15+ People Whose Disturbing Trips Could Turn Into a Bestselling Novel

We travel to create unforgettable memories and spend quality time with the people we love. While most trips are remembered for the good times, some stand out for far stranger reasons. These travelers didn’t come home with souvenirs, but with unexplained stories that still haunt them, even years later.

• My family and I took a trip to Italy and were staying in this charming but slightly creepy historic hotel. We took tons of photos the whole time, mostly on my son’s camera. When we returned home and looked through them, we froze. There was one photo we definitely didn’t take.
  It was a blurry snap taken in the middle of the night. The photo showed a room that looked exactly like the one we stayed in, but the angle was strange, like it was taken from the upper corner of the ceiling where a security camera might be.
  We checked the timestamp. It was taken at 3:03 AM on our second night, the same night my husband said he had a lucid dream. At the time, we thought it was just that, a weird dream. But now...I’m not so sure.

• My flight was delayed, so I had to spend the night out. I checked in a hotel at midnight. When I entered the room, turned on the lights and walked over to the bed, I screamed because there was a guy on the bed staring blankly at the ceiling. He didn’t move or react at all. I ran to the reception and told them.
  When we all went to the room, we froze. The guy was nowhere; the room was empty. The bed was still made like no one had touched it. They gave me a new room, but I barely slept. I still have no idea what I saw.
• “Family trip to Niagara Falls when I was about 13. We rented a house for the weekend that was walking distance from the falls, 2 storeys that the family rents out separately, but no one was on the other floor. We start hearing noises, someone walking around, toilet flushing, doors opening and closing, really creepy stuff.
  Turns out a family member was living in the attic, and they chose not to tell us.” © desertrat113 / Reddit
• On a road trip, I stayed at this weird little roadside motel. Around 2 a.m., I woke up and saw a woman’s face peeking in through the window. I was on the second floor. I froze.
  When I got the courage to check, there was no one outside, just a chair below the window that hadn’t been there before.
• I was on an overnight train and had a window seat. A man across the aisle just stared at me, nonstop, for hours. Didn’t blink much, didn’t say a word, just watched. Even when I pretended to sleep, I could feel him staring.
  Eventually I asked if he was okay. I froze when he just smiled and said, “You look like her.” Never said who, and I didn’t dare to ask.

• “When I was 4 or 5, my parents & I stayed in a Motel 6 somewhere in Arizona. In the middle of the night, we hear a bunch of screaming & doors slamming & people running down the hallways. As we’re all waking up, it also feels kind of like it’s raining in the room — only the rain is moving.
  My dad throws on the lights & the ceiling is crawling with tiny ladybugs. And they are falling off the ceiling, so the beds & carpet are also covered in tiny ladybugs. And apparently ours was not the only room affected.” © Unknown author / Reddit
• I got up to use the bathroom in the train and saw a woman walking toward me who looked exactly like my sister. Same coat, same haircut, same walk. I even said her name out loud.
  She didn’t respond. Just walked past me and disappeared into another car. My sister texted me literally 10 seconds later, she was at home, hundreds of miles away.
• Stayed at an old inn during a road trip. Woke up in the middle of the night feeling like someone was breathing right next to my face. I turned on the light, no one there, door still locked, room empty. But the mirror across the room was fogged up like someone had exhaled on it.
• I was staying at a budget hotel for work. Around 6 a.m., I woke up to someone knocking on the door, saying, “Room service!” I hadn’t ordered anything. I looked through the peephole, no cart, no uniform, just a guy in a hoodie. I didn’t answer.
  He stood there for a full minute, then walked away. I told the front desk later. They said no one from staff had been up there.

• Back in 2011, my girlfriend and I were driving during a snowstorm on this old, barely-used highway. We were following an SUV when it suddenly stopped. I pulled around a bit to see why and saw a truck blocking the road. Both front doors were open, and two sets of footprints led straight into the woods.
  The truck was running, no damage, no sign of anyone around. I got out to check if someone needed help but got this weird gut feeling. Right as I was about to follow the tracks, the SUV driver called out that the truck had been reported stolen. Cops were on the way, so we bailed.
  The next day, I saw online that the footprints led deep into the woods... and just stopped. No clues. Just a circle of untouched snow like they vanished. No one ever figured it out. Still creeps me out to this day.
• “I came back into my camp from cooking/cleaning/taking a dump, and found an individual digging around in my tent and gear. I quietly watched the person from a bit away while they rummaged around, eventually leaving while taking nothing. Packed up all my stuff and hiked through in the dark.
  There are zero good things that could come from someone else looking through your gear in the middle of the woods as nighttime approaches. Don’t know what they wanted, don’t want to find out.” © 732 / Reddit
• Checked into a rental cottage. The bathroom door was stuck shut like it was locked from the inside. Called the host, she said, “That’s not possible because it doesn’t lock.” It was open when I came back from dinner and I hadn’t touched it.
• In 2016, I was 53 and traveling alone through small towns. I stayed at this old inn that felt a little off. At around 2:30 a.m., I heard footsteps in the hallway. They stopped right outside my door and didn’t move.
  I looked, no one was there. But the floor was wet, like someone had just been standing there after walking in the rain. It hadn’t rained.
  The next morning, I told the front desk. The woman just said, “We don’t use that room unless we have to.” I left right after.

• On a road trip, two friends and I decided to crash for the night at a small, out-of-the-way motel. Around 3 in the morning, I woke up and saw someone standing in the doorway of our room. The door was wide open.
  Since I’d been dealing with sleep issues and having really vivid, almost dream-like experiences, I convinced myself it wasn’t real and went back to sleep. The weirdest part? The next morning, all three of us said we had the exact same “dream.”
• “Traveled to Virginia for a conference at a mid-range hotel, signed in and spent the first night alone. I was a 20-year-old girl at the time. My (platonic male) friend stayed in my room with me the second night.
  I wake up around 2 am and see a strange man in my room. My friend wakes up and sees him too. He stutters and says that he was just dropping off some towels and must have made a mistake. Didn’t report it at the time because I would have felt bad if the poor guy got fired over an honest mistake, but I wish I had.” © throwaway_today_hay1 / Reddit
• “My mom was in China visiting her family when she got a phone call from a number she didn’t recognize. She picked it up and didn’t recognize the voice and asked who the person was. The person pretended to be a friend of my uncle (I’ll call him Bob). My mom was suspicious so she didn’t really talk to Bob so she just hung up.
  Fast-forward to when my mom arrived at her hotel. She got a call from the phone in the hotel room, and she picked it up, and it was Bob. She was kind of freaked out because she didn’t say anything about where she was staying. And Bob told her to meet him at a restaurant that was really far. She didn’t go, and she checked into another hotel.” © honey-butter-chips / Reddit
• I once stayed in a budget hotel during a road trip. Around 2 AM, the front desk called and said there was “an issue with my payment” and asked me to come down. I was half-asleep, but something felt off, so I said I’d check in the morning.
  Turns out, no one from the front desk had called me. The police later told me this was a known scam in the area, someone tries to lure guests out of their rooms late at night by pretending to be hotel staff, and then robs them. Still gives me chills thinking about what could’ve happened if I’d gone downstairs.

When you travel, you never really know what you’re going to run into. Some stories stick with you for all the wrong reasons, and these people are proof of that.