There's a reason people love scary things. For one, scary stories provide a sense of mystery, shock, suspense and terror that taps into their built-in fears. And many of them love to share their terrifying experiences because it provides them with a connection with other people who have had similar experiences.

If that's something you can relate to, then you're in for a treat because some of the scariest moments shared by these Redditors are so horrifying that you'll be hiding under your bed covers.

The Mysterious Alien Ship

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Most UFO enthusiasts believe that alien spacecrafts are saucer shaped, but there are others that believe UFOs are flying around in triangular shaped vessels. And that's exactly what Reddit user TwitchMoments and his friends saw when they looked up at the sky. But was it really a UFO or a military aircraft?

“I was outside with my brother and best friend just talking and shooting around the basketball at night. I don’t know why or what made us do it but we all were looking at the sky as we were talking and all of a sudden we see a triangular, dimly lit craft that was flying fast over us. What struck us was how silent it was and how clear we can see it. it was at least idk 100 feet high. We all ran inside and just told my family. In the end, I really just think it was a military aircraft, but who knows.”

It Was Pure Evil

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One of the scariest experiences anyone can have is waking up and finding that someone is in your home. But Reddit user Cykosurge was even more terrified because they were experiencing sleep paralysis and couldn't move, scream, fight or run away when pure evil surprised them from behind.

“Our old house was at the corner, pretty secluded and near a main road.

One night I woke up to hear my mom yelling, I was sleeping on the futon and this guy wearing all black just strode over me running. The burglar ran off before he got anything. I was more surprised to be woken up that early rather than the fact a burglar just broke into the house. Wasn’t the first time the house got broken into, certainly not the last. We weren’t rich by any stretch mind you, pretty much lower middle class.

Other than that, I woken up to sleep paralysis, and at the time was pretty convinced whatever that was behind me—as I was lying on my side—it was evil. I could just move my eyeballs and all of my instincts told me not to look at it. All I felt was pure fear.”

There Was a Shadow Lurking Outside

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Reddit user Nappyboy28 almost went to jail for stabbing someone, but he could have probably gotten away with it as he was scared out of his mind by some kind of intruder who had made his way into their rental property's yard.

“My wife and I stayed at a small rental property in Bath, UK this spring. Whilst in bed I heard the gate to the property (right outside our bedroom window) open and close quietly. This immediately made me jump up and become alert. I heard someone trying to quietly walk on the gravel walkway to our front door until the motion sensor light came on. I saw a person’s shadow dart against the wall outside of our room and instantly went into attack mode.

I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the wooden block and stood at the front door ready to pounce. It was silent for way too long and then I heard someone running away and the gate slam. My wife said that once the motion light turned off the person took off running. I have no idea what their intentions were but I almost stabbed the [heck] out of someone that night. It still gives me goose bumps thinking about it.”

Aliens are Real

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Reddit user atclubsilencio was paralyzed with fear when he saw a tall slender figure walk up the stairs straight at them. But the figure wasn't an intruder, at least, not one from this Earth. It was some kind of alien from outer space, and its flying saucer was right outside the window.

“I was about 9 or 10. It was late at night and my bed was right under the window, I was just gazing out looking up at the sky when I saw what looked like a UFO. It was a white orb, rather large, shot straight into my line of vision, then moved in a few circles, then shot away. It came back and did the same thing, only it was closer and larger, it made no sound.

I immediately got creeped out and walked from my room, around the corner and was about to walk into my mom’s room but the door was locked. Her door was facing the stairs which went down to the living room/kitchen. Suddenly I heard someone coming up the stairs and a snorting sound. I looked down and saw this tall slender figure walking up the stairs straight at me. I remember saying ‘Dad?’ but then saw that it was something … inhuman.

I immediately froze in fear, the creature or whatever it was, tall, slender, two slits for a nose, large black eyes, got right up into my face, continuing to make that awful snorting sound. Kind of like the sound a pig makes. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t move, I just collapsed as it towered over me and bent down, pushing its face right into mine. Finally I blacked out.

The next thing I know I was being awoken by my mom at the bottom of the stairs. She asked me how I got there, and said I must have slept walked. I’ll never forget that face and that snorting sound. and I think I’d die of a heart attack if I ever saw it again.”

The Deadbolt Wouldn't Stay Locked

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Deadbolts are supposed to provide a sense of security when they're locked, but Reddit user Show_Case wasn't feeling very secure at all because the deadbolt was behaving like it had a mind of its own, or perhaps it was being moved by a supernatural entity.

“I’d just moved into a basement suite. Every time I went out I would lock the deadbolt but not the door handle but when I came home a lot of the time the deadbolt would be unlocked and the door handle would be locked.

At first I thought I was just confused about which one I had locked so I started paying more attention. It kept happening and I realized someone must be going in when I went out. I assumed it was the landlady and was annoyed but didn’t say anything at first. Then one day I came home and found the wrong lock locked again. I went in and opened the fridge to get something to eat.

There was a book in the fridge that I had never seen before. I collected old books and this one was published in the early 1900s which creeped me out completely because it was like it had been left for me. I finally called my landlady and asked if she was going into my apartment and told her what had happened. She freaked right out, said the last person who lived there was a really creepy guy with mental health and drug problems. She got all the locks changed that day and it never happened again.”

Flying Leaves Around Mom's Urn

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Losing a parent is one of the hardest things that a child will ever have to face in their lives. But Reddit user CaptainFireball45 didn't have time to mourn because he was too busy dealing with his mom possibly haunting the funeral.

“I was at my mother’s funeral sitting down while somebody was giving a eulogy. All of a sudden it got cold and I turned to see a bunch of leaves flying around my mother’s urn.

Later that night my Dad and I were driving back to the hotel we were staying at. On the way, I just felt nothing but chills going down my spine. We arrived at the hotel and when I got into the room, I went over to shut the window shades but something caught my eye and I looked down at the parking lot down below. It was a faint white figure that looked very much like my mom and it just smiled and vanished.”

The Handprint in the Bathroom Mirror

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It's difficult to ignore the possibility that there's an intruder in the house when there's evidence that shows there is. Just ask Reddit user Haceldama, who went into the bathroom to take a relaxing shower and ended up feeling super tense after looking at the evidence in the mirror.

“Two weeks ago, I got out of the shower to find a man’s handprint on the upper part of my bathroom mirror. I haven’t had a male over at my place in over a year.”

The Body in the Bathtub

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As a kid, Reddit user Marattmor wasn't sure he believed in ghosts or the hereafter. But his mom sure didn't make it any easier to ignore the possibility after one of their neighbors took her own life.

“When I was a kid and lived in my old apartment my mom befriended the downstairs neighbor and would often invite her over for coffee and tea because she was always so lonely.

A few weeks went by without hearing from her so we both go downstairs and knock on the door, it was like a movie where when you knock the door slowly crept open as if it had been this way for a while. We walked inside and found her in the bathtub covered in blood and the smell was disgusting. Apparently the lady’s girlfriend left her and she couldn’t handle the pain. My moms way of comforting me was ‘Don’t worry, Mark. She was our friend so she won’t haunt us.’ Gee, thanks mom.”

Someone on the Other Side of the Door

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Every now and then, people get this weird feeling that there's someone in the house, but it's usually their imagination. But Reddit user shutupuralwaystalkin wasn't so sure they were imagining things when others started to hear things on the other side of their bedroom door.

“It was a house where my family stayed. First thing me and my sisters started noticing, its kinda hard to explain but when our doors were closed we could see a shadow at the bottom of the door like someone was standing behind it. Adding to that my room was downstairs next to the laundry room and garage, my girlfriend was in my room while I was in the garage smoking and she heard someone walk by the door and could heard stuff being moved around the laundry room, no one was home except the two of us.”

Oh What a Beautiful Baby

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Most parents enjoy perfect strangers walking up to them and telling them how beautiful their babies are. But Reddit user inchcape's dad was actually terrified because the compliment came from an intruder or a ghost.

“My parents have told me that one night they were up watching some TV after putting me to bed (this was when I was young enough to still have a baby monitor). We lived in a two-story apartment, and my bedroom was on the second story. They heard someone talking softly through the baby monitor, saying ‘Oh, what a beautiful baby’… needless to say my dad flipped and grabbed a baseball bat and ran into my room, but no one was there.”

Close Encounter With a Serial Killer

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They say to never pick up hitchhikers and be weary about strangers who flag drivers down claiming they're having car trouble. Well, Reddit user youngandlucky learned he and his wife would have become the next victims of an Australian serial killer if they had stopped to help a stranger out on the side of the road.

"Kinda creepy at the time, but scary afterwards. Long time ago driving from Bowral to Berrima in New South Wales (a State in Australia), my wife and I were flagged down by a guy asking to borrow a car jack because his van (which he said was his sisters, and yes it was white) had a flat and his jack didn’t work.

Guy was creepy and we just said nah mate and took off. A while later we saw the photo of the serial killer Ivan Milat (who had been caught by then). Pretty sure it was him and the van fitted."

The Strange Whistling Sounds

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When Reddit user happy_go_lucky11 heard a whistling sound outside, they assumed that it was the noise caused by the wind. It was pretty stormy outside, after all. But later that night after the house lost power, they heard the whistling again and it was coming from inside.

"Growing up my mom my was a bartender, she was a single parent, so I took care of my little brother most nights.

One night while I was making dinner I kept hearing a strange whistling sound, but I didn’t think much of it because it was storming pretty hard outside. But the whistling continued and it started to sound more like a melody than whistling from a storm.

I started to get a little freaked out and asking my little brother if he was hearing it too; he wasn’t. Eventually the whistling stops, but it’s still storming pretty badly. Fast forward to the end of the night when I’m going to bed. I’m climbing up the ladder of my bunk bed and my tv shuts off. I think maybe the power went out, but the hallway light is still on. I try to turn it back on and nothing happens, so I reach around my tv stand and realize that it’s been unplugged.

At the same time I hear the whistling, only this time its not in the distance, it sounded like someone was whistling directly into my ear. I could almost feel their breath, it sent chills down my spine; it still sends chills down my spine. At that moment I took off running out of our house screaming! We lived in an apartment with 3 other units, so I woke the neighbors above us. They were younger couple with two kids and offered to come check out our house. I could tell at the time the guy thought I was just a stupid kid hearing things, but was trying to make me feel better. My brother and I waited outside of our apartment while he went inside to check it out for us.

After a few minutes he came back and he seemed a little agitated and asked if you’re playing a prank on him. This really scared me and I told him we weren’t playing a prank on him. He could probably see we were telling the truth by our faces, because I could see the fear roll over his face. He said he looked everywhere and did not find anyone, but was convinced someone was in our home. They invited us to stay in their apartment until my mom was home from work, because they didn’t feel comfortable with us staying alone. I never heard the whistling again, but so many other strange things happened to my brother and me in that apartment. I’m convinced it was haunted. I’m not sure if the story will be scary to any of you, but that was the most terrified I’ve ever been in my life."

There's Someone in the House

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Reddit user dayumlochnessmonster was ready to shower and sleep, but that's the last thing they were able to do that night because lurking in the shadows was a silhouette that looked an awful lot like an intruder.

"I had just gotten home from the gym and was exhausted. I badly needed to shower/sleep so I began to head upstairs. As soon as my bedroom door came in to view, what I can only describe as a dark and humanoid looking silhouette creeped out of view from the side of my door frame. I knew 100% that I had seen something and wasn’t too keen on investigating it.

I grabbed a knife from my kitchen, convinced myself that i was a grown man, counted down from 5, kicked my halfway closed bedroom door all the way open and started yelling like a maniac (I was home alone). I didn’t find anything or anyone. I checked each closet thoroughly, under the bed, etc. Etc. The usual ‘[eff] that’ places. I closed my door out of habit and began to get undressed when the only light in my room burned out. It was absolutely pitch black.

Considering how positive I was that I had seen something earlier, I promptly began to freak out. I had this sense of dread and absolute impending doom. I felt like there was a hand about 2 inches away from the back of my neck, it was such a vivid and terrifying feeling. I bolted in the direction of my door after about 5-10 seconds of being too afraid to act and got out of my house until the rest of my family came home."

The Smiling Set of Teeth Outside

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Reddit user StuftRug peed himself after a stranger lurking in the woods outside his RV beckoned to him. But this wasn't the only creepy thing about the odd encounter that night. Things got even weirder when he shined the light out the window and saw a smiling set of teeth outside.

"When I was 8 my parents were going through a rough patch in their marriage and my dad was briefly living in a broken down old RV parked in a friends front yard that wasn’t hooked up to anything (classy right?). No electricity no water no nothing.

We had to stay there overnight on the weekends we were with him and it always made me nervous. The RV couldn’t even be locked. Well one night I woke up in the middle of night, pitch black with nothing but a tiny flashlight, and I had to pee worse than I have ever had to pee. I was already scared to death of the dark so I woke my dad up and pleaded to let me pee in the bathroom or maybe even the sink but he was grumpy and said no just pee outside there’s nothing out there.

I made my way to the door, stepped out into the grass, lowered by pajamas, and started going but as soon as I did some creepy as [eff] voice said to me “hey kid come here” along with some rustling in the bushes. I bolted back inside peeing all over myself crying in fear and grabbed the door handle to hold it shut. I heard more rustling outside but then it stopped so I let go and with my little dinky flashlight went over to the window, pulled down the blinds just a bit, and shined my light right into a smiling set of teeth. I didn’t see the rest of the face as I jumped back into my little bed throwing the blanket over my head and cried until the sun came up. People act like I’m being a [wimp] when I say I’m not too fond of the dark but I still can’t handle pitch black nights."

Strange Whispers In His Ear

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Reddit user TheMightyChoochine was convinced that his friend had whispered in his ear to wake up. But when he did he saw that his friend wasn't anywhere near him. That's when he realized that the place he was staying in was haunted.

"I was sleeping in a bed at my friends dads place, it was just her and I there. The bedroom door was open and she was maybe twenty feet away, within eyesight working on a project.

Eventually I heard her walk around the bed and whisper in my ear to wake up. When I sat up she was still in the other room but she was staring at me like a deer in the head lights. She insisted immediately that we leave and later she told me she thought she saw my shadow as i was walking around the bedroom until I sat up and saw I had been sleeping the entire time. That place was haunted as [eff] but that was the scariest thing that happened to me there. Although once a book flew across the room at us."

Screeching From Behind

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Reddit user Le_Jacob considered themselves a great bicyclist, but even they had to admit that they were worried they wouldn't be able to cycle fast enough to get away from the mysterious creature that was chasing after them at night.

"I work in a pub, it’s about 2 miles away in the next village. I usually finish work late (1-2am) and I have to cycle home. The only route is a small road that goes through somewhat large woods. There’s a 1 mile stretch that has absolutely no street lights, it’s pitch black.

As I was cycling through the woods I start hearing this screeching sound, similar to a small animal dying. It scared the [daylights] out of me, so I started pedalling fast. I continued to hear it, and it seemed as it was progressing towards me. I use my phone’s camera light to navigate, although it isn’t impossible to see without it.

I point my phone behind me and I swear I caught sight of some humanoid creature on all 4s running at me, call it mind games but this was pretty vivid. I continue to cycle as fast as I can (I’ve been cycling long distances from a young age, I’d like to say I’m quite fast), yet I continue to hear the screeching and the light patting of the footsteps of whatever is chasing me. I try to turn my phone light off, and after a few seconds I manage to do so. The patting becomes quieter, and I hear one last screech from whatever it was. I have never been so scared in all my life."

Tour Through the Haunted School

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Most people avoid school like the Black Plague. But Reddit user Litagoliter and his friend decided to break into their old school building, which had been abandoned, and take a look inside. The only problem was that although school was out, there was someone or something still lurking in the halls.

"This takes place in march-april of 2013. Me and a friend had just been to the movies and was just walking around, at ~10:45 PM. We decided we would take a shortcut through the schoolyard of our old school which had since been abandoned and was in pretty bad shape.

As we walked through the schoolyard we decided to try to get inside the school building and explore a little bit. Now, the school consists of two “wings”, so the building is an L shape if viewed from above. It is three stories tall and has three entrances. The main entrance leads in to a kind of main hall, which connects the two wings. Each wing has staircases in each end of the corridors, which lead to the different floors (this is important later).

One of the windows right by the entrance to the lower wing was actually wide open, so we could easily get in. We were now in the basement. We used our cellphones as flashlights, and made sure not to point them towards the windows to avoid being seen. Even though the building was not in use, there was still a lot of stuff left just laying around. Musical equipment, uniforms, a pool table, chairs, etc.

So we were just exploring each room in the basement to see if we could find anything cool. We explored the basement for about 15 minutes before we headed up to the first floor, and we were now in the main hall. There was some kind of tarp or large plastic sheet hanging there to separate the hall and the lower wing for some reason. I assume it was for some kind of construction work. We went down one of the corridors and started exploring the classrooms.

Every classroom had been either vandalised or suffered some kind of water damage, so everything was pretty broken down and rotting. In hindsight I think we were lucky the floors didn’t collapse on us or something. We had just come out of the third classroom and were in the corridor when we heard someone moving the tarp/plastic sheet in the main hall. This was not wind or anything, we could definitely tell someone was physically moving it. We could also hear footsteps, although the rhythm of the steps was kind of… weird. It sounded like someone changed their walking pace sporadically, if that makes any sense.

We immediately went inside a classroom to hide, as we thought someone had called security on us. We hid behind the door in the classroom for about 2 minutes, dead quiet. We didn’t hear anything else during this time, so we figured it had to be the wind or just random noises. We decided to keep going.

We went through the corridor and up the stairs in the other end from the main hall, and explored the second floor. While we were there we would occasionally hear some noises, but we just brushed it off as wind. After a while we had explored the rest of the corridor, and we decided to walk down the staircase that lead from the second floor to the hall. Halfway down the staircase there was this plateau before the second set of stairs, and this is where things took a turn (no pun intended). We could see the plastic from there, and it was moving. We also heard some kind of scratching noise. We stood there for a second just listening, and I decided to peek around the corner to see what was making that sound.

What I saw scared the living [daylights] out of me. It was some kind of.. creature. It was skinny, almost completely naked (couldn’t see any clothes at least), had really thin strands of hair, and was REALLY pale. Like corpse-pale, almost completely white. The first thing that came to mind was that this thing looked like Gollum, just bigger. It was crouching down and was scratching the floor or something, and it made some weird growly, groany, breathy noises. It was facing away from us, so I just stood frozen for a good while and watched it. I took a step back and just pointed at this.. thing and looked at my friend. He peeked around the corner and immediately I could see his facial expression change into a combination of horror and shock. It was reassuring in a way, knowing that he saw it too.

We just stood there for a good 20 seconds just watching this thing do whatever it was doing, and the most clichè horror movie thing happened. My friend started backing away slowly, and while doing so stepped on a piece of glass that cracked. This startled the “creature”, and it quickly looked over it’s shoulder right at me. I just bolted at that point. We ran all the way to the basement to get out, and the whole way there I swear it felt like it was right behind us.

We ran back to my friends house, and when we got there we had a kind of debriefing session, making sure we both saw the same thing. The closest thing to a reference picture I can find is this. It pretty much looked exactly like that, just with thin strands of hair on it’s head. I understand if you think I’m [kidding], I would be skeptical if someone else told this story. But I swear this actually happened, and my friend confirms it to this day. We got a good enough look at it to confirm that it was a humanoid creature of some sorts, but it didn’t really resemble a human being.

The only explanation I can think of is that it was a homeless dude that for some reason was naked in this abandoned school, but this is in northern Norway during winter; you wouldn’t survive very long without clothes. Also, I live in a very small town with very few if any homeless people, so that theory wouldn’t really make sense. It could also be some kind of animal that had found it’s way inside, but we got a GOOD look at it, and it didn’t resemble any animal I’ve seen before. I have no idea what that thing was. I am normally a rational/occam’s razor kind of person, but we saw what we saw and I have no explanation for it."

Fright Night at a Caregiving Facility

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One night, Reddit user BaseAttackBonus was busy working at a caregiving facility when one of the patients warned him that there was someone outside. Of course, he didn't think much of it because the patient had dementia. But when he humored the old gal and went to investigate, he realized she wasn't seeing things.

"I work a graveyard shift at a caregiving facility taking care of people with advanced dementia. Basically I watch people die for a living, they beg and cry and moan all night long and then they die. We just had a client die yesterday and it left my coworker in tears. Now for the creepy part.

A client wakes up and tells me someone is outside her window. I figure this must be a hallucination but she keeps insisting so I look for a knife but I was new at the time and didn’t know where they kept them locked up. So I end up with a large pointy salad fork, 3am, outside looking for intruders. It turns out she wasn’t hallucinating. I didn’t catch anyone, thank god, but my coworkers bike was stolen that night."

Glasses Found

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Reddit user thedailyaustin's mom had some great news! It turns out that she had found her glasses after searching all day for them. The not so great news was that she thought he had found them and placed them on the bathroom counter. Then he broke the shocking news to her.

"Just after high school I was dating this girl. We were both at my mom’s house at the time, during summer break. She had lost her glasses that morning and couldn’t find them anywhere. She went to take a shower in one of the upstairs bathrooms and I went outside to wash my car.

I’m just about finished when she comes outside wearing her glasses and I ask her where she finally found them. She looks at me a little weird and tells me that I gave them to her. I’m confused because I’ve been outside the entire time. She then tells me I opened the bathroom door and set them on the counter while she was showering and then left. Now, we were the only ones home at the time so this disturbs me a little bit. I swear up and down that it wasn’t me so she starts to freak out. I grab a baseball bat from the garage and we go into the house thinking someone is in there that shouldn’t be.

We creep around the house looking in all the good hiding spots, until finally making it upstairs to my brothers bedrooms. I start move from my brothers bedroom into his bathroom where the door opens inward. Between the crack of the door I see someone hiding between the door and the wall. Right then, I finally sorta understood why people in the movies freeze when something is about to fall on them or hurt them, because I was terrified.

It lasted maybe a second, but it felt like minutes, and then I bashed the [stuff] out of this door with the person hiding behind it, but they didn’t cry out. Then I realized it was my brothers bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. My girlfriend swore the entire time I knew her that someone put those glasses on the bathroom counter but I never found anyone in the house."

Honoring the Not-So-Dead Waitress

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Reddit user Midonyah had waited on a lot of customers over the years, but there was one creepy guy who took a photo of her and framed it. But even though she no longer works at the restaurant, her friend, who still does, left it hanging there and told the restaurant's new manager that the girl in the photo was dead.

"I used to work tables in a restaurant. One day, this guy I’ve never interacted with before comes to me and hands me a framed picture, smiling nervously. I look at it, and it’s a picture of me, at the staff table. I was done eating, and staring at nothing, probably thinking about… Something deep and clever. (yeah, unlikely though) I look at the guy, he explains timidly that he found me so pretty that he took my picture, and framed it so I would see how pretty I was and hold onto it forever. Sweet gesture, but kinda creepy.

Five seconds later, the manager walks by, hears the story, bursts out laughing and decides this is perfect, just perfect, and hangs up the frame in the back. On the wall, next to the work schedules, in a place where EVERYONE that works here looks at practically everyday. He thought it was hilarious. Everybody had a laugh, then we…. kinda forgot about it. The picture became a part of the wall. It’s been 8 years since I’ve worked there. The staff changed, the managers changed, over the years everybody I knew changed jobs and everything. But my best-work-friend still remains. You know, the ONE person that could probably do another job better for her, but stays in this place by pure force of habit? The one person that will always be there and still work there, 20 years after you’ve moved on?

She decided to keep the picture. She told the new managers that the “girl on the wall” was a waitress that worked here and died in an accident and that the whole staff decided to frame her picture and honour her or whatever to keep her memory alive because she loved this place so much… you get the kinda stuff. …. Yep. 8 years later, when I occasionally visit the restaurant to say hello to my friend, I have a quick glance above the schedules. The picture’s still there."

Mystery at the Train Station

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Reddit user Necrorider and their friend knew exactly how long it took for their train to take them to the station nearest to their home, or so they thought. But one day, they realized they had missed their stop by a couple of stations and have no explanation for the missing time.

"Where I live, there’s a train that goes from my school to my home. The distance between those stations is about 15 minutes. One day, my friend and I left school together and boarded the train. We were both getting off at the same stop. Let’s just say the station at the train is Station 1 and our home is Station 5. The distance between each station is about 3 minutes.

Anyway, we board at 3pm and chat. We’ve taken this train more than a hundred times before, meaning we know how long it takes, what our stops look like etc. Even the train announcer announces the station as well. We constantly look outside for scenery to tell us its our stop and check out watch and stations we’re at.

We continue chatting, and then, as usual, we get off the train. We exit, turn right to take the escalator down and… it’s not there. Confused, we give a quick look around and notice we’re not at station 5, we’re at station 8. No problem, we just sat past right? So we checked out watch. 3:15. Both him and I have never been able to deduce what happened.

The time needed to reach station 8 could not just take 3:15, it would at least be 3:25. The train itself is automated and so the distance and time needed never changes. We take the opposite train and discuss what just happened. We both saw that the last station the train announced was Station 4, as was the scenery we saw a million times over, passing by a school we always use as our landmark. Up to this day I can’t find a reasonable explanation of what happened. And still creeps me out to this day."

Night Terrors

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When Reddit user casuallynoted was four, he experienced night terrors at the children's hospital he was in. And although each encounter was slightly different, there was always one creepy looking figure stalking him in all of them and he was convinced he was going to die every time.

"When I was four, I had an infection that caused my lymph nodes in my neck to swell up badly, and I wasn’t able to get it checked out until it was really bad. I ended up being sent to the hospital, where I stayed for around a month. I don’t remember a whole lot of it but I’ve seen pictures of me hooked up to an IV, it was a children’s hospital so it wasn’t bad at all, I remember playing TMNT the arcade game, it was fun.

After I got back though, I began having these insane night terrors, just about every night with only a few exceptions. They would always follow the same pattern, with minor variations (location, small details, etc.), and the same being was present in all of them: I would be somewhere with people that I knew (Friend’s birthday party, kitchen with my family, at school), and for one reason or another, everyone would leave the room.

Once I’m alone, I look around and realize that every room that’s connected to the one I’m in is pitch black. After I had had quite a few of these, I became used to them and realized that it had to do with the creature in these dreams. He hated light, any source of it would hurt him in some way, and so he had the power to absorb or cut off the light, even rays of moonlight that would pour into the room from the windows. From this point, I would do one of two things: If I walked out into dark hallway/room/etc., he would travel in the darkness, be right behind me, and spend his time giving me a slow, detailed, and agonizing death.

Now, these started when I was four. He would do everything under the sun, things I hadn’t heard of yet. I didn’t watch horror movies. There was one where he stabbed me all over my body and held me down, whispering in my ear as I died from blood loss, another where he murdered me, others where he would tie me up and suffocate me until I begged for him to kill me. Every single time that he killed me, I felt a strange almost tingling feeling in my back that quickly spread across my spine and erupted into pain. I can’t describe it in any other way except that it’s extremely painful.

Alternatively, if I stayed in the lit room, I would watch, my heart pounding, as the lights flickered off, and eventually he would be there. Maybe not right away but he would always be there. Sometimes he would kill me, I would wake up from bed, and he would be right there again. I never actually woke up.

Around maybe age 6, I decided to begin using a night light. Not because I was afraid of the dark, I was fine sleeping without one before, but I realized that if I woke up out of bed and that night light was off, I needed to shock myself out of the dream as quickly as I possibly could. I kept using this method for a while, and if I had a particularly bad terror the night before, would just decide not to sleep. I had nights where I would stay in the computer room with the lights on all night because I was afraid of falling asleep.

My mom did try to help with these, she saw me waking up crying and sweaty and obviously disturbed, but how does a young kid explain the things I saw when they don’t know the words for them themselves? It took a long time before she was able to fully understand what was going on. So at exactly age 10, I had one of the best days of my life. I remember waking up at 4AM that day, which was definitely strangely early. I know because I checked the alarm clock to see what shows were on (it was a Saturday morning). I got up and turned on the TV, figuring that I probably couldn’t go back to sleep (I was never the best at actually getting back to bed once I woke up early like that), so I might as well stay up and catch some of the early Saturday morning cartoons.

Suddenly my vision started to mess up a bit, and I felt myself losing control of my body right on the couch. I began dreaming, but I could still see the living room if I focused on it, my eyes were definitely open in real life. I had the first part of a dream in which I met a girl dressed in white, and suddenly snapped out of it back to the living room. I got up, completely freaked out (I still haven’t heard of anything like this being possible, and I’ve been looking for years. The closest thing I could find was sleep paralysis), and I got up to go to my parents room because I had no idea what else to do. As I was walking there, I froze once again and the dream continued, same weird half and half dream/reality vision, this happened about four more times until I laid down in my parents bed and had the last part of the dream.

The girl in the dream promised me that I wouldn’t have one of those night terrors ever again, and that we would see each other again when I turned 15. Fast forward so many years, I’m 19 now. I never heard back from her at 15, but the dreams stopped for the longest time. I almost thought they were gone. But about a month ago, I began to have them again out of the blue. No indication as to why I’m having them again. Same creature, except he’s younger now. He used to be around 30-ish, now he’s maybe 17. I’ve learned lucid dream control techniques in the years that I have had regular dreams, and attempted to use them twice to try to kill him instead, and both times, I felt almost like a shocking feeling in my brain and heard a static sound, and then it was a false awakening where he was there again, over my bed.

The first time that happened, I remember trying to do a reality check, and he put a hand over my mouth and whispered in my ear “If you try that again, I swear you’re going to regret it.” I’d once posted on Dreamviews about all of this to try to get an opinion but I didn’t get too much back on it, so this is my creepy life story. There are a few other strange experiences with dreaming that may have something to do with all of this, but my post is way too long as is, so I’m just going to leave it like this. If anyone has any clue as to how I might be able to stop these dreams, just let me know. They’ve become progressively more violent now that they’ve started again, and he is usually with people who I have had intense negative experiences with in the past now (like my dad)."

The Mystery in the Arkansas Woods

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The woods can be an intimidating place full of weird things. Just ask Reddit user I_Am_Eli, who recalls seeing a strange glowing ball near his grandparents' house deep in the forest. But what really spooked him wasn't the glowing light but rather the hairy humanoid creature crawling towards him.

"Back in the early 1990’s I was a kid, around 13 at the time of this incident, and I used to stay at my grandparents house a lot out in a very rural area in SE Arkansas. When I say very rural, I mean it was a series of networked dirt roads to get out to their house.

The closest neighbors besides my aunt and uncle who lived about a quarter of a mile up the road was over a mile and a half away. This was very backwoods and isolated from most civilization. The closest town was a 10 mile trip. It’s in the middle of farmland and mostly woods. They had lived in this house since my mother was a child. And had both grown up just a ways down the road.

Anyways, there was a general store roughly 3-4 miles down the network of dirt roads. This was your typical country general store ran by an old lady and her husband and it’s only customers really only consisted of the people who lived out there in BFE.

One day my grandmother asked me if I wanted to walk to the general store and get her some milk, eggs a few other miscellaneous items and I told her I would. She gave me some money and I headed on my way.

It was fairly early in the day and I had plenty of time to get back before dark, which I always made sure to do when I was out roaming about. Things can get mighty creepy out in the backwoods of Arkansas after nightfall. It’s a darkness unlike most people who have lived primarily in cities or towns have ever experienced.

Me being a 13 year old, had poor time management skills. I stopped at the bottom of a hill next to this small wooden bridge you have to cross and messed around at the creek catching crawdads and such and I kinda just messed around the whole way to the store. By the time I left the store I realized it was quickly approaching dark. This was fall and darkness set upon the land pretty early in the day.

I didn’t want to be walking those lonely, secluded roads through the woods alone in the dark so I hurried as fast as I could. Running and sprinting as much as possible. But it wasn’t enough. By the time I had made it back to the bottom of the hill near the bridge, it was almost completely dark, and there was an eerie sort of glow brought about by a very bright nearly full moon that was rising.

At the top of the hill the road was perfectly straight and flat, with woods on the left side and a large field on the right. About a half a mile up from the top of the hill is my grandparents house and you can see it from there. As I top the hill I can see the faint glow of the lights at their house, and I feel a sense of relief because I was kinda freaking out a little bit, but knowing I was so close and could see the house offered a little bit of comfort.

The field on the right was somewhat illuminated by the glow of the moon and my eyes had adjusted to the darkness rather well at this point. As I walked up the road, I hear something from the left, behind me on the wooded side of the road. It sounded like leaves being rustled. I turned to look and see nothing at first, but then as my eyes begin to focus I see something in the ditch, a black shadowy shape slowly moving towards me.

At first I thought it was a dog, but then realized it was much to large to be a dog, and then I realized it wasn’t actually walking on 4 legs, it was crawling, like a person would. I stared for a moment, out of sheer confusement trying to figure out what I was seeing and then a jolt of fear shot through me as it dawned on me, that whatever this thing was, it had been trying to sneak up on me.

At that exact moment this thing stood upright out of the ditch on two legs, like a person. It had the shape of a human, long arms, legs and was proportioned as such. It stood roughly 7-8 feet in height and was completely covered in black or maybe dark brown hair. It’s face was dark in color, and I can’t recall seeing much in the way of features do to it being night. It was no bear for certain, or any other kind of animal I have ever seen for that matter. I immediately dropped the bag of stuff I had been carrying and bolted as fast as my legs could take me towards my grandparents house.

I heard a heavy breathing/guttural growling kind of sound behind me and heard this things foot steps running behind me on the gravel as it gave chase. I did not turn around and was certain that it would grab me at any moment. I then heard it crash off into the woods, and let out an earth shattering and ungodly scream unlike anything I had ever heard before or since.

I’m positive this thing could have easily caught me, had it wanted to, but for some reason it let me go. By the time I reached my grandparents my heart felt as if it would explode from the combination of the adrenaline rush I had from being scared beyond any type of fear I had ever felt before or since, and full on sprinting as hard and fast as possible for about a half straight mile.

I flew into the house and in an incoherent mess of hyperactive gibberish tried to explain to my grandparents what had just happened. My grandmother didn’t really seem to believe me, but did believe SOMETHING had scared me and acted rather weird about the whole thing. She tried to convince me it was just a dog or some other animal. The next morning I woke up and found my grandpa sitting outside whittling wood underneath the shade tree in the front yard, as he often liked to do.

I went and sat down beside him in one of the old metal lawn chairs. He was a very rational man, down to earth, and had grown up in and hunted that area his entire life. He knew every square inch of it, mapped into his mind. He knew every type of critter and creature that lived in those woods, what noise they made, where to find them, how to catch them, etc. I had only been hunting with him for a couple of years, but had been going out into those woods with him since a pretty young age on walks and such. He had passed a lot of his knowledge down to me during those adventures.

I spoke to him about what had happened to me the night before, and told him that I knew what I saw. It wasn’t my overactive imagination, I wasn’t making it up, and it definitely wasn’t a dog. He knew that I wasn’t just some dumb 13 year old kid, and he knew that I knew the things he’d taught me. He stopped whittling, looked me right in the eyes and said, “I know what you saw. I’ve seen it before too. There’s things out in them woods that people don’t understand, and that a person ought not go foolin with.” I remember those words clearly to this day, because it gave me affirmation, but at the same time made me realize that whatever I’d seen was very real in existence, and beyond my understanding.

My grandpa then went on to tell me that far back in the woods, there are some cliffs and at the bottom of those cliffs is a cave. He told me that the cave is where the creature lived. He had once stumbled upon it a long time ago when he was hunting. He said he was standing on the top of the cliff looking at it when a creature fitting the same description emerged and began screaming wildly at him and throwing rocks.

He said he took a shot at it, missed and then this thing gave chase to him. But my grandpa was on top of the cliff, so in order to get to him this thing had to go around a pretty good distance and then up, which he said it quickly began to do, so he hightailed it out of there in a hurry. He said the whole way back home he felt as if he were being watched and kept hearing twigs snap behind him and he was certain that it was following him. Stalking him. He made it home and as he reached his front porch he turned and looked back at the woods from where he’d came and saw it peeking out at him from behind a tree. Later that night he said that he and my grandmother awoke in the early morning hours to large rocks being thrown at the house and ungodly howling noises from outside and this thing trying to get into the house.

He said he could hear it walking around on the front porch, rattling the doorknobs, banging on windows and it sounded like it was muttering to itself, in a low deep garbled voice, but it didn’t sound like a language, just a bunch of gibberish. After a while the thing went back to throwing some more rocks and howling, so my grandpa grabbed his shotgun and fired it out the front door a few times into the darkness and the direction of the howling and said he heard it run back into the woods. He didn’t know if he’d hit it or not.

He said that was the last he’d ever seen or heard from it, but over the years an occasional farmers cow would be mutilated, or someone’s hunting dog would go unexplainably missing, or someone would have a story about some strange creature they’d seen. He also said it scared my grandmother beyond words and she absolutely has refused to ever talk about it or even acknowledge that it happened. Which explains her acting weird about it when I told her what happened to me. I know it’s a pretty far fetched story, and you can believe it or not. It makes no difference to me. I know what I saw and my grandpa knew what he saw, and neither of us had ever felt the need to convince anyone else of it. In fact, until today I have never actually spoken of it to anyone other than my grandpa and he passed away roughly 10 years ago."

There's Someone Watching

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Reddit user Dijibaby7 was an EMT trying to get some shut eye in the back of his ambulance when his partner woke him up with news that scared him half to death. It turns out that there was someone lurking outside and watching them.

"Was an EMT working the 4am-4pm shift. We pick up our rig and get told to post (hang out and wait for a call) in a really [bad] part of town. I parked behind this shopping center where all of the businesses had closed down due to the lack of people around that general area. It was a lot of trailer parks, really run-down apartments, and whatnot. I picked this place because the sun was going to rise in an hour or so and my partner and I both wanted to take a nap until a call came through the radio to us.

My partner has no problem sleeping while sitting straight up in the front of the ambulance. I absolutely cannot do this, so I went in the back and laid down on the bench to try and nap. The thing about our old ambulance was that you couldn’t open the side door from the inside. So I had to get out, go through the side door (not the very back double doors) and lay down. I left the side door a little bit cracked open for when a call came though so I could jump into the front to respond. About 5 minutes of me laying there and my I hear my partner call me. “Hey dude. You awake?” “Yeah.. what’s up?” “That person over there has been staring at us for a while.”

Across the street there was a sidewalk along the side of a park. I could make out a faint shadow of a person. Knew it was someone because their cigarette butt flickered every time they took a puff. The streetlight was super dim but I could tell that they were there, just staring at us. It was super weird so we watched them for a bit. After about 5 more minutes of us just watching, the person walks away.

We joke about how weird people are, being up at 5am roaming around some sketchy park. I lay back down and start to doze off. I wake up to my partner saying “HOLY MOLY DUDE!” So I pop my head up into the front cabin. The person was standing like 20 feet from our ambulance, dressed in all black, staring at him. Eyes locked. I look at her face and I kid you not, she looks like the girl from The Ring. She had pitch black straight hair, wearing all black, very light skinned, the street light made her look like she was white as paper. My partner is absolutely terrified as they’ve entered some weird sort of staring match. I told him to hop over into the driver seat and get out of there. He says “I can’t. I’m too scared to move.”

Well I guess I have to squeeze from the back though this little space to get into the driver’s seat. I jump up and try to get back into the front cabin. It’s a tight squeeze because I’m a bigger guy, but I make it through. She apparently takes notice of me moving and starts power walking straight to us. I’ve never been so freaked out in my life. As she gets super close, I realize she’s looking at the side door that I left a little bit cracked open! I’m thinking “I forgot to close it!” I get a good look at her face. She’s noticed that door and I know she’s gonna try to get in. Maybe she’s going try to kill me? I don’t know but I have to get out. Her whole body is shaking as she gets closer and closer, still staring at my partner. She gets up right next to his window and just stares at us both in the eyes. I get into the front about with about 1 second to spare, start the ambulance, and peel out. We never posted there again."

The Eight-Legged Lashes

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Reddit user Icvotria's boyfriend would have totally freaked out if he had woken up in the middle of the night. But it wasn't because she was watching him as he slept. It was because of the odd-looking thing that was crawling down his face.

"I woke up in the middle of the night last week and looked over at my boyfriend, sleeping soundly next to me. I was admiring his nice face, thinking what long, pretty eyelashes he had. I was half asleep, comfy and warm, and everything was lovely. As I became more alert, it slowly began to dawn on me that, though he does have very long, pretty eyelashes, they weren’t quite that long. That’s when the spider started moving across his face. THERE WAS A MASSIVE SPIDER ON HIS EYEBALL."

The Creepy Construction Guy

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Some guys just don't know when to give up. That's something that Reddit user Throwawaynannyjob learned the hard way when a construction guy followed her to the house she was working at as a babysitter and tried to break in.

"I had just got a job as a nanny looking after 2 kids for a family. I worked, the same hours every week, one the shifts being from 3pm until around 10 on Friday nights. Across the road from the families home was a construction site which I walked past everyday. The builders would wave and say hello to me in the mornings and evenings, but one took a particular interest in me.

He was at least 20 years older than me and often said comments that would make me feel uncomfortable. Every morning on my way to work he would yell out “compliments” to me and in the evenings he would offer me a lift home in his van. I always declined. Although I felt uncomfortable, I never really felt unsafe until one day he approached me on the street.

When I turned to walk away after he said something particularly vulgar he grabbed my arm harshly and said “don’t you dare walk away from me”. From then on I was a little more wary of him. The house that the family live in is a two storey home with all the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs and the living area and kitchen downstairs. The downstairs area is surrounded by floor to ceiling glass windows. So one night after the kids were in bed I was upstairs. Now, I admit I was having a bit of a snoop in the parents room so I was listening carefully for any signs of them arriving home, as they were due back early tonight.

While upstairs I heard a noise, which sounded like the gate. I peeked out a window that over looked the front yard, just in time to see a black sports bag be thrown over the high fence. After the sports bag came a bat and then a man. It took me a couple of seconds to register what was happening, until I realised that the man was the builder. I completely froze. I watched him walk across the yard and down the side of the house and then the lights cut out. I had no idea what to do. My phone was downstairs and due to all the windows there was no way I could go get it without being seen. The only way out of the house was downstairs. I could hear him walking around the house and rattling windows and trying door handles. I was trying to figure what to do when I heard a car come down the driveway.

The parents had arrived home. I hid upstairs with the baby until I heard them come inside and call my name. I ran downstairs hysterically and the police were called. The guy was never found and I never saw him again. They tried to track him down through the building site but they were very tight lipped about who worked there. Looks like they were dealing with a lot of shady and unlicensed people coming in and out of there. The thing I learned from this experience is the importance of breaking up your routine whenever you can. I would catch the same bus, at the same time everyday. Get off at the same stop, go to the same grocery store every morning and walk the same way to work. I believe this helped this man figure out where I would be at what time. I don’t let myself think what might have happened if they didn’t not arrive home when they did."

Children of the Night

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Reddit user Goat_machine's neighbors were babysitting and the kids were doing a slumber party. He just didn't realize that they were going to be doing it outside his yard until he looked out the window and saw a bunch of creepy kids staring up at the sky.

"My next door neighbours are kind of old, and since they’re retired, run a sort of mega babysitting company thing to keep busy. A bunch of people in the neighborhood drop their kids at the NDNs. These people don’t have much control over these children. And we don’t have a fence separating our backyards. So one night, these people are holding a slumber party of sorts. Right next door. I can’t sleep because of the screaming [kids] next door, so I get up and go to the bathroom. I look out the bathroom window… and a crap ton of little kids are standing in my backyard, very still, staring at the stars or some [stuff] like that. I probably should have connected the dots from there, but in the moment, I was freaking out. The next day, I found little handprints on most of my downstairs windows."

Call From the Dead

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As a 911 operator, Reddit user penguinluvinman was used to getting all sorts of strange calls. But there was nothing unusual about an elderly woman calling claiming she wasn't feeling good and needed help... until first responders arrived and told them what they found at the house.

"I used to work as a 911 operator in a relatively large metro area. One night at about 3 am or so I answered a call from an elderly lady who said she didn’t feel good. I tried to get more info about what was wrong, chest pain, trouble breathing, headache, is she diabetic etc. I got her address and age, she said no one else was home but the door was unlocked so they could go in.

No matter what else I asked about what was wrong, all she would say is “I don’t feel good, can you please send someone to help me?” After a few min she said “I’m gonna put the phone down for a minute, I need to go to the bathroom.” I tried to get her to stay on the line with me, told her she can do whatever she needs to get ready but I’d like to be able to stay in contact in case there’s a problem.

She said “I’m gonna put the phone down, I’ll just be a minute.” A couple min passed, then the fire department called on scene so I just disconnected and didn’t think much about it. Told them the patient advised front door is unlocked and she was in the bathroom. A couple more min and the one of the firefighters called over the air with a weird tone and said “Fire alarm (which is how they addressed dispatch)…uh how exactly was this called received?” I told them call was first party from the patient’s home phone approx 8 min ago.

He didn’t respond over the air, but called the desk from his cell phone, which usually only happens when something weird is going on that they don’t want broadcasted since anyone can listen to the radios. On the phone he said “are you sure this wasn’t a third party call from a family member or something?” I said “negative, caller advised ‘I don’t feel good’ and said no one else was home, so to the best of my knowledge, the caller is the patient…have you made contact?” He said “yea, she was in the bathroom like you said, but she’s been dead for about 12 hours. Cold to the touch, fully livid, full rigor, we’re gonna need a deputy out here.”

Afterwards we pulled the tapes of the radio and phone calls and checked the timestamps, address, phone number, and went over everything a few times to see if I missed something. I called them back in the morning after the shift to see if they had anymore info, but they were just as weirded out as we were. The phone was in the living room and the patient was in the batbroom, but the call was definitely from that phone. Still have no idea what the most likely explanation is."

Do I look Like Jonathan Taylor Thomas?

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While waiting for her boyfriend, Reddit user GiggleButts was approached by a guy who wanted validation that he looked like 90s actor Jonathan Taylor Thomas. But even though she thought he looked like Lutz from "30 Rock," she humored him and told him that he did. Unfortunately, that didn't satisfy him and it was starting to creep her out.

"In college, I went to Champaign, IL and saw Big Gigantic. Afterward, boyfriend and I stopped to get gas and I was thirsty as [heck] for non-venue priced beverages, so I went into the little shop while he filled up the car. It was ~1am so the shop was deserted except me and the cashier, whom I greeted casually and walked to the back giant wall of refreshments.

I’m staring and pondering for a while before I realize the guy has made his way over and is staring intently from a few feet away. “Do I look like Jonathan Taylor Thomas?” He asks. “Uh…what?” I answer, not entirely sharp after a concert and wondering if I missed something. “Jonathan Taylor Thomas. A lot of people say I look like him.” I should pause the story here to tell you that this 20 or 30something gentleman bore zero resemblance to the pre-teen hunk of the nineties. This guy was pale, dark hair, kind of mushy-faced with no distinctive qualities. I’d compare him to maybe a younger Lutz from 30 Rock.

Anyway. I’m staring at him and getting nervous and not sure what to say. “I guess?” I stammer, hoping this will end the line of questioning. “Oh! In what way?” “What?” I grab a Sprite bc I am now getting a little freaked out and do not have the luxury of deliberating any longer. This guy has not cracked a smile and something just seems very, very off. We walk to the register and he continues. “In what ways do I look like Jonathan Taylor Thomas, specifically?” “I…uh…” He’s ringing me up and I’m looking through my bag for my wallet trying to think of a competent answer. “In the nose? I guess?” He seems relieved. That’s when my boyfriend appears at the glass door entrance a few feet away. He tries to open it. It’s been locked. All the blood drains out of my face and I start feeling very, very sick. He seems surprised by my boyfriend’s presence and looks at me, realizing whatever he had in mind for me is no longer in the cards. Without a word he unlocks the door and I gtfo. Boyfriend is confused and I sit in the car and breathe and drink my Sprite and tell him what happened and we both shiver the rest of the way home. And that’s the end of the Jonathan Taylor Thomas story."

Ghost With a Shotgun

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Reddit user Phoboss will probably never go on a cemetery tour at night ever again. Who could blame them after the experience they had? It turns out that during the tour, everyone heard a series of gunshots. But things got really weird when a series of flashes led to the appearance of a ghostly figure walking towards the tour group with a shotgun.

"I went on a guided cemetery tour at night. About six or seven of us were standing around a tomb listening to the story of how the inhabitant had killed himself with a gun when all of a sudden there was a big flash and the whole sky lit up green with smaller flashes. We found out later that we had witnessed a meteor breaking up. So the tour guide takes a moment, recovers from the surprise, and continues his story about how some decades after the poor chap had killed himself someone broke into his tomb and stole his skull.

We then moved on, and walked further into the cemetery when we were startled by a loud bang. We shrugged it off as a car backfiring, laughed nervously at how on edge we were and continued the tour. Shortly after we hear a couple more bangs in quick succession, and one of the tour party commented that they were pretty sure they were gunshots. There was another bang, closer. Definitely a gunshot. Then we saw a light inbetween some of the headstones and I kid you not, we saw the figure of a man carrying a shotgun, slowly coming from the direction of the tomb we had just been at. We froze. I looked over to the tour guide, thinking it was some prank he plays on all his customers, but he was completely white and was backing away. It was a man with a shotgun and he was walking towards us. He lifted a flashlight and pointed it directly at us. Several of us ducked behind the headstones as he yelled, “Get out of here! What the [heck] are you doing in this place!?” Turns out the city council pays some guy to shoot possums in the cemetery and they forgot to warn the tour company."

The Stranger on the Couch

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It's totally normal for a houseguest to run into someone that they've never met before, especially when they're doing a sleepover at a friend's house. But Reddit user allycatcal was unprepared to learn that the woman they had met wasn't a member of the family, but a total stranger, possibly an intruder.

“When I was about 10 I was having a sleepover at my friend Amy’s house. I was sleeping on the mattress on the floor and it was positioned as if you sat up you looked directly down the hall into the living room. Amy’s mum’s bedroom was to the left, the bathroom was on the right. I still remember this very clearly. Amy was a bit of a scaredy cat; everything scared her. I remember the dogs barking next door woke us up; she was scared and tried to get into bed with me. I was like it’s just dogs go back to bed. She was scared and went to sleep with her mum. It’s summertime so it’s light pretty early. I wake up and I see Amy aunty was sitting on the couch, staring at me!! Amy’s aunty was in air force and would visit when on leave. I remember thinking why is she staring at me … she looked away and I was looking at her. It was 5:15 A.M. Anyway I went back to sleep, woke at more a reasonable hour and asked where aunty Sandra was. Amy’s mum looked at me, and said, ‘Huh Sandra? Sandra’s not here she’s in X City.’ I have no idea who was sat on the couch but almost 30 years later I swear it was not a dream and some lady was there.”

Grandma's Ghost

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Reddit user WallyPlumstead missed their grandma, who had passed away in her sleep. But when her ghostly shadow started haunting them, nostalgia turned to paralyzing fear.

“When I was 13 I experienced the ghost of my grandmother. She died in her sleep while taking a nap on the living-room couch. Afterwards according to my father and grandfather, every now and then they could hear her make the trip from the bedroom to the kitchen and open the refrigerator door. A trip she made many times when she was alive.

At first I thought my father and grandfather were making this up, having fun at my expense. A couple years after she passed away, my father and I went to spend the weekend with my grandfather. My father and I slept on the living room couch (it opened into a double bed). The same couch my grandmother died on. My grandfather left the house to go to a next-door neighbor’s house to play poker. My father and I went to bed in the living room. My father went right to sleep. I laid awake, reading a magazine. After a while I heard the noise of the back bedroom door being pulled open. I heard the sound of shuffling feet. I heard the creak in the floor directly in front of the bathroom doorway. I heard more shuffling feet. Then I heard the fridge door being pulled open and I heard the sound of glass bottles in the fridge door clinking against each other (back then they were still putting soft drinks in glass bottles). Feeling thirsty, I decided to get out of bed and go join my grandfather in the kitchen for a cold drink. I go into the kitchen, only to find myself all alone.

I was puzzled. I could’ve sworn I heard my Grandfather walk from the bedroom into the kitchen and open the fridge. Then I remembered that my grandfather wasn’t home. He was over the neighbors’ house and he hadn’t come back yet. Then I remembered my grandfather’s and father’s ghost stories. Then I got scared. I raced from the kitchen, into the living room, and leaped over my sleeping father into my side of the bed. Then I went to sleep. I don’t know how long I slept before I woke up with a start, a feeling of paralyzing fear in my body.

I was frozen. I was lying on my right side. It took a while for me to work up the courage to turn my head to the left. My head was covered by my blanket. There was a shadow being cast onto my blanket. The shadow was the outline of a head and shoulders of a woman with a beehive hairdo. My grandmother used to always have a beehive hairdo even years after it went out of style, up until she died. I heard heavy breathing coming from the shadow. I had to work up the courage to move one of my hands to remove the blanket off of my face.

When I did, in an instant, the paralyzing fear I felt was gone. The shadow was gone. The sound of heavy breathing was gone. My father was still sleeping. I pulled the blanket back over my head and went back to sleep. Only to wake up again on my right side, the paralyzing fear was back. Forcing myself to turn my head. The shadow was back. The heavy breathing was back. Again I had to summon up all my courage to move my hand to take my blanket off my face, only to find nothing there and the paralyzing fear gone.

I went through this same routine the entire night. I lost count of how many times this happened through the night. Maybe a dozen. Maybe more. But it happened a lot. The next morning I told my father what happened to me throughout the entire night while he slept. The sounds of the bedroom door opening. The shuffling feet. The fridge door opening. Nobody in the kitchen. Being awakened with a paralyzing fear. The shadow. The heavy breathing. The repeat performances throughout the night. I kind of expected him to tell me that I was just seeing and hearing things. But instead he smiled and exclaimed, ‘that was grandma!’”

Malevolent Static Noise

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When people hear static noise on the radio or see it on the TV, they simply adjust the dial or flip the channel on their remote contol. But there are some who tune into what seems like an otherworldly frequency. Well that's exactly what Reddit user deepmedimuzik experienced, only his encounter with static noise was malevolent and scary.

“When I was a young kid my room was in the spacious downstairs rumpus area. Whilst I felt ‘independent’ in the sense that I had free roam of the area, I always felt slightly uneasy being so far from the rest of my family at night. I to this day remember a recurring nightmare I experienced in that room.

My father had given me his hi-fi player and would put a CD on to help lull me to sleep and provide a sense of comfort before I drifted off. This was a nightly routine and I would play all sorts of music, from Pink Floyd to The Stranglers. One night I woke to the music off, but the amplifier lights still bright and often flickering. In my dreamlike state I stumbled out of bed to try and turn the CD player off, only to be overwhelmed with a feeling of static. Almost like the CD player was transmitting its frequency throughout my own body, using it as an antenna.

This feeling I can only describe was like the most intense, yet painless pins and needles, and culminated in every hair standing on end. As the sensation subsided, I felt almost paralyzed. I was able to move, but it took every ounce of strength to pull myself back up into the bed. Once under the covers, the static noise seemed to materialize in front of me. Not in the visual sense but more in a dark emotive way. It was a shadowy yet malevolent feeling but still unwelcoming. I distinctly remember my flight or fight instincts kicking in, and the most logical conclusion I arrived at was to play dead. My thought process was something along the lines of “This presence can’t affect me if I don’t respond to it”. So I remained perfectly still, careful to not even take a breath out of sync. Eventually I fell back to sleep, but would have the exact same dream almost every night. The funny thing is I never felt scared or threatened by this presence, more confused. It was like a higher being that had complete auditory and physical control over me.”

The Haunted Armoire

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For centuries, ghosts have reportedly haunted people, houses, and yes, even furniture. This is something Reddit user yo_yollie and their sister discovered first hand while playing near an armoire that seemingly had a life of its own.

“Me and my sister lived in a haunted house in Thailand when I was 10 years old. We shared a room and there was a jack and jill bathroom separating another empty room. I guess back then and now maids are cheap so we had a maid. She would always yell at us for leaving the ceiling fan on but we would never go in that room. The room was upstairs and when we were downstairs we would hear kids running and bouncing balls and laughing in that room.

One night before hearing all these noises me and my sister had a friend come to sleep over. We made blanket tents in the empty room but there was an armoire in there. When we had the lights off and just chatting we heard scratches on the wall and froze. Then the armoire doors suddenly squeaked open and we all booked it out the room! Scariest [stuff] ever. Later we found out that behind our backyard fence was a swamp and local people told us that a lot of people would dump their babies there.”

The Ghost Touched My Face

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A Reddit user expe3er5c4x3eriencing was experiencing all the signs of her apartment being haunted. Her TV turned on and off and things went missing all the time. But what really sent a wave of terror across her body was the ghostly touch she felt on her cheek.

“All of this happened when I was 12-16 years old. I am now 25, and haven’t felt a ‘spirit’ ever since I’ve felt better. Before I start, I would like to point out that English is not my first language, so I apologize for possible mistakes. Please feel free to ask if there’s anything that is not clear. My mom and I used to live in a three-story apartment. The upper floor was basically my own, with my room, a bathroom and a tiny hallway. I think it all started with my mom asking me where I put certain things.

She couldn’t find documents that had been in the living room before. Or small things such as pens. Naturally, she blamed me, but when things that belonged to me went missing, she no longer believed that I hid them. Apart from this, the television turned itself off and on a couple of times.

However, none of this makes you think “Woah, this apartment is haunted.”, so we weren’t too worried. Around one year later, when I was 13, my depression got a bit worse, and things in our apartment got weirder. I was asleep but woke up abruptly, only to start crying (aah the joys of puberty and lovesickness). I suddenly felt someone petting my cheek, the way you do it when babies are crying. I immediately felt comforted and fell back asleep.

I remember when I had one of my friends over. We stood in my floor’s hallway and heard somebody running the stairs up and down really loudly. My friend got pale and was genuinely shocked, as was I. A couple of days later, I was home alone and spent some time in my room, with the door opened. I heard someone unlocking our apartment’s door, opening and closing it. I then heard someone walking up the stairs, and called out for my mom as I assumed she got home early. But there was nobody there. To this day I am absolutely sure that I even heard the key in the lock.

I felt as if I was being watched quite often. Actually it was so ‘normal’ that I got used to it. My mom also said that she saw things moving in the corner of her eyes, and that she felt as if somebody was with her sometimes, even when she was alone. Those occurrences happened now and then, but luckily it didn’t scare us too often. We kinda got used to it, and the ‘ghost’ or whatever it was didn’t do us any harm.

Then, at age 14 or 15, my depressions got so bad that I started cutting and tried to commit suicide twice. During this time, my mom told me she saw white fog walking up to my floor. I was a bit scared, but what was I supposed to do about it?! Then an incident happened which really convinced me that our apartment was haunted. I was in bed and tried to sleep but couldn’t as I wasn’t tired at all. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard a heavy breathing coming from my couch (which was right across from my bed). Maybe some of you saw ‘The Others’. There’s a scene at the end where you can hear the old lady breathing. It sounded like this but more ‘evil’. At first I thought that I was imagining it, but I was so shocked and frightened that I couldn’t fall asleep, and stayed awake for another couple of hours.

The breathing never stopped during that time. When I finally had the guts to stand up and just get out of my room, when I passed the couch, the breathing got quieter, but got VERY loud once I was in the hallway. Luckily, my mom believed me and let me sleep in her room. She checked my room, but there was nobody there. Still, she also heard that breathing. I heard it again a couple of times, during the day and at night. Aside from that, I saw flashes of light every day, no matter the time and weather. I read that seeing flashes of light can be a sign for migraine, but gladly I never had a ‘serious’ headache. Besides, I didn’t see those flashes right before my eyes, but outside my windows. To this day, I’m convinced that the apartment was haunted and as weird as it may sound; I believe that my depressions basically ‘summoned’ something. However, I still can’t explain the flashes. So if anyone has an explanation or a similar experience, please feel free to comment.”

The Stranger in the Bushes

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One of the hardest lessons Reddit user Arararararagi_kun learned in their young life was that some evils don't come from the supernatural realm, but real-life flesh and blood humans. And in this case, the threat came from someone in her family and a mysterious stranger lurking in the bushes.

“Around when I was five or six, my mom, aunts, cousin and me when down to Jamaica to go to the funeral of my great grandmother. After the funeral and everything, me and my cousin were playing around with dominoes while everyone was asleep except for my grandfather who was on the veranda.

Fast forward an hour or two later this guy come up to the house asking to see my mom and my aunt, it was a cousin they had knew growing up, so my grandfather kept asking what to do want with them just to notice that my mom cousin was drunk. So they just kept arguing with my mom and my aunt eventually coming going on the veranda so see what was going on. So their cousin asks will they come out to talk to him, which they wouldn’t because it was like 4:00 in the morning or so. At some point during this I wake up and ask what is going on but they tell me not to worry.

While this whole exchange is going on, my grandfather notices a car driving up and down the street and notices that someone was in the bushes so he starts to figure out something was off so he grabs his machete at this point the cousin and the guy in the bushes leaves in the car that was driving up and down the street. Next morning they learned that their cousin was there to [abuse] them and kill everyone when they were done. Overall the experience was pretty traumatizing as a five or six year old then.”

Stalked by a Cadillac

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Reddit user WallyPlumstead wasn't being haunted by a ghost, but they were being stalked. It wasn't, however, a conventional stalking because the person looking after them wasn't lurking in the shadows. It was a group of guys in a Cadillac who kept driving around and jeering at them and there was a moment there where they thought this might be their last night on Earth.

“I was about 12 or 13 years old. One time I’m walking to my psychiatrist for my weekly appointment. It’s a half hour walk and after dark. I enjoyed walking, especially after dark when things were quiet, peaceful, and slow and no one else around. No, I didn’t live in a dangerous neighborhood nor did my walk take me through any dangerous neighborhoods. As I’m about half way to my destination, a car, a Cadillac, comes driving down the street. Some people, both male and female, in the car are sticking themselves half way out the windows and are taunting me and jeering me as they drive by. A bunch of people in their late teens or early 20s.

I ignore them and keep on walking. About a minute or two later, the same car comes down the street again and those people are jeering me and taunting me again. I don’t know who they are. Maybe they live in the neighborhood. I still ignore them and keep walking. Another minute or so goes by and again they come driving down the street, taunting and jeering me. Now I’m worried. They’re circling the block over and over, deliberately focusing on me. As soon as they reach the corner and make their turn and are out of sight, I duck behind some bushes in someone’s front yard and wait. The car comes again down the street. This time, not seeing me walking down the street, they’re not jeering. They pass right by me in my hiding place and turn the corner. I think they think I’ve finally reached my destination, one of the houses on the block, and went inside and as a result, drove away.

I thought wrong. Stupidly I leave my hiding place and go back to walking on my way to my psychiatrist. I should’ve stayed there behind those bushes much longer because I hear the car approaching. They spot me and start taunting and jeering me again. They turn the corner. This time I run towards my destination but I know I wont get far before the car and those kids catch up with me again. So to that effect I decided to hide again behind the bushes in front of an apartment of an apartment building. This time resolving to stay there for good until the thugs in the car gives up their searching for me.

I’m hiding there behind the bushes for not long. Maybe about 30 seconds or so when the guy whose apartment it is pops out from his apartment, asking what I’m doing hiding in his bushes. At first he probably thinks I’m a burglar or something, but I explain to him how I’m walking to my psychiatrist and how I’m being followed and harassed by a bunch of kids in a car, which was why I’m hiding in his bushes. The guy can instantly tell from the tone of my voice and my facial expressions that I’m telling him the truth. He can see how scared I am.

Just then the car comes down the street and pulls right up at the curb directly in front of us. They look at me and the guy I’m with. Not a mean looking guy (in his late 30s-early 40s), but tough and serious looking enough. He’s not wearing a shirt. But he’s wearing a sleeveless undershirt which reveals that this guy’s upper body is very well toned, slightly muscular, and no fat. I’m looking at the car and I realize that it’s missing a few people inside. The car doesn’t look so full now. The guy I’m with just gives them a mean stare. He asks me, ‘You know them?’” I explain that no, I don’t know them at all. I haven’t the slightest idea of who they are. Just then, as the car is sitting there, about three of them approach walking from the other direction. The car was traveling east to west. Those three were walking on foot from west to east. So that’s why the car seemed not so full.

They were looking to escalate the situation. They weren’t satisfied with just driving by and taunting me. They changed tactics. A few of them got out of the car up ahead and started walking toward me while the ones in the car took another turn around the block. Their plan now was to physically trap me in between themselves and their car. Perhaps grab me and drag me into the car with them for whatever reasons. But seeing my tough guy guardian angel with me, the kids walking toward the car instead got into the car and it took off. The guy offered to stay with me for a little longer or if I wanted to, to duck into his apartment to stay there until I was sure that it was safe to continue on my journey. I had a feeling that this was the last I was going to see of those guys and their car and I didn’t want to be late for my appointment. So I thanked the guy for his offer, but declined. And decided to head on my way. The guy went back into his apartment and closed the door.

I looked at the closed door and hoped that I didn’t make a mistake by turning down the guy’s offer of better safety, because I was still scared. Thankfully I was right about not seeing the car again. The rest of my walk I was unmolested. I reached my psychiatrist’s office. I told my therapist about what happened. He insisted on calling the police. The police came and took a report from me. That’s the last I heard of it. On my way back home, I usually took the same route that I came from, up the same streets. But this evening, I varied my way home, taking some different side streets to walk on. Never saw that car or those thugs again.”

Taunted by a Drunk Elephant

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Elephants are generally peaceful and tend to leave humans alone unless they are provoked. But during a safari, Reddit user rowingpostal had an encounter with a bull elephant who refused to move out of the way and kept false charging towards their guide's truck.

“Only scary because I was there. In one day I had two close calls with elephants. First while on safari our guide stopped in a clearing. As I was getting out he freaked out and told us to get back in the car. As we do an elephant bursts into view trumpeting and charging. The truck fails to turn over once. Twice. Third time was not the charm. And finally on the 4th attempt it turns over and we tear out of there. Turns out we had parked between mama and her calf.

We spend the rest of the day laughing about it because what else can you do, until on the path to our camp we come across a drunk bull elephant (there is a tree that has a really sugary fruit. Elephants have learned to knock the fruit down and let it ferment for who knows how long so they can come back eat it and get blasted) Anyway we then spend about three hours getting false charged by a bull elephant and we couldn’t move. Because if we moved he would have known we were not a strange green rock but something smashable. And we couldn’t just hit the gas because the truck wasn’t very fast in reverse. It was a long day for everyone. I especially felt bad for our guide because that safari was his first one back on the job. He had been out for two years because he had been charged by and elephant and caught a tusk in his side. shudders”

Crazy Aunt Goes Psycho

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Everyone has that one wacky relative that everyone says to stay away because they're crazy. But Reddit user unlimitedanna's aunt really was crazy, which she proved when she started coming at them with a pair of scissors in her hand.

“My parents sent me to live with my grandmother when I was seven. They had to work in another city for a couple of months while waiting for my big brother to finish middle school. I was ecstatic to live at my grandma’s, since she would spoil the [heck] out of me. She lived in a two-bedroom house with four of my aunts and my uncle.

However, three of my aunts and me slept piled into one bedroom while my uncle and grandma slept in the living room. The reason? One of my aunts was schizophrenic and had a whole bedroom to herself. My aunt had been crazy for years (my grandma wasn’t the best making her take her pills) and she would spend hours talking to herself and drawing with crayons on the wall. Looking back, it’s creepy as [heck]. But as a child I was having a blast living in a house where I was the sanest person around. This ended rather abruptly when I woke up with my crazy aunt pointing some scissors at my neck. The most plausible story is that she wanted to cut one of my hair strands, as she had picked this habit of cutting hair for a couple of months. However, we never knew for sure. Almost immediately my parents picked me up, and moved to a very old house where earthworms came out of the toilet and shower drain at night. As a child I thought I had woken to a living nightmare.”

The Mystery Man With the Suitcase

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There are all sorts of interesting people at the train station, and the mysterious man with the suitcase that Reddit user dcel8 encountered was one of them. There was no other way to describe a guy who was screaming at them in gibberish while holding a suitcase filled with a leaky substance oozing out of it.

“This happened recently, it was midnight, I was at the train station waiting for my train to arrive, and there was this really tall guy walking my way carrying a suitcase. As he came closer I noticed he was struggling to carry the suitcase as it looked rather heavy and oddly enough it was leaking some sort of liquid, not water, but it seemed more thicker. As this guy approaches he orders me to take the bag, the tone of his voice was a little aggressive and he didn’t sound sober, taking a closer look at him, I noticed he’s covered in dirt up to his face and cuts on his forearms, I said ‘sorry’, struck for words I started to walk away, my train starts to arrive and the guy follows me saying things I couldn’t quite understand, I hop on the train, door shuts, he is outside pointing at me yelling more gibberish, train slowly departs and suddenly punches the window in frustration with his eyes locked on me, relieved I’m on the train, fellow commuters looking at me puzzled with all the commotion of me and that guy. Creeped me out.”

Grandma's Ghostly Thumbs Up

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Reddit user Planet_Kolob missed his grandma's thumbs up. It was a gesture that used to make him laugh, but he never thought he'd ever see it again because she had passed away. Then, he took a tumble down the stairs and discovered that grandma was stilling giving him thumbs up from beyond the grave.

“I was a kid when this happened so just keep that in mind as you’re reading this story. My great grandmother had recently passed away and we weren’t that close or anything but whenever I went to my grandparents’ house where she was living she would always smile at me and give me a thumbs up. I don’t know why but that thumbs up always made me smile and giggle a little.

One day after school on my way home I am thinking about my great grandma and remembering her thumbs up. I get home and run downstairs and about halfway down I trip. At the bottom of the stairs was a gate and the roof was only seven feet high or so. The gap between the top of the gate and the roof was maybe four feet. When tall people walked downstairs they had to duck on the last step so they didn’t bump their head. I feel like I should have either hit the ceiling or at least crashed through that gate. Instead I landed softly on the ground and my first thought was of my grandma giving me a little smile and a thumbs up. Pretty weird. I was young though so I may have just had a wild imagination about the whole thing but I swear as an adult I remember that happening and its such a clear and vivid memory.”

The Pakistani Facebook Friend

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There are tons of online scammers looking for potential victims to trick into giving them money. But Reddit user Birchwoood was both mesmerized and terrified by the mysterious Pakistani stranger who reached out to him on Facebook and seemed to know everything about his life.

“June last year a man from Pakistan began messaging me on Facebook, assuming it was a scam account I ignored his attempts at conversation and thought little of it.

Six months later the random messages started to pop up again, several times a day, with personal information about me he couldn’t possibly know. Every day for almost four months this stranger wrote to me knowing details about my life that I’m certain aren’t on my Facebook profile.

He knew where I’d worked, where I live, my phone number, the brand of smokes I buy, how I’d become unemployed, my parents separating and my daily routine. I’m not easily spooked but he was trying to get under my skin and it was working. I told a few close friends who were skeptical at first, figuring he’d gotten my information off Facebook, until they read the message thread for themselves and could see how serious it was.

Of course I considered the possibility an acquaintance of mine was behind the account posing as this man. Unfortunately the timeline dated back to 2012, had hundreds of photos, check-ins with family and friends on the other side of the world and appeared legitimate. He intimidated me for months dropping facts about my life every now and then to scare the [stuff] out of me.

Finally he explained he wanted to come to Australia and if I helped him he would pay me. At first I was amused that he thought I could be of help, making a joke of his idea. He obviously didn’t appreciate my response because he started mentioning my dad and sister. I was more angry than scared by that point and decided to contact the National Security Hotline. I figured if this individual was willing to pay a stranger on Facebook to worm his way into Australia they’d want to find out why. They also didn’t think I was crazy, so that was a huge relief after all the looks others had given me.

A few days passed after the call, the messages continued but I had peace of mind knowing I’d reported it. Maybe I had overreacted? Maybe I was crazy? Or perhaps one of my friends was behind it all! Obviously the authorities weren’t taking the situation as lightly as I’d thought, because detectives turned up at home to get the story from myself firsthand. As bizarre as the situation was, it was comforting knowing that they listened and had my best interest after being made to feel like an idiot for months. The messages stopped the same day I spoke to the detectives at my house, giving me reason to believe action was taken when they left. I’ll probably never know the details, but it’s probably best that way anyway.”

Home Alone But Not Alone

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Reddit user nessag was home alone, except he wasn't. Whenever he tried watching TV in his parents' room, he felt he was being watched. Then he saw a shadowy figure in the hallway that locked eyes with him, and that's when he realized there was someone else in the house.

“When I was a teenager I was home alone one weekend and I was sleeping in my parents’ room since there was a TV in there. Sometime around 2:00 A.M. I felt like I was being stared at from the direction of the hallway. I looked up and I saw a shadow person looking at me. It was weird because it was a pure man-shaped black mass and I could see him in the dark hallway, I’m guessing light from the TV helped. I sat up and stared back but I was terrified. We looked at each other for probably 5 seconds and then it turned and walked down the hall, a few seconds later I heard a loud crash. I was so scared I turned the TV to the Disney Channel and stayed awake for as long as possible. When I woke up the next morning I walked down the hall to the bathroom and that’s when I noticed a mirror that was hanging and fallen off the wall and was shattered. My family still doesn’t believe me but I know what happened.”

The Man With the Camera

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Child predators are the kind of thing everyone hears about on the news but they never expect to encounter one themselves. That's what Reddit user heylookitsatyler thought, and then he encountered a man filming him with a handheld camera, and he and his friends starting running for their lives.

“I was outside playing with friends one afternoon …we were around 9 or 10. We lived in a quiet area. As we were playing, we noticed a man in a truck drive by over and over again. Each time he passed my friends’ yard, he would drive slowly. We then realized that this man was recording us with one of those old handheld recorders. It freaked us out. We ran inside their house and called his mom. She told them they needed to stay inside and that I should go home. I tried explaining that my mom wasn’t home at the moment. But she still made me leave. I lived about a mile or two down the road. I’ve never run so fast in my life. I was terrified that man was going to find me as I was running back home. When my mom found out what happened…she was super [mad] my friend’s mom hadn’t allowed me to stay at their house until she could come pick me up.”

The Ghostly Giggle

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Reddit user Faux_F0X was convinced that one of his sisters was running up and down the stairs at his aunt and uncle's house where his family was staying at. He even heard her giggling in the background. But when he spoke with his mom on the phone, he discovered his sister wasn't in the house.

“Went to my aunt and uncle’s house one family vacation about 10 years ago. We drove from South Texas to some small town in Missouri, can’t remember the name, we arrived there at 1:00 A.M. Family consisted of myself, 2 younger sisters, mother, father. Most of the family was hungry from the long drive and wanted to see if a McDonald’s was open. I was tired from the long car ride and wanted to stay at the house. Mom said one of my sisters would be staying as well. I settle down into the living room watching TV, slightly dozing off. I can remember hearing pitter-patter down the hallway and assumed my sister was just running around, she’d be eating sugary snacks the whole way up. I get a call from my mom asking what I wanted to eat and in the background can hear both my sisters arguing. I hear a giggle somewhat behind me stand straight up and look around, nothing. I ask my mom if my sister ended up going with them, which she confirmed. I stood in the corner of the room till everyone got back.”

The Peeper With the Flashlight

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For centuries, Peeping Toms have been spying on people through windows as the unsuspecting home owners dress or sleep. And Reddit user miles_kilow learned she had a Peeping Tom of her when she saw a shadow with a flashlight looking into her bedroom.

“I’d been living in my first apartment alone for maybe two weeks. It was a basement apartment which meant cheap and the windows were right at ground level so you could see legs and shoes walk by. There were two bedrooms. I slept in one with the blinds closed, but the other room’s window had some water damage so I kept the blinds all the way up to let it dry out before maintenance came. That room had nothing in it but spare boxes from moving in.

One night, I was asleep and then suddenly completely awake and alert. Every fiber of my being was suddenly on edge. I looked at my phone and saw it was around 4:00 A.M. I laid in bed for a minute before I turned towards my closed window and saw it: a large dark shadow of a person with a flashlight trying to see in to my bedroom. I instantly freaked. I quietly grabbed a small hunting knife and stealthily moved to the hall so I could see into the other bedroom—the one whose window coverings were WIDE open. As I peeked around the corner, the person was scanning the floor of my bedroom methodically with the flashlight. They were big, had on heavy boots, and keys that jingled.

At this point—as a single girl alone in a [bad] apartment I thought this was it. I was 100% prepared to take my little hunting knife and fight this [guy]. My adrenaline was sky high. At that moment, my phone buzzed and I got a text from a friend on the police force who literally asked, “What’s going on at your apartment?” I thought—yep, this is a bad guy…he’s peering in my windows and is going to bust in any second now…but then he went away. I didn’t hear from my police friend after I texted him back. I decided to go lie down on my bed and just wait to see what happened next.

Not five minutes after lying down, someone knocked on my door with incredible force. The panic mounted again. Now—I have no peephole, no safety chain…just a deadbolt. At the top of my voice, in case it’s a murderer I want to wake people up, I yell, “who is it?” I hear a meek voice reply that it is the police. My first thought is now that is a clever plan to get a girl to open her apartment door. I stood there silently before I heard the voice say again, that I wasn’t in trouble. I opened the door a smudge, ready to slam it, to see two cops, one backed away from the door and one up the steps. They must have seen my tiny little knife or something. They proceeded to apologize for scaring me—they were the ones looking in my windows. I yelled at them and possibly cried a little … the adrenaline finally broke, okay? I got the whole story from my friend the next day—turns out a fellow resident of the apartment complex had gotten drunk, lost his keys, and broken into his own apartment to go to bed. They thought it was mine and were confused by the lack of broken windows….I was terrified at the time, but it’s a good story now.”

The Stranger Looking In

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Reddit user -obliviouscommenter- decided to park his car on the side of the road to rest for a bit. He figured it was cheaper than renting a hotel and safer than continuing to drive and risk falling asleep. Then he wished he had kept on driving when he saw someone gawking at him through the car window as he tried to sleep.

“I was living in my car for a few months. I would just drive out of town and park off the side of the road on logging roads or whatever to sleep. Found this one place to park which was nice because it wasn’t too far away but also far enough that no one else would be there at night. First night I was there I had a waking dream that someone was outside my car looking in. Freaked me out but whatever. Parked other places for a few nights. Went back there for a few nights and had similar freaky nightmares both nights. Someone outside the car, trying to get in, etc. Basically said [eff] this place and avoided it for a while. Was tired one afternoon and decided to go back to have a nap. Laid there for about ten minutes before hearing a noise and suddenly there’s this homeless dude walking his bicycle down out of the bush right past my car. I recognized him as someone who runs around picking bottles out of trashcans. Creepy as heck, guess he lived in a camp in the bush right there.”

Pursuing the Shadow Figure

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When Reddit user -eDgAR- started chasing after a shadow figure in a dark apartment building, he assumed that the shadow was his friend pulling a prank on him. But when he called out to his friend and he answered back from downstairs, his blood suddenlly chilled.

“When I was 16, my friends and I had and apartment inn the building his parents owned. It was an old building, in Chicago and had tunnels that Al Capone and company had built that his dad blocked off. We used the roof as a place to go and smoke cigarettes. You had to get through the attic to get there, though. There were no lights so the only lights we had we from our old flip/brick phones. One day, my friend Manny and I were going up to smoke. I told Manny I had to [pee], so I did in the apartment. I went up and felt like there was someone there. It was pretty common for us to mess with each other, so I said, ‘Manny, I know it’s you. Quit [messing] around.’ I followed this shadow figure, thinking it was him. I yelled, ‘Stop playing, I know it’s you’ as I followed this figure. Then I heard, from downstairs, Manny, say, ‘What?’ I was terrified. I had just followed ‘him’ to a corner. I ran back downstairs and asked if he was there. He was, talking to his gf at the time and I told him I didn’t want to go upstairs. I know what I saw. People always try to say ‘maybe the shadow was your own’ That’s not possible because I had a Motorola flip phone at the time and I was only holding that in front of me. I saw a shadow person, and I know others have, too.”

The Man Lurking in the Forest

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There are all types of dangers lurking in the woods and not all of them are wild animals. This is something that Reddit user LenyAK learned as a child, and he never ventured into a forest with his cousin without an adult present after this happened.

“This was back when I was a little kid in Eastern Europe. My cousin and I were walking through the woods, we were maybe eight to nine years old. It was more like a large urban forest, big enough to get lost in. Suddenly we saw a man standing in the bushes, he was wearing nothing but tighty-whiteys, dress shoes, and a watch and had his back toward us. We kind of just froze there, staring at him. He must’ve heard the rustling behind him and slowly turned around. He had the creepiest smile on his face and started slowly moving toward us while making a beckoning motion with his finger. I remember being frozen with fear for a few moments before turning around to look at my cousin, who was no longer there. I could only see his heels flashing in the distance as he was running away. Of course I followed immediately and I don’t think I’ve ever ran that fast before or since.”

The 3 Claps

My sister claps 3 times before driving. Sarah has been doing that for the longest time, and I never really understood why. One day she was giving me a ride and I decided to ask her, “Why do you always do that?” She looked at me menacingly and just said, “Mind your own business.” I let it go and that was that. A week later, my husband and I are sleeping, it’s the middle of the night and we hear someone trying to come into our house. We both get out of bed and suddenly I hear, “Clap, clap, clap”, three times. I said “Ah, it must be Sarah.” I went back to bed and my husband went down to check on her. Moments later I heard, “Oh my god!! Who are you?!” Turns out, it was some mentally challenged homeless man that lost his way. I later found out that people are taught to clap 3 times to snap out of their delusions and are commonly used by people with health problems. That’s the day I realized my sister actually needed professional help.