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I’ve seen WAYYYYY too many horror movies to NOT get creeped out when I’m home alone, or in someone else’s house by myself.
Even if you know everything is totally fine, there’s something unsettling about being alone at night and hearing a creak in the floorboards or a branch breaking outside your window…
Are you ready to hear some creepy true stories about people being home alone?
Let’s dive into these spine-tingling tales from AskReddit users.
1. Someone’s watching…
“The scariest thing that happened to me I didnt know actually happened until the following day. I lived in an apartment in a not so good part of a dangerous city with my boyfriend who worked nights. One day our friend came over and called me to let him in our building in a hurry.
Turns out this guy had been crouched by my car in the parking lot and had approached our friend and closed in on him. My friend pulled out a weapon and the guy ran off.
Upstairs I noticed that the guy had left a green bundle near my car and assumed he would be back for it. It made me uncomfortable so I suggested we call the cops. Not 5 minutes after a cop showed up to ask where the guy had gone swat, K9, and about 10 cars showed up and swarmed our area.
Turns out the guy had escaped from county the night before with two other guys. He was in jail for assault with a deadly weapon and repeated domestic violence offenses. He had climbed the fence in the yard behind our building where our landlord kept his camper, broken into the camper, and stayed there the night before.
He had stolen all the electronics out of it as well as a butcher knife and was trying to break into my car before my friend showed up.
I had been alone the night before and had taken my dog down to the yard to go to the bathroom. I noticed that the barbed wire on the top of the fence had fallen down, and my dog was nervous. But I brushed it off. The guy had been in the camper watching me the whole time and I never knew it.”
2. Creeper in the window.
“Was working pretty late (re: 2am) on my computer when I get an alert from my security camera that detected motion. I checked it and there was a person staring into my apartment window in full view of where I was working. I closed the computer, turned off the lights and went into the bathroom for a bit.
Turns out being extra paranoid when someone is staring into your apartment at 2am isn’t a good combination. I checked the camera memory and the guy was there for 20minutes, just real casual. Called the cops and the kid ran away and came back an hour later. Haven’t seen him since.”
3. A twister.
“I was a young kid home alone and my mom called the phone and said a tornado was coming and I had to go shelter in the basement… The basement was incredibly creepy, especially as a child. I NEVER went down there on my own.
So little old me grabs my toy lantern to descend into the basement all alone with rain hitting the windows, with only the flicker of my toy lamp to light up my surroundings while I make my way to the boiler room and shelter in place until someone comes to get me…. Imagine that, just sitting there in the darnkess listening to all of the sounds for something like two hours. Fucking freaky.
Turns out the tornado missed us by miles.”
4. Attempted robbery.
“I was in my basement where the computer was playing some game, probably Runescape, and heard someone pull into the driveway, naturally assuming it was my mother who was coming home from work.
I heard the screen door open but when no one opened the lock on the actual door I started to go upstairs and I saw a pair of legs go by the window (while the basement was underground, there was about a foot that popped up above ground level and had two windows).
I go upstairs and see two dudes in my backyard looking at the windows and talking about the door was locked. It was an attempted home robbery, we had been broken into a few times at that point and had everything locked, but 10 year old me was terrified.”
5. Sorry, kid.
“It was a hot summer and my parents went to a wedding. I had a project to do and it was like 1am and silent until a random drunk dude crawled in through my window with a bottle and blush face. I was 20ft away at my desk from the window and we both just stared at eachother.
He was flustered and said “oh sorry there kid wrong house” and attempts to leave the way he came. He was drunk n dizzy so I helped him by pushing him out the window. I thoroughly shut it and stared at it for 2 hours until my parents came home.”
6. On the loose.
“When I was home alone with my little sister, at the time I was probably 12 or 13 and my mom had just ran to the store for milk.
These cops showed up at my door and asked if they could come inside to look around, I was a kid and confused so I said ok. And they later told my mom that the house across the street was just broken into and the man had not been caught and they were lead to believe he was hiding out on a different property somewhere.
So they thought this grown man was hiding in my garage or backyard while I was home alone with my sister, my mom never left the house without us again when we were kids.”
7. Maybe wasn’t a sales guy…
“Once while I was home alone, I had been warned not to answer the door, for anyone, or I might get taken away. One sales guy had been banging on the door repeatedly for the last 6 minutes.
I guess I hadn’t muted the tv fast enough. He screamed “I know you’re home alone in there!” I about died.”
8. That’s a good way to get hurt.
“This just happened last week, I woke up to someone in my house.
Walking up the stairs to my bedroom, it was about 1 pm, and I work third shift, so I was sleeping. In my haste, I didnt grab my bat. I whip open my door and it’s my ex bestfriend, whom I’ve blocked on every social media site… she starts yelling at me for not responding to her and how she misses me…. idk what scared me more, the split second I realized there was an intruder.
Or that someone I knew would just take it upon themselves to force me to talk to them, by trespassing.”
9. The neighbor.
“I heard gunshots when I was home alone for the first time as a twelve year old. Turns out my neighbor was a murderer.
At least twelve cop cars and like two fire trucks showed up and I thought it was the end of the world.”
10. There’s someone out there.
“This happened many, many years ago when I was but a youngster. In my suburb there had recently been a spate of break and enters. Where I live, they tend to happen suburb by suburb (like, one suburb will get hit a bunch then there’ll be nothing for a while).
My family had gone away for the weekend, but I had stayed home because I had work. I was up at midnight watching a James Bond movie (Live and Let Die for those playing at home), with all the lights in the house turned off, and I heard a really sudden and strange thud from my kitchen/living area.
I instantly knew it was a weird noise – nothing in the house made any noises like that – so it was immediately suspicious. Just as I was about to get up to go and check it out, I heard it again. That’s when I realised it was actually the thudding of the thick glass sliding door from the kitchen to the outdoor patio.
As I mentioned, all the lights are off, so I’m making my way through the house turning lights on. When I reached the light switch to turn on the patio light, I hit all of the lights at once, including the light at my front door (which is visible from where I’m now standing).
We had those glass panels next to the front door, which I could now also see out of since the light was on. There was nobody at the patio area at this time, but through the glass panels at the front door I saw someone sprint past and out of the yard. Even though I couldn’t see any detail, it was unmistakable to see that it was a person running past.
It later occurred to me that they were most likely kicking the glass patio door to try and smash it and break in, as I later learned that this is apparently one common method of entry during burglaries. I had initially assumed they were hitting it with something, but a boot would explain the deep hollow thud of the noise better than striking it with something.
Was pretty spooky at the time – just that sudden realisation of “that is not a normal noise”. Kind of crazy what your intuition knows in moments like that.”
11. You could’ve warned me!
“Not sure if this counts. Was working on a farm in northern ca. It was a start up and I was the only person (at nights) on an isolated 650 acres. After dinner, was walking from the lodge to my cabin (100 yards +-) it’s dark so all I can see is what my flash light illuminates plus a little on the periphery of the main beam.
Anyway, walking back and in the periphery I see red fucking eyes staring at me unblinkingly. I turn the light on it and all I see is a pale white mass behind the still red eyes. I freak, takes a little bit to get me jumpy but this sure as hell did. picture a 6’5” 260lb man.
Now picture him letting out an unbelievably high pitch scream and straight sprinting into his cabin, 50 yards or so. The next day I was talking to one of the guys that come up to help out during the day told him what happened and he about fell over laughing. I think the sincere terror in my voice as I described the pale monster really drove the funny nail home for him.
Well, turns out there’s such a thing as albino deer and just so happens one frequents this property. Nobody thought to warn me before hand.”
12. Terrifying.
“My parents let me walk home from school alone when I was in 4th grade. In my now adult opinion, thats way too young.
So I walk home from school. House is empty til about 5 when my parents get home.
So Im doing my usual routine: mountain dew code red, Doritos 3D’s, and Toonami on cartoon network.
So im only home for about 3 minutes when I hear a knock at the door. 99% of the time I stay quiet and just wait for whoever to leave. But for whatever reason I actually go to the door and call out. “Who is it?”
Stranger dude voice on the other side “Hey! Its your buddy Mike!”
I don’t have a grown ass man buddy Mike, Im in 4th grade.
My shit goes COLD. Heart in my throat. Goosebumps. Cannot move paralyzed terrified.
Dude says again “Hey!….open the door, we gotta go”.
And he jiggles the door handle really hard. Then he knocks again bam-bam-bam. Jiggles the door handle hard again.
Im still like 1 foot away from the door. I actually never moved since all of this started because I didnt want him to hear my footsteps.
After a minute of silence I heard a car door close and him drive away.
Im still freaked the fuck out for the next hour. And worse thing was I was now super paranoid about walking to/from school because obviously he followed me that day and I had no idea I was being tailed.”
13. Anyone home?
“The lights turned off all at once while I was in the kitchen. It was pitch black. I heard the door open. For some reason instead of thinking power outage my brain went to “someone has cut the power and is coming to kill me”.
I grabbed the landline, the knife and was crouched behind the kitchen counter hearing steps come through the house, trying to breath as quietly as possible.
Then I hear my mom go “Hello? Anyone home?”
The power went out by chance at the exact moment she came in the door. That would have been an awkward hospital trip.”
14. Scratching in the ceiling.
“There had been a scratching in my ceiling for awhile, and my landlady was dragging her feet over having it looked into.
One night, around 2am, the scratching became so bad it woke me up from a dead sleep. I tried to reassure myself that whatever it was couldn’t really get through to me, and I would be fine until I could call my landlady the next day and really press the issue.
Then some debris fell from my ceiling- whatever was up there had managed to dig a small hole into my room. I screamed, and heard some scurrying away from my approximate location. Grabbed any stuff I needed for the next day, got the fuck out of there, shut the door tight behind me, and slept on the couch.
I called my landlady first thing in the morning, and she had someone come while I was at work that day to check it out. A mama raccoon had managed to get her way into the space between the roof and my ceiling and had given birth to a litter of kits.
The guy speculated that the kits were getting old enough to start wrestling around, and that was likely what led to the hole in my ceiling. Luckily it was just small (the size of a quarter), so there weren’t any angry raccoons hanging out in my room when I got home.
They were able to safely trap and release the whole little family, but I still started hunting for new apartments ASAP.”
15. Wrong house.
“It was about 8:30 at night and I heard the front door open. I called out from my room asking why my mom and dad were home only a half hour after they left for dinner. I almost shit my pants and straight up jumped out of my bedroom window when a random male voice replied, “What? There’s somebody in here?”.
Turns out it was somebody who got hired to check on one of our neighbor’s dog when they were on vacation and he got the wrong house address, but the raw fear that gripped me when I heard his voice still gives me nightmares.”
Creepy stuff!
Have you ever had any scary experiences when you were in a house all by yourself?
Please share your stories with us in the comments!
