My grandfather said two things about life and the clock: you can get twice as much done before noon as after, and nothing good ever happens past ten p.m.
The older I get, the more certain I am that he was right – and these 17 people, who have had some pretty creepy experiences, might agree with him, too.
17. Everyone has this first sleepover experience maybe.
When I was around 12 we had one of our first sleepovers where we dared to watch a pretty scary movie. I believe it was the “sixth sense” or something. We had one of those radio-controlled clocks that would start to adjust every night.
During the scene where the boy starts crying all of the sudden the clock starts to go nuts. Thats when we changed to Toy Story. But boy, I still remember that vividly.
16. I think I would have crapped my pants.
It was just after midnight one Friday night/Saturday morning and my wife and I were talking downstairs just about ready to turn in when the landline phone started ringing. My first thought was ‘oh god, something bad has happened for somebody to be calling at this time’.
I picked up the phone and saw on the display that it was showing my wife’s cell/mobile number. I turned to her and asked where her phone was thinking that she’d left it somewhere and somebody had found it and was calling us using it to say they’d found it (hadn’t quite thought in that second that they would need to unlock it). She said it was upstairs. A gave her a sought of withering Sheldon look and answered the phone.
I said hello but nobody answered so handed the phone to my wife and went upstairs looking for the phone. It was resting face down on the side of the bed. When I picked it up it was all lit up and showing that it was calling our landline!
So how did a smartphone unlock itself (with the correct security code), navigate to contacts, find our home number and call it on it’s own?
15. Probably just animals getting it on.
So, the other night I was watching tv with my cat around 2am, and I hear a sound that sounds like a woman being murdered. I’m looking around the house and stick my head out the door and can faintly hear it coming from a park/lake near my house. I was freaking out, but wanted to look on google and see if maybe it was an animal sound.
14. Definitely a ghost.
I studied in my research lab as an undergrad and sometimes very late at night (especially during finals week)
The research building itself was older and not renovated: more dimly lit, wooden surfaces and cabinets, dust, empty rooms from labs that moved out etc,l. We knew there was a mice/rat problem because there would be these weird scratching sounds or movement in the vents when it was quiet enough
Anyways, it must have been 3-4ish AM, I was the only one in the research building and inside the individual lab rooms when I was studying and suddenly some closed, packaged plastic (culture) flasks fell onto the ground from the shelves. It made a huge ass noise and it scared the shit out of me. I just logically attributed it to the rodents to try and focus on the final coming up. There was a weird uneasy feeling in the back of my mind, like something was wrong and I felt like I was alone in the back of a dark movie theater watching things from afar
I became paranoid because it was perfectly flat and not on the edge of the shelf. So I set them flat on the center of the table and looked around, went back to studying etc
Couple of moments later, the same exact noise happened. I for sure now figured it was the fucking mice near the original shelf but when I went into the attached research lab, it was the same exact flasks I purposely put on the middle of the table. I was so freaked out that I didn’t put the culture flasks back up and when I was getting my study materials, I couldn’t move as fast as I wanted to because I was so damn terrified.
Anyways I ended up trying to casually sprint to the 24 hour on campus library that night and the rest of finals week
13. This is so much nope.
Well the other night I was reading creepypastas on my phone and the front door handle started jiggling and the porch light came and i heard someone say shit and ran.
12. Or just a really intense cat lover.
More funny than creepy, but definitely odd. I was sitting on my apartment balcony about 2:30 AM last week, and one of my cats was chilling with me at the other end on the balcony railing. We’re on the 2nd floor, across from a very dark park, and the cats love sitting to watch the world go by.
Anyway, I’m sitting browsing Reddit and having a dart when I hear some little voice go “Mew!” At first, I thought it was the cat – but then I hear it again, this little “Mew! Mew mew! Psst!” and notice my cat is staring intently down at the road.
I lean forward to look down through my balcony slats, and some woman has stopped her car in the middle of the street, leaned out the window, and is meowing up at my cat on the railing.
I didn’t want to stand up and startle her so I just waited, and she sat there for five minutes mewing and trying to get his attention before speeding off. Very strange. Assume drugs were involved.
11. Put the ol’ ticker to the test.
It was around 5am when I watched a Video and the Knock Knock sound was playing in the back(its was really looud). I had my headphones on (on PC) and my window open (I live in the first floor). At first i thought my dad knocked on my door and was about to catch me at 5am at my PC, then the sound came from the other side and I thought some drunk people were trying to break into my room.
That was probably the scariest thing.
My pulse went nuts at that moment.
10. I would not have been able to sleep that night.
I was just chilling, lying in bed. The house is utterly silent. And then I hear a sharp, meaningful bang, as if someone just took their stick and tapped it on the ground. Not with incredible force, but enough to be heard. I froze up, but wrote it off. It sounded like it was coming from way downstairs, houses make noises, whatever.
Then I hear it again, this time closer in the kitchen. It sounded to me like a blind person tapping around, but only ever one tap. It happened a few times, sounding like it came from random rooms.
Then, tap. Directly outside my door. I was in high alert at this point, and my stairs up creak like a mother fucker. But I didn’t hear anyone come up. Just that tap. I nearly shit myself.
First and last time that’s happened.
9. It’s like he’s the neighborhood superhero.
I’m typically up to 0200 or 0300. My dog and my routine is to lap the neighborhood sometime between those hours so she can have a pee break.
I’ve seen teenagers making out.
Lovers sneaking out of neighbors houses when the other partner is away.
Drunk drivers hitting all sorts of things. Telephone poles seem to be a favorite.
Bears.
Drunks walking home from their night out. Who are awesome people be that type of person!
And the weirdest thing was coming around the corner and hearing a smoke detector going off. Narrowed it down to a house didn’t see anyone but smelled some smoke. I banged on the door no one answered. Called the fire department. They rolled in with one truck agreed smoke from that house. Banged on the door. No answer. Knocked down the door found the oven on smoking away and no one in the house. Turned out they left in a hurry forgot they had bread in the oven. Bought me a nice bottle of Scotch and the dog a new collar/some toys.
8. I might never put my back to a window again.
I’m a 911 dispatcher for a particularly rural area, and it’s not unusual to have a night with no real calls, and I work by myself. The room I sit in is relatively small with glass windows all around the front of it allowing me to speak to anyone who may come into the front doors. Most nights I’ll make myself a couch out of two office chairs so I can sit with my legs stretched, which causes me to be unable to see out those windows.
One night I hadn’t had a single call in the first half of the shift, but right around 2:30 a random call came in that I just told the guy the phone number he needed and shrugged it off. Something in me couldn’t seem to settle back down comfortably in my spot, so I instinctively checked behind me out those windows and nearly shit myself when I saw a man with a medical face mask on standing as close to our outside door as possible… Just looking inside… I gasped and stared at him a solid minute before coming to my senses. I picked up the phone and waved it at him, because there’s a massive sign outside that says dial 911 for assistance. He just looked at me funny, and then turned to leave. I waved and held up a hand to tell him to wait and called one of the medics that stays in the building and asked him to go and see. Turns out the guy was super high on who knows what, but absolutely convinced he had covid-19, his temp was completely normal.
I stay pretty on edge now and check behind me A LOT more often now.
7. That awkward moment when no one speaks.
I live in a second floor apartment. My bedroom is actually supposed to be the living room and my bed is against the wall opposite the front door. Usually I keep the door locked but this particular night, about two weeks ago, I forgot to lock up after a friend left. Anyway, I’m in bed reading a news article at around 2 in the morning and I hear my doorknob turning and some guy I’ve never seen before opens the door and sees me there looking at him.
He just stands there for a couple of seconds looking just as surprised as I was when I finally loudly and assertively, to the best of my ability anyway, ask “Can I fucking help you?” The guy says “Shit, sorry. I didn’t know anyone was home.” As if that makes any difference. He just closes the door and I hear him walking down the stairs and the front door open and close. I look out the window and he’s just walking down the street like nothing happened.
6. Welp there goes that friend.
Was making some noodles at 3 in the morning when the house phone rang. I let it go to the machine and it was actually a text from a friend. The text read “I can see you lol” but when the text to voice read it out in its robotic voice over the message machine it went “I CAN..SEE.EE YOU..HAHAHAHAHAHA!” in a witchy tone. Fucked up my whole operation.
5. This is stinking TERRIFYING.
I was about 12 years old and was spending the night at my friend’s house. The two of us and her younger brother were all sleeping in the game room and I couldn’t fall asleep because my friend wouldn’t stop snoring. So I grabbed my blanket and pillow and went to the living room at the front of the house to sleep on the couch. I’m dozing off when all of a sudden the front window is fully illuminated by the headlights of a car.
Now, her house is set far back from the road, so the only way this could happen is if someone purposefully drove up the driveway, and I knew that both of her parents were at home and in bed. Then I hear the crunch of footsteps on the gravel outside and people whispering. By this point I’m fully alert. I go with my instinct and run into the game room to wake up my friend and her brother, and then we run to her parents’ bedroom to tell them what’s happening. Her mom starts running through the house turning on all of the lights and then we hear the screech of tires peeling out of the driveway.
The scariest part is that the next morning, when I go to use their phone to call my mom to come get me, there’s no dial tone. The burglars had cut the line. (This was the ’90s, and cell phones weren’t common yet.) I later find out that this isn’t the first time that they had almost been burgalized. A few months before something similar had happened. Needless to say, I never spent the night at my friend’s house again.
4. Let’s go ahead and blame the video games.
I used to play videogames in my basement when I was younger, with the lights off of course.
Well I started hallucinating things because of a lack of sleep and staring at the tv all day long, crazy stuff. Anyways, the handle of old wooden door we had in the far back of the basement started to rattle and shake on its own, and then slowly opened and made that creepy creaking sound. It was completely pitch black in there. I then saw a long black arm with thin, foggy fingers start to slowly reach out and climb along the wall, and then I saw two eyes peep put from behind the door. I immediately forgot about whatever game I was playing and ran as fast as I could up the stairs and locked the door, that thing scared the hell out of me.
Learned my lesson not to play video games for too long, especially late in the night in a creepy basement.
3. Everyone loves messing with the younger kids.
Here in south Texas theres an urban legend of a thing called La Lechusa. It’s supposedly a witch that transforms into an owl with the head of an ugly old lady.
We’ll never knew about this until I spent the night at my cousins. We were up around 2 in the morning watching tv and the tv turned off. My cousin and I yelled at his older brother wondering why he turned the tv off. He said “Y’all don’t hear that!?” We listened but didn’t hear anything. He says “Listen! Y’all don’t hear that whistling!”
We listened very quietly and heard whistling coming from the backyard. It was a long whistle. Then another, then another over and over. We asked what that was and he told us it was La Lechusa. He explained what it was and that it comes for kids who are up throughout the night. I was laying on the floor next to their bunk bed. But in front of me was a window that faced the backyard. I held my head down in fear that I would look up and see her. He said “Just stay quiet. I’ll turn the tv back on when she goes away.” We lie there and eventually fell asleep.
I woke up minutes later and woke them up because fuck that lol. It’s a tale Ive heard from others since then. Could’ve been something else but as a kid, it’s scared the shit out of me.
2. Maybe a possum? On stilts?
I usually have a rule that i don’t leave my room for whatever reason after 3 am because one night when i was getting water from the fridge i had felt eyes directly on me, giving me goosebumps and making my heart beat faster.
I turned to look towards my front door that has glass panes on either side of it only to see two white orbs staring back at me.
I have felt so much fear in my life.
1. I need a rational explanation immediately.
I’m an ICU nurse.
One night I was looking after a ventilated patient who was brain dead. We were waiting on family to arrive the next day so we could extubate the patient and let them pass. I was waiting for the 3am cares round when I looked at the clock – it was turning backward rapidly.
Freaked me out completely. For the rest of the night I stayed close to the door and within sight of the exit.
Guys I love creepy stories but some of these would have really gotten to me!
Do you have a scary post-midnight tale to tell? We’d love to hear it in the comments!
