The horror genre is extremely popular at the moment. According to a recent consumer survey, 46% of Americans said they watch horror content at least occasionally. We like to be scared in a controlled environment and witness somebody else’s horror. But what if something terrifying is happening to us?
After reading these stories, you might swear off human interactions for good. We scoured the internet and found the most bone-chilling encounters folks have had with other people, and they are seriously creepy. It turns out that ghosts, witches, and demons aren’t the scariest things on the planet. Sometimes, fellow humans can be just as menacing and horrifying.
More info: Reddit
#1
I got chased down by the neighborhood delinquent teen with a gun when I was walking home from the bus stop with friends. I was 10, my friends were 10/11 years old too. We ran to a house for help, a middle aged woman answered and refused to let us in or help us. She said it could be a prank, we told her it wasn’t but she was convinced we were trying to get in her house and rob her. We ran farther to my friends house, her mom happened to be off work early and was home. She called the police. I got to ride in a cop car and watch two cops take down this 17 year old piece of s**t into the pavement.
Image source: anon, Kenny Eliason
#2
I woke up hungover as hell in my apartment in Philly to a big guy with a gun pointed at me telling me to give him money. It honestly took me a few seconds to realize what was happening and as I frantically searched for my wallet, he took my back pack with my laptop and also stole a few Eagles/Flyers jerseys. The weirdest thing was that he stole all my socks as well.
Image source: DragonStangFlyer122, Tahir osman
#3
Was riding my bike to school taking the bike trail when I noticed a guy leaning against a light post, thought nothing of it since I’ve taken this trail pretty much every day throughout high school, anyway I’m riding and things go dark. Turns out as I passed by the guy pistol whipped me, woke up to him trying to take my feet out of the straps of my bike, he notices I’m awake and immediately points his gun at me asking me to hand my bike over. I resisted at first telling him that my mom had just bought it for me after begging so long for it. He took it anyway. Still bugs me to this day.
Edit: didnt expect my story to take off ! , some minor details for people wondering. The bike was a Dawes sst al,
I was 16 at the time I’m 23 now.
I had clipped pedals at the time which is why he was struggling to take my feet out.
I live in a not so nice area where stuff like this is not uncommon. (Fontana/rialto) CA.
The guy had face tats and dressed like a thug, he would stick out like a sore thumb riding a competitive fixed gear bicycle. I’m sure he stole it to sell rather than personal use.
I also called the police and they came over to file a report, I didnt notice I had blood going down my ear (probably adrenaline) till the cop pointed it out, he took pictures of the split in my head for the report.
If anyone knows if the police station or county keeps reports like this on file for a while I would be happy to try and get the pictures and police report.
Image source: ysraeldorian, Sabin Chhetri
#4
I was at a sleepover at my friends place. We decided to sneak out and wander around aimlessly. We stopped at our school which had a small patch of trees on the grounds where the older kids hung out during lunch. There was rumours of a great playboy collection there, hence our visit.
While there my friend stepped off to the side to have a pee. A few seconds later he comes rushing back and says “run”. I didn’t know what his deal was but as a kid in the “forest” with only the light of the moon, I figured asking questions was a secondary option to being left alone there.
We ran until we couldn’t run anymore. Finally my friend explained that there was some weirdo looking at him go pee. He said that he believed the guy was jerking off.
Being kids with a history of pranks I thought he was f*****g with me. Then I looked back and saw the guy a long ways back but moving in our direction. We kept running towards my friends place and he kept following.
When we got back we thought we lost him. We snuck back inside and turned off all of the lights in the basement. We laid there silently and terrified.
About 10 minutes later we see something move by the window. We knew someone was out there. We stayed completely still and quiet. A minute later we hear a noise coming from a room in the basement. We both lost it and started yelling “dad” for my friends dad.
He came running down the stairs and we were yelling someone’s in that room. His dad flung open the door and the window was open and there were fresh marks on the wall from someone climbing in or out. For some reason he didn’t call the police. He decided to stay downstairs with us for the night.
I didn’t really sleep and in the morning my friends dad made me walk home with him. A few blocks away and there were a bunch of police. As we walked by one of the cops stopped us and asked if we saw anything suspicious last night. We told him the story which kicked off further questioning.
It turns out that a kid went missing from his room right around the same time that we got chased home.
They found the guy a few days later dead from s*****e. They never found the boy he abducted.
We had a lot of trouble with that. My friends dad felt guilty for not calling the police. He became addicted to sleeping pills. My friend was traumatized with just how close he came to being grabbed in the forest. He turned to d***s really young and eventually k****d himself. I went through therapy for awhile and still have occasional night terrors from that night even though it happened almost 30 years ago.
**Edit:** WOW this blew up. Thanks for the kind words, helpful PM’s, and the gold and silver. Go figure it’s on a throwaway account.
I had far too many comments and questions, so I will try to address them here.
First of all, I have already posted my story on here a couple of years ago. At the time I was approached to sell the rights to it. I was interested in doing so because I like money. As a result I spoke to my family and my friends brother since he is the only one still with us from that family. I also spoke to a lawyer about what to give and what not to give. As it turned out the potential buyer was trying to pull enough information out of me to basically steal the story. Once I had my lawyer tell them that the information exists and has been verified, but they wouldn’t receive it until a contract was in place, they bailed. For that reason I am a little guarded about this information.
That being said, I wrote this out in summary form. I skipped over several details in the process.
One comment was critical of my friend being traumatized by a guy jerking off. That’s not the case. He was traumatized by how close he was to being the victim. This is the same issue I have been struggling with.
Another comment questioned why the guy just so happened to be in the forest. While I don’t know for certain, my assumption was that he was following us before my friend spotted him. Also this “forest” was actually an island of trees in the middle of a field. It was probably 200m diameter at the widest point. It separated the baseball and soccer fields.
I am also appreciative of the advice about my mental health. I have been attending counseling for this and other c**p that’s happened in my life. Unfortunately I have had a few bad situations that rivaled this one. I am doing really well and have managed to live a very happy and successful life. Married for 10 years now and a baby on the way. My struggles are minimal at this point and really are just infrequent night terrors.
Again thank you all for reading and being so supportive.
Image source: fuggitycc, freepik
#5
I was investigating a fire for an insurance company in a fourplex in north STL. North STL is a bad, bad area. It was *clearly* an arson. I had five separate, unconnected fires. I’d been there for awhile, taking photos and doing my thing.
I was drawing my diagram in the building when I hear two guys walking by the building on the other side of the wall. I’m straining to hear what they’re saying since it could be pertinent to my investigation.
The two guys get to the rear of the building where the fire department had ripped out the wall to be able to extinguish hot spots they’d found. I can clearly see them both standing there talking. They start to kick through the debris on the ground and one starts saying how some dumb b***h had snitched on his buddy for setting this fire. He starts telling the other guy about how he’s going to deal with her and pulls a god d****d pistol out of his waistband.
At this point, I’m frozen in fear about to s**t my pants hoping that they don’t look ninety degrees and see me standing there like a j*****s. So I crouch down as low I can without making noise and wait. They continue to talk about how it’s b******t she told the cops on him and blah blah blah.
Finally a car drives by and I use the sound of it to get out of the house out the front door. Which unfortunately wasn’t super quiet since most of the floor had collapsed and I was wearing fire boots.
I get to my truck across the street. I’m sitting in the drivers seat trying to unclench my b******e when the guy with the gun walks around the side of the house to the front porch, sits down, and aims it at me. I turned the truck on and got the f**k out of there.
I ended up going back about an hour later to see if they were gone because I had to finish my scene. Still top 5 scariest moment of my career so far.
Edit: for those asking why I went back, my boss would never have let me turn in a report without a diagram or samples so it was go back then or later. I don’t think the claim was denied since it was a rental company and no one was supposed to be living there. And yes I called the police. But things burn down in north city so often that it gets ignored a good percentage of the time. Also I have no idea how it turned out. I didn’t stop and ask for names.
Image source: fireinvestigator113, projectUA
#6
My house was broken into while we were having dinner. I was about 7 years old at the time. My mom answered the door because she thought it was her friend. Turns out to be robbers in mask with guns. I was pretty small at the time and no one noticed me. I noped out of there and walked straight into my bedroom and locked the door. I think I was in shock at the time and didn’t know what to do. In retrospect, I should have dialed 911.
Image source: meloncreampan, Ron Lach
#7
The first apartment I was in, I moved in right after some coworkers, after living there for a bit, my coworkers jacked AF d**g dealer showed up pissed off. When I answered the door, he wanted to come in and talk to my coworker, I said it was just me and my gf, I didn’t want to wake her up so I took the conversation outside. Turns out, he just got out if jail and needed $200. I talked him down saying that $200 wasn’t worth any more time and to just let it go, after what felt like an eternity. He finally thanked me and left, I didn’t sleep well until I left that apartment.
Image source: CaptainNeverGetLaid, Drazen Zigic
#8
Last year I moved from a dense urban area to a really pretty, underpopulated rural one. I got super into trail-running. There’s a big, circular route that I like a lot in the local nature preserve, and over the summer I was on an early morning run there when I passed a dude sitting on a rock slightly off the trail. He looked exceedingly normal – streetclothes, hat, boots etc – and I figured him for a hiker. All good.
So I make my way down the path, around, uphill and to this nice overlook, where I usually stop to drink from the fountain. It’s when I’m bent over at the fountain that I hear a twig snap, and I straighten up to see that guy, crouched over and stepping through the woods off the clearing like he’s trying to creep up on me. I bolted.
The sprint back was the most terrifying experience of my life, obviously. I don’t know if I lost him or if he gave chase at all. The police never found anyone matching his description, and I don’t run anywhere near there anymore.
edit: If you’d like to be creeped out further – the police said he had most likely seen me before and been stalking me for an indeterminate period, i.e. he was camped out front to see whether I’d show, then cut across to the spot where he knew I always stopped. I’d probably seen him before without realizing it. He might know where I live.
Image source: joyyfulsub, Morgan Sarkissian
#9
I was driving through a somewhat rough neighborhood at night (late after a movie) and while sitting at a light we saw this guy in a beat up car take a bump of c*****e next to us. We make eye contact. As the light turns green he merged behind us and then proceeds to follow us around flashing his lights and honking his horn for several blocks. We pull up to another red light he pulls up next to us yelling at us to roll down the window.
Turns out he just wanted to let us know we had a tail light out and then drove away.
Image source: SkinnyGirlFUPA, Getty Images
#10
My ex girlfriend was verbally a*****e. After I said that we were breaking up, she walked into the kitchen. I had no idea why, but I was terrified. She came out with something behind her back. I bolted out of her house and went home. Never went round again.
Edit: thanks for all of your support. I’m so glad that I’m not alone in this and that other people have gone through the same. Also, for the person that called me a p***y and the people that are saying that I should have seen what she had first, I’m going to guess that you have never been in an a*****e relationship. When you’ve been a****d by someone, the start to seem inhuman. My ex was 6” and really strong, she never showed any sort of regret even though she ended up putting someone in the ER with a broken nose. I’m 5”1 and really weak (we are both girls btw). Getting into a physical fight with her and a knife is basically s*****e.
Image source: Casmodo_Dragon, Alena Darmel
#11
Drunk driver tried to mow me down on my moped down a dead end street, luckily I managed to get my bike up the pavement and put a parked car between me and the drunk, so he couldn’t get me, pretty intense.
Image source: TheAngry_Duck, wirestock
#12
My first apartment was part of a complex that was U shaped with a large grassy area in the middle. The neighborhood kids would run around and play in the grass a lot. One day I was sitting on my stoop talking on the phone when one of the kids fell over, grabbed his foot and started crying. He was maybe 5 or 6. He had stepped on a bottle cap and sliced open his foot. I took him inside, had him sit on the edge of the tub, washed his cut and put some neosporin on it and a bandaid and sent him on his way.
A few hours later there is a knock on my my door. When I answered, a massive skinhead with a tattoo of a pentagram on his neck was standing there with his chest out. The boy was peeking around one of his giant thighs pointing at me. He stuck his finger in my chest and yelled, “Did you take my boy in your f****n house? That’s my son. Did you give him a f****n bath?”
“Look at his foot!” I shrieked. “He cut his foot. I washed the cut.”
He inspected the kids foot then asked me.what exactly happened. I stumbled through the story. Then he just said, “Alright then.” He shook my hand with a vice grip and I never saw him or his son again.
#13
Went down to the local creek with my friend. We were probably 10 or so. The local creepy teenager shows up, drunk out of his mind. I immediately knew this was bad. He mumbles something under his breath, and i looked at my friend with the “we need to get the f**k out of here look”. He stepped closer towards us and another guy, older and probably twice the size, ran up and grabbed him. He told us to go home and not come back. Later the creepy guy was involved in a robbery that turned into m****r. And i still feel so thankful to the other guy who was there.
Image source: Bouperbear, Getty Images
#14
Saturday at Barnes and Noble. I had my son ready on the changing table. When another man walks into the restroom and I see him just eyeing my boy. I decided to wait to uncover my son. The mans body language bothered me as he slowed down on washing his hands, drying and hesitantly walked out.
I kept my eyes on him as I placed myself in front of my son.
Image source: achihuahuaalbaile, EyeEm
#15
Me and my boyfriend came back at like 2 am from a night out. We were both quite drunk and stumbled into the hallway to the elevator when we see drops of something on the floor. It definitely was blood. Fresh and wet. The elevator button and door were covered in bloody hand prints aswell.
My boyfriend called the elevator, pushing me aside not knowing what would be in it. Luckily nothing except for a puddle of blood.
The elevator came from the 5th floor. So we went investigating. The trail of blood ended at a door with huge hand smears of blood on the door.
It took all our courage to ring (not the nicest place to live, robbery??) But I am so glad we did. An elderly man opened the door. He looked like straight out of a horror movie. Covered in blood from head to toe. His grey sweater was red. His hair was wet. His shoes were filled with blood.
We immediately sobered up. I called an ambulance which arrived in 2 minutes. My bf went inside the flat helping the man sit down. There was so much blood I have never seen that in my life.
We didn’t know what happened to him until we met him yesterday properly for the first time. Recognized my bfs glasses. He was drunk, wanted to ride his bike home, crashed somehow and got a huge cut on his head. He takes heart medicine which thins his blood that’s why he lost so much.
If we wouldn’t have rung the doorbell he would have bled to death.
He actually gifted us money and a super expensive bottle of champagne for something completely self explanatory.
Image source: ohiomamb0, EyeEm
#16
My father having a heart attack. Me having to translate everything in the ER from Polish to English and back again. Oof.
Image source: piishax33, RDNE Stock project
#17
Have been home invaded three times, once by two guys who had a gun, a knife, and a bottle of petrol they splashed all over everyone, and the other two times by 4 dudes with knives. Got stabbed one of those times, only in the hand but they were going for my face, luckily I was fast enough to “catch” it. Those experiences were pretty freaky and taught me a lot about how savage and animalistic people can be.
Edit: so many people saying I should get a gun, do I have a gun now etc. Hell no! If I had a gun either I would have been k****d, to get my gun off me, or I would have k****d someone. No matter how f****d the situation was I wouldn’t want to k**l someone, they were just morons who were acting on (untrue) rumors that I was a d**g dealer and someone worth robbing. But I would like to believe that they could turn their lives around. I dunno maybe that’s naïve of me but hey, I’m still here. Would probably feel different if I had a wife and kids but I’m not so worried about myself I guess.
Image source: mattsh123, garakta_studio
#18
When I was 13, I just got dropped off from the school bus, so I had a bit of ways to walk home. As I get close to the corner of my street, some guy in a dark blue car rolls up and asked where I was headed.
Told him I was going home. The guy the excruciatingly slowed his car down to match my walk and asked if I wanted a ride home. I told him no thanks I’m almost home. Then he continued to ask where I live and if I still wanted a ride home.
Luckily I had a phone at this age, and pulled out my Nokia phone (idk why I remember this) and pretend to call my mom (she wouldn’t have picked up the phone and I was almost home).
The guy saw what I was doing and sped off like crazy.
From the age of 13, I started carrying pepper spray.
Image source: Leefies, Mary Taylor
#19
I spent a few months when I was 16 hanging out with some organized crime guys in my hometown. Dudes had uzis in their trunks, and people didn’t f**k with them.
One night I went with a younger one (mid 20s) on an errand. I wasn’t told what for, but he started driving to a bad part of town and told me I was going to help him take care of something.
I got out at a stoplight, And started walking. Something wasn’t right. I never spoke to those dudes again.
I was pretty sure at the time I was going to get k****d, or help k**l someone. In retrospect, I was probably just on a beer run or maybe sent to go pick up some money from a gambler or something. But at the time, I was convinced I was going to be a part of, or a victim to a major crime.
Image source: furtivedog, Erik Mclean
#20
Once, whilst getting s****d with mates in a graveyard at about 16-17, my friends little brother was suddenly accosted by an absolute giant of a man and a pair of his cronies. We had seen them coming but didn’t expect any violence.
He grabbed my mates brother in a headlock and said “we’re gonna go shave his head”, I’ll add that we were all the typical long haired, black denim and Pantera t-shirt spotting types, getting verbally and occasionally physically a****d was kinda standard. Thinking that they were probably joking to a degree I pulled my friend out of the hold.
Well, next thing I know I’m being punched around the chops by a guy a solid foot taller than me, a decade older and with strength and a reach that I couldn’t possibly compete with. I spent a lot of my childhood getting beaten by adults, but by this point i thought I’d got through that part of my life.
He held me by my neck and just kept punching me until I hit the ground. By this point my collective of mates are doing all they can to stop him but he’s swatting them like flies, one calls the police.
Once I’m on the ground he kicks me in the skull, eleven times in all, I’d heard he was wearing steelies but I’m not entirely sure if that’s true. But he just would not stop throwing all he had at my skull. The last kick was under the chin and everyone heard a massive crunch. It was enough to make my attacker stop and run away. It’s okay though, it wasn’t my neck, but I had just had seven of my teeth shattered whilst biting through the edges of my tongue.
Was left with a dodgy eye, ear, memory and spine. Still get weird headaches since then too, but I got off lucky. Because I don’t bruise the hospital kinda dismissed me upon arrival and I then had to go give a statement, it was of over time that a lot of the more frustrating issues became apparent.
They caught the bloke, he had to pay me £120 towards dental bills, but most importantly my friends were all fine. I been getting my a*s kicked by people for years so I’m happy it was me and not them, I’ve just no idea why he was so determined to seemingly k**l me. He died a couple of years back now, good riddance.
Image source: PM_ME_YER_TITTAYS, Rodion Kutsaiev
#21
I was up in my third floor bedroom having just had a spliff chilling to music with my headphones on when I started to hear weird noises. Naturally I just thought it was because I was s****d but it was weird enough for me to take my headphones off.
I listened for a bit and coming from downstairs was a creepy voice I didn’t recognise mixed in with John’s (my housemates) voice but he sounded like he was in pain.
I was like w*f so I started walking slowly down my stairs and then looked into his room and saw John on his floor holding his eyes in pain with a big dude in a hoody shouting at him and then grabbing things off the shelves.
The next thing I knew autopilot had kicked in and I ran towards the room and the hooded dude turned, ran out the door when I smashed into him making us both go tumbling down the staircase trying to exchange punches on the way down. We scuffled a bit in the hallway until he eventually ran out the door.
It transpired that John (who at that time was on crutches) was hobbling home and went to open our front door when the hooded dude came up behind him and pepper sprayed him in his face blinding him. He then took him up to his bedroom to rob him and his stuff. Poor guy had to have eye pads on for the next 2 days.
Anyway, it was all pretty f****d up but John was ok in the end and honestly I was so s****d it didn’t really feel like it was happening at the time. Was like a bad trip.
All moved out 2 weeks later – was Brixton in London.
Image source: mrpiper1980
#22
Late 80s, was running errands in town with my mum and two sisters. Back then it wasn’t uncommon to leave your kids in the car while you ran inside the store.
We are sitting in the car waiting, and then I see an older guy walking towards our car. I just get a really bad feeling and start yelling at my sisters to lock the doors, while I lock the two on my side.
He comes over and spends the next couple of minutes trying to open all the doors on the car while we are cowering in our seats. Eventually he gave up and left.
We were all 8 and under in age at the time. I just knew that if he got in the car he would take one of us.
Image source: anon
#23
My landlord’s brother was high on angel dust, and held me hostage for several hours. He was partially r******d, so I was able to drift his thoughts toward french toast and bong hits. I charmed my way out of getting r***d and m******d.
I will never forget his face in the bathroom mirror as he held my bleeding hands under the faucet water, while berating me, eye to eye, in the mirror. So scary.
Image source: anon
#24
As I was getting into an elevator, I didn’t see the dude standing in the entrance’s corner (f*****g psycho), dude sneezed, I screamed bloody m****r, scared the dude who also screamed mid sneeze.
I think we both felt like the two most r******d human being in all of history for a few seconds. Laughed it off, we awkwardly said goodbye, left on the same floor and walked the same direction for about 20 meters until I pulled the phone out and faked forgetting something.
Edit: First gold, and it’s thanks to one of my dumbest moments, thanks! :’).
Image source: Xepphy
#25
I’d had just spent a fantastic Saturday evening at a friend’s house to celebrate his birthday. Beer begat beer, and then somehow single malt whisky pushed its way into the party.
I left his house at about 12.30am and caught a tram home. The tram was crowded enough that I needed to stand near the door.
Sometime around halfway home the tram stopped at a station, and I looked up from the book I was reading, to see some enraged guy charging across the tracks, yelling as he came towards me.
Because my blood was somewhere around 20% Scotch, it took me a while to realise that he was running across the tracks towards me specifically.
I heard him yell. I saw his saliva splatter on the tram door. He punched the tram door twice. Really hard. Thankfully the tram doors do not open on the other side while it is stopped at the station (TIL).
As the tram began to depart he still held on for a few seconds while some of the other folks on the tram, safe in the knowledge he couldn’t get in, started to tease him. (Incidentally, they called him a ‘prawn’ which was not an insult I’d heard before.)
I have no idea who he was, or what provocation he perceived. Or what he would have tried if he’d opened the doors.
Naturally, once the tram left him behind I tried to just kind of stand there, looking unperturbed.
It was only the next morning that I thought how much worse that situation may have ended up if either a) the tram door had opened; or b) I had been walking past this guy instead of on public transport.
Image source: EvilBosch
#26
A delivery driver I used to work with pointed a gun at my head as I was bending down to get something from the cooler I was working near. I c*****d a joke about him (honestly forget what) and when I stood up I felt it at my temple. He started laughing and I laughed it off too, got him his order ASAP and when he left I went home and called my boss, and didn’t go back till he was fired.
Turns out he k****d himself and his baby’s mother a few years after that incident.
Image source: KyleRichXV
#27
When I was 15, I regularly was at home by myself since both of my parents worked full time and my brother had moved away to college. Well one day during the summer i was just relaxing at home, when all of a sudden someone knocks on the front door. I get up and check the peephole, and see two guys just standing in the driveway just off the porch. One of them wearing a suit, the other wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, but facing away from the house like he’s playing lookout. I decide to ignore them, cause they’ll go away, right?
Wrong.
They continue knocking, knocking, knocking but getting progressively louder and more aggressive. Finally, I decide to call the sheriff’s department and ask for a non emergency check since they’re trespassing. My d*****s decides to yell through the door that I had called, and before I can even realize how dumb it is, the guy starts kicking the front door. I freak the f**k out, run back toward the center of the house and realize that there’s a third guy trying to kick in the back door as well. At this point I call 911 and start screaming about these three guys trying to break into my house.
Notoriously, it took the sheriff’s deputies longer to get there than anyone would imagine, and they see the guys walking down the road later. Stopped them to question, but no arrest.
Image source: NC_DE336
#28
My cousin who was like 14 was babysitting us (9 year old me, 4 year old brother), her dad called coming down from I wanna say crack? H****n? Idk something real bad, he called and screamed at her to tell hik where her piggy bank was, she told him to f**k off and hung up.
He called back, she didn’t pick up, and he left a voice message which played as he was leaving it saying basically he was gonna come down there and f*****g m****r all of us, with a knife, he was gonna come down there and f*****g k**l us all.
He was full of s**t but we were terrified. Can you imagine the pure fear a 9 year old feels when a grown man who sounds crazy says he’s going to m****r her with a knife? So we prepared. We blocked out the windows, locked everything, put heavy furniture in front of the doors. My brother was asleep in his room, my cousin told me just leave him, but I couldnt stand the thought of him being alone in there so I covert style belly crawled, heart beating out of my chest, across the kitchen, through the living room to his room, scooped him up, and brought him back to my moms room, which we then barricaded ourselves into.
I got no sleep that night and my mom and my aunt came back the next morning like “What the f**k did you kids do?!” But I was honestly just happy to be alive and that my mom was home again.
The worst part of the whole thing is when she got home her dad had sold all of her belongings. I mean everything, her bed, her dresser, tv, it was all gone. It was just an empty room.
He’s clean now but I still hate his f*****g guts. F**k you uncle donald.
Image source: rayofsunshine121
#29
Back in the early 90’s I worked as a night auditor for a small motel in Prospect Heights Illinois. I was a young mother and worked nights while my husband worked days. Occasionally, my husband would stop by and check on me. It was a brutal schedule and I truly don’t know how I made it on only a couple hours of sleep each day. But I digress. My job was to perform a daily audit on the rooms and money. Also I would check people in and out of the hotel. The hours were midnight to eight in the morning. One night I had finished my audit and was watching a scary movie on the little tv they had behind the front desk. It was winter and very cold. A man came up to the door and he was wearing a ski mask. For a second, I thought it was my husband so I kind of smiled. He came up to the front desk and I asked if I could help him. He asked me why I had smiled at him. Well I knew right then I was in trouble. He waved a big knife at me and told me to turn around. I felt the most fear then. I felt like I was going to die. He hopped over the front desk and cut one of the phone lines and took the money. I had my coat and purse back there and he took those as well. As he left he said, “I have your purse, I know where you live now!” I stayed hunched in the corner behind the front desk as he left. Then I realized he had only cut the handset to one phone and the main line on another, so I took the handset from one phone and attached it to another where he had not cut the main line. I dialed 911 and got an operator on the line. Just as I was about to talk, the guy came back. Apparently he had dropped his knife behind the desk. I saw it on the floor as he came around. I picked it up. In my mind I’m thinking, can I stab him? We stood there kind of facing each other. Me, in my uniform and this big guy in a thick ski jacket. He demanded I give him the knife. I truly thought if I tried to stab him I would lose and he would k**l me. I gave him the knife. He took the knife and hit me over the head with the handle of the knife a couple of times and then left. The police soon came and I recounted my story. As far as I know, he was never caught. The place I worked for let me have a day off but when I needed more ( I had head injuries) they fired me. It turns out, they had been robbed a few times before but had never put in security. I did take them to court for lost wages and I won. About a year later, maybe less, I saw on the news that a night auditor/clerk at the SAME hotel had been kidnapped from the motel, r***d, stabbed and left for dead. They caught that guy and he is now in prison.
I am literally shaking as I type this. It’s been so long but I rarely talk about this or I just laugh it off like it was no big thing. Obviously it still affects me greatly. Scariest night of my life. The hotel, when I worked there, was an Econo Lodge but they apparently changed the name soon after I left, to Forest Lodge. So when the story about the kidnapped clerk came on the news, I didn’t immediately realize it was the same motel. Until they showed a photo of the motel. Then I knew and it scared the c**p out of me.
Image source: buyer0100
#30
I was sitting at a coffee shop one afternoon minding my own business when a stranger came in the door, awkwardly glanced in my direction then looked me dead in the eye and said “You’re being watched”. My heart jumped and I just kind of responded in fear, “Excuse me”?
“You’re being watched.” He proclaimed once more, but this time a little more sternly. I must’ve had this look of terror on my face because he quickly chuckles and tells me someone is standing outside the window behind me staring at me, I look behind me and it’s my brother.
Image source: trollcitybandit
#31
I was never in any danger, but observed another girl almost get kidnapped at Walmart…
Back when I was in high school, my mom, dad, kid brother, and I went grocery shopping at Walmart. A teenage girl (who was about my age at the time) approached us and awkwardly said she thought some sketchy men had been following her around the store.
I guess my family doesn’t look very threatening, because she asked my dad if he would be willing to walk her out to her car. She seemed embarrassed and kept saying she was probably overreacting, but my dad was quick to say that he would never want me (his teenage daughter) walking out alone if I suspected someone was following me.
My mom, brother, and I stayed with our cart, and my dad went out into the parking lot with the girl. Several minutes later, they both came back inside and we knew something must’ve happened.
It turns out that an old van was parked and idling right next to her car. When the driver and passenger noticed the girl was with my dad, it sped away.
The police were called, the girl’s parents showed up, and my dad and the girl provided statements to the officer. The officer applauded the girl for going with her gut by asking my dad to walk her out, because based on the evidence, there very well could’ve been a much scarier ending to the story…
Meanwhile, the incident freaked my parents out so much that I wasn’t allowed to go to the store alone after dark until I graduated from high school. Lol.
Additional information that might be relevant: This happened in January or February of 2010 in northern Colorado. We never found out if somebody was caught after the incident, but after speaking to my dad he confirmed that neither him or the girl had remembered the license plate (although he did recall it was a CO plate)… He wanted to reiterate that it was 150% the girl taking a proactive approach to her own safety that saved her life that day.
Image source: anon
#32
There’s an abandoned hotel near where I live, it closed about 10 years ago and it’s been knocked down now sadly. I went in with my friends when it was still up (we were about 12) and we snuck in for like the 1000th time. We went into the old kitchen and there was this guy just there with his back turned in a parka. He looked about 20, and he just slowly started turning around, one foot at a time. When he turned around fully, he was wearing one of those cheap theatre masks. We f*****g booked it and I cut my leg off the fence we climbed through. When we got about half a kilometer away my friend just started crying because he was so shocked. Tbh, I think that guy was just exploring and heard us and decided to scare us, but still it was awful.
Image source: anon
#33
I was a truck driving trainer. I picked up a student who within the first 20 minutes asked me about a shooting at a company yard, and how much damage a fully loaded truck and trailer would do at full speed. I sat next to him for literally seven hours while he drove. He didn’t say anything. I’d ask him questions, but I’d get two sentence answers, and then nothing. I have never been so scared or uncomfortable in my entire life. Dropped him off the next day. Said he had been recording me texting (was sending my fiancé gps locations and selfies to let her know I was still alive and ok). He said he was going to send it to my company. I had been recording the entire exchange myself because I was so scared of what might happen. I sent it to my company and he was fired the next day. I couldn’t sleep for a couple of days because I don’t know if he had followed me home or not. He was recently rehired, and not even a day with a trainer, he was dropped off in another state. I was told he is no longer eligible to work for my company.
Image source: thatriggerscrazy
#34
I was about to be kidnapped once, I’m pretty sure.
At the time I was living in a pretty s****y area that was known to have a lot of d***s and some human trafficking, as they had busted a few illegal brothels a few weeks prior to this (and illegal brothels here are code for “these women were kidnapped from the poorer part of this continent and smuggled here”).
I was coming home pretty late from my work, around 1am. I had to cross this super dark street and turn left to my street. As I was about to turn, I noticed something moving from the corner of my left eye, coming from the darkest corner on the street. I turn and jump because I got really startled. I was completely alone in a dangerous neighborhood at 1am and suddenly this small old lady pops up and comes to me out of nowhere. She was really weird looking too. She was smaller than I am (I’m 1,62m/ 5″1 I think), skinny and her hair was very well kept. She also had pretty big b***s for her frame, I think they might’ve been fake. The weirdest part from her appareance were her eyes though. They were this bright blue that were really unsettling. I didn’t really get how they could be so bright when it was so dark. Maybe they were reflecting the moonlight, I have no f*****g clue but that lady seemed almost supernatural.
Anyway, she comes to me and the first thing out of her mouth is “oh, i’m not evil”. Oooookay lady. Then she goes on by saying “oh, you know, I have been asking around but everyone is saying no, can I sleep at your place tonight? I have food with me (she had a bag of fresh groceries with grapes and stuff) and wanted a place to stay – “, I cut her off at this moment and said we don’t have any room for her. Then she keeps insisting a bit more and I say that if she wants a place to stay, there is a hotel 200m from where we were, down the road. She asks if I am sure if it’s open and I say that yeah, I always party around that area and come home really late and it’s always open. She proceeds to say that it must not be open because the hotels in the center were not.
This is a lie. I know it because i’ve lived in that city for 3 years.
This is when things start getting creepier.
She goes on by asking me what’s the name of the street. I tell her. She asks where’s the hotel. I tell her down this very same road, no turning, just walk 200m. She then proceeds to ask these two questions THREE TIMES EACH. I am gesturing at her, getting increasingly annoyed at this point and she just cuts me off and says “Well, I’m sorry, I just don’t know where it is. Could you go inside the car and put it on the GPS?” and at this moment I look at the car that was parked there and this young woman with long black hair comes out of the passenger side with a phone on her hand. The car has smoked windows and looks really expensive. My head, which was screaming at me this entire time to run f*****g explodes and I tell her that I can’t help her anymore and start backing away. She gets visibly frustrated and I almost run home. As I get inside my bedroom, I go to my window, as I can see that street corner. They weren’t there anymore. It took me 2 minutes to reach my bedroom.
After the matter I went over all the details in my head. First of all, if you want a place to sleep, why the f**k would you go to the worst part of town where you know there won’t be anyone around because the nightlife there is dead? Also, why lie about the hotels in the center? They are always open, I had to pass there almost every single day. And if she really had no place to stay, she could’ve paid for a parking space inside a parking lot and sleep in her car. Third of all, I noticed that she came from the sidewalk side, i.e. the passenger side. The younger woman as well. That meant that someone was driving that car and I couldn’t see them because the windows were smoked. And lastly… If she was with a young woman that had a phone with working internet. Why in the hell would she need my help? F**k man…
So yeah, that’s the story of how i’m pretty sure I was about to end up in one of those illegal brothels, or worse.
Image source: anon
#35
I was driving with my friend through a popular park in our city when we came to a dead end parking lot trying to find a certain trail. We started to turn around when a man who was at the trunk of his car ran up to the passenger side of my car, panicking and throwing his arms up. I immediately think he’s broken down or needs help or maybe something is wrong with my car. I lock the doors and roll the window down a crack to hear what the issue was. When he came closer, I got a very uneasy feeling. The guy just didn’t seem right. He smiled and asked if we had ever been to some store in the local area. He offered us candy and tells us to take a look of what we wanted in the back of his car (what a cliche). Keep in mind, I was 21 or so at the time, not a child. At that point I’m accelerating to get the f**k out of there and as we’re pulling away there was another man coming down the hill with a huge stick in his hand and immediately tried to flag us down too. I sped off and saw them talking together and watch as I drove away.
On the road out, we saw a woman jogging towards where we had just had this super creepy encounter and I pulled over immediately and told her to turn around. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I had just let her jog into a weird a*s situation like that. I have no idea if those men wanted to kidnap someone or k**l or what, but I’m glad we got the f**k out of there. I haven’t been to that park since.
Image source: Charbarzz
#36
Mentally disturbed a*****e older brother beat me regularly as a kid but one time it got so bad i actually fought back and he pinned me down and tried to cut my throat but our older sister walked in at the exact moment it counted and stopped him. He had just barely started the cut. The part that f****d me up the most though was my mom let him back in the house 2 weeks later after recieving no psychological treatment at all. I was 7. I developed pretty abnormal behaviors in the attempt to feel more secure and now even as an adult i cannot sleep in an unlocked room.
Image source: dman2316
#37
I worked with this guy who was a hard partier. He seemed pretty cool when we were working, so when he mentioned a band I liked was playing at a little country bar right outside of town, I agreed to go with him. We had a blast and I ended up wasted. He kept my drinks flowing all night which was fun for me because I was only 19. We get back into town and he parks behind a bar that had a strict ID policy. He says he’ll be right back. At this point, I’m not feeling good at all. Not drunk sick, but something different. I got out and made my way to my usual bar hangout across the street. A regular noticed me and later said that I didn’t look right. He got a number for my friend (before cell phones) from the phone book and called him to come get me. The last thing I remember was the guy came in looking for me and the guy helping me refused to let him take me home. He left pretty quickly. I remember nothing else until I woke up the next day, tucked in on my friends couch. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Pretty sure the original guy roofied me and my instincts kicked in before he could accomplish anything. I avoided him like the plague at work after that. The good thing was, the guy that helped me at the bar ended up becoming one of my best friends.
Image source: anon
#38
Dude tried to rob me with a gun under his shirt. Might have been a finger idk but I was way too drunk to let that s**t happen. Pulled the crazy card and started screaming at him at max volume at about 3am he backed down a little. Then we were sitting there and he kept telling me “man you’re not leaving” and I kept telling him “well you’re not getting my money” and it must have been 30 minutes. Then a taxi drove by and I hailed it and got in despite him saying he’d k**l me if I got in.
Dude poked me with whatever was under his shirt but I was pretty certain it was his hand. It probably was cuz I kept telling him to show me the gun and he wouldn’t. Probably was a bad idea but I was uh like 14-15 shots deep.
This happened when I was visiting Seattle for the Microsoft Bluehat conference. There’s a little more to it before that I probably shouldn’t share publicly.
Image source: TheRedmanCometh
#39
We had self locking doors in college but I had went down the hallway to the bathroom to brush my teeth, get ready for bed. I had left my door slightly ajar so I wouldn’t have to bring my keys with me. When I got back to my room I could just sense someone was in there. Sure enough a big drunk guy stumbles out of my closet and I realized that my door was now locked behind me and that even yelling for help would take a few minutes. While he for sure was trying to get amorous (and no, I didn’t know him personally, just had seen him around campus) he wasn’t being too pushy yet.
All I remember was trying to get him to leave and within a minute or two a girl was knocking on my door and he let me open it. She did know him and basically told him to scram which he did. I asked her how she knew, and she said she thought she saw him wander in there and came to check on me. All I can say is she was angel because I’ve always felt like that night would not have ended well for me.
Image source: Tanaisy
#40
I was coming out of my local Walmart at maybe 9:30 pm, to a dark, only partially occupied parking lot. It was nice outside since it was summer, and I usually park far enough away to give myself a walk. I should mention that I’m a fairly small, thin female in my 20s as it seems important later.
My car was parked across the isle (or whatever it’s called) from a couple of others; a small sedan directly beside a large, very dark SUV. A lady probably in her thirties was standing between the sedan and SUV with a shopping cart with a baby carrier inside. I started loading my groceries and stuff into my car, and the lady started calling out to me.
“Hey miss, can you help me?”
I immediately got bad vibes, and didn’t approach. I asked “what’s up? How can I help?” without moving from near my car.
She was pulling at the baby carrier in the cart and apparently struggling. “Can you help me get this out of the cart? I can’t get it out!”
It seemed weird to me, since that more than likely wasn’t her first time using the carrier, and since I was pretty obviously smaller and likely less strong than she was. (That might be an unfair assumption to make, but it still seemed weird to me.)
Then, the light in the front seat of the SUV came on. I told her, “you can probably ask the person in that car, I don’t think I’m strong enough to help you!”
She seemed frustrated, and I was getting a bad feeling from the situation, so I was starting to get into my car. She shouted again “I can’t get my baby out, can’t you help me?”
I feel really bad if she really needed help, but I just pulled the car door shut and called my mom right away. It felt like some sort of setup for human trafficking or something- no actual baby noises or sign of an actual baby, and the way the cars were parked and he darkened SUV. I might be paranoid and overthinking, but I just didn’t get a good feeling from any of it. I’m sorry if that lady and her baby really needed help, but I’m sure a Walmart employee would have helped if that were the case!
Image source: heymissspider
#41
I was home alone at my college house, my roommates were all gone for the night for whatever reason. I had a girl over and we got drunk, she ubered home and I passed out on the couch in the living room. When i woke up the tv and my backpack that my laptop was in were gone. Both were in the room i passed out in. Some dude literally robbed my house right in front of me passed out on the couch. Felt pretty scared when i woke up and realized what had happened.
Image source: space9610
#42
My dad threatened to k**l me with a tire iron once, he had me backed into a corner and the tire iron in his hand, I knew the son of a b***h was crazy enough to do it but I didn’t care. I told him to do it, “K**l me then a*****e” he pussied out and i walked away. Wasnt till about 10 mins later when I was driving away I broke down shaking and crying. Why it happened- when I was about 22 I told him I was leaving/moving out, they had legal guardianship of me because I’m disabled. He didn’t want me to leave because they got government assistance and tax breaks for “taking care of me” I spent a few months in the hospital but was moved to a group home after awhile and am more high functioning now than I have ever been so I do not regret it!!
Image source: EmilyOnPlaystation
#43
Torn between being r***d and the way the mental trauma it gave me affects how I react towards other “scary” encounters I’ve had with people.
When I was r***d I just felt a numbing sensation. But it f****d me up.
For a few nights since Halloween, there’s been a man walking uncomfortably close to the back of our house. My dog never barks or growls, but every time this man is there, Toby is ready to go for it. This man always appears a few minutes after I turn off the bedroom lights, always when my SO and roommates are gone.
Last night he was there again, and I was so terrified. It felt like my heart was going to explode. Toby jumped out of bed, growling and barking. I see the a walking, and he passes a bush—but doesn’t appear from the other side. Toby stayed at our bedroom patio door for twenty minutes. The man never moved from behind the bush. I went upstairs and looked over our balcony, and I could see his boot. We slept upstairs last night.
The only time I felt this unsafe in my home was after I got r***d. I thought I had this trauma under control, but recent events make me feel like therapy would be beneficial.
Edited to add a picture of the [area behind our house ](https://imgur.com/a/jxB5NZl) and a f**k you to anyone who wants to be accusatory of lying about being r***d.
I’ve had a horrible experience with the police after reporting being r***d, and so have thousands of other victims. If you’ve never experienced that trauma, you don’t get to have an opinion on how it affected me. Maybe instead of victim blaming, be suspicious of why the police don’t ever take our claims seriously. Do some research on how that trauma can affect people differently. And reread what you’ve written, think about how it would feel to go through that and see some entitled p***k tell you you’re just “a troll using it for karma.”
F**k you. A simple link to my profile and you’d see that I’m a victims advocate and I’ve been very open about what I’ve gone through since I joined reddit (even before). So many victims are afraid to talk about what happened to them because of reactions like this.
Image source: poke_thebear
#44
This was earlier this year. I was 15 at the time. I drove to a CVS Pharmacy and bought whatever. I walked back to my car, got in, turned the key, and kept the car parked while I texted someone on my phone. A black Honda Accord quickly pulled in to the parking space that was to the right of the one that I was parked in. The driver started waving at me behind his rolled-up window. He started to roll it down. I thought that he was trying to get my attention to tell me that I was about to back up into something or someone. I looked in my rear-view mirror and began to roll down my passenger’s side window. He threw his door open and began approaching my car while saying “Hey, kid – my name’s David. Do you mind if I talk to you for a second?” He reached for the handle, and I quickly shifted gears and screeched out. Fortunately, nothing was behind me. I didn’t even look. He was giving me a look that said “Ahh, come on, kid…” I noped the f**k outta there and drove away. I parked in the parking lot of a nearby bank and called the police. Human trafficking is a real problem where I live. I think that I saw a David pop up in the Daily Bookings and Releases section of our local sheriff’s office’s website. I didn’t get my hopes up, though; Honda Accord is an ubiquitous make and model, and I didn’t have a license plate for the operator.
Image source: anon
#45
I was about 16 at the time and my family went on a vacation to Destin, FL. The weather wasnt doing so well and the ocean was going nuts. They had the red flags out but as long as you stayed close to shore the waves werent too bad. Many people were having fun with the aggressive waves and body surfing in. When I was running out to catch a wave back in I jumped to go over a wave, and I saw a young girl a bit farther out than I had been going. I got a weird feeling and decided to go out a bit farther to see what was up. I yelled to see if she was okay, she didnt say a word and still had the scared look on her face. I swam out to her and as soon as I was closed she reached for me and I grabbed her. I pulled her close with one arm as a wave crashed over us and we both went under. As the wave cleared I took a few steps towards shore. I was about 6ft at the time and the waves were well over my head, so when the next one came I just pushed the girl up with one arm and kept her head above water. I kept repeating the process and soon found myself taking a few steps forward but getting pulled back out a bit each time. After I noticed this and as I was getting more tired I started to get really really scared. But thankfully those thoughts didnt come true and soon a man came running out towards us and grabbed her from me to help get us in. I was then able to make it back in to calm both my mom and the girls mom down who were crying hysterically on the shore.
Image source: tarzan1848
#46
This may be tame to other stories. I used to work in a prison as a contractor. Walked the main line to get to housing units to meet with some of them. Pre-release type of work. Anyway, I was walking the mainline (imagine long corridor with a painted line area to designate staff walk in the middle and inmates walk on the sides) and was walking towards Edmund Kemper (he’s the coed killer from Santa Cruz and portrayed pretty accurately in Mindhunter on Netflix). It was by the canteen area so there was less space for him so he and his inmate aide that was pushing his wheelchair moved closer to the staff line. I remained in my area per protocol. Usually not a big deal to walk by these guys, but that morning I stood less than 3’ from Kemper. You know how people talk about feeling tension in a room or a sense of creep from a person? Well it was a massive wall of evil that I felt, like it was punched in my face. Almost took my breath away and I had to keep my game face on and not appear scared. Acutely aware of his size and what he had done to earn his time in prison and was quietly freaking out. Just nodded to them and said “good morning” as I usually greeted the inmates and officers. Got back to my area and stayed there for a while. No thanks Kemper.
Image source: AlienFartPrincess
#47
Probably the time I was in university and finishing an essay at around 1 am…I heard a knock at my window and saw the face of an unfamiliar young man staring right at me. He had to flip and step up onto a trash can in order to look into my bedroom. I screamed and launched a slipper at him (was the first thing in reach) and he bolted. I cried and cried thinking of what might have happened if I weren’t already awake.
A close second is when an older man sat beside me on the city bus, leaned over to look at my phone and asked me what time it was. I told him, and he stuck his hand down his pants and grunted, staring at my face and then at my breasts. I was like 18 at the time. I got off at the next stop and ran. Anybody who witnessed it didn’t give a d**n.
Image source: Tealbouquet
#48
The first time I tried to leave my ex. He was dead in the face and eyes and calmly told me I wasn’t leaving before beating the ever living s**t out of me, attempting to stab me a few times before losing his nerve for it, then plopped me in I’m guessing a closet and locked the door. Still don’t remember how long I was in there and don’t remember being let out, just ending up waking in bed. Finally got away from him for good a few weeks later.
Image source: TinyTinasRabidOtter
#49
Very light compared to a lot of you but:
I was up in the middle of the night and I was heading to bed. As I was shutting off all of the lights, I walk into our dark computer room and I notice the closet door was half-closed. Weird. The paranoid part of me thought there was a guy in there with a knife waiting to stab me. As I attempt to fully open the door, it hits something. Must have been there vacuum in the closet? Please? I reach inside and look around the door…and notice a human torso. I grab it out of sheer panic and look up to see my sister screaming at me. Scared the s**t out of me. I half-expect her to be waiting behind shower curtains now whenever I check behind those…
Edit: Oh, I forgot to add. She said didn’t know how she ended up in the closet and said she was probably sleepwalking…but I doubt it. I think she was trying to slip out of the house in the middle of the night but knew she couldn’t do it until I went to bed. How long she waited in that closet, I have no idea.
Image source: _Than0s
#50
Well, I hope the b***h was real.
In Toronto there is a subway system run by the TTC or Toronto Transit Commission. They often square off certain parts of the subway route (Which is pretty f*****g basic) in order to do some upgrades or fix bits. Lately they’ve been shutting down the subway rides into downtown on the weekends.
Anyway, They were doing some upgrades on the track and we were going by pretty slow making sure not to run over anyone while they scampered out of the way. Out of no where the power cut out. Now, I should say that I wasn’t the only one in the train car. The cars are decently long and I was at one end, and some woman was at the other end.
When I walked onto the train it was up at her end where there was a giant bubble of seats empty around her. She was displaying the typical signs of Batshit Crazy and people sort of avoided her. Everyone else was off, getting off at Yonge but I still had another couple stops east to go.
She was laughing, audibly, and I tried to tune it out by listening to some music but it never really worked. It was so chilling that my brain sort of just kept ignoring the music and focusing on her, so eventually I just unplugged the music and sat back, trying not to s**t my pants.
So anyway, the power cuts out and here I am sitting at one end, as far away from her as I could possibly be, and the lights turn off for some reason.
She stopped laughing.
In fact, she stopped making any noise at all.
When the lights came back on about 5 seconds later when I had sufficiently s**t my pants, she wasn’t at the far end. She was about 3 seats away from me.
Staring at me.
The second the train stopped I bolted for the f*****g door.
After she ‘relocated’ she didn’t make another sound, she just kept staring.
F*****g creepiest moment of my g*****n life.
Image source: anon
#51
When I was 18 I worked the evening shift at a convenience store. Over the previous 3 nights 3 stores from the same chain had been held up at gunpoint in my (small) city, so my manager had basically been prepping me all week to get robbed. I was (understandably) on edge all night. I was down to the last few hours of my shift and I was finally starting to calm down a little bit when a guy with his hat pulled down low walked in, came right up to the counter, and started reaching into the inside of his jacket and said “You know those days when you should’ve just stayed home? I think this is one of them”. Time was moving in slow motion at this point and my heart was beating out of my chest.
After what felt like 10 minutes the guy pulled his wallet out of his jacket and asked for a pack of cigarettes. Anti-climactic, but scary nonetheless.
***TL;DR almost pooped my pants over a pack of cigarettes***.
Image source: anon
#52
I once worked as a live-in staff member in a college dormitory. During the summer we housed the few summer school students who remained on campus (near 30). It may be significant to point out these students tended towards the highly academically-motivated, often times high-stress students, if quiet.
One warm day in late June my office received a call from a concerned sibling that she and her family was unable to reach her brother who lived by himself in a room on the summer school floor. This wasn’t unusual as our office frequently dealt with students avoiding their kith and kin due to frayed nerves or general social awkwardness.
Our normal protocol to check on a student is to try to reach them by our emergency contact information, failing that – go check their room to verify they’re living in the building and perhaps available then and there, then have them call their family to verify we followed up on the original request. Also – we are to only enter a room with another staff member present to ensure personal safety of staff and students.
I failed to reach this student on his room and mobile phone, and was working short-staffed so since I was on my own I decided to pop up to his room and check on him.
I arrived on his floor around 2 in the afternoon and the floor seemed deserted as I had expected. I found his room number and immediately noticed the sound of a movie playing on a TV or computer from behind the door. I knocked three times and announced that I was a staff member checking on his health and safety.
No answer.
I didn’t think this was that remarkable, college students are notorious for leaving electronics running while not in the room. I checked the floor showers and bathrooms and found them deserted.
I returned to his door and knocked three more times, waiting about 20 seconds between each knock.
No answer.
This is when my instincts started to buzz. I worked in residence halls a number of years as a professional and something about all the pieces of this puzzle weren’t adding up; family concerned about his health and safety, electronics running (someone must have started them recently, within the time frame of a movie run-time), summer school students and their idiosyncratic behavior, something wasn’t right.
I was by myself, so I probably let myself get more worked up than if I was with someone else. A deserted dorm floor, even at 2 in the afternoon, oftentimes evokes Kubrician memories of the Overlook Hotel . . .
I decided that for some sense of closure or sanity I needed the immediate resolution of keying into this student’s room, even though I was by myself and not technically supposed to do so.
I knocked on the door one more time for good measure, again announced myself as the hall director. I keyed into the room and my spider sense went off even stronger:
The room appeared relatively vacant; the student appeared to be living out of a suitcase (which is unusual for someone staying no less than 8 weeks for a summer school session). The bedding was tussled like someone had been sleeping in it and all the lights in the room were on. And as I had suspected, there was an open laptop on a desk running on battery power playing *The Matrix*. But no student.
I began to start rationalizing to keep from feeling unsettled; surely this student and I had crossed paths on my way to his room (I’d never met him before so I wouldn’t recognize him otherwise) and perhaps he was just down in the lobby picking up delivery food for a late lunch.
Sure, that’s it.
Then I turned to leave, planning on trying to reach the student later in the afternoon or that night. As I turned to leave I noticed another odd piece of evidence; the accordion closet doors (which are removed in most rooms due to disuse, particularly single rooms like his) were still in this room. And they were closed.
Odd. I couldn’t remember the last time I actually saw someone use those cranky, dysfunctional doors. Then my intuition spiked higher than ever. S**T S**T S**T. I realized I was alone in a room with a potentially s******l student who may, in fact, have completed just that. And I am about to be “that guy” who discovers the body and then has a s**t storm of paperwork and undesirable tasks, not the least of which would be calling the family back to break the news.
I felt like I was talking to myself when my voice c*****d as I spoke to the closed doors and announced my name and title and that I would be opening those accordion doors in 3 seconds.
I fumbled with the latch on the doors, and finally managed to get them disengaged, and as I slid the doors apart, I was unprepared. I don’t know what I really expected, a hanging? gunshot wound?
I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect: a 7′ dark-skinned Indian man staring at me embarrassingly as though I had found his secret hangout. We stared at each other for a good 15 seconds without blinking, breathing or speaking.
I finally realized what was going on and my natural emotion was disbelief. All I could think to say was, “Um . . . are you in here hiding from me?”
He looked at me and said, “Yah.”
My heart was still racing, I turned to leave and before I shut his door I turned back to him and said, “Call your sister, she’s worried about you, and, frankly, I am too.”
TLDR, I met an Indian in the cupboard. Literally. Scared me.
Image source: PressureChief
#53
When I was quite young I was out at the park walking my dog (German Shepherd) when I realised it was getting quite late and I was the only one left in the park. A man dressed in a dark hooded top and a black scarf covering his face jumped the fence that leads into the alleyway behind the park and started marching towards me, but he hadn’t spotted my dog, who was off sniffing around or doing whatever dogs do. My dog got between us though and there was a kind of stand-off for a while. My dog was really tense and growling with his ~~heckles~~ hackles raised, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if my dog was going to attack the man so I just kind of froze. After a while the man backed away, jumped back over the fence and ran away down the alley. I put my dog back on his lead and went home, but he was still tense the whole way back. I was a little freaked out, but perhaps not as afraid as I should have been, looking back on it now. I didn’t know what that man wanted, or what he was doing there, or what would have happened if my dog wasn’t there with me. There would have been no reason for him to go into that park by himself and come towards me like that. I shudder to think about it. I think if the man had made a move towards me my dog would have attacked him.
Image source: anon
#54
One night, around 3am, I was dead asleep with my exboyfriend next to me. All of the sudden I hear someone IN my house asking if anyone was home. I woke up my ex, and told him to go see what the hell was going on. He was a total chicken s**t and made me go. I get out of bed, can’t find my glasses but the guy is still shouting. I come out of my bedroom in my pajamas and see there is a big bald dude in what looks to be a police uniform standing in my entryway.
I’m squinting trying to get a good look at him and he looks at me and says, “I just wanted to tell you that your door was left unlocked and you should lock it.”
I mumble something to the effect of “Uh, thanks?” and he leaves my apartment. I’m still as blind as a bat but I see that he walks away instead of getting into a car. (No policeman would be policing the woodsy area I live in on foot)
The next day I called the local police station and asked if any officers had reported this incident and they said they would check with the on duty officers and get back to me. The called me the next day and said no one had done this.
I still get freaked out when I think about this happening and I wish I knew what that guy was up to.
Image source: quirkytiff
#55
My sister’s bedroom was on the second floor. all of a sudden she screamed and said she saw a hand on her window. we thought she was having a nightmare, told her to go back to bed. Next morning we found a ladder up against our house by her window.
edit: haha, I see people are freaked it was the second floor. It was normal house, I dont know if that helps or hurts, but the top of the ladder reached it. also it happened in 1987, so you can relax a little.
Image source: Ruddiver
#56
The time my high school sweethearts father found out I took his daughters virginity. He took me for a drive to an empty field to have a chat. He’s a good father and she is an only child. I thought I was dead.
Image source: il_vekkio
#57
I once lived in a sort of bad neighborhood in a very tiny house with my brother, who was rarely there. Old house, so it was a little creepy and also felt like anyone who wanted to could have broken in.
One night I was getting ready for bed, it was pretty late and during a hot summer. We didn’t have A/C, so I had one of those two fan window deals. The blinds were pulled down to the top of the fan. I was changing for bed, I sleep in underwear and a t-shirt.
I slipped out of my pants and changed my shirt. I don’t wear a bra to bed because F**k that. I am about to hop into bed when I hear a low, masculine voice say, ” Let’s see those t*****s again”
I think my whole body stopped working for 5 seconds while I absorbed the fact that there was a creepy peeping tom right outside my window and I was alone in a house that he could get into if he wanted.
It was the first and only time I called the 911. I had a panic attack waiting for the police and the very nice 911 lady had to calm me down. Bright note, apparently it was a slow night because they sent 3 cars. I was so happy when I moved.
Image source: Tripleee
#58
I have two.
When I was around 12, a neighbor had a party where I met a girl my age. My mom was happy to see me making friends so we head to my house to play games. My dog was a sweet lab who had never been angry or growled *ever*. This girl walks up to him to pet him, and he immediately growls and barks, and eventually cowers close to me. I couldn’t believe it, but even by 12 I believed you don’t just ignore a dog’s intuition. So I take note of the sign but we go play and then go for a walk. Not 10 minutes into the conversation and this girl is an obvious sociopath. I realized what I and the dog had felt about her. She was empty and fake, in very visceral way. She starts talking about r**e. Not in a ‘maybe she was a****d’ way. In a ‘doesn’t that sound interesting, but how do the logistics work’ kind of way. She specifically wondered how you r**e someone while holding a knife to their neck. Her parents invited me to spend the night at her house. I declined.
Image source: reconditerefuge
#59
When I was younger and we had just moved to this town, the lady who lived down the block attempted to break into our house. She banged on the windows and couldn’t get in though.
Fast forward ~6 years, there she is outside of our new house on the other side of town, asking us for gas money… with our gas can.
Image source: anon
#60
When I was a kid we lived on a lake and there was a lakefront owner’s meeting every year. It was a few houses down from ours. The children were brought and we would eat a lot of appetizers, color some, hang out in a certain area with a babysitter, but as we all arrived we were expected to say hello to the adults.
One year there was a new owner on the lake, the lake was pretty small so there were maybe fifteen owners at the meeting. I remember being very creeped out by the new over, he just had a bad vibe. I remember as we walked home after my brother and I told my mom we didn’t like him.
Cut to like six years later, my family had moved away to a different part of the state and were watching the news and realized the helicopter footage was of our lake. The police had identified and arrested the green river killer, that terrorized Western Washington in the 80s and 90s.
Eventually the image is Gary Ridgeway came up and my blood ran cold. That was the owner I didn’t like. And that’s how I met the most prolific serial killer in the US to this point.
Image source: milleribsen
#61
Had a neighbor in Virginia that was always friendly. He would help anyone on the block doing stuff. Fixing cars, helping landscape, etc.. For some reason he always seemed a little off to me. Seen him one day smacking something on his driveway. Turned out to be a cat. Said it was rabid. Never really believed it. Reported what happened. Nothing ever came of it. About 2 months later his girlfriend came up missing. He seemed quite upset. Other people in the neighborhood expressed sympathy. He would hold his face in his hands and carry on. But once I caught what I thought was a grin on his face when he turned away. Gave me the creeps considering what I witnessed with the cat. He is the only guy who ever put me on edge. She was found in a shallow grave somewhere near Virginia Beach a few weeks later. Multiple broken bones and her skull crushed in. He was the primary suspect. Was later arrested for her m****r. He was grinning when arrested. Dead eyes, s**t eating grin. Moved away before the trial.
Image source: slrg123
#62
I’ve interacted with several convicted rapists/murders/pedos thanks to past jobs. One of the subjectively worst ones was also one of the most charming people I’ve ever met. He just had this way of making you feel comfortable and wanting to be open and friendly right off the bat.
But he had dead eyes. I don’t know how to explain it. He made eye contact and was super expressive. There was just this disconnect that showed a glimpse of what he was hiding underneath. All the charm and friendliness he presented and encouraged in people was just to hide a monster.
I have this somewhat repetitive dream about him once in awhile and still wake up scared.
Image source: KirinG
#63
I know it’s a basic a*s answer and it’ll probably let be buried, but the man who s****************d me when I was 12.
I was taking tae kwon do classes, he worked specifically with the older age school group. All the children loved him, he was the young cool instructor, all the girls had a crush on him etc. He eventually moved in with our family bc he needed a place temporarily. Now I come from a big family, one of 6 children. There was a lot going on at home, navigating my brother’s learning disabilities, trying to find a new school, homeschool the older ones, it was a lot. It started out as being friendly, eventually leading to secret texting, handholding, and a stolen kiss here or there. First red flag that I blocked out from memory, is that they all went swimming one day and I was on my period, I had not learned how to use tampons then, he walked up to me when no one was around and said something along the lines of, “you know you’ll eventually start having to use them right?”…. Looking back what 23 year old says that to a f*****g 12 year old. Eventually he ended up s******y assaulting me under a blanket while watching a movie with my entire family in the room. He got kicked out for finding out we were texting, but those were innocent. I never really put two and two together for a long time. The red flags were screaming, but i unfortunately wasn’t taught the signs, extremely sheltered, the the point where I didn’t think what happened to me was bad. It’s the ones that seem so nice and normal who do the most damage.
I went through a very dark time in my life from 2012-2014, I eventually told them what happened after my behavior was off. I’ve never told anyone specific details, only that he touched me and kissed me once, but it was way more than that. He’s on the list now. I’ve been to therapy and I’m in a much better place now, but it was just the way he was so normal and lax, no indications, but again I was a naive 12 year old girl yearning for any attention she could get.
Image source: Littleasian1025
#64
I was working in a newsagent in a busy shopping centre. This guy came in to put money on his Gocard ( a prepaid card for trains and buses ect). Anyway, he had the darkest soulless eyes I’ve ever seen, ankle monitor, carrying a shovel, with half his face tattooed with teeth and jaw outline, his head was shaved and one side of his head was tattooed that said “k**l all rats”. He was extremely well spoken. He looked me dead in the eyes once and kept his eyes to the ground the entire transaction after.
Image source: Prawn_spaghetti
#65
Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer. Although at the time nobody knew it was him so none of our interactions were scary, just slightly odd.
Image source: GypsysDeletion
#66
Got a DUI back in 09. Was taken to the Placer country drunk tank. Guy with tattoos all over his face approaches me. I think I’m for sure getting r***d. Nope, he wanted to offer me his roll of toilet paper for a pillow. He introduced himself as the “Sac City Psycho”. He told me he would watch over me to make sure nobody f****d with me, cause he could tell I did not have much experience in jail. Now looking back on it, I guess for a few hours there, I was his b***h.
Super nice guy tho, 10/10 would be his b***h again.
Image source: NagoGmo
#67
My cousin. Hes a high ranked memeber in a pretty well known 1% motorcycle club. Dude stands maybe 5″7 and Average build. No visible tats and super soft spoken.
Everything about him says he should be a banker not a biker. I have never seen him even raise his voice once but that dude scares the absolute s**t out of me. He gives off strong psycho energy.
Image source: SignificantFix8218
#68
Was hanging out and drinking with a friend of mine when he said a guy we knew wanted to come over. I said no because he gives off mass shooter vibes but my friend invited him anyway.
We were all hanging out and having a good time and my friend drunkenly mentioned what I had said about the guy. I shot my friend a “why the f**k would you say that” look, expecting the guy to be offended. Instead, he smiled and asked, “how many bodies you think I could get?”.
Image source: WaleNeeners
#69
One of the people I grew up calling an uncle was actually a hit man for the mafia. I loved him to death and never would have imagined it, but everyone who knew him and his reputation was terrified of him. I only learned of what he did after he disappeared, I miss him he was always really good and kind to me and my siblings, but d**n learning what he did was terrifying.
Image source: anon
#70
When I was pretty young I was hanging out with an older friend, and I found out one of her close friends from school became a high ranking member of a cartel. He got cancer and was allowed to sort of “retire” from the cartel to spend the lasts few years with his family. I met him at a party of hers and we smoked a joint together. He was very polite but I had no intention of spending more time around him!
Image source: xain_the_idiot
#71
He wasn’t scary when I met him, but I got very afraid along the way. My first boyfriend had become a*****e near the end, and started stalking me after I broke up with him.
I’ll spare everyone the details, as I have a literal 10 cm thick dossier about it, since it took over 4 year for him to fully stop it. The last time I heard from him was 19 years ago, but in recent years I have noticed it affected me a lot more than I thought at the time.
So no big scary stranger, but someone i used to really love. But if I’m put in ia similar situation, for instance if someone just shows up at my home, I feel that same panic I felt a lot back then.
Image source: Selfish_Kitty
#72
Treating a guy high on m**h in the back of an ambulance. As we were securing him to the cot for transport, he flips out and started screaming. He eventually opened the side door and ran to the police on scene. Yes the tweaker ran to the cops, instead of us trying to help him. For about 20 seconds, I thought I was going to have to throw done in the ambulance with a methy.
Image source: jweis2012
#73
My boyfriend and I and one of his friends had been partying in the woods behind another friend’s apartment complex, we were leaving and had just gotten into his buddy’s pickup. I was sitting in the middle. We heard yelling, and suddenly there was a man pointing a rifle with a freaking bayonet on it through the driver side window. He was carrying on about us partying in the woods or whatever, but I was mostly focused on watching my boyfriend out of the corner of my eye. He spent a lot of time thinking about fighting, and he had previously told me about his theory on how a full beer can could be used as a weapon. I could see his hand sliding down towards the bag of beer on the floor. I thought, holy s**t he’s going to try to bonk this nut case on the head, and I’m going to get shot, or stabbed, or both.
Fortunately, our friend started talking calmly to bayonet guy, apologizing and asking if he’d been in the service, saying he was a vet too, hey man, you don’t want to get in trouble here, etc. The dude ended up wandering off, and I didn’t get to find out whether you can disable an armed man with a can of Budweiser. Forever grateful to you, Joe!
Image source: strum_and_dang
#74
That time I got mistaken for a gang member by a rival gang and got surrounded by 15-20 guys with weapons. Thought my life was gonna end then and there but somehow managed to talk some sense into them and convince them I wasn’t who they were looking for. They ended telling me I was real, all gave me pounds, got back in their van and drove off.
Image source: Subzero84
#75
My ex got a gun pulled on him while at a house party. I was sitting next to him, and couldn’t move for like 15 or so minutes while things were figured out. He thought my ex had stolen his coke and was a little angry.
Image source: sunnysideup2323
#76
I was at a 24 hour donut shop in my city where homeless people tend to hang out during the middle of the night and my friend and I walked there drunk off our assess and as we were ordering a homeless guy started screaming nonsensical things at the cashier and the other homeless people in the store. He then turned towards my friend and I and pulled out a knife and started waving it at us and screaming gibberish at us. I was drunk and confused and just stood there with no clue what to do kind of chuckling because it was so surreal to me while my friend started crying. We were the only women in the store and as soon as he pulled the knife on us and started walking towards us and swinging it at us all the other homeless men got up and held him back. He was probably about a foot from my face when the owner leaped over the counter and escorted us out through the back and walked us to the nearest public place still open and waited with us while we called an Uber. He apologized profusely and next time we went back (during the day) he recognized us, gave us free donuts and told how that was not the first time that had happened in the store.
Image source: jenna9820
#77
I have been a****d by an ex boyfriend but that’s definitely not the scariest that’s reserved for the child molester babysitter that touched me inappropriately more than once. My parents God love them were so freakin naive they were overstressed and overworked. He was a 60 something year old man that went to our church. We called him “candy man” because he always had candy for us kids.
He babysat me and my brother more than once, I will never ever forget that evil smile and that “this won’t hurt…” They still have NO idea it’s been over 20 years but it messed me up bad. I have C-PTSD from both my ex and him. That was the scariest thing ever and even now in my sleep sometimes I’ll see him. That’s what’s scary.
Image source: coffeeandjesus1986
#78
Dude chasing me with a knife or an escape and evasion exercise where we weren’t told it was happening and got kidnapped by dudes with guns in balaclavas. The second probably s**t me up more at the time but once you knew it was staged it wasn’t so bad on reflection.
Image source: anon
#79
I’m female in my early 20s. I walk into work at 5:45AM and park 2 blocks from work on a neighborhood street. I’m always on alert, keeping a close eye on my surroundings. One morning a few months ago, I heard an engine approaching rapidly from behind me, then a creepy, white van loudly screeched to a halt RIGHT next to me. The driver had his passenger window down and leaned forward. In my terror, I didn’t think about the fact that a kidnapper would be getting out of the car, not rolling down their window. I immediately stopped breathing and ran for my life. My life flashed before my eyes. I looked back to see a newspaper fly out the window and the guy sped off. It took me an hour to calm down. My heart still stops every time I see a van or hear tires screech.
Image source: anon
#80
I was a little kid and my dad was driving me around Kansas City. After a while of driving, when we entered the bad part of town, this guy walks out in front of the car and waves at us with this stone-cold expression on his face. Another guy walks up to the drivers-side window and says hi to my dad. I can smell beer on him from the back seat. He holds up a pixie-stick that’s been obviously opened and twisted shut, and asks my dad if I wanted one. After he said “No, thank you,” the guy reaches into the car, and tries to grab my dad’s wallet out of the center console. My dad shoves him back, and starts to roll up the window. The other guy is practically laying on the hood, so my dad can’t safely drive away. Pixie-stick guy grabs the top of the window as it’s rolling up, pulls out, and smashes it. My dad was screaming at him the whole time. As he tries to reach in for a second time, this time reaching into his own waistband with his other hand, my dad punches him; Hard. This was, and still is to this day, by far the worst punch I had seen in my life. There was an audible crack, and then I literally saw his eye pop out of its socket as he fell to the curb. The guy on the hood slid up to the windshield as my dad floored it, and hit the glass, shattering it and sliding off. We never filed any police report, and I don’t know if either of the guys died.
Image source: TheConflictPigeon
#81
Scariest encounter wasn’t an encounter. Worked for a rent to own furniture place between my junior and senior year in college. I’m 6’3″ 280 lbs, so I’m built for lifting. The other delivery guy was a prison guard before, so he was fairly well built as well.
Now, 95% of the job is delivering furniture. However, since rent to own requires, you know, rent, you tend to get those who get behind on their payments. If they get too far behind, we pick up their stuff. Most people are actually happy since that’s means the phone calls from the manager stop. Some would rather run an hide. We’ve tracked people across town, to different towns, even one that moved across the country, no idea how the manager and corporate did hmm that.
So one day, we get told that after we make a delivery, we are supposed to check out an address. Supposedly, this girl and her baby daddy are 8 months behind and keep moving to avoid us. The place is out in the country, but we live in a rural part of the world so that’s no big deal. We find the place, with a half mile long drive way, leading to a trailer house. There’s a truck in the yard, doors open, hood up, lights on, someone was working on it, recently. We also notice that the front door to the house is wide open. Odd, when its 95+ outside. There is absolutely no body around this place. Then, on the picnic table just outside the front door, we see a pretty new box of s*****n shells. It’s open, and a few are missing.
Now, we had pulled up to this place, got out of the truck, but hadn’t said a word. We just looked at each other, got back in the truck, and drove back to the store. We both just had that feeling that something bad was in the air. A couple months later, after I had quit and went back to college, I saw that that girl and baby daddy had been picked up for cooking and selling m**h. Crazy enough to shoot us? Probably.
Image source: sharpshooter999
#82
I’m so happy this question was asked. This is the only good story in my whole life.
Growing up, I always wanted to go on a bike ride at night, something about it seemed really cool to me. It wasn’t until I was 13 that my mom finally let me. She told me to wear my helmet, have my phone, take a flashlight, and she set the parameters for where I was allowed to go. She gave me about 4 miles, which was a lot to me. So right after the sun set, I was off.
I loved it. There were no people out walking their dogs, no kids running around, the temperature was perfect, etc.. It was really fun, so fun, that I ignored the limits my mom set. You see, where I was biking was all walking paths. It was one of those grassy areas between two neighborhoods. There’s this long path that went at least 600 feet at a 25 degree angle. I was flying down this hill, having an absolute blast, and darted right through the parameters.
My mom set these limits for a reason. Everything on the inside was close to houses and people. The outside, more specifically, the place where the path I was on lead to, was barren. I rode along this path for 10 minutes before I could only see some of the lights of the houses on the inside of the limits.
After 15 minutes of riding along this dirt path, I hear singing. It sounded about 30-40 feet in front of me. I stop riding to hear it better. It was a woman’s voice. She was singing Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles. But she wasn’t singing the words, just the melody of the vocals. Her voice was strange. You know how when you have phlegm in your throat, your voice gets scratchy? That’s what her voice sounded like.
I inch forward to try and see her. I get close enough to see the silhouette of hair bouncing up and down, like she was headbanging. I decide to get my flashlight out. I’m thinking that maybe this person is in need of help or something. Or maybe this is an insane person and the light will scare them away. So I take the flashlight out of my pocket, point it at her, and turn it on.
The moment the light hit her, she stopped moving completely. She was facing away from me. She had disgusting hair that seemed to be sticking together in clumps. Some of her hair was ripped off, too. She was wearing a very over-sized, bright red hoodie. I was almost too scared to move. I think she was, too. I conjured up as much bravery as I could and said “Sorry” in a very, oops-this-is-the-wrong-room, kind of way. She didn’t respond.
I turned off the flashlight and put it back in my pocket. Just as I was turning my bike around, she screams. She screams in an awful, awful, high pitched voice. I d**n near s**t myself as I throw myself back onto my bike. I hear her voice getting closer to me. I book it as fast as I can. I don’t look behind me, and I don’t stop pedaling. Her screaming grew quieter and quieter until it dissolved into the howling of the wind.
**TL;DR** Went on a bike ride at 13, heard someone singing Eleanor Rigby in the darkness, shine a flashlight on her, she freezes, turn it off, she screams and runs at me as I bike away.
Image source: AverageDoorknob
#83
This story is 100% true, I experienced it myself in the Summer of 1991.
When I was about 10 years old, I lived on Woodway Drive in the Fox Harbor Apartments in Paducah, KY. If you look up the address, you will see some woods just to the north of the apartment complex. My friends and I played in those woods every day after school and all day on the weekends.
Through the few years I lived there, we cleared a small area in the woods and created a fort from various things we got out of dumpsters. It was our own place that no one else knew about, and it was awesome.
One day as we were walking to our fort, off in the distance we saw a man walking through the woods. He was walking parallel to us, but in the opposite direction – like cars traveling on a road, but with about 70 – 80 yards separating our paths. We stopped talking and stopped dead in our tracks when we saw him. We never saw anyone in the woods, especially not adults.
When we stopped moving, he did too. He turned towards us and looked right at us. As I stared at him and was able to make out the details of what he looked like, I noticed that he was wearing what looked like a Halloween mask (a generic mask, not Michael Myers) and carrying an axe in his hands. We stood there in silence and motionless for what was probably about 10 seconds – he looking at us, and us looking at him. The he started sprinting straight at us.
We did the only thing we apparently thought to do, run straight to our fort. We were probably about 50 yards from the entrance to the fort and in those 50 yards he gained a lot of ground on us. When we finally made it, he was upon us. All of my friends scurried up a tree and were screaming, but I was the last in line. By the time I could try and climb the tree, he was standing right there by us. He was screaming like a lunatic and waving the axe in the air. I was scared, had no idea what was going on, and my mind was blank on what I should do.
I grabbed a large stick and took a nice big baseball bat swing and c*****d him on the face with it. He stumbled back a bit, moaned and took the mask off. I recognized the face. It was the landlord and manager of the apartment complex. A man who was probably about 50 years old. He wanted to play a joke on us and thought this was the most appropriate thing to do. He was a f*****g psycho.
TL;DR: Was chased by a man with a mask and an axe through the woods. I fought back. It was all a joke that we didn’t find funny.
Image source: Brettuss
#84
Here is a very creepy thing that happened to me. One winter I was pushing my limits and winter camping a lot, but I had this crazy tent with a fireplace. The limits part was just the fact that I was solo and pretty remote in these places. This was rural SW colorado canyon country, there wasn’t that much snow at all on the ground but it was 0 degrees F that night. Well, it was a full moon and I was restless so at about 2am I got out of my tent (fire still going) and went for a long walk. I ended up climbing up some stuff that was probably a quarter or half mile from my tent/vehicle but up above it so I could see down on my tent and campsite clearly. It was really beautiful down there, dimly lit from the inside by the stove’s fire and dimly lit from the outside by the big moon. I was enjoying myself and just about to head back down when I heard distant gravel crunching. I had been there since noon that day and not a single vehicle had driven past so I was kind of put off and decided to stay up there until they drove passed.
The noise grows louder (amazing how far away you can heard in the canyons at night) slowly and eventually I can see that it is a car on the same road so I stay put and watch. It’s going really slow, I can see a lighter being used quite a bit (i’m not saying they were smoking m**h, but they were smoking m**h). And it’s something like a 89 caprice or something. Like the old cop cars, and really crappy. So I’m just watching, still in a very wistful mood and feeling somewhat powerful from my perch. They near the bend where they’ll be able to see my tent and round the corner. Brake lights. They slow way down and seem to pause at my tent for an eternity. Probably only a minute or so but now I was on high alert and pretty nerve wracking. I had no kind of anything weapon wise on me, just a hatchet down by the tent for firewood.
But they drive on. I’m pretty relieved but still shaken, now thinking about what if they come back. So I decide to chill for a little longer and make sure i see them exit. Nope. They turned around down the road and came back. I watched as they parked a ways down the road and got out and started walking down the road towards my camp. It was such bright moonlight which slick rocks all around that I could see this all happening SOMEWHAT clearly but I couldn’t make out much more than the basic scenes and there were still lots of big shadows.
I proceed to watch for quite a while as they approach my tent, look all around the outside, look in the vents (where it probably looked like I was sleeping, the bag was in there with bedding), mess with my vehicle, and then walk back to their car and leave.
I pretty much stayed up there until just before dawn and only came down when I knew I could break camp and bail. There were footprints in the snow on the outside of my tent and I kept imagining what it would have been like to have just woken up and not known what happened, just see the footprints.
After that I started carrying A) a spot locator beacon B) battery powered motion detector alarm C) s*****n. And I started using a much smaller tent and sometimes I even camp in a bivy 20 or 30 feet away from my tent and just put my pack in the tent. This way if someone starts messing with the “honeypot” I have enough to get some awareness and do the right thing.
tl;dr: potential serial murderers passed me by.
Image source: BillBrasky_
#85
I work in a middle eastern grocery store in one of the reddest states. When my son was an infant I would take him with me to work most days. We get a lot of soldiers that have spent time overseas looking for some of the good food they had there. One day this soldier comes in and he’s just nice as can be. Then he sees my son and he starts talking to him in a cutesie baby voice saying how cute he is. Then out of no where, and in the same cutesie voice, he says to my son “oh you’re so cute! I just wanna gouge your little eyes out”. It caught me way off guard. I just laughed nervously and picked my son up and walked in the back.
Image source: Wildxflower
#86
When I was 17, my friend and I were walking down the street near my house at about 1:00 am. We lived in dense neighborhood dominated by three decker houses. We came around a corner to see this huge bull sized man on his knees, over a woman. He was furiously smashing her head into the concrete sidewalk. When I say this guy was bull sized, I mean he was not fat. His muscles had muscles and they were bulging. He reminded me of the Hulk. Only, he was not green. He was red. Red as if he was in heatstroke. We screamed at him right away.
He looked up, and I will never forget that face. There was snot pouring out of his nose. Long strands of it hung all the way down to the woman’s head. His eyes were bright white, crazed, wide, and far too circular. His face expressed a murderous fury I have never seen before, and hope I never see again.
He lifted the woman’s head by her hair, and with a loud “crack” spiked it into the cement like a football, and screamed “you want some of this huh!” I had not seen my friend pick up the rock he had, but he threw at the guys snarling face. He hit him right in the nose. It was a big a*s rock, but it did not even phase the guy.
They guy lunged at my friend, who took of running. They guy took off chasing my friend. I knew there was no way a guy that size would be able to catch up to my buddy who was a track and field athlete. I ran to the woman.
Her hair was completely matted, and Dark red blood was gushing from a huge deep gash across her forehead. I could not believe she was not unconscious. I tried to tell her I was here to help and she became combative. She started punching me screaming to leave her man alone. I was afraid that her screaming would bring that monster back to us.
With that thought I said “f**k this” to myself and I grabbed her wrists and dragged her to the nearest door and started pounding on it. This time it was me screaming “open the f**k up!” I was scared shitles that this guy would be back before I got to someplace safe.
Two men opened the door and pretty much freaked out when they saw that I was restraining a small woman covered in blood. I think they were about to take me out, but I screamed “call the police! Call an ambulance!” I told them that we needed to get in before he comes back. I told them “He WILL come back!”
We quickly dragged the woman into the hallway, shut, and locked the door. One of the guys called the police and they showed up in what seemed like seconds. An ambulance arrived soon after.
My buddy, seeing the lights of the squad cars, returned to the scene. He out ran the guy, and got to a store and had the clerk call the police. So I guess they were already on the way before we made the call.
The police had allot of questions of course. We had no idea who the guy was. We never saw him or the woman before. In the end the police gave us a card and said that if we see this guy again, call 911 right away. Like I would even hesitate.
The next day, the events of the night before were in the paper. I read the article sitting on my porch. It said that the woman was in critical condition. It mentioned my name as well as my buddy. It also said that the man was yet to be identified, and was yet to be apprehended. Here is the part that really messed with my head. The place where this happened was one block away from my porch. I looked up and could see the spot where he was smashing her head. I remember thinking “That f****r is still out there!” and looking down at the paper “he knows my name.”
Two weeks later I turned 18, and I was on a plane to boot camp. This guy scared me THAT much.
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#87
Several years ago I had to spend the night in a psych ward. I couldn’t sleep because of this woman that was banging her head against the wall while screaming.
Image source: anon
#88
My older brother and I were playing in a cemetery in a small Texas town. The cemetery sat next to some railroad tracks which led into the black section of town (for those not in-the-know, tons of small southern towns are still de facto segregated). It’s a huge cemetery and there was no one around. Then we heard little POPs. POP. POP. POP. And pieces of the headstones began flying off around us. We looked toward the railroad tracks and there was an old black man shooting at us with a rifle.
Image source: anon
#89
I’m a DJ in a local bar, met many many weird and wonderful people in my time, but one stands out in particular. Her name is Alice, and she lives in her own wonderland 24/7. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she’s harmless, she’s always happy and dances like she’s auditioning for a new workout DVD but she’s the kind of person you don’t wanna make eye contact with.
Creepiest moment with Alice had to be the one night i was working, had the headphones on, doing what i do and was aware of someone standing to the right of me, not dancing. Instantly got the feeling that you get when you know someone is staring at you, you just have to look back. So i did.
What i saw was Alice, staring right at me with the strangest “smile” on her face. I say smile but it wasn’t a nice look. Teeth and gums in full view with a crazy look in the eyes.
“W*F” was my initial reaction. Stuck the headphones on again and continued what i was doing, and Alice continued what she was doing too.
After a good couple minutes, i removed the headphones and asked “Anything in particular i can help you with? You want a request played or something?”
Her reply will stay with me for the rest of my life
“No, I’m good! Just showing you my teeth”.
Image source: Wildebeast1
#90
Jimmy. A butcher I used to work with. Greek, lived in South Africa for 20 years. K****d 5 guys on various occasions who tried to rob his butchery there. Showed me a scar from one of the fights defending his store. Top bloke…really scary.
Image source: _Konttrol_
#91
A male child who put another younger child in a headlock with intent to injury, maim, or k**l. Had to use my full adult strength to pull apart.
The child was in elementary school. When asked why? They answered just having fun.
Child had shark eyes. He was not there.
Image source: Grouchy_Bar_492
#92
A guy I used to know. I grew up on a rough estate. Violence, d***s, all that stuff. The local pub had a reputation for being a rough house and there were some dangerous guys that frequented it. Guys who had done violence, and were quick to do so.
The guy I knew, I had never heard raise his voice, or make threats. He was unnaturally quiet and incredibly distant. And he had the darkest, blackest eyes. When I chatted with him, he was polite and respectful but there was never a moment when it didn’t feel like I was being watched by something ice cold and without remorse.
Occasionally he would come into the pub, and even if it was a packed Saturday night, the atmosphere would change. The other tried and tested lunatics would see him and lower their volume.
I’ve lived a bit and I’ve met all sorts. But I’ve never met someone who made me want to be extra polite and careful more than he did.
Chilling.
Image source: anon
#93
An outlaw biker. I didn’t know why he was
In my shared apartment. He was mean. Something to do with weed. 30 minutes later he had a .45 against my forehead. We were getting robbed. He held us a gunpoint and called his biker buddies. They stripped the apartment clean. The brand new Kenwood Stereo, the Sony TV, even the silverware. …everything not bolted to the floor. I was 18.
E: I quit being around druggies and d***s ever since. .
Image source: TwinFrogs
#94
My babysitter growing up was married to a man (Mike) who was a housing development builder in town. He had a pretty good reputation for his quality work and quick turnaround, but as a child, I always felt like there was some off about him. Like, whatever he was hiding was just below the surface, and it really had a grip on him. He was never outwardly mean or aggressive, just a little strange.
He ended up suddenly dying from a heart attack, and it caught everyone by surprise, including his wife and kids. Shortly after he passed, his wife received some paperwork from an attorney she had never heard of who worked for Mike. Come to find out, he had brutally m******d his parents when he was an adolescent, and instead of going to jail, he was sent to a hospital until he turned 18. Since he had stayed in the community, he was permitted to change his name and resume a “normal” life.
He never told anyone about what he’d done. Not his wife, his kids, or a single soul except for that lawyer who managed his estate and business investments.
Image source: HannahSolo23
#95
When I worked as an ER nurse I clearly remember this 8yr old kid who came in for holding a streak knife to his little brothers throat. We couldn’t get him to settle, super violent. No one WANTED to put him in restraints so we tried leaving him alone in the emptied out room to cool down, he waited for a momentary break in with security guard at the door not looking and escaped running through the whole department. They couldn’t grab him or tackle him in a public space like the waiting room and hand to wait till he got down a back hallway. Four adult guards to carry him back and put him in four point restraints. He was calm, but refused to stop and just relax, behave. Just looked at you with cold dead eyes and pulled at all his restraints without stopping. I’ve never seen evil eyes in a kid like that. Made my blood run cold.
Mom came in, sweet as could be. Said she is basically nonstop in touch with CPS and police, but was at the end of her rope, the 8yr old boy couldn’t be kept safely at home with the younger brother. Locks on every door and fridge, all the cupboards locked, everything even remotely sharp was hidden. Family was living in their own prison.
Kid was too young for juvenile hall/detention center, and too young for mental health sociopath diagnosis and permanent MH ward placement, and too violent for a group home. It was an awful predicament for the family.
Police privately told me they fully expected the kid was a sociopath, and was gonna be arrested as soon as he hit whatever the eligible age was. It was just a waiting game. Mom and family hoping everyone made it through to that point.
I’ve never had a patient, let alone a kid, give me chills right up my spine like that kid did. I’m sure torturing animals was next up on his to do list.
Image source: UndecidedTace
#96
My neighbor when I was a kid. Jack. Not a big guy, not scary looking at all, really a sweet man. But as I learned from my father who was a great pal of his – Jack was a master marine Sargent who was on Guadalcanal for the full first 6 months (see: The Pacific. That was Jacks division). He was also in on the Saipan and countless other Marshal islands invasions.
He took me fishing once when I was 12 and wanted to make sure I didn’t get my ideas about wars from John Wayne fake movies and told me the real s**t. e. g. Sleeping with a knife and a .45 in hand because the Japanese raided every night and finding your rifle in the dark took too long. Especially when it was pouring rain. Of knowing a bonzai charge was coming because you could smell the opium they were smoking for courage come drifting over the rise. Or what it felt like to k**l a man by bashing him with a helmet. It worked. Scared the BeJesus out of me. I knew jack my whole life and he was my godfather. Nicest sweetest man ever but woe to anyone who f****d with jack.
Image source: watadoo
#97
I had guard duty at the Navy base in Orlando in 1983 during Christmas break. The guy I was guarding, who was awaiting trial, had knocked out a fellow student at Naval nuclear power school, then stole his car. When they caught him, he was three states away. He had blue tinted glasses and talked about the injustice of the world and how he was going to crown himself King.
Image source: mellotron42
#98
So many people talking about psychopaths / dead eyes… got me thinking, what happens when two dead eyed psychopaths come across each other. .
Image source: LittleAgoo
#99
I’ve only ever met one person that scared me, which is extremely weird given….things.
I was up waiting for my usual med appointment at the mebtal health office, there was a guy walking around the lobby in full hiking gear and a walking stick, (was shorts weather outside, but dude was dress like he was ready to walk through a national park), which still, not really that odd to see something like that there, and yes he was just babbling non stop about i cant really remember to the front desk, who just entertained it.
Anyway a guy and his kid (adult) comes in, and the kid had recently been arrested, and was talking about how they told him the meeting at the sheriff’s office was optional, and he didn’t think he had to go, while his dad was telling him he did in fact need to go to it. (Yes they say that, when my husband got arrested he had the same attitude. They sent him a letter basically saying “be at the next one or we will come get you”, so no, it’s not actually optional). Anyway hiking dude over hears this, decides for whatever reason he needed to be involved and shouts across the room to the guy’s dad something about “well he has a right to refuse to go to the sheriff’s office if he doesn’t want to”. But the next part, after he wasn’t actually answered, was he when he started talking about how “its okay, I know I’m the only real person on earth, all of you are just in my imagination”. I kinda hid in my shoulders hoping my psychiatrist would come get me for my appointment soon.
Image source: RoseWould
#100
My father. He never physically harmed my brother or me, but the threat was always there. Our house was never quiet because he was always verbally abusing someone. I later learned that Mom got much, much worse. Also, my father was an admitted pedophile. He got caught in a sting once, but he never served prison time.
Based on one incident, dishonorable mention goes to my brother. When he was 11 or 12, shortly after our parents had separated, he went into a rage and absolutely trashed our apartment. He also shoved our mom hard enough against a wall to put a dent in it. She wasn’t badly hurt, but the entire incident scared the c**p out of 15 y.o. me. I refused to be alone with him for at least a couple years after that.
Image source: taniamorse85
#101
Once did one of those corporate mock jury panels. The little scientist analytics guy came out half way through to shoot the breeze and holy hell. I never understood what people meant by having a magnetic personality until them. We were clamoring over this dude. It was completely involuntary. He asked me a question and it was an out of body experience watching myself act like a golden retriever. I was so freaked out that I avoided him like the plague the rest of the panel. Nice dude. Seemed chill but he could have started a cult with a snap of his fingers. Absolutely terrifying.
Image source: Bridge-etti
#102
I got arrested for public intoxication in the mid/late 90’s and was put in a normal cell because the drunk tank was full. About ten minutes later, I was woken up and hastily moved to an adjoining cell. I visited with the guy in the first cell I was in for the few hours. When I was bailed out, I bumped knuckles with Gary, guy in other cell, and left.
I later found out he was Gary Kleypas, and he was being held on 1st degree m****r and dismemberment of a body of a college student.
I also found out that later in the day, after I left, he beat the next guy who was put in his cell nearly to death.
Image source: TheJonnieP
#103
Did an internship at a jail, met a dude awaiting trial on a triple homicide, guy just had that vibe around him that just made you feel uncomfortable. Just being in his presence you could feel the air change around you and everyone in that room felt and respected it.
Image source: throughthequad
#104
I was at a bar and this guy walks in and immediately it felt like I was on alert. My spine turned to ice when I saw his eyes look at me, they were almost sunken into his face, as if he was peeking our from behind a portrait. He moved like a cat stalking prey.
Over time he made his way over to me and made polite conversation, but his words felt disjointed, almost like he was translating them before speaking them. There was nothing aggressive or insulting about anything he was doing. In fact, he was quite polite. but everything about this guy was setting off every nerve I had. He was even smiling through most of it, but it felt as if his lips were stapled back.
Image source: Cyanora
#105
So I went to a bachelor party for a friend and we had a s******r there, the girl came and everything went smoothly. She came with her security/pimp who was this real big black guy with this bad air around him. He was silent, and stared at everyone and just overall very creepy.I asked if he wanted a drink or something to eat since he was there anyway and he just stared at me without saying anything.
I found out a little more than a year later that this guy was k*****g hookers and leaving them in abandoned houses. This was in Gary, so there’s a TON of abandoned houses.
Image source: NoExample9918
#106
A former client. Not big enough to be truly scary but some day….
He did enough damage as it was. Beat two staff literally half to death. Broke another one’s nose for asking him to not pull their hair. So many concussions. Thousands of dollars in damages to both company property and staff’s: televisions, windows, doors, gaming systems, windshields, glasses, phones, teeth, bones… Literally every escalation every single day ended up being an attempted m****r. We could, on a good day, expect 2-4 or them per shift. Sometimes lasting hours.
They got mad at us if we called the police to help us. They didn’t want him to “look bad” in the community. We weren’t officially forbidden from personally pressing charges but it was not encouraged. Everyone did everything to make sure he never faced any consequences. For the two staff he pulverized, he had to draw a picture to say he was sorry (he was almost 14). He finished the picture, looked the staff with him in the eye and said, “I’m not sorry. I’m glad I did it. I wish I’d hurt them worse. I wish I’d k****d them.”
It was my job to work with him. When he wasn’t in a rage, he had his decent moments. In one calm conversation, we were playing Legos or something, I asked him if he’d like to talk about some ways to avoid hurting people when he gets angry.
The kid looks me dead in the eye and said, “no. I don’t want to stop hurting people. I like hurting people.”
I asked him why.
He shrugged, “I just like it. It’s fun.” I believed him.
Image source: Jermicdub
#107
Pissed off Dwayne Johnson, let me explain
A few years ago I was part of a charity event with Power of pain (a family friend who I call my aunt, Barby, owns the charity for neuropathyand other immune disordes) and funny enough we some how got Dwayne Johnson as a guest (we had contacted him but didn’t expect him to actually come), he was a f*****g great guy honestly best f*****g dude in the world, any way after the event alot of us went to a Dennys down the road to celebrate, not expecting him to be there though he was invited, he shows up like 20 minutes after we all get there and he’s having a blast hanging out eating Pancakes but unbeknownst to the rest of us there was a domestic dispute across the Dennys, a couple who seemed like they were about to break up but more like the guy was just an a*****e a*s hole screaming at his girlfriend the whole time and her just in tears, Dwayne catches wind stands up puts on his ‘rock’ persona and has a f*****g screaming match with this guy and he is just receding further and further into his shell and eventually he just f*****g leaves, Dwayne pays her bill helps her stop crying and walked her out to her car, he then came back in with a smile and continued having a good night and finished his Pancakes, he’s a beautiful kind hearted man but if you p**s him off he will make you s**t yourself, remember they call him ‘the rock’ for a reason best night of my life
And moral of the story be nice to people because if your not you may find yourself in a situation you just can’t win.
Image source: Ok_Experience_6877
#108
My uncle was in prison with Kip Kinkle, a teenage boy who m******d his parents, went to school and shot it up, k*****g a couple kids and wounding a couple dozen others. It was one of the High Schools in my Home town. I was only about 7 years old at the time, but I remember it vividly. Our school and every other school in town went into a lockdown for a number of hours.
Anyway my uncle was in a gang, he’s been shot a couple times, God only knows what else. Years later as an adult, I asked my uncle what it’s like to meet Kip Kinkle; and he said “naw he ain’t no killer, I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was just a scared little punk” That comment admittedly made my skin crawl a little.
Yep, my uncle is the scariest person I’ve ever met.
Image source: Extreme_Today_984
#109
There was this hyper violent, super effeminate kid named Renault that I went to high school with. He had Goldust vibes, but like a more aggressive, more extroverted version. The rumor was he beat the s**t out of a group of kids with a baseball bat just for talking s**t to one of his friends. People vouched for the story, too. That kid scared the s**t out of me.
Image source: Global_Adagio_25
#110
My grandpa’s 2nd wife Angie. She was a hateful woman. I don’t believe in people being 100% anything but she was pure evil. Had a collection of porcelain dolls in a corner of their house when I was very young and she would always try to talk to me *through* them. One time I touched a Pillsbury dough boy figure on her shelf and she swatted my hand with a metal ruler. Eventually she pretty much overdosed my grandpa on morphine and he died. She was in her 70s when I was a young kid, I’m 30 now. I heard from my aunt that she’s still alive somewhere near where she lived with my grandpa (which makes me believe she is some kind of h*g witch) and that she’s committed insurance fraud like, a lot.
Image source: LepreConArtist
#111
I moved furniture when I was younger, and one time I moved a PPCLI Airborne guy. He was nice enough, but also, something about him was really unsettling. I used to hang with a pretty bad crowd, and some of them had done some bad things, but nobody I had ever been around made me as unsettled as this guy did. I can’t really explain it.. he just had like this aura of predation, I guess. It felt like he was looking at you as if you were an insect. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Image source: VanEagles17
#112
I once fired a guy and a few months later he bombed a church.
Image source: Haunting_Parfait
#113
When I ran with a gang there were a few scary dudes, but one more than the rest, tall dude with long hair, didn’t speak much, one point we were all chilling on a balcony, another dude got a big mouth and said something to him can’t remember what, without hesitating this guy stood up, slid a knife into this other dudes leg and chucked him off the balcony and just sat down with a beer and smoke like nothing happened, dude didn’t fall to far but had quite a few broken bones, this was only one of the things this guy did, but this was the most memorable as this was the day I met him.
Image source: anon
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