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I love scary stories. I really love them if they’re TRUE; it really makes everything so much creepier.
AskReddit users went on the record and shared the scariest true stories they know. Hang on tight!
1. Yikes
“The Neishabur train disaster is something that reminds me how death can come at any moment.
A train with 51 wagons of sulphur, fertiliser, petrol and cotton wool somehow broke loose and rolled down the track about twenty kilometers until it derailed in the town of Khayyam, Iran. There were no humans on board.
Chemical leaks ensued and authorities tried to extinguish whatever fires broke out.
At one point, the whole thing explodes. And it really explodes. The whole town of Khayyam is literally demolished, 3 nearby towns are badly damaged and it was heard 70 km away. The wreckage continued to explode for several days after. Around 300 people died and more than that injured.
An earthquake of 3.6 on Richter scale was produced.”
2. Nightmare
“The 1904 Cincinnati Privy Disaster. In 1904, nine schoolgirls drowned in an outhouse after the floor collapsed. They literally drowned in human waste.”
3. Always lock your car doors
“My mom was driving, and a guy ran out in the road, so she stopped so she couldn’t hit him.
It was night time, so it was pretty dark out, and 3 other men emerged from the forest around, all trying to use the door handles of her car to get in. She locked them luckily, and gassed it to the nearest town.
Remember to always lock your car after you start it, because if it wasn’t unlocked who knows what would’ve happened to her.”
4. A happy ending, at least
“I would call it creepy more than scary, but my mom’s friend had a small house and lived alone. She noticed weird things: a batch of soup depleting faster than usual, missing eggs, damp towels in the hamper when she hadn’t used any, extra dishes in the dishwasher, etc… This went on for months, she thought she was just being forgetful.
One day she heard some thumping around in her attic and went to investigate. She found some make shift living quarters. Small radio, hot plate, sleeping bag, pillow, food wrappers, etc… She called the cops who came to keep an eye on the place. They ended up catching a homeless man climbing a tree, trying to sneak into her attic window. He had been doing this almost daily. He would wait for her to go to work, then go down stairs and help himself to food and amenities.
The funny part about this story is they got to know each other throughout the ordeal, and the guy was actually very respectful, just down on his luck. She didn’t press charges, instead, let him move in, helped him get a job, and he lived in the attic until he got back on his feet. Creepy shit with a happy ending.”
5. OMG
“My friend’s boss bought an Audi A4 convertible, back when they were new and interesting. One of the talking points was the pop-up roll hoops that were hidden unless you rolled it.
A few months after buying it he got to test those roll hoops out, as he lost control and skidded down a steep bank about 10m (~35ft) deep.
The roll hoops did their job, and he survived with just cuts and scratches from the bushes he’d plowed through. The car ended up the right way up and he got out, walked back up the bank to the side of the road, then got on the phone to the police to report the accident. While he was standing there a driver from a car that had seen the accident came over to speak to him.
Approaching from behind the other driver asked if he was okay. My friend’s boss turned around to reply and dropped dead. His neck had been fractured, but was in one piece right up until he turned his head, when it severed his spinal cord.”
6. Prison life
“I work at a Max security prison and we have several inmates who are severely mentally ill. The ones that self harm wear a Fitbit kind of thing to monitor heart rate if there is a change we rush their room to stop whatever is happening. On top of this we also do visual inspections.
On one round a coworker was doing cell checks and noticed this particular inmate had blood on their face but nothing came up on the monitors or anything. So he called to the inmates to ask if they were okay, the inmate had their eyes closed and just kept repeating, “it doesn’t hurt”. The inmate would not answer where the blood was from.
We opened the cell to see what the situation was and it turns out the inmate had plucked out both of there eyes and they were laying on the floor. The inmates HR monitor never alerted and the inmate never screamed. Paramedics said the inmates vitals were normal and the inmate was fully responsive.”
7. Vietnam
“Before my Dad died, he once told me a story from when he was in Vietnam in the 1960s. He told me about a mission where he and one other American with five CIDG strikers (South Vietnamese villagers turned fighters) were tasked to emplace seismic ground sensors along a trail network deep in the jungle. He said they were about two days into the mission when he and two of the strikers split off from the main group to go watch a nearby trail intersection.
He said the jungle was pretty quite that day, just the sounds of birds and bugs and an occasional monkey. He said they had been watching the trail intersection for about three or four hours and were deciding on whether to move further down the trail or to turn back and link up with the rest of the patrol. Before leaving the cover of the brush my Dad said he checked the trail ahead of them one last time and prepared his men to move. Now here is where the story gets interesting and he told this part with absolute dead seriousness.
He said just as he started to step out onto the trail he sees a light skinned Black Union Cavalry Soldier in full battle gear laying alongside the trail just shy of the intersection. My Dad said the Union Soldier had two pistols, a Spencer rifle and a short curved club at his hip. As my Dad was trying to process what he was seeing, the Soldier looked directly at him and smiled. Then the Soldier slowly placed a finger up to his lips as if to tell him to be silent and then motioned my Dad back off the trail.
My Dad said he signaled for his men to remain hidden and he recalled that as he slipped back into the jungle on one side of the trail, the Union Soldier did the same on his side of the trail. Less than 10 seconds later he said the lead element of a group of NVA (North Vietnamese Army Soldiers) walked right through the trail intersection some 30 feet away.
My Dad estimated that the group was comprised of some 70 – 80 Soldiers equipped with automatic rifles, light machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers. He has no doubt that his entire team would have been wiped out on the spot. He said as soon as the enemy Soldiers had passed, he and his team beat feet out of there as fast and as quietly as they could and rejoined with the rest of the patrol.
He reported the enemy Soldiers his team had encountered, but decided not to say anything about the Soldier he had seen. My Dad kept this secret for many many years; only telling me just before he passed and earlier only telling his Grandmother on her death bed in the 1970s. He said when he told his Grandmother, she smiled and without opening her eyes told him, “you saw Old Red Tom”. Red Tom was my Great Great Grandfather.
He was a half Black / half Creek free man who was a scout for the Union Army during the Civil War and later served with the U.S. Cavalry in the American West. He was know for carrying two pistols, a Spencer rifle and a Creek warclub into battle.”
8. Always trust your gut
“When my aunt was about 16 she was working at a grocery store and had a boss in his mid twenties. One day he called the house and was begging her to sneak out and hang out with him. She was considering it because it was her boss and she didn’t want to say no. My mom, who is two years younger than her, always gets these incredibly spot on “gut feelings”. She had one that night and begged my aunt not to go out with him.
Thankfully she listened to my mom and told him no which made him really angry. He ended up going out that night and meeting another girl. He took her out to some cliffs and raped her and pushed her off. Somehow she lived through this and was able to get him sent to prison. I feel so sorry for that girl and so thankful for my mom and her gut feelings.
Always trust your gut.”
9. Terrifying
“I spent my first 10 years in New Delhi. Back then, we would find dead women (burnt with acid or set on fire) and it used to be so “normal”. Like oh look, another one of those dowry cases where her family didn’t pay the husband enough money so they killed her.
Many years later i revisited those memories and realised how insane that actually was! I’d totally forgotten about all that.”
10. F’d up
“I worked for U-Haul when I was 18 and it was located in front of a club that was known for being really sketchy. I came in to open one morning and it was common for people to knock on the door hoping to get in early and get their truck.
On this day, I hear frantic knocking on the door. I’m there alone still so it kind of startled me. I look and there’s a women, completely naked, covered in what looks like blood. I called the cops and grabbed one of the moving blankets and went out side to cover her up. She smelled really bad and was a mess. Ended up being blood and her own shit she was covered in.
Found out later she was drugged at the club that night/early morning, raped and left blacked out in the alley. It was just a f*cked up and surreal situation to be involved in.”
11. Scary
“i was in a crappy motel. the room had bedbugs. i was too exhausted to go to the front desk. i just needed to make it until the morning. i slept in the tub. hours later i hear someone breaking through the window.
i had a big knife with me and ran out into the room to find a man halfway through my window. we stared for awhile at each other in shock. i think we both were scared. then he says,” is this your room?” im like,” yes, this is my room man!” more staring. then he slowly starts backing out while cursing me for leaving my window unlocked and not expecting him to break in.
motel on watt ave, sacramento.”
12. Brutal
“Not as scary as some of the stories here, but I was pretty horrified when my dad told me the story.
There are some really big houses in the woods in my hometown. One of the owners went out drinking with his buddies and realized he forgot the key to the gate when he got home. So he decided to just climb the gate. While climbing in his drunken state he slips and his leg gets pierced by one of the spikes on the gate. He was hanging there but too afraid to call for his wife. Since he was sure she would just open the automatic gate from inside the house and since it was one of those gates that slides to the side it would just rip his leg off if she did.
He was hanging there the entire night until his wife woke up, saw him and called the fire deparment. My dad (who is one of the firefighters that showed up) said they had to saw of the spike to get him off.
Just imagine hanging from your own gate all night not being able to call for help.”
13. Mary Vincent
“The story of Mary Vincent always stands out to me.
In 1978, 15 year old Mary was hitchhiking. A man named Lawrence Singleton picked her up.
He brutally raped her, and eventually made her get out of the car. She planned to run, but he noticed, and cut both her arms off. He threw her into a ditch/ravine and left her to die.
She packed her stumps with mud to stop the bleeding and spent all night crawling out.
She eventually makes it to the highway and starts walking, naked and covered in blood. The first car that saw her sped away in fear. The second car was a couple on their honeymoon. They picked her up and she survived.”
14. Still there
“Nutty Putty Cave in Utah was sealed up in 2009 after John Jones was trapped upside-down in a small crevice while spelunking. When rescue teams finally arrived he had been upside-down for so long that his legs were drained of blood.
The only possible way to have gotten him out was to break his legs, which would’ve sent him into fatal shock. He died after being trapped for 28 hours. His body’s still in the cave.”
15. Absolutely terrible
“3 sailors survived the sinking of the USS West Virgina at Pearl Harbor, only to die 16 days later, due to the lack of air. The Navy knew they were there, but couldn’t get to them.”
