55 Terrifying Encounters People Wish They Could Rationally Explain

My brother was diagnosed with cancer when he was 3. A few days after his diagnoses, I was sitting out in the living room with my parents, and he walked out of his room. He said that a man named Tony was floating in the corner of his room, eating peppers, and telling him that he was OK, and he was watching over him. Tony was my dad's grandfather, who died before we were born. And he loved eating peppers. It was really strange, as my dad never really talked about him, especially nothing detailed like eating peppers. My parents freaked out a bit.

On the morning of my mother's funeral, I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to socialize or thank people for coming. As I lay there, I felt the bed compress as if someone sat on it. I swear she was telling me one last time to get the f**k up before I'm late.

I have sleep paralysis and i woke up one night not being able to move and the grudge girl was a foot away from the left side of my face. With huge eyes and blood running down her face. I woke up in the morning with a puddle of p**s, I p**sed myself i was so scared.

I've shared this story before and this still creeps me the hell out.

Growing up, there was this girl who always freaked the f**k out of the other neighborhood kids. For example, she told all the girls that in the forest behind her house there were "d**d, bloody people," in it. All the kids freaked out and told their parents which resulted in all the dads doing a search in the forest, only to find hot pocket wrappers and empty beer bottles. After that, all the neighborhood kids refused to go near her, including me. A few years later, my parents got a divorce. The day that the movers came to my dad's house to get my mom's stuff out, the girl comes out of nowhere. She said that "Matt" didn't like that my parents were getting a divorce.

My dad ended up telling me that Matt was her imaginary friend that was often too physical. Even though I stopped being friends with her, her parents were still friends with my dad. Her parents told my dad that Matt could control the lights, even making the power go out one time. Matt also knocked on doors at night, but if he was ignored, the banging on the doors would start.

Two years after my parents divorce, my dad decided that he would invite that whole family over to catch up. I was begging my dad not to but he said it would be nice. So when they came over, my dad said to show the girl my bedroom since I got a new TV. I show her to my room and she is acting normal and complimenting my room. I was still creeped out because she just sat on the floor while I tried to put a movie into my DVD player. And I s**t you not, but out of nowhere, mid conversation, in the most deadpan voice, she said, "Matt's here." At that exact moment, the lights flickered and I f*****g ran out of my room crying. Her parents ran into my room and dragged their daughter out and went home. I refused to sleep in my bedroom for weeks.

I haven't heard much from that family ever since then. I heard that Matt still controlled the lights but I don't know if he is still around. Even to this day, when the lights flicker or a bulb breaks, I still freak out.

Broke into an abandoned supermarket when I was 14. Not sure what I was expecting to find.

I was at the 2nd level of the 2-level building observing this wide open expanse-inside-a-building that had at one point been full of normal families shopping and employees working but which had now been forgotten.

I was thinking how odd it was that I was the only one who had likely been inside for several years. I heard rats rustling off in the distance. I had entered from a large ventilation duct from behind the building. I sat there still looking downward and considering whether to venture down and further into the store (and how I would get back out if I did).

I sat for a while considering but suddenly I heard a loud noise from the front of the store. I thought perhaps the owner was entering to survey or something. S**t, good thing I had stayed put high and out of view.

Two younger men entered moving suspiciously. They obviously were not the owners. It seemed like they were looking to loot anything that had been forgotten. They flashed flashlights around and then as they shined them to the right around the corner from the main entrance where they entered (the direction of the rats I heard rustling about) the light uncovered a man standing facing them about 5 yards from them.

This happened so fast but I will always remember it in detail, it is burned into my memory. The man jerked his head around to look at them. His face was leathery and he had brown hair. His hands were dirty with something. He yelled at them "you 3 are DEAD!" In the most terrifying voice I've ever heard. They ran, he chased, and I got out as fast as I could. Only later did it occur to me that I was the third one and he had been staring at me the entire time.

Mine is not creepy/scary, but is still unexplainable. When i was about 6, my younger brother and I shared a set of bunkbeds. I slept on top, he on the bottom. These bunkbeds were built by my dad, and didn't have a safety bar to keep you from falling off. But I never fell out, so it wasn't a problem. I believe I was asleep one night, but the only way I can explain it is that I was having an out of body experience. As in, I was watching myself sleep. I fell out of be, still sleeping, and I'm watching myself fall. Something, I still don't know what, caught me mid-fall and lowered me down gently. Although I was watching myself, I still remember the feeling of being caught by something soft and lowered down to the floor. Which wouldn't be weird, it's just a dream, right? Except I woke up on the floor. And not when I fell, but when my alarm for school went off. If I had hit the floor hard, I definitely would've woken up. It was a 6 foot drop and legos littered the floor. I could easily have broken something or at least bruised, but instead I woke up with a couple lego bricks stuck to my face.


I'm still not sure what happened. I thought at the time that God or an angel had caught me. But I don't know.


TLDR: God saved me from impending d***h by legos.

I've had a few strange experiences in my life, but here's one of the creepier ones I've personally had. My parents live in a house built in the 1760s on the coast of Southern Maine. It's a center chimney cape with a long ell off the back. When they first purchased the house I did some research on the property and the owners through the years. The house was built by the Eaton family, and was handed down through the family from generation to generation until about 1860, when it was sold. Between 1820 and 1830 the Eaton family lost both parents and eight of the nine children to premature d***h. Most of them died of tuberculosis.

I had returned home from college to stay with my parents during winter break. January in Maine is bitter cold, and in an 18th century house, all the more so. My little sister, who was about 15 at the time, and I were sharing a bed, partially for warmth, partially because I'm a sissy and the d**n old place has always creeped me out a bit. The bed was in a downstairs front room of the house. The only other person in the house at the time was my younger brother who was in the back ell, far across the house from us. I woke up around 8am, rather abruptly because I could hear intensely labored breathing coming from my sister. At first I thought she must have come down with a terrible cold and was really congested. I lay there for a couple minutes and then finally rolled over to check on her because it sounded awful, like an asthma attack or a d***h rattle. When I rolled over I immediately saw she was on her side facing me, wide eyed. She whispered "That's not you?!". The noise continued and it was loud, there was nothing subtle about it, and it was coming from the bed, directly between us. We jumped out of bed, checked under the bed, checked the entire room, and the while, the breathing continued. Finally, at a loss we just stood on either side of the bed, facing each other and listened in disbelief. It stopped abruptly.

I have no explanation for that. My parents have owned the house for almost ten years since then, and a variety of odd things have happened, though no one else has ever heard the labored breathing, which I rather think is just what it would sound like if, say, a person were dying of tuberculosis.
Let me know if you guys would like to hear a few more stories about the house. I've got a bunch.

So my granddad used to tell us this story because my brothers and I found it fascinating. I'll probably butcher a minor detail or two, but I'm pretty certain on a lot of it. I'll point out where I could be wrong.

So my granddad and his family grew up in rural southern Ireland, so there fields, moors and rivers galore, and family all lived pretty near each other. There was a old tale that existed in the area that went something along the lines of "If you hear music coming from seemingly nowhere, leave. Someone is in danger."

So my granddad and his brother Nicky were out on the moors, when all of a sudden they both hear music, and they do not know where it was coming from. Naturally, following the tale, they left, and returned home. When they got back though, they found that their cousin (^^I ^^think? ) was missing.

Several days had passed, and there had been no trace of her, it was like she vanished. But one night, in a storm, she was suddenly at the door. Soaking wet, but seemingly unharmed. When people asked her where she was, she would only ever reply "I was listening to the music."

This is all she would respond with when asked about the whole situation, even up until the day she died. My granddad unfortunately passed away in December of 2013 to cancer, but his brother Nicky is still around, still living in Ireland, and he swears it to be true.

You hear all the time about "my cousin's aunt's brother who is twice removed" having something happen to them, but something about having it happen to someone very close to you, and then other people backing it up seems to really hit home.

I'm a little late to the party but I have a pretty creepy story that my mother told me happened recently.

My mom is a real estate agent in a very rural area. She often goes to old foreclosed farm houses that she is selling and tries to get good interior shots to post online.

There was one house that was in pretty bad shape because it had been left empty all winter and was a pretty old house. Anyway, mom starts taking pictures.

My mom isn't one to get scared easily by old houses. She really enjoys going to old houses alone and exploring. So she wasn't jumpy or expecting anything bad. She does this stuff all the time. She's taking pictures of the rooms and every thing is going great until she gets to this one room halfway down the hall. Her camera flashes, but no picture is showing up. She tries several more times, illuminating the room with flash, but still getting no image. She assumes her camera is broken, but continues down the hallway to explore the house herself.

She gets to a bathroom at the back of the house and sees that the water in the toilet is frozen (not winterized, tsk tsk) and laughs. Not thinking, she pulls out her camera and takes a picture. IT WORKS! She's pretty pumped because now that means she can go back to the room and finally get that picture.

When she goes back to take a picture of the room the same thing happens. Flash, but no picture. Then things get weird.

She hears a mutter/whisper sound from right behind her. Like someone was right over her shoulder. It was unintelligible rambling, but she said it sounded urgent and agitated. She spun around and no one was there. That's when she felt the icy pit in her stomach and realized she needed to get out of there right now.

She ran outside and searched the perimeter of the house. She thought maybe someone was outside talking and the acoustics made them sounded closer than they were. No one was there. The house was surrounded by a least a square mile of open field. No one was around.

She decided to leave without her pictures.

When my sister was younger, she developed an eating disorder and as a consequence of that (according to her doctor) she took up drinking a lot. We're in Mexico and over there you don't have to be 21 to purchase alcohol (she was 20) so she got pretty wasted easily and fast. One night she was too drunk, and I tried my best to stay up with her as I usually did just to watch her, but I was exhausted and crashed. I don't know how long I had been sleeping when the distinct smell of my deceased grandmother woke me up. I mean this smell was strong, enough to wake me up. When I did, my sister was starting to vomit, but was on her back. So I was able to sit her up and call my parents and stuff, who also commented on the smell.

I hate to think what would've happened if I hadn't woken up :( still can't explain the smell though.

I was about 11 when this happened and it remains one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me.

I grew up in rural Ireland and our house was the last of four houses located on this country lane. I used to get the bus home from school everyday and ordinarily the bus driver would drop me at the top of the lane and I would walk the rest of the mile or so to my house. This day was no different. I jumped off the bus and started making my way down the road towards the house. I was about halfway down the road when I heard a car driving up behind me. I stood in off the road on the grassy verge and the car slowed down to a stop beside me. I didn't recognize the car at all or the man in it and I remember thinking instantly that something wasn't right. This is a rural area, everyone knows everyone and strangers stick out like a sore thumb. The guy rolls down the window and says, "Hi Karen, do you want a lift the rest of the way?" My name is not Karen, so now I know for sure that this guy is up to no good. I tell him that isn't my name and say that I'm grand anyway, I can walk. He just sort of nodded at me and didn't say anything else, so I just started walking on away from the car. I was really nervous at this point. I didn't look behind me but I hadn't heard the car reversing or driving away, so I just assumed he was sitting there watching me walk. After a few more metres, I look behind me and I see that he has gotten out of his car and is walking after me. I took off running up the road. I could hear him running after me and it suddenly occurred to me that my parents probably wouldn't be home from work yet and my brother, who was older than me, was probably still in school, so I would be alone in the house. That's when I started crying.

I finally reached our driveway, ran up and around to the back of the house and burst into the kitchen to find, lo and behold, my brother sitting at the kitchen table, eating toast. He had skived off school for the afternoon. At this point my heart felt like it was going to come through my chest and I was so out of breath from running and crying that I could hardly even explain to him what was wrong except that there was "a man". My brother played one of the national sports in Ireland during his teenage years and grabbed his hurley (an Irish version of a baseball bat, to simplify things). He ran outside with it to find this man at the bottom of our driveway. He went down to confront him, but the man took one look at my brother and the hurley, turned and booked it out of there. We told our parents who reported it to the cops, but nothing ever came of it.

I don't know for sure what that man's intentions were, but I am certain he meant to harm me. I think I narrowly avoided an abduction. It makes me wonder just how many kids come across creeps like that and don't manage to escape. We only ever hear of the big, "newsworthy" abduction stories, but I'm sure kids get stolen on a pretty regular basis. :(

TL;DR When I was a kid some creep chased me home, my brother scared him away with the Irish equivalent of a baseball bat.

*On a totally unrelated note, when I was travelling the US many years later, I spent a night drinking with some friends in some dingy little bar in San Diego. I went to pee and as I was sitting on the toilet, I look down and see an eye looking at me through a mirror that's poking out underneath the partition between my cubicle and the one next to me. I was transfixed for a second before bolting out of there having barely finished my p**s.

TL;DR Some f*****g pervert was watching me p**s in a toilet in San Diego.

My friend's father passed away unexpectedly. The night before the burial his family wondered if they should hire a locksmith to open the safe in his closet, as they knew he had some personal effects that he might want to be buried with. They ultimately decided not to.

The next morning when they got to the funeral home the mortician commented that something tripped the alarm the night before, but there was no signs of entry or any people around. When they went into the parlor to see him, both my friend and his mom immediately saw a red leather portfolio tucked in the arms of the deceased. They knew that was where he kept his special items, family pictures, love letters she had sent him when he was in Vietnam, baby pictures, etc. They also knew he kept it locked in the safe in his bedroom. The safe they knew was closed and locked the night before. The safe that was in the room where my friend's mom slept that night and wasn't disturbed. The safe that was wide open when they got home later that day. It wasn't broken into, someone who knew the combination had opened it and as far as they knew the only person who knew the combination was the deceased.

It freaked everyone out but ultimately they were fine because it meant he wanted to be buried with those memories.

My mom told me this story of a large colonial house that we moved in when i was about 4 and i had an imaginary friend named Jenny.

Apparently my mom always had a weird feeling about the house and one day out of the blue i told her that i had been playing with a little girl named Jenny. She thought that it was just a phase. I told her Jenny wanted me to let the cat in to the basement so she can play with it. she let me and my cat never came back. that creeped her out.
Then a few days later i told her Jenny wanted me to come to the basement to play with her. She told me no and to go to bed. I did and when i woke up i had deep scratches on my back and legs. My mom sent me to my grandparents and proceeded to look up stuff on the house. she found an old picture of the house and who used to live there ( the house was built in like the late 1800's) and asked me if Jenny was in the picture.
She said there was like 7 little girls in the picture and she knew who was Jenny but i wouldn't have. I guess i pointed to Jenny without hesitation. She was scared because she had also learned that Jenny went in to the basement and was never found after that day so that family moved. After that incident with the picture we moved out of that house, i guess that was way too much for my mom. I was 18 when she told me that. I still think about it and think how scary that story is.

I've posted this before and it didn't get much attention. I may be a little late to this party, too, but here it is.

Edit: Sorry for the long read, but I really don't know how to shorten it without taking away from the story.

It was the early '90's. Two of my buddies and I were hanging out in our church parking lot late after church was over one night. It was pitch black save for the single streetlamp in the middle of the parking lot. We were sitting in the back of Don's truck near the light. To my right was the external building that housed the kitchen. The church building, also to my right but a little bit behind me, is attached to the kitchen by an open foyer. Behind both buildings is the multi-acre graveyard, with oldest graves over a century old. Beyond the graveyard is pastureland and woods. To my left running in front of the buildings and parking lot is the main country road with more open pastureland across the road.

We were sitting there shooting s**t, just passing time and having a good time talking about random things under the sun. Suddenly Jim shot a look into the blackness across the road and had a confused look on his face. We asked him what was up, and he said, "You guys didn't hear that?" He claimed he heard a deep growl off the in the distance somewhere in the pasture. So we sat in silence for a minute or so, listening intently. Nothing but the summer breeze through the oak trees could be heard. Don and I shrugged and jokingly accused Jim of making s**t up to scare us. Slowly the conversation resumes and we think nothing more of it.

Out of nowhere, both Don and Jim pop their heads in the direction of the pasture again. Don asked, "Is THAT what you heard?" Jim said yes. I heard nothing and figured they must have gotten together when I wasn't paying attention. They described it as a deep growl with almost a bit of laughter. I just laughed it off myself, telling them to quit messing around. They both looked at each other, though, with a bit of a scared look. Why we didn't leave at that point, I don't know, but young stupid males ain't too bright. Again, we listened for awhile but heard nothing more than a cow mooing in the distance.

Again, we go back to talking, but Don and Jim both keep bring it up with each other, saying maybe it was a coyote or a cow or something. I thought the joke was getting old, so I kept trying to steer the conversation away to other, more important things like video games and women. But then we heard it. We ALL heard it. This deep, gutteral, hellish growling laugh echoed from the graveyard though the foyer between the kitchen and church. Recalling the sound now brings the hair on my neck to attention. We all froze in fear for a few seconds, and without a word we all jumped out of the truck, ran to our respective vehicles, and hightailed it out of there.

I have no idea what it was. Someone playing a prank? Possibly, most likely. A sick coyote with a deep d**n voice? Unlikely, but maybe it was some sort of animal making sounds. A demon? Nah, surely not. But whatever it was, we have no idea what the f**k it actually was because it scared us s**tless.

To this day, we still bring it up occasionally. We call it the "Laughing Growling Thing" because of how it sounded. Curiosity makes me wonder if we would have found out what it was if we had stayed. The deep recesses of my mind tell me I don't want to know.

This happened to me in December of 2001 when I was 9 going on 10. A little back story, I never had a dad and my mom worked until 6:00pm, keep in mind this was during the winter, no school, and it was in upper Indiana. I had hiked out to the convience store near sunset to get some supplies for the storm since my mom was stuck at work. I walked in and was greeted by one the staff I knew, Dante (no, not hicks, this was a 7-11, not a QuickStop), Dante informed me that there was a blizzard warning and that he would drive me home so I didn't "end up frozen in a ditch". So I bought around $40.00 in supplies (food, batteries, candles, matches, etc.), and payed for them before Dante closed up shop and took me to his car. Dante owned a beater, a battered Honda CSX which often leaked oil and broke down, so I wasn't expecting this to be a flawless ride, but I sure as hell didn't expect what happened. About halfway to my house (its also worth mentioning that Dante lived across the street from my house), the car breaks down, normally this wasnt a problem, but it was snowing like a m**********r and we didn't know what was wrong. Dante decides to walk to the nearest house around 1 mile away while I stay in the locked car to be safe, around twenty minutes later, I feel a strange unsettling feeling. I look out the window and see something very odd in the distance, three glowing light hovering above the ground around 1/2 mile away, one red, one blue, one yellow. I start freaking the f**k out and get on the floorboards for what seemed like hours, but in reality was around 20 minutes before dante returns with another person. While the other person works on the car I stand next to Dante while he protects me, he too sees the lights and becomes quite unsettled and decides to lock both of us in the car so nothing can happen to us. The man eventually gets the car started and Dante thanks him before gunning it out of there in a hurry. To this day, I have absoultly no idea what those lights could have been, it was in the middle of nowhere, no house, no cars, just cornfields all around, it still gives me the creeps over 13 years later.

There are already 3022 submissions so this will probably get buried, but here is a true story:

In the late 70's, my Uncle was studying medicine at the University of Chicago. After a morning class, he decided that he would hitchhike back home to Lincoln Park on the North side instead of pay for a taxi. A man drove up in a Plymouth Satellite and offered my Uncle a ride. The man looked normal and seemed friendly...lighthearted even, so my Uncle got in the car and they started driving towards Lake Shore Drive. However, once they got there, the man drove South on Lake Shore instead of North, towards Lincoln Park. My Uncle told the man he was going the wrong way and to turn around and head North. The man looked at my Uncle, put his hand on his knee and said, "No son, you are coming with me" and smiled darkly at him. My Uncle froze in panic, and when they hit traffic near the South Shore, he quickly unlocked the passenger door and ran away without looking back.

A year or two later on a cold December day, my Uncle was having coffee in a cafe with my future Aunt when he caught something on the TV that made his blood run cold. He saw the man that had picked him up from school that day the year before. He had been arrested for the suspected r**e and k*****g of over 20 young men and boys. The man on the television was John Wayne Gacy. And he had removed the door handle off the passenger side door to prevent the men he picked up from escaping.

My dad is one of those completely serious types. I have hardly ever heard him laugh or crack a joke, so you pretty much take what he says seriously.

Anyway, we were watching some random TV show, UFO Files or Ancient Aliens, and I asked him if he believed in UFOs/aliens. He proceeds to tell me a story I had never heard him tell before.

Apparently, when he was a teenager, he and my great grandmother were on their back porch one evening (very rural southern Mississippi in '70s) and noticed a huge object hovering over the woodline a few hundred yards from the house. Then suddenly it ascended vertically at an impossible speed. He said he couldn't explain what it was and hasn't seen anything like that since.

This is a popular story passed on in our school.

A student just finished training (a sport I forgot) in the 9th floor of our Sports Center building.

She rode the elevator alone, and pressed the Ground floor button.

The elevator went down as expected, but stopped at the 8th floor and opened. She checked the floor but no one was there.

It also opened at the 7th, 6th and eventually all succeeding floors. She checked after every floor but no one was there.

The elevator opened again at the 2nd floor. She peeked outside, still empty.

She then pressed the close button.

It won't close.

Instead, flashing at the top of the floor number was a word.

It said,

*OVERLOAD*

She got out of the elevator as fast as she can.

One summer when I was 13 or so sometime late at night, my mom and I were sitting in the living room talking. For some reason we looked out the window and saw two people walking past our house. They were about 7ft tall and wearing silver parkas. It was hot and humid outside. As they past our house the pipes in the chimney started shaking violently and didn't stop until the people were out of sight. There weren't any pipes in our chimney. It was eerie.

OK. Here it goes. In school there used to be this boy called Alistair who was really really weird and he lived in a house five doors down from me and was new to the area when this all happened. He was really shy and has zero friends, he was probably the most intelligent peson I've ever met but I'd occasionally go over to his house and play video games whilst our parents talked. Alistair had really 'dark' vibe and wasn't normal, his room was full of those creepy drawings of faces and fires with incredible detail. He asked me to play the staring game with him, I started to stare at him but he laughed and said 'not that one', confused, I followed him up to the Attic where he immediately drew a white circle on the floor in chalk, it looked like he'd done this before with his immense focus. He sat perfectly in the circle and told me to be silent and to hold his hand. He stared into my eyes with intense coviction and gestured me to do the same, I sat there staring into his eyes before he broke into a smile and shook my head from side to side, then grabbed my chin and tilted my head upwards, To my absolute f*****g horror there was a tall woman stood behind him staring directly at my face and smiling, the scariest f*****g smile I'd ever seen, I looked back at Alistair in terror where he smiled and said 'can you see it?' I screamed "Yes!" almost in tears and he rolled away from the circle and she was gone. I was crying immensely and had a huge feeling of dread as I walked downstairs, Alistairs mum smacked him and said "Don't you F*****G dare play that game again" knowing full well what had just happened. I ran home and cried. I spoke to Alistair the next day at school and he told me that "she doesn't always go away". I just can't. I just can't.