Every once in a while, I read something that as a grown adult, makes me NEVER want to be alone again. Take a look at the stories below from AskReddit. Are they true? Who knows. But they sure got me thinking.
1. Mis-fortune Cookies
I’d been living alone for less than a week. I got some Chinese take-out and was eating in front of the TV. I finished my meal and cracked open the fortune cookie. It read “You will have a visitor tonight, lock your door.” There were no visitors that night, but the memory still haunts me.
2. Closet Confessions
My parents bought their first house back in 1972. It was a fixer-upper, but they decided to move in right away and fix things as time/money permitted.
Within a few days of moving in, the new neighbors came over to introduce themselves. They also let my parents know that the previous owners had moved out after a nasty divorce. They had lost their second baby from SIDS, and their relationship went downhill from there.
My parents were horrified, more so because they were newly pregnant and couldn’t imagine going through such a thing.
They eventually pretty much forgot all about it. Life went on. They were in love with their new life and their new house.
In preparation for the baby, they decided to wallpaper the nursery. Now, my Dad told my mom there was no need in wallpapering the inside of the closet, but she insisted. She was kneeling down, scraping off old paint inside of the closet when her eyes fell upon something that made her blood turn to ice.
Written in crayon, at about eye level for a kindergartner, in childish scrawl was: I KILLED THE BABY.
3. Long Showers
Woke up one night around 1am, heard the shower was on… I first thought it was my brother, he works night shifts, so thought he had came home late and was in the shower… It went on for about half an hour until i got up and went to see wtf he was doing… No one was in the shower, my brother wasn’t home yet, i was the only one in the house. Still to this day, i have no idea how it turned on or who did it.. Almost 5 years later i still think about it and shit myself… Even writing this now i feel like turning every light on in the house…ahah whyyy do i do this to myself!!
4. Settle Down Max
Growing up I lived in the middle of the woods. No neighbors for about a mile on each side and we own 60 acres of forest then a swamp after that. So basically I lived in the middle of nowhere. One summer when I was about 14 I was out in the middle of the woods playing with my dog (I’m an only child and both of my parents were out of town.) when I kept feeling something hit my elbow. I’d go to throw Max’s ball and the bump would make me throw it almost straight up. Assuming it was just me bumping it on trees or something I ignored it.
After the fourth or fifth time of it happening I thought…well this sucks I’ll just go home. Walking back I felt uneasy but I knew I was just freaking myself out because we were alone. About an hour later Max and I are at home on the couch when the garage door opens and he starts barking barking barking, I hop up to go let in my Mom or Dad, even though they were home really early. I peered through the peephole and saw the door was still shut and no one was in the garage. Quieting max down I opened the door slowly and called out for my dad. Nothing… No response at all so I go out to check the door and it’s still locked. Okay… sure. Weird but oh well. Max heard it too so at least I know I’m not crazy.
About 20 minutes later I hear the door open again and this time Max starts growling like crazy. I quiet him down again and just assume its the wind or something making noise even though by this point my heart is racing. I hear footsteps come up the stairs and think “oh jeez, dad really is home this time” and hop up and run to the door, it starts to jiggle so I run faster to let him in. I peep through the hole and even though my hand is loosely around the jiggling handle theres no one on the other side of the door. Terrified I go hide on the couch with all the lights on. Max is still growling.
About an hour after that I start to feel a little better even though im still terrified then I hear the door handle jiggle again. This time it was Max jiggling it, he needed to go outside and the only way outside is through the garage. Fantastic. I literally sprint with him to the kennel and as I’m standing in there I decide to ask this “thing” questions to make myself feel better because I knew it wouldn’t answer me. Thinking about what to ask it my eyes are drawn to the huge heavy oak door on the kennel. It was always open because it was too heavy for me to move easily. I said “Ok ghost! if you’re real you’ll shut this heavy door!” nothing… a minute goes by…nothing. Max is still sniffing around. I turn around to yell at him to hurry up and then from behind me I hear ‘click’.
I whipped around and saw the giant door had swung shut and latched. Okay….clearly it was just the wind. It wasn’t really windy but… it was the wind, for sure, had to be. I proceed “Ok ghost that was the wind, if you’re REALLY real you’ll open this massive door back up!” nothing. I relax a bit and then squat down with my head in on my knees reminiscing about how lame I just was being scared when I hear ‘click clack’. The door was now wide open. Max was done so we booked it back into the house locking every door in the house.
For the next 4 hours I would hear the footsteps on the stairs and the door handle jiggling every few minutes, until finally around 11pm my dad walks in and yells at me for wasting electricity.
I never told him or my mom about it until about a 4 months later when my dad came in from hunting after dark. He looked shaken and I asked him what was wrong… He said he aimed at two deer but missed both completely because it felt as if something was hitting his elbow and making him shoot way above the deer. Thats when I told him everything.
5. Kinect
Was playing Kinect one night. It detected a second player. I was alone.
6. You Should Lock Your Door At Night
A few years back I rented an apartment from a friend of mine. He had recently bought it and had it completely renovated. He put it up for sale but couldn’t find a buyer so I offered to rent it in the meantime.
After moving in I realized there was something wrong with the lady next door. She was about 45 but looked much older. She would sit up all night listening to Christian radio shows and talking loudly to someone. It got to the point where I couldn’t sleep so I went over to her place and asked her to keep it down. She opened her door and I got a quick peek. Her walks all had crosses painted on them in different colors. And words like “Jesus” and “angels” scribbled everywhere. The windows were painted black letting no light in at all. It was damp, yellow stained 50 year old carpets, dog shit and cock roaches everywhere. No dog though.I asked her to please keep it down. She just looked at me and shut the door. Then she turned up the radio even louder.
The next night I had my GF staying over. I wake up in the middle of the night and see a shadow of a person next to the bed looking at us sleeping. I think I’m hallucinating as I usually do in the dark when I’m sleepy. But then the shadow starts talking. It’s my neighbor and she’s holding something in her hand. She broke in during the night and who knows how long she stood there.
“You should lock your door at night” she says and walks out.
The next morning I hear someone making strange noises below my bedroom window. It’s my neighbor talking to herself in tongue. She has a plastic bag in her hand with her rotting dead dog inside. It’s hot as hell outside and I can smell death from the bag.
At this point I’m scared shitless. Shes obviously very insane. I go upstairs and knock on another person’s door and ask what the hell is going on. The guy is as scared as me. Apparently she broke into his apartment one evening as well while he was watching tv with his kids. He got up from the couch to get a snack only to find her behind the couch staring at him holding a power drill. (Now I know what was in her hand.)
At this stage I’m basically pooping myself. I call the cops and they know all about her. Apparently she is a violent schizzo and she hasn’t taken her meds. But they can’t force her or enter her apartment w/o her permission because she owns it. The only thing they can do is get her when she goes outside. I sit up for the next two days waiting for her to run out of cigarettes. When I hear her leave at 2am to go across the road to the 7-eleven I call the cops. They have 3 cars and a special van over in less than 2 minutes. They restrain her and throw her in the van and drive off to some institution and in less than a minute it’s like she was never there.
I never see her again. Still have nightmares about her looking at me in my sleep.
7. Sleep App
A few months ago I downloaded a program for my phone – Sleep as Android. I bought the premium version of the app for the extra features to record sound throughout the night when volumes reached a certain threshold. It would activate when I would snore or move around. I would usually spend the next evening going over some of the recorded sounds. Everything was pretty normal until I listened to something out of the ordinary.
It was near the beginning of April, and I had the apartment to myself. I’ll let you listen to the sound before I go on explaining it.
It started out picking up my snoring, and then the hairs on my neck stood up as I hear my doorknob moving. Following this, you can hear my door open slowly.
I was confused and a little worried. Everything was still locked up, nobody came home (the chainlock was still latched on the front door), and my landlord certainly didn’t come.
I don’t use the app anymore.
8. Speed of Light
This happened to me when I was about 8 and still scares me to this day. One evening I went to let my dogs in from the back garden at around 9pm. It was pitch black so I quickly opened the door and my dogs came bounding in, as soon as they came in I locked the door and at this moment a person on the other side pulled the handle down trying to get into my house. We had a glass door so even in the dark I could see the outline of a man standing there.
I ran to my dad and he ran into the back garden after this man and saw him running down the road. Since then I have closed and locked doors at the speed of light.
9. In Game Action
Woke up one night to some noise downstairs. Xbox was on and the kinect was moving up and down every so often like it does when you set it up. Turned it off and went back to bed.
Next morning, i booted up the xbox and tv and started kinect adventures. Several pics were taken last night of “in-game action”, but no one was in the pictures.
10. Stalker of the Century
Something along these same lines happened to me when I was kid, but no one was ever found in my basement. It was my first time staying home alone while my whole family was out at my brother’s ballgame (I was 13 I think). Anyways, I’m on the phone with a friend of mine feeling so grown up when someone beeps in on the other line. I tell her I’ll be right back, and click over lines. Then the creepiest voice I have ever heard says, “Hello, little girl, I’m the man in your basement!”
Honestly, I laughed it off and just hung up thinking it was a prank call. I was a pretty confident little thing, and my neighborhood was pretty safe so I figured someone was just messing with me, knowing it was my first time alone. They beeped in again, so I clicked over and heard, “DON’T YOU F-ING HAND UP ON ME YOU LITTLE, B*@#!” and the lights started flickering and there was banging under my feet. I KNOW it sounds crazy, but my dog started freaking out and my cat ran away, so I assure you I wasn’t imagining a thing. Our basement was actually just an area connected to the garage, it wasn’t finished. I heard what sounded like footsteps coming up the garage steps to get into our kitchen, and I threw stuff in front of the door and hearing yelling and what not.
I kept trying to hang up and call the cops, but every time I tried to, he was still on the phone. My friend told her parents what was happening, and they ran to the neighbors house to call the police for me. I sat petrified with a broken rifle, a butcher knife, and a baseball bat behind my front door because it’s the only place in the house downstairs that couldn’t be seen from a window, crying. Eventually I clicked over to hear a police dispatcher on the phone and stayed on the line with her until the police got to my house. There was no sign of forced entry, though we had a broken window pane on our outside garage door that had been messed up for months prior and my guess is he used that to get in.
The police assumed I was just a paranoid girl, and they were going to leave me home alone after they gave an all clear. Fortunately a family friend had been driving by and saw the cops there and stopped to see if everything was okay. He gave me a ride to the school where my family was. They were skeptical that anything had happened, but we did get a security system not too much longer after that, and my parents both got cell phones too. This was ’94 I think so cell phones weren’t super popular yet.
After that happened, I swear there was someone stalking me for years. I would leave my apartment locked and bolted and come back to find appliances on (hair dryer, stove), heat on in the middle of the summer. I lived in 4 different places, and would get strange phone calls at everyone despite being unlisted. Cars would randomly be parked down the road from a house and speed up and slam on the brakes as I would run inside. I’d hear loud bangs outside when I lived out in the country. Nothing has happened since I’ve been in my current house and married, but I am still super paranoid all the time.
11. No, No
One night when I was about 7 years old, I went to sleep at around 9:30 and got into the second level of my bunk-bed. I soon fell asleep, but then I woke up in the middle of the night to someone whispering “No, no” repeatedly as if they were in pain, thinking I just imagined it I tried to go back asleep. And then that’s when I heard it, the creaking of the wooden boards on the stairs, slowly getting louder and that whisper “No, no”. I knew it wasn’t my parents because they were sleeping in the bed next to mine.
Then I heard some screaming along with the foot steps coming up the stairs and again the whisper of “No, no”. So I slowly got out of bed, crept towards the ladder to get to the floor and I slowly began to crawl towards the bedroom door in the dark which had a full view of the stairs. I opened it without creak in the darkness and I saw nothing moving in the dark nook of the stairs. But I now heard the whisper of “No, no” coming from the room upstairs which nobody used. I silently crept towards the stairs, but I kept the lights off, and I began to creep down them so I could check the front door.
Nothing was out of place, so I turned on the living room lights and that’s when I saw it for an instance. The silhouettes of three people outside the living room window and then they were gone. I proceeded to turn on every light in the house and crawl into bed with my parents as I waited for it to be morning.
12. Free Pizza?
My parents were out one night and my brother and I were home alone. We were probably 12 and 10, respectively. Anyway, there’s a knock at the door and I hear a voice say “Pizza.” Initially thinking it was my father playing a joke I instinctively went to open the door when it hit me…
That wasn’t my dad’s voice.
“We didn’t order any pizza” I said. There was no reply and no audible movement. I went to my bathroom window which allows some vision of the footpath leading from the front of our property to the front door but you can’t see the door itself. So we waited for about 15 minutes clutching a cricket bat and some ornamental fireplace poker until finally the dude moves away from the door and walks away.
Just some guy with dark hair in a long ponytail, a long dark coat and no pizza.
13. Secrets Don’t Make Friends
In my last apartment, every morning, 3 a.m. I would hear this woman screaming “help” in this loud, clear, blood-curdling shriek.
I tried asking my landlord about it and he got real quiet and wide-eyed and never said a damned thing about it.
None of the other tenants would talk to me.
14. Ski Masks and Motorcycles
This happened just a couple weeks ago on a friday. It was late at night, around midnight. I had two friends in my car, we were coming back from a restaurant to celebrate finishing up the school play. I just dropped the first friend off and was now making the four or five mile drive to my second friend’s house. It’s a narrow road in MA that cuts through some pretty dense woods. She was in the front seat and we were listening to ballads, just talking about life. Not a big deal.
I was behind a deep red pickup truck that had a motorcycle in the bed of it the entire way so far. I wasn’t tailgating them, nothing, even though the driver was going a bit slow for my tastes and swerving around just a tad too much. When I’m just about to reach this intersection that’s not even a block from my second friend’s house, this guy pulls over. Seemingly no reason, he just pulled over to the side of the road about a car or two’s length from the blinking red light. As I pass him to stop up ahead, I see his face. He has a pretty generic face, nothing unusual, but he’s staring right at us with anger in his eyes. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I just sense something’s…not quite right. My friend looks out the window and says; “What is he doing?” shakily.
I look at my rearview mirror to see the guy getting out of the seat, pulling a ski-mask over his face and wielding a huge, I’d say 10 inch knife in his hand. He started sprinting at my car, almost reaching the passenger side. I screamed and slammed on the gas, driving around for awhile, the man only chasing my car for a few blocks until he knew he wasn’t going to catch us. When I got back at the intersection minutes later to drop my friend off, he was gone. My friend ran inside, locked her doors and everything and I sped away, but it. Was. Terrifying. I told the police and filled out a report last week. Never driving at that intersection again.
15. The Other Mother
When I was sixteen I was sitting at a table with my mom talking about life, musing on the afterlife and reincarnation.. The usual. I began to laugh and say “you know, I’m pretty sure I remember my past life”. This was about the time her face went pale. I asked her why.
That’s when she began to list all of the details of my silly past life which I always felt was just a recurring dream I must have. She told me how I was the youngest child in a family of poor travelers. How my crib was the top drawer of any dresser where we would sleep and my mother was a tall, bony, angry looking woman with her hair pulled high, always wearing a long dress. All the details I was about to tell her, for what I thought was the first time.
“How did you know all of that? I’ve never told you before!” I said.
“Because that isn’t the first time you’ve told me”, she said, “you told me that story many times when you were a baby, after you first learned to talk.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“And the worst thing…” she said with a dark brow, “was when I would come to play with you…and you would tell me your other mother was behind me.”
16. Voice To Text
My wife and I just moved into a brand new house this past July. There are definitely creaks and weird nosies from the house settling. However, I had a buddy over one night. We all had got a little drunk and as we were going to bed, my buddy jokingly knocks on our bedroom door and asks if he can sleep in our bed because “there is a ghost in his room!”. “Go to bed Rodney!” I say.
The next day, after he went home, he told me his girlfriend asked him, “So, you called me last night?” He didn’t remember calling her, so he checked his phone and there was no record of any new outgoing calls. He told her that he didn’t call her, and she said, “That’s interesting, because I had a missed call last night from you, and a voicemail. Listen to this.” What came next was the weirdest thing ever.
It was this loud droning noise with lots of feedback and interferrance. Her phone would translate any voicemail into text, so while you heard this weird growling sound, the text message read, “HELP ME. HELP ME. ARE YOU THERE? HELP ME PLEASE!”
Creeped out.
