24 True Scary Stories From Creepy Catalog Readers

Creepy Catalog readers have the best scary stories. You can read the entire thread on Facebook here.

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I was almost abducted from a grocery store when I was a teenager. A man asked me to help him put his groceries in his trunk but wasn’t holding any bags and didn’t have a cart. I told him I needed to ask my mom first and he replied “never mind you’re too nice for me,” then he almost sprinted out of the store.

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Apparently when I was 4 years old I came into the kitchen holding onto a large teddy bear. My grandparents who were visiting with my aunts and uncles asked me where I got the bear. I told them “big grandma” gave it to me. Big grandma was the nickname my grandfather’s mother Rose was called by the grandkids. Rose died 20 years before I was born, it was a sad death so no photos were kept around and she wasn’t spoken about much. My grandfather took the bear from me and looked at it, on the right foot of the bear was an embroidery. It was my name, the date 03/18/1996 (2 days prior), and a rose. This scared them even more because Rose used to embroider every stuffed animal she gave to the kids, with their name, the date, and a rose. They didn’t really know what to do with the bear because even though it was scary it was from Grandma Rose so they put it in the attic. My grandma put me down for a nap, so the adults could talk about what happened and not scare me. When she came to wake me up a few hours later the bear was in my arms as I slept. She screamed and everyone came to check on her. They all saw me with the same bear again, I apparently told them “Grandma Rose said not to take my bear away”. They didn’t touch it again, there are several old photos my grandparents have of me and this bear and I have been told this same story by multiple family members who were there that day. My grandfather refuses to talk to me about it, and gets very angry when I bring the bear up. While I don’t remember it actually happening because I was so young, I do remember the bear and never thinking it was weird or scary, just one of my favorite toys.

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Back when cassette tapes were a thing when I was a kid, my sister and I would record ourselves singing and doing skits, and play it back to listen to it. Mom bought us a brand new one from Walmart. We recorded ourselves, went to play it back and it was completely blank. We tried again and again. Still nothing. Then we tried one last time and when we went to play it back, there was the deepest, scariest voice we have ever heard in our life saying: “Hello” to us. We screamed and pulles out all of the tape. To this day that voice still haunts me.

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A 4 year old mysteriously placed in my program who told me about his past life when I was giving him a swimming lesson. Details described of a home that used to be where a parking lot stood in a neighborhood I’d been babysitting in my whole life. Come to find out, the exact home, with the exact crime and the exact suicide he relayed happened right in that spot. Kid disappeared from my program a few days later, when I followed up bc of concern, my boss said “what four year old?” My staff knew him well, and one staff witnessed the whole discussion. I have goosebumps now just recalling it.

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Grew up in the family farmhouse that’s been in the family for generations. When we were young and our Dad was gone hunting, my sister and I would hear footsteps – like big heavy workboots clomping, walking slowly through the downstairs of the house. We always ended up in bed with our Mom.

Time passes on, we all kind of dismiss it as childhood imaginations. I’m in University and home for a visit. Up late working on a paper. And what do I hear on the floor below, but big, heavy footsteps wandering through the house.

Don’t know which of my ancestors is keeping an eye on things, but still freaks me out when they start up.

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My Grandmas old house was in our family for generations and had a lot of activity. You would catch shadow people peeking around corners at you out of the corner of your eye. One experience I remember clear as day was when I was young, there was a strange woman sitting in the rocking chair in her den quietly rocking and looking out the window. By the time my Grandma came to look the woman was gone but the chair was still rocking. I think the all time absolute scariest moment was back in the day of disposable cameras, your first shot would be a “throw away shot” to make sure it was working. Someone had taken a picture looking into my Grans kitchen and on top of her fridge was a flower arrangement. When we developed the pictures there was a perfect mans face in the flowers. Not arranged so that when you squint it vaguely looked like a man, I mean a full on mans face, on top of the fridge, blocking the flowers. We were all so scared we destroyed the picture, I wish now we had kept it, it would have been a great conversation piece.

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My husband and I have both heard a male voice clear as day in our small cabin. He said simply “ Hello,” to me when I was home alone. Called my parents…I’m an adult woman. They came and helped me make sure nobody was in there. I waited for them in the yard. We recently had a daughter she’s only a few months old. I’ll feed her in the middle of the night and she looks over my shoulder and sometimes at the ceiling and smiles or coos like somebody is communicating with her. One night I had a bad feeling someone was in the house and I walked into my living room and the front door was wide open. I met the niece of the man who built the house and we’re fairly sure it’s him. I think he’s happy we’re there as all the occurrences don’t seem malevolent. I think he’s pleased a young family has moved in and adores his home or maybe it’s his wife. We talk to him sometimes by name, Vernon.

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I worked overnight at a pet boarding facility. One night every dog went silent and turned to stare at the same spot at the exact same moment.

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I had an apt at my Great Uncles house for a bit. Woke up one night because I felt someone caressing my cheek. (I lived alone). It was a woman in an old fashioned black dress with brown hair in a bun. As I woke up she got up and walked into my closet and disappeared.

Not once was I scared. I felt loved.

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When my niece was three or so, she was afraid to sleep in her room bc of the “boy in her closet”. I slept over there and stayed in her room as she was sleeping with her parents. I work up in the middle of the night with a little pale faced child sitting at the end of the bed. I assumed it was my niece as I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but when I tried to sit up to see what she wanted, a hand pressed my chest down into the bed and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe or scream or think, but after a few seconds, I was able to move again and couldn’t see anything in the room. Needless to say, I moved out to the couch!

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I am possessed and I do honestly believe I am. When I was a child we lived across the street from a cemetery, a very large cemetery. Forrest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee Wi. Look it up it’s huge! Anyway. For a long time I had reoccurring nightmares over and over from 7 til 9 years old(the whole time we lived across the street from It). It was always the same, I’m walking along on the sidewalk next to the fence of the cemetery when I get this strange feeling in my chest like my breathing slowed down suddenly. And as I started to feel uneasy I looked behind me and there was a tall pure shadowed figure of a man walking behind me a good few paces away. Well every time I had another dream of the same thing happening the figure would be closer and it got closer and closer over the 2 years of this nightmare. On the final day I EVER had this nightmare I was trying to run but the sidewalk in front of me stretched out and it was like I was running in place and my heart felt heavy and raced uncontrollably. Suddenly the HAND of this shadowy figure touched my left shoulder and as I turned around to see the figure instead of seeing it I woke up with what felt like a FELL INTO MY BED. I was sweaty with a racing pulse and I’ve literally never had the dream again. I think about it almost every day and it’s been 20 years. Since then I’ve come to terms that I have an entity connected to me from that dream. Scariest reoccurring dream of my life and after 2 years for it to just stop as soon as the shadow touched me? No coincidence in my opinion

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In the house I used to live in, I experienced a lot but the scariest by far was one night I fell asleep in the living room. I had just woken up to go use the restroom. I was sitting up, checking the time on my phone when something told me to look up. I did and I seen a man sitting on the couch in the other room. I seen his side profile. He was an old man with a longish beard, a straw hat and he was smoking a pipe. I could see the smoke so clearly. His head turned towards me and then he disappeared.
My family and I heard a lot of noises through the day and night.

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Being lost in a cornfield with my two brothers and two cousins. Well all were shoved/touched and we were no where near each other. My one brother found his way out of the field and said he was chased by a while animal that disappeared in a cloud of smoke. We told our grandpa about the incident and all he did was tell us to stay out of the corn field.

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I was driving to my home with my mom in the car. I saw a smashed bus on a flatbed trailer coming toward us in the opposite lane, and I said, “Oh my god. Look at that bus!” My mom said “What bus?” I said “turn around and look at that bus on the flatbed trailer!” She said, “oh, yes, I see.” We got to my house and on the news there was a story about a bus that flipped over into a river in Texas, killing a lot of children.” The coincidence bothered me. After my mom went home I asked her on the phone, “Mom, did you really see that bus?” She hesitantly said, “No, but you were getting so angry that I said I saw it.” I cried for days afterward. I’ve known ever since that I saw an illusion that day.

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Staying at Cecil Hotel for 4 nights…5 of my friends after trip was over confirmed we all had scary and paranormal experiences all 5 of us and that’s no coincidence. We decided to look up the history of that hotel and no wonder we didn’t even know. Months after our visit we hear about the story of Elisa Lam google it all. And now the hotel is called something else now to get back more customers. To think we also used their showers. So sad for Elisa.

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Not me, but my mom. When she was about 5/6 years old she was severely burned with hot water. As she ran towards the front door she nearly ran into a “man” that opened a black cloak as she ran toward him. She got scared and ran the other way. Drs later told her she could’ve died from the injuries. Death came for my mom but she wasnt ready to go!

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I was in labor for 30 hours while trying to give birth to my daughter, I pushed for three hours when they told me she wasn’t making it through my birth canal and we would need to have an emergency C section. They prepped me for surgery, got my husband ready and in to surgery I went. After my daughter was pulled out, I started hemorrhaging. I remember being cold and then all of a sudden a total warmth and calm came over me. I died on that table and the only thing that brought me back was my husband telling me to look at my daughter. That was 2 and a half years ago and I have the most amazing daughter!

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My grandmother looked out her front door one night and in the moonlight, she saw a baby’s casket on a stump in her front yard. She got scared and slammed the door and didn’t look out again. The next day, she received a call that a relatives’ new born had passed away the previous night.

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When we moved into our apartment, something felt off. It was a very old house turned into a duplex. I told my husband something didn’t feel right and he just teased me about it. I had a couple things happen (shoe moved across the floor by itself, I saw some shadows, stuff like that) but my husband experienced nothing… until one night.

We’re in bed and in the middle of the night I feel like I’m being watched. I roll over and see this figure standing in the corner of our room. It looked like a hunched over old woman with long hair. I laid there and just stared for a minute. That’s when my husband rolled over and asked if I could see her too. He was so freaked out. He’d never had an experience before so this was no territory for him where I was like “eh a ghost” and rolled back over. He didn’t sleep for a few days. I ended up cleansing the apartment a few times and it’s been calm ever since.

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I was walking down the hwy when I was 17 and found a stuffed cat and a magnetic letter C. I kept them both. A week later in that spot on the hwy I rolled my fathers F250, three times, going 90km. I crushed the roof down to the seat, except on my side it’s like there was a bubble around me. I got a cut on my arm and my hand, that’s it. I believe the letter C represented me my first initial and the cat for 9 lives.

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I lived alone with my young kids, my kids were asleep for the night, I was in my bed watching tv with my cat sleeping on my bed. My room is near the stairs. I heard what sounded like a man in work boots come running down my stairs…pause.. There was a loud knock on my bedroom door and it opened all the way. My cat was sleeping and looked up at the doorway, freaked out and went tearing out of my room. I ran out to check on my kids and they were still sleeping and I slept with my lights and tv on for the next several days.

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It happened to my great grandmother. In our small, rural NC area that we lived in, there was this older woman who just mean to everyone and was kinda a hermit. Back then, everyone thought she was a witch. She wanted my grandmother’s husband so bad that everyone in the community knew of her infatuation with him. And she hated my great grandmother because of it. Apparently, grandma went to the river one evening to wash clothes, and she was found later just wandering around, not knowing where she was or who she was. She couldn’t remember her husband, kids, anyone. This went on for years. Electric shock therapy, being institutionalized. None of it helped. And then one day, the “witch” passed away, and as soon as she did, my grandma suddenly remembered everything. I’ve been told this story since I was a child. Everyone who knew my grandma knew of the story.

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My grandma passed away and one of my uncle’s ended up taking over redoing her house but in his room that used to be her and my grandpa’s room he had his bed and everything in the same place. My mom and I went over to clean it up while they were at work and I was in the room and my mom(Mary/Maryann) was outside I heard “Marianna” just like my grandma used to call her. I freaked out cause I know I heard it so my mom came in and said “Sam, you heard that right? Someone called my name” I said “yeah, and it sounded like..”

“My mom” she said.

Ooh I got goosebumps and she told me to hurry up and finish picking up so we can leave.

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A friend asked me to come over one night because she was experiencing a lot of activity. I went over and as soon as I walked in I felt like something punched me in the chest and I got a splitting headache. We sat in her kitchen and tried to debunk everything and heard whispering, felt fingers on us. We asked for proof of the spirit if there was one and her new rice maker flew off of the counter, and the box and instructions flew off to the other side of the counter. I was going to sleep over but no longer wanted to sleep on the sofa by myself, so we both slept in her bed. When we woke up in the morning, it looked like someone had taken a sewing needle to my chest. It was covered in thin scratches that were lightly bleeding.