50 People On ‘The One Story That Gives Me The Chills To This Day’

1.

Pterodactyl_eyes:

My friend told me about something that happened to her when she was younger, about 8 or 9. She was walking home from school and got her key out to let herself in to the house. Her single mum worked and came home later on weekdays. As she reached up to put her key in the door her mum opened it, in dressing gown having left home sick. Instead of greeting her, she looked straight past my friend and immediately said “who are you?” My friend turned around and a man in a long coat hurried back down the path and down the street. Being ill that day had potentially saved her daughter from something potentially horrible happening to her.

2.

qyll:

Was talking to someone who was first on scene to the Virginia Tech massacre. He told me that although the sight of dead bodies was disturbing, what really stays with him was the sound of all the cell phones ringing from people trying to contact them.

3.

iceshard32:

I worked as a vet tech a couple of years ago, and this man came in to put down his old dog. Standard euthanasia protocol was used: get a basic history, ask if they want to be present, etc.

As a coworker of mine asked the do you want to be present part, he responded with “yes, because I lost both of my boys last week and I wasn’t there for them, and I’ll be damned if I’m not there to send off my last living family member.”

Both of his boys we later found out died overseas. After hearing this, our whole staff went into that our euthanasia room and just hugged this man and his dog several minutes past his dog moving on.

Out of my years in the field, I’ve never heard such a heartbroken man to lose his animal.

4.

youngappleby:

When I was 13 my Dad was taken to hospital and my mother joined him leaving me in the house alone sleeping. When they came back they noticed hand print on all the downstairs windows of the house and snow trodden in the porch. They searched the house an nobody was there. The next day we find out our next door neighbour was murdered. I know its not tat scary but when I think how close I came to possibly being murdered or worse it sends chills down my spine.

5.

RileyJohnGibbs:

My grandfather’s second wife was a sleepwalker, the kind that would get out of bed and do things like make a sandwich in the kitchen. My grandfather became used to it, and whenever he woke up in the middle of the night and she wasn’t in bed beside him, he would find her and gently lead her back to bed without waking her up, just as he had been advised.

But one night he wakes up and she isn’t lying in bed, but instead sitting on the edge of the bed, her back turned to him. He calls her name to ask what’s wrong, but she doesn’t answer, and he realizes she must be asleep. He can tell that she’s doing something, holding something in her lap, but he can’t see what it is.

He sits up, looks over her shoulder, and sees what she’s doing, still in her sleep: loading his revolver.

6.

fattyboombaladee:

when I was maybe 4 and my sister was almost 1, my parents had been divorced a few months, and my mother was driving us from Las Vegas to Wichita to see our grandparents. At one gas station on the way, this man came up to the car and told my mother “I hate to see a single mother travelling alone and I noticed we are headed in the same direction, do you want me to follow you for awhile to make sure you are safe?” She politely said, no thanks and drove off. at our next stop for gas, he again came up under the guise of “checking” on us, he had been following us since the last stop. While he was talking to my mother, his sport coat blew open and I saw a gun tucked in his pants. After she again told the man we were fine, she left and I told her what I saw. While she was driving, she wrote a note to give to the next gas station attendant saying who we were, where we were planning on spending the night, and that this creepy dude was following us and what he looked like. Could you please call the law in (i don’t remember what town it was) and have them waiting at the hotel?

When we got to the next stop, mom raced in and handed the clerk the note and sped off with us. We got to the hotel and the manager had the cops waiting in one room and gave us another room with a pizza and pop. the man showed up and asked if his “wife and kids” had checked in yet and what room were they in. The manager gave him the key to the one with the police in it. They questioned him and found out he was a convicted rapist and also had a warrant out, so he was arrested.

7.

prettyugly1:

When Chinese flag bearer and basketball phenom Yao Ming walked through the National Stadium during the opening ceremony of the Olympics, there was so much commotion where I was that I neglected to find out more about the little boy was that he was walking with.

It was Lin Hao, a nine-year-old who survived the deadly earthquake in Sichuan in May. It’s interesting how this tribute to the earthquake by opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou has been covered by the international press.

Many Western news outlets reported that Lin was an earthquake survivor, but they failed to mention that the little boy, who was attending the Yuzixi Primary School in quake-epicenter-Wenchuan County, not only survived, but after getting out of his classroom, went back into the rubble to pull two classmates out to safety.

During his rescue, he was hit by falling rubble and suffered injuries on his head and arms. It’s also been reported that while his classmates (10 survivors out of 32 students) were waiting for help, he encouraged them to sing songs to keep their spirits up. When he was asked why he risked his life, he said: “I was the hall monitor, it was my job to look after my classmates.”

8.

Eleminohp:

When I was in elementary school a student at my school was involved in a triple homicide suicide. His father murdered his mother, his brother, then him, then finally himself. For awhile after that I imagined being in that house during that event. It happened in the middle of the night while they were sleeping, according to the news story, but I know that after the first murder everyone in that house was awake. Everyone you knew and spent your entire life with is being killed all around you by someone you looked up to, and you have no where to go…it’s extremely terrifying to me. The child was like 10 or 11…very sad.

9.

Shady6669:

My grandma during ww2 used to steal potatoes and coal from nazis for her family. She was young between 12 and 16 I’m not sure. One day she noticed a few men standing near a fence a but paid them no mind since she had just stolen coal and potatoes. This happened for a few weeks her taking the same route and she noticed the men getting frail and weak so she snuck back later that evening and gave them some food. And continued to fore awhile ended up saving their lives and that is how my grandmother met my grand father who was a Russian solder being held prisoner. Camp was possibly breendonk but I’m not sure she passed a few years ago so I can’t ask. On a side note on her death bed the priest asked my grandmom what she wanted to be known as and she said a thief because of this story

10.

cahooter11:

Two years ago in 6 days I was in a car wreck and almost died. I was driving home late at night, fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into a tree on my driver side front door. I have no memory of what happened for the next couple of days, but I woke up in the ICU strapped to a bed with a respirator and feeding tube in me. I had broken bones in my skull, my collar bone, collapsed both lungs and ruptured my diaphragm. Every doctor I have seen since then looks at me in shock and tells be I shouldn’t be here. The chilling part of the story is how I was found. Some neighbors of mine were driving home late from dropping their daughter off at a bus that she was taking to camp where she was a counselor. The bus left late. It was delayed because another couple counselors were an hour and a half late. One of them was my best friend from elementary school. After they finally dropped their daughter off, they headed home and were driving down a secluded road near our neighborhood. The wife saw a car parked on the wrong side of the road, but couldn’t that there was any damage, because it was dark and on the opposite side of the car. They kept driving, until she thought she heard honking and convinced her husband to turn around. I was unconscious. The car was dead and the horn was found to not be working later. They didn’t know it was me until two days later. They saved my life.

11.

coleabaius:

When I was a boy scout, I got the filmmaking merit badge while at winter camp one year. In order to earn it, you have to complete a short film (no matter how terrible). It’s luck of the draw (naturally) when it comes to who is in your merit badge class, but since we were all in the woods, we decided a slasher flick would be a lot of fun. We wrote a script where a masked killer goes around stabbing people at a boy scout camp (we weren’t, you know, creative geniuses or anything).

There was a kid named Paul in the group who was pretty cool, got along great with everyone. He was one of those guy’s who is just naturally likable, but we unanimously voted to make him play the killer because he had this really creepy Peter Lorre eye thing going on. He did great, fake-stabbing a bunch of victims and being menacing enough for a movie produced by 12 and 13 year olds.

We edited the thing (buckets of fake blood, bad acting and all), and I forgot about it completely until 6 years later when I was a freshman at college and recognized Paul walking between buildings. I jogged over, we made small talk about each other’s Spring Break plans (since it was a week away), and that was that. Not like we’d kept in touch or anything.

Fast-forward a week, and I’m back home watching the news when I see a report about a young man who’s killed his mother, father and two family dogs and then lit their house on fire over the break. The police already had a suspect in custody, so the newscast flashed his picture and sure enough, it’s Paul.

12.

TurtlesDontLikePB:

Oh gosh so many. My Oma (grandmother in German) grew up in a small town called Wiesloch, Germany during the Holocaust and WWII. She rarely talks about that period of her life but when we ask she would say things like “Ya, I had friends who just disappeared. But we were raised not to ask questions.” However, the most horrific story I heard was when she told me she was playing by a railroad track near her home with some friends. At one point, a large freight train came by. She heard what she thought to be scratching and screaming, but not those of an animal because she had heard that many times before when the train had passed. This time it was different. So she ran home and asked her mom what that could have been or meant. She said that her mom just yelled at her to never ask questions like that again and to stay away from the tracks and talk to no one.

13.

prettysoitworks:

I was 16/17, and it was very common for my friends and I to go camping in the mountains, bring weed, beer, acid, whatever. I was always a big fraidy cat when it came to getting fucked up, so I usually abstained, parents warnings took to heart I guess.

This particular night most of my friends were tripping acid, while I was sipping a beer, enjoying the fire and whatnot, and a bunch of us girls decided to go off somewhere to pee. We were still pretty young and quite squeamish about the boys seeing us squat. (Hell I still am)
We stumble off into the woods and end up walking for quite some time, one girl was searching for the perfect spot, and she was super high, but we all just went along. We finally come to a small clearing and decide to pee there. Everyone pees and we set off back to camp.

One of my friends hears a low moan coming from the other side of the clearing, tells us to shhh, but we don’t hear it so we urge her to come on. She is intent on investigating, so I decide to go with her . It was really dark out. You could only see as far as the lanterns light hit, so we were off into the unknown.

Our light finally revealed a car. A brand new lookin Subaru, it was really sudden like, and kinda freaked us out so we scamper back to our friends screeching like lil 16/17 yo girls and set off back to our camp all freaked out.
We tell the boys about it when we get there and they convince us we had happened upon another camp site and make fun of us for freaking out.

5 years later, I am in nursing school and working as an admin asst in a labor and delivery hospital. I have made a really good friend at work and she and I hang out all the time. One night she comes over and we are drinking and she tells me her dad has been missing since ahe was in high school. She says he had tried to commit suicide a few times and her family figured that he succeeded, but no one ever found him. She secretly was hoping he just ran off to start a new life and maybe she would see him again someday.
Not very long after that, a man was found in a stolen subaru up on the mt where we used to camp, he had been there for years, through every season, freezing to hot, there was a hose from the tail pipe to the window, the man had commited suicide.

It made the news, and one of the guys from highschool called and reminded me of that night in the woods, the car was found not far from our usual spot, wasn’t that nuts? That was what we saw.

At work, my friend got a call,from her mother, the guy in the car was her dad.

We heard him moaning. We saw the car. If we weren’t such dumb shit little kids we could have done something. I watched my friend fall apart over it, but didn’t tell her about my experience in the woods. I have always felt so bad.

14.

man_with_a_big_gun:

When I was in my early teens, my parents used to go out dancing and left me alone on Friday nights. We lived in a rustic, soporific house, surrounded only by a desolate sawmill and a defunct car garage. The closest neighbor was about a mile away. I used this opportunity to throw heavy metal albums in their fantastic stereo and play them at an enormous volume. One evening, I put in Metallica’s … And Justice For All and went to the restroom in a small corner in the house. “Blackened” was blaring in the distance and it seemed as if the floor was shaking. I walked back into the living room and looked at the front door and I could see the chain on the door pulsating in rapid rhythms. I remember thinking “the bass on this system is incredible!” Then, during the middle of the song, the chain stopped moving.

15.

ashleighlynn:

In her early twenties, my mom managed a photography studio in a mall in Scarborough, Ontario. One day my mom is working alone and this guy comes in asking for a photo but he’s being a little weird about it, saying he needs a picture taken of his hip. They did a lot of injury photos for court cases so my mom assumes this is what he needs and starts loading up the camera. When she looks up, he’s got his pants totally off and he’s exposing himself. My mom starts laughing hysterically and tells him to get out, she doesn’t have time for this nonsense. About an hour later, a girl that was working at the denim store down the hall comes down to tell her about this pervert that took off his pants in the middle of the store, trying to expose himself to the female customers. They both have a laugh, he didn’t seem all that menacing, just (obviously) not all there. Two days later the girl comes running into my mom’s studio, pale as a ghost. On the front page of the paper is a sketch of the guy, with the title “Scarborough Rapist”. It’s pretty crazy to think that she was that close to getting attacked by Paul Bernardo in the peak of his rapist crime spree.

Find more creepy Thought Catalog reads here.

16.

deepseaforme:

A woman I dated who went to school in Missouri had some friends who went cave diving a lot. While diving one day, their line “fell from the ceiling” as she put it, and they were lost.

She said when their bodies were recovered, it was apparent they’d fought over the last of the air in their tanks.

17.

archiface:

My grandfather was in the Vietnam War. I remember he told me his unit was walking thru a dense forest, and he dropped his map. Bent over to pick it up, and the solider walking behind him took a bullet to the face. If he hadn’t dropped his map that would be him, and I wouldn’t be here.

18.

fuckUredditors:

One day when he was young, about 10 to 12 maybe, he was playing outside near a small river with a friend. He lived in southern Wisconsin, so it was probably cold as fuck. While playing, they notice something strange in the water; it’s a capsized canoe, with 2 guys who were probably fishing, hanging on for dear life in the freezing water. He says they had already turned sort of blue-ish and could barely talk. So the 2 kids get the men out of there and essentially save their lives. It’s a big thing in their town, there’s a story about it in the local paper and everything. Everyone is happy.

Fast forward about 5 years.

My dad is on his way to a concert in Chicago with one of his buddies (the same kid as above) in his new car. Of course they were young and stupid and it was the 70’s, so who the fuck wears a seatbelt, right? Well as they were driving past some bar, where there was some big party going on, a mobile home comes flying out of the parking lot out into the street. The driver obviously didn’t look at all and was probably drunk. My dad crashes his car head on into this trailer and totals his car. The fact that they weren’t wearing seatbelts saved their lives; the bottom half of the car was crushed (the crash propelled them forward/upward).
Luckily nothing happens to him or his friend. Not a scratch, only shock. Just as they get out of the car and try and catch their breath, the propane tank on the trailer explodes and the whole thing catches on fire. Stumbling out of the trailer come 2 guys in flames, screaming/moaning, skin bubbling, they die right there on the spot in frint of everyone (people from the bar had gathered round). Turns out these 2 guys were the exact same fishermen he and his friend saved 5 years ago.

This is all true by the way. I didn’t believe him at first, but he showed me the articles in the paper and his parents confirmed.

Tl;dr My dad experienced Final Destination IRL

19.

Nuova:

My family runs and lives on a large farm, and around summer each year we are often forced to work longer hours than normal in order to harvest hay for the livestock in addition to the other routine duties. Well, my dad was finishing up one of our neighboring fields and had just a few more bales of hay to go, so he decided to work through the night and be done with it. Around 2am he finished the last hay bale but noticed that it didn’t come out properly from the baler. He raises the arm of the tractor up as high as it would go, hitting about 10ft, to cast light on the bale. He exists the tractor and begins to approach the bale about 7ft from the tractors headlights. As he is removing excess twine from the bale he suddenly can’t see. Then the realization of what was happening started to creep into his mind. Something was standing between him and the headlights of the tractor. Waiting.

He came home several hours later, early in the morning, clearly disheveled. He told me the story, concluding that eventually it decided to leave. My dad said he stood in the newly restored light with his back against the hay bale for the rest of the night, unsure what to do. When the sun began to come up he circled the tractor and made his way home. He followed that by saying, “I knew almost immediately something wasn’t right. My mind wanted me to believe that a deer or one of our cow’s wandered in front of the tractor, but the lights were 12ft high.”

20.

spymachine:

When my uncle was four he visited his aunts home for the summer. There were really no kids around that were his age so he mainly just rode his bike around the neighbourhood to amuse himself. One day he rode a little too far and got lost, but luckily a car pulled over and told him that it was okay, he would take him back to his aunts house. So my uncle loaded his bike in the car and got in. The man started to drive, and my uncle, thinking it was one of his aunts friends, asked no questions. It wasn’t until they turned onto the highway that my uncle started to ask the man where they were going, that his aunts house wasn’t near the highway. The man didn’t say anything to him and kept driving until suddenly he pulled over to the side of the road and seemed to think really hard on something. He then turned the car around and dropped my uncle off at the entrance to the neighbourhood. My uncle realized years later that this man had attempted to kidnap him and at the last minute changed his mind.

21.

DeHart666:

I still don’t know if this story is true or not but, my brother’s old soccer coach had a college aged son who was kind of crazy. One night, he had a few friends over for some drinks and someone tried to break in to his house. The guy grabs his shotgun and fires a round in the air to scare the robber off. After that, the guy says to his friends “Do you guys want to see something crazy?”, cocks the shotgun, puts the barrel to his head and pulls the trigger, while thinking he only had one shell left in the gun. I heard this story when I was 8 or 9 and it still freaks me out today.

22.

spookyorwhat:

When i was around 17 I was out with a friend one Friday or Saturday night. Probably around midnight, I don’t remember exactly, I took him home and started my way back to my house. He only lived about 10 minutes from me, so it wasn’t a long drive.

I’m from a small town in southeast Massachusetts, and in the small town there was a scraggly looking middle aged woman who you would sometimes see walking around town. The rumor was that she was the town hooker. I don’t know if she actually was a hooker, but she sure looked the part.
Anyway, here I am driving home, and I see this lady thumbing for a ride on one of the back roads. I don’t know why, but at the time I decided it would be funny to pull over, wait for her to get to the car, then speed away. (I say I don’t know why I did this, because I was alone and this is more of something you would do with other friends present). Regardless, I pulled over and as she was almost at the car door, I see a big burly looking man running from the woods toward my car. I peeled out of there so fast. I have no idea what they were planning, but it was sure creepy at the time.

23.

Garaputo:

My mom and step-dads anniversary, after he killed himself with alcohol/vicodin overdose, she was sleeping on the couch and felt someone grab her head and kiss her on the forehead.

24.

unclebro:

One time a sailboat was found floating abandoned in the Mediterranean Sea. When the people who found the ship inspected it, everything was working and left on, but there was nobody on the ship. Then they saw fingernail scratches along the side of the hull. The people on the boat had stopped for a swim, jumped off, but forgot to put the swim ladder down. They were stuck in the water in the middle of the ocean because the floor of the ship was barely out of reach. They drowned from their own mild/stupid mistake.

25.

Im_Qwinning:

A 16 year old girl is house sitting for a family friend. Late one night when she is all alone she hears a weird noise coming from the basement. The noise won’t stop but because she is by herself she decides not to go down in the basment as fear begins to creep into her mind. She calls 911 and explains her story and tells them not to rush as it is probably nothing. Within two minutes several cops are at the door. Four cops make their way down into the basement and one stays with the girl outside. She hears yelling and moments later a deranged looking man is brought up the police. He was found sitting on the washer banging a machete between the washer and dryer trying to lure her down. She asks how they knew he was down there and they said when she called the police and hung up the phone the operator heard a second click. He was listening.

26.

Karmdown:

I always have weird dreams that come true, i kind of just assume its flukey and nothing more. But what really creeps me out is my mum calling me last year while i was overseas, I look at my phone and i have like 15 missed calls, and overseas mobile calls are f*cking expensive. So i’m shitting myself that someone has died. I call back and mum is crying, begs me not to go on an Alps bus tour because she saw it crash in her dream.

Next day on the news i see a crash of a tour bus, two people from the Hostel i was staying at died.

Nope, Just nope. And does that mean i inherited it from her?

27.

mrplatypusthe42nd:

Interesting story: My grandmother was used to hearing thumps in the night and assuming it was the cat jumping around, as he tended to do. Cat died, thumps went on unchanged.

28.

highqpics:

About 15 years ago I was 17 and in high school in Seattle. I hung out a lot with people who smoke or drank but didn’t really join in too often; my parents were ok with it but basically made me realize I didn’t need it. That didn’t mean I didn’t participate occasionally. One night, I was with a few friends from our soccer team. They wanted to smoke before we all had to go home since it was a school night. We went to Volunteer park on Capitol Hill, there are a lot of trees on the west side of the road there where you can go do things people don’t want to be seen doing. Everything was normal, giggling, excited kids smoking some weed. No big deal. I took a hit off the blunt but because my parents were picking me up I decided to go cop watch. I just wanted to hit it once, go home and play some video games, but still be Cool. No big deal. I told them I was going to go out and make sure no cops came. They might have payed attention or they might have not. Normal shit no big deal. At the park there are these evergreen trees that have these really low hanging branches that make it really easy to get 20+ feet up in them. Imagine a really fat, reasonable sized christmas tree, but without all the branches blocking the view. I climbed up one of those and relaxed and looked at the Space Needle, what a great night! Then I heard some branches snapping below me and I saw a guy standing there. He was staring where my friends were. I looked past him about 25 feet and there was another guy standing there, and a few more. I looked to my other side and there were more guys standing there, about 15 total in a semi circle around where I thought my friends were. This was about 11Pm, no reason for a group of them there. I didn’t move, this wasn’t some community cop shit, or even cops… I waited for what seemed like forever, slowly climbed down, and dropped and sprinted as fast as I could towards the greenhouse. About 50 feet away I saw my friends running out of the woods back where I thought they were, they said someone tried to grab one of them on the way out. The girl screamed as the guy grabbed my friend, and they all ran. No reason. So sketchy. I’ve heard about people disappearing from Seattle parks before, fuck that shit. Be careful high schoolers in Seattle just trying to have some fun

29.

assmonk3y:

This is an urban legend which has been circulating amongst students from my school who have gone on overseas exchange programs.

Basically, there’s a girl who was on exchange in a country and living by herself. One night, as she was walking back home after a late night out, she came across a pool of blood in the alley next to her apartment.

Getting abit worried at this point, she ran home and locked her doors and windows. Just a short while later, she hears a knock on her door and peeps to see who it is. It was a police officer.

She opens the door a little, leaving the latch on. “Excuse mdm, there has been a murder in the vicinity. I would like to ask you if you saw anyone suspicious on your way home earlier.”

Being in a foreign land, she felt a little afraid about the prospect that she might have to go down to the station for questioning. “no” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice anyone.” She didn’t mention the pool of blood which she has came across earlier.

So the officer thanked her and left.

A couple of days later, she was watching the TV in her apartment and there was news about this murder and that a suspect had been arrested.

Turns out that the police officer who came by did it.

30.

KazamaSmokers:

The story takes place one July morning in 1982.
I was late for my job as a fry cook at a country club on Cape Cod. As I raced my jeep over back roads in a rural part of town, I came around a tight bend in heavy morning fog. And there, standing in the middle of the road, was a man. Pale, and sweaty, he was wearing only a pair of shorts and a backpack.

I saw him only for a split-second, before I swerved and went off the road. But I’ll never forget the face. He stared straight ahead, looking me right in the eyes with a wide-eyed, maniacal look on his face. His mouth was open as if he was screaming, but there was no sound. I got out of the jeep and ran back looking to take a swing at the guy, but he was gone.

It wasn’t until ten years later that I saw him again. On TV. His name is Hadden Clark and he’s a serial killer. He’s the man I saw that morning in Woods Hole. I have zero doubt about it.

You don’t forget a face like that.

31.

birdablaze:

The night before my brother was supposed to be married he was driving home on a practically empty road. He stopped at a red light and over on his right was this really tall man dressed like an insane homeless person holding a huge styrofoam cup to collect change. There was something about him that caught my brothers eye and he decided to give him some money. While he was reaching in his pocket to get cash the light turned green. Just as he was pulling the money from his pocket, and three seconds into the light being green, a garbage truck ran through the light hauling ass with two cops right on his tail. And the homeless man was gone.

32.

PurpleChyGuy:

I took genocide as a class in my senior year of high school. We were lucky enough at the end to have a bunch of holocaust survivors come and speak to us.

One story stood out in particular. A man told us of how his life was saved by another prisoner. He was ruffling through some garbage to try and find something edible when a guard caught him. The guard forced him to kneel and he remembers the cold feeling of the guard’s pistol poking the back of his neck. All of a sudden, a thick fog rolls in out of no where. The guard is distracted for a moment and then the man heard a loud clang and rapid footsteps. The fog cleared as quickly as it came and the man saw a bloody shovel on the ground while another prisoner was running away at full speed. He then told us how he is broken and will never be whole until he sees the man again and thanks him.

Fast forward three stories. A man comes in and tells of all about a night where he went to go rummage through some garbage to find something edible. He sees another man doing the same in the distance and then sees him being found out by a guard and almost executed. He was afraid, but when a thick fog rolled in he saw a shovel near him and knew it was his only chance. He hit the guard on the head and ran back to his bunk without any spoils to hide. He then laments how he never saw the man again.

Needless to say, we all freaked out and started screaming that that the man he saved spoke only 30 minutes ago. The two men were brought together after nearly 70 years and break down crying while sharing a long embrace. Turns out they’ve been living only 4 miles from each other for the past 40 years.

33.

midlifecrisises:

I was playing house at my parents when I was 18 when they went on a summer holiday. I lived in an outhouse, never locked my room (figured it was safe, and the main entrance was where it was risky). On day three of being home alone, I visited the local ‘haunted’ house where a gruesome family murder took place in the 80’s. My friends were having a joke about how weird it would be something happened to me that night (like most poorly written horror films). I thought nothing of it…but grabbed my little brothers baseball bat and put it beside my bed anyway. I went to bed like usual, and pulled the curtain on the window (I can see straight through it from my bed). Anyway, I was asleep, but have always been a light sleeper. At around 3 am, I just knew someone was watching me and felt it. The silence was deafening, and I was struggling with trying to emerge out of my sleep. I was drowsy, and a part of me was yelling ‘it’s just a cat or something’, but was awake the second I heard the creaky front door open. I was frozen, my eyes open, but unable to move. I was in shock, or still in sleep or something. I saw a man in my room, stare at me, take two paces towards me…breathe…and after what felt like an hour, walk out of my room. I crawled off my bed eventually, mustering up the balls to grab the baseball bat, and crawled to the door.

The door was open. And so was the main house.

Nothing was stolen, but to this day, I have no idea what happened that night or why, but it was easily the scariest shit i’ve ever experienced.

34.

Grantme:

So when I was 13 (26now) my mom was dying of a form of liver cancer. We would talk for hours about what is heaven going to be like etc. I asked her what would be her last meal (stupid 13yr old talk) she told me lemon marrange (sp?) pie. The last few days she lost all will to eat or drink, and I was crushed because me and my dad brought her lemon marrange pie everyday. A day before she passed she told me, where even I end up that will be our code word. If it is possible I will tell someone that I want lemon marrange.

Fast forward to when I am 24, in Sea tac airport and this lady comes over and she explains that she is a medium, and she has no idea why but a lady wants a slice of the lemon marrange pie. I explain to her the story she validates some other things and continues moving on her way.

35.

Garrettcz:

The story of David and Catherine Birnie, an Australian couple who were serial rapists and killers. The idea that a woman would help her husband rape other women bothers me a lot, and has stuck with me since hearing the story a long time ago. It makes it so much more disturbing to me.

36.

Paintedlizard:

My mom used to bake bread and sell it at farmer’s markets. Since we didn’t have a large kitchen, she would rent space at the elementary school down the road. Baking was done after work on thursday nights, later is better so the bread was fresh the next day. She would bake in the kitchen, and the rest of the school was dark and locked up. One night the phone rang, and assuming it was my dad she picked it up. The person on the other end said. “You called?” She said that she didn’t, and told them they must have the wrong number. “Well i was in the shower when the phone rang, so i *69 when i got out, and the call came from here.” She ended up calling my dad and had him come keep her company, and she wouldn’t bake alone for a while after that.

37.

IRtej:

My cousins friend actually experienced this. She came home around 9 in the evening. Enters her appartment like she usually do, nothing suspicious going on. She’s been at work for like 12 hours or something and is dead tired. She turns straight to her bedroom, when she walks into the bedroom she noticed something under her bed, she stops and says to herself out loud. “Damn, i forgot to lock my bike.”

She leaves the apartment, calls the cops. The cops arrives and finds a man (Previous convicted rapist apparently) hiding under her bed.

38.

Tcry:

Pardon my lack of knowledge on this event. As I have not researched it. But a ship capsized in the Atlantic Ocean not too long ago, (assuming it wasn’t very deep where they went down, probably off the coast of somewhere) and three days later they send a diving team to recover bodies. They see something moving in the dark, and shine a light to reveal the cook. Alive. Breathing through air trapped in the overturned boat. He had survived three days in there. And when they got him out and recovered, he told them it was pitch black, and silent. Except, he could hear the fish eating the rest of the crew..

39.

thecelestialteapot:

A few years ago, a friend’s girlfriend at the time was driving home from seeing him. He lives in the country, and she lives in the suburbs. There was a truck next to her with a cattle trailer on it, and she looked up and saw a human female hand dangling out of one of the air slots near the top. She said she called the cops, and that they said she wasn’t the first person to call about it.

i don’t know if it was bullshit or if it was a prank or what ever happened, but it gives me chills thinking about it.

40.

Melodic_692:

A girl is playing in her room, when she hears her mother call her from the kitchen. She puts down her toys and rushes to meet her mother, when suddenly a hand reaches out of a cupboard and pulls her inside, while another hand is wrapped around her mouth to stop her from screaming. “Shh, please be quiet angel,” whispers her mother’s voice in her ear, “I heard it as well.”

41.

musicandlyrics1993:

My piano teacher’s (and close family friend) niece (Laura) was in a massive car accident with 9 other college students. She was in a coma for months with her family doting on her/talking to her etc etc. Well-there was another girl (Whitney) who died in the car accident, and was buried and her family mourned. Well, Laura and Whitney looked a lot alike and turns out that in the chaos of the accident they didn’t do dental records on the seriously banged up laura when she entered the hospital. And as Laura began to emerge from the coma she was asked to write her name and wrote “Whitney Cerak.” Turns out they had been switched and Laura’s family had been sitting with Whitney for months while their daughter was dead and buried under another’s name-and the Cerak’s got a phone call one day that their daughter that they had buried and mourned was alive. (Look up Laura Van Ryn/Whitney Cerak accident)

42.

jenesaisquoi:

The postsecret card that says “everyone I knew before 9/11 believes I’m dead.”

43.

evil_froggie_12:

I remember a few months back, almost a year ago I read a users comment about her and her younger brother:

She, roughly 12 years old, and her little brother, 3 years old, were playing in the play room and out of no where the boy says to his sister “I was in mommy’s tummy twice.” She looked at him and shrugged it off because that’s a random thing to say, but then he goes on to say “the first time, I wasn’t there for long. I was sick. They came and said I had to leave mommy, I told them no, that I like it here. They said I had to go now, but that I could come back.” “Then The second time was much better, I wasn’t sick anymore.” The sister just lets him continue playing as she goes to her mom and repeats the story and her mom starts to cry. Their mother had a miscarriage a few months before getting pregnant with the brother.

The OP of this story swore it was true and if it is, that’s fucking spooky. Who are “they.”

44.

Magma151:

I forgot the title, but there’s this creepy pasta of a man who stays at a hotel with the one rule that he cannot look into the unmarked locked room on the way to his own room. He looks through the keyhole and sees a woman sitting in the corner. He thinks about knocking, but decides to leave her alone. The next morning, his curiosity gets to him again and he looks through the keyhole. However, this time all he could see was a distinct red color. He assumed the woman knew he was spying on her and covered the keyhole with red cloth. He later went to the receptionist and confronted her about the room. The receptionist explains “a woman was murdered in that room, and many guests have reported seeing her ghost. She was white all over, except for her eyes. They were red.”

45.

elbowstoopointy:

I was driving through west Texas on my way to California and take a detour on 41 to see a friend out studying bats in Devil’s Sinkhole. I stop at the only gas station for about a zillion miles to top off my tank, use the bathroom and get a snack and it’s one of those rickety old gas stations from the 70s with old pumps where you have to prepay inside.

While I’m inside looking around at the snacks I see all the bags of chips and candybars are dusty and expired by about two years; the refrigerators holding the soda don’t even sound like they’re on and it’s absolutely sweltering inside, no A/C. I look up out the window and see one of the only two employees there circling my car, running his fingers along the edge of the trunk. Then he reaches over and tries the driver-side door handle.

I turn to the guy behind the counter and get pissed, “He’s trying to get in to my car!” He looks out at the guy now pulling on the passenger side door, looks me right in the eyes and says in a flat, matter of fact tone, “I don’t see him doing anything.” Then he stoops just enough for me to see him reach under the counter for something, and that’s when I felt myself click in to autopilot.

I flipped around and banged open the door, screamed at the other guy outside to get the fuck away from my car or I’d break his face, then somehow managed to work my keys fast enough to get in and peel out before the other guy could get out the door behind me with something in his hand. I floored it for the next 50 miles freaking out because I know I looked in the rear view mirror to check if they were getting in to the truck in the parking lot to follow me, but I couldn’t remember what I saw because my head was swimming from the adrenaline.

I called the police about 20 min later and they told me since nothing had actually happened that they weren’t going to “waste the gas driving out there.” I still shudder when I think about how the man in the convenience store never broke eye contact with me while he was reaching under the counter.

46.

TheUltimateSalesman:

Three guys drop acid. They hang out. The next day, their one friend is silent. He ignores them. No speaking. NONE. This goes on for a week. On day 7, the guy FREAKS out, runs out of the house screaming, and they don’t see him again for SIX months.

The guy finally shows up at the house one day six months later, knocks on the door, they let him in. They ask him, “WTF happened to you?”

Friend tells them that he thought he had killed them during the trip and they were HAUNTING him. He thought he had killed them.

47.

Locomotion15:

when I was in preschool, my parents were out and my siblings and I had a babysitter. At some point during the night, we could hear a knocking on the door. As soon as we would look out through the peep-hole, the knocking would stop. It continued even when my parents got home. We never figured it out and the babysitter never came back.

48.

areonmobasher:

A friend of a friend went with some girls in her sorority out to the Caribbean for Spring Break. One of the girls met a super suave guy at the club, went into another room to hook up, session was interrupted because the girls had to go back to their hotel. The girl thanked her sorority sisters because the guy kept trying to get her to come home with him. She and the guy, however, exchanged numbers. Within the next couple of days she develops a rash around her mouth. Meanwhile, her phone had been blowing up with calls and texts from this guy, still trying to get her to come over. Goes to a local doctor to get tested, the doctor starts to ask more and more questions about her recent sexual activity. She mentions the guy at the club.

Turns out that the bacteria that was causing the rash is only found in carcasses. The police were notified and got the contact/residential info of the club guy from this girl’s phone.

This guy’s house was full of rotting, dismembered bodies of girls that he had brought home, raped, murdered, and then proceeded to have sex with for days–some were weeks–after they had been killed. As if that weren’t enough, he would even eat some of the victims.

49.

p_i_see_you:

My husband and I were still in college, had a baby, and lived in a trailer house that my husband and his dad renovated. My husband was in the living room watching tv and I had gone to bed for the night. My daughter was around a year at the time and slept with us but she had fallen asleep in my husband’s arms while he was still watching tv. The next thing I remember waking up and seeing a shadow by my dresser. I looked around the room trying to see if it was my husband coming to bed and when I looked back, the shadow was by my side of the bed and it said, “Give me the child.” I couldn’t speak for a minute and then said no, and called my husband. As I hear my husband coming towards the room, the back door opens and then closes. I start freaking out saying that someone was in the house and it wanted the baby. He went to the back door but it was locked and told me that no one had been in the house and my daughter was asleep on the couch.

50.

7Raulphie:

Before my family and I moved to another state, my father went and visited the area to check on the progress of our new house which was being built. My father was there for a few days and was staying at some crappy Motel 6 in a shady area of town. His room was the last room at the end of the hallway on the top floor. In the middle of the night on the last night he was in town he is woken by the phone ringing in his room. He groggily answers. It was the front desk and they say something along the lines “Sorry to wake you, but we’ve been receiving a couple of reports about rooms being broken into and some stuff being stolen. We are calling to make sure you lock your door and are safe.” My father replies that he is fine and hangs up. He decides to go double check that he locked the door. As he sits up in bed he notices that the door to his room is ajar. Being spooked, he cautiously checks the room and finds that nothing is missing and no one else is in the room. He creeps to the door and peaks out. Sitting right outside his room on the window sill of the hallway window is his shaving kit. Creeped out of his mind, he quickly grabs it and locks the door. After he calms down a bit he calls down to the front desk and says “Hey, you just called me about the break ins around the hotel, and I just want to report that my room was broken into when I was sleeping, nothing stolen and I am fine. Figured you would like to know” The front desk replies, “You must be mistaken, we never called your room and we haven’t received any reports of breaks ins” Thought Catalog Logo Mark

image – Shutterstock

More From Thought Catalog