People Who Were Scared To Their Core Share Their 30 Spine-Chilling Experiences

I was 11 maybe 12 years old. Dad worked late most nights so I was home alone per usual. Home however was a ranch house far out of town in a Florida pine forest. It was late and dark. The doors were all French style glass with no blinds or curtains. Outside those glass doors was only a hauntingly dark tree line, dimly lit by the moon. Leaving all the lights on and a TV gave some comfort but this meant it was much easier to see in than it was for me to see out..

On this night I had to get something out of the “back room”, this was our name for a garage that was absorbed into the house. The concrete floors and unfinished walls gave the room a cold air. As I’m searching for what I need, I glance up to see a large bleach-white figure standing outside the glass door. 6 feet tall with no head and no expression. Just white hair draped in front like a ring girl. This was the night I learned there was another option besides fight or flight. It was freeze. I stood frozen in fear, as if the blood in my body just drained. Unable to do anything until my brain recognized it was a horses a*s. The horse got out of its pen and was chilling under the carport, with its a*s against the glass door.

I was about to fall asleep in my bedroom (I was 16 at the time so it's a while ago). Suddenly my dad calls me, which is weird considering it was 2 in the morning and my dad never calls me because we're literally in the same house. My dad tells me to come downstairs because he doesn't feel very well, so I do. My dad is rarely sick so I started worrying. When I came downstairs, he was drenched in sweat and held a hand clutching to his heart, making weird noises in pain. When I sat down beside him, he told me he called an ambulance. Then he went quiet, and around half a minute later he just said "Can you hold my hand"

It terrified me because it felt like he was making sure to say goodbye in case he died. It took longer than it should've for the ambulance to arrive, and my dads condition only got worse and worse. When they finally arrived, they were all very calm, but suddenly there was a change. They did an EKG on the spot and suddenly started hurrying around with bags of liquid and needles and monitors around my living room, and they even told me to hold stuff and carry things for them. I tried to keep my composure, but I was shaking in terror. I overheard them saying that he was having a heart attack.

They asked me to call my mom (I lived alone with my dad at the time), so I tried but she didn't pick up. I told them she didn't pick up and they basically said "Okay, take care of yourself" and left with my dad.

My dad was admitted to the hospital and ended up surviving the heart attack with minor complications, but I was left alone at home for 5 days straight. I was 16 ffs, and no one did the slightest effort to make sure that I was alright. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat. I just waited for my dad to come home. My dad is my best friend, he's the only one I have, and I catch myself going to check on him during the night just to make sure he's alive. I'm terrified every day.

My healthy husband contracted sepsis out of the blue. In 24 hours he went from fine to multiple organ failure (all of them) and life support. He was given a 20% chance of survival. We had 2 very young kids at the time. I saw our future look completely different within hours.

On a bright note, after shed loads of antibiotics, a month in ICU and other drugs and a years recovery, he is absolutely fine, all organs recovered!
But the feeling of my world changing in a day has never left.
Never ignore signs of sepsis! Also God bless the NHS

Went into my then 2 year old nephew's room to wake him up for the day. He was in his crib laying in a kind of weird posture, with his eyes wide open staring off at nothing. I figured he was awake already and thought "haha he looks dead..." to myself, and said "Good morning Matthew!" and his eyes didn't move to look at me. I said "Matthew?" and got closer to the crib and the way he looked was worse up close, just unfocused dead eyes looking at nothing, body limp. I shook him gently, then harder, saying "Matthew? Matthew?! MATTHEW?!" and when I yelled his name his eyes suddenly focused and he smiled at me and stretched like he often does when he first wakes up. Little f****r was asleep with his eyes open! It was only a few seconds but I swear my blood turned to ice, was never so scared in my goddamn life. No idea what caused it and he never did it again!

When I was about 10-11 years old, my best friend (still best friends) and I walked across our neighborhood about twenty minutes or so away to go visit the large pond nearby. We took bread to feed the ducks. At some point a white pickup truck pulled up and remained parked by the pond for quite some time. There was a man inside by himself that remained watching us.

I knew something was wrong and pointed it out to my friend. She told me not to worry and said he might be waiting on someone. We tried moving to the other side of the pond, to which he slowly followed us in his truck. We continued to play but both became increasingly nervous, and eventually decided after him following us a few times and continuing to watch us that we needed to make a game plan to get home. We both agreed walking back to her house was not an option. Obviously this was at a time children did not have cell phones, so that was off the table.

We agreed to make a run for it when the timing was right. His truck was right in front of where we’d need to get to the nearest house. The man began to roll down his window to speak to us so we jolted and took off running as fast as we can. He could definitely sense we were on edge I’m sure. He followed us and stopped the truck as we banged on a stranger’s door. He was full on in the middle of the road watching us. Once a man answered he sped away. At that point we were both sobbing hysterically. Luckily this was a father himself and was incredibly kind to us. We waited on the front porch while he called my father and explained the situation. My dad flew over and picked us up in what I’d like to call record time lmao. Both he and my dad called the police.

Come to find out a man in a white truck had been reported in the area for several weeks trying to pick up young girls. They put out a neighborhood watch for months in my neighborhood. I never saw him again but hope he was caught. So thankful for that random dad that helped us and took us seriously! I cannot imagine what would have happened had he not answered or we had tried to walk back on our own.

When my mom called me in the middle of the night telling me to get to her house- that the police were there and something happened to my twin sister. My initial thought was that she got arrested or something. I lived down the street from my mom at the time and the feeling of absolute terror driving there was something I cannot explain. I kept saying she’s dead she’s dead I can feel it. It was a mix of absolute panic/shock/dread that I cannot put into words. I arrived at my moms house and saw a cop car with just their lights flashing and heard my mom scream from inside. I was right. That night replays in my head often and I can still feel that horrible feeling.

When I was in sixth grade, we were in choir one day when out of nowhere an announcement comes over the loudspeaker. “WE ARE GOING INTO LOCKDOWN, THIS IS NOT A DRILL, THERE IS AN ACTIVE SHOOTER IN THE BUILDING.” We all panicked, switched out the lights, and packed ourselves into the furthest corner of the room away from the door, all 110 of us. Some people were crying, others were praying. My hands were shaking and I was just whispering, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” At some point, someone came by trying the door and pounding on it, and I had never felt terror like that before and I haven’t felt it like that since. After the longest five minutes of my life, they got on the loudspeaker and said, “Thank you for your cooperation during the drill, students. You may resume class as normal.” We went from utter terror to relief to rage in a matter of seconds.

My ex-girlfriend had a psychotic breakdown. Went from perfectly normal to insane within a week. One night I took her to the hospital during one of her episodes and the doctor pumped her full of sedatives and said to bring her back in the morning as they had no beds. I didn’t feel comfortable about leaving the hospital but he assured me she’d be fine until the morning.

When I woke up the following morning I opened my eyes and saw she was lying on her pillow staring at me wide-eyed and grinning. It scared the hell out of me. As we got up to get ready to go back to the hospital she came at me with a knife and tried to stab me. I was able to get away from her and calm the situation long enough to call the police and paramedics. She later said that she had to [end] me.

I shudder to think what might’ve happened if I had stayed sleeping for longer that morning.

Sucked farther and farther out to sea on my bodyboard after sunset while surfing triple overhead waves, just as the fogbank rolled in obscuring the coastline- and the direction I needed to swim to get home.

Took a couple hours in near dark open ocean to land a couple miles up the coast, guided solely by the faint, faraway string of a few streetlights and headlights that broke though the fog.

Every splash I heard behind me was *definitely* a great white shark. I'd panic paddle whenever there was a big splash behind me (again, I was in 20 foot seas. this happened *constantly*) until I could regain my calm center and try to drop my heart rate, the whole while thinking about how all that fast paddling I did probably just attracted a shark.

This was near San Francisco, lost at sea in great white breeding grounds while looking like a seal on a winter night, in horrendous conditions. It's not easy landing on a tiny strip of beach when twelve foot waves are dumping onto dry sand and the current is ripping at a decent pace... two miles away, I landed safely.

Slept like a baby, waking up screaming every two hours

I was almost murdered. It's a long story but I'll try to paraphrase it.

When I was a senior in high school a girl in my neighborhood went missing and about a month later was found dead. During that time her adoptive father was contacting people left and right. Apparently he had his suspicions about my ex boyfriend of 3 years who dated the missing girl in middle school. Adoptive father comes to my house to talk to me about ex and never really asked me anything about him but he talked about himself the whole time and how he was in a white supremacy gang and [eliminate] 12 people a year. After he left my house he kept trying to get me to meet with him alone without my mom present to talk to me more about my ex because he felt like I was leaving stuff out in front of my mom. I told him no, I wasn't comfortable and he just kept insisting. It got to the point where I had to have security walk me to and from my car at work and school. Adoptive father ends up getting arrested on unrelated charges and the detectives come and talk to me to figure out what he said to me etc. They told me to stay away from him and that he is dangerous. They pulled my mom away to speak privately to her and I didn't find out til I was in college that they told her that they think he murdered the girl and that he was planning on murdering me and blaming it on my ex that he went crazy and started murdering all his ex girlfriends.

It's been 7 years since this happened and the adoptive father was just convicted of murdering his daughter in February. But, I'm always terrified that one of his "brothers" are watching me since I testified against him.

Ok I'll tell it. It was in April of this year, and you can guess by my nik that I'm Ukrainian so I was in my backyard talking with my friend when suddenly half of the sky turned red (it was at night) and the only thing that I managed to do is say "Holly s**t !" and start counting. After 29 seconds I heard explosion after simple calculation turned out that our AA shooted dawn russian missile 10 kilometers away from me, but s**t that few minutes was f*****g scary !

I was home alone (off sick from school), and a paedophile hacked my computer. He had access to my webcam (which I didn't know at the time), and said he could see me. Described everything around me. I thought he was in my backyard, panicked and locked all the doors while crying and shaking. I called my dad and he came home straight away. It was a whole ordeal and the police did an investigation. Turns out he was a known paedophile in the US (not the country I live in). Nothing they could do.

To this day I cover all webcams on laptops/PC's as soon as I own them. All doors are locked when I'm home alone and all windows have curtains on them you can't really see through.

Yes, I've had therapy. But some paranoia just sticks.

My 3 year old being diagnosed with leukemia. She had been sick for months and the doctors kept blaming it on reactions to getting some vaccines, then “anemia”, then a UTI, etc. My mom instinct one day told me if I didn’t take her to the doctor again she would die. She had labs drawn and her hemoglobin was 2.3 (that is almost no blood in your body!). I knew something was way off for months but knew it was cancer when her pediatricians’ office called and usually a nurse gives simple lab results over the phone and it was a physician telling me she needed to go to the hospital immediately and to pack bags to be there for awhile and that she had a room in the ICU ready for her. The most devastating and terrifying day of my life by far. My ex husband/her father had just left for rehab the day before and I received all of this info and had to process it super quickly on my own. I had to smile and comfort her while they poked and prodded her repeatedly when all I wanted to do was break down. She went through chemo and all that comes along with it for 2 1/2 years and she finished treatment on Halloween last year. I feel so blessed our story has a happy ending and that she got to ring that bell, but that moment felt like I was living in an actual nightmare. I was so scared that I was numb, you truly never expect something like that to happen to your baby. It’s amazing the cure rate for her type of leukemia (Pre B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) is now 97% curable. Prayers and good vibes to all of you who’ve shared experiences of trauma or terrible things that have happened.

We were at the beach and my son needed to use the washroom. I took him and my 2 year old daughter into the washroom, my son went into the stall to do his thing. Because his swim trunks were wet, he had trouble pulling them up. I went in the stall to help him for literally 15 seconds and when I came out my daughter was gone. I ran out of the washroom, looked to the beach, she wasn't in sight. I started screaming her name and i couldn't find her anywhere. Then someone said "I think I saw her at the playground".

I ran up a grassy hill and saw her on the slide. That minute she was missing was the scariest moment of my life.

When I was new to teaching (HS), I was being observed by a principal. The class was being mostly good, but this one student was head down sleeping. I called his name, no response, so I went over to wake him up. I touched his arm and he just fell over, yellow foamy drool everywhere. He had overdosed, thank God the principal was there with their walkie to call for help while I did what first aid I knew. The student survived- but I was so scared because I wasn’t sure how to help, or if my helping was hurting. Its the feeling of being utterly powerless and incompetent when someone’s life is in your hands.

I was driving early in the morning one summers day on a rural highway and rolled up to an overturned car. It was one of those accidents that made you grateful that you weren’t there when it actually happened — rollover cage severely dented, front windshield cracked, several windows gone, and rear door was open. Then I did a double take. The car was still on, the front window wipers were skating over the shattered glass, and there was a man in a fetal position 5 feet away in the grass.

I pulled the f**k over immediately and called EMS. I ran over to the guy whose head was cracked like a porcelain doll. He didn’t know the date, his name, and at several points tried to get up before his legs gave out.

years ago when I still lived at my parents house, I was sleeping on the couch in the unfinished basement with my girlfriend at the time. I woke up to her shaking me awake with absolute panic in her voice whispering that there was a very tall man across the basement watching us. Hearing that made my blood run cold so i slowly peeked over the back of the couch and sure enough, I could just barely make out the shape of an EXTREMELY tall man facing us in the darkness. He was so tall that his head was close to the ceiling. I whispered to my girlfriend at the time that I was going to jump up and turn the light on which had a string that you needed to pull to turn it on, and right when I did that she needed to use the light to run to the stairs and get out of the basement. So after a second of psyching myself up for whatever came next, I counted to 3 and jumped off the couch and turned the light on.

I finally got a proper look at the guy. It was my dads f*****g scuba suit that he hung from the rafters to let it dry. My hands were shaking for a half hour after that but we both got a good laugh out of it….eventually.

It’s a strange one, because I had no actual, logical, reason to feel scared, yet I was terrified.
I worked in a shop a few years ago and was tidying up at the front of the store near the windows and the entrance. I saw a man walk in, but I only saw his back when he came into the store. He had long hair and wore a leather jacket or leather trousers or maybe both, can’t remember. I thought nothing of it at the time. A few minutes later the same man was walking back towards the doors and I looked at him casually. He was looking at me too so we ended up making eye contact. Instant goosebumps, shivers. Whatever vibes he was giving off it scared the sh*t out of me to the point that I couldn’t move or even take my eyes off him. He slowly walked towards the doors while maintaining an eye contact. When he walked past me, he had this smirk on his face that was just purely evil. He proceeded to walk out of the store and turned right and for a few moments he was covered by a huge sign in our window. Every cell in my body screamed at me to go. Run. Even though he was actually leaving clearly, I still felt the need to get as far away from him as possible. But at the same time I felt like I didn’t want to lose him out of my sight until I knew for sure he was gone. As he came back into view he was still looking at me. When he finally walked past our window I almost cried from relief that he was gone. He never said a word. Never even approached me. All he did was looking at me and it scared me more than anyone ever. I never saw him again and I hope I never will.

Then girlfriend [took her own life] while being on the phone with me. (To be exact - the part where she is non-responsive)

When I had a psychotic break and I left the hospital I was afraid of f*****g everything. I couldn’t leave the house without feeling like someone was about to murder or kidnap me. I’ve never experienced such fear and paranoia to that level before. Which is saying a lot bc I suffer from paranoid delusions.