"What’s the scariest rural place in the USA/Canada for your car to break down?"
Wide Open Space...
"Wyoming."
"It's a really cool place, but there's just nothing there."
"You might as well break down on another planet when it comes to some stretches on the interstate, let alone smaller roads."- cosmolegato
Way More Than Border-line creepy...
"A number of years ago I drove along the Texas/Mexico border and went through a little border town on the US side."
"A buddy of mine was with me and as soon as we pulled into town, we both looked at each other and said, 'what the f*ck is wrong with this place?'"
"But, I was almost out of gas, so I stopped to fill up."
"Went inside to pay."
"Standing in line."
"10 year old buying a candy bar in front of me."
"I suddenly realize that the magazine stand in front of me is completely filled with, anime porn?"
"I still don't know."
"They looked like comic books, but the cover of the one that I happened to be looking at was a p*ssy."
"A very artfully drawn anime p*ssy, but a pussy nonetheless."
"With a 10 year old standing in front of me buying a candy bar."
"Okay, this is weird, but whatever."
"Ten year old pays for their candy bar and exits."
"Guy behind the counter says, 'can you hang on for a moment?'"
"Sure. Whatever."
"I look at the counter."
"The magazine on the counter seems to be a special effects magazine of some kind."
"It's showcasing what appears to be a severed human head lying on the sand of a beach somewhere."
"Me, still not figuring this out somehow, 'huh, this is an interesting magazine, what's the back cover?'"
"The back cover would appear to be a car interior with a dead body and a bunch of blood and, material, everywhere.
"Oh."
"This is a magazine of crime scenes."
"Death porn."
"At the local gas station."
"So we left."
"Pretty sure the next car found themselves in the middle of a Stephen King novel."- kneightx
GiphyAlways Pack A Sweater
"My car broke down in rural Nunavut."
"I’m lucky I had my emergency kit on me."
"Nothing like sitting for three hours while it’s -40C and no heat."- veggienuggets123
Alone In The Lone Star State
"For me, it was west Texas."
"No idea about the people, but it was unnerving."
"I drove through it at mid day-night."
"No cell phone signal."
"No radio."
"No power lines."
"Hot as hell."
"At night you could see occasional flashes of light in the distance of one of those fuel things that spit out fire out the top."
"Then every once in awhile there would be this random small house or run down looking trailer out in the middle a good 10-30 minute drive from the road."
"I always wonder what their story is."
"Cut off from the world in the middle of a desert, though I do not dare to find out lol."- PalwaJoko
Define What You Mean By "Rural"...
"There are two kinds of scary rural: rural so remote you'll die before you reach help and rural where you die because you meet 'help'."- onesadjam
Beware Of Wolves...
"I'd say between Thunder bay and Winnipeg."
"There's like f*ck all between these two places, and I once saw a giant white wolf here."
"Was cool, but I wouldn't want to break down there."- Hawkwise83
Anywhere In Canada In The Winter
"I imagine along the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories border in the dead of winter would be pretty horrifying."- Zytharros
GiphyTruth be told, it's never fun or convenient when your car breaks down anywhere.
But if one could choose the location, it would ideally be in the midst of civilization, and in broad daylight.
Seeing as we can't plan around that, however, it is always a good idea to get your car checked up before embarking on a long road trip.
Particularly in the winter.
"What is the creepiest thing that has ever happened while you were home alone?"
Someone was trying to break into these Redditors' homes.
It Wasn't The Stepdad
"My brother and I were home from school because we were sick. We had a craftroom in the mostly unfinished basement and we were down there playing with miniatures. Around noon we heard, VERY CLEARLY, the front door unlock, open, close, and someone walk in shoes across the foyer tile to the kitchen and turn on the sink."
"They then turned off the sink and went up the stairs to the second floor. I figured it was my step dad and called my mum to let her know he came home for lunch."
"She had just got off the phone with my step dad and he was in his office at work. She called him back and he came ripping home while we hid in the basement. Although we never heard the person come back down the stairs we didn't find anyone in the house."
– JamesonZane
Early Morning Disruption
"Someone started trying to force the door of my small garage apartment open, while I was laying in bed inches from the door, at around 2am."
– RainWindowCoffee
Evidence Of Forced Entry
"Years ago, a stranger smelled weed outside my apartment and knocked on my door. They wanted to join and smoke. I apologized and said no."
"Later that night, I left to go out. When I came home my air conditioner was knocked in and there were signs of someone trying to force entry."
– tassadank
Voices Carry
"I wasn't technically alone as someone else was in the house, but because of his medication, he couldn't do anything to help if there was an emergency."
"I was downstairs with my husband snoring beside me. I heard from the top of our basement stairs 'Hello?... Hello?... Is everybody okay?.' I went up to figure out who it was and thought maybe we'd accidentally left a door open somehow."
"Searched everywhere, nothing even slightly amiss. Made a phone call and also got my neighbor over. Both doors were shut and locked. Did a thorough check behind every door, the tub, under furniture, etc. Nothing. No one."
"This has happened several times and my only explanation is that it's our neighbor. For some reason, when we're in the basement, everything our neighbor does sounds like it's in our townhouse. Though I still have no idea why he's walking around his own house calling out 'Hello' and asking if everyone is okay."
– CuriousRelish
These Redditors had it ruff and later had a laugh.
False Alarm
"I was awoken in the middle of the night to something pulling on my comforter at the foot of my bed. I look down the foot of my bed and see this three or four foot shadow figure trying to climb on my bed. I panicked thinking I was about to get murdered. I flipped on the light to find my 15lbs dog trying to drag my 4 foot teddy bear onto my bed. It was terrifying in the moment, now I just find it hilarious."
– Accomplished-Gap5856
The Hairy Entity
"I was in my late 20s possibly early 30s when i woke up to see this black mass staring at me on my bed in the dark. I was terrified. I threw the blankets over my head and I was shaking. I peaked out after what seemed like an eternity and was licked. It was my black ungroomed schnauzer."
– CinematicHeart
Barking Order
"It was like 2am and I had to take my dog out to go to the bathroom. As I’m standing out in the yard, I notice there’s this really big dude walking down the sidewalk towards my house."
"The big dude looks over toward me and screams 'Hey! Come over here, right now.' He sounded really pissed and I definitely did not go over to him. I locked myself in the house and watched him from inside."
"He was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk just staring at my house and looked really mad. As I’m watching him, two cars pull up to the curb and a bunch of people get out and join him to stair angrily at my house."
"I’m very confused at this point because I don’t have any enemies and I wasn’t sure what all these people wanted with me."
"The guy who originally scream at me starts walking toward my house and screams 'I said come over here! Right now!'"
"At that moment, my motion activated light on my porch went on and I could see a giant goofy looking dog sitting on my porch. The dog sprinted away when the light went on and the big dude went chasing him up the street. The people got back in the cars and chased after the dog too."
"As it turns out it the big goofy dog was their family pet and it had escaped from their house. It saw me in the yard with my dog and was running towards me to play (I never even saw it until the light came on). The big dude was just yelling at his dog, not me. The people in the cars were his family members trying to help catch the dog."
"I actually saw them walking down the street a few days later and introduced myself. Both the dog and man were very friendly. It was a happy ending for an initially creepy situation."
– MrBigTimeJim
Funny Games
"Slightly similar, I looked out my window and it was and episode of black mirror with 15 people standing in front of my home and people in their cars all looking down at their phone emotionless… Pokémon gym is in front of my house apparently."
– LA_LOOKS
It Was A Scream
"As I'm laying on the couch watching TV late at night, I hear a tapping on glass. I brush it off, only to have it happen again about a minute or so later. I turn to look out our sliding glass back door, which had always given me the creeps with its no blinds or lighting in the back yard, to see of all things someone standing outside wearing a scream costume."
"My mind started racing as to who it might be, perhaps one of my sister's friends? I wasn't about to go outside and find out! They slinked away into darkness before I found my nerve. Turns out my 70 yo grandma decided to scare the sh*t out of me lol."
– AmbivalentEnthusiast
People recalled their hair-raising events.
Strange Bedfellows
"So I lived in an apartment by myself. And every once in a while I'd be about to fall asleep and I'd feel a weight next to me as if someone else got into the bed (it was a queen size bed). So at the time I was dating a woman who would sleep over from time to time but I never mentioned this to her. So one night while she was over I had to leave due to a family emergency. I told her it's okay if she sleeps at mine alone if she would like and that I would be back the next day. I get home that morning and she tells me 'the weirdest thing happened last night, as I was falling asleep I thought you had come home and gotten into bed with me bc I definitely felt someone get into bed on the other side, but when I opened my eyes you weren't here.' Freaked me the f'k out."
– ManyRanger4
The Murderer
"My neighbor shot 2 people in his house. Then proceeded to hide the gun behind my house. I was home and watched him out the window. I didn't know what he was doing at the time. It wasn't until later I found out what had happened. The victims both died."
– offtuna
Eight-Legged Freaks
"Once was watching arachnophobia as a 13 year old on Halloween. Went to go to bed, got a little nervous because of the movie, decided to just shake out my bedspread. Found a solid 3 inch wolf spider sitting like an Andes mint on my pillow. Slept in the bathtub that night. Idk why that felt safe but it did."
– kharmatika
Wailing
"I was about 10 or 11 years old. We had woods behind our house. My parents were out one night, and I heard a shriek from the woods. My blood ran cold and I called my parents immediately. While on the phone, the terrifying scream happened again from the woods, and my mom could actually hear it from the phone."
"Later we figured out it was a fox."
"What does the fox say? Apparently foxes scream like someone getting murdered."
– morethanlemons
The Unstoppable Chair
"I was 11 or 12 yrs old. Internet was not a thing on my country yet, but the first PCs with Windows 98 came in and we have one at home. I was playing with wordart (yeah, good times tho) at like 12pm, then suddenly a chair from the kitchen table start to shakking, like with violence. Of course nobody was there. I ran out to the frontyard and wait for my mom to come home, she was there by 1pm."
"20 years later I still don't know how the f'k the chair was moving like that, because a lot of thing that happens to us when we were kids have a reasonable explanation. This on the other hand could be my mind playing with me but never happen again and i was a normal kid with normal parents and friends, no traumas or psychologic problems."
– outerspace69
If you're alone and not expecting anyone and you suddenly hear the front door rattling, would you check to see who it is through the viewfinder or pretend you're not home?
I pretended I wasn't alone once under the circumstances.
When I heard someone trying to open the door to my apartment several years back, I faked a conversation with someone who wasn't there to ward off the possible intruder.
I never found out if it was a tenant mistakenly arriving at the wrong apartment or a complete stranger who managed to bypass the secured vestibule door to the building. But I wasn't going to find out if my apartment was going to be broken into by somone who assumed no one would be home.
Time to invest in a Ring doorbell cam, I suppose.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
Whether it's a creaking noise on the second floor when no one else is home, or demonic hallucinations that may or may not have been part of a dream, people have felt something with every fiber of their being that convinced them there were other forces at work.
Redditor TurtleBoi87 wanted to hear about unexplainable phenomena from strangers on the internet and seriously asked:
"What is the creepiest experience you have ever had?"
Not everyone believes in ghosts. But they also probably would not want to see proof they exist.
The specters are just waiting for the right moment to make an entrance.
A Presence In The House
"I grew up in an old farm house. It was around 150 years old (must be around 175 now) located in a sparsely populated area in north central Iowa. Very rural. There were a lot of small odd occurrences over the years my family lived there, but the most frightening one for me occurred when I was a teenager. I was old enough to be home alone, but not old enough to drive."
"My parents and older sister were all out for the night so it was just me and the dogs at home. I settled in to watch a movie in the living room located on the first floor of the house when I heard someone walking heavily in the hallway above me. This house had plank wood flooring with nothing remotely sound insulating. These steps were distinct, heavy, and unmistakable. I knew I was the only person home and the house was miles from the closest neighbor, let alone town."
"My stomach was in a knot, but tried to be logical and quickly decided it must be a dog (even though the steps sounded much too heavy for our small terriers). I leaned forward in the recliner to call for them, but as I leaned forward I saw that both dogs were already sitting at my feet. And they looked terrified. I took the dogs, the wireless house phone, and ran out of the house, and locked myself in my mom's car in the driveway. I called my parents and waited in the car for them to get home. They had both had enough experiences in the house to not doubt me."
"ETA another story from that house -The family who built the house lived out their lives there, including their daughter. Her name was Minnie and she never married and thus lived in the house her entire life; birth to death."
"A few years after my parents moved I was talking to my mom about all the odd incidents that happened in that house. She asked me if I ever found little gold safety pins around the house. I hadn't. She then shared that she was always finding little gold safety pins when she was alone in the house. Multiple times she had even had them drop onto her, landing in her book or on her sewing project. She would look up and even checked for cracks in the ceiling, but they seemed to fall from nowhere. It made her uneasy, but it mostly just perplexed her."
"Then my grandma told my mom that she had a once met Minnie years ago. My grandma was an RN at the local hospital and when she was a young nurse Minnie came into the ER. She was very old at this point and in poor health. In order to treat her, the nurses had to undress her as she was wearing layers and layers of clothes. My grandma said it was an incredibly frustrating task because all of her layers of clothes were fastened together with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny gold safety pins"
Possessed Laptop
"One time I was in my room trying to go to sleep when my closed laptop randomly blasted screams of what sounded like a woman in pain. I still have NO IDEA how that happened, but it scared the sh*t out of me."
– caitycha
Gramps Has Had It
"I was at home alone with my dogs and one of them wouldn't stop barking. She had a shrill piercing bark. Suddenly a man's voice yells 'SHUT UP.' I was on the phone with my mom at the time and she asked 'who's there with you?.' I said no one I don't know what that was. She told me to gtfo immediately. I didn't, I figure the only person who died while living in the house was my grandpa and I can't blame his ghost. That dog was being super annoying."
A good night's sleep didn't come for these Redditors, who either experienced being in a partial sleep state or witnessed someone who did.
Face Stealer
"As a kid (maybe 12) I walked in to my mums room to kiss her goodnight. I didn't realise she was asleep and as I entered I woke her. She saw me standing in the doorway and jumped straight out of bed. She grabbed me and threw me on to the bed and tried to choke me out, while kind of clawing at my face. I grabbed a pillow to try to put it between us but she was on top of me and screaming. I remember seeing her face in the light coming from the hallway and she was crazed. I kept screaming at her 'it's me! It's me!' But she wouldn't stop. "
"Somehow I got out from under her and I ran out into the loungeroom where my dad was stood up, about to see what was going on. I grabbed him and threw him between me and my mum, who was right behind me and still clawing at my face. He grabbed her and bear hugged her, while her arms reached out over his shoulders, still clawing at me. I don't know how but she woke up, and immediately started crying, really sobbing, and apologising. She said she was stuck in some sort of not quite asleep, not quite awake state and when I stood in the doorway all she could see was that I was wearing her face, and she felt she had to get it off me. We stayed up all night crying and I still won't walk in a room if someone is asleep."
– PiperPug
The Long Night
"Sleep paralysis. Was laying in bed after one hell of a day and the mind was racing like never before."
"Eventually, the body fell asleep but the brain didn't or however the f'k it works. Luckily I prefer to sleep on my sides or face down, that night was face down so I guess I skipped a lot of the nightmare fuel."
"Felt a pressure on my back, akin to say a large cat laying on your back."
"Then came the hallucinations whoo boy. Dark moving figures in my peripheral vison, odd sounds in an empty house, sensations of touch on my arms and legs."
"It was a sh*t night."
– Helluks
"When I was about 10 I was lying in my bed when a pair of hands came up from behind my headboard and started choking me. I remember trying to move or scream but I was completely paralyzed and silent. Then all of a sudden I 'woke up' but I was sitting bolt upright in my bed. Had no idea what sleep paralysis was at the time so it's safe to say it scared the absolute sh*t out of me!"
It's interesting the things the brain interprets what we're seeing.
Cosmic Rays
"When I was younger I've been walking around with a friend of mine in the middle of the night. We walked over an open field when we suddenly stood in a flickering extremely bright and somehow 'dancing' light, we both looked around but there was no light source or something we ran away and when we turned around to see if it's still there it was just gone. Today we still have no idea what happened back then and yeah."
O Brother, Where Art Thou
"Went to visit a friend since I had moved away. We were hanging out in the bathroom and I saw her brother walk by and down the stairs. Couple minutes passed and I asked if her brother was off, she said no he's at work right now. I told her no I just saw him passed by us and he was wearing his sweatpants. He was in fact at work. When he got home the first thing he said was 'you can see it to.' His room was the only room that was ice cold. His mom ran sage through the house and after that his room went back to being warm. His parents or sister would never see this figure, but I did."
Demon Beast
"I started experiencing all the typical haunting stuff. lights flickering, shadows, objects moving, feeling weight on the bed, even being touched."
"Didn't phase me."
"Then I saw a demon beast appear outside my window, just waving at me with the most sinister smile, pure evil, something even hollywood couldn't recreate."
"That got me. Almost left my apartment without my shoes."
"When I returned I was intent on capturing it on video, But it never fully manifested again. I guess it made it's point."
Sinister Silhouette
"Several years ago, before kids) I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. As I crossed from the bed to the bathroom I looked down the long hallway to the guest room at the end of the house. We slept with the doors open then, before kids. The guest room has a big window lined up perfectly to The hall. The shades were shut but there was lots of ambient light in the room. It lit up a black shaped ghost/ vampire perfectly. Only saw it for a second but nearly gave me a heart attack. I have convinced myself that it was just my eyes playing tricks on me,but…."
They say your mind plays tricks on your and your wild imagination confuses your perception of reality.
While that's plausible logic, why do they always have to happen when we're all alone, and usually at night or in the dark?
As a kid, my "imagination" had a field day with me when I spent the night home alone for the first time without a babysitter.
I think I was just paranoid because it was eerily quiet, but I could've sworn I heard the rocking chair behind me creak a few times as I was reading a manga comic book.
When I turned around, the rocking chair was completely still, but the creaking noises simultaneously stopped as I turned around.
It probably didn't help I was reading The Drifting Classroom, one of the most disturbing manga by Kazuo Umezu, a well-known Japanese comic book artist specializing in the macabre and unimaginable horrors.