Top 10 scariest or creepiest things people have seen and heard according to Reddit users

reply to post by Lady_Tuatha


Thanks for sharing all your stories!! What a fun thread to read during a boring Friday at work.

It got me thinking about creepy stories that I might be able to share. I only have one unexplained experience; and as the years have passed, I’m not even sure what to make of it. I still get the chills when I think about it, even though I can’t be sure if I imagined the whole thing or not.

I was perhaps 8-10 years old at the time. I lived with my parents and younger brother in a modest 2 storey home located in your average small town. We must have only recently moved in because my bedroom at this time was upstairs, next to my parents bedroom, and my younger brother’s was just down the hall (later, both of our bedrooms would be downstairs).

Anyway, it was late one night and I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Everyone else is asleep and the house is dark and quiet. However, my room was fairly well lit from the bright moonlight shining through the Venetian blinds covering the window located just above the headboard of my bed. Since the blinds were somewhat open, the horizontal slats of the blinds cast a distinct shadow on the far wall at the foot of my bed.

As I toss and turn, I look over to see what appeared to be the shadow of a “cat” on that far wall within the outline of my window. Startled, I begin to try and rationalize what I’m seeing. How the heck did a cat get WAY up to the outside of my window?? It’s at least 20ft straight up from the ground with no way to access it other than a straight climb. Not totally impossible for a cat but certainly improbable. Additionally, the windowsill itself couldn’t be more than a few inches wide on the outside. Perplexed, I lay there COMPLETELY motionless just observing this shadow as it appeared to move around outside my window, just above my head. I was too afraid to get up and look out to see what it was.

That’s because I can really only describe the shadow as looking like a cat…but it wasn't a cat. I saw pointy ears and a long cat-like tail (hence my initial thoughts), but it appeared as though the cat was wearing a hat or touque (Canadian eh?) or beanie. That and maybe a jacket or a vest or something. While it was about the same size, it certainly didn’t move like a cat either. It was TRULY odd!!

As I watched in terror, this thing was moving back and forth along the windowsill and occasionally appeared to by trying to open my window!! It would reach down and pull…but my window was always locked when closed. I then watched it climb over the window, as if to get up on the roof and look around. Then it would climb back down and try to open the window again. Each time the sheer terror in my lil heart grew exponentially!

After watching the moving shadow repeat this routine for a couple of agonizing minutes, I had a plan. EVER SO SLOWLY, I began to move the covers off my body so I could make a fast unimpeded getaway. I waited for it to head up to the roof again and then BAM; I was GONE out of my room so fast that I’m sure would have made Usain Bolt envious!! I ran across the hall to my parent’s room and startled the heck out of them! Running into their room in the middle of the night is not something I would normally do, especially at that age.

This time, however, was different.

So with my parents leading the way, we turned on all the lights and went to check things out. Sure enough…nothing. Absolutely nothing. Naturally, my parents told me it was just my imagination.

Was it?

To this day I’m still not sure. Did I imagine the whole thing?? It seemed far too vivid and real so it’s difficult for me to pass this off as simply my imagination. However, I was a young kid so maybe it was? The fear I experienced was definitely real.

Thought this one was quite scary.

I was once in a hottub with some friends late at night, and we were all telling some stories. One of the guys told us this one, a story of a girl he knows (not sure if it's true, but multiple people in the hottub who knew her verified it was true): So one day, this girl was called over to babysit. She did it a lot for these people, so it was routine for her. Anyways, she was told to put the kids to bed at 9, and she did. After she put the to bed, she started watching TV and doing homework, waiting for the parents to come home. But then, she started hearing some noises coming out of the basement, like pans falling and stuff. She just ignored it, and thought it was the washing machine or something. Anyways, a little later, she starts hearing the noises again. She decides to call the police, and tell them she was hearing noises coming out of the basement at the house she's babysitting at. The lady at the station told her there's a patroller in her area, and that he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. Anyways, in about 5 minutes, she hears a knock on the door. She answers, and it's a full swat team. She asked, "I thought they were just sending a patroller.." and one of the guys told her "after you hung up the phone, we heard a second phone on the line hang up". Ended up there was a man in the basement, listening to the conversation. The lady in the station waited and heard him hang up, then immediately sent the swat team to help. They went downstairs and caught him; he was wanted for multiple cases of rape.

reply to post by zidanelittle


Sorry about that! I had them all posted but the mods removed them due to me copying and pasting too much, i got a penalty of 50 points too for it. ooops wont be doing that again, staying clear of thread posting now for a while.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


Part 2:

Finally, when my sister and I had finished recounting our experiences at night in the house with the footsteps going up and down the hall and across our rooms, my mom decided to tell us something that she had omitted about the house. Apparently when they were having all the renovations done, the contractor in charge called them up and asked them to come over right away because he wanted to show them something. When they were clearing out the attic, the workers had found an old mattress lying up there along with multiple bottles with candlesticks stuck in the tops. According to my mother, it was very clear to them all that someone had, in fact, been living in the attic. My parents had the workers clear it all out and they both agreed that, considering the rest of the house and the deadbolts on the bedroom doors especially, they would never tell us that anybody had ever been living up in the attic. My mother had heard the footsteps at night, too, and always thought that it was just her imagination getting the better of her since she knew about that fact. Because we never knew and heard it, too, it scared the hell out of her.

To this day, none of us know what was up with that house. That night, we seriously discussed the various possibilities of where the footsteps that all three of us heard at night but it cast everything that we experienced in that house in a totally different light. We moved into a house that had drilled holes in the bedroom ceilings, double key deadbolts on all the bedroom doors and someone who had been living in the attic. We heard footsteps coming from that attic every night. We don't know and still don't know if whoever had been living in the attic moved back in somehow after we did. All the locks on the house had been changed so it's hard to say. We also still don't know what the occasional smell was in the kitchen because, during renovation, nobody thought to look and by the time we noticed it, we didn't want to know.

I drive by that house every once in a while and it's funny but it's easy to see that there are still problems with it. It's the only house on the street that has alarm signs very prominently displayed in the front yard and it now has security lighting all around the house entirely. It just stands out because of those little bits of extra security. To me, it kind of says that the people who moved in after us experienced stuff, too. The current owners of it are a company so I don't think anyone lives in it full time anymore.

To add since I just scoped out the house but apparently this still pretty home sold for $190,000 when it was appraised at $467,000 in 2007, pre-housing bubble crash. Prior price sold was a mere $117,000...for an elegant home off a popular golf course...

Originally posted by Lady_Tuatha
reply to post by zidanelittle

 

Sorry about that! I had them all posted but the mods removed them due to me copying and pasting too much, i got a penalty of 50 points too for it. ooops

wont be doing that again, staying clear of thread posting now for a while.

We all goof time to time. I didn't even know to use the ex-tags until today, and I've been here a while. Don't let it stop you, 50 pts is meaningless.

And it really is an awesome thread.

This is a true story. Pics of the yards in question can be provided upon request.

I was in 2nd grade when this happened, lived in Piqua OH. It was late at night, after dark during winter. I was making a snow man in my yard. My friend's yard was right behind me, and past THAT yard was my first girlfriend I ever had. After I finished my snow man, I looked forward, toward her yard when I saw something HUGE walking in her yard. This was easily a hundred feet away, it was taking HUGE steps, and swinging it's arms in very huge arcs. (Like a power walker would)

I couldn't take my eyes off it, knowing at the time this thing HAD to be 7-8 feet tall considering how big it looked from so far a distance. Then suddenly it stopped, turned it's head, and looked right at me.

It had red, glowing eyes. It held my gaze for only a second, then walked faster towards the back gate of her yard. (I being so young, assumed it sped up to come after me.)

I ran in up the stairs towards my apt, screaming like crazy about bigfoot, and literally crawled under the sink hiding. It took my mother 20 minutes to assure that everything was fine, just my imagination.

When I had the nerve to peek outside, I looked at my snowman & it was completely destroyed.

And no, I didn't have the courage to look for "prints" or anything else like that either tyvm.

Based on google maps the addressee is 764 Lincoln St Piqua Ohio. In the pic you'll see a wooden fence on the background, that wasn't there in my time, my friend lived there, his name was Gary, & he had a brother named Roger. On the other side of his yard was my first gf, Tammy. The house/apt with the steps going up was where I lived. (I also lived on the house on the corner, but that isn't relevant to the story)

This has been a gut-wrenchingly interesting read, so please keep them coming! Helped me pass my five hour shift in work so I thank all of you

I have only had one scary incident like this happen to me;

This occurred when I was 16 (two years ago) when I was babysitting (as many scary happenings do), and it was around 2AM while I was watching The Shining, which certainly didn't help the situation.

The curtains to the living room window, which faced out on to the street, were open and I was lying on the sofa, which faces the window. A movement caught my eye, and when I looked onto the street I saw a tall man, wearing dark clothes, standing underneath the street lamp opposite the house with an unnervingly broad smile and wide eyes. This was in a rough area of my city, and so I was naturally fearful of all people in the area anyway, but the look on this man's face and his terrifyingly still stare chilled me to the bone. The scariest part was, there was netting over the window which usually prevents outsiders from being able to see inside, while allowing those inside to see clearly outside, but I swear he was staring me right in the eyes. I watched him stand still, staring for a few minutes until he pointed directly at me and (what looked like, because I couldn't hear) laugh hysterically. I instinctively and fearfully ducked underneath the window sill and sat there for about fifteen minutes with thoughts racing through my head, painfully close to emptying my bowels in my clothing.

I thought that by then he must be gone, so I got on my knees and slowly moved up to look out the window. The man was right outside the window, face almost touching the glass, with the same wide stare and freakishly wide smile. I have honestly never been so scared in my entire life, I shouted incoherently, shut the curtains as fast as I could and rushed to grab hold of a kitchen knife and ensure all doors were locked. I sat on the sofa shaking, gripping the knife with white knuckles until 4AM when the mother got home.

Scariest moment of my life and that man's face will be burned into my memory forever.

Originally posted by Coup_Detat_Cam
reply to post by Lady_Tuatha

 

As I toss and turn, I look over to see what appeared to be the shadow of a “cat” on that far wall within the outline of my window.
...
As I watched in terror, this thing was moving back and forth along the windowsill and occasionally appeared to by trying to open my window!! It would reach down and pull…but my window was always locked when closed. I then watched it climb over the window, as if to get up on the roof and look around. Then it would climb back down and try to open the window again.

Probably just a cat burglar..

No idea what it was, but thanks to you and everyone else for the stories.

reply to post by LiberalSceptic


I love the russian sleep experiment story! ONe of the best creepy ones out there.

Well, back to my tarot readings

Is there a link to the thread you got this from so i can see them or was it just individual posts on a certain sub reddit? If that's the case, which one?

Great thread! I've been reading this all afternoon at work. Fantastic time passer. Gimmie more

reply to post by Casualboy100


No .. it was totally random ... guy seemed homeless .. there is an addendum .. actually a preface .. a couple of nights before that happened ... I was asleep downstairs on the couch, next to a window that was at least 5 ft off street level... ...

I had an incredibly realistic dream that these two demons had my chest splayed open and were scratching my heart with their super long finger nails ....it was one of those dreams that you cannot tell if its real or what .... I could FEEL the nails on my heart...

I awoke .. really startled and scared ... and after a few minutes of just laying there trying to make sense of it all I used an old technique I knew when I wanted to sleep .. to "become" ..(or imagine "becoming" ..EVERYTHING around me ... atomically ... ) kind of hard to explain ... but as I spread my spirit/being to everything around me (even outside)...

BOOM ... a street cat BANGED itself up against the window ..letting out the most terrifying, blood curdling SCREAM you can imagine ....

this was just after that dream and I RAN upstairs to my wife and baby .... days later that other episode occurred.. ...

true story ....

Originally posted by Zotor
99% of that stuff sounds like urban legends, urban legends like this are perpetuated by liars who don't have any good stories first-hand, so they tell a story they heard second-hand and claim it happened to them first-hand to get attention. Everytime I hear a story like this I ask the person details, what, when, why, what color, how, etc, 99% of the time they can't answer because they ripped it off from an unreliable source. I can do better w/ personal stories but wouldn't want to jumble them together w/ these urban myths. I've heard a few of these 15 years ago, proving they aren't legit.

Yes... but this thread isnt really about the legitimacy of these stories now is it? It's about the most scariest things you have heard/experienced, so who cares if they are "TALL TALES", as long as we get a good shiver out of them, eh?

To those who are scared of ghosts...

Its not the dead ones you have to worry about.

reply to post by Lady_Tuatha


This is by far one of the best threads to show up on ATS in a very long time...I believe I may have a touch of ADHD, because lately none of the threads can keep my attention for more than 2 pages, I have read every single post in this thread....love, love, love it!!!

I have a story to share. I have many stories to share, but I'm going to go with this one because it is burned into my brain.

I must have been about 6 or 7 years old at the time. My family and I were visiting may aunt and uncle in their new house. My mom and my Aunt Angie were upstairs in the kitchen. My dad and my Uncle Mike were in the basement playing pool. Off of the pool room was a kind of family room with a fireplace and a couch and a television. My sister, my cousin and I were in the family room downstairs, right next to the room where my dad was playing pool.

Us kids decided to play "light as a feather", of couse they chose me to be the dead person because I was the lightest. So I am laying on this huge ( I mean huge, like 4 foot by 4 foot) feather pillow, and my sister is on one side of me and my cousin is at my head and they both have four fingers under me. Now normally there would be another person on the other side and someone at the feet, but we didn't have enough people and were apparently bored out of our minds so this was just going to have to do.

All of the lights are off, but there was light coming from the pool room so we could still see each other a little bit. So my cousin is at my head and she is going on and on about how I died and how everybody was so sad and how I would be missed and blah, blah, blah and then my sister and her start chanting "light as a feather, stiff as a board" over and over.. The next thing I know I can feel them raising me up, but I just felt like I was floating and I knew that together they couldn't raise my up that high with just their finger tips. As soon as that thought came into my head my dad turned on the light in the family room and I fell straight down onto the feather pillow. And I fell FAR. My dad asked us what was going on, and of course we didn't tell him because we didn't want to get in trouble. We told him that my sister had flipped my over her back and I fell onto the pillow.

My sister and my cousin were so creeped out that we never tried it again. I am 41 now and still, to this day, I have no idea what happened, but I forbid my children from ever, ever trying it.

reply to post by smyleegrl


Thanks. Im just being melodramatic, ( my thread is my baby!) lol, naw I know I may have overstepped the (offsitematerial) boundaries, but, I just did not know how to reflect the thread in any other way, it wouldnt make sense without showing the top ten, hence the title...... ah well,,, you live and learn.. I have other forums with less stipulations to express my varied views and news'sources on, in the meantime il stick to the ats rules if i want to post here again.

reply to post by FlyersFan


The only time I ever felt a spirit touch me,was Japan ,and it shoved me actually . I don't think it has to do with being American .,its more like you're an outsider period .
Could you ever hear them ? They used to whisper nasties in Japanese at us.
I have to post the Ebisu story I can see.

reply to post by MitchL61


Underpants Gnomes !

Heh ...sounds like leprechauns .Seriously

My mother lived in a rural town in West Virginia when she was in her twenties. Back then many houses didnt have indoor toilets, you had an outhouse in the back yard. She told me one night she went out very late to use the bathroom. Looking through the small half moon shaped window in the front, she saw the outline of several bushes silhouetted against an overcast sky in the distance. Suddenly one of the "bushes" stood up to a height she estimated to be much higher than a man. She closed her eyes in terror and when she finally had the courage to look again, "it"was gone.
I always was very creeped out by this story. And for some reason it makes me think of the Mothman, who in a couple reported sightings did the same thing.

Hi there, Firstly I'm a very long time lurker, (10 years or more) first time sign up and poster. Don't know why this topic finally got me on board, as Im a constant visitor to many forums, but it did.
This topic got me thinking back to a supernatural series that used to air over here in Australia early/mid 90's, called The Extraordinary.
It's was a show that used to describe re-enact true ghost, U.F.O stories etc. A kind that all of you guys on here would love, all topped off with a host (Warwick Moss) who has a deep husky voice. That used to always make the stories seem a little scarier to a young teenage boy.
Anyway whenever, someone occasionally brings the story up I mention about the "I'll give you a ride" story and anyone whoever has seen the series, says those words still give them chills.

This story it's all more believable as it happened to a famous U.S/ Greek actor Telly Savalas. Better known for playing Kojak in a 70's crime serieswith the same name.

Wish I knew how to imbed a video but the youtube link is below, otherwise just Google "Telly Savalas I'll Give you a ride." It's only a 6 minute video and well worth watching. Enjoy!
www.youtube.com...

Synopsis:

When Telly was younger he was driving home at 2am after just dropping off a young girl after going on a date in Long Island, New York. He ran out of fuel after walking into a restaurant and asked for directions to a gas station.
He set out on foot in a "wooded area" as he was walking he hears a male high pitched voice say "I'll give you a ride" he turns around and theres a man sitting inside a Cadillac dressed in a white suit. The strange thing is he didn't hear any car pull up. Telly replies "thats fine as I'm going to a gas station," Telly gets in the car and directs him towards the gas station. As they pull up, Telly get out a fumbles in his pockets for some coins to pay for the gas. The man in the White suit says "I'll lend you a dollar," but the strange thing was he didn't ask him for any money. Embarrassed, Telly asks for the mans name and address, so he can post it out to him. The man wrote it down on a piece of paper, and handed it to Telly. Telly goes in gets some gas, pays for it a gets back in the car.

Driving back, out of the blue. The man turns and says to Telly in his high pitched creepy voice "I know.....so and so, (Telly doesn't say the same in the video). Telly replies, Who's he? The man says "utility infielder for the Boston Red Sox" Telly recalls how bizarre it was, for him to come out of the blue and say that. As they weren't even talking about baseball or anything like that. Finally after arriving back at Telly's car, that man got out and gave him a push start. Then drove off.

The next day Telly goes to work and later in the day he sees a head line in the paper. So and so (the baseball player mentioned the night before) Dead. He was 27 and died under very mysterious circumstances.He thought to himself what a frightening coincidence. He remembers then about the piece of paper the man had wrote his name and address on. Telly picks up the phone and calls thew number, a man answers "Jimmy's Bar," Telly asks to speak to Mr Cullen, the man replies "just a minute." Then a lady gets on the phone and asks "who's calling?" Telly replies, "Can I speak to Mr Cullen?" Woman says "He's not here." Telly replies "Well I was with a James Cullen last night he game me this number and said I could reach him here." She says " Look you S.O.A.B I don't what you're talking about. You're talking about my husband and he's been dead for 2 years," then she slams the phone down.

Anyway not letting it go he later got in touch with the woman and met her in person. He told her of his story, the white suit he described, was the suit he was buried in. The piece of paper he gave Telly with his number and signature on it, was identical (baring James was replaced with Jimmy) to a letter he had written his wife. Telly also says he had this very high pitched voice. The mans wife said " No, he had a very deep voice, much like you." Then Telly finds out that he shot himself through the throat/ voice box. *cue cold shiver*

Well that's it. I know it was a long winded story, and I hoped I painted a picture for you. But to it justice you have to watch the video, those of you who can. As I said it only goes for 6 minutes. Please do as it is my favourite Ghost story. Thanks for reading.

GORR