Boo! Gotcha there, didn’t I? No need to feel embarrassed though. We all get scared from time to time and, as far as I’m concerned, hearing someone say "boo" is getting off scot-free compared to other frightening encounters. Whether it was a time someone thought their life was about to end or an unexplained brush with the paranormal, one thing is for sure: many of us will be sleeping with lights on tonight after reading this. Here are 42 stories of people’s most terrifying moments of all time.
1. Swan Song
I was 12 and my brother was eight. We were living with our dad after he and mom separated. Dad ruled with an iron fist when it came to school attendance; he wouldn't let us stay home unless we were bleeding or hospitalized. Nevertheless, I still tried to stay home from school at times. One day, I tried faking a headache so I could stay home. His reaction was bizarre.
He immediately said yes, but that I would have to stay with him all day. I asked why, and he said: "Because I need you here". Fast forward to lunchtime and we're sitting at the table eating. I look at him and see he's looking at me with a look I had never seen before. Then before I could process it, he collapses onto the floor.
He had a massive heart attack that took his life almost instantly. If my dad didn't let me stay home, my little brother would have found his body after school, and he would have been there for hours. I don't think my brother would have recovered from that. It took me over 10 years to recover from it myself, quite honestly.
But then, another thing happened that I can't explain. I used to go to sleep with the radio on, and for the three nights before my dad had the heart attack, I would wake up during the night to a particular song playing. Same song, every night for three nights…until he passed. Later, they played that song at his funeral. I hadn't told anyone what happened.
2. What the Fox, Man?
My oldest brother, now deceased, was almost a human execution machine. When we went hunting, he could spot game other people couldn't see. One day, I was out with him and he used my shoulder as a rest to kill a crow I couldn't even see until it exploded. (FYI I do not condone taking lives of crows). He rarely missed.
One day we were out fox hunting in the winter. Foxes are very smart animals and, in the winter, you sometimes come across them sleeping on top of hills, probably because the sunshine keeps them warm. We were walking along when my brother whispers "stop - slow down." About 300 yards away is a fox, all curled up on the top of a hill. So, he lies down and prepares to make his shot. Just after he flipped the safety off - a second before pulling the trigger - the fox basically does a 180 on the snow, still as a ball.
It turned out the 'fox' was actually a fox hat. Like, on a living person's head. My brother would have taken his head off if he hadn't moved ...
3. Not the Trunk!
When I was 11, I biked out in front of a car until it honked really loudly at me. I stupidly flipped the car off and they came to a screeching halt. A huge guy stepped out and went to open his trunk. His girlfriend got out of the passenger's side crying and screaming, begging him not to open the trunk. I was frozen in fear. He got back in the car and sped off. I have no idea what was in the trunk. Hopefully not a fully automatic machine piece on a turret.
4. Come Out Come Out Wherever You Are
I was sitting in my room on the second floor after getting out of work. Little bro is downstairs watching TV, the dog is in the hallway outside my door sleeping. All of a sudden, our dog starts making a racket. He's jumping around, barking, clacking nails, howling. I get up to see what's up and I hear, "Aw that's a good girl" in a male voice. It didn't sound like little bro so I go "Oh you're home early!" thinking it is my dad's friend/our roomie as I open the door.
Soon as I'm out, there is no one at all but the dog wagging her tail staring at the empty end of the hallway. Little bro comes upstairs to yell at me for getting his dog riled up, said he heard the same voice thinking it was me or our roommate. We did a once over of the house with my butter sharp tool and his BB piece, and there was NOBODY to be found. Still gives me the spooks to this day.
5. You’re Not Alone
There's an abandoned house next to mine. The previous owner moved out to California 25 years prior and never sold it. So I got a flashlight this one time, pushed the window open and went inside, starting with the basement. In the basement was an untuned grand piano, some old WW2 memorabilia, a signed Elvis poster, and some other really cool things no one should ever leave behind.
There's basically a whole story in that basement, including a broken wedding picture frame and instruments everywhere. Then I started walking upstairs, my excitement transformed into dread. I heard crying from one of the side rooms. That's when I got really scared and haven't gone back there since.
6. One Word: No.
A friend and I used to run after school, and we enjoyed doing trails where possible. There was one in particular, above a park, that went up a steep dirt hill onto a ridge that overlooked a nearby valley. It was a beautiful area to run, but a little secluded. Mostly just cows in the area. So we were running for a bit and stopped to walk, when we heard something.
Something was wrong. I don't know what it was, but when we heard it, we just froze. It was the most unnatural sound I've heard in my entire life. It was something, but whatever it was sounded so wrong that my body instinctively said "no." The only other time that my body has ever done that was when I was on a field trip to an anatomy lab years later, and the smell of the preserved body came up.
Something about that smell produced that same feeling in my body, that instinctively said "no." So whatever it was that we heard—that couldn't have been more than 20 or 30 feet away—made me feel the same thing that the smell of a deceased body did.
7. Affectionate Ghost
Fell asleep in my living room after my parents left for a date. I was deep asleep when I suddenly felt my hair being petted. I thought maybe I just didn't hear my folks come in, so I opened my eyes to find… no one there. Still creeps me out to this day.
8. Some Mysteries Are Best Left Unsolved...
Family went on vacation. Sitting in the living room playing X-Box. Hear a noise outside. Pause. Horn blaring. Live in the middle of the country. Grab my revolver. Walk out to my mom's car horn blaring. No one sitting in the seat. Horn stops. Screw this. Walk inside. See something run through the house. Chase it to sliding glass door. Unable to open it.
I have no idea what in the world is going on, so I leave and stay at my friend’s house. Went back and found nothing. Still no idea what on earth that was…
9. Spider-Man
I got home from work late one night and was walking onto my front stoop when I walked right into this huge spider web. At first I didn't think much of it, until I looked down and saw about 20-30 baby spiders all over me. I started freaking out, then noticed the parents sitting on my front door. They were huge, bigger than a quarter, so of course, I did not want to use the front door.
I run to my back door, throw all of my clothes off, and jump in the shower. I then watch as baby spiders begin falling out of my hair.
10. Free Falling
When I was 10 or so I went ice fishing with my dad. It had just snowed the night before so you couldn't see the ice. On our way out to the ice house, I fell straight through an unmarked hole that had a very thin layer of ice covering it. The scariest part of this was instantly shutting down and sinking because of the cold. I could look up and see where I had fallen through but couldn't swim back up to it.
After a few seconds, I finally willed myself up and to the edge where my dad pulled me the rest of the way out.
11. Three’s Company, Four’s a Crowd
Six years ago when I was 19, I was staying the night at my best friends’ house with another friend. All three of us were sleeping on the bed and I woke up in the middle of the night. There was a girl, around six or seven years old standing at the foot of the bed looking at us. I was so freaked out I just kept looking back at her. I was too scared to do anything.
She slowly faded away. I swear this really happened but I'm not sure if it was a ghost or if I was somehow semi-awake and dreamt it. The scariest thing I have ever experienced though, regardless of whether it was my imagination or really a ghost. I didn't tell my friends for a couple of months because I couldn't really believe it.
Then a few months later, they were telling me about how one night when they were in their room, they heard children laughing in the living room. My jaw dropped. Apparently, they went to their bedroom door to listen better and when they got to the door there was a loud thunk on it, like someone hit it. They ran out of the room thinking someone was in their house but when they checked the house there was no one there and all the doors were still locked.
I told them about the girl I saw when they told me what happened to them.
12. What the Heck?
I was just sitting at home browsing the internet at my desk with my arms crossed. My head starts to itch, and naturally, I begin scratching it. Mid-scratch, I realize my arms are still crossed...
13. Close Call
About five years ago, my mom started dating a guy she met online. Right from the start, my wife and I never really liked this guy. We didn't think he was mean or anything like that, just a little creepy. He was quiet, kept his eyes closed a lot, and occasionally said odd things. Just before Christmas, my mom and this guy started having some difficulties.
My wife and I were visiting her for the holidays and she dropped all of her problems on us. We listened carefully and told her our opinions, and suggested that she would be better off without him. She already had her mind made up, though, and decided to break up with him... on Christmas Eve. We spent the night at my mom's house and got up early on Christmas morning to visit my dad.
We didn't plan to spend the night there, but we got snowed in, which was actually a nice Christmas surprise. The next day we left as soon as we could get through the snow and my wife suggested that we stop by my mom's house on the way to see if she was okay. My wife just had a really bad feeling about my mom's now ex-boyfriend.
My mom's car was in the driveway, but that doesn't mean much because she lives close enough to work that she often walks. She also never locks her door, which drives me crazy, so we let ourselves in. That's when we see dark red liquid oozing out of the refrigerator's water dispenser. It had filled up the spill container and was leaking onto the floor and had made a puddle.
My wife screamed and I freaked out. I fully expected to see my mom's head in the freezer. I nervously opened the freezer to find... a bag of frozen cherries that had been opened, crammed into the freezer so that it fell onto the ice dispenser, and melted. Mom was fine.
14. He Just Couldn’t Resist
My sister is like 17, in the basement cinema room watching Texas Chainsaw Liquidation. The new one. No one is home nor should they be for a few more hours. However, my dad got off work early that day and drove home to find her watching this movie. So my dad, being the comedian that he is, decides to rev up his chainsaw and kick open the cinema room doors to my screaming sister.
Not his finest moment.
15. Dry Bones
My grandmother lives in a very old house (late 1700s), which is surrounded by graveyards on both sides. The other day, my friend who I hadn't seen in months, arrives at my house. We are walking along the old cobblestone driveway when he begins talking about his newfound spirituality, not in a religious context, but with regards to feeling "tuned in" to things.
I believed him; he had been away at a drug treatment program and I believe that he had experienced some kind of spiritual awakening. Anyways, as we are talking, my cat walks over to us and starts rubbing up against my leg. After a while I realize she won't quit and that she is trying to tell me something. I start to follow her and soon I realize she is leading me somewhere: we're going to the graveyard.
Every time I stop following her she turns around and rubs my leg until I begin walking again. When we finally get to the graveyard, she jumps up on a gravestone, balancing on the slender part of the gravestone, and will not move. She begins hissing when we try to take her off the headstone. Then we read the inscription. We were completely stunned.
It turns out that the grave was for someone who had lived and lost his life our own house.
16. Nosy Neighbors
Our yard had a cemetery from the 1800s in the back, so it was quite a common local attraction for visitors, since many of the graves were for children who perished back then from the flu, etc. There are some creepy stories from that place, but nothing lives up to what happened to me there.
While playing outside with my sister this one time, an old couple walking by the cemetery began pestering my sister about what her name was. They approached us and started to get closer and closer. We were just little kids and got terribly scared, so we ran inside and told our mom what had happened. The following week I heard a story on the news about an elderly couple approaching and abducting a teenage girl, and it turned out to be the same couple that had approached my sister and me.
I still get creeped out by that.
17. That’s the Thanks You Get
I once was giving blood at my school's blood drive. So they put the needle in and I passed out. The nurse just happened to leave and when I woke up I wondered why everything was wet. Then I opened my eyes and everything was soaked in my own blood. I screamed and then passed out again. Never giving blood again.
18. School Days
My high school is haunted. Almost every faculty member there has had an "experience." More than one teacher refuses to be there alone at night. A teacher was there working late (this is around 9:30 or so), when he hears a door slam. Thinking it was a fellow teacher or janitor messing with him, he looks out into the hall. No one was there.
He goes to investigate down the hall, when suddenly he hears a door slam. He went to check and lo and behold, no one was in there. This is an entirely brick room with no hiding places, mind you. He ran out of there real quick…
19. If I’d Known You Were Coming
One time when I was at my grandparents’ farm, they claimed to have seen a little girl and an older woman appear on their property out of nowhere. There's a run-down old house in the woods near them who’s owner looked just like the old woman they saw. My grandpa recognized her. She used to take care of him when he was sick.
She usually only shows up when he's sick. They don't recognize the little girl, or know where they appeared from, or where they went.
20. Breaking and Entering
My aunt was home alone when she heard someone open the door and walk into the hallway. Since her husband (my uncle) was not supposed to be home for a few hours, she went downstairs to see if someone was there. She did not see anyone, but outside the door, she saw a chilling sight: there were footsteps in the snow leading to the door, but not away from it.
This got her nervous, and on a second glance, she saw an unfamiliar pair of shoes in the hallway. She ran up and called the authorities, and when they came and searched through the house, the found a homeless man hiding in a storage room, holding my uncle's piece. Luckily he had not found the leads (it was hidden in another place).
He was , but according to my aunt, it was the scariest thing she has ever experienced.
21. Only One Regret
This happened to my wife's grandmother about 15 years ago, before we got married. Her husband had just passed about a year previously, but she'd been going down to the library and volunteering. It was a good way to give back, but also to get exercise and socialization. This was in the winter, so she walked back when it was getting dark.
The library closed at five in the evening and then there was some extra stuff to do before everyone actually left, plus on this particular night she turned down a ride home from another volunteer because she wanted to walk home. The house is about a mile away through some lightly wooded area in south Texas, and as she's about halfway home she notices someone behind her.
He's walking the same direction and gaining on her, which in itself isn't all that particular (she's old and thus not particularly fast) but in this case, he "seems vaguely sinister." They keep walking, and pretty soon he's right behind her. Then he falls into pace, just staying behind her. Now she knows that something's up. But she's almost home, she can see the top of her driveway coming up, and she has her lights on so it'll look like someone's home when she's walking in.
She just needs to make it another 150 yards... Then 100... All that time, she said he was so close that she could feel his breath on her neck. Maybe 50 yards away from her house, it happens. Strong hand lands on her shoulder, "Okay lady, don't turn around. Hand over your purse or I'll cut ya." She stops for a second, then takes one big step forward, turns and shoots the guy in the neck with the .38 she kept in her purse. Hey, it's Texas.
The guy spent the next five years in a hospital correctional facility before he lost his life due to complications. My wife's grandmother passed last year. Up to the end, she lamented that she'd pulled the trigger too soon: "My late husband would have been embarrassed to know I missed."
22. Wherefore Art Thou Nina?
I moved to Montreal and got a new Canadian phone number. Over the next eight months, I'd often get texts and calls from French people at strange hours of the day asking for "Nina" several times a month. One April morning while I was in bed I get a call from a withheld number claiming to be with the Montreal authorities, stating that Nina had been missing for over a year and that this was supposed to be her number.
I sent an inquiry to the Montreal authorities website a few days later asking if there's anything I can/should know about this missing "Nina." A few weeks later I got a response that basically said "Yes, Nina's missing. But we can't say anything else." I thought it couldn't get weirder, but I was wrong. I search missing persons in Quebec/Montreal, and Canada, but I couldn't find any Nina missing within the last year.
The experience was spooky and unsettling, to say the least…
23. Dream On
I'm at work one day when my then-wife calls me out of the blue. She usually did not call me during the day because she worked the night shift. She tells me to call my friend Danny and make sure he and his family are okay. When I ask why, she tells me that she had a dream and can't remember it, but that I should call Danny and make sure he's okay.
So I call Danny and check in with him. I tell him about my wife's dream. He's mildly amused but tells me that he and his family are fine and to thank my wife for her concern. I call her back and let her know all is well. She's very dubious when she hears the news. I found out later that within half an hour of my phone call to Danny, he got another call from his uncle in Florida to tell him that his son had taken his own life.
24. How Did You Even Escape??
The time I had a redneck in Cascabel, Arizona pull a piece on my friends and me for 'trespassing' on government land. Let's not forget he owned a ranch nearby that was littered with bones, abandoned cars and about 30 license plates from across the country hanging on his fence. Oh, and he also had dried blood all over his shirt.
25. Dancing in the Dark
A few years ago, I was home alone at night time. I was watching TV in the living room when I heard the doorbell ring. Whenever I hear the doorbell ring, I am cautious to answer it. When I’m alone, all the more. I walk up to the peephole without turning on the porch light (so they don't know if anyone is actually home or not) and look through.
It's really dark but I can see a small figure (more like a blob, around four feet high) doing some kind of dancing motion. Dipping down and oscillating its "arms" outward. Think of a person moving their arms like wings ever-so gracefully. It was pretty dark outside but this figure was very opaque, so I could see all this stuff going on.
After a few seconds, I stopped looking through the peephole because it was too freaky to look at. I regained some courage and looked back through a few minutes later, and whatever it was was gone. To this day I still don't know what that was and I get freaked out thinking about it.
26. Meet Bam-Bam
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I was around six years old. I was at home with my sister who was 15 at the time. We grew up in a small Texas town, everyone knows everybody. We are home alone this particular night, and my folks let my sister babysit me frequently. We always got along due to our age gap. Anyway, it is about 8 pm in the winter so it is dark and we are in the common room watching 60 Minutes.
This one was a typical story, guy next door that was quiet went on a rampage in his next door neighbor's house, hurting them and kidnapping their young daughter. About 45 minutes into the show, all of a sudden we hear BAM BAM BAM. The front door bangs like crazy. We jump and scream like banshees. Then it's completely silent.
Just when we are about to declare that everything is safe, we hear the storm door on the outside of our front door close. Uh oh. Someone had to have opened that door to be able to bang on the front door like that. We totally freeze. I remember this part vividly. I am on my knees sitting on my feet. I turn around to look at windows and glass door behind me.
I see the back door knob turn. It was latched at the knob but not secured with a bolt lock. It rattles slightly as if someone is gently trying the handle. Neither of us make a sound, just hold our breath. Then BAM BAM BAM BAM. The windows are vibrating violently and I can see with each jerk of the door how my reflection gets fuzzy, then clear, then fuzzy.
My sister gets up and basically drags me into her bedroom, slams the door, throws her mattress and anything she can in front of her door. Thankfully she had remembered the phone. We still had to direct dial the sheriff there, and in her panic didn't remember the number. She just hit redial on the phone. It was one of her friends and she tells them in broken gasps that someone is trying to get into our house and that we need help now.
I am curled up on the floor and cannot stop shaking. We don't hear anything else until we see the headlights of my sister's friend and her parents driving up to the house. We never did find out who was at the door or why, there were no signs of anything happening but a couple of scuff-marks on the bottom of the back door that we could not remember if they were there beforehand or not.
Nothing like that has happened to me or her since, but for sure we never forget to lock a door after that.
27. Just Passing Through
The DECA advisor at my school takes the club members on "ghost hunts" every year. He told the story of when they got home from a competition and they did an impromptu hunt at like 10:00 at night or something. They were in the auditorium (which is considered to be the most haunted room in the building) when suddenly they hear a bunch of prop spears crash to the ground.
Of course, they turned on the lights within seconds, and no one was there. They went to check the trap door that runs under the stage, and it was still padlocked from the top side.
28. Faster Than a Speeding Lead
I live close to a Walmart, so when I need to go I just walk there. But the trail takes you behind the store, then you have to walk along the side to get to the front. There's a forested area all the way around the back and side of the store. My boyfriend and I were walking one night to get some stuff for root beverage floats, and as we were walking up the trail, we saw a black dog sniffing around.
But it was dark, and I jokingly said: "What if it's some sort of creature?" The dog whirled its head around at that exact moment, looked at us, then took off at a speed I have never seen a dog run before. I'm talking like The Flash level. Weird. So then a couple of months later, my neighbor tells me she and her son had seen a creepy black dog roaming around the back of Walmart.
Couldn't be the same one, right? Just a coincidence. But then, she tells me that when it spotted them, it took off at the speed of light. THEN, my boyfriend comes home in somewhat of a panic a few weeks later, and says he saw the dog again. It's just weird. It's not black like a dog would naturally be, it's black in the way an absence of light would be, is the best way I can describe it.
Like a void of nothingness that's dog-shaped. I’m now scared of walking to Walmart...
29. Going Our Separate Ways
I was 12 years old and I had just moved to Mexico from the United States with my parents and brother. Since we didn’t have a place to stay, my grandma let us stay at her house for a couple of years before moving out. Since my grandma’s house was in a pretty bad neighborhood, my mother would park the car in a "guarded" parking lot about two blocks from the house, so every day we would walk two blocks at 5:00 am to get the car out of the parking lot and drive to school.
One day, we were walking towards the parking lot when all of a sudden my mom stops me and tells me to be quiet. Baffled, I ask what was going on, and she then proceeds to point at a tree that was perhaps eight meters away from us. I then see a small pointy-eared figure that would pop its head out from behind the tree, kinda like a little boy teasing us.
This was no little boy. It was a small grey creature with big eyes just looking at us. My mom grabbed me by the hand and started walking away. I then saw it run off in the opposite direction. I can swear on my life this happened.
30. We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
It was my first night in Somalia. We had to set up a camp. There were gaping artillery holes in the wall surrounding the compound. We wired them all. A bulldozer dug the defensive holes after the sun went down. The guys we relieved complained about the smell of the hole. I got in and they did not exaggerate. The smell was horrid and we were being poked by jagged rocks.
I was able to sleep in the next morning after night duty. When I got up and went outside to wash up, there was a lot of activity by the hole I was in a few hours before. That's when I learned the awful truth. The hole was dug in a poorly marked graveyard. The activity at the site was loved ones claiming remains.
The smell was decomposition. The jagged "rocks" were bone shards.
31. Fifteen Minutes of Shame
About two years ago, my ex and I went through a really nasty breakup. Lots of crying and nasty words said. It became apparent that she had a lot of emotional problems and really wasn't the person I thought she was. To make things stranger, she is the one who dumped me (multiple times) and was absolutely furious when I finally told her it was time for her to go.
I wasn't exactly perfect here either, but that's what happens. I had also started a new and healthy relationship at this point maybe three weeks after the primary breakup, which bothered her to no end. Anyway, she shows up one day to collect some belongings that were still at my place. While over, she sits me down on the bed.
She hands me a note, telling me to read it out loud. It's a really nasty speech about how I'm incapable of love, and a terrible person, and deserve to die. I refuse to read it but she's screaming at me so I just said fine. I finish reading the speech and then she pulls out a loaded piece from her purse and spends about the next 15 minutes trying to muster the will to pull the trigger.
She says she knows the law, she knows she'll be caught, she knows she'll go to correctional facility and she's fine with it all because I'll be off this planet. So I spend this whole time with tears streaming down my face, trying (poorly) not to totally freak out. I start telling her that she's not a killer and she just needs to go live her life without me.
We parted with a hug and I just learned she got engaged to a new guy a couple of months ago.
32. Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself
One time I stayed over at my grandparents’ place. They went to sleep, and I stayed up watching "Series of Unfortunate Events." I eventually fell asleep and woke up at about three am in the recliner. The TV is still on the DVD menu, and the volume is turned down low. Suddenly, I heard this brutal scream from what sounds like a woman.
My blood started immediately curdling. I ran upstairs and told my grandma. She walked outside. Nothing.
33. You Have Definitely Entered the Twilight Zone
I was in Toronto for a concert and, long story short, I got stopped by "The authorities " and they have taken me to custody , saying that they were taking me to the inebriated tank. Not a big deal. I was very intoxicated and had been before as well. I pass out in the back of the car until they wake me up in front of what appears to be a warehouse of some kind.
We get inside and it looks like a hospital. The authorities leave me there and people come up and start taking weird amounts of blood, more than you normally would take. The nurse leads me into a bedroom and some bouncer type guy slams me into a bed and straps me there, like seven or eight straps across my body. That’s when my senses start to kick in and I majorly panic.
I’m left alone in some pitch-black room, strapped in and unable to move. After passing out again, I wake up in these bushes beside Burger King. I still had my phone and my wallet with all my money in it. It boggles my mind to this day. I have no idea what happened. My friends think I was drugged or hallucinated, but I swear it was real.
34. Reddit-ception
I was alone in my house reading a scary Reddit thread. Just as I was reading it, I heard someone grab the front door handle and violently rattle it back and forth. I freaked out. Turns out it was just my cat playing with a piece of paper. Not sure why my brain interpreted THAT to sound like a doorknob. It was definitely scary at the moment though…
35. Wakey, Wakey
I was sleeping at three am in my basement room. Wake up to the sound of someone moaning in agony on the couch. The way my room is laid out I couldn't see him, so I just assumed I was hearing things and tried to go back to sleep. Didn't go away. Five minutes later, leaned up and saw his legs and shoes. Oh, same as a friend who had been over earlier. Nope.
Lean up farther, he's Hispanic (my friend is Greek). I sit there for thirty seconds and my first thought is to attack the fellow with the sharp tool on my nightstand. Instead, I remember my room locks from the outside (converted basement). I move, he hears me and chases me out of the room. I get there first, and lock him in. I sprint up two flights of stairs to wake up my parents (I'm 15) and they just think I'm having a bad dream or something.
They walk downstairs and right as they approach my room, the edge of a 10lb weight from my room breaks through the door. Oh, there's actually a guy in there. My mum reached for the phone and called 9-1-1, while my father (with her) went up to the middle floor of the house drew a broadsword from the mostly decorative suit of armor in the living room, and tells me to fetch the cavalry saber from the umbrella stand (weird family, kay?).
Five minutes later authorities arrive, open the door and arrest the poor fellow, who was drugged out of his mind (PCP). Apparently he got in diving through a window. I take sleeping meds so it didn't wake me when it shattered. They inform us it's technically a citizen's arrest because of the confinement.
36. That Ghost Definitely Wasn’t Casper
As a kid, I had bad sleep paralysis and I would sometimes wake up and think there was a ghost holding me down and trying to kill me. Not fun moments…
37. Witch Hunt
One day while doing my laundry, one of the lights blew out in my basement. My basement is set up so that the laundry room is split off from the other side of the basement with a wall and a door. In order to get upstairs, you have to exit the laundry room and go through the other part of the basement. So the light blew in the other part, not the laundry room.
As it was the only light on that side, it was pretty dark. I finished the laundry I had to do while dreading the walk through the dark basement. I exit the laundry room, get halfway through the basement, and suddenly I hear a loud cackle. Imagine a sound people make when they imitate a witch. Take that and imagine that the witch had been lighting up for 50 years, making her voice deeper and hoarser.
That is what I heard, clear as day, right behind me. I did not hesitate to bolt for the stairs. I waited until my father got home and then changed the bulb. I have yet to hear that cackle since, and I have not told a single person in the house about it.
38. Catch Me If You Can
I have a projector in my bedroom, and one night when I was watching something on it, something person-shaped appeared inside the beam of light. At first I thought it was steam coming from a cup, but there was no cup or anything underneath that could have caused it. It stayed for about half an hour before suddenly disappearing (I even managed to take a picture).
I'm a skeptic and do not believe it was anything supernatural, but I have no explanation for it to this day and it definitely freaked me out.
39. Going Out With a Bang...Almost
I was nine years old and it was St. Patrick's Day, so I was off school. My mom had been seeing a guy and their relationship was about to end. I was in the living room in his apartment and they were elsewhere, screaming at each other. I remember my mom telling me to go outside, so I did. He lived on the third floor, I think.
I waited outside, until my mom suddenly comes out and we run to her SUV. I later found out he was inebriated and had a piece. It was loaded. My mom was able to get it from him, throw it far under his large bed, and run. I didn't find that detail out until years later, but it's terrifying to think what could have happened. Their relationship did not continue.
40. Down the Hatch
I was about four or five years old and my parents had just separated. My mom was living in a two bedroom apartment. I had my own room but I preferred to sleep in her bed whenever I stayed with her. Our two bedrooms were at the end of a hallway, directly across from each other. I woke up in the middle of the night and remember sitting up and seeing that our cat was sitting in the door frame of my mom's room.
This was strange because our cat was typically always in bed with us. As I watched our cat, he walked into my bedroom and meowed at something. I felt weird, so I turned to face my mom and wake her up. In the three seconds it took her to wake up and ask what was wrong, we both looked back at the door frame. Our blood immediately ran cold.
There was a man standing by my open door, making his way out of my bedroom. My mom picked me up and literally threw me out of the screen window (we were on the first floor; it was maybe a three foot drop to the ground). After she jumped out, we started screaming until one of our neighbors called 9-1-1. The authorities came but they didn't see any signs of forced entry.
Only that our front door was unlocked which led them to believe the man must have exited that way. The strange thing was that my mom swore up and down that she locked the door that night, with the deadbolt and chain lock. About a week later she was cleaning the kitchen when she opened up our water heater closet and found a notebook with names and drawings, as well as a pair of gloves and some gum wrappers.
The authorities were called again. They said that the man had probably been in our house. He must have hid until we were asleep.
41. Knock Knock...
I moved to my dad’s when I was 10 and didn't know anyone in the area, except for the family my dad was friends with. Luckily, they had a girl a couple of years older than me and we got to know each other. We weren't close, but we ended up having some of the same friends. One night my friend Rob was hanging out with her and her younger brother.
They happened to be in the house alone because the mom was at work. She'd been helping this one lady at her work and had gotten to know her fairly well. The lady's sister had recently been released from a mental institution. The night Rob was hanging out with my friend, they get a knock on the door. My friend thought it was just their mom (she knocks a certain way when coming in) and answered it without thinking.
Rob wasn't supposed to be there and he took off through the window to his house down the road, never even giving it a second thought. Turns out it wasn't her mom. It was the sister of the lady her mom was helping, who had somehow tracked down her address. My friend's younger brother got away to the neighbor’s to call the law enforcement .
The lady brutally liquidated my friend a week before Christmas. I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral.
42. Hooked on a Feeling
I was laying in my bed with my boyfriend and the lights were out. We weren't talking, just both thinking. All of a sudden, he rolls over and hugs me really tightly. I, of course, hug him back. But then this feeling just hit me. If I wasn't already laying down, it would have knocked me over. It was a total feeling of dread and panic.
I'll admit, I have had panic attacks in the past. But this was not the same. I hugged my boyfriend back as hard as I could. I never felt a feeling like this before. My boyfriend is one of those people who is always really warm, but even in his arms, I felt ice cold. I could feel this evil, awful feeling and it seemed like it was coming from the corner of my room.
It was kind of like sensing your friend behind you when they aren't saying anything. I honestly believe there was a demon or something in my room. I got the courage to speak, and I said, "Jay, do you feel that?" and he said he did, he felt the same cold, evil feeling. This all happened in about thirty seconds to a minute.
He decided to call his friend who was studying to be a youth pastor. He put him on speakerphone. Matt prayed for us and we both closed our eyes and listened, praying in our heads. When the prayer was done, the room felt lighter and it wasn't cold anymore. But after a little small talk afterward, Matt asked, "Were you two talking while I was praying?"
We were like, of course not. We were just listening. He said he heard a deep, gravelly voice on the phone telling him to stop. And he said he felt an awful, evil feeling overcome him while he was praying. I am convinced it was a demon. But it never came back, so.... Why was it there in the first place? That's the only problem I have with the whole thing.
What was it trying to accomplish? I don't think I'll ever know…
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