10 Mysterious Events That Left People Questioning Reality

There’s something deeply unsettling about moments that slip through the cracks of reality—like a stranger’s cold smile in the dark or a voice calling from an empty room. These stories from Reddit capture just that: a skin-crawling feeling that will make you question what’s real... and will also stay with you longer than you’d imagine.

1.

We had an unhinged woman who was in her 60s, she had the tendency of just walking around the neighborhood and sitting on a random porch muttering to herself. Adults kept their distance from her and kids were told to not go near her.

She broke into my grandma’s house while I was visiting, I was only 6 and sleeping in the living room and she just broke the kitchen door and saw me. She just stood in front of me and just smiled. My mom and grandma took her outside and waited for her relatives to pick her up.
© Unknown author / Reddit

2.

We had a neighbor who moved out and came back a year later. He brought his two kids and an Asian woman he claimed was his wife. He claimed it was the same wife he used to have and that she just lost weight and had a makeover. But we remember the wife as a tiny woman, who was 5’1 or so. The wife took off her sandals and I saw that even without them she was about 5’6.

While on vacation he told one of the neighbors that his wife passed away of a brain tumor. I began to wonder where his wife really was. I think he just sent her back to her home country. But it was creepy to see him trying to pass off the new one as his wife.
© Unknown author / Reddit

3.

A few nights ago during the night shift, I was typing up an email to a customer and saw something out of the corner of my eye. I ignored it for a moment and kept working. Then it sunk in: It was a person just staring at me through the window.

As I turned my head they slowly walked out of my view towards the parking lot. So I went outside to confront them, but they were gone. Not a soul in sight for miles. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched the rest of the night.
© FBI_Monitoring_Van / Reddit

4.

When I was 11, I was babysitting my siblings while my parents were away. We lived in the country but had a neighbor we shared a driveway with. The neighbor was a fisherman and was away for work. He had been gone for months. Our bedroom was on the second floor of the house. From our window, I spotted a man dressed as a clown on our neighbor’s patio. Tight black clothes, horrible clown face, red fluffy hair.

I thought I was dreaming. I called my sister. She saw him too. The clown then slowly turned his head and looked right up at us. He gave this nasty, slow smile and waved and beckoned to us. Nope. We ran and hid under the bed until our parents got home. So much nope!
© cutencreepy / Reddit

5.

I was living with my sister when she went away on vacation for a week and I had the house to myself. I was lying in bed when I heard what I thought was a guitar being played so I headed downstairs to see what the noise was. I found my guitar lying on the ground, picked it up and put it back on my stand.

I went back to bed and again I heard the guitar being played. Head back downstairs to find the guitar lying on the ground again. Why was this spooky? It was the 11th anniversary that my dad had passed, and he loved playing the acoustic as much as I do. Could. Not. Sleep.
© Unknown author / Reddit

6.

I was in a restaurant years ago on lunch break. At the time I was a very thin 25-year-old woman. There was this big creepy guy sitting there who would NOT stop staring at me. I mean just open face staring without blinking for the entire 15 minutes I was eating several seats away.

I asked for a box and left early to get away from him. As I walked out he said, “You shouldn’t be out alone. Someone’s going to grab you and steal you away.” 100% convinced he had someone locked up in his basement.
© xain_the_idiot / Reddit

7.

While working the night shift in an old hospital, I heard elevator doors open behind me. I then heard the clip-clop of hard-soled shoes take a few steps out my way. When I turned around, no one was there. I suspected someone was hiding behind a linen cart. I knelt down and looked underneath it, only to see two shiny, old-fashioned pointy nurse’s shoes pointed my way.

I turned and immediately got shivers down my spine. There was... nothing. I eased my way around the cart to scare the person who was trying to scare me, but no one was there. I looked down and could no longer see what I thought were shoes.
© banditk77 / Reddit

8.

My husband of 12 years left on a work trip and vanished for three days. On the fourth, a man arrived, claiming to be from my husband’s employer — an intelligence agency. He revealed my husband had lived under a false identity for years and had to leave the country forever.

I was given $10,000 to start over. My world crumbled, but I rebuilt my life and found love again. Now, I have two children with a man I trust completely.

9.

One day I was sitting in the back room of my house on my laptop, probably on Reddit. My older brother was upstairs taking a shower. We both knew our mom would get home from work soon at around 1 or 2. This was a weekend so were just kinda chilling out, nothing special going on. All of a sudden I heard my mom open the front door and say something like “Hello, I’m home” like she usually does.

My brother heard this too and came downstairs to say hi. He got downstairs and started calling mom, to see where she was. I heard this and soon I realized, after I came over, that our mom was not home. We both heard the same thing, but it was all in our heads. We all agreed that it was the weirdest thing, especially because two people had heard it, not one.
© ViscousFluid / Reddit

10.

My friend and I were walking home from a party, and we passed a generally abandoned campground. We heard a dog barking, which was unusual since it was one in the morning. The bark sounded weird though. It kept persisting until we both realized what it was.

It was a guy imitating a dog’s bark. We heard insanely aggressive crunches coming from the woods, so we booked it back to my friend’s house.
© LthePerry02 / Reddit

If you’re up for some more chilling, yet totally true tales, here’s another list of carefully curated stories that people have shared online.