12 Stories That Would Be Less Creepy If They Weren’t Real

Stories in this article are real-life events shared by people online. They prove that some of the scariest moments are simply those that defy logic. These strange occurrences leave us feeling unsettled, with a sense of mystery lingering long after they happen.

• I saw someone in my kitchen late at night. I thought it was my father and asked him what he was doing here in the middle of the night. He stood in the dark not moving. I flipped the light switch on. I was alone. Nobody was there but me shaking from terror. I couldn’t see him clearly but saw someone with his shape in the dark. I talked to it for about 30 seconds, it stood 6 feet from me. © mark503 / Reddit

• My husband recently took an overnight job. He’s only been there about two weeks and works evenings/overnights from 9 pm to 6 am.
  Last night was no different; he left home around 8:15 pm. Our daughter, who is 11, and I decided to make it a movie night. Around 11 pm, I heard keys in my backdoor and the usual sounds my husband makes when he comes home. I crept out to the kitchen to make sure it was him, and it was. He told me he needed to grab his knee compression sleeve, walked down the hall, said hi to our daughter as he passed the living room, and went upstairs. He came back down, kissed me, and left again.
  We finished our movie and went to bed. In the morning, when he got home, I made a joking comment about him forgetting his knee sleeve. He was genuinely confused, as I recalled the previous night. Our daughter confirmed everything I said, and he still acted confused. I pulled up our security motion camera on my phone to show him when he popped in quickly. But there was no footage from the night before, or any other night, of him coming home after he left for work.
  My daughter and I both heard him, saw him, and touched him. But he was never home during that time. Nothing else out of the ordinary happened that night. We seriously have no idea what happened. © worthlesscommotion / Reddit

• A friend of mine always claimed her house was haunted and had numerous experiences and stories I always took with a grain of salt. I heard all these stories years before her father died.
  Fast-forward almost a decade after he passed, I was walking up her basement stairs, which led to the living room where the chair he sat in was still located. You have to turn to the right out of the basement door into that room, and as sure as I can see any living person, there he sat, looking down at his newspaper. I just put my head down and walked out the front door as fast as I could.
  It took me a couple more years to tell her that story, but when I did, she and her mother were both excited, as none of them had ever seen him. In the same house, I’ve witnessed a chair start spinning for no reason and a ceiling fan turn on by itself. © Unknown user / Reddit

• My great-grandma and mom were very close but lived overseas from one another my whole life. They talked on the phone every Sunday at 8:00 AM. However, due to a four-minute difference in clocks, Nana always ended up calling at 8:04. Also, the caller ID never showed up.
  Mom called on a Sunday, and Nana died on a Tuesday. The following week, we were sitting at the table eating breakfast, and Mom noticed it was 7:50 AM; Nana would have been calling any minute! She got emotional, and I comforted her. Then at 8:04 AM, the phone rings. The caller ID reads “Unknown Caller.”
  We looked at each other like, what is this, some sort of sick joke? She answered — there was nothing but static on the other line, and some garbled voice recording.
  The only decipherable words in it were, “We hope you enjoy your trip to paradise!” (click) The phone cut off.
  Absolutely no explanation for that one. It still baffles me to this day. © smittywrbermanjensen / Reddit

• When I was in middle school, my family went camping in New Mexico. We were at a campsite near a lovely stream. My parents had one tent, and my brother and I had another. As I was settling down to sleep for the night, I was listening to my headphones. I decided it was time to go to sleep, so I took my headphones off and was dozing off when I became hyper-aware of a sound. There was a slight swishing/scratching sound on the side of the tent. I had just assumed there was a breeze, and a stalk of grass was brushing on the side of the tent.
  With a sudden jolt, I realized there was no wind whatsoever. I asked my brother, “J, what is that?” He asked what I was referring to. I pointed out the scratching noise. He took his hand and hit the side of the tent. In response, whatever it was, hit the side of the tent from outside of the tent. We both immediately began screaming hysterically. My parents came running, and all the while, the scratching continued. My parents said it was surely just a bug, a tent string, or some vegetation and got a flashlight to look at the exterior of the tent. There was nothing.
  They brushed down the exterior, shook the tent, took everything out of the tent, and shook it. The noise continued. I was completely in pieces, so I went and slept in my parents’ tent, and my father slept in the “kid tent.” My brother and father reported that the scratching continued all night long. Still puzzled and freaked out by this experience. © Njsturgeon / Reddit

• In my last year at uni, I lived in a four-bedroom house with a ground floor and two upper floors, each with two bedrooms. My friends occupied the first-floor bedrooms, while I stayed on the second floor, and the bedroom next to mine was empty since the guy who rented it rarely used the room. Both my bedroom and his had small crawl-space cupboards in the corners.
  One day, I returned home from uni to find my friends discussing noises resembling footsteps that they claimed to have heard from my floor at night while I was asleep. I laughed, dismissing their concerns since I had heard nothing.
  Despite my skepticism, I offered to go and investigate the crawl spaces. We went upstairs, I opened the door of the empty room, and right as I did, the door to the crawl space in the other corner of the room slammed shut.
  We freaked out. There was no reason for that door to have been open in the first place. So, we grabbed our kitchen knives, holed up in one of their rooms, and waited for a friend to come and check the cupboards and attic.
  We never found out what those noises were, but it was the scariest thing that happened the whole year we were there. © stuck_in_a_book / Reddit

• I had a fever very often when I was young. The medicines didn’t help. One day, a stranger on the street asked my mom if I was always sick and who was the elderly person following me. My mom was confused as there was no elderly person nearby.
  The stranger pointed into the air and described my deceased paternal grandmother’s appearance, including her hairstyle and the clothes she wore to her grave.
  My dad was from a different town, and my mom would have known if the stranger was a mutual friend. The stranger instructed my dad to call my grandmother to go back.
  My mysterious fevers stopped. © Reddit-Loves-Me / Reddit

• When I was 11, my family and I moved to another town because of my dad’s job. We were only going to stay there for a year, and thankfully, we were given a house in a closed community of about 20 houses.
  One day, my parents were out, and I was alone with our dog for about 2 hours. I was playing in my room when I remembered that the black socks for my Monday uniform were drying in the backyard. I went there with my dog and uttered out loud, “I wish there was something to do.” Not a moment later, I heard a young voice say very clearly, “Then let’s play.”
  I turned around to see my normally hyperactive Golden sitting, looking at me like nothing had happened. I freaked out immediately and ran upstairs to my parent’s bedroom. I turned on the TV and hid under the covers until my family arrived. They saw me sweating, scared, and paranoid at this point. They never figured out what happened but tried to make me feel better.
  Now, the part that freaks me out is that each of the houses in the community was surrounded by 3-meter tall cinder block walls. The place where my socks were was next to a wall separating it from another house, one that had no children. The other house to the left was over 20 meters away and behind another wall. The wall behind my house separated us from nothing but a steep hill.
  No one could have said that, and to this day, it freaks me out every time I think of it. © Blackirean / Reddit

• In college, I was roommates with my childhood best friend for about two years. We were very trusting with each other; we would go into each other’s rooms freely and grab or borrow whatever we needed. No questions asked. Our rooms were across the hall from each other. My friend had very long black hair, and she was very fair-skinned.
  One day, I got home from work with my headphones in my ear. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a snack. I saw her walk out of her room and go into mine, then leave my room and go back into hers. She looked like she had just gotten out of the shower; her hair was soaking wet, and she was wrapped in a white towel. Her long black wet hair is what I distinctly remember. Also, she made no eye contact with me, but I didn’t think it was weird. I didn’t say anything to her, since borrowing each other’s stuff was normal.
  About an hour passed, and I went to the kitchen. I saw her there and told her, “Did you find what you needed?” She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “What are you talking about?” So I said, “I saw you go into my room and grab something.” She asked me if I was sure I saw her. Panicked, she told me to grab my phone and go to her car ASAP.
  Then she told me she got home maybe 5 minutes before we started talking. She called the cops, and they came along with the apartment manager. They checked the whole apartment and found no one. My friend then told me that for a week, she’d been hearing noises from her bathroom, like bottles moving, and when she went to check, she found nothing. I have no idea who I saw going in and out of our rooms, but it looked exactly like my friend. © sm1020 / Reddit

• There was a kid in my class that no one else remembers. I distinctly remember playing with this kid in kindergarten, and we were pretty much inseparable. About a month past Christmas break he disappeared. No one remembered him. Not the teachers, or the others in my class. I even asked the school counselor if he was okay, and she humored me by going through records to see if he’d transferred. She couldn’t find a thing. I think about it at least once a month. © CrippledUnironically / Reddit

• When I was a kid, I decided to play a prank on my mother. One night, while she was browsing through the refrigerator, I grabbed a snake toy and planned to throw it behind her, then run to my bedroom and hide.
  About 5 minutes later, I heard a commotion outside my bedroom, and several minutes after that, my grandpa (who lived in the next block) barged in with his assistant, and my mom rushed into my bedroom. She told me there was a King Cobra behind her after she finished browsing through the refrigerator. She said the snake was almost 2 meters long.
  I immediately confessed that it was me who threw the snake toy behind her. However, when my mom brought me back to the kitchen, I saw a real King Cobra, almost 2 meters long, distinctly different from my colorful snake toys. I couldn’t see the snake toys that I had thrown earlier.
  To this day, I still have no idea if the toy I threw was actually a snake, or if the toy somehow transformed into a snake. Either way, snake toys were banned for me after that incident. © Courier33 / Reddit

• When I was in high school, I would always be the first to arrive home out of my family, having the entire house to myself. I’ve never been superstitious or someone who scared easily, and the hour I had alone was my favorite time of the entire day.
  My bedroom was upstairs, and one day when I got home from school, I placed my bag away and started up the stairs. About halfway, I stopped because I thought I heard something coming from upstairs, so I stayed and listened.
  I heard a very slow rendition of the melody from “Ring Around the Rosie,” crystal clear, coming from my bedroom. I was 100% sure I was the only one home, and I had no ’device’ that could be playing music unprompted, especially “Ring Around the Rosie.”
  I froze in fear and listened for about 15 seconds to make sure I was hearing it, which I was. I turned back down the steps and waited around in the living room for my family to get home before I went back upstairs. I went into my room a few hours later, and there was nothing out of the ordinary.
  It’s something I think about now and then. © Unknwon user / Reddit

Experiencing fear can be quite thrilling, which is why many people enjoy watching horror movies. If you’re craving more of that spine-tingling sensation, you’re in luck! This article is packed with eerie stories that will give you plenty of thrills.