12 Creepy Nanny Stories That Seem Pulled From a Thriller Movie

Strange noises, unexpected visitors, and eerie encounters—these babysitting stories are the stuff of nightmares. You won’t believe the twists that make these seemingly normal nights take a terrifying turn. Read these 12 stories that may have you looking over your shoulder.

• I was babysitting my nephew, and we walked to pick up a pizza from the place up the street. On the way back, this guy started following us. I noticed, but he was far enough away that it wasn’t that suspicious.
  When we got to the door of the apartment building, I went to unlock it, and the guy started charging at us at full speed. I opened the door just in time for us to get in and lock the guy out. He was hitting the window of the door, yelling at us, “Come back, I just wanna talk to you!”
  I called my parents, and my dad came to pick us up, and my sister went back to our house after she was done with work and stayed the night. © GoddessInHerTree / Reddit

• I was babysitting my cousin one time, and we were playing dress-up, so she decided to start doing my hair. We were sitting in front of the mirror, and the entire time, she kept looking at something over my shoulder in the reflection. There was nothing there, so after about 10 minutes, I asked her what she was staring at, and she goes, “The tall man, he says he wants to play with you.” © soapypenguin123 / Reddit

• I was babysitting a little boy, and he was taking a nap, so I turned the baby monitor on and went to the kitchen to get a snack.
  After a few minutes, I hear a man’s voice coming from the baby monitor. I freak out, grab a knife, and go to the kid’s room... No one’s there, the kid’s fast asleep.
  I go to the kitchen, telling myself to calm down... but then I hear the man’s voice again. He’s talking about drilling holes in floor joists to get the plumbing set up, and I can hear heavy machinery in the background.
  It’s then that I remember that the house a few doors down is under construction. The baby monitor was running on the same frequency as their radios, and it was picking up conversations from the construction site. © SilicaFume / Reddit

• I was babysitting my brother while my parents went to Miami to get my mom her passport. This was around the time my little brother got pills for A.D.D., and he was having the worst time swallowing one pill by itself and water.
  Cue it gets around 8 pm, and my brother comes down and says, “I practiced swallowing my pills!” He was super proud, and I was terrified. I thought he swallowed the whole bottle. Call my mom up, and she’s like, “Okay, get him water and try to get him to throw it up.”
  He probably thought I was crazy for what I tried to get him to do. I learned later he was practicing with candy, specifically Skittles.
  Just that gut-wrenching moment was terrifying to me. © crazyrandomn*** / Reddit

• I live in a small town and our prize possession is a rather large mental hospital. I got a call from the parents telling me to lock all the doors and windows because a dangerous patient had escaped and was in our neighborhood. I told the kids to stay inside, but didn’t tell them the reason in order not to freak them out.
  I went to change a diaper, and when I got back, the oldest boy (about 8) was missing. I immediately started panicking and went to look in the backyard. He had decided that that was the perfect time to pee outside because “the outside potty was better.” © Chubb_Rubb8 / Reddit

• I was in the living room, watching Sister, Sister, when all of a sudden I heard a man say, “Hello.”
  I check the front door, look out the window at the driveway. Go upstairs and check the kids, they’re both still in bed.
  Go back downstairs, hear it again from the darkened dining room. “Hello. I am Armando.” They had a parrot. © Podaroo / Reddit

• One of my first babysitting jobs. Girl was 3 or 4 and boy was about 1. The girl refused to go to bed because there was a man outside the sliding glass doors. I finally get her to bed and lay on the couch.
  Suddenly, like two hours later, I hear knocking on those glass doors. That little one had gotten up and made me freak out. © Unknown author / Reddit

• I was babysitting my niece a couple of years ago. She’d have been three. I put her to bed, read her a story, gave her a cuddle, then went down to watch a movie and ended up falling asleep on the couch in the living room.
  I don’t know how much later it was, but I woke up to something grabbing my ankle. My eyes shot open, I freaked out, and I shook my leg as hard as I could. Bad idea.
  She’d managed to unfasten her door, climb over two different baby gates, and get down the stairs without doing herself an injury, all to ask me if I could read her another story. We don’t tell her mother about the time I almost dropkicked her daughter across the living room. © Portarossa / Reddit

• My parents always left me to watch my stepsister. One night, when she was about 6-7, I told her that she could watch a movie with me.
  She went to her room to put her pajamas on, then came out and asked, “My mom wants to know if she can watch the movie with us.” Her mom had recently died, so I was creeped out and didn’t know what to say.
  I ended up saying, “Sure, she can watch it with us,” and she said, “Okay, I’ll go tell her!!” and ran back to her room.
  I thought then it was probably her way of dealing with the loss, to pretend her mom was still around like an imaginary friend. Now I think she probably did it on purpose to scare me. © polarbearstare / Reddit

• 3 y/o: “There are strangers... There are strangers in the backyard...” “THERE ARE STRANGERS IN THE BACKYARD.” Kid runs.
  The back door starts rattling. Called my dad, who lived across the street—in tow with my brother, they scavenged the backyard... to find two raccoons fighting. © ams1989 / Reddit

• Was babysitting my niece. She started crying in her crib upstairs so I paused Netflix and went up to check on her. The lights were completely off so as not to wake her up more.
  As I was standing in this completely dark room soothing her, I heard voices downstairs in the living room talking about breaking in and taking things. I had been alone in the house, my cellphone was downstairs, and my sister wasn’t coming home for another four hours. I was freaking out.
  After what seemed like forever, I got up the courage to go check out the noise... only to find Netflix had unpaused, and it was a heist movie I was hearing. © joyfall / Reddit

• When I was in high school, I used to babysit for a family that had a glass door off their kitchen, and whenever I’d get something out of the fridge for the kids, I’d think to myself how scary it would be if someone was just standing there looking in.
  One night, it was storming really badly. I went to get one of the kids a glass of milk. Lightning flashed, and a filthy man I’d never seen was standing there framed in the glass door, staring in. I screamed and yelled for the kids to go hide. Of course, they didn’t listen and ran into the kitchen.
  Turns out it was their uncle stopping by to drop off something he had borrowed. He worked construction and had gotten quite muddy and was just going to leave whatever it was by the door, which is when I saw him. © wiggysbelleza / Reddit

If these creepy babysitting stories have you on edge, wait until you see the disturbing finds that made people question reality. From jaw-dropping discoveries to mind-bending encounters, these tales will make you second-guess what’s really happening around you.