30 Scarred People Reveal The Scariest Thing They Have Ever Seen, That Will Never Leave Their Memory 

My mother's husband coming at me with a machete trying to kill me. I stumbled and fell, it's not a silly horror movie trope, it happens. I still hear the sound of it hitting the floor inches away from my feet as I scrambled backwards. Did you know that machetes make sparks when they hit…

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These people from Ask Reddit are here to explain the scariest thing they’ve ever seen.

1. Was a dog walker. Opened the door to my most frequent client hanging by a slip-lead she had gotten from me. She had been dead for two days. That shit fucked me up for a long time.

2. I was surfing with a group of friends and while paddling back out came across a dead body. He was completely swollen from being in the water and I can still see his eye less face when we flipped him over.

3. A few years ago my family and I lived in a house with a rather large basement. Our basement had a door which led to a smaller room where my dad mainly kept his tools. When I was about 16 I went downstairs to get a textbook because I was working on a science project. This was about at 3 am. I went downstairs and turned the light on. While I was halfway down the stairs the doorknob on the door which led to a smaller room started violently shaking. Whoever was trying to open the door couldn’t because the door was locked. Then they banged on the door one time and stopped. I thought it could’ve have my brother or dad who probably got stuck in there so I wanted to go check. But just in case I went back upstairs to pick up my dad’s hunting rifle. With my heart beating out of my chest I opened the door and no one was there. This is impossible because there is no other way out of the small door other than that door. And even if the person who was violently shaking the door knob opened the door and left I would’ve seen him/her while I was upstairs grabbing the rifle. My parents dismissed it as me hallucinating but I know what I saw. Thankfully we moved out a while back. By far the scariest moment of my life.

4. A guy being shot just a couple feet away from me and my friend…I think the scary thing is that me and friend saw that car come down the road and just stared at it. Once the shots rang out we hid under a car. I’m surprised they didnt do anything to us afterward.

5. The inside of a green sedan car when a guy tried to kidnap me when I was 18. He had the door opened and tried to push me inside several times, I remember thinking “if he gets me inside I’m dead” so I put the heel of my shoe at the bottom of the door, one hand on the roof and pushed against the car with all my strength while crying. I bit, scratch and hit but I’m thin and he was a muscular young guy. So the inside of that car is the scariest thing ever.

6. My mother’s husband coming at me with a machete trying to kill me. I stumbled and fell, it’s not a silly horror movie trope, it happens. I still hear the sound of it hitting the floor inches away from my feet as I scrambled backwards. Did you know that machetes make sparks when they hit hard surfaces?

7. I got mugged once, so I’d say my mugger. I remember his face very clearly. He stabbed me once on the side of my torso and I had to go to therapy for it.

8. Inside the barrel of a shotgun. I was younger. Shot at a kid with a paintball. He ran home to get his dad’s shotgun. Still don’t know if it was loaded.

9. My sister with a needle in her arm and her head blown off in the garage.

10. Driving down the street approaching a freeway overpass and see a tanker crashing into the bridge and exploding on the overpass. I stop about 5′ from the flames and can’t backup because the traffic behind me. I jumped out and ran.

11. A highway car crash at the front of my friends.

We heard the noise when we were in the house. We ran outside to see what had happened.

A guy from my high school crossed to the other side of the road and collided head on with a truck. He burned to death in front of my friend and I.

12. Once when I was about 10 or 11 years old I heard this story from one of my friends about a local urban legend that only came out during years that ended with a 7, the year was 2017 and it was a warm June night I had gone downstairs to get myself a glass of water from the kitchen. I then went to the bathroom and while I was washing my hands I looked out the window and saw a huge set of blood stained teeth, I told my parents and they didn’t believe me, of course. To this day I still wondered if those teeth I saw that night could’ve been those of the Michigan Dog-man.

13. Lived in Texas and about 18 years ago I could hear my neighbors fighting (the husband was a violent drunk) outside. Just as I opened the front door to watch another fight unfold between the husband and wife, I saw the wife open the door to their truck and pull out a 12 Gauge shot gun and put a hole in her husband’s chest.

14. My mom being choked with a knife to her throat by my dad. It didn’t help that I was 7 and I had to make the call for help.

15. My brother coming home almost naked and beaten up. Some people had jumped him, stripped him and ganged up on him over some girl, apparently.

The fact that he was beaten up wasn’t so scary, but he was naked. My mind immediately jumped to worse stuff.

16. I once saw a guy riding on top of my family’s car, he was leaning over the top and looking through the window just smiling at me and my siblings.

17. I saw a young teenage girl sit on the edge of a 9 story building’s roof contemplating suicide. Me and my work partner were on the ground watching a negotiator working with her to talk her down. I’m getting anxious just remembering it.

She was talked off the ledge and brought to the hospital. (Didn’t jump.)

18. My mom, siblings and I have all seen this but, we start to smell cigarette smoke, then we turn around or look and see a man sitting or standing, just watching you. Then it disappears. Gone. poof.

19. Had a schizophrenic meth head on a 3 day bender break into my house while my son was home and I was at work.

My 12 year old was on Christmas break from school, and decided to sleep in my bed with me the night before, to watch a movie. When I got up for work in the morning, I left him to sleep in my bed, it’s a small safe town and he’s responsible, so I didn’t have any issue leaving him for the few days I still had to work before leaving for Christmas holidays.

I had been at work for an hour when he texted me and told me someone was in the house. I immediately thought it was one of our friends dropping off Christmas baking or something, and texted back, who is it? And he responded I don’t know, they told the dogs not to bark and wake me up. I thought that was odd so I drove home and checked around not seeing anything, went to my room and he was covered up in the blankets. I got him out of bed, he’s telling me he saw someone, didn’t hear them leave. So I brought him upstairs to check the cameras. Once upstairs waiting for the camera recordings to load, he went to the washroom. I had a weird feeling, so I thought I’d better check the closet in my room (big walk in closet). As soon as I walked in the closet and turned the light on I saw him hiding in the corner. I was immediately furious. I yelled at him and called the police. I waited with him while he rocked back and forth sitting on the floor for the police to come. I wasn’t sure what he was on but he wasn’t aggressive towards me. Police arrested him and then once he was back at the detachment he attacked a female cop and tried to get her gun to shoot her.

Once it was all over with, everything sunk in and it took a long time to get over that fear. I had to force myself to check the spot he was hiding it every time I went in my closet to tell my brain he wasn’t there.

20. I had just finished watching Insidious.

My son, who was around 6 at the time, was asleep in his room. I could see his room and him/ hid bed out of the corner of my eye from the couch I was sitting on. I was talking to my best friend on the phone and I see movement. I stop talking turn my head to the side to see him.

He slowly sat up in his bed and slooooowly turned his head to face me. Just his head. His eyes were closed.

It was especially terrifying because the entire movie I was thinking about how it weirdly was like my son. He had an unexplained “coma” for 12 hours, had night terrors and sleep walking… He talked a lot about “monster vision” and at one point had an imaginary friend with no face that told him to hurt me.

He’s normal now and has, to my knowledge, not murdered anyone.

21. When I was 7 I found the mutilated body of one of my classmates who had gone missing the week before. Her body was dumped behind the local playground.

22. Walking in Walgreens a little out of it, I look over and see a man with fresh stab wounds in his face and neck. I think there’s no way that’s real, no one around me seemed to be panicking and the man himself seems fine, I’ve had hallucinations before so I shrug it off. Then I look back at him, the stab wounds are still there which is unusual for my hallucinations, he looks at me and we stare at each other. I think I’m being rude by staring because there’s no way this man has actual fresh stab wounds in his face. I move on only slightly shaken because I might need to up my medication. Then a bunch of police officers come in and arrest him. It took a few minutes for the dread and fear to really sink in.

23. Maybe 8 or 9 years ago I went on a late-night bike ride to Niagara Falls, from my house in the neighboring town. It was kind of spooky fun going there at 1 AM with no one around, but that’s not the scary part.

Heading home around 2 AM, I had to pass underneath the bridge leading back to Grand Island, where I lived at the time. Just on the other side of the dark underpass were three naked dudes throwing a rope up in a tree. One had a torch, like an honest-to-goodness Indiana Jones torch. They all just kind of looked at me as I rolled past. I noped out pretty fast.

To get home, I had to sort of loop around from the bike path and double back to get onto the bridge. As I was climbing up the bridge, I chanced a look down on the scene I’d just passed. All three guys were just staring silently up at me. It was another big NOPE.

24. Being on the phone with my son, when he was robbed at gun point, I heard the whole thing, then heard the guy running away with his phone, at that point I had no way of knowing if my son had been hurt.

He wasn’t, but a truly terrifying moment for a mother.

25. I was running home once in the middle of a thunderstorm and quite literally a bolt of lightning hit RIGHT in front of me, I was literally almost hit.

26. Once I had to get up really early in the morning to go on a trip for my job. It was about 3:30 in the morning and I had forgotten to go and get gas for my car the night before. I stopped at a gas station about a mile away from my house because it was well-lit and it was in a nicer area.

Anyways, I was pumping gas and then I got the weirdest feeling that I needed to move. I moved behind my car and then away from it and then I noticed this huge guy hiding in front of my car. He was sneaking towards me when I got the urge to get away from my car.

I was completely alone and I’m just a small girl. I almost always have mace or something with me if I am by myself. This time I had a knife and pulled it out and started screaming bloody murder for him to get the hell away from me. Then he started moving closer around my car to me. I screamed even louder and an attendant came out who called the cops.

Definitely one of the scariest moments of my life.

27. As an early teen my bro and I saw a kid on a skateboard try and grab onto the back of a semi trailer, fell and was ran over by the rear set of wheels. He stood up, took a few steps and back down and passed.

28. A homeless men trying to get inside of the house through my bedroom window while I was trying to get some underwear.

29. Walking to my parking garage late at night. Woman stopped me asking if I could give her a ride to buy milk for her newborn. No way was I going to go that, politely declined but still felt kind of bad. My parking garage stairwell had windows I could look out of, decided to watch where she went next. She walked towards a set of dumpsters which I had passed by, and from behind them arose two men. They then walked down the alley together.

Still wonder what they had in mind. If there were going to mug me they had that opportunity as I passed by them before she stopped me. Possibly planned to steal my car since she asked for a ride. Either way, my stomach dropped when I saw them pop out from behind those dumpsters.

30. I watched a dude get shot and die in a road rage incident. Messed me up for a while. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

January Nelson

January Nelson

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.