30 Scary Home Alone Stories That Will Remind You To Double Lock Your Front Door 

1. One night when I was about 12 or 13, my parents were gone for a while and I was just staying up really late (past midnight) on my desktop computer waiting for them to come home.

Like most people, I had been told a million times not to talk to strangers on the internet but about half my friends list on MSN were people I had never met before so I was just chatting with a bunch of them.

Out of nowhere, one of my online friends had told me exactly what I had been doing the past hour or two. Eg, what I was eating, drinking, playing with, when I had gotten up last…. Things I hadn’t mentioned in chat.

I instantly got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. My desktop was set up in front of a big window so as far as I knew, this person I had been talking to (that was supposed to live in a different country than me) had found my address and been watching me through the window.

Turns out, he had somehow hacked into my webcam (I always left it plugged in even though I had been warned not to when I wasn’t using it) and had been frequently watching me through it whenever he wanted.

It’s been 10 years and I still have all the cameras on my devices covered in thick duct tape.

2. I was about 8 and I was taking the trash outside after the sun went down, when a hand reached from the side of our back deck and grabbed my leg trying to yank me. I screamed very loud and they let go and I ran inside.

3. I was a kid (around 10 yo) and I was babysitting my 7 yo sister.

We grew up near an insane asylum, and every now and then we’d get an “escapee” in our yard. They’d walk off the grounds, and head through the woods toward the nearest big town. They’d get about a mile to our place and realize walking 40 miles to that town was probably not happening. So they’d ask to use the phone to call and get picked up by the hospital. This happened every now and then, but this was the first time it happened when I was home without my folks.

The woman who arrived in our driveway wanted me to call the hospital to pick her up. But she also asked me if I had some matches, presumably to light a cigarette. I ushered my sister into the house and locked the door as I called. The woman was kind of half screaming/half moaning, “Matches… I need matches!” until they came and picked her up. I’m sure it was just for a cigarette but it also could have been to burn us alive, so I didn’t give her any.

4. I had just moved into my first apartment. It was around 8:30PM and I heard the doorknob moving like someone was putting a key in it and turning and knocking. At first I got really excited that my then boyfriend was home, but then realized it was only 8:30 and he was due home from work around 10:30.

So I looked out the kitchen window and didn’t see his car or anyone’s car I had known parked outside, that’s when I panicked. The doorknob kept moving for a few more seconds and then stopped, a few minutes later they had some piece of metal they were sticking between the door trying to open the door. I freaked out at that point and locked myself in the bathroom with a knife and called 911. They tried to pry the door open for about 3 minutes before they stopped.

The police surveyed the area and found an elderly man roaming around with a knife and a crowbar. He used to live in that apartment and he wanted his stuff back that we stole when we moved in, I was told he was really delusional.

I’m so thankful and glad I didn’t answer the door once I realized it was no one I knew. To this day my heart stops when someone knocks on my door.

5. So this took place in my backyard when I was a kid. My mom had made a tree swing by putting a large log across two trees that were split at the top in Y-shapes. A rope hung down from the middle of the log and there was a little wooden slab to sit and swing on. I was out there swinging away when suddenly before I knew what had happened; I was pulled backward and found myself laying on the dirt. I looked up just in time to watch the log that was holding the swing split and came crashing down. I had used this swing a billion times and where I landed wasn’t even reachable at maximum swinging capacity. I looked up and no one was around. The feeling of being pulled back is permanently logged in my brain.

6. I live in a cul-de-sac. My bedroom is on the second story. I woke up one night around 3 am to go to the bathroom. I knew we were expecting a LOT of snow. I looked out the bedroom window to see the accumulation. It was deep! Higher than the curb. Like a white blanket across the cul de sac. I decided to get some water, so I walked downstairs, turned on the light – went to the bathroom and got water. Was downstairs maybe four minutes. I went back to my bedroom, all lights were out again and I looked at the snow one more time. Within those FOUR minutes – there were now FRESH footsteps leading from my house, across the cul-de-sac and disappearing behind my neighbors house!

7. Once I was alone watching TV and the door behind me closed AND locked.

8. Lived out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods and corn and wheat fields. I was home alone one night and decided to step out on the porch for a cigarette. I’m about halfway done, take another drag and when I blow out the smoke it rolls around a face about a foot away from me. Needless to say I tossed the cigarette and nopped back inside and locked the doors.

9. House sitting / baby sitting for a new neighbor. She was a single mom from the east coast, moved to Indianapolis. I was a 6th grader. All I had to do was sit in the house and do my math homework while she was on a date. Her 2 year old baby was sleeping in his crib / room. Around 9pm I get a call and answer. It’s some man who only asks “who are you?” I say I’m the babysitter. Then he starts asking all these questions about where the mom is and who I am personally. I get scared and hang up and call the mom and let her know. The guy calls back and then just starts saying the address I’m at. Then asks if the baby is okay. When I say yes he says “how can you be so sure when he’s that close to a window?” To which I just go “IM JUST THE BABYSITTER AND AM TRYING REALLY HARD ON MY MATH HOMEWORK AND NOW IM SCARED AND IM ALSO FAILING MATH.” Basically a mental breakdown happened. 5 minutes later the mom shows up and explains it’s her ex husband who found her. She hands me a wad of cash and excuses me. Idk if the guy was in the bushes or calling from Massachusetts or what… it was scary.

10. I was laying on the chair with my eyes closed but I wasn’t really asleep. I heard a woman whisper my name in my ear and she told me that I HAD to get up now. I swear I could feel her breath as she talked. I got up and there was no one there.

11. Was asleep in the living room on my day off when a suburban came crashing through my kitchen. Dude was drunk and high, had taken his grandfather’s suburban and left a trail of destruction through the neighborhood for 2 blocks. 10+ vehicles hit, my house, 2 mailboxes and tore up multiple yards until his SUV was disabled from hitting a Camry. Police ended up busting the window and dragging him out half naked.

12. In fall 2016 I moved into half of a really old house. It was built in the 1880s, a stones throw from the original campus of Indiana University, which is now a park filled with homeless people and drug addicts. The owners basically turned it into a weird duplex. My friend had lived in it right before I moved in and he claimed that it was haunted, but I didn’t really believe him because he was a bit of an odd guy.

Anyways, the layout of the house was weird. You walked in the door and were in a living room type space, and then you kept walking and there was a doorway to a bedroom, and past that was the kitchen. No doors, only door inside the apartment was to the bathroom and one that led to the shared basement.

So, my first night there was uneventful. I was a little uncomfortable because I hadn’t lived by myself in a long time and was just feeling lonely and on edge. I stayed up late and then eventually fell asleep, but I woke up again around 3 in the morning. Cliche, I know. What woke me up was what sounded like a group of drummers were drumming on every flat surface of the living room. It went on for awhile, and I was completely terrified. It was just a cacophony of sound. After about 2 or 3 minutes I finally gathered up the balls to get up and check on it, and as soon as I passed the threshold to the living room it just stopped. Nothing happened the rest of the night but I didn’t get much sleep.

Couple days later a friend was visiting and he was about to leave. We were standing by the front door next to my bookshelf and I told him about how I was having trouble sleeping, and the story from the first night. As I was saying this a book threw itself off the bookshelf and onto the floor 3 feet away. It had to fly past the dresser the shelf was perched and landed between the two of us. He just gave me a creeped out look and said he had to go, I don’t blame him.

Eventually I asked the guy in the other half what was up, as he had lived there for 8 years. He told me that no one stayed longer than a year and they all reported the same shit. For whatever reason, he said nothing ever happened on his side. Doesn’t make sense, but there it is.

13. This is my sister’s story, we laugh about it now cause it’s crazy how our parents brushed off how serious this was in hindsight.

She had gotten home from high school and was all alone, some guys came and tapped at the gate, where I live you do occasionally get people knocking and it will either be Jehovah witnesses, or people saying they’re raising funds for a recovery program they’re in (or lying about being in) or people selling something, that sort of stuff.

She couldn’t be arsed so she just ignored them as she sat in the living room, after a moment of silence she hears a BANG and the garage door rolling up, she runs to the garage and screams as she see’s the two guys inside! They had been scoping out houses looking for empty ones to rob. The guys luckily just grabbed the two bikes in the garage and booked it. My mom mostly complained about the stolen bikes when she got home, but hey, way better that they took those rusty old things than ransacked the whole house or done something to my sister.

To this day it’s why I go to the door when people tap at the gate, I rather tell them “No thank you” or “not right now” and have them know the house isn’t empty just in case it’s someone scoping out homes.

14. When I was about 13 I spent the night over at my cousins house. We were home alone for the night and stayed up late playing video games. I remember he left the room to use the restroom. I must of been playing something good because I was sitting on the edge of the bed up close to the tv. As I played by myself I felt my cousins come back in the room from behind me and he laid back down on the bed. Gave me a little bounce as if he had jumped on, bed squeak and all. When I turned back to talk to him he wasn’t there. He was still in the restroom. I look down on the bed where I thought I had felt him and there was an imprint on the bed coming back up, like if someone had been there and were just coming off of it. I have far more stories about that house, but that’s definitely one time I felt the most shaken.

15. A couple years ago I was home alone, husband traveling out of state. I put on the news on the Samsung Smart TV in the living room, set the remote on the coffee table and went into the kitchen next room over to make dinner. After a few minutes I noticed I don’t hear the sound of the news anymore, and I thought maybe the signal went out or the tv timed out and shut itself off.

I come back into the living room and the TV screen is showing a picture of a couch in a living room… my living room. Takes me a minute to realize the camera in my tv has been activated and it’s showing a live video of the room.

The remotes were still on the table so no chance the dog accidentally stepped on them and pushed buttons or anything.

A few days later news broke that Samsung smart tvs had a hacking issue.

Guess the real mystery is how often I was spied on before i put tape over the camera…

16. I was watching a horror movie/ can’t remember what one now but in it was a scene with lots of crows dying around a farm house flying at the windows- smacking into them annnnd guess what the hell happened! A damn bird smacked into the window during that movie scene. I almost shit my pants and was covered in goose bumps.

17. It was January in Minnesota. There was about a foot of snow on the ground and my parents were out at a bar and my brother was at a friends house but would come back later. I was in my living room watching tv and I heard a small knocking coming from the basement. So I walked down to investigate all over the basement to find nothing. Not thinking much of it I walk back upstairs to the living room to continue watching. About 5 minutes later I hear a loud crash from the basement and what sounded like a door opening. At this point I was pretty worried. I started to make my way down the stairs terrified and as I went down I thought maybe my brother was home without me knowing so I called his name. Nothing. I called again, and nothing so I kept slowly moving down the stairs only to find that there were drawers open in desks, boxes opened, and a few plastic bins and containers all knocked down and tipped over but worst of all, my back glass door wide open with footprints leading out the door. I shut it, called my parents and when they came, my mom called the police while my dad followed them. According to him, they went over my fence, and to the road behind my house where they stopped. My guess is he was picked up, but we and the police never found out if it was planned or just a random house they picked to rob. Absolutely terrifying.

18. When I was a kid and my parents first started letting me stay at home by myself without a baby sitter the large stereo we had in the finished part of our basement just turns on and starts blasting music. It was after midnight, the music was insanely loud so there was no ignoring it so 8 or 9 year old me had to go down into the basement and turn it off. Everything you’re not supposed to do in a horror movie I did and I survived but every light in the house stayed on until my parents got home later that night.

I still don’t know why it turned on but I messed around with it a lot so I must have turned on some sort of alarm or timer or something earlier that day. That’s what I’m choosing to believe anyway.

19. I was watching TV on the couch with the dog around noon or so. Suddenly she perks up, the hair on her back stands on end, and she begins snarling at the corner of the room. This dog, who was a previous abuse victim and scared of her own shadow, hesitant to ever bark or attack, was in a position to lunge.

Right at that moment I hear clear, defined footsteps walk from my roommate’s room across the hall, right in my line of vision. No one is there but I’m looking directly at the source of the sound. The dog is on the defensive but her tail is tucked between her legs at the same time. Immediately following this the room got really cold for a few seconds and it took her a while to lay back down.

Never had any other paranormal experiences in that house nor really ever in my life (the exception being a house I nannied in for a while) The suddenness of it really freaked me out.

20. All the doors in the apartment slammed shut at the same time. I took a walk around the neighborhood until my roommate got home.

21. It was raining heavily outside. I was sitting on one the chairs, looking out the window. And then suddenly, I heard something walking on the floor above me. I thought it was just a sound my mind was creating because yeah, I was already scared being all alone at home. So I ignored. About 5 minutes later, I hear someone knock on the window. I thought maybe it was a bird who hit the window or something. But then, suddenly, this huge floor lamp fell right on me. And I sat there for solid 10 minutes, trying to understand what exactly happened. The lamp was perfectly fine. I still don’t understand how It fell. Definitely the creepiest “alone moment” of my life.

22. One time when I was about 8, back when kids were allowed to run free range in our country neighborhood. I came back early from playing with some neighbors and went to sleep on the couch as I was tired from running rampant. My parents thought I was still at the neighbors house so they left to go to the store.

When I woke up, it was dark and the power had gone out. I climbed off the couch and started calling for my mom when I started hearing noises from the basement which I never went down to anyways because it scared the shit out of me at that age.

It was a scratching noise, like something with claws was dragging against the concrete floor.

Naturally I was scared shitless so I ran back to the couch, climbed into the hole underneath the cushions and waited until my parents got home. It only took them 20 minutes but to an 8 year old scared of being eaten by some basement monster, it felt like hours.

23. Was sitting in our living room watching TV one night and no one else was home. In the kitchen we have a refrigerator that has dual doors to open and a lot of decorations all over it including a small magnetic chime thingy.

I’m sitting there when i hear the chimes ringing slightly so I mute the tv and listened thinking maybe a family member was home. Nothing happened so I turn the volume back up and keep watching TV. A minute later I hear what sounds like someone sneezing in our kitchen and it didn’t sound like any of my family voices. I tensed up and thought someone had broken in our home.

I’m shaking at this point but I’m being quiet and listening. A few moments go by and I hear the refrigerator doors open and then slam shut so hard I can hear glass jars inside it rattling. I ran in the kitchen ready to whoop someone’s ass and there was nothing. Told my family about it and they said I was just paranoid but we’ve had guests come over to the house and say it feels weird in there

24. I’ve had some woman walk up to my door when I was a kid at midnight and start screaming and knocking on my door. All of the doors were locked but she eventually just lied down and fell asleep on my porch.

25. I was home alone when I was like 9 or 10 (whichever you are in 5th grade). It was literally the second day my mother allowed me to just walk home from school, rather than stay at daycare.

Phone rings. Voice on the other end asks for David. I tell them sorry, wrong number. As a weird but relevant aside, we got constant wrong numbers when I was a kid because our home phone line was one digit off from H & R Block (Tax prep service), so I had developed a sort of standard cadence to wrong number calls. It almost always went:

“H & R Block?” “Sorry, wrong number.” “Oh, I’m sorry.” “That’s ok!”

So I’m on the line, waiting for him to say “Oh, I’m sorry.” Instead, he starts yelling that he needs to speak to David. He knows David is there. I tell him I have two Uncle Davids, but neither are there. The guy starts cursing and ranting in what, in hindsight, was pretty clearly driven by meth.

So I’m already pretty spooked, having never really encountered a fully crazy person in my life, and then he starts describing my house. He starts telling me that it’s white with brick pillars on the green porch, red doors, and with a white dog in the backyard. He concludes the call with “I know you’re lying, and I’m gonna come get your ass.”

In the next thirty seconds, I rush to get a knife in the kitchen, call my mom, and look frantically out the front of my house.

Then there is a banging/kicking at the door. I screamed at a pitch I didn’t realize I could, and I ran into the bathroom (only locking door) and stayed there until my mom got home. When I heard the garage door open and my mom call out for me, I started sobbing and ran out to her, knife in hand.

When I got older, I found out from my mom that the Uncle David the guy was looking for was a pretty bad drug addict for years, and that’s why I hardly ever saw him. He probably gave someone he owed money to a bad address/number.

Thanks Uncle David!

26. SO was out of town on business, so I treated myself and ordered in from my favorite restaurant. Delivery guy arrived, and insisted he had to come into my place to deliver the food and take payment. I had to loudly refuse this multiple times (in the hopes a neighbor would hear me), and he kept insisting. Finally got him to process my payment in the hallway, but he was muttering under his breath the whole time. Scared the hell out of me – I double-locked the door when he left and sat up all night feeling uneasy. Wish I had reported him to the restaurant, but I was too shaken to think about it.

27. I was home alone one night in middle school. I was in my room (which is right above our kitchen) watching TV. I had already shut all of the lights off down stair cause I was eventually going to fall asleep and didn’t want to get yelled at for leaving the lights on. So I am laying in my bed the family dog (a Chesapeake bay retriever)was lying next to me when I hear cabinet doors open and shut. It wasn’t like they all opened at once and then shut but more like one after another for a few seconds. I freeze and look at the dog (who at this point was an old lady) who perked up and looked at me. I peak out my window that over looks our drive way and didn’t see anything. Now I didn’t think anyone was in the house because while the dog was lazy af she was a great guard dog and she would have responded if the door opened or whatever. So after a few seconds the dog gets up and starts moving towards the stairs and I decide to follow fully confident that if anyone was down there she would scare them. I grab my softball bat and my cell phone and follow her downstairs. As we come downstairs I notice the lights are on in the kitchen and I dial 911 because I know I shut the lights off prior to going up stairs. When we get in the kitchen all the cabinet doors were open which was obviously not how i left it. Thats when I notice that the door was still locked so I thought whatever did this was still in the house. So I quickly ran upstairs to my parents closet and called my parents and told them whats up. They came home and obviously didn’t find anyone or any trace of anyone being in the house. We still do not know why the light was on and cabinet doors were open but we had some other paranormal like occurrence happen around that time so we chalked it up to the household ghost.

28. It was raining pretty hard one night and I was about to go to bed. Our dog decided to start going nuts barking at the corner of the family room. We had just moved in so there wasn’t anything in there but she just kept constantly barking at nothing. I tried to pull her away but she wasn’t having any of it. She started showing her teeth and snarling, which she never does.

I figured there must be an animal outside so I turned on the deck lights (deck is off the family room) and peer outside. Nope, nothing. I wasn’t about to go outside because of the rain and I didn’t see anything anyway. So I drag the dog to the bedroom but she just won’t shut up.

Finally decide to get my shoes and umbrella on and walk around the house. Found one of my neighbors curled up along the side of the deck trying to protect himself from the rain. He’s disabled and a little slow. He usually goes out for walks in the neighborhood. He got caught in the rain and couldn’t find his house. If my dog hadn’t gone nuts he might have been out there all night and who knows what could have happened.

29. 2 years ago, I get home from my last lecture from university, before the start of Christmas break. My family had gone to Scotland for the weekend. I was all alone at home for the weekend. Once I arrived at home, I showered and was getting food ready.

After eating, I turned on my PS4, plugged my headset and began playing. However, an hour later, I hear loud thudding from upstairs floor. Rather then being brave and checking upstairs, I ran to close and lock the living room doors to prevent a robber from entering. I hurried to my phone and called the police, who arrived quickly and began searching.

After 20 minutes of searching, they found that someone had broken in to my house, through my bedroom window. Luckily, no valuables had been taken. I did, however get a 2 hour lecture from my parents on what precautions to take when home alone.

30. Someone scoped out my apartment charged up my stairs and started banging on the door demanding I open it and talk to her. This chick would not give me a name or what she wanted. Finally threatened to call the cops and that’s when she runs back down my stairs.