66 Creepy Stories That Will Ruin Your Day

I read these at night and I could not go back to sleep. I heard creaks and shuffling in my room — I’m not sure if it was my imagination. I ended up playing Red Dead Redemption all night long. Please, excuse me Mister Marston. Found on r/AskReddit.

1. blue_tidal

About five years ago I lived downtown in a major city in the US. I’ve always been a night person, so I would often find myself bored after my roommate, who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep. To pass the time, I used to go for long walks and spend the time thinking.

I spent four years like that, walking alone at night, and never once had a reason to feel afraid. I always used to joke with my roommate that even the drug dealers in the city were polite. But all of that changed in just a few minutes of one evening.

It was a Wednesday, somewhere between one and two in the morning, and I was walking near a police patrolled park quite a ways from my apartment. It was a quiet night, even for a week night, with very little traffic and almost no one on foot. The park, as it was most nights, was completely empty.

I turned down a short side street in order to loop back to my apartment when I first noticed him. At the far end of the street, on my side, was the silhouette of a man, dancing. It was a strange dance, similar to a waltz, but he finished each “box” with an odd forward stride. I guess you could say he was dance-walking, headed straight for me.

Deciding he was probably drunk, I stepped as close as I could to the road to give him the majority of the sidewalk to pass me by. The closer he got, the more I realized how gracefully he was moving. He was very tall and lanky, and wearing an old suit. He danced closer still, until I could make out his face. His eyes were open wide and wild, head tilted back slightly, looking off at the sky. His mouth was formed in a painfully wide cartoon of a smile. Between the eyes and the smile, I decided to cross the street before he danced any closer.

I took my eyes off of him to cross the empty street. As I reached the other side, I glanced back… and then stopped dead in my tracks. He had stopped dancing and was standing with one foot in the street, perfectly parallel to me. He was facing me but still looking skyward. Smile still wide on his lips.

?I was completely and utterly unnerved by this. I started walking again, but kept my eyes on the man. He didn’t move.

Once I had put about half a block between us, I turned away from him for a moment to watch the sidewalk in front of me. The street and sidewalk ahead of me were completely empty. Still unnerved, I looked back to where he had been standing to find him gone. For the briefest of moments I felt relieved, until I noticed him. He had crossed the street, and was now slightly crouched down. I couldn’t tell for sure due to the distance and the shadows, but I was certain he was facing me. I had looked away from him for no more than 10 seconds, so it was clear that he had moved fast.

I was so shocked that I stood there for some time, staring at him. And then he started moving toward me again. He took giant, exaggerated tip toed steps, as if he were a cartoon character sneaking up on someone. Except he was moving very, very quickly.

I’d like to say at this point I ran away or pulled out my pepper spray or my cellphone or anything at all, but I didn’t. I just stood there, completely frozen as the smiling man crept toward me.
And then he stopped again, about a car length away from me. Still smiling his smile, still looking to the sky.

When I finally found my voice, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. What I meant to ask was, “What the fuck do you want?!” in an angry, commanding tone. What came out was a whimper, “What the fuu…?”
Regardless of whether or not humans can smell fear, they can certainly hear it. I heard it in my own voice, and that only made me more afraid. But he didn’t react to it at all. He just stood there, smiling.

And then, after what felt like forever, he turned around, very slowly, and started dance-walking away. Just like that. Not wanting to turn my back to him again, I just watched him go, until he was far enough away to almost be out of sight. And then I realized something. He wasn’t moving away anymore, nor was he dancing. I watched in horror as the distant shape of him grew larger and larger. He was coming back my way. And this time he was running.

I ran too.

I ran until I was off of the side road and back onto a better lit road with sparse traffic. Looking behind me then, he was nowhere to be found. The rest of the way home, I kept glancing over my shoulder, always expecting to see his stupid smile, but he was never there.

I lived in that city for six months after that night, and I never went out for another walk. There was something about his face that always haunted me. He didn’t look drunk, he didn’t look high. He looked completely and utterly insane. And that’s a very, very scary thing to see.

2. captainklaus

I’d been living alone for less than a week. I got some Chinese take-out and was eating in front of the TV. I finished my meal and cracked open the fortune cookie. It read “You will have a visitor tonight, lock your door.” There were no visitors that night, but the memory still haunts me.

3. up_up

I watched in horror as this drunk seeming guy fell (maybe it was on purpose, but I don’t know) onto a commuter rail track just as the train was coming. The sound/sight of him getting run over (crunching, splattering, awful) has stayed with me for life as the scariest, brain scarring thing ever.

4. spectre_alabama

I was on vacation in Ithaca with my boyfriend at the time.

We had literally, I’m talking 10 minutes, just gotten into town and stopped at a suspension bridge near Cornell’s campus. I’m terrified of heights and, so, my boyfriend was coaxing me step by step over the bridge. It was gorgeous and we stopped at the middle to take a picture.

On the side we had come from there was a parking lot with steps leading to the bottom of the gorge but on the far side there were hiking paths with no barrier.

A woman walked past us and offered to take a picture for us. We declined and she smiled and walked quickly to the far side of the bridge where she smoothly jumped off into the gorge. There was not a second of hesitation, it was almost like she expected the path to keep going.

The sound of a person hitting the ground from a jump like that sticks with you.

5. cranklowza

I was about 15 minutes from finishing the night shift at work when there was a massive crash on one of the windows in the office so I get up and go to check it out. Someone has thrown quite a sizable rock through one of the windows on the front of the building. This is made especially weird because I’m working in the industrial district at 11:30 at night with none of the other businesses open. I go back to my desk, put a quick call through to security to let them know and decide to head home. As I’m leaving the building I’m freaking myself out about it more and more and end up running to my car, getting in and taking off. I’m almost home and I’ve started to calm down a bit when I realise that I didn’t unlock my car when I got in. It had been unlocked the whole time. I do a quick check with my hand in the backseat for any possible murderers that might be hanging around there but there’s nothing there.

Fast forward 30 minutes: I’ve called a friend of mine who says he is out drinking so I decide I’m going to join him. I jump on my bicycle and start riding over. I’m doodling along the road on my bike, it’s a nice night and I’m in no big rush, just enjoying the moonlight when I hear someone riding behind me. I straighten up and stick to one side of the road. He passes me really slowly and, when he is right beside me, he shoots me a smile I can describe as purely fucking insane. I kind of flinch and am taken aback as he rides on. That’s when I realise. He is riding my mom’s bike.

Needless to say, I sprint the fuck home. When I get there, sure enough her bike is missing and one of my car’s doors is open. The back left one. I was driving, and had no need to open that door.

6. bydpark

I was standing on my balcony when I saw some drunk guy flash in front of my eyes. I was on the tenth floor and apparently he fell over from the twenty-first floor. The split second he passed by, I got to see his look of fear, shock, disbelief and a whole bunch of other emotions before he fell to the floor in a thud and crack. You could just tell he was dead.

7. illBoopYaHead

After living in my house alone for 8 years, I came to the realization that I had closed a lot more doors than I had opened.

8. Bringerofthenachos

A group of friends was staying at this remote cabin that one of my friend’s cousins owned. There were no roads leading to the cabin, and it was a good 3/4 day hike from where you parked the cars.

I couldn’t go at the same time as everyone else due to work obligations, so I decided to head up the same day but later. It would mean I would have to camp for a night by myself though (the latter part of the trail is too dangerous to be taken at night, especially by someone who doesn’t know it). I didn’t care, I was kind of looking forward to it as I’ve never camped alone before.

So I was in the middle of these woods when the sun went down. I got my camp set up in this small clearing. Probably 40 feet across. Get my camp fire going and pitch my small, one person tent. Do all that camping stuff like cooking hot dogs on a stick over the fire and s’mores. I probably stay up for a good 2 or 3 hours after dark (it was mid-autumn so the days were somewhat short).

The entire time I thought I heard shit moving in the woods on the edge of the clearing. I didn’t think anything of it at first cause the woods are full of animals, but as the night went on I realized that whatever it was was just circling the clearing over and over. Once I started paying attention it made 4 or 5 laps around before I decided to get up and investigate. The noise stopped as soon as I stooped up and I thought I heard some sounded going away through the woods.

I just shrug it off thinking it was some fox that was curious that got scared when I stood up. I decide its time to sleep, douse the fire and climb into my tent. I start to doze off and stay in that half asleep half awake state for a while. I normally hear weird shit when I’m in this state, so I don’t think much of it when I hear a voice.

Something wakes me all the way up though and I realize the voice is real and right outside my tent. Its just above a whisper and I’m not sure if it was another language or if they were just speaking English in such a way that I couldn’t understand.

I lay there for some time, I don’t know how long, listening and waiting for something to happen. There is just enough moonlight to light up the walls of the tent, so I can see when a hand presses into the wall of my tent down near my foot. This freaks me out and I sit up quickly. Who ever was outside of the tent tore ass out of there. Like running full sprint through the woods.

I get out of the tent and shine my flashlight around and see nothing. I was expecting there to be a bloody handprint on the tent, but nope. Didn’t sleep that night, packed up camp at first light that morning and booked it to the cabin.

9. bondmaxbondrock

I was once in a hottub with some friends late at night, and we were all telling some stories. One of the guys told us this one, a story of a girl he knows (not sure if it’s true, but multiple people in the hottub who knew her verified it was true):

So one day, this girl was called over to babysit. She did it a lot for these people, so it was routine for her.

Anyways, she was told to put the kids to bed at 9, and she did. After she put the to bed, she started watching TV and doing homework, waiting for the parents to come home. But then, she started hearing some noises coming out of the basement, like pans falling and stuff. She just ignored it, and thought it was the washing machine or something. Anyways, a little later, she starts hearing the noises again. She decides to call the police, and tell them she was hearing noises coming out of the basement at the house she’s babysitting at.

The lady at the station told her there’s a patroller in her area, and that he’ll be at the house in about 20 minutes. Anyways, in about 5 minutes, she hears a knock on the door. She answers, and it’s a full swat team. She asked, “I thought they were just sending a patroller..” and one of the guys told her, “After you hung up the phone, we heard a second phone on the line hang up.” Ended up there was a man in the basement, listening to the conversation. The lady in the station waited and heard him hang up, then immediately sent the SWAT team to help. They went downstairs and caught him; he was wanted for multiple cases of rape.

10. Invad3r

I saw this little bird walking on the street when suddenly a seagull grabbed it in it’s mouth. Seagull started to smash this helpless bird against the ground few times. After a while it ate the bird and I saw a bump on seagull’s neck like the bird was stuck in it’s throat. Then it flew off.

I was just standing there and said: “What the fuck, seagulls shouldn’t do that.”

Fuck seagulls.

11. bigsol81

I was playing around with a radio once when I was a kid, just slowly spanning through the static trying to find a station. I had found an old television antenna, attached it to the side of our house and ran a wire out my window to it with an alligator clip attached to the radio antenna, allowing me to get a way broader range of signals.

So I’m sitting there, early in the morning (like 2am), slowly sweeping frequencies, and suddenly I get to this station that’s playing this very weird crackling sound. It sounded sort of like cracking knuckles, or maybe Rice Crispies cereal, but with a fixed, rhythmic pattern instead of being random. I sat there listening to it for a second, then it suddenly stopped and this faint voice says “It doesn’t work. We’re already dead. We’re already dead.”

It took a second for the weight of the words to hit me, but when they did I freaked the fuck out and almost threw the radio across the room. I’m pretty sure it was just someone messing around with a radio transmitter, but damn if it didn’t scare the shit out of me at the time.

12. AllTheCheesecake

My dad died of cancer the day I turned 16 after about two weeks in a coma. It was really fast – less than two months between diagnosis and death. He died in the house. (we had a hospice attendant and my mom was very good about seeing to him in those final days).

Anyway, a lot of weird shit happened after he passed, but the one that still freaks me out when I think about it happened about 12 hours before he took to bed for the last time. He was in our living room napping on the couch while my mom was in the kitchen cooking. No one else was home.

Suddenly, he jerked awake and was shouting for my mom in a very loud, agitated voice. Clearly angry with her. “Beverly! Don’t do that! Don’t EVER do that again!”

She ran into the room, alarmed and asked what he was talking about, and he said, “Don’t do that. Don’t walk past me like that in that long, black wig.”

Sometimes I think he saw death.

13. Caboose2701

This was a few years ago on a night scuba dive. There were 8 of us in the group including our dive master and his assistant. We had just finished our dive and were gathered up in a circle ready to ascend and get out of the water when my dive master freezes. He takes his flashlight and pointing it outside our circle of divers he catches something circling us with the beam. Turns out it was a 12 foot long great white shark. At this point half of the group are trying to keep the shark illuminated as it circles us and remarkably everyone stayed calm. The only things going through my mind were iterations of these two thoughts, “don’t look like a yummy delicious fatty seal, and that I hope I taste terrible.” My dive master gets our attention and slowly puts his thumb up and then makes an upward motion. We all begin to ascend and the shark kept with us until we were maybe 10 feet from the surface. Then it turned off into the darkness and was gone. I did not go back into the ocean for about a week after that.

14. rambles_off_topic

The scariest thing happened to me in an old house I used to rent back in 2008. I came home from work one day and heard a bloodcurdling scream come from my crawl space. The entrance to my crawl space was in my coat closet in the foyer. The hatch to get in was still shut, but there was a trail of blood leading up to it, and bloody scratch marks all over it. I knew there was nobody else in the house because my roommate was in Atlanta on a business trip all week. If he had been home, I wouldn’t put it past him to have injured himself dicking around down there. He constantly had to go down there because he would disconnect the speaker wires running from my receiver to the outdoor speakers.

Whenever he pulled the receiver out to plug his laptop in, the wires would yank out of their ports and fall through the hole we drilled in the floor. They didn’t have any slack because the idiot at Home Depot that cut them for me didn’t know what the hell he was doing. I asked him for 100 ft of 8 gauge speaker wire and he started cutting me CAT5 cable. How the fuck do you confuse Ethernet with speaker wire? That was the last straw with Home Depot. They already screwed me twice with that shitty Ryobi brand of tools they carry. I bought a Ryobi leaf blower and weed wacker and neither of them ever started. I think Ryobi is Japan’s way of getting us back for nuking them. Fuck Ryobi and fuck Home Depot.

15. eeJayLiz

My parents bought their first house back in 1972. It was a fixer-upper, but they decided to move in right away and fix things as time/money permitted.

Within a few days of moving in, the new neighbors came over to introduce themselves. They also let my parents know that the previous owners had moved out after a nasty divorce. They had lost their second baby from SIDS, and their relationship went downhill from there.

My parents were horrified, more so because they were newly pregnant and couldn’t imagine going through such a thing.

They eventually pretty much forgot all about it. Life went on. They were in love with their new life and their new house.

In preparation for the baby, they decided to wallpaper the nursery. Now, my Dad told my mom there was no need in wallpapering the inside of the closet, but she insisted. She was kneeling down, scraping off old paint inside of the closet when her eyes fell upon something that made her blood turn to ice.

Written in crayon, at about eye level for a kindergartner, in childish scrawl was: I KILLED THE BABY.

16. designerlogic

Woke up one night around 1am, heard the shower was on… I first thought it was my brother, he works night shifts, so thought he had came home late and was in the shower… It went on for about half an hour until i got up and went to see wtf he was doing… No one was in the shower, my brother wasn’t home yet, i was the only one in the house. Still to this day, i have no idea how it turned on or who did it.. Almost 5 years later i still think about it and shit myself… Even writing this now i feel like turning every light on in the house…ahah whyyy do i do this to myself!!

17. fishfishfish

I housesit for a family friend when she goes out of town. The woman who lives there is really into a bunch of spiritual stuff – new age stuff, reiki, etc. The very first time I was housesitting, I was outside watering the plants. I was the only one there and had closed the door after me. From the driveway where I was watering, I had a completely unobstructed view of the front door, the only door that was unlocked at the time. When I went back inside, there, on the little table next to the front door was a half eaten cookie. The table had been completely clear when I went outside and I hadn’t seen cookies that looked like that anywhere in the house. Nothing too creepy, but very puzzling and unsettling.

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

The next time I was over, I was pooping around 10:30. The house itself is fairly old and creaks from time to time, but nothing too loud or disruptive. While I was pooping, there comes a single loud knock from the other side of the bathroom door. This wasn’t a little creak or pop from the house, it was a loud, determined rap on the door. It was enough to scare my poop back in for the rest of the night.

18. AmberHeartsDisney

One of the scariest things I ever heard was when I worked in retail. My stored used to do layaway and that was where I worked. Right by the layaway counter We had three bathrooms. A Men’s multi stall, a Women’s multi stall and a family bathroom. Well only the family bathroom had a door that locked all the others had the push/pull swing door. I was in the back cleaning up and I thought I hear screaming so I walked out front by the counter. I heard more screaming. I was not sure at first where it was coming from I ran and checked the men’s and women’s bathroom and they were empty and I still heard the crying and screaming. It was coming from the family bathroom. I banged on the door but the yelling, screaming crying kept going on. It sounded like a child and I had no idea what was going on. I called for a manager because I had no way of getting in the door since it was locked. This whole time there is still crying, screaming banging. After several attempts of trying to open the door we called 911. We had no idea what we going on but it didn’t sound good. I think about fifteen minutes at this point, although it felt forever. Then the sound check stopped. No more banging, crying nothing. We banged on the door until the police came.When they finally did they had to kick the door in since we had no key. As we all stood around and looked in all we saw was blood all over the place.

We were not really sure what happened at first but the police told us to back up and that is when they pulled out a lady and a child. A bloody child, maybe 3. We all just stood there in shock. The child was not moving, we thought he was dead because of all the blood. They took the lady away in handcuffs and the child to the hospital.

We all had to give statements. Later my manager told me what happened. She just snapped becayse he wouldn’t stop crying and she just had enough and did whatever she could to make him stop. The child did live. I was sure he was dead but he wasn’t she had just knocked him out from hitting him so hard.

This story is not scary in the ghost sense but for that to happen right behind the door and not know what is going on or be able to help was pretty scary to me.

19. SkippersLost

Well, I’ll never forget this one…

My wife and I used to live in a townhome that backed to some woods. We both took off work one day to get some things done in the yard, cutting the grass, weeding our large flower beds, laying mulch etc.

Our yard wasn’t big; it took about two full grass clipping bags. I would walk a couple of feet into the woods and dump them in a pile.

As I’m walking back to empty the second bag, something in the middle of the woods catches my eye. Something out of place and it’s moving.

I crouched down to get a better look and I just froze. At first, I could make out a pair of shoes just swaying back and forth and then was able to see the legs and body of a teenager. There in the middle of the woods was a teenage boy who had hung himself. Next to the tree, I could see a skateboard leaning up against it.

I yelled for my wife to call the police and started running back to try and save him but he was gone. His body was limp and his head was was just slumped over. His dark scruffy hair was slowly blowing in the breeze.

The cops came and quickly cut him down and they were gone.

As it turns out, he was having problems getting along with his parents and this is what he decided to do.

20. _vargas_

Years ago, I lived in a townhouse above the an old couple that were the landlords. This was in the historic section of Albany, NY near the park. The landlords were in their sixties, maybe early seventies. This place actually had a plaque on the front of it saying it was built in 1880-something and that some rich state senator had lived there. There’s places like this all over the area that had been subdivided and rented out.

I lived there for a year and every now and then, always while I was trying to sleep, I would hear faint, organ music accompanied by some rhythmic banging sounds. I always have slept with a fan to drown out any ambient noise and sleep better. This music was just…floating through my room. No one was above me. Just the old people who went to bed at nine below me. I would get up and try to find the source of the sounds but it just seemed like it was everywhere and nowhere.

Since I never heard any music or anything from any other room, and I never heard that music during the day, I concluded that it was the ghosts of previous occupants that had lived there decades before. This actually affected my decision to live there again when my lease was up. The old couple even offered to knock $50 a month off the rent if I resigned. That would have amounted to nearly a month of total rent over the course of a year. I thanked them, but declined, opting instead to live in a newer place.

Flash forward a couple of years. My friend is having a party. He invites some coworkers that he used to work with at the state. I’m talking to one dude about all the places in Albany I had been in. He’s lived in several, too. After some conversation, we find out that one of his friends used to live in that exact same apartment before me. I’ve never told anyone about the music and banging I would hear there but I just have to ask this guy if his friend ever said anything about the place being haunted. His eyes light up when I ask him.

“You’re not going to believe this!” he says and starts thumbing through the contacts list in his phone. He dials his friend. When the guy answers, he gives him a brief overview of the conversation we had been having then hands me the phone.

“What’s up, man? Yeah, I lived there in 2003. You heard the music, too? That was the landlords having sex below you. I swear to God. I actually asked about them about it the morning after I had heard it for the tenth time. The old man sheepishly explained that he was banging his old lady. He apologized and said they’d keep it down. The funny thing is, it seemed to get louder and louder over the last couple months I lived there. It was almost like they wanted me to hear.”

The mystery was solved. That organ music I had heard was literally organ music that the old people would have sex to. Somehow, that was creepier than it being ghosts.

21. insidethetardis

Growing up I lived in the middle of the woods. No neighbors for about a mile on each side and we own 60 acres of forest then a swamp after that. So basically I lived in the middle of nowhere. One summer when I was about 14 I was out in the middle of the woods playing with my dog (I’m an only child and both of my parents were out of town.) when I kept feeling something hit my elbow. I’d go to throw Max’s ball and the bump would make me throw it almost straight up. Assuming it was just me bumping it on trees or something I ignored it. After the fourth or fifth time of it happening I thought…well this sucks I’ll just go home. Walking back I felt uneasy but I knew I was just freaking myself out because we were alone. About an hour later Max and I are at home on the couch when the garage door opens and he starts barking barking barking, I hop up to go let in my Mom or Dad, even though they were home really early. I peered through the peephole and saw the door was still shut and no one was in the garage. Quieting max down I opened the door slowly and called out for my dad. Nothing… No response at all so I go out to check the door and it’s still locked. Okay… sure. Weird but oh well. Max heard it too so at least I know I’m not crazy.

About 20 minutes later I hear the door open again and this time Max starts growling like crazy. I quiet him down again and just assume its the wind or something making noise even though by this point my heart is racing. I hear footsteps come up the stairs and think “oh jeez, dad really is home this time” and hop up and run to the door, it starts to jiggle so I run faster to let him in. I peep through the hole and even though my hand is loosely around the jiggling handle theres no one on the other side of the door. Terrified I go hide on the couch with all the lights on. Max is still growling.

About an hour after that I start to feel a little better even though im still terrified then I hear the door handle jiggle again. This time it was Max jiggling it, he needed to go outside and the only way outside is through the garage. Fantastic. I literally sprint with him to the kennel and as I’m standing in there I decide to ask this “thing” questions to make myself feel better because I knew it wouldn’t answer me. Thinking about what to ask it my eyes are drawn to the huge heavy oak door on the kennel. It was always open because it was too heavy for me to move easily. I said “Ok ghost! if you’re real you’ll shut this heavy door!” nothing… a minute goes by…nothing. Max is still sniffing around. I turn around to yell at him to hurry up and then from behind me I hear ‘click’. I whipped around and saw the giant door had swung shut and latched. Okay….clearly it was just the wind. It wasn’t really windy but… it was the wind, for sure, had to be. I proceed “Ok ghost that was the wind, if you’re REALLY real you’ll open this massive door back up!” nothing. I relax a bit and then squat down with my head in on my knees reminiscing about how lame I just was being scared when I hear ‘click clack’. The door was now wide open. Max was done so we booked it back into the house locking every door in the house.

For the next 4 hours I would hear the footsteps on the stairs and the door handle jiggling every few minutes, until finally around 11pm my dad walks in and yells at me for wasting electricity.

I never told him or my mom about it until about a 4 months later when my dad came in from hunting after dark. He looked shaken and I asked him what was wrong… He said he aimed at two deer but missed both completely because it felt as if something was hitting his elbow and making him shoot way above the deer. Thats when I told him everything.

22. zernebock614

Living in the Northern part of Mexico, the drug cartels war was very intense in the city where I live a couple of years ago. I was waiting to cross the street when I saw a big truck dumping a plastic bag that happened to contain a fucking dismembered body. The worst part is that nobody did shit. I just waited for the light to change and ran like hell.

23. LumosTheNox

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

One night his dad woke up because he heard Hunter calling him. But he was calling him by his name, not ‘dad’. So he went to his room and he was asleep. He woke him up and said “Hunter, you were calling me. Is everything okay?” And Hunter said, “Dad, when they call you you’re not supposed to answer.” and fell back asleep.

He asked him about it in the morning but he said he didn’t remember saying it.

I get chills when I think about it.

24. ceejiesqueejie

When I was 14 my family and I fell on hard times. We got kicked out of our house and ended up in emergency housing, basically we went to charity who found us a house that we were able to rent for 100 a month, but only for 3 months. That summer, my mom and stepdad separated temporarily, and my three younger siblings would go to my step-dads for a week or so then come back to my mom and me. This house was FUCKING. CREEPY.

It started off with just that feeling, you know? Like, something isn’t quite right, that you might not be the only person in the room. In the day, that’s all it was, the feeling that something was up. Your instincts pricking at you. I tried to ignore it, but as soon as dusk arrived shit would start happening. More than once I could hear this static-filled music playing, but I couldn’t find the source, it just filled the halls. I heard whispering and went to my two sisters room, in the open closet, a pair of eyes looked at me and disappeared. My brother spent one night in the house and didn’t come back. In my room, I could never win. On one wall, a mirror, when I flipped over to face the window, I watched tall shadow figures pace in front of it. In my mothers room, the same shadow figures paced in circles around her room. One night, she and I sat up for two hours in her bed watching these shadows. She was strongly religious and didn’t know what to make of it.

During the time we lived there, there was a lunar eclipse. I had never seen one before and was very excited for it. When I went out to look, every time, this terror took over me and I couldn’t stay outside, I couldn’t explain it. When the moon was fully cloaked, I went outside, looked up, but my head suddenly snapped down and to my left. I could see three tall shadows walking in between the tall pine trees in the yard. Panicked, I ran back inside and into my room, flinging myself under the covers with my eyes shut tightly, but listened to the pacing outside my bedroom window.

Three months of this. We moved out at the end of summer into a new house, my mom and stepdad got back together and I was with my younger siblings again. We all agreed the house on Acorn street was fucked up, and still get chills when we drive by it, just to see.

25. AndThenSex

Up until I was about 8 or so, I lived in a REALLY old house that, since the beginning of time, had been bounced around from relative to relative until eventually my mother had been handed over the keys. It was basically a shit heap. Two stories, a collapsed balcony on the second level, mould and mildew all over most of the ceilings, one tiny bathroom and the toilet was outside, over-run was frogs and spiders and whatever other kind of hell-spawn the Australian outback would throw at us.

I was terrified as a child – scared of basically everything. I’m much better now, and have much bigger balls than most of my friends (if I do say so myself). Nonetheless, I would probably have to put the blame on this old house of mine.

I remember as a child that I would always have the same dream.

I’d start in the kitchen, no idea how I got there of course. It was during the day, probably later in the afternoon. Nobody was around, so naturally I’d go looking for my mother and father. I’d go to all the normal places – mum wasn’t in the laundry shed or the lounge room, dad wasn’t on the patio outside or up the back at the chicken coop, and my sister wasn’t around either.

I was starting to get worried, thinking that everyone was gone and they’d left me alone. Until I heard a noise above me coming from the second floor, where the bedrooms are. Relieved, I darted towards the stairs and jumped on the first step.

Then I felt it. There was something in the back of my head, making me stop, leg still raised up as I prepared to move onto the second step. Something telling me that I shouldn’t go up there. Of course this thought was running rampant in my mind “Don’t go up there, don’t go up there, stay down here, don’t go up there, there’s something up there”.

Finally my leg dropped before I could reconsider. I pushed myself up those stairs, and even though I didn’t want to anymore, I couldn’t stop myself, only slow down. Each step up was taken at a agonizingly slow pace, and I wanted so bad just to go back down stairs and find someone – run to my grandparents house and stay with them until my mum was home.

But eventually, I rounded the corner, leaving only the last few steps leading up to the floor ahead of me. There was nothing there – I couldn’t see anything in the stairwell. I started getting hopeful at this point – maybe it’s ok. Nobody’s here. I was just imagining things and it’s going to be fine.

I’m still taking the slow steps up when it appears.

Something’s there.

I can’t actually remember what it was, and I never could after I woke up. But it was horrifying beyond belief, and I would always try to close my eyes, because that was my thing as a child – if you can’t see it, then it can’t see you. But I could still see it. I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t shut my eyes – it was like my eyelids weren’t working. I would even try holding my hands in front of my face, but still I couldn’t block it out – I could see through my hands. And I couldn’t do anything I was frozen, unable to do anything except STARE at this thing all but a meter away from me.

Whatever I saw, whatever I did, for those 8 years I was at that house, I had to force myself up the stairs. Day or night, it was horrifying. My mother sighed and tried to reason with me, my father growled at me and called me a coward and my sister just laughed and said I was retarded. But every time I had to go up those stairs, as soon as I hit the top stairwell, I had to stop and make sure that I could cover my eyes with my hands or that I could shut my eyes.

Of course it would terrify me most when I’d go to blink and wave my hand in front of my face and it wouldn’t work and I’d realize I was dreaming.

26. BlorfMonger

I used to have a truck that I swore had the ghost of a dead baby in it. I used to get home late from my job as a dishwasher, and after I parked and was sitting in my driveway with the engine off, I would hear this really faint sound of a baby crying. Late at night when it was quiet, it used to make my arm hairs stand on end. I used to get home and hop out of the car in fear of hearing it.

One night I decided to sit there and just listen, try to pinpoint the sound. Eventually I discovered that it was indeed not a dead baby, but when I undid my seat buckle, the old spring of the seat belt retractor would slowly start pulling the belt in, creating a faint noise that sounded like wailing.

27. tellmetheworld

Was playing Kinect one night. It detected a second player. I was alone.

28. Sweetdish

A few years back I rented an apartment from a friend of mine. He had recently bought it and had it completely renovated. He put it up for sale but couldn’t find a buyer so I offered to rent it in the meantime.
After moving in I realized there was something wrong with the lady next door. She was about 45 but looked much older. She would sit up all night listening to Christian radio shows and talking loudly to someone. It got to the point where I couldn’t sleep so I went over to her place and asked her to keep it down. She opened her door and I got a quick peek. Her walks all had crosses painted on them in different colors. And words like “Jesus” and “angels” scribbled everywhere. The windows were painted black letting no light in at all. It was damp, yellow stained 50 year old carpets, dog shit and cock roaches everywhere. No dog though.

I asked her to please keep it down. She just looked at me and shut the door. Then she turned up the radio even louder.

The next night I had my GF staying over. I wake up in the middle of the night and see a shadow of a person next to the bed looking at us sleeping. I think I’m hallucinating as I usually do in the dark when I’m sleepy. But then the shadow starts talking. It’s my neighbor and she’s holding something in her hand. She broke in during the night and who knows how long she stood there.

“You should lock your door at night” she says and walks out.

The next morning I hear someone making strange noises below my bedroom window. It’s my neighbor talking to herself in tongue. She has a plastic bag in her hand with her rotting dead dog inside. It’s hot as hell outside and I can smell death from the bag.

At this point I’m scared shitless. Shes obviously very insane. I go upstairs and knock on another person’s door and ask what the hell is going on. The guy is as scared as me. Apparently she broke into his apartment one evening as well while he was watching tv with his kids. He got up from the couch to get a snack only to find her behind the couch staring at him holding a power drill. (Now I know what was in her hand.)

At this stage I’m basically pooping myself. I call the cops and they know all about her. Apparently she is a violent schizzo and she hasn’t taken her meds. But they can’t force her or enter her apartment w/o her permission because she owns it. The only thing they can do is get her when she goes outside. I sit up for the next two days waiting for her to run out of cigarettes. When I hear her leave at 2am to go across the road to the 7-eleven I call the cops. They have 3 cars and a special van over in less than 2 minutes. They restrain her and throw her in the van and drive off to some institution and in less than a minute it’s like she was never there.

I never see her again. Still have nightmares about her looking at me in my sleep.

29. mnfats

I was fixing a jumped belt on an old Gleaner K2 in the middle of the field, in the middle of the night. When my dog (a 110lb lab), who’s usually sniffing for birds when I stop, is standing still and letting out a growl I’ve never heard from him. I shine my almost dead flashlight where he’s looking and I see three sets of eyes change quickly from a glow, to a silhouette to coyotes. They’re pretty harmless on their own, but in a pack they’re relentless. I call for my dog and bolt for the cab, but he runs at them instead. I stood on the platform for what felt like hours, as my dog tried to fight off the now 5 coyotes. I couldn’t let my buddy die, so I grabbed the hammer and wrapped my jacket around my arm. The second I got close, one of them went for my leg and I offered my arm instead, which it gladly took and I swung down on its back with all my might. Second coyote, same as the first, grabs my arm and I swing at his back. The other three are switching between fighting and dragging my dog into the corn and like an idiot I throw the hammer at the pack with no effect. I kick the one doing the most dragging and he thankfully runs off. I picked up the hammer and swing at the one my dog doesn’t have and stood back and watch my dog chase off the 5th. He came back bloody and limping, but no worse for wear. But even with the rabies shot, he started showing symptoms about a week later. Toughest thing I had to do to date was putting that dog down.

You can find more creepy things from Thought Catalog here.

30. merrell0

A few months ago I downloaded a program for my phone – Sleep as Android. I bought the premium version of the app for the extra features to record sound throughout the night when volumes reached a certain threshold. It would activate when I would snore or move around. I would usually spend the next evening going over some of the recorded sounds. Everything was pretty normal until I listened to something out of the ordinary.

It was near the beginning of April, and I had the apartment to myself. I’ll let you listen to the sound before I go on explaining it.

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

I was confused and a little worried. Everything was still locked up, nobody came home (the chainlock was still latched on the front door), and my landlord certainly didn’t come.

I don’t use the app anymore.

31. ActiveSloth1234

This happened to me when I was about 8 and still scares me to this day. One evening I went to let my dogs in from the back garden at around 9pm. It was pitch black so I quickly opened the door and my dogs came bounding in, as soon as they came in I locked the door and at this moment a person on the other side pulled the handle down trying to get into my house. We had a glass door so even in the dark I could see the outline of a man standing there.

I ran to my dad and he ran into the back garden after this man and saw him running down the road. Since then I have closed and locked doors at the speed of light.

32. CrackheadSally

When I was 7, I woke up in the middle of the night with an earache. I decided to tell my mom and stepdad and walked out of my room. Someone was sitting on the chair in the living room (about 3 feet away from my bedroom door). The person looked strange (the face was just kind of distorted) but it was dark and I couldn’t see well. “Mom?” I asked. The person shook their head, and I started getting scared. “Mike?”. The person shook their head again. I decided the best course of option was to go back to bed so I wouldn’t have to walk past this…person. I climbed in bed, and closed my eyes for a second, before opening them and seeing the person standing in my doorway, smiling madly and nodding furiously.

33. lpopsicle

Watching an A7 Corsair grab the #3 cable that had not been fully retracted. After the wire broke and whipped around 2 sailors were dead and 2 were amputees. Getting to the scene seconds after was the most horrific site I have witnessed. Using a mop and pail to swab up the puddles of blood. Heart wrenching.

34. cjhf29

I’m a nighttime tour guide at an old convict prison in australia, it’s run by the government so the tours are pretty watered down and family friendly (the tours run between like 6 and 9 on Wednesday and friday nights) and some of the scariest shit i’ve ever experienced has happened there.

I’m not convinced in ghosts and what not but if there are, they’re definitely there. every other person who works there has their own creepy story. My scariest was when i had a group of about 30 people in the gallows one night (the room where people were hanged) and the room is made of corrugated tin, so i was there doing my bit when suddenly there was this huge bang on the roof. everyone looked up and a few people screamed but a lot laughed — we have a few actors that jump out on tours so they probably thought it was that. The banging didn’t stop though, it was kind of irregular at sort of like half second intervals (like boom, boom, boomboom) and people we getting creeped, me included. so i took the group outside. now the roof of the room is a slanted A frame so if you walk back a bit you can see the outside roof. we all watched as this one bit of tin looked like it was being stomped on from the outside , moving and everything, still banging when i took the group to the next spot. we finished off the tour and a few people thought it was a joke, but it genuinely terrified me. i’ve got some ‘ghost’ photos on my galaxy i’ll try and upload now, but i’m not very good at internetting

35. ludnik

This is creepy, at least I always thought it was. I was working in a big grocery warehouse, hundreds of people worked there, it was night shift, sitting in a break room at lunch with a couple of other guys trying to find something to talk about to stay awake.

I started talking about the best jobs I’d ever had. After a minute or so this older guy who never ever said more than a word or two at a time starts telling us about this nursing home he used to work at. He was in his 60s and he’d already been at this current job for 30+ years at the time, so his story took place when he was a young man (I surmised).

He was an attendant for this nursing home and he told us he used to have sex with many of the female residents. These were elderly ladies and handicapped people as well. He told us he’d usually get it on with at least one of them every night and they were all very grateful for his attention. He felt he was in heaven at the time.

According to him, some of the ladies he was involved with were in their 80s and all of them were very lonely. He said his favorite was a younger woman who had cerebral palsy or some nerve disorder. He said that although she couldn’t talk, he could tell she loved his attentions by the way she’d squirm and wiggle during sex. He told us he’d eventually been “let go” from this dream job but not for what reason.

When break was over and he left the breakroom me and the other guy sat there for a moment and I asked him if he’d ever heard that story before. He said, “Hell no, I’ve never even heard him talk that long about anything before.” The guy in question was always such a quiet guy and I switched back to day shift not long after that so I never talked about it with him again. But it really stuck in my mind in a creepy way. I think he BELIEVED what he said, but were these women his lovers or his victims?

36. PetrusOfThorolund

To really get my story you have to have an understanding of my third floor landing.

There’s a single set of stairs that lead up to it, once on the landing its a T-Shape, with an Office the left, my bedroom to the right, and straight ahead is a bathroom with a shower.

Anyway, one night, ~10PM I’m taking a shower before I head to sleep. The glass panels on my shower is that like, concave/convex glass that blurs everything, so everything was blurred and unclear. I glance at the door and I see some kind of hand like figure. Now, it was pitch black, so right there it freaked me out because I come from a family of pale white welsh people. What freaked me out more was how the hand seemed to come through the door, or at least an angle where whomever the hand belonged to would be visible.

All it did was hit the lights. That’s it. No noise, no attack or anything, it just turned off the fucking lights. So there I am, I just witnessed a phantom hand, and now I’m in my shower and it’s pitch fucking black. I’ve never been so chilled to the bone before, something about being in the darkness of the night, with the only noise being the water hitting the floor beneath me, just reduced me to the most primal state of pure fear I’ve ever been in. I eventually get myself to leave the shower and hit the lights. The relief that came over me was immense.

I’ve never been able to explain it. The stairs up to the landing are old and creek like hell, I would’ve heard someone come and go down. No one was in my room, or the office. Weirder still, nothing like it has happened since.

37. ruffyreborn

Woke up one night to some noise downstairs. Xbox was on and the kinect was moving up and down every so often like it does when you set it up. Turned it off and went back to bed.

Next morning, i booted up the xbox and tv and started kinect adventures. Several pics were taken last night of “in-game action”, but no one was in the pictures.

38. JamesRenner

I’m a journalist and was told this doozy by a woman I interviewed for a true crime story.

When this woman was a young girl, say 8 years old, she started to come down stairs at night to tell her father that there was a man in her closet. He tells her there’s no such thing as the Boogeyman and sends her back to bed. This happens on and off for like a week. Finally, he gets frustrated and walks her back to the room and says, “I’ll show you there’s nothing in your closet” and goes to open the door. It opens an inch and then he feels someone slam it shut.

Turns out there really was a man in her closet. This guy was a perv who would come in to the house every night and stare at the girl from the closet while she slept. The dad kicked the shit out of him and the perv went to prison for many years.

I researched her story 20 years after this happened. The guy had just gotten out of jail again and no one could find him.

39. Tdiggy

Driving to pick up a friend who was at this cabin party about 40 miles west of where I lived. It was close to 2 a.m. So i’m driving down this back road to find this random cabin somewhere and I come across this red 4 door sedan with all the doors open and 4 limp figures in the seats with their heads slumped over. That alone kinda freaked me the fuck out. Later on I’m driving by again after a failed attempt at picking up my friend, mind you it’s getting close to 3 in the morning, and only the front seat passenger door was open and ever person in that car was staring with a blank dead stare directly at me as I drove past at 10 mph. Very creepy to me.

40. robotangst

I lived on 13 acres, most of it was forest. I was eight, hardly ever home alone but when I was this kind of thing would happen all of the time. Only when I was alone. The doors would open while they were locked, my young dogs would run up to the door and stay 10 feet away barking at something I couldn’t see while I hid behind the bar clutching a knife.

At the same home, my younger sister and I would play in the woods with just our dogs. At 5 and 7 years old we had an imaginary friend that we both would talk to and could hear what it was saying. Our dogs would follow it when it would walk away and run around it in circles as it moved around.

I revisited that house 8 years later and saw a figure moving along the edge of the woods, it looked the same size as our friend. When I told my sister, she told me she saw it too but no one else did. I didn’t realize until I was older that there was no way we both should have been able to hear it, or that the dogs shouldn’t have been able to see it.

41. Mikeheathen

I grew up in the south in the late 70’s and early 80’s. My grandmother lived on a cotton farm in SC, and my cousin and I would go visit her during the summer. We’d help out on the farm, but during the heat of the day we’d go swimming in the river to cool off. Our favorite spot was fairly isolated, so we never really saw anyone else, but there was an old dirt road that ran from the gravel road back to an abandoned farmhouse in the woods.

My cousin and I were in the river when we saw a cloud of dust in the distance. We thought maybe our uncle was coming to take us back to the farm, but we always swam for an hour or so after lunch, and he never drove the tractor to come get us. We’d heard stories about some backwoods family who’d gone all Deliverance on some kids a few summers ago, but we figured it had to just be our uncle trying to freak us out. Regardless, we snuck up to the river bank so we could see the dirt road, but we’d still be hidden in the trees.

We saw a ratty Oldsmobile Delta 88 with blacked out windows creeping down the dirt road. The car didn’t belong to anyone we knew. I only remember the make and model because I knew it was the Evil Dead car…and because of what happened next. After it passed by our hiding spot, we noticed it didn’t have a license plate. It drove another 30 yards or so and then stopped. A black garbage bag flew out of the passenger window and into the field. It was about the size of a football. Then the car made a slow and methodical 3 point turn, taking great pains not to let the tires venture too far into the cotton field. It made its way back the direction it came, until it disappeared out of sight.

My cousin and I had remained silent throughout the event, and with the car gone we looked at each other. I wish we would have just ignored it. I wish we would have headed back to farm. I wish we would have told our uncle or our grandmother what we had seen and had them come investigate. But we were 13. Curiosity was killing us.

We had to look in that bag.

As we left our hiding place and headed down the road, we looked around nervously, hoping the Delt wouldn’t show up again. As we got close to the drop zone, we could see blood on some of the cotton directly above the bag’s resting place. We looked at each other one last time, and then we opened the bag.

There, in the bottom of the bag, wrapped in a bloody washcloth, was a tiny baby girl. She looked like she might have just been asleep, but she wasn’t. The image of her lying there, naked, bloody, and discarded, has haunted me ever since.

42. SammieB1981

Something along these same lines happened to me when I was kid, but no one was ever found in my basement. It was my first time staying home alone while my whole family was out at my brother’s ballgame (I was 13 I think). Anyways, I’m on the phone with a friend of mine feeling so grown up when someone beeps in on the other line. I tell her I’ll be right back, and click over lines. Then the creepiest voice I have ever heard says, “Hello, little girl, I’m the man in your basement!”

Honestly, I laughed it off and just hung up thinking it was a prank call. I was a pretty confident little thing, and my neighborhood was pretty safe so I figured someone was just messing with me, knowing it was my first time alone. They beeped in again, so I clicked over and heard, “DON’T YOU F-ING HAND UP ON ME YOU LITTLE, B*@#!” and the lights started flickering and there was banging under my feet. I KNOW it sounds crazy, but my dog started freaking out and my cat ran away, so I assure you I wasn’t imagining a thing. Our basement was actually just an area connected to the garage, it wasn’t finished. I heard what sounded like footsteps coming up the garage steps to get into our kitchen, and I threw stuff in front of the door and hearing yelling and what not.

I kept trying to hang up and call the cops, but every time I tried to, he was still on the phone. My friend told her parents what was happening, and they ran to the neighbors house to call the police for me. I sat petrified with a broken rifle, a butcher knife, and a baseball bat behind my front door because it’s the only place in the house downstairs that couldn’t be seen from a window, crying. Eventually I clicked over to hear a police dispatcher on the phone and stayed on the line with her until the police got to my house. There was no sign of forced entry, though we had a broken window pane on our outside garage door that had been messed up for months prior and my guess is he used that to get in.

The police assumed I was just a paranoid girl, and they were going to leave me home alone after they gave an all clear. Fortunately a family friend had been driving by and saw the cops there and stopped to see if everything was okay. He gave me a ride to the school where my family was. They were skeptical that anything had happened, but we did get a security system not too much longer after that, and my parents both got cell phones too. This was ’94 I think so cell phones weren’t super popular yet.

After that happened, I swear there was someone stalking me for years. I would leave my apartment locked and bolted and come back to find appliances on (hair dryer, stove), heat on in the middle of the summer. I lived in 4 different places, and would get strange phone calls at everyone despite being unlisted. Cars would randomly be parked down the road from a house and speed up and slam on the brakes as I would run inside. I’d hear loud bangs outside when I lived out in the country. Nothing has happened since I’ve been in my current house and married, but I am still super paranoid all the time.

43. awildkristenappeared

i was visiting my dad in portland as his job required a temporary relocation from michigan. my mother, brother, and myself took 10 days hitting spots all over oregon and washington state. we ended up at multnomah falls, a popular state park and tourist attraction.

when we flew back to michigan, he was going through his camera while he listened to the news, and heard that someone had died at the falls that day. it’s not uncommon for suicides to happen in places like the falls, but as he was scrolling through the pictures, he was curious at what time the suicide occurred, because my dad had one of those cameras that time-stamped every photo.

The news reported the time of the body’s discovery as my dad fell onto a picture timestamped at 3 minutes prior to that time. At the top of the falls, in my family photo, there stands a man at the edge minutes from jumping to his death.

44. chrisman01

I used to work night shift Security on a college campus. 11PM-7AM, usually by myself. If I was lucky I’d have a work-study student officer with me until 2.

The campus had been around in one form or another since the Revolutionary War. Started as a wood fort, then stone, then finally a concrete fortress with dozens of brick buildings until the end of WWII, when they decommissioned the fort and turned it into a college.

There’s one building on campus that used to be an officer’s quarters, a really fancy, rather upscale three story house. The place has all the classic ghost stories: Lady in white, shadows moving on their own, footsteps, etc. I never believed them.

Until I experienced them.

Temperature drop:
My first experience in there I was still on second shift, during the day. It was maybe 4pm; I remember the sun was still out. It was also in the 80s outside. I was crossing the main lobby, a large room in front of the double staircase, when I realized something.

It was suddenly way too quiet, like the air was heavy and pressing down on me. I stopped walking for some reason. Then it got cold. Really cold, it must have dropped about twenty degrees. Needless to say, I booked it before I heard or saw anything. I’ve seen horror movies, fuck this!

The Scream:
Another experience with this place: Screaming. I was escorting a couple of new officers to show them how to lock the building.

We were standing in the lobby (everything seems to be focused there…) talking to the last guy in the building. Four of us, standing in a group, when all but one of us heard it.

Shuffling. Like something being dragged in short spurts across the floor directly above us.

scrunch scrunch SCRUNCH *AIEEEeeeeee!!!*

A woman screamed! But there was nobody up there! I wanted to check it out, but the female officer I was next to was too creeped out… cough

The Child Laughing:
It must have been a few months after the scream incident. I hadn’t gone through there much since then. I was escorting another new guy, and had just finished telling him the story about the scream.

We were standing next to the back door (once again, this room was directly connected to the lobby, with a rather large arch connecting them instead of a door). As we started walking into the lobby, a familiar feeling crept over me.

It was quiet… and heavy…

That’s when we heard it. I’m pretty sure I heard the pitter-patter of little footsteps, but we both heard it.

A little girl. Giggling. On the floor above us.

The building was empty and already locked up; We were doing second checks. There was no way somebody else was in there, the previous patrols would have found them.

We looked at each other… “WELP.” Booked it out the door.

The woman in black heels,

This one is the last thing I experienced in that building. In fact, it’s the only thing I saw outright.

I was working alone that night. There were still two staff members in the building; one in the basement, one at the front desk. As I was locking the doors, they were finishing their tasks and getting ready to leave.
I double checked the building, turned off some lights, and started crossing the lobby when I looked up the staircase. The staircase runs parallel to the lobby, it goes up half a floor to the landing then the rest of the way in a switchback setup (like this, but with another set of stairs on the other side of the landing too).

There was a woman up there on the second floor! All I could see was the bottom of a black skirt, her legs, and black heels. Walking from the right to left.

She was wearing heels, but there was no sound. And even though she was walking at a regular pace, I blinked… and she was gone.

TL;DR: I didn’t believe in ghosts until I became a Security officer on the night shift. I’ve experienced some shit, and most of it with witnesses.

Then there’s the stuff you really wouldn’t believe, where there was nobody with me to confirm it (once again, night shift without coworkers). Like the face in the bushes. Or the shadow of a soldier on top of the old fort. But I’ll keep those stories for another day.

45. [deleted]

One night when I was about 7 years old, I went to sleep at around 9:30 and got into the second level of my bunk-bed. I soon fell asleep, but then I woke up in the middle of the night to someone whispering “No, no” repeatedly as if they were in pain, thinking I just imagined it I tried to go back asleep. And then that’s when I heard it, the creaking of the wooden boards on the stairs, slowly getting louder and that whisper “No, no”. I knew it wasn’t my parents because they were sleeping in the bed next to mine. Then I heard some screaming along with the foot steps coming up the stairs and again the whisper of “No, no”. So I slowly got out of bed, crept towards the ladder to get to the floor and I slowly began to crawl towards the bedroom door in the dark which had a full view of the stairs. I opened it without creak in the darkness and I saw nothing moving in the dark nook of the stairs. But I now heard the whisper of “No, no” coming from the room upstairs which nobody used. I silently crept towards the stairs, but I kept the lights off, and I began to creep down them so I could check the front door. Nothing was out of place, so I turned on the living room lights and that’s when I saw it for an instance. The silhouettes of three people outside the living room window and then they were gone. I proceeded to turn on every light in the house and crawl into bed with my parents as I waited for it to be morning.

46. khalidalakoozi

I was 5 when the civil war in Afghanistan started, and I saw some pretty gruesome stuff. One time, a man was beheaded in the market and hot oil was poured down his body. The oil would somehow stimulate the nerves and the body would start writhing, simulating a dance. This was called “dance of the dead” and it was used to scare political opponents. Another time, I saw a man being run over by a tank repeatedly until his body was absolutely shredded. The last gruesome occurrence I saw during the war happened on my street. I was looking at the window when a man on the street was shot by an anti-aircraft gun perched on top of a mountain. Needless to say his body was buried in pieces. Apparently, the fighters on top of the hills overlooking Kabul would make bets with each other over hitting random civilian targets with different weapons.

47. 1s2s2p3s3p

I had a stalker for a number of years. One day out of the blue he sent me an email saying “Ever been raped?”

I had, but nobody ever knew about it. I lived alone at the time, and I was terrified of him for years before law enforcement finally took me seriously.

48. soul2squeeze15

I was about 7-8 years old and normally after school my mom sets up the tub so I can have my afternoon bath. Keep in mind that my bathroom was tiny and there were no room for someone to hide in without being spotted immediately. So my mom watches me go in the tub, gives me a toy and walks away to the kitchen to finish cooking. I wanted to splash around in the water with my toy so I closed the glass sliding door of the tub. As soon as I closed the sliding door, it quickly opened on its own. My tiny little mind couldn’t fathom how that happened. A few seconds later the sliding door rapidly opened and closed for a few seconds. I started screaming and my mother ran to the bathroom to find me crying in the tub. I told her what happened but she didn’t believe me. The sliding door was closed when she found me crying in the bathroom. For over 20 years it bugged me. Was it part of my imagination? It felt completely and entirely real.

49. 1shotaccount

When I was around 6, my family lived out in the rural desert in Southern California near a Cahuilla tribe reservation. We had a few acre ranch that was beside small mountain (or large hill). My room had large windows that faced towards the mountainside and as such, it was always extremely dark at night so there was a motion sensor porch light that was attached over the backdoor which you could see from my window, think of an L on its side. Backdoor lead to a room we never used but anyone coming to the property thought it was the front door.

Anyway, one night, while trying to sleep I hear a tapping on the window like a subtle scratching. I wake up and see two very striking yellow eyes and the silhouette of something at the window, very canine. Now we had coyotes here but this was the size of a small man, far larger than any coyote and there were no wolves in the region – we had a dog, but a border collie was no where near the size of this.

So we stare at each other for a few moments, just dead still – I’m completely frozen on what to do while it just stares back. It begins to scratch again at the window then turns and walks, upright, to the backdoor and tries the handle. The light goes on, see this furry dog-man thing trying to get in and I freak. Remember running out of my room and grab a rifle we had in an case in the living room (like 15 feet away from my door) and then run back to my room. There it is, on the other side of the glass looking at me. It sees the rifle then bolts into the dark.

I never knew what it was and I only learned about ‘skin-walkers’ much later. Never told my parents but I slept with that Winchester rifle beside my bed for a few years after.

50. shujinkou

My wife is an RN and she was on float to another unit helping out (she normally worked cardiac but she was helping out in the Alzheimer’s unit). She was saving a particular patient for last as the patient was known to be a real pain. Very old, mean to everyone and just generally tried to make the nurses miserable. She and the respiratory therapist got to the patients room at the same time so they decided to tackle her together. They got into the room and the patient had smeared shit all over the walls of the bathroom and the hospital room, she was standing on the bed screaming and jumping up and down on the bed. The two of them somehow got the patient calmed down, got the horrible mess cleaned up, and got their jobs done. She said it took about three hours. They then got went out and put a do not disturb sign on the door to make sure the patient could stay calm and get some sleep. They were standing one person on each side of the door (herself and the respiratory therapist) catching their breath and proclaiming how much that sucked when they spotted someone. A big farmer looking guy wearing a John Deere baseball cap, overalls, a red plaid checkered shirt and big work boots coming down the hospital hallway (and he looked kind of annoyed). He walked right past them into the patient’s room slamming the door open. My wife caught the door on the backswing and marched right into the room after him (respiratory therapist right behind her) planning on dragging him back out and giving him a piece of her mind. When she got in the room he was not there.

No sign of the person she followed in.

She looked under the bed.

She looked in the bathroom.

She checked behind all of the curtains.

She even made sure the window still would not open.

No sign of the farmer at all. She then noticed the patient was sitting upright in the bed just kind of staring off into space.

So she asked her: “Did you just see someone come into the room?” The patient said “Yes, it was my daddy; he said he was coming to take me home tonight and that you mean people won’t be able to hurt me anymore.” She responded with: “That’s great, how about you get some rest before he comes to pick you up.” The patient then lay down and went to sleep. The patient died that night.

My wife and the respiratory therapist swapped stories to make sure they were not crazy, they both saw it.

51. wolfmanravi

My parents were out one night and my brother and I were home alone. We were probably 12 and 10, respectively. Anyway, there’s a knock at the door and I hear a voice say “Pizza.” Initially thinking it was my father playing a joke I instinctively went to open the door when it hit me…

That wasn’t my dad’s voice.

“We didn’t order any pizza” I said. There was no reply and no audible movement. I went to my bathroom window which allows some vision of the footpath leading from the front of our property to the front door but you can’t see the door itself. So we waited for about 15 minutes clutching a cricket bat and some ornamental fireplace poker until finally the dude moves away from the door and walks away.

Just some guy with dark hair in a long ponytail, a long dark coat and no pizza.

52. jax9999

One morning I woke up to my grandmotehr calling my cellphone. I was upstairs, and it was weird for her to call me.

“There’s something wrong with your father.”

So, I came downstairs and she was in the hallway looking towards the living room where my father was on the flat of his back not moving.

I went to him and tried to see what was wrong. he was cold. I ushered my grandmother into the kitchen to sit down. and called 911. In the meantime, I started CPR.

He was down for hours, must have died during the night.

There is a certain type of desperation when you’re doing CPR on your own father. I’ve done it before, when being trained, and a few times over the years in emergency situations. but this was different. I was doing CPR, and the phone was on my shoulder, and I was telling my grandmother everything was going to be alright at the same time trying not to lose it myself. Then a big mouthful of cold dead black blood came up.

I’m not sure how much I swallowed. I know some went to my sinuses and came out my nose. This froze my entire soul. I could taste my fathers cold dead blood. My brain shut off dead for a minute. I don’t remember getting up and going to the sink. In that missing time I had gotten up went into the kitchen and was trying to wash his blood off of my face. I had my grandmother behind me asking what was wrong, but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even think barely. I was just trying to wash that smell, that taste out of my mouth and nose.

That was four years ago. I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, and all I can smell or taste is my fathers dead blood.

I hid this for years. I kinda had a mental breakdown, and lost it for 2 years. Didn’t tell a soul. Eventually I told my boyfriend. I had an irrational fear if i ever told him he’d never want to kiss me again. but he did. so that’s ok. I hope I’m never in another situation where I have to do CPR, because I don’t honestly think I could do it.

53. claymier2

In my last apartment, every morning, 3 a.m. I would hear this woman screaming “help” in this loud, clear, blood-curdling shriek.

I tried asking my landlord about it and he got real quiet and wide-eyed and never said a damned thing about it.

None of the other tenants would talk to me.

54. Karbear_debonair

I grew up in a house that was creepy as hell. Everyone saw shadows move, everyone lost things, everyone heard voices in that house. People who had never heard the stories about it would come into the house for the first time and comment on strange things.

One night during the summer I’m laying awake on my bed trying to fall asleep. But I can’t. It’s too hot, and it feels weird in the room. I’m on my right side, then my left, then back again. This whole time my brother is singing and tapping in the bunk above me.

Finally, pissed, I reach up to push up on his bed. I would do that in retaliation when he was loud. As I roll onto my back I feel a hand through my mattress. It started at my neck and swept down my back, pushing the mattress as it went. Scared the ever-living fuck right out of me.

I never did figure out what the hell that was.

55. DutchRedneck

Too late for the party i guess but still… Here is my creepiest moment. Worked as a security guard in a hospital when my coworkers received a call from a woman who found a note from her husband. In that note he wrote he was going to kill himself and he also noted the exact area of where he would do it. (Toilets)

We thought it was a prank call but obviously we still had to check it out. Mens toilets where clear, next where the women’s toilet. Fuck one door locked. Also no response to our yelling and knocking, so we yelled we where going to open the door. And unlocked the door with the side of the key and opened it.

What we saw there was absolutely horrific, not so much as in the gore but the way he took his own life. We found the man laying on the floor with a plastic bag taped around his head. Every item in his pocket was placed on the toilet, phone, cigarettes, lighter, wallet etc. My colleague checked his pulse, but he was already cold. So we where to late.

We contacted the police and my co worker had his wife on the phone the whole time trying to comfort her as she wasn’t allowed to tell anything about the state of her husband. That was up to the police to tell.
Anyways police removed the tape and found another plastic bag under the the other one. When they removed the second plastic bag and tape we saw he also had put pieces of paper in his nose.
So yeah this guy was a patient of the psych ward and decided to kill himself by suffocation. Anyway, never took a dump on that particular toilet again, neither did my coworkers.

56. PsuedoNom

My parents were drug addicts. When I was young, we had a nice home, but slowly, as I matured we started living in shittier homes. When I was a teenager we rented a decent size, but rundown house in a weird neighborhood. On moving day, we set out exploring, excited to see that the unfinished basement at least had a semi-finished laundry room. Underneath the stairs in that laundry room, there were some child like drawings on the walls. A picture of 5 family members, including a baby, with the caption “Our new home.” It was a little weird, but whatever kids draw in random fucking places, we just covered up the art and used the laundry room.
That basement was super creepy, their was always a feeling of something watching you. All of us experienced some kind of weird thing in this house. Now, I’ve believe in ghosts because of an earlier experience I’ve had in a much older house, but I still remain skeptical.

Everyone who stayed with us or visited us reported hearing a voice of a little boy behind them at random times during the day. It was always the same thing: “Rah!” the noise that little kids always make when they are trying to scare you. We all kind of ignored it, dismissed it or lived with it.

One day, I was home alone and sitting on the computer doing my online classwork, when I started to hear this weird buzzing noise. I ignored it for awhile, but it just kept going, this steady buzzing noise. No one was home, even my dog was gone. I waited until my dad came home from work and fell asleep on the couch and decided to investigate. By then, the noise had been going for about 2 hours. I eventually followed the noise downstairs and saw my dad’s electric hair clippers, turned on and just buzzing all over the bathroom floor. I was really confused as to how this happened. I turned the clippers off and heard an impatient sigh come from the other side of the basement. Not thinking, I just said, “sorry.” and noped the fuck out of there. I got back upstairs and woke my dad up and told him he left his clippers on, hoping for an explanation. He told me he lost his clippers weeks ago and told me to go get them from the basement.

The last thing that happened was something that really cemented the fact that there was something weird in that house in the minds of our whole family. My mother, brother, sister and I were all getting ready to leave the house. Keys in hand, shoes on and all of us walking towards the door. My brother stops at the fridge and says to us, “I’m going to take this last Pepsi, ok?” ALL OF US heard from the basement, a distinctly child-like voice, I’d say a boy around 4 or 5 shout, “NO!” in direct response to this statement. It was so clear; it was that bratty toddler NO that so many parents are familiar with.
We all solemnly looked at each other, confirmed in each other’s eyes what we just heard and hurried to the car as naturally as possible. That is probably the only house I was HAPPY to hear we got evicted from.

57. 007_Monkey

Guy lights himself on fire, runs through a parking garage and jumps from the eighth floor or so. Watching him fly through the air and hearing him scream is one of many memories I would love to forget. Hearing him hit the concrete made a sound that is hard to describe but is probably closest to the sound those kids jelly toy things make when you throw them on the ground and they flatten out. Any temporary relief I received from his screaming stopping was quickly replaced by confusion as I see what I thought was a greyish pinkish ball rolling along the ground about ten feet away from his head towards me. Brain pulls a total derp as I think thats an odd looking basketball, wonder what it’s doing over here nowhere near any outdoor courts. Snap back to reality, yup intact brain, instant out loud WTF. The sounds and smell of burning flesh are what is burned most into my soul. I guess not really scary, but these days I don’t do heights or get close at all to fire.

58. alalal982

This happened just a couple weeks ago on a friday. It was late at night, around midnight. I had two friends in my car, we were coming back from a restaurant to celebrate finishing up the school play. I just dropped the first friend off and was now making the four or five mile drive to my second friend’s house. It’s a narrow road in MA that cuts through some pretty dense woods. She was in the front seat and we were listening to ballads, just talking about life. Not a big deal.

I was behind a deep red pickup truck that had a motorcycle in the bed of it the entire way so far. I wasn’t tailgating them, nothing, even though the driver was going a bit slow for my tastes and swerving around just a tad too much. When I’m just about to reach this intersection that’s not even a block from my second friend’s house, this guy pulls over. Seemingly no reason, he just pulled over to the side of the road about a car or two’s length from the blinking red light. As I pass him to stop up ahead, I see his face. He has a pretty generic face, nothing unusual, but he’s staring right at us with anger in his eyes. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I just sense something’s…not quite right. My friend looks out the window and says; “What is he doing?” shakily.

I look at my rearview mirror to see the guy getting out of the seat, pulling a ski-mask over his face and wielding a huge, I’d say 10 inch knife in his hand. He started sprinting at my car, almost reaching the passenger side. I screamed and slammed on the gas, driving around for awhile, the man only chasing my car for a few blocks until he knew he wasn’t going to catch us. When I got back at the intersection minutes later to drop my friend off, he was gone. My friend ran inside, locked her doors and everything and I sped away, but it. Was. Terrifying. I told the police and filled out a report last week. Never driving at that intersection again.

59. socalvan

When I was a kid my bed faced the open doorway and I could see straight down the hall to my mom’s bedroom. One evening when I was about 8 or 9 I woke up looked down the hall and saw a feminine figure leaning against the doorway of my mom’s room. There were no distinct identifiable features, but I could tell it was a lady, and she was all white. I put the covers over my head and screamed for my mother.

The next day we were at the county fair when my mom and dad are talking, basically saying “we should tell her.” They sat me down, and had explained that a lady was murdered in the house at the top of the stairs (where my mom’s room was) back before they bought it. They never arrested anyone for the murder, but people speculated it was her husband. They shared some of the strange things that happened in the house right after they’d moved in. There were a LOT of strange things.

About 20 years later my boyfriend and I are staying the weekend in the house while we’re in town. We got into a slight argument, and I told him “I’m going to bed.” And as I’m walking away, I hear a very distinct voice (a female’s one) saying “Where are you going?” and I stopped and said “I told you, I’m going upstairs.” To which my boyfriend responded with confusion as to why I had repeated what I’d said. It hadn’t registered right away that it had been a female voice, but it was definitely like someone was there asking me. The next day I had told him the history of the house, and then he shared some strange things he had noticed over the few days but didn’t tell me because he was worried I’d think he was crazy.

60. oograh

When I was in high school (I’m nearly 40 now) my parents bought a good sized house, for what they paid. They were aware the house had a “history” but none of us were superstitious, so they bought it.
The history of the house, was that a man had killed himself there. The people who lived there in the early 80s had rented the basement of the house to their friend. His wife left him, and I guess the divorce was messy. He didn’t die in the house, but in the driveway, he ran a hose from his exhaust into the window of his car.

My parents lived in the for over 10 years. We always joked about the place being haunted. The basement in particular, just had a creepy feel to it. I never got the whole “feels like you’re being watched” feeling before then, and haven’t since, but you just got that feeling. There were always small things going on (creaky floors, breezes, crap like that). Most were dismissible. Here’s the stories that stand out.

My mother was reading a book in the living room late at night. Sometimes she had trouble sleeping, and was going read, until she got tired. This night was was sitting there, and heard a metal noise like a “ting”, then the clack clack clack of something hitting the floor. She turned around to see the final skid of a fork, as it came to a stop beside her. Three fork was sitting on a table across the room. She said it sounded like someone had hit the tongs and sent it flying across the room. Everyone else was asleep at the time.

Well after my sister and I had moved out, my sister had a child. My parents bought an automated swing for the baby, for when they visited. The swing would randomly swing on its own. The swing would be turned off, it would just be like someone had lightly pushed it. It happened enough, that my parents would just kind of mention it lightly, when it happened. They’d just say “oh hey look, the swing is moving again” and go about their day. One night I was staying over at my parents watching tv. It was about 2am, and I heard a tap tap tap. It was coming from the fireplace. The swing was about 7 feet away from there for reference. The tapping was deliberate sounding, like a person, or animal had done it. I shrugged it off and kept watching tv. Five minutes later, tap tap tap. I’m intrigued now. I go to the fireplace expecting a trapped bird. Nothing, and no taps. I turn to sit down, and once I pass the swing, tap tap tap. I have a better hearing vantage now, and it sounded like someone tapping on the mantle. I walk up to it, and when I get to it, tap tap tap, loud this time. Nothing was there that could have caused it, and the hair in my arm is standing on edge. I, kinda spooked, turn around to go outside for a smoke (before I quit) then TAP TAP this time, instead of a third tap, the swing swung forward like someone pushed it full force. I had a couple cigarettes instead of one.

Last one. Back when I was just out of school, before moving out, I was up late. I was in the hall, when I hear my father yell “what the fuck!” i asked, though their door, if everything is okay. He exits the room. He is white as a sheet. He said he woke up, and saw two old ladies standing at the foot of their bed. They were just staring at him, and mouthing something, like talking to him. Said, there was no expression on their faces (happy, sad, scared…) and no sound. When he yelled, they disappeared.

61. [deleted]

Hearing my grandfather call my name when I was alone in my apartment and he had been dead for seven years. Mind you, he died in (and had never been outside of) the States and I was in my apartment in north France. Still gives me the chills.

62. SwissPatriotRG

In middle school, class was letting out and my best friend and I were walking to our buses. He had to stop by the music room to pick up his instrument to take home, so I told him “goodbye”.

I kept walking, turned around the corner and he popped out of another door with his instrument and startled me on purpose. We walked and talked for another minute and as I was walking away from him to get on my bus I told him “goodbye for good this time”.

That weekend he was killed in a car crash in front of his house, he was ejected and his family’s car rolled over him.

Now I relive that last interaction I had with him every once in a while. Definitely creepy.

63. lukeyboy767

When I was sixteen I was sitting at a table with my mom talking about life, musing on the afterlife and reincarnation.. The usual. I began to laugh and say “you know, I’m pretty sure I remember my past life”. This was about the time her face went pale. I asked her why.

That’s when she began to list all of the details of my silly past life which I always felt was just a recurring dream I must have. She told me how I was the youngest child in a family of poor travelers. How my crib was the top drawer of any dresser where we would sleep and my mother was a tall, bony, angry looking woman with her hair pulled high, always wearing a long dress. All the details I was about to tell her, for what I thought was the first time.

“How did you know all of that? I’ve never told you before!” I said.

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

“I don’t believe it!”

“And the worst thing…” she said with a dark brow, “was when I would come to play with you…and you would tell me your other mother was behind me.”

64. Kallehoe

My wife and I just moved into a brand new house this past July. There are definitely creaks and weird nosies from the house settling. However, I had a buddy over one night. We all had got a little drunk and as we were going to bed, my buddy jokingly knocks on our bedroom door and asks if he can sleep in our bed because “there is a ghost in his room!”. “Go to bed Rodney!” I say.

The next day, after he went home, he told me his girlfriend asked him, “So, you called me last night?” He didn’t remember calling her, so he checked his phone and there was no record of any new outgoing calls. He told her that he didn’t call her, and she said, “That’s interesting, because I had a missed call last night from you, and a voicemail. Listen to this.” What came next was the weirdest thing ever.

It was this loud droning noise with lots of feedback and interferrance. Her phone would translate any voicemail into text, so while you heard this weird growling sound, the text message read, “HELP ME. HELP ME. ARE YOU THERE? HELP ME PLEASE!”

Creeped out.

65. Racid

My boyfriend was in the army before I met him, this is by far the creepiest story he’s told me. It gave me goosebumps.

He lived in a two story townhouse (on-base housing) in Ft. Hood for about six months. Tenants always came and went because of deployments. Weird stuff would happen both at night and during the day; mainly thuds in his bedroom on the second floor and shuffling. He felt uneasy being in his room so he always slept on the living room couch on the first floor.

On the weekends he would be up late playing Xbox Live, being the achievement hunter he is and due to insomnia. he wouldn’t fall asleep until 5AM.

One night, he was up late on his Xbox dashboard, sitting on a sofa chair, smoking a cigarette. His Kinect was plugged in. As many of you know, there’s a screen on the bottom right corner that shows an infrared version of what the Kinect camera can see. This lets you know what its detecting. It’s really sensitive and although at times frustrating to use, surprisingly accurate.

This was when the hair behind his neck stood up. He noticed the infrared screen. Standing to the right of him, alongside him, was a solid female figure.

He wanted me to add that he has never EVER used his Kinect after this. Even after moving back home to Chicago. I can attest to that. Haha

66. LadySmylee

My grandmother once lived in an old, three story house. It was set in the woods and slightly run down. It needed new paint, some of the floorboards would creak and the doorways were no longer straight from where the house had settled over the years.

The house itself always gave me a slightly uneasy feeling. However, I have an over-active imagination and at the time of this event I was heavily into my Stephen King horror phase (I was about ten).

The third floor of the house contained three bedrooms. One bedroom belonged to my aunt Beth, who was eight years older than me and wanted very little to do with my brother or myself. Since we stayed at Granny’s during the day while Mom and Dad worked, I think it was a jealousy thing. Beth was my Mom’s youngest sister and the baby of the family, while I was the first grandchild.

About three months after they moved into this house, Beth started complaining about noises coming from the walls in her room that kept her up at night. Granny and Papaw dismissed her complaints, but when my other aunt who lived there began to echo her concerns, they decided to investigate.

I was there when Granny took Beth upstairs and began searching her room, just to prove there was nothing there. The rat traps they’d sat hadn’t worked and they owned three cats, so mice were not likely the culprit. Anyway, while moving a big dresser away from the wall, they discovered a piece of plywood nailed to the wall. It wasn’t even painted. (I should mention the dresser had come with the house, as had a lot of the furniture). Granny, being Granny, immediately took a hammer and crowbar and tore off the plywood.

Behind it was a small door.

I’m not kidding when I say small. It was about three feet high and narrow. An adult man would have to really squeeze to get in there. The door was locked but Granny got it open anyhow.

Inside was a little hallway, very dusty, that opened into a tiny room. I could walk in the hallway if I hunkered over. An adult would have to crawl, and could only sit in the little room.

There was a small chair, doll sized, in that room. Nothing else. The walls had been covered in wallpaper that was now very yellowed with age. Dust and cobwebs everywhere, I sneezed for days after this little adventure.
What we finally noticed, and what still haunts me to this day, was the fresh looking scratches on the walls of the tiny room and the little hallway. Nt scratches, really…more like gouges in the wall. These gouges were in groups of three, as if whatever clawed hand responsible had only three fingers.

There was no dust in the gouges. They looked fresh.

We backtracked out of that little room, not saying a word. Granny nailed the plywood back in place and moved the dresser back against the wall. And that was that.

Two night later Beth moved into her sister’s room and they kept that room locked until they moved out a year later.

The house was eventually abandoned. I went back with a group of my friends in high school to show them the little room, but the stairs were in really bad shape and rotten. The house was torn down not long after.

Follow Michael at @UghHugs.

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