Creepiest Stories That Will Send Chills Down Your Spine

Some of us remember the most memorable memories from our past. Some of those may be delightful, but the ones that are etched on our minds are those memories that made our blood run cold. Those experiences horrify you and still haunt you up to this day.

These stories from Reddit users will surely give you the heebie-jeebies. Prepare yourselves as these might be the scariest things you have encountered. Come check these!

1. Night Shift Nightmare

I was about 15 minutes from finishing the night shift at work when there was a massive crash on one of the windows in the office so I got up and went to check it out.

Someone has thrown quite a sizable rock through one of the windows in the front of the building. This is especially weird because I'm working in the industrial district at 11:30 at night with none of the other businesses open.

I go back to my desk, put a quick call through to security to let them know and decide to head home. As I'm leaving the building I'm freaking myself out about it more and more and end up running to my car, getting in, and taking off.

I'm almost home and I've started to calm down a bit when I realize that I didn't unlock my car when I got in. It had been unlocked the whole time.

I do a quick check with my hand in the backseat for any possible worst scenario that might be hanging around there but there's nothing there.

Fast forward 30 minutes: I've called a friend of mine who says he is out drinking so I decide I'm going to join him. I jump on my bicycle and start riding over.

I'm doodling along the road on my bike, it's a nice night and I'm in no big rush, just enjoying the moonlight when I hear someone riding behind me. I straighten up and stick to one side of the road.

He passes me slowly and, when he is right beside me, he shoots me a smile I can describe as purely insane. I kind of flinch and am taken aback as he rides on. That's when I realized. He is riding my mom's bike.

Needless to say, I sprinted home. When I get there, sure enough, her bike is missing and one of my car's doors is open. The back left one. I was driving and did not need to open that door.

Cranklowza

I was playing around with a radio once when I was a kid, just slowly spanning through the static trying to find a station.

I had found an old television antenna, attached it to the side of our house, and ran a wire out my window to it with an alligator clip attached to the radio antenna, allowing me to get a way broader range of signals.

So I'm sitting there, early in the morning (like 2 am), slowly sweeping frequencies, and suddenly I get to this station that's playing this very weird crackling sound.

It sounded sort of like cracking knuckles, or maybe Rice Crispies cereal, but with a fixed, rhythmic pattern instead of being random.

I sat there listening to it for a second, then it suddenly stopped and this faint voice said, "It doesn't work. We're already dead. We're already dead."

It took a second for the weight of the words to hit me, but when they did I freaked the heck out and almost threw the radio across the room.

I'm pretty sure it was just someone messing around with a radio transmitter, but hell if it didn't scare the crap out of me at the time.

Bigsol81

At university, in my room in the halls, it was just me and stuff. Every night after I moved in I heard voices.

Not through the wall voices, but hushed, in the room voices, that I'd become aware of as I lay just below the threshold of sleep. These voices would be talking, quite leisurely, in low tones.

It always seemed like as soon as I jerked awake they'd quickly hush themselves to a barely audible whisper that I couldn't chase around the room, because it just hung in the air.

I owned no radio; my laptop was shut down and unplugged, and the halls had no PA system or anything. Just the voices, that were talking about things in some strange language, getting louder as I fell asleep and quieter when I woke up.

Turns out that the cables on my speakers weren't properly isolated, and I was picking up French radio. Only happened at night because that was when I turned them off; when there was current flowing, they didn't act as a radio receiver.

Captain_English

My wife and I to see The Sixth Sense when it first came out. We had just moved into our new house, and my wife was pretty shaky when we came home. We didn't have kids at this point.

She insisted that I go through all of the rooms in the house to check for who knows what. Being a dutiful husband, I went through all of the bedrooms and finished up in the guest bathroom.

The door was ajar, and I pushed it open and heard, right next to my head, the loudest, most blood-curdling scream ever.

Turns out that the cat was behind the door and somehow had its tail in the jamb-- and when I opened it, it got pinched. Heck, man.

lobstah4

The story of Karen Wetterhahn. Essentially, she was a chemistry professor at Dartmouth. She was working with an organic mercury compound that was relatively unknown at the time.

A drop spilled on her gloved hand. No big deal usually. Turns out dimethylmercury penetrates latex gloves quickly, and a drop on the hand is a death sentence. She slipped into a coma about 6 months later and then passed away.

The terrifying part is the description of her coma. It came from a source on the internet.

“One of her former students described it as not being the kind of coma she’d expected.” She was thrashing about. Her husband saw tears rolling down her face.”

“I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain.” Terrifying. I am so glad I'm not a chemist. Computers are friendly.

larsendt

About a year ago I was climbing a tree in my front yard at around 4:30 a.m. I had walked a lady friend to her car and was killing time until I got the "I'm home" text, and the weather was nice for tree climbing, so I just did it.

That night my neighbors didn't lock their gate like they normally do, leaving easy access to their tool shed, lawn mower, etc. I guess the guy forgot, but it was noticeable (large gate, right next to the road, expensive old man tools).

So as I observed the gate from my lofty perch and considered all of the reasons it would be open, I noticed a car coming down my street very slowly, eventually coming to a halt right in front of my neighbor's driveway.

I looked into the car and saw two young men pointing and looking intently around his yard. Sketchy crap during daylight, much more so at night.

After a minute or so of being too nervous to do anything at all, I realized I was leaning pretty heavily on some branches, exposing myself more than when these two had just driven up. That was when it happened.

The guy in the passenger seat noticed me first. He did a panicky sort of double take when he first saw me, followed by what I generally assume to be the words "Oh crap!", and rapidly punching the driver in the arm.

Attempting to look menacing, I did the only thing I could think of which was to hold my arms up in a claw-like pose (like a tree rex). when the driver saw me.

He did the same panicky double-take before slamming the gas and noping out of there. I like to think I was the creepiest/scariest thing those two ever saw.

TheSilvermanCometh

This was a few years ago on a night scuba dive. There were 8 of us in the group including our dive master and his assistant.

We had just finished our dive and were gathered up in a circle ready to get out of the water when my dive master freezes. He takes his flashlight and points it outside our circle of divers he catches something circling us with the beam.

Turns out it was a 12-foot-long great white shark. At this point half of the group is trying to keep the shark illuminated as it circles us and remarkably everyone stays calm.

The only things going through my mind were iterations of these two thoughts, "Don't look like a yummy delicious fatty seal, and I hope I taste terrible."

My dive master gets our attention slowly puts his thumb up and then makes an upward motion. We all began to ascend.

The shark kept with us until we were maybe 10 feet from the surface. Then it turned off into the darkness and was gone. I did not go back into the ocean for about a week after that.

Caboose2701

I was fixing a jumped belt on an old Gleaner K2 in the middle of the field, in the middle of the night. When my dog (a 110lbs labrador), who's usually sniffing for birds when I stop, is standing still and letting out a growl.

I've never heard from him. I shine my almost-dead flashlight where he's looking and I see three sets of eyes change quickly from a glow to a silhouette of coyotes. They're pretty harmless on their own, but in a pack they're relentless.

I call for my dog and bolt for the cab, but he runs at them instead. I stood on the platform for what felt like hours, as my dog tried to fight off the now 5 coyotes.

I couldn't put my buddy’s life in danger, so I grabbed the hammer and wrapped my jacket around my arm. The second I got close, one of them went for my leg and I offered my arm instead.

It gladly took it and I swung down on its back with all my might. The second coyote, the same as the first, grabs my arm and I swing at his back.

The other three are switching between fighting and dragging my dog into the corn and like an idiot I throw the hammer at the pack with no effect. I kick the one doing the most dragging and he thankfully runs off.

I picked up the hammer and swung at the one my dog didn't have and stood back and watched my dog chase off the 5th.

Mnfats

I woke up one night around 1 am and heard the shower was on. I first thought it was my brother, he works night shifts, so thought he had come home late and was in the shower.

It went on for about half an hour until I got up and went to see what he was doing. No one was in the shower, my brother wasn't home yet, I was the only one in the house. Still to this day, I have no idea how it turned on or who did it.

Almost 5 years later I still think about it and scare myself. Even writing this now I feel like turning every light on in the house. Why do I do this to myself!!

designerlogic

I had this once, I came home and heard the shower was on. I move to the kitchen (my bathroom is connected through the kitchen). I see loads of steam coming out of the bathroom.

At this point, I was scared beyond belief, but I had to check it out. So I checked it out and the shower was on with streaming hot water.

The only logical explanation is that I have a shower mat, which I usually drape over the shower head, and the shower mat has fallen. So I can conclude the shower mat hit the heat valve. Right?

votedh

When I was young I would get sleep paralysis. I remember one time I was lying in the living room by myself and started to fall asleep, and the sleep paralysis started.

I couldn't move or open my eyes when I started hearing this weird buzzing noise and then a really creepy voice started saying my name.

It kept saying it, slightly louder each time as if it was getting closer. I finally snapped out of it. It was really freaky, messed me up for a few days as a kid.

mothfukle

This happened to me when I was about 8 and still scares me to this day. One evening I went to let my dogs in from the back garden at around 9 pm.

It was pitch black so I quickly opened the door and my dogs came bounding in, as soon as they came in I locked the door, and at that moment a person on the other side pulled the handle down trying to get into my house.

We had a glass door so even in the dark I could see the outline of a man standing there. I ran to my dad and he ran into the back garden after this man and saw him running down the road. Since then I have closed and locked doors at the speed of light.

ActiveSloth1234

A few months ago I downloaded a program for my phone. An app for sleeping. I bought the premium version of the app for the extra features to record sound throughout the night when volumes reached a certain threshold.

It would activate when I would snore or move around. I would usually spend the next evening going over some of the recorded sounds. Everything was pretty normal until I listened to something out of the ordinary.

It was near the beginning of April, and I had the apartment to myself. 

It started out picking up my snoring, and then the hairs on my neck stood up as I heard my doorknob moving. Following this, you can hear my door open slowly.

I was confused and a little worried. Everything was still locked up, nobody came home (the chain lock was still latched on the front door), and my landlord certainly didn't come. I don't use the app anymore.

Merrell0

When I was 7, I woke up in the middle of the night with an earache. I decided to tell my mom and stepdad and walked out of my room. Someone was sitting on the chair in the living room (about 3 feet away from my bedroom door).

The person looked strange (the face was just kind of distorted) but it was dark and I couldn't see well. "Mom?" I asked. The person shook their head, and I started getting scared, "Mike?". The person shook their head again.

I decided the best course option was to go back to bed so I wouldn't have to walk past this person. I climbed into bed and closed my eyes for a second.

Once I opened my eyes, I saw the person standing in my doorway, smiling madly, and nodding furiously. I screamed at the top of my lungs and closed my eyes.

My stepdad came running out of his room in his underwear with a baseball bat (that was a scary sight in itself). There was nothing there.

But, the clothes my mom had folded and put on the chair were strewn about the living room. For the longest time, I told myself it was my cat, sitting on the clothes.

CrackheadSally

My dad passed away of cancer the day I turned 16 after about two weeks in a coma. It was really fast, less than two months between diagnosis and death.

He passed away in the house. We had a hospice attendant and my mom was very good about seeing him in those final days.

Anyway, a lot of weird crap happened after he passed, but the one that still freaks me out when I think about it happened about 12 hours before he took to bed for the last time.

He was in our living room napping on the couch while my mom was in the kitchen cooking. No one else was home.

Suddenly, he jerked awake and was shouting for my mom in a very loud, agitated voice. He was clearly angry with her. "Beverly! Don't do that! Don't EVER do that again!"

She ran into the room, alarmed, and asked what he was talking about, and he said, "Don't do that. Don't walk past me like that in that long, black wig." Sometimes I think he saw death.

AllTheCheesecake

My old co-worker had a son who was in his mid thirties and he had a son named Hunter that was 4 or 5. She said that Hunter would have bad dreams and that he would sleep with his dad when he got scared.

One night his dad woke up because he heard Hunter calling him. But he was calling him by his name, not “dad.” So he went to his room and he was asleep.

He woke him up and said "Hunter, you were calling me. Is everything okay?" And Hunter said, "Dad, when they call you you're not supposed to answer." and fell back asleep.

He asked him about it in the morning but he said he didn't remember saying it. I get chills when I think about it.

LumosTheNox

While not eerie, it was probably the most scared I've ever felt in a moment. When I was about 13 or 14, I woke up in the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom.

I had one of those bunk beds, but where instead of a bottom bunk there's a desk. For whatever reason, I started psyching myself out badly.

I sat up in my bed staring into the pitch blackness, imagining a man with a knife standing under my bed ready to end me as soon as I put a foot down the ladder. Or a torn-face ghost girl in the hallway.

I was also imagining someone smiling and bloody at the turn into my bathroom. The usual freaky images. I tortured myself for a solid 20 minutes, then used another 10 to try and convince myself of being stupid and go to the bathroom.

When I finally felt ready, I carefully stepped down the ladder, holding my breath, ready to feel my foot get harshly grabbed. I continued to the bathroom, slow and completely on edge.

Well, I guess my mom was going to the bathroom at the time too, because she was right there in the hallway and she bumped into me. For the state of mind, I was in at that time, getting bumped into just set me over the edge.

I collapsed in the hallway in shock, started crying, and peed all over myself. My mom was stunned and apologetic, but not without a great deal of laughter and mockery first.

melanie086

Maybe not the creepiest, but what's on my mind right now...I just moved into this house a year ago. I discovered that there are child-sized handprints on one of my bathroom walls.

These are permanent handprints you can only see from a certain angle, like what water exposure does to paint. The previous owners have no idea what I'm talking about, and I don't know how they got there.

pineapple_warhorse

My boyfriend lived in a house that made no sense. There was a light switch on a baseboard that worked a light two rooms away, for instance. Just a crappy only-college-kids-can-stand-it house.

They decided to see if there was room in the attic space for some boxes. So my boyfriend opens the hatch-thing, pulls down the ladder, and goes up.

Pulls the chain for the light to come on. The bare bulb is over a dusty room empty except for a rusty, metal children's high chair.

My boyfriend clicked the light back off, came back down the ladder, and said, "No, we're never going up there."

Kittae

To get my story you have to have an understanding of my third-floor landing. There's a single set of stairs that lead up to it, once on the landing.

It's a T-shape, with an office to the left, my bedroom to the right, and straight ahead is a bathroom with a shower.

Anyway, one night, around 10 pm, I'm taking a shower before I head to sleep. The glass panels on my shower are like, concave/convex glass that blurs everything, so everything was blurred and unclear.

I glance at the door and I see some kind of hand-like figure. Now, it was pitch black, so right there it freaked me out because I come from a family of pale white Welsh people.

What freaked me out more was how the hand seemed to come through the door, or at least an angle where whomever the hand belonged to would be visible.

All it did was hit the lights. That's it. No noise, no attack, or anything, it just turned off the lights. So there I am, I just witnessed a phantom hand, and now I'm in my shower and it's pitch black.

I've never been so chilled to the bone before, something about being in the darkness of the night, with the only noise being the water hitting the floor beneath me, just reduced me to the most primal state of pure fear I've ever been in.

I eventually get myself to leave the shower and hit the lights. The relief that came over me was immense. I've never been able to explain it.

The stairs up to the landing are old and creek-like heck, I would've heard someone come and go down. No one was in my room or the office. Weirder still, nothing like it has happened since.

PetrusOfThorolund

I house sit for a family friend when she goes out of town. The woman who lives there is really into a bunch of spiritual stuff, new age stuff, reiki, etc. The very first time I was housesitting, I was outside watering the plants.

I was the only one there who had closed the door after me. From the driveway where I was watering, I had a completely unobstructed view of the front door, the only door that was unlocked at the time.

When I went back inside, there, on the little table next to the front door was a half-eaten cookie.

The table had been completely clear when I went outside and I hadn't seen cookies that looked like that anywhere in the house. Nothing too creepy, but very puzzling and unsettling.

When the woman returns, I mention it to her and she laughs and says she "gets ghosts all the time." I'm a fairly skeptical person, but honestly, ghosts were the best explanation.

The next time I was over, I was pooping around 10:30. The house itself is fairly old and creaks from time to time, but nothing too loud or disruptive. While I was pooping, there comes a single loud knock from the other side of the bathroom door.

This wasn't a little creak or pop from the house, it was a loud, determined rap on the door. It was enough to scare my poop back in for the rest of the night.

Fishfishfish

I was once in a hot tub with some friends late at night, and we were all telling some stories. One of the guys told us this one, a story of a girl he knows.

So one day, this girl was called over to babysit. She did it a lot for these people, so it was routine for her. Anyway, she was told to put the kids to bed at 9, and she did.

After she put them to bed, she started watching TV and doing homework, waiting for the parents to come home. But then, she started hearing some noises coming out of the basement, like pans falling and stuff.

She just ignored it and thought it was the washing machine or something. Anyways, a little later, she starts hearing the noises again.

She decides to call the police and tell them she is hearing noises coming out of the basement at the house she's babysitting at. The lady at the station told her there's a patroller in her area, and that he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes.

Anyways, in about 5 minutes, she hears a knock on the door. She answers, and it's a full swat team. She asked, "I thought they were just sending a patroller."

One of the guys told her "After you hung up the phone, we heard a second phone on the line hang up.” Ended up there was a man in the basement, listening to the conversation.

The lady in the station waited and heard him hang up, then immediately sent the swat team to help. They went downstairs and caught him; he was wanted for multiple crimes.

Bondmaxbondrock

I was babysitting my nieces one Friday night while my brother-in-law took his wife to dinner. She has a strict bedtime of 8 pm.

So after successfully getting her to sleep (no small task), I decided I would watch the Skyfall movie that people wouldn't shut up about.

Halfway into the movie, I was chilled to the bone when Sophie (who sneaked out of bed and behind the couch) whispered into my ear, "You know James Bond ended the life of Jesus, right?" I haven't offered to watch her again.

whistledick

I saw this little bird walking on the street when suddenly a seagull grabbed it in its mouth. Seagull started to smash this helpless bird against the ground a few times.

After a while, it ate the bird and I saw a bump on the seagull's neck like the bird was stuck in its throat. Then it flew off. I was just standing there and said: "What the heck, seagulls shouldn't do that."

Invad3r

One morning last December around 4:00 am, I woke up to a piercing, shrill, alarm-like noise. In a panic, I jumped out of bed thinking it might be a phone or my car alarm or something.

As I was trying to locate the origin of the noise, I realized it didn't change frequency or volume regardless of where I was in the house. There was no point of origin (as far as I could tell with my semi-conscious brain).

So I'm stumbling around in complete darkness with a tiny flashlight thinking how stupid am I. I just did the cliche horror film thing and started walking around in the dark instead of turning on the lights.

I found the light switch and clicked it! It doesn't work!! I look outside, the whole neighborhood's pitch black, with no street lights, no cars, nothing. I grab the phone, it's dead.

I found my mobile and called a friend, they didn't pick up probably because it was 4 in the morning! However, my twisted brain led me to the conclusion that something awful had happened.

So there I am, the shrill noise is still there in the background, I'm standing in complete darkness. Perhaps the sleep deprivation combined with the rush of adrenaline.

Suddenly, I had this immense fear that led me to the notion that the end of the world had arrived. I thought, whatever was happening didn't matter.

The adrenaline was wearing off and I felt exhausted and pretty down in general so I slinked off back to bed, falling asleep thinking I'd rather pass away peacefully in my sleep than fully aware of imminent death in the darkness.

That day, I found out our power had been cut in the night which set off a neighbour's home security system (he wasn't home to turn it off) which explains the lack of electricity and the awful noise.

Simplicity541

I was buying a house last year, and one of the places I decided to look at was a renovated farmhouse.

The main building itself was pretty nice and I was considering it as an option, but then the realtor took me to check out the old barn that was on the property.

From the outside, it looked like it could be converted into a nice workshop. I walked inside and almost immediately felt something fall on my head. I brushed it away and did the "get it off me" dance until it fell to the ground. It was a tiny spider.

Then another drop on my head. I repeated my freak-out and got another, larger spider out of my hair. Then I made the mistake of looking up.

There was a huge black spot on the wall, which I realized after my eyes focused was the biggest cluster of spiders I had ever seen in my life. At that moment, I was a faster sprinter than Usain Bolt.

MostlyBullshit

In the middle of the summer two summers ago, I was sleeping in my bed peacefully when I heard the loudest thunder I've ever heard in my life.

Normally I am not afraid of thunder but this time my entire house shook as if it was a huge earthquake. I shake it off and go back to sleep. No big deal.

The next thing I knew, I was jolted awake by a flash of bright purple lightning and the loudest thunder that Zeus could create.

Then I start to hear the screams. It had seemed as if outside my window was a choir of demented hell spawn screeching in cries of agony. As I lay in bed terrified I thought to myself, "This is happening. I can hear them. This is how it ends."

Later I found out that the screams were just a pack of foxes that were scared by the intense lightning, but still, that was some scary crap right there.

MrUncreativeMan

One morning at about 1:00 AM, I got a phone call from my little sister's cell. She lived in a time zone to the east, so it was 2:00 am there. It woke me up, and I immediately sensed that something was wrong.

I picked up the phone and groggily said "Hello?" when I heard a muffled woman's voice, possibly my sister's, saying, "Please, help me." She sounded terrified and desperate.

I immediately thought I was having a "Taken" moment. My sister was being taken, and it was all she could do to call me for help! Should I hang up and dial 911? Should I yell into the phone?

Should I keep listening and try to pick up some kind of relevant information? I wished I had one of those fancy phone recording devices that the Taken guy had right then.

I opted to keep listening, and as I did, I occasionally heard muffled yelling and screaming, much to my horror. Her phone must have been hidden away pretty well.

Then something strange happened: I heard what was my sister's voice, also muffled, but completely calm. I didn't hear what she said, but it was a very casual, conversational tone.

I noticed for the first time that there was also scary music along with the yelling and stuff in the background. I found out she accidentally dialed me while in the middle of a horror flick by 2 am. I hung up, called back, and gave her hell for it.

Thisisnotdan

Decades ago on a road outside Midland, Michigan, thousands upon thousands of lifeless frogs. Cars slid through this green and red mass like they had hit a patch of black ice.

Cars were in the ditch with a 200m trail of frog carcasses behind them. It was chaos. When I got home, my mud flaps were liberally caked with amphibian carcasses. Why were all those frogs in the middle of the road?

[deleted]

I used to have a truck that I swore had the ghost of a baby in it. I used to get home late from my job as a dishwasher, and after I parked and was sitting in my driveway with the engine off.

Then, I would hear the faint sound of a baby crying. Late at night when it was quiet, it used to make my arm hairs stand on end. I used to get home and hop out of the car in fear of hearing it.

One night I decided to sit there and just listen, trying to pinpoint the sound. Eventually, I discovered that it was indeed not a baby.

When I undid my seat buckled the old spring of the seat belt retractor would slowly start pulling the belt in, creating a faint noise that sounded like wailing.

BlorfMonger

Bobcat screams in the middle of the night. We have a house on the lake with a decent amount of wooded property, so we get all kinds of wildlife roaming around.

I can't see any houses around us, no street lights, so it's pitch black woods all around us. We were there with some friends last weekend, playing some cards around midnight when we heard a bobcat.

It sounds like a ghostly woman screaming in the night. Our dogs started going nuts trying to get out. It was definitely freaky when it was coming from pitch-black woods.

Millerzep

Hearing my grandfather call my name when I was alone in my apartment and he had been dead for seven years. Mind you, he passed away in the States and I was in my apartment in northern France. Still gives me the chills.

The only thing is that I thought I'd heard people call my name or say something to me before when they hadn't or when no one was around, but this was much different.

It was crystal-clear when I heard him, usually, if I think I hear something of the sort, it's not as readily distinguishable in what is "being said."

I had also finished posting a status for my family sharing pictures of him and my deceased grandma and how it was about seven years ago.

Maybe that had something to do with it, but I still peered into the hallway expecting to see him there. I didn't respond because I didn't want to egg myself on into lunacy.

[deleted]

I don't know about the creepiest ever, but recently I had a good scare. I was out camping and took an extra day at the campground so I was the only person left. Great big field, one tent.

The park owner even offered to refund my money if I wanted to leave, but I was there on my own specifically to get away from the hustle and bustle, and I stayed the extra night.

I finished a novel I was working through and decided to finish the night playing a game on my tablet, not scary but it sets a mood, you know.

I fall asleep and wake up to something poking me in the back. I lie there, “poke poke.” It's in the middle of my back and I can hear it scraping the bottom of my tent.

I look around without moving. My neighbors had told me about seeing some venomous snakes and I'm worried maybe something crawled in to get warm. I finally decided that it must be under the tent itself.

I sit up and the thing shimmies out from under the tent into the woods. For all I know it was a chipmunk or mole or something trying to keep warm, but it did give me a scare.

anonymous11235

My cousin had a child about 8 years ago. My great-grandmother (a very beloved woman, an all-around great person) passed away while his wife was pregnant, and only about 2 weeks before she was due.

This was a big deal for a few reasons. My cousin would have been the first of his generation on my mother's side of the family to have a child and, therefore would have been my Gramma Shaver's first great-great-grandchild.

5 generations alive at the same time, it would have been pretty cool. But she passed away from a stroke and it was very tragic.

After a couple of years. They are showing their daughter family pictures (she's approximately 3 or 4 years old at the time). Asking her “Who's this?” and seeing if she remembers the names of aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

They sort of skip over a pic of my Gramma Shaver, and she puts her hand on the pic and says "That's Gramma Shaver!" My cousin said he was a bit uncomfortable but asked "Do you remember hearing us talk about her?"

According to him, his daughter looked him right in the eyes and said "No, but she visits me and talks to me all the time!"

He said he didn't sleep right for a few weeks. Good thing we're all sure if she is a ghost, she is probably the most kind gentle ghost there is. Still creeped me out.

Chip085

When I was a kid, my parents went out one night and left me home alone. We had a bunch of cats, and we fed them all in separate rooms with the doors closed to keep them from stealing each other's food.

My parents had fed them, I only had to let them out. I went to the back of the house to let out Playful, who ate in the room directly across the hall from my bedroom.

When I opened the door, there was blood everywhere. His food dish was about a quarter filled with it, and there were bloody pawprints on the floor near the door but not a speck on my cat.

I checked his paws and his mouth, there was no blood on him at all.

When my parents came home they checked him over and weren't able to find any explanation either.

ravencrowe

I was backcountry camping alone can be incredibly scary. With a friend, you can at least discuss that “bump you heard in the night,” or you can be consoled. But alone, it is an entirely different story.

The day goes by fine. You hike out, take a lunch break, get to camp, set stuff up/have a little fun. Then it starts to get dark.

You have a fire and you can see a little at first, then, total darkness sets in. It is disheartening to not see your hand in front of your face. Soon enough, you start hearing things. Footsteps, twigs snapping, and brush moving.

Depending on where you are camping, you might hear coyotes/wolves at night. Coyotes have more of a shrill yelping howl, almost hyena-like.

Wolves have this hauntingly beautiful droning howl. The worst part is that you will hear them everywhere.

You'll hear a howl a couple of miles away, then you'll hear one a mile away, then you'll hear one 500 yards away.

Pretty soon, you can be surrounded by this eerie chorus. It doesn't make for the best sleep. Storms are also worrisome out in the middle of nowhere. Lightning has claimed many hikers.

I also stumbled upon a black bear 20 feet away once. Despite nearly having a heart attack/peeing my pants/accepting death, it noticed me pretty quickly and fled.

CaptainNoBoat

Just last year, I was in NYC and riding a packed subway. Mid-ride, a man gets up with a strangely large backpack. He cleared his throat and said, "Alright everyone, the time has come."

At that moment, the people on the sub's faces turned to fear, a mother nestled her son, and I tensed up, ready to pounce.

He continued to say "I am a poor man, in need of food, if anyone has anything on them or if they could take me out for food it would save my life." My girlfriend and I got him some fast food.

We asked him to approach a large group of people differently. All in all, he was a nice guy and didn't even look homeless. My girlfriend still refers to it as "The day the fast food guy was gonna end our lives.”

Nevixd

When I was sixteen I was sitting at a table with my mom talking about life, musing on the afterlife and reincarnation. The usual.

I began to laugh and say "You know, I'm pretty sure I remember my past life.” This was about the time her face went pale. I asked her why.

That's when she began to list all of the details of my silly past life which I always felt was just a recurring dream I must have. She told me how I was the youngest child in a family of poor travelers.

How my crib was the top drawer of any dresser where we would sleep and my mother was a tall, skinny, angry-looking woman with her hair pulled high, always wearing a long dress.

All the details I was about to tell her, for what I thought was the first time. "How did you know all of that? I've never told you before!" I said.

"Because that isn't the first time you've told me," she said. "You told me that story many times when you were a baby after you first learned to talk."

"I don't believe it!" I answered. "And the worst thing," she said with a dark brow, "was when I would come to play with you and you would tell me your other mother was behind me."

Moiraq

I was about 7-8 years old and normally after school, my mom sets up the tub so I can have my afternoon bath. Keep in mind that my bathroom was tiny and there was no room for someone to hide in without being spotted immediately.

So my mom watches me go in the tub, gives me a toy, and walks away to the kitchen to finish cooking. I wanted to splash around in the water with my toy so I closed the glass sliding door of the tub.

As soon as I closed the sliding door, it quickly opened on its own. My tiny little mind couldn't fathom how that happened.

A few seconds later the sliding door rapidly opened and closed for a few seconds.

I started screaming and my mother ran to the bathroom to find me crying in the tub. I told her what happened but she didn't believe me.

The sliding door was closed when she found me crying in the bathroom. For over 20 years it bugged me. Was it part of my imagination? It felt completely and entirely real.

soul2squeeze15

I actually had the most frightening nightmare the other day. I was coming home from work, and it was already dark out.

As I walked up the steps to my front door, I immediately saw little children playing on the lawn but couldn't make out if they were neighbors or not.

I walked up close to them and they were adults with kids masks on. I woke up in a cold sweat. It really sucked.

Me_z

My girlfriend and I don’t talk about this ever because it scares us so much to remember. We’re still scared of the area by our bedroom door, and we sleep with the lights on.

The incident happened at 2 am. We are slammed awake by an alarm coming from inside our bedroom that is so loud, that it hurts to hear.

Going from deep sleep to heart-pounding adrenaline dump, and the noise so loud, I am experiencing complete disorientation and panic.

Someone is standing at the bedroom door. Child-sized. Very long hair. “Who the heck is that?” I scream. “Where? Where?” my girlfriend screams. I’m yell-crying at this point. “What is that?”

It doesn’t move. The light switch is right next to the door, right by the child. I force myself to jump up (our mattress is on the ground) and flip the light switch.

Instantly, the child is revealed to be a towel hanging on the doorknob. I don’t care what anyone says, I will never forget being that scared and feeling that unsure of what to do.

Even though I knew nothing supernatural was going on, it still gave me the willies just to think about it. The loud alarm was the smoke detector. We couldn't figure out what had set it off.

Pdross1

It was the creepiest (but proves I have some kind of good energy watching my back). I was about 16 and home alone in my house at night. This was back in the day when this messaging app was the thing to do.

So I was chatting away on there with some friends and my internet kept cutting out. So I would be signed out of the app and then signed back in. This went on for a while and kept cutting out quicker and quicker.

I couldn't stay online for more than 30 seconds. So I was like stop this and get up from my computer chair to leave the room.

The moment I was at the doorway turning the corner to go up the stairs, the light fixture fell off the ceiling.

It shattered where I had been sitting on the computer chair. I ran upstairs and proceeded to hide under my blankets until my parents got home.

Loris0214

I had been working on a student film a few years ago and I was tasked with taking care of all of the equipment. Earlier that day I had leaned the camera crane against the wall in its large oddly shaped bag not thinking anything of it.

Fast forward to that night when I wake up to find a dark figure leaning against my wall as if staring at me sleep. I slowly rouse myself.

I stayed still before mustering up the courage to say "Who are you" in a shaky voice filled with terror. I sat there motionless for ten minutes before I fully woke up and realized I was stupid.

Strangely the most terrified I have ever been.

DilatedDingus

My brother and I used to play hide and seek in the dark and took it very seriously. We would close all blinds, cover all lights (microwave, oven, TV, etc), and had very well-set rules.

One night it was just my brother, his friend, and me, and we decided to play. As our eyes adjusted to the pitch black slight silhouettes could be made out, but generally you could be a foot away from someone and not know they were there.

So my brother is it, and I'm sitting in the corner of the kitchen hiding. His friend yells safe, and I hear the two of them talking in the living room.

As they're talking, the door to our walk-in pantry starts to slowly open. I can see the silhouette of a large-headed man holding a knife and walking towards me. Frozen with fear, I just sat there ready to be ended.

When this knife-bearing man got close, my brother came in and flicked on the light.

The man pulled off his mask to reveal he was my brother's other friend who had been hiding outside unbeknownst to me just so they could scare me.

At this point, I was crying and obviously didn't want to play anymore. Not paranormal and creepy, but I've never been more scared in my entire life.

[deleted]

I was heading to my then-boyfriends house one night, we took this back road as a shortcut. It was dark. I don't remember being able to see the moon at all.

Very few other cars were on this road, so all we had were our headlights as far as sources of light. I was talking to him and turned my head back to look down the road

That’s when I saw this old man crossing, wearing a plaid shirt and moving rather quickly. I remember the plaid vividly, and he seemed to stand out in the dark. Before I had time to react properly, my boyfriend drove through the man.

I watched him pass through the hood, the dashboard, down the middle of the car, and vanish. It was like time had suddenly slowed down.

My boyfriend saw nothing, but I insisted we never take that road again after.

illuminatzi