1. THE ‘WOODS’ KIDS
“I was watching my little cousin, we were at my grandmother’s in the middle of nowhere (less then 10 houses in the surrounding 15 miles). She was about 3 and was telling me about her ‘friend’, playing along with her I asked her where her friend lived.
She points to the woods outside I said ‘oh with his mommy?’ She looks at me and says ‘no, with woods kids’ I thought that was weird so I just walked away went to make some food and she follows In minutes behind and says randomly ‘there’s a lady…. she killed the kids…. they have to stay in the woods now.’ I always took it as something she must have overheard well watching tv with my grandparents or her mom. Still creepy as fuck.”
2. He Only Showed Up At Night
“‘I don’t want to go upstairs alone. The man in my room might be there.’
She explained she saw him in her room at night. I told her it was probably just her dad checking on her. She said no, because this guy was tall and skinny and her dad was short and fat. She was 3.”
3. That’s Just The Ghost
“I used to babysit my dad’s friend’s children. They were two, sweet little girls who were very easy to look after.
The only problem was their house. They used to make me promise that the ‘white man’ in the house wasn’t going to come and look at them while they were sleeping.
I eventually asked their dad what they might be talking about because they brought up the white man every time. He says, ‘Oh, that’s just the ghost we have in the house. Don’t worry about him’.”
4. The New Stepmom
“I was watching my cousin’s 7 year old, and my cousin had just gotten remarried. She wanted to tell me stories of her own after we read a book, and ALL of them included her brutally murdering her new stepmom. Stabbing her, ripping her limbs off, and throwing her into a pit of hungry dogs were just a few of the things she did to her stepmom in these stories. I asked her to give me a story with a happy ending instead and she said that those stories did have happy endings…”
5. Do You?
“I used to nanny full-time. The parents asked me to stay late (almost overnight) so they could go on a date that day.
I put all of the kids to bed and loaded up a movie the mom had suggested. It was a horror movie called the Babbadook.
Part of the way through the movie, I paused it because I heard the youngest coming down the stairs. She comes up to me, looks me dead in the eyes, and says ‘Do you want to die?’ Without hesitation, I told her ‘No, go back to bed.’
As soon as I hit play, the little boy (about the same age as their youngest) asks the mother ‘Do you want to die?’
I thought it was freaky, but I chalked it up to her maybe seeing the movie with her family already.
When her parents get home, I told her mother about it. She has never seen the movie…. Apparently she just does this sometimes while sleep walking.”
6. A Bioengineer In The Making
“I had a child tell me she wanted to jackhammer people to death and then build a playground out of their arms and legs…”
7. Little Creep
“Six-year-old boy got really close to my face and angrily told me he was going to pull out my eyelashes one by one because I wouldn’t let him watch a bad movie that came on tv. Around his parents, he acted like a saint and frequently lied and finger-pointed to get out of trouble. Little creep.”
8. The RoboBoy
“I had accidentally broken his recorder by not catching in time by the time it slid off the table
Boy I’m babysitting: ‘Hey, don’t break things. When you break things, you hurt feelings. You hurt my feelings. I thought we were friends.’
Me: ‘That was an acc-‘
Boy: ‘I am self-aware.’
The fact he pointed out that he was self-aware made me laugh and feel creeped out at the same time. Since then, he has been staring at me every time I have to take care of him…”
9. The Pit
“My god daughter used to talk of seeing the people under her porch and also seeing her ‘brother’ who was stillborn but the creepiest thing she’s ever said was when she was 5 and looked straight at me and said ‘your master wishes to see you in the pit’ and then turned and skipped away, the pit is what her parents call hell.”
10. Please Don’t Interrupt Us
“Put the nephew down for a nap. Heard him making a fuss in his room so I went to talk him back into a nap. He’s sitting in his bed, staring at a wall. I asked him to lay back down. He says, ‘Don’t talk to him while we’re playing.'”
11. A Very Specific Date
“The little girl I was babysitting (who I had never met before that time) ran up to me, pointed at my face and said ‘YOU’RE GOING TO DIE ON MAY 27th!’…. she never clarified what year though. This was about 10 years ago.”
12. Commuting
“I like when my mom drives me to school because I get happy whenever I see the dead animals laying around.”
13. Summer Camp
“I worked at a summer camp and was in charge of a cabin of twelve girls around the age of 11 for weeks at a time. During one session I had a camper that kinda scarred me (let’s call her Susie). Susie would wake up in the middle of the night bawling and my co-counselor and I would take turns trying to soothe her back to sleep. This would happen many nights throughout her two week session. She had to be pulled out of her afternoon activities a couple times too so she could calm down.
She was a bit of an outcast in the cabin and we took the dramatic breakdowns as issues with self-esteem or frustrations over trying to fit in. Homesickness is always a possibility too. She had an intelligence and quirkiness about her that made her well-loved by the staff at the camp, but sometimes her sense of humor was difficult for campers to understand. We did the best we could to try to acquaint her with the other girls in the cabin.
One night before bed Susie began to sob again, honestly quite violently this time. I took her outside and she was dry heaving. I kept asking her what’s wrong and if she missed home and just trying to figure out how to help. It was time for the other campers to go to bed so I took her on a walk, hoping it would calm her down. As I’m holding her hand and rubbing her back, I just keep telling her that it’s going to be okay. She looks me dead in the eye and says ‘I see him.’ I ask who. Susie says ‘the man.’ I say ‘Who, honey, who do you see?’ She says the ‘the man in the dark.’ And she gets so worked up she begins to cry again. I try to calm her down again and she goes on to explain to me that she sees this dark figure sometimes and it gives her a bad feeling. I asked her if he talks to her and she said no. But she did say that he makes her feel sick sometimes and that that’s the reason she cries. I asked if her parents knew and she said yes, so I told her that she can always come find me if she ‘sees him’ again and I’ll make him go away. It was near the end of her session, so we didn’t have anymore major incidents after that.
Part of me really hopes that she’s making it up. I can’t stand the thought of a child being haunted by whatever she sees, whether it’s truly there or not.”
14. No One Would Ever Know
“While babysitting a little girl. The girl looked at my mom and said, ‘I could kill you right now and nobody would even know.'”
15. The Sandwich Coverup
“Was in the kitchen making a PB&J sandwich for the kid, and he comes in and sits down. He seems to look like he’s thinking about something and then he looks at me dead in the eyes and says ‘If I killed somebody would anybody know it ever happened if I just ate the body in a sandwich?’ I hid the knives from him after that.”
16. Don’t Bring Up Wolfy
“Babysat my nieces one summer. One afternoon I was pushing the younger one on the swing while the older one was dribbling a soccer ball or something. I was pulling the one hand pushing the kid, other hand scrolling through Twitter move when all of a sudden my niece gets off the swing and hurried to the house. I asked what’s wrong as I thought she might’ve been hurt or something, and she just said ‘I’m going inside, Wolfy is in the tree’ (neighbors tree hung into my brother’s yard). Shook me up a bit but I just kind of let it go. When their mom came home I brought it to her attention, she had a look of ‘not again’ come across her face and said, ‘if she mentions Wolfy again, just tell her mommy made him go away’ weirded the fuck out I then proceeded to drive home in an hours worth of traffic.
I brought it up to my mom and she even said, ‘don’t bring up Wolfy around her, that’s something your brother and sister-in-law have been dealing with for quite a while.’ This thing goes deeper than I imagined. I’m so curious to ask her about this Wolfy when she’s significantly older, to see if she even remembers him.”
17. BEING CREEPY PROBABLY SAVED HIS LIFE
“I baby sat for a single mom down the road. She was going out with her new bf. Cute great 5 year old boy, though very timid. I myself was 15 at the time.
Nights going fine, we decide to do some arts and crafts. He gets up and runs over to grab some scissors and runs back. I say ‘hold up slow down, you shouldn’t run with those it’s bad and dangerous.’ He instantly drops the scissors and starts sobbing, turns around and defeatedly heads towards the kitchen.
I’m completely baffled and follow him to the kitchen. I say I’m confused and what’s going on? He points to a drawer and through sobs over 20 seconds he manages to struggle out ‘it’s sob in sob there.’ It’s a silverware drawer, but prominent on the top is a large knife which I can see some flecks of blood on. I turn around to him and he’s taken his pants off. On his legs I see countless cuts, some scars looking years old, some only a day or two old.
So I’m a weird mix of confusion, fear, pity, and sadness. He had been cut on as punishment for any little thing he ever did wrong. I close the drawer and kneel down and tell him I’m so sorry I would never hurt him and to put his pants back on. It takes maybe twenty minutes for me to console him to stop crying and calm down and believe that I’m not going to cut him and this isn’t a test.
I get some treats for us, let him choose a tv show, and sit him down on the couch. I say I need to make a quick call, but I’ll be right around the corner and back asap. He agrees, and I call the cops. Non emergency though so it’ll be a while. I let them know he’s still very shaky and I’d like to hang up and go be with him. I hang up, but before I do I decide to deadbolt all the doors just in case.
Lucky for me too, because mom gets home before the cops. I give the kid my discman and headphones and send him up stairs so he can’t hear any of the ensuing unpleasantness. I go to the door and tell her she’s not getting in until the cops arrive. She freaks out, screams at me, and pounding in the door yelling to be let in, ordering the kid to let her in or ‘it’ll happen’. She goes around to all the doors and tries them.
Just as she grabs a brick and approaches a window, the cops pull in. She drops the brick and goes to them in hysterics, claiming I threatened to hurt her boy and I’m doing terrible things. I open the door and approach. Cops yell at me to stay where I am, one of them runs up to me and grabs hold. I do not resist and explain the situation. Half way through mommy screams at me ‘LIAR! You did you, you monster you hurt my boy!!!!’ Other cop manages to get her to stop screaming at me, and I convince my cop to step further away so I can finish.
Cops converse, and tell me I’m going to be cuffed and put in the cruiser until medical services get there to inspect the child. I successfully argue that mom and son should not be alone together. Mom is belligerent ‘you have the culprit all cuffed you can go now throw the book at that monster why are you still here’ the entire wait. Medical gets there, inspects the boy, I’m released with apologies and the mom takes my place in cruiser.
All that and I didn’t even get paid.”
18. Mr. Dies
“I have a nephew that always had an imaginary friend named Mrs. Diles. He would always talk to her and tell us about her. Then one day he saw a picture of an aunt that passed away at a young age, and said ‘That’s Mrs. Diles!’ Creepiest thing I’ve ever been a part of.”
19. Five Miles From Any Other House
“I was playing with the kid (2 years old) outside in the snow and it started to get cold so I picked them up and was carrying them back inside when they pointed at the tree line and asked me: ‘Who’s that?’ The house was five miles away from any other houses at a pretty secluded spot. There shouldn’t be anyone there. I still don’t know what’s worse, that the kid was playing a creepy joke on me (they were only two), or that there was genuinely someone in the woods.”
20. Look At The People
“When I was babysitting my nephew I was holding him up on the deck just after dinner. He looked to a dark part off the side of the deck and pointed and said, ‘Look at the people! I said ‘buddy there is no one over there,’ to which he replied ‘oh yes there are’ while gesturing at individual spots in the yard. I did not sleep well.”
21. Axe Time
“I was watching a neighbor, she was probably about 5 or so at the time. I tucked her into bed, then told her it was story time. She looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘No, it’s axe time.’ She took the book from my hand and hit me in the neck with it.”
22. “older children”
“Not me, but my sister when she about 15, was called by a neighbor to do a babysit. He asked her if she did babysit for older children, and she was fine with it (she is used to do babysit for kids and even older people who need help). She knew him as a neighbor of the guys she was doing babysitting a few times a month, so she thought it was cool.
When she arrived, he told her to come in and that he will bring the baby out. After 10 minutes she didn’t understand where he went, he came out dressed as a baby, and started acting like one.
She freaked out and run back home. Our father called the police. The guy moved out of the neighborhood the next week.
My sister is now a lot older and married, and she still freaks out if you mention babysitting.”
23. She Came At Us With A Knife
“14 year old me along with my best friend were paid $20 to watch a 7 year old girl for the night… Well her mom didn’t tell us her child was insane. She grabbed a BUTCHER KNIFE chased us with it, then proceeded to open the door and run through the apartment complex screaming she was going to kill everyone and herself.
We finally got the knife away from her with the help of a neighbor. We were terrified for her and us. The mom finally showed up, acted like nothing was wrong, gave us $15 because she had to leave her date early and had the audacity to tell us to come back the next night to watch her. We ignored her after that. As a parent now, I feel even worse for that child, she must’ve been put through hell in her short life! I hope she’s in a good place now.”
24. The Sign Of The Devil
“‘Do you know what the sign of the devil looks like??’ Then proceeds to draw the upside down star symbol for me as a gift.”
25. She Knew About The Brother
“I babysat a little girl quite a few years ago. One day we were sitting down having lunch and she looked at me and asked when her little brother would be able to play. I was very confused as her mother wasn’t expecting and she was an only child. A few months later her mom announced she was pregnant. When the gender was revealed a while later, it was a little boy. I was a bit freaked out.”
26. All Planned Out
“Three year old boy walked up to me, stroked my cheek and smiled before saying in an eerily calm voice ‘I’m gonna kill you with a stick.'”
27. Getting Back At Dad
“When the child I was looking after set fire to his bedroom while his brother was asleep in there and laughed and laughed as he watched me try to put out of the fire that was spreading round the room.
He was jealous his dad was out with friends ‘Now dad will have to come home.'”
28. The Bonfire
“Once at a Fourth of July party with about 10-12 younger kids the adults went into the barn to get some more ice/alcohol/maybe smoke a joint and left me and a few of my friends to watch the kids. We had a small bonfire going and we were just basically supposed to make sure nobody fell into it. At one point a couple of them were getting too close to the fire so I told them to back up a little bit, and one of the older kids (maybe 7 or 8) just looked at me and said ‘I’m going to kill the littlest one.’
I really didn’t know what to say to that so I just let him be.”
29. He made me fear for my unborn child
“At 18 I babysat a 19 year with a traumatic brain injury and his 10 year old brother. The 19 year old was actually fun to talk to. He was smarter than his family gave him credit for. They had a super fucked up family.
It was the 10 year old who creeped me out though. One day when I was babysitting he was showing me all of his stuffed animals. They had all been stabbed. When I asked him why he had murdered a bunch of puppies and super hero plush dolls he said ‘sometimes I just need to…It makes me feel better.’ Everyone, including his mother told me that I was overreacting but I knew something was wrong with him.
He was diagnosed bipolar after I called the police when he pulled a knife on his mother, held it to her throat until the police took it away from him. I honestly believe if I hadn’t been there he may have killed her. I had to stop babysitting him when I was 7 months pregnant because he did not like the idea of my baby. He made me fear for my unborn child and that was while he was on bipolar meds. I honestly think he may have been schizophrenic.”
