18 Hilarious And Creepy Stories That Only Insomniacs And Night Owls Will Understand

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via Flickr – Stu

1. Mystery Juice

I was laying on my couch watching tv and glanced up and noticed a glass of orange juice sitting on a table across the room. I thought, “hmm, that’s weird, I don’t remember pouring a glass of juice”. Then “wait, I don’t even have juice. Someone is in my house and they bought a glass of juice with them!”

Then I realized it was an unlit yellow candle.

2. Sounds Reasonable

Last night I wouldn’t let my cat in my room because I was afraid that there was a huge pool of blood soaked into the carpet and I thought the way my cat was scratching at the door sounded like a demon and therefore, my cat was demonically possessed.

Both of these were random conclusions that I drew with complete certainty and seemed reasonable even after 2 more hours of not sleeping.

3. The Screech

[It was] one of those awesome spring/summer nights, I couldn’t sleep and had the windows open. I was sitting in the living room by one of the windows just enjoying the breeze and decide that it’s an absolutely lovely night, the moon is full, and I’m going to go out in the way back of my yard to my sitting spot to soak in and enjoy the evening if I’m not going to be sleeping. I took my phone with me for the flashlight.

So I’m sitting out there, listening to the breeze, night bugs and quietly burbling creek when I hear this chilling screamy screech that just sends a massive shot of adrenaline through me. I fumble my phone out and direct the flashlight in the direction of the woods. I pan it around and there is a set of eyes reflecting back at me. Thoroughly freaked out, I run back in the house.

Now I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere in the woods my whole life and I have never heard anything like that in my life. After that incident, I’d hear it from time to time in the middle of the night when we had the windows open. I dub it the soul stealer. I have no clue what this thing could be.

Fast forward to last summer. My husband and I go to his grandparents lake house. We were sitting on the deep screened in porch right as the sun was going down and we see a few deer come right up to the porch almost, a mom and two babies. We are being super quiet so we don’t scare them but something scares them anyway. Mama throws up her tail and lets loose with…you guessed it…that unholy screech. In all my rural life I’d never heard a deer noise. I didn’t even think they made noise.

4. Petting The Cat

After a few days of zero sleep.

I saw my cat sitting on top of my dresser at about 4 in the morning. I couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t move, so I went up to her and petted her for a solid minute until my cat walked into my room.

I had been petting my folded clothes.

5. Voices And Shadows

I hadn’t slept for 2 and a half days, was finishing up one of my shifts at work and I started hearing voices and seeing things. It was beyond terrifying. Nothing like hallucinations of pictures eyes moving, seeing shadow figures stalking you while saying “he’s to tired to pay attention” and “we should take his soul now.” Ahhh the good old days.

6. Someone In The House

When my uncle was a boy, he was having trouble sleeping because it was really hot one night. He walked out of his room and into the living room. It was at this point he noticed the front door was open. Then he saw the shadow of a hand move across the wall, over the couch, clearly attached to someone lying on the couch. So my uncle shouted “There’s someone in the house!”

My grandfather leaped up from the couch and said “Where?!” Turns out it had been too hot in my grandparents’ room as well, so he had gone to lie on the couch, and opened the door to try getting some air to circulate.

7. The Visitor

I was the overnight DJ at an oldies station for a number of years. Just me, shelves full of records, and the glow of the control board. One night while I’m running down the weather, I hear a huge cracking noise in our front room. A drunk guy with a steel worker’s frame had smashed down our door and was hunting for a light switch.

“Can I… Um, excuse me… Do you need…” I stammered.

“Yeah! You! I wanna hear the Beatles!” he yelled/slurred as he found the switch. The light took the otherworldliness out of the situation, but it also brought his size into focus. He easily could knock me out in one swing, and he was mad enough to do it.

As calmly as I could make my voice: “Sergeant Pepper, or the White Album?”

“Revolver.”

He left during Eleanor Rigby, but I played both sides all the way through. That’s my creepiest moment. Sitting alone at three in the morning with all the lights on, listening to Good Day Sunshine, and staring at the door with its broken lock.

8. Even Your Clothes Will Turn On You

After a few nights [of being awake] the clothes on the dresser, coats hanging, etc begin to resemble demons, monsters, or psycho killers – to the point where they move and changes expression to unnerving smiles with wild staring eyes.

9. Demon Goat

I have hallucinations aside from my insomnia, one frequent one that’s followed me is the demon goat god. Scary as fuck, lurks in that almost pitch black spot of the room where no light seems to go. I know he’s not real but fuck if he doesn’t freak me out.

No matter what way I shift in bed, the light seems to just disappear in that area until I get too scared and turn on a light.

10. Creeping Yourself Out

Was lying there, in the night, and I thought I saw something move beside me. This had my heart racing for a few seconds and I decided that I’d listen to some music. The first song I put on had a voice saying ‘you saw me’ very lowly in the background toward the end. I had never noticed this in the song before because I had just gotten a really good pair of headphones that could pick up on it. I was actually genuinely afraid to listen to the song again the next day in case I couldn’t hear the ‘you saw me’ bit.

11. Frozen With Fear

A guy hopped over the wall in my back garden, walked straight up to my window, and stared at me for like a minute. It was obvious that he was extremely drunk. Creepiest part is that I was writing on my laptop and saw him from the corner of my eye, but I was way too freaked out to leave the room. Felt like an eternity before he wandered off.

12. People Wander Neighborhoods At Night

About a week ago, around 3 in the morning, I wandered into my kitchen.

I walk up to my sink that has a window above it. I glance up and look into my backyard and see a guy standing there, about 15 yards away. He looked to be a mid 30’s, semi balding white guy with a bright orange jacket. I mini-freaked the fuck out and slowly backed away from the window.

Luckily I left the light off, as my kitchen is fairly small and it was bright enough from the street lights outside and could maneuver around just fine, so he didn’t see me. I watched him for a good 10 minutes, my heart ready to pound out of my chest. It’s hard to describe, but he had this sort of 1,000 mile stare why’ll looking at the ground a few feet in front of him. It was really fucking weird.

Finally he started to pace back and forth, and after about 10 seconds he left and walked down my street out of site. I haven’t seen him since, but I make sure to lock all the doors and keep my pistol grip shotgun loaded near my bed.

I wouldn’t be so freaked out if it were just me in the house, but my twin sister lives with me and takes the bus to work everyday. We work different schedules, and she is home by herself more often than not.

Oddly enough, I came home from work last night around 8 during a snow storm. I park in the back (driveway loops around my house into the back) and just as I’m getting out of my car I notice foot prints leading from the street and onto my deck, and back to the street again. About an inch of snow had formed into the prints, so whoever it was had been there about an hour before I got home.

13. Gavin

One night I couldn’t sleep due to a bad reaction to prescribed pain medication. I sat up for most of the night and then at 5am there were multiple knocks at doors in our apartment complex, like someone was just going down them all. They get to my apartment and like an idiot I go downstairs to answer the door and am confronted by a dude called Gavin who seems to be sketching out and/or paranoid and looking for his friend who lives in one of the other apartments. He is super agitated and looking for his friend because he believes his friend is “harbouring” (his word) his girlfriend who has just broken up with him and moved out. He gives me all this information in short, yelled sentences and seems pissed off with me but finally leaves after about 20 minutes of me being like “dude I don’t know your girlfriend, she’s not here, it’s 5am”.

14. So Tired That The Cat Talked

I was working on a paper for college, and it was very late at night or very early in the morning. I stood there thinking for a minute, and my cat stood there staring and purring at me. Then, my cat said, “You should really go to sleep.” It turned and looked at her, my heart racing. She was just purring. I said, “Yes, kitty, I’ll go to sleep.”

15. Lullaby Music

One time over break I was staying at my mom’s house. It was about 3 in the morning and I was just laying in the guest bed in the dark. All of a sudden, I hear a few seconds of music, like children’s lullaby music. I had not left my bed for a few hours, and no one else was in the room. Needless to say, no sleep was had that night.

The next day I found out my mom had put some of my childhood toys in the closet, one of which plays music when wound up. The toys must have readjusted slightly during the night. I was just happy to find out I wasn’t imagining things.

16. Being Followed

There was a span of time about 8 years ago where I just didn’t sleep at all. I reached my breaking point when I hadn’t slept at all for over three days and started hallucinating. I clearly remember walking from my house to the center of town (about two miles away) in the middle of the night during winter. There’s a small park downtown with loads of bushes surrounding it and thought the best course of action would be to sit in those bushes and hide from two guys who had been following me for a few blocks. So I sat in the bushes and stared at these two guys who were standing at the edge of the park and were pointing at me and whispering to each other.

I finally had enough of that, got up and started running the few blocks to a pedestrian tunnel that goes underneath a rail yard (the fastest route back to my place) with these two guys running after me. When I got to the tunnel I saw two people blocking the other side, freaked out and turned around where I saw the two guys who had been following me blocking my way. I clearly recall thinking I was about to be raped and killed and made a delusional and manic call to a friend who happened to be a couple blocks away from the tunnel. He picked me up and was totally bewildered because he didn’t see anyone else in the area.

That was probably the closest I’ve ever come to going mad due to sleep deprivation and still remember the entire ordeal as if it happened last week. It’s strange because logically I know I was hallucinating, but it felt so horribly real.

17. Hyperventilating

“A little context, my backyard is accessible from the front by a rather large stretch of rocks on one side, and a rather large fence that would be noisy to climb with rocks as well. These aren’t rocks you can step on quietly. Now one night at 2am I decide to take a piss, while going about my business I heard someone hyperventilating RIGHT outside my window, like they would have to be in the room for it to be any closer. I didn’t hear any footsteps on the rocks or anything. I looked out my glass sliding door and NO ONE was there. No footsteps, no clanging on the fence or anything. I never figured out what caused the noise.”

18. Evil Mirrors

Hallucinated crazy shit with mirrors. Winking at myself, going on hour long speeches and jumping around the room but all this are reflections. One horrible night +3rd) I had my reflection step forward to me out of the mirror and fall into ground as if it were a long cliff. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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