15 Bone-Chilling Real Stories That Are Scarier Than Horror Movie

The truth, which can hide in the everyday moments we frequently overlook, can sometimes be more terrible than fiction. Unexpected, mysterious, and unexplainable things tend to appear in our lives when we least expect them to. The most terrifying scenes are sometimes found in the shadows of our own world rather than in the plots of a horror film.

• "Once, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my bedroom door creaking open. I could see the outline of someone standing there, but when I turned on the light, there was no one there. The door was still slowly closing, as if whoever or whatever had been there was leaving.
  Even creepier, my Nest fire alarm had illuminated in the corridor, sensing movement, but there was nobody there. Still gives me chills thinking about it." justheway / Reddit
• "The basement in my dad's house is finished except for the storage room, which is really dark and creepy and is around the corner from the main room of the basement. There's an elliptical down there and when standing on the elliptical, if you look over your shoulder, you can see half of the door to the storage room.
  I was working out on said elliptical, and I felt like someone was standing behind me, so I looked over my shoulder and in that half doorway, a dark figure with light gray eyes was standing there looking at me. I was house-sitting, so I know there wasn't anyone else home. I slowly got off the elliptical and went into the bathroom to hide, then a while later decided to be bold and rush past the storage room and back upstairs. Not the first time I had seen that gray-eyed figure, either." Conscious-Outside430 / Reddit
• "I was about to cross the street, a lady put her arm across my chest and said, 'Wait.' As I look at her trying to figure out what is going on, a car crash happens and one of the cars goes tumbling down the street 2 feet in front of me. If she hadn’t stopped me, I would absolutely be dead. I turn to look at her again, and she is no longer there.
  I could see for blocks in each direction, nowhere she could have gone that fast where I wouldn’t be able to see her. The only thing I can come up with is I imagined it happening in my memory due to how tragic the crash was. Never experienced anything even slightly 'supernatural' before or after." Unknown Author / Reddit
• "I was maybe 10 years old, and my grandma had just died. I didn't really know her because she had spent most of my young life in a nursing home and often didn't remember who I was when I went to visit. But, when I visited, she would always rub my back. It was sort of like an instinctual comfort thing - she did it to all her kids and grandkids.
  For about a year after she died, I would be sitting in my room at night, alone, and start to feel someone rubbing my back like she used to. It freaked me out until one night when I acknowledged it and said, 'Thank you, Grandma.' It stopped after that, and I never felt it again." sillybanana2012 / Reddit

• "My mom died a couple of years ago, and I was staying with my dad at their house for a few months to look after him, sleeping in her bed. Every night for months, as soon as I lay down, I’d feel someone sit down on the side of the bed. I knew it was her, and it didn’t bother me.
  I’d cry myself to sleep because I missed her so much. Sometimes I’d talk out loud to her. Eventually, it stopped happening. I miss it, to be honest." Mediocre-Proposal686 / Reddit
• "When I was a kid, my grandpa was the night shift custodian of a big old-school church building. My sister and I used to go with him some nights because they had a big gymnasium-type room with a ton of big exercise balls and stuff, and it was fun to run around.
  One night, while my grandpa was locking up a room, my sister and I heard a noise down the stairs behind us. We looked and there was an old lady leaving the building. She turns, looks at us, does the 'shhh' motion with her finger to her lips and leaves. We don't think too much of it at the time.
  We go to my grandpa and ask him if there was anyone else here tonight (like any meetings, classes, etc.) and he says nah it's just us in the entire building. We ask him where the door down the stairs leads, and he says, 'Oh, that goes out to the cemetery.' My sister and I FREAKED out. We still talk about it to this day and have the same memory of it." ziggs4lyfe / Reddit
• "Working in a nursing home for years during the night and everyone always complained of weird stuff like noises on the top floor. I never believe in any of that, so I was always the one going upstairs to do night checks.
  One night I was changing a resident on that floor with a colleague and my colleague complained he heard something like people walking. We were in the resident room and I had to go to the cupboard at the end of that corridor to get bedsheets and when I was coming back with the bedsheets I kept hearing steps and like if someone was touching and opening plastic bags. I was so annoyed and looked outside the room and saw a shadow passing in the corridor.
  The issue is that the shadow was so big like if literally a person just passed by along with step noises and plastic bags. I freak out so badly and froze completely. I had to call another colleague to come upstairs because I was so scared of coming out of the resident room.
  Bear in mind that I do not believe in those things, and for 2 years I was always the one doing night checks on the top floor and bottom floor on my own. Never had any problem and never saw something. Since that day I never went upstairs alone and was always very scared." Separate-Audience-68 / Reddit

• "Brought home a three-foot-tall realistic doll my grandparents had, with the intention of fixing it up. I'm scared of dolls, so I put it in a box and put a heavy metal box on top of it.
  The next morning, the doll was gone. The boxes were still in place, but the damn thing had disappeared completely. I live in fear." -TheLoveGiver- / Reddit
• "I had a dog growing up that was the smartest dog I’ve ever met. She was like a human trapped in a dog’s body. My brother and I found her wandering around our neighborhood after school, and we brought her home. She was beloved.
  My brother died young. After he died, she would walk slowly in a circle around a plant we had in the living room, letting the leaves that hung down gently rub her back. Every once in a while, she would stop and look up at the plant for a moment, like she saw some kind of apparition floating above the plant. She would get a sad look in her eyes and let out a whimper.
  I’m convinced she was seeing my brother’s ghost watching over us. I really loved that dog." Ell_Jefe / Reddit
• "I was walking home from work in the afternoon and just happened to look upon an overcast day. Parallel to my direction, a meteor burned up, led by a bright burning and leaving black smoke across the whole sky. It made a low-pitched, loud rumbling across the whole sky for the 3 seconds it took to travel that far.
  Before YouTube, no one would have believed me, much less heard of anyone who saw it. In hindsight, it was wicked cool to see. At the time, I thought I was going to die. I had seen meteor showers. I had never seen one that low, or with any volume." Growth-Beginning / Reddit
• "I live in the countryside and when I was a kid, every day I used to go check the chickens that we had in a henhouse in the garden. It was around 8 pm in the winter, dark and snow everywhere. I put my shoes on and went outside. Everything went as usual until I saw it.
  There was somebody standing in front of me in the dark. Or like... I wish it was somebody. That figure was almost 3 meters tall and had red glowing eyes. I told my parents and to this day nobody believes me. " simb33 / Reddit

• "I used to go night running pretty late (11pm–1am) up a valley near my house. At one point, the road I run on goes through an area with cemeteries on both sides and an abandoned Japanese Shinto temple nearby.
  One night during a run while I was running between the cemeteries I saw an old Asian lady standing by a bus stop. She said 'Hi' in a very slow and deliberate manner and waved at me. I nodded and smiled at her and kept jogging. My turnaround point was about 5 minutes past the bus stop, but when I turned around and ran back the way I came, the woman was gone.
  No cars or buses had driven past me in either direction, and I didn't see her walking anywhere. She was there when I ran up the road, and she was gone five minutes later when I ran down the road. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but later I realized the whole situation seemed very strange.
  Why was she there so late at night? Where did she go? I still get a chill up my spine remembering the odd way she said 'Hi' and waved at me. Needless to say, I changed my running route shortly after that." Rodby / Reddit
• "My friend and I were in a restaurant talking about what happens after you die. Then my plate started moving and we both stormed out of the restaurant, screaming." WadamkaAintGotALife / Reddit
• "Not something I saw, but something I didn’t see. I was sitting on the couch at my grandparents’ house when I hear an unintelligible, yet unmistakably 'human' whisper in my ear. Spin around to see absolutely nothing.
  I later told my brother about it, and he told me that he had a similar thing happen to him. I have experienced that one other time in that exact spot. I don’t sit on the left side of the couch anymore." Idol-Mind / Reddit
• "About 25 years ago, my now former wife and I were caretaking a house. We had been there for several weeks, and we both noticed that we always had that feeling coming up the stairs from the cellar that something was going to grab you as soon as you turned the light switch off. Everything else about the house was normal.
  We slept with an analog windup alarm clock next to the bed, the kind that actually ticks. To set the alarm, you move a tiny third hand to the location on the clock face for the desired time. For example, halfway between six and seven to awaken at 6:30. It's a physical process and there is very little way to get it wrong.
  We always had the clock set to wake us up at 6 am. It was not something we fiddled with on a daily basis. One night, the alarm clock went off at like two in the morning. Old-school ringing bells. Both my former wife and I woke up absolutely terrified.
  I saw a small figure, maybe 2 feet tall, run out of the room. I thought I must've been crazy until my former wife screamed, 'Did you just see that thing?' we both described it as some sort of small gremlin.
  When we looked at the alarm clock, we saw that the alarm hand had been moved from 6 am to 2 am. That's the whole story. Scared me. Have no explanation for it. Nothing else ever happened there, but the cellar feeling persisted." theferalforager / Reddit

These people claim to have witnessed paranormal events, and their stories are absolutely spine-chilling. Read more here.