“I Had A Bad Feeling”: 25 Times People Ignored Their Gut Instinct—And Regretted It

Reddit is a goldmine for real-life horror stories that make your spine tingle. One particularly chilling thread asked users, "What is your scariest TRUE story?" and the responses ranged from eerie supernatural encounters to terrifying real-world experiences. Here are some of the most hair-raising tales shared by users.

These real-life stories remind us that sometimes the scariest things aren’t found in horror movies but in our own experiences. Whether it's a supernatural occurrence or an unexplainable human mystery, these chilling accounts prove that fear is often just a step away from reality.

#1

Image source: ChristopherSquawken, Alexander Mass I was sitting in my room, after getting out of work, on the second floor. Little bro is downstairs watching TV, the dog is in the hallway outside my door sleeping. All of a sudden dog starts making all kinds of racket, jumping round, barking, clacking nails, howling. I go to get up to see what's up and I hear "Aw that's a good girl" in a male voice. It didn't sound like little bro so I go "Oh you're home early!" thinking it is my dad's friend/our roomie as I open the door. Soon as I'm out there there is no one at all but the dog wagging her tail staring at the empty end of the hallway. Little bro comes upstairs to yell at me for getting his dog riled up, said he heard the same voice thinking it was me or our roommate. We did a once over of the house with my butterfly knife and his BB gun and there was NOBODY. Still gives me the spooks to this day.

#2

Image source: kls17, Steve Gale I got home from work late one night, was walking onto my front stoop when I walked right into this huge spiderweb. At first I didn't think much of it until I looked down and saw about 20-30 baby spiders all over me. I started freaking out, then noticed the parents sitting on my front door. They were huge, bigger than a quarter, so of course I did not want to use the front door. I run to my back door, throw all of my clothes off, and jump in the shower. I then watch as baby spiders begin falling out of my hair.

#3

I have two. Maybe not THE scariest but these are the ones that come to mind right now.... When I was maybe 12 (give or take a year) my parents were having upgrades to the exterior of our house done - new windows and siding mainly. I was in bed one night when I woke up because I heard noise outside my window. Bedroom on the second story of the house and bed against the wall under the windows so the windows were along the length of the bed. At first the noise was like someone throwing rocks against the window. Because of the equipment outside the house (ladders and whatnot) I tried to convince myself the wind was blowing something against my window, but every few minutes I would hear more noise, to the point that I was petty sure someone was climbing a ladder. I took the popular strategy of laying completely still because that's what makes scary things go away. That worked until there was definite knocking/scratching on my window. Remained frozen with fear until it sounded like someone was trying to get the window open.. That's when I jumped up and bolted out my bedroom to my parents room (which was literally the next room over, maybe 5 feet away) and woke my dad up: "I think there's someone outside my window!" Took him a few seconds to fully wake up but he got up and went into my room to check things out.... My f*****g brother apparently snuck out, locked himself out and was trying to wake me up to let him back in without my parent knowing. That did not work out the way he hoped. My other story was when I was home for spring break during my junior year if college. My parents had divorced at this point, dad moved out and my mom was pretty much living with her now husband, but they basically kept the house so I had somewhere to live when I was home from school, but I was living alone in the house because of this. Well, just me and my little mini dachshund. One night I'm watching tv in the den and my dog starts barking from the other room. I call her over because I thought she was barking at random noises as she tends to do, but she wouldn't stop. I poke my head out of the room to she what's she's doing and she's got her paws up on a window sill (big essentially floor to ceiling windows in this house) freaking the f**k out barking at something she sees and wont come to me when I call her. I should also point out that this window looked out over our large yard, big enough that we could have sold the lot for someone to build another home on, and the yard is lined by hedges so she couldn't have been barking at someone just walking by and it's pitch black so it would be odd if she could see a small animal or something. Anyway, I'm all alone in his big house and relatively paranoid about home invaders and s**t so I start to freak out because there's obviously SOMETHING out there. I grab my cell and type in 911 so I can just hit send if needed, and I slowly work my way over to the window where my dog is still losing it. Finally get up next to the window and look out (while trying to hide so that the psycho killer that's obviously out there can't see me) There's a white plastic grocery store bag floating around in the wind American Beauty style that's catching just enough moonlight to be visible, and that's what my dog was freaking out about. Image source: anon

#4

Back when I was about 6 or 7 we were visiting my aunt for christmas; who had just divorced her husband. He was a hot headed Czechoslovakian guy who had started to a go a little off the deep end. He had called the house multiple times over the past few days threatening my aunt but nothing had ever come from it. My parents and I had just immigrated to Canada (where this story was taking place) so we were spending the night at my aunts before our house was ready. My aunt was sitting in the den and looked up and saw her ex coming towards the house with a hunting rifle, she screamed and my dad (with balls of f*****g steel) flew into action locking the door and running myself, my aunt and my mum up the stairs and locking us in a room. We put a dresser infront of the door while my dad grabbed a buck knife and ran down stairs. The rest of the story I only know as it's been told to me, but basically my mum called the police from the upstairs phone, but my aunt's ex busted open the door near where my dad was hiding, my dad jumped him and they basically got into a fist fight. in the foyer until the cops had showed up. I know my aunt's ex dropped the gun when he got hit, but I'm not sure what happened to the knife (my dad will not confirm to this day if he stabbed him or not). The police showed up and arrested my aunts ex but the scariest part was for sure that my aunt's ex's father was found hiding in the backyard when the police did a sweep of the house. He was an old abusive drunk that HATED my aunt and he had been waiting in the backyard with a knife hoping we would have run out there. He ended up getting deport and my aunt's ex went to jail and had a restraining order for years to come - although he still claims they only wanted to scare people. It was a horrifying experience hearing the commotion from downstairs while we were hidden away. All I know is based on my dad's bravery, and the beating he must have put on that guy (based on the screams we heard), we're safe to this day! Image source: CerwynSC

#5

When I was a kid the thing I hated to do the most was take my clothes downstairs to the basement and place them in a big pile next to the laundry machine so that my Mom would wash them. That side of the basement was not finished and it freaking terrified me. I had so many nightmares about the place - like crazy reoccurring nightmares that I would realize when they were happening but I was unable to escape them. One of the nightmares was that I would be up and around the house with no one else at home, and then I would become aware that it was approaching The Time. I don't know what time it was, but I could feel it in my bones that bad things were about to happen. So I would get under the kitchen table (the door to the basement was in the kitchen) and then the basement door would open and I could see the legs of some man. I never knew who it was, and never saw his face, but I knew that if this creature caught me out in the open it would do terrible things to me. The worst thing was the thought that it knew I was under the table, but it enjoyed the fact that I was so afraid, hiding under there trying not to be seen or heard. Sometimes, either at the end of an unrelated dream or on it's own, I'd be walking down the stairs into the basement and when I stepped off the last step I was plunged into total darkness and something would grab me. I can't explain the terror this produced in me, and the fact that I KNEW at the top of the stairs what was about to happen, and I could not stop walking. There were other crazy dreams like that, all taking place in the basement or about the basement. I hated the basement. One day when I had to take my laundry down I was home alone except for my dog. So I decide it'll be better to have her down there with me than have to go by myself. I grab my laundry, call the dog, and head down the stairs. It's daylight, light is streaming down the stairs and into the basement through these small slit windows, and nothing is all that terrifying. I saunter over to the machine, casually toss my clothes onto the pile, and start to make my way back up the stairs. Previous boldness aside, I always run up the stairs because I hate the basement. I was a scrawny kid, so you could barely hear my feet tapping up the stairs. Suddenly, all I can hear is this insane thudding and scrambling COMING UP THE STAIRS BEHIND ME! My brain almost literally shut down. I screamed with terror, I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and I couldn't even continue moving up the stairs. I simply fell onto the stairs and curled up into a ball. Can you even imagine growing up and being told monsters aren't real, and then facing the moment where your worst nightmare is about to murder you in your own home? I just shut my eyes as tight as I could and waited to die. Then my dog started licking my face, excited to be playing a fun new game called Race You Up the Stairs. Image source: verkadeshoksnyder

#6

Image source: Travelberry, Svetlana Obysova When I was 10 or so I went with my dad to go ice fishing and it had just snowed the night before so you couldn't see the ice. On our way out to the ice house I ended up falling straight through an unmarked hole that had a very thin layer of ice covering it. The scariest part of this was instantly shutting down and sinking because of the cold. I could look up and see where I had fallen through but couldn't swim back up to it. After a few seconds I finally willed myself up and to the edge where my dad pulled me the rest of the way out. Tl;dr: cover your ice holes when you're done with them.

#7

Image source: momsaysimpretty, Iz zy True story time. I was about four or five years old and my parents had just separated. My mom was living in a two bedroom apartment, I had my own room but I preferred to sleep in her bed whenever I was staying with her. Our two bedrooms were at the end of a hallway, directly across from each other. Our apartment was on the first floor and I remember that it was in the middle of the summer and my mom had a window open her room, which was directly behind the bed (above the headboard). Anyways, I woke up in the middle of the night and remember sitting up and seeing that our cat was sitting in the door frame of my mom's room (her door was open and you could partially see into my bedroom), this was strange because our cat was typically always in bed with us. As I was watching him he walked into my bedroom and meowed. I turned to face my mom and wake her up. In the three/four seconds it took her to wake up and ask me what was wrong we both looked back up in the door frame and there was a man standing by my open door, making his way out of my bedroom. I still don't know how she managed to do it so quickly, but my mother proceeded to pick me up and literally throw me out of the screen window (again, we were on the first floor and it was maybe a three foot drop to the ground). She quickly followed and we were able to start screaming for help and someone called 911. The police came but didn't see any signs of forced entry. Only that our front door was unlocked which led them to believe the man must have exited that way. The strange thing was that my mom swore up and down that she had locked the door that night, with the deadbolt and chain lock. About a week later she was cleaning the kitchen and opened up our water heater closet and found a notebook with names and drawings, as well as a pair of gloves and some gum wrappers. The police were called again but all they could do was speculate that the man had been in our house and hid until we were asleep. **Edit:** Just to clarify: Our apartment was on the ground level, so my mother didn't hurl me into potential paralysis, just a three'ish foot drop to grass.

#8

Image source: aett, nrd About five years ago, my mom started dating a guy she met on a dating site. That part is fine - I had recently started dating the woman who would later become my wife and we had met online (I'll just refer to her as my wife for this story). Anyway, my wife and I never really liked this guy. We didn't think he was mean or anything like that, just a little creepy - he was quiet, he kept his eyes closed a lot, and occasionally said odd things like offering my wife a chocolate and then popping one in his mouth, closing his eyes, and moaning as he let it melt in his mouth. One time my wife and I were visiting my mom but she got called into work, so we waited at her house. Her boyfriend was over but he spent the entire several hours just hanging out in her bedroom with the door closed. Just before Christmas, my mom and this guy started having some difficulties. My wife and I were visiting her for the holidays and she dropped all of her problems on us and we listened carefully and told her our opinions and suggested that she would be better off without him. She already had her mind made up, though, and decided to break up with him... on Christmas Eve. We spent the night at my mom's and got up early on Christmas morning to visit my dad at his house. We didn't plan to spend the night at my dad's, but we got snowed in, which was actually a nice Christmas surprise. The next day we left as soon as we could get through the snow and my wife suggested that we stop by my mom's house on the way so that we could see if she was okay. My wife just had a really bad feeling about my mom's now-ex-boyfriend. My mom's car was in the driveway, but that doesn't mean much because she lives close enough to work that she often walks and it hadn't snowed in her town. She also never locks her door, which drives me crazy, so we let ourselves in. That's when we see blood OOZING out of the refrigerator's water dispenser. It had filled up the spill container and was leaking onto the floor and had made a puddle. My wife screamed and I freaked out. I fully expected to see my mom's head in the freezer. I nervously opened the freezer to find... a bag of frozen cherries that had been opened, crammed into the freezer so that it fell onto the ice dispenser, and melted. tl;dr Thought my mom was decapitated by her creepy ex-boyfriend.

#9

Image source: anon, MART PRODUCTION A terrifying, but true story I experienced when I was 12. I moved to my dads when I was 10 and didn't know anyone in the area, except for the family my dad was friends with. Single mom with 3 kids, luckily there was a girl a couple years older than me (12 at the time I met her) and we got to know eachother a little over a couple years. We weren't close, but ended up having the same friends. One night my friend Rob was hanging out with her and her younger brother. They happened to be in the house alone because my friends mom was at work. Which is where this gets terrifying and sad. Her mother has been helping this one lady (through her work) and got to know her fairly well. She found out her sister was in a mental institution and was let out recently... The night Rob is hanging out with my friend, they get a knock on the door. My friend thought it was just their mom (she knocks a certain way when coming in) and answered it without thinking. Rob wasn't supposed to be there and he took off through the window to his house down the road. He never thought twice about it. Wasn't her mom. It was the sister of the lady her mom was helping, and she figured out through talking to her sister where her family lived and her moms working schedule. She came in, and this is where is don't know details and I'm glad I don't. My friend's younger brother got away to the neighbours to call the police. The lady brutally m******d my friend a week from Christmas. Decapitated her and left her body, naked in a bathtub. Hid her head. They had to look through the presents and I don't know where they found it, but they did. I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral.

#10

Image source: hobbsit, Zachary DeBottis Alrighty. This is the late 80s/early 90s, I was around 6-7 years old. I am at home with my sister who is 14-15 at the time. We grew up in a small Texas town, everyone knows everybody. We are home alone this particular night, and my folks let my sister babysit me frequently. We always got along due to our age gap. Anyway, it is about 8pm in the winter (deserts get pretty d**n cold) so it is dark and we are in the common room since that is where the TV was. Watching 60-Minutes or 48-hours or Hard Copy or some s**t (those 1 hour news pieces on CBS that chronicle large crimes in depth; trafficking, m*****s, kidnappings and the like. Basically a gritty Lifetime special). This one was a typical story, guy next door that was quiet went on a rampage in his next door neighbor's house mutilating them and kidnapping their young daughter. Well, the thing about our house common room is the door leading to the back yard was a large glass door on a wall of floor to ceiling windows. Nothing but blackness beyond it unless you have the back light on (we did not). The front door is on the other side of the room with a small entry-way. This is a solid door, so you cannot see what is beyond it, with a glass storm door on the outside of it. About 45 minutes into the show, they are talking about the ongoing manhunt for this crazy guy and BAMBAMBAM, front door bangs like crazy. We jump the f**k up and scream like banshees. Dead silence now. The only lights on in the house are the kitchen down the hall from the common room we were in and the light from the TV. We start thinking something on the porch (we had some planters and a rocking chair out there) had simply blown against the door. This was west Texas, crazy strong winds out that way. Well, a minute or two of silence and us holding each other post adrenaline o******e passes. Just when we are about to declare everything is safe we hear the storm door on the outside of our front door close. F**k. Someone had to have opened that door to be able to bang on the front door like that. Shitshitshit. We are both frozen in the middle of the room on the floor where we had been watching TV. My sister crawls over to the TV and turns it off. It was an old TV, so you had to turn that metal dial to switch it off, which it does with a mildly loud THUNK. Now it is just us in a room dimly lit by the kitchen light down the hall. I do not remember how much time passed with my frozen and my sister still crouched by the now off TV, but we kept making eye contact then looking at the front door. I remember this part vividly, I am on my knees sitting on my feet and I turn around to look at the back wall of windows and glass door. We hear and I see the back door k**b turn, it was locked on the k**b but not deadbolted. It rattles slightly as if someone is gently trying the handle. Neither of us make a sound, just held breath. Then BAMBAMBAMBAM loud as all hell someone is trying to force the door open just jerking it back and forth. The whole wall of windows is vibrating violently and I can see with each jerk of the door how my slight reflection gets fuzzy then clear then fuzzy. My sister flips her s**t and screams bloody m****r. I am still frozen on the floor. She gets up and basically drags me into her bedroom, slams the door, throws her mattress and anything she can in front of her door. Thankfully she had remembered the phone (one of those ungodly heavy beige plastic long metal antenna portable phones). We still had to direct dial the sheriff there and in her panic didn't remember the number. She just hit redial on the phone. It was one of her friends and she tells them in broken gasps that someone is trying to get into our house and needs to get there right f*****g now (The profanity sticks out here more than anything else, who knows, young brain). I am curled up on the floor and cannot stop shaking. We don't hear anything else until we see the headlights of my sister's friend and her parents driving up to the house. We never did find out who was at the door or why, there were no signs of anything happening but a couple of scuff-marks on the bottom of the back door that we could not remember if they were there beforehand or not. Nothing like that has happened to me or her since, but for d**n sure we never forget to lock a door after that.

#11

Image source: parkturner, AINNNEK Not mine but my elder sister's. So my sister is in our big suburban all by herself and she is like 17. She is in the basement cinema room watching Texas Chainsaw M******e. The new one. No one is home nor should they be for a few more hours. However my dad got off work early that day and drove home to find her watching this movie. So my dad being the comedian that he is decides to rev up his chainsaw and kick open the cinema room doors to my screaming sister. Not his finest moment.

#12

When I was young, I'd say 8-11ish, my sister whom is 7 years older would babysit me when my parents were out. At the time, she smoked a lot and my parents made her smoke outside of course. So, I'd follow her outside into the carport (which faced the street) and play around, annoy her and such. One day my sister notices a car at the end of the driveway, just sitting in the road. It's a white suv (I believe a mid 90s bravada? bravado, not sure) with a bike rack on top. It has the most tinted windows I have ever seen, you could NOT see inside from the side. It sat there until she went inside, then would drive to the end of the road and sit at the church parking lot and wait. Wait until she'd come out again for another smoke. And it would repeat this. Odd, but my sister is a brave lady and just kind of ignored it. That is, until the next day while my parents were out again and it showed up again. It would sit at the end of the driveway. And just... watch? I don't know what the driver was doing. But he was watching my sister (if I didn't go out, I'd watch from the front window and it would just sit there and watch my sister). She told my father, who was a Sherrif deputy at the time and he called the cops made a complaint. They showed up, looked around but the SUV was nowhere to be seen. Months went by, and nothing. Then one day, a good nine months after this had all started and 4ish since the last sighting, it was back. It became a regular occurrence. Another day, my sister was outside doing her nasty habit, and sure enough here it comes. This time we were alone as usual, and she decides she's had enough. She tells me to stay in the carport, and she's going to go confront them. She starts walking toward the SUV. and halfway down the driveway she would later remark to us "I felt utter terror, like I knew if I went any further, I was dead. I was paralyzed by pure fear". She turned around and went inside. Finally, the family car was in the shop for some kind of issue so we were all stuck home for a night and had to get delivery, etc. while my parents are home, my sister goes outside to smoke. I go outside with her, and eventually the SUV shows up. She tells me to run inside and tell my father, and I do. My dad promptly gets his gun and starts briskly walking down the drive way with it inhand, in the direction of the SUV, but not levelled towards it. The SUV floored it, down the road and peeled out onto the nearby large highway. My dad, being a cop, noted the year and model and distinguishing features. The scariest thing? The license plate had been covered in duct tape. We never saw it again, and my sister just kind of shrugs it off now. Image source: anon

#13

I have some stories that scare the heck out of me, but I'm not sure how you all will react because it's not your messed up brain. Shortly after graduating from high school I woke up one morning and found my Father dead in our living room. I tried giving CPR but he was already dead by the time I came out. I suffered PTSD from this event and would regularly have nightmares where I would be walking to the living room and I would realize what I was about to see and I would start screaming before I got there, and then I would wake up screaming. This lasted about a year where I was not a functioning human being. I would stay awake for days to not experience the dream over again. Then one day I had a mental break in the middle of the day. According to my girlfriend, who is now my wife, said I tensed up like I was having a seizure for about an hour straight. In my mind I had to keep living out that morning over and over, but I would stop myself before I went into the living room with a primal scream, which my wife said I would do in real life aswell, until I finally let myself go into the living room and see my fathers dead body. After I came out of it I did not have the nightmares anymore. Flash forward to 2005, I joined the Army and am in Iraq. I was leading a convoy and we had intel that terrorists were sending children out in front of convoys to get them to stop and ambush them. As I'm driving a kid runs out about 300 meters in front of my vehicle and I froze. We had orders to run over any one in our way and I was dreading having to make this decision. My truck chief is screaming at me to floor it, so I do, and the kid dodges out of the way at the last second. When we get to the next FOB I go to get some sleep but am disturbed about the moral choices I had made that day. As I fall asleep I have a nightmare that I am driving again and the kid jumps out in front of me. This time I run him over but then stop feeling the horror of what I did. I go to check the body and as I go around to the back of the truck I get that same dread I used to. Somehow in my brain I remember my old nightmares and assure myself it's not the same. As I get around the truck I see my fathers dead body and I go straight into my primal screaming again, only to wake up screaming and running. I mean I am at a full sprint as I wake up and in a part of the FOB I don't recognize. I thankfully haven't suffered from these nightmares anymore, but I'm in constant fear of my own screwed up mind. Image source: Trenches007

#14

Image source: corby315, Andrej Lišakov I posted this yesterday as well. One day while doing my laundry one of the lights blew out in my basement. My basement is set up so that the laundry room is split from the other side of the basement with a wall and a door. In order to get upstairs you have to exit the laundry room and go through the other part of the basement. So the light blew in the other part, not the laundry room. As it was the only light on that side, it was pretty f*****g dark. I finished the laundry I had to do while dreading the walk through the dark basement. I exit the laundry room, get half way through the basement, and I hear a loud cackle. Imagine a sound people make when they imitate a witch. Take that and imagine that the witch had been smoking for 50 years, making her voice deeper and hoarser. That is what I heard, clear as day, right behind me. I did not look hesitate to bolt for the stairs. I waited until my father got home and then changed the bulb. I have yet to hear that cackle since, and I have not told a single person in the house about it.

#15

Image source: GareKon, Getty Images I suffer from sleep paralysis from time to time and it's very common for people with sleep paralysis to have hallucinations when they wake. The thing is whenever I have sleep paralysis I ALWAYS hallucinate the same thing every time. I'd slowly wake hearing whispers all around me, nothing really clear can be said but it's audible and have this great pressure on my chest like someone's pushing me. I'd open my eyes to this little girl garbed in an old white lace dress with long black hair sitting on me with her back facing towards me. What makes it worse is that she's slowly turn her head backwards to face me and the whispering would get louder and louder still while she does it. I'd always close my eyes before I'd see her face but the pressure on my chest would get heavier and the whispering would pretty much become deafening. Then silence. A very unnerving silence. I'd slowly regain motor control of my body but I still have never open my eyes after that and I'd force myself to go back to sleep. Happened to me over a dozen times and I hate it so much. Not really a true story but it's a real thing that happens to me at least once a month and it sucks.

#16

Image source: anon, Jeremy Weber So I'm laying in bed at my then girlfriend's house while she and her room mates are at class. I was hungover and it wasn't unusual for me to stay over or chill around the house. Anyway, she has a little Pomeranian and her room mate/cousin has a chihuahua (sp? I have no idea). They start going freaking bonkers in the hallway. Like panicked yelps. It was enough to concern me, so I get up to check what was going on. I should say I'm 6'1 and very muscular/athletic. I'm in my boxers. Anyway, I open the hall door and these two pretty hood looking dudes are holding the dogs down trying to shut them up. I didn't really know what was happening. For a second I thought maybe they were her friends? I don't know so I just say, "What's up?" In a rather harsh manner (it surprised me how mean/aggressive I sounded). Anyway, the dudes f*****g bolt. I stepped back and shut the bedroom door and kinda stood there processing that they were burglars. I looked out the window of her bedroom and saw that Pomeranian trotting around outside. I kinda gather myself and open the door and check around the house. They were gone. Her neighbors had the Pomeranian, but the chihuahua was gone. Her cousin and her cousin's boyfriend found the pup later unharmed. Tl;dr dudes break into my girlfriend's house. They ran off. Thankful I wasn't shot or stabbed.

#17

Image source: persepolisp, Dillon Kydd I rode out in front of a car on my bike when I was 11 and the car honked really loud at me. I stupidly flipped the car off and they came to a screeching halt. A huge guy stepped out and went to open his trunk. His girlfriend (?) got out of the passenger's side crying and screaming begging him not to open the trunk. I was frozen in fear. He got back in the car and sped off. I have no idea what was in the trunk. Hopefully not a fully automatic machine gun on a turret.

#18

Image source: buzzlightbeer27, Dmitry Ratushny I posted this last night in a similar AskReddit thread. A few years ago, I was home alone at night time. I was watching tv in the living room when I heard the doorbell ring. Whenever I hear the doorbell ring, especially, when I'm home alone I am cautious to answer it. I walk up to the peephole without turning on the porch light (so they don't know if anyone is actually home or not) and look through. It's really dark but I can see a small figure (more like, black blob, idk it's definite shape and had to be around 3-4 feet) doing like a dancing motion. Dipping down and oscillating its "arms" outward. Think of a person moving their arms like wings gracefully. It was dark outside but this figure was more opaque so I could see this going on. After a few seconds I stopped looking through the peephole because it was too freaky to look at. I regained some courage and looked back through and whatever it was was gone. To this day I still don't know what that was and I get freaked out thinking about it.

#19

Image source: codeusasoft, Min An This is probably going to be buried but I have two. The first is when I was younger we lived in a apartment complex which my mother managed, the day before halloween she was telling us all a scary story about how two little boys and their mom died above us (vacant apartment) and how if you listen closely you can still hear their footsteps running up and down the hallway. Well at that very moment what do we hear? The sound of running upstairs. The look on my mothers face was pure terror, so she called the cop that patrols the neighborhood and one of the on duty maintenance guys and they went into the apartment. Turns out a a homeless mother had slipped in through an opened window with her two children and had been living up there for sometime. And my mother never told another ghost story again. Second: Different complex which my mother managed, i'm a bit older now. She was going through vacant apartments to check if anything needed to be fixed/switched out before showing them. I went with her as no maintenance guys were working that day. So we go through a few apartments and all is normal. Until we get to one where the door just opened, no need to turn the knob. The lock had been broken. I ~~chopped~~ chalked* it up to neighborhood kids and didn't think anything of it. I stood in the living room area looking outside while my mother went to the master bedroom; then I heard her scream. So I sprinted back there as fast as I could and there in the closest is a girl pale as snow, half naked and nails dug into the wall. My mom tells me to go get help, so I turn to go to the main office to get the security guard and what do I see? A guy about 6'3 running out of the kitchen where I had been standing next too, I chased him for about 400-500 feet before I lost sight of him. Girl was in the middle of being SA'd when we walked in. tldr; f**k you read it.

#20

The time I had a redneck in Cascabel, Arizona pull a shot gun on my friends and I for, 'trespassing' on government land. Let's not forget he owned a ranch nearby that was littered with bones, abandoned cars and about 30 license plates from across the country hanging on his fence. Oh, and he also had dried blood all over his shirt. It felt like a mix of Texas Chain Saw M******e and Jeepers Creepers. Image source: minusthelela

#21

Image source: Khrull, RDNE Stock project I'll share mine. It didn't actually happen to me but it happened to my Mom when she was a teenager. My Mom now is in her mid 60's. She's not an overly religious woman, she doesn't read teh bible regularly, rarely goes to church but she prays every night cause that is what gives her comfort. I'll have to side note this with I watched normal "horror" movies with her every so often, nothing too crazy or gory but spooky if you will sort of stuff. Well I asked her if she wanted to watch the Exorcist and she flat our 100% refused. She said there is absolutely no way she will EVER watch anything related to possession or exorcisms. Well this was curious...so the movie Constantine comes out and I show her the trailer asking her if she wants to watch it....she sees the girl near the beginning climbing the ceiling and just refuses AGAIN. I should also note, my mother will refuse and kick you out of her house if you even think about bringing a Oujia board into the house...she'll yell, scream and cuss until you drop the subject and that's that....this is important. Alright so that little back story is out of the way, I ended up asking her why exactly she refuses to watch those sort of movies...well she tells me when she was a teenager, at a sleepover at a friends house, they were up playing games, the parents watching TV. Her friends and her self are on the floor playing a board game...a game my mom has never played before. Well come to find out it's a Oujia board and she doesn't know what it does, well they start playing asking a bunch of questions. They end up finding out there is a spirit in the house, so they ask it to show itself. Nothing happens, they DEMAND it to show itself. This was her first indication something wasn't right...cause the lights all around the house, every single room went out immediately including the TV, and then snapped right back on, spooky huh? Nah, just a fluke. They ask the next question..."Who are you?" The piece moves round the board in big cirlces with their hands on it and stops at the letter D. Moves to the letter E, then to the letter V, I, L. Wow someone must be messing with it. This can't be real...So they ask, if you are the Devil, then show yourself. Nothing happens for a while, and then suddenly the TV goes out. Well in the reflection in the TV sitting in the living room next to them my Mom and her friends, even her parents could make out the shape of something...something terrifying just sitting there, next to them...the house got extremely cold. Suddenly loud noises could be heard in the kitchen, stuff flying off the top of the refridgerator and cupboards oepning and closing. They immediately stop the game, close it up adn throw it in the trash never to play one again. Later that night my Mom is sound asleep and is awoken by something loud and clanging on the roof. She listens intently and she can hear what sounds like chains and dogs up on the roof. Well that's not possible, it must be outside somewhere. She wakes up the next morning and goes and talks to her friends parents, asks them if any of their neighbors have any dogs...they tell her no...and they tell her they also heard the dogs and chains up on the roof last night. So that's the story of why my Mom refuses to watch anything that involves exorcisms. She truly believes that the devil was there with them that night, sitting next to them. And the messed up thing is...every time she tells me that story...I get this cold shiver down my spine that there is no way she would be making this up.

#22

Image source: anon, Pavel Danilyuk Not to me, but to my nana and it freaks me out to this day. My nan has a very good friend she has known since her nursing days, and back when they both had their kids and had grown into women, her friends ex-husband rang up my nan. He was very depressed and needed someone to talk to, but my nan had to say that unfortunately she couldn't go over to see him as she had just had a new born (my father), was breastfeeding and needed to feed. He said he understood and said "I'll see you soon then." My grandad was on nights at work at this time, so she wasn't expecting anyone home or to visit until the next morning. At about 9pm that night, she heard their front gate open (it was a very vocal gate, she liked it that way so that when she was alone she knew when someone walked up to the house.) She assumed that maybe grandad had been sent home or forgot something, so thought nothing of it. That was until the family dog, Ben, began to stiffen up and growl toward the front door and nobody opened it. He began to bark. Nan insists he had never been like that. He was a dog that had been brought up around 4 youngsters. Placid, patient and kind. She tried to get up to open the front door to see if some kids were playing around with her, but she couldn't. She was frozen in her place on the chair. She said she felt icy cold for about 2 minutes. The fire was blaring. Nan described that after the cold began to fade, she felt very calm and serene, and heard the front gate go once more. In the morning, when grandad returned home, she explained to him what happened and at what time. He told her he had some terrible news. That her friends ex-husband had commited s*****e at about 8.50pm that evening. It took about ten minutes walk to my nan's house then from his.

#23

Image source: eddieswiss, Efrem Efre My sister and I were playing outside when we were younger and an elderly couple was walking by our yard. Our yard had a cemetery in the back, so it was quite a common local attraction for tourists as this house was built in the 1800s, and most of the graves were from children who died back then from the flu, etc. There are some creepy stories from that place, but nothing lives up to what happened all those years ago. Playing outside, and this old couple kept pestering my sister about what her name was, as they approached us, and got closer. We were just little kids, and got terribly scared, and ran inside and told our mom what had happened. The following week I heard a story on the news about an elderly couple approaching a teenage girl, kidnapping her, and r*ping her, and it was the same couple that had approached my sister and I. I still get creeped out by that.

#24

Image source: d2hazn, Anna Madera **TL;DR:I gave blood and the bag overfilled and popped.** I once was giving blood at my school's blood drive. So they put the needle in and I passed out. The nurse just happen to leave and when I woke up I wondered why everything was wet. Then I opened my eyes and my everything was soaked in my own blood. I screamed then passed out again. Never giving blood again.

#25

Image source: samissleman17, josiah farrow There's an abandoned house next to mine, the previous owner moved out to California 25 years prior and never sold it. I got a flashlight, gloves, and pushed the window open and went inside, starting with the basement. In the basement was a grand piano (still plays, but very much out of tune), old WW2 stuff, what seemed to be a signed Elvis poster, some other really cool s**t no one should ever leave behind. There's basically a whole story in that basement, including a broken wedding picture frame and instruments everywhere. On the main floor was an unmade bed, molded food still in the fridge and on the stovetop, half-empty beers turned solid, lights that still hadn't been turned off. Then I started walking upstairs when I heard crying from one of the side rooms. That's when I freaked the f**k out and haven't been there since.