

They said he seemed like a pretty normal guy, friendly and cheery. When it was time to set up a place to sleep the uncle took them to a closet that was totally full of sleeping bags and bed rolls. They didn't think much of it at the time and all grabbed a kit and set up on the living room floor. They stayed a couple days and nothing out of the ordinary happened, and afterwards the uncle drove them to the bus station and they continued on their way. About a year later that man was arrested and charged with several counts of murder. He was the man who was picking up young hitch hiking backpackers and slaughtering them. The guy who told me this story was 100% certain he had slept in the sleeping bag of one of his victims.

pasomider

Why Would You Say This

Back in the 70s, some friends and I planned a camping trip to northern Cali for a long weekend. We packed up and headed north on the highway. Somewhere around Bakersfield we picked up a hitchhiker headed to Kernville, who we dropped off before heading further north.

So we get to our campsite and start getting things set up, my gf finds a note tucked into the top of her backpack. It read, "I could have killed all of you".

None of us slept that night.

adanipse

A Stranger In My Home

There have been several confirmed cases in a few different countries of people living in other people's houses unbeknownst to them.

I believe one case went on for a couple of years. The intruder would wait until the homeowner would go to work and then sneak out and steal small amounts of food as not to be noticed. Well, eventually the homeowner did notice and couldn't figure out where his food was going, so he set up a hidden camera to record it.

I can only imagine how scary it would have been to come home from work one night and sit down to watch the video, skipping through hours of stillness, to suddenly come across a person crawling out of your attic. And then the slow realization that that person is still in your house at that moment.

And then the retroactive fear of thinking back to all the times you laid awake at night and heard a noise, which you just dismissed as coming from the pipes or the old wooden beams, but actually it was a f*cking person just above you.

It gives me the heebee jeebees every time I think about it.

Iwillpickonelater

Broken Doors

My sister dated a guy when she was in high school who lived a few towns over. Once, his families garage door broke, which they credited to a big storm, and they couldn't get into their garage for a while. Finally when someone showed up to fix it, they found a bunch of blankets and some food scraps in there. Turns out, a guy who was on the run after murdering some people a state over was able to break their garage door and lock it from the inside so he could live there for a bit. I believe he was found and arrested, but still not a comforting story.

jelljen

An Unexpected Tenant

For about a year I lived in a house with four housemates. We had a pretty big backyard with a garage and a tool shed that we never used, ever. We also had motion detector lights. Two of my housemates were very superstitious and believed in ghosts and spirits and such.

The lights in our backyard would go off randomly, I assumed it was animals, my housemates were sure it was a ghost. One of them told us she'd seen a man-ghost looking trough our window when she was high. They thought it was scary, I thought nothing of it because... well yeah.

A few nights later, drunk me thought I saw a man through the mesh-door to the backyard. I just thought my mind was playing tricks on me because my housemates kept talking about the "ghost".

Eventually I moved out to go back to my home country, and about 6 months after that I FaceTimed with one of the housemates. Well, turns out it hadn't been a ghost. A homeless man had been living in our toolshed for god knows how long. It gave me the creeps for sure.

ieams85

Truly Worst Fear

One of my friends was drugged by a "nice seeming" girl at a bar that tried to sex traffic her. The girl got her an uber to an address she didn't know under the guise of "get my drunk friend home" but she woke up on the way and told the driver she didn't know where they were going. They called the cops, apparently that wasn't the first time that week they'd heard the same story and they recognized the address as one they were already tracking. If she hadn't woken up on the way she might have been trafficked by now. Apparently they use younger, safe seeming girls to do the collecting a lot of the time.

spacelordmthrfkr

When Being Polite Backfires

Not the scariest one I've heard but one of the scariest things to happen to me (also in my post history in r/letsnotmeet).

A few years ago I was living in a big city, didn't know anyone. A guy I was seeing came (from abroad) to visit me. At the end of his trip I accompanied him to his train home. After that I went back into the metro to go home. It was about 2 PM, very bright and sunny outside. I sat down on a bench near a man. We made eye contact and I said hello, he said hello back. I felt like something was off but tried to ignore it. The metro car came and we both got inside.

It was crowded. I took a seat, he took one of the only available ones which was right across from me. I started thinking I was overreacting since he started talking to a man near me, seemed like they knew each other. His friend got off after a few stops but he stayed. Once I saw my own stop approaching to change lines I got up. He got up too and was right behind me. I could see his reflection in the metro car window and he was very slowly looking my legs up and down. I started to feel very uneasy. The doors open, we get off. I start walking quickly to the end of the platform then realise he might be following me. There were several entrances/exits around so I suddenly changed direction to go to another exit. He changed course as well. Then I turned around again, he followed. I did this a few times and he changed his path to match mine each time.

Eventually I knew I had to leave somehow so he wouldn't catch up so I went to the exit I needed to take to change lines and go home. Unfortunately the passageway to the next line was flooded with people so I was slowed down. He caught up with me and started crowding me in, getting closer and closer to me. I was backed up against a wall at this point, him just smiling brightly at me.

"Hello, how are you?" He asked me, still inching towards me. I was terrified at this point. No one stopped to even glance at us so I knew unless I did something myself I wouldn't get away from him. I glanced to the right and saw a staircase downwards.

Without warning I SPRINTED away to the stairs. He was very caught off guard and it took him 2 or 3 seconds to start following me. I flew down the stairs and straight into a metro car. I turned around to see if he was close behind. He was sprinting down the stairs as well. Thankfully, the doors closed before he could get to the bottom and we pulled away.

Surprisingly I had gotten onto the right metro line and direction to go home, not that it mattered much to me at the time. That incident and several others of men following me home or in the street make me paranoid when I walk outside alone.

AardvarkCactus

Who Was Looking For Me?

I had two incidents in school that I still don't understand. I would have been Year 9/10, so about 14/15 years old.

The first one, I was walking out the school gates when this huge man who I didn't know stopped me and asked "Do you know Evilmentalhamster?" to which I quickly answered "No." and went on to my school bus home. I never found out why someone was asking after me.

The second occasion, someone phoned up the school reception saying that they were waiting on road nearby to take me to the dentist. I didn't go because I knew that I didn't have an appointment booked. Again, I have no idea what it was about...

Evilmentalhamster