51 People Share Their Creepiest Real Experiences That Are Horrifying And Disturbing

My fathers best friend, a man and his wife that I have known since I was a baby always unsettled me.

His wife hated me (she hated kids) and he would pay attention to me, watch me, even if I ignored him. By the time I was 12 I knew things about him that I shouldn't know, like favorite s*x jokes/positions/preferences, you know, stuff that you may say to your best friend (my dad)... but not with their 12 year old daughter around.

When I turned 16 there was a night where he was over and i was in a spaghetti strap shirt and night pants, about to go to bed, saying goodnight to everyone in the house. My dad had gone to the bathroom and this guys wife was in rehab for d**gs so she wasn't there.

He got up from the table and went to give me a hug goodnight. This was really weird since I never initiated any hugging and he would never initiate one with me. This hug lasted forever... my arms at my sides, his arms trapping me against him.

He finally released me from the hug but placed his hands on my arms and looked at me. This look still makes my skin crawl. He looks down at my chest and whispers "wow... you are getting so much bigger" his thumbs are ghosting over my arms and closer to my chest. I was too startled and unnerved that I froze. I couldn't think to move.

This man, a man that helped my dad change my diapers, was lusting over how big my b**bs got when I was 16 years old.

Thankfully, before anything got worse my father got out of the bathroom and this guy backed away. I would never go around him after that, I told my dad that when he would be there I was not going to stay there. Marvin, let's not meet again.

I have always been a lanky and unmuscular man. Needless to say, when I came face to face with a big dude holding a knife in the middle of the night, I was pretty much f**ked.

I was walking home from my closing shift on a warm summer night last year when he stepped out of the shadows and demanded my wallet. I didn’t immediately reach for it—I guess I was in shock—and he stepped closer and yelled at me to empty my pockets.

When the realization set in that this guy was ready to k**l me over the meager 20 dollars I had on me, a white moth fluttered between us. To my surprise, the mugger began screaming and swinging his knife at the bug, which only made it fly around more erratically. Those fierce eyes that had been locked on me just seconds before were now full of terror, completely focused on the moth.

I took karate lessons for a few years when I was younger, so I took advantage of the situation and performed the number one move recommended by all reputable martial arts schools: I ran like hell.

I ran all the way home, occasionally glancing back, but I never saw him following me. I guess he had other things to deal with.

So, a lesson for all wannabe criminals: before attempting to commit a crime, maybe deal with your dumb phobias first.

I don’t have a car, so Uber/Lyft is my main mode of transportation to get to work. This morning, I requested an Uber about half an hour before I had to be there, and the pickup was supposed to take less than five minutes. For some reason, though, my driver kept going in circles.

He ended up calling me asking for directions, and I was telling him exactly where to go—same as the GPS in the background. At that point, I was irritated and asked if there was a way he could cancel because I was going to be late. He said he couldn’t and eventually found his way to my apartment at the exact time I was supposed to be at work.

He kept apologizing, and I just mumbled, “It’s fine, I just need to get there.” Then he took me to another store on the way and asked, “This is it, right?” It took everything in me not to blow up. I calmly gave him directions to the actual store I work at and told him to please just follow the GPS.

We finally got to my job, and I was nearly 20 minutes late. As soon as he parked, I muttered “thanks,” got out, and rushed inside to clock in.

About an hour into my shift, one of my managers came up to me and said my Uber driver had been harassing people at the front of the store, trying to get in touch with me or a manager to take responsibility for me being late and apologize. You need a membership to shop there, so he kept getting kicked out. He tried four or five separate times to come in.

Another hour later, a different manager told me he had started blowing up the store’s phone, begging to speak to me. She asked me not to leave alone and to stay alert in case he came back.

I contacted Uber support multiple times to report it. All they did was give me a $3 credit. I made sure to rate him one star so I wouldn’t get him again, but it’s honestly scary knowing he knows where I live and work.

I was maybe around 13–14 years old at the time, and I had recently been allowed to stay home alone. Every now and then, when I was by myself, I would hear sounds coming from upstairs, and I’d instinctively call my mom. She told me it was just the house “settling in,” sharing a story about how she used to hear similar noises in her old house.

After many instances of hearing sounds, I decided that the next time I was home alone, I would stay completely silent and make as little noise as possible. For the first half hour, there was nothing—not a single sound. I eventually got bored and felt safe, so I went to grab the TV remote. But just before I picked it up, I heard a huge crash upstairs, followed by running footsteps.

At that point, I was certain someone was in the house. The noises kept coming, consistent enough that there was no doubt someone was upstairs.

Fourteen-year-old me came up with a quick plan. Being a skinny, non-threatening girl, I grabbed a kitchen knife. Then I took a shoe and propped open the front door. After a few deep breaths, I shouted in the deepest voice I could, “I know you are upstairs! I am giving you a chance to leave without me calling the police. I have propped the front door open and I will be in the bathroom. Be aware that I am holding a knife, and if you refuse to leave, I will call the police.”

I went into the bathroom with the knife, absolutely scared to d**th that someone might open the door. I waited and waited, until I heard a sound that still scares me to this day—the front door closing, and the shoe being moved.

I quickly locked the door and turned on the alarm system. I hope I never see or hear that person again.

A handful of years ago, my washing machine quit working. As a mother to two young boys, this was practically a minor emergency. So I packed us up and headed to the nearest laundromat, boys in tow.

The kids were being kids—watching the laundry spin in the machines, playing with their little cars, etc. The owner of the laundromat, a middle-aged Asian man, came out and started talking to them. Not in a creepy way at first—he just seemed entertained by them. He gave them small candies, a quarter for the machines, things like that.

I thought he was just being nice until he started talking to me. He told me how lucky I was to have two boys, which I agreed with. But then he started saying how his wife “only” gave him daughters and how shameful that was to him. At first, I thought he was joking, but the resentment was very real. He went on about wanting a new wife who could give him sons.

At that point, my husband walked in—he had been nearby in the strip mall and stopped by to see if I needed help. That didn’t deter the man at all. He congratulated my husband on having a wife who gave him sons and continued complaining about having daughters.

I started packing everything up because it was getting uncomfortable. As we were leaving, the man said to my husband, “How much for her? I’ll give you $10,000.”

We brushed it off at first, assuming he was joking. But as I was halfway out the door, he came back with a higher offer. That’s when my husband told him to chill.

We’re generally easygoing people and didn’t want to escalate things or cause offense, but the whole situation was unsettling.

Laundromat man, I hope you learn to love your daughters—and also learn that it isn’t your wife’s fault for having girls. But let’s not ever meet again.

I only found out about this a few years ago. I’m 28 now, but when I was about 5, my mom and I lived in a duplex off a main road in a wooded area. We were on one side, and on the other was a woman and her son. He was studying to be a teacher. My mom was about 25 at the time, and he was in his early 20s.

He would often come over to talk to my mom. She said he asked a lot of questions about me and even asked if he could take me for walks in the woods. She always said no.

My mom worked in the operating room at the local hospital and was often on call, so I usually stayed at my grandma’s house on weekends. One night, while I was at my grandma’s, my mom was home alone sleeping. She woke up in the middle of the night—she’s not sure if she heard something or just felt someone in the room—but when she opened her eyes, she saw feet in socks sticking out from the end of her bed.

She grabbed her bedside lamp and was about to hit the intruder when our neighbor said her name and identified himself. He couldn’t explain why he was naked except for socks, but he begged her not to tell his mother.

My mom called the police. She later went to court and gave a victim impact statement because she was terrified he might become a teacher and be around children. She believes he may have been there for me that night and is incredibly grateful I wasn’t home.

We moved immediately. She couldn’t stay there another night.

So, neighbor who broke into our house wearing only socks—let’s not meet, and hopefully you are nowhere near children.

I don’t know how long he was in my bed or why he was there. All I know is that he woke me up with a kiss, which I immediately wiped off with my hand.

I was fully clothed, which made me think nothing had happened, but the buttons on my pants were undone. I don’t know if they had been like that before or if he undid them. Under the sheets, my shirt was pushed up, and he had his hands on my waist, holding me close.

I moved his hands off me, and he went back to sleep. I sat up in shock and caught a glimpse of his face. I asked, “What are you doing?” He yawned and said, “Resting.”

I clenched my fists, ready to defend myself. At that moment, he said, “Okay, I’ll leave,” and walked out of my room.

I was so shaken that I pushed my dresser against the door to make sure he couldn’t come back. I immediately took a shower and felt relieved that nothing worse had happened—at least, as far as I knew. I had gone to bed around 11, and when I woke up, it was 5 AM.

I had a strange dream that night. In it, I was in a zoo where the zookeeper had let all the animals out of their cages. One of them was a tiger. When it saw me, it immediately tried to attack me, and I fought back. We were wrestling, but I lost. As it pinned me down, instead of biting me, it started licking me.

That’s when I woke up—to him kissing me. In my half-asleep state, I had been fighting him.

This happened last summer.

Me, my husband, and our kids live like 5 minutes from a local park. My kids, who were 2 & 4 (girls) at the time, were super bored, so I suggested walking to the park. We put them in their little red wagon, grabbed some water bottles, a few toys, and headed out. The walk there was fine, nothing happened.

We got to the park, the kids started playing, and I noticed a white car parked across from the park. I saw an older man just sitting in the car watching us—like deliberately staring. He never turned his head or looked away. It was like he wasn’t even trying to hide it.

I told my husband, and he told me to grab my phone and get a picture of him. I started recording, holding my phone up so he could see that I knew he was watching. This a**hole smiled creepily at me while eyeing my girls.

I grabbed both my kids, put them behind me, and told them to stay there and not move. My husband started walking toward the car and yelled, “You better stop staring at my kids, a$$hole!”

The guy just kept smiling weirdly. As my husband got closer, he pulled out and drove away. But I was still recording, so I got the license plate.

I called the cops and told them what happened. The next day, they called us back and asked us to come in and show them the video. We did, and they found him later that day and arrested him.

Turns out he was a s*x offender and wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near parks or schools because of previous convictions. When they arrested him, he was at another park not far from ours.

This guy wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was a creeper.

When my oldest daughter was a freshman in college, she and her friends decided to get into bones. Specifically, they would pick up decaying roadk**l, clean the skulls, and make art from them (or sell them). Eventually, they decided to get some fresh cow skulls to clean. They went to a local sl***hterhouse, and bought three cow heads, wrapping them in plastic garbage bags and putting them in the back of their car.

On the way to the cleaning site, they stopped at a home improvement store in the middle of nowhere to pick up some supplies; two people went inside, two stayed with the car. After a few minutes, my daughter said, "I think the heads shifted; I'm going to check the them and make sure the bags didn't come open." She got out, opened the hatchback, and the bags toppled out, spilling blood and decapitated cow heads onto the pavement.

As she jumped back, she happened to see a lone Store Employee, pushing carts back to the store. And he saw the heads. And the blood. He dropped the carts and power-walked as fast as possible to the storefront, just as my daughter's friends came out. "We need to GO," she said. And they went, with all haste.

This was...oh, five years ago? I'm sure that poor traumatized employee is hoping to never meet them again.

I suffer from schizophrenia. The other night, I had an extreme episode of psychosis. I don’t remember much about what happened. I was wearing sweat pants and high heels and wandering around my apartment complex. I decided to go home. The main door in my apartment complex requires a key card (like a hotel), but my roommates always leave the back door open. So I walked into what I thought was my apartment and made myself comfy on the couch. I tried to go into my room, but it was locked, which confused me because I never lock my door.

The people who lived there thought I was a friend of one of the other roommates, so it took them a minute to register what happened. When they did, they freaked out, understandably, and called the cops. The cop thought I was drinking or on d**gs, but I showed him my medical emergency card that explains I have schizophrenia. After he read the card, I was totally out of trouble and he just wanted to make sure I got home safely.

I don’t even remember the interactions I had with the people who lived there, as I wasn’t super lucid until the officer came.

So yeah. Now these people have a story about how a random schizophrenic woman in sweats and high heels just cane into their house and made themselves at home. (This all happened at night) oops... sorry

Some background: I (28F) am a dog walker/pet sitter. Some of the dogs I walk have reactivity, including this one—a pit/lab mix. She used to pull a lot and was incredibly reactive to other dogs on leash as soon as she saw them. Through a lot of work and training, she has come a long way, to the point where it really isn’t an issue anymore, even when other owners’ carelessness lets their dogs get too close.

On this particular walk, she was a dream the entire time. She passed multiple dogs without issue and would just look at me for the treat she knew she’d get for behaving well. We turned down a side street that looked completely empty so I could give her a more relaxed walk, and everything was going fine for a while.

Then suddenly, someone was there.

I’m usually very aware of my surroundings, especially since some of my walks are in less safe areas, but this guy completely caught me off guard. I don’t know how, but he got about two to three feet behind us without either of us noticing. Out of nowhere, he shouted something I couldn’t fully understand—I only caught the last two words: “YOUR DOG!”

Immediately, my dog—who had no history of aggression toward people—jumped between us and started growling, snapping, and lunging at him. I’m 5’3”, and this guy was at least 6’7” and very muscular, so I struggled to hold her back.

As soon as he saw her reacting like that, he threw his arms up and ran across the street without saying another word. He disappeared around a corner shortly after.

I’ve never praised a dog for reactivity before, but in that moment, I did. I gave her every treat I had left, took her home, and told her owner what happened and how their dog might have saved me.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe the guy just lacked social awareness, but neither the dog nor I got that impression.

She’s easily my favorite client dog now. I still walk her every week, but we haven’t gone down that street when it’s empty again.

I’m really grateful for her—but I definitely hope I never run into the “YOUR DOG!” guy again.

My family at one time volunteered at a veteran's homeless shelter quarterly. It was with a group of people from our church. We had gone several times. I had a small baby that I was wearing on my body with a wrap while serving the food, and I would occasionally mingle and talk with the veterans while they ate.

One evening, I was speaking to two men at a table and one asked me where I lived. I didn't take it to mean anything other than the general town I was from, which I told him. It was nowhere near where this shelter was.

But then, the other man at the table, who I had never seen before, looked at the other guy and told him exactly how to get to my house. He told him where I lived.

Then he looked at me and he said, I used to live on the hill across the road from you. I used to watch you all the time. You and your children.

So that was the last time I volunteered anywhere like that. I reported him to the shelter director. He was a registered s*x offender, I found out later, and he DID live across the road from us at one point. I've never been so creeped out in my life.

This post is short and to the point. It’s been the only time I was truly in danger.

I was around 6 years old. My family and I were leaving the supermarket, and I was begging my mom for candy. I didn’t get any, so I threw a huge fit. I started stomping and crying at the exit and told my mom I wouldn’t leave without it. She said, “Fine, stay here then,” and walked toward the car.

That made me cry even louder. As she got farther away, a man approached me and said, “Get in my van, boy, we will catch her.”

I stopped crying immediately. I already knew about stranger danger, and I just looked at him and felt that something was very wrong.

My mom rushed back, grabbed my hand, and pulled me away. She didn’t say anything to him, just gave him a d**h glare.

I was completely quiet the whole ride home. I still think about what could have happened if she had taken longer to come back.

Years ago, when I was 11, I was home alone with my 7-year-old brother. It was around 9 PM, dark, and pouring rain. We were reading in our room, which was right next to the front door and had a big window with the blinds open.

Then the doorbell rang, followed by knocking. I thought it might be my parents, though it was strange they didn’t use the garage or their keys. I looked outside for their car—nothing but rain. As I got closer to the door, I heard a man’s voice, definitely not my father’s, shouting through the storm: “Would you like some cookies? We’re selling Girl Scout cookies!”

That immediately felt wrong, considering the weather and the time. I stayed quiet and checked the peephole, then glanced through the side window. My heart dropped. There was no parent and child—just a grown man, maybe in his late 50s, standing there alone with no cookies, completely soaked.

I remember the awful feeling of checking the locks while he stood just on the other side of the door. He must have heard me. Those two locks felt like the only thing between me and something dangerous. He kept knocking and repeating the same line about cookies while I stood there, unsure what to do.

Then I realized the blinds in our room were still open, and the lights were on. As I turned the corner, I saw the man peering through the window, possibly looking at my brother, who was still reading and unaware of what was happening.

My heart started racing. I quickly turned off the lights and rushed to close the blinds, fully visible to him. Then I checked every lock in the house, shut all the blinds, and told my brother to go sit in one of the interior closets with no windows. I didn’t tell him what was going on—I didn’t want to scare him. For some reason, I didn’t call the police or my parents either. I just waited in the hallway until the man finally left.

Even now, thinking about it gives me chills. So many things could have gone wrong that night. Ever since, one of my biggest fears has been someone reaching an unlocked door before I do.

Just a little note before we get started: my son looks nothing like me, and I have a baby face, so when people see us together, they assume I’m the babysitter, not his mother.

I had just gotten off work, and my husband was waiting for me with our son, who was four months old at the time. We ordered food to go, and my husband went to use the bathroom while my coworkers cooed over the baby at the pickup counter.

I noticed an older man watching us, but I brushed it off since my son usually gets a lot of attention. He was also a regular at that McDonald’s and hadn’t raised any red flags before.

He came up, smiled at my son, and asked if he could hold him. I politely declined.

Then he pulled a twenty out of his wallet. “Why don’t you take this and get yourself a sandwich and leave the baby with me,” he said, trying to hand me the money.

“No, thank you,” I said, trying to stay polite. I needed my job, and we had just gotten a new general manager, so I wanted to make a good impression.

“Aren’t you hungry? It’s so hard to work two jobs. I’m sure if anything happened, the parents wouldn’t blame you.”

I was about to go off on him when my husband came out of the bathroom and stepped between us.

“Oh, you must be the father,” the man said. He offered my husband the money too, but didn’t mention taking the baby this time.

We started leaving the store, but the man followed us, still offering money. Finally, my husband stopped suddenly, and the man walked right into him. My husband just stared him down until he turned around and went back inside.

A few weeks later, the man came back to the store and started ranting about how he could have given that baby a better life than that young man. I told him I was the mother and that he could get his sausage biscuit somewhere else because he wasn’t welcome there anymore.

Creep who tried to buy my son—let’s not meet again.

This happened last night.

I had just fallen asleep. I hear my dog outside losing his mind. Only to be followed with a notification on my phone "There is motion at your front door", thanks Ring.

I open my phone to the live view of what's happening, only to be greeted by an eyeball directly in front of the camera, and a man whispering/mumbling to himself. He proceeds to knock and ding the doorbell.

Now i live in a suburb, quiet town, wholesome neighbors, all good people. Luckily I decided to actually lock my door today. He then begins trying his luck at the doorknob, and the window, standing off to the side, all the while i hear mumbling and whispers.

After my SO let's him know that we are going to call the police, he gets all huffy and puffy saying how he was just looking for his dog "Fido"... uh huh.. by trying to enter my house, and be a creep on the video... in fact, here you go, see for yourself: video

When I was 17 (F), my older sister (23) took me to the mall to get a cell phone. The guy who sold it to us, probably in his early 20s, showed us several options, let me pick the phone, choose a number—pretty standard—and set us up with a plan. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Then I got a text: “Hey, it’s the guy who sold you your new phone.” I replied—I don’t even remember what I said. I was young and naive; this was about 13 years ago. What I do remember is that he kept texting and calling me.

He kept telling me how attractive I was and that we should be together. I told him it wasn’t a good time because I was about to leave for the entire summer. He asked where I was going and even offered to come along. I didn’t have any real plans—I was going to live out of my car—and I definitely didn’t want a stranger tagging along. It felt really strange that he’d suggest quitting his job and leaving the state for someone he’d only spoken to in person for about 15 minutes.

I told him it was creepy and asked him to leave me alone and stop contacting me. He kept calling, and I kept ignoring him. Eventually, we had to file a complaint and change my number.

So, phone guy whose name I still can’t forget—let’s not meet again.

This is a story about a man named John that I met while working retail.

John is an older white man in his mid fifties, well dressed, well spoken, with shoulder length steel gray hair tied back in a low ponytail. At the time, I was working at a farm and pet supply store.

I was called over to help a customer look at electric fences and shock collars for dogs (which I am steadfastly against, but I had to help). I asked him what I could help him with, and he said he was interested in an electric fence for his dogs since he had a cabin in the woods and wanted to make sure they didn’t get away.

Then he said, “Oh yes... I’m looking to use this shock collar... maybe on you...?”

Thoroughly creeped out, I tried to laugh it off and told him no thank you. I got him someone who knew more than I did and thought that would be the end of it.

Of course it wasn’t.

The next time he saw me, he said, “I have been looking for you. I bought what I wanted, I didn’t like what you said, I wanted to slap you the next time I saw you!”

I told him if he ever hit me, I’d absolutely hit him back.

A few days later, he told me he would really, really liKe to take me out to lunch one day. I politely declined.

He kept coming into the store and looking for me. Most of the time, I’d see him before he saw me. One day, I hid until I thought he had left, but he found me in my department.

He said, “Just so you know, I’m not dressed up for you today. I have a meeting with the bank, but if I didn’t, I would be taking you out for lunch. You know, I can tell you dyed your hair. You look so beautiful, but that doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? It might mean something if you liked me back.”

He was never banned from the store, even after one of my managers heard him say things like that to me. But my coworkers would warn me when he came in and help me avoid him until he left.

I haven’t seen him since I quit, and I’m very thankful for that.

When I was a kid, I used to go up to the Smoky Mountains and stay with my friend and her family for a few days to a week. One time, my friend’s dad drove us down to Asheville, NC, which was about an hour and a half away.

My friend and I had put on a lot of makeup that day—we were preteen girls just having fun—but it was still very obvious that we were kids.

We went into a Mellow Mushroom to sit down and eat when a man, probably in his 30s or 40s, started talking to my friend. The situation quickly turned unsettling when it became clear that he thought my friend’s dad was a pimp and that he was interested in my friend.

I’m pretty sure my friend’s dad threatened to disembowel the guy. We left immediately and drove back to the mountain house. Later, he explained to us what had happened and why we had to leave so suddenly.

Some context: Me and my ex were together for two months, and within that time he stole money from me and blamed it on me when I asked him about it. We broke up after I went for advice on Reddit. My routine is pretty simple—I go to college most of the day, then to work, then home to do homework, and repeat.

The story: I was at my job, just working, when I got an alert on my phone. I figured I’d check the cameras when I got home. Over the next two hours, I got three more alerts.

On the bus ride home, I decided to check the footage. I watched my ex take a hammer to my back door. I kept watching as he struggled with the deadbolt, and then I saw him get inside.

I called the police faster than I thought I could and told them there was a break-in at my address. I kept watching the video—about 15 minutes after he entered, he left with a duffle bag.

When I got home, the police were already there. I identified myself as the homeowner and went inside to check the damage. The place was trashed. My duffle bag and some jewelry were missing.

I gave the police the footage and told them it was my ex, along with where he had been staying. I also filed for a restraining order and had the deadbolt replaced.

Not long after, they caught him at a pawn shop. He had broken in to “get back” at me for dumping him.

Now I have a restraining order, and he’s in jail for a year for breaking and entering.

Ex, let’s not meet again.

TL;DR: My ex broke into my house, I got a restraining order, and he ended up in jail.