Our homes may be our safe havens, but these AskReddit users tell stories that will make you check under your bed twice tonight… and tomorrow night… and the next night… and…

#1. That Wasn’t An Air Vent

“Back in junior high, the first time my parents left town and left me alone for a week. It’s going good, I stayed in the basement and the entrance to the hallway that leads to my room had decorative beads hanging in the entrance way. I’m in my room watching TV with my faithful dog, Smokey laying at the foot of the bed. All of a sudden he starts barking wildly. A bark I’d never heard out of him. Almost a cry. I think something is wrong with him and just as I almost get a hand on him, he jumps off the bed and dives under it completely silent. I get to the floor to look under the bed for him and I hear the beads in the entrance way start to rattle together as if someone ran into them with a lot of force. I sit there scared shitless for a bit, then grab a bat and investigate. The beads are still swinging with force, every door and window in the house is still locked from the inside, there aren’t any air vents close to the beads and Smokey refused to come out from under the bed for another two hours. To this day, I have no idea what caused those beads to rattle.”

#2. Blood Curdling Bloody Murder Scream

“I hate writing this… still gives me the creeps.

I was like 12, and I was asleep in my family’s living room since I was sick and it was winter (My house has terrible insulation and my room was cold, family room was warm). So I was asleep and at around 2 in the morning, I’m woken up to the feeling that someone is right there. I always slept with a flashlight since I read, so it was in my hands and I turn it on and point it in the direction of where I thought the guy was. Right there, just a foot away from me, was a guy staring right into my face. The light hit his face and he turned and ran away. I let out a blood cur[d]ling bloody murder scream and my mom and dad came running down stairs. Turns out he had freaking broken into our house and then stood there staring at me.”

#3. Never Go To The Basement Alone

“I remember this story my dad told me about when he was young, probably a teenager. His dad was a mason and carpenter and would buy old run-down houses and fix them up, and then resell them. He told me that this one house his dad had bought was an old, huge house, like an old plantation home. He said he always had weird feelings in the house, and there were rooms they just didn’t go in. They tried making his bedroom the top floor room, but apparently when you went in that room you just felt a huge pressure all over your body just pressing down on you. It scared him and his mom so much, they moved him to a different room. My dad and grandma always believed in ghosts, and knew it was haunted. But my grandpa wasn’t afraid of anything and didn’t think anything of it. The house had a basement, but they just didn’t go in it. They knew something was wrong with it, they could just feel it. One day, my grandpa just decided to go down in it and see finally what was in it. So he went down with a flashlight, and after a minute or two down there, he came back up visibly shaken and they moved shortly after. He didn’t talk about what he saw for some years later. When he finally did tell what he saw, you could tell it was something that had actually scared him. He said there were chains on the walls, shackles on the floor and some of the chains, like it was an old slave house. He seemed to imply there may have been more, like bones or something, but he couldn’t say it, he was just to shaken up. Now this house was in like the middle of Ohio, and it was built after the civil war. So…. They have no clue why it was like that…”

#4. The King Has Returned

“One morning I opened my eyes and my daughter is staring at my face and says softly in a monotone, emotionless voice “The king has returned”, turns around and walks out of the room. ‘WHAT THE FLUFF DOES THAT MEAN? WHAT KING?’. It bothered the crap out of me. I threw off the covers and ran into the living room ready to do some kung-fu fightin’ in my boxers…she was watching The Lion King.”

#5. I Speak Fluent Whale

“A few years ago, I was living in a house with my brother and 4 or 5 other people. He had just finished his shift at Applebee’s and got home around 2am. No one else was in the house (we had all gone out drinking), so he was alone in a dark, 100-year old house. He put his iPod into its speaker/dock, and went into the kitchen to get a drink. Suddenly, he hears a noise. It’s a low, not-quite-growling sound, but definitely organic. It stops. He hears it again, this time higher in pitch, with the sound fluctuating slightly. He slowly creeps through the house, trying to find the source. Every couple of seconds there’d be another long, drawn-out noise…sometimes low-pitched, sometimes high-pitched. Eventually he started wondering if a sick/dying/rabid raccoon had somehow got in through a window and was in someone’s closet. He grabs a broom (for “defense”) and keeps tracking the sound. Eventually he’s able to narrow it down to either his bedroom or the room across the hall from his. He stops and listens. He hears the sound again, this time definitely coming from his own bedroom (where he was just a few minutes before). He lunges through the door whipping the broom around Donatello from TMNT. Turns out there was a MP3 of “whale songs” on his iPod, and he had accidentally hit “Play” on shuffle mode when he placed it into the speaker/dock. Still though, can you imagine hearing whale songs in your dark house at 2am?”

#6. Holding Hands Isn’t Always Cute…

“I woke up one morning and went to stretch my arms under my pillow and suddenly my hand found another hand lying under my pillow. I grabbed on, snapped upright yanking my hand out from under the pillow, and found my self holding hands with myself. Apparently my left arm was completely asleep and i was too asleep to notice. That sure got the heart rate going.”

#7. Friendly George

“I lived in a haunted house. Shortly after moving in, I had the feeling that there was someone behind me, particularly when I was cooking. A few months later, a rounded the corner and saw a man standing at the fireplace, I saw him clearly but he was gone in an instant. I did some research and learned that the home had been built by this man, and that he died in the living room, next to the fireplace, of natural causes. His wife also died in the house years later, and it had been abandoned for 6 years prior to my purchase. They had 2 sons in that house. I felt the man continually, but I wasn’t afraid, I had the feeling that he was curious, or protective. Then I gave birth to a baby boy, and the ghost was present daily. I once heard playing sounds in the middle of the night coming from the nursery…the baby was too young to get out of his crib. Later, when my son started to speak, he asked “Who’s the man who plays with me at night?” Creepy. When my son was two, he took what could have been a fatal fall – riding a wheeled toy down a very steep staircase that ended in a wall. I stood horrified – but midway down the stairs my son seemed to be picked up off the scooter, and set down on the stair – the scooter crashed into the wall at the bottom, leaving a dent. I couldn’t even speak but I felt the ghost. The last event occurred when metal bakers shelves, stocked full of china and glassware, fell over in the night. The crash was tremendous. I rushed to the basement ans saw the shelves lying down on the floor…but instead of scattered and broken china, each piece was neatly stacked on the concrete floor and nothing was broken. I sold the house for other reasons, but no one can live in it. There have been 6 owners in 9 years. Maybe they just need to tell George (that was his name) to leave them alone – he’s not a bad guy.”

#8. A Black Charred Hand…

“One day about a year ago, I was brushing my teeth in my bathroom sink. I look down at the faucet and see a figure standing behind my reflection. I thought my hair was reflecting the dark shape, so I moved it back and turned around to see if there was anything there, and I didn’t see anything. I go back to brushing my teeth and look in the faucet reflection, and the shadow has moved to the corner of my room. It’s tall, like a grown man. It’s black, but not entirely. It looked like it had been charred or burned somehow. I freak out and turn around, there’s nothing in the corner. I am freaking out at this point, so I hurry up and brush my teeth as fast as I can. My curiosity gets the best of me, and I look in the faucet reflection again. This time, the shadow is gone, but there is a black shape hovering over the rim of my bath tub, and a black charred hand with long fingers lists itself up, and then disappears behind the tub.”

#9. Ghosts Comforting the Living? Still Creepy

“About two months ago, my fiancé and I had a very stupid argument. I went into our bathroom to get away and sat on the floor with my back to the door. I was crying from pent up frustration, when I felt something like a finger or two running up my back. I turned around quickly to tell my fiancé off, thinking he opened the door or maybe I didn’t close it. But no, it was closed. What creeped me out is that I not only felt fingers, but my shirt moved up with them, exposing my skin. Like they were partially under the bottom of my shirt and it made it all the way to the middle of my back. I still get goosebumps thinking about it because I know it was real. It wasn’t something that I could write off as my imagination.”

#10. I Will Just Stay Here Until Forever Now

“When I was 12 my mother was in school to become a hair-stylist. She was given three highly realistic heads with synthetic hair to practice on. I mean, very real, down the the detailed colours of the irises in their eyes. One evening after I had gone to bed she attached them to the upstairs banister so as to not forget them to next morning. As I came upstairs to pee in the middle of the night, there stood at just below my height the dark silhouettes of THREE FUCKING PEOPLE STARING AT ME. Beyond logic, I jumped into the nook where we kept our shoes. ‘I will just stay here until forever now,’ I thought as my heart tried to beat me to death.”

#11. Fucking Elmo

“I was walking down my hallway at 2 in the morning one night to get a glass of water. Right when I turn the corner a fucking Elmo toy starts asking me to play with it. Scared the living shit out of me.”

#12. Homeboy Just Wanted A Drink

“In a house living with my girlfriend and another couple. I’m watching tv at round 2am in the living room, girlfriend is asleep, other guy is asleep, and I assume the other girl is out in her study, which you had to go outside to get to, so the back door is unlocked. From my vantage point you can see a portion of the kitchen, which is next to the back door. I hear the back door swing open, assume it’s my housemate and continue watching my TV show. About fifteen minutes later, I happen to glance through the doorway into the kitchen, as I hadn’t heard my housemate either leave the house again or wander through to the bedrooms (house is quite loud), and there’s A GUY STANDING IN THE CORNER OF THE KITCHEN STARING AT ME. He had a brown jacket on, dark eyes and dark hair, and was clutching a bottle of my midori, shoulders slumped, staring at me. When he sees that I’ve noticed him, he moves. I get up from the floor and chase him to the kitchen, but he’s gone. Carefully go out the back, nobody there, out the front… Nope… In the driveway, down the street… Just nowhere to be found. Still gives me chills thinking about it.”

#13. Guard Dog For The Win

“This is when I was in high school. I’m chilling in the living room with my dog sleeping by my feet watching TV. When suddenly, my dog jumps up and runs to the stairs which are right off the living room. Now my dog would normally never bark unless the doorbell rang. This time he went into attack mode: growling, barking, his hair rising on end, then he would look at me trying to see if I would call him back. I was scared shitless, no one could have come home because you have to come through the living room to get the stairs so no one could sneak in. After a minute he would not let up he kept acting like something was there, just something I couldn’t see. I had to sit there as my dog was acting like he was ready to rip someone’s throat, until finally he walked back to my feet looking proud of himself. I like to think he scared something off that day, but I was very happy when we moved.”

#14. The Man With No Eyes

“It’s bedtime again. I am sitting in my bed talking to my daughter getting her ready for sleep. All of the sudden she starts crying hysterically and hiding in me. Was she hurt? What the hell was wrong? Does she need to go to the ER? I was worried and she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but she was terrified of something. Finally, she looks up at me and says, ‘He’s standing right there.’ and points to an empty corner. ‘Who is standing right there?’ ‘The man with no eyes…'”

Photo Credit: stackexchange

#15. Wrong House, Drunky

“It was around 2002 I had just married my wife and we had just had our first baby. Bedroom door opened up and hit my wifes side of the bed. Guess she went to get up for the baby in the middle of the night. she went to get out of bed and when she put her feet down on the floor she felt a body. She reached down and lifted a arm. She thought it was me on the floor at first then she reached over and i was asleep in bed. She started screaming i woke up. the guy passed out on our floor woke up. i chased him out of the house with a knife. Basically some drunk came in our house and passed out on our floor without our knowledge in the middle of the night. Totally fucked up.”

#16. Don’t Go In The Wall

“Our son at the age of three would wake up screaming in the middle of the night almost every night because ‘he didn’t want to go in the wall.’

Hes almost 5 now and the last thing he says to my wife and I before bed is ‘dont go in the wall’.

He doesn’t wake up crying about it anymore though. Creepy.”

#17. I Hate Pianos

“When I lived with my Mother I had a room in the basement of our two story house. My Mom has always played piano and we had an older grand piano in our living room and the way it was set up you had to walk right past the piano to get to the bathroom So, late on night everyone else is asleep and I need to use the bathroom so I make the journey upstairs and just as I am passing the piano it makes a loud CLANG like someone banged on a bunch of the keys all at once…the lid to the keys was closed. I was genuinely freaked out and sat in the bathroom long after I was finished, frightened to walk passed the piano, just as I got my courage up another CLANG occurred before I even opened the bathroom door. I finally just burst out of the door and ran back to my room.

I hate pianos.”