Nighttime is a little scarier no matter where you are, but there is something especially eerie about the silent pitch darkness of unpopulated rural areas.
The unknown sights and sounds that lurk in the deep dark are enough to make one's skin crawl. A sudden shriek or a piercing light can make the blood run cold.
Perhaps curious about what life is like in those rural spots, Redditor catarpillarfu**er asked:
"Rural folk, what is the most creepy thing you've seen or experienced?"
Many people talked about the sounds. There is something so unnerving about unexplained noises coming from unexplained places, all in the dark.
Final Cries
"The blood curdling scream of something being killed by coyotes, then all of a sudden it stops and there's dead silence."
"Just a few weeks ago just had a black snake wrapped on my outside door knob when I opened it! I guess it was trying to get to the nest of fly catchers beneath the porch roof."
-- TNClodHopper
Dads Can Nope Too
"I live in rural Wisconsin. Surrounded by corn, marsh, the works. I remember I was in my teens, outside at dusk with my parents but we were all doin' our own thing."
"Suddenly a woman's voice yells 'HELP ME' from the woods beside our house. Just loud enough to hear, but quiet enough for me to second guess what I heard. My mom and dad both turned to look at me like 'you heard that too right?' "
"Mom starts screaming 'DO YOU NEED HELP WHERE ARE YOU' It's moved from dusk to pitch black now and the hair stood up on my neck because it got TOO QUIET."
"Mom wanted to keep yelling, but dad just got up from his chair and said "inside". I think that's one of the only times I've seen her listen to him."
Misleading Exterior
"Australia has a reputation for scary animals, but people don't ever talk about the sounds you hear."
"The cutest, most fluffy, sweet-faced little animals make demon noises in the dark. Our birds scream, possums sound horror movie noises, koalas sound like giant monsters."
"All of these are completely harmless. Generally the dangerous animals are, coincidentally, the ones you can't hear."
Not as Sly as We Thought
"Grew up in a very rural area of Kentucky on a property that was about 75 combined acres of woods and empty fields out a dead end, one lane road. One night when I was a kid I was sent to take the trash out to the dumpster after dark."
"The dumpster was already at the bottom of the driveway. About the time I reached the dumpster I heard the most blood curdling scream I have ever heard. Like a woman was being brutally murdered right in my ear."
"I flew back to the house and had a full on come-apart, crying and telling my dad to get a gun. Fox screams will make your blood run cold."
-- Rangylil13
Unseen Lips
"Live out in the country, realized one night that we never got the mail that day so I walked out to the road to get it. No moon that night so it was pitch black, just the sound of crickets and tree frogs."
"As I'm walking back up the driveway, I hear my husband whistling, from the direction it's coming from it seems he walked out the back door and was coming around the side of the house towards me."
"I didn't know why and didn't bother to ask, I just went up on the porch and back in the front door. Just then my husband CAME OUT OF THE BATHROOM. I still get freaked out a little when I think about it. It was 100% a human whistling a tune and both humans were in the house."
Hot and Heavy in the Woods
"I live on a road very far away from town. I have neighbors but I can't hear them or see them from my house. My back deck overlooks a field before mikes of woods. One night I'm out back having a smoke and most likely stoned. I'm just chilling in the dark w a little bit of candle light and the light from inside when I hear a sound that scared the hell out of me."
"It was a deep low breathing/snorting sound. It came from the field but it sounded like it was right next to me. It gave me chills and I thought there was a monster in my back yard. It's pitch black and I can't see what it is, not that I really wanted to. I went back inside, locked the door and googled the sh** out of it."
"It was a deer. During their mating season a male dear can make sounds like that."
There All Along
"A friend of mine lived in a semi-rural area growing up. One night the cops knocked on her door and warned her that they were looking for a possibly violent fugitive. Told her they'd check her property and that she should lock up and be wary."
"It wasn't until some time later that she found out the full story. The fugitive had been caught sexually assaulting a horse in a local stable. In the ensuing panic, the horse's leg was broken and the man got away."
"He was found two days later hiding in a stormwater drain."
"I live in Ireland there are a shit ton of stray cats that farmers just let roam around to cull the local rat population, recently they've started coming further and further into the village and now every night it sounds like someone's climbing around outside my window..."
"my god the first time I heard it was at 2:00 am, they were tapping on the window and everything trying to get in, keep in mind they weren't meowing our making cat noises, it was just one cat walking around on my roof and tapping the window that leads to my room. It was terrifying I legitimately thought it was a person"
People Who Made A Lot Of Money From Something Totally Random | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
For others, it was all about the things they saw. There are some images they just won't get out of their heads anytime soon.
Two Runners
"I used to live in the desert for a year, and on nights when the moon isn't out or there are clouds blocking out the stars and moon it's almost pitch black, you can't see more than ten yards ahead of you..."
"...one night I was driving down the highway going home and then suddenly in my headlights I see a guy running on the side of the highway full on sprinting, I'm going 70mph so it's only for a second or two but I'm like what the hell was he running from?"
"I hope he's okay because I'm not pulling over lmao but then maybe a minute later I see another guy in my headlights only he's walking on the side of the highway, and I swear to God it looked like the same guy, two separate guys in the dark walking/running on the side of the highway?"
"What possible reason could explain that, I didn't see any cars on the side of the road that might've broken down, I was so weirded out I just had an uncomfortable feeling the entire ride home"
-- santichrist
Unexpected Closure
"Used to live in rural Philippines in a tiny fishing village in Tinambacan. Right next to our house was a fenced-off lot that had been overgrown and a really broken down house. It always looked REALLY creepy at night and kids in the neighborhood told me it was haunted. From our rooftop you could look into the lot."
"One night I was looking at it, and I saw a strange blue glow coming from inside and shadows moving across the windows. I couldn't place it at all and didn't hear any noise, no people speaking or any indication of what was causing it. Really scared me."
"I brought it up to my family and they told me drag queens were squatting there overnight so that they could attend a nearby disco. So… that was relieving."
-- drekia
A Fixer Upper
"Grew up spending a ton of time in the Colorado Rockies. In college a friend and I were on a weekend backpacking trip up in national forest land, about three hundred yards off-trail, when we stumbled across a mostly-buried bunker someone had made."
"Think a 20-foot-long Tuff Shed, buried up to it's roof. We only noticed it because sun glinted off one of two small windows in the roof, which had been deliberately covered with brush/tree litter. Looking through the windows, we could make out a cot, buckets and tubs of food and supplies, etc."
"Found the door (concealed/partially buried), which had a heavy padlock securing it."
"Noped out of there with a quickness, didn't want to run into whoever had built the place."
No Need for Supernatural
"Something else that happened in rural CO: this is my friend's story. Dress rehearsal for our school play would run a little late sometimes. My friend ended up being one of the last people there. She walked to her car and got in, something in her rear view mirror caught her eye."
"She looked through her back window to see that a mountain lion was a few yards away. It wasn't the first instance of a mountain lion being on the school grounds. The middle school was just down the hill from there, and I remember when it locked down because there was a mountain lion outside. Good 'ol nature lol"
Horrifying Realities
"I used to live 30 minutes away from where I am now in the Philippines, and back then there weren't any convenience stores or supermarkets nearby in my village. It was just all grass, trees, and vines---perfect if you wanna hide mutilated or sacked bodies. One day, my parents and I drove home from my pre-school. Suddenly my dad went silent and told me not to look"
"i was stupid enough to disobey, and saw someone hanging from the trees with their neck. We learned later on that people were killing themselves because of destitution and personal conflict."
In Unison
"One night I grabbed my son's toy night vision goggles to see if they even worked. If they did, maybe we could see what was making all the weird howling noises in the woods for the last 2 nights. So I looked across the yard into the woods and there were so many eyes."
"So. Many. Eyes. They were everywhere. In one case there was a grouping of 3 eyes. I had myself convinced it was just a opossum with it's baby and I couldn't see the other eye, but then they all blinked at the same time."
"I have never ever used night vision to look in the woods again. Whatever deformity was there can have it's space."
-- 1D0ntKn0wY0u
A Warning
"When I had just gotten my first car I was driving home one night around 10pm, I came around a corner on a very dark backroad and my headlights shined onto a large stake that someone set up on the curve with a deers head shoved on top."
"I was nervous the rest of the way home after that."
The Great Orb
"My friend and I were driving across a rural stretch of highway with very little traffic at night. We were having an involved conversation while he drove. Suddenly I saw something extremely large looming in the distance, right in the middle of the road. It too dark to make out but looked like a huge boulder or round object, at least 10 ft high and just as wide."
"I screamed and pointed at it, my friend hit the brakes and swerved hard around, thankfully missing it. No other cars were around and as it was a one way, we could not turn around to investigate. My first thought was a giant Boulder but we were in flat desert, nowhere near a mountain or hills. We called the cops to let them know but about sh** our pants."
So if you're thinking about upscaling to a big house out in the country, beware the mysterious that may lurk there.
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