12 Nannies Who Wanted to Quit Babysitting Forever After a Shocking Experience

Babysitting is supposed to be a sweet, simple job—games, snacks, bedtime stories, and maybe a bit of TV. But for some nannies and sitters, one innocent shift turned into something they’ll never forget... and wish they could. From eerie encounters to boundary-crossing parents, these 12 stories prove that sometimes the scariest thing in the house isn’t the dark basement—it’s the job itself.

• A while back, I lived in a townhouse community and offered to help a single mother who needed someone to watch her infant while she went on a date. Her baby was only a few months old, and everything went smoothly—at first.
  But then the night passed... and she never came back. Morning rolled around, still no sign of her. This was before everyone had mobile phones, so there was no way to check in or find out what was going on.
  She finally showed up the next day, totally casual about it—didn’t apologize, didn’t seem worried at all. Just picked up the baby like it was no big deal. I never agreed to babysit for her again.

• Between the ages of about 10 and 13 or 14, I used to babysit for a rather eccentric family in my town. They had three daughters who were great fun, and we always had a good time together. But their parents had some unusual habits.
  One of the oddest was how they made important decisions—they would flip a coin. Heads meant yes, tails meant no, and they treated the results like gospel.
  I had been watching the kids for a couple of years when, one evening, the mother asked me a strange question: where did her husband and I go when he drove me home? I told her the truth—that he dropped me off and left right away. But she claimed it usually took him two or three hours to get back. I was completely taken aback by what she was implying.
  About a week later, she told me I couldn’t babysit anymore. When I asked why, she said the coin told her that her husband and I were having an affair. We weren’t.

• The first time I babysat for a family down the street, everything seemed pretty average at first. The mom was friendly and polite, and the little boy I was watching was around two years old—easy enough. Then I met the dad. He seemed polite too, but there was something a little intense about him. He was always hovering, asking tons of questions about routines and bedtime.
  Just before they left for the night, the mom pulled me aside quietly and told me not to be surprised if I heard little clicks or noticed blinking lights—her husband had set up audio monitors in nearly every room to “make sure everything was safe.” She tried to laugh it off, but it felt more like a warning than a joke. They left, and sure enough, I started noticing the quiet hum of devices in the corners of the living room and nursery.
  I didn’t see any cameras, but I definitely felt watched. I ended up babysitting there a few more times, and every time I had to change the baby or put him to bed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was listening to every word and movement. Creepiest part? The dad always asked oddly specific questions afterward—things I hadn’t mentioned to anyone.

• I was babysitting one night out at this house on a big, secluded property—lots of trees, no nearby neighbors, and of course, it started pouring rain. Classic horror movie setup. Everything was going fine until I started hearing these low, drawn-out moans coming from the back of the house.
  At first, I tried to brush it off—maybe a possum on the roof? But it didn’t sound like an animal. It sounded human.
  Just in case, I gathered the kids in the front room near the phone, locked the doors, and kept them close while I debated calling the police. I wasn’t about to go creeping through dark hallways with something groaning in the distance.
  When the parents got home, I explained what was going on. They went to check it out, and—no joke—it turned out to be a toy from a McDonald’s Happy Meal that had somehow ended up in the bathtub. The water had shorted it out, and it was making these horrifying glitchy sounds in the dark.
  Honestly, if I’d known it was just a possessed fish toy, I might’ve laughed. But in the moment? I was ready to grab the kids and bolt.

• I’d been babysitting for this lovely family for over 3 years and was happy with the job. One night after the kids were asleep, the dad sat too close, started asking weirdly personal questions,
  and then, to my shock, he said that he and his wife wanted me to participate in their relationship.
  He announced that they wanted to try an open marriage. I blinked, unsure where this was going, until he spelled it out: he wanted to know if I’d be interested in being part of that arrangement. As in, with him.
  I was stunned. My heart was racing, not out of flattery but from sheer shock. I mumbled something about needing to leave, grabbed my bag, and walked out the door, barely hearing what he said next.
  The worst part? I kept wondering if the wife knew, or if this was his own twisted idea of “open.” I never went back. Not even to say goodbye to the kids.

• I used to babysit this three-year-old boy, and every single time I was over, he’d ask me to look in the closet at the end of the hallway. He always said, “That’s where the yelling comes from.” The thing is, that closet was in the far back of the house, down a dim hallway, and it was always locked tight. No one ever opened it, not even the parents.
  After the fifth time hearing him mention the noises from inside it—same exact wording every time—I decided I was done. It creeped me out way too much, and I never went back.

• I once babysat during a wedding for the bride and groom’s kids, and it turned out to be less about childcare and more about managing family drama. The bride’s parents were divorced—and judging by the tension, it wasn’t exactly an amicable split. They clearly hadn’t seen each other in a while, and the wedding brought all their issues boiling back up.
  Instead of just watching the kids, I spent most of the day caught between the bride’s mom and dad as they bickered nonstop and tried to one-up each other for time with the grandkids. Things got so tense, the bride’s mom ended up arguing with her daughter during the actual reception. In the end, instead of letting the grandmother take the kids home as planned, the bride and groom ended up bringing their children along on their wedding night.
  It was completely chaotic, and honestly, I should’ve charged four times what I did. The best (or worst?) line of the day came from the mother of the bride, “God, it’s like she thinks the whole day is supposed to be about her.”

• I once took a babysitting gig watching three kids and figured it’d be more fun (and easier) with backup, so I asked my best friend to help, and we agreed to split the money. When we got there, the parents casually mentioned that all three kids had just gotten over chickenpox—but assured us they were “definitely not contagious anymore.”
  Fast-forward exactly two weeks, and both my friend and I were covered in itchy spots. We had to miss our main job because of it. Safe to say, that was the first and last time I worked for that family.

• This family offered me a very good payment for babysitting their kids. One night, I was tucking them into bed, when a 4YO complained that there was a monster under his bed. I peeped under the bed to show him that nothing was there, and froze in horror. There was a man lying silently in the darkness, his eyes wide open and staring straight at me.
  For a split second, I couldn’t move. My heart pounded so loudly I was sure the kids could hear it. The man didn’t speak. He didn’t flinch. Just stared.
  I quickly straightened up, forcing a calm smile for the 4-year-old, “Nothing there, sweetheart. Just your imagination.” I tucked the blanket tighter around him and whispered, “Stay in bed, okay?” before stepping out of the room, closing the door behind me with shaking hands.
  In the hallway, I dialed 911 with trembling fingers, but as I waited for the call to connect, something clicked in my mind. Earlier that week, the kids’ mom had casually mentioned that her husband would be traveling for work. And yet, tonight, there was no sign of either parent.
  I remembered too vividly how easily I had let myself in—the door already unlocked. I turned my head slowly and looked at the master bedroom door, slightly ajar. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong. And then, the truth unraveled.
  Turned out, the man under the bed wasn’t a burglar. He had a key. He had a reason to be there. He was someone who thought he belonged. He was their mother’s secret lover. And he had come, believing the coast was clear.

• I was asked to babysit a kid whose parents were real weirdos. They would tell the kid the wrong names for things. Socks were called frogs. “Put your frogs on.”
  Later, I found out with shock that these creepy parents didn’t do it just for fun, they wanted to test their child’s ability to resist outside influence and stay loyal to them no matter what. They were part of a fringe parenting group obsessed with creating “closed cognitive environments” to shield children from societal norms.
  Every made-up word was designed to create a special language that only a very closed group of people would understand. When I started using the correct words around the child, he became visibly anxious and would later repeat the wrong ones like mantras.
  Eventually, I discovered hidden notebooks where the parents tracked his reactions to "language contamination"—and my presence was just another controlled variable in their bizarre linguistic experiment.

• I used to watch two kids who lived up the street. The mother was single and had a close friend—also a single mom with two kids—so I often babysat all four of them together. I knew they liked to go out for the evening, which was fine with me, since they always came back in a great mood and paid me more than I expected.
  What I didn’t realize was just how into their hobbies they were. One evening, I went upstairs to get money for pizza. I found both moms in the bathroom—but instead of getting ready to go out, they were fully dressed in elaborate costumes and standing in front of the mirror practicing dance moves from some viral internet challenge.
  The weirdest part? They earnestly tried to teach me the choreography, totally forgetting I was supposed to be watching their kids downstairs.

• One night, after putting the two neighbor girls to bed, I went downstairs and turned on the TV. Not long after, I suddenly heard crying, fast footsteps, and a bathroom door slam shut upstairs. It seemed strange—it didn’t sound like either of them.
  I ran up and found the bathroom door locked. I knocked, asked if everything was okay, but the only response was sobbing from inside. So I went to check on the girls. They shared a room with bunk beds. Both were fast asleep—peaceful, unmoving. Still, the crying continued. Panicked, I ran back down, the sound following me through the house.
  When the parents got home about thirty minutes later, I told them everything, and we all went to check. The crying was still there—louder now—but this time the bathroom door creaked open with no resistance. And as we stepped in, the sound slowly faded to silence. That was the last time I ever babysat.

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