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It doesn’t matter if you’re 10-years-old or much older, sometimes being home alone gives all of us the heebie-jeebies.
You never know what’s lurking just outside that window, do you…? Let your imagination run wild and you can really start to think about all the terrifying things out there in the world.
Here are some hair-raising stories from people on AskReddit.
1. What an idiot.
“My girlfriend and I both travel a lot for work so it’s not unusual for only one of us to be home on any given week.
Last fall she was in San Francisco and I was home alone for a few days. We live in an apartment on the top floor of a building. Above us is a roof with a deck available to everyone.
Middle of the night I get up to use the bathroom and on the walk back to bed I look over to the study. There’s a sliding door in the study leading to a balcony.
I immediately stop dead in my tracks. I see the outline of a person standing on my balcony — facing me.
I run over, hit the lights, grab a knife from the knife block and start dialing 911.
The person is a kid — no more than 16. He sees me hit the lights, grab a knife and my phone and he immediately grabs the railing on my balcony and flings himself over.
I run over — assuming I just watched someone kill themselves — only to see him safe and sound on the balcony below me. He then hurdles off that balcony. He’s jumping from floor to floor. He hits the parking lot in the back of our building safely and then sprints off.
Cops finally come and break up a party on the roof. Turns out he was just a drunk friend of someone on the second floor and got dared to do it.
Also shout out to my dog for being asleep 15 feet from the balcony and not doing anything.”
2. Close call.
“We lived outside a rural town and my mother always told my father not to leave me home unsupervised because it was a 20 minute drive from town if some accident were to occur.
Anyway my dad was a completely irresponsible parent and so he ignored that advice and instead left me at home by myself at age 7. However, before he left to go back to a meeting he explained how to load and cock his 12 gauge shotgun under his bed with buck shot and told me if anyone comes to the door and tried to break in…shoot them.
Fast forward a couple hours…my mother calls him and asks how everything is going. He says I’m home alone. She loses her mind and rushes out of work to come home and get me. In her rush she forgets her house keys.
So she gets home, and starts banging on the front door. I didn’t hear her voice at all so being the obedient child I am I go into my parents room, load the gun and bring it towards the door. I cock it and I don’t know if my mom heard it or what but she suddenly stopped banging and yelled my name instead.
It’s probably the only reason she’s alive today.
I was really scared before I knew it was her, but I assumed my dad was smart and told me the right thing to do.”
3. Out in the country.
“Well my house was sort of out farther away from town. We had neighbors, but they were few and far between. There was a hiking trail opening across the street from our driveway, which was VERY long, and cant be seen from the trail. My room had a large window facing out to the driveway.
Anyway, I was home alone, cleaning my room, and singing ‘We Are The Champions’ extremely loudly (as well as playing it on my tv). Looked up, and suddenly see a man power-walking up my driveway VERY quickly. It’s obvious no one is home but me since there aren’t any cars in the driveway.
So I ran to the front door (which was open because it was hot af outside), and locked it, and closed and locked my window.
Turns out bro-friend did not like that. I called 911 because he was still approaching my house, and I was getting scared by his demeanor, and while on the phone with the 911 operator, he started banging on my front window by the door, and then the door itself.
He tried kicking in the door, and tried breaking the window. I went and hid in my moms closet (because it locked from the inside only) with a knife until the cops showed up.
By the time they showed up he was gone, and there were hand and shoes prints all over the door and front window, and some hand prints on my bedroom window. They found him about an hour later walking up and down my street. He told them that he ‘heard my pretty singing voice and just wanted to say hi’.
He was also drunk, but admitted to being sober at the time of the incident and started drinking ‘after I rejected him’. He also told them that he planned to come in and ‘have some fun’ with me after he found that I was home alone. And that he was waiting for nighttime to come back.
So yeah. Had a lot of nightmares about that one.”
4. That’s scary.
“First time I was ever home alone an earthquake hit and being a 10 year old who had never experienced an earthquake I had no idea what was happening and lost my s**t.”
5. The dog knew.
“One evening my dog (who sadly passed away this year) used to like standing on the stairs and looking out the window to watch the world go by. One evening my parents went out and my dog was on his usual spot when I hear a very low growl. I come out of my room to see to him and he growls again and shifts slightly but he’s focused on the window and he doesn’t budge.
His heckles are up and his body language is stiff. I’m thinking it’s a fox or cat that’s triggered him but I’m concerned as it was the first time I had ever heard him growl. I take a look out of a different window and I can’t see anything.
I knew enough not to try to move any dog on whilst in that state (a risk of dogs redirecting etc) so I left him to it and eventually he comes and settles outside my room after pacing along the hallway for a bit, but he won’t come into my room when I call him.
He’s just fixed in my doorway. After an hour a police helicopter flies over and circles around the area but that’s normal for that part of town and I don’t make a connection, I just figure something has spooked my boy.
The next day at around the afternoon we get a knock on the door from the police. The evening before a young girl got followed off a bus and raped on a nearby green and the dirty bastard ran off and hid in peoples gardens after he was done & had tried a few people’s doors and windows to see if they were open & the police wanted to know if we’d seen anything unusual that evening.
My dad answered in the negative as he was out with my mum, however I wasn’t in when the police knocked and only heard about it later when my dad told me about the police. The guy was eventually caught and charged as they traced the card he used to board the bus he followed the girl off from. It wasn’t his first offence either, it was all over the local news.
I suspect the guy was hiding in our garden and my dog had spotted him and knew the guy was dodgy so went into guard dog mode, which was unusual as he was a big soppy baby who loved everyone.
I miss him!”
6. Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie.
“Sitting in my parents’ farmhouse reasonably deep into the Scottish Highlands, on a farm around 5 miles from the nearest (small) town overlooking a valley but on a small road that wasn’t travelled on much.
Anyway, totally alone, just chilling in the living room and something SMASHED into the window right beside me. I f**king sh*t myself. A huge crow, completely out of the blue, flew hard into the window. Double glazed so didn’t break but made a hell of a noise about 3 feet away from me. I was freaking out. How could a crow hit that window in the house, having not avoided the house altogether? I was on edge for hours afterwards. It survived and eventually kind of limped and eventually flew away.
Just a random occurence but it gave me a serious fright all alone up there on a windy hill.
Later on i could laugh as it left a perfect bird-shaped greasy mark on the window, like something out of a cartoon!
7. All fired up.
“I was 15 or 16. It was a Friday night, and my parents were having dinner with some friends. I was supposed to stay alone at home for 3 or so hours.
A middle-aged guy got into the garage and was trying to break into the house. He was carrying a bat/pipe/something, was angry as heck, and kept yelling my dad’s name. He broke windows and a door, and damaged my mom’s car. Luckily, he didn’t get inside.
I was so scared I didn’t even think of calling the police. I remember how my hands were shaking and how I was trying hard not to cry. I called my mom and my parents rushed home; they called the police on their way.
Police arrived a few minutes later. Turns out this man was married to one of my dad’s coworkers; she was cheating on him and she told her husband the other guy was my dad in order to “protect” the real other guy.”
8. Blood on the porch
“Was home alone one night and it was close to Halloween in 2015. Loud knock on the front door. I was eating dinner, so I slowly but cautiously go to the front door. Open it up and there is blood all over the porch and no one there.
Kind of freaked out a bit thought it was a prank. Called the cops because what the f**k ya know? They said they would send someone there. They called back and said someone was on a bike and fell and was bleeding bad and was going door to door asking for help. I missed the person, but one of my neighbours helped them out apparently. Crazy.”
9. Not a good thing to see.
“I was pretty young at the time probably 10-11 my parents went to get groceries and let me stay home to watch the tv. Then suddenly a bloody dude just runs up to my house and starts knocking on my door ( we live on a one way street ).
Maybe a quarter of a minute later a cop car pulls up and they beat the s**t out of the guy, put him in the back of the car and drove away. I guess the criminal was trying to escape but did not think there would be no exit whatsoever except through someone’s house. Scared the living hell out of me.”
10. The Mothman?
“About 10 years ago, I walked out to my garage to have a cigarette. If you were to walk back into my house at the point I exited, you’d step up a small concrete stair, and from there you’d go right into the kitchen and the rest of the house, or push open the sliding wood door to the basement.
The kitchen provides ambient light so you can still see inside. I watched as the door to the basement slid closed by itself, even popping the two halves of the door into its fully closed position, which would’ve taken a good push as it didn’t fit the best. A few seconds later, it flew open.
No one else was in the house, including pets. I have no idea how it could’ve happened. No drugs/alcohol were involved. Scared the hell out of me.
I also walked out one night into the garage, opened the door to the backyard, and, looking left, saw something attached to our house fly away so fast it didn’t make sense.
The weirdest thing is it didn’t look like it took flight; instead, it looked like something pulled off along a parabolic curve. I can’t make sense of that one either, and it still scares me to this day.”
11. Don’t answer the door.
“I was in bed upstairs crying (was severely depressed) when I heard the door bell ring and because of how depressed I was, was too lazy to answer it.
Turns out it was a man with a knife wearing a mask we caught on our security cameras, he went to our backyard, waved at my dog and tapped the glass doors while looking inside. Thank God I did not answer that door or go downstairs because he would’ve seen me.
Also turns out he broke into many other homes that night all through our neighborhood.”
12. Meth head.
“This meth head was trying to break into our house when I was a teen. I remember hearing the door knob moving and I moved the curtain back on the window and saw an empty stare looking right at me.
His eyes were dilated and had the look of death in them. Thankfully my neighbor saw it and had him at gunpoint.
He came out with a shotgun. Dude got down really fast.
Idk what happened to him, but he didn’t come back around.”
13. Has this ever happened to you?
“My grandparents paid me to house sit for them and take care of their animals(2 dogs, 2 goats and like 3 or 4 horses) for two weeks. One of the dogs was really clingy so I closed the door on him when I went to bed one night. I woke up in the middle of the night but I was too tired to move but I saw a black figure with a white face standing right beside the bed.
It was making this horrific growling noise and leaned into me and pressed down on my chest. It pressed harder and harder and then I was able to move my fingers and then I was eventually able to move my body but after that, I let the dog sleep in the room and I slept with the lights on.
That was the first time I experienced sleep paralysis and thankfully the times after that one weren’t freaky.”
Be sure to lock those doors and windows tonight!
Have you ever had anything creepy happen to you when you’ve been home by yourself?
If so, please share your story with us in the comments!
