67 True Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Making toast

“Making toast late one night facing the kitchen bench eating for a good 5-10mins. Cleaned up and turned around and every single cupboard door and cutlery drawer were open. They were all closed when I went into the kitchen, and there was no way anyone could have snuck in and done it because I was home alone. I also didn’t hear them open in the time I was there. Scared the shit out of me so I froze, let it register for a few seconds, then calmly closed everything and went back to my room to hide until daylight. One of a few weird things to happen growing up.” — bables08

Pig mask

“Our old house was on a corner, and in lieu of a backyard had a side yard, with a small deck that wrapped around the back. The dining room had patio doors that lead out to the back and we would have BBQs and such back there.

When I was about 14, we only had one desktop computer and one laptop for the family. My brother and I would fight over the desktop (that’s where Diablo 2 was installed!) so I would use the laptop to write music.

On one particular night, my brother had a friend over and they were downstairs doing whatever and I was at the dining room table on the laptop.

As I was wrapped up in my writing, I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings.
I heard a knock on the patio door, which startled me. I looked up, expecting my brother or his friend (the basement had a door that lead to the back deck as well.)

Standing at the door, and waving was a person (could not tell sex or age) wearing a Halloween pig mask.

Thinking it was my brother or his friend I mouthed “good one” and gave the person the finger and they walked away.

As soon as they left I went downstairs to give them shit, and to my surprise and dismay… They were both sitting on the couch playing PlayStation. They swore up and down it wasn’t either of them, and there was no way one of them would have had time to get downstairs and unmask before getting on the couch.

To this day, I have no idea who it was that knocked and waved.” — shanster925

Last day on earth

“I worked from 2pm – 11pm at a gas station In one of the nicer cities around here and I had a gentlemen look me in the eyes and ask if I’m enjoying my last day on earth? Walked away before I could answer.” — atStevens98

“I’m still here”

“I came home pretty late one night and my roommates bedroom was shut and I assumed she was sleeping already but I saw something out of the corner of my eye in the kitchen, I said her name but she didn’t answer. I didn’t think anything of it so I walked into my room and before I turn the light on something whispered “I’m still here.” I turned on the light in my room but nothing was there so I turned on every light in my house and knocked on my roommate’s door and eventually opened it but she wasn’t there so I left her light on too and slept with all the lights on. When she came back the next morning I asked her if she was messing with me and she started crying and said she left because something was in the house messing with her and she had to get out.” — charmaine369

👻 You can read 101 of the scariest (and shortest!) true stories in our new collection, 101 True Scary Stories to Read in Bed Tonight, available here. 👻

Raising a serial killer

“We (me, my wife and my 3 yo son) are sitting in the food court at Costco. There is another family with a ~4-5 yo girl sitting behind us. My son looks at me and says “Do you see that girl over there…..I’m going to teach her a lesson.”

So I am taken aback for a second then I think he must intend to teach her numbers or some other normal thing you teach people. So I ask what he is going to teach her. His response: “I’m going to teach her to drown.”” — HellscreamGB

They knew

“A family friend of mine used to work in private wealth management. One of her jobs was diversification of her clients assets on the stock market.

Out of nowhere she gets a call from a representative of one of her very big private clients to sell all the stocks of a big airline and move the liquidity somewhere else. No buts, and if needed they could sell in up to 5% below market as long as the shares are sold quickly.

This was extremely weird, as the stock price of the company was pretty stable, and specifically this clients portfolio was heavily hedged with this stake, but she didn’t think much of it – oftentimes her clients did this for personal reasons (such as having a bad experience on a plane of the company or etc).

Two days later one of her colleagues that she shared this peculiar story told her how the airline stock price started slowly but surely falling – some people were selling off their shares too, which were gladly bought by the market at increasing prices.

The next day AA Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the WTC in New York. The stock market was closed for another week.” — mdi5c0rd

Hello?

“I went camping by myself in Maine, one night I woke up at like 3am. Not being able to fall asleep I just laid there listening to the woods. Then I heard a faint hello…. I was petrified. I felt so vulnerable in the tent. I never figured out what it was.” — bromandude69

“Would you like to come live in my basement?”

“When I was 17 and worked in retail as a cashier, I had a very old couple come through my line buying a wok. The husband who was at least 85 started making conversation with me about the wok, and asked if I liked Chinese food.

“Yeah, I like Chinese.”

“Do you want to go out with me to get some Chinese?” He winks at me.

“N-no sir.”

“Oh. Well.” He looks a bit disappointed and turns to look at his wife who is on the phone with someone. “Would you at least like to come home with me and live in my basement?”

“…no.”

The rest of the transaction took place in terrified silence. His wife never said a word. I wonder to this day if he was trying to joke, because he sounded so sincere, or if he was suffering from dementia or something else that make him not realize how creepy that sounds to someone young enough to be your great grandchild.” — angelxdamian

Followed

“The summer after I graduated from high school, I left work early and went up to my parent’s cabin in northern Michigan. Spent that night at the beach watching the sunset. Once the sun went down and it became nearly pitch black (no light pollution) I got to my car and started driving down the highway (M22). After about 10 seconds of being at speed, there was an older Tahoe (late 90’s) that started riding my ass and flashing it’s high beams. So, I got up to about 60 in a 45. They were still on my ass.

I pulled off to the side road that my parent’s cabin is off of and they took the same turn. I thought this seemed weird cause there’s only about 30-40 houses on the road. So I went all the way to the end, which is usually a dead end but leads to a maintenance area for the golf course nearby. Truck was still following me. At this point I was freaking out because if I pulled into the house they’d know where we lived and they were still following close by.

I took a ton of random turns and the truck kept following every single turn for about 15 minutes. I finally had a chance to make a turn with traffic going through the intersection that gave me a few seconds of a head start. Pulled down a side street, went up 100 yards, turned off all of my lights and waited. Truck slowly drove by the perpendicular street and kept going. Booked it home, pulled my car around the side away from the main road, and pulled every curtain. For an 18 year old, I was scared as hell that night.” — SourTurtle

“Bark”

“This actually happened fairly recently. I was home alone one day with my dog and 2 of my friend’s dogs. Out of nowhere, they all start barking and looking up towards our loft.

As they’re quieting down, I hear someone in a mocking, calm tone say, “Bark.” They start going crazy again and I decide it’s time for a long evening walk.” — themanaroundhere69

The evil twin

“New Year’s Day, 1995. I was in the middle of 3rd year university, and a bunch of friends had come down to visit me and my roommate for the festivities. We were all pretty hungover from drinking the night before, and went out for the usual “nice day out, a bit chilly, I don’t feel so good” post-greasy-breakfast hungover stroll around the neighborhood.

Two of these friends were twin brothers. One of them, we hung out with all the time. The other we’d just met for the first time. He was pretty normal the night before, joining in the fun, but on this day, we were all hanging around a local basketball court shooting hoops with an old basketball we’d found in the grass, and this twin brother kept following me around all over the place with the creepiest grin I’d ever seen in my life. Staring right into the nether regions of my soul, the whole time.

I’d back away and join the group again, and he’d keep following me around. When we were walking back to the apartment, it was just me and him walking down the sidewalk behind the group, and he moved over in front of me, stared at me with that creepy look again, and fell down to his knees as if to worship me or something. I didn’t know what to do… “Hey buddy? You all right? We’re heading back now, right?” And so on. He wouldn’t say anything – he’d just be there on his knees, looking up at me with a clenched face and squinted eyes, as if he were looking directly into the sun or something.

Later that day, my roomie said he was tripping balls, so I thought nothing of it and moved on with my life. A few weeks later, we got a phone call from the twin brother we usually hung out with, and it turned out that this other twin brother went over to his aunt’s place with a knife and stabbed her 14 times. She didn’t die, but you know, still pretty bad. He had even called the police before going, because he knew he was going to do it but he couldn’t stop himself from doing it, because you know, “the voices” and so on.

The ensuing court case was widely covered in the media as this was a relatively smaller community where this sort of thing doesn’t happen on a regular basis. I was reading one of the articles and one of the testimonies was that this twin brother was severely schizophrenic and was hearing voices in his head. He believed to his very bones that his aunt was the devil, and that he had been commanded by God to go and kill her.

So, who was this “God” that told him to go kill her? Well, as the newspaper article described, it was a guy in a group he hung out with on New Year’s Day. Didn’t take me long to realize that he was talking about me.

This was 22 years ago. I know for a fact it was a mental illness, but just knowing that I had somehow “commanded” him to go kill his aunt stays with me to this day.” — catgotcha

Always look under the bed

“My great aunt lived way out in the boonies by an old southern prison. This was before most people had tv, so she had been listening to the radio and found out that a violent rapist had escaped from the prison nearby. She walked into her bedroom and had one of those old saggy mattresses and felt something under the bed. She said “something didn’t feel right” and she slowly got off the bed and called the police. When they arrived they found the rapist under her bed holding a knife from her kitchen. He told them he had been waiting for her to go to sleep so he could rape her and then stab her to death.” — northangerabby

Someone was there

“We were living with my brother in law and his two teens when i was pregnant. He has an elevated house on quite a bit of former hunting land, several miles down a county road.

My husband works 7-6 and BIL works offshore for 14 days. While he was at work, his kids stayed with their grandmother. Nice house but it had a weird vibe. I chalked it up to pregnancy hormones.

One day, home alone i was taking a shower and felt someone staring at me. I stuck my head out and listened. Couldnt hear anyone in the house so i resumed my shower. A while later i heard the back door shut. I was standing in the kitchen and could see the door (which had no steps and was 6′ from the ground). Door was still locked.

I told my husband about it that night and he shrugged it off. We locked down and went to bed. I dont know how long id been asleep but i woke up to the blankets being yanked off the bed and my husband flipping on every light in the house. He threw open every door, every cabinet, looked in every pantry or closet while holding his handgun. I asked what was going on and he swore he heard boots thumping through the house and someone talking. Everything was still locked and its not a big house. Nobody was there except us.

One night, a while later, my niece came into our room (her dad worked over and we had them for a few days) and asked to sleep in bed with us. Now, this girl isnt scared of anything and is 14 at the time. I sat up, told my husband to scoot over, and patted my pillow. Thats when i noticed her 16 year old brother curled up under a blanket on the floor beside me. “Why are you both in our room at 2 in the morning?”

They didnt want to answer at first but explained that something in my nieces room laughs at night. I hated that room when we moved in, and put up any laundry i did quickly in there. I asked my nephew why he was on the floor and he said, “She came into my room on the cot to sleep but something started knocking on the door. We came down here as soon as it stopped.”

Again, husband flipped on every light, looked in every nook and cranny. Nothing.

Eventually we moved out, and the kids decided to live full time with grandma. My husband said he heard a man laughing in my nieces room, but there was nobody there when he turned on the lights. Scared the shit out of him.” — KNSF

I was almost a hostage

“I was walking down the street when I saw a rusty nail in the road. I picked it up and threw it into an empty house’s yard (not helpful I know). After I threw the nail a man came out of what I thought was an empty house and shouted to me. I freaked out (thinking it was about the nail) and kept walking towards my house. The guy didn’t sound mad but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. He started following me to the street and gesturing me to come over but my gut told me to keep on walking. I get home and see from my house the empty house is now surrounded by cops (At this point I still think it’s about the nail). After awhile it gets worse and men in full gear show up.

I found out later that the house was indeed empty, the men inside were known criminals, and I very much almost ended up a hostage.” — duckyblinders

We found a leg

“While cutting lawns along this bike trail, me and a coworker found a mostly decayed, severed from the knee down, leg.

Cops were called, they questioned us and we never found out any more about what happened.” — phome83

2am

“Years ago (early 90’s), my boyfriend was driving me home and we saw a man lying on the ground in the strangest position. Kneeling, with his head on the ground and bent at a sharp angle so that he faced the street. It was two in the morning and the man was covered in sweat with his eyes open. We pulled over and I hopped out of the car to check on this guy. His eyes were wide open and he seemed like… his face wasn’t moving, but it really felt like he was pleading for help. He didn’t respond at all when called out to him. No blinking, glassy eyes. I reached out to touch him and he was ice cold. I’m sure he wasn’t breathing.

This was before cell phones, so I hopped back in the car and we sped back to my house to call 9-1-1. Ten minutes later, the police called back to ask for the cross streets again. Apparently, they arrived at the corner and there was nothing there. I verified that they had the right spot and they said they would call back if they needed any more information. That was the last I ever heard about it. I checked the newspaper for the next few weeks, but we never found out anything else about that man.” — thelivingroad

“He’s biting daddy”

“My 3 year old, who is normally very happy go lucky, was extremely concerned the other day. He kept looking around the room talking about “the rhino” (who knows what a 3 year old might translate as a “rhino”). This went on for about 20 minutes – he was very concerned and looking around the entire time. So, we get to a point where he says the rhino is moving. My wife asks where the rhino is… “he’s coming to Daddy.” yeah, um, I’m Daddy and my ass puckered just a wee bit at that comment….

Fast forward about 4 days (last night), and he starts talking about “the ghost” – my daughter asks my son “where is the ghost”, my son says “he’s biting Daddy.”

What the actual fuck.” — Kahne_Fan

Scratching

“We had quite a large house, shaped like an L. But the L was cut into a hill, so the _ of the L had a downstairs, which was almost underground. It had windows facing out but alot was either in the hill, or under another floor.

I had the room on the bottom part of the L from 13 onwards. My room had two doors, one that opened out to a kind of rumpus room, and one to an ensuite. It was always creepy as fuck, but being a skeptic, I dared anything there to do something to me. Grew up fine, but I could never sleep unless both doors were shut. When my parents went away, I’d break the rules and bring my dog in to sleep on the bed. I woke a few times late to see her alert and staring at the door to the rumpus room. Occasionally id hear a clawing at the screen on the window, but we had dogs, cats, horses and the local bush turkeys, foxes, etc. I figured if something was there that shouldnt have been my dogs would’ve gone ballistic.

Fast forward 5 years bring a new girlfriend to my home to meet my parents. Slept in my old room – she woke up screaming between 12am-3am twice out of the three nights we stayed there. Have been with her 5 years since and it’s only happened in that room. She won’t sleep in the house anymore.

My parents let my younger sister move into the room about 4 years ago. She asked me recently if i ever heard scratching on the window late at night. Both of the dogs we had, plus the cat and the horses are all dead, it being roughly 10 years later so the scratching is likely independent of the pets, unless the local animals are fucking with us. She also said she cant sleep unless both doors are shut and she’ll often put doorstops under both doors so she hears if either door opens.

She googled some stuff and decided to sage the room and said she’s had hectic nightmares since and woke up screaming late at night a few times. For reference, she was about 14 when the night terrors happened with my gf so we never told her. As i said, im a skeptic but it’s still pretty creepy.” — Torrossaur

Road rage

“I was ambling down an old country highway in NW Georgia on my motorcycle (750 Vulcan) when I spotted an ambulance coming the opposite way. I pulled over, and a pickup truck pulled over behind me. In my rear-view mirror I see the passenger get out with a baseball bat and start hustling my way. I didn’t even look, just dropped it into gear and hauled ass. What followed was the most harrowing experience I’ve had in life as this pickup truck proceeds to chase me all over the place for about 20 minutes. I’m unfamiliar with the area and my bike was not meant for going fast around turns, so I’ve got no room for error and it’s all I can do to stay out in front of these guys. I’m blowing through four-way intersections in a bid to get some distance and come up with a plan, but they are hell-bent on catching me. I finally manage to get pointed towards the highway and into the cover of other cars, but then traffic stops on a bridge. The truck is three cars behind me, and I’m thinking if I can just get out to the highway I’m probably home free because my Vulcan can go fairly fast in a straight line. In my mirrors I can see that passenger snaking through the cars on the bridge, so I lane split (illegal in GA) and make the on-ramp, hammer down and I’m gone baby gone.

Never went back to that town. As far as I know this was an unprovoked attack of the hillbilly variety, because prior to the ambulance I hadn’t even seen another vehicle, I don’t ride particularly fast, and I don’t believe in loud pipes. I got lucky as hell, seeing him come up behind me like that.” — luckygiraffe

3am walk

“I am fairly small for a guy. I stand at around 5’5” and the most I’ve ever weighed was around 150lbs. About 6 or 7 years ago I didn’t have my license despite being far old enough to drive, but a good buddy of mine wanted to hang out. He too did not have a way of transport, so we decided to both walk towards one another and meet in the middle. We would both be walking ~5 miles. It was 3am on a cold winter night and I was wearing a black jacket with my hood up.

About 2 miles into my hike along the main road, a car pulled into a parking spot of a home I was passing, just a few feet behind me. He wasn’t entirely into the driveway, almost half way hanging out into the road. I half expected it was just a kind stranger wanting to give me a ride, but I wasn’t about to take any rides from anybody. I kept pacing forward and ignored the car behind me, expecting them to roll down a window and shout at me. It didn’t happen. The car just sat at the edge of that drive way, running but completely dark inside to the point that I could only barely make out the figure of a large man.

I don’t typically get frightened by much, but something in the air made me tense up and my heart kind of dropped to my stomach. I stopped and turned to look at the car. I had a feeling that the person driving was watching me intently.

The figure in the car was definitely facing me; I could see the reflection from his dash bouncing off of his eyes. I stared back. I figured he was about to yell out to me, but he just sat quietly in a strangely menacing way that I have only ever seen scenes in movies play out. I kinda did a wave at the figure, letting him know I saw him and waited for some type of communication in return. He didn’t budge, just stared intently. I returned to pacing away, slightly brisker.

After just a few moments I could hear the car slowly roll in reverse, so I turned to face it but kept pacing backwards. The car kept creeping, slowly. I pulled down my hood and stood still again, waiting for him to pass me.. but instead the man slowed to a stop beside me. The passenger side window rolled down, and the man and I met eyes.

No words were exchanged at all, and before I could even let out a “hello?” the man grimaced and accelerated away at a decent pace; almost as if he was disappointed by what he had seen.

It doesn’t seem like much from how it reads, but I’ll never forget how tense that interaction was for me. I’ve not felt anything like it since.” — babyfacedjanitor

Haunted supermarket

“I work in a supermarket, early shift, and part of my job is changing the shelf labels for the price changes each day. Just this Wednesday gone I was putting new labels on a shelf of hand soap when, about two foot along the shelf from me, a bottle shot off and landed in the middle of the aisle. I looked along the aisle at my colleague and she just shrugs her shoulders and says “happens all the time!”

I’ve never directly witnessed anything else but, being one of the first on the shopfloor each day, I’m now questioning all the items that I see sitting in the aisles first thing and guessing I can’t blame untidy customers for them all.” — NiteliteBunnyFrite

Weird guy

“My sophomore year in college I ran into this guy that was a year younger than me. Let’s call him Mitch. Mitch and I we’re acquaintances that ran in the same circles. He was a nice guy. Smart. And quiet. At parties he would fold these really cool 3d shapes in the corner instead of interacting. He would always just…watch everybody.

Anyway, I ran into him at a bus stop and I stopped to say hello. We had an awkward chat about our majors (him physics, me chE) and I asked if he had any contact with a mutual friend that went into the army. He said yes and I said ‘Great! Could you pass him my number!’

He opened his wallet and pulled out a piece of paper, the only thing in there. It had my name, university address, and phone number.” — clavalle

Murder basement

“I work as a cable tech. I once went into a basement that I still have nightmares about. There was a single pull sting type light in the center of the room so I couldn’t really see much until I turned it on, but the walls down the stairway were covered in old newspaper. I am used to dark basements so going to turn on the light I was not prepared for what I saw. All the walls were covered in newspapers. Everyone of them was a headline about a tragedy or a murder. There was a black and white framed picture on the wall, and below it was a large child sized porcelain doll propped up in a rocking chair with a super old looking cradle beside it. I stayed and did my job but I still can’t shake that feeling of… something… when I think about it.” — invalid_turkey

The matrix

“Every few months, in a department with over 20 women, we’d all come in in nearly identical outfits. It was odd. We were all ages and races and styles, but there’d be a day when everyone would show up in a black skirt and red blouse. A few months later, everyone in brown slacks and a cream colored dress shirt. A few months later, gray skirt and black sweater. We could never figure out the trigger (tv show character looking fly in that outfit the night before, a visitor to the building who appeared polished…nothing). Always creeped me out, as it seemed to represent some sort of group think or collective consciousness working on us.” — streamstroller

Please don’t do this at home

“This is a story from my mother. She was home alone for a while and was expecting a friend over, and was taking a shower. In case her friend came while she was still showering she left a note on the front door that said “I’m in the shower, come on in!” While she was showering she heard a knock on the bathroom door, and she said “I’ll be right out!” When she got out of the shower nobody was there, and a few minutes later her friend pulled into the driveway. ” — SolaireLuvzEstusSoup

Intruder

“I converted an old Android phone into a IP security cam that starts recording and send me an email on motion. Set it up before going out of town. One night I got a “motion detected” email at 3am. In the morning I went through the video, recording somehow got jammed and it shows a single frame of a weird silhouette standing in front of the door, with the door open (I left it close, and it was closed when I got back home).” — oguz279

A love story

“When my grandmother’s second husband was in his death throes, he had a habit of knocking on the bedroom wall to get her attention, since he didn’t have the strength to shout. This went on for a long time, because even though he was deathly ill he kept holding on. I was about seven years old at the time, and living with them.

Not long after he died, my grandmother told me that she was sitting at the dining room table alone one morning as they used to together, quietly drinking her coffee, when suddenly she heard the knocking on the wall again. She heard it clear as day. It wasn’t me, because I was in their bedroom sleeping in her bed, and she could see me sleeping at that (it was a small house). She claims she heard it on more than one occasion.

As the years went by, other strange things happened. I began to have dreams of a young man in a navy uniform I’d never met before, watching us sleep in the house, or standing over me in my bedroom. I sometimes felt an eerie presence in the house, and at one point heard a disembodied voice call me by name in the middle of the day. My grandmother almost got into a car accident once, and nearly missed hitting a semi when all at once she swore to God she could smell his cologne like he was in the car. She also had odd dreams of her husband coming back to the house, telling her he hadn’t gone anywhere and he wasn’t dead.

Finally, a bird began to visit the house some days. I saw it and heard it myself. The bird would fly to her bedroom window, and tap on the window with its beak. It did this many times, and we learned to recognize it. That was the last sign before the odd occurrences began to taper off. My grandmother died a couple of years ago, and afterwards for the first time ever, I felt like the presence in the house had left us.” — CaptainCruiser

Who was there?

“I have dogs that bark at anybody. My mother doesn’t live with me nor has a key to my house.

About 4 years ago i am sitting in my house alone on a day off from work. Both of my dogs hovering around me. One at my feet. One at the doorway leading into the hallway.

Its quiet. I am redditing. Or doing whatever on the internet. I hear my mothers voice clearly say “Brian!” like she was trying to get my attention from across the house.

I just perked my head up a little stunned thinking I was hearing things. However my dogs, as soon as I perked up, so did they and they started growling really fierce in the direction of the voice with their hair raised.

We went to inspect the house but nothing was there.” — whySOcomical

Watched

“This happened quite a few years ago when I was at Uni. My friends and I were living on a ground floor flat and my room was at the front of the biulding, outside my window was the front garden.

My boyfriend (at the time) and I had literally just finished having sex and I put my head on the pillow and glanced to my right, which is where the window was. There was a gap between the curtain and the window and I was met with a pair eyes watching me.
We both (me and the peeper) had the instinct to look away and then quickly look back. At this point, I shouted to my ex, that there was someone watching us from outside. He jumped, opened the window and shouted various amusing warnings. He could see that the grass was disturbed so that someone had been there and by the looks of it more than once.

From further inspection the next morning, we found out that he had jumped the small hedge and exited through my neighbours garden.” — treatmelikeatable

Hospital ghost

“I’m a nurse and I used to work day shift at my old job. I was walking down the hallway with my computer-on-wheels (COW) to pass meds one afternoon. I was in between two patient rooms, not really close to either door, and far away from the nurse’s station and kitchenette. I could hear one of the physical therapists talking to a patient in one of the rooms, but no one else was in the hallway. I was looking down at my papers to kind of get myself organized before going to see another patient. All of a sudden in my right ear, like someone was standing right behind me, I heard a female voice say “I’m COLD!!!” in kind of a jokey way, like someone would do a big shiver and rub their arms and say, brrrr, I’m COLD! I turned around thinking it was my friend Brittney goofing on me but there was no one there. There was no one in the hallway at all.” — MuninnMoraine

They want you to know they’re there

“My wife and our two friends are hanging out one evening chatting away, my son and his friend were( the son of one of the people we were hanging out with) were asleep in his room. The four of us hear a blood curdling yell. I swear it was her sons and she swears it was my sons voice. She races through the kitchen and into the room to see what has happened, nothing, they were sound asleep. She comes back through the kitchen to tell us and freezes in terror. Every single door and drawer is open, 23 of them. In the 10 seconds she was out of the kitchen everything was opened. 6 of them are high enough to be out of reach to everyone except me. Didn’t sleep too well that night.” — Icamp2cook

Toilet ghost

“As a child I walked into the toilet in my Great grandfather’s house (I lived with him for a while) and he was sitting on the toilet and had not locked the door.

I spluttered out an apology as I backed out and shut the door, then I stood on the other side of the door and realised that he had died some time before, shook my head and went back in to the empty toilet.

I have never really forgotten the feeling of ‘Well, that simply is not real’.” — Pedantichrist

Wii

“We have a Wii. The sensor bar is on the TV stand directly in front of the TV… as is anyones…

We dont have the cord wrapped up or anything it just hangs behind the TV in a jumble.
One night we were watching TV cuddling on the couch, when suddenly, the Wii sensor bar literally flies across the room til it got to the end of its length and fell to the floor.

Like someone had grabbed it and chucked it across the room.

We could find no explanation for this whatsoever. We had a cat and a dog at the time but cat was sleeping in another room, and dog was on the couch with us.” — InthegrOTTO87

Patio lunch

“Was out at lunch in midtown Atlanta with some coworkers. We sat out on the patio. There are some high rise condos right across the street. Some guy jumped from his ~40th floor balcony and splattered all over the roof of someone’s Jetta. Everything went everywhere. The noise was pretty memorable as well. We noped out of there before ordering. It was a super silent ride back to work. One of my coworkers said he won’t sit out on patios anymore when eating.” — incognitoATwork

Creepy student

“I am a teacher of adult students, and one student of mine is kind of intense and creepy. Actually, she’s based at another school, but specifically started attending classes at my school after meeting me. When i first started, she kept giving me ‘welcome presents’ as I was new to the country. Just simple things like food, postcards and books, which was a nice idea but it seemed a little excessive. She added me on social media and then got upset when i didn’t reply to her constant messages (i told her that i don’t really use social media).

Anyway, i didn’t see her for a few months and figured she’d just gone back to her own school or stopped studying or whatever, and was relieved that she’d clearly got bored of me. But then last week she comes in and gives me an envelope full of photos of me during lessons that she’d taken… without me knowing.” — antisarcastics

Found

“Was working in an office pretty late, 100% sure I was the only one there. The AC system shuts down at like 7PM, and until it does, you don’t notice how much noise it was actually making. Office got extremely quiet, which is unsettling to begin with, and I had my office door closed. About thirty minutes later, I hear the muted voice of a little girl with a heavy British accent saying “mommy, I think he’s in this one.” (note: I live in the American south, so there is no good reason for a British child to be there) Almost shit my pants as the door cracked ever so slightly, until a real live little girl popped her head in and says “nope, wrong one. Sorry!” Turns out, her American stepfather was still in the building.” — MotleyBru

Haunted clocks

“At our old house the clock on my nightstand always jumped ahead by five minute increments every few days. I’d change it out – electric, battery powered, any clock that was on my night stand would do it. Watched our room to make sure no one was messing with me. It was just… weird.” — focusly

He wasn’t asleep

“I often visit WalMart in the wee hours of the morning. One time I went in about 2 am and noticed and elderly gentlemen asleep on one of the mobility scooters at the entrance. When I left bout 20 minutes later, he was still there. I thought it was a little odd no one from the store had woken him up, but whatever. Found out the next day he had died and spent the better part of a day on display as a corpse at the entrance to walmart.” — bobombpom

Dead cats

“Years ago when I was a senior in high school, I had a day were I wasn’t feeling to great. So I decided, as I occasionally did, to skip out on my last two classes and head home. That meant no school buses obviously so I would just walk the 3 miles home. Before the age of computer cell phones this was a pretty long, boring hike to take so I decided to take a short cut through some small wooded trail along the creek.

Eventually I came across a dead cat lying in the middle of the trail. As I walked around it I noticed another dead cat to my left. Looked to my right and sure enough there was another. Creeped out, I looked behind me and noticed two more, and yet another two in front of me. they were all laid out in a giant circle, with one in the middle. Almost like a half assed pentagam.

I speeded up the pace and got the hell out of there. Never took that trail again. Thinking back a really weird thing is that there was no visible damage to any of the cats, to blood or cuts, the dead.” — PMmebassguitars

Yikes

“I worked for Radioshack back in the late 90’s and I was scheduled to open on a Saturday morning. I go in the door, lock up behind me and go to the back to get things ready, only to see my boss sitting at the chair in the back with his tie around his neck and tied up to a inventory rack with his pants around his ankles and he’s dead with his still erect dong in his hands.

That is the day I started drinking heavily.” — meandrunkR2D2

RIP Max

“When I was 12 my cat went missing in the summer. We lived in the country near a lot of farms and he was an indoor/outdoor cat but he would come home every night for his dinner. He hadn’t shown up for 2 days and I’d been roaming around the fields looking for him. The 2nd night I had a vivid dream where I saw him lying on his side in a field, dead, with his neck snapped and his tongue hanging out. The next morning I went out as soon as I woke up and walked exactly to where his body was in a field about 600 yards from my house where I hadn’t looked yet. He looked just as he did in my dream, down to the position of his body and his tongue being out. We figure he got his neck snapped by a coyote or dog. Creeped me right out and I strongly believe that dreams can tell you things if you only pay attention. Since then I’ve had other dreams that have come true or warned me of things, but this was the most vivid – it was like a photograph – and 20 years later I can still see the image clearly in my mind. RIP sweet Max.” — lumaday

Indian in the cupboard

“I once worked as a live-in staff member in a college dormitory.

During the summer we housed the few summer school students who remained on campus (nearly 30). It may be significant to point out these students tended towards the highly academically-motivated, often times high-stress students, if quiet.

One warm day in late June my office received a call from a concerned sibling that she and her family was unable to reach her brother who lived by himself in a room on the summer school floor. This wasn’t unusual as our office frequently dealt with students avoiding their kith and kin due to frayed nerves or general social awkwardness.

Our normal protocol to check on a student is to try to reach them by our emergency contact information, failing that – go check their room to verify they’re living in the building and perhaps available then and there, then have them call their family to verify we followed up on the original request. Also – we are to only enter a room with another staff member present to ensure personal safety of staff and students. I failed to reach this student on his room and mobile phone, and was working short-staffed so since I was on my own I decided to pop up to his room and check on him. I arrived on his floor around 2 in the afternoon and the floor seemed deserted as I had expected. I found his room number and immediately noticed the sound of a movie playing on a TV or computer from behind the door. I knocked three times and announced that I was a staff member checking on his health and safety.

No answer.

I didn’t think this was that remarkable, college students are notorious for leaving electronics running while not in the room. I checked the floor showers and bathrooms and found them deserted.

I returned to his door and knocked three more times, waiting about 20 seconds between each knock.

No answer.

This is when my instincts started to buzz. I worked in residence halls a number of years as a professional and something about all the pieces of this puzzle weren’t adding up; family concerned about his health and safety, electronics running (someone must have started them recently, within the time frame of a movie run-time), summer school students and their idiosyncratic behavior, something wasn’t right.

I was by myself, so I probably let myself get more worked up than if I was with someone else. A deserted dorm floor, even at 2 in the afternoon, oftentimes evokes Kubrician memories of the Overlook Hotel . . .

I decided that for some sense of closure or sanity I needed the immediate resolution of keying into this student’s room, even though I was by myself and not technically supposed to do so.

I knocked on the door one more time for good measure, again announced myself as the hall director. I keyed into the room and my spider sense went off even stronger: The room appeared relatively vacant; the student appeared to be living out of a suitcase (which is unusual for someone staying no less than 8 weeks for a summer school session). The bedding was tussled like someone had been sleeping in it and all the lights in the room were on. And as I had suspected, there was an open laptop on a desk running on battery power playing The Matrix. But no student. I began to start rationalizing to keep from feeling unsettled; surely this student and I had crossed paths on my way to his room (I’d never met him before so I wouldn’t recognize him otherwise) and perhaps he was just down in the lobby picking up delivery food for a late lunch.
Sure, that’s it.

Then I turned to leave, planning on trying to reach the student later in the afternoon or that night. As I turned to leave I noticed another odd piece of evidence; the accordion closet doors (which are removed in most rooms due to disuse, particularly single rooms like his) were still in this room. And they were closed.

Odd. I couldn’t remember the last time I actually saw someone use those cranky, dysfunctional doors. Then my intuition spiked higher than ever. SHIT SHIT SHIT. I realized I was alone in a room with a potentially suicidal student who may, in fact, have completed just that. And I am about to be “that guy” who discovers the body and then has a shit storm of paperwork and undesirable tasks, not the least of which would be calling the family back to break the news.

I felt like I was talking to myself when my voice cracked as I spoke to the closed doors and announced my name and title and that I would be opening those accordion doors in 3 seconds.

I fumbled with the latch on the doors, and finally managed to get them disengaged, and as I slid the doors apart, I was unprepared. I don’t know what I really expected, a hanging? gunshot wound?

I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect: a 7′ dark-skinned Indian man staring at me embarrassingly as though I had found his secret hangout. We stared at each other for a good 15 seconds without blinking, breathing or speaking. I finally realized what was going on and my natural emotion was disbelief. All I could think to say was, “Um . . . are you in here hiding from me?”

He looked at me and said, “Yah.”

My heart was still racing, I turned to leave and before I shut his door I turned back to him and said, “Call your sister, she’s worried about you, and, frankly, I am too.”” — PressureChief

Then who was security?

“Security at my old building came by to change the locks.

Then a few hours later, security came by to change the locks.” — hck1206a9102

“Cat”

“I’m entering a disclaimer- it was NOT a mountain lion.

I live in the sticks in Michigan, but a decent sized neighborhood with about twenty houses. Our streets make two circles. I was home with my toddler, who was taking a nap. I’m on my back porch, drinking coffee. Around noon. There’s a piercing scream that seems to last at least thirty seconds, I’m startled, so I go out of my fence and walk up my driveway to look around.

There’s a man hauling ass down the street, cradling his arm and dripping blood on the concrete. He sees me and shouts, “Did you see that fucking cat?! Which way did it go?!” I saw no animal.

I asked if he needed help, but he declined, saying an ambulance was on its way and just needed to find the cat. Perplexed, I pull off my long sleeve and hand it to the guy, telling him to at least wrap his injury. He holds up his arm, and his fingers are mangled.

“A housecat did this to you?!” As I gently help him wrap his hand.

“This wasn’t a regular cat…we just have to find him!!!!”

So I help him look. So do a few of our neighbors. Ambulance arrives a few houses down at his place, so we walk down and sit on the curb. Suddenly, commotion from the other way and a half dozen people sprinting to the cul-de-sac to corner this animal. It disappears around a house, and we hear a volley of barking. Another man comes from behind the house, running at full speed towards the ambo. I’m still sitting with bloody guy, and running guy gives him a tissue. I almost fainted and probably would have if I were standing- in it was bloody guy’s thumb and first finger, with a bit of tissue and nasty.

We never caught “the cat” and I didn’t get a good enough look at whatever it was to figure it out. Bloody guy said he was weeding his garden and this giant black fuzzy thing with teeth and a tail chomped his hand under the bush and ran. He tried to follow it, but it was too fast. He said it stood taller than his knees, and he was like 6’5.

Got his digits stuck back on properly though, and has since fenced his back yard.” — berthejew

Stacy

“I was dating a girl in high school, let’s call her Stacy. During senior year we got senior release during lunch which meant we could leave school during our lunch period. Being horny teens we went back to her house and she started giving me a bj. Suddenly we both here someone call out “Stacy?”. We both jumped up and got dressed. No one was home. Both her parents were at work and her siblings was at school. We looked outside and no neighbors were outside. To this day we have no idea who or what it was, but we both heard it.” — Mr_Belch

Haunted tattoo shop

“Worked in a tattoo shop where two of the past owners had died. One of them died just a block away from the shop, and it was long rumored that the shop was haunted/cursed. Weird stuff would happen like speakers/decorative knives falling off shelves overnight and smashing through our glass-topped light table, and the lights would flicker on and off.

One late night I was alone in the shop tattooing some eighteen-year-old kid and the light above me started flickering. My lights above my station had always been perfectly lit so this seemed unusual. It was flickering so much that it was starting to get annoying and I began to feel nervous, even though I really didn’t believe the shop was haunted. Finally after a few minutes of this I stopped tattooing for a second, looked up at the light, and said in my head, “okay [dead shop owner’s name], I get it, you’re here. Can you stop messing with my light, please?” It was supposed to be kind of a joke.

The light stopped flickering INSTANTLY. It went back to just shining regular ol’ light and I went back to tattooing, pretty shaken up. From that moment I knew the dead shop owner was there and I knew he was just causing occasional mayhem to fuck with us, nothing malicious but definitely haunting that place.” — mmiikkiitt

People are scarier than ghosts

“I used to work at a Boy Scout Summer Camp. Every week I had to take a big group of campers to a “secluded” spot for their wilderness survival badge where they had to build a shelter out of sticks, leaves, etc and sleep in it overnight. The spot was only about 1/2 mile from the main camp, but we took them a circuitous route that made it seem really secluded.

Anyways, on this one night all the campers had made their shelters, we had cooked dinner, and were all just sitting around the campfire. It was getting late, maybe 11:00, so I sent all the campers to their shelters for the night and started cleaning up the fire. That’s when we heard in the distance what sounded like church bells. They were pretty faint, but myself and my fellow staffers could definitely hear them. They went on for about 30 minutes, ringing ever 30 seconds, or so. We were all a little creeped out, as there were no churches or towns within 20 miles of us. After the bells stopped, though, the singing started. It was too faint to hear the words, but it sounded like church choir music, but a lot of people, and a lot more enthusiastic. Also, it was almost midnight at this point. The singing went on for well over an hour, sometimes quieting down until we almost couldn’t hear it, sometimes getting so loud we thought it was getting closer.

All of the campers were super creeped out, but I lied to them, telling them there was a church service going on in camp, and that there was nothing to be scared of. Eventually, at almost 1 AM, the singing stopped. I found out a few days later that there had been a large KKK rally only a few miles away that night, and that’s what we had heard.” — VVillyD

Co-worker apparition

“This isn’t creepy, but it gave me pause for thought.

I was returning to my office having finished a meeting. As I approached the door, I saw my colleague walk from the left of the office to the right – presumably returning to his desk.

As I entered the office, I started to say “Hey Ma-“, stopping abruptly upon the realisation that there was nobody else in the office with me.

I’m not sure what exactly I witnessed, but it was clear enough and detailed enough to convince me 100% that my colleague would be in there.” — MostBestInternetter

At least it wasn’t the other way around

“A few months ago I had this really scary dream that seemed so real. In my dream, I was in my bed doing something on my laptop. Suddenly I just had a bad feeling something wasnt right. Like I somehow knew something was in my room with me that shouldnt be there. I jump off my bed, and hurry and flip my light on. I flip it on just in time to see this weird black shadow sphere thing with legs zoom under my bed. I woke up scared and crying, but it felt so real and I just knew whatever I saw was very evil.

The next day me and my dad were watching one of those ghost shows like My Ghost Story on TV. In the episode this women was in her room, and all of a sudden she felt like something wasnt right. She turned her light switch on just in time to see a weird black shadow sphere thing with legs scurry under her bed. It pretty much looked exactly like the thing I saw in my dream. I flipped the fuck out.” — Newaccountsauce

But then who was phone?

“Working late in the lab at school, I had to grab something from an upstairs classroom. It’s after midnight and the entire building was empty and dark. Suddenly the phone in the classroom starts ringing. So, after that heart attack I decide to answer it.

Silence. Not even a dial tone. So I hope out and go back to my dorm. The next day I have class in that room, so I ask my professor how often people call the classroom phone by mistake. He looks at me funny and says the phone in that room has been disconnected for years.” — Pinion_Gear

The murder chair

“Took my 3 year old daughter on a hiking trail through some local woods. I let my daughter lead the way and she chose to turn up a path that was far less well trafficked than most of the trails in the area.

About 10-15 minutes in on this relatively overgrown and barely there trail, heading deeper into a more isolated portion of the forest than I’d ever been to previously, we came across a grizzly sight. A white plastic lawn chair tied to a tree by a rope, the seat covered in splatters of days old dried viscous fluid.

https://i.imgur.com/plEfQ1y.jpg
I snapped that pic and then picked my daughter up and noped the fuck right out of there.
After the fact I’ve come to a far less creepy explanation for what we saw, but in the moment it was creepy as fuck.” — OctavianX

The crow

“I was working with a young client with childhood onset Schizophrenia. This individual was a harm to themselves and others.

My back was to the window in my office when they started screaming “THE MAN IN THE BLACK IS HERE HE FOLLOWED ME NO NOOO!” As I am trying to calm them down, they start to sob.

HE IS AT THE WINDOW. I CAN HEAR HIM. HE SAYS HE WANTS TO HURT YOU. HE WILL COME IN HERE AND TAKE YOUR SKIN OFF HE WANTS YOU DEAD.

I am trying to calm them down, moving through the plan we had when they were overcome by their hallucinations.

Then I hear tapping on the window.

There is an enormous black crow at the window. Tapping on the glass extremely hard with its beak. The bird was just staring at me. It would tap, bringing its head back and slamming its beak into the glass. Then staring. Over and over again.

I got the client calmed down and we ended. The bird was still there. We leave the office.

The bird was still there when I came back.

Next client comes in. Bird was still there.

That bird sat at my window another four hours, staring and tapping.” — LustfulGumby

Peeping Tom

“I don’t know if this counts because I was too young to actually remember this happening, but one day when I was in elementary school my mom picked my brother and I up from school and we stopped to play at a local park on the way home. We ended up leaving early because there was a sketchy truck parked there (not in the parking lot) and my mom was a little uneasy about it.

Later that night, my mom was getting ready for bed and screamed because there was a guy peering through her bedroom window. My dad ran outside but the guy was gone already.
A month or so later, we were watching America’s most wanted and my mom recognized one of the guys as the guy who had been peering through her window. His truck was identical to the sketchy truck she had seen at the park. He had murdered his girlfriend’s parents (girlfriend and brother were stabbed but survived, IIRC).” — BareShoulderHeathen

Benign ghost

“Almost every night my TV turns on by itself at some point between 3-5 am. I used to think that maybe it was one of my cats who walked across the remote, but I’ve tried hiding the remote, putting it places where they couldn’t get to it, and it still happens.

Now I just turn the sound all the way down, before I go to bed. The TV will still get turned on, but at least then I won’t be woken up by it.

I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation for it, but I rather like the idea of having a benign ghost, who likes late-night TV, living in my tiny apartment with me.” — Lilebi

Shooter

“I had a customer come into my work wearing a trench coat and ushanka type hat. Looked to have something strapped to his shirt under the coat with duct tape. He left, I messaged my wife about how creepy he was and that I thought he had a bomb on his chest. He came back 15 minutes later and thanked me for being polite and started talking about religion and Obama being the Anti-Christ. Turns out he was on his way to shoot up the Planned Parenthood and he managed to kill 3 people.” — Yizzar1234

The universe turned off

“About three years ago, my old roommate and I were just hanging out in our living room watching a show or something in the middle of the day, when all of the sudden for like a split second everything went pitch black. Like, everything. It was not a power outage, our TV remained on and there were no blinking clocks. It was more as if the universe just turned off for a half-second.

As if this utterly unparalleled experience wasn’t enough on its own, my roommate looked over at me right after it happened and said “Did you see that?”” — lmMrMeeseeksLookAtMe

Family story

“When I was about 10, something real weird happened to my family.

We were all asleep, as usual, and I slept in the same room as my brother, and my mum with my father and younger brother. In the middle of the night, the safe in my parents’ room starts going off as if someone was playing with it. My parents didn’t think much about it, went back to bed, and right as they did that, my brother’s toys (the ones that had those children’s songs) started playing music, without anyone touching it. They were a little freaked out, but it went away after a few minutes so they went back to bed.
However, in the morning, when my mum brought my brother to the shower, she saw a red handprint on his back that was too big to be hers but too small to be my father’s. I saw the handprint, and it looked as though someone had slapped my brother, but nobody did and he slept quite well.

My mum called her family, and told my grandparents about it. After a few phone calls, we found out that my paternal grandma died that night, while we were asleep. So our family came up with the explanation that my grandma wanted to see my newborn brother so she payed us a little visit (my family is a bit superstitious, but apparently it’s normal for South Europeans). I still am unable to explain that and it still is a little scary to think about.” — Aleksandra1128

Haunted

“When I was young we use to live in a house that we didn’t know was haunted at the time. There were many thing I remember happening, but the one that freaked me out was when my sister’s said that whenever they tried to look for me, they always found me in my mom and dads closet with the door closed. I would be sitting there in the dark and play with my toys, and when they asked why I was in there I would say I’m playing with my friends.
Other things kept happening that my parents brought a medicine man to the house. He told us that an old man and his 2 granddaughters died in a fire in the house. So he did his ceremony to get rid of the spirits, he told us to leave the front door open for tonight and we all sleep in the living room. towards the middle of the night I remember we all woke up to the sound of the front door slamming shut, indicating that the spirits have left us.” — nativelight

The thin person

“My father’s story. One day he was cooking for the family. The living room and kitchen is one room where in the middle of it, there is a corridor that leads to our bedrooms. As he was cooking he turned around and saw this really tall and thin ”person” runs from our living room through the corridor. My father as a man of science does not believe in the paranormal, but this got him… He went to check in every single bedroom just to be sure about it. That is the part that terrifies me.” — DimitrisPla

Ghost sister

“I was waiting at my Nan’s house alone for a couple of hours and it was all fine and dandy. I was sat on an armchair near the door of the living room and I hear my sister clearly call my name in an annoyed way. She wasn’t in the house! My heart started beating like crazy and then when she did come in to the house about 40 minutes later she just laughed at me . I still don’t know what it was or if my mind was playing tricks on my but it was very creepy.” — k-f-p

Deanna

“This happened to my old coworker:

She was in the process of purchasing a new home. Her and her family would visit the developing home every weekend just to see the progress of the house. A few weeks passed where life got busy and they couldn’t visit it. Her 3 year old daughter came up to her one day and said, “mommy when are we going to the house again? I wanna see my friend!” She replied, “Oh ok sweetie, we’re going there tomorrow actually.” She said, “Yay!” And ran off. My coworker thought that maybe she was talking about a neighborhood kid or something like that and didn’t think much of it. They visit the house the following day, and on the way home, her daughter starts crying. “Mommy I’m so sad I didn’t see my friend!” And she replied, “Oh honey, don’t worry. Maybe you’ll see your friend next weekend when we go.” So my coworker prayed that night to basically bring her daughter comfort and make her forget about this “friend.” That or have her see whoever this is next weekend. Well… the next day her daughter comes running into the room saying, “Mommy mommy I’m so happy I saw my friend!” She replied, “Oh you did? Where did you see your friend?” (Confused because she always talks about seeing her “friend” on the other side of town). “I saw her in the mirror.” Her daughter replied. “Wut?” My coworker said. “She said she loves me but she can’t see me anymore.” My coworker asked, “What’s your friends name? And what does she look like?” Her daughter responded, “She’s really pretty! Long dark hair, and her name is Deanna.” My coworker’s heart sank. That was the name of her sister that died at birth.” — katiebug0313

👻 You can read 101 of the scariest (and shortest!) true stories in our new collection, 101 True Scary Stories to Read in Bed Tonight, available here. 👻