20+ Creepy Real Life Experiences That Gave Us Goosebumps

From eerie encounters to bone-chilling coincidences, some people have creepy real-life experiences that could rival a horror movie. We’ve gathered some of the most unsettling ones here from Reddit, although they may leave you with a craving to sleep with the lights on.

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• The cameras at my work are programmed to flick to areas of motion when they are inactive. One night, at like 3 am, when I was alone for a four-block radius, all of them flicked to the door right outside my office.
  There are 190 separate camera feeds. © BlackTemplar2154 / Reddit

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• The house I grew up in had someone pass away on the property. We used to have a crystal ashtray on the fireplace mantel that my father had received as a gift. My friend was in the living room when the ashtray started sliding across the mantel by itself about 6 inches, then stopped. My father said to ignore it because that’s just the lady who passed away in the house was trying to get your attention.
  He would always call her by her name and say, “Okay, that’s enough. We know you here, so don’t scare the guests.” It wasn’t scary for me per se, but my friends got freaked out by it when it did happen. © Alienlovechild1975 / Reddit

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• My childhood home was haunted, apparently. Countless people have seen and heard things. The craziest thing that happened to me though was when I was 14 or 15. I was an avid gamer (Xbox 360 days). So, what started to happen was that my Xbox would turn off randomly while I played. It was a newer Xbox 360 so it would make a beeping noise when the power button on the system itself would be touched. It also messed with my disc tray button.
  Well, one day after school I was playing some games and of course my Xbox turned off. Frustrated, I said out aloud, “Okay, you’ve turned my Xbox off and messed with my disc tray, now turn it on!” I kid you not, my Xbox turned itself on not even a second after finishing my sentence. It’s the only time it ever turned on by itself and never happened again. © SpecialSurprise** / Reddit

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• A few years back, I was trying to find my mother-in-law’s mom’s gravestone in an overgrown, unkempt graveyard in Texas. Four of us had been searching and couldn’t find it. Our driver was calling us back to the car because we had a flight to catch. My mother-in-law was heartbroken she couldn’t find it when I heard a voice in my head.
  It was a woman’s voice that called my name and said, “I’m over here.” I walked right to where I heard the voice and pulled away the long, dried weeds, revealing her headstone. © Mbluish / Reddit

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• Years ago, I worked at a Walgreens photo desk. A lady came in one day with an old black & white photo of her as a child. She said she used to tell her mom there were ghosts in the trees around her house, and her mom thought she just had a wild imagination and was making stuff up.
  She then showed me the photo of her, taken in the 60s, in a white dress and a pretty smile on what looked like a sunny day. But in the background, there were like scary faces all over and around the trees, on the bark, and in the branches.
  This was the worst case of pareidolia I’ve ever had. She wanted to make an enlarged copy and said she would give it to her mom to prove she wasn’t crazy. That photo still haunts me. © Unknown author / Reddit

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• Back when I lived with my parents, there was a “rotten egg” smell in our home, from the garage. We looked everywhere but couldn’t find the source. My mom was sick of it and decided she wasn’t sleeping in the house anymore. We tried cleaning out the floor drains and looking around for any chemicals that could have spilled, and we couldn’t find anything. Then one night, I had a dream. My deceased grandfather told me, “You need to go into the garage and take the charger off the battery.” It didn’t make sense when I woke up, but I went right into the garage and saw that my dad had an old motorcycle battery hooked up to a trickle charger. The battery had gone bad and was releasing toxic hydrogen sulfide fumes throughout the entire house. © HottIcedTea / Reddit

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• Years ago, my mom fell very ill with stomach pain, tiredness, and more symptoms. She went to many doctors and tried many meds, but nothing ever helped against anything. The doctors were stumped. My grandma called a “medium,” a friend of hers.
  She spoke to a ghost named Patna. I never believed in stuff like this, still don’t really, but this made me think twice about my suspicion. The medium offered to help to find out what was wrong with my mom, and we were like, Okay, if she wants to do this, let her do this; we have nothing to lose. So the medium asked the ghost in a ceremony what was wrong with my mom.
  The ghost, Patna, told my mother that she had been poisoned. Desperate, Mom got blood work done. The results came, and we were shocked to see she was actually poisoned with Quicksilver. Turns out, my mom had an old amalgam filling for her teeth, and when she got a new one, with a metal of higher quality, the old one disassembled the new one.
  These amalgam fillings are mixed with quicksilver, so when it was disassembled, my mom got slowly poisoned. A few weeks after it was removed, all the symptoms stopped. So a ghost kind of helped my mom. I have no idea how my grandma’s friend should get to this explanation. Maybe it was luck; maybe I’m not open-minded enough to believe in that, but it was definitely spooky. © Fraenzine1510 / Reddit

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If you’re in the mood for more such goosebumps-inducing stuff, then here go some camping stories that might make you want to stay home, safe and sound.