
I have never been a fan of haunted houses. I even skip the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World. I think it's because there was a "haunted" townhouse that was on the block I lived on in childhood.
It languished there for years.
Sometimes local crazies and addicts would break in and set up shop. And then there would be an onslaught of insanity.
Of course during summer nights playing we kids would always dare one another to go in. I never could.
So I got labeled a coward. But hey, better a coward than a corpse.
Redditor whales-are-cute wanted to gather up tales about the times some houses got us spooked by asking:
"Redditors who lived in old/haunted houses, what's your mysterious story?"
I do believe spirits roam the halls of buildings. And that is just freaky.
That's why I like to research places before I move in. There is this fabulous luxury building on the Upper West side of Manhattan. People would kill to live there.
But that's because they don't know people were killed trying to leave there. It was an insane asylum shutdown by the city.
So I'll skip it thanks.
"I need sleep"
I was staying in an apt over an old theatre in a mining town. Apt was easily 60' above the street.
Woman, blue hued, in long dress... just appears in my peripheral vision. I turn to look... And she does the same. We meet eyes while she pauses there watching me. She then walks across the room and out the front wall of the apt over the street. I look out the window and nothing.
I'm like "I need sleep."
I mention this to owner and he explains there was a balcony there but it was lost in a fire decades ago where a woman died trying to escape said fire. Now it's a solid wall where a doorway was. He just added "long blue dress?"
Like bro... things you could have mentioned in the housing ad!
"You are in my realm"
We live in a 150 year old farmhouse. The first week we lived here, my iPhone was sitting 5 or 6 feet away from me, hadn't been touched in a while (like 20 minutes or more) and Siri just said "You are in my realm." There was no history of the phone saying this, or of any activity.
A few months later, my cat woke my up, waited at the foot of my bed and kept meowing until I got out of the bed.
She went to the top of the stairs, and waited until I followed. Followed her downstairs and she just sat in the middle of the room. I checked a few things to make sure something hadn't caught fire or whatever, while she just sat in the middle of the room looking up the staircase.
The house was SO quiet it was eerie and disturbing, usually something makes a noise in this place. I turned around to go upstairs, and thought I stood in something wet and bent over to check, but it was just a weird spot that was so cold, I thought my socks were wet. When I stood up, I felt a hand on my right shoulder. Nobody was there.
Doors occasionally open, and TV remotes constantly go missing. We've lost I think 5 now, and have never found one. Every single piece of furniture has been removed from the TV room during renovations, so it's not like something ended up in a void under the couch.
Two years ago, I was at a flea market and bumped into a former co-worker I hadn't seen in quite a while (who ended up living just around the corner). She pointed at a couple and said to go introduce myself, as they lived in our house in the 80s. I introduced myself, said I live in their old house and they immediately asked how the ghost was doing! Apparently it had a thing for TV remotes back then as well.
Former Flat Earthers Explain What Finally Made Them Come Around | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Science is science. Fact is fact. Truth is truth and simple is simple. These are things we must now attest to in 2021. Can we please all get onboard with wha...Be Not Afraid
My Dad was killed before I was born. When I was still in elementary school, I would feel someone tightening the cover on my bed at night. I would look around the room and didn't see anyone. When I told my Mom, she told me it was my Dad tucking me in. She said that he wanted me to be a girl.
Also sometimes I would be out flying in the sky like the birds on his back. He would bring me back home when it would get dark. Then I would wake up and look around the room, and go back to sleep. It didn't scare me.
Just Run!
I moved into a house built in the 1890s several years ago. A few weeks after moving in, before meeting any neighbors, I heard heavy footsteps coming down the attic steps outside my bedroom. I then heard footsteps on the staircase for the first/second floor, and someone say my name.
My husband was 30 miles away, nobody in town knew me or had access to my house, and there was nobody outside at the time. I grabbed my baby, phone and keys, and ran outside to wait. We searched the house top to bottom and never found anything, but I've heard the footsteps multiple times. We have no upstairs plumbing or hvac, so it remains unsolved.
I've also heard music playing downstairs, talking to previous owners this was common. It's just commonplace now, and we don't always have stuff going on. A lot of major remodeling has been done, so I guess maybe that's why it's happening. Honestly the repairs are scarier than anything else.
He left a bunch of furniture including a rocking chair with a matching rocking leg rest.
So one night I came downstairs for a late-night snack had to been after midnight and I was the only one down there, and there is this rocking chair and leg rest just rocking away all by themselves in sync.
See now I think some of y'all need some good sage. Or some nice mantras and perhaps an exorcist. Or a shaman. Try a few different things. See what works. Because that is all a lot of nonsense right there.
He's Here
We would hear foot steps downstairs or upstairs when no one was there.
Some guy died in the house.
Nothing else weird though.
I Hear Her
I lived in an old house with my dad after he was divorced. Money was tight, and he lectured me many times to not leave any electronics on so the electric bill wouldn't be outrageous.
In the mornings, I would stand in the living room looking out the window, waiting for my ride for school to drive by.
Only one home, house totally silent. Suddenly start hearing a woman talking, but very muffled. I would compare it to the sound of someone talking on a phone way on the other side of the house.
I thought the TV was on. Bent down and hit the power button only for the TV to turn on. Wtf? I look at the phone, thinking maybe it was on. Nope. Checked radios, etc. Nothing is on.
Walk back into the living room and listen closely. Sounds like a woman having a conversation with someone.
They're talking about sewing needles and materials. Sounds like it's coming from the other side of the room, so I walk closer to hear better. The voices now sound like they're on the other side of the room I just came from.
That was when my hair stood on end. That moment you realize something isn't normal. Quickly ran outside and waited for my school ride lol.
Got home and told my dad about it. He told me he also heard a woman's voice one morning while working out, but it sounded distant and conversational. He didn't want to tell me because he didn't want me to be scared by myself in the house.
I still think about it today and it was a very baffling experience.
Back in the Day
My sister and I were just reminiscing the other day about this house we grew up in. We lived in a townhouse in a complex of low income rental homes for most of our childhoods. Very bad vibes in general, none of the three of us kids were ever alone in any part of the house at any time because we were dead terrified to be.
I peed the couch once because my mother refused to accompany me upstairs to the washroom, and I was too scared to go alone. The house was built more upwards that outwards so it was a long tall steep staircase and long hallways. The bathroom was at the end of the hallway, and you had to cross the hall at the top of the stairs to turn on the hall light.
We've collectively experienced a few events ranging from bad feelings, recurring nightmares, strange occurrences, to apparitions. Strange events include my sister sleepwalking to the top of the stairs and screaming at the top of her lungs that I was going to die. She never did sleepwalk again and to her chagrin, I am alive and well.
Apparitions include the man sitting at the dining room table the morning of my birthday, and the child in the stairwell window that had no landing to stand on beneath it.
That was the only time we saw our parents acknowledge we had a problem, because we were looking at it from outside the house. We were the driveway, all 5 of us and our dog in the car after a camping trip. We stayed with family friends that night.
The Black Mass
There were poltergeists in the apartment where I was living. We were three flatmates, one guy that did not believe in anything paranormal, and me and my best friend. I started hearing noises at night, our two bedrooms were side by side and there was something knocking from her side, like something made of glass. We investigated, turned out it was the bottles she kept in her room shaking by themselves at night.
Got worse later. Some of her clothes were teleporting to my room when we were outside together. One day I was spending a week alone there, I heard my keys shaking on the door when I was trying to sleep. The morning after, I found the strap (5 centimeters long?) of my keys completely and tightly wrapped around the ring that was holding my keys together.
Same day, there was a black mass in the corridor and the curtain of the bathtub was moving by itself, I still remember the sound it was making on the metal pipe. Nearly got an anxiety attack, I called my best friend and she came back early from her holidays to stay with me. My dad called a medium and a lady to make a spiritual cleanse.
Not the Basement
I actually lived in a house that was haunted, but I don't know if it was a "bad" haunted.
My mother told me when I was kid, she was getting me ready to go out and I was looking at something and talking. I said it was my great mother, mentioning her name. She was deceased before I was born so I never met her or knew she existed at that point in my life... (it was her old house).
Light bulbs used to pop and shatter every once in a while. The sinks and bath tubs would start running (with the knobs turned) every once in a while. The house is still in my family but nothing weird has happened in years.
I frequently have dreams about that house though, and it's always me being scared of the basement!
Moooo!!!
100 year old farmhouse.
I used to hear an odd bell like noise once in a while.
We lived in an old house around that age about 16 years ago. Lots of weird stuff happened in that house. Your comment reminded me about our really old mechanical doorbell that would randomly ring without anyone around it.
MJ?
Martha Jane (the woman who built the house in the 1800s) would creep up the steps every night to check on her 6 kids. I would yell at my mom and she would say... "Its just the ghost..." like this was completely normal.
Light a Candle
An apartment I lived in years ago, was the scene of a triple homicide (drug thing). It had been about a year from the time of the murders and when I moved in. The place was professionally cleaned and building owner gave me a great deal due to what had happened. GF at the time, who I never mentioned the circumstances to me getting a great place always said she was cold, especially at night.
It could be dead of summer and if she slept over, she would be under a blanket while I was on top of the covers sweating like a dog. She bought a candle from a Botanica and lit it because she said something bad must have happened there. I never told her about the killing.
Those Screams!
When I was about 4 yrs/old? My parents lived in an farm house. My two older brothers shared a bedroom upstairs. I slept in my parents room (I believe) which was downstairs. Both of my parents, and both of my brothers, claim that the story is true.
On various nights, in the dead of night, the window in my brother's room would suddenly fly open. The room to their door would open and shut. Then there would be footfalls on the landing (think open walkway that looks down onto the living area) towards the stairs. The footfalls would then go down the stairs.
When my parents heard my brothers scream, then the footfalls on the landing, they would rush towards the stairs just to see... nothing. The footfalls always ended at the bottom of the stairs.
We didn't live there long and finally moved into another house.
Woof!
I don't live in an old house, I live in an apartment building that is 11 years old. There's a ghost in my apartment.
Don't experience it very often but on occasion it will turn on my iPod. Occasionally there will be scratching coming from the craft room door. And every now and then you will hear a growl. Once saw what seemed to be a small white dog dash behind my sofa; I checked and both of my doggos were sleeping on a chair on the other side of the room.
Same time, Same Place...
My house and my house before this, both were very old, my best friend's great grandpa lived in my current one. I'll just say what happens here. Everyday, at 2:30PM to 3:00PM, I'll hear banging underneath my floorboards as if someone is under the house and trying to get help/trying to get me underneath to kill or kidnap me. I constantly feel watched through my windows as if my neighbor is looking at me while I'm dancing or getting dressed or anything.
My dogs will be walking out of my room and just randomly look down the hall as if someone is walking there, but nobody would be in that vicinity/would be home with me. And just last night, I put my hand near the edge of my bed and something that wouldn't move if my hand moved had moved and touched the palm of my hand.
Not Funny
Currently live in "haunted" house, and we have had the usual happen: doors opening/closing by themselves, voices when no one is around, shadow people. The one thing that takes the cake though is the damn pizza! We were having dinner and watching television when a slice of pizza lifted up and flipped over toppings down and then flipped back over the other way! I'm still scratch my head at how or why this happened.This sounds like a bad joke but trust me it isn't.
What I See
A light in my house kept coming back on when I had turned off-couple who formerly had that room were dead.
Felt Someone brush past me in condo, former tenant had died.
Saw a man's face with long hair and old style clothes on my TV, realized the TV was off.
Had a problem with my son, saw him in front of me on a sofa smiling at me, that spooked me!
When my oldest brother died, I was not able to attend his funeral, he appeared, smiling in a blue shirt. He was buried in a blue shirt. Was very comforting to me. ❤️
I don't know why I see and dream things.
the old gal...
My grandparents house has a ghost of an old lady that literally sits in the corner of the guest room and knits. I've only seen her twice and both times only frightened me because I never expect to see her.
The Crying
I lived in my parent's guest house when I was younger one night my kids were crying in the other room and I got up to check on them and they were on a bunk bed when I went in their room 2 shadow figures were leaning over them and turned to me I screamed and ran towards them grabbed them with the shadow figures beside me and ran out I never screamed like that or felt fear like that before.
I will never understand how people actively seek out places like these to live in.
Some people get excited at the prospect of living in a haunted space.
No thank you. My sleep schedule is already bad enough.
Go spook someone else please.
We're human, and we can acknowledge that we all make mistakes.
But there's a limit to how much grace any person can be shown for their slip-ups.
In fact, there are some mistakes that a person could make in a single day that could ruin the rest of their lives.
Redditor TunaSaladWithBeans asked:
"How did somebody you know ruin their life in one day?"
Second Chances Included
"Not a barn burner but still pretty bad considering the 'adult' involved. TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read): So-called adult failed to adult after numerous warnings and went off a metaphorical cliff."
"The clown was a senior married reserve Naval officer who also had a job at a nuclear power facility that required a Top Secret Clearance. He got deployed as a reservist to do classified work in Europe. Nothing James Bond but still not something the US wanted people to know about. It was plenty cushy too: living in a luxury hotel with lots of paid time off base to check out the sights."
"But the clown decided to hook up with a German woman and have an affair. The military doesn't care about that so long as you're above board with them about it so you can't be blackmailed. They don't even tell the spouse. This is spelled out once you get a security clearance."
"He didn't tell the military; they found out another way. But the unit went easy on him. His commander told him either tell his wife or stop seeing this German woman. If he did that, there'd be no consequences; if he didn't, there'd be h**l to pay."
"This warning was repeated to this clown on multiple occasions. The clown said he'd stop. Then he went off to Germany on vacation to, you guessed it, hook up this German woman."
"The commander took it personally that the clown ignored his warnings, disobeyed orders, and lied to him. Go figure. The commander fired him from the cushy job and revoked his security clearance, which ruined the clown's reserve military career."
"Because he needed a security clearance at his civilian job, he lost that too. And of course, his wife found out and divorced him."
"I suppose the clown recovered from this and is doing OK. But I imagine it's just as possible he's living in a van down by the river."
- Eric_da_MAJ
A Life-Changing Drive
"A dude I met was 18 and had been drinking. He was driving down a rural road when he lost control of his car, and flipped it. "He killed his passenger, who was his best friend."
"He was charged with a felony DUI and manslaughter. He was really messed up by this and knowing that he killed his friend haunted him."
"He was also an avid hunter and had to give that up because he was banned from owning firearms as a felon."
"He was in his thirties when I met him and he was pretty messed up."
- teaching-man
Over Before It Began
"Had a friend in college. We were both training to be Pilots. His dad owned an insurance company and gave him the company's credit card to pay for all his flight hours with."
"He got about two years in when he finished his first license. ($30k-50k) Got a DUI halfway through his second license."
"Pilot career down the drain. On top of that, his father's company will be paying for it."
- taylorman8181
Keep Checking In with Friends
"A childhood friend who relapsed from drug addiction. He ingested fentanyl and died all alone in a filthy basement."
"He had been looking healthier, we reconnected, and he was planning his life going forward sober. That hurt a lot, that hope being taken away in a few minutes."
"F**k opiates, fentanyl, and those who deal it. Too many lives are lost every day."
- TheBklynGuy
Hot Off the Press
"My boss had his dream job as a sports editor of the local paper, a nice family, and a young daughter. He called one day to say he wasn’t coming to work."
"Turns out he was busted trying to meet up with a girl he met online for sex, and the girl was actually a cop."
- esmerelda_b
Celebratory Loss
"My friend's wife was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors said she had about a 10% chance of surviving."
"She scheduled her surgery for a month out, and without telling him, took out several credit cards in just her name. She ranked up $100,000 in debt in that month flying around the world and doing everything on her bucket list."
"She had the surgery and chemo after and... lived. She was fine. That debt completely f**ked up their lives for about 10 years."
"The husband, my friend, knew she was traveling. He saw the roughly $10,000 added to their joint credit card. He did not know she had taken out credit and was hiding an additional $90,000 in debt."
"And his wife honestly thought she would die, and then the credit cards would close the accounts and the family would owe nothing. Which is not exactly how it works. So luckily that did not happen."
"It f**ked up a lot of things. He lost his DoD security clearance because of it (people with a lot of debt, can be bought). And he took a less-paying job as a federal contractor, where I met him. But he honestly does not regret it, and is happy to have his wife and kids all alive."
- Bug1oss
Serious Matters
"I knew a guy my freshman year of college. Easily the most socially awkward person I've ever met. Not necessarily a bad guy but a really weird one."
"He was expelled for making a bomb threat. No idea what happened to him after that but I can't imagine anything good."
- cfbethel
Mob Mentality
"Brother of a friend went out drinking with some scumbag 'friends' people had warned him to stay away from. Late into the night, there was an argument with one of them. My friend's brother ended up being part of a group that beat this poor guy to death. He won’t see the outside of a prison for a good 20 years now."
- MargotChanning
Tragically Anticlimactic
"Guy I went to high school with was diagnosed with testicular cancer when we were about 25. For months, maybe years, I would see updated posts about the progress he was making with treatment."
"Then one day he posted on Facebook that he was cancer free. The next day he was dead."
"To celebrate, he'd gone out that night and got absolutely wasted and fell down a flight of concrete steps outside his flat in the early hours of the morning. By the time he was found in the morning, he was gone."
- vicki5150
Just Heartbreaking
"A friend of my parents was a good family man who loved his family. One day he was playing with his toddler and was playfully tossing her on the bed. She would get back up giggling and he would toss her again."
"In one of the tosses, he threw her a bit too far and she hit a bedpost. She lived but became bedbound, unable to even talk."
"He went to jail for child abuse. He lost his wife, his job, and his little girl would never be the same."
- IIVIIORTAL_K
Losing Roulette
"An old coworker went to Vegas, felt really good about his odds due to the liquor, and ended up betting his entire life savings on roulette and lost. He ended up losing his house, his wife, and kids, and from what I've seen he lives in a tiny apartment and works a min wage job."
- Dire-Dog
New Work-From-Home Fear Unlocked
"He ate dinner alone, choked, and died."
- waterloograd
Holy Debt, Batman
"Some kid in our senior year of high school pulled the fire alarm every day. He was getting away with it for a while."
"The school had town officials and the chief of the fire department and the police come in and talk about the dangers."
"The town would send trucks and be without them if there was another emergency. None of that worked."
"When they offered a reward the kid’s friends ratted him out. His family had to pay for all those calls, he was expelled from school and didn’t graduate."
- JediMasterPopCulture
Prescriptions Needed
"A week ago, my little sister slipped on the ice getting out of her car and hit her head. She didn’t think much of it when she had a pounding headache later, figuring she just whacked herself good."
"Her friend told her to just sit down and take it easy until she started slurring her words roughly 10 hours after the fall."
"They called an ambulance for her, but she was going into cardiac arrest. Turns out she’d stopped taking her blood thinners she was supposed to be on for clotting issues. The headache wasn’t the fall, it was the clot in her leg cutting off blood to the brain."
"At the age of 26, she never recovered and leaves behind a four-year-old and two-year-old."
- KearneyZzzyzwicz
Hero Status
"A day horribly altered my life. I was a teacher and coach. For a field trip, the principal 'could not afford two busses,' so I had to walk about ten girls to the field trip location, and back to school, while the one bus was filled with the rest of the junior high students and faculty."
"It would be about a mile each way. I chose the girls of my team because they would listen to me outdoors, unlike lots of middle school kids."
"While crossing the street in the crosswalk, with the walk signal in our favor. All the kids went first, and like girls, they were clumped together and chatting while walking."
"I noticed a woman made a left turn into our crosswalk and never saw us as she tried to accelerate to beat an oncoming car. I knew she was going to run right through the girls."
"I pushed the kids forward, very forcefully. Most of the girls fell onto the pavement in front of other vehicles waiting at their red light. (They were badly scraped up, like road rash from me pushing them. But no hospitals or doctors were needed for their scrapes.)"
"I don't remember the impact. I remember seeing a Pontiac symbol between the headlights. I came to, and I was in a whole different lane, facing where I had just come from. I could not get up. They say my body went up the car, and off the driver's side, tearing the side mirror off the car and breaking her windshield."
"Horror and sobbing from my student-athletes. The girls raised me onto a backboard when the ambulance came, which must have been traumatic."
"Now, 20 years later, I am still an ambulatory wheelchair user. I can't teach or coach. I can't work at a desk. I have chronic pain. Yes, my life can be really sucky, but I would not change what I did that day."
"When I get low emotionally from all my limitations, I remember those girls. I watched them go to college, get married, grow into mothers, and hold impressive jobs in their fields. And when they show a photo on Facebook of their happy moment, it recharges me to know they are safe, healthy, and happy. And it reaffirms my decision to save them from harm."
- CannaBeeKatie
Most of the subReddit shared stories of drug and alcohol use or negligent driving. But some of the stories were far more tragic than gross, and there were even some heartwarming stories thrown in.
But the conversation is an important reminder to be mindful of our actions since they truly could change our lives in a moment.
What separates a human being from a monster?
It's an age-old question about humanity. How is a species that is born out of love and blessed with the ability for critical thinking and making others happy capable of committing unspeakable acts of horror?
The scary thing is anyone is capable of the worst kind of crime–taking another's life.
Does it take one unfortunate moment in a fit of rage or cross paths with the wrong individual resulting in a person snapping and killing someone?
Or, are some of us born with the murder gene?
To answer these questions, Redditor akd432 dug deep into the dark side of humanity and asked:
"People who know murderers, were there any signs that something was off? If so, what were they?"
It could be anyone.
It Started With The Barking Dog
"One of my former co workers decided to shoot a house all because a dog was barking in the back yard of a different house, went on a shooting spree killing the entire family except for the infant that was on the second floor."
"Only thing that was off was his drinking problem."
– Car_loapher
The Friend's Brother
"I’ve met several after the fact, but this is about one I met weeks before the murder."
"My then-husband and I were hanging out and met up with a friend of his and the friend’s girlfriend. The friend gets a call from his brother and invites him join us. The brother arrives, and pretty soon afterwards, the whole vibe changed."
"My ex knew both men since all three were kids, so he was relaxed enough to start drinking around them. I was babysitting a wine cooler because I’m the next thing to a teetotaler and was the designated driver. I kept noticing the brother staring at me, but tried to ignore it, but it quickly became very uncomfortable. I’m nothing special to look at facially, I got the mom-bod on lock, and I was with my husband."
"The brother then asks me why I’m not drinking. I explained that I’m not a real drinker and added that I like to be aware of who and what’s around me. So he asked my husband why I wasn’t drinking. I don’t remember his response, but dude looks at me and says 'we need to get you drunk.'”
"I left to go sit in the car, because wtf was that. I didn’t feel safe or protected because my ex wasn’t even paying attention. About 20 minutes later, dude walks up to my car and asks if I can take him to the corner store. I reminded him that he had a car and he replied that he couldn’t drive because he’d been drinking. I told him I wouldn’t take him, which led to us staring at each other in silence for several moments. He broke the silence by saying 'I bet you’re real loyal. A loyal girl. A good girl. I know that motherf'ker get anything he want from you.' Then he laughed and walked away."
"When I told my ex the next day, he wasn’t bothered and was making excuses for the friend’s brother’s behavior. A few weeks later, there was a report on the news about the body of a woman being found in my exe’s old neighborhood. Find out later she’s been murdered. It didn’t take long to find and arrest her killer, aka the friend’s brother."
– miKezOGnoze
Some kids show signs of being unstable but are easily dismissed as nothing serious until it was too late.
Don't F'k With Squirrels
"I’ve posted about it before but a kid down the street talked about killing squirrels for fun. He was 7ish years old."
"He moved away and we forgot about him."
"20 years later we saw him in the news for brutally killing his parents."
– SchleppyJ4
Led By Vengeance
"I knew Christopher Bennett as a child. Honestly I thought he was a bit of a jerk, then again most little boys are mean to little girls. Especially little girls who are 3 years younger than them and seem to think they can do whatever the boys are doing. Last time I saw him, we had grown up a little, I was 11, he was about 14, he wasn't as mean as I had remembered him. Did I see it coming, no, most people didn't. I mean he was getting into trouble a lot but murder, never thought he had it in him. Then again he was right to kill the bastard he did and I think a lot of other people would become murders if they saw what he did."
– CylonsInAPolicebox
Trophy Collector
"I spent a lot of time at a friend's house when I was 6-9 years old. He had a brother who was like 3 years older than us, who I remember as being generally nice, but I have one weird memory of him absolutely losing his sh*t when he tried to teach me and his brother to roller blade and I couldn't get it--like throwing things and weeping uncontrollably. When I was in high school, found out that he had joined the military, and while he was deployed he got court martialed for killing civilians and keeping body parts (fingers, ears) as trophies."
– StarFanthirteen
Family members share their horrific experiences of being related to a murderer.
The Jealous Sister
"Knew a girl as a freshman in college who was mean, obviously mentally unstable, and not too bright. When her fraternal twin sister fell in love with a good friend of mine, she became enraged with jealousy and could not let it go. Her sister begged her to get help and there was a huge blowout in a hallway on campus where my friend had to intervene to prevent his girlfriend from getting stabbed by her sister. The police were called to campus and she spent a week in jail before her sister decided to not press charges. Her remaining friends dropped out of her life because of her actions and unwillingness to get help. She got kicked out of college shortly after threatening the guidance counselor who was giving her one last chance and moved back in with her parents. When her sister went home for Christmas with my friend to introduce him to her parents, I told him to watch his back. They hadn’t even made it all the way into the house before they were attacked and repeatedly stabbed. My friend died on the porch and she died at the hospital the next day. The murderous sister was beaten to death in a jail fight a few days later.
"I met their older brother, who I didn’t even know existed, at the funeral for the good sister. He said he had gone no contact with the family years before for his own protection because his parents refused to do anything about the mental health problems that his little sister always had, even as a small child."
– howarewestillhere
The Off Uncle
"One of my uncles murdered his wife. He was out of jail by the time I was a kid. Yes, there was always something off about him. My mother told me he was always violent and had a sadistic streak - he liked to make people afraid. He mellowed out as he got older but he was always a user and always looking to take advantage where he could. I’m pretty sure he was a sociopath. My mother had a lot of siblings and he was the only one like this."
– mrsshmenkmen
You think you know someone.
No Murder Vibes
"For 4 years I worked 4 desks away from someone who was arrested and convicted of a 32 year old cold case murder. Dude was an a**hole but didn't give off murder vibes. The general reaction was 'huh, I hope his replacement is less of a d*ick."
– Hobbs172
She Suddenly Snapped
"I knew someone who killed her mother."
"No, absolutely no warning at all. No hints to look back on and say we should have seen it coming."
"She was a perfectly average suburban wife and mother who woke up one day and snapped. And ended up being featured on Snapped."
"She’s currently serving out a 40 year term."
– 5footfilly ·
People joke about individuals going postal when pushed to their limits, but that's all it takes for someone to abandon all sense of logic and go on a killing spree.
But there are also those who have mental issues and are cast off from society and can be triggered to act on any suppressed violent impulses as a possible reaction to being neglected and unloved.
Either way, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what drives anyone to murder.
And the scary thing is, you never really know who a coworker really is when they're off the clock, a neighbor who never leaves their house, or even a family member who has a history of being the polite one.
People who work in hotels see all kinds of people.
As people from all over the world go in and out of their revolving doors on an almost daily basis.
Though it might be the housekeeping staff who see more than anyone else, and frankly more than they would care to see themselves.
Unlike most of the staff, they have the unique position of going into the guest's rooms.
Of course, they tend to knock to make sure no one's there before entering.
But every now and again, the guests don't hear the knock or put on the "please makeup room" sign on their door instead of "do not disturb."
Leaving the poor cleaning staff with a memories they would likely do anything to forget.
"Hotel staff of Reddit, what’s the most NSFW moment you witnessed at your hotel?"
Thrills On Ice
"I worked at a hotel in a resort town in Europe."
"One of the maids called me to a room for help because it has been the location of an extremely messy sex party from the touring ice show."
"There were used condoms thrown everywhere, and half the furniture was busted."
"The poor maid was in tears, thinking she'd have to clean it."
"The hotel management called in a professional cleaning company who wore disposable suits, respirators, and eye protection."
"They got rid of most of the stuff in the room and charged a fortune to the ice show."- Abba_Fiskbullar
Get A Room! Oh, Yeah...
"I work overnights in a relatively small hotel, and at least 6/7 days a week, I hear people banging loud as hell in their rooms."
"Half the rooms have a balcony that overlooks the lobby, and those doors aren't soundproof at all."
"We had a man sleepwalk out of his room to the lobby, bucka** nude."
"We had a woman show up in the lobby in her underwear."-
Now That Takes Effort
"Night Auditor here, I've seen a LOT."
"Multiple times I've had guests come to my desk completely naked because somehow they locked themselves out.... naked... this one always confuses me."
"But probably the most NSFW was a guest who had gotten violently ill."
"We're talking projectile vomit on EVERY surface of the room, blood all over, feces, pee... everything was just destroyed..."
"Obvious call to paramedics, but I can never unsee it."- thefuzzmuffin
Amazing He Wasn't Hurt...
"I was a night shift security guard for a motel right next to the biggest casino in my state."
"It was common for addicts to hang out around the property."
"One time, this guy staying in a room did a lil too much and had a freak out."
"He was running around the walkways naked."
"I had to ward him away from peoples rooms so they wouldn’t be disturbed."
"He ended up jumping off the second story balcony and splatting on the pavement."
"He scampered up and hauled a** across the street into a car dealership."
"Not my problem anymore."- Carniverousphinctr
Will Someone Think Of The Children?!?!
"Sex party in the hot tub while children were playing in the indoor pool steps away."
"I had to break that up and throw them out."
"And deal with the numerous lengthy yet justified complaints about it."- mbgal1977
When Wigs And Disguises Won't Cut It...
"Many years ago worked at a very nice casino resort as a valet."
"Regular pulled up in his nice BMW and went to help."
"Wrote up his ticket got his keys and offered to help load up his luggage on a bell cart while we waited for a bellman."
"Opened the trunk and went to lift the suitcase and I about threw my back out."
"I wasn’t prepared for it to be so heavy."
"Gave it another go and heaved it onto the bell cart and heard a sound."
“'Mr, did your suitcase just make an oof sound…?'”
"Long story short a sex worker who was banned from the property was stowed away in there to get up to his room."- thatryanguy1
Why Stop When The Getting Is Good?
"When I was young and worked at a hotel, I was delivering a room service meal and when I got there, the door was closed but had been left just shy of being latched."
'I knocked and the guest yelled 'come in'."
"I pushed it open with the cart, walked in and he was standing there with a big grin on his face watching my reaction as I wheeled in the cart, butt naked with a woman, also naked."
"He smiled and reached out and handed me a $20 he had in his hand and said to just leave it there and close the door on the way out."
"I guess part of their kink was to show off and see my reaction."
"I was shocked, but never said anything to anyone at work."- TXjoedog
NSFW? More Like Safety Hazard!
"The most NSFW thing that I recall was the manager getting on a cleaning kick and accidentally mixing the wrong chemicals in the pool area."
"A toxic gas started to form and the whole hotel had to be evacuated at like 5 AM."- DtotheJtotheH
What Haven't They Seen?
"I did security for a hotel for a number of years."
"I've seen naked guests locked out of their rooms, wedding parties break into the pool area and jump in fully clothed."
"Had a drunk woman climb out her 3rd-floor window and chill on the roof just below."- silverwarbler
Storefront?
"Best friend was GM I was manager."
"He found over the years 4 guns, 5 lbs of weed (at once)."
"The amount of guns is what surprises me."
"Only one out of the four guns found over the years was reported stolen."- Drewpacabra
So Many Questions...
"I wasn't working at this hotel and was just a guest, but I wish I had asked the staff for the backstory."
"I'm checking into my hotel in Los Angeles and was given my keycard."
"Head to the room, open the door, and there's a naked buff dude standing next to the bed just staring at me."
"He says nothing."
"I apologize and quickly leave, assuming somehow I'd gotten the wrong room."
"I go back to the front desk and say, 'I'm sorry, but I think you gave me the wrong room. There's a naked man already in there'."
"The worker at the front desk says, 'Sh*t, not again'."
"He pulls out his walkie talkie and says, 'Security? He's back again'."
"They assigned me to a different room and I was on my way."- telarium
What hotel guests do within the privacy of their own room is their business and no one else's.
Even so, it couldn't hurt for them to remember to lock their doors.
Sometimes you just get a vibe or a tingle down your neck that you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It can be wise to trust this gut instinct, as we learned from many in the Reddit community.
Often those goosebumps or the voice in their head actually saved them from serious harm.
It all started when Redditor throwaway_district9 asked:
"what has been your most bone-chilling, hair-raising, "Let's get the hell out of here" experience?"
A Frightening Weekend
"I don't tell this story often but this seems like a good place. Back in college I used to drive up the Oregon coast on weekends, then just crash in my car when I got tired. I woke from a nap in the driver's seat and something just didn't feel quite right. It was just dusk and the light was fading pretty fast."
"I yawned and stretched and as I did so I turned my head to the side and just caught a face ducking down below my rear passenger window. I went to hit the lock button just to make sure and in my panic I accidentally unlocked the doors briefly and then locked them again."
"I stared at the window for a few minutes, knowing that someone was crouching just out of sight. Eventually, I started the car and thought I heard a scuffing sound. Whoever it was didn't reappear, but that was enough for me. As I noped out of there and pulled out back onto Highway 101, I glanced back and a bald figure in a red t-shirt with something wrapped around his face booked it into the woods on the side of the road."
"That was the end of that weekend trip. I drove the two hours back to my dorm room, white-knuckled hands locked on the steering wheel. I had to pull over a few miles down the road though to deal with the adrenaline shakes."
– jasonhackwith
What Could It Be?
"Me and a couple of my friends were walking around at night when we were around 11 or 12 and I specifically remember all of us feeling like something was off and we started joking about someone or something getting us and saying to each other we’re not afraid of anything. Then we heard a raspy growl that we all agreed had to be a mountain lion."
"All of us were in a dead sprint to my house, scared sh*tless as soon as we heard it. I didn’t live in a place where they usually are so people mostly didn’t believe us, but shortly afterwards and after some more sightings, a mountain lion was caught just 10-15 miles from my home. In hindsight it definitely wasn’t very close to us and we didn’t actually see it, but we definitely exaggerated and acted like it was right next to us."
– bringeroflightning
Not So Abandoned
"A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about 8 years ago, and when we got to about the third floor...I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell."
"Basically it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling."
"Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout "YO!""
"Time to go."
"I've never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other's bikes."
– PlayerH8rsBallz
Furniture Troubles
"When I was 16 I had a pickup truck and my parents asked me to pick up some new furniture on the way home. As I’m driving home it starts pissing rain and I was worried the furniture would get destroyed, so I pulled over on the side of the road under an overpass to wait it out."
"As I’m waiting, another car pulls up behind me. An overweight bald man steps out and begins walking towards my car. I tell him I’m waiting for the rain to stop so I don’t ruin the furniture for my parents."
"He was acting very odd and telling me he would help me out as he was fingering his belly button. I was creeped the f*ck out."
"He says one minute he has to grab something to help and leans into his car window. All of my alarm bells are going off so I figured f*ck it and just sped off furniture be damned."
"So glad I did, who knows what would have happened"
– DrPeterVankman
Volunteer To Prey
"My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue (SAR) team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and had built a pretty nice fire. We were sitting there and it was about 0200, hoping this dude would wander into camp."
"I had heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprise, we're in the middle of the woods, I'm used to animals stalking around outside my camp."
"I knew there were two animals, one one each side of us. It was at about that point when we heard a bird chirp. It came from about the place I figured one of the animals were. Then another, from the opposite side."
"I immediately realized we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We very quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It's got a camper shell and is outfitted for truck camping."
– SGTRhoads16
Drive Off
"Driving Uber one night a couple years back. I picked up four guys from a club, listening to them talk I realized that two guys (one of them ordered the ride) had met the other two at the club and were on the way to get drugs from one of their cousins."
"There was an odd vibe, some of the conversation didn't seem the most linear, and I was hyper-aware that these drunk dumba**es were heading with two strangers to a drug deal. And I was the one driving them."
"I did not want drugs in my car, and I was very aware that we might be on the way to an ambush. If we'd been 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, went to an apartment just off a main street, and after both had gone into the building I just said "should be leave?" to the guys and we did. I still don't know if it was just a ploy for a free ride, guys too drunk or dumb to pull off a basic drug deal, or something nefarious that didn't finish."
– verminiusrex
Trust Your Gut
"I was in an upstairs lab in med school, just a friend & I practicing surgical skills. There was a main enclosed staircase down to the lobby/classrooms & a weird outdoor stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. It wasn't a fire escape, but the old main entrance to the lab classroom. When I put my hand on the door handle to the main stairs, I was FILLED with a weird sense of "Get out! Not that way!" Just absolute fear, I felt trapped & anxious. For the first time in 3 years, I said "Let's take the outdoor stairs..." My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit."
"The next day we found out that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, one of our classmates was pulling a gun on the admin & students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He'd been kicked out of the program for his grades & snapped."
"My friend still talks about it & tells people to always trust my instincts. I actually asked her to stop telling people, because I felt so weird about it. I'm sure I just heard something in the distance that gave me that feeling, but Gavin de Becker would be proud!"
– ittybittylurker
Lightning Strike
"One time I was out in Colorado with some buddies hiking near the top of a mountain. Some bad weather started to roll in but the top was only 15 mins away so I went ahead while they went back down. As I was getting to the top I felt static in the air and the hair in my head started to stand up. I immediately started to panic cause I thought I was about to get struck by lightning so naturally I ran down without ever getting to the top. I’m not sure if I was gunna get struck but I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out."
– shlable710
Bone Trail
"Hiking in the Rocky Mountains, on a trail I knew pretty well. I was leading a group of kids, maybe twenty or so middle school aged children from the camp where I worked."
"I turned a corner and saw a jaw bone of a deer. Pretty cool, showed it to the kids. Didn't have any flesh on it, so I assumed it was pretty old."
"A hundred feet further down the trail I find another bone. Femur maybe (I specialized in insect populations, not deer anatomy.) This one looked a little fresher. Another ways down, another bone."
"I'm getting a little nervous at this point, so I explain that we should probably turn around and head back. My students all groan that they want to see more dead stuff, but I shepherd them down the train and back to camp."
"Two days later we got a call at the camp that someone had been attacked in the area by a mountain lion. Apparently a mountain lion had set itself up in the caves on the cliffside and it had gotten pissed when someone got too close."
"I'm glad we left the area, even if my students would have loved to see more dead stuff."
– SalemScout
Yeah, I would've left too!
Do you have any similar experiences? Let us know in the comments below.