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When you were a kid, did you have a book called Scary Stories to Read in the Dark?
Did you actually read it in the dark, or were you smarter than me and realized you definitely should read it while the sun is still up?
Either way, you’ll know what sort of person you are now and what you can handle – because if you thought those stories were terrifying, you’ll be hiding under the table after reading these!
26. No place to rest.
About two years ago, I was driving home from a family reunion pretty late at night, and the drive was about two hours. I didn’t stay the night because I had to be back for work the following day. Most of the drive was on roads with dense bushes and trees on either side – the real creepy ones you see a lot in movies. Anyway, I had been driving about 45 minutes, and I was starting to get really tired.
You know how sometimes you just suddenly become really tired, out of nowhere? Well yeah, that happened to me. I knew I wasn’t going to last, but I didn’t come across any place that I felt I could park and safely sleep.
Anyway, after it became clear to me that I wasn’t going to find a place to pull up, and my tiredness wasn’t going away, I did something very questionable. I pulled over to the side of the road onto the grass, behind some bushes, to try and hide my car from anybody else who was going to come past (the roads weren’t empty, I came across another car every few minutes or so). I made a mental note that the time was 11:22, and then fell asleep.
Some time later I was awoken by a scratching sound. I looked at the clock – 11:50. The sound stopped after a few seconds, and because I was still extremely tired, I didn’t bother looking around and simply went back to sleep. I was later awoken by the same sound, and it was now 12:40. This time it really freaked me out because the sound didn’t stop.
The thought ran across my mind that it was just an animal inspecting the car, but why would it return almost an hour after it had left the previous time? I looked in my rear view mirror and just managed to catch a glimpse of something running away into the forest.
Now, at the time, I thought it was the dang hook killer, you know the one that scratched that couple’s car and then slaughtered the guy when he got out to investigate? F**k that, I thought to myself, so I got the heck out of there. There was a bend no more than a hundred yards up the road, and as I came around it, there was a f**king car, parked off to the side of the road with the driver side door opened.
I slowed down just to look to see if anyone was in there (there wasn’t). Then I looked in my rear view mirror. I didn’t see anything, and all of a sudden, this guy comes sprinting around the corner. He starts screaming at me, shouting stuff like “Hey! Hey you! Get the f**k out of your car! Now!”
I noped the f**k out of there and sped off. I never saw the guy again.
25. When you’re really, really tired.
“Back when I worked night-shift as a Security guard, I would experience mild hallucinations due to my poor sleep schedule.
I was doing my patrol and I was feeling particularly out of it, so I kept getting those flashes of movement in the corner of my eye, but I was convinced it was just my brain f**king up.
As I’m going along, I see a pale shape on the ground and quickly recognize it as a body.
My adrenaline spikes and I nearly pass out.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a CPR dummy the workers left out for training.”
24. Don’t talk to strangers.
When I was about 10/11 I was ill and did not go to school one day, my parents both worked and couldn’t get the day off so told me just to stay in the house and don’t answer the door to anyone, and the usual stranger talks etc.
I was sitting watching tv in the front room that has a big bay window that looks out onto the street, which is a main road with a row of shops across the road. I felt awkward with all the people walking past so decided to shut the curtains slightly and for some reason as I did I noticed this man in his late 40s/ early 50s with a beard and glasses wearing a green knitted jumper (he looked like your stereotype child abductor). Something about him walking past just seemed strange, but not enough to play on my mind until he walked past again 10 mins later in the same direction, as if he had just looped round the block.
10 minutes later he appeared again and stopped at the edge of the driveway for about 30 seconds looking at the window, he then proceeded to the door looking in the window as he walked by, it was an old victorian sandstone house with big storm doors on the front that you needed a key to open, so he couldn’t get in. He knocked the door a few times but something just told me not to answer, he then came to the window banging it and saying something but I couldn’t make it out.
I then noticed the realisation in his face that there was a back door, my parents never locked the back door so the dog could come in and out as he pleased, I ran through to the kitchen and within seconds of turning the key and locking it the handle started turning and he started banging the door I just curled up in a ball on the floor in fear, he started trying to open windows and eventually left about 30 mins later.
I dread to think what could have happened if I had not remembered the back door was unlocked.
23. In the garage.
“…When I was about 8 or 9, I woke up to my dad calmly but firmly telling me to get up, go in the bathroom, and shut the door.
I was annoyed because I was half asleep, but I listened. Apparently I was more tired than I realized, because I feel asleep on the bathroom floor.
The next morning I asked my mom what happened. She seemed oblivious and confused. I looked at my dad like she was crazy, and I asked him why he had woken me up. He denied doing it. I was becoming frustrated to the point of tears, but I ultimately let it go.
Fast forward to college. I was home one break, and I decided to ask again.
…This time, my dad goes, ‘Ha! I was wondering if you even remembered that.’
Turns out that a lot of houses on our block were being vandalized and robbed all those years ago. Someone had broken into the garage and was inside the house. My room was partially over the garage. My dad heard it happen and quietly got me to safety.
Authorities were called, the guy ran. He was never caught, however, and my parents didn’t want a terrified kid on their hands, so for years they pretended like nothing had ever happened.”
22. Everyone’s nightmare.
I was in high school, doing homework at the dining room table.
From there, I could see the front door. Our front door at the time had a 2’x5′-ish pane of glass in it, with a lace “curtain” over it. I remember hearing a noise, like somebody was on the porch. It was probably 9pm or so, it was very dark outside and the porch light wasn’t on.
As I’m watching the front door, I can SEE the screen door opening. It stands open for a minute or so, and there’s nobody there – or they were dressed all in black. I’m frozen, waiting to see what happens next. The screen door just slowly closes.
If someone was there, they didn’t just let it go, someone was closing it carefully so that it wouldn’t make noise. After that, I don’t remember if I heard footsteps… maybe they saw me watching them and decided to quietly get out of there.
21. Nightmares for years.
“When I was a kid, I sneaked down to my parents’ bedroom to tell my mother something. I had to be quiet so I wouldn’t wake my dad up.
I kept whispering, “mom! mom!” in the dark and all of a sudden he sat up and started yelling.
My mother came out of her room and told me that I was lucky because my father thought I was an intruder and almost got me.
I had nightmares about that for years, thinking of my brush with the ether.
About 30 years later, I brought it up at some family get together. And, my mother said, ‘Oh Sapphyrre, you really believed that? He didn’t have a weapon. We were just having s^x.’”
20. A persuasive ghost.
A few years ago I was walking through the woods off the beaten track a bit and I smelt this really overpowering sweet smell. Being nosey I pulled back the undergrowth to have a look and found a dead body.
The guy had clearly been there a while and wasnt looking great, all swollen and green and black with various runny bits. The local wildlife had also been dining well for a few days.
I called the authorities who told me to wait with the body until they arrived. Being in the middle of no-where it took a while for them to arrive and it got dark and I was just sat there in the dark with him for a long time.
It turned out he had committed suicide. For a long time afterwards I had dreams about him and he would talk to me and not nice things. Mainly about how he was angry I had disturbed his resting place and he wanted me to kill myself. Probably just my imagination but all pretty disturbing at the time. He still turns up in my dreams from time to time and no doubt will be tonight after typing this.
19. The officers always go first.
“Officer here.
Got dispatched to a suspicious conditions call.
Picture an abandoned single-wide trailer in an empty field in the middle of a trailer park.
The trailer had a single light on inside.
…Partner and I figure it’s hobos or junkies squatting. We walk up to the trailer and the light goes out.
We’re ready, someone is def inside. Throw open the door, identify ourselves and begin to sweep the trailer. Back door is shut and locked from the inside. Trash everywhere, but nothing recent. No lanterns or candles.
Nothing.
Feeling real weird now, we leave to go back to the caller…As we walk back across the field, we look back…the light is back on in the trailer.
Partner is trying to be professional, but I do not f**k with the paranormal.
Officers die first in scary movies. High tail it out of there, never been back.
Clarification.
There was zero power running to the trailer. Nothing behind the trailer but field. NOBODY was in the trailer and no one could have come out except the door we went in.
Trust me peeps, I wanted it to be just a hobo or some kids.”
18. He knew where she lived.
A few summers ago I went for a bike ride around midnight with a friend. We went our separate ways at the end of the evening and I had about two blocks to ride back by myself.
Because of construction I had to ride on the sidewalk but the streets were dead but it wasn’t a problem until right where I was about to turn left onto my street. There was this man walking by himself, maybe 40s, a little scruffy but not homeless.
The side walk was narrow and I didn’t want to freak him out so when I got about six feet behind him I said “hey behind you!” And he turned around and gave me this super angry look.
I turned down me street and he started to follow me, literally screaming about how I was a f**king c**t and he was going to kill me and all that. I live right off the corner and I didn’t want him to figure that out so I decided to do another loop around the block. That’s not the scary part.
The scary part is that when I looped back around and looked down the street I saw him standing on my f**king front stoop staring out at the street like the motherf**ker KNEW I lived there. He saw me ride by again but he didn’t say anything.
I ended up going back to the friends, but my bike got stolen from the alleyway by the house two days later.
17. Are you messing with me?
“My parents were on a cruise with my older brother and since I shared a room with my little brother, I decided to sleep in my older brother’s room who had his room to himself.
One night I woke up feeling incredibly nauseous. There was a painful ringing in my ears and I tossed and turned for a bit trying to fall back asleep.
When I decided to open my eyes to check the time, I saw a dark figure standing over me.
I didn’t move, just kind of staring into what looked like a head. It confused me because I couldn’t make out any details, just shadow. Until it cocked it’s head at me like a dog does when it’s puzzled.
I immediately jumped out of bed to turn on the lights but it was gone just like that.
Fast forward a couple weeks; one night I was with my older brother and told him I didn’t want to freak him out, but saw something in his room.
He immediately when from joking to very serious, asking what it was. When I told him, all he said was ‘Please tell me you’re f**king with me. I’ve seen that thing before.’
Turns out he had two similar experiences where he had woken up and he saw it watching him sleep, but he convinced himself it was just his eyes playing tricks on him in the dark.”
16. Staring right at us.
I used to live in China back before I moved to the U.S. I was 12 when this happened.
My friend used to live in those apartments that look like high-rise but are a little bit smaller. Anyways, in order for us to go to his apartment, we had to either take the stairs and walk up 10 stories or take the elevator. One day, I had a sleep over at his place and we went to get the new Pokemon movie (the one with latias and latios) at like 6 in the evening. The store was like 2 blocks away. He always talked about how creepy the apartments he lived at are because very few people lived there. I swear, I’ve only seen like 3 other people in those apartments and I was there all the time.
Anyways, on the way back, it started to rain pretty heavily. We ran to his apartment and took the elevator. The elevator creaked and moaned on the way up and suddenly stopped. The lights in the elevator went out and it was pitch black and silent. Only thing we could hear was the muffled sound of rain and thunder. We being kids, started to panic, scream and cry. We were there for about 2 minutes when we heard a loud thud on top the elevator. Then we heard light footsteps walking above the elevator.
We got quiet and looked up at the vent facing upwards in the elevator. The vent had holes in it so you could see out of the top of the elevator towards the long tunnel up the building. Our eyes had gotten used to the dark so we could make out a few objects. The footsteps stopped and it was dead quiet again. My friend nudged me and pointed up towards the vent. What I saw was probably the scariest thing i’ve ever seen and I am 20. I have never been this scared in my life.
I looked up and could make out a face looking down through the vents. It looked like an ape. Like a really human like ape with human facial features if that makes sense. It was staring straight down at us. I don’t know if it was our imagination distorting a face of a monkey or an actual demon looking thing but it literally made me freeze in fear.
But anyways, we started screaming. I will admit. I peed myself. It still gives me chills thinking about it. It started banging on the elevator roof. It didn’t scream or anything, just made noises by banging the roof. It then took off and we could hear the footsteps running to the side of the elevator roof. Then the power came back on and the elevator started moving again. We never took that elevator ever again. It seriously traumatized us.
15. Perhaps an overreaction.
“I was watching scary movies and I got hungry so I decided to go out for a late night Taco Bell run.
I lived alone at the time so it was quite a shock when I opened the door and a hand was reaching in after me!
I slammed the door on the offending arm and ran and grabbed a butcher knife. After closing all the blinds and sitting in the dark for an hour I worked up the nerve to look outside.
I was shocked to find a bunch of Chinese food menus for a new restaurant scattered all over the ground.”
14. The dog toys.
When my sisters and I were little, my dad bought us a puppy. Well, this puppy was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment kind of purchase, so we had to swing by Walmart to get a leash, puppy chow, and some chew toys. Our dad had us wait in front of the Walmart on a bench with the puppy while he went in to get the supplies.
This nice skinny tall man with a red beard walked by, saw us, and sat next to us on the bench. He was paying lots of attention to my oldest sister, who would have been around 7 or 8 at the time. He started talking to us. Asked us if the puppy was for sale (he wasn’t).
Started asking us how old we were. Kind of started out innocent.
Then he turned to my oldest sister and said, “Hey, I have some extra dog toys out in my car if you want some!” He was trying really hard to get my sister to go with him to his car to get these dog toys. She stammered, “Our dad told us to wait here for him.” He kept insisting, and we were getting kind of nervous.
Our dad walked out of the Walmart doors and gave this man the ultimate evil eye. The man fled, and when our dad got to us, he started berating us for talking to a stranger.
13. A little bit comforting.
“My friend passed in a car accident and they towed the car pretty early in the day.
We were teens so we thought we should go collect all her things that were ejected from the car when she hit the tree.
After about a half hour, I was overwhelmed and just sat down and started crying. I had my two friends with me cleaning stuff up, and they just let me get it out for a bit.
Someone started rubbing my shoulders in the deepest massage I have ever had, and it was really helping me get control of myself and relaxing me. I let them rub for a few minutes and then I put my hand on theirs to let them know I was appreciative.
There was no hand, just my shoulder.
I turned around to say thank you to whoever it was, and there was nobody. I looked up at the car and my two friends were standing there talking about something.
SOMETHING had been TOUCHING me!!
I ran to the car and asked my friends if it was them. They looked at me like I was crazy. I made everyone get in the car super-fast and we left.
I think a spirit was comforting me in my loss, and I am grateful and freaked out for it.
I can still remember how it felt, and it’s been 22 years.”
12. An actual machete.
My grandfather’s company (does timber, mining) was setting up an office in a relatively remote part of a 3rd world county and found a house that was dirt cheap, even for 3rd world country standards. Obviously, there was a catch. The villagers in that area told him not to purchase it since the house was haunted and everyone who had ever lived there went violently. He decided it was just some superstitious bs and got it anyway.
So the guy setting up the office will live on the top floor of the house with this family and the lower floor’s for the office. He moved in with his wife and 3 kids.
Anyway, my grandfather suddenly got no news from him for the longest time. Since this was in a remote part of a 3rd world country, he wasn’t too worried since he just assumed they lost power or something. He finally contacted the local authorities to go check on the guy since he was completely unreachable.
They found everyone dead. Apparently the guy offed his wife, kids and then himself with a machete. A f**king machete. He actually hacked himself up. It wasn’t one of those cuts on the wrists to let everyone slowly bleed out. Everyone was hacked down, including the guy himself.
The description of the scene had to be an exaggeration since I’m assuming the sight of 5 decapitated bodies, including 3 kids, were scary enough to make people see things, so I won’t bother putting it here since I’m not sure what’s true and there were details that people could not have witnessed. Let’s just say I stopped paying attention after I heard the phrase “magic machete”.
I was told entire room was covered in blood, including the ceiling. Some people were saying the blood on the ceiling had to have gotten there because the spirits “threw the bodies around”, I had to explain about blood pressure and got tons of weird looks.
Now, the weird part, if this isn’t weird enough, was that he managed to barricade the door with the bed, with his wife and kids on it. And it’s one of those gigantic old beds that’s extremely hard to move. The locals say this is evidence he was possessed by spirits. I say moving to the middle of nowhere in some 3rd world country drove the guy nuts and crazy people can do all sorts of crazy stuff and even perform crazy feats of strength.
Anyway, my grandfather had to paid a bit of money to make sure nothing gets to the press (not hard, middle of nowhere) about the entire thing and get the authorities to classify them as “natural” (no idea how they’ll explain that, 3rd world countries are awesome). All employees in the know had to sign an NDA too.
He then tried getting other volunteers to set up the office. Even if they haven’t heard all the gory details because of my grandfather’s gag order, everyone knew the previous guy passed. No one volunteered. He “promoted” one guy, gave him a fancy title and told him he’s in charge of setting up that office. The guy quit.
11. Highly dodgy.
“Several decades ago I did the night shift at a local corner store in one of the less nice areas of town. Highly dodgy would be generous in describing it. (Hilariously it’s now gentrified to the max).
One night the glass door slid open and in strode a half dressed, bone thin dude who was obviously off his tree and high as a kite. I knew that wild look well, I’d seen this guy before on more than one occasion.
What made this night unique was the blood filled syringe he was wielding. Now after a couple of years of solo night shift in that place I’d been held up several times. Knife, baseball bat, even a weapon (rare in Australia) but that syringe was new.
And frightening. Other hold ups were scary but run of the mill. hand over the $50 that was all I kept in the till and they were on their way. This guy (Gavin was his name) didn’t know what planet he was from or on while making demands about giving him everything I had. I have never been so scared in my life.
Thankfully he sodded off with his $50 and a few packs of smokes. Officers picked him up 15 minutes after I called them (they knew him well, also). Found out it was his blood and he was HIV+ as well have have HEP C and a few other things. He got a stint in the pysch ward.
That is my creepiest life experience by far.”
10. So many footprints.
When I was about 13 or 14 I lived on a farm in NC. This wasn’t a regular farm that you would expect with fields full of beans and stuff, it was actually a pine tree orchard. Pine needles are a big landscaping commodity and so we lived basically in the woods and would bail the pine straw every year. Whatever, the point is that my house was in the middle of 550 acres of perfectly lined longleaf pines.
My living room had a huge picture window. I won’t go into the architecture of the house, but it was a weird custom job built by some dentist in the 30’s. The window in the living room stretched nearly the entire length of the room, maybe 50 feet. The house was built on a subtle hill, so the living room itself sat 5 or 6 feet off the ground, so you had something of an angle to look out at a solid mile of pine trees. During the winter it was unsettling because you’d get just a bit of snow, enough to reflect moonlight so that you could see the dogs running around at night. I’ll be honest, i hated that room and that window.
So now to the relevant part. I had a cousin over for the weekend and we were doing what kids do in the country: throwing stuff in the fireplace to see what happens. It is getting late and the fire is dying down, so we build the big kingdom of couch cushions and blankets in the living room and get ready for bed. Nothing out of the ordinary until we hear the dogs barking. They were really far away. The property stretches for nearly a mile, so I just assumed they were chasing off whatever animal felt like crapping in my yard.
So my cousin is staring out the window and not saying anything, which prompts the standard “what’s up?” He just kind of keeps staring and says he feels like he’s seeing things. Naturally I get all anxious and start staring out the window as well. Nothing happens for a few minutes and he gets more and more annoyed with me because i’m asking what he saw, he keeps shushing me so that he can focus. And then we both see it. A shadow of a person moves from one tree to the next. not a run, not a leap, just a brisk walk from one tree to another. This is probably 100 yards out from the house. We can’t actually tell if the person is coming closer or not because we’re dealing with moonlight reflecting off of snow/slush/ice.
I guess the crazy part is that we didn’t so much freak out…because at this point there is still that chance that we didn’t see what we saw, you know? So we just kept staring. We should have gone to wake up my dad, but he’s an idiot and the kind of guy to walk out on the patio and holler into the woods with his weapon. We were just scared enough to agree that we don’t want to taunt whatever is happening.
So about 3 minutes later, it happens again, but a good 50 feet from where we first saw it. Another person, another tree, a few strides and they were gone. This happened every few minutes for the next half hour, and we just stared.
At this point I should mention that I didn’t really have neighbors. The land surrounding our farm was Federal Paper (i don’t know who owns it now) so it was miles and miles of uncultivated trees. You don’t see people around the farm unless they intend to be there.
So we keep watching as these two figures intermittently appear and vanish until finally we see one appear but not disappear. Instead we focus in on it and see that it is now running forward. We lose our s%*t and go wake my dad. By the time we get into the room with my half-awake father, there is no one to be seen.
We sprint around locking doors and windows. Keep in mind that we’re out in the country with no one around… it rarely occurs to lock doors. Every door was worse than the last because you just know that as soon as you reach the door, someone is going to be trying to open it, although that never happened.
We locked everything up, walked around the house at least 50 times making sure no one got in without us knowing, and then convinced my dad to fall asleep in the living room with us while we stared out the window. I never understood why my dad wouldn’t call the authorities. He always had this ‘we take care of our own’ mentality and it simply wasn’t an option to call the authorities.
The next day we went out to look and, absolutely, there were footprints everywhere in the snow. We saw them between trees and then we finally saw where someone had been standing right in front of the window… but as I said, I wouldn’t have seen them because while i’m 7 feet up in the living room, they would have been right beneath me.
9. I guess you get used to it.
“Working night shift in a hospital.
The staff toilets were off the ward on a corridor. As you went in there were two sinks in front of you, paper towels to the left, two cubicles to the right and a store room between the sinks and the cubicles, set back, no door. The light in the store room never worked.
Both cubicle doors open, I went into the one closest the door. As soon as I started doing what I needed to do, crying started from the cubicle next to me, quiet sobbing, not wailing. When I (very rapidly) left the cubicle I was in, the door to the other one was still open and empty.
Same ward, but a few months before was the first night I had done on there, it was an old nightingale ward, so we put chairs at one end so we could see everyone. The other nurse was reading some notes and said “footsteps are here again”.
We both heard footsteps coming from the top of the ward to where we were, then back up to the top. She didn’t even look up, just said “you get used to it”.”
8. Be vewy vewy quiet.
I had awesome parents who let me sleep in the living room on weekend nights when I was very young because my sister was a light sleeper and I could stay up until dawn. But of course I always end up sleeping on the couch because Nick At Nite made me tried.
So, one night I wake up to the prickly feeling. Like an instinct. Just bolted into a sitting position and stared out the front window. We lived in rural Georgia, so you can imagine the magnitude of trees. In perfect light cast from the moon, I see a silhouette of someone in this f**king tree. The family dog dashes to the window and is snarling into the glass.
Terrified, I run into my parents room and try to explain to my parents that there is a strange person outside. Dad grabs something defensive and darts outside with the dogs to beat the wax off the hot head. I tremble in Mama’s arms until Dad comes home and says he saw no one and to go to bed.
I decide to sleep in my regular bedroom. I fill in my sister in as to what happened. Dad is making regular rounds in the house with a cup of coffee. We’re all still and I finally think “I can sleep.”
Nope. I notice the man outside my window. From what I can see in the moonlight, he gives me a shush signal and runs away. Just turns around to run a straight line away.
I swear I couldn’t stop crying for what felt like hours.
7. Night on the highway.
“I drive semi trucks at night with multiple trailers, the style I tend to pull is rockies one long 50 foot trailer and a 28 foot pup trailer hooked behind it.
After you get out of the cities on some highways its just dark only thing lighting the roads is the moon and stars, colors in the sky that would make you think you’re seeing UFO flying around, just beautiful nights.
I’m on one of these roads with fog settling in and things are getting darker. This is a 2 lane highway, for no reason I move into the left lane. The moment I start to question why I even did that, this car with no lights appears along the white line of the break down lane.
Just parked there no lights on and a few feet in front of the car is a woman in a dress gently blowing in the wind standing on the line looking like she was ready to step in front of a truck.
Been a few years now and of all things I’ve encountered that image haunts me.”
6. Last summer.
Ok so this happened to me last summer when I was back at my parent’s house during the holidays. It was around 3am and i was in my room on my computer when I got a call from my sister.
Now that was already a little bit weird since my sister’s room is just down the hallway from mine and she could have just came in my room. I went to pick up and the call ended as soon as I reached the phone.
I figured that she wanted to speak with me so I got up and went to her room. As soon as I reached her door, she started screaming that someone was in the room with her so I busted in and of course nobody was here.
After she stopped crying she told me that she woke up and saw a dark shadow just centimeters from her face and that’s when she screamed.
So I told her that she called me, she tell me that her phone is not in her room and that she was sleeping. Sure enough her phone is actually downstairs in her purse. The weird part is that I have the log of her call on my phone but she doesn’t. Never managed to explain this one.
5. Just awful.
“We had a truck driver kill himself in the parking lot.
Slit his wrists and ankles. Then changed his mind, and ran into the warehouse looking for help.
That happened on the nightshift at 4am.
I came into work at 8am. There was still a few official cars left, but no ambulance or anything. Some cleaning had been done, but I learned that you don’t really get blood out of concrete. You could see the trails in circles and how frantic he was looking for someone.
It’s sort of a repressed memory. Makes me shiver thinking of it. What a sad situation that was for him.
It was pretty creepy going into that corner of the building on my next nightshift. As creepy as I felt the building was, I hope he and his family have found peace. I really don’t have words beyond that.”
4. The banana peel.
One early morning a few short years ago, I am walking to my bus stop and eating a banana. It is dark, misty, (around 5am).–
As I approach the dimly lit corner on my street, a tall man in a black mask steps out of the dark alleyway to my left. Sleepy and disoriented, I barely acknowledge him. When he shouts “put down your f**king purse” and points his weapon to my head, things start to click.
The man says “put down your bags,” and I tell him, “okay, okay, I’m putting them down over here.” He orders me to walk over to him (toward the alley) and “get down on the f**king ground” and I agree “I’m coming, okay, okay.” My heart is beating a million miles a minute and my hands still smell sticky with banana. I know I need to get away.
I don’t know why, but my mouth won’t stop working: “Look, see, I’m on the ground. My stuff is over there. Please just take my stuff” But he doesn’t like it. “SHUT THE F**K UP, OKAY?!” He gets on top of me and puts the weapon to my head.
At this point, I should mention the fact that I’m on my way to coach a high school practice and I’m dressed like a dude. Huge baggy pants, hat, jacket… If not for my tell-tale voice, I’d look like a prepubescent 90’s rap star. Anyway, as the guy gets on top of me, weapon to my head, he looks at me and pauses. I can’t tell you why I know this, but I swear that at this moment, it clicks for him that I’m a woman. He gets off of me, stands up, and points to the dark alley. “Come with me.”
My stomach hurts. I remember that there have been a recent rash of assaults in my neighborhood (during the day time no less). When the man points down that dirty alleyway, my internal voice speaks the f**k up. Says voice #1: “There was no way in HECK you are going to go down there without a fight.” “But he has a weapon, you dips%*t” replies voice #2. “F**KING FOLLOW ME!” the real voice, his voice, hollers.
So I do what I do best: I talk. “I’m coming, I’m following you!” I call. And the man makes a crucial mistake — he believes me. I take one, two tiny steps backwards, toward the sidewalk. And he turns his body — and his weapon — toward the alley. This is my moment! I take a deep breath, tuck my head down in case he starts shooting, and start SPRINTING away. I hear a voice screaming in a high pitch wail before I realize that it’s mine. After running 6 or 7 blocks, I head back to my apartment, hoping he’s not there to see where I lived.
The authorities check out the alleyway an hour later, but the potential-attacker is long gone. The only evidence of the encounter is my banana peel browning in the alleyway and the adrenaline rush that I couldn’t shake for days. I would be lying if I said that if that experience doesn’t bother me still… but I’m so fortunate to mainly be haunted by the “what-ifs” and not the “what-dids”.
3. We both saw it.
“I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in ghosts.
Didn’t stop me and both my coworkers one night shift all seeing the same 8 foot tall solid black shadow f**cking drifting down the middle of the corridor.
I slept with the lights on for WEEKS.”
2. Maybe it was a coincidence.
I was in college, living in an apartment next to my best friend. He came over to watch a horror movie. I wish I could remember which one.
Deep into the movie, a ghost appeared in a scene and caused pots and pans to crash. The characters were terrified.
Not two seconds later, all of my pots and pans fell off my fridge and crashed on the floor. My friend and I turned on the lights, stopped the movie, picked up the pots, and never talked about this night again.
1. Small town life.
“I worked nights in a 24 hour convenience store in a small town, being that it was a small town most of my customers were regulars. One night a couple came in and the first thing I noticed was that the woman was crying, not too unusual, she went straight to the restroom.
The guy was walking around the store. He was acting a little different, nervous and not as chatty as normal, and he kept looking out the front door across the highway. The store sits on what would be considered “main street” which runs parallel to a major highway with maybe a block separating them and on the other side of the highway is railroad tracks. So they buy their cigs, drinks, and snacks and leave.
After my shift I head out to my car and glance across the highway and see local authorities, sheriff and state trooper vehicles. Lot’s of them. Some of the guy’s who worked across the street were in the back of a truck with binoculars and call me over. They asked if anything weird happened last night and I told them not really.
One of them then tells me that I was lucky because they found a guy who had been hog tied, beaten, and then offed execution style by the railroad tracks. The couple that had come in acting weird was who did it. So after they offed this guy they came into my store and bought snacks.
Apparently the woman had been cheating on her boyfriend with the guy they offed.”
I sure am glad that none of these happened to me.
What’s your creepy story that no one ever believes? Share it with us in the comments!
