18 Reddit Let’s Not Meet Stories That’ll Make You Fear Life



The Let’s Not Meet subreddit is a part of the internet that should really come with a warning. If you’re not careful, you can fall down a rabbit hole full of chilling tales that will make any normal person paranoid about the outside world. The stories on r/LetsNotMeet are all presented as true, real-life experiences, often depicting creepy encounters with sinister individuals. Gathered on this list are posts so frightening, they’ll make you look at the world in a whole new way. These are the Reddit Let’s Not Meet stories that will totally make you fear life.

Surgical Zombie Smoke Break

From Redditor /u/POTUSKNOPE:

I have a lot of weird encounters outside my office on my smoke breaks, but I think this one takes the cake, even with how anticlimactic it was.

Today I was sitting on the wall outside my building smoking and messing around on my phone. I had probably been sitting there for about two minutes without looking up when I finally do and notice a guy on the corner about 20 feet away staring intently at me. He’s hunched over facing me in the classic zombie pose wearing a large coat, a surgical mask and gloves. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but it was day time and the area is relatively populated so despite being the only people on the street, I wasn’t too worried.

I went back to looking at my phone, but kept discreetly glancing in his direction to see if he was still there. He didn’t move or stop looking at me for probably another minute of a half, just sunken shoulders with his unblinking eyes pointed directly at me over his mask.

Finally I notice an older man walking towards us and my cigarette is almost finished so I assume worst comes to worst, this guy will be near if anything happens. I glance back at my phone and hear what I assume are the older man’s footsteps approaching.

Before I have a chance to look up, the surgical zombie is sitting within an inch of me on the wall. I’m a polite girl so I give him a vague smile while my inner self and personal space are screaming at me to get up and leave. He asks me for a cigarette, so I give him one and he just continues to sit there with it unlit. I can’t fight my manners so I ask him if he needs a light and he gives me a gloved double-thumbs up and stares at me. I ask him if that meant he had one, to which he responds with another double thumbs up. I assume that was him saying he did so I turn back to my phone planning on taking one more drag before getting up to leave. He then says “yes, I need one” so I give him my lighter. He hands it back and I put my smoke out and stand up. He then begins laughing, like full belly laughing. I didn’t really know how to respond so I tell him to have a nice day and walk into my building.

To be honest, I’ve never really had a fear of people, and I can’t say this is the first time I’ve had someone has done something like this, but the mask and gloves really added to the absurdity of the situation.

Have We Met Already?

From Redditor /u/Furstenfeld:

It’s Friday night at around 8.45pm. The little one’s in bed, and I’m chilling with some friends online, gaming. There’s a loud bang and I’m instantly freaking out, due to having my home, my safe place, invaded by some creeper twice in the past three months.

I turn the volume on my computer down, trying my best to come up with excuses. Oh, it was the neighbors doing something. Who in their right minds would try to break into my house when they can see that I’m awake? Front outdoor light on, lounge light on.

It’s quiet for a while, so I return to playing the game and talking to my friends. That’s when I hear rustling. I think it’s coming from the game, despite the volume being super low, but to be on the safe side I turned the sound on the computer off completely. The rustling’s still there.

At this point, I think it might be that annoying pest possum. The banging could have been it jumping onto the garage roof, and now it was snuffling around outside the leaves, searching for some food. As I said earlier, who would try to trespass when they could clearly see someone was home? If they did trespass, why would they be doing so so loudly?

I wanna say it put me at ease, but it didn’t. Fast forward half an hour and the noises have stopped, and my cat’s begging me to be let outside. Little b*stard. (I love him, really.)

I hate opening doors / curtains / windows at night. Paranoia at [its] finest. But tonight I had a reason to be paranoid, at least. I kept the chain lock on the door and let the fat fuzzball squeeze out, and had a bit of a peek through the crack, seeing if anything was amiss on my front lawn.

Nothing out of the ordinary, so I lock the door and head back to the lounge. Five minutes later, someone tries the door handle. Finding it locked, I hear a laugh, and they start scratching on the glass as I frantically grab my phone and call the police.

Whoever it was had left by the time they answered the phone, and police couldn’t find evidence that anyone had been on the property. They did a sweep of the neighborhood, but couldn’t find anyone on the streets, either.

Whoever you are, I’d say let’s not meet, but I’m pretty sure you’re the same person who came the other two times. And I’m fairly certain that that person is my ex. So, Mr ex. If it IS you. Smile for the cameras next time you come around. They just arrived in my mailbox.

A Day Of Play Leads To Kidnapping

From Redditor /u/cheeseshrice1966:

I’ve stalked this sub for a while, and couldn’t decide whether or not to post mine but I’m feeling brave on a Monday.

It was a very long time ago- back in 1973. I know it was summer, I was 6, and we were living on Monica Lane in Madison, WI.

Thing is, I sort of recalled it but never put two-and-two together until a few months ago when I was talking to my mom who went into great detail.

I was a very gregarious child; outgoing, extroverted, friends with anyone. It was at the time a middle class neighborhood, and 3 houses down from ours, on the same side of the street, was a huge park.

My mom was a nurse and my dad was a salesman, but mom worked 2nd shift at Merriter, while my dad worked days. I rarely had a babysitter, only if they went out for dinner or a movie. But they did go out often and there were always older kids in the neighborhood to babysit.

One sitter who I really liked lived a few blocks or so away, and down the street a little bit. Vicky had babysat a few times before that and it was pretty uneventful. She’d play games with me, and do my hair, play dress-up, pretty basic stuff.

So anyhow, one day I had gone with friends down to the park. I remember there was a ball field at the time, and a sandlot next to the field. My friends wanted to play on the monkey bars, but I wanted to play in the sand. I looked at the sand box and my babysitter Vicky was standing there. I told my friends I was going down to to the sandbox and ran off.

We played in the sand, building a castle, and then She asks me if I wanted to go get something cold to drink. It was stifling hot, and I of course said yes. So she takes my hand and we start walking to her place.

She starts telling me about her puppies and asking if I want to play with them. Of course I get giddy and now can’t wait to get to her house. This was where my memory had stopped and after my mom told me what happened, the rest of it flooded back.

My mother just happened to be talking to my sister and I about some of the places we lived and we got to Monica Lane. I told her I remembered the park and how big it seemed, and she asks me if I remember being kidnapped.

I immediately thought she was kidding and then the look on her face told me otherwise.

She said it was around 5 in the afternoon and one of my friends had come to the door to ask me to come back outside, sure that I had gotten bored and walked back home. When my mom checked the house, she realized I wasn’t there and (7 months pregnant with my sister) sprints to the park, screaming my name.

After asking several kids if they’d seen me with no clue, she went to the ball field and asked the older boys if they’d seen me.

One of the boys (she guessed around 14) said that he’d seen a younger woman playing with a girl that fit my description in the sand and walk off in a general direction and that was all he knew.

My mom ran across the street to one of the houses, and asked to use their phone and called the police. By the time the police got there, my dad had come home and some of the neighbors were trying to help my mom.

So there’s this search party out looking for me, screaming my name and knocking on doors. The police had gone back to the park to ask the boys if they knew who had been with me and if they knew who she was.

Between the boys and the neighbors, they had deduced who it was that had led me off, but I have no idea how, honestly.

The police and the entourage go to her home (she lived with her parents but they weren’t home) and knock on the door. She came to the door and told them she hadn’t seen me, and that she’d been home all day.

The police asked to come in and for some reason she said okay. They went through the house, and went to the basement and found me. That’s what my mom knew and then I remembered. It was literally like a flood gate had opened and I started crying.

At 6 you sort of trust everyone, and she’d been in our home. I never got a bad feeling from her and my parents didn’t, either. But when we walked into her house I remember that cold, holy f*ck feeling washing over me and getting very worried. I remember starting to cry and saying I wanted to go home, over and over.

She takes me into her kitchen and gets me a glass of water and a tissue. I hear dogs barking, and next to the kitchen is an open stairway the goes down and where the barking was coming from.

She starts trying to cajole me into going downstairs- telling me there’s all sorts of toys and games. I reluctantly agree and she grabs my hand to head down the stairs. The dogs are going nuttier and I start screaming.

At this point Vicky is getting f*cking bizarre. She’s screaming at me to “SHUT THE F*CK UP!! IF YOU DONT SHUT UP I WILL THROW YOU IN THE CAGE WITH THE DOGS AND THEY WILL EAT YOU!! SHUT UP!!” Dragging me down the stairs and still screaming.

I was scared out of my mind. I remember crying so hard I was hyperventilating, and I am screaming so hard I’m not making sounds. Vicky then flips a switch and starts being syrupy sweet, trying to calm me down. She tells me that she was just playing a game and tells me she wants to play hide and seek.

She must have been relatively skilled at calming me down because the next thing I know, I hear knocking on the door upstairs and I wasn’t crying. The houses were all the same sort of tract houses that Sears used to sell, not huge but not small, but you could hear everything at any spot in the house.

I keep hearing the knocking and she tells me that it’s her friends. They’re coming to play hide and seek!! She convinced me to let her put a piece of masking tape over my mouth so I wouldn’t make a sound, and lifted me into this big wooden box next to the kennel. She put a big pile of blankets over me, and told me to be really quiet so they didn’t find me.

The whole time the dogs were going batsh*t but when she calmed me down, they calmed down, too. They still looked incredibly mean but they were no longer frothing at the mouth, and only slightly growling. Until the knocking started.

I remember scrunching in there, confused. Still scared and convinced that the dogs were going to get out and eat me. I was crying again and hyperventilating. I remember taking the tape off my mouth because I couldn’t breathe, but remembered I needed to be quiet because I was afraid what she’d do if I screamed.

I laid in that smelly box next to a big bag of dog food, sweating to hell, tears rolling down my face. I sort of pushed the blankets to the side but only enough so that I could pull them back over me when someone came. I recall thinking about my dad and wondering if he’d come find me.

All of a sudden I hear what sounds like adults yelling my name. They come down the stairs and the dogs are going batsh*t again. Over and over men are yelling my name and then I hear a man say ‘if you don’t shut those f*cking dogs up I will!!’

I was in a large storage box (like a carpenters tool box type of thing) with tape hanging off my mouth, when they opened the lid. I remember a very nice man asking me my name and if I was okay. I don’t remember answering him in anything other than screams and tears and grabbing his neck so hard my dad had to practically pry me off of him.

I remember my parents taking me to the hospital to be checked out and that’s all I really remember.

Mom said that Vicky was found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and last she knew was in prison but couldn’t remember when the last time was she had heard anything. We moved from the area shortly thereafter, and I haven’t been back since.

I do know that mom said that her parents were odd but that they didn’t know them. She had met Vicky from neighbors that had used her as a babysitter, and had never heard of anything bad and that I always seemed happy with her.

She lived in the general neighborhood but it would have been two blocks over and [one] block down. Mom said they never picked her up, she always walked over. When they’d get home they’d drive her home but never noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Mom and dad had only met her parents when they came to the door to ask for forgiveness; that Vicky hadn’t meant to do anything bad, and was a good girl. Mom said my dad picked up her dad by the shirt and told him that if they ever came on our property again, he’d kill them.

I remember her name and sort of what she looked like, but would have no idea if she walked up to me who she is.

Never Take Powdered Envelopes From Strangers

From Redditor /u/summer2502:

The other day at work we were basically told to look out for ourselves and others, wait for a security guard etc. Now this was a normal thing for the suburb we live in but it was still a bit strange. My friend from night fill told me why.

Their friend and co worker finished up at around 12 that morning and was approached by this guy when he was at his car. The guy looked pretty normal, trakkies and all, and gave him an envelope claiming there were free Fringe tickets inside. (side note for clarification: Fringe is an art festival, like music and comedy and dancing etc. in the CBD) There was some sort of white powder on the ticket but he just assumed it was cocaine or something (again not uncommon in this area) so just grabbed it, planning to throw it out later because it was probably counterfeit. Not wanting to spark any conflict, it’s unpredictable around here especially at 12am.

His mates came out around 12:15 to see him with something like burns on his hands (where he touched the powder) and felt like he was burning on the inside and couldn’t breathe properly, luckily he was still conscious and told them to take him to the hospital which luckily wasn’t that far away.

They got there and practically everyone that came into contact with him felt like they were burning under their skin and were all having breathing difficulties within minutes. They had to call HAZMAT firies and everyone was decontaminated, luckily everyone is okay.

The Dumpster Creep

From a former Redditor:

Around 9pm, I heard the tell-tale rumble that meant the forecasted storm was about to start. I couldn’t recall if I had rolled up my car window when I got home, so I went out to check. It was already dark out, and I live in a part [of] town that isn’t big on street lights so at night sometimes it’s hard to even stay on the sidewalk without crashing into bushes. The dumpsters are about 200-300 feet from my car [on] our U-shaped street, tucked into a corner that backs into trees and a small creek. I live on the back of the building, so once I round that corner you can’t see me from my car nor the dumpsters.

I got out to my car. As I rounded that corner, I could see what looked like a flash light in the dumpster. Weird, but not alarming as there are a lot of teenagers and younger boys who f*ck around in that corner of the parking lot. My window was down a bit, as I was rolling it up I hear a clattering sound from the dumpsters. I turn to see someone climbing out of the dumpster and start shining the light in the other dumpster. My daughter had left her window down too, so I walked around to her door and rolled her window up too. I slammed her door shut a bit harder than I meant to, and since I was then facing the dumpsters I could see the dumpster man freeze and swing his light in my direction. He immediately switched it off and right as I started to walk back inside, he started full on sprinting toward my direction.

My usually sedentary [butt] has never moved so fast as I noped back on to the sidewalk and to the back of the building. I quietly opened and shut my door, locked in hopes that with eight apartments back here, he wouldn’t know where I was. Or maybe he was running for reasons entirely unrelated to me. Or maybe he was just f*cking with me and is now having a laugh with his friends about the lady he just scared the sh*t of. Whatever it was, I’m sure as sh*t not getting any sleep tonight.

Late At Night, He Comes

From a Reddit enthusiast with an uncouth username that shall go unmentioned:

This past weekend, my soon-to-be-wife Alexia and I had just settled down for a night of movies, pizza and cuddling. We live in a residential area right outside of town; our home situated right across the street from a Presbyterian church with a large cemetery behind it. Most of our neighbors don’t own pets but there’s one in particular across the street and downwards a bit who owns perhaps the loudest, most annoying dog to ever exist. Quite an annoyance on a night like tonight but luckily it was quiet for the entire evening.

It’s around a quarter after 10:00 PM and we’re lying down watching a film in our living room when the loudest dog on earth begins to go off. Unfortunately, there’s nothing much we can do, except maybe confront our neighbor or file a noise complaint but who wants to be the neighbor that does that?

After about five minutes, I get up off the couch and decide to walk over to our neighbor’s home and say something about the dog. As I headed outside and made it to their driveway, unfortunately, I noticed that the neighbor wasn’t home; their only car not there. I decided anyway to walk up to the door and ring the bell. After a minute of no one answering, I gave up and headed back towards home.

I noticed that Alexia had stepped outside and was looking on towards the direction of the barking. I told her that no one was home and that we should either ignore it or finally file a complaint. No one should have to deal with a loud dog at night, especially if you’re trying to unwind after a long day of work or are trying to sleep.

Alexia and I [head] back inside for a bit and finally after about ten minutes the dog ceases to bark. Alexia and I exhaled and laughed a bit before continuing our film. But of course, not long after that, the dog starts up again. This time, it sounded vicious.

I got up, went outside and approached our neighbor’s fenced-off backyard and saw the dog, who must’ve heard or saw me coming. It stopped barking, walked up to me and began to pant in the cute way dogs do. I chuckled and said the dog’s name, to which he looked at me and sat down. Such a good animal, even if he’s so loud.

I then heard something that sounded like somebody walking through leaves coming from behind me and to the right. I turn around to see somebody looking at me from behind a gravestone in the cemetery. The dog must’ve heard this as well, as it sprung up and began to bark in the direction of the gravestone.

I looked on as the person continued staring in my direction and as the dog continued to bark. I looked towards my house where I saw Alexia standing near her car, looking at me with a confused look on her face. I looked in horror as I saw the person reveal himself from behind the gravestone; his forehead and cheek was stained red with blood, dripping down off of his chin. In his hand was some sort of dagger.

The dog began to go ballistic as the person took a few steps in our direction before stopping. I turned to the dog, then back at my home. Alexia, who was still outside, yelled out to me what was wrong. I told her to call the police. She said “why, the dog?” to which I replied “he’s f*cking armed.” Probably confused, Alexia went inside to grab her phone as I continued to watch on as the person now began to back off, the dog now going berserk. It was going to take a bit of time for someone to reach our home, so I readied myself to go into self defense as I watched the man finally turn around and walk away towards the back of the cemetery and towards the woods.

When the police finally arrived, the person was long gone and I was stuck there explaining to a couple of skeptical officers about my encounter. They didn’t seem to take me that seriously but still investigated the area as I explained to Alexia about the person I saw.

When the police left after finding no trace of anyone, Alexia and I didn’t feel much better. We locked our doors and windows and I decided to call our neighbors to fill them in on everything before heading back to continue our movie night in spectacular fashion: with the Exorcist.

The Child P*rn Ring Office In The Middle Of Nowhere

From Redditor /u/boracay111:

When I was 19 I worked for a company that allocated labour to rural areas of Australia. Basically what you did was tell them when you were available, and they’d send you to a remote farm for a few weeks where you’d do whatever they needed done. It was hard work and long hours, but good pay and good fun if you got in with a nice group of workers.

When this occurred, I was working on a large property… it was the middle of nowhere.

I was working at the farm clearing bushland with 3 other guys my age from the city, our boss was a guy called Jeremy who owned the farm and supervised us while helping out with the work. He was pretty laid back, and was generally really good to us. This summer in particular was very hot, and the work was hard, so one day when the temperature hit about 38 degrees Celsius (about 100 Fahrenheit) Jeremy decided to give us the afternoon off.

He said he knew of a water hole on the farm about a 25 minute drive north, I was keen for a swim but the other guys just wanted to relax for the arvo, so him and I hopped in one of the work trucks and started heading across the property. It was mostly wide, empty expanses with a few clumps of scattered bushland. Jeremy wasn’t much of a talker, so we drove more or less in silence. After about 20 minutes however, he suddenly perked up and jabbed me in the ribs; [and he said,] “do you see that over there… beneath the two dead trees?”

I should mention here that if you’re not familiar with inland areas, particularly those in Australia, they are brown or red, and mostly flat and bland, meaning any bright colours stick out like a sore thumb, so you can imagine our surprise when we could see a large blue angular structure far off in the distance. We steered in [its] direction, and as we got closer we realised it was a huge blue shipping container just sitting in the middle of nowhere. Jeremy was perplexed, I asked him if he knew what it was but he obviously didn’t. He said he hadn’t seen it when he drove through the same area about 5 weeks before, and he wanted to go and see what it was.

Initially we pulled to a stop about 100 meters away from it. At this stage I had a really bad feeling, the whole thing wasn’t right, [it’s] hard to explain, but if you can imagine seeing such a foreign object in the middle of a huge barren expanse, it had to be something weird. Jeremy however wanted to investigate, which I understood, given it was his property, but in truth I was really anxious.

As we got closer, things got even more bizarre. There was a big diesel generator behind it thumping away, and a CCTV camera on each side, all motion activated so they buzzed from side to side, following us as we moved around. I tried to reason with Jeremy, something along the lines of “with all this security, someone obviously doesn’t want us here, lets just go”. He brushed me off however, reminding me it was his farm and whoever had put this here was trespassing, so he wanted to go inside.

Despite all the surveillance, there was only a small padlock on the huge door. We had some bolt-cutters in his toolbox, and after a bit of a struggle, we broke the lock and went inside.

The first thing I noticed was the rush of cold air… there were flashing LEDs all around the place and the sort of hum you hear when a hard drive is working hard. When we finally switched on the lights, we could see a sophisticated (albeit somewhat cluttered) office set up. There were hard drives the size of bar fridges and other computer equipment lining the walls, sometimes piled 2 or 3 high, and plastic storage boxes scatter[ed] around the far wall, and several desks with computer monitors arranged in the middle, complete with rolling office chairs.

At this stage I felt like I was in one of those nonsensical dreams… My heart was racing and I just wanted to bolt, we had been seen by the CCTV, so if anyone was monitoring they already knew we were here. Jeremy on the other was adamant we had to get to the bottom of this, so I put on a brave face and started looking through the computer. This went on for a while, but in short neither of us had a very high grasp of technology outside of Facebook and Microsoft Word. The best I can describe it from my lay position is that it was endless lists of “computer talk”, it was like the old Napster or Limewire download screens looked like, just constantly picking up and receiving data then recording it on several windows.

I gave up on the computers and walked cautiously over [to] the far end of the container to the big pile of storage boxes. By then I was pretty sure no-one else was there as there was nowhere to hide really, but I was still incredibly on edge. I decided, against my better judgment to see what was inside all these boxes. My brief sift through this box still makes me feel sick to the stomach.

It didn’t take long for me to realise… [it was] child p*rnography. One thing that still gets to me is that it was all neatly ordered in to folders and smaller boxes… These people were organised. I immediately recoiled, jumped up and ran over to Jeremy. I could hardly string a sentence together… I dragged him out, composed myself and managed to explain what I saw.

We jumped back in to the truck and sped back to the house. The farm had no mobile phone reception, and we hadn’t [brought] the satellite phone so we had to get back to the landline to call the police. Once we called them they still had to make it all the way to the farm from the nearest police station, which was in a town about a half hour from the town closest to the farm (as I mentioned, very remote). We waited, talking frantically about what we’d seen, until the cops arrived almost an hour later. They arrived with 2 four wheel drives, and we jumped in and led them back. This is where it gets worse…

By the time we got back, the container door was open and there was fire inside. We had only two small extinguishers in the cars, and these did very little. The fire department took an hour to get there, by which stage most of the damage was already done. An arson report by the federal police found almost no evidence of the computer equipment described, and only traces of paper and cardboard. This means that whoever ran it, knew we were there and had time to come and remove most of it and get away. There were various ways to get off the property and the landmass was huge, so there was no real way to tail them. Since the police hadn’t taken us all too seriously in the first instance, probably due to our poor explanation on the phone, aerial surveillance was also impossible by the time we had pieced it all together.

I took a keen interest in following it up, but with no real evidence of who might be responsible, the investigation went cold. I’ve kept in contact with Jeremy, and the shipping container is still sitting there on the farm, as [it’s] too expensive to move.

Roommate Wanted: Female Only


From Redditor /u/ScarsAndStripes:

Amanda is my brother’s girlfriend. At the time of this story, she was looking for her first apartment and moving out from her parents’ house. Her and my brother didn’t want to move in together since they had only dated for a few months. She opted instead to search for a roommate online. Browsing Craigslist, she found an ad titled something like “Roommate Wanted: Females Only.” This sort of thing was common since the area she was looking in was mostly young professionals.

The listing was for a room in a house for about $225 a month, which was quite cheap… The occupant listed herself as a 23 year old college student that wasn’t comfortable with living with any males. The other roommate would have their own room and attached bathroom. So far, Amanda was into this place. However, the listing only had a single photo from outside the property. Amanda sent an email wanting to meet the occupant and tour the house. Within 30 minutes, she receives an email back with all the details and time to stop by. The girl worked late hours and wanted Amanda to stop by at 8pm.

When Amanda arrives, there is a handwritten note on the front door saying “Door broken, use back door.” Walking around the house, it looks nice but slightly unkempt: tall grass, weeds, dusty windows, etc. Still no alarms for Amanda though. When she knocks on the backdoor and an older man opens the door. At first Amanda thinks she has the wrong house but the man reassures her and says that the occupant (I forget the name) was out and he was the landlord. The occupant asked him to meet Amanda since she was working late. He seemed pleasant and offered to show her around.

Alarms start going off but aren’t at red alert yet. First, the guy was clearly in his 40’s, unshaven, and looked like he lived in his car. Also, only the kitchen light was on. As they walked around the house, Amanda noticed one huge red flag: No furniture. Nothing. The landlord was polite about answering questions but seemed irritable to keeping lights on for too long, rushing her around and only letting her look at rooms for a few moments. There was a single room that the landlord wouldn’t open, telling her that it was the occupant’s room and he didn’t want to invade her privacy. As they walk down the hallway into the living room, she notices the front door has a plank nailed across it. “Broken” for sure.

Amanda’s creep-o-meter is started to ding so she decides to wrap up the walk-through and leave but trying to polite. As she’s giving the guy her “thanks for the showing” bit, he perks up and states that he forgot to show her the basement. It’s recently furnished and would be a great rec room…and she should take a look down there. At the time, Amanda and the landlord are standing in the small hallway between the front living room and the back kitchen. In this little hallway was the basement door. When he opens the door, it opens outward to create something of a barrier between Amanda and the backdoor. The basement is pitch black. He smiles, motions down the stairs, and says “Ladies first.”

What happens next is nothing more than a stroke of luck. Amanda get a text just as some random person parks in front of the house. Thinking on her feet, she pretends it’s a phone call and answers her phone. “Hey! Yeah, are you here? I’ll come out from around back and let you in. It’s great, you have to see it.” With a motion of confidence, she excuses herself around the landlord and walks out of the back door. She says the guy just looked at her like he was confused. Once outside, she sprinted to her car and sped like hell out of there.

When Amanda got home, she told her mother and my brother everything. Cops were called, they took her statement, and went to investigate. The Craigslist post had been removed.


The house had been foreclosed over six months earlier and the property had been abandoned. When the police investigated, they found that the closed room the “landlord” didn’t want her to look in was where the man had been staying. There was a pile of old dirty blankets, rotten food, and empty gallon jugs everywhere. More creepy was he had plastered ripped up pages from porno mags on ALL the walls in the room (where do they even find porno mags!?).

The really scary part of this was the basement. The man had tied a thin piece of fishing twine at about shin level across the stairs about halfway down. The basement was empty except another pile of old blankets, a broom handle wrapped in leather belts, and a small box with a few rolls of assorted tape (duct, electric, etc).

Amanda ended up not moving in.

The Creepy Mountain Man

From Redditor /u/yourfavouriteredhead:

I was 17 at the time, and I had just gotten my first job. I lived in rural western Virginia, in a small mountain community. My mom’s friend owned a camping resort not far from my house that had a general store, and she said she’d pay me to help out in the store during the busy months in the summer. It was a pretty easy job, and I met a lot of out-of-towners, which was nice because our community could get so isolated; most of us lived pretty far away from each other.

One day, a big burly mountain man type came into the store. He was in his late 40s/early 50s, probably 6’5”, and about 280 lbs. He looked dirty, like he worked outside a lot; his clothes were sort of tattered and he had a long beard… He bought some basic items, one of which was one of our homemade bars of soap. When he came to the register, he looked me up and down carefully. He didn’t talk for a minute, just stared. His people skills clearly needed work.

“Did you make this soap?” He asked gruffly.

“Possibly,” I said. “I help out with that sometimes.”

“You make a lot of your own stuff?”

“Toiletries and things like that, yeah.”

“I like that,” He said, nodding to himself. I honestly did not know how to respond. I quickly rang up his items and he paid with crumpled money. Right before he left, he asked, “You cook, too?”

“Sometimes,” I replied.

“Bet the boys ’round here are itchin’ to marry you.” He said as he smiled to himself. I said nothing. I was puzzled as to what I said that stood out as wife material. I told Krista (mom’s friend/boss) about the bizarre encounter and she laughed it off; so did my family and friends.

But then, Mountain Man started turning up more often. We chatted a little bit here and there, and I found out he had a cabin in the woods, he claimed he built “with his bare hands”. He said he hunted and lived off the land, other than the things he bought at the store. Over time our chatter escalated, with him making comments about how nice it would be to have a woman like me around who could make those things, and cook his kills. One time, he even said I had the “birthin’ hips that men lust after”. Shudder.

He even started inviting me to fish with him, hunt with him, see his place, etc. and I always politely declined. But he got more and more insistent and I told Krista about how uncomfortable he was starting to make me. The intensity with which he said those things really scared me. She said that when he came in, go get her and she would ring him up.

Thanks to her, I started speaking to him less, and I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. But one night, I was closing up, and it was late, around 10 at night. Krista had left about an hour before, and I was leaving by myself. The only two cars in front of the store were an old blue pickup and mine; I was immediately alarmed because I knew Mountain Man drove a blue pickup. But I didn’t see him in the lot, just his car, so I walked quickly to my car and checked the backseat before I started her up.

But then when I first turned the key into the ignition, I got nothing but sputters. I tried several more times and got scared quickly. Of all nights, why is this happening tonight? I remember asking myself angrily. Just as I was reaching for my phone to call for help, there was a loud pounding on the driver’s side window. I’m shocked that I didn’t piss myself.

I didn’t even want to look, because I knew it was him. But I did, and my suspicions were confirmed. He smiled a big grin at me, showing me exactly which teeth were missing.

“Need some help?” He said loudly through the window. I shook my head furiously.

“My dad is on his way.” I said, hoping to scare him off. I hadn’t spoken to my dad in years. Mountain Man laughed.

“No he’s not.” He said. “Open the door.” The hairs on my neck stood up straight. How did he know I was bluffing?

“No,” I said firmly. “Leave me alone.” Suddenly he looked angry. He pulled the handle but I had locked all the doors when I first got in. He kept furiously pulling the handle and started pounding on the window. “Leave now or I’m calling the cops!” I screamed at him.

He clearly wasn’t getting the message so I pulled out my phone and called 911. I must have sounded hysterical to the dispatcher, and I knew she could hear him pounding. She said she would have officers out ASAP, but out here, that could be a while.

“THE COPS ARE ON THEIR WAY! LEAVE NOW!” I screamed at MM, who didn’t seem to let it deter him. But after a few more minutes of pounding, he suddenly stopped and walked back to his truck. I watched him go, hopeful he would leave me alone.

But then he started walking back toward me, with a f*cking crowbar in hand.

“NO!” I screamed at him. “GET THE F*CK AWAY FROM ME!” He started swinging at the driver’s side window with the crowbar. I ducked down into the passenger seat on the floor and covered the back of my neck like they teach you in tornado drills. I heard the sickening crack of the window but not for long; suddenly, I heard male voices shouting, telling MM to get away from the car. I sat up and saw two men approaching, one with a shotgun pointed at MM.

I recognized them as a couple of guests staying at the resort for a camping trip. I breathed a sigh of relief and got out of the car, telling them that the police were on the way. I thanked them profusely as we waited for the police, and surprisingly MM didn’t make any moves to get away, but the cops came pretty quickly after that, so he didn’t have much of a chance.

They took him away and I gave them my statement; I was pretty shaken up for a while afterwards. A few weeks later I finally got the scoop on the man. Apparently he had a history of mental illness. He had been in and out of state institutions. He really had been living in an old cabin in the woods, where he wasn’t taking his meds… They found a journal that MM kept. Apparently, in it he said he was lonely and wanted a wife. He mentioned me by name a lot (stupid name tag), and Luke said there were a lot of lewd things in there about me that he didn’t want to share, but tried to put it simply by saying that MM had a detailed plan to abduct me, starting with sabotaging my car engine to get me into a vulnerable position. When Luke said that, I nearly burst into tears thinking about how horribly that night could have gone if those two men hadn’t come along.

Thankfully, he has been put back into a state institution. With any luck, he’ll stay there for good. Mountain Man, let’s not meet again.

The Creepiest Room Ever Found Under A Bridge

From a former Redditor:

I live in North Wales, UK. For anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting, it truly is a beautiful place to live, though, for an adolescent boy, it is certainly lacking in things to do. As a result, my friends and I would often find ourselves mindlessly exploring areas of countryside and coastline.



We returned with the necessary equipment and proceeded to unbolt the cover… It wasn’t long before we had removed the heavy steel disc, and had started descending the ladder down into the structure. Once we had all safely reached the bottom, we decided to progress to the other side. At this point, we are totally confined into the narrow space that leads into the main area… So, as we squeeze and crouch, and at one point scrape along our bellies, to the other side of the structure there is a growing sense of claustrophobia between us. The distance from end to the other is surprisingly long, but by the halfway point you can look down through narrow gaps onto the motorway below. This was actually pretty cool, which helped keep us calm, in a strange way.



I reached the end first, and let me tell you, I have never felt the same sense of dread before or since. In front of me was a single fold-away chair positioned facing a wall. On the wall was a partially torn page from a newspaper, or a magazine, showing a fully naked lady in an erotic position. The reason I don’t just refer to it as ‘p*rn’ is because something was different about it; I can’t put my finger on it but it seemed more sinister than sexy, if that makes any sense.



I’m sure this ending comes as a disappointment to some of you reading this, as we (luckily) never bumped into the twisted individual who sits in that chair, but I must stress how radically out of the norm this was given where I live… I sometimes think, though not recently as I had more-or-less forgotten about that night entirely, about the person who climbs down into that bridge and navigates through the darkness to sit facing a wall, and do God-knows-what… You honestly couldn’t envision a more surreal situation.

“Dr. Ramsey” Stalked An Entire Family

From Redditor /u/sweetmercy:

A week or so before my 10th birthday, I walked to the corner store with a $5 bill and picked up a jar of Ragu for my mom. On my way home, a man I’d never seen before fell in step with me and began talking.

“Hi!” he said, cheerfully. “My name is Dr. Ramsey. I’m a pediatrician. Do you know what a pediatrician is?”

I walked along silently, not replying and fervently hoping he would take that as a sign he should leave me alone. Subtleties were not his strong suit, though, because he kept right on chattering.

“Are your parents looking for a pediatrician for you? Of course, you’re almost a big girl now, you’ll be needing another kind of doctor soon, won’t you? That’s okay though. They can still bring you to me until then. What’s your name? You have beautiful hair. I was just on my way to get some suckers for the candy jar in my office. Do you like suckers?”

Thankfully, we were nearing my house, so I ran forward, up the back steps and into through the kitchen door. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of a very long, very scary ordeal. It didn’t take long after that for “Dr. Ramsey” to begin showing up. At first, it seemed benign enough…at least to a kid. He would drive by nearly every day, smiling and waving. I told my mom, who said maybe it was on his way home from work. But then, the phone calls began.

My dad called me into the living room, and sat me down. He asked about the day Dr. Ramsey followed me home, and if I talked to him. He said I wasn’t in trouble, but that I needed to tell him the truth. I told him [no], and he asked if I was sure…could I be forgetting something? I told him [no] again, and he frowned, then asked “Then how does he know your name?” I didn’t know.

It turns out, that was not all he knew. He knew my sister’s name as well. Pretty soon, neither my sister or I were allowed to answer the phone. He called several times a day; at first, neither of us knew what he was saying. Then, one night, one of my brothers told us that he was telling my parents that he was going to hurt me (and later, my sister).

Things got complicated after that. My dad had called the police, but as this was before there were any stalking laws, there was not a lot they could do. They told my parents to call back if he “tried anything”. My dad then called a friend of his from back in the day, who happened to be a cop. For the next month, my dad’s friend escorted me to and from school. Suddenly, life as I knew it came screeching to a halt. I couldn’t walk to school alone, I couldn’t play outside, I couldn’t walk to SuperAmerica (sort of like a 7-11 for those who don’t know)…

Then one afternoon my sister, two of my brothers, my mom and I were in the kitchen. One of my brothers saw a glimpse of someone in the garage; they’d seen him too. Dr. Ramsey came bolting out of the garage, my brothers chasing after him. They ran all the way to Cherokee Park, where he lost them in the trees. My parents called the police again, but nothing came of it. The only information they had was a description and a name that was almost certainly fake.

A couple weeks later, we woke to find our dog hanging from the side porch. She was a gorgeous saddle-back German shepherd, born the same day I was. We were all devastated. The cops said there was no evidence it was him, and ruled it accidental, but none of us believed that.

His phone calls became more informative in the meantime. He would talk about who was home, and who wasn’t. If my brother would say my dad was home, he would tell him who was really in the house. He also would talk about the house itself…about the window in the kitchen he could easily open with a knife from the outside even when it was locked, and about the french doors that connected the living room to the side porch and how the lock could be finagled from the outside if you jiggled it just right. That night, my dad put in some carpenter nails at the bottom of the french doors until he could get a new lock ordered.

My parents had to go to a company event for my dad’s work. My older brothers were at Saints West roller skating rink. My sister was on the phone with her best friend. My little brother was on the floor asleep. I was watching Devo on the Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack. It was late. Suddenly, the top of the french doors swung inward, and in the few miliseconds before the nails in the bottom caused them to snap back, I could see his silhouette. My sister whipped the phone at the television, and we ran up the stairs. About halfway up, we realized our little brother was still asleep on the living room floor. As quietly as we could, we slipped back down the stairs to get him. We all went into our bedroom and didn’t turn on the light; this way we could see outside. We watched out the window for a while, and when we didn’t find him, we crept down the hall to our brothers’ room to look. We looked down and could see someone standing at the backdoor. He knocked, loudly.

“What do you want?” my sister asked out the window. He stepped back and said “Is this the Mercy residence? I have a pizza for delivery. Can you come to the door?” She scoffed at him, declaring she was not stupid, she could see he didn’t have a pizza, and she was calling the cops. He left.

A short while later, my brothers returned home. We told them what happened and they walked around the yard, watching for him. They came back in, and things settled down. By now we’d pretty much given up calling the cops because it never helped, so we just went back in, each of us (except my youngest brother, still asleep) carrying a knife from the kitchen “just in case”. Eventually, one of my brothers went into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal as a snack.

You know that sensation you get when you can just feel someone watching you? Yeah, he had that in spades. He kept looking around the kitchen, through the doorway into the dining room, at the windows. He didn’t see anything, but he could still feel eyes on him, so he went closer to the door to try to see better. The kitchen lights were reflecting on the windows of the door (it had 3 rows of 3 windows), so he still couldn’t see. He stepped closer, then closer again, until he was right up to the door, then cupped his hands on either side of his head so he could see. There on the other side of the window pane was Dr. Ramsey, smiling back at him. He turned to yell for my older brothers, and when he looked back again, he was gone. They went out again to look for him, but didn’t see him…

A couple of weeks later, I was at school and we were outside on the playground during recess. I was swinging upside down when I saw that now-familiar blue Ford Galaxy cruising by, moving slowly. There he was, smiling and waving. He called my name, and I ran to the teacher and told her. The school had been told all about him, and she took me inside right away and called my mom. That same day my mom had gotten a call from the school office asking her to verify that my dad was picking me up, as he’d called to say he was on his way. He wasn’t.

Not long after that, I woke up one night, thirsty. I went down to the kitchen for a drink and there, sitting alone in the dark, was my dad. On the table, a gun. He was tired of [the] police waiting until Dr. Ramsey “tried something”, he was tired of his children being terrorized, he was tired of being afraid every time he left for work that something would happen to us while he was gone. I sat with him for a time, watching, before he sent me back to bed.

These events, and many more, took place over a period of around 18 months. Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. He had vanished from our lives; the phone calls, the drive-by with the creepy waves, everything. For a long time, during and after the Dr. Ramsey days, I would have a recurring nightmare in which I would wake up to find him standing over me as I slept. It took a long time before I felt like a kid again…

I don’t know what happened to him when he disappeared. I don’t know if he was in a car wreck, locked in prison, in a coma…but sometimes I wonder if the wait ended for my dad when he was sitting in the darkened kitchen one night. I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to.

A True, Very Creepy Surveillance Story

From Redditor /u/coolvy:

I was living with my parents and sister in Brisbane, Australia at the time (2008, which means I was 19). I remember my dad had just got Foxtel (cable TV in Australia) but only the TV in the lounge room could use the cable box, and I really wanted to somehow get the cable in my room without paying $99 or whatever for a new box. So dad one day went out and bought an AV transmitter/receiver. It was basically a two piece bit of hardware where you would plug this tiny box into the cable TV in the lounge room and it would transmit a video signal to the receiver, connected to the TV in my room. So one Saturday, I decided to connect it…

My younger sister (16 at the time) was the only other person home at the time, upstairs in her room (my room was downstairs). I opened the box, and connected it up. At first I was going back and forth, trying to get the cables right, trying to get the channel right etc, but no luck. Until I finally got something… As it started fuzzing in, I remembered that this whole time the cable set top box wasn’t even on, and that’s why it wasn’t working this whole time. “But then why was I getting a signal?”. It seemed to all hit me at once. As I realised the box was off, the picture fuzzed in, and I saw a bed…

I FREAKED the f*ck out, as at first I thought it was my bed. I had recently seen Saw 2, and remembered that scene where she turns on the TV and its a camera filming her in her apartment. That was the first thing I thought of. I sprinted upstairs to my sister, absolutely terrified. I told her to come down and take a look. She came down and we both realized it wasn’t my bed. We didn’t know who’s bed it was, or how I was getting the signal. Obviously it was the Av receiver picking up a camera signal, but we were just so confused as to who/what it was for?

Eventually my parents came home, and we concluded that it would have to be a neighbor, or someone living close by, for us to be receiving the signal. We waited around until about 6pm, and then someone came into the room.

My dad recognized it as one of our neighbors. We still didn’t know what the camera was for, but we assumed it had something to do with fidelity. Either his wife or he had set it up to watch the other and see if they were cheating. Either this, or it was to tape themselves having sex. We entertained the idea that he was a murderer and would film himself murdering people in his room, but just to freak [each other] out. We’d always make jokes about how one night we’ll turn it on and [it’ll] just be his face with clown make up on staring at the camera waving, and then him walking out of the bedroom with a knife. This never happened. But what did happen was still super creepy.

We connected to this signal for over a week, but after a few days the novelty kinda wore off. We felt a bit weird watching it, and just resigned to the explanation that it was to catch his wife cheating. Until one day, we turned it on, and realized what we had discovered.

Our neighbors were having a bunch of renovations done to their house. During weekdays they would be out, and there would be workers at the place pretty much all day. It had been like this for over a month. We started watching the feed and saw a man walk into their room. It was the plumber that had been there regularly for the renovations. We didnt think anything of it, until he start[ed] opening drawers. I called out to my mum (only person home at the time) and we started watching it. He started getting the [wife’s] underpants and sniffing them, doing all that creepy sh*t. At first we were like “oh my god, how embarrassing, he’s being filmed. will the neighbors see this somehow?” but then what happened next [was] truly terrifying.

He slowly walked over to the camera and look right down the f*cking lens. We were CONVINCED that he knew we were watching. Mum immediately called dad. I kept watching. He started fiddling with it and then put it back down. I told mum that I don’t think he knew we were watching, but he’s definitely the guy that put the camera there. Dad came home, and by this time the plumber had left. Much to mums pleading, dad went over to the neighbors to tell them what we saw. Mum wanted to completely stay out of it and was terrified, understandably. When we told the neighbors, they had NO IDEA what we were talking about. They allowed dad to go up to their room, and what he found (that was holding the camera) was an installed device in the wall that was designed to monitor water usage (which was completely normal, at the time, as Brisbane had been hit with a drought recently and there were lots of water restrictions, still is now I think). The plumber had installed this into the wall, but had fitted a camera behind it in the wall to watch the bed.

Immediately they called the police, who came over and conducted an investigation… After a couple of weeks my mum was speaking to the wife next door and asked what happened with it all. The wife said that the police found out he would, at nights, come to our street and sit in his car (which had really tinted windows) and watch them on his laptop. When mum told me this I got the BIGGEST shivers. The reason was (besides the obvious of a creepy dude sitting his car watching people through a hidden camera) was because on multiple nights, when I had driven home late from my [girlfriend’s] or walked home drunk after a night out, I remember seeing a station wagon… always about 30m down the street from our house. It was never there during the day, always at night. I’d always walk past it and look at my reflection in the windows, assuming no one was inside.

Terrorized For Two Hours By A Home Intruder

From Redditor /u/MauraGrace:

This happened when I was in college. I lived in Isla Vista, the student community at UCSB, notorious for being a party school. It fully lived up to its reputation. I like to party, but holy sh*t! These people were off the wall. As such, there were a lot of people who put themselves in dangerous situations, drinking to excess, not being careful, not locking doors, etc. It had a very isolated and insular vibe, and anyone who was hanging around who wasn’t college-aged immediately looked out of place and strange.

One night after having a few drinks, I came home to my small house where I lived with 2 other girls, probably around 2:30am. We were all serious students (I was probably the least serious, actually), and when we partied it was not your typical UCSB mega-rager. More like a small get together with friends. We would often have a few people spend the night, sleep on our furniture [or] in our beds as the case may be.

That night my roommates had had a few people over who I didn’t know, and I saw when I returned home that one of them had opted to sleep on the couch from the shadow that I saw there (I didn’t turn [on] the light so I wouldn’t wake anyone up). But as I was passing the couch to enter my bedroom, I noticed that the figure was lying very stiff. He just had this weird energy to him. He was lying down, but it was like he was putting all of his energy into lying as still and rigid as possible. I paused, and the guy quickly jerked his head to face me, without moving his limbs, so quickly that it startled me. I could see his wide open eyes glinting in the dark.

Figuring that I’d startled him or that he was drunk or maybe on some kind of stimulant and unable to sleep, I just hurried past into my bedroom and locked the door. the dude made me nervous and I wasn’t taking any chances. I fell asleep.

At 4:30 am I woke up. There was a strange sound at the door almost like somebody was drumming their fingers against the wood very quietly. I lay still and listened. There were more quiet sounds like someone scratching the door with their fingers, which got louder and louder until it was clear that he was using both hands and scratching as fast and as hard as possible. It created an extremely loud and intimidating sound that filled me with fear.

I got my cell phone and texted my roommate because I was afraid to make a sound. “Your friend is freaking me out, is he coked out? Can you talk to him? He’s banging and scratching on my door.”

She didn’t text me back, probably because she was asleep. I texted my other roommate to the same effect, covering all my bases. Keep in mind that the scratching has been going on at this point for a couple minutes. I have no idea how he could have sustained it, scratching a wooden door with your fingernails can’t feel good. He also grabbed at the knob and jiggled it super forcefully.

Because neither of them answered, I decided to call and really wake them up, though [I] was scared to make a sound. I know it sounds stupid but there was something seriously horrifying about being teased like this through the door. I knew that he was trying to terrify me… maybe the police needed to be called, and I wanted to loop my roommates in since it was one of their friends.

The scratching stopped abruptly and I called my roommate, who answered sleepily. “Yo, your friend is messed up, can you please deal with it? Do we need to call the cops? He’s seriously scaring me and he was scratching at my bedroom door, really f*cking weird.”

She didn’t say anything for several seconds and when she did speak, her voice had no sleepiness in it at all. “What friend?” She said. “That f*cking guy that was sleeping on the couch!” I said. She was quiet again. “We didn’t have any guys over,” she said. “Call the police.” My adrenaline surged and I told her to please lock the bedroom door as quickly as possible. I realized that I hadn’t heard scratching in a while and I had no clue where the dude had gone.

Suddenly I heard a loud banging in the other end of the house, where my roommates, Lauren and Monica, shared a bedroom. The bangs were followed by the sound of them screaming in fear. I quickly dialed the police as this maniac proceeded to bang against the (luckily) locked bedroom door of my two roommates as they screamed. The heaviness of the blows left no doubt that he was trying to break the door down.

I’d told the 911 operator the situation and she’d dispatched two squad cars.

The police in Isla Vista are generally used to peeling drunks off the sidewalk and breaking up brawling frat bros. This was really serious and strange and I think the dispatcher got the sense from my tone how terrified I was, and she stayed on the phone with me. At one point the banging stopped and everything was quiet for a while. I talked with the dispatcher and suddenly looked down to see that this guy had slipped his fingers through the 1-inch gap between my door and the floor and was just kind of waggling them around, making this weird growling sound. I screamed and backed away, which is my biggest regret about this situation, since when I look back it would have been so awesome to just stomp the sh*t out of those fingers and hear the guy howl in pain.

When the cops rolled up, I heard running and the sound of our sliding glass door opening and closing, and then he was gone. The cops never caught him.

He had broken in through our side door by jimmying the lock somehow. My door was covered in what turned out to be huge gauges he’d made using a pair of scissors, which he discarded on the ground before he left.

What terrifies me most about this was that I walked right past him. I looked him right in the face. I realize now that he was not trying to sleep or on drugs, but was lying so stiff like that because he was hiding. He probably heard me open the door, and freaked out because he hadn’t realized there was another girl living there, and tried to blend into the couch in the darkness.

The Smiling Man

From Redditor /u/blue_tidal:

About five years ago I lived downtown in a major city in the US. I’ve always been a night person, so I would often find myself bored after my roommate, who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep. To pass the time, I used to go for long walks and spend the time thinking.

I spent four years like that, walking alone at night, and never once had a reason to feel afraid. I always used to joke with my roommate that even the drug dealers in the city were polite. But all of that changed in just a few minutes of one evening.

It was a Wednesday, somewhere between one and two in the morning, and I was walking near a police patrolled park quite a ways from my apartment. It was a quiet night, even for a week night, with very little traffic and almost no one on foot. The park, as it was most nights, was completely empty.

I turned down a short side street in order to loop back to my apartment when I first noticed him. At the far end of the street, on my side, was the silhouette of a man, dancing. It was a strange dance, similar to a waltz, but he finished each “box” with an odd forward stride. I guess you could say he was dance-walking, headed straight for me.

Deciding he was probably drunk, I stepped as close as I could to the road to give him the majority of the sidewalk to pass me by. The closer he got, the more I realized how gracefully he was moving. He was very tall and lanky, and wearing an old suit. He danced closer still, until I could make out his face. His eyes were open wide and wild, head tilted back slightly, looking off at the sky. His mouth was formed in a painfully wide cartoon of a smile. Between the eyes and the smile, I decided to cross the street before he danced any closer.

I took my eyes off of him to cross the empty street. As I reached the other side, I glanced back… and then stopped dead in my tracks. He had stopped dancing and was standing with one foot in the street, perfectly parallel to me. He was facing me but still looking skyward. Smile still wide on his lips.

I was completely and utterly unnerved by this. I started walking again, but kept my eyes on the man. He didn’t move.

Once I had put about half a block between us, I turned away from him for a moment to watch the sidewalk in front of me. The street and sidewalk ahead of me were completely empty. Still unnerved, I looked back to where he had been standing to find him gone. For the briefest of moments I felt relieved, until I noticed him. He had crossed the street, and was now slightly crouched down. I couldn’t tell for sure due to the distance and the shadows, but I was certain he was facing me. I had looked away from him for no more than 10 seconds, so it was clear that he had moved fast.

I was so shocked that I stood there for some time, staring at him. And then he started moving toward me again. He took giant, exaggerated tip toed steps, as if he were a cartoon character sneaking up on someone. Except he was moving very, very quickly.

I’d like to say at this point I ran away or pulled out my pepper spray or my cellphone or anything at all, but I didn’t. I just stood there, completely frozen as the smiling man crept toward me.

And then he stopped again, about a car length away from me. Still smiling his smile, still looking to the sky.

When I finally found my voice, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. What I meant to ask was, “What the f*ck do you want?!” in an angry, commanding tone. What came out was a whimper, “What the fuu…?”

Regardless of whether or not humans can smell fear, they can certainly hear it. I heard it in my own voice, and that only made me more afraid. But he didn’t react to it at all. He just stood there, smiling.

And then, after what felt like forever, he turned around, very slowly, and started dance-walking away. Just like that. Not wanting to turn my back to him again, I just watched him go, until he was far enough away to almost be out of sight. And then I realized something. He wasn’t moving away anymore, nor was he dancing. I watched in horror as the distant shape of him grew larger and larger. He was coming back my way. And this time he was running.

I ran too.

I ran until I was off of the side road and back onto a better lit road with sparse traffic. Looking behind me then, he was nowhere to be found. The rest of the way home, I kept glancing over my shoulder, always expecting to see his stupid smile, but he was never there.

The “One Who Got Away” From The Railroad Killer

From Redditor /u/whitneycat:

I was 19, staying late at the college darkroom to develop some film for my photography class. The photography building… was a dark, rickety hulk near some lonely railroad tracks in a little-traveled part of campus.

I finished developing my film close to midnight and headed out, nervous as always to be alone at night in this deserted part of town. It was dark; several of the streetlights around the parking lot were out, and the few that remained were phoning it in, putting out a weak flickery light that did nothing to reassure me as I headed toward my car.

I heard him before I saw him, a scrape of feet on asphalt. He said, “Hey, can you do me a favor?” I startled and dropped my keys, and he mumbled an apology for scaring me. I noticed he was wearing a jogging suit and limping. “What do you need?” I said. He hobbled a step or two toward me. “I think I sprained my ankle. Could you take me to the ER?” The university hospital was a short distance down the road.

I hesitated. The guy looked perfectly pleasant, and he did seem to be in pain. But I’d recently finished a book about serial killer Ted Bundy, who lured some of his victims by pretending to have a broken arm and asking for their help carrying books to his car. When they leaned over to put his stuff in the passenger seat of his VW bug, he knocked them unconscious with a crowbar and stuffed them inside. This scene played across my mind as I looked at the guy. It also occurred to me to wonder why the hell anyone would want to jog in this creepy part of town.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that. But I could call somebody for you. There’s a phone in the photography building there.”

“There’s nobody to call. I just moved here, I don’t really know anybody. Can’t you just drive me? It’s right down Limestone Avenue.” He leaned against a car and winced as he reached down to rub at his ankle.

“I’ll call you an ambulance,” I offered.

“No! I can’t afford that, I don’t have health insurance. Can you just drive me? I’ll pay you twenty bucks.”

There was something in the way he said this last bit, something…wrong. Like that exercise in my acting class, where we had to recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as though we were delivering a tragic monologue or a furious rant. There was a tone rising up that didn’t quite match the words he was saying, a raw urgency that reached down inside me and hit the panic button hard. There was a moment of silence between us.

“I can’t help you,” I said. “I’m leaving.” I gripped my keys, slipping them between my fingers the way my mom had taught me, so I could use them as a weapon if he came at me. I kept my eyes on him as I speed-walked the last few feet to my car. He watched me drive away, still leaning against that car, a flat expression on his face.

Away from the dark parking lot, driving through campus with my music turned up, the fear faded. I started to feel a little guilty for leaving the guy there, although I knew I’d done what my mom and dad would have wanted me to do. I was about to turn into my dorm parking lot when I realized I needed to pick up some stuff for breakfast the next morning, so I turned around and headed back in the direction I’d come. About a minute down the road, my stomach clenched. There was the guy in the jogging suit, running along the sidewalk. His ankle was perfectly fine.

Later that summer, two students at my college were attacked by those same railroad tracks; the girl survived, but her boyfriend died. The man who attacked them was a serial killer dubbed the Railroad Killer by police. He murdered dozens of people across several states, most of them near railroad tracks. I didn’t see his mug shot on TV until years later, but the picture broke me out in the same icy sweat I felt when I saw that guy running down the street. I can’t be 100% positive, but my gut tells me I escaped a serial killer that night.

The Man In The Yellow Raincoat: A Serial Killer In Disguise

From Redditor /u/whalebaboon:

So this is a story that happened to my mom’s friend in Korea about like 10 years ago. Every time I hear this story, I still get the chills.

My mom’s friend lived in an apartment complex in Seoul. She was a stay-at-home mother with a young daughter, and her husband worked during the days. One day, she was coming home from running errands with her daughter and got onto the elevator in her building. When she got on, she noticed that there was a man wearing a cap and a yellow raincoat, and he kept his head low so that she couldn’t really see his face. She immediately felt really uneasy, and she made her daughter stand to her side, furthest away from the man. What made her feel even more uncomfortable was that when she pressed the button for her floor, there was no other lit number. And on top of that, she noticed that he was carrying something wrapped inside newspaper close to his side.

Things started to click in my mom’s friend’s head and she started to panic and decided to take out her cell phone and pretend she was calling home to her husband, who was obviously really not at home and at work. She started saying things like “Oh, I’m on the elevator and about to get off. Can you get the door for me?” and making it seem like her husband was waiting at home.

When the elevator did reach her floor (I think she lived on like the 12th floor or something) she quickly got off and grabbed her daughter and started to walk as fast as she could to her apartment. She noticed that the man also got off on her floor and was slowly following her down the hallway. When my mom’s friend got to her door, she started to bang on it and shout, “Hey, yeobo (husband/dear), I’m home! Please open the door!” And kind of pretended like he was coming to answer the door. Upon seeing this, the man in the yellow raincoat started to walk away back towards the elevator.

When he seemed to be far away enough, my mom’s friend quickly picked up her daughter and slid open her door’s passcode thingy (this is usually how people get into their homes in Korea) and started to frantically punch in her keycode. But the problem was that the buttons would make sounds so the man knew that no one was going to answer the door for her and he turned around and started to run back towards her. My mom’s friend, at this point, was practically screaming and when she finally got her door to open, the first thing she did was throw her daughter in through the door. When she got in herself, she saw that the man was pretty much inches from the door, but she managed to shut it and lock it before he could wedge his hand or weapon into the door. Afterwards, looking through the door’s peep hole, she saw that the man was walking away back towards the elevator.

Several months later, my mom’s friend was watching the news and there was [coverage] on the capture of a serial killer named Yoo Young Chul… She told my mom that she could never forget the dread she felt when she saw the too familiar yellow raincoat and hat that he was wearing when apprehended.

Backpacking In The Alabama Wilderness Gone Wrong

From Redditor /u/cmvr2256:

This happened about 6 years ago… I was about 12 and my brother was 26 at the time. My brother had been serving in the U.S. Army for several years… he is a Green Beret and had recently (3 or 4 months prior to this trip) completed the Army Special Forces Qualification Course (Robin Sage and all that), and by then was an active duty SF Engineer Sergeant. Definitely not someone you’d want to f*ck around with.

Given that we both grew up with a passion for the outdoors, he thought it would be nice to take me on a backpacking trip in northern Alabama… The trip had gone smoothly up until the 3rd night we were camping out. Around 8pm we had our camp set up, eaten dinner and were sitting by the fire talking about typical boy sh*t – guns, girls, etc.

For some reference, our spot was about 50 yards from a large stream, and about 50 yards downhill adjacent to the large path. Our camp, the stream, and the path formed a triangle of sorts.

This was summertime in Alabama, so it wasn’t quite dark yet when two guys, who looked to be in their late 20s wandered up and ask if we had seen any hogs while we were hiking around. Given that this is rural Alabama, we actually had seen some farther into the wilderness area and told them so.

Even though they were relatively polite (my brother called them “good ole boys”) I got a seriously creepy vibe from them – dirty clothes, greasy hair, scraggly facial hair, etc. I think they probably looked like they belonged in the movie “Deliverance.”

They kinda hung out for a few minutes… looking around, asking us questions like how long we had been out there, how long we were staying, and what looked like them kinda sizing us up. They then abruptly said goodbye and walked away. I didn’t necessarily feel threatened by them, and I know for sure my brother didn’t, but I still felt uneasy about the whole thing.

Fast forward 3 or 4 hours. My brother and I had gone to sleep and were nestled in our tent when I woke to the sound of multiple dogs barking. I’ve always been a heavy sleeper and they sounded like they were only about 100 yards away. My heart immediately started pounding and I kicked my brother through my sleeping bag and asked if he was awake/had heard the dogs. He responded “I’m awake, they’ve been getting closer for the past hour or so, just lay still and don’t make any sounds.” Needless to say, 12 year old me was about to sh*t my pants. We would also hear sporadic shouts from several different sources but neither came any closer. A few minutes later my brother whispered, “They’re just hunting for hogs, they use the dogs to pin them down and then they shoot them.” This gave me some relief, but not much. Somehow I managed to fall back asleep. The fact that they were doing this at night was a huge red flag my brother later told me, but I think he was just trying to keep me calm.

Fast forward what was probably another 3 hours, around 2am. I had managed to sleep pretty well after first hearing the hog hunters when I woke up to my brother squeezing my shoulder firmly, saying “wake up, put your shoes on quick and follow me, be as quiet as you can.” My heart immediately went back to racing because I heard the dogs and voices in the distance, farther away than before but still distinct. Not asking any questions I did what he said and as soon as we were out of the tent he told me to get on his back (this was a breeze for him after rucking with God knows how much weight in the Army). We snuck about 50 yards into the woods towards the junction of the path and the stream and crawled into some bushes. It was up a hill so we had a pretty good elevated view of our campsite.

I remember as we were laying there how loudly I was breathing and how quiet he was when I heard the very distinct sound of a pistol slide racking. I looked over and my brother had his pistol (a HK USP that he gave to me a few years after this story took place) and was watching the campsite and surrounding area. I started to whisper to him when he put his hand over my mouth and pointed at the campsite.

The group of hunters had been steadily approaching our camp and by this time (30 or so minutes) had reached it. There were 5 of them and like 3 or 4 dogs. They all looked relatively young but two had either rifles or shotguns and the dogs were going crazy, obviously having smelled our scent.

For those of you who are backpackers/campers, nobody who comes up on a random camp in the middle of the night with dogs and guns and has good intentions. I knew this, and my brother knew this. I was scared sh*tless. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but my brother later told me they were talking about us, although he hadn’t heard any specifics either.

They lingered for about 20 minutes shining flashlights around and talking to themselves when my brother put his mouth to my ear and said “If they come towards I want you to turn and run as quickly as you can, don’t stop, don’t look back, stay off the trail and look for the flashing lights” (I didn’t know what he meant by this but that’ll come later). I knew I could make it back because he had taught me ‘land nav’ pretty well. He then handed me a flashlight and told me not to take the red filter off. He told me later that the red filter helps preserve night vision and cuts down ambient light so it would be harder for someone to see from a distance.

At this point I was so scared I almost started crying, but at the same time had a rush of adrenaline and what I think now was confidence that he thought I could handle myself.

We laid there for awhile longer when out of nowhere they started screaming “WHERE YALL AT?!?!” and firing into the woods at random. My brother dragged me back behind the crest of the hill and threw himself on top of me. Thankfully our position on top of the hill we were protected from any gunfire.

They shot maybe 5 or 6 more times and then started walking back the direction they had come. They got maybe 100 yards away when I heard a blaring siren and saw emergency lights flashing through the woods. Turns out my brother had called the Forest Service Office on a satellite phone my family has for emergencies while I was asleep and they had sent out Forest Service officers and game wardens to our area of the wilderness. The Sipsey Wilderness is about 25,000 acres in size so it took them awhile to get there on the dirt roads.

When we saw the game warden truck my brother signalled them with the light and pointed them in the direction the hunters had gone and the guy sped off shining his spotlight through the woods.

As soon as they were all gone we went back to our camp, packed up our sh*t and waited by the path for the game warden to come back, who then gave us a ride in his truck bed back to the main staging area.

On the drive back my brother told me how brave I had been and that we would talk about it with our parents the next day if I wanted to. I asked him not to do that because I thought they might never let me go camp again.

Serenaded By A Violin-Playing Creeper

From a former Redditor:

Around two years ago, I finally moved into a brand new house in a brand new building estate in Australia. I was one of the first to have a finished build in the area and was elated to finally gain independence. The first few weeks went by as normal and during that time, I’d often take walks alone with the dog in the afternoons and roam the surrounding estate area.

All the roads around us had been partially completed and all the other properties were marked out, but no other houses were built excluding one that was directly opposite mine. The house looked finished, but there was no driveway laid yet and from what I could gather, [no one] lived there.

To the left of my house roughly a few hundred meters away was a field with a huge hill in it… For whatever reason, the council just didn’t want people on it so the whole area was surrounded by a huge chain link fence.

The only other noticeable feature in the area was a small abandoned farm house with a shed a few kilometres down the road. I knew nothing about it and often went walking there with the dog as it gave me something mild to explore amongst the vast nothingness I was living around. The entire place was dilapidated and completely inhabitable, but it was still interesting none the less.

About a month or two after moving in, I awoke one morning to the sound of a violin. It sounded extremely distant and quite haunting, I actually enjoyed it and assumed that the neighbours opposite me has finally moved in. Excited that I finally had some people to talk to, I peeked out the curtain and saw the house opposite mine was still as vacant as it ever was. I got dressed but by the time I managed to look outside, the violin has stopped.

This happened roughly every second day for the next week, the violin would wake me up and then just disappear after about 45 seconds. I’d ignored it to the point where my curiosity simply got the better of me and the next morning when I heard the violin playing again I immediately jumped out of bed, threw on my dressing gown and shot out the front door. I scoured the early morning surrounding and there, up on the hill, was a figure playing a violin.

It was barely light, but the person looked very tall from the distance I was at and as they were playing, was doing what could only be described as a waltz-type walk, spinning slowly around in a circle as they played. I took my eyes off the person and walked over to pick up the morning paper and in the 10 seconds that took me, I heard the violin stop.

When I looked up, I noticed the figure was no longer playing or dancing, but was now standing still and most likely looking in my direction… we both just stood there for half a minute not moving before the creeps got the better of me and I went back inside.

After that morning, things started happening. On my walks I began to notice footprints on the surrounding properties that weren’t made by me and that I’d never seen before, which I just assumed were from people walking up from the other housing areas down the road. I never awoke to the violin, but I swore I could hear someone walking on the street next to my bedroom window in the early mornings, however I never saw anything…

One night as I was heading to bed, I turned off the television in the living room and again, could hear the faint sound of a violin playing, however it sounded more muffled and rehearsed.

I froze and a cold chill flowed through me instantaneously. Considering that it was about midnight and not the usual time I’d hear it playing, I went to the front window and peeked out to see that there was a light in the house opposite mine. It was clearly a candle as I could see the dim light flicker in the empty window and the music sounded like it was coming from an old record player, but in the ten minutes I watched, I never saw any movement inside the house.

I moved away from the window sufficiently freaked out and after another five minutes, I heard the music abruptly stop. I peeked out again to notice the light was now out. I never saw anyone. I began to become unsettled in the house and would often invite friends over to hang out until late, but of course nothing would ever happen when someone else was with me. I never bothered to tell any of my friends as without evidence, I figured they’d just give me sh*t about it and I’d just become more agitated.

But nothing compared to what happened next. In my living area, the desk sits right next to a small window which looks out to the fence surrounding my property… unlike most of the other windows, I’d never need to cover this one with a sheet or blanket because [no one] could ever see in. I usually had headphones on when I played and I always had the lights off, for no other reason than I preferred to play games in the dark.

One night when I was gaming, I got up and walked into the dark kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge. It was dead silent excluding the faint sound coming out of my headphones. As I closed the fridge and turned around to face the desk, I saw directly out the window two very, very faint lights.

I didn’t even catch on and immediately started walking back to the desk fixated on the small glowing balls and it wasn’t until I had my nose almost pressed against the glass that I realised the two lights weren’t lights at all.

They were eyes.

A set of eyes, sitting just above the fence line staring wide open at me. They didn’t blink. They didn’t move. My entire body locked up, all I could do was simply stare back as my brain was still comprehending that there was an actual person looking at me in the scariest way I could possibly ever imagine. I don’t know what happened, either my head kicked into gear or my muscles loosened but my body automatically collapsed and I fell to the floor, scurrying to hide against the wall away from the window.

I could hear my heart beating through the carpet like a drum as I tried to lay as flat as possible and as my mind was still processing the sheer severity of the situation, a violin started playing. That f*cking violin and the haunting tune it always emitted started up, except this time it was directly outside my window and much louder than I’d ever heard it before.

The lights were still off and I wanted to get up to turn off the PC screen so I couldn’t be seen, but my whole body just wasn’t ready to cooperate. Not only was the sound of the instrument extraordinarily loud, but it sounded like it was been played with frustration, notes been missed frequently and the strings screeching. The pace of it was getting faster and faster and by this time, my dog Jeb out in the backyard had picked up on the situation and registering an unfamiliar sound, gave one solitary, deep bark.

The violin instantly stopped and the house was finally dead silent excluding my headphones which I could hear quietly working away. I was still frozen to the carpet and it wasn’t until Jeb gave a second menacing bark that I heard the figure outside the window start to walk away in the direction of my yard.

Once that first footstep hit the ground, I instantly thought of the welfare of my best mate and finally, my head connected with my extremities and my entire body kicked into overdrive. I left from the ground and slid across the laminated floor to the backdoor where Jeb was standing, staring into the backyard. I ducked to keep low and quietly unlocked and slid open the door.

Usually doing so would notify Jeb that he was allowed inside but when the door opened up, he didn’t move an inch and was completely fixated on the pitch black backyard. Everything told me not to go outside but there was no chance I was letting anything happen to my dog and I moved out onto the alfresco, moved behind Jeb, put my hand under his collar and attempted to back him toward the house. Jeb is a pure labrador and weighs like a sack of sand so when he doesn’t want to move, it takes a sheer force to pull him in the direction you want him to go and right now, Jeb wasn’t going anywhere.

I yanked at his scruff and as I did, he emitted a bark like I’d never heard before, a deep, bellowing “f*ck you right off” sound that elevated my nerves to an all time high. We both just stood there, waiting for some form of reply and I couldn’t remember how long we both just froze there, but eventually [I] heard footsteps from around the side of the house begin to walk away. But not a simple walk, almost like whoever was doing it was slowly dancing in a circle, the footsteps keeping to a beat as they drifted away from the house into the distance.

Once I couldn’t hear anything, Jeb licked his lips, gave me a look and wandered back inside. I followed, locked the door behind me and spent the night reverting to my child-like self; hiding under my bed covers with my dog. I didn’t sleep a wink.

That was the last time I ever saw or heard the violin player. The following morning when the sun finally came up, I called into work sick and called the police. They scoured the lot next to mine and found footprints in the dirt, however there were so many there that it was impossible to tell who’s were who’s. The only description I could give to the officer was his height, he would have had to be over 6ft to stare over that fence at me but they explained that he could have been standing on something, or on his toes.

They also told me that they’ve never received a report of anyone playing a violin in the area or anyone been in the fenced off hill either. I essentially looked like an insane person, but the officers were very nice about the whole thing and offered to patrol the area for the next few nights which helped put my mind at ease. Nothing else has happened since then.

Over the next year or two, people finally started moving in and I tell them all the story about the figure I saw, some of which still use to keep their children in line which I found funny. One guy nicknamed the council lot ‘Violin Hill’ and the name has stuck around our street since then. I even spent a period of time [scouring] the depths of the Internet for that violin tune I kept hearing, but could never find it. There were a few classical pieces that seemed reminiscent, but I’ve since thought that whatever tune was played must have been self composed, which creeps me out even more.

I’m still in the house, I still tell people the story and I haven’t changed my routine one bit which has really helped me to block out the fear of the experience.

I game with the blinds closed now.

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