You don’t need a campfire and a flashlight to enjoy a good creepy story. All you need is the internet!
User BelvitaBiscuitz started an epic thread on r/AskReddit with the prompt:
There are a HUGE range of stories, many of them cute, or sad, or funny. But a select few of these (apparently true) stories are just plain creepy.
We’ve curated 10 such spooky tales here. Enjoy.
1. Right Outside his Door
My mother told me this… because I honestly don’t remember (I was around the age of 5-7).
We were at my grandfather’s apartment and right outside of his door, I stopped and turned around and said in very serious voice “Grandfather’s dead.”
Turns out I was correct. Died in his sleep.
I didn’t understand the concept of mortality at the time so this understandably fre*ked out both my parents.
– MilkTeaSwirl>
2. Screaming Neighbors
When I was 17, I worked at a grocery store with a guy named Brian. Normal guy, mid 20s, lil chub. Didn’t really think much of him.
One day he tells me about how he lives in an apartment by himself and that his neighbors are absolutely crazy. Like they would yell at him to be quiet, pound against the wall to get him to shut up, even though he wouldn’t be doing anything. He would sneeze, and his neighbors would scream at the top of their lungs from next door. It was that bad.
Tbh, I didn’t really care much when he was telling me this. I just wanted to go home and not work anymore.
Couple days go by and I noticed that Brian wasn’t showing up anymore. Whatever. Didn’t think much of that either. A month or two goes by and he finally shows back up to work. So, being the nice friend I am, I asked him where he’s been. He tells me he was actually fired because he was in the hospital. I didn’t think that was a valid reason to fire someone, but what do I know. I didn’t comment on that. I asked him why he was in the hospital and he told me it was for “personal reasons”. I tell him it was good having him back, and carried on with my day.
Fast forward a couple days to me talking to another coworker who was good friends with Brian. He says “Did you hear what happened to Brian?”
“Yeah he was in the hospital and was fired or something”
“Do you know why though?”
“No, he said it was personal”
So this is what happened a couple months ago before Brian disappeared. He was at home by himself, when his neighbors (surprise) start yelling at him through the walls for being too loud. Brian telling himself “I’ve had enough” decides to call the police and have them deal with it. The police arrived and started talking to the neighbors for quite some time. Hours go by with the police and neighbors. So he calls the police again to ask what’s taking so long.
The police respond with “..um.. We left like an hour and a half ago.”
Turns out that the neighbors were never yelling at him. In fact, they were never there.
Brian was schizophrenic and was hearing voices in his head. He had to go to a mental hospital for a month.
– theprinterdoesntwerk
3. Get Out of My Room
When I was a night shift CNA at an assisted living, I was doing my rounds at midnight she came barreling out of her room with her cross and white as a ghost.
I asked if she had a nightmare and she responded “there is a man in my room telling me to get out of his room.”
I peeked inside her room and saw it was empty. I was still internally set on her dreaming. She walked around with me most of that night.
The next night was even more bizarre. I have a pager that lets me know if any residents need help or if any doors are opened. Well it’s 2am and the front door alarm goes off. That fre*ked me out since all the doors were locked. As I head up to the front to investigate I see that resident with the door wide open and looking up at the sky. I asked her what she was doing and she replied “Death is coming for X I have to let him in”
For days she kept talking about the angry man in her room. How he kept her up, he yelled at her, and threw things on the floor. My curiosity got the best of me. “X, what does the man look like” as she described him my heart sank…. she was perfectly describing a resident who lived in the room previously who passed away (he didn’t like ANYONE in his room). “Did he ever tell you his name?” I asked she looked at me “it’s X” (his name)
I asked the other workers if anyone mentioned anything about that resident. All have denied.
She was moved to another room 2 days later after her family was very concerned for her wellbeing. Her night mares have since stopped
Another resident has moved into the room and hasn’t had any problems.
I’ve had bizarre things happen to me working at that facility, but nothing has topped that one.
– PryzeTheBest
4. A Fiery Premonition
10 or 12 years ago, I started having a feeling that the fire alarm in my apartment building was going to go off. Initially, it was just a little tickle at the back of my brain and I could ignore it. But over the following days and weeks that tickle grew into a a full-blown nag. I couldn’t shake it.
One day I got home from work and the feeling was so strong—PACK YOUR sh^t, THE FIRE ALARM’S GOING TO GO OFF—that I said ‘fuck it’ and packed up all of our important paperwork, medicines, extra clothes,etc. and sat and waited and felt like an idiot.
Half an hour later the building fire alarm went off. I grabbed all the bags and went outside. The fire trucks came and it was quickly discovered that a resident in the other tower (my apt. building is composed of two towers joined by a common lobby) had burned their dinner and instead of opening a window, they opened their door which let the smoke into the hallway which set off the building alarm. That person had just moved into the building that afternoon.
How the ever-loving-fuck did I know that was going to happen? I had this growing feeling for six weeks. And he just moved in that day.
– floorplanner2
5. The Disappearance
When I was young, probably around 13-14 my mom and I were driving down a backroad highway (with a speed limit of 70km/h with traffic lights if that paints a clearer picture) that connected our town with others.
We passed an older car that had hit the guardrail BADLY, there was rubble and glass everywhere. The front of the car had begun smoking so my mom and I decided to make a u-turn at the lights ahead (maybe 250 metres beyond the crash) to try to help/call an ambulance.
While we drove to the lights I noticed not a single person in their cars looked panicked or even acknowledged that there had been a horrible wreck. Normally when there is a wreck it’s common for people to slow down and at least look, but not a single person around us was reacting.
We turned around and… nothing. The car was gone. All evidence that a car had crashed was gone, the rubble, glass everything. Even the air where there was smoke was clear. The fre*kiest part of all was the guardrail had no damage at all.
We both looked at each other in confusion and tried to come up with a reasonable explanation of how a tow truck could have pulled up, hooked up the car, and moved it in under 30 seconds. We kept travelling in that direction for a couple of minutes to make sure we didn’t miss it somehow, but we never found evidence of a car accident.
It’s been over 10 years and I brought it up recently. My mom said she remembered perfectly and always thought it was a weird glitch in the matrix.
– Jenna5366
6. Time Waits
One time when I was little, I was playing outside in the back yard and I tripped and fell, flat on my back. As I was falling, I braced expecting to hit the ground, but I just…. Didn’t.
I felt like I stayed that way for a few seconds before I opened my eyes and gently dropped the last inch or two to the ground.
I immediately ran inside to tell my mom but she just gave me the child-patronizing-laugh and an “okay sweetie.”
The only thing I’ve been able to come up with since then is that it was a dream, but it sure doesn’t feel like one.
I’ve had a couple similar experiences since then, but this is the only one without a possible explanation.
– NetworkAuditor2
7. The Link
My mom doesn’t believe us, but me and my brother are convinced we have some sort of mental link. We constantly have the same sh^t pop into our head.
Like I’ll start singing a song and he’ll be like yo wtf the song just hit that part in my head, even though there was no reason for us to even think the song.
we’ve simultaneously burst into song before and its great. We’ve even shared dreams before. We fought a dragon together.
– SgtSkitman
8. The Unhappiest Place on Earth
Someone was murdered at Disney World, and the body was dumped near a security ground. My father (not sure where he is now) worked security and my mom discovered a map in his room and a small circle drawn where the body was dumped.
He also matched the description when they posted a sketch on America’s Most Wanted.
They ended up arresting somebody else but my mom swears he killed the girl.
– CapN_Stevezy
9. The Grateful Undead
I grew up with hippie parents on a commune. There are tons of stories, but this one I’ve never had a chance to tell. The grownups used to listen to a lot of Grateful Dead, and when I was a little girl I liked a few of the songs.
My fave was “Ripple”, which I decided was about a beautiful sea monster. I drew a picture of it and wrote RIPPLE next to it. One of the grownups thought it was cool, so he mailed it to the Grateful Dead’s fan club – and they made me an honorary lifetime member.
For years, I’d get little packages from them, with stickers or guitar picks and such.
But here’s the really weird part: I moved around a lot in my 20s and 30s; different states, etc.
Even my mom sometimes didn’t have my contact info. But no matter where I was, the Grateful Dead somehow always found me and I’d start getting the little packages again.
This was cute at first, but totally fre*ked me out after a while.
– GargleHemlock
10. The Regular
Some friends and I hang out at a bar. A solid ten of us. A group of real friends going on twenty years. A guy came into the bar (we’ll call him Bob) on his first occasion and got blind drunk in no time and left. Bob did the same thing the next night and subsequently became a regular, but the group kept their distance.
One evening, one of my friends noticed Bob was sobbing in his beer. My friend went over and asked Bob everything was OK. Bob said his 7 year old niece had been killed in a drunk driver. We all expressed our sympathy. After a few weeks of intermittent drunk visits, he came in and cried in his beer again: his stepmother had died. Bob said he was closer to her than his Mom. A few months later, crying again: his sister had jumped off a parking garage. Bob’s life was a Greek tragedy. My group of friends and I didn’t know what to make of it.
Once Bob got to know more of my group of friends, the more erratic and violent he became. Bob threatened others and insulted the whole group. The guy wasn’t stable. It was becoming clear Bob had a habit of pulling people into his orbit then resenting that person and threatening them.
Then he showed up at the far end of the bar one day crying in his beer. Exhausted of the act, one of the guys nicely asked if he was OK. He wasn’t: his 7-year old niece had been killed by a drunk driver and his stepmother was gravely ill and expected to die within the week.
Wait, what?
We all got quiet. The next day, one of the guys calls me and says there are no obituaries in the guys hometown paper that collaborate with his claims. That night, we went to the bar and saw Bob. I asked him if there was a charity we could donate to in memory of his niece. Bob didn’t expect anyone to ask such a question. At that moment, one of the guys went up to him with an article he had pulled up from the guy’s hometown paper from that day honoring his stepmother for her volunteer work promoting a citywide run that was happening a few months from that date.
– MidwestBulldog
It’s like having that campfire session but without having to go outside! Best of both worlds!
Everybody’s got at least one spooky story up their sleeve. What’s yours?
Tell us in the comments.