When we’re at home, we’re in our element. There’s no reason for us to be afraid or unnerved. After all, this is our space, right? Unfortunately, it always seems that all bets are off when we’re home alone. It’s not out of the question to worry about every little noise or shadows we see outside… or the shadows in our own home.
#1 Awkward Hospital Trip
The lights turned off all at once while I was in the kitchen. It was pitch black and I heard the door open. For some reason, instead of thinking power outage, my brain went to "someone has cut the power and is coming to hurt me.” I grabbed the landline and was crouched behind the kitchen counter, hearing steps come through the house. I was trying to breathe as quietly as possible. Then I heard my mom go, "Hello? Anyone home?" The power went out by chance at the exact moment she came in the door. That would have been an awkward hospital trip.
#2 End of the World
I heard shots when I was home alone for the first time as a 12-year-old. Turns out, my neighbor has some trouble with the law at one point in his life. After I heard all those pops, I remember that at least 12 cop cars and probably two fire trucks showed up. At the time, I thought it was the end of the world.
#3 Locked Door
I was in my basement where the computer was playing some game and heard someone pull into the driveway. I assumed it was my mother coming home from work. I heard the screen door open but when no one opened the lock on the actual door, I started to go upstairs and saw a pair of legs go by the window. I went upstairs and saw two dudes in my backyard looking at the windows and talking about the door being locked. It was an attempted home invasion. We had been broken into a few times at that point and had everything locked, but 10-year-old me was terrified.
#4 A Dropped Call
One time when I was maybe 11 years old, I was home alone at night and got a call from the local sheriff's office. They told me they just had a dropped 911 call from this number (my house landline) and asked if I was okay. I didn't call them. Nobody else was home to call them. I don’t know, it just creeped me out a lot.
#5 In the Kitchen
I was actually at a friend’s house when her parents weren’t home. We were maybe 10. It was her, my sister, her sisters and me. We decided to go swimming. There had been a rash of burglaries lately but mostly garages were broken into. We were in the pool and noticed the kitchen light turn on (it was evening).
We assumed her parents, so looked in the window to do something stupid to get their attention. We then realized we didn’t know the individual in the house. So, we hid behind the wall of the pool (above ground), terrified until her parents finally came home. It appeared as though he got spooked as he only ransacked the kitchen and left the garage door wide open when fleeing.
#6 Forced to Apologize
When I was around 8, my mom commuted to a major city about an hour away, so I would bring myself home from school, lock the door and watch cartoons until she got home. We lived in apartment blocks, and one day one of the older men in the apartment lost his wallet. For some reason, he figured it must have been me.
Keep in mind, I've never stolen anything in my life or had any trouble with the law. I had no clue what he was talking about. He came and banged on the door so aggressively that I jumped. He was belligerent, demanding I open the door. I called my mom crying and she jumped on a train to come home, but she was an hour and a half away. She called some friends and they came and got me. At that point, he took a break and went back to his apartment. But, he left his dry cleaning there.
When my mom got back, she stormed straight to his door and pounded on it like he had done to our door. He came to the door, all shocked, and she demanded to know why he thought it was appropriate to bang on the door for an hour to scare a little girl. He replied that he thought I took his wallet. My mom asked him if he still thought I did, but he said he found it in the parking lot. She looked like she wanted to hurt him, and forced him to apologize.
#7 Skeletal Thing
It was a spooky movie night at a friend’s and we were three movies deep. I was hungry went to get my leftovers, heading downstairs by myself. When I closed the fridge, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned to see what it was, there was a ghostly white, skeletal thing just staring at me from outside the patio. It had shimmering hazy lights pulsing behind it. I freaked, dropped my food and run up the stairs, nearly in tears and babbling about something in the back yard. Turns out, it was just my own reflection mixed with the lights and steam from the hot tub outside. I’ve never been so scared in my life.
#8 Wrong House
It was a hot summer and my parents went to a wedding. I had a project to do and it was like 1:00 a.m. and silent until a random tipsy dude crawled in through my window with a bottle and blushing face. I was 20 feet away at my desk from the window and we both just stared at each other. He was flustered and said, "Oh, sorry there, kid. Wrong house." He then attemped to leave the way he came. He was so out of it that I helped him by pushing him out the window. I thoroughly shut it and stared at it for two hours until my parents came home.
#9 Hey Doggy
I am nearsighted and one night as I took out the trash, I saw something run past me. It looked like a white blur. I almost screamed, turning around fast to catch a glimpse. I saw a white animal next to my car that resembled a dog. I approached it slowly and said, "Hey doggy..." but it ran and didn't run like a dog. After seeing it around the neighbor's yard, I still didn't understand what I was looking at. I really believed it was a runaway dog. A few days later, I saw it during daylight. It was an albino deer. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen and it looked more like a goat than anything.
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#10 Party on the Roof
My girlfriend and I both travel a lot for work, so it’s not unusual for only one of us to be home on any given week. Last fall, she was in San Francisco and I was home alone for a few days. We live in an apartment on the top floor of a building. Above us is a roof with a deck that’s available for everyone to use.
In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom and on the walk back to bed I looked over to the study. There’s a sliding door in the study leading to a balcony. I immediately stopped in my tracks. I saw the outline of a person standing on my balcony — facing me. I ran over, hit the lights, grabbed a utensil and dialed 911.
The person was a kid — no more than 16. He saw me and immediately grabbed the railing on my balcony and flung himself over. I ran over — assuming I just watched someone jump — only to see him safe and sound on the balcony below me. He then hurdled off that balcony. He jumped from floor to floor. He hit the parking lot in the back of our building safely and sprinted off. The cops finally came and broke up a party on the roof. Turns out, he was just a tipsy friend of someone on the second floor and got dared to do it. Also, shout out to my dog for being asleep 15 feet from the balcony and not doing anything.
#11 Tapping on the Glass
I was watching some sort of ghost television show about demons or something in my basement when I was home alone. At the time, I was probably 14 or 15. A turkey walked up to the sliding door and started tapping on the glass. I noped out of that basement so fast. I don't think I ever watched that show again either.
#12 Too Tired to Move
My grandparents paid me to house sit for them and take care of their animals (two dogs, two goats and three or four horses) for two weeks. One of the dogs was really clingy, so I closed the door on him when I went to bed one night. I woke up in the middle of the night but I was too tired to move. I saw a black figure with a white face standing right beside the bed.
It was making this horrific growling noise, leaned into me and pressed down on my chest. It pressed harder and harder and then I was able to move my fingers. I was eventually able to move my body but after that, I let the dog sleep in the room and I slept with the lights on. That was the first time I experienced sleep paralysis and thankfully the times after that one weren’t freaky.
#13 Late-Night Shower
This was in my early teen years. The power went out while I was taking a shower late at night. I got out, already freaked out and looked outside through the window. My house was the only one without power. My stupid teenage brain thought it was clearly an attempt on my life The reality was that my house had a weird problem where the power would cut out if the water heater and air conditioner happened to turn on at the same time. It had never happened to me before that, but my dad assured me that was the problem once he finally came home.
#14 Movement Detected
My house came with an alarm that kept track of movement in every room. I set the alarm before bed, but woke up in the middle of the night. The alarm was alerting me that there was movement going back and forth between my guest bedroom, down the hall, and into my office. My alarm has a robotic speaking voice, so in the dark I'd hear it say, "Movement: guest bedroom, movement: second floor hallway, movement: office, etc." I assumed it was a glitch, and nothing to worry about, but I ended up turning that function off.
#15 Porcelain Dolls
I was 12 years old and my dad was at his girlfriend's house. I went into my room to take a shower. I always put a chair under the door handle in my room because it didn't have a lock. My grandma loved giving me porcelain dolls and she decorated my room with shelves that had porcelain dolls on them. All of the dolls were on their shelves before I got into the shower. When I exited my bathroom, one of the porcelain dolls was 10 feet across the room, face down on the ground. This doll must have flown across the room to have landed where it did. Also, the doll was not broken. Needless to say, my grandma was sad that all of the dolls were packed up and put in the attic for safekeeping.
#16 Life In Your Hands
It was just me and my mom. She got tipsy and fell down the stairs. She knocked herself out cold and I had to administer CPR while the paramedics came. To this day, she has no recollection of this incident and denies it. No one else in my family can relate to how scary it is seeing someone almost pass away and having their life in your hands. I don't know how first responders do it.
#17 Scratching in the Walls
There had been scratching in my ceiling for a while and my landlady was dragging her feet over having it looked into. One night, around 2:00 a.m., the scratching became so bad it woke me up from REM sleep. I tried to reassure myself that whatever it was couldn’t really get through to me and I would be fine until I could call my landlady the next day and press the issue.
Then some debris fell from my ceiling. Whatever was up there had managed to dig a small hole into my room. I screamed and heard some scurrying away from my approximate location. I grabbed any stuff I needed for the next day, got out of there, shut the door real tight behind me, and just passed out on the couch.
I called my landlady first thing in the morning and she had someone come while I was at work that day to check it out. A mama raccoon had managed to get her way into the space between the roof and my ceiling and gave birth to a litter of kits. The guy speculated that the kits were getting old enough to start wrestling around, and that was likely what led to the hole in my ceiling.
Luckily, it was just small (the size of a quarter), so there weren’t any angry raccoons hanging out in my room when I got home. I’m glad they took care of everything. Animal control was able to safely trap and release the whole little family, but I still started hunting for new apartments as soon as possible.
#18 French Glass Doors
I was probably nine years old, my sister was six. We had a babysitter who was 12, so alone in the sense that no adults were around. Fool that I was, I squirted bug spray on my sister and she chased me in retaliation. I ran through some French glass doors to get away from her. She went for the knob and missed. Her arm went through one of the glass panes.
She cut herself so deep, you could see inside the arm. It looked like a poorly cut piece of raw meat since that's basically what it was. The babysitter held a piece of cloth on my sister's arm until my mom came home (called her right away) and took my sister to the ER. She didn't hit an artery so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it was scary at the time. She got 60 stitches out of it.
#19 Gives Me Nightmares
It was about 8:30 at night and I heard the front door open. I called out from my room asking why my mom and dad were home only a half-hour after they left for dinner. I almost wet my pants and straight-up jumped out of my bedroom window when a random male voice replied, “What? There’s somebody in here?” Turns out, it was somebody who got hired to check on one of our neighbors’ dogs when they were on vacation and he got the wrong house address. The raw fear that gripped me when I heard his voice still gives me nightmares.
#20 Hiding Somewhere
When I was home alone with my little sister, at the time I was probably 12 or 13 and my mom had just ran to the store for milk. These cops showed up at my door and asked if they could come inside to look around. I was a kid and confused, so I said okay. They later told my mom that the house across the street was just broken into, the man wasn’t caught and they were lead to believe he was hiding out on a different property somewhere. So they thought this grown man was hiding in my garage or backyard while I was home alone with my sister. My mom never left the house without us again when we were kids.
#21 Baked Potatoes
I was home alone at my dad's while he was working nights, making my dinner. I was probably about 14 or 15 at the time. I was watching TV while my potatoes were cooking when I heard something slam into the front door. I checked it out, nothing. About 10 minutes later, I heard another bang on the front door, repeat and still nothing. It really freaked me out because we'd had a few houses get broken into on my street. Turns out, I didn’t put enough holes into my baked potatoes and they exploded in the oven.
#22 Shutting the Door
I was chilling in my bed with my dog watching TV and I heard a door shut downstairs. I looked out the window of my sister's room because she had a view of the garage, but the garage was empty. I crept downstairs and searched the basement as well as everywhere on the ground floor. But, I found nothing. I went back to my room, on edge for the next couple of hours, until my family got home. I still don’t know what happened and it couldn't have been wind because it was winter, so we had all the windows closed.
#23 In Full View
I was working pretty late on my computer when I get an alert from my security camera that detected motion. I checked it and there was a person staring into my apartment window in full view of where I was working. So, I closed the computer, turned off the lights and went into the bathroom for a bit. Turns out, being extra paranoid when someone is staring into your apartment at 2:00 a.m. isn’t a good combination. I checked the camera memory and the guy was there for 20 minutes, just real casual. I called the cops, the kid ran away and came back an hour later. I haven’t seen him since.
#24 Up the Driveway
Well, my house was sort of out farther away from the town. We had neighbors, but they were few and far between. There was a hiking trail opening across the street from our driveway, which was very long and couldn’t be seen from the trail. My bedroom also had a large window that would face out onto the driveway.
I was home alone, cleaning my room, and singing “We Are The Champions” extremely loudly. I looked up and saw a man power-walking up my driveway. It was obvious no one was home but me since there weren’t any cars in the driveway. I ran to the front door (which was open because it was hot outside), locked it, and closed and locked my window.
That guy did not like that. I called 911 because he was still approaching my house and I was getting scared by his demeanor. While on the phone with the operator, he started banging on my front window by the door, and then the door itself. He tried kicking in the door and tried breaking the window. I went and hid in my mom’s closet (because it locked from the inside only) until the cops showed up.
By the time they showed up, he was gone and there were hand and shoe prints all over the door and front window. There were also some handprints on my bedroom window. They found him about an hour later walking up and down my street. He told them that he “heard my pretty singing voice and just wanted to say hi.”
He was also loaded, but admitted to being sober at the time of the incident. He started drinking “after I rejected him.” He also told them that he planned to come in and “have some fun” with me after he found that I was home alone. And that he was waiting for nighttime to come back. So yeah. I had a lot of nightmares about that one.
#25 Playing a Prank
My siblings decided to play a prank on me when I was in the third grade. They told me I'd be home alone and they left with my nanny. Then, after about a half-hour, they started tapping on the windows. It started spaced out, but as time went on they got more and more frequent and I was terrified. It ended with both of them just banging really loudly on random windows, then they banged on my door and finally came in and told me what they were doing. I was screaming and crying. It was easily the worst day of my life. I hate being home alone now and I’m really jumpy. I hate saying it was traumatic because I feel like that's going overboard.
#26 I Know You’re There
Once while I was home alone, I had been warned not to answer the door, for anyone or I might get taken away. One sales guy had been banging on the door repeatedly for about six minutes. I guess I hadn’t muted the television fast enough. He screamed, “I know you’re home alone in there!” and I about had a heart attack.
#27 It’s a Small World
When I was about 12 years old, I was home alone for the weekend and cooking lunch while playing some loud music. I kept hearing something playing with my music, so I stopped it and heard the tune of "It's a Small World.” Just the tune, no lyrics. Kind of like it was coming from a toy. So of course, I had to investigate.
I checked downstairs and found none, so I went upstairs and halfway up, it got louder. It eventually stopped but I could never hear that song in the same way ever again. It also didn't help that my bedroom was upstairs, so I did the fastest run I could when it was bedtime. To this day, I still don't know what was responsible for that sound.
#28 Halloween Night
I was home alone one night and it was close to Halloween in 2015. There was this loud knock on the front door. I was eating dinner, so I cautiously went to the front door. I opened it up and there was a red liquid all over the front porch with no one there. It kind of freaked out a bit, but I thought it was a prank.
In any case, I called the cops because I wanted to make sure I was safe. They said they would send someone there. They called back and said someone was on a bike and fell and was really hurt. They were and going door to door asking for help. I missed the person, but one of my neighbours apparently helped them out.
#29 Soft Thudding
This was late at night when I was a teenager. It must’ve been around 1:00 a.m. and I was watching YouTube. Suddenly, my phone got an alert. My phone is connected to the security system and whenever something happens, it gives an alert for a few seconds before ringing so that you can cancel if you want to. I was home alone and I decided to cancel the alarm.
I slowly get out of my room and crept down. Then I heard a thud. It sounded like someone trying to quietly jump down from a higher place without making much noise. I also heard some footsteps and creaking coming from my kitchen. I inched towards my kitchen and turned the light on, prepared to fight for my life. It was my cat that I forgot existed because I was so scared.
#30 The Fourth of July
When my son was a baby, I left him with his usual babysitter. It was the Fourth of July and she was standing at her sliding back door, holding my son, watching fireworks. Suddenly, a man burst through her front door, ran through the house and right past her out the back door and over the fence. Cops soon followed. She never left her front door unlocked again.
#31 Alone in the Basement
I was a young kid home alone and my mom called to say a tornado was coming and I had to go shelter in the basement. The basement was incredibly creepy, especially as a child. I never went down there on my own. So little old me grabbed my toy lantern to descend into the basement all alone with rain hitting the windows. I only had the flicker of my toy lamp to light up my surroundings while I made my way to the boiler room and shelter. I just sat there in the darkness listening to all of the sounds for two hours. It was awful. The tornado missed us by miles.
#32 Breathing Walls
I have always had hallucinations, primarily audio and visual ones. When I turned nine, I started to be able to tell when it wasn’t real. Just imagine up until then, when I was home alone at night the walls would breathe and people stomped around the house. I would carefully search the house for other people, but the walls breathing always scared me. I still see it every now and then and it still creeps me out.
#33 No Logical Explanation
I was going to the bathroom with the door open (I live with my fiancé, no kids). I saw a hand around the edge of the doorframe, so I got up to joke with my girlfriend. But I came around the corner and there wasn’t anything. I called her and she said she wasn’t home. She said I knew she was at the gas station because she said she told me. In a serious manner, I cannot logically explain it. I can’t help but believe ghosts are real.
#34 Alert Sirens
This happened when I was at home with a friend in the seventh grade. We lived on a military base and I was home first as I took the bus. My friend was over and we were doing homework in my room. All of a sudden, we heard the alert sirens. We went outside to check what it was and all we heard was, "Active shooter on base." We ran upstairs and hid. It’s still scary.
#35 No Exit
I was pretty young at the time, probably 10. My parents went to get groceries and let me stay at home to watch TV. At random, a dude just ran up to my house and started knocking on my door (we live on a one-way street ). He was also covered in red. Maybe a minute later, a cop car pulled up, they beat the guy, put him in the back of the car and drove away. I guess he was trying to escape but didn’t think there would be no exit whatsoever except through someone’s house. It scared the living heck out of me.
#36 Crime of Passion
I was 15 or 16. It was a Friday night and my parents were having dinner with some friends. I was supposed to stay alone at home for three or so hours. A middle-aged guy got into the garage and was trying to break into the house. He was carrying a bat or something, was angry, and kept yelling my dad's name. He broke windows, a door, and damaged my mom's car. Luckily, he didn't get inside.
I was so scared I didn't even think of calling the police. I remember how my hands were shaking and how I was trying hard not to cry. But, I called my mom and my parents rushed home; they called the police on their way. The police arrived a few minutes later and it turns out, this man was married to one of my dad's co-workers. She was sleeping around on him and told her husband the other guy was my dad in order to "protect" the real other guy.
#37 Down the Stairs
I decided to go downstairs in the middle of the night to get myself some snacks. After I took my first step down the stairs, I somehow passed out. I eventually woke up on the landing, totally unscathed. I must have fallen backwards (I still don’t know how I fell) but if it was the other direction, I would've plunged to my demise.
#38 Down the Hall
I was sitting in the front of the house watching television when one of the bedroom doors down the hallway slammed shut. That had never happened before and it’s never happened since. My investigation turned up nothing, but I still couldn’t explain what happened that day. I’m just glad it was during the daytime!
#39 Someone In My Home
I woke up from a deep sleep, sitting straight up in bed, heart pounding, absolutely convinced someone was in my home. I spent the next 20 minutes slowly searching my very small basement suite, where I live alone, with 911 pre-dialed on my phone. No one was there and my door was still locked. No windows were open, etc. I’m still not sure what woke me up, but I've never been so paranoid in my life.
#40 Many Other Homes
I was in bed upstairs crying (was severely depressed) when I heard the doorbell ring. Because of how depressed I was, I was too lazy to answer it. Thank God because it turns out it was a man wearing a mask we caught on our security cameras. He went to our backyard, drank a bottle from our deck, waved at my dog and tapped the glass doors while looking inside. Thank God I didn’t answer that door or go downstairs because he would’ve seen me. He broke into many other homes that night all through our neighbourhood.
#41 Coming Home Early
When I was about 18, my parents went out of town to visit family and I was home alone for a few days. Saturday night, I was chatting with friends online and started hearing little noises downstairs. Then I could hear muffled voices. My parents weren’t due back until the next evening and I started panicking. I locked myself in the office and called 911.
At that point, I was crying and hiding behind the desk with the phone. I then heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I lost it when the doorknob started rattling… and then my mom started asking why the door was locked. I told the operator that my parents were home early and hung up, while my mom was fussing for being online all evening. They decided to come home early and because I'd been online, they couldn't call me to let me know.
#42 Strange Virus
My sister and I were home alone and our parents were out with some friends. Suddenly, there was the voice of a young child downstairs, repeatedly screaming "mommy." After a few minutes, I was finally able to go downstairs and look. Turns out, our PC was turned on and played this sound. I turned it off. When our parents came home they didn't believe us, until it started again a few days later in the middle of the night. This time our parents were home and it was some strange virus on our computer.
#43 Weird Position
I slipped, fell and somehow lodged myself stuck crammed in the doorway. I was very stuck for a very long time. One leg was bent in an odd position and my wrist had bent backwards. I couldn’t move due to shock and pain at first, but I finally wriggled myself loose. For a moment, though, I was convinced someone was going to find me lifeless in this weird position.
#44 Don’t Answer the Door
I was laying in bed when the doorbell started ringing multiple times. I thought it was my cousins because they do that a lot, so I stayed in bed since I was lazy and they had keys. After a few more minutes of ringing, I started to get paranoid and texted my family group chat. The ringing stopped and I heard loud banging noises and the sound of wood being broken. I don’t know why, but I got up to check it. The burglar saw me through our frosted glass on the door, yelled and ran away. I got scared of being alone in the house for a while after.
#45 My Back Turned
It was just me and my dad at home. When I was maybe eight, I remember I had woken up in the middle of the night to a light in the hall directly across from my room. I figured someone was in the bathroom. For some reason, this made me need to go to the bathroom, so I got up and walked to the door. Just before I knocked, something either pinched or poked my butt. When I whipped around, nothing was there. It’s kind of embarrassing for me to say, but I’m 20 and I still can’t keep my back turned from any dark rooms or halls. I have to sleep with my back against a wall.
#46 Lock Check
I once woke to two cops opening my bedroom door asking who I was. They had apparently been called because someone noticed the house back door was open. That actually wasn’t scary in the moment because I was so tired, but I get nervous thinking back now. I now always make sure to do a door and lock check.
#47 Zombie in the Garage
One time when I was around 12, an inebriated dude wandered into my backyard. I didn't know it was a human at that time and just heard the loudest commotion coming near the garage. He was mumbling and groaning like a zombie. I grabbed a bat to try to see what was up and this idiot started coming full speed at me. I immediately ran inside and called the police. I thought I was going to be eaten by a zombie.
#48 Messing With Nature
I was sitting in the back room during a thunderstorm. I felt a weird sensation and then all of my senses went into overdrive as a lightning bolt hit a tree maybe 15 yards away. My ears were ringing for a few minutes afterwards. The roughly 20 seconds after the strike when I couldn't see or hear was absolutely terrifying. I thought I passed away. I never messed around with thunderstorms after that.
#49 A Bit Shocking
I was about eight years old and decided to try and play music. I put the plug into the electric socket, but it had an open end and I got a shock. The issue was that I didn’t know what a shock was. So, I was under the assumption that someone was in the house who I couldn’t see. I thought they startled me, but it was scary.
#50 Sleeping Body
I think I had an out of body experience one time. I was about to fall asleep on the sofa after a long day at work. I always check to make sure the door is locked before going to sleep. I reached over from the sofa to feel if the door was locked. It was, then I looked down to see the cat watching me. I was kind of glowing in a strange light. Then I realized I couldn’t reach the door from the sofa and I saw my body asleep on the sofa. I panicked, the cat panicked, I got sucked back into my sleeping body and woke up. I didn’t sleep again for a long while.
