Fear is a powerful feeling that can help us recognize danger. So it makes sense that things like a creepy noise in an old house, a bizarre encounter on a deserted road, or a terrifying tale told by a friend would send our fearful senses spiraling.
Redditor u/throwaway_district9 recently asked Reddit for their most terrifying tales and “let’s get the hell out of here” experiences. Shivers are already going down my spine!
1. Oregon Coast
I don’t tell this story often but this seems like a good place. Back in college I used to drive up the Oregon coast on weekends, then just crash in my car when I got tired. I woke from a nap in the driver’s seat and something just didn’t feel quite right. It was just dusk and the light was fading pretty fast.
I yawned and stretched and as I did so I turned my head to the side and just caught a face ducking down below my rear passenger window. I went to hit the lock button just to make sure and in my panic I accidentally unlocked the doors briefly and then locked them again.
I stared at the window for a few minutes, knowing that someone was crouching just out of sight. Eventually, I started the car and thought I heard a scuffing sound. Whoever it was didn’t reappear, but that was enough for me. As I noped out of there and pulled out back onto Highway 101, I glanced back and a bald figure in a red t-shirt with something wrapped around his face booked it into the woods on the side of the road.
That was the end of that weekend trip. I drove the two hours back to my dorm room, white-knuckled hands locked on the steering wheel. I had to pull over a few miles down the road though to deal with the adrenaline shakes.
2. I’d be worried
Was walking from a local shopping mall to the train station so I could go home. The shortcut went through a huge long tunnel and was out of sight from the road, and wasn’t used unless you knew the area.
When I got to the tunnel I looked up and saw one guy standing right at the other end of the tunnel, in the middle, just looking in my direction. Like he was waiting. Every hair on my body stood on end, I felt like I needed to vomit and before I knew what I was doing my feet turned me around and started walking FAST away. He started walking after me and said “don’t worry, it’s not like I’m going to RAPE you!”
I RAN and walked right on the edge of a highway in plain view of cars in case he ran after me. I couldn’t stop shaking for an hour.
3. Meth’ll do that
2019 summer, i was house sitting for my dad while he was away for work. the house is in the middle of nowhere and barely even on google maps, usually when friends would come over i would have to drive to the top of the nearest paved road and lead them down a few more i paved streets to my dad’s place.
i had had a few drinks with friends and been dropped off my a friend that lived close by, he dropped me at the side of the house because it was easier for him to turn around there. so i walked up the stairs and entered with my key through the side door that led to the kitchen. the kitchen overlooked the front garden but the front door was nestled into a small porch and wasn’t visible to me.
i saw a movement in the front garden while i was making tea in the kitchen and immediately turned off the lights. there was a man trying to look into the kitchen windows from the garden, he ended up walking around to the wall-to-ceiling glass doors around the back of the house, cupping his hands to the glass and trying to look in. i wasn’t completely sober that night so i remember just thinking the situation didn’t seem real. he couldn’t see me in the dark but i was hiding behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining/lounge area (open floor plan). i had stupidly not locked one of the glass doors closer to the front door and he started entering the house, in the pitch black, not realising i was maybe 10ft away from him. i had already called the friend who had dropped me off as i knew he was still nearby (cops would have taken at least 30mins to get to me), knowing his parents (ex military) kept a gun in a safe in the truck. i remember just wanting to RUN, get out of the house asap. the situation didn’t feel real at all, like something from a movie. i was acting on adrenaline. but if i ran, i’d be alone in the middle of nowhere with a deranged man chasing after me.
as the guy walked further into the house, i stepped out and pulled a knife on him (again, i was NOT sober. it was a very stupid thing to do). he tried to incoherently make conversation but i got him out of the door just as my friend pulled up with his gun. the dude bolted to his car that was parked in an area concealed by trees on the property.
turns out he was the gardener. He had been keeping tabs on me, knew i was house sitting alone for my dad while he was out of town, was VERY high on meth (he admitted to me while i had the knife out) and had been waiting on the front porch for me to come home. except i had used the side door that night, something i NEVER usually did.
if i hadn’t have used the side door that night, i have no idea what would have happened. i also have no idea what would have happened if my friend hadn’t come back when i called him, because the guy was starting to get aggressive and trying to come towards me right when my friend got there with his gun out.
we like to joke about it now, but it was the worst scenario i have ever experienced where i wanted to just run and get the fuck away
4. Domestic Violence
When I was 27 my girlfriend lived in a crappy part of Hollywood, FL near US1. She had a kid pretty young but the dad ended up going to jail for assault. The place she could afford was run down af, with all sorts of addicts and genuine low-lifes living in the units around her. She hated the place. She couldn’t move in with me becau se I was just renting a room where I lived. It was better than living at her parents though (drunk abusive dad, addict mom).
I went to visit her after my shift ended at 9PM. Picked up some food and planned to cook for her. We were there for about an hour just sitting on the couch watching her kid play with a box.
Then the banging started on the door. She looks terrified thinking it’s her ex. I’m kind of freaked out also because I heard all these stories about him. Some guy is cursing, hitting something against the door hard. We don’t even want to peek through the window or peephole thinking he’s got a gun. We call the police but the operator is having a tough time hearing.
Then we hear some other woman screaming and cursing. He had the wrong door. We hear them start fighting. Smashing, more screaming. Sounds like she’s spitting and we hear punches. We’re not sure if it’s her or him but it’s loud.
911 operator says police are on their way. The kid starts screaming because he’s scared. The man outside starts banging on the door again. He thinks his kid is with us and shouts he’s going to kill us for taking his kid. My gf just breaks down at this point and starts crying.
Maybe 10 minutes later the police arrive. The arrest both of them then took our statements.
She moved out a couple days later and we ended up renting another crappy apartment but in a much better area.
5. Dad’ll Protect You
When I was a teenager I was awoken to a sudden chaos in my house. I come out of my room to see my dad but naked except for his red wings with a pistol in his hand absolutely tearing through the house towards the front door. My mother swoops me out of the way and locks me in and herself into my sisters room. Apparently someone was trying to break into my window and had not realized my parents window was right by mine (small craftsman style home) my dad woke up, grabbed the gun and chased the dude down the street NAKED with a gun at 3am. Screaming I’m going to find you mother fucker. Pretty sure every neighbor called 911. Cops come, police helicopter involved the whole 9 yards. Turns out the dude was some wanted person who been outside my window long enough to have smoked a half a pack of cigarettes. Probably the only reason he didn’t get in was that we had storm windows. Which is what he was trying to pry off when my dad woke up. They did end up getting him hiding in a neighbors shed.
Now I was born when my dad was only 21 and I was prob under 15 at the time so he’s only mod 30’s. My dad was a construction worker who was like 6’2 and he started going bald young so he shaved his head and had a huge goatee. He was very menacing looking when he wanted to be. Thank god no one had security cameras at the time because the image of that angry naked man with work boots on running down the middle of the road kept the neighbors tongues wagging for MONTHS as it was. This was the mid 90’s.
6. Get outta there
One time I was out in Colorado with some buddies hiking near the top of a mountain. Some bad weather started to roll in but the top was only 15 mins away so I went ahead while they went back down. As I was getting to the top I felt static in the air and the hair in my head started to stand up. I immediately started to panic cause I thought I was about to get struck by lightning so naturally I ran down without ever getting to the top. I’m not sure if I was gunna get struck but I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out.
7. Mountain Lion
Hiking in the Rocky Mountains, on a trail I knew pretty well. I was leading a group of kids, maybe twenty or so middle school aged children from the camp where I worked.
I turned a corner and saw a jaw bone of a deer. Pretty cool, showed it to the kids. Didn’t have any flesh on it, so I assumed it was pretty old.
A hundred feet further down the trail I find another bone. Femur maybe (I specialized in insect populations, not deer anatomy.) This one looked a little fresher. Another ways down, another bone.
I’m getting a little nervous at this point, so I explain that we should probably turn around and head back. My students all groan that they want to see more dead stuff, but I shepherd them down the train and back to camp.
Two days later we got a call at the camp that someone had been attacked in the area by a mountain lion. Apparently a mountain lion had set itself up in the caves on the cliffside and it had gotten pissed when someone got too close.
I’m glad we left the area, even if my students would have loved to see more dead stuff.
8. Fire
Possibly fighting a house fire, and realizing that I had very hot feet.
Through concrete-soled boots?
My officer and I immediately noped the fuck out.
Hot feet mean you’re standing above a fire. As fire burns upwards, it’s weakening the floor beneath you. So we were about to plummet into a basement fire.
9. Come over here
I must’ve been around 10 or 12 when this happened. I was walking back home one afternoon (around 3 or 4 pm) after strolling around the neighborhood, which was usually very safe, friendly and quiet. I was on the opposite side of the block (the houses behind ours), which wasn’t an issue because there happened to be a park that went across the whole block and connected to the other side, so you didn’t have to go around the whole block, so I was only a few houses away. I went through the park (a park I had played at my entire childhood) without paying much attention, when about halfway through, this guy who I didn’t know, definitely older than me, wearing a hoodie started calling me. “Dude, come over here one sec.” “Um, what do you want?” “Come here, I just wanna ask you something” “Ok, ask me from over there.” “No, no, come over, please.” “No, tell me from over there.” At that point, another dude that was sitting next to him gets upset, I hear a “That’s it” and they both stood up quickly and started making their way towards me. I can’t recall how far they chased after me, but my instincts just told me to run like hell and I did. To this day I still don’t know if they were gonna mug me, if they were just taking the piss or what was happening but it definitely scared kid me.
10. Watching
I worked a lot in remote areas of west Texas, servicing oilfield related equipment. One time I was out in the middle of nowhere as usual and to the northeast was a butte (an isolated hill that’s bigger than a regular hill but smaller than a mountain) but everywhere else around was pretty flat. There was one road in and out of the site I was at.
At some point when I was working on a control box, I had the overwhelming feeling that I was being watched. I scanned the horizon, looked all around the butte, and went back to work. This happened a few more times within several minutes until I finally saw something move on the side of one of the rock outcroppings on the butte.
I went to my truck, grabbed my binoculars, and the figure hid behind that outcropping. It was definitely a human. I glassed him for a good 20 minutes and I could see him peek around every couple of minutes. Eventually he leaned out so far that I could see the silhouette of the barrel of a rifle slung around his back. At some point he was hidden behind his rock for a while and the next time he peeked out, I couldn’t see the rifle. He had either put it down somewhere or he was now holding it.
I immediately felt a sense of impending doom. The hair on my arms and neck was standing straight up. I very quickly collected my tools, got my AR-15 from behind the driver’s seat and sat it on the passenger seat, and tore out of there. I sped down the dirt road, almost clipped the cattleguard, and started cruising down the highway just as the adrenaline started to wear off. I remember the metal taste in my mouth and having to grip the steering wheel to keep my fingers from twitching.
A few miles down the road, a maroon suburban full of guys was pulled over on the oncoming side of the road. They definitely weren’t oilfield workers: shades all around, buzzed heads, all intently looking at me. I expected them to pull a u-turn and pursue me, but they didn’t. I can’t prove that this is what was happening, but I do know that cartel guys run operations where one scouts for guys working alone and calls in a group of guys to rob them of their truck and tools.
11. Haunted House
When I was about 11 this house down the street from my grandparents’ had a reputation for being haunted. One day I was walking to the shop to get supplies for my grandparents and I saw the owner of the house outside.
He was about my dad’s age and started talking to me. I really wanted to be the first of my friends to go in the haunted house, and I was asking a million questions about ghosts and stuff, and he told me I could come in and see if I wanted. I said I had to go do my errands but he was pretty convincing and promised he wouldn’t tell anyone.
So up his driveway and into the haunted house we went, but I heard him lock the door when we got in and for some reason I was hyper aware of it. I said I changed my mind and he kind of blocked me from the door, trying to change my mind and calling me a scaredy cat and stuff. I don’t remember exactly what happened for him to let me out, but he did, and I ran for my life. Sat at the shop for ages just shaking and wanting to puke without even knowing what I was scared of.
Anyway, turned out later it wasn’t a haunted house. The guy was a pedophile and serial child rapist. His house burned down while he was in prison.
12. Bear!
Best friend and I were heading down a mountain from scouting bighorn sheep a little before opening day for hunting season. It was already pretty close to a 20km day of hiking through the mountains. We were roughly a couple of kilometres from the truck, hiking along the bank of a dried riverbed when his dog stops dead in his tracks. We thought he heard a squirrel or something like normal, so we keep walking. In an absolute flash, a bear (must have been a black bear) gets up about 25 feet from us and BOLTS off into the bush so fast that he was probably over 100 feet away before I would have even been able to get the bear spray out of the holster on my belt.
I just wanna say this: if you and a bear startle each other, and he decides to attack, you are 100% fucked. I have never seen something so big move so fast in my life.
13. Bad dude
Back when my son was only about a year old my husband worked second shift so I was alone every evening. We lived in townhouses at the time and had a neighbor who was a war vet, my husband was friendly with. He was a little off in the sense there was very obvious PTSD and other traumas but all around a nice dude.
Anyway, one evening this guy knocked on the door. I opened it thinking he probably was looking for my husband and I was just gonna let him know he was working. Dude was super drunk, wouldn’t stop talking and kinda made his way into the house. He also brought his huge ass German Sheppard with him. I was trying to be friendly but I had the worst feeling in my stomach. I felt insanely vulnerable and like something just wasn’t right with this situation. I kept trying to tell him in the nicest way to leave but he wouldn’t.
I texted my husband “hey neighbor guys here and won’t leave, he’s trashed, I feel really uncomfortable”. My husband texted his buddies that lived a few apartments down and they came over immediately. They got the dude out of the house and not even 20 minutes later I hear noises outside and this guy is trying to rip the license plate off my car. My husbands friends heard it or saw it I’m not really sure but they came over and were more aggressive about him going home and leaving me alone. And he did, so I thought.
Few hours later my husband gets home and sees this guy hanging out crouched behind some cars. He goes up to him to ask him exactly what the fuck he’s doing. I don’t know the exact details because I stayed hiding in the house but this guy had ropes and some other weapon on him and full intentions of raping me that night.
It makes me sick to think that if my husbands friends wouldn’t have came over as fast as they did to help me my poor son would have watched something horrible happen to me. Or even what he would have even done to my child.
14. The Tweaker Girlfriend
I’m a criminal defense investigator. I had a murder case involving two brothers. The one accused of the murders was very autistic, and his brother was a schizophrenic. The schizophrenic brother lived in a potato shack in the middle of the desert. I needed to talk to him several times throughout the course of the investigation, and since he didn’t have a phone or electricity, I had to drive several hours out to his house and yell his name from the fence line until he came out of the shack.
This investigation lasted for several years, and over time I developed a rapport with schizophrenic brother, and I kind of got to like him. He would talk your ear off about the aliens with golden eyes and the underground tunnels that connect all the Walmarts in the country, but he was pretty entertaining, and part of me wonders how much of it was a “show”.
Schizophrenic brother eventually gets a girlfriend; she’s a tweaker who has mistaken his schizophrenia for meth induced psychosis. I talked to her a few times in jail when she was sober, and she was surprisingly charming and insightful.
The last time I go to see schizophrenic brother, it’s a dark winter night and tweaker girlfriend is there; she’s lurking in the shadows and staring daggers at me the entire time I’m talking to him. I cut off his conversation about the speakers in his fillings and walk back to my truck to leave.
A minute later, schizophrenic brother comes running out and tells me that he wants to show me something in his shack. He’s never invited me inside before, and I’m not thrilled by the prospect. The whole thing feels off to me, so I tell him I have to get going, and start the truck.
The look of relief on his face when I declined to go inside convinced me that tweaker girlfriend was waiting behind the door with a hammer or something. A few months later I learned that she shot him in his sleep and stashed his body in an old refrigerator. She has since plead guilty to his murder.
15. More Mountain Lions
My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue (SAR) team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and had built a pretty nice fire. We were sitting there and it was about 0200, hoping this dude would wander into camp.
I had heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprise, we’re in the middle of the woods, I’m used to animals stalking around outside my camp. I knew there were two animals, one one each side of us. It was at about that point when we heard a bird chirp. It came from about the place I figured one of the animals were. Then another, from the opposite side.
I immediately realized we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We very quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It’s got a camper shell and is outfitted for truck camping.
16. Into a plane
A lot of years ago, I was working at the Cincinnati airport as a ramp agent for (now-defunct) Comair Airlines. I was working a departing plane, by myself, so I was hustling around to get the baggage door closed, signaling the pilot on engine startup procedures, and I still have to unplug the power cart and marshal the plane out. The power cart was a diesel generator, parked behind the starboard wing, the cable plugged into a jack on the plane’s belly. The pilot signals me to disengage it, so I acknowledge him, and run from my position in front of the nose, out toward the wingtip, and back in, following the trailing edge of the wing. The exhaust from the turboprop engine is several hundred degrees, so you have to duck under the jetblast to reach the jack. I shut off the power cart, reached the jack, unplugged it and threw the cable clear, latched the door and then started running back toward the nose to get the plane rolling. Hurry, hurry, hurry…
I’d only run a few steps when my left leg just… didn’t drop. It extended, for such a distance and time that I literally looked down at it, thinking “what the hell…?” My foot finally planted, knee locked, and I felt the impact in my teeth. My stride was interrupted, and I’d literally been turned 90 degrees, now running directly away from the plane.
That’s when I realized my next step would have taken me through the propeller. That is the closest I’ve ever come to fainting. I have no idea what caused that change in stride, but I am certainly glad of it.
17. Terrifying
A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about 8 years ago, and when we got to about the third floor…I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell.
Basically it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling.
Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout “YO!”
Time to go.
I’ve never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other’s bikes.
18. School Shooting
I was in an upstairs lab in med school, just a friend & I practicing surgical skills. There was a main enclosed staircase down to the lobby/classrooms & a weird outdoor stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. It wasn’t a fire escape, but the old main entrance to the lab classroom. When I put my hand on the door handle to the main stairs, I was FILLED with a weird sense of “Get out! Not that way!” Just absolute fear, I felt trapped & anxious. For the first time in 3 years, I said “Let’s take the outdoor stairs…” My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit.
The next day we found out that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, one of our classmates was pulling a gun on the admin & students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He’d been kicked out of the program for his grades & snapped.
My friend still talks about it & tells people to always trust my instincts. I actually asked her to stop telling people, because I felt so weird about it. I’m sure I just heard something in the distance that gave me that feeling, but Gavin de Becker would be proud!
19. Snakes
We were tearing down an old outbuilding/office on my in-laws farm. We wanted to save as much of the lumber as we could to reuse in a chicken coop. So, we pulled a large piece of plywood off one of the walls and the insulation was crawling with hundreds of snakes. Said snakes immediately started exiting the wall towards us in a writhing horde. There are rattlesnakes on the property, we’ve seen them.
I have never in my life noped like I noped at that moment. I pretty much teleported into the back of my fil’s pickup, one minute I standing in the way of hundreds of agitated snakes the next I’m considering if I can fit through the little rear window of a Ford F150.
20. Whoa
Exploring a abandoned high rise, out of the blue my friend grabbed me by my collar from behind, I was about to step into a elevator shaft. After swearing at him “what the fuck” he said “look” and I saw the drop of like 20 floors to a concrete bottom with broken metal rods sticking out. We went home. He saved my life 100%