12 Ordinary Days That Ended Up Haunting People Forever

Some experiences never leave you. A stranger who seemed to know too much. A phone call at the wrong time. A near miss that could’ve ended differently. On the Internet, people have shared the true moments that still give them chills, years later. These stories don’t need the supernatural to be terrifying... They’re unsettling because they actually happened.

• I fell asleep on the couch and woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Once I got there, I realized that I didn’t need to go after all. I started walking toward the bedroom, but then I turned around and went back downstairs to the couch. When I got there, I saw my body, still asleep, curled up on the couch. I don’t remember what happened next, but I know it must have just been a dream. Still, it freaks me out to think about it to this day. © dipdipbeantot / Reddit
• My best friend and I were having a sleepover at her house. We were teenagers and, for some reason, we were home alone. While we were goofing off upstairs, we suddenly heard a crash downstairs. We freaked out for about 30 minutes before we mustered the courage to check it out. I grabbed a bat, and we slowly crept down the steps. In the kitchen, we found that a glass bowl had fallen and broken. The really creepy part was that all the pieces had been picked up and placed in another bowl on the table. We still have no idea how that happened. © stardust7 / Reddit
• Maybe around age 14 in the early ’90s. We were traveling from Texas to Tacoma, Washington. We were almost out of money and gas, and we had no food. We were stuck in Chico, California. I sat in the car while my mom took my younger sisters to the restroom at a gas station. I was riddled with anxiety about our situation as I looked down. The car door opened, and I looked up. A brown-haired woman who looked like a Brady mom sat in the seat facing me. She said, “It seems like you’re down on your luck. Take this and give it to your mom. Tell her to pay it forward someday to someone who needs it.” I looked down at my hand, and there was a $100 bill. When I looked up, she had disappeared. She was nowhere to be found in the parking lot; she had just vanished. I cried. When Mom came back, I told her what had happened, and she cried, too. We got gas. There was a man selling oranges on the side of the road, so we bought a bag. Then, we went to a local park with a small spillway dam and swam and ate oranges for a couple of hours before getting back on the road. I never saw the woman again, but she saved us, and we made it to Tacoma to start our new life. Thank you, kind stranger with invisible powers! We never forgot your kindness. © heatherloree76 / Reddit

• A friend of mine is a bit of a nature nerd. She goes on long hikes and camps by herself for a few days at a time. One time, she did this and returned safe and sound. Nothing happened. When she got her disposable camera developed, she found three pictures of herself sleeping in her tent. © ol2pump / Reddit
• When I was growing up, there was an extra room upstairs in our house that we used as an office. It had a closet with one of those tiny attic access doors on the side. Sometimes, when we were all downstairs watching TV, we’d hear a creaking sound moving toward that room. That room was next to mine, and sometimes I’d find the closet door open, the light on, and the attic door cracked open. There was a spot on the wall that our declawed cat would always attack. The cat attacks had worn off some of the paint. All of that was creepy, but the night the dog, who never came upstairs without my dad, started barking in the hallway by my room toward the office was the worst. She barked and growled for a bit, then started backing off into my room while looking up as if she were staring at the face of someone coming toward her. She backed into my room and squealed as if she’d been stepped on. Then she ran into the far corner, put her nose and eyes into the corner, and whimpered. I picked her up and went downstairs to sleep on the couch. That was 14 years ago, and I’m still freaked out by it. © chiliedogg / Reddit
• I had a recurring nightmare about a pitch-black parasite sucking the life out of me. Sometimes it lurked in dark corners, waiting for me to go to bed. During that time, my cats always slept on my bed. It was a very stressful time for me. I got an itch on my chest where I dreamed the parasite was sucking my life out of me. I got sick and felt a pea-sized lump. I went to my doctor, who ordered a biopsy of the lump. As it turned out, I had male breast cancer at the age of 28. After I recovered, the dream never came back, and my cats slept in their usual spots instead of on my bed. The dream was creepy enough, but what was even creepier was that my cats were protecting me. © Mechanic84 / Reddit

• This happened to my mom when she was young. She was at work, and so was my dad. At some point, she had a feeling that something was going on, so she instinctively called my dad. When he picked up, she realized she didn’t have a reason to call him, but it felt strange. To avoid embarrassing herself, she told him to come meet her for lunch, since he was out of the office (I think he was stopping outside for lunch). Anyway, he came to her, they had lunch, and went on with their day. In the evening, they both watched the news, and they saw that there had been an explosion. It happened at the same place where my dad had been before my mom called him. © ViolaPurpurea / Reddit
• One of my cats had been missing for a few weeks. I had given up hope of finding her. While I was on the phone with a friend who lives 100 miles away and has never seen my house, he interrupted himself from talking about work and said with a strange urgency, “Doug! Open your front door. Your cat is sitting on the porch waiting to come in.” Of course, when I opened the door, I found her just sitting there. We were both blown away. Between sobs of joy, I asked, “How did you know?” He replied, “I don’t know, man. That was really weird.” © doug1963 / Reddit
• When I was about ten years old, I had a pretty scary dream. In the dream, my mom was drowning in quicksand, and my little brother, who was seven or eight years old at the time, jumped in to save her. In the process, he broke his arm. The next day, my little brother broke his arm. There was no quicksand involved, and my mom was never in danger in real life, but I was still super freaked out by the fact that I had dreamed about my little brother’s injury the night before it happened. To this day, it gives me chills when I think about it. © mrbriightsiide / Reddit

• Okay, so I’m standing in front of the French bread at Walmart. I notice a strange guy standing there, staring at the food. He looked about 40 years old, wore jeans shorts, was a little overweight, had a handlebar mustache, wore a tight shirt, and wore flip-flops. I picked up a loaf of bread, and he turned to me with a strange smile. I walk away from him. After about 30 minutes, I changed my mind and went back to the bread aisle. That dude was still standing in the same spot, just starring. I put the bread back, and he immediately grabs the loaf I just put down and storms to the cash register. He pays and leaves. That was the only thing he bought. © MrFromEurope / Reddit
• My neighbor was an old, mean lady. When we were kids, my brother, some other neighborhood kids, and I played outside a lot. Every single day that we were outside, she would be peering out of a little window facing our backyard. She was always watching. Sometimes, if we got too close to her yard, she’d knock on the window or yell at us. At one point, she put up “No Trespassing” signs along her property line. Mind you, we never went into her yard. We were mindful of her. We were just ten-year-olds playing in our backyard.
  
  One day, while we were playing outside, my brother and I heard a strange noise, like a loud bump. We looked around, thinking it was an animal or something. We couldn’t find anything. After a little while, we realized the neighbor lady wasn’t in her window. We shrugged it off and enjoyed not being watched for once. That night, an ambulance arrived at the old lady’s house and took her away on a stretcher. We found out from her daughter that she had fallen from the stool she had been standing on to look out the window, where she had been watching us, and had broken her arm. We were shocked when we realized the sound we had heard was her falling. We felt bad because she had clearly been in distress for a while before the ambulance arrived. She was in the hospital for a few days before returning home. Once she returned, she was right back on her stool, watching us. © True_Panic_33** / Reddit
• When I was little, I had a terrible dream about a man in our house. That night, I was woken up by my sister’s screams. I ran downstairs to find her. There was a police officer in our backyard, and it turned out that the man from my dream was a local worker who had come by the week before to check the meter. I must have seen him before, but I didn’t pay attention. My mind replayed his image at night. A neighbor had called the police after noticing the man standing by our fence for almost an hour without moving. An officer questioned him, but he wasn’t breaking any laws. He said he was “just checking to see if everything was working properly.” The police eventually escorted him off the property and warned him not to come back. What still chills me is how he chose our house out of all the others and how my dream had placed him exactly where he stood that night.

The scariest memories aren’t always about what can’t be explained... They’re about the real encounters, the eerie coincidences, the moments when instinct screamed that something was wrong. Those are the stories that stay with us, long after. And if these kept you hooked, there’s another set of unforgettable confessions waiting to send shivers down your spine.