Strangers In The Dark: 22 People Describe The Creepiest Thing They Ever Saw At Night
"One night I saw a black hooded figure with glowing red eyes at the foot of my bed."
1. A man walking on stilts at midnight.
“A man walking on stilts.
It was midnight, like 12:00 AM. And I see a random dude walking on stilts.
????????????????????????”
2. I opened the curtains and watched two clowns walk down the street on the sidewalk in front of our house.
“One night I woke up at about 2 in the morning just super thirsty. I went downstairs, got something to drink and went back to my room. I decided to look out the window just to check on things. I opened the curtains and watched two clowns walk down the street on the sidewalk in front of our house. I didn’t sleep well after that.”
3. One night I saw a black hooded figure with glowing red eyes at the foot of my bed.
“I’m schizophrenic. One night I saw a black hooded figure with glowing red eyes at the foot of my bed.”
4. A man fucking a cow.
“A man fucking a cow, through night-vision goggles. (in Afghanistan.)”
5. Animal sacrifice in the cemetery.
“Would always take the shortcut through a local cemetery from my friends house to my house. I wasn’t afraid of it, I knew the caretakers and all of the dogs that roamed the place.
Get into the middle of the cemetery and I see candles lit and people standing around. I skirt around them and they are all chanting something in Spanish, I’m able to make out a couple of chickens in a pen but they are all chanting/praying.
Next day I returned on my bike, go to the same spot and find little bowls filled with chicken eyes, hearts, etc. I was only about 17 at the time, but apparently I happened upon a group of people practicing Santeria.
It freaked me out at first and when I learned a little more about it I realized it was not much to fear, unfortunately I didn’t learn more about it for a few years.
Yep, creepy as hell, especially seeing the remains of the chickens the next day.”
6. Hooded cult ceremony in the graveyard.
“A few buddies and myself used to be into ghost hunting in high-school. There was this creepy 19th-century graveyard in my town, sort of tucked back into the woods off of a desolate road, that we’d sometimes go to at night for shits and gigs. I had one of those TalkBoys from Home Alone so I’d take that and we would ask the ‘spirits’ questions to try to excite some EVP’s or whatever (really we were just fucking bored). So one night around midnight we decide to go; it had recently rained and was still drizzling a little bit so the atmosphere was pretty spooky. As we’re walking up, sort of laughing and joking to ourselves, one of my buddies stops dead in his tracks and is just staring towards the center of the graveyard where there is a small, dim streetlamp. Shit you not, faintly illuminated by the light, there is a group of five or six people dressed in head-to-toe in black, hooded robes sitting indian-style in a circular formation. We’re out of earshot so we can’t really hear if there’s any chanting or dialogue, but we just kind of sit and watch for a second. Suddenly we see another one emerge from the woods holding a lantern, slowly walking towards the group. This sort of did it for us so we turned and legged it out of there. We still have no idea if that was a cult or what but it scared the shit out of us.
TL;DR: Went to old graveyard at night, saw a cult or something doing whatever-the-fuck, shat brix, ran.”
7. I woke up, this man was running away from my window with a devil mask on.
“Once when I was 12, I was sleeping. I used to keep my window open at night, I heard a loud thud. I woke up, this man was running away from my window with a devil mask on.”
8. Car ride with a serial killer.
“I’ve posted this before, but this happened at night and was perhaps the creepiest thing to happen to me in my life, so it fits here.
Years back, when I was still smoking pot, I decided to head to my friend’s house up the road, which was close to 4 miles. My car wasn’t working but man, I really needed to get high. So I started hiking down the main road from my parent’s house to my friend’s house. I was maybe halfway there, when a car pulled up next to me. A man in the driver seat said ‘Hey, get in. I’ll bring you to where you’re going.’ Being a naive dumb kid, I agreed. As soon as I got in the car, I felt the strangest vibe coming from him, like he wanted to put his greasy fingers on me.
The interior of his car was a mess. Old paper cups, discarded McDonald’s bags, cigarette boxes. Yet the passenger seat was rather spotless, as if he was expecting to have someone ride with him. The conversation that took place began pleasantly, but took an odd turn.
‘So where are you heading?’
‘To a friend’s house. Gonna go have some fun.’
‘Yea…I like to have fun, too. Mind if I party with you guys?’
‘Oh um…sorry, but he doesn’t like strangers visiting.’
‘Oh….Too bad…’
The rest of the car ride was quiet, and only lasted maybe 10 minutes. He stopped in front of my friend’s house and I shook his hand. It was clammy and sweaty. I stepped out, went inside, and don’t see him again until he’s on TV.
Six months later, I was watching a news report and saw my ride, being sentenced to eight life terms. The man that gave me that ride was none other than Ronald Dominique.”
9. A pack of wolves sprinting toward me.
“I left my house to go for a run late one night. It was a quiet street with not many lights on it. I was only about 40 yards or so from my house when I took a turn onto an adjacent road. In the distance under the light from one of the very few lamps in the neighborhood was 4 or 5 wolves(I’m 100% sure they were coyotes based off of where I live but for the sake of this story, they were wolves). I slowed down immediately and must have kicked a pebble or something because they all froze and looked in my direction. Then I froze. Then they started sprinting(it was probably more of a light jog) towards me and I turned around and have never run faster in my life back to the safety of my own home.
To be honest, I was probably in no danger at all but DAMN that is not what I wanted to see that night.”
10. Chased by a pack of coyotes.
“Brakes went out on my car way out in the boonies, probably 10 miles from the nearest town and a few to the nearest house. I went into a ditch where I split my head open pretty good on the side window and broke my arm and a few ribs.
So, I’m in pain, it’s pretty hard to breathe, and as it’s circa 1997 I didn’t have a cell. Nothing to do but start walking.
It was a moonless cloudy night. In other words pitch and I mean pitch black. I could only tell I was still on the road by the sound my feet made on the concrete. Couldn’t see my hand in front of me.
So here I am in the middle of nowhere, bleeding out of my head from a gash that went on to need 35 stitches, broken arm, broken ribs, can’t see my hand in front of me, and what do I hear behind me?
The warbling call of a coyote. Then another, and another. Next thing I know there must be 20 of them and they sound like they’re in a damned blood frenzy.
Now under normal circumstances I could probably take a few coyotes. But I can barely lift my broken left arm and even moving my right arm makes my ribs light on fire. So I realize I am in a very serious amount of trouble.
Nothing for it but to keep walking. They’re close now, can’t be more than 100 yards.
Finally I see the light of a house in the distance. I want to run, but I don’t, I maintain pace, walk up to this place, and with no amount of manliness in my voice I proceed to bang very loudly on their door and beg for them to let me in.
Finally some old man answers the door pulls his gun on me and asks what I’m doing banging on his door at two in the morning?
‘I got in a car crash and there are coyotes after me, please let me in so I can call for help.’
Guy grabs and shines a mag light back the way I had come, and sure as shit, had to be 25-30 coyotes.
Seriously, if that house was another mile away, or if lost consciousness in the crash or on the road, I’d have been eaten.”
11. The big black blur of southern Kentucky.
“I’ve waited 20 years to tell this story to the world.
I grew up in rural southern Kentucky. My parents lived in a neighborhood down in a little valley, lots of open, rolling hills, which was surrounded by woodlands on most sides. It was freakin’ awesome for a kid, tons of room to ride ATVs and explore.
My cousin (we’ll call him Bryan) was my BFF, we’d spend most weekends together. That typically consisted of staying up late playing video games & watching MST3K. Well, sometime during the fall of my 3rd grade year, we decided to go outside late one night to do whatever the hell 3rd graders do in the sticks at midnight.
Some exposition: we had a big front yard which sloped down to the basement entrance, the slope was seriously maybe 40 degrees (it was nearly impossible to walk down). At the bottom edge of the yard, we had a dog house where our German shepherd and beagle slept. The back and sides of the house were surrounded by several acres of fields which all sloped down and could be seen plainly from anywhere in the yard.
Got it? Okay.
We’re sitting in the front porch bullshitting. There’s a full moon, and everything is sublimely still. We get bored, decide to go in and play Sega, but we have to sneak through the basement door so we don’t wake up my parents.
As we walk around the house to get to the door, we stop at the top of the slope. Both of the dogs are going absolutely batshit insane over something. Out in the field, maybe 75 yards from us, is something as big as a small car, solid black, sprinting a good 25+ miles an hour. No shape that we could discern; had it not been for the moon, we’d never have seen it.
We run, RUN down this slope, because fuck gravity, and slam the door shut, lock it, put a couch in front of the door, and pray. Neither of us had any clue what else to do. We didn’t tell our parents about it the next day; we figured they wouldn’t believe us.
Flash forward to my senior year of high school. I’m talking to a teacher on a school trip who was well-versed in local ghost stories & general weird shit. I tell her the story of ‘The Blur,’ as I’d taken to calling it. She tells me that she’s heard numerous accounts that were almost identical, stretching all across southern Kentucky, going back almost 30 years. Reports of a large, black creature ‘gliding’ through the night, generally fucking shit up for a lot of unfortunate animals.
It was pretty messed up to hear someone give credence to what I’d known about for all those years.
That was almost ten years ago. This summer, I moved back home with my parents for a few weeks. That’s when I came across this, and I promptly got the fuck back out of the sticks.
TL;DR I saw a big black blur in my backyard, and apparently everyone else has too for the last 30 years.”
12. Zombie at the gas station.
“My husband and I were on a road trip. Coming back to Louisiana from Iowa. We would drive in 4 hour shifts while the other person slept in the back of the car.
It was about 3am and he woke me up to start my shift. I looked around and didn’t see another car in sight or even a streetlight or building. He had taken an alternate route that he thought would be faster.
Finally we come across a small, local gas station with a single light on. It was closed and our car was the only one there. We pull over and as I’m getting ready to open the car door so we can switch places my husband tells me to hold on. I look up and from behind the back of the gas station a man wearing rags was shambling towards us quickly. Not quite running which made it even scarier in a zombiesque way. I told my husband to hurry and drive away. He was intrigued though. He just stared ahead as the guy got closer and closer. I started freaking out and screaming for him to go until he did.
As he drove away I looked behind us until the gas station disappeared. As far as I could see the ‘man’ followed the car at the same odd pace he was walking at until I could no longer see him. Gives me the chills big time.”
13. The little white face in the barn.
“I work on a dairy, and just the other night I had to clean the milk barn by myself. No one else was on the property, and as I was cleaning I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a little white face about knee height that was just staring at me. I saw the face near corners in the barn, and when I’d turn there was nothing there–as if what I saw had just ducked around the corner. Then when I went out to open the gate to the corral, I heard someone yell at me, even though everyone else was gone. I–a 21 year old man–called home for my dad to come help me finish up and calm down, but my parents were out that night and no one answered. I finished and went home, then had to sit there all by myself until they got back.”
14. Chased by a bread delivery truck in the desert.
“Being chased by a bread delivery truck in the middle of the desert around 1-2 AM, it was a giant truck that had no affiliation with anything other than saying BREAD on the side.
My friends and I liked to night climb. We lived in the middle of the desert. One day we decided to go venture into an area we hadn’t been before but was public land. There are a lot of random dirt trails, we drove around for a while until we found a great canyon, the moon was full and lit up the desert. It was serene and beautiful until it came time to leave.
Mind you, there is no other light other than the moonlight, my headlights and soon the headlights of the bread truck. It came down one of the random little trails hauling ass and stopped dead in its tracks when i’m assuming it saw us. It just sort of rumbled there idle for a minute or two and we all just stood at the back of my SUV and peaked around to see if anyone was going to get out. Nope. They just sat there, waiting and waiting and waiting.
After a few minutes of this I got weirded out and decided we should leave, we piled into my SUV and started driving the opposite way down a trail, the fuckers turned that bread truck around and started following us. I don’t know if any of you have driven down any desert trail that isn’t monitored, but shit gets fucked. That bread truck was flying down the trail after us. I would turn down random trails trying to get away from it go over a crest of a hill, but there it was that generic truck right behind us. We drove around for a good half an hour or so with this truck just following us. Finally I was able to get to the highway and speed off; it didn’t follow.
Tl:dr: the desert is full of wild bread trucks.”
15. They didn’t really move other than some swaying back and forth.
“I remember back when I was in university I was watching zombie movies one night. It was about 3 AM and I went to get something to drink from the kitchen and there was this person standing in the middle of the road at the end of the street. They were far enough away that I couldn’t make out anything about them just a shadowy figure. I watched them for about 15 minutes and they didn’t really move other than some swaying back and forth. I finally decided my imagination was getting the best of me and decided to watch another movie. after the movie I went to the kitchen window again and sure enough the figure was still there. This time a car drove by and the figure shuffled a few steps after it then stopped, whoever it was was gone when I woke up but it creeped me out enough that I still remember it 10 years later.”
16. Naked guy on the front lawn.
“I was 16. Walking home from my Chinese gf’s house after a night of making cookies. It’s like 5am and a school night/day. I see a guy walk onto his lawn to grab the morning paper. Sprinklers are on. As I’m getting closer, I notice that this guy isn’t wearing any clothes. Being the awkward kid I was, I cross the street to the other side of the block (this was in a suburb) so I can give this guy some space. All of a sudden, naked guy runs through the sprinklers with newspaper in hand. I try not to stare, cause hey, it’s his sprinkler and he can do anything he wants with it.
I try to walk as briskly as I could until I am squarely in front of his lawn on the other side of the road. It is this moment when he realizes that he has a spectator. There’s an awkward split second where we lock eyes, and his face turns beet red. He tries to say something, but only blubbers some incoherent form of English.
Before I get a chance to utter a single word to defuse the situation, he charges at me. Yes, this naked, cold, wet man armed with a soggy copy of the NY Times is running at me, planning to do God knows what. Hurtling towards me, in all his saggy-ball and man-titty glory. I follow my instincts and run, as my house is only 5-6 blocks from where I am. But I realize that once I make it home, this guy will know where my house is. Plus, I don’t want to wake my parents up after I snuck out to make cookies. My house is 2 blocks from an elementary school, so I run there. As soon as I get onto the school grounds, I whip around and confront my pursuer.
‘Hey man, you don’t want to walk into an elementary school without clothes on.’ We’re both huffing and puffing, sucking for air. He doesn’t care.
At this point of the story, I should probably mention two things. One, I was in the back entrance of this school, and two, this school’s campus was gigantic for an elementary school. I’m talking like it had room for three soccer fields and a baseball diamond.
So there I am, running in an open field with a naked crazy man at my heels. I’ve had enough mental damage at this point, so I start screaming for help out of desperation. I don’t even remember what I screamed, but I’m sure it was something along the lines of ‘Don’t you touch me, wetman!’
As I get to the front driveway, I see a cop car parked with his lights off. I guess he heard me screaming, cause he immediately gets out and assumes the position needed to tackle the shit out of me. Without missing a beat, I point behind me and say, ‘Help! Naked guy!’ I keep my eyes ahead, and I can see the exact moment on the cop’s face when he realizes what I’m running from. Like an expression of pure disbelief. Dumbstruck.
The cop changes targets and decides to rescue me. I run past the cop and next thing I hear is the sound of two men grunting and a thud. I turn around to see the cop has apprehended saggy-balls. He still has his paper. Knowing that the cop will want a statement from me, and remembering that I’m currently sneaking out of my house to make cookies, I sprint home. I stayed home from school that day, and I never walked on that block again to this day.
TL;DR: I ran for my life. Naked guy gets arrested at an elementary school.”
17. The ghosts of Confederate soldiers.
“One night when I was young, my parents left me at my grandmother’s house for the night. Now, this wasn’t just any house. It was built in the 1700s. The buildings my grandparents used for storage had once been slave quarters. The wooden beams on the basement ceiling were blackened from when the basement had been the kitchen where the slaves cooked. Confederate soldiers had camped on the hill next to her house during the Civil War. This house was steeped in history: births, deaths, laughter, wars, slavery, freedom. My grandmother’s bedroom was on the first floor, directly above the basement, but she made my bed on the second floor, directly above her room, where I had a perfect few of the hilltop where the soldiers had camped.
I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. The moonlight was streaming through the window, illuminating the small room. For a moment, confusion overtook me. Where was I? Then I sat up, looked out the window, and was comforted by the familiar landscape of my grandmother’s land. Something caught my eye; there was movement on the hilltop. I thought it may be a fox or a deer, as they were common to the area, but then the figure turned in such a way that the moonlight shone onto something on its body, causing a gleam that didn’t come from the eyes of an animal. Terrified, I pulled the covers over my head and tried to sleep. The effort was fruitless, and I peeked out of the window again. The figure was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. Almost immediately, however, the rocking chair in the corner of the room began to slowly but steadily rock back and forth. Looking back now, this may have been due a breeze that blew in through the window, but I was only about five years old at the time, and common sense eluded me.
The one thing I still cannot explain, however, was a click I heard as I pulled the cover over my head a second time. I bolted upright, totally alert. The chair had completely stopped moving in the few seconds it had taken me to sit back up. The click had come from somewhere to my right, where the door was. I stared at the closed door, waiting for something to happen, and suddenly the floorboard immediately inside the door creaked. I screamed, and instantly heard my grandmother’s footsteps rushing up the stairs. I felt safer every step closer she came, and finally, finally, she was just outside the door. I heard her grasp the knob and then…nothing. I heard the knob jiggle, but the door did not burst open. It was locked. She hadn’t locked it. I certainly hadn’t locked it. I tiptoed to the door, reached for the lock to let my grandmother in, and heard a familiar click when I turned it to the ‘unlocked’ position.”
18. A man with his arms crossed, just staring at us.
“My husband and I were driving from Denver to Lake Powell a few years ago. It’s a 10 hour trip and we thought we’d drive through the night so we could have more time there. The drive was fairly boring, without a lot of cities or lights. But there were plenty of cool rocks and mountains around. As we were driving through Moab, UT we had to slow down a bit while on a curvy road with a steep drop-off on one side. It was probably 2 or 3 a.m. at that point and we hadn’t passed another car in a while. But as we came around a curve we saw a car pulled into a clearing about 15 or 20 feet off the side of the road. The headlights were off, but standing next to the car was a man with his arms crossed just staring at us. It was the creepiest thing ever. Pure fear kept us awake for the rest of the trip.”
19. The madman of the Catskills.
“In the autumn of 1986, I decided to try crack cocaine. My girlfriend and I drove up to Washington Heights above Harlem and copped some buttery nuggets in a plastic vial from a Spanish Wolfman.
We motored up to the Catskill Mountains for the weekend, staying at a moldy old resort where meals, lodging, and bingo were all included in the $99 price. On Saturday morning we shoved a white rock into a glass pipe and took some megablasts while watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse. My head swelled up to weather-balloon size and it seemed as if my heart was going to punch through my ribs and splatter all over the room. But as soon as it felt safe again, we smoked some more. That night, gacked on crack, we drove through the dark mountain forests to a posh hotel featuring kosher comedians such as Mal Z. Lawrence.
The ride back was black and quiet. Trees were huddled deep and thick on both sides of the narrow road. Suddenly, as we hit a dip, a bearded wildman in a fringed-rawhide jacket jumped out of the woods and tried leaping onto the car hood. It was something out of a ‘Freddy’ or ‘Jason’ movie, minus the production values and plus the real threat of death. I hit the accelerator and left him in the forest.
We reached our hotel with foreheads sweating and our hearts battered like punching bags. I decided not to develop a crack habit.”
20. The girl on the swings.
“I live in Denmark, at the edge of one of our larger cities. The apartments here are for students only, and a lot of people live quite closely together in this area, however; you don’t see a lot of people except for in the student bar after midnight. So, a friend of mine lives here as well, just on the other side of the parking lot, next to which there is a small playground.
This friend and I enjoy watching horror movies, and so we were on the evening that I am here describing. I was at his place, we’d been watching quite a few movies that night and it was getting quite late – I think it was around 3am – and I was going to go home and go to bed. To add to the following, I’ve never been too comfortable in darkness, and watching horror movies doesn’t necessarily help. Furthermore, for some reason there is quite often some issue with some of the lamp posts here, so that some areas will be completely unlit.
Now, I’m walking home at around 3am and naturally the light is out in the parking lot / playground area. Not a problem, I’m not particularly excited about it, but I’m not uncomfortable crossing the lot either. I’m halfway across when I hear a squeaking sound from the playground. I turn to examine the origin, and on the playground, on one of the swings is what appears to be a girl (I could tell he/she had long hair, but it was very dark) swinging eerily back and forth – completely in the dark, alone. I went straight home and called up the friend whose place I’d just left on Skype, and told him about it. He has a window overlooking the playground, and was of course intrigued, so he left the computer for a second to have a glance outside. He returned half a minute later to inform me that the playground was completely deserted.”
21. The little girl who looked at us and disappeared.
“It was a cool summer evening in FL, I think it was ’96. I was in high school and a few of us would always hang out at Nathan’s house. His parents were cool and we’d usually end up on the back screened-in patio chilling on the couches. That night, like many others, we had gotten stoned and we were cracking jokes, making fun of people, whatever, normal high school age stuff. It was just me, Nathan and Shannon but for some reason I kept thinking there was a fourth person there. It was like I would be seeing them in my peripheral vision during a fit of laughter but then look over to find no one in that seat and be left with feeling that someone just left the room. Chalk it up to being stoned…
So Nathan is showing us his ‘ice trick’ for the hundredth time which is basically halfway swallowing an ice cube, and then spitting it back up. Of course he always looks like a tool doing it so we heavily encourage him. He’s sitting there, head back with a piece of ice in his gullet saying ‘see, no ice’ and looking like a complete idiot. Meanwhile Shannon and I are dying of laughter as drool starts pouring from Nathan’s mouth while he tries to talk. He makes a vain attempt to stop it and in doing so kicks over his glass of ice water that’s sitting on the ground next to his chair. I glance down at his water and think I see something or someone looking at his tipped over glass. Then its head turns and then it’s gone, immediately followed by that feeling that someone just left again. All in a split second. I was still laughing my ass off but was all of a sudden very confused by what I had just seen. It took about one more second for the scene to replay in my head and for me to realize what I had just witnessed – When Nathan kicked his drink over a vague, washed out image of a little girl kneeled down and looked at the spill. When I looked at her, she looked up at me. She was probably ten years old wearing a standard white little girl dress although I couldn’t make out/recall any real detail. Immediately after making eye contact, she instantly backed away and out of sight. And that was when the feeling had washed over me.
I stopped laughing and was too confused and hadn’t had enough time to even be scared yet. Nathan was still cracking up and trying to pick up his drink and for a moment I thought I was too high and seeing shit. But then I looked over at Shannon who was sitting next to me. He wasn’t laughing either. Eyes wide and mouth open, he was white as a sheet like he had just seen, well, a ghost. Shocked, I asked him ‘did you just see that?’ He replies, ‘the little girl, and she looked at us, and now she’s gone.’ Holy shit. I asked again and my best friend proceeded to explain to me exactly the same thing I had just seen. Nathan had no idea what we were talking about but Shannon and I were both scared shitless by then and we spent the rest of the evening inside. While we were talking about what had just happened Shannon mentioned he had been getting that same feeling that I had been getting all night as well. Like there was someone there, that kept leaving the room.
To this day, I don’t know what I saw. I’m not religious, don’t believe in the supernatural and I would say it was the weed except someone that I would trust with my life saw the exact same thing at the exact same time as I did.”
22. He just stood there, staring at me with no expression on his face, motionless, void of life…except for his black, hungry, terrifying eyes.
“When I was about eleven or twelve, I rode the school bus with this tall skinny boy that lived down the street. He was my age and known in the neighborhood as ‘the cat killer.’ He had been caught multiple times torturing animals, skinning them alive, dissecting their bodies. On the bus and in school, he would stare at me with these cold, unblinking, wild eyes that sank deep into his pale face. One night, alone in my bedroom, I took off my school clothes and changed into my pajamas. I stood there, in front of the mirror, buttoning up my top and suddenly got the feeling that I was being watched. Then I saw it…his hungry, wild eyes…in the corner of the mirror. I froze, realizing that he had been standing outside my window in the pitch black night, watching me undress. When I turned around to face the window, he just stood there, staring at me with no expression on his face, motionless, void of life…except for his black, hungry, terrifying eyes. I screamed as loud as I could and he ran away. We continued to go to school together for the next two years and he never stopped staring at me. The image still haunts me as well as the notion that he walked to my house from over three miles away In twenty degree weather. I’m usually just a lurker but felt compelled to share. Feels good to get it out. Thank you for listening.”
