20 Real Stories That Might Send A Shiver Down Your Spine, As Shared In This Online Thread

There are many horror movies out there to satiate your thrill-seeking mind this Halloween season, but are you also interested in finding out some real-life haunted stories? Believe it or not, sometimes, real-life stories are more terrifying than horror movies. A Redditor got curious about real-life horror stories and thus he asked people "What is the scariest story you know that is 100% true?" We've collected some spooky, creepy, and disturbing stories from the thread. Scroll below to read them. More info: Reddit

#1

Image source: radseven89, Julia Koblitz There was a woman who worked in a science lab who spilled two drops of organic mercury on the back of her gloved hand. Those two drops destroyed her entire nervous system and brain.

#2

Image source: Oxidias, Zoltan Tasi My mom was driving, and a guy ran out in the road, so she stopped so she couldn’t hit him. It was night time, so it was pretty dark out, and 3 other men emerged from the forest around, all trying to use the door handles of her car to get in. She locked them luckily, and gassed it to the nearest town. Remember to always lock your car after you start it, because if it wasn’t unlocked who knows what would’ve happened to her.

#3

Image source: Saganic, Mika Baumeister I would call it creepy more than scary, but my mom's friend had a small house and lived alone. She noticed weird things: a batch of soup depleting faster than usual, missing eggs, damp towels in the hamper when she hadn't used any, extra dishes in the dishwasher, etc... This went on for months, she thought she was just being forgetful. One day she heard some thumping around in her attic and went to investigate. She found some make shift living quarters. Small radio, hot plate, sleeping bag, pillow, food wrappers, etc... She called the cops who came to keep an eye on the place. They ended up catching a homeless man climbing a tree, trying to sneak into her attic window. He had been doing this almost daily. He would wait for her to go to work, then go down stairs and help himself to food and amenities. The funny part about this story is they got to know each other throughout the ordeal, and the guy was actually very respectful, just down on his luck. She didn't press charges, instead, let him move in, helped him get a job, and he lived in the attic until he got back on his feet. Creepy s**t with a happy ending.

#4

Image source: jplevene, Chris Yang Two off duty US soldiers were on a train in France. When walking past a toilet they recognised the loading noises of rifles coming from inside. They waited outside and jumped the guy when he came out. He was a terrorist who was about to go through the train killing people.

#5

Image source: pessimisticoptimista, Franki Chamaki When my aunt was about 16 she was working at a grocery store and had a boss in his mid twenties. One day he called the house and was begging her to sneak out and hang out with him. She was considering it because it was her boss and she didn’t want to say no. My mom, who is two years younger than her, always gets these incredibly spot on “gut feelings”. She had one that night and begged my aunt not to go out with him. Thankfully she listened to my mom and told him no which made him really angry. He ended up going out that night and meeting another girl. He took her out to some cliffs and r*ped her and pushed her off. Somehow she lived through this and was able to get him sent to prison. I feel so sorry for that girl and so thankful for my mom and her gut feelings. Always trust your gut.

#6

Image source: Rickson20, wikimedia.commons Artimus Pyle the drummer from Lynard Skynard survived a plane crash and walked to a nearby house only to be shot by the homeowner. The homeowner saw a bloody long-haired man and winged him. Pyle survived that as well and made a full recovery.

#7

Image source: chrisw1984, Iván Rivero This is a hometown story that stayed with me. It happened literally right around the corner from where I grew up, maybe a two minute drive away. Judy Kirby murdered six children and one adult by intentionally driving the wrong way on a divided highway in an attempt to commit suicide. She had been hospitalized for depression, but had also just ended a relationship with her ex husband's brother and was by some reports involved in drug trafficking and fearing an imminent arrest. She picked up her sister's son, who was celebrating his tenth birthday that day. She then loaded her three children into the car, supposedly to pick up a gift for the nephew. Instead, she went missing with the carload of kids. A short time later, calls started coming in to 911 about a car going the wrong way down the highway at a high rate of speed. They made it about 90 seconds before a head-on collision with another vehicle, driven by a father with two children and another child along for the ride. The crash annihilated both vehicles. The only survivors were Kirby herself, and the child who was along for the ride in the other car. There were pieces of children all over the highway. She was sentenced to 215 years in prison.

#8

Image source: saywat30, Aquib Akhter I spent my first 10 years in New Delhi. Back then, we would find dead women (burnt with acid or set on fire) and it used to be so "normal". Like oh look, another one of those dowry cases where her family didn't pay the husband enough money so they killed her. Many years later i revisited those memories and realised how insane that actually was! I'd totally forgotten about all that.

#9

Image source: justthatoboist, Clark Van Der Beken My dad and some friends got drunk and went for a drive on some back roads and were going as fast as the truck would go as teenagers. My dad was slightly less drunk than the others and eventually demanded they let him get out. They pulled over and he and one other girl got out. He and the girl started walking to town while the other three sped off in the opposite direction. Well less than a mile up the road from where they got out is an extremely sharp turn, which they missed and hit a tree going pretty close to triple digits (miles per hour). Two of them died on impact and the only reason the third survived is because they crashed in front of a house that two doctors lived in. The survivor was paralyzed and lost his leg and part of his arm and was in the hospital for eight months before dying. This was in the ‘60s so medical care wasn’t what it is today. When I first got my permit my dad took me to that corner to explain the importance of safe driving. It gave me goosebumps about how close he was to being in the truck. He said that the dad of the driver got what remained of the truck to be hung up in the center of town for months after to be a warning to all.

#10

Image source: chocolate_on_toast, Pixabay Amateur rugby. Guy gets hit pretty hard and dislocates his hip. While waiting for the ambulance, a guy runs up saying he's a physio and can at least relocate the joint. He cracks the hip back into its socket and the guy SCREAMS. One of his testicles had been jolted out of place in the accident - and had been chilling out in the empty hip socket. Squish.

#11

Image source: anon, adrian susec Was working the evening shift at a gas station. Man comes in all disoriented. I go to help him out. he has a gash on his head and doesn't know where he was. I couldn't see any crashes around so assumed he had fallen or something. Normally we are supposed to stay inside the glass shielded register area whenever anyone is in the store. I, being a nice human being, went to help while calling the police/EMS. They got there and checked him out. They thought his head may have been fractured. Took him to the ER. I went back to work. Cops stopped back by for some coffee a few hours later. They told me the guy got hit by a baseball bat trying to break into a little girl's bedroom and was wanted for r*pe and murder in two other states. I never left the register area at night again.

#12

Image source: -spookyxghost-, Dmitry Shulga The story of Mary Vincent always stands out to me. In 1978, 15 year old Mary was hitchhiking. A man named Lawrence Singleton picked her up. He brutally r*ped her, and eventually made her get out of the car. She planned to run, but he noticed, and cut both her arms off. He threw her into a ditch/ravine and left her to die. She packed her stumps with mud to stop the bleeding and spent all night crawling out. She eventually makes it to the highway and starts walking, naked and covered in blood. The first car that saw her sped away in fear. The second car was a couple on their honeymoon. They picked her up and she survived.

#13

Image source: persondude27, Sebastian Beck An acquaintance of mine sent his son to triathlon camp in Texas. A week later, his son came back from camp. The next day, the son was complaining of a headache. Four days later, he was dead. Healthy, happy, fit 12 year old one week, dead the next. Turns out the lake had [Naegleria fowleri], the brain-eating amoeba. Nothing scares me as irrationally as already being dead and waiting for your body to catch on.

#14

Image source: Jenny010137 The 1904 Cincinnati Privy Disaster. In 1904, nine schoolgirls drowned in an outhouse after the floor collapsed. They literally drowned in human waste.

#15

Image source: anon, Natalia Yakovleva i was in a c**ppy motel. the room had bedbugs. i was too exhausted to go to the front desk. i just needed to make it until the morning. i slept in the tub. hours later i hear someone breaking through the window. i had a big knife with me and ran out into the room to find a man halfway through my window. we stared for awhile at each other in shock. i think we both were scared. then he says," is this your room?" im like," yes, this is my room man!" more staring. then he slowly starts backing out while cursing me for leaving my window unlocked and not expecting him to break in. motel on watt ave, sacramento.

#16

Alright, so my pre-school teacher who also ended up somehow changing jobs and becoming my 11th grade english teacher had a super interesting life. Her mother had some super famous book, her father worked high up in the government, but enough about her family. First, let me describe her to you, she had dark hair and blue eyes (you'll see why this matters in a minute). She told this story every single year to the new students in her class...when she was younger, she was driving through Arizona on a two-way road while her boyfriend at the time was following behind her on his motorcycle. For those who don't live in Arizona, certain stretches of it can be quite isolated and deserted. She said that they were on a long drive (it's been about 6 years since I was in her class so details are fuzzy), but basically her and her boyfriend both knew the destination where they were heading by memory and eventually got separated by a few miles. A man who was behind her in a Volkswagen beetle kept pulling up beside her into the other lane (no one was coming) and motioning at her to pull over. She somewhat ignored him the first few times, but he kept doing it and began getting more frantic each time. She said that she believed that he spotted something wrong with her car, so she saw a parking lot off the road for a deserted gas station and pulled over. Once pulled over, she said that she instantly got an eerie feeling. The man was suspicious and kept telling her that he saw something wrong with her headlight and insisted she get out of the car so he could show her what he meant. Her boyfriend who was a few miles behind her, eventually caught up and spotted her car at the sketchy gas station. Right as she was out of the car, her boyfriend began to pull in. As he did that, this man got into his car and SPED off like his life depended on it. They later were able to identify that the man was Ted Bundy. She said she cannot imagine what would have happened to her if her boyfriend had been even another 3 miles behind her on the road. Image source: january-7

#17

Image source: BigBadAl, Michael Jin My friend's boss bought an Audi A4 convertible, back when they were new and interesting. One of the talking points was the pop-up roll hoops that were hidden unless you rolled it. A few months after buying it he got to test those roll hoops out, as he lost control and skidded down a steep bank about 10m (~35ft) deep. The roll hoops did their job, and he survived with just cuts and scratches from the bushes he'd plowed through. The car ended up the right way up and he got out, walked back up the bank to the side of the road, then got on the phone to the police to report the accident. While he was standing there a driver from a car that had seen the accident came over to speak to him. Approaching from behind the other driver asked if he was okay. My friend's boss turned around to reply and dropped dead. His neck had been fractured, but was in one piece right up until he turned his head, when it severed his spinal cord.

#18

Image source: ExtraEvilJesus, Clem Onojeghuo That there's a guy casing the bar that I work at literally right now, and I can't do anything to stop him. He's been in asking what time/days we're open, and what days we have security. Caught him feeling the corners of our windows and doors too. Unfortunately, until he breaks in and robs us, the police won't do a thing.

#19

Image source: Chiruadr Neishabur train dissaster is something that reminds me how death can come at any moment. A train with 51 wagons of sulphur, fertiliser, petrol and cotton wool somehow broke loose and rolled down the track about twenty kilometers until it derailed in the town of Khayyam, Iran. There were no humans on board. Chemical leaks ensued and authorities tried to extinguish whatever fires broke out. At one point, the whole thing explodes. And it really explodes. The whole town of Khayyam is literally demolished, 3 nearby towns are badly damaged and it was heard 70 km away. The wreckage continued to explode for several days after. Around 300 people died and more than that injured. An earthquake of 3.6 on Riechter scale was produced.

#20

Image source: anon, Michael Costa Nutty Putty Cave in Utah was sealed up in 2009 after John Jones was trapped upside-down in a small crevice while spelunking. When rescue teams finally arrived he had been upside-down for so long that his legs were drained of blood. The only possible way to have gotten him out was to break his legs, which would’ve sent him into fatal shock. He died after being trapped for 28 hours. His body’s still in the cave.