16 Insanely Creepy True Stories That Will Keep You Glued To Your Screen Against Your Will

We've all experienced something that is weird or just "off." But here are some of the scariest true stories that the internet has to offer. 
Jacob Geers
October 24, 2016
“When I was around 16 my rapidly growing family finally moved from the house I had spent my entire life in. As you would expect, we spent a lot of time fondly remembering things we used to do in the house as we were packing everything up. At some point I decided to go into the downstairs closet with a flashlight and read, something I used to do when I was younger to get some peace and quiet.

Now, this is one of those deep closets that goes under the stairs; it went back around 8 feet and then had a left turn into a very low maybe 3 foot high space. This space was largely occupied by a mountain of old blankets and stuffed animals. Of course, this is the most fluffy spot to sit and read.

About an hour in I shift a little to get comfortable and I hear a low, slow, warped, hoarse voice say "you always make me happy". I flipped my shit, hit my head on the low ceiling, and practically broke the door down getting out. After hyperventilating and explaining to my family why there was no color left on my face I went back to see what it was. It was my stuffed Little Bear from when I was 3 or 4 years old that I happened to lean on juuuuust right to press his belly. When I pressed his stomach again though, nothing. This poor bear I hadn't played with since I was a toddler used the last of it's power, used it's dying breath to tell me I made it happy.

You make me happy too little bear.

When you're not making me piss myself.”
“This is the story of how a creepy encounter with a scary man at a harbour café saved me from something even more terrifying. It was in the autumn of 1994 and I was 19 years old. At the time my dad had been working for almost six months abroad, and I was planning a surprise visit. My dad and I have always been close, I am an only child and my mother died of cancer when I was still a baby. So it was just my dad and I really, a tiny little family but he made up for it by being the most awesome parent ever. Now that I wasn’t a little kid anymore, I appreciated that more and more. I had had booked the ticket and was ready to go, it was gonna be great fun to surprise him with a visit. I had to take the ferry though, and I had just gotten my driving license and felt really unhappy about having to drive my little car onboard the ferry, and decided to not bring a car at all, and just rent one once I got there. Having time to spend I decided to have coffee at a near by café since I was early and they hadn’t started letting people onto the ferry just yet. At the café there were lots of truck drivers and I soon realized I was the only woman there.

One man, a 40-ish bloke with ice blue eyes and tattoos all over was eyeing me from across the room. Something about him made my skin crawl.

I got up to leave, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable, and to my utter horror he followed. What do I do now? I asked myself. This was before everyone owned a cell phone, I might add. I decided to try and look busy and maybe he would leave me alone. So I pulled out my ticket and tried to look like I was reading it carefully, when he suddenly snatched it from my hand and said: ‘I’m on the same boat. I’ll have hours of your company then, how lovely’ in a voice that was an absurd combination of jovial flattery and hidden hostility.

I felt it very strongly that if I got on that boat, with this man who now knew my booking details, I’d be in grave danger. I can’t explain why the feeling was so overwhelming, but it was, and I decided there and then to not get on the boat. The ticket had been cheap anyway, I could get on the next one instead. I hid in the ladies room until I knew the ferry had left and then I went to rebook my ticket. The story could have ended here, a creepy encounter with a stalkerish man, but it doesn’t.

I was right in the assumption that getting on that ferry would have been unbelievably dangerous. Have you figured it out yet? The date was September 28, 1994, the name of the ship was M/S Estonia, and that cold night she sank in the Baltic sea, taking 852 people with her, resulting in the worst ferry catastrophe to strike Sweden to this day.

I still recall that day with horror, and wonder what would have happened if this creepy man had not taken an interest in me? If I had not listened to my instinct and gotten on board instead of waiting for the next boat... Would I have been among the survivors? Or would my dad have seen my name on the list of lives lost in the Baltic sea?”
“I used to work as a 911 operator in a relatively large metro area. One night at about 3 am or so I answered a call from an elderly lady who said she didn't feel good. I tried to get more info about what was wrong — chest pain, trouble breathing, headache, is she diabetic, etc.

She gave me her address and phone number and said no one else was home but the front door was unlocked so they could come in. I toned the call out as 'general illness' and kept trying to get more details. No matter what else I asked about what was wrong, all she would say is 'I just don't feel good, can you send someone to help me?'

After a few minutes she said 'I'm gonna put the phone down for a minute, I need to go to the bathroom.' I tried to get her to stay on the line with me, told her she can do whatever she needs to get ready but I'd like to be able to stay in contact in case there's a problem.

She said, 'I'm gonna put the phone down, I'll just be a minute.' And that was it. I stayed on the line and asked for her every so often but got no reply.

A couple minutes passed, then the fire department called on scene so I just disconnected and didn't think much about it. Told them the caller advised front door is unlocked and she was in the bathroom. A couple more minutes and the one of the firefighters called over the air with a weird tone and said:

'Dispatch...uh how exactly was this caller received?' I told them the call was first party from the patient's home phone approx 8 minutes ago. He didn't respond over the air, but called the desk from his cell phone (which usually only happens when something is going on that they don't want broadcasted since anyone can listen in on the radios).

On the phone he said 'Are you sure this wasn't a third party call from a family member or something?' I said 'negative, caller advised "I don't feel good" and said no one else was home, so to the best of my knowledge, the caller is the patient...have you made contact?'

He said 'Yeah, she was in the bathroom like you said, but she's probably been dead for about 12 hours. Cold to the touch, fully livid, full rigor, we're gonna need a deputy out here.'

Afterwards we pulled the tapes of the radio and phone calls and checked the time stamps, address, phone number, and went over everything a few times to see if I missed something. I called them back in the morning after the shift to see if they had anymore info, but they were just as weirded out as we were. The phone was still in the living room and the patient was dead in the bathroom.”
“One night, about ten months ago, there was a pretty heavy snow storm in my area. All of the roads were closed and a curfew was issued for everybody except emergency medical personnel.

I had been shoveling snow for most of the day and was dead tired come nightfall. Didn't have the energy to do much of anything besides eat dinner and lay down. I fire up some OG Star Trek and begin to doze off.

A couple of hours later, around 1AM, I hear the sound of a door rattling and a slight whisper saying my name, "vladimir_pwnin". I sit up a bit and realize it's coming from my parents' room, becoming fainter with the passing time. After 10 minutes or so, I gather up the courage to see what the hell is going on.

Shitty folding knife in hand, I peak out into the hallway and don't see anything. The noise is still coming from the room next door, the rattling becoming more rushed as I approach. Cautiously, I open the door and sneak inside. It's pitch black and I can't see anything.

My eyes are taking entirely too long to adjust to the darkness. I'm shuffling forward, and all of the sudden, something grabs and pulls on my leg. At this point I was so freaked out I jumped back. As the whispers continued, I recognized my dad's voice. He was asking me for help.

He had a stroke while walking to use the bathroom around 1AM that night. After he fell, he was able to use his left foot to rattle the door to his bathroom. My mom fell asleep on the couch in the living room and wasn't around to help or hear. I was able to grab the house phone and call 911, and despite the weather, the police and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes.

That was the scariest night of my life. The doctors told us there wasn't much hope for my dad before going into surgery, since he had a hemorrhagic stroke and there was a massive amount of bleeding.

Fast forward 10 months and my old man is cognitively the same, just paralyzed on his right side. He had every infection under the sun while in the hospital, but he staved them off and is still with us today. He was my best friend before the incident, and my hero after.”
“When I was 16 in the mid 90s, aka the "I know everything, I'm invincible and you can't stop me" age, I got in a fight with an acquaintance while a whole bunch of us were hanging out at his house. Stupid fight, can't remember what about, but I decided fuck it, I was going home. I lived about 5 miles away, but I didn't have a car, and since it was 2am, there were no buses. I was going to walk home.

In the middle of the night, though a not-as-safe-as-it-seem neighborhood, as a tiny 16 year old girl.

So I did. I think, in hindsight, my friends either didn't believe I was going to do it, or were too startled by the sudden argument to realize what I was doing. I left the house and started hoofing it. About a mile out, the suburban housing neighborhood melted into a main street, with highway access. I started to notice a greyish minivan following me. It would follow me, pass me, turn a corner, and about 3 blocks later, it would do the same thing. I mean, really really obvious what it was doing. I crossed over to the other side of the street so I was walking the opposite of traffic flow, and thus no car could come up behind me. It kept doing it, on the other side of the street. About a mile later, there was a 24-hour Fred Meyer (west coast USA chain grocery/all-purpose store), lights bright, but parking lot emptyish. I immediately crossed the parking lot and went to head inside.

Just before I got to the doors, the minivan that had been following me, pulled up into one of the parking spots. A guy called out from the driver side and said:

"I don't want you to walk over here, just stay there and listen. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing. I saw you walking a while back, but I also saw a dark car that was following you.

A couple of times you went to turn around, or stopped, so it started following you down a parallel side street. When I saw it, I started to follow you both, just to make sure you were safe. Go inside the store, and call someone to come pick you up, please. I haven't seen the car since you headed across the lot."

He waited until I was inside the store, and then pulled away. I didn't have anyone to call, so I just let the night cashier know what was going on, and hung out with her for about an hour and a half. Then I finished the walk home. I've never forgotten the incident, or that man, whoever he was. During the walk, I never saw the dark car he mentioned, but I've always been convinced he saved my life that night.”
“Growing up, my bedroom was the only one that faced the front of the house/street. When I was about 8 or 9, I woke up to my dad calmly but firmly telling me to get up, go in the bathroom, and shut the door. I was annoyed because I was half asleep, but I listened. Apparently I was more tired than I realized, because I feel asleep on the bathroom floor. The next morning I asked my mom what happened. She seemed oblivious and confused. I looked at my dad like she was crazy, and I asked him why he had woken me up. He denied doing it. I was becoming frustrated to the point of tears, but I ultimately let it go.

Fast forward to college. I was home one break, and I decided to ask again. I had thought of that night off and on for years, and it still bothered me. This time, my dad goes, "Ha! I was wondering if you even remembered that." Turns out that a lot of houses on our block were being vandalized and robbed all those years ago. Someone had broken into the garage and was inside the house. My room was partially over the garage. My dad heard it happen and quietly got me to safety. Police were called, the guy ran. He was never caught, however, and my parents didn't want a terrified kid on their hands, so for years they pretended like nothing had ever happened. It wasn't supernatural, but it was unsettling for sure.”
“My aunt and uncle moved into a 19th century home in a small town in Maine a few years back. Think something from Steven King. Their neighbors warned them about previous paranormal incidents. Since they moved in, many more incidents have taken place. These incidents include but are not limited too:

An in-your-face chocolate smell in the kitchen when no one had been cooking.

Random items appearing in places they shouldn't be. My aunt was a school administrator, now retired, and she has a filing cabinet full of old documents in the basement. One night while I was visiting, a binder from that filing cabinet was underneath my bed when i woke up. The filing cabinet was in the very back of their storage space and would have required someone to scramble over camping equipment, old furniture, etc. to get to it. Weird.

Levitating objects. Super skeptical of this one.

My aunt was home alone running on a treadmill in her basement. Unexplained banging noises came from the ground floor. She yells, 'For heaven's sake shut the fuck up already,' and the banging subsides.

The most memorable incident for me was when my uncle noticed that his medication went missing. My aunt yelled to the 'ghost' that his medication is important and is the one thing that is not to be played with. They later found his pill bottles standing upright underneath the bed. Standing upright. The couldn't have rolled underneath. Never happened again.

The ghost has not really done anything harmful and from what I have heard can even be described as playful. We have affectionately dubbed the ghost 'Gracie the Ghost'.”
“I'm currently a freshman in college. One of my close friends in my pledge class is on the soccer team and heard this story with too much evidence and corroboration (pictures of the report on the Boston pd blotter, the text conversation, etc.) for it to have been completely fabricated.

So, my friend is close with this guy on the soccer team who recently went on a Tinder date with a junior at a college near us. She's from around Boston and commutes to her school. He matches with her on Tinder, takes her to dinner, they're having a good time and get to talking about their lives and such.

On the date, she tells him about another date she had recently been on that left her with a bad feeling. She had matched with a normal looking guy on Tinder from the area (not a college student) and agreed to meet up after talking for a while. They went to a restaurant to get dinner, and they had planned to go to a pretty popular bar near there for drinks after. She got a bad feeling by the end of the dinner and that didn't end up happening.

 Apparently it wasn't anything too bad, she could just tell he was a bit strange and not her type (described him as 'quirky' before all of this went down). So, she gives him an excuse and goes home; normal, their texts after it were amicable and she thinks it was just a bad date.

Couple days later, she meets up with the soccer dude from the beginning of the story and they really hit it off.

Her parents leave a few days after that for a trip, which she had told soccer guy about. The date went really well and he planned on going over at some point to chill with her. The first night they're gone, she wakes up to a noise in the kitchen; her room is on the second floor, the kitchen on the ground floor, and there's a basement under that. Normal house in Back Bay. So, she thinks she heard something and it freaks her out badly enough that she calls her parents.

They say, you know, 'everythings fine, you're probably just hearing things because its an old brownstone, don't worry.' Realistically I think that would have been anyone's, myself included, reaction.

Second day, she's upstairs and hears a noise from the TV room behind the kitchen. They don't have any pets and these were the types of noises that would make you get up from what you were doing to make sure something hadn't fallen or whatever. She described to my mutual friend as feeling like if she had gone downstairs at that moment that something really, really bad would have happened. Gut stuff. Anyway, she calls her parents again and they say the same thing. She gets up the nerve to go downstairs and everything's normal. Nothing moved, nothing knocked over, alarm records didn't show any doors opening. She's like 'yea alright I'm probably freaked out over nothing.'

Third day, everything's fine. No noises, no cause for concern. My mutual friend was going to go over but had a Unified midterm and couldn't make it (notoriously hard class at MIT). Anyway, that evening she's watching tv in her room and hears a noise somewhere downstairs. This time, it wasn't something she could ignore. All of her adrenaline was firing and she was actually freaking the fuck out. This time, she calls the cops without asking her parents. They say basically the same thing as her parents lol. "Yea, all of our cars are out right now, since you just heard something we'll try to have someone over to check outside your house in around 2 hours."

Literally 4 minutes later a fucking squad of cop cars rolls up. But not just cop cars, like full on riot-squad van, knocking-down-doors shit. They rush the house, and she's watching all of this from somewhere upstairs. Cops throw the front door open, and immediately fan out, sprinting through every room in the house and yelling 'clear' and some other stuff she didn't remember. One of them tries the basement door. Locked from the inside. They break down the flimsy door and rush the basement.

They found her first Tinder date in the basement. He had completely covered one part of the room in some kind of heavy plastic tarp. He had a bag of heavy duty butchering knives with him. The cops immediately force a surrender and take him.

In the post-mortem, she was told that the cops, when she called them, heard a second phone pick up, and when she hung up, they heard breathing and a click before he could hang up the basement phone.

The mutual friend heard about all of this after the fact, and the thing that really gets me is the part about the cops hearing him on the phone. When my friend told me and some of the guys in my fraternity that part it felt like all of the oxygen left the room.”
“Not so much scary but kind of crazy, and something I cannot explain or understand:

In high school I had a friend, we'll call him, John for these purposes. Me and John played football together and we would always get extra lifting sessions in at the high school gym. We remained friends after high school and even worked together for a bit. He ended up getting into selling pills and our relationship deteriorated to the point we were no longer speaking.

Fast forward a few years later and I have this dream. In my dream, I am back at my high school gym lifting weights with John. We were just chatting about random stuff, having a good time and then he suddenly says that he has to go. I tell him I don't want him to leave because I want to keep hanging out and I missed him. He just says he's really sorry but has to leave, I say "OK, see ya later" and he replies with a nod and a "See ya".

I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing, I see it is my mom and answer it. She tells me that John had died last night and asking if I am OK and other mom stuff. She had heard from Johns mom who called in saying that Johns siblings would not be at school the rest of the week because of his death. My Mom was a secretary at the school they went to.

I can't help but think that something paranormal had happened to allow me to make peace with and say goodbye to my friend and have some bit of closure. He was 25 when he died of a overdose and was the first person really close to me who had died.”