We all know that truth is stranger than fiction. But in many cases, it can be more terrifying as well. And in this day and age, those haunting moments are often caught on film.
If you’re in need of some spooky stories to impress your friends with on Halloween, we’ve got you covered, pandas. Reddit users have been recalling the most chilling and disturbing pieces of found footage they’ve ever seen, so we’ve gathered their replies below.
Now, we have to warn you that we’ve intentionally omitted the links to these videos, as many are quite unsettling and gruesome. If you really want to see the tapes, you can search for them at your own risk. But if you’d prefer to err on the side of caution and simply read about them, this list has just enough details to spare you from being scarred!
#1
The video diaries of Bjork stalker Ricardo López. His descent into madness is fascinating to me. There’s an hour and a half video on YouTube that shows him progressively getting worse. It doesn’t end well.
Image source: SkeetAllOverTheWalls, NewCom Entertainment
#2
The recording of the 9/11 call where the guy is calling 911 and then you hear his terrified bloodcurling scream as the tower collapses…and then silence as the line goes dead.
F****d me up for a while.
Image source: WHTMage, Getty Images/unsplash
#3
Officer Kent McGowan kicked in the door on a felony warrant and shot 41 year old Susan White claiming she’d pulled a gun on him. At first, everything seems kosher, but later on that night, the officers investigating the shooting found that she was on the phone with 911 at the time and isn’t the aggressor, she’s scared out of her mind.
It appears that McGowan had been stalking her and had basically fabricated the circumstances that led to her having a warrant out against her. He then broke into her house, ran up to her bedroom and shot her. She’s frantic, telling the operator that he’s trying to break into her house. One of the last things she says is “HELLLLLLP!!!!” It’s chilling.
Image source: Hysterymystery, Eduardo Ramos/unsplash
#4
Recently there was a guy in Chicago who was breaking into houses. He was caught on security cameras slowly creeping down some stairs and just watching the homeowners sleeping on the couch. Not as violent as some of these other posts, but super creepy.
Image source: aratinastorm, Aakash Dhage/unsplash
#5
Not found footage exactly, but the one where a family a driving and a brick from the truck in front of them goes through the windshield k*****g the mother. Their panicked shrieks are f*****g heartwrenchingly terrifying.
I’m not going to link to it because I don’t want to accidentally see it again.
Image source: KJones77, Sebastian Huxley/unsplash
#6
Definitely the shooter’s first-person view of the live on air shooting in Virginia last year.
Image source: anon, Getty Images/unsplash
#7
Yuri Lipski.
A diver that got disoriented in an underwater tunnel in the Red Sea and went down and down until he died.
Image source: MarsNirgal, Waterline Stories
#8
That chimp owner’s 911 call while her escaped ape was eating her friend, Charla Nash; coupled with her recovery photos this was pretty disturbing.
Not as bad as some of the others on this thread but a fair contribution, I think.
Image source: anon, Stamford Advocate
#9
Poor Blockbuster employee attempting to do his job while a ghost is coming at him.
Image source: NinjaHDD, spooksrule
#10
I don’t remember her name but the lady in a hotel was wigging out in the elevator like someone was there (she was alone) and then later her body was found in the water tank.
Image source: GoshGollyJee, Unknown author
#11
Definitely, definitely, *definitely* this dash cam footage from a strange road block in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night.
Image source: civildisobedient, Ivan Tukhtin
#12
I saw a road rage video on Reddit that was absolutely terrifying. This m*thd out lady was trying to run some girls off the road and was impersonating a police officer so they would open the car door.
#13
The night club fire. F**k that. I’ve seen some s**t, but that one stuck with me for a while.
Image source: snodog00, Karl Callwood/unsplash
#14
Stephen McDaniel peeping Tom video before he breaks into Lauren Gidding’s apartment and k*lls her.
Edit: Bonus: McDaniel being interviewed several days later by local news as a “concerned friend.
Image source: cheftlp1221, 13WMAZ
#15
A call from the weepy voiced killer fits the bill although it’s audio only. Basically if you don’t know this guy would k**l almost involuntarily, and then usually call the police expressing remorse for what he had done while crying.
He eventually got caught because his final victim injured him in self defense. Knowing the killer was injured the police were on the look out for anyone checking into hospitals with injuries like his.
Image source: Freebird_McTwist, Kelli McClintock/unsplash
#16
In 1984, a Cessna L-19 Bird Dog crashed in the Tabernash, Co. The wreckage wasn’t found until 3 years later by a couple backpackers. The local law enforcement found this heavily damaged VHS tape and were able to figure out what happened. From Wikipedia:
> On August 10, 1984, a Cessna L-19 Bird Dog (registration number N4584A), piloted by James Jeb Caddell, 38, crashed in a forest near Tabernash. The aircraft was en route from Granby, Colorado to Jeffco, Colorado. The wreck was found by a pair of backpackers three years later on August 23, 1987. A 6½ minute video shot from a VHS camcorder mounted on the instrument panel was found at the site. The heavily damaged tape, some of it hanging from tree branches, was recovered and repaired by Colorado deputy sheriff Dale Wood. Subsequent analysis of the footage revealed that the pilot had not taken into account the density altitude conditions that existed on the day of the flight. The aircraft was unable to climb away from steadily rising terrain due to the fact that it was essentially at or above its service ceiling, and in an attempt to remedy the situation, the pilot stalled the airplane three times during a steep bank to the right. The pilot could be heard yelling, “D**n, hang on Ronnie!” to his one backseat passenger, Ronald Hugh Wilmond, 36, three seconds before impacting the terrain.
It’s the “D**n, hang on Ronnie!” that gets me.
Image source: anon, Brice Cooper/unsplash
#17
There was a clip of an elderly woman calling 911 about a suspicious looking man outside, you hear the door creek open, then she screams bloody m****r and the call ends. There was no resolution. It’s on YouTube somewhere.
Image source: anon, Curated Lifestyle/unsplash
#18
The sinking of a ferry filled with Korean students that were told to put on their life preservers and stay seated in a ship the captain knew was sinking. The part that makes it all seem real is when a kid jokingly sings a song from the titanic thinking it’ll all be fine.
Image source: slitheryjack, Korea Coast Guard
#19
The video of the 9/11 attacks filmed by a NYU student from her dorm. It captures the feelings of confusion, shock, and hopelessness when they realize s**t just got completely real.
Image source: anon, Curated Lifestyle/unsplash
#20
The WTTW pirated broadcast that happened in Chicago 1987.
Image source: Jimmyg100, Unknown
#21
Everybody knows about it but the Paris Catacombs footage.
EDIT: basically the story is a dude who illegally ran into the Paris catacombs (a massive underground burial place iirc, it has a lot of spooky skeletons) got lost and started recording. You can obviously see he’s scared and eventually he drops his camera and starts running for an unknown reason.
Image source: KabooshWasTaken
#22
I’m going to go with the man they found alive in a sunken tugboat 3 days after it capsized.
>As a rescue diver probed the wreckage of an overturned tugboat, it was assumed that all he’d be doing would be recovering the bodies of those who perished.
However, as he was swimming through the murky water inside the capsized boat, a hand suddenly reached toward him.
It was the ship’s cook, Harrison Okene, who had somehow survived for approximately 60 hours in only his underwear in the freezing cold water by breathing from a small air pocket and taking sips of Coca-Cola.
Okene was the only one of 12 crew members who survived when the Jacon-4 tugboat capsized.
Image source: 446172656E
#23
The Leonard Lake footage. Now I am not 100% sure this is verified to actually be the video they found at lakes home. But it is incredibly unsettling. Lake was a serial m******r who had a t*****e chamber in his home. The video basically consists of him interviewing a woman about the terms of her imprisonment and talking about his desires with his partner in crime. The story is creepy as. Give him a Google.
Image source: CravingSunshine
#24
At the 5:36 mark of Vsauce their video “If”, it shows and lets us hear what Americans would see and hear on radio/TV when a nuclear attack is happening. It honestly gives me a f**k-ton of chills just listening.
Image source: CloudedMushroom
#25
Three guys one hammer was a tad bit unsettling.
Image source: dick-nipples
#26
The Valentich Disappearance. The original tapes have been destroyed, but there’s a full transcript available, and several dramatic reenactments on youtube.
Valentich was flying a plane off the coast of Australia when he began to give a report about ‘something’ in the sky with him.
> Valentich: Is there any known traffic below five thousand [feet]?
> Robey: No known traffic.
> V: I am—seems [to] be a large aircraft below five thousand.
> R: What type of aircraft is it?
> V: I cannot affirm. It is [sic] four bright, it seems to me like landing lights. . . . The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.
The transcript continues for a few pages of Valentich describing this thing passing around his aircraft. The final part of the transcript is as follows:
> V: My intentions are, ah, to go to King Island. Ah, Melbourne, that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. [Silence for 2 seconds.] It is hovering, and it’s not an aircraft. [Silence for 17 seconds, open microphone, with audible, unidentified staccato noise. End of transcript.]
Although some theories suggest that the four bright ‘landing lights’ were just the planets Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Antares – which is a little goofy, as it might be quite difficult to confuse a planet for landing lights.
Wrecked pieces of Valentich’s aircraft were later found washed up on several beaches around Australia.
Image source: Mishmoo
#27
Surprised no-one mentioned Unknown russian soldier yet. It’s a video from the Kazaa era of a guy getting his throat slit. Cured me of all these kinds of videos. The sound the guy makes and the way the knife pretty much saws through his throat is forever ingrained in my mind.
Image source: GhostDieM
#28
Anyone got that footage of a b**b going off in a classroom(?) and eviscerating a woman that was in the room.
Then there’s the guy who got arrested (I never found out what for), and wasn’t searched when he was brought in. He was given a bottle of water and then the cop who was about to have a sit down with him walked out of the room. He took a sip from the bottle, pulled out a gun, and with one hand, flicked off the safety and put a bullet in the side of his head, without hesitation.
He’s right in the middle of the frame the whole time, and you see blood flowing out the entrance wound, hear a groan from the moment he pulls the trigger that gets weaker over the following seconds, and his body goes from tense to limp. You literally see the life leave his body. It kinda makes you realize, that s**t isn’t instant death.
Image source: Zentopian
#29
The dashcam footage of a young cop getting shot by a guy in a routine traffic stop. They show that video in police training.
Image source: anon
#30
Theres a guy who dives i think its the red sea, with a gopro on and he decends further than his tank is fit for. Upon recovery they got the gopro, you basically just dive down with him and he dies.
Image source: fastball032
#31
The death of Kelly Thomas has to Be one of the most disturbing ones.
Worst thing about the incident is the
fact that Kelly suffered from Schizophrenia and because of that saw his father just standing there watching.
And I think the police Officers who beat him to death got their charges dropped after a while.
Image source: akkuli
#32
There is a video of a dude driving through Mexico on a dirt road at night and this crazy woman in white appears in front of his headlights and starts screaming and running up to his car and chasing him as he drives in reverse. Not going to try to find it.
Image source: TraciTheRobot
#33
There’s a documentary on YouTube that details the m****r of a farm family in Texas. The survivor was Robin, the 10 year old daughter. She was watching from her bedroom door, she ran back into bed and they shot at her as she laid in bed and missed. The most disturbing part is probably how she’d hang her robe up on a hook on her door every night, and after she “got shot” she lay on the bed, pretending to be dead for hours, because she thought the robe was the man who did it watching her. And the most heartbreaking part is when all the police arrived, and she just cried about needing to feed her animals. One of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard.
Image source: anon
#34
I wouldn’t call it found footage, as such, but the recording that exists of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady torturing and murdering a child (without looking, I believe it was Leslie Ann Downey) with Little Drummer Boy playing in the background, is one of the most harrowing things I’ve heard of. My Aunt (who was one of the prison officers who was responsible for Hindley in the early years of her sentence), says its the worst thing she ever heard in her time (and she saw some bad stuff..).
Image source: rmt1982
#35
Timothy Treadwell aka Grizzly Man. He went up close to the bears on multiple occasions. The most horrifying footage is the audio captured of his screams as a grizzly mauls him to death.
Image source: anon
#36
The photos from the cellphones of the Dutch girls who went missing in South America scare the s**t out of me.
Image source: InvestigateContact
#37
Sorry for the lack of details but there was a tv show about serial killers I watched and one of the murderers would abduct women off the street and record what he did to them in his basement. They didn’t show that footage but they showed him on camera afterwards saying (Paraphrasing) ‘(Date and time) First victim, name… I don’t know… (you can hear how that bothers him) *chuckles* and I don’t give a F***.)’ Eventually he got caught and hung himself in the back of a police van if that’s any consolation.
Image source: Sub-Mongoloid
#38
The Estonia cruise/car ferry sunk in the Baltic Sea on 1994, taking an estimated 853 passengers with her into the deep, ice-cold water, in the middle of the night. Most people drowned in their cabins.
Just a handful of passengers managed to get out of the ship before she sunk, most of them freezing to death while waiting for the rescue :(
It might not be “found fotage”, but here’s the whole, actual mayday call and radio communications between her and the other ferries in the area. It’s chilling that no one realized how bad the situation is, not the captain, and not the other boats, but you can hear the panic rising on the radio from the ship, as Estonia starts to tilt over and looses the electricity.
Even when the other boats arrive to the scene and Estonia is gone they just can’t get their minds around the fact that this cozy, “safe” luxury hotel has been swallowed whole by the sea. Chilling, especially as someone from the Nordics who travel with these huge ferries fairy often…RIP :(
Image source: sparkly_avokado
#39
19 year-old Russian girl and her stepfather are camping. He gets attacked and dies. His stepdaughter calls her mom on a cell phone in-between attacks by a brown bear and her cubs.
“Mum, the bears are back. She came back and brought her three babies. They’re… eating me.”
then…
“Mum, it’s not hurting anymore. I don’t feel the pain. Forgive me for everything. I love you so much”.
Image source: anon
#40
The video of the chef that was found alive in sunken ship wreckage during a recovery mission by a scuba diver.
Image source: WinterCherryPie
#41
The recording of Byron Smith murdering two teens who broke into his house. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. super creepy and really NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Image source: anon
#42
I can’t find the video but I recall a video of a number of workers getting electrocuted. When others come to investigate the power flips on again k*****g even more people. So eerie. They just drop.
Image source: SethEllis
#43
I don’t know if you can still find the video online, but google Luka Rocco Magnotta. He filmed himself dismembering a young man he had just m******d… Then proceeded to mail body parts to different government institutions across Canada.
Image source: fojkrok
#44
I always thought the Polaroids of the girl who was kidnapped and in that rickety tower with duct tape over her mouth were just terrible.
Image source: MixCarson
#45
I can’t remember the account name but this kid did a series of Slenderman videos that were ridiculously convincing. Still gives me chills thinking about them.
Image source: McCyanide
#46
A woman wakes up after giving birth without arms or legs.
I think this is especially disturbing because she supposedly got an infection in the hospital and that’s why it happened.
Image source: -Shirley-
#47
The creepiest thing I have ever seen is the dash cam footage where they are on the highway and some debris flies through the windshield and kills the person in the passenger seat, you see it go through the windshield, and a second later you hear the blood curdling scream of the driver who apparently just lost their loved one. It was the most heart wrenching, haunting noise I’ve ever experienced.
Image source: kevie3drinks
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