10. MmmmBisto

My father died when I was four, so it was just me and my mother living at home.

One night in early 1982 when I was 6, there was a knock on the door at 2:00am. My mother got up to answer it, I heard it too so I got up as well.

My mother called out “Who is it?” and a male voice responded “I’m looking for Mrs. Stepasant – Open the door”. We have an odd family name, but it is nothing like Stepasant. So my mother was immediately cautious, and scared.
Anyhoos the man kept knocking and getting more angry that my mother not let him in. He resorted to kicking on the door and threatening to break our windows. We didn’t have a phone to call the police, so my mother reported to plan B which entailed playing music really loudly. We lived in a mid-terrace house so my mother figured it would wake the neighbours and get their attention as well as hopefully scaring off the nutter.

It worked. A neighbour from across the street came over to complain about the noise after the nutter had ran off. When my mum explained what happened, he went and called the police.

The next day the police had a locksmith come round to fit extra security to our home as well as a panic button.

A long time after this event when I was in my teens my mother told me that when the policeman took her statement his face went white and said we needed to beef up our security ASAP. Long story short, they were looking for someone who preyed on vulnerable people like us. What he did was never revealed to my mother, but I think it was easy to infer.

As an aside, during the incident my mother had a cleaver in one hand and a can of aerosol oven cleaner in the other. Had he have got in, he would have been either blinded or lost a few fingers. My mother is not the sort of person to go down without a fight.

11. kranix

I woke up during surgery on my throat. When I was three.

Man, there’s nothing more terrifying than not being able to move or scream, just staring up at people with lots of equipment down your throat, hoping they’ll soon notice that your eyes are open…

12. kirkleton

When I was about 10 years old, my family lived in a house in Orange County that backed up to a small canal and service road. We had a 6 foot cinder block wall, but the service road was raised up to that level. Our backyard was only about 15 feet deep. I could see it from the window in my room.

One clear night with a bright full moon, I was having trouble sleeping. My bed was against the opposite wall facing the window with full view of the canal. All my lights were off and everyone was asleep in my house. A silhouette of a man, back lit by the moon, appeared on the service road and slowly walked until he was nearly in the center of my window. He stopped walking, turned, and stared into my room. I froze in fear thinking he knew I was in there and that I could see him. I hid my head under the covers for what seemed like an eternity. Then looked back out the window, moving as little as possible. He was still there, staring…

I absolutely panicked, but didn’t want to move and have him see me terrified by him. I put my head back under the covers for less than a second and screamed. I looked back up and he was gone. I looked out the window to try to see him running away, but no one was out there.

Still kind of freaks me out to this day.