Unforgettable Chilling Encounters That Will Keep You Awake at Night
Scary stories are best told in the dead of night, preferably in hushed tones with a dim flashlight as your only light source. But true horror can only be felt when you’re in the midst of the action.
These Reddit users shared their most terrifying real life stories, and they’re more frightening than any horror movie or bedtime tale.
I’ll Never Forget What I Saw
I was driving to pick up a friend who was at this cabin party about forty miles west of where I lived. It was close to 2:00 in the morning.
So I’m driving down this back road to find this random cabin somewhere, and I come across this red four-door sedan with all the doors open—but that’s not the scariest part. There are four limp figures in the seats with their heads slumped over.
I was way too freaked out to stop. Later on, I’m driving by again after a failed attempt at picking up my friend. Mind you, it’s getting close to 3:00 in the morning by now.
This time, only the front seat passenger door was open—and every person in that car was staring with a blank expression directly at me as I drove past at ten miles per hour.
I’ll never forget it.
Black Sky
When I was 20 years old, I was taking my girlfriend home late one night on small country roads. I went to take a left turn then suddenly there were bright headlights coming through the passenger window. She screamed, I screamed, we were about to be killed….and nothing happened.
We didn’t get hit; the car just vanished. She was hyperventilating and crying.
I was scared, confused, and my adrenaline was racing. We sat there five minutes before I could drive again.
But our nightmare wasn’t over yet. I started up the road and suddenly there were intense headlights behind us. They flew up behind us, easily going 50 mph faster than us. We braced to get rear-ended…and nothing. My girl was screaming so loud that she was hoarse.
All I heard was, “GO, GO, GO.” We drove the next 10 miles on little country roads at 110 mph, making curves that should have sent us into ditches, with the headlights either mere feet behind us or pulling alongside but we could never see anything but lights.
Then my girlfriend suddenly screamed something that made my hairs stand on end. She yelled, “What did you do with the stars?!”
I glanced up, not daring to look away from the road very long, and the sky was black. Not moonless night black, I mean GONE black.
I know how crazy it sounds but I am driving with the gas pedal on the floor at three times the safe speed, scared to death, with a screaming girl beside me and I distinctly remember watching the trees in the headlights.
This was to figure out if everything literally vanished, ceased to exist once my car’s headlights were past it, because looking out the passenger window things seemed to just pop and vanish. She curled up in her seat and passed out.
There was a sharp 90 degree turn ahead with a huge, deep gully just past it and there was no way we could make it at our speed.
I don’t know why, but when I saw the lights beside me, I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could. The lights zipped past us and vanished, the stars were back, and somehow sitting there I just knew it was over.
I woke her up, and she just kind of oozed into her seat and quietly asked me to take her home. We didn’t talk about it at all, she just got out and ran inside.
I sat in her driveway and trembled for 10 minutes. I was terrified of going home the way we had come, so I numbly drove 20 minutes in the wrong direction and slept in the parking lot of a truck stop because there were people around 24 hours a day.
We NEVER discussed it and three troubled months later broke up. I have never heard of anyone else seeing odd lights and I’ve never seen them again but SOMETHING was out there with us that night.
The Voice is Coming From Above
This is something that happened to me back in 10th grade. I couldn’t sleep and I was feeling restless, so I decided to take a walk along the greenway near my house.
Most people would have reservations about walking through the woods alone at night, but it was a safe neighborhood and I knew the greenway like the back of my hand.
After no more than five minutes of walking through the woods, I hear a girl singing. I recognize the tune right away, it’s “Camptown Races.” You know, “Camptown ladies sing this song, Doo-da, Doo-da.” I look around for the girl, but it’s pitch black.
Not wanting to suddenly come across her and frighten her, I shout out, “You have a nice voice!”
No reply, she just keeps singing. Weird. I continue walking, but the singing isn’t getting any further away. Is she following me? Or are we just coincidentally walking in the same direction? So I make a sharp turn and start walking down another path. The singing follows. Another sharp turn.
Again it follows. Okay now I’m 100% sure this girl is following me.
I start trying to pin the location of the voice with no luck. I think she was purposefully changing her volume to prevent me from knowing when I was getting closer or further away. Now I’m really starting to get freaked out. I bolt and start sprinting back home.
I was running track at the time so I was pretty certain I could ditch her.
I get home, kick off my shoes, and turn on my TV. I’m about 10 minutes into an episode of Aqua Teen when I hear a voice that’s not coming from the TV.
It’s a girl’s voice singing frigging “Camptown Races.” For a brief moment I just sit there in pure terror. This can’t be happening. I run outside barefoot and frantically look around.
I realize that the voice is coming from above me. She’s on the garage roof. I kept a ladder on the side of the garage so I could climb up. The ladder was the only way up or down unless you wanted to jump and chance a sprained ankle. This is it. I’ve got her.
I race up the ladder just in time to see a figure in a red hoodie disappear off the side of the roof leading to the backyard.
She had jumped. I watched her race across my backyard, completely unfazed by the fall, and book it over our six-foot fence like it was no big deal. I briefly considered chasing after her, but I couldn’t in my bare feet. Frankly, I don’t know if I wanted to.
I don’t believe in ghosts and ghouls but I’m still freaked out by the whole thing to this day.
Man’s Best Friend
I was home alone with my old roommate’s pit bull, Hamburger. She was very sweet but would bark at strange noises or if she heard something outside the house. That night it was around 11:30 pm and I was chilling in my room when she started barking.
Normally a quick “Hey, cut it out!” would hush her up, but not this time.
So, I figured something had riled her up for real. I went out into the hall and she was looking from the living room down the hall in my direction but past me. So, I looked to where she was looking and couldn’t see anything. The hall was mostly dark except for the light from my room.
I looked back at her, and she whimpered for a second.
Then, out of nowhere, she started growling and barking like I’d never heard before and ran towards me and a couple feet past me. She continued barking aggressively at the end of the hall. She was not an aggressive dog at all, so this freaked me out.
And it was definitely not a mouse, because she was looking around human head height.
I went to the living room, turned on all the lights, and sat on the couch because it was nice and far from the end of the hall where Hamburger was barking. I called her back to me and she sat by my side doing a low growl for the next five minutes.
When I calmed down and wasn’t feeling so alarmed anymore, she refused to come with me to my room. But all that was nothing compared to what happened next.
Later that night woke up to what I swear looked like an adolescent girl in a white dress at the foot of my bed. Here’s the catch though. My room at night in that house could get really dark. I shouldn’t have been able to see anything as distinctly as that.
It might have been night terrors but I doubt it. Also, I was completely conscious when all that with Hammy went down.
I never told any of my roommates, and I’ve only told one other person before. Even writing it out I’m doubting myself. All I know is that I loved that dog, and if there was something there, she put herself between me and it.