19 Terrifying Stories That Read Like Horror Fiction…But Are TRUE
"One of the sinks started dripping, not flowing, but dripping blood. Slowly. Like a f*cking horror movie."
1. My friend’s parents stumbled onto a fresh corpse left by Ted Bundy on their first date.
“It was near Halloween time when my friends and I were telling ghost stories. My friend said she was going to tell a story about her parents’ first date. She said she didn’t like telling the story, since it was actually true, but we prodded her on.
To cut to the chase, the parents had spent a nice, if awkward first date, and around the time that they would have said ‘good night,’ the male in the situation–my friend’s dad—suggested that they go for a midnight hike up Provo Canyon. He apparently knew the place, since he had done a fair amount of rock climbing in the area. So the two drove up the mouth of the canyon, got out of their cars and started hiking under just the light of the stars, since it was a new moon.
At some point, the male starts getting a ‘bad feeling,’ since the pathway ahead, which would pass under some trees, would be dark, and because it was getting to be quite late. He ignores the feeling and presses on. In later rehearsings of the story, the female would say that she had felt the same feeling at what was probably the same time, though she didn’t know the trail like he did. A minute later, the feeling came back to the male. He ignored it again, and started walking a bit of the way into the trees when his foot hit something ‘soft’ in the middle of the path. Under the trees, it was too dark to see just what this soft thing was, and the feeling came back stronger than ever. Instead of finding out what his foot had bumped into, he and the female both agreed to hightail it out of there…
Years later, after being married for some time, they were watching an interview with the serial killer, Ted Bundy. In response to a question asking him to describe the time that he felt the closest to being caught, he explained about the night that he lured a girl into Provo Canyon, and had just killed her when he heard some people coming up the trail. He explained how he hid in the trees just in time, only to watch some guy walk right into the body, and for some reason, just turn around and walk away.
TL;DR. Friend’s parents stumbled onto a fresh corpse left by Ted Bundy on their first date.”
2. My brother dreamed that John was dead…and John was dead.
“When I was around seven my Grandmother took care of a baby whose mother was an alcoholic and drug addict. This woman would bring her child (let’s call him John) to my Grandmothers house and leave him there for months at a time. Needless to say our family became very attached and thought of him as part of the family. His mother came to get him one night and her drunk boyfriend flips the car. John was in a coma for about 3 or 4 days. One night my older brother wakes everyone in the house up screaming and crying saying that John is dead. Once my parents get him calmed down, he tells them that John came into his room crying, saying that he has to leave but he is scared and wants my brother to come with him. While my parents are trying to convince my brother that it was just a dream, the phone rings and it is my uncle calling from the hospital to inform us that John had died. This happened over 30 years ago but I still get goosebumps thinking about it.”
3. All the doors in the house started slamming themselves open and closed.
“I live on a party house. Enough fucked up shit happens here on a lot normal day, but you really, really don’t want to be here alone. I’m the only roommate that can stomach it, but then, I’ve seen some really terrible things in my time.
I was home alone one night, and I was certain of this because all my roommates were in Minneapolis for Gay Pride week. I was planning to have a party, but decided against it, checked the house, and locked up for the night. At about midnight I heard the dog whimpering at my door, and got up to let him out. As he did his business I thought I heard a door slam upstairs. I thought it was nothing but a stray breeze at first, but it was a pretty placid night.
As I let the dog in I heard a huge succession of slams, and began to think it may be someone trying to fuck with me. I grabbed a butcher’s knife and headed up the stairs cautiously. When I got up there all the doors were standing open, which was weird as all hell since roommates generally shut their doors when they were away. When I walked down the hallway to check the bathroom door I heard a loud crash from the downstairs and a moment later the dog went streaking by and hid in the bathroom behind me.
Now more than a little freaked out, I went downstairs to investigate. I didn’t see anything strange so I stood still for a moment, and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I turned in time to catch my door slam itself shut and then fling itself open.
I noped right the fuck out of there.”
4. One time I woke up in the middle of the night to see two eyes floating in the darkness in the corner of my room.
“As a boy I was deathly afraid of the dark. I’m still always ‘alert’ when I’m traversing the darkness.
One time I woke up in the middle of the night to see two eyes floating in the darkness in the corner of my room. Like a dogs eyes in the dark. Thinking it was my dog I shout to him ‘Buster, come here boy!”. it just sat there. ‘Buster, come on!’ Nothing. ‘Buster come here right fucking now!’ Nothing, scared shitless I lean forward for the light switch, turn on the light and I’m alone in my room.
I slept on my couch for about a year and a half afterwards.”
5. The rocking chair that was rapidly rocking…with no one sitting in it.
“Okay on the subject of demon related stories (I’m atheist but this is creepy) My uncle is the pastor of a church in Oklahoma, and one of his closest buddies is a youth minister in a church in a neighboring town. He has a wife and one daughter. Every Saturday morning when his daughter was younger (around 5, 6 or so) she and his wife would get up really early and cook breakfast. One morning the daughter saw the kitchen light turn on from her room and heard some of the pots and pans being moved around. And she thought why is my mom making breakfast without me? So she got up and went to check but it was about 4AM and no one was in the kitchen and all the lights were off. She went to her parents room and asked ‘Mommy why did you try to start breakfast without me?’ Her mom thought it has been her in the kitchen making that noise. So she woke up her husband (my uncle’s friend) thinking someone was in the house. He grabbed on old aluminum baseball bat and walked into the dark house. He checked the kitchen and besides some pots and pans being out nothing seemed too greatly disturbed. Next to the kitchen is a reading room, with a couch and a rocking chair. When he walked in there, he could barely make out the rocking chair which is rapidly rocking with no one sitting in it. He jumped back frightened and grabbed a bible sitting on the shelf and screamed: ‘In the name of Jesus leave my house!’ And the chair instantly halted. Nothing like that ever happened again. I’m not a believer but nonetheless, creepy ass story.”
6. The rocking chair that was rapidly rocking…with no one sitting in it.
“Okay on the subject of demon related stories (I’m atheist but this is creepy) My uncle is the pastor of a church in Oklahoma, and one of his closest buddies is a youth minister in a church in a neighboring town. He has a wife and one daughter. Every Saturday morning when his daughter was younger (around 5, 6 or so) she and his wife would get up really early and cook breakfast. One morning the daughter saw the kitchen light turn on from her room and heard some of the pots and pans being moved around. And she thought why is my mom making breakfast without me? So she got up and went to check but it was about 4AM and no one was in the kitchen and all the lights were off. She went to her parents room and asked ‘Mommy why did you try to start breakfast without me?’ Her mom thought it has been her in the kitchen making that noise. So she woke up her husband (my uncle’s friend) thinking someone was in the house. He grabbed on old aluminum baseball bat and walked into the dark house. He checked the kitchen and besides some pots and pans being out nothing seemed too greatly disturbed. Next to the kitchen is a reading room, with a couch and a rocking chair. When he walked in there, he could barely make out the rocking chair which is rapidly rocking with no one sitting in it. He jumped back frightened and grabbed a bible sitting on the shelf and screamed: ‘In the name of Jesus leave my house!’ And the chair instantly halted. Nothing like that ever happened again. I’m not a believer but nonetheless, creepy ass story.”
7. They heard something when the demon left his body, and it left claw marks on his wooden floor.
“Way back in 5th grade or so, I discovered a glorious Pokemon themed chat room through the wonders of Yahoo. Within this chat room, there were maybe 15 regulars, generally between the ages of 12 and 16 or so, and we had a great time role playing various anime characters and storylines.
Anyway, I got to know a few people from there well enough to chat with them on AIM or by phone and a few of those friendships lasted a good four or five years. One of these guys was a little eccentric- he LOVED creature/monster models and stories, stuff like Godzilla, Spawn, whatever. He believed in things like chupacabras, which I thought was silly, but didn’t really care, and he lived out in the boonies in some midwestern state (which all seemed like hick-land, to my young west coast mind). After getting to know him pretty well and having a good 100 hours of phone conversations over the years, he finally revealed this lovely story.
He told me that sometimes he would black out and wake up to discover that he had, or was still in the process of, hurting or torturing animals and children. He had quite a few cousins and neighbor kids who lived nearby, and apparently had killed some animals. When he revealed this to me, I felt sick inside—I love animals, and this information chilled me to the bone. It was really hard for him to tell me this and he confided that I was one of the only people he had ever been able to tell. Then, it got weirder.
Someone in his family, or maybe a family friend, decided that he must be possessed by a demon, and that they had to perform an exorcism. They did it at night (of course) in a dark room lit by candles, and he tied to the bed because they didn’t know how the demon would react. He was choking up as he described this part, I could hear his voice quivering because he was so emotional and terrified at this part of the story. He described a pretty creepy process, but the worst part was the end: he said they heard something hit the floor under the bed when the ‘demon’ left his body, and then something scrambled across the floor and out of the room in the darkness, leaving claw marks in the wood floor.
He was totally and completely serious about this, and how it cured him and he didn’t hurt things any more. I, as any sane person would do, noped right the fuck out of that situation.”
8. There was a true story about a guy in my neighborhood that was going into people’s homes and stealing shit and killing pets.
“In my hometown there was a true story about a guy in my neighborhood that was going into people’s homes and stealing shit and killing pets. He made one strike a night, and he was SUPER careful, so he never got caught. On like the 9th or 10th night they caught this guy and he was MY NEIGHBOR. He was 17 years old and he did it ‘for the thrill.’”
9. My grandmother’s recurring nightmare.
“My grandmother’s entire life she had a recurring nightmare. In this nightmare, she would be walking down a long dark hallway, turn to the left, open a door, and see something terrible. She’d always wake up before seeing what it was.
In her 40s, she, her husband, my dad, and my aunt were on vacation. They booked the hotel at the last minute, so they ended up having to get 2 rooms with 2 twin beds on opposite sides of the floor.
My dad wakes up around 3 AM and can automatically tell something’s not right. He calls out in the darkness ‘dad?’ No response. He turns on the bedside light. ‘dad?’ he says, a little louder this time. Still no response. Getting worried, he slides out of bed and shakes his father. He doesn’t wake up.
My dad ran down the hotel hallway to my grandmas room and started banging on the door. My grandma worriedly opens the door, and my dad shouts ‘something’s wrong with dad!”
He leads her down the hallway. A long hallway. To the last door on the left. My grandmother reaches the door, turns to left, and sees her husband dead in bed. Heart attack.
She never had the dream again.”
10. The girl in the window.
“My 4-year-old daughter was supposedly asleep when I heard noises coming from her upstairs bedroom. I tried to listen but could not make out what was being said. I approached the room, and she stopped talking. Thinking I alarmed her I went into the room. At the time she was sharing it with her 3 year old sister. I walked in and saw the 4 year old sitting up in bed. I smiled and said is everything OK? She said fine, but her sister said they were keeping her up. I asked who? My 4-year-old said sorry but that she was talking. When I asked her who she was talking to, my 3-year-old sat up and said ‘the girl in the window, she said you were coming.’ After I shit a brick, I asked who the girl was and they both said a girl comes and stands in front of the window at night and talks to them. Not knowing what to say, I said o.k. tucked them in and hung around outside their door. The next day I asked about the girl. they said she came back but was mad! I waited a few days and asked again. My 4 year old said the girl in the window was still mad. I forgot about it for about a week, when my wife said, who are the girls talking to upstairs. Freaked out I ran upstairs and both girls were sitting under the window looking up. They turned and looked at me and asked if I wanted to meet the girl. When they turned around, disappointed, they said the girl left. It has been about 5 years since and I have not heard about the girl in the window since then.”
11. The shadow started running toward us at top speed.
“When I was about 11 some friends and I were having a slumber party and we all snuck out of the house in the middle of the night and went to a park about half a block away. We had been there at least an hour or so when I thought I saw a large shadowy figure about 100 feet away, lurking in the shadows under some trees. We all turned to look and stared in the shadow’s direction for about 5 minutes trying to make it out. Right about when we had decided we were seeing things, the figure started running at us at top speed. We jumped up and ran back to the house as fast as we could go and locked the door. We could hear someone moving around the outside of the house and then it began tapping on the windows. We couldn’t wake anyone up since we would have had to admit we had snuck out. We spent the night huddled together in the middle of the living room, waiting to be murdered. Luckily we weren’t.”
12. Aliens are probably stalking my mom.
“My mom, grandparents, aunt and uncles and several of their neighbors all swear they saw a UFO hover over my grandparents house in the late 1960’s. They said it just hung over the backyard, silently spinning expect for a faint whizzing sound for a minute or two with all sorts of colors in a ring.
My mom and grandma said they remember the television and radio in the living room turning on full blast, getting transmissions and broadcasts from other countries in other languages, and appliances in the kitchen were rattling. My uncle said it was hanging right outside his bedroom window on the top floor, and that he was too scared to move, just stood by his window, staring.
Another time I’m pretty sure I saw a UFO with my mom behind our house about 10 years ago. Our backyard is basically a mile of farmland, and there was a bright, white light bouncing in the middle of the field and then it just shot up and was gone.
TL;DR Aliens are probably stalking my mom.”
13. A friend told me her purple dinosaur came to life at night and watched her.
“TL:DR Friend told me her purple dinosaur came to life at night and watched her.
Friend, explained to me why she took sleeping pills. Apparently when they lived in GA they bought an older house, (rich family, VERY nice home) which had some character. She claimed to find some old purple dinosaur in the crawl space while her dad was fixing some plumbing. Played with the dino for a few weeks, always slept with it in her bed, among other toys. One day she woke up to it staring at her standing on her chest in a different molding/position than when she had found it, or it had been the past few weeks. Set it aside. then next 3 weeks, same thing. Didn’t matter if she put it on the floor, in a drawer or anything. One day she locked it up. Couldn’t sleep. heard the drawer unlock. Open. and slam shut…. Slight footsteps, and it was back on her chest. She was scared. So scared. She pretended to sleep while it shifted and sat on her chest. And watched her sleep. She told her mom the next day, her mom didn’t believe her until she was allowed to lock the dammed thing in their room. Same damn thing. They moved to another house, after other paranormal things started happening around the house. The dino stayed at the original house, buried if i remember right for a year an a half. One day it appeared at their new house just standing like they found it on the kitchen counter. Got rid of it for good, i think they burned it, and ditched it in the river. Never to be seen again. Friend has a repeating nightmare that goes away with the pills… She’s older now, and can’t drink because of said pills, Has made numerous emergency hospital trips to finding scratches on her body the hospital claims are from ‘night terrors’ Now, maybe im just a freak about scary stories. Or fucking toys that talk. But the seriousness on her face. And the tears that welled in her eyes, i was sold. Not sure if bullshit… But i believe. Whether i want to or not. Scary shit. Kid you not, had trouble sleeping in her current house. (clarification, she was 13 when the dino thing happened, she is 10 years older now.)”
14. A stranger would stand outside my 8-year-old cousin’s window at night and stare at him.
“When my cousin was around 7 years old his room was in the basement… the basement level was half under ground and half above ground, his room had a window and his bed was right next to the window. One night, out of the blue, he wakes up and opens his eyes and there’s a man crouched right outside the window just staring at him. He didn’t know what to do so he just froze for a second then turned over in bed and turned his back to the guy and eventually fell asleep. (Why he didn’t run screaming to his parents’ room is something I’ll never understand.)
This went on for a while, on random nights the stranger would come and stare at him through the window, sometimes he would actually tap on the glass with his finger. On the opposite wall of the window was a mirror, so one night when my cousin noticed the stranger was there, and he turned over in bed so as to not have to look at the guy, the stranger shined a flashlight and bounced the beam off the mirror to illuminate my cousin’s face as if to say ‘I can still see you.’
But the worst part was this. One night the stranger finally got bold and began to push on the window to see if it would open, but luckily the window was locked. To this day my cousin has no idea who the guy was or what he wanted, or what he would have done had the window been unlocked that night. And to this day he still has not told his parents about it (he’s 31 now).
TL;DR – Stranger would stand outside my 8-year-old cousin’s window at night and stare at him.”
15. After holding my breath for a long time I could still hear this guy breathing.
“Paranormal activity is weird to me, I disregard it all from a scientific standpoint but I have grown up in a house where I just can’t explain the stuff that happened. So, I just try not to think about it, like how the universe has no edge.
But anyway this house. So it was a old house in New Zealand, my family lived there for about 5 years and there were many haunty things that occurred during that time frame.
We had the normal doors slamming when there was no breeze. Many times my sisters and I would hear footsteps from the hallway when there wasn’t anyone there. One night my family was awoken by a smash, we all went to where we thought the source of the noise came from and found a vase smashed on the floor in the middle of the bathroom. It had been sitting on the window sill above the sink and vanity where if it has just fallen would have smashed into the sink, but it had managed to bypass the sink and smash about 7 feet into the middle of the room.
My mother often claimed to have woken up and felt someone breathing on her face.
My biggest scare was when I woke up one night in my room, my bed was in the middle of the room. Now I could distinctly hear a man breathing heavily as if he was lying on the floor next to my bed. I was seven years old and it was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced. I had had a few asthma attacks previously and was trying to tell my self it was me breathing weird but after holding my breath for a long time I could still hear this guy breathing. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the floor but luckily it was not between me and the door. It took me about 10 minutes to build the courage to get out of bed and run screaming and crying to my parents’ bedroom. I slept in my mum’s bed that night.”
16. There was blood all over the walls and jars of hearts labeled with the names of the missing kids.
“My high school teacher told us a story about his friend living in rural Arkansas. He (the friend) meets a girl at the Walmart register. They talk and hit it off pretty well. She is a nice religious girl, exactly like the one he wanted to be with. They exchange numbers. He calls, they have long conversations deep into the night. They go on dates. She is a genuinely nice girl. She ended every phone conversation with a prayer ‘we thank our father’ (or something like that). The guy is completely smitten.
She finally calls him to come to her house at 7:30 one Saturday night. She tells him to come there at exactly 7:30 and not a minute later. She says that if he is even a minute late, she will break up with him. The guy was a little league baseball coach and had a game on that day. The game was supposed to end a few hours before that so he accepted the offer.
On the day of the game, the game went into overtime (or whatever you call it in baseball..it went on longer than expected). The dude (coach) was getting a little nervous but he still had plenty of time. The game ended a little late, but three of the kids’ parents hadn’t arrived yet and he had to drop them off home. Panicking (he really doesn’t want to miss his chance with the nice girl) he tells him to hop into the car and speeds of. After quickly dropping off the first two kids, he decides the third kid’s house is too far off, so he leaves him on the road and begs him to go walk home (yeah very douche move I know….). He rushes home, showers, gets dressed in a hurry and tries to go to the girl’s home ASAP.
He arrives at her house at 7:35 (5 minutes late). A woman in her mid forties comes out and tells him Clarice (the nice girl who called him over) said you are late and wants you to go away.
Dejected, he goes back home. A few days (or rather, the next day I think) later he sees the local news. He sees the house and it looks familiar. It is the girl’s house. The police are leading a handcuffed woman out of the house. It is the forty year old woman that had spoken to him earlier. Behind her is the girl he was dating. He was shocked as the headline read ‘child kidnappers’ or something like that. He expected the police to visit him soon as well, because he was dating the girl.
Soon, as expected, a police officer comes to his house and asks him if he is (name). The guy is nervous but knows his rights. He asks if he should get a lawyer or not. The policeman tells him that he is not legally allowed to tell him what happened, but felt a moral obligation. This is where the story gets CREEPY.
The policeman says the women arrested were engaging in human sacrifice. In their house they found the missing children’s remains. There was blood all over the walls and jars of hearts labeled with the names of the missing kids. There was an empty jar that had the dude’s name on it. Turns out, the girl invited him on a date at her house at 7:30 to kill him in a ritual human sacrifice. The ritual apparently had to be executed with precise timing. His being late saved him from being ritually sacrificed.
Needless to say, there are some crazy cults in rural Arkansas.”
17. The lights hovering above the pentagram in the woods.
“As somebody who is caught between a strong Christian (southern Baptist, even) upbringing and reconciling all of that fun with my current agnostic-ish views, I’ve always wondered what the hell happened this night.
In Beaumont, Texas, there is a place called Saratoga or Bragg Road, with some degree of ‘paranormal’ history. I’ve gone a number of times with my family and sometimes you see a little something and other times you don’t. However, one night that we headed out there was decidedly different.
Our group piled into one truck for this. (It’s Texas–everyone has a truck.) I was probably sixteen or so at the time. It was me and my (at the time) stepdad in the truck bed and my brother, mother, two cousins, and my aunt in the cabin. We had decided to go to Bragg Road because it was a happenstance occasion: we all happened to be in town on a Wednesday night where none of us had to be anywhere the next day. We figured that nobody would be out there, which tends to improve your chances of seeing something. (I’ve got an uncle with absolutely terrifying stories from the road, but that’s a story for another time.)
The way things work on Saratoga Road is you drive slowly down the one-lane dirt road, and then if you want to you double back and drive it again. On our first run-through we didn’t see anything even remotely paranormal, though we did pass by a sketchy group of young (college-aged) men and women who had pulled over into a small clearing in the swamp and were just leaving their car. They gave us some nasty looks, as if we were intruding.
Well, we decided to drive back down the road a second time just to see what we could see. By this time we had forgotten entirely about the other group of people. We get to their little impromptu campsite and they’ve… Done some remodeling, so to speak. They had erected some kind of pole with a pentagram painted on an affixed sign and were standing around a campfire, talking softly to themselves. Remember those nasty looks from earlier? We got them a hundredfold then.
So we pass by the creepy group, my stepdad and I being the only two truly face-to-face with them (the others could just close their windows.) Not two minutes later, we suddenly start hearing crackling noises. My stepdad pushes my arm anxiously and points up to the treetops, saying, ‘Holy SHIT. Look!’
Lo and behold, there are blueish-white motes of light, about two or three feet in diameter, rapidly fluttering about the treetops. They stopped for a moment, hovering about twenty feet above us before suddenly descending. Freaking out harder than I ever did before or ever have since, my stepdad and I begin banging on the window, screaming ‘DRIVE! DRIVE!’ My aunt, the driver, stops the car to ask what we were so freaked about, prompting us to scream louder.
So we do our best to hang out as we suddenly take off from 10MPH to about 50MPH on this narrow, one-lane dirt road. The lights continued to follow us, getting closer all the time and making this noise…I can’t really describe it as anything but disturbing. It had some kind of high-pitched ‘ethereal’ quality to it, but it just felt alien. (In the sense of ‘not normal”, of course.)
When we got to the end of the road we all bailed to our respective cars ASAP. We regrouped at a gas station a few miles away and compared stories–everybody saw the same thing and heard the same noise. I don’t believe we’ve been back since.”
18. I see a HUGE shadow, like the size of a cow.
“Ok. About time i document this. A true story that happened to me and my two friends hanging out at my house when we were about 15-16 years old. We were hanging out early in the night skateboarding in my driveway when we decide to walk into my back property, where there is a dried out pond. We took our AirSoft guns, flashlights, and my German Shepherd, probably just to humor each other cause we were trying to get scared. Anyway, it was about midnight at the dried-out pond and one of my friends starts acting funny, he starts going on about ‘I summon you demon to haunt these lands..’ etc. I just figured he was trying to freak all of us out and denounced it. Well, while we were walking back up my property to my house theres a dirt road. All of the sudden I hear both of them scream bloody murder. I look in this tree behind the fence line and I see a HUGE shadow, like the size of a cow. It jumps out of the tree, and seems to run about 30 ft in less then a second right at me. Before I know it, I was laying on my back on the ground and my German Shepherd (which only barked about 5 times in her life) Barking loudly and running off in the distance. We then ran to my house and tried to calm down, nothing else happened that night. I still don’t know what to think about this, it will always chill me to the bone, but it happened.”
19. One of the sinks started dripping, not flowing, but dripping blood. Slowly.
“I don’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, but I lived in this house for a year, and I swear to god there was some evil shit going on in there.
For starters, there was a lot of folklore about the house. Back in the day, it was a tenant house for hookers. After that, it was a trap house which got raided by the DEA (confirmed by the landlord). Allegedly, they found a dead body, 4 keys of heroin, 50 pounds of crack, etc., etc., etc. (None of that was ever officially confirmed.) After that, though, the house sat vacant for a few years before the landlord put it back up on the market.
And then we moved in.
Upon touring the house, my roommates and I found strange graffiti and writing on the walls, most of which was covered over by yellowed, peeling floral wallpaper. There were cobwebs everywhere. It looked like some bums had been squatting there from time to time (empty bags of potato chips, one room reeked of piss). Being four dumb, broke-ass college kids, we took it and said it was just ‘kitschy”.
On move-in day, I found the broken end of the pusher from a syringe in the corner of my room, as well as some blood stains on the floor I hadn’t noticed during the tour. It should be noted that my room was the smallest, about the size of a closet, with a tiny window which looked out a brick wall, a door that couldn’t stay closed, and a noticeable bump in the middle of the room. (It was previously two houses on the same property. They were put together around the time it first came up for rent…in the mid-60s.)
Now, the following things happened repeatedly:
• One roommate heard the sound of a dog barking coming through his air vent on a fairly regular basis.
• Another roommate would wake up to find objects (even big ones, like his desk one time) had been moved around his room. He locked his door every night before going to sleep, and started using a voice recorder to monitor noises. Nothing. Not even the sound of sleepwalking.
• We all saw shadows of people who weren’t there when walking around. Especially at night.
• I heard rape screams coming from one of the bathrooms in broad daylight. Like, loudly. And it got louder as I got to the bathroom. When I turned the light on, the screams stopped. No one was in there. This happened twice. Both on Tuesdays.
• Bread frequently molded the day of or the day after purchase.
• Occasionally, the house would smell horribly (distinctively like something died) for no apparent reason. We blamed the…
• POSSUMS! IN THE CEILING! AND WE COULDN’T GO INTO THE ATTIC BECAUSE WE DIDN’T HAVE THE KEY! Oh, and did I mention that our ceilings were that cheap shitty stock-board they use in public schools?
• Worst of all, these fucking tiny-ass fruit flies would spawn in our front yard every time it rained over the summer, and they would swarm the house by coming through the cracks at the bottom of the doors.
The following only happened once. Brace yourselves.:
• We found a knife. No one knows whose it was or where it came from. It just appeared one day.
• One of the sinks started dripping, not flowing, but dripping blood. Slowly. Like a fucking horror movie.
• All the lights went out. One. By. One. They didn’t turn on for ten minutes. The electricity and the breakers were fine.
• When one roommate and I turned off the tv, we saw the reflection of some guy wearing a hat standing behind us. Obviously, he wasn’t there.
• We heard an old, 1960s style dial phone ringing. We all had cell phones with special ringtones.
• A window opened itself.
• We heard someone walking around on the roof outside. Blah, blah, blah. Wasn’t there.
• The microwave flipped itself upside down one day when we went out for a roommates-lunch.
• And the creepiest of all, there was a standing pool of blood in the kitchen one morning. No source has yet been identified.
It became a joke. ‘The house is possessed’ and all that bullshit. We even made a drinking game out of it eventually. But the truth is, we all had horrible sleep problems and nightmares the whole year we lived there. It got to the point where one roommate basically moved in with his girlfriend of a week just so he wouldn’t have to sleep at our house anymore.
On top of everything, the negative energy of the house turned us all against each other and wreaked havoc on our mental health, all of which started getting better as soon as we moved out.
I dunno. Like I said, I don’t believe in ghost stories. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t spend a year in Hell.”
