Scary can mean different things to different people, and depending on what’s going on in your life at the time, there is an array of noises that could literally scare you to death.
For these 21 people, these are the noises they will never forget as long as they live.
21. Always trust the dog.
I was walking my dog at about 4 am a couple of years ago (I go to work before the crack of dawn.) and heard a coyote howl in my neighbor’s backyard. Then another one answered it, from the other side of the street.
My dog literally stopped and pooped in the middle of the street, then turned and headed back to the house.
I almost pooped, too.
20. Were there updates, though? I hope so…
In my early 20s, I worked at a nuclear power plant in the laundry department… and there was an alarm for a “nuclear event” while I was on shift. All non-essential personnel had to take shelter in the on-site bunker, and wait. For hours.
The speakers blared an alarm and notice inside and out of the complex. The notice was something akin to “Alert. Nuclear event in progress. Take your stations. Alert”.
HOURS.
19. You don’t know until you know.
When a fox screams they sound just like a woman being brutally beaten to death. Imagine waking up to that right outside your window at 3am.
18. At least he figured it out.
The most terrified I’ve been from a sound was when I was working graveyard security at an old army fort converted into a school. Part of the job was to walk through the buildings every hour or so and check the doors that are supposed to be locked.
During one check I stopped midway to use the bathroom, and while I was washing my hands I heard a sound part way between a moan and roar, that was exactly the sound you’d expect some shambling undead monstrosity to make, and it came from right outside the bathroom door.
I stood there frozen in terror for a good five minutes, still holding a paper towel. When I didn’t hear any other sounds, I turned the lights off to get accustomed to the dark, slowly opened the door, and sprinted for the exit. I didn’t go in another building the rest of the night.
Two days later I was back for a day shift on the weekend. I’d had some time to consider what had happened, so I went back to the same bathroom and flushed the toilet, a minute later, the old water pipes made the same noise again.
17. Oh no, Grandma!
The wet thunking sound of my grandmother’s head hitting the pavement when she fell off her walker, followed by low moaning and a pool of blood.
She ended up being okay, but at the time, I thought I just watched her die in front of me.
16. Puts your heart right in your throat.
The roar of a tornado that was about 1/8 of a mile from me combined with the sound of the emergency sirens and the fierce winds full of all kinds of debris.
15. Please be responsible.
The thunk of a car hitting my sister and the noise she made as she hit the pavement. Truly the most pants-shitting level of terror I’ve experienced and that’s a deep well to draw from.
She survived, after resuscitation. Don’t drive drunk.
14. That will haunt you.
Woman howling in distress after her very young son had died due to a sudden and unexpected illness.
Me and the nurses ran towards thinking someone had been seriously injured. We found her a completely broken and took her somewhere for privacy until her brother could arrive.
13. That’s one way to get rid of him.
Way back in the 1980s when I was in the Navy, my ship was down at the Guantanamo Naval Base, for training.
One day we were out at sea doing underway replenishments alongside an aircraft carrier. During this exercise the two ships would sail side by side on the same course, very close together and rigs lines and hoses between the two ships to transfer fuel and other supplies. It’s some dangerous shit.
Every time our two ships would come together and get lines passed to the other ship a Russian trawler would come diddy-bopping along right between the two ships, forcing us do to an emergency breakaway.
This happened repeatedly all morning. At lunchtime both ships took a break. The aircraft carrier also launched four F-14s.
After lunch we started up again, got lines and hoses passed, and once again the Russian trawler came up between us. Once again we did another emergency breakaway.
But THIS time…. the four F-14s came roaring out of the clouds, one after another, afterburners fired up, and all four went super sonic just over the trawler.
I am insufficiently eloquent to convey to you what it sounded like. The roar of the F-14s engines, flying at maybe 80 ft and no more than 25 yards away was like the gates of hell had opened up and every tortured soul howled in anguish at the same time, in the midst of this horrific screaming were four thunderous booms, one after the other. It sounded like the world was coming apart.
It was mayhem. The guys on the carrier knew this was coming. The guys on our ship did not. People screamed and dove for cover, people pissed themselves, some shat themselves, I nearly dove overboard looking for some cover from the godawful noise.
The trawler turned and disappeared over the horizon behind us at flank speed and we never saw him again.
12. I got chills just thinking about it.
Girl getting her hip popped back into place in the ER with no meds after being thrown a hundred feet off a motorcycle.
I will remember the scream forever. It seriously haunts me.
11. What a nightmare.
My friend was fatally shot in the chest when we were leaving a club together in 2016. We were drunk and didn’t really realize what happened but when the reality of the situation set in the look of fear in her eyes is an image I’ll never be able to forget.
She started frantically grabbing at her heart and crying “I don’t want to die” in between gurgled breaths. Moments before she passed she started convulsing and making these primordial sounding squelching noises that haunt me in my sleep to this day.
She was 21. I miss her every day.
10. Why is it always 3am?
I stayed up till like 3am and just heard a super loud scream outside of my house! It wasn’t just one time though. It happened a few times a week!!
Turns out it was a drunk dude. Still scared the shit outta me
9. Tough to live with.
My own face being beaten in by a home invasion robbery with the butt end of a gun.
I woke up to being beat almost to death, it was so loud in my head.
8. Nooooooooooooooooo. Nope.
The sound on its own wasn’t actually scary. It was the fact that it came from the middle of my room, in the dark and it sounded like a person making a popping sound with their lips.
I was trying to convince myself that I imagined it. Then I tried to make the same sound, to see if I could. I did. And then I heard it again… like an answer.
Yeah, 10 year old me was scared shitless by that. I still have no idea what that was or where it came from.
7. It’s so wrong.
I used to volunteer in a NICU with premie babies. Great job, it was a fairly small hospital with a bigger, more advanced one nearby so our babies were rarely in much danger. They just couldn’t quite go home yet.
Maybe my second week volunteering I saw one of the visitor rooms open and heard this wail from a mother whose twins had just passed in her arms. The scream of a parent losing a child is such a primal, haunting sound like absolutely nothing I’ve ever heard before.
This was maybe a decade ago but I can still hear it like it was yesterday.
6. They probably weren’t thinking straight.
Someone moving downstairs when I knew for a fact no one else should be home.
Ultimately more a sad story than a scary story but when I was a teenager my parents went to visit family out of town and let me do my thing at home for a few days. Unfortunately my mom got a call that grandpa had died so they returned early and in the middle of the night.
But instead of calling ahead or ringing the doorbell and just waking me up they decided the best course of action would be to just let me have some sleep and then tell me in the morning.
Needless to say I was almost scared to death when i got up in the morning and heard someone downstairs and the door opening and closing when I thought I was home alone.
5. A desperate man.
When I was a teenager I heard my dad screaming ‘wake up, stay alive’ over and over while my mum had passed out and puked blood from a ruptured stomach ulcer.
I’ll never forget the pain in his voice.
4. Too many of us know this one.
The sound of the death rattle when my grandmother was on hospice in her final hours.
It’s a sound you’re never prepared to hear even when you know death is coming for your loved one.
3. Unsettling is an understatement.
I live in a 150 year old farm house and I heard the most maniacal child’s laugh in the middle of the night ( approximately 2 am).
I am 99 percent sure it was my 5 year old daughter sleep talking but after hearing that and finding her sound asleep was unsettling.
2. That’ll get your heart rate up!
One time at 3AM my big dog let out a full-on wolf howl in a dark room (he was dreaming).
I’ve never heard him howl, before or since.
It was a full volume, “Aroooooooooo” about a foot from my face while I was asleep. I seriously thought I was in mortal danger.
1. A very unique sound.
Lightning struck a tree behind my house. I was by a window on the side of the house facing it and it sounded like a huge bomb went off.
Knocked stuff off shelves and scared the hell out of the cats. I was shaking from adrenaline for a long while after that.
My heart couldn’t have taken many more of these!
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever heard? Tell us in the comments!
