It’s always pretty terrifying to be woken up by something that goes BUMP in the night, isn’t it?
Almost 100% of the time, you know it’s just the house creaking or your cat rummaging around, but every once in a while…something sinister is going on.
Have you ever been woken up by something scary in the middle of the night?
Take a look at these stories from AskReddit users.
1. I’d have a heart attack.
“I don’t know if it counts but we were in the field in Camp Pendelton, CA and sleeping in just our mummy bags under the stars and I woke up in the night for whatever reason and my eyes focused on the next guy over in our circle who had one of the largest spiders I’ve ever seen in the wild sitting on his forehead, maybe getting warm or something.
Freaked me the f*ck out, I flicked it off of him and zipped my bag all the way up so there was just the breathing hole and used my boonie cover to plug that and just breathed through the little vents.”
2. Severe weather.
“Tornado Siren.
In the midwest they test them once a month and you get used to it. But holy hell when it goes off at 3AM your subconscious mind dumps adrenaline into you. I thought i was going to have a heart attack.
Like literally 29 year old about to have my wife call an ambulance.”
3. Creepy kids.
“A silhouette of a small child at the end of my bed that whispered my name in a demonic voice.
It was my daughter.
I don’t care what people say, kids are creepy af in the dark.”
4. Rude awakening.
“A brick being thrown through my window by my *sshole nextdoor neighbors at the time.”
5. The stranger.
“My wife and I were separated and I was sleeping in the basement apartment of our home.
She woke me in the middle of the night to come upstairs. There in the kitchen was an intruder sitting calmly at the table. My wife left me alone with this person at 3 am. I was shaking scared that this person would snap and get violent.
Turns out he was stoned out of his mind and my wife had forgotten to lock the front door. She had left to call the police. I found out later that she had found him in my son’s room.
There aren’t many things scarier than funding a stranger in your house in the middle of the night.”
6. War zone.
“When I was in Iraq, I was woken up multiple times by gunfire or an explosion.
You’d think one of those instances would be the most scared I’ve ever woken up, but you’d be wrong. That dubious honor goes to my wife farting loud enough to make the dog bark about two weeks ago at 3am.
That was, hands down, the quickest I’ve ever shot awake, trying to mutter “…the f*ck kind of apocalypse is this?” around my heart, which had crawled up my throat and gotten a death grip on my uvula.”
7. Screams in the night.
“In college, my friend and I lived on campus kind of out on the edges, near the animal units (think lightly forested, set back from the main road a bit).
One night she knocks on my door and silently motions me to her room, eyes wide. We slept with our windows open because of the gorgeous night weather. Outside her window we hear a high pitched wailing.
After staring at each other for a couple minutes, we stupidly decided to go out with flashlights, expecting to find a woman, injured and wailing. We found nothing, and didn’t sleep soundly, but the next morning found a dead bunny.
Their injured screams are strangely human and I’ll never look at a bunny the same way.”
8. Oh, boy…
“My husband was on a work trip and he was supposed to come home on a Friday while I was at work, so I was home alone for a week.
No kids, no pets. They decided to comeback early and just drive in the middle of the night home. I was already on edge from staying home by myself. Next think I know, I hear my front door open, and I start to panic bc it’s 3 in the morning and someone is in my house!
I finally figure out it was him, but I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. He said he didn’t want to call/text me bc he didn’t want me to wake up. About a week later, our neighbor, who we call “Meth Head McGee” tried for break into our house in the middle of the night while he was high.
He had a small meth explosion in his house, so he came running over to ours trying to get help. Hearing him wiggle the knob and kick the door was terrifying!”
9. The nightmare room.
“Woke up terrified when my hair which was tied in a bun came undone slowly carefully and intentionally like someone did it.
Turned around and saw shadows dancing on the wall and when I blinked it disappeared.
That room was full of nightmares.”
10. What a creep.
“My landlord, drunk off his *ss and shouting at me that I had no right to be there.
I was 19 and alone because we were mid-move and my parents were still at the old house. I was also sleeping naked.
I was so f*cking terrified. He finally left and later denied it ever happened.”
11. True crime.
“I woke up to the sound of gunshots a few buildings down.
3 people were killed.”
12. What the…?
“I heard static, like from a radio in-between channels.
The static lasted about 30 seconds and then I heard the opening lines of the Gettysburg Address. “Fourscore and seven years ago—“ that whole bit. It scared the sh*t out of me and as soon as I sat up, it stopped.
I have no idea where it came from or how.”
13. Close call.
“January of 2020 started off with a bang for me. At 6 a.m. the boiler in my house exploded. 1,100 lbs of metal blew itself about 10 feet across my basement into a large metal wardrobe, reducing them both to unrecognizable heaps of shrapnel.
It literally sounded like a car bomb going off underneath me, and shook my entire house. Grabbed my daughter and we noped out of the house as fast as we could.
We were extremely lucky to get out without injury, and I never want to wake up like that again.”
14. Camping alone.
“When I went cycling and camping alone in Saguaro National Park, Tucson AZ, which maybe wasn’t the smartest thing to do by yourself.
I was in my mid twenties and went specifically to look for and photograph animals, namely snakes, so I had no fear of creatures. I set up camp one night in a gravely area, and was woken up in the middle of the night by footsteps approaching my tent in the gravel.
What scared the living sh*t out of me and kinda, sorry if this makes me sound like a p*ssy, put me off camping alone forever, is that it really sounded like something very heavy and bipedal. Like a crazy person coming to murder me. Or sasquatch. It appoached my tent with slow, heavy footsteps crunching in the gravel. I didnt hear any other sound, no breathing or rustling of clothing.
Just crunching gravel. There were just two footsteps not four. It came right up to the tent, then walked away, slowly. I have no idea what it was, and it may have been a mountain lion, they can walk pretty stealthily. But the thought of a human being walking around in the desert at night and slowly approaching me while I slept is what scared me the most, not the thought of an animal or monster.
I wanted to call out “hello?” but was literally paralyzed with fear. I didn’t sleep again that night, but came out at sunrise to find zero evidence, and just carried on with my trip without incident but have not been camping alone since.”
Have you ever been woken up by something in the middle of the night that was really scary?
If so, please share your stories with us in the comments.
We can’t wait to hear your creepy tales!
