The world is a pretty scary place and nobody gets it more than the internet. We all have at least one pretty unexplainable moment from childhood or recently where a door slam, a shadow, a turning door knob, or a strange voice seems to come out of nowhere. Is it a ghost? We'll never know...
While it's probably unlikely that ghosts exist (don't curse me, spirits!) unsolved mysteries can drive anyone crazy. So, when a recent Reddit user asked, "What is the creepiest thing that’s happened to you?" the internet was ready to share their flashlight-under-the-chin campfire stories with the world. Get ready to shiver, these are truly horrifying...
1. This is terrifying, "danadu1230."
I was at a church girls camp the summer I was 17. I was a youth leader, so I (along with 6 other girls) arrived the night before the main campers. We naturally chose the cabin furthest back from the adult leaders' cabin to sleep in. These old wooden, drafty cabins had log walls, 4 bunk beds, and a mesh screen door with no latch.
That night, I was the last one to fall asleep. I woke up randomly at 1am, looked at the door, and saw the shadow of someone standing directly outside the door. I heard a faint knock, but was too petrified to move. After a few seconds, the shadow moved away. I never fell back asleep.
The next morning, I checked with all the adult leaders - they had done final rounds at 10pm, and had all fallen asleep after that. We were nowhere near the the trail to the bathrooms, and there was no one else on site except the girls in my cabin and the adult leaders.
I tried to brush it off, convincing myself I was imagining things in my sleepiness, and mostly succeeded, until later that night one if the other youth leaders in my cabin piped up and said "umm.. did anyone else see someone standing outside our door last night?"
We slept in a different cabin that night.
2. WTF, "aranboy522."
I was in my living room in my apartment studying for a test 5 in the morning. As I am sitting there in complete silence, I see someone try to open my door and fail.
3. Oh. my. god, "potroast1251."
I was woken up by the sound of someone breaking my bedroom door down. I wear contacts and didnt have them in, but I saw the door bust open and a human was there, and then ran off. I got out of bed, saw my apartment door had been broken down as well, and then discovered the phone lines had been cut.
4. Woah, "PieceofShist."
I forgot that the door to the toilet on the second floor on my house doesn't properly fit the frame and slides open easily. One day when I was home alone, it got really windy and the small window in the toilet was open. The door to the toilet started to move around in the frame and slam open.
I almost shat my pants tbh
5. Ha, "InevitableEducation."
When I was a teenager me, my brother and two of my friends would sneak out in the middle of the night and just bum around. One night around 3am we were cutting through a neighbors yard when we heard this very far away screaming sound. We all stopped for a bit and just listened. It sounded like probably half a mile to a mile away. All of a sudden that screaming sound came from two feet behind us in the grass. We ran like the devil himself was chasing us. It turns out it was just a couple of cats in heat but it didn't make it any less creepy.
6. GTFO, "[deleted]."
One time in a public toilet the person in the cubicle next to me stuck his head under and looked up at me. I didn't really know what to do so I just got the fuck outta there
7. No thank you, "markie719."
Same here. I was going to bed around 3 in the morning, and my apartment at the time only had a deadlock, because the door knob wouldn’t lock. As I’m getting ready to finally sleep, I hear my doorknob turn slowly. I don’t know why, but I yelled something like “Hey!” And the door knob slowly went back into place with some footsteps walking away. It was just creepy.
8. Woah, "uaenaeu."
20F here. I was an Asian tourist in Barcelona, had beer and chips while overlooking the city with one of my best friends. We parted ways by 11:30 PM, and on the way back to my hotel I made eye contact with a man in passing. After a few minutes, I could feel a chill behind my neck, and there he was, following me. When I arrived at a crosswalk I had to stop and wait, and he asked for my name, details, if I wanted to go out for dinner. I was just ignoring him, stuttering and pretending I didn’t speak English or Spanish, and my knees were shivering in so much fear. I kept telling him to go away, and he would, but he kept appearing every street I turned. He tailed me, and I was so scared to make a wrong turn to a dark alley. Luckily came across a group of Spanish aunties and asked them for help because a man was following me, then I ran to my hotel without stopping.
9. Um WTF, "linesicouldntchange."
walking home after closing at work, about 10pm, a guy walks up about 10ft from me, pulls out a disposable camera, snaps a pic of me, and walks away. didnt say a word or even wave at me. was real uncomfy
10. This is terrible, "Shlenb."
I was taking an Uber to my friends house alone. The uber driver was friendly and we were chatting. He told me he thought I was very pretty and liked my eyes. I said thank you and the conversation drifted off. Halfway through the ride I notice he isn’t in the turn lane for a turn he needs to make. There is no alternate route to my friends house so I told him nicely that he needed to make the turn there. Silence.
He passed the turn. Then I asked him to turn around at the next light. More silence.
We were starting to head to a less populated part of my town and I was panicking. I was preparing myself to have to jump out of a moving car. Finally I very loudly and firmly told him to turn the fuck around.
He acted as though he didn’t hear me the first two times, apologized, and turned around. Luckily we were close and the ride wasn’t much longer. When I got out of the car he told me to call him to pick me up later but only if I was drunk. I try to never uber alone now.
11. Was this restaurant the beginning of a horror movie? "pragnar."
...fortune cookie that said:
"Remember, we are always watching."
12. Definitely a ghost, "enigmathere."
This happened when I was about 7 years-old. My parents were both at work, it was summer break, and me and my two older siblings were in the rec room of our house (brother was 11, sister was 13).
We’ve been playing N64 for quite some time. It was mid-afternoon, and my sister decides to go to the kitchen, and runs back to us, and says that the sliding door to the backyard/ deck, was left opened. We’re all freaking-out, and don’t know what to do. My sister then calls my Dad at work, and he comes right away (it’s like a 30 min drive too!) looks around, and nobody is inside the house.
None of us opened the sliding door that day, not even with the screen door on to air out the house. We’re still confused to this day how that happened. There many other creepy moments that I can think of, but this stands out the most.
13. Dear god, "MuhdieKuhh."
Behind the wall next to my bed is free space and this space is linked with our attic and one day I turned in my bed, looked at my white wall and saw something dark red on the other side through a hole I never knew there was.
14. OH MY GOD THIS ONE WINS, "efthesociety."
When I was 10 my room had a window, street view. A homeless man broke in, stole all my blankets that were on me and left. Days later we saw him on the streets with my blankets.
15. Such good dog parents, "-_-Proxy-_-
Parents leave a podcast playing to comfort the puppy while home alone, forgot to tell me. I open the door and hear voices from down the hall, and have a heart attack.
16. Nope nope NOPE, "Flawlessfear."
Sleeping at grandma house (old farm house) when i was 12. Sharing bed with sister. Woke up in the middle of the night. Went to take a piss. While im in the bathroom, sister starts screaming. I go back upstairs to find her sitting on the bed looking at me with a big ass smile. Her eyes looked so black. Then she just went back to sleep like nothing happened. So did i. Then as i was about to fall asleep, the bedroom door just slammed shut with the power of a black hole and woke everybody in the house except my sister. That shit was scary af so i hid under the sheets and fell asleep.
Woke up next morning and talked about it. My sister then tells me that she saw a dark shadow, got scared, screamed then went to sleep with my parents downstairs. At that point i was questioning reality.
I still cant understand what really happened but i sure hope i was having sleep paralysis or something cause whatever i slept next to wasnt my sister
17. AHHHHHH, "The12thman94."
This is a story from a family friend.
When she was a teenager her family and her friend went camping outside of Seattle. There was a single guy staying next to them who seemed pretty nice. Later she and her friend were walking back from a store nearby when the guy pulled up next to them and offered to give them a ride back to the camp. They said they were okay and it made the guy mad. They made it back to the camp but after that the guy started acting weird around them staring at them and they even found him going through the girls tent. It freaked them out enough that they left for another campground. Later they saw the man's picture on TV.... Ted Bundy.
18. Goddamn, "hotairballoons."
A woman I worked with at the Fashion Place Mall in Utah told me that in the 70's, a cute guy asked her out, and they had plans to meet for a date one night. She was only 17, and her mom adamantly refused to let her go because she felt her daughter was too young, and this guy was a little older. 20's or 30's. The woman and her mom had a huge fight over it, it was very dramatic. But in the end, mom won out and she didn't go.
When they were watching the news later, she saw his picture and recognized him. It was Ted Bundy.
19. Definitely should go to the police, "wewantthefunk28."
Oh! I have another one - about a year ago now.
I'm a journalist with a pretty active twitter account. One day I saw that an account with a weird spider picture (I'm arachnophobic) had added me. Its handle was something like "the owls are watching you" - which is kind of a reference to Twin Peaks (one of my favorite shows). Anyway, they started writing pretty innocuous things to me, and only me. Then they added all of my coworkers and people I knew from the journalism scene on twitter. Including people I was friends with but didn't communicate that much with on Twitter. I only freaked out when they wrote some dumb reply to me and I went to their profile again. I found at the top, a picture of me very very drunk. Must have been taken in my early-20s. I had never seen the photo before. It wasn't on any social media I or anyone else I knew had. I don't even know where it was taken. But I know the shirt I'm wearing, I know I was drunk, and I know the general period of time (between 20-23 years old) that it was taken. I even reversed image searched it and nothing. The quote alone with the photo was just: "In vino veritas" (in wine, truth). The account was gone 2 days later.